I’m Out Of The Box?
My son Josh is watching the demonstrations in Hong Kong right now. Back to containment againl No doubt given a push by the U.S.
Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution
The neocon foreign policy…I mean by people like Kristol, Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Perle, Brzezinski, Cheney and a lot of those people who have been on the Defense Board for a long time…was a reaction to the soft politics of the “new left” many of which were former “ Old Left” communists or former communists. Leftists and liberals who are disappointed with Utopianism become Revolutionaries. Or sell out and buy into a 401k because they want to educate their kids.
BTW, the family of Martin Luther King won a civil suit against the government proving it was the FBI-CIA who were terrified of King and had him killed but you never saw this in the press. And it was the FBI who saturated the Black community with drugs during the Black power movement to pacify them. You probably can find a video which I’ve seen of Ramsey Clark, Attorney General under Johnson, describing how it worked during his tenure. Some even argue with some evidence that the counter-culture and free speech movements was infiltrated and encouraged in in it’s excesses in order to turn the general population against it. With some success I might add.
People think presidents have all this power and know what’s going on. Not true. They just make promises they can’t keep.
So originally the neocons propped up corrupt foreign rulers in an effort to contain communism. And were willing to risk totalitarianism and corruption in these countries (that they didn’t feel were ready for democracy) to contain what they feared would be something worse. So we got the banana wars in S America, the killing of Allende in Chile, and “accidental” helicopter crashes in other countries, and Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal in Central America.“Bitter Fruit” describes the support we gave to Guatemala’s genocide of the indigenous in the 80s. Cuba, Haiti…on and on. Some of these efforts may appear to have had benign results but not many.
And the military industrial complex and international corps (John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”) had reared their ugly heads which fit in with the geopolitics and realpolitik of people like Kissinger. Kissinger and people like him architected Realpolitik and still is under Obama. Now it’s the containment of “terrorism” and the fear-mongering about the middle east which fits in with their agenda of controlling the petrodollar and containing China. (I think this is what the current issue with Russia issue is all about)
We see the results of this in the reaction of people around the world where the U.S. has meddled and interfered. Thailand is a good example I am familiar with. The US needs Thailand as an ally in the ASEAN countries against China and Thaksin was a willing puppet. There was an impending civil war. They are still finding cashes of arms. Thaksin gave poco gifts to the poor uneducated and brainwashed farmers to create a constituency for his corrupt government while he bled the country to death. It was he, in a Skype video to the Red leaders (who were former communist mountain guerrillas) who ordered them to burn down BKK in 2010. Which they nearly did.
Even the very poor in urban areas like BKK could see through Thaksin and supported the junta. It remains to be seen what the results of it will be. In the meantime, Thaksin and his PR man, Robert Amsterdam, are doing their best to get the mainstream media to brainwash the rest of us. “But he was elected, they scream! Yeah, we know how much that counts for. Interesting thing is that the expats in the countryside who have Red girlfriends or wives are just as brainwashed!
And now Turkey BTW. Not so nice for the locals to have crappy governments propped up by the U.S. What do they care. They don’t have to live there.
The neocon agenda may all make sense on paper but the reality of the results has been devastating to millions domestic and foreign.
A few of these people were former leftists but not many. Moynihan is the only one I can think of. And having lived on a Marine Corp base in 29 Palms California in the later 60’s and early 70’s for two years, I would argue that the military is indeed fighting a Christian war against evil. And recently the military was engraving bible verses on rifles and basic training includes a whole lot of christian brainwashing.
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Re: Christian Radicals. I am talking about people like Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and host of Tea Party wing nuts they represent who use dubious christian “values,” a misunderstanding of the constitution and of democracy itself and finally not even a basic understanding of human biology to fight the christian war against evil. “ God is on their side.” It was the right wing christians who partially instigated and supported the harsh homophobic policies in Africa. And it’s the Christians For Israel who support zionism..an odd alliance but not if you think about it. And these people support neocon policies.
Libertarianism doesn’t appeal to me even though Ron Paul’s criticism of the financial world makes sense to a lot of young people today. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Though I feel some kinship with some of the Libertarian social anarchists.
I am an independent. More of a Jesse Ventura one. But not really. I just like him. Reminds me of my beloved father who was going to shoot the “gub’t sons of bitches” if they ever set foot on his propity! ha! My first generation Polish mother who knew what it was to escape the Germans, used to make him read all his shit literature outside the house! 🙂 He was one of the original Libertarian farmers and now my son is taking after him. I feel caught in a conundrum in the gut.. in the middle of my personal history having grown up among 19th century “cowboys,” my education, rejection of religion, my experiences of the counter culture and anti-Viet Nam activism in the 60’s and 70’s, then having seen the other side by working for a state government where my coworkers really felt like they were public servants and with the feds.
My values of love and compassion coming from 40 years of meditation has given me perspective and softened me. Only problem is I have a lot of love but no where to put it now except in a universal way. But the last thing I want to be categorized as is as an NPR liberal! I would hope that my lens are clear enough to see Sharia at the gate. On that I think there are a lot of us that would find common cause with the christians…if only on the basis of freedom if nothing else.
Since living in Oaxaca I have become familiar with the Uses Y Costumbres political/social system in the indigenous communities (which operates on consensus and non-hierarchical community and in the pedagogy of deschooling by Ivan Illych which has been given expression by Gustavo Esteva..here in Oaxaca no less. Another luxury.
I feel incredibly free to nuance my own understanding of the world here in Oaxaca. And I am free to live the way I want to in this free-wheeling country away from the so-called “civilization” and all the mindless rules of the first world. An incredible luxury.
Tags: Hong Kong, Joshua, Progeny, World Watching And Politics
Zoe
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