[Mb-civic] Warlords of America....AND "Michael Moore, artist and patriot"

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Yikes!  This missive from John Pilger may be hard to swallow for some, but it rings 
true.  I hope and pray that Bush goes down in November, but reading this is a step 
towards being very clear about the long term trends and powers that we are living 
with...(I have included Ed Pearl's introduction) --mha atma
Following Pilger is another good article---also from a Brit, about Farenheit 9-11.  I 
hope you "enjoy" reading and digesting these (hope you don't get indigestion!)..


------------

"The campaign against Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is indicative. The 
film is not radical and makes no outlandish claims; what it does is push past 
those guarding the boundaries of "respectable" dissent. That is why the 
public applauds it. It breaks the collusive codes of journalism, which it 
shames. It allows people to begin to deconstruct the nightly propaganda that 
passes for news"

Hello. The passage from Pilger's article suggests why I send you what I do. 
My own sense of logic, reality and morality tries to contact similar values in 
whomever gets the emails, despite the painoccasionedin mostof us. 
Theharsh assertions of this essay would obviously be easier to accept if it 
weren't in the middle of a campaign, butit contains truths whichmustbe 
deeply heldthrough November andthen amplified.They will be needed,rest 
assured. Interestingly, many people I speak with nowadays seem to 
understand that - quite a healthydevelopment. It's early and I ramble, 
butI've been sending so many 'negative' essays I feltthe needtocomment 
and fitthat into amore hopeful, but realisticperspective.One that lasts
Ed


The warlords of America

John Pilger

08/20/04 -- Most of the US's recent wars were launched by Democratic 
presidents. Why expect better of Kerry? The debate between US liberals and 
conservatives is a fake; Bush may be the lesser evil.

On 6 May last, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution which, 
in effect, authorised a "pre-emptive" attack on Iran. The vote was 376-3. 
Undeterred by the accelerating disaster in Iraq, Republicans and Democrats, 
wrote one commentator, "once again joined hands to assert the 
responsibilities of American power".

The joining of hands across America's illusory political divide has a long 
history. The native Americans were slaughtered, the Philippines laid to 
waste and Cuba and much of Latin America brought to heel with 
"bipartisan" backing. Wading through the blood, a new breed of popular 
historian, the journalist in the pay of rich newspaper owners, spun the heroic 
myths of a supersect called Americanism, which advertising and public 
relations in the 20th century formalised as an ideology, embracing both 
conservatism and liberalism.

In the modern era, most of America's wars have been launched by liberal 
Democratic presidents - Harry Truman in Korea, John F Kennedy and 
Lyndon B Johnson in Vietnam, Jimmy Carter in Afghanistan. The fictitious 
"missile gap" was invented by Kennedy's liberal New Frontiersmen as a 
rationale for keeping the cold war going. In 1964, a Democrat-dominated 
Congress gave President Johnson authority to attack Vietnam, a defenceless 
peasant nation offering no threat to the United States. Like the non-existent 
WMDs in Iraq, the justification was a non- existent "incident" in which, it 
was said, two North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked an American 
warship. More than three million deaths and the ruin of a once bountiful 
land followed.

During the past 60 years, only once has Congress voted to limit the 
president's "right" to terrorise other countries. This aberration, the Clark 
Amendment 1975, a product of the great anti- Vietnam war movement, was 
repealed in 1985 by Ronald Reagan.

During Reagan's assaults on central America in the 1980s, liberal voices 
such as Tom Wicker of the New York Times, doyen of the "doves", 
seriously debated whether or not tiny, impoverished Nicaragua was a threat 
to the United States. These days, terrorism having replaced the red menace, 
another fake debate is under way. This is lesser evilism. Although few 
liberal-minded voters seem to have illusions about John Kerry, their need to 
get rid of the "rogue" Bush administration is all-consuming. Representing 
them in Britain, the Guardian says that the coming presidential election is 
"exceptional". "Mr Kerry's flaws and limitations are evident," says the 
paper, "but they are put in the shade by the neoconservative agenda and 
catastrophic war-making of Mr Bush. This is an election in which almost the 
whole world will breathe a sigh of relief if the incumbent is defeated."

The whole world may well breathe a sigh of relief: the Bush regime is both 
dangerous and universally loathed; but that is not the point. We have 
debated lesser evilism so often on both sides of the Atlantic that it is surely 
time to stop gesturing at the obvious and to examine critically a system that 
produces the Bushes and their Democratic shadows. For those of us who 
marvel at our luck in reaching mature years without having been blown to 
bits by the warlords of Americanism, Republican and Democrat, 
conservative and liberal, and for the millions all over the world who now 
reject the American contagion in political life, the true issue is clear.

It is the continuation of a project that began more than 500 years ago. The 
privileges of "discovery and conquest" granted to Christopher Columbus in 
1492, in a world the pope considered "his property to be disposed according 
to his will", have been replaced by another piracy transformed into the 
divine will of Americanism and sustained by technological progress, notably 
that of the media. "The threat to independence in the late 20th century from 
the new electronics," wrote Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, "could 
be greater than was colonialism itself. We are beginning to learn that 
decolonisation was not the termination of imperial relationships but merely 
the extending of a geopolitical web which has been spinning since the 
Renaissance. The new media have the power to penetrate more deeply into a 
'receiving' culture than any previous manifestation of western technology."

Every modern president has been, in large part, a media creation. Thus, the 
murderous Reagan is sanctified still; Rupert Murdoch's Fox Channel and the 
post-Hutton BBC have differed only in their forms of adulation. And Bill 
Clinton is regarded nostalgically by liberals as flawed but enlightened; yet 
Clinton's presidential years were far more violent than Bush's and his goals 
were the same: "the integration of countries into the global free- market 
community", the terms of which, noted the New York Times, "require the 
United States to be involved in the plumbing and wiring of nations' internal 
affairs more deeply than ever before". The Pentagon's "full-spectrum 
dominance" was not the product of the "neo-cons" but of the liberal Clinton, 
who approved what was then the greatest war expenditure in history. 
According to the Guardian, Clinton's heir, John Kerry, sends us "energising 
progressive calls". It is time to stop this nonsense. 

Supremacy is the essence of Americanism; only the veil changes or slips. In 
1976, the Democrat Jimmy Carter announced "a foreign policy that respects 
human rights". In secret, he backed Indonesia's genocide in East Timor and 
established the mujahedin in Afghanistan as a terrorist organisation designed 
to overthrow the Soviet Union, and from which came the Taliban and al-
Qaeda. It was the liberal Carter, not Reagan, who laid the ground for George 
W Bush. In the past year, I have interviewed Carter's principal foreign policy 
overlords - Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security adviser, and James 
Schlesinger, his defence secretary. No blueprint for the new imperialism is 
more respected than Brzezinski's. Invested with biblical authority by the 
Bush gang, his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American primacy and its 
geostrategic imperatives describes American priorities as the economic 
subjugation of the Soviet Union and the control of central Asia and the 
Middle East.

His analysis says that "local wars" are merely the beginning of a final 
conflict leading inexorably to world domination by the US. "To put it in a 
terminology that harkens back to a more brutal age of ancient empires," he 
writes, "the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent 
collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep 
tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming 
together."

It may have been easy once to dismiss this as a message from the lunar right. 
But Brzezinski is mainstream. His devoted students include Madeleine 
Albright, who, as secretary of state under Clinton, described the death of 
half a million infants in Iraq during the US-led embargo as "a price worth 
paying", and John Negroponte, the mastermind of American terror in central 
America under Reagan who is currently "ambassador" in Baghdad. James 
Rubin, who was Albright's enthusiastic apologist at the State Department, is 
being considered as John Kerry's national security adviser. He is also a 
Zionist; Israel's role as a terror state is beyond discussion.

Cast an eye over the rest of the world. As Iraq has crowded the front pages, 
American moves into Africa have attracted little attention. Here, the Clinton 
and Bush policies are seamless. In the 1990s, Clinton's African Growth and 
Opportunity Act launched a new scramble for Africa. Humanitarian bombers 
wonder why Bush and Blair have not attacked Sudan and "liberated" Darfur, 
or intervened in Zimbabwe or the Congo. The answer is that they have no 
interest in human distress and human rights, and are busy securing the same 
riches that led to the European scramble in the late 19th century by the 
traditional means of coercion and bribery, known as multilateralism.

The Congo and Zambia possess 50 per cent of world cobalt reserves; 98 per 
cent of the world's chrome reserves are in Zimbabwe and South Africa. 
More importantly, there is oil and natural gas in Africa from Nigeria to 
Angola, and in Higleig, south-west Sudan. Under Clinton, the African Crisis 
Response Initiative (Acri) was set up in secret. This has allowed the US to 
establish "military assistance programmes" in Senegal, Uganda, Malawi, 
Ghana, Benin, Algeria, Niger, Mali and Chad. Acri is run by Colonel Nestor 
Pino-Marina, a Cuban exile who took part in the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing 
and went on to be a special forces officer in Vietnam and Laos, and who, 
under Reagan, helped lead the Contra invasion of Nicaragua. The pedigrees 
never change.

None of this is discussed in a presidential campaign in which John Kerry 
strains to out-Bush Bush. The multilateralism or "muscular internationalism" 
that Kerry offers in contrast to Bush's unilateralism is seen as hopeful by the 
terminally naive; in truth, it beckons even greater dangers. Having given the 
American elite its greatest disaster since Vietnam, writes the historian 
Gabriel Kolko, Bush "is much more likely to continue the destruction of the 
alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to 
believe the worse the better, but we have to consider candidly the foreign 
policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate . . . As dangerous as it 
is, Bush's re-election may be a lesser evil." With Nato back in train under 
President Kerry, and the French and Germans compliant, American 
ambitions will proceed without the Napoleonic hindrances of the Bush gang.

Little of this appears even in the American papers worth reading. The 
Washington Post's hand-wringing apology to its readers on 14 August for 
not "pay[ing] enough attention to voices raising questions about the war 
[against Iraq]" has not interrupted its silence on the danger that the 
American state presents to the world. Bush's rating has risen in the polls to 
more than 50 per cent, a level at this stage in the campaign at which no 
incumbent has ever lost. The virtues of his "plain speaking", which the 
entire media machine promoted four years ago - Fox and the Washington 
Post alike - are again credited. As in the aftermath of the 11 September 
attacks, Americans are denied a modicum of understanding of what Norman 
Mailer has called "a pre-fascist climate". The fears of the rest of us are of no 
consequence.

The professional liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have played a major 
part in this. The campaign against Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is 
indicative. The film is not radical and makes no outlandish claims; what it 
does is push past those guarding the boundaries of "respectable" dissent. 
That is why the public applauds it. It breaks the collusive codes of 
journalism, which it shames. It allows people to begin to deconstruct the 
nightly propaganda that passes for news: in which "a sovereign Iraqi 
government pursues democracy" and those fighting in Najaf and Fallujah 
and Basra are always "militants" and "insurgents" or members of a "private 
army", never nationalists defending their homeland and whose resistance has 
probably forestalled attacks on Iran, Syria or North Korea.

The real debate is neither Bush nor Kerry, but the system they exemplify; it 
is the decline of true democracy and the rise of the American "national 
security state" in Britain and other countries claiming to be democracies, in 
which people are sent to prison and the key thrown away and whose leaders 
commit capital crimes in faraway places, unhindered, and then, like the 
ruthless Blair, invite the thug they install to address the Labour Party 
conference. The real debate is the subjugation of national economies to a 
system which divides humanity as never before and sustains the deaths, 
every day, of 24,000 hungry people. The real debate is the subversion of 
political language and of debate itself and perhaps, in the end, our self-
respect.

John Pilger's new book, Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its 
triumphs, will be published in October by Jonathan Cape 
Copyright: John Pilger

------

(John Berger is a well-known British art critic.)

Michael Moore, artist and patriot
John Berger
August 17, 2004
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-1-67-2048.jsp#

A sloppy, cynical piece of propaganda? No, says John
Berger: Michael Moore's documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 is
a historical landmark inspired by hope - and its maker is a
true artist deeply committed to his country.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film -
although it is a cunning and moving film - but as an event.
Many commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage
the film. We will see why later.

Michael Moore's film profoundly moved the artists on the
Cannes Film Festival jury and it seems that they voted
unanimously to award it the Palme d'Or. Since then it has
touched many millions of people. During the first six weeks
of its showing in the United States, the box office takings
amounted to over $100 million; this sum is, astoundingly,
about half of what Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
made during a comparable period.

People have never seen another film like Fahrenheit 9/11.
Only the so-called opinion-makers in the press and media
appear to have been put out by it.

The film, considered as a political act, may be a
historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain
perspective for the future is required. Living only
close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do,
reduces one's perspectives: everything is a hassle, no
more. The film by contrast believes it may be making a very
small contribution towards the changing of world history.
It is a work inspired by hope.

What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective
and independent intervention into immediate world politics.
Today it is rare for an artist (Moore is one) to succeed in
making such an intervention, and in interrupting the
prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its
immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush
will be re-elected in November. From start to finish it
invites a political and social argument.

Will Michael Moore's film help prevent George W Bush's
re-election? Todd Gitlin's weekly openDemocracy column,
written with verve and insight, is an unmatched guide to
the presidential election race.

Maverick movie, political event

To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or
perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century
taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of
communication so that it can systematically stifle
reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is
usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term
interests of some elite.

This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and
is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for
themselves and make thought-out connections. And it
identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally
unlistened to.

Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating
with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter, Michael Moore the
former.

Ever since the Greek tragedies artists have, from time to
time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing
political events. A tricky question because two very
different types of power are involved. Many theories of
aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For
those living under political tyrannies art has frequently
been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually
look for ways to control art.

All this, however, is in general terms and over a large
terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has
succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the
programme's own ground.

For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed.
The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the
film being distributed played a significant part in
creating the event.

For other views of Fahrenheit 9/11, see Todd Gitlin's
"Michael Moore, alas" on openDemocracy, and Christopher
Hitchens's "Unfairenheit 9/11" on Slate.

To point this out in no way implies that the film as such
doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply
to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass-media
a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies
and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity
which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example
to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it.

A People's Tribune

The film proposes that, in the first year of the
millennium, the White House and the Pentagon were taken
over by a gang of thugs - plus their Born Again Frontman -
so that United States power should henceforth serve, as a
priority, the global interests of the Corporations. A stark
scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced
editorials.

Behind Michael Moore's film comes a powerful documentary
tracking another dimension of power in the United States:
The Corporation, by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel
Bakan.

Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie
speaks out. It demonstrates that a single independent voice
- pointing out certain home truths which countless
Americans are already discovering for themselves - can
withstand all the manipulative power of communications
experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press
conferences, and break through the conspiracy of silence,
the manufactured atmosphere of fear and the solitude of
feeling politically impotent.

It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a
period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes whilst the
band plays the Apocalypse. A movie in which millions of
Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in
which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises,
mostly bad but some good, being discussed together.
Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is
shared one can fight against the odds.

Michael Moore's filmic reference to George Orwell's
nightmare vision of political order based on total power
and systematic deceit is echoed in Mark Medish's
openDemocracy article, "Four more years for Big Brother?"
(July 2004).

In over a thousand cinemas across the country Michael Moore
becomes with this film a People's Tribune. And what do we
see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the
world as he is indifferent to it. Whilst the Tribune,
informed by popular experience, acquires political
credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice
of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist.

There is something else which is astounding. The aim of
Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as
he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified
war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of
these issues. It declares that a political economy which
creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by
disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to
survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy
to maintain its own internal order and security. It
requires ceaseless war.

Thus - fifteen years after the fall of Communism, decades
after the declared End of History, one of the main theses
of Marx's interpretation of history, again becomes a
debating point and a possible explanation of the
catastrophes being lived.

Can dialogue between Americans and non-Americans clarify
the issues at stake in the US election? Be provoked,
surprised and infuriated by openDemocracy's "Letters to
Americans".

It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices,
Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes.
For how much longer?

There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the
world today that ignores this question. And this is why the
film was made and became what it became. It's a film that
deeply wants America to survive.

***
___________________






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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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