| Response to Gordon Sinclair's Piece from Canada
>A previous post references a piece by Canadian Talk Radio Show host, Gordon Sinclair, and suggests that it has some importance. The original is below. It was written to pump support for the failed wars on Vietnam. You might want to read Sinclair first. Many Canadians were disgusted by Sinclair and his views on the war on Vietnam. > >> >>Let us look at this piece by part, briefly..... >> >>German and Japanese war criminals were returned to power by the US, after WWII, and the Mafia was allowed to rule for years in Italy because of US intervention--and the Vatican's continuing support for the fascists. The same war criminals were secreted into the US by the thousands, and their activities as Nazis never stopped (See Blowback by Chris Simpson). >> >>France collapsed well before 1956, when masses of French people waived at the invading Germans and assisted in setting up the Vichy (Nazi) government. The Maginot Line was not much good, no better than Star Wars defense systems. At the end of the war, the US intelligence services opened the port of Marseilles to heroin traffic, in exchange for 'defending the regime against the communists' who were, after all, the only people who had much of an impact in fighting the nazis, and who might have won a fair election. (The Politics of heroin, Mccoy) > >The US putting people on the moon, the result of a thousand years of knowledge built on through the struggles of people at work, men and women, followed the USSR putting people in space. Unfortunately, huge technological advances were never used to make life more democratic, more equitable, and in fact were used to support warfare and intelligence systems (the Challenge ship was carrying a spy satellite) because both the USSR and the US governments were far more interested in war and exploitation than impriving human life. Are we to attach a nationality to all the accumulated knowledge that put people into space? Where shall we place Gallileo, or the Catholic Church? >> >>When the US wants raw materials, cheap labor, and open markets, it uses its military to ensure the profitibility of exploitation. Chile. El Slavador. IRan. Brazil. Guatemala. Haiti. Detroit. (William Blum, Killing Hope) > >When natural disasters come to countries who are not on the profitability list, like Nicaragua, the US is slow to move. Natural disasters? The AFghan people have been dying from a 4 year drought, the first aid they got was to the Taliban, from George Bush, in the millions, because he liked their religious war on drugs. > >Unnatural disasters? What about the continued bombing of Iraq, killing unknown thousands? Perhaps two million dead in Vietnam? What about blowing up pharmaceutical plants in the Sudan/ (see Robert Fisks columns in the Guardian) > >Since World War II, I believe the United States actually dropped bombs on these countries that I can think of quickly . These include: China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, > Lebanon 1984, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-1999, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, and Yugoslavia 1999. > >>Sicking by your allies? The US? Remember the marines shooting the Vietnames 'allies' off the struts of helicopters as the US fled Vietnam in cowardly disarray? Good to its allies? Go visit a VA hospital. Ask about what they are doing about Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome. And what of the war criminal Robert Kerry, who admits to killing Vietnamese civilians? Why is he an ally? >> >>People can't build planes? Really? Is that a genetic failure? The Pakistanis didn't just build their own airplane. They built a Bomb. THE bomb. So did India. So would have Iraq but the Israeli's bombed that. The Israeli's have combat arms that are vastly superior to those of the US. How come the gun crazed US cannot build a good assault rifle? >> >>Talk about combining the ingredients of capital: Imperialism, exploitation, technology, mysticism, racism, and nationalism, you get the death camps, not because the people in any given country are stupid or evil, but because the social processes of capital pit people against each other in a war of all on all. >> >>The scandals? Yeah. Not "Where is Chandra?" but where is the 12$ billion California budget that was given to the oil billionaires instead of school kids? What of the recent Bush doleout to the Taliban? What happened to deregulation, a dogma that seems lost and forgotten, as the airlines demand to go on the dole. What of the city of Detroit, utterly collapsed for a decade, ghettoized at frightening levels, yet no one noticed. How come the US is about to give US intelligence services a 500% raise, when these same intelligence services not only created the terrorists, but also have been consistently used against people struggling for equality---from the civil rights movement to the Black Panther party and all between. > >> >>And the great scandal: All that is necessary to live reasonably well, for everyone on earth, exists now---maybe for the first time in history. How come we cannot decide to set up a social system where we share, do unto others? That is indeed a scandal of the highest porportions. > >The hubris of the imperial gaze was shattered long ago, but surely by Mayday, 1975. Early on, Conrad did a nice job in Heart of Darkness. Even Kipling was beginning to get a clue: >"When you're wounded and left, >On Afghanistan's plains, >And the women come > out, > To cut up > your remains, >Just roll on > your rifle, > And blow out >your brains, >And go to >your Gawd, > Like a >soldier." > >For the masses of people in the US and Canada, following Gordon Sinclair is to follow a long line of petty criminals willing to sacrifice others for nationalism ,racism, and capital's endless needs, from General Pickett to William Westmoreland. It was unwise for southern boys to go on Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. It would have been more in their interest to shoot Pickett, shoot Robert Lee, and go home. About 100 years later, that is what many young men did in Vietnam---despite Gordon Sinclair's talk show call to arms. > >>This aged piece below is deserving of a handout at a gun show and little more. >>_______________________________________________________________ >>>> >>>> > >>>>>TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES >>>>> >>>>>This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing. America: The Good >>>>>Neighbor. >> >> >>>>> >>>>>"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most >>>>>generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. >>>>> Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out >>>>>of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars >>>>>and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today >>>>>paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. >>>>> >>>>>When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who >>>>>propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the >>>>>streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. >>>>> >>>>>When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries >>>>>in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by >>>>>tornadoes. Nobody helped. >>>>> >>>>>The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into >>>>>discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about >>>>>the decadent, war-mongering Americans. >>>>> >>>>>I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the >>>>>erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other >>>>>country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the >>>>>Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? >>>>>Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? >>>>> >>>>>Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on >>>>>the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You >>>>>talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about >>>>>American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several >>>>>times - and safely home again. >>>>> >>>>>You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store >>>>>window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued >>>>>and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they >>>>>are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at >>>>>home to spend here. >>>>> >>>>>When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through >>>>>age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad >>>>>and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. >>>>>Both are still broke. >>>>> >>>>>I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other >>>>>people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced >>>>>to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even >>>>>during the San Francisco earthquake. >>>>> >>>>>Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned >>>>>tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing >>>>>with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their >>>>>nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope >>>>>Canada is not one of those." >>>>> >>>>>Stand proud, America! |