[THS] !!!! William Blum: Since I Gave Up Hope, I Feel Better

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19855.htm

Since I Gave Up Hope, I Feel Better

By William Blum

01/05/08 "ICH" -- - "More than any time in history, mankind now faces a
crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to
total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
-- Woody Allen

Food riots, in dozens of countries, in the 21st century. Is this what we
envisioned during the post-World War Two, moon-landing 20th century as
humankind's glorious future? It's not the end of the world, but you can
almost see it from here.

American writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) once asserted that the role of the
artist was to "inoculate the world with disillusionment". So just in case you
-- for whatever weird reason -- cling to the belief/hope that the United
States can be a positive force in ending or slowing down the new jump in
world hunger, here are some disillusioning facts of life.

On December 14, 1981 a resolution was proposed in the United Nations
General Assembly which declared that "education, work, health care,
proper nourishment, national development are human rights". Notice the
"proper nourishment". The resolution was approved by a vote of 135-1. The
United States cast the only "No" vote.

A year later, December 18, 1982, an identical resolution was proposed in
the General Assembly. It was approved by a vote of 131-1. The United
States cast the only "No" vote.

The following year, December 16, 1983, the resolution was again put forth,
a common practice at the United Nations. This time it was approved by a
vote of 132-1. There's no need to tell you who cast the sole "No" vote.

These votes took place under the Reagan administration.

Under the Clinton administration, in 1996, a United Nations-sponsored
World Food Summit affirmed the "right of everyone to have access to safe
and nutritious food". The United States took issue with this, insisting that it
does not recognize a "right to food". Washington instead championed free
trade as the key to ending the poverty at the root of hunger, and expressed
fears that recognition of a "right to food" could lead to lawsuits from poor
nations seeking aid and special trade provisions.[1]

The situation of course did not improve under the administration of George
W. Bush. In 2002, in Rome, world leaders at another U.N.-sponsored World
Food Summit again approved a declaration that everyone had the right to
"safe and nutritious food". The United States continued to oppose the
clause, again fearing it would leave them open to future legal claims by
famine-stricken countries.[2]

Along with petitioning American leaders to become decent human beings
we should be trying to revive the population control movement. Birth rates
must be radically curbed. All else being equal, a markedly reduced
population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon global
warming and food and water availability (not to mention finding a parking
spot and lots of other advantages). People, after all, are not eating more.
There are simply more/too many people. Some favor limiting families to two
children. Others argue in favor of one child per family. Still others, who
spend a major part of each day digesting the awful news of the world, are
calling for a limit of zero. (The Chinese government recently announced
that the country would have about 400 million more people if it wasn't for
its limit of one or two children per couple.[3])

And as long as we're fighting for hopeless causes, let's throw in the demand
that corporations involved in driving the cost of oil through the roof -- and
dragging food costs with it -- must either immediately exhibit a conspicuous
social conscience or risk being nationalized, their executives taken away in
orange jumpsuits, handcuffs, and leg shackles. The same for other
corporations and politicians involved in championing the replacement of
food crops with biofuel crops or exploiting any of the other steps along the
food-chain system which puts bloated income ahead of putting food in
people's mouths. We're not speaking here of weather phenomena beyond
the control of man, we're speaking of men making decisions, based not on
people's needs but on pseudo-scientific, amoral mechanisms like supply and
demand, commodity exchanges, grain futures, selling short, selling long,
and other forms of speculation, all fed and multiplied by the proverbial herd
mentality -- a system governed by only two things: fear and greed; not a
rational way to feed a world of human beings.

The Wall Street Journal reports that grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-
Midland Co. said its quarterly profits "jumped 42%, including a sevenfold
increase in net income in its unit that stores, transports and trades grains
such as wheat, corn and soybeans. ... Some observers think financial
speculation has helped push up prices as wealthy investors in the past year
have flooded the agriculture commodity markets in search of better
returns."[4]  At the same time, the French Agriculture Minister warned
European Union officials against "too much trust in the free market. We
must not leave the vital issue of feeding people to the mercy of market laws
and international speculation."[5]

It should be noted that the price of gasoline in the United States increases
on a regular basis, but there's no shortage of supply. There are no lines of
cars waiting at gas stations. And demand has been falling as financially-
strapped drivers cut back on car use.


Intelligence agents without borders

When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 in the
Greek government led by his father George Papandreou, he was shocked to
discover an intelligence service out of control, a shadow government with
powers beyond the authority of the nation's nominal leaders, a service more
loyal to the CIA than to the Papandreou government. This was a fact of life
for many countries in the world during the Cold War, when the CIA could
dazzle a foreign secret service with devices of technical wizardry, classes in
spycraft, vital intelligence, unlimited money, and American mystique and
propaganda. Many of the world's intelligence agencies have long provided
the CIA with information about their own government and citizens. The
nature of much of this information has been such that if a private citizen
were to pass it to a foreign power he could be charged with treason.[6]

Leftist Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa declared in April that Ecuador's
intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA," and
accused senior Ecuadoran military officials of sharing intelligence with
Colombia, the Bush administration's top (if not only) ally in Latin America.
The previous month missiles had been fired into a camp of the Colombian
FARC rebels situated in Ecuador near the Colombian border, killing about
25. One of those killed was Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the
group. It turned out that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been
tracking Aisalla, a fact that was not shared with the president, but
apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers. "I,
the president of the republic, found out about these operations by reading
the newspaper," a visibly indignant Correa said. "This is not something we
can tolerate." He added that he planned to restructure the intelligence
agencies so he would have greater direct control over them.[7]

The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is routinely referred to
in the world media as "Marxist", but that designation has not been
appropriate for many years. The FARC has long been basically a criminal
organization -- kidnapings for ransom, kidnapings for no apparent reason,
selling protection services to businesses, trafficking in drugs, fighting the
Colombian Army to be free to continue their criminal ways or to revenge
their comrades' deaths. But Washington, proceeding from its declared
ideology of "If you ain't with us, you're against us; in fact, if you ain't with
us you're a terrorist", has designated FARC as a terrorist group. Every
stated definition of "terrorist", from the FBI to the United Nations to the US
criminal code makes it plain that terrorism is essentially a political act. This
should, logically, exclude FARC from that category but, in actuality, has no
effect on Washington's thinking. And now the Bush administration is
threatening to add Venezuela to its list of "nations that support terrorism",
following a claim by Colombia that it had captured a computer belonging to
FARC after the attack on the group's campsite in Ecuador. A file allegedly
found on the alleged computer, we are told, suggests that the Venezuelan
government had channeled $300 million to FARC, and that FARC had
appeared interested in acquiring 110 pounds of uranium.[8] What next?
Chavez had met with Osama bin Laden at the campsite?

Amongst the FARC members killed in the Colombian attack on Ecuador were
several involved in negotiations to free Ingrid Betancourt, a former
Colombian presidential candidate who also holds French citizenship and is
gravely ill. The French government and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez
have been very active in trying to win Betancourt's freedom. Individuals
collaborating with Chavez have twice this year escorted a total of six
hostages freed by the FARC into freedom, including four former Colombian
legislators. The prestige thus acquired by Chavez has of course not made
Washington ideologues happy. If Chavez should have a role in the freeing
of Betancourt -- the FARC's most prominent prisoner -- his prestige would
jump yet higher. The raid on the FARC camp has put an end to the
Betancourt negotiations, at least for the near future.

The raid bore the fingerprints of the US military/CIA -- a Predator drone
aircraft dropped "smart bombs" after pinpointing the spot by monitoring a
satellite phone call between a FARC leader and Chavez. A Colombian
Defense Ministry official admitted that the United States had provided his
government with intelligence used in the attack, but denied that
Washington had provided the weapons.[9] The New York Times observed
that "The predawn operation bears remarkable similarities to one carried
out in late January by the United States in Pakistan."[10]

So what do we have here? Washington has removed a couple of dozen
terrorists (or "terrorists") from the ranks of the living without any kind of
judicial process. Ingrid Betancourt continues her imprisonment, now in its
sixth year, but another of Hugo Chavez's evil-commie plans has been
thwarted. And the CIA -- as with its torture renditions -- has once again
demonstrated its awesome power: anyone, anywhere, anytime, anything,
all laws domestic and international be damned, no lie too big.

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" 
  T.S. Eliot

Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, held a press conference at the
National Press Club in Washington on April 28, during which he was asked
about his earlier statement that the US government had invented the HIV
virus, which causes AIDS, "as a means of genocide against people of color".

Wright did not offer any kind of evidence to support his claim. Even more
important, the claim makes little sense. Why would the US government
want to wipe out people of color? Undoubtedly, many government officials,
past and present, have been racists, but the capitalist system at home and
its imperialist brother abroad have no overarching ideological or realpolitik
need for such a genocide. During the seven decades of the Cold War, the
American power elite was much more interested in a genocide of
"communists", of whatever color, wherever they might be found. Many
weapons which might further this purpose were researched, including,
apparently, an HIV-like virus. Consider this: On June 9, 1969, Dr. Donald M.
MacArthur, Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of
Defense, testified before Congress:

    Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a
new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects
from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that
it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic
processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from
infectious disease.[11]

Whether the United States actually developed such a microorganism and
what it did with it has not been reported. AIDS was first identified by the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981. It's certainly possible
that the disease arose as a result of Defense Department experiments, and
then spread as an unintended consequence.

If you think that our leaders, as wicked as they are, would not stoop to any
kind of biological or chemical warfare against people, consider that in 1984
an anti-Castro Cuban exile, on trial in a New York court, testified that in the
latter part of 1980 a ship traveled from Florida to Cuba with "a mission to
carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets
and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war,
which later on produced results that were not what we had expected,
because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces,
and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not
agree."[12]

It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the
germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians.
This was but one of many instances where the CIA or Defense Department
used biological or chemical weapons against Cuba and other countries,
including in the United States against Americans, at times with fatal
consequences.[13]


Breaking the media barrier

"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out,
marginalized, disrespected, and you go from Iraq to Palestine to Israel,
from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush
administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on
the war, stopping him on the tax cuts ... If the Democrats can't landslide
the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge
in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a
pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication he's the candidate of
perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas?"

Thus spaketh Ralph Nader as he announced his presidential candidacy to a
national audience on NBC's Meet the Press in February. The next day his
words appeared in the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, Associated Press,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, International Herald Tribune, and numerous
other publications, news agencies, and websites around the world. And
other parts of his interview were also repeated, like this in the Washington
Post: "Let's get over it and try to have a diverse, multiple-choice, multiple-
party democracy, the way they have in Western Europe and Canada."

This is why Ralph Nader runs for office. To get our views a hearing in the
mainstream media (which we often, justifiably, look down upon but are
forced to make use of), and offer Americans an alternative to the
tweedledumb and tweedledumber political parties and their cookie-cutter
candidates with their status-quo-long-live-the-empire souls. Is Nader's
campaign not eminently worthwhile? But as always, he faces formidable
obstacles, amongst which is what H. L. Mencken once observed: "The men
the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars;
the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

Here are a couple of campaigns to contribute time and money to:

Ralph Nader -- http://www.votenader.org/
Cindy Sheehan, running for Congress in San Francisco against Nancy
"Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi -- http://www.cindyforcongress.org/


"Building a new world" conference
May 22-25, Radford University, Radford, Virginia, 5-hour drive from
Washington, DC. Cindy Sheehan, Kathy Kelly, Michael Parenti, David
Swanson, Gareth Porter, William Blum, Medea Benjamin, Gary Corseri, Mike
Whitney, Kevin Zeese, Robert Jensen, and others. Room and board
available at reasonable rates. Full details at:
http://www.wpaconference.org/


NOTES
[1] Washington Post, November 18, 1996

[2] Reuters news agency, June 10, 2002

[3] Washington Post, March 3, 2008

[4] "Grain Companies' Profits Soar As Global Food Crisis Mounts", Wall
Street Journal, April 30, 2008, p.1

[5] Washington Post, April 27, 2008, p.13

[6] William Blum, Killing Hope, pages 217-8

[7] New York Times, April 21, 2008

[8] New York Times, March 4, 2008

[9] Agence France Presse, March 24, 2008

[10] New York Times, April 21, 2008

[11] Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on
Appropriations, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970"

[12] Testimony of Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez, on trial in Federal District
Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of September 10,
1984, pp. 2187-89.

[13] William Blum, Rogue State, chapters 14 and 15
William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War 2 - Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower - West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir - Freeing the World
to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books can be
read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org