Ramblings, April 2010

I've had a bit of time off from the major media insanity to dwell on things again - kind of like Simon and Garfunkel must have done before writing the "Sounds of Silence." So here goes. Hope this answers some questions, implied or explicit. Pardon my rambling, I'm just getting my "writer's fingers" back:)

What's really remarkable to me is how many of these ghastly reports have appeared on the pages of the New York Times, quite recently. Remember - this is the same NY Times which just a few months ago "validated" (supported) the recent escalation in Afghanistan with much enthusiasm. What, do they suddenly have cold feet? A little squeamish? That's the price "we" pay, I suppose. A price, it must be reckoned, that seems extrememly minor in comparison to those doing the suffering and dying. But it is a price we pay nonetheless. Like those of us who play all kinds of mental tricks on ourselves; the way we fool around excessively with essential truths. Some of us bend over backwards to swallow the lies, with Gusto!!! And in this way all our lives are diminished, warped, cheapened. Of course, The New York Times does this for us, anyway. The Times lowers our consciousness with every editorial praising the "surge" it has shamefully printed. Bullshit columnists like David Brooks rationalizing all kinds of armed intervention, apparently totally oblivious to the resulting flagrant violations of international law. Alledging that we must stay the awful, but "necessary" course. Portraying out-and-out lawlessness and national aggression as understandable defensive, action. Seems I heard that one before, with respect to Iraq! So the pundits get rich telling us manifold absurdities. Telling us that yes, we did try diplomacy, but it failed. (A lie; we needed desperately to engage in honest diplomacy, as we still need to.)

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/07/ret.us.taliban/

We are told "We were attacked; we had to respond militarily." (Another lie, or misrepresentation, at least - the ordinary people of Afghanistan, those dying from drones and gunshots, had nothing to do with 911.) Anyway, one might, depending on ones level of ignorance, genuinely wonder "Why? What have we done to earn such hatred?" But that would require taking into consideration hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives taken by western militarism. For example, in the 1991 Gulf War, and other well-known acts of Western state-sponsored terrorism. Yes, a vigorous examination of one's own national history might shed some light on the question: "why did they do it?" Curious mortals might wonder, under ordinary circumstances, if the vicious bombing campaign inflicted day after day on Iraqis entirely innocent of attacking Kuwait might be a sore spot in the Muslim World. We might then, following such reflection in America, avoid falling prey to the Disinformation Meisters who would have Americans believe nonsense like "they hate us for our freedoms."