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Book by John Maxwell
How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalist and Journalists
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Our
Lives in their Hands
By John
Maxwell
Field Marshal von Rumsfeld is correct.
The Iraq Torture Scandal is going to get
worse, much worse before it blows over. Before that happens,
however, the scandal will have presented to the people of the
United States a unique opportunity for decision: whether to
follow the Bush Administration’s precipitous descent into a
degenerate corporate statism and ultimately, dictatorship, or to
seize control of the ideals and instruments bequeathed them by
their founding fathers two centuries ago, to
re-invent a functioning democracy
Franklin Roosevelt, and most of the liberal
democrats who have led the United States at one level or
another, believed that the US “constitution is so simple
and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary
needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of
essential form” as he said in his first inaugural speech in
January 1933.
Most American leaders – Presidents and
others and particularly the members of the Supreme Court, did
not until recently, regard the US Constitution as
inherently vulnerable to subversion. Of whatever party, all felt
constrained by an idea of ‘America’
which was inherently well-meaning and dedicated to the greater
good of the people as a whole.
Roosevelt put it this way in his inaugural
speech:
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If I read the temper of our people correctly, we
now realize as we have never realized before, our interdependence on
each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well;
that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal
army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline,
because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership
becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our
lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a
leadership which aims at a larger good. |
Who
Benefits?
The Bush counter-revolution, on the other
hand, makes no bones about its dedication to the larger
good of the rich and powerful. At this very moment it is
engaged in an ideological struggle within its own ranks in
the Senate, to entrench new benefits for the rich as against
providing for the disinherited. And it marshals consent by
scaring the daylights out of its own people.
Roosevelt said ”There is nothing to fear
but fear itself.” He might have added, “and unbridled
selfishness and arrogance.
The Bush single-minded concentration on
satisfying the greed of the few at the expense of the needs
of the multitude is nowhere better expressed than in the
so-called war on terror and the inhumanities and injustices that
flow from that ‘war’.
It was a truism, stated even by Bush himself,
that the essence of defeat would be for the United States to
yield up its liberty and surrender its civilisation in the
struggle. But it was clear from the start that this
struggle against terror was a con. Declaring war against terror
is declaring war against an abstraction, as many of us said at
the time. It allows the President to pick and choose his
enemies, without regard for anything that they might have done.
And among those enemies it transpired, were Free Speech and
Justice.
Iraq was invaded on totally and now,
admittedly, false pretences for what South Sea Bubble
prospectuses described as “purposes which will in due
time be revealed.” At the moment, the US is supposed to be
bringing civilisation and the rule of law to a nation which is
now horrified by tales of American depravity and outlawry.
It has allowed the US to intervene on the
side of a few rich elites to decapitate the nascent Haitian
democracy and to threaten Cuba with social ‘improvements’
which would turn that nation back forty years.
Here in Jamaica,
to demonstrate its complete control of our destinies, the US has
decided to wreck what remains of our efforts at town
planning by inserting its terrorist attracting embassy into
the heart of a residential community—doing what Ariel Sharon
says terrorists do—hiding behind innocent bystanders, using
them as shields.
‘We
Pledge Our Word…’
John F Kennedy's inaugural speech, which
we at the JBC broadcast live on January
20 1961, electrified millions of people round the world
when the new President promised to deal honourably with
people like us.
“To those new States whom we welcome to the
ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial
control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a
far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them
supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them
strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in
the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of
the tiger ended up inside.
“The tiger of course, was the spectre of
communism which dominated the waking thoughts of western
statesmen. But people of goodwill then believed that
eventually even that obsession would go away. Kennedy held
out his hand “to those nations who would make themselves our
adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides
begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of
destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned
or accidental self-destruction.”
Kennedy had no intention of being a softie,
of adopting any leftish position, but he recognised the
madness of “ both sides overburdened by the cost of
modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the
deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of
terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.”
Kennedy proved he was no pushover in the
Cuban Missile crisis, and began the path which would lead to the
de-escalation of nuclear menace, to nuclear
non-proliferation treaties and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty so cavalierly scrapped by President George Bush.
Bush’s reasons: to free the United
States from any apparent restrictions on the use of its power
and to empower the military industrial complex against which, in
his farewell speech in 1961, President Eisenhower warned so
strongly:
The
Military-Industrial complex
| The total influence—economic,
political, even spiritual—is
felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal
government. . . . In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will
persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take
nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together. |
Last year, I was one of millions round the
world who marched in protest against the United States’ plans
to attack Iraq, in violation of international law, common sense
and common decency. 'No blood for oil!', we said, but tens of
thousands of Iraqis perished plus nearly a thousand Americans
and their allies, while the ranks of the terrorists and those
who hate the United States have swelled beyond calculation.
In a column ten days after 9/11 I said
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Anyone who has studied the honeybee soon realises that bees make four types of cells: honeycomb cells and
brood cells for Queens, Drones, and Worker bees. Queen Bees lay
the same eggs in every brood cell. Some cells are
differently shaped and sized for Drones and Queens. When a
hive loses a Queen it simply transfers an egg from a worker cell
to a Queen cell, and presto, a new Queen. Queens go on laying
eggs for life, once fertilised by a Drone.
Any human brain, fertilised by
Injustice, can, similarly, produce a hero or a terrorist.
As the careers of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak
Shamir and Ariel Sharon demonstrate, the differences between
them may not be visible to the naked eye.
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While Mr Bush may see every justification for Mr
Sharon’s latest campaign in the Gaza Strip and
approve of his tanks, helicopter gunships and bulldozers, the
Palestinians collectively punished by him may have very
different ideas. Some of them, indeed, may be provoked into
turning themselves into one-man armies—aka terrorists—to
avenge their grievous injury.
Sharpening
the Contradictions
In the same column in which I discussed the
habits of bees, I also suggested that “Although a
majority of Americans are now standing to attention and saluting
the flag, many, I believe, would welcome a little more obvious
moral and intellectual leadership from the White House. What
they get instead is incitement to lynch law and racial war.
Sooner or later, it will be obvious that Justice cannot be
achieved that way.”
That denouement has come sooner
rather than later.
A majority of Americans now disapprove of Mr
Bush’s handling of the war, and as the heinous and depraved
nature of the military response becomes more apparent, an even
greater majority will develop. Mr Karl Rove—Mr
Bush’s so-called ‘brain’—obviously believes that all
of us—Americans and others—are fools who can be
turned round by the expenditure of millions of dollars on
misleading and untruthful advertisements. Their underhand
methods of propaganda extend even to using taxpayers money to
pay for a campaign boosting their political version of
Medicare. With the money at their disposal, the Republicans will
do much more damage to American trust and national integrity
before they are through.
The people they went to rescue in Iraq,
are, according to an US Army sponsored poll, 90% against
American presence in Iraq. And this was before the exposure of
the torture regimes of Messrs. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cambrone.
The Bush war has sharpened the contradictions
between the original American Dream (however inadequate) and
the neo-fascist nightmare now being prepared for all of us.
American conservatives are now beginning to understand what
people like us in the developing world meant when we said
that Globalisation was slavery by another name. In Iraq, the US
Army is preparing to sacrifice its own slaves to save
the necks of the elite.
And, at last, even the corporate American
media is awakening to an understanding of what is
at stake.
The latest Al Ghraib videos reportedly show
American soldiers engaging in sex orgies in the sight of
Iraqis they had just finished abusing. It may be depraved, but
it is not unexpected. People whose civilised instincts are
suppressed by intimidation or coercion are likely to express
their alienation and distress in singularly inappropriate
ways. They are as much victims as the people they had so
recently and brutally victimised.
War is not a civilised pursuit. General
George Patton sixty years ago had the courage to put into words
the real depravity of war whether conducted by Americans or
anyone else:
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… the very thought of losing is hateful to
Americans. Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as
a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious
bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post,
don't know anything more about real battle than they do about
fornicating. Now we have the finest food and equipment, the best
spirit, and the best men in the world. You know . . . My God, I
actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against. My God, I
do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut
out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our
tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. |
Mr Bush said he wants to be known as a “war
President”. Little does he know.
Copyright©2004 John Maxwell
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Incognegro: A Memoir of
Exile and Apartheid
By Frank
B. Wilderson III
Wilderson, a professor,
writer and filmmaker from
the Midwest,
presents a gripping account
of his role in the downfall
of South African apartheid
as one of only two black
Americans in the African
National Congress (ANC).
After marrying a South
African law student,
Wilderson reluctantly
returns with her to South
Africa in the early 1990s,
where he teaches
Johannesburg and Soweto
students, and soon joins the
military wing of the ANC.
Wilderson's stinging
portrait of Nelson Mandela
as a petulant elder eager to
accommodate his white
countrymen will jolt readers
who've accepted the
reverential treatment
usually accorded him. After
the assassination of
Mandela's rival, South
African Communist Party
leader Chris Hani, Mandela's
regime deems Wilderson's
public questions a threat to
national security; soon,
having lost his stomach for
the cause, he returns to
America. Wilderson has a
distinct, powerful voice and
a strong story that shuffles
between the indignities of
Johannesburg life and his
early years in Minneapolis,
the precocious child of
academics who barely
tolerate his emerging
political consciousness.
Wilderson's observations
about love within and across
the color line and cultural
divides are as provocative
as his politics; despite
some distracting
digressions, this is a
riveting memoir of
apartheid's last days.—Publishers
Weekly
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Becoming American Under Fire
Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship
During the Civil War Era
By Christian G. Samito
In Becoming American under Fire, Christian G. Samito provides a rich account of how African American and Irish American soldiers influenced the modern vision of national citizenship that developed during the Civil War era. By bearing arms for the Union, African Americans and Irish Americans exhibited their loyalty to the United States and their capacity to act as citizens; they strengthened their American identity in the process. . . . For African American soldiers, proving manhood in combat was only one aspect to their quest for acceptance as citizens. As Samito reveals, by participating in courts-martial and protesting against unequal treatment, African Americans gained access to legal and political processes from which they had previously been excluded. The experience of African Americans in the military helped shape a postwar political movement that successfully called for rights and protections regardless of race. For Irish Americans, soldiering in the Civil War was part of a larger affirmation of republican government and it forged a bond between their American citizenship and their Irish nationalism. The wartime experiences of Irish Americans helped bring about recognition of their full citizenship through naturalization and also caused the United States to pressure Britain to abandon its centuries-old policy of refusing to recognize the naturalization of British subjects abroad. / For Love of Liberty |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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