U.S. unfit to rebuild Iraq

Arguing that the U.S. is best qualified to piece together broken Iraq is like agruing that bank robbers that just robbed a bank of all of its money should run the bank until it is restored to solvency.

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?

Edmund Burke is credited with first referring to the media as the “Fourth Estate.” The British government consisted of three estates including the King, the Lords and the Commons. Burke pointed to the editors in the gallery and claimed they were also an estate, a major power broker. He speculated that the media were the most powerful of all the estates.

The term “fifth column” derived from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The rebel Fascists, led by Francisco Franco, were marching on Madrid, the Spanish capital. Franco’s forces were divided into four columns, which descended on the city from four directions. Many Fascist sympathizers allegedly resided inside the city and did everything they could to undermine the Spanish Republic. They became known as the “fifth column.”

The Spanish Republic was one of the most free and democratic governments ever to rule a large nation. Alas, freedom and democracy seem to be unnatural to the majority of human beings. Hitler and Mussolini openly supported the Spanish Fascists to the point of supplying arms and flying strafing and bombing missions. Thousands of idealistic Americans went to Spain to fight for the Republic. The U.S. government claimed to be neutral. In reality, its actions indicated it preferred to have the Fascists in power.

What role does the U.S. media play today? Is it a “fourth estate” with high democratic ideals as Burke imagined, or is it a traitorous “fifth column” of subversives undermining the nation’s principles, values and ideals?

The mainstream media often refer to themselves as liberal. In reality, they are owned mostly by conservatives and funded mainly by conservative corporate advertisers, many of whom will withdraw their advertising dollars if they disapprove of programming content. Conservative plus conservative does not add up to liberal.

In the U.S. the media pass themselves off as the fourth estate and as liberal to lull ordinary people into believing that they have a watchdog keeping an eye on the repositories of power. This deception is crucial for a small, undemocratic oligarchy to rule the nation. The media claim that the people are sovereign while secretly helping the oligarchy consolidate its power.

The media follow the rules of propaganda. They repeat lies and deceptions over and over until they are widely believed. They omit critical facts that would change the meaning or impact of an event or action. They never admit that the oligarchy exists. They are the obedient servants of the oligarchy.

The success of the modern ruling oligarchy can be attributed to its ability to remain inconspicuous. Ordinary people don’t suspect its existence. Members of the oligarchy will surface in cases of ominous threats to their power or wealth. Oligarch Richard Mellon Scaife surfaced to combat the Bill Clinton threat. For example, the 1992 election went wrong. George H.W. Bush should have been a shoo-in. Bush’s missteps and a third-party challenge by billionaire maverick H. Ross Perot—not a member of the oligarchy--produced a surprise outcome. Scaife funneled millions of dollars into organizations to neutralize Clinton. The federal courts, by and large obedient servants of the oligarchy, cooperated fully. Clinton, pummeled from all directions, was kept off balance. He was left unable to do any harm to the oligarchy such as pass his healthcare reform program and convert military spending into mass transit upgrades and expansions.

Another oligarch surfaced when George W. Bush lost the 2000 election in spite of extensive election rigging. James Baker intervened with the local governments and the U.S. Supreme Court and got the election turned around.

In both cases, the media covered up or distorted most of the illegal actions allowing the oligarchy to prevail and leaving the people baffled, stupefied and silent.

The oligarchy’s successes at the end of the 20th Century encouraged it to reach for greater power in the 21st Century. The people showed no sign of higher awareness even though they had access to far more information. The primitive instinct to follow a macho man no matter how low his intelligence still was strong. The bearing of a leader is far more important than his brain. George W. Bush has what British Member of Parliament George Galloway termed “A simian swagger.” Bush’s political handler, Karl Rove, noticed Bush’s swagger in the 1980s and reportedly bragged to some Texas friends that he could make that man president of the U.S.

Now, in the 21st Century, the world finds itself facing a nation with weapons capable of destroying that world being led by a man whose brain spent most of its existence cooking on drugs or pickled in alcohol. There are 21st Century weapons in the hands of First Century men.

Manipulating everything is a power-hungry, amoral oligarchy. The oligarchy holds the beliefs held by the kings, Feudal lords and aristocrats who preceded it. Ethically, the oligarchy believes morals are meaningless. Morals are tools to be used to pacify the masses, which, left on there own, would turn the world into lawless disorder and chaos. For their own good, the masses must have laws and morals imposed on them, harshly if necessary. Lying to impose an ethical system not only is not wrong, but it is noble to do, the oligarchs believe.

Those laws and morals don’t apply to members of the oligarchy. When an oligarch is exposed for violating one of the rules, he is given a slap on the wrist. No matter how hideous an atrocity an oligarch commits, he will never suffer the harshest punishment. An oligarch has never been executed in the U.S., the world’s second biggest practitioner of capital punishment after dictatorial China.

The media’s job is to cover up the hypocrisies and contradictions and spin the evidence to be harsh on common people and soft on rich oligarchs. The U.S. mainstream media has mastered the art of deception. It isn’t what it appears to be. What it says usually is untrue. It lies first, and tells the truth only if forced to do so.

Is everyone justified in killing Americans?

U.S. president George V said, ”The law is whatever we [U.S. leaders] say it is.” He reflected the widely-held self-appraisal that Americans are above the law due to their inherent superiority and goodness.

Are Americans as noble as they claim? Until this year, America was one of only five nations that executed its children. It is the only industrialized nation that executes its citizens. It goes to war, on average, every two years. It has more people in its jails than any other nation in the world, including China, which has five times the U.S. population.

The U.S. has committed more acts of genocide than any other nation existing today. Americans began their history by killing over 10 million Native Americans, often using the most cruel killing methods known. They killed defenseless women and children with the enthusiasm of unscrupulous savages. They were the last nation of European origin to abolish slavery, and then only after killing 600,000 in a bloody fratricidal war.

The U.S. began the 20th Century with the genocide of over one million Filipinos. It ended the century with the genocide of nearly two million Iraqis. In between those mass murders, it orchestrated the deaths of 500,000 Filipinos after the Second World War, over one million Koreans during the Korean War and two million Vietnamese, 500,000 Cambodians and at least 100,000 Laotians during the Vietnam War.

When the objective history of the 20th Century is written, Germany, Japan, Great Britain and the U.S. will vie for the title of most primitive, diabolical nation of the century. The 20th Century was the bloodiest in human history. The number of people murdered in wars equaled the total population of the world the year Jesus was born. Those who called themselves Christians did most of the killing. The problem was that technology outstripped human evolution. Twentieth Century weapons were in the hands of first century humans.

One of the four nations stands out as uniquely diabolical. It was the only nation in history sick and twisted enough to incinerate tens of thousands of defenseless men, women, children and babies with nuclear weapons. It should win the title of most gruesome nation of that wicked century.

As the most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. can’t be justly punished for its atrocities. The U.S. exploits that immunity and acts with impunity. It holds others to very high standards and itself to low or, more often, no standards. It acts as the world’s bully and the earth’s Mafia and takes whatever it wants.

Ninety-two percent of U.S. citizens can’t distinguish right from wrong. They function at an animal level, not at a civilized human level. They are at a three-year-old mental, moral and maturity level. They are like insects avariciously devouring the life-giving produce of the world’s vegetable garden. They are the main obstacle to civilization.

Using U.S. standards, everyone is justified in taking preemptive action to exterminate these lawless, ravenous, uncontrollable, immoral insects. They are the scourge of the earth. They elect leaders such as the current semi-literate George VI who advocate “mutually assured destruction,” who gladly would eliminate life on earth rather than yield on any issue.