Excerpts from:
Come On Down for Your Freedom Medals
by John Pilger, January 22, 2009
On 13 January, George W. Bush presented "presidential freedom medals," said to be America's highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country's modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is "responsible for more than 90 percent of all cases of torture."
As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honored for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush's ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama's inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. The continuity between the two administrations has been as seamless as the transfer of the odious Bono's allegiance, symbolized by President Obama's oath-taking on the steps of Congress.
As eyes welled on 20 January for the first African-American president, who remembered Cynthia McKinney, the courageous African-American Congresswoman, the first to be elected from Georgia, who spoke out for the Palestinians and was duly driven from office by a Zionist smear campaign?
As deserving as Blair, Howard and Uribe are of the Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in their company. With the assault on Gaza a defining moment of truth and lies, principle and cowardice, peace and war, justice and injustice, I have two nominees. My first is the government and society of Israel. (I checked; the Freedom Medal can be awarded collectively). "Few of us," wrote Arthur Miller, "can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."
In 1948, the year Israel's right to exist was granted and Palestine's annulled, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other leading Jews in the United States warned the administration not to get involved with fascists like Menachem Begin who described the Palestinians in the way the Nazis used untermenschen – as "animals on two legs." He became prime minister of Israel. This fascism, which was not often flouted openly, was the harbinger of Likud and Kadima. These are today "mainstream" political parties, whose influence, in the treatment of the Palestinians, covers a national "consensus" that is the source of the terror in Palestine: the brutal dispossessions and perfidious controls, the humiliation and cruelty by statute. The mirror of this is domestic violence at home. Conscripted soldiers return from their "war" on Palestinian women and children and make war on their own. Uri Avnery, one of Israel's bravest dissidents, says his country's leaders suffer from "moral insanity": a prerequisite, I should add, for the award of a Bush Freedom Medal.
My other nominee for a Bush Freedom Medal is that amorphous group known as western journalism, which has always made much of its freedom and impartiality. Listen to the way Israeli "spokespersons" and ambassadors are interviewed. How respectfully their official lies are received; how minimally they are challenged. They are one of us, you see: calm and western-sounding, even blonde, female and attractive. The frightened, jabbering voice on the line from Gaza is not one of us. That is the subliminal message. Listen to newsreaders use only the pejoratives for the Palestinians: words like "militants" for resisters to invasion, many of them heroes, a word never used, and "conflict" for massacre. Mark the timeless propaganda that suggests there are two equal powers fighting a "war," not a stricken people, attacked and starved by the world's fourth largest military power which ensures they have no places of refuge. And note the omissions – the BBC does not preface its reports with the warning that a foreign power controls its reporters' movements, as it did in Serbia and Argentina, neither does it explain why it shows but glimpses of the extraordinary coverage of al-Jazeera from within Gaza.
There are the ubiquitous myths, too: that Israel has suffered terribly from thousands of missiles fired from Gaza. In truth, the first homemade Qassam rocket was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001, and the first fatality occurred in June 2004. Some 24 Israelis had been killed in this way, compared with 5000 Palestinians killed, more than half of them in Gaza, at least a third of them children. Now imagine if the 1.5 million Gazans had been Jewish, or Kosovar refugees. "The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to protect the people of Kosovo …," declared the Guardian on 23 March, 1999. Inexplicably, the Guardian has yet to call for such "an honorable course" to protect the people of Gaza.
Such is the rule of acceptable victims and unacceptable victims. When reporters break this rule they are accused of "anti-Israel bias" and worse, and their life is made a misery by a hyperactive cyber-army that drafts complaints, provides generic material and coaches people all over the world on how to smear as "anti-Jewish" work they have not seen. These vociferous campaigns are complemented by anonymous death threats, which I and others have experienced. Their latest tactic is malicious hacking into websites. But that is desperate, since the times are changing.
Across the world, people once indifferent to the arcane "conflict" in the Middle East, now ask the question the BBC and CNN rarely ask: Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine does not? They ask, too, why do the lawless enjoy such immunity in the pristine world of balance and objectivity? The perfectly-spoken Israeli "spokesman" represents the most lawless regime on earth, exotic tyrannies included, according to a tally of United Nations resolutions defied and Geneva Conventions defiled. In France, 80 organizations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel's leaders. On 15 January, the fine Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, wrote in Ha'aretz that Israeli generals "will not be the only ones to hide in El Al planes lest they are arrested [overseas]".
One day, other journalists and their editors and producers may be called upon to not only explain why they did not tell the truth about these criminals but even to stand in the dock with them. No Bush Freedom Medal is worth that.
4 comments:
Ananda,
I like your preface where you make many nice points. Truth or honesty is the beginning of real change. However, truth means to see others equally. Does the author of the article you include see others equally? It doesn't seem that way. Without justifying the obvious crimes of the US and Israel towards Iraqis and Palestinians, was Saddam Hussein a model leader? Did he not murder tens of thousands of his own people and hundreds of thousands of Iranians? Have the Palestinians under Hamas acted according to religious principles when they send suicide bombers to Israel or lob rockets at them? Innocents should never be targeted, whether they are Jews, Muslims or Hindus. No sadhu or saint can condone violence against civilians. But truth needs to be seen with equal vision, without bias or envy towards any party. That is something the author of this piece is lacking.
Even though Saddam Hussain is peripheral to the article, let’s not forget that the U.S. has killed upward to a million Iraqis and three million more are refugees. Even Saddam's figures of horror do not come close to that. Most of Saddam’s atrocities were carried out when he was an ally fully supported by the U.S. Plus, Saddam was never a threat to the U.S. or E.U. No WMDs (the main reason given by the US for the invasion) were ever found. Factually, the entire raison for the continuing US aggression and support of rogue states boils down to oil and resources. Resources that do not belong to the U.S. Thus its covetous actions are nicely reflected in the verse I quoted from the Isopanisad. As Obama clearly said in his inauguration speech, "WE WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR OUR WAY OF LIFE". “Apologize" or not, the U.S. does need to drastically change its corporate-coordinated mass-consumerist "way of life" both for the sake of livable ecology and in order to reduce its deadly, oil-related entanglement in the Middle East. Still, what in the name of "God" (a frequent Obama reference) would be so bad about, yes, apologizing to the world for the incredible damage our interrelated consumerist and imperial ways have done to life on the planet.
I have no problem with the verse you quoted from Isopanisad. But you should apply it fairly to all sides. Who isn't cheating and lying? Who isn't claiming to be the master of all they survey? Which country isn't murdering millions or billions of defenseless animals each year? Who is apologizing for that? Whose stomach is not the graveyard of guiltless creatures and whose mind is free from envy?
My point is, when we speak about truth, it must be applied universally. Anyone can make an argument to support a partisan political viewpoint. In this case, the argument against the US is easy and politically correct, at least in Europe. But when we look at the whole picture we can see a grotesque world where ignorance of the soul has become God. And in that ignorance, defenseless creatures of all stripes are the victims. Whether the aggressors are polished Westerners, or barbaric Taliban, they all share a common theme: ignorance of their soul and envy towards other souls.
Although I agree with your comments I do have a point to make.
Every human being is given sufficient independence to deny God, His existence and any responsibility to Him. Those that do so are put in the material world. However, their independence does not extend to utilizing material resources in any way they want. There are laws of nature to be followed if progress is to be achieved.
My point is that the leaders of this planet, the US/EU and their allies, have a real responsibility to utilize their dominion, power, military strength and overwhelming financial resources in an equitable way consonant with progress for everyone on the planet. If they do not do so then they are open to criticism. In fact, historically they have done nothing but extend their empires at the costs of countless innocents (overburdening the planet with their unnecessary military strength). Their policies are directly responsible for the creation of barbarism such as the Taliban and Al Qaida. Thus, because of their actions, and because they are the UNDISPUTED LEADERS in all fields of control, they are open to criticism.
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