Break the silence: world war is beckoning

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-140514.html

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".

Break the silence: world war is beckoning
By John Pilger
May 14, '14

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the West, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally freest journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - "our" terrorism - are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April, the US State Department noted that, following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's campaign in 2011, "Libya has become a terrorist safe haven".

The name of "our" enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of Western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory. The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. All are subjected to a Western media campaign of caricature and vilification - think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, now Vladimir Putin.

Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of NATO, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the West are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

[Feral Child]

1. Nothing to add. REC

[chervilant]

2. Walter LaFeber's

American Age is an essential and candid history of US foreign aggression policy.

[chervilant]

3. AND, k&r

since the hedonists who've usurped our media, our politics, AND our global economy are still convinced that war is the fastest way to grow their wealth, while thinning the Hoi Polloi (not to mention distracting us!) .