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It hasn't been that long ago since
the United States was The Land of 'Happily Ever After.' And even though too
many prefer to remain in that idyllic place where everything was thought to
be clear and politicians supposedly represented 'the public' who put them
in office - nothing could be further from the truth.
In 1999 Howard Zinn put together
"A People's History of the United States" for anyone who might be
curious about how this nation was formed from the point of view of those
who have not formerly been heard from, namely Indians, Slaves, Women and
the poor regardless of race or gender. In the 680 plus words of his book,
Howard Zinn shows us a much different picture of what the US was founded
on, and how our fledgling Empire came to acquire what we have so proudly
claimed as 'our right.' The patterns of events throughout clearly show that
what most have come to think of as The History of the United States is
anything but accurate. For starters all our national figures from
Revolutionary times forward were much different men than most were led to
believe. This nation was from the beginning a class oriented society where
a very small percentage of the rich held almost all the wealth, and all
others were merely used to expand the gap between the rich and poor.
For instance what happened in
America began a very long time ago along with a number of plots and schemes
that were inherent in the period that began in1492 and lasted more than 200
years. This was the Colonial period when 'the colonies' as they were then
called, began to carve out holdings in blood and slavery while the US was
creating "A Manifest Destiny" designed to steal the continent and
slaughter the original inhabitants. The United States broke every one of
the 400 Treaties that were signed during the nearly 400 years of internal
warfare with the invaded populations. This created one of histories largest
known genocides that was marked by an endless series of 'removals' that
steadily drove the original people from the lands of their nations and from
the lands that they had lived on continuously for thousands of years. In
this slaughter the young nation used slavery, child labor, and the near
total subjugation of women to ensure that their eminent positions (at the
top of everything) would remain free from all challenges to their absolute
power. Most of this was completed by 1890 with the US military Massacre at
Wounded Knee which officially marked the closing of the 'internal
frontier.' By then the government had slaughtered all but 300,000 of those
who had called this land home for Eons, prior to the arrival of the
Pilgrims. The numbers murdered in these crimes surpassed even the numbers
that Stalin later reached in the Gulags of the USSR.
This is replicated almost exactly
in the treatment of the Palestinians today by Israel, from the seizing of
their lands to the camps (or the reservations) that the Palestinians have
been pushed into; and all of it overseen by the supposedly neutral
good-faith broker, which the USA initially professed itself to be.
In 1823 The Monroe Doctrine was
created to allow the USA to unilaterally do whatever it wished with the
nations in Central and South America. The Spanish American War soon
followed. But the Monroe Doctrine was more than idle thought: "the
American armed forces had made forays overseas. A State Department list,
'Instances of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798 -1945' - shows 103
interventions in the affairs of other countries between 1798 and
1895." The die was cast, and the Robber Barons had begun their long
march to take over the world. In 1845 "Manifest Destiny" was used
to justify the annexation of Texas, and the war with Mexico was declared in
1846 to acquire the 'Republic of Texas.' In 1848 Mexico surrendered and
gave the US the access they were seeking to reach the Pacific Ocean.
However the opening chapter in the internationalization of our fledgling
empire was the Spanish American War; another war that began with a bogus
excuse but this one led to the acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the
Hawaiian Islands, Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines. American
Imperialism began when the Philippines rebelled in 1899 and we sent in
70,000 US troops that took three years to crush the rebellion of Filipino
"insurgents."
"Mark Twain commented on the
Philippine war:
We have pacified some thousands of
the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their
villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished
heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the
remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new
name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred
concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu,
and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.
And so, by the Providences of
God-and the phrase is the government's not mine-we are a World Power."
From these shabby beginnings the
USA has inexorably moved in spurts and starts toward that imperialism
sought by the ruling elite of this nation: "The Beacon of Hope - for
the Free World." Never mind the lies, the use of slavery for nearly
500 years, the racism, the paternalistic dictates of the powerful or the
millions who have suffered through the ignorance, the poverty and the
disease, which leadership has continued to seek in order to confine the
lower classes and protect themselves from being overthrown.
Zinn's shadow history of the
United States contains many things not commonly part of what most think
about whenever the history of this nation is mentioned. There was mass
murder, rape, pillage and plunder, racism, slavery, child abuse and
virtually every brutality that arises whenever the powerful are allowed to
have their way with those they use and abuse to create and maintain their
personal fortunes. To understand the obscenity of the imposters who sit in
our public offices today - their hands dripping with the blood of the
innocent and the unfortunate around the globe - we should take the time to
learn how the USA came to be at this point in time.
With the compliant US Media
leading the way to block the public from getting any answers of consequence
- and with a president that has clearly lost all touch with reality as the
global situation begins to descend into global anarchy - we need to begin
to make serious demands of this government.
There is a little noticed control
mechanism that has all but completely taken over what used to pass for
government, and that is the term "bipartisan." It is used as the
one sure method for arriving at the workable solution that supposedly
contains viable answers to the serious questions of the day - in truth -
this amounts to treason because it implies that all people are of one mind.
And - in a nation, that as Bush so frequently says "is At WAR!"
we should be a nation of many opinions and a nation with many questions now
more than ever.
Elected officials throughout our
history have sold us down the proverbial rivers that lead only to war,
solely for private profits. Our history is replete with all kinds of
rebellious populations that resisted war after war - often with good reason
- this time is no different. The American public must not buy into the fear
and paranoia that Rove and his boys and girls are trying to cast in cement
- for as individuals we are much stronger than we might at first appear. We
must begin to participate in what this government wants to do - and if
people decide to demand an end to these wars, then that message needs to be
very clear.
In the last five years the clock
of normal time for Americans has gone from living in a difficult world to
living in a nightmare at light speed - as the Bandits race to fulfill their
own idea of the Endgame that has been their real target all along: Because
with the background that surrounds the plight of so many millions of
victims, over so many hundreds of years; it is far easier to understand how
it could have happened that a bunch of amateurs beginning in 2000 -
masquerading as leaders of a nation - could be so bold as to enable an
attack upon their own people to justify this concluding chapter in their
Imperial Dream of Empire.
Jim Kirwan
http://warfolly.vzz.net/
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