By GARY CORSERI
James Clapper, new Director of Intelligence. He already perjured himself before Congress. But what is a little lie between friends?
“And Jove was witness from his lofty throne
Of all this evil, and groaned as he remembered. …”
(–Ovid, from The Metamorphoses, “Jove’s Intervention”)
They are winding up their war toys once again; these old, perverted men who hate the young. If hypocrisy were a syrup, their snouts and mouths would drool it.
After the Cold War, and pre-9/11, it was common Sunday morning “news” talk-show fare, to “debate” (sic) whether America should be “policeman” to the world. Those who opposed the notion have lost the argument big-time. Now, we are not only the world’s Cop, we are, by Jove!—Jove, sitting in judgment. But, unlike Ovid’s Patriarch-in-Chief, we seem incapable of judging or remembering.
For example:
1. [from Wikipedia]: “The Egyptian Revolution of 2011… was a diverse movement of demonstrations, marches, plaza occupations, riots, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience and labor strikes. Millions of protesters from a variety of socio-economic and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of the regime of Egyptian President [i.e. “dictator”], Hosni Mubarak.”
When the overthrow was achieved, and an electoral process established in Egypt (for the first time in its millennia-long history!) the US mass media blessed the event as the “Arab Spring.” In June, 2012, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi wins Egypt’s presidential election. (It’s not rigged; it’s legit!)
But, Morsi is no “uniter.” The US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and NATO stick their camel noses under the tent, and after 13 months, Morsi is driven from office in a military coup (which the U.S. refuses to call a coup!). Over 900 Morsi supporters—for the most part, unarmed, are mowed down in the streets of Cairo like so much rotten wheat stalks. The American mass-media will not show the bullet-riddled bodies of hundreds of children—and others—who held up their purple thumbs for their imperfect, but legitimate, democracy.
2. On the other hand, a month after the street massacres in Egypt, the U.S. MSM rushes to judgment to show pictures of more than 400 children—the alleged victims of a chemical attack by Syria’s government (which has been rapidly gaining momentum in its 2-year campaign against those whom the US itself has labeled “Al Qaeda terrorists”—i.e., as long as they are in Yemen, Afghanistan or Iraq! The obedient MSM notifies its viewers that the visuals they are about to see are “disturbing” and may not be suitable for children. (This, of course, has the same effect as a forewarning not to watch Miley Cyrus’s power-motorboat booty at the VMA!) The pictures have the intended effect—and former Vietnam War critic, now Secretary of State, “elder-statesman” John Kerry declares the pictures of the children (but not Miley’s) a “moral obscenity.” (It is not known if Kerry described America’s “My Lai Massacre” in Vietnam—or its napalm-bombing there—with equivalent outrage.
3. Speaking of outrage and pictures: 9 months ago, a deranged, gun-crazy, probably hyper-pharmaceuticalized 20-year-old named Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members with his dead mother’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S assault rifle. The police quickly cordoned the area, and no pictures of the massacred children or adults were ever shown! Our public officials grieved openly, the President even flicked away some public tears. Neither Vietnam War “hero” John Kerry, nor anyone else in public office, expressed outrage or called the act, and America’s weird gun laws, a “moral obscenity.”
4. That should not surprise anyone! Just five years prior to Sandy Hook, another lunatic, also, perhaps, hyped-up on pharmaceuticals, killed 32 of his fellow students at the Virginia Tech in Blacksburg—“the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history” [Wikipedia.] The MSM broadcast some blurred pictures of the 17 who were physically wounded and the many who were traumatized; but, no riddled bodies. Wikipedia noted: “The massacre prompted the state of Virginia to close legal loopholes that had previously allowed Cho, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to purchase handguns without detection by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). It also led to passage of the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years. The law strengthening the NICS was signed by President George W. Bush.”
Of course, it is easy to circumvent the law. It was Adam Lanza’s mother—whom he murdered on the morning of the Sandy Hook massacre—who purchased the guns for her troubled son!
5. In fact, the U.S. government has circumvented its own, and international laws, as well as “moral laws” from its inception. No need for a “declaration of war” in Korea, for example, when a UN-engineered “police action” will do. No need to declare war against Vietnam when a spurious attack by fishing boats against a US destroyer [!] will result in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, with a cowed Congress legitimizing a ten-year killing spree in Southeast Asia! No need for an Article One, Section Eight Constitutional declaration… when General Colin Powell can go before the UN, wag a vial of sugar and declare that that much anthrax could poison the water for all of New York City, and that Saddam Hussein was just the guy to do it! No need for laws, when we have gunslinger-swagger-man Bush saying he wants Saddam Hussein “dead or alive” and Exxon-owned Condoleezza Rice scaring the bejesus out of the Jove-fearing public with her talk of smoking-gun mushroom clouds! But… let’s not count the bodies. A million Iraqis dead? Didn’t they have to pay for 9/11? Didn’t they kill 3,000 Americans? Wasn’t there plenty of forensic evidence? (Oh, yeah—we shipped all that to China!)
6. In modern classics like KILLING HOPE and ROGUE STATE, William Blum cites scores of US and CIA military interventions since WWII. Counting “psy-ops,” and other operations more recently come to light (thanks to “hackers,” NSA disclosures, etc.), that figure is now securely in the hundreds! We have about 1000 “known” military bases around the world. As Edward Snowden and others have made clear, our National Security Agency can track Americans’ phone calls, internet exchanges, etc. Our president—any president—can press a button and a drone can emulsify an American citizen like Anwar Aw-Alaki (and his 16-year old son) anywhere in the world. Judge, jury, executioner! At the height of our massacres in Iraq, Cowboy Bush famously called our Constitution “just a piece of paper.” He should have called it “toilet paper.” That’s what it was to him!
7. Before we get too perplexed about “chemical attacks” in Syria, consider: “Some 30% of chemical food additives are not tested nor approved by the FDA.” [Harper’s Index]
8. Or this from Pro Publica: A flurry of lawsuits assert that Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes to buy drilling rights for lowball prices. …The suits claim the federal government facilitated the alleged swindle by failing in its legal obligation to ensure the tribes got a fair deal.
9. Or this from CGL News (2/17/13): A tank holding radioactive liquid at Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, is LEAKING! The storage tanks hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew, are left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons. The leak could be in between 150 and 300 gallons a year.
10. Do we have the right to play God in this world? Have we managed our affairs so wisely, so humanely, that we can violently dictate terms to others?
Lastly, consider a few words from the New and Old Testaments: “Can the blind lead the blind?… And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Luke, 6:39-41) And, “Whence then commeth wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?” (The Book of Job, 28:20)
Gary Corseri has taught at universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons. His books include collections of poetry, novels and a literary anthology (edited), and his prose and poems have appeared at hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide. Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.
