The fundamental source of the uncritical, servile and submissive nature of the American population to the American government is due to the source of many “original” Americans who came from the servant trade and bond-indenture servants. I bet that many Americans have never even heard of servant trade and how it was used to populate the early American colonies because it is not taught in America’s public schools nor even in American colleges and universities. Theodore W. Allen, in his book, The Invention of the White Race: The origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (New York, Verso, 1997, pp. 119-121)
The term, “servant trade,” as it came to be called, that is, the export of chattel\ laborers from Europe, sprang up as a response to the profit-making needs of tobacco business, and it soon became a special branch of commerce. These bond-laborers, “provided a convenient cargo for ships going to the plantations to fetch tobacco, sugar and the other raw products available,” writes A. E. Smith. The real stimulus to emigration was not the of servant to go to America, but the desire of merchants to secure them as cargo. Investors found the trade attractive. In England, votaries of what today is euphemized as, “market principles” sold English men and women for ₤2 per head (or even less sometimes) if they had them already in captivity as convicts or workhouse inmates.
In all, some 92,000 European immigrants were brought to Virginia and Maryland between 1607 and 1682, the great majority being sent to Virginia. More than three-quarters of them were chattel bond-laborers, the great majority of them English. In 1676, it was Governor Berkeley’s estimate that about 1,500 European chattel bond-laborers were then arriving in Virginia daily, “the majority English, with a few Scots and fewer Irish. “Others were brought to the Chesapeake after the defeat of the Catholic cause in 1689, and they were for a time especially worrisome to the colonial authorities for fear that they might “confederate with the Negroes,” as Francis Nicholson warned when he was Governor of Maryland.
Most people who went through the public school systems in the United States or in the African, Caribbean or Asian colonies probably heard of the “African Slave Trade” or the “Triangular Trade” that transported African slaves from West African Coast to the New World. But rarely were service trade – the commerce between England and the New World that transported European convicts, captives, convicted felons, workhouse inmates, poor people, debtors, orphans, etc to the New World as bond-indenture laborers and/or slaves. This is one of the greatest secretes and deceits of western education not to teach or discuss service trade in western schools because they do not want people to know that most Europeans also were brought into America by force in chains. Their standard orthodoxy is that only blacks came in chains as slaves. The truth that most early whites and blacks came into America in chains would change America’s historiography, public perceptions, discussions and current public policies. It is therefore, important that these facts be presented and rigorously discussed.
Allen continued:
Volunteer emigrant bond-laborers were those who boarded ship for America of their own conscious will, although in most cases that will was shaped by extreme hardship and defeat at home, or by the self-delusion about the prospect of prospering n the new land. Of those who came thus voluntarily in the seventeenth century, some arrived with written contracts, called “indentures,” setting forth the names of their owners, the duration of their periods of servitude, and perhaps, some “consideration” or “freedom dues” that their owners were to give the laborers upon completion of their terms. In some cases the indenture was between the worker and the particular plantation owner whom he or she was to serve in the colony. More frequently, the indenture was arranged with a merchant, ship’s captain, or other middlemen, who sold the laborer to the highest bidder, and then signed over the indenture to the new owner. As early as 1635, a standard indenture form was in use with blank spaces to be filled in with the names of the parties and witnesses.
He continued:
The involuntarily immigrant bond-laborers who came from Europe may also be considered in two categories. There were those who came under sentence as convicted felons and political prisoners, including captives taken in civil war or rebellion in England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1664, a committee on plantation labor supply problems urged the Council for Trade and Plantations (subsequently to be known by various names, and ultimately as the Board of Trade) to have more systematic resort to this and other forms of recruitment of plantation bond-labor. Convict should be sent to serve seven or fourteen years, said the Committee, according to the seriousness of their offenses. “Sturdy Beggers and Gipsies and other Wanderers” who could not be forced into a settled way of life should “be sent to the plantations for five years under the conditions of Servants.” From among the unemployed poor of the towns, villages and parishes of England, some should be “invited or compelled” to emigrate to serve as unpaid bond-laborers… The involuntary shipment of still others to Anglo-American colonies, lacking even the color of law, depended on crimps and “Spirits” (so called because they “spirited” their victims away from their native places) who obtained their unwitting victims either by kidnapping or by gross and deliberate deception. The latter and more common method was noted in an English pamphlet published in 1649:
The usual way of getting servants, hat been by a sort of men nick-named Spirits, who take up all the idle, lazie, simple they can intice… who are persuaded by these Spirits they shall goe into a place where food shall drop into their mouthes… The servants are taken up… and by them [the Spirits] put in Cookes houses about Saint Katherine, where being once entered, [they] are kept as Prisoners until a Master fetches them off. (Emphasis mine)
For example, Senator Obama who is the 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate, and who might actually win the presidency on November 4, 2008 election, always uses his example to promote and “confirm” America’s historical promotional propaganda, that America is the land of great unlimited opportunity, just as the “Spirits” then promoted America as the place “where food would drop into their mouthes” then. . Obama would often say, with pride and seriousness in his face and voice, “no other country is my story even possible, that someone of his low parentage and beginnings, would ever even aspire to become president.” The truth is that Obama is flatly wrong because presidents and leaders all over the world often come from people like him – people of low and humble background, who worked hard for their achievements.
The evidence is abundant and clear that most world leaders do not come from royals but rose from struggling backgrounds. Very few world leaders are Prince Charles who has his world path prepared and ordained for him. Most world presidents and prime ministers come from common backgrounds and worked their way up. Presidents in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Venezuela, Haiti, UK and many other countries come from educated, intelligent, resourceful, ambitious and motivated individuals like him. His current achievements in US would also easily push him to the leadership cadre in Kenya and/or any other society in the world. The prime minister of Barbados, David Thompson came from a common background; and Owen Arthur, the prime minister (1994-2008) equally came from very humble background. His father was a shopkeeper but he rose to become the prime minister. So, Obama must stop saying that, “in no other country is his story even possible,” because his story is the story of most presidents and prime ministers in the world. It makes me sick in the stomach anytime he says it because it is just not true.
Education has been the main source of social mobility in most countries. People who acquired education like Obama did often use it to situate themselves in leadership positions. The interesting thing, is that most societies, even in third world countries, have structures in place to encourage and reward academic diligence and excellence with free tuition, scholarships, grants, etc. to tertiary levels – things and policies that are rare in America where students often pay exorbitant tuition for their tertiary and/or professional education through suffocating private-lender loans.
In America, some students also often pay for their tuition with their own blood, if they survive their military service. One of the main attractions for military service in America, is that the military will help pay for their college education after an honorable service in the military. This is the great pitch of the military recruiters as they go after the poor but ambitious high school seniors in America, who want to go to college but cannot afford the spiraling high cost of education in the system. It is a shame that the opportunities for good college and professional education, which other youngsters get free, unattached in most other countries are used to entice many of our youths to their untimely deaths. No wonder that our children, children of the working class and the poor, are the cannon fodders, the disposable elements in the Bush/Cheney imperialist wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It is even most sinister and abominable that Bush and Cheney, eho made sure that they did not serve in combat during their time or that their own children never get near the battle fronts are now ever eager to sacrifice other peoples’ children to die in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My point is that what got Obama where he is today is his good education. He should therefore not only emphasize that, but ensure that he promotes good education policies for our children so that they would get the same chance as he did. America should have free tertiary and professional education policies that will not depend on demanding pounds of blood and flesh of our children like Shylock. We are a very rich country. We can afford to educate and train our children free like most other European nations.
I think that Obama need to emphasize the low humble background he shares with political leaders in this country and in other parts of the world to give hope to the vast majority of the common suffering masses of the world. Rather the way he is using his fortunes only gives solace and support to America’s structural fascism and racism. The possible election of black President Obama is cosmetic and unintended. More importantly, it will have no impacts on the structures of fascism and racism in America. Rather, it will only allow our fascist and racist bosses to showcase themselves as leaders with human hearts while leaving their structures of oppression and exploitation intact.
For example, a black President Obama will not stop New York City Police and police security forces across the nation from shooting, killing, sodomizing, brutalizing and profiling blacks and minorities across the nation. Black President Obama will not stop the horofic sodomizing of Abner Luimer incident or the forty-one bullets that rained on Amadu Diallo , or the fifty bullets on Dell or the police antenna/walkie-talkie sodomizing of Michael Mineo on October 15, 2008. It is important to note that Michael was sodomized just about two weeks before black Obama will be elected president, thus confirming that a black President will have no impacts on the fascist, racist structures of the system. According to New York Post of October 25, 2008:
The man [Michael Mineo] who said cops sodomized him with walkie-talkie antenna had injuries consistent with type of assault, according to his hospital discharge papers .. And law-enforcement sources said Michael Mineo suffered a torn rectum among other severe injuries
They continued:
“What are you doing to me?” Michael Mineo screamed at the cops as they subdued him, several witnesses told investigators. “What are you – a faggot?” (Read, New York Post, “Injuries Hint Cop Sodomy: Walkie-talkie ‘rape’, by, Murray Weiss and Lukasi I. Alpert, October 25, 2008, p. 8).
Thus, Obama is only strengthening the fascist/racist bosses by gloating that “his story is only possible in America,” which we have shown to be a lie. However, Obama will be doing the vast majority of the common masses of the world a lot of good if he rather emphasizes his unity and common base with them instead of seeing his story as a unique experience that is only possible in America. In that case he will be expressing solidarity and unity with the masses of the world where he actually belongs instead of trumpeting and glorifying American fascism and racism, which is what he currently does.
Obama’s Real Big Lie
I have tried to explain how and why it is a big lie for Senator Obama to keep saying that his story -- from low humble parentage to the presidency -- is only possible in America. Precisely, my position is that presidents and prime ministers in many other countries come from such low, humble and modest backgrounds.
However, the biggest lie, which Senator Obama has been perpetuating with the help of the bosses is that he is not black or not really black or not fully black. The statement comes out in various ways and with various nuances, partly encouraged by Obama himself and/or by his handlers and supporters – both black and white who want to vote for him and/or sharpen their rationale to vote for him. All the configurations are because Barack Obama is of mixed race – from a Kenyan father and a white mother. They make it look like Obama is not fully black since he has a white mother. Some even go on to say that he will be the first mixed-race president, if elected.
It is interesting and astonishing to watch some Americans make such bland arguments that Obama is not fully black because he has a white mother. Genetically, Obama has 50% white gene he inherited from his white mother, so there is no debate that he is of mixed race or what we call mullato. Unfortunately, American custom and laws never recognized mullatoes or mixed-race. In American historical sociology, one is either white or black. John Punch became the first slave when he was sentenced in Virginia in 1640 to serve his master for the rest of his natural life for running away from indentured servitude with two other white indentured servants, who were each given four years extension of their servitude as was the practice then. Thus, the concept of slavery – servitude for life – was born in America in 1640 in Virginia with John Punch. In 1641, the colony of Massachusetts formally recognized slavery, as the first colony to do so. Furthermore, in 1662, Virginia passed a law that “all children of slave mother would also be slaves.” This was the law that made all mullatoes slaves.
Mullatoes by then were a significant part of the population since slave masters raped slave women at will for pleasure and to increase their properties. So, the law of 1662 was designed to ensure that all mullatoes were slaves. They were treated and regarded as slaves by law, culture and socialization of the society. It was based on the law that the children of Thomas Jefferson with his slave maid were slaves and treated as slaves. So, where does Obama’s white motherhood come in differentiate him for blacks – none. This is because in America, any drop of black blood makes one a black.
Allen then concluded:
The Council for Trade and Plantations report to which reference is made above acknowledged the leading part played by the “Spirits,” who “receive a reward from the persons who employed them.” Like the beaver and deer skin trade that was proving so profitable in the colonies, the English bond-labor supply system in the seventeenth century had its subdivisions. William Haverland was a hunter and trapper, and was accounted a most aggressive one. His role was that of initial seducer and captor of the laborer. Thomas Stone, one of Haverland’s prey, told of the experience. One day late in November 1670, he was accosted in a London street by Haverland whom he did not know, but who represented himself to be a native of Stone’s own county. By deceit coupled by brute force, Haverland delivered the besotted Thomas to a ship’s captain to be taken and sold as a plantation laborer in America.
It is therefore clear that most early Americans (black and white) were slaves and bond-indenture laborers for the very few bosses that owned our great grandparents and great granduncles who were unfortunately sold to or spirited to American. The trauma of that experience filters into our attitudes today and accounts for the docility and ready servile acceptance of our current leaders and bosses explanations and policies. This accounted for why the founding fathers did not accept most Americans as their equals, why they were scarred of democracy and the masses; and why the crafted a constitution in 1787 that constricted the masses and common Americans. When the founding fathers created the American Constitution, blacks, native Americans, white women and majority of the white men were not allowed to vote (only propertied white males could vote) because the few white male bosses did not think they would share equality with their slaves and/or former bond-indenture servants.
Bacon rebellion resulted from the personal power struggle between Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy young Englishman and William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia colony. As the struggle continued, each side tried to muster support for its cause by promising freedom to the indentured servants and black slaves who joined them. Even poor white farmers who had other discontents and grudges against the colonial Governor Berkeley and his colonial policies eagerly joined Nathaniel Bacon who easily mustered much greater following than William Berkeley. Bacon and his men marched on Jamestown, set the town on fire in September 1676, as the governor ran away for safety.
However, the rebellion fizzled out after British authorities sent a royal expeditionary force to assist in quelling the uprising that arrested the committed black and white rebels. The rebellion finally ended when the leader, Bacon, suddenly dies in October of stomach infection.
Bacon's Rebellion demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class -- what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.
Timothy Breen, professor of history at Northwestern University, had this to say on the relationship between black slaves and white indentured servants in colonial Virginia:
There are many ways that human beings divide themselves up. Class is one, [and] gender, race, ethnicity. There's a number of ways that people divide themselves up. And in early Virginia, race was a category that people recognized. Black people recognized difference, and sometimes, I would even argue, celebrated difference. But in this highly competitive, depressingly abusive world, poorer whites and poorer blacks -- people who were marginalized in this system of dependent labor -- oftentimes reached out to each other in ways that suggest that, at least in the first 50 or 60 years of Virginia, ...people of African background and English background were able to work together in ways that, again, in later period of American history, were impossible
On Virginians' concerns about white and black servants, professor of history, Margaret Washington, Cornell University stated as follows:
You can't discount the notion that black and white servants and slaves were going to unite over their common oppression. We have evidence of them running away together. We have evidence of them rising against their masters together. They lived together. They slept together. So yes, there was a possibility of a lower class surge against the elites. So that's a very important consideration for the Virginians, in terms of wanting to create one kind of labor force
The point is that that poor whites and blacks in colonial America had a high level of class unity and understanding because of their similar historical origins as bond-indenture servants. Evidence shows that class was more important to the colonial Virginians than race which became quite worrisome to the elites and the bosses. The importance of Bacon rebellion therefore, was that it became the first time when various poor classes in colonial America banded together against the elites and the colonial government with dare consequences to them.
The bosses were lucky to quash the rebellion because of the sudden death of the rebel leader, Nathanial Bacon, but it was a wake-up call for the bosses to begin to dismantle the natural bond of class unity among poor and oppressed whites and blacks by instituting race based policies that resulted in racial slavery and all the other racial policies that have come to identify America.
The American experience is therefore a litter of pitched battles by common Americans for equality in their country. Today, in 2008 lots of progress have been made by common Americans in our struggle for equality in the system – slavery, Jim Crow and segregation laws have been abolished; every white male can “vote” white females can now vote. White females and blacks are even contesting to become president of America -- someting our founding fathers could never have imagined. Some other notable civil rights achievements can also be counted on the plus side for common Americans but America still remains the most backward of all western democracies by most comparative analysis, which means that we still have lots of struggle ahead of us to strike even with our comparatives.
The electoral college is one structure our founding fathers inserted in the Constitution to hobble the common man and frustrate democracy in America. Also go to nightweed.com to read about many other ways that voting is frustrated in America like the fact that “80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies – Diebold and ES&S” – companies that are owned by Bush and Republican pals. Also Morley Safer of CBS, 60 Minutes on February 14, 2008, show why the Danes are the happiest place on earth, and why many of them would not want to exchange place with us.
In 1662, Children Became Slaves of Their Fathers By Law:
It is important to understand the full impacts of the 1662 Virginia law, which decreed that, "all children of slave mothers would also be slaves." The first impact of the law was that it produced extra incentives for the slave masters to rape their slaves just to produce more slaves or properties for them. This meant that for the first time in human history, males used sex not just for biological satisfaction and/or enjoyment but also as a way to increase their property, wealth and economic value. This mean that males did not see their offspring as their children or themselves as fathers but as their owners and masters. Incredibly, the society saw and regarded mullato children the same way – as slaves owned by their masters even when it was clearly known that the masters were the biological fathers of the children. This is clearly something that is inconceivable in today’s America or in any other society – that fathers would regard and treat their children as their slaves – with the sanction of the law and the society. It is important to see and understand how depraved and subhuman the system was so that we can begin to understand and appreciate the strides we have made and where we need to go.
Thomas Jefferson Freed His Slave Children When He Died:
One thing that history books agree about Thomas Jefferson, was that he freed his slave children in his will. Some authors state it as a question of facts, some state it to show his generosity while others do not bother to mention it at all because they are too embarrassed that our historical icon had slaves. To me however, the important thing was not that he had slaves like many rich whites of his epoch, but that he also held his own children as part of his slaves and therefore freed them at his death. It is inconceivable to me how someone could hold his children as his slaves and/or how a society could make a law requiring such. But America did that and Thomas Jefferson did that. Today’s America is big on Christian evangelism, on family values and our love of children. We jail deadbeat fathers – whether of same of mixed races, we do not care. The law and the society now require fathers to be men and to support their children without distinction to race, which is great. We also have serious problem of “fatherlessness” from single or abandoned mothers in the society especially among the minorities. Could these phenomena be traceable to the slave era when some children were properties and fathers were masters and slave owners?
In 1665, Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland and leased a 300-acre plantation, where he died five years later. But back in Virginia that same year, a jury decided the land Johnson left behind could be seized by the government because he was a "negroe and by consequence an alien." In 1705 Virginia declared that "All servants imported and brought in this County... who were not Christians in their Native Country... shall be slaves. A Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ... shall be held to be real estate." English suppliers responded to the increasing demand for slaves. In 1672, England officially got into the slave trade as the King of England chartered the Royal African Company, encouraging it to expand the British slave trade. In 1698, the English Parliament ruled that any British subject could trade in slaves. Over the first 50 years of the 18th century, the number of Africans brought to British colonies on British ships rose from 5,000 to 45,000 a year. England had passed Portugal and Spain as the number one trafficker of slaves in the world.[18]
America being the only modern society that held chattel slavery as a matter of public policy had learnt and perfected the art of mass-control mechanisms from the beginning. In addition, slaves in early America did not mean only Negroes because America held and treated the vast majority of early poor whites in conditions akin to Negro slaves. Thus, according to David R. Roediger:
By most accounts the indenture’s unfreedom and hardship, though short duration, were in some respects worse than any institutionalized form of labor exploitation in Britain. Indentured servitude was a term, which like kidnapping, gained currency because described the particular harsh realities of labor recruitment to the colonies. Sharon Salinger’s work on servitude in Pennsylvania suggests that the institution only became more ‘American’ and more debasing as the Revolution approached[21].
A spokeswoman for General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC through its division NBC Universal, declined to speak about the specifics of the comments but said,
The fact is that if the Bush loyalists who defended Bush and said that Mcllelan was not in the loop are correct, which means that Mcllelan was not really in the loop, did not know what he was talking and was just feeding us lies, then Bush must be impeached for the grave crimes of national deceits. It means that they deliberately lied to the American people for years by putting up someone (Scott Mcllelan) who told us lies. This means that either way, Bush must be impeached, tried and punished for his crimes against the American people and the world. Either Scott Mcllelan was correct that Bush deliberately lied to us about the Iraq war or that he was wrong because he was not in the loop, according to Bush loyalists and defenders. So, nothing could save Bush from the wrath of the American people except the pathetic docility of Americans, our servile adulation, reverence and obedience to authority, which is the subject and premise of this paper – that Americans are too docile, meek and submissive to their political leaders and too reverential of them for comfort and for progress of the system. In fact, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and our other founding fathers would be laughing at us in their graves now because they would not have rebelled against King George and the mighty British Empire if they had been as timid, servile and docile as we are today. . Again, remember the fundamental premise of their rebellion against the King of Great Britain,
Three-fifths Clause or Three-fifths Compromise:
The three-fifths clause or three-fifths compromise, as dubbed by some scholars, is a ringing part of the American Constitution that was crafted by our founding fathers at Philadelphia in 1787. The three-fifths clause, in Article 1, Section 2 of US Constitution, clearly stated that Africa-Americans would count as three-fifths of persons. Yet, it is the same document that many teachers and scholars today deify, discuss and teach our students in such uncritical, glorying and venerating terms as if it was perfect and crafted by super-perfect, super human beings.
The clause is rarely ever fully discussed nor are its historical imports and continuing imparts on the society ever explored or critically examined. Yet, I will dare say that no other clause has had more effects in structuring America than the three-fifths clause. The three-fifths clause gave us the fifty states. We might have ended up with different number or name of states. It gave us the bi-cameral Congress. It gave us the 13th and 14th Amendments; and all the various civil rights Acts through which we have been trying to right the monumental wrong and injustice that was done and enshrined in our constitution by our founding fathers in 1787. For all these and other reasons, too numerous to mention here, the three-fifths clause should have acquired more focus in our social studies and social science curricula in public schools, colleges and universities in America.
Unfortunately, three-fifths clause is rarely mentioned let alone ever critically discussed in our educational system because such an approach would expose our students to the real America, which is what our bosses do not want and are scarred of. Our bosses rather prefer circulating the fantasy notion of America as the “land of freedom,” “leader of the Free World,” and all such other venerating, deifying notions of America and our founding fathers. No other society venerates or deifies her founding fathers like America. These guys are treated as if they are infallible demi-gods and any questioning of their actions as totally taboo.
In fact, a student once said to me in class that, “it would not be nice to tell our school children the truth that many of our founding fathers were slave owners and racist” Fortunately, before I could respond, another student cut in and answered in the affirmative, “Sure, the truth must be told to students.” Even a student once said that, “it was disrespectful,” for me to criticize the founding fathers, the racist policies of the system, Bush and the Iraq war, etc. because I came from Nigeria and got education from this system. My response to the student is simple and clear, “it is not disrespectful for me to critic anything I find wrong in the system. That it is in fact my duty to do so and that it is a great compliment and affirmation to the super education that I received at Purdue University, which gave me the critical tools to analyze the system because every great education must give students the tools for critical analysis.” Finally, on this issue of disrespect, I must add again, as I have said many times, that it is my fervent objective and teaching strategy to impact the art and strategy of critical thinking, research and analysis to my students so that they will no longer be slaves to what they system tells them, but must have the discipline, the maturity and the fire to do the necessary research hard work for critical analysis. Of course, the beauty of critical research hard work is self-empowerment.
The 1787 Constitution demands the government conduct a census of the country every ten years as the cardinal part of the republic the Founders created, since accurate population data were and are needed to properly appropriate seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Thus, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3, of the Constitution specifically spelt out the three-fifths clause as follows:
(b) Including those bound to Service for a Term of Years
(c) Excluding Indians, not taxed.
(d) Three-fifths of all other Persons.
However to realize that white bond-indentures continued in tandem in the system even as African-American racial slavery steamed across the system is not only flabbergasting, but requires a whole new analytical tools that go to the root of understanding the docility and stupor of the current American society. Some critical questions that arise are:
(i) How were the bosses able to do it?
(ii) How were they able to keep the white bond-indentures obedient as African-American slaves proliferated the system.
(iii) More importantly, how did the bosses get the white bond-indentures to fight the revolutionary war in 1776 without liberating them? It was like getting people fight for their oppressors and enslavers.
(iv) How and why did white bond-indentures still exist in the system in 1787 – some 180 years after its introduction in Jamestown in 1607?
(v) Such questions would get students to discuss rigorously why the royalists had so much appeal during the revolutionary war – something rarely discussed in America’s school system.
(vi) Britain was offering freedom to the royalists, their supporters, and/or anyone who would support them fight including white bond-indentures and African-American slaves
(vii) George Washington and others who fought King George and the British government, dubbed themselves, the patriots while the King George called them, the rebels.
(viii) Therefore, the revolutionary war was between the patriots and the royalists; or between the king’s forces and the rebels. If American students understand the revolutionary war correctly, it would help them understand the contemporary Iraqi wars. However, the bosses do not permit such thorough discussions and understanding of the revolutionary war and the American experience. The bosses want only the sanitized version American experience, or what Professor Ward Churchill calls, “the triumphant history of America.”
(c) Excluding Indians, not taxed
The third criteria of the founding fathers about how to count the population of each state was to exclude Native Americans or Indians from the count. This reflected their pogrom mentality towards the Indians. Indians should be cleared and ethnically cleansed from the area. Hence, killing, depopulation, clearing Indians, and isolating them in remote sterile reservations where they would all die off were the first official policies of our founding fathers towards Native Americans as reflected in the Trail of Tears and their other horrible policies towards Native Americans and confirmed by in the 1787 Constitution. Thus, our founding fathers were the first to practice extensive ethnic cleansing in modern history.
(d) Three-fifths of all other Persons.
While discussion the white bond-indentures or the Native American policy could be flabbergasting and could underscore the sinister genius of the founding fathers, discussing the actual three-fifths criteria is profound and leaves one speechless as to the rigor and the intellectual energy that the guys invested in crafting that particular paragraph. First, let me confess that writing is a very difficult exercise. Sentences often take me several trials to get exactly what I want. Therefore, I have great respect for writers because I know that it takes lots of work and intelligence to produce good work.
America Kills the Founding Fathers of Other Nations:
My point is that no society venerates and deifies its founding fathers like America does. America is not the only society with founding fathers Every society has founding fathers, yet none adores and treats their founders as divine idols to be worshipped by children and the society like American do. Nigeria has founding fathers – those who fought for Nigeria’s independence from Britain are regarded as fathers of the nation but nothing like the veneration that is accorded to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others early leaders. Haiti, Jamaica, Ghana, Indonesia, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Congo, Iraq, Iran and other countries – all have their founding fathers, which people do not venerate and adore like they do in America.
The overboard veneration of founding fathers by Americans is result of intense and even harsh socialization processes to which early Americans were subjected starting from the colonial days when they looked up to the leaders not as fellow citizens but as bosses and owners. The whites were happy and went along with such servile culture because according to David R. Roediger, they reaped “The Wages of Whiteness” which included their admission into “whiteness” and the white club; and their feeling of superiority over blacks. The blacks, on the other hand, had no option, they were held and pinned down by both the bosses and their former white comrades. Whites who socialized with blacks and ran away with them before as comrade-in-arms had now been brainwashed and re-socialized anew to forget their own equally horrible history and origins from servant trade and bond-indentures, to acquire a new fake reality and to begin to think that they are different and superior to blacks. Hence, the American bosses are ever lucky because they always Balkanized and manipulated their subjects as bosses in other nations could hardly do.
The American bosses did a master trickery on their subjects – especially on the whites to buy their silence, acquiescence and compliance without conceding anything to them. I call it fake and illusionary reality for whites because the American bosses dupe all American workers – whites and blacks –. The fact that blacks and minorities are duped more than the whites and the fact that American whites get far less rewards than the workers of other industrial nations do not bother many American whites so long as they have blacks and minorities to trump over.
However, the sinister nature of American officialdom is not that other countries also have founding fathers, but that American government often kills or tries to kill the founding fathers of other countries. American forces killed Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected president of Congo. American forces also killed President Sukarno in 1965 along with about half a million Indonesians because America did not like Sukarno’s policies. America replaced President Sukarno with President Suharto who ruled Indonesia as America wanted. Thus, according to Stig Aga Anndstad:
The CIA explicitly instructed by Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles performed the till-then largest covert military action in US history, and in support of the regional rebellions tried to overthrow the neutralist Indonesian government under President Sukarno.3 The rebellion failed, and considerable damage was done on US-Indonesian relations. The following years Indonesia shifted from a parliamentary democracy and into a more authoritarian state-form. A delicate tripartite power structure emerged, consisting of the communist party (PKI), the military and Sukarno. In US eyes, the country’s drift seemed to be towards becoming the world’s third major communist country, threatening to become the “greatest loss since the fall of China.”4 However, in 1965 an allegedly communist coup attempt led to a military counter-coup led by general Suharto (henceforth referred to as the Gestapu affair). After a massacre of roughly half a million claimed communists, an anticommunist military government established itself under the rule of Suharto. During the next few years Indonesia aligned itself with the US and recreated its links with the west. Indonesia, seemingly out of the blue and by “bloody good luck” was “saved for the free world”.(Read, Stig Aga Aandstad, United States Policy Towards Indonesia, 1961-1965, (Norway, University of Oslo, 2006).
While it has been long acknowledged that American public schools are generally doing quite badly in math, science, writing and English, compared with most other western and third world nations, there appears to be new realization and particular alarm that the public school students also perform even worse in social studies. Bill Gates in a CNN interview on October 4, 2008 acknowledged again that our public school system is bad and needs complete overhaul. He stated that our universities and graduate research institutions are the envy of the world. My research and experience, which I have shared with my students many times, confirm Mr. Gates position, so I completely agree with him.
The whole discussions and concerns about failing American education and poor knowledge of American history are interesting and pathetic because they were all part of the system’s designs. Also the comedian, Jay Leno of NBCs “Tonight Show”, has series where he goes out and asks ordinary American including students, some simple questions about America’s history to show how Americans know very little about their system. This means that America’s poor knowledge of social studies is not confined to current public school students, but a congenital systemic problem that needs fundamental analysis and solution. Some questions that come to mind while pondering about the poor knowledge of American history by Americans are:
(2) Which history are they really talking about? Real history or sanitized history?
(3) Since the emphasis in the school system is sanitized history, could it be that students are turned off because they know that there is something phony and unreal about the history being taught them?
(4) Since most public school students are recent immigrants of children of immigrants, could it be that they feel alienated because the curriculum does not sufficiently address their own background.
(5) The system’s emphasis had been on other subjects core subjects math, science, ELA with social studies relegated to the background – no wonder students do not think that it is important.
(6) Finally, it is said that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again, the same way and expecting different result. The historical system’s approach of blaming teachers for students’ deficiencies is not working and has not worked to improve students’ knowledge and scores. May be it is time to do something different. May be it is time the bosses could ask teachers, who are in the teaching trenches, what do they think, and how can they improve their students knowledge and examination scores.
(7) The role of the bosses should be to give strategic guidance and provide the necessary logistics but teachers, who are in the frontline, should be given the tactical leeway to practice their trade. This is very imperative because the bosses strategies, which have been implemented for years now got the students and the school system no where. The only outcome is this deplorable outcome, the latest result of only 14% pass rate, which is truly low and awful.
Today, in fall, 2008, the system gathers blacks and Hispanics from their neighborhoods and quarantines them in Upstate/White neighborhoods and suburbs where they provide revenue and top employment for the bosses and are used to boost Congressional/Legislative representations of their new abodes even as they are not allowed to vote just like in the American 1787 Constitution. Our public school system is a disaster nationwide. It has been described as “global joke” by the “Two Million Minutes” – a documentary film on global education by the international team of experts that compared America’s public school children with other countries. Also did a special on the crisis of America’s public schools with Bill Gates and Jonathan Kozol – known critics of America’s public school system. A recent study found out that New York State has the third worst performing public school system in the nation. We need good free universal medical system. We are the only industrial democracy that does not have free universal coverage. Shame on us. So our priorities are upside down. These are some of the priorities our president and elected official should be trying to solve and not about blowing other countries up or the Commander-In-Chief role as McCain claims. The primary criteria for our president now in 2008 should be who can fix our multiple socio-economic and political crisis especially now that our economy has gone south.
However, Lesley Stahl noted that, “the people they met had lots of resentment against Americans; and expressed little gratitude for Americans.” Ms. Stahl then asked them, “Let me ask you, do you like it better now than during Saddam?” to which they replied, “Saddam’s time was definitely better, we had essential services like water, power and electricity.” They said these in front of General Odierno who conceded that life could be difficult without utilities. Lesley then added that there are piles of garbage and open sewers everywhere; and that unemployment rate was about fifty percent. The truth is that Bush unleashed hell in Iraq for which they may never forgive us, no matter how we want to sugarcoat, whitewash or cover our atrocities there.
There is no excuse at this stage of American development for a posture of political innocence, including an unquestioning of the good faith of our government. After all, there has been a history of manipulated public beliefs, especially in matters of war and peace.
Professor Falk continued:
Historians are in increasing agreement that the facts were manipulated (1) in the explosion of USS Maine to justify the start of the Spanish American War (1898), (2) with respect to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to justify the previously unpopular entry into World War 11, (3) in the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, used by the White House to justify the dramatic extension of Vietnam War to North Vietnam, and, most recently, (4) to portray Iraq as harboring a menacing arsenal of weaponry of mass destruction, in order to justify recource to war in defiance of international law and the United Nations. The official explanation of such historic events as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the assassination of President Kennedy have also not stood up to scrutiny by objective scholars. In these respects, the breaking of trust between government and citizenry in the United States has deep historical roots, and is not at all merely a partisan indictment of the current leadership associated with the right wing of the Republican Party. But it does pose for all of us a fundamental haunting question. Why should the official account of 9/11 be treated as sacrosanct and accepted at face value, especially as it is the rationale for some of the most dangerous undertakings in the whole history of the world.
The above quotation is from the "Forward" Professor Falk wrote for the book, titled, The New Pearl Harbor written by David Ray Griffin.
Right now Bush is busy fabricating other lies to attack Iran before he leaves office in January 2009, and there is nothing we can do about it. Yet, we call this country, a democracy – what a democracy? No. It is not democracy. It is dictatorship. John Perkins is correct when he calls America an “empire,” which means that if we want democracy we should stand up and work for it – and stop deluding ourselves that we already have democracy just because Bush, the champion of election rigging who got to power through unprecedented electoral roguery, criminality and theft, with his paid pundits and five shameless corrupt criminal and corrupt Supreme Court Justices, tell us that we are a democracy. No. Democracy is when the people elect their leaders and can remove them if they want. In the Bush case, not only did he steal the election in 2000, he elegantly stole it again in 2004. Further, he is now all poised to steal the election again in 2008 through McCain who will only be a Third Bush.
Bush has already scored the initial and partial victory in the 2008 presidential election by Hillary Clinton and replacing him with Senator Barack Obama who would be easier for her candidate, Senator John McCain to defeat in the general election. The truth is that the criminal actions of this W. Bush administration are unprecedented in the annals of American governments – and they do all these with unbelievable arrogance and pomposity. I have intimately known, studied and taught American government and society for over thirty years, and never did I imagine that I would ever witness an American president surpass the buffoonery of President Dada Idi Amin of Uganda and the Self-Crowned Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic in the 1970s.
When scholars will start writing about idiotic, incompetent, criminal, pompous Don Quixote’s of the 1970s, President Dada Idi Amin and Emperor Bokassa would certainly vie for the apex status. W. Bush will certainly be at the acme of such pompous, incompetent, ignorant, arrogant, criminal group when academicians begin to compile such inglorious, ignominious groups and ignoramus of the twenty-first century. Honestly, the amazing thing to me is not that Bush is criminal, ignorant, corrupt and pompous, but that Americans watch him hopelessly and helplessly ignore and destroy our laws and values as the Congress does nothing.
The concept of Checks and Balances which I have taught my students for decades have been rendered useless and a joke by Bush with his "imperial presidency" as the Congress trembles under his feet. The American mainstream press is also a joke. They are mostly Bush’s “lapdogs” and are scared of him. Occasionally, the media would splash some anger, as one struggling to untie itself from bondage, to write something sensible and truthful about Bush. Thus New York Times Editorial of May 22, 2008 titled, “What the F.B.I. Agents Saw“:
Does this sound familiar? Muslim men are stripped in front of female guards and sexually humiliated. A prisoner is made to wear a dog’s collar and leash, another is hooded with women’s underwear. Others are shackled in stress positions for hours, held in isolation for months, and threatened with attack dogs. You might think we are talking about that one cell block in Abu Ghraib, where President Bush wants the world to believe a few rogue soldiers dreamed up a sadistic nightmare. These atrocities were committed in the interrogation centers in American military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And they were not revealed by Red Cross officials, human rights activists, Democrats in Congress or others the administration writes off as soft-on-terror. They were described in a painful report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, based on the accounts of hundreds of F.B.I. agents who saw American interrogators repeatedly mistreat prisoners in ways that the agents considered violations of American law and the Geneva Conventions. According to the report, some of the agents began keeping a “war crimes file” — until they were ordered to stop. These were not random acts. It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials. The report shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners: — Four F.B.I. agents saw an interrogator cuff two detainees and force water down their throats. — Prisoners at Guantánamo were shackled hand-to-foot for prolonged periods and subjected to extreme heat and cold.— At least one detainee at Guantánamo was kept in an isolation cell for at least two months, a practice the military considers to be torture when applied to American soldiers. The study said F.B.I. agents reported this illegal behavior to Washington. They were told not to take part, but the bureau appears to have done nothing to end the abuse. It certainly never told Congress or the American people. The inspector general said the agents’ concerns were conveyed to the National Security Council, but he found no evidence that it acted on them. Mr. Bush claims harsh interrogations produced invaluable intelligence, but the F.B.I. agents said the abuse was ineffective. They also predicted, accurately, that it would be impossible to prosecute abused prisoners.[66]
The Report continues:
For years, Mr. Bush has refused to tell the truth about his administration’s inhuman policy on prisoners, and the Republican-controlled Congress eagerly acquiesced to his stonewalling. Now, the Democrats in charge of Congress must press for full disclosure. Representative John Conyers, who leads the House Judiciary Committee, said he would focus on the F.B.I. report at upcoming hearings. Witnesses are to include John C. Yoo, who wrote the infamous torture memos, and the committee has subpoenaed David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Mr. Conyers also wants to question F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, both of whom should be subpoenaed if they do not come voluntarily. That is just the first step toward uncovering the extent of President Bush’s disregard for the law and the Geneva Conventions. It will be a painful process to learn how so many people were abused and how America’s most basic values were betrayed. But it is the only way to get this country back to being a defender, not a violator, of human rights.[67] (Emphasis mine)
The above New York Times, Editorial, is so apt to understanding Bush’s profligacy that I had to reproduce it in full. However, as great and commendable as the editorial might be, it is still fundamentally deficient. The Editorial only reflects the pathetic timidity, hopelessness and helplessness of Americans to dealing with the challenges of a ruffian, gangster and “cowboy” president like W. Bush.[68] You see, the founding fathers designed a presidency that a normal, moral, law-abiding person would occupy. Never did they anticipate that a total ruffian, an irresponsible, nonchalant, amoral, non-caring, coward and selfish warmonger like W. Bush would swindle himself to the presidency.
Bush then proceeded to trash all the rules of the presidency as many Americans are confused and running for cover. The Editorial is therefore, pitifully very weak. It concluded that the investigation, “is the only way to get this country back to being a defender, not a violator, of human rights”. (emphasis mine). No. The conclusion of the editorial is wrong. Its purpose is not just to expose their lies but also to impeach, try and punish them for their crimes against America and the world. I am sure that in the privacy of their homes that the Bush-Cheney gang will be laughing their hearts off at us. They would be pounding their chests, congratulating themselves and wondering how certified incompetent jerks and cheats like themselves have so thoroughly succeeded in conning and bamboozing many Americans to do their bidding; and how we are all scarred to touch them.[69].
This brings me to the 2008 presidential election. In America, people are not only helpless, hopeless and powerless; we are also brain dead and scared to death about our leaders. We think that they are gods – omniscience and omnipotent – even when they have shown to be the most incompetent, corrupt, criminal, greedy, murderous, conscienceless and heartless administration ever.
I told them that the root cause of the spike in oil price is Bush’s war on Iraq, which disrupted Iraq and the Middle East, which is the main base of oil supply. They would not talk about Iraq war as the root cause of spike in oil price because it would make them blame Bush for the war which they are scared to do. That is what I call academic stupidity, timidity and dishonesty. In my class, I make it real. We call the spade by its proper name, which is why my class is different. We are real. We do real academia in my class. There is nothing ivory tower in my class. We relate our theories to the real world. We use real world examples to buttress our points. We make connections between the theories we study and the real world. Students are made to see and feel the connections between theories, analysis and public policies because that is how societies operate. My objective, which I believe should be the objective of academic endeavors, is to impact and improve the society for the better.
Global Price of Oil Spike from About $14 per barrel in 2003 to over $100 in 2008:
It is both frustrating and interesting to watch the level of philistine academia that goes on in the system now where it seems that “politically correct” academia demands that professors or researchers should never mention or blame Bush in their analysis. Otherwise, how could the main focus of research and discussions about “rising oil prices” be about the rising demand for oil for SUVs, and in China and India. I am amazed because oil price spike in 2003 only after Bush invaded Iraq. The global price of oil per barrel in 2002 was about $14 per barrel. It was about $135 in the summer of 2007. The domestic price of gas per gallon was about $1.25 per gallon in 2002 and about $4.25 in the summer of 2007. There were as many SUVs in 2002 as there were in summer of 2007. The Indian and Chinese economies did not have any significant hike from 2002 to 2007, so the only new independent variable that caused the spike was Bushes invasion of Iraq, yet scholars, professors, etc avoid making the obvious connections like a plague because they do not want to make it look like they are blaming Bush for Iraq war. Yet, basic economics, simple economics, Economics 101 in any university teaches that the price of goods are governed by the laws of Supply and Demand. The invasion of Iraq not only disrupted the supply of oil but created massive uncertainty in the supply base of oil hence the escalating oil price. I wish that economic professors will prove me wrong that Bushes invasion of Iraq was the main cause of the hike in oil price. And if I am right, they must make the connections because professors are supposed to teach truth to their students and not pander to politics.
Bush is the Major Cause of the National Economic Crisis and Financial Failures of Fall 2008:
As I write this in fall 2008, the nation is in a state of economic trepidation. Our major economic and financial institutions are in tumult and in state of free fall. Major banks are collapsing, declaring bankruptcy, merging, being bought over and/or simply melting away. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bears Stearns, IndyMac, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Wachovia, and many others are either in distress and/or collapsing. The reasons for their predicaments, we are told are due to subprime mortgages and overdrawn credits. Republican presidential candidate called the situation, “the greatest crisis since the end of World War 11” while Alan Greenspan called it, “a once-in-a-century economic crisis”. And, according to New York Times of September 25, 2008:
President Bush appealed to the nation Wednesday night to support a $700 billion plan to avert a widespread financial meltdown, and signaled that he is willing to accept tougher controls over how the money is spent. As Democrats and the administration negotiated details of the package late into the night, the presidential candidates of both major parties planned to meet Mr. Bush at the White House on Thursday, along with leaders of Congress. The president said he hoped the session would “speed our discussions toward a bipartisan bill.” Mr. Bush used a prime-time address to warn Americans that “a long and painful recession” could occur if Congress does not act quickly. “Our entire economy is in danger,” he said.
We are therefore clearly in a very serious economic and financial crisis which is even affecting the entire global economy. Some banks and financial houses in UK and Europe are been affected too. According to Daily News of September 26, 2008:
The Wall Street crisis has put many New York City real estate deals in jeopardy and scuttled countless others. Real estate agents are seeing some purchases fall through because buyers can’t get mortgages, John Reinhardt, CEO of Fillmore Real Estate, said yesterday. “Banks as so cautious,” he said, “Everybody’s afraid more than normal – both buyers and sellers.” Neighborhoods where banks have tightened their lending practices are showing high foreclosure rates including Canarsie, East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick. As a result, sale prices in these areas have dropped 20% from a year ago, Reinhardt said. In other parts of Brooklyn, prices are down 15% to 20%. Buyers facing serious problems include those who signed purchase contracts a year of two ago at condo developments under construction in Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. The homes are ready for occupancy and the buyers have, “nonrefundable deposits at stake,” said Melissa Cohn, CEO of Manhattan Mortgage Co. These buyers face potential losses because they already put down 20% -- and banks are demanding that they pony up an additional 10% as security. When buyers initially lined up their deals, reasonably solid credit score of 650 were sufficient to qualify them for prime mortgages. Now they need scores topping 700. Some must find co-signers to get loans.
Again, the scary thing is that while everyone agrees that the economic crisis is huge and potentially fathomless, no one is linking it to Bushes criminal Iraq war and to the monumental corruption and criminalities associated with his policies. Ironically, the Democrats, Bush, Bernanke and Paulson led the choirs calling for a bi-partisan approach to “solve” the crisis with a “$700 billion Bush bailout plan” Even some top Republicans from Bush party are opposed to the plan while all the top Democrats, Senators Chris Dodd, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Reid including their presidential candidate, Senator Obama have all become Bushes chums and cheer leaders for the humongous bailout.
It is a shame to see Senator Schumer plead with Bush to get his Republican friends to support the deal quickly because this is a national “bi-partisan” crisis that demands immediate patriotic solution. The foolish and timid democrats are incorrigible. The chicken Democrats are all lining up with Bush because he said that it is “a national non-partisan crisis”? My questions are:
- When has Bush done anything patriotic for this country?
- Were they correct when they lined up with Bush to attack Iraq as a national patriotic duty?
- Do they not see any connection between the profligacy of the war, the financial drains and stresses of the war and the ballooning economic and financial stresses of the system?
- If Obama cannot make the connections between Bushes war and the threatening economic collapse, he is then worse than useless.
- The economic crisis is actually God sent for Obama and the Democrats to use to knock off Bush and McCain.
- Obama and the Democrats must therefore start making consistent, loud, direct and clear connections between Bush, McCain, The Republicans and the crisis.
- The only thing national about this crisis is that it affects commonners like us, otherwise the root cause is Bush, which must be loudly stressed.
The truth is that our current national economic crisis and threatening financial collapse are rooted in Bushes war – and the connections are obvious for anyone with a minimal understanding of the workings of our national economy to see unless he has a deliberate agenda to obfuscate facts and save Bush. Let me make a simple connection, which can be done in many other ways.
(a) When the price of gas went from about $1.25 per gallon to about $4.00 per gallon, this meant that peoples’ gas bills jumped from about $25 per tank to about $80 per tank. This meant that filling the tank went from about $125 to about $400 per month. Clearly many other things had to go – mortgages, other credits, etc. As banks and other financial houses fail to receive their timely payments, the stresses on them mounts; credits of the customers deteriorate as they fail to make payments, which means that the banks’ and the customers’ fortunes are going south simultaneously. Meanwhile, the high cost of gas also shot up heating bills for individuals, businesses and government offices. The general operating expenses of all sorts of businesses and governments skyrocket causing constricted services and mass layoffs. Increasing unemployment and decreasing government services will cause major and increasing socio-economic stress in the system. Government revenue will decrease because of decreased tax base from increased unemployment. As business incomes lower their taxes decrease. Meanwhile the high cost of fuel increases the cost of food production which will increase the cost of food in US and other parts of the world, as evidenced by global food riots -- all part of the hardships, the spinoffs and spillovers of Bushes war policies.
Obama, whose mission is to defeat Bush/McCain in this election would have used the worsening economic/financial crisis to underscore Bushes incompetence. Rather he is embracing Bush and calling it a national non-partisan crisis as if it was not the socio-economic and political policies of W. Bush that caused them.
(b) The above analysis and connections can be done starting from any aspect of the economy but they will all end up with Bush war because the price of global oil could never have risen from from $14 to over $100 per barrel from 2003 to 2008 without Bushes deliberate, planned war of aggression against an innocent country, Iraq; and we cannot expect such phenomenal price increase without without complex jolting negative effects. So anyway one looks at the crisis, anytime one does an objective analysis of the crisis, it will always lead to Bush. Bush is therefore the ultimate culprit for this crisis.
(c) Right now, some European banks are collapsing too. So as the crisis becomes truly global, Bush must be held accountable. This means that Bush the devil is dragging the whole world down to hell after himself and his friends, Dick Cheneys, the Halliburtons, etc have siphoned national wealth into their private coffers. Global governments who know that Bush is a rogue and war criminal -- that he stole American elections, invaded Iraq and kidnappped and tortured people all over the world, and did not raise a finger-- desreve to be removed by their own peoples too. Some governments were even imitating Bush in their social and economic policies, hence the problems of their economies.
Bush Policies Are Fundamentally Anti-America:
First, Bushes reckless and selfish war on Iraq put tremendous amount of money into the coffers of oil producers, some of whom happen to be our enemies – notably Iran and Venezuela. The price of oil made these countries super rich; and therefore more confident to oppose us. We are really funding our enemies. It is therefore, really a very stupid anti-America policy that only a Bush can adopt because he never really cares for America. As long as Bush, his friend Cheney and few other friends made money from the policy, Bush was satisfied with it because he is exceedingly selfish and never cares about common Americans.
I am therefore happy that my students discuss what we do in class with their friends and loved ones because that is the only way we can begin to hope for change in the society. We are not intimidated by those who do not want to hear the truth. All I know is that the truth must prevail. It is a tough task. I do not expect it to be easy. Many professors, either out of ignorance or laziness, opt to regurgitate the orthodoxy which is quite easy. Martin Luther King said that, “the arch of the moral universe is long but that it bends towards justice.” It is a tough task but I believe that we are winning as shown by the evidence of my students’ positive reactions.
Bush Will Attack Iran Before He Leaves Office:
This is the last issue I want to address, even if briefly because I know that the paper is already getting too long. I want to say something about Iran because the same Iraq playbook and scenario is unfolding again before all of us and no one appears to know what to do until it explodes before us again. I hope that I am wrong, and I honestly hope that I am wrong this time, but my track record has been almost near perfect for me to wonder, fear, shudder and pray that I am wrong. All that can save us now from a Bush-Iran war is prayer because from all that I know from my over thirty years experience as a social scientist and policy analyst, I will predict that Bush will attack Iran before he leaves office on January 20, 2009 for the same reason he attacked Iraq in 2003 – simply for his political survival. Bush attacked Iraq for his political survival and for oil. Both are two mutually re-enforcing reasons. The war might not have occurred without the other because both are equally important for the war to occur. Bush needed the war to stabilize his presidency after he stole the White House in the 2000 election and he needed the oil companies to give him the cover and the boost after the secret deal Dick Cheney had with oil executives. Hence, Bush did not attack Iraq for any of the high values of democracy, national interests, WMD or national security that we are used to arguing. Those were necessary and convenient rationalizations that he used or encouraged depending on the national mode and mood. More importantly, Americans are either too embarrassed to admit that their president would attack another country or send American children to their certain deaths for such base personal reasons as political survival and oil for the profit of his gang. Those are two horrible reasons for going to war, for putting American lives in jeopardy, so Americans will never admit it. It is not only very embarrassing for Americans to admit it but must be utter humiliating for Americans to realize that it is true and that they cannot do anything about it. So America’s best approach is self-denial, self-delusion. Just aggressively deny that it could ever be – even be aggressive in your denial – and refuse to even consider the possibility. Thus, some Americans, in classrooms and elsewhere, behave like children in their aggressive rejection of out-of-the-box views and questions that fundamentally deviate from their known orthodoxy. Yet, Norman Solomon has brilliantly shown that American presidents have historically used wars to boost their domestic standing[76]. Hence, Americans encouraged by Bush gang have been inventing all sorts of reasons to satisfy themselves or justify their president’s brutality and barbarism. Since it is for democracy, it is okay to destroy Iraq; since it is for oil, we can kill millions of Iraqis to maintain our living standard.
America's Moment of Truth -- Self-Denial and Self-Delusion:
Americans are traumatized and confused when confronted with the reality of why Bush attacked Iraq. They are confused to know that Bush and Cheney attacked Iraq for two reasons that are common, base and criminal, viz:
- They needed a new Pearl Harbor to boost their political fortunes. Having stolen the 2000 election, they needed a weapon of mass distraction (WMD) to distract the people from their crime. This means that they planned a new crime to distract us from their "old" crime. It worked perfectly fine because since 9/11 and Iraqi war no one talks of their stolen election. Their strategy was clear -- just overwhelm the people with massive crime so that they would not have time to talk about "old" crimes.
- We will kill Saddam who sacked our oil friends from Iraqi oil, seize Iraqi oil and give it to our friends in business. We will also move ino Iran and take control of Iranian oil. This will put us in control of major oil sources in the world.
- Since Cheney has already privatized American Army in his earlier life as Secretary of Defense, they would then award no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney's Halliburton to provide all the services that the military normally performs at exorbitant prices and profits to ourselves.
- Halliburton's subsidiaries and our other cronies like KBR, Blackwater, etc will also receive lucrative no-bid contracts because there will be lots of money to go around.
- Meanwhil we will make lots of money, Halliburton, our friends, cronies at KBR, Blackwater will also make tons of money and everyone of us will be happy.
- Above were the deals that Bush, Cheney and their friends made before the war.
- Remember that Cheney has insisted that any details of the meetings he had with top energy executives remain top secret confirming that it was truly a mafia meeting, which was what it was.
- The Iraq war is therefore, the only war that was started by political leaders for their personal political and economic benefits -- thus confirming the utter criminal nature of Bush and Cheney -- which are clearly too embarrassing and humiliating for some Americans to contemplate and discuss.
Thus, Iraqi oil and private, selfish political and economic benefits and incentives provided the fused motives and basis for the Iraqi war. Without one of them, the war would not have occured. Iraqi oil provided the objective conditions and economic base for the war, while the greed, selfishness and criminal nature of the actors pushed them on for the dastardly deeds.
Bush and Cheney needed to recover Iraq's massive oil and give it to their friends in oil business. Once the war conditions were there, all that Bush and Cheney needed was to find ways to rationalize it to the people hence their use of Sadam's WMD -- weapon of mass destruction. They told us that Saddam must be destroyed since he has WMD and that he has operational link with al Qaeda and bin Laden who killed thousands of Americans.
If Bush Had Attacked Iraq For Oil
Bush has never argued that he attacked Iraq for oil. He has however encouraged his friends, supporters and the nation to argue such through innuendoes. By announcing in dramatic way that "America is addicted to oil," just as he was making vigorous efforts to attack oil-rich Iraq, it made it look as if his attacks were part of his policies to find oil for the oil-hungry America. Hence, reasonable men began to rationalize in their minds that the war might actually be necessary because it is not good to let the bad-man Saddam control such a vital resource to us.
I wish Bush had attacked Iraq for oil for Americans. If it were true, we would have been buying gas for about 50 cents now in 2008 because gas was about $1.25 in 2003 when he invaded Iraq. It does not make sense for the price of oil to quadruple to over $4 and rising when Bush invaded Iraq for its oil and actually succeeded in seizing and controlling the entire Iraq oil. Rather, the war caused the spike in oil prices. Oil prices spiked because of the fundamental disruptions of the oil supply bases of Iraq caused by the Bush attack and not because of demand increases from China, India and/or our SUVs, etc. as they want us to believe.
If Bush had gone into Iraq for freedom, to free Iraqis and establish democracy, he would have left to let Iraqis enjoy their freedom and establish their democracy. Rather he has occupied Iraq with more than one hundred and fifty thousands troops since his 2003 invasion. Any idiot would know that no country can be free when occupied by overwhelming foreign forces. For example, I do not know how Americans can be free or feel free if over one hundred thousands foreign troops are occupying US. These foreign troops who do not look like us, do not speak our language, do not know our culture, etc knock down our gates and doors, search our women, kill us at sights, and still declare that they have liberated us. Would it make sense to us? How do we expect such to make sense to others? Yet, Bush and some of his supporters argue that we have brought freedom to Iraqis by removing Saddam. It is an insane and ridiculous argument for us to be occupying a nation and still tell them, tell ourselves and the world that we have brought freedom to them.
Iraq and the Theory of White Man's Burden:
The only equivalent logic I can think of, in history, was when America enslaved blacks and claimed that they were doing good to blacks because Africans were genetically inferior people who needed guidance. This is America’s Sambo theory or America’s theory of “white man’s burden. White America justified slavery for themselves because of Sambo theory – a theory that saw blacks as perpetual children who need continual guidance.Some whites justified slavery because they argued that blacks were happy as slaves since they were genetically inferior. Thus, according to Stanley Elkins:
The Negro was to be a child forever. The Negro in his true nature, is always a boy. He is dependant upon the white race; dependant for guidance and direction even to the procurement of his most indispensable necessaries. Apart from this protection, he has the helplessness of a child – without foresight, without faculty of contrivance, without thrift of any kind. Not only was he a child; he was a happy child[77].
He continued:
Few Southern writers failed to describe with obvious fondness the bubbling gaiety of a plantation holiday or the perpetual good humor that seemed to mark the Negro character, the good humor of an everlasting childhood.[78]
For example, America is already feeling that Iraq is their burden and that they are spending so much on Iraq when it is America that destroyed Iraq and therefore has full responsibility for the plight of Iraq. Bush’s attack and occupation of Iraq is even worse than Hitler’s occupation of Europe during the Second World War because, at least, Hitler did not pretend that he was civilizing his occupied territories or bringing democracy to them. He called them inferior races and made it clear that he occupied them because they were inferior and would serve his Aryan race. Bush, on the other hand, is drowning the world with his grandiloquent hyperboles of democracy, freedom, etc while drowning and suffocating Iraqis with massive military presence to enforce his permanent or enduring military presence for economic exploitation. The truth therefore is that all the reason Bush gave us for invading Iraq plus all the “popular” ones people invented for him by his cronies for attacking Iraq are baseless and do not make any sense. The only reasons left why Bush attacked Iraq in 2003 are because he did it for his political survival and for oil profits for his gang. Ironically, these are reasons which Americans are too shy, too embarrassed, too cowardly, too scared or too ashamed to even consider. By September 2001, the country was still suffering from the malaise of a stolen election. The country had witnessed their election stolen after a most protracted and most unusual election debacle, dispute and wrangling that reduced United States presidential election to the level of third world election facades. The final result was that the Supreme Court imposed W. Bush – a man who did not win the election – on us as our president. Even Alan Dershowitz, the noted Harvard law professor and enthusiastic Bush supporter, called the Supreme Court decision, Supreme Injustice[79]. The point was that W. Bush was in political limbo by September 2001. He had seized the White House and was the president by then but was uncomfortable and uncertain of his future because he knew that he stole the election and that people did not like it – his rating was low and going south; and his administration was in limbo – so he needed to do something to ingratiate himself to the American people and salvage his administration; and the Iraq war provided the exact pill he needed to bond himself with Americans especially after 9/11 had provided him the absolute cover and the new Pearl Harbor to launch such an attack[80]. Hence, 9/11 not only transformed W. Bush from being a Rogue-President or Suspect-President or Pretender-to-the-Throne to being a respectable and patriotic War-President. He was then able to effect the secret nefarious plans Dick Cheney had worked out with his oil executive pals to attack and seize Iraq oil fields as they have finally done.
Thus, according to New York Times:
Four western oil companies are in final stages of negotiation this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP – the original partners in the Iraqi Petroleum Company – along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contract to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to the Ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat. The deals expected to be announced on June 30, 2008 will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations[81].
Bush has enjoyed the War-President status since the Iraq war – a status that has been politically very beneficial to him – and one, which he has no desire to relinquish. Naturally, one does not voluntarily relinquish favorable and beneficial position. The War-President status did not just help W. Bush establish and stabilize his presidency in 2001, it helped him beat back all the major threats and challenges to his administration. It helped him beat back the Kerry challenge and keep the Democrats intimidated, scared and afraid of him even after they succeeded in taking back the Congress in 2006.
The next serious challenge W. Bush has is the next presidential election in November 2008. Bush would have already served his eight year term so he is not running for re-election but the outcome of the election is even more crucial for him because the next president would determine how the records of his current administration would be retired. The next president might accede to the growing calls of many for a true Independent 9/11 Commission which Bush does not want because it might uncover some shocking truths about Bush’s involvement and/or criminal collusion in 9/11[82].
Given Bush’s determined efforts to stop or frustrate any genuine independent 9/11 commission, it is expected that Bush will go to any length to stop a president who might order a new independent 9/11 commission. Bush is looking forward to a comfortable retirement in his Crawford, Texas ranch as a ex-President and not to be dragged about by the many commissions, court cases, inquiries into many of the atrocities and criminal behaviors of his administration being planned by many Americans and others around the world. A friendly presidency at the White House like a McCain's would assure him the necessary cover, protection and shield to enjoy his proposed retirement peacefully.
Obama Candidacy Is Largely Bushes Handiwork:
The Bush gang has already done the most important thing towards ensuring a Bush third term for themselves by eliminating Senator Hillary Clinton from the presidential race because she would have been far more difficult, if not impossible, for them to defeat than Senator Barack Obama in the general election. Afterall, had beaten Papa Bush in 1992 when he was on top of his game because of his "successful" first Gulf War; and no one gave him any chance. So, the Bushes are petrified of the Clintons because they are the only Democrats who have beaten them in the high game of presidential politics, and thus, know how to beat them.
The truth is that the Clintons are as tough as the Republicans and do not quit or chicken out as Gore and Kerry did. The Bushes know that they will have a tough fight if they try to rig and steal election victory from the Clintons. Hence, the best strategy for the Bushes to rig the 2008 presidential election was to make sure that the Clintons were not in the race atall, which they succeded by eliminating her in the primaries. It was amazing to watch as the combined energies of the Bush forces with their "lapdog, client" media colluded to trash and defeat Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama during the primary nomination process. Thus, New York Times of June 13, 2008, report that “Critics and News Executives Split over Sexism in Clinton Coverage.[83]”
The point is that Clinton coverage was not only sexist but the entire establishment forces were vigorously and shamelessly anti-Clinton. It was clear that they rigged the environment in favor of Obama because they perceived him to be a weaker candidate and easier to defeat in the general election. Does that mean that Obama will not fight the Bushes and the Republicans efforts to steal the 2008 presidential election? I do not know and I am not sure. But I know that the full bags of various Bush/Republican dirty tricks and election frauds could determine the outcome of 2008 presidential election as in 2000 and 2004. Many signs of possible major election frauds are visible now in September 2008 and I have not seen the Democrats or Obama Camp address them.
Iran Is Bushes Final Trump Card For Bush Three:
The final trump card Bush has to ensure a Bush third term is to attack Iran. This will rekindle his War-President status which might be waning now especially with the 5-4 Supreme Court decision of June 12, 2008 that declared Bush Guantanamo Bay detention of “enemy combatants” illegal and unconstitutional[84] Thus, according to New York Times, Editorial of June 13, 2008:
For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label, “unlawful enemy combatants” and throw them into never-ending detention. Twice the Supreme Court swatted back his imperial overreaching, and twice Congress helped Mr. Bush try to open a gaping loophole in the Constitution. On Thursday, the court turned back the most recent effort to subvert justice with a stirring defense of habeas corpus, the right of anyone being held by the government to challenge his confinement before a judge. The court ruled that the detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have that cherished right, …[85]
It continued:
It was a very good day for people who value freedom and abhor Mr. Bush’s attempt to turn Guantanamo Bay into a constitutional-rights-free zone. The rights of habeas corpus is so central to the American legal system that it has its own clause in the Constitution: It cannot be suspended except “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Despite this, the Bush administration repeatedly tried to strip away habeas rights . First, it herded prisoners who were seized on Afghanistan and in other foreign countries, into United States navy base at Guantanamo Bay and claimed that since the base is on foreign territory, the detainees’ habeas cases could not be heard in federal courts. In 2004, the court rejected that argument, ruling that Guantanamo, which is under American control, is effectively part of the United States. In 2006, the court handed the administration another defeat, ruling that it had relied improperly on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to hold the detainees on Guantanamo without giving them habeas rights. Since then, Congress passed another law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that tried – and failed horribly – to fix the problems with the Detainee Treatment Act. Now, by a 3-4 vote, the court has affirmed the detainees’ habeas rights. The majority, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the Military Commissions Act violates the Suspension Clause, by eliminating habeas corpus although the requirements of the Constitution – invasion or rebellion – do not exist[86]. (Emphasis Mine)
I am therefore almost definite that Bush will attack Iran because it might create the necessary conditions for McCain to win and not because of Iran’s possible “nuclear” programs. That such an attack might jeopardize our national interests in the region, and around the world, might invite devastating responses from Iran and her allies and might engulf the region into another conflagration could actually be what the Bush gang wants. This is because such would keep us and the world focused on how to contain the deteriorating widening chaos instead of trying to figure out ways to impeach and try him and his cohorts for their various war crimes[87]. Thus, Bush gang rightly, but regrettably figured out that the only way for them to be safe is to overwhelm and smother us with problems we cannot solve.
Iran is therefore, the new WMD for Bush:
The real WMD for Bush is Weapon of Mass Distraction. Bush was therefore right when he said that he was going to Iraq for WMD but made us believe that he was looking for “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” However, he actually meant, “Weapon of Mass Distraction” because that was what WMD meant for him – the war was used to distract us from his crimes of stolen elections, etc. In the summer of 2008, the Bush crimes have only accumulated, compounded and confounded us even more since he first used WMD to save himself. I therefore do not know why anyone should now expect him to abandon his known and proven successful strategy. The WMD strategy has worked very well for Bush for the past seven years and I bet that he would try it again, because the stakes are even much higher for him and his gang now.
Meanwhile, it is important to stress that Bush did not have the right to attack Iraq even if Saddam had WMD or had relations with al Qaeda. It is still illegal for a country to attack another for such innocuous reasons. You do not and should not attack a country just because it has nuclear weapons, yet Bush has manipulated the country to accept such ridiculous premise as an axion that needs no examination or proof. My question is this: Under what principle of international relations or international law is it stated that a country would be attacked just for possessing nuclear weapons? And I can affirm that there is none. There is no scholar or professor who can show me that because none exists.
My Studies at Purdue University Failed to Teach Me About WMD:
If it is true that a nation would be attacked and destroyed if it possessed nuclear weapons, then my rigorous education at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, failed to teach me that. My professors at Purdue then failed woefully in that task because I did not get the idea that a nation will be obliterated if it possesses nuclear weapons from my rigorous studies at the eminent university. Besides, my continuous intensive teaching/research practices since my doctorate in May 1978 from the eminent university did not uncover that either. Therefore my professors at the university did their jobs well, and were correct. Thus, it was not until the Bush gang, who wanted to attack Iraq for their political survival and private economic gains, stole our presidency in 2000 that, they came up with the crazy theory of WMD and preventive warfare. Bush got lots of support from the establishment media to promote his wacko WMD theory as axioms. It is however, both interesting and disappointing that few establishment professors sold their academic integrity, in what I call, “academic prostitution” to support Bush’s obvious criminal ventures in Iraq and elsewhere.
For example, the article by Professor Louis Rene Beres, of Purdue University, titled, "Patience can kill," in Daily News of Wednesday, August 30, 2006, is both shocking and disappointing for its content and tone. Professor Beres wrote:
The world is wasting time with anything short of military strikeaimed at Iran’s growing nuclear infrastructure. Otherwise, we will be complicit in welcoming Ahmadinejad’s regime into the nuclear club. Exactly how soon that will happen, no one knows – but no one who cares about the regions security should be content to wait and find out.
He continued:
Why? Because a nuclear Iran would pose a genuinely apocalyptic hazard to the world. I Washington today, it is fashionable to pay this notion lip service – but few people seem to genuinely believe it. Deterrence worked during the Cold War because both the United States and the Soviet Union were governed by common assumptions of rationality. Iran, to the contrary, flatly calls for “wiping Israel off the map” – a call that itself is a violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Given Iran’s recent actions – arming Hezbollah and fomenting sectarian murder in Iraq – we can only imagine how they would throw their weight around the region with a nuclear weapon in their arsenal. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms, and this can only be accomplished through what international law calls “anticipatory self-defense.”
Professor Beres further continued:
Yes, it’s true that, given the terrible mess in Iraq, many are queasy about such terms. But we must not shy away from tomorrow’s threat because of mistakes we may have made yesterday. I acknowledge that even the most successful act of military preemption against Iran would result in large numbers of civilian casualties (because of the deliberate Iranian policy of placing military assets in the midst of civilian population). But further postponements will only multiply the number of casualties from any future preemption, or – in the worst case scenario – even permit Iran to become fully nuclear. In that eventuality, a vast region could then face the prospect of literally millions of fatalities.
Professor Beres’ article is particularly interesting and surprising to me because he was one of my professors at Purdue University. Specifically he was the professor who taught me nuclear strategy, which means that everything I know about nuclear strategy today, started from him for which I remain grateful. The tone of the article is completely different from what he taught us at Purdue in 1970s. The paper concluded that Professor Beres “is chair of Project Daniel, a group advising Israel’s prime minister on nuclear matters.”
I am baffled that Professor Beres would make a complete turn around on nuclear proliferation and start urging Bush to attack Iran for her peaceful nuclear program – something that is lawful and permitted within Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are known to have acquired levels of nuclear capabilities, and no one is threatening to attack them nor has the world imploded.
The frenzy about Iran’s possible nuclear program is all part of the war-mongering neo-con strategy of Bushes real weapons of mass distraction (WMD).strategy. I am therefore, surprised that Professor Rene Beres who has a totally different academic background would hop on Bushes war-bandwagon. Professor Beres came to Purdue in the 1970s as a fresh doctorate from Princeton University where the legendary professor Richard Falk, known worldwide for seminal works on peace studies, social justice and nuclear proliferation was his dissertation supervisor. So Beres came to Purdue with Richard Falk’s background of peace studies, social justice and international law and was truly proud of his mentor for which he made students buy and study many Falk’s books and theories.
I never personally met Professor Falk, but I consider myself one of his students and have been heavily influenced by his academic ethos because of my tutolege under Professor Beres who eventually became one of my doctorate dissertation committee members. We studied the “porcupine” theory of nuclear proliferation and the French theory of “force d’frappe” as efforts at global nuclear equity.
So I wonder where and when Beres got the notion that the world must strike Iran militarily immediately because of its nuclear program whether for peaceful purposes as it says or for weapons as some suspect? Why should the world attack Iran? Who is the world that should attack Iran? Is it the US or Bush that called UN “irrelevant”, disobeyed UN to attack, destroy and occupy Iraq against UN objections and global horror? Is it Bush and his gang that are currently committing the worst types of torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity since Hitler? So, who or which country should do the attacking and why? These are some of the issues and questions that Professor Beres must deal with and answer to his inquiring students especially if the article reflects what he teaches his current students, which is clearly different from what he taught me.
The only time a country has the legal basis to attack another is in the case of self-defense. The case of anticipatory self-defense, which Dr. Rice and Bush floated as their basis for the attack is bunkum and hogwash; and has no basis in a civilized world. It is a law of the jungle, the law that neighborhood bullies use and obey and not needed in twenty-first century.
In conclusion, Impeach the Bush Gang:
In conclusion, the New York Times is wrong by pressing for just “full disclosure” by the Democratic Congress and/or by Representative Conyers. It is not and cannot be the only way to “get this country back to being a defender, not a violator, of human rights” as its editorial above stated. Rather, the only effective way to begin to get this country back on track is to impeach the Bush-Cheney gang. Impeaching the Bush gang, even this late in their administration, will serve some important functions for America: · It will stop the gang from doing further harms to America like attacking Iran, which they might still do. · It will make the culprits pay personally for their crimes against the people and the system · It will deter future leaders from criminal destruction of the societies’ laws and values. · It will show that we are a democracy – that this country belongs to Americans and not just a few criminal arrogant few[88]. · More importantly, it will restore our credibility as a democracy and leader of the free world. Just as when our kids offend the laws in public schools, we do not just announce names of the offending students over the school’s public announcement system, the offending students are also punished according to the established laws and rules of the school system because there are consequences that go with violations of the law. In the case of the presidency, governance and political leadership, the constitution provides that leaders who violate the constitution and the laws of the land should be impeached. Impeachment is, therefore the constitutional provision for Bush’s acknowledged atrocities and onslaught against American constitution, laws and values. Scott McClellan stated in his book that, What Happened, that Bush admitted to him that he authorized officials to out Valarie Plames, the C.I.A. secret agent because her husband Ambassador Wilson opposed Iraq war. Outing a C.I.A. agent is a clear crime, which was confirmed by the conviction of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s top aide. Further, to rob it more on the nation, President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence with no national outrage. Yet, America went numb when Scott McClellan , former Bush’s top pressman told us the source of the name leak. No press, no Congressperson, no senator, no important person even took note of what we were told – that our president violated an important national security law for which his top aide was convicted. Such disclosures will generate national outcry and outrage in most other modern democracies, and not the dumb, mute reactions we displayed in America. For example, there was a clamor for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister to resign for disclosures that he accepted a $150,000 bribe from an American businessman. His Foreign Minister and Defense Minister, as well as Israeli press led the call for his resignation[89] – things that would not happen in America – for cabinet officials and the press to demand the resignation of Bush, no matter the charge or evidence, is simply not our DNA – hence Noam Chomsky calls America, a failed state[90]. Anything short of impeachment for Bush will be timidity and cowardice. Therefore, New York Times should be happy about the scant possibility of “full disclosure” but must press for impeachment with all its energy. After all, we harassed and impeached Bill Clinton in the 1990s for his love shenanigans, which had nothing to do with his official performance as the president. Yet, all we can hope about Bush for all his corruption and abuse of our democracy, and for all the humongous social and economic problems he created for us, is only to hope for, “full disclosure” when “so many people were abused” and “America’s most basic values were betrayed” by the Bush-Cheney gang[91]. What a shame! What is the problem? Why are we so scared of the Bushes? Is there anything I do not know about the Bushes? Why is America afraid of this Bush gang? Why have we allowed them to hold us hostage and ransom? Yet, according to Star Spangled Banner, Our National Anthem, America is supposed to be “the land of the Free and home of the Brave... Rather, our acquiescence, acceptance and submission to Bushes dictatorship have made America to become “the land of the shackled and home of the timid. Shame on America!
Finally, let me stop so far. This paper was written as a response to one of my students who wrote to express his appreciation for my class and how he is using his class lessons to enter into meaningful discussions with other equally worried and concerned Americans. Again, it is students like him who carry the touch and the fight into the world that are the raison d’être for my teaching. They underscore the success of what we do, and we will soon have legions of armies like them waging the desperately needed war for the real education of Americans. My love and regards to him, to the gentlemen he talked to; and to the many others that he will in future. Very soon, we will all link together in an unstoppable army of warriors to wipe out ignorance, empower common Americans to establish real democracy in America. I therefore remain eternally grateful to him and many others like him.
[1] See Bill Gates, “Keynote Address” to the to the 2005 Governors’ Convention; Also read, Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Harper Books, 1992); Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (New York: Crown Publications, 2005), and Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities, and Restoration of Apartheid in America’s Schools. [2] Joe Williams, “Plea from a hell of a classroom: Can’t teach Amid Chaos” Daily News, February 9, 2005. [3] Ibid. [4] The three main languages in Nigeria are Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba, but there are over 200 other languages spoken by Nigerians. [5] Read, William Brock, “Fixing Our Schools on the State of US Education,” Parade, June 6, 2008, p. 10 [6] Read, Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (New York: Free Press, 2006); and Greg Mitchell, So Wrong For So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq (New York: Union Square Press, 2008) [7] Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (New York: The Universal Library, 1963), p. 132 [8] Read, Associated Press, “Guns Ruling Spawns Legal Challenges by Felons: Supreme Court Decision Spawns New Lines of Attack on Firearms Laws.” July 20, 2008 [9] Read, Paula Dwyer, “Kissinger can’t see beyond his nose: Okolo” The Purdue Exponent, Vol. 92 n. 29, Friday 2-20-76, West Lafayette, In. U.S.A. [10] Deanna Baker, “Indentured Servitude in Colonial America, Frontier Resources, NIA-CILH, 1996. [11] Ibid. [12] David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1993), p. 24. [13] Ibid, pp. 24-25. [14] Read, “From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery” Resource Bank: The Terrible Transformation, Africans in America, www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3_txt.html [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid. [17] Read, Roediger, op. cit. [18] Ibid. [19] Read, Amechi Okolo, “House Slaves and Black Progress: A Critical Analysis,” Socialjusticecenter.com; Samuel H. Sloan, The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson ( New York: Kiseido, 1998) [20] Read, Marjorie Cohn, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law (Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress, 2007), passim; Also read other works cited in this paper. [21] David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Versco, 1993), pp. 29-30. [22] Ibid., p. [23] Ibid. [24] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” (New York: Manhattan Riverside Church, 1967). [25] Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee, “Poll Find Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” New York Times, July 16, 2008 [26] Ibid. [27] Ibid. [28] Go to my website, www. socialjusticecenter.com to read some of my works on social justice. [29] Read, Vincent Bugliosi, The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined Our Constitution and Chose Our President), (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2001); Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (London: Pluto Press, 2002); Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) [30] Michael parenti, Democracy For The Few (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), p. 5. [31] Ibid. [32] Ibid. [33] William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000); Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (New York: Basic Books, 2003) [34] Bugliosi, p. 59. [35] Ibid. [36] Ibid, p. 60. [37] Ibid, pp. 60-61. [38] Ibid, p.61. [39] Kennie Anderson, Land of Hypocrisy (Canada: Progressive Productions, 2003), p. 11. [40] Ibid. [41] Ibid., p.12. [42] Ibid. [43] Ibid., p. 15. [44] Ibid., p. 16. [45] Ibid. [46] Ibid., pp. 16-17 [47] Ibid. p., p.10. [48] KGB was the CIA equivalent in the Soviet Union. [49] Read, “Beyond Vietnam” Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King in April 1967, opposing Vietnam war at Riverside Church, Manhattan, New York. [50] Ibid. p. 17. [51] 28 + 18 = 46 ÷ 2 = 23% Approval rate or 77% Disapproval rate. [52] Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (New York: John Wiley, 2005), pp. 1-33; Also read, Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006) [53] Ibid, p. 241. [54] Read, Brian Stelter, “Was Press a War ‘Enabler’? 2 Offer a Nod From Inside”, New York Times, May 30, 2008. (p.A18). [55] Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (New York: Free Press, 2006) [56] Glenn Greenwald, How Would A Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok (San Francisco: Working Assets Publishing, 2006), p. 38 [57] Ibid. pp. 38-39 [58] Marjorie Cohn, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways The Bush Gang Has Defied The Law (Sausalito, CA: PoliPoint Press, 2007), passim. [59] Please, read: Greg Palast, op.cit, Vincent Bugliosi, op.cit and Alan Dershowitz, op.cit. [60] Glenn Greenwald, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (New York: Crown Publishers, 2008), p. 20. [61] Ibid. [62] Ibid, p. 19. [63] Ibid, p. 21. [64] Corky Siemaszko, “W. for war but eager to avoid it, prof recalls” Daily News, September 10, 2004 [65] Greenwald, op. cit, p. 15. [66] New York Times Editorial, “What the FBI Agents Saw” May 22, 2008. [67] Ibid. [68] Senator Robert C. Byrd’s Iraq Speeches, We Stand Passively Mute (Washington, DC: Papyngay Press, 2004); Loosing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency (New York: Norton, 2004), passim. [69] Read, Thomas Oliphant, Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), passim. [70] Aidan Hartley, “Democracy by Other Means” New York Times, January 11, 2008. [71] Somini Sengupta , “ Nepal Reborn as a Republic” New York Times, May 29, 2008 [72] Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, “Bush Overstated Evidence on Iraq, Senators Report,” New York Times, June 6, 2008 [73] Ibid. [74] New York Times, Editorial, June 6, 2008 [75] Ibid [76] Solomon, op.cit, p. 241. [77] Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (New York: Universal Library Edition, 1963), p.132. [78] Ibid. [79] Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) [80] David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004) [81] Andrew E. Kramer, “Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back,” New York Times, June 19, 2008. [82] Read, Amechi Okolo, “Dr. Rice, W. Bush and bin Laden PDB” and “W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Their Joint Appearance at 9/11 Commission” socialjusticecenter.com [83] Katherine Q. Seeyle and Julie Bosman, “Critics and News Executives Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage,” New York Times, p. A1 & p. A24 [84] Read, Linda Grenhouse, “Justices, 5-4, Back Detainee Appeals for Guantanamo -- In a Rebuff to Bush, Court Says Inmates Can Use Habeas Corpus Petitions,” New York Times (June 13, 2008) p. A1 & p. A23. [85] New York Times, Editorial, “Justice 5, Brutality 4” (June 13, 2008). [86] Ibid. [87] Jeremy Brecher, Jill Culter, Brendan Smith, eds., In The Name of Democracy :American War Crimes In Iraq And Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005) [88] Read, Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002) [89] Read the daily newspapers, New York Times, New York Post; Daily News, etc of the weeks of May 18 and 25, 2008. [90] Read, Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), Ibid. [91] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), passim
No comments:
Post a Comment