Good job, Ed

   So much has happened to us in the last 25 years, it seems the events have no roots in an earlier time. That is of course, the conclusion the Empire wants us to reach; their version of the past is the "real" one.
Your take on Vietnam is seldom presented; the Empire's version holds that peace protesters made the war last longer and made us lose the war, nothing about a war that shouldn't have been.
Ties to the past persist. Neocons have ties back to John Foster Dulles, Ike's sec state, and Allen Dulles, head of CIA, who extended the Cold War to surrogates S.Korea and later S.Vietnam, as you state in your article. The Domino Theory, the U.S.s only strategy concept in foreign policy.

Thanks for information we can trust to give us the real history, as much as it can be given, neither revisionism nor propaganda. 

by Jay Farrington (13 articles, 2 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 223 comments) on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:26:58 AM
 

How do people learn about their past?

Except for those who consider themselves professional historians, most of us remember what we heard as children. If we were admonished by parents to protect a particular brand of religion, that will be a lens through which we see school lessons and private reading.

Therefore. it is likely enough that the "dumbing down" process you describe will become dumber through the generations. To offset family influence there should be cultural influences greater than just plain classes. Can community groups, perhaps with church participation, help children get broader perspectives as they are in those formative years?

 

by Margaret Bassett (31 articles, 1969 quicklinks, 30 diaries, 1282 comments) on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 2:06:51 PM
 

Caution -- Danger ahead!

How do people learn about their past?Except for those who consider themselves professional historians, most of us remember what we heard as children. If we were admonished by parents to protect a particular brand of religion, that will be a lens through which we see school lessons and private reading. Therefore. it is likely enough that the "dumbing down" process you describe will become dumber through the generations. To offset family influence there should be cultural influences greater than just plain classes. Can community groups, perhaps with church participation, help children get broader perspectives as they are in those formative years?

Margaret:

 

About “their” past? I suppose that would begin with a genuine sense of curiosity, and perhaps a great deal of willingness to accept the consequences from what was learned. As to how, I couldn’t begin to offer thoughts there.

 

EVERYTHING else, however begins with a healthy sense of entitlement to dignity, and a deeply held requirement that one be treated with it. I say that from the perspective that, if one is willing to sacrifice the right to question everything, to accept nothing on pure face value, or not question something because another has suggested, even strongly suggested, that you have some obligation to accept what you’ve been told, then one is not ready or willing to learn much. Really, it takes courage and the curmudgeon’s basic attitude, “F*** Y**, I’m going to find out for myself!”

 

Margaret, ya know, just because someone believes something to be true cannot make it so, if it isn’t.

 Certainly you need some basics, the tiniest fragment of a sense of something you perhaps recalled from 8th grade. With the Internet and Google, no one has to be a “professional historian.”  The research is sooo easy, and so readily available. I’m going to lead you down hell’s path here. For example, type in the Google/search bar Christian church history. Then go searching. (Also Google Pope Urban VIII, and learn why I’ve determined that popes and priests, ministers, mullahs, and rabbis don’t know one bit more than do you, and why what they tell you should be taken with a grain of salt and both eyes wide open.).  

In addition to the less trustworthy material, you’re going to find a lot of highly authoritative information, much of which has the potential to bring doubt over what you may have believed an entire lifetime. And that’s good, if you’d rather have a grasp of the truth, the good, the corrupt, and the just plain disgusting, than continue believing a fairy-tale fable, because that’s what you’ve been led by the nose to accept as so by someone else; someone else who has no better handle on life, who doesn’t know a single thing more about it than do you.        

  

You brought up “church participation.” As an ardent student of the Bible and the damning miserable history of religion, church participation would be the very worst place to go seeking the truth. By definition, religion requires one dispense with a quest for facts and evidence on behalf of a willingness to believe the far simpler explanations that have zero foundation in any verifiable truth.

 

I have two sons, 20 and 23. I doubt anyone can locate any two young men more honest, more moral, more good and truly decent than are they. Neither has been baptized, neither has ever set foot n a church. Any connection between religion and morality is coincidental, not necessary. All I’ve ever asked of them is that, before they decide on any religion, they study each and all religions. Know why there’s an 80% chance you and your associates and relatives are Christian? It isn’t because you did the least honest research. It’s because of the completely irrational process of being born into such a culture. As much as you, or anyone you know, believe the Christian tenets, if you or they had been born in Islamabad to Moslem parents, I guarantee you’d be as fervently Moslem as you are Christian. And what does that TRUTH say about the truth of what those who call themselves Christian is? It is no more valid than if you claimed you believed that any other total accident of birth had an intrinsic truth.

 

So, the church . . . Nah, Google Eusebius of Ceasarea Or how about Irenaeus. Irenaeus is a good one. The only reason the books in the Bible are the ones that are there is because Irenaeus and a bunch of other men did not want any strong reference to women in there. That the books that are in the bible are there had absolutely nothing to do with god or Jesus or anything else. It was to maintain subjugation of women.

 

With your research tucked in your purse, ask your minister or priest. My bet is they’ll give you spin that would make Fox and the Bush admin jealous. Then start thinking 100% on your own, and just having the greatest time discovering all kinds of neat stuff. The incredible thrill of discovery!!!!! But be careful: you could open a Pandora’s box.

 Ed

 

by Ed Tubbs (177 articles, 1 quicklinks, 24 diaries, 58 comments) on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 5:41:10 PM
 

Good article Ed, and I invite you

to read my US historical perspective in a previous article I wrote about the "Beijing Olympics & People living in Glass Houses".

I believe you need to not only include the hook and sinker, but the line and pole as well.

There are many "Informed" Americans who can't even locate Iraq on a world map, let alone recall that Saddam Hussein was a former Ronald Reagan "Freedom Fighter" now re-labeled a "Terrorist's" by the Reich, and the same goes for Osma Bin Forgotten...er Laden and his Al-CIAda organization.

I'm to understand the reason the US involved itself in Vietnam, was the Gulf Of Tonkin false flag operation that was there to protect Standard Oil and its off-shore oil interest. Along with bailing out Bell (Hell)icoptor from its near bankruptcy status before the US committed itself to Vietnam.

How many Americans still refer to Pearl Harbor as an attack of Surprise by the Japanese, while the carrier groups were out at sea and several fleets of B-17's were en-route to Hawaii in order to confuse the radar operators eyes on that fateful day?

Mr. Hearst and his false flag operation of the USS-Main sinking in Havana Harbor is just another of many false flag operandi the US has used in galvanizing the American public behind an administration's reasoning to use War as a means of bailing out the US economy to inject $ into the MIC that has been a part of the fabric of this nation for a long time. That Eisenhower warned us would lead to ruin the USA and its prestige around the world.

With the most recent false flag operation of 9/11 being the feather in the cap of the cabal of Bu$h & Co. to usurp power and illegally occupy 2 sovereign nations that one has the 2nd largest reserves of oil in the world and the other is needed to bring on-line oil pipe alignments so Caspian crude can make its way to the western world.

by Stanimal (0 articles, 4 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 668 comments) on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 3:32:11 PM