Much To Be Thankful For
By William Blum
I’m back
August
26, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- It has recently been reported that Senator
John McCain has an aggressive brain tumor. Not
long ago I would have thought: “Good. It’ll be
great to be rid of that neanderthal reactionary
bastard!”
Not
now. My kidneys are gone and I’m on (rather
unpleasant) dialysis for the rest of my life. My
separated-from German wife is in Germany and
can’t fly because of the danger of blood clots
forming and lodging in her lungs or heart. I’m
an avid reader of medical news and almost every
day I get choked-up and depressed by the
never-ending heart-breaking stories of incurable
pain and suffering of the old and the young.
So I
wish the senator a good recovery, if that’s
possible. Probably no more possible than his
politics recovering. He just condemned all the
neo-Nazi actions in Charlottesville, this man
who went out of his way to pose for friendly
photos with neo-Nazis in Ukraine and
jihadists in Syria.
So far
the dialysis does not seem to have helped, at
least not with my two main symptoms: deep-seated
sleepiness at home, resulting in repeated naps,
making my writing difficult; and getting
out-of-breath and having to stop and rest after
a very short and slow walk outdoors. I’m curious
about whether any of my readers knows of anyone
with a medical problem that was clearly relieved
by dialysis. It may be my advanced age of 84
that blocks any improvement. But, supposedly,
the dialysis keeps me alive in the absence of
functioning kidneys. Incidentally, nine of my
readers and friends have offered me a kidney for
transplant, but I can’t find a hospital willing
to perform it; again it’s my age, though I’m
very willing.
At
least I still have my eyesight and my hearing.
My mind is okay. I have all my limbs and am not
paralyzed. And I’m not in pain. Much to be
thankful for.
It’s
also very nice to have gone past the hangups my
condition thrust upon me and to be back writing
my report for the first time in five months.
During the recent American presidential campaign
I wrote that if I were forced to vote and also
forced to choose between Clinton and Trump I’d
vote for the Donald. (As it turned out I voted
for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.) I
stated two reasons why I’d choose Trump over
Clinton: presumably, a lesser chance of nuclear
war with Russia and a lesser chance of the
American government closing down the Russian TV
station, Russia Today (RT),
broadcasting in the US. There was at the time,
and now again, growing Congressional pressure to
do just that and I’m very reliant on the
station. Because of such matters I was willing
to overlook Trump’s many and obvious character
defects, which I summed up with the endearing
word of my people back in Brooklyn –- “shmuck”.
But by now the man’s shmuckiness has been writ
so large that little hope for him can be
maintained.
What is
keeping Donald Trump from drowning in the very
cesspool of his own shmuckiness is a gentleman
named Kim Jong-un. Who would have believed that
a single historical period could produce two
such giant shmucks, men who tower over their
pathetic contemporaries? There’s only one
explanation for this remarkable phenomenon. Of
course. It’s Russia. Moscow is using the two men
to make America look foolish. And Russia, it may
soon be revealed, gave North Korea its nuclear
weapons. Did you think that such an
impoverished, downtrodden society could produce
such scientific marvels on its own?
Is
there any act too dastardly for Vladimir Putin?
We
don’t know yet whether Trump’s son, daughter or
son-in-law made any deals with Kim Jong-un. Stay
tuned to Fox News and CNN.
Those
stations, amongst others, put out a lot of fake
news, but when it comes to news of North Korea
nothing compares to the fake news of 1950. Did
you know there’s no convincing evidence that
North Korea did what they’re most famous for –-
the June 25, 1950 invasion of South Korea, which
led to the everlasting division of the Korean
peninsula into two countries? And there were no
United Nations forces that observed this
invasion, as we’ve been taught. In any event,
the two sides had been clashing across the
dividing line for several years. What happened
on that fateful day in June could thus be
regarded as no more than the escalation of an
ongoing civil war. Read my chapter on Korea in
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II for the
full details of these and other myths.
The response to terrorism
I still
get emails criticizing me for the stand I took
against Islamic terrorists earlier this year.
Almost every one feels obliged to remind me that
the terrorists are acting in revenge for decades
of US/Western bombing of Muslim populations and
assorted other atrocities. And I then have to
inform each one of them that they’ve chosen the
wrong person for such a lecture. I, it happens,
wrote the fucking book on the subject!
In the
first edition of my book Rogue State: A
Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,
published in 2001, before September 11, the
first chapter was “Why do terrorists keep
picking on The United States?” It includes a
long list of hostile US military and political
actions against the Islamic world during the
previous 20 years.
So I
can well see why radical Muslims would harbor a
deep-seated desire for revenge against The
United States and its allies who often
contributed to the hostile actions. My problem
is that the Islamic terrorist actions are seldom
aimed at those responsible for this awful
history –- the executive and military branches
of the Western nations, but are more and more
targeted against innocent civilians, which at
times includes other Muslims, probably even, on
occasion, some who sympathize with the radical
Islamic cause. These random terrorist
acts are thus not defendable or understandable
from any revenge point of view. What did the
poor people of Barcelona have to do with Western
imperialism?
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Civilians are of course much easier to target,
but that’s clearly no excuse. As I’ve pointed
out in the past, we should consider this: From
the 1950s to the 1980s the United States carried
out all kinds of very harmful policies against
Latin America, including numerous bombings,
without the natives ever resorting to the
uncivilized, barbaric kind of retaliation as
employed by ISIS. Latin American leftists
generally took their revenge out upon concrete
representatives of the American empire:
diplomatic, military and corporate targets – not
markets, theatres, nightclubs, hospitals,
schools, restaurants or churches.
The
terrorists’ choice of targets is bad enough, but
their methods are even worse. Who could have
imagined 20 years ago that an organization would
exist in this world that would widely publicize
detailed instructions on how to choose a truck
to drive down a busy thoroughfare and directly
into crowds of people? What species of human
being is this?
What is
needed is a worldwide media campaign to make fun
of the very idea that such men, along with
suicide bombers, will be rewarded by Allah in an
afterlife; even the idea of an afterlife can of
course be derided; yes, even the idea of Allah,
by that or any other name, can be derided; at
least the idea of such a cruel God. Appealing to
jihadists on simply moral grounds would
be even more useless than appealing to Pentagon
officials or Donald Trump on moral grounds. The
jihadists have to be deeply ridiculed;
the small amount of human empathy and decency
still remaining in their heart of hearts has to
be reached through embarrassing them before
their friends and family. Femmes fatales
can be used against young Islamic men, most of
whom, I’d venture to say, have sizable sexual
hangups. Bombing them only increases their
numbers.
Some thoughts on the question
that will not go away: Capitalism vs. socialism
“The whole art of Conservative politics in the
20th century is being deployed to enable wealth
to persuade poverty to use its political freedom
to keep wealth in power.”
–– Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960),
Labour Party (UK) minister
The
fact that Donald J. Trump is a champion –-
indeed, a model, or as he might say, a huge
model –- of capitalism should be enough to make
people turn away from the system, but the debate
between capitalism and socialism continues
without pause in the Trump era as it has since
the 19th century. The wealth gap, affordable
housing, free education, public transportation,
a sustainable environment, and health care are
some of the perennial points of argument we’re
all familiar with.
So many
empty houses … so many homeless people –- Is
this the way a market economy is supposed to
work?
Twice
in recent times the federal government in
Washington has undertaken major studies of many
thousands of federal jobs to determine whether
they could be done more efficiently by private
contractors. On one occasion the federal
employees won more than 80% of the time; on the
other occasion 91%. Both studies took place
under the George W. Bush administration, which
was hoping for different results.
The
American people have to be reminded of what they
once knew but seem to have forgotten: that they
don’t want BIG government, or SMALL government;
they don’t want MORE government, or LESS
government; they want government ON THEIR SIDE.
As to
corporations, we have to ask: Do the members of
a family relate to each other on the basis of
self-interest and greed?
Speaking in very broad terms … slavery gave way
to feudalism … feudalism gave way to capitalism
… capitalism is not a timelessly valid
institution but was created to satisfy certain
needs of the time … capitalism has outlived its
usefulness and must now give way to socialism …
the ultimate incompatibility between capitalist
profit motive and human environmental survival
demands nothing less.
The
system corrupts every important aspect of our
lives, including the one which takes up the most
of our time -– our work, even for corporation
executives, who demand huge salaries and
benefits to justify their working at jobs that
otherwise are not particularly satisfying.
Several years ago, the Financial Times
of London reported on Wall Street’s opposition
to salary limits:
Senior bankers were quick to warn the plans
would cause a brain drain from the
profession as top executives seek more
rewarding jobs out of the public eye. Unlike
other careers where job satisfaction and
other considerations play a part, finance
tends to attract people whose main
motivation is money. … ‘The cap is a lousy
idea,’ complained one top Wall Street
executive. ‘If there is no monetary upside,
who would want to do these jobs?’
As for
those below the executive class … When they
work, it’s too often just any job they can find,
rather than one designed to realize innermost
spiritual or artistic needs. Their innermost
needs are rent, food, clothes, and electricity.
For
those concerned about the extent of freedom
under socialism the jury is still out because
the United States and other capitalist powers
have subverted, destabilized, invaded, and/or
overthrown every halfway serious attempt at
socialism in the world. Not one
socialist-oriented government, from Cuba and
Vietnam in the 1960s, to Nicaragua and Chile in
the 1970s, to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the
1990s, to Haiti and Venezuela in the 2000s has
been allowed to rise or fall based on its own
merits or lack of same, or allowed to relax its
guard against the ever-threatening imperialists.
The
demise of the Soviet Union (even with all its
shortcomings) has turned out to be the greatest
setback to the fight against the capitalist
behemoth, and we have not yet recovered.
How
could the current distribution of property and
wealth reasonably be expected to emerge from any
sort of truly democratic process? And if this is
the way regulated capitalism works, what would
life under unregulated capitalism be like? We’ve
long known the answer to that question. Theodore
Roosevelt (president of the United States
1901-09) said in a speech in 1912: “The
limitation of governmental powers, of
governmental action, means the enslavement of
the people by the great corporations who can
only be held in check through the extension of
governmental power.”
And
what do the corporate elite want? In a word:
“everything” … from our schools to our social
security, from our health care to outer space,
from our media to our sports.
“We are all ready
to be savage in some cause. The
difference between a good man and a bad
one is the choice of the cause.” –
William James (1842-1910)
A few
years ago, when George W. Bush came out as a
painter, he said that he had told his art
teacher that “there’s a Rembrandt trapped inside
this body”.
Ah, so
Georgie is more than just a painter. He’s an
artiste.
And we all know that artistes are very
special people.
They’re never to be confused with mass
murderers, war criminals, merciless torturers or
inveterate liars.
Neither are they ever to be accused of dullness
of wit or incoherence of thought or speech.
Artistes
are not the only special people.
Devout people are also special: Josef Stalin
studied for the priesthood.
Osama bin Laden prayed five times a day.
And
animal lovers: Herman Goering, while his
Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a
sign in his office that read: “He who tortures
animals wounds the feelings of the German
people.”
Adolf Hitler was also an animal lover and had
long periods of being a vegetarian and
anti-smoking.
Charles Manson was a staunch
anti-vivisectionist.
And
cultured people: This fact Elie Wiesel called
the greatest discovery of the war: that Adolf
Eichmann was cultured, read deeply, played the
violin.
Mussolini also played the violin.
Some Nazi concentration camp commanders listened
to Mozart to drown out the cries of the inmates.
Former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic,
convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes,
genocide, and crimes against humanity, was a
psychiatrist, specializing in depression; a
practitioner of alternative medicine; published
a book of poetry and books for children.
Members
of ISIS and Al Qaeda and other suicide bombers
are genuinely and sincerely convinced that they
are doing the right thing, for which they will
be honored and rewarded in an afterlife. That
doesn’t make them less evil; in fact it makes
them more terrifying, since they force us to
face the scary reality of a world in which
sincerity and morality do not necessarily have
anything to do with each other.
Dick Gregory, 1932-2017
“Mayor Daley and other government officials
during the riots of the ’60s showed their
preference for property over humanity by
ordering the police to shoot all looters to
kill. They never said shoot murderers to
kill or shoot dope pushers to kill.”
“When the white Christian missionaries went
to Africa, the white folks had the bibles
and the natives had the land. When the
missionaries pulled out, they had the land
and the natives had the bibles.”
“The way Americans seem to think today,
about the only way to end hunger in America
would be for Secretary of Defense Melvin
Laird to go on national TV and say we are
falling behind the Russians in feeding
folks.”
“What we’re doing in Vietnam is using the
black man to kill the yellow man so the
white man can keep the land he took from the
red man.”
Notes
Blum is
also the author of
America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – The
Truth About U.S. Foreign Policy and Everything
Else
(2013),
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only
Superpower
(updated edition 2005),
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
(2002), and
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the
American Empire
(2004). His books have been translated into
more than 15 languages.
https://williamblum.org
