“The problem here is to define ... a form of life that would not depend on an unsustainable relation of domination over the rest of the world.” - Jean Bricmont
We live in a time of incredible change, and to have any say at all in the direction that change will take requires a respect for reality. Right now, the United States is losing this battle as it tries mightily – and wastefully -- to sustain its post-WWII legacy as the world’s undisputed Top Dog.
The key to this disaster here in the US is a greater and greater restriction of information in conjunction with what can only be called a top down enforced blindness among the population.
If you think this is only the view of a disgruntled leftist, read Thomas Friedman’s latest column in The New York Times, where he imagines WikiLeaks revealing a gleeful cable from the Chinese ambassador in Washington to his bosses in Beijing:
“Things are going well here for China,” the ambassador writes. “There is a willful self-destructiveness in the air here as if America has all the time and money in the world for petty politics. ... This leaves us relieved. It means that America will do nothing serious to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.”
His fictional ambassador goes on to gloat over the $190 million a day being pissed away to war in Afghanistan. He speculates that by the time the US finally leaves the Afghanis will hate the US so much China will have the inside track on all the minerals there.
The real cables recently released by WikiLeaks are, of course, not nearly as crisp and to the point as this fictional one. But they’re equally as insightful and inciting to boot.
Mike Huckabee, a follower of Jesus Christ and a presidential candidate, says Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, should be tried and executed. Others, like Tom Flanagan, a former aide to the Prime Minister of Canada, says that would take too long and Assange should just be assassinated. “Take him out!” is the correct vernacular, I believe. Sarah Palin wants him hunted down like an al Qaeda dog.
The same surely goes for Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of the 250,000 diplomatic cables. And since The New York Times and virtually every other major newspaper in the world has run some of the cables, presumably Times Editor Bill Keller and the other editors should be “taken out” as well...
For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, journalist-run online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/
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