Old Ducker
06-07-2010, 03:39 PM
Next on my reading list.
The Exclamation Point at the End of the Story
Americans have a desperate need to believe. We want to trust our government and our leaders. Our default position is to accept without too much questioning the assertions of our presidents and the institutions of our government. Few of us are easily convinced yet today that America was involved in assassinations and the deposing of democratically-elected leaders of other nations, and as Hamas drops rockets into Israel and Israeli troops sweep through Gaza we conveniently ignore the incontrovertible fact that it was the policies of our outgoing president that put Hamas into power.
Our citizens are not big on context. When the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers overthrew the U.S. puppet Shah Reza Pahlevi in 1979 and occupied the American embassy, we accepted the characterizations our leaders gave us that the Ayatollah was a madman. Perhaps, he was, but he was a madman of our own devise, whose foundational power grew from the CIA's overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in the early 1950s, a man who was nationalizing energy company assets. The Shah became our boy, bought billions of dollars of our armaments, let us have his country's oil, tortured his opposition with U.S-trained forces, and was no real threat to Israel. High school history class, however, leaves out that part and the journalism that covered it, rare though it was, went largely ignored. The Ayatollah was a lunatic, our enemy, a threat to global peace, and that was all the American taxpayers needed to hear. Give us a bad guy so we can be good.
The rest (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-exclamation-point-at_b_155144.html)
Podcast interview of Russ Baker by Lew Rockwell (http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2009/02/17/101-russ-baker-the-looting-bush-family/)
The Exclamation Point at the End of the Story
Americans have a desperate need to believe. We want to trust our government and our leaders. Our default position is to accept without too much questioning the assertions of our presidents and the institutions of our government. Few of us are easily convinced yet today that America was involved in assassinations and the deposing of democratically-elected leaders of other nations, and as Hamas drops rockets into Israel and Israeli troops sweep through Gaza we conveniently ignore the incontrovertible fact that it was the policies of our outgoing president that put Hamas into power.
Our citizens are not big on context. When the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers overthrew the U.S. puppet Shah Reza Pahlevi in 1979 and occupied the American embassy, we accepted the characterizations our leaders gave us that the Ayatollah was a madman. Perhaps, he was, but he was a madman of our own devise, whose foundational power grew from the CIA's overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in the early 1950s, a man who was nationalizing energy company assets. The Shah became our boy, bought billions of dollars of our armaments, let us have his country's oil, tortured his opposition with U.S-trained forces, and was no real threat to Israel. High school history class, however, leaves out that part and the journalism that covered it, rare though it was, went largely ignored. The Ayatollah was a lunatic, our enemy, a threat to global peace, and that was all the American taxpayers needed to hear. Give us a bad guy so we can be good.
The rest (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-exclamation-point-at_b_155144.html)
Podcast interview of Russ Baker by Lew Rockwell (http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2009/02/17/101-russ-baker-the-looting-bush-family/)