Friends,
activists and countrymen, do not despair for our captivity in
inexpressible shame, sorrow and frustration. Rather be grateful for,
and inspired by, the work of eighteen well-known, kind, loving and dedicated,
North Americans who defend humanity from the infamy of a mass-homicidal
amoral government of insane greed, unethical acquisition, and brutal
inhuman exploitation of Mankind through military and
CIA
terror, and life taking economic oppression. From MSM being facilitated by an all pervasive indoctrinating news/entertainment
media cartel - conglomerate owned and overseen by an illicit wealthy
undereducated desperate corporate power-elite governing through
a manufactured agreement with pseudo-democracy. What little force is necessary to control a citizenry inculcated to materialist
self-preoccupations that make it blind and indifferent, and disinterested
in its complicity for the suffering and hunger caused by the cruel and
deceptively organized hegemony of a U.S. commercialized empire
attempting to co-opt and commoditize the whole planet.
Follow the example of these eighteen turning on a spotlight rather than curse the darkness.
Sixteen
Celebrated American Spokespersons For a Humanity Under Attack: (Readers
are invited to look over biographical notes of the less famous)
Noam Chomsky
Howard
Zinn
Naomi Kline
Amy Goodman
Michael Moore
Edward Herman
Ramsey Clark
Gore Vidal
William Blum
Cynthia McKinney
Cindy Sheehan
Jeremiah Wright
David Korten
Michael Parenti
Joel Kovel
John Perkins
and Two Elected Spokesmen For Honest Americans Working From Within The Belly of the Beast (by no means the only two)
Dennis Kucinich
Bernie Sanders
NOAM
CHOMSKY - world renown linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,
political activist, author; recognized as America's foremost dissident
and critic of U.S. foreign policy and conglomerate owned media
disinformation; seminal works include
Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global
dominance (Recommended to the
United Nations General Assembly by
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela);
Year 501: The Conquest Continues
(recommended for a foundation in function and history of modern
capitalism/imperialism);
The Fateful Triangle: The United States,
Israel and the Palestinians (a history up to 1986);
Media Control: The
Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda; Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media; Chomsky cited as a source more
often than any other living scholar during the 1980-1992 period in
The
Humanities Citation Index; voted the leading living public intellectual
in The 2005
Global Intellectuals Poll; 96 books; lectures constantly; an inspiration on campuses across the nation; professor emeritus
MIT.
HOWARD
ZINN - Peoples Historian, history from the point of view and experience
of common people; playwright;
promoter of the political influence of artists pro humanity in public
affairs; lifelong opponent of an exploiting and murdering ruling upper
class characterized by ignorance, selfishness, indifference to the
suffering of others and the insanity of greed; author of more than 20
books, including
A People's History of the United States and
autobiography
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (also a film);
pivotal role in human rights, civil liberties and anti-war movements; his warm-hearted
lectures express a firm belief in the natural goodness inherent in
humanity as he vociferously denounces war and institutionalized
thievery; constantly speaks out for peace and economic justice; his
latest effort is
The People Speak in book form and a multiple narration
on tour -now in video; after WW II, investigated his targets as an
Air Force Bombardier and found mostly innocent people were killed;
diplomatic mission to Hanoi in 1968; professor emeritus in Political
Science,
Boston U.
NAOMI KLINE - a Canadian,
(American parents moved to Montreal as war resisters);
journalist, author and activist known for her political analysis and
criticism of corporate globalization; precise researcher of U.S.
political economy as it functions in its present
exceptionally malfeasant form; clearly written and easily understood topical
articles, lectures; seminal books;
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No
Jobs, published in 28 languages, became a manifesto for the
anti-corporate globalization movement; attacks brand-oriented consumer
culture, operations of large corporations unethically exploiting
workers in the world's poorest countries;
Fences
and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization
Debate (proceeds go to anti-globalization organizations) describes methods used
in post-invasion Iraq to build a completely unconstrained free market
economy, allow foreigners to extract wealth from Iraq; how torture, often an essential tool for
authorities implementing aggressive free market reforms, can
appear pointless sadism if its context is not understood;
The Shock
Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, 2007, a lucidly written and
comprehensively researched documentation of how companies have learnt
to profit from disasters by forcing privatization, pushed through while
the citizens of these countries were reacting to disasters or upheavals
-how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world
through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries;
groups neoconservatism with neoliberal like Bill Clinton as part of a
single ideology;
The Take, how factory workers in Argentina took
over a closed plant and resumed production, operating as a collective;
was Miliband Fellow at the
London School of Economics; ranked 11th in
an internet poll of the top global intellectuals of 2005.
AMY
GOODMAN - American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist and
author; has broken the monopoly of the conglomerate media cartel with a
New York TV prime time public radio/television/internet news program -
the most significant progressive news institution; coverage of peace
and human rights movements and support for independent media, news and
selections featuring "
Who are we
not hearing from in the traditional media;"
Democracy Now! The War and
Peace Report, educating with context and in depth
interviews not beholden to corporate media ownership; wrote
expose of human rights violations in East Timor and Nigeria; arrested
at 2008 Republican Convention;
"Dissent is
what will save us. We live in very dire times. Global warring, global economic meltdown, the lack of health care in the
U.S., those
typical pundits we see on all the networks who know so little about so
much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. If you have
something else to say, perhaps, like, 'Officials of our government are guilty of war crimes', you can actually say that
in less than eight seconds, but you sound a little crazy. You're
marginalized, because you have to take a little time to explain: what
are the Nuremberg Principles? Geneva Conventions? What are war crimes?
That takes more time. We need to go
beyond the way the issues have been framed. We see where the status quo
has got us. mainstream news makers leave 'a huge niche' for Democracy Now!, basic tenets of good
journalism, you talk to
people who live at the target end of a policy," When the Bush
Administration didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it
"laid bare media that
act as a conveyor belt for the lies of the Administration - people
started to seek out other forms of information;" more confrontational
than the typical reporter"; President Bill Clinton charged Goodman with
being
"hostile, combative, and even disrespectful." In 1991, covering
the independence movement in East Timor, Goodman was badly beaten by
Indonesian soldiers after witnessing a mass killing of Timorese
demonstrators in the Dili Massacre; produced documentary,
Drilling and
Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship with Jeremy Scahill;
arrest at 2008 Republican Convention; Books:
The Exception to the
Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That
Love Them;
Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People
who Fight Back and
Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in
Extraordinary Times;
Breaking the Sound Barrier, anthology of her columns;
"My column will include voices of people the media mostly ignore and even ridicule;"
narrated
One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George
McGovern, film features McGovern, Gloria Steinem, Gore Vidal, Warren
Beatty, Howard Zinn, Ron Kovic, and Dick Gregory; 2008 awarded
Right Livelihood Award
in the Swedish Parliament; former news director of
Pacifica Radio
station
WBAI-FM NYC.
MICHAEL
MOORE - national conscience awakening film maker of sufficient success
and controversy provoking stature to force commercial media
attention; his
Bowling at Columbine is a poignant masterpiece about an
America of programed homicide as a way of life, a culture of macho
violence that destroys the minds and afflicts the psyche of the young
surrounded by the production of war instruments of mass death, taking
as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre;
Sicko exposes
the medical-care-for-profit industry under control of insurance and
pharmaceutical corporations, millions forced to chose between treatment
and financial ruin, millions of poor denied care, compares the U.S.
with Cuba where excellent care is a human right;
Fahrenheit 9/11
relates business connections of the Bush and bin Laden families;
Capitalism - A Love Story is woven around the reality that the top 1%
of the population, a plutocracy, controls more financial wealth than the bottom 95%
combined, bishops testify that capitalism is against the
teaching of Jesus; Moore says simply,
"Capitalism is dead." publishes a
serious but colorfully worded and engaging populist audience serving
newsletter devastatingly critical of the government .
EDWARD
HERMAN - economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and
regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media;.
Professor Emeritus of Finance,
Wharton School, also
Annenberg School for Communication, both at
the
University of Pennsylvania; one of his best-known books is the
classic
Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass
Media, written with Noam Chomsky; titles of his books illustrate his
contribution to uncovering incendiary media distortions:
The Myth of
The Liberal Media and
The Global Media (with Robert McChesney) (1999);
Beyond Hypocrisy : decoding the news in an age of propaganda -including
A doublespeak dictionary for the 1990s; The "Terrorism" Industry
(1990);
Demonstration Elections (with Frank Brodhead);
The Real Terror
Network (1982);
Corporate Control, Corporate Power; The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume I: The
Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Vol. II: After the
Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial
Ideology;
Counter-Revolutionary Violence -
Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda (with Noam Chomsky);
Atrocities in
Vietnam (1970);
Principles And Practices Of Money And Banking:
prominent articles and essays:
Godfatherly Global Justice: Milosevic,
Sharon and Suharto and
The Propaganda Model Revisited both
Monthly
Review July 1996;
The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective, Dec. 2003;
United States As Torture Central - U.S. sponsors regimes using torture
extensively 5/04
Third World Traveler;
The Politics of the Srebrenica
Massacre, ZNet on line
ZMagazine 7/7/05,;
Genocide Inflation is the
Real Human Rights Threat: Yugoslavia and Ruanda;
Znet ZMagazine;
Iran:
Riding The "Green Wave" At The Campaign For Peace and Democracy;
Monthly Review June 2009; his thoroughly documented scholarly writings
bring public enlightenment to what is propaganda for wars and
exploitation.
RAMSEY
CLARK - America's most prestigious defector from the criminal
imperialist capitalist establishment; U.S. Attorney General in both the
Kennedy and Johnson Administrations; involved in drafting the 1968
Civil Rights Act; following his term as Attorney General active in the
anti-Vietnam War movement; visited North Vietnam in 1972 as a protest
against the bombing of Hanoi; author of
The Fire This Time: U.S. War
Crimes in the Gulf; perennial defender of both those in his perception
falsely accused no matter how guilt be taken for granted, and those
whose trial is meant to cover the guilt of others complicit in the
crimes accused of, as in the trial of Saddam Hussein blocking testimony
that would have incriminated Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, the
CIA
and U.S. corporations, and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic not
permitting testimony of the war crimes of Clinton and
NATO; recipient
of the
Gandhi Peace Award and the
Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience
Award; founded
International Action Center which coordinates activism
and information opposing domestic and international injustice.
GORE
VIDAL - novelist, essayist, satirist, playwright, screen and TV script
writer, actor, and provocateur for rectification of injustice; his
biting satires ferociously bitter when defending progressive themes and
seems to get away being subversive, having license perhaps as a renown
literary figure easily moving in prominent literary circles, in
addition to having being born into a family with high political and
social connections tracing its history back to founding of the nation;
urbane and self-confident of the repository of knowledge he draws upon;
equally at home in politics, exhibiting a keen familiarity and
intelligent grasp of current events; an incisive, analytical
uncompromising critic of American politics; his unique presence on the
scene of history lends his essays a feeling of authority and intimacy.
Though cool, elegant, and witty, the essays comment harshly on American
domestic and foreign policy; Vidal became, in the '60s, a leading
spokesman for the New Left, an iconoclast willing to debate William F.
Buckley; in recent years, he has waged a continual war on those who
would attempt to diminish freedom; his biting and satirical but always
humanity based wit and quips brings Mark Twain to mind; in 2004, did
one man Broadway show on McCarthy era blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, author
of the most penetrating anti-war story of all time,
Johnny Got His
Gun; recently moved back stateside; was for years resident in Italy,
earlier Guatemala. [source in part:
About Gore Vidal, American Masters]
William
Blum - author, chronicler of
CIA crimes against humanity, his books have brought public
awareness of the
CIA's nefarious world wide reach and penetration in
its often independent role, frequently secretly working ahead of, or in
disregard of the U.S. government's agenda - its gargantuan financial
resources appearing to be infinite for its being the above-the-law
muscle behind corporate America's interests; his book
Killing Hope-
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II contains
documentation of an incredibly consistent practice of vicious
disinformation, and frightening and disgusting methods of torture and
assassination; publishes the monthly
Anti-empire Report; i
n 2006 Osama
bin Laden recommended that all Americans read Blum's Rogue State: A
Guide to the World's Only Superpower, from which Osama bin Laden
quoted, "
If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United
States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and
those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American
interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."
CYNTHIA
McKINNEY - brave and obstreperous former Congresswoman, outspoken,
imaginatively drawing attention to imperial and capitalist mega crimes;
Green Party Candidate for President 2008; [Info from
Wikipedia
article:] Member,
U.S. House of Representatives 1993 to 1/3/03; 2005 to
1/3/07 as a Democrat; submitted to Congress
Martin Luther King
Records Act calling for
"release all currently sealed files pertaining to the
assassination"; 2006, introduced articles of impeachment against
President Bush for withholding intelligence from the Congress,
redacting information, actively manipulating the intelligence on Iraq's
alleged weapons program, also charged Dick Cheney and Sec. of State
Condoleezza Rice alleging knowingly made false statements; introduced a
bill calling for
"the suspension of the use, sale, of depleted uranium
munitions"; signed the
9/11 Truth Movement statement, calling for new
investigations of perceived as unexplained aspects of 9/11; gained
national attention charging that the United States had advance
knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and that US President George W. Bush may
have been aware of the incipient attack and allowed them to happen,
allegedly due to his father's business interests with the bin Laden
construction company and many defense industry holdings; wrote open
letter to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal noting her agreement with the
Prince's suggestion that the attacks were an indication that
"the U.S. should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more
balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause"; cited
Amnesty
International and
Human Rights Watch on use of lethal force by Israeli
security forces; stood with Aboriginals against Australian mining
companies; worked to stop conventional weapons transfers to governments
that are undemocratic or fail to respect human rights; introduced
legislation to end the mining of coltan in eastern Democratic Republic
of the Congo; 2006, praised new leftist leaders in Latin America: 2005
advocate for victims of Hurricane Katrina and a critic of the
government's response; questioning
Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff, McKinney referred to a news story in which
the owners of a nursing home had been charged with negligent homicide
for abandoning 34 clients who died in the flood waters, McKinney asked
Chertoff:
"Mr. Secretary, if the nursing home owners are arrested for
negligent homicide, why shouldn't you also be arrested for negligent
homicide?" objected to the official allotment of the electoral votes
from Ohio being awarded to the incumbent in the 2004 U.S. presidential
election; unseated in the 2002 Georgia Democratic primary, protested
in a court case Republicans being allowed to vote in Dem primary;
featured in documentary
American Blackout; 2000, chastised Gore for
failing to support the U'wa people of Colombia opposing petroleum
drilling,
"I am contacting you because you have remained silent on this
issue despite your strong financial interests and family ties with
Occidental"; in Georgia House of Representatives, spoke aggressively
against the 1991 Gulf War causing many legislators to walk out in
protest of her remarks; M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the
Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy; initially high school teacher, university
professor.
CINDY
SHEEHAN - amazingly persistent, articulate, imaginatively aggressive
and energetic anti-war activist, rightfully broadening her
denunciations to include war's root causes, imperialistic capitalism;
journey of political awareness after the double anguish of son's death
in Iraq and her feeling of having failed him in not have prevented his
joining the military, galvanized her into actions so provocative that
they achieved media attention for her camp-out next to President Bush's
Texas ranch; at the time of 2005 presidential
inaugural, spoke at the opening of
Eyes Wide Open: the Human Cost of War, a
traveling exhibition created by the
American Friends Service Committee;
one of the founders of
Gold Star Families for Peace; [
Wikipedia
informs:] Sheehan attracted international attention in early August
2005, when, just
outside Bush's Texas ranch demanded a second meeting with the President.
She told members of
Veterans for Peace,
"And the other thing I want him
to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it
freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your
friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle
East." She also vowed not to pay her federal income tax for 2004
because that was the year her son was killed; gained the label of
"Peace Mom" from the mainstream media; arrested for demonstrating on
the White House sidewalk; met with Senator John McCain, and later
called him a "warmonger"; in London end of 2005 interviewed by
BBC
Radio and by
The Guardian; addressed the International Peace
Conference, organized by the
Stop the War Coalition, attended the
London Premiere of
Peace Mom, a play written by Dario Fo (Literature
Nobel laureate) about her; traveled to Ireland, met Irish Foreign
Affairs minister Dermot Ahern, voiced her objection to U.S. aircraft
refueling at Shannon Airport, stating,
"Your Government, even though
they didn't send troops to Iraq, is complicit in the crimes by allowing
the planes to land and refuel"; attending 2006 Bush
State of the Union
address arrested by Capital Police, for wearing a T-shirt reading
"2,245 Dead How many more?"; 2006, in Melbourne spoke in support of
David Hicks; in New York arrested after blocking the door to the
U.S.
Mission to the U.N. offices" during a protest with Iraqi women against
the war; accused the United States of planning to attack Iran; appeared
on
MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, called Bush
"the biggest
terrorist in the world" and "worse than Osama Bin Laden," and conceded
that she would rather live under Venezuela's Hugo Chavez than under
Bush; published memoir:
Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache
to Activism; 2007, traveled to Cuba, called for the closure of the
U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, visited the Latin
American School of Medicine; years of speaking tours; contested the seat of
Speaker of
the House in 2008 election; has a weekly radio show at
CindySheehanSoapbox.Org.; 2009, arrested at the White House protesting President
Obama's continuation of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; 1960-70s, honors
graduate Cerritos College; studied history at
UCLA, youth minister at
St. Mary's Catholic Church, Vacaville, California; for eight years,
coordinated program for at-risk middle school children.
JEREMIAH
WRIGHT - theologian, teacher, pastor; world wide prominence during days
of repeating TV sound bites of an angry Rev. Wright, arm raised,
fiercely declaiming in a horse voice,
"God damn America for its war
crimes!" "God damn America for killing innocent people," the war
promoting entertainment/news media cartel inadvertently promoting a war
condemning preacher to national notoriety; Sept. 2009, main speaker
celebrating the 60th anniversary of the independent socialist magazine
Monthly Review at
Ethical Culture Society, New York (
"Jeremiah Wright:
He's Baaack!" warned
Washington Examiner, 11/ 2/09), gave eloquently
compassionate, inspiring, empowering description of our predicament
under imperial capitalism;
identified his own personal community as inclusive of areas on other
continents where people suffer injustice for the sake of world
domination for profit by the few; spoke of his divinity school teachers
and his education by events in the lives of Martin Luther King Jr.,
Malcolm and the many other noble luminaries of black and minority
leadership during the long history of the fight for liberation of
Francis Fanon's "
Wretched of the Earth"; himself also formed in years
of ministry while listening "in the pew"; denounced the U.S. government
for repeatedly launching wars "based on one lie after another"- for the
of agony and manslaughter of Palestinians - for enslaving, oppressing,
and criminalizing Black Americans, emphasized that Amendments to the
Constitution did not make up for its fundamental laws of injustice in a
nation where social change is suppressed; hailed the
Monthly Review as
a scholarly publication that has placed priority on people
particularly the world's most oppressed; asked,
Why the poor are not seen as people, but rather as a liability
for health care," "if you help the homeless, they call you a saint; but
if you ask why people are homeless, they call you a socialist. I am
proud to be called a socialist, I want to know why! If I help the
hungry in the world, they call me a saint. If I ask why are there
hungry folks, they will call me a communist"; spoke of
"a country where
2,000 juveniles are serving life without parole"; Listening to the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright once he reached the fiery peak of declaiming horrors
and human degradation, the comparison with Martin Luther King Jr.
thundering during his 1967 Beyond Vietnam address in New York was
beautifully obvious. Both men base condemnation of violence on love.
Both had the same divinity school teacher; The King who Wright sounded
a bit like is not the one we remember every January, of
"I Have a
Dream", but the King of the righteous anger,
"I cannot be silent. My country
is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." That King was
vilified the day after as treasonous reminds of Wright pilloried in
media as anti-American. For the first time in these 42 years, the peace
movement has a charismatic celebrity religiously following in King Jr.'
footsteps; 1995, delivered a prayer as part of Nation of Islam head
Louis Farrakhan organized
Million Man March in Washington, D.C.; 1984,
courageously disregarding public opinion went to Tripoli with Farrakhan
to visit Gadaffi; professor,
Chicago Theological Seminary, Garrett
Evangelical Theological Seminary; Board Directors of
Evangelical Health
Systems, and
Malcolm X School of Nursing; joined
Marine Corp., trained
as a cardiopulmonary technician; part of the medical team charged with
care of President Lyndon Johnson after 1966 surgery at
National Naval
Medical Center; pastor emeritus of
Trinity United Church of Christ,
Chicago; featured on Wynton Marsalis's album
The Majesty of the Blues.
DAVID
KORTEN - author, political activist and prominent critic of corporate
globalization; extensive time living and working and warming his heart
in the 3rd world forming his recipe for outliving imperialism; 1995, published
When Corporations Rule the World,
sometimes referred to as the bible of the 1999 Seattle
WTO protest;
next,
The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, which was
launched at U.N. headquarters in New York in 1999, focused on
framing a positive alternative to corporate rule based on living system
principles; 2007,
Global Civil Society; 2006,
The Great Turning: From
Empire to Earth Community; 2009,
Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom
Wealth to Real Wealth -Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace It; ,
"While based in the Philippines, 1980s, I concluded that the leadership needed
to redirect the human course would not come from within establishment
institutions, but rather would depend on citizen groups working from a
shared understanding of the deeper problems afflicting the species and
a common vision of unrealized possibilities. At that point, I became a
defector from the establishment and have since worked through public
interest citizen organizations devoted to a transformational social
change agenda"; Ph.D. at
Stanford U. in Business Administration; devoted
to setting up business schools in low-income countries - starting with
Ethiopia"; a captain in the
U.S. Air Force in Vietnam, taught civic
action and psychological operations at the
Special Air Warfare School,
served as military aide to the civilian head of all defense department
behavior and social sciences research; 5 years as Visiting Associate
Professor of the
Harvard University Graduate School of Business;
advisor to the Nicaragua-based
Central American Management Institute;
staff of the
Harvard Institute for International Development; faculty
appointments at the
Harvard School of Public Health; taught
international family planning management; 1970s, left U.S. academia
and moved to Southeast Asia; 15 years Ford Foundation project specialist working with
management institutes around the world, later Asia regional advisor on development
management to the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to
help AID apply what they had learned in the
Ford Foundation about
organizational change strategies for transforming large-scale public
bureaucracies into responsive support systems dedicated to
strengthening community control and management of land, water, and
forestry resources
; traveled regularly between
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines.
"Disillusioned by the evident inability of USAID and other
large official aid donors to apply the approaches that the Ford Foundation had developed and proven, gradually I
became aware that the crisis of deepening poverty, growing inequality,
environmental devastation, and social disintegration I was observing in
Asia was also being experienced in nearly every country in the
world including the United States and other 'developed' countries, I
eventually made my break with the official aid system. My last five
years in Asia were devoted to working with leaders of Asian non
governmental organizations on identifying the root causes of
development failure in the region and building the capacity of civil
society organizations to function as strategic catalysts of national-
and global-level change. In 1990, I joined with colleagues from around
the world to found the People-Centered Development Forum as a support
network for those who were seeking to challenge the dominant
development paradigm. I have since served as the Forum's president and
principal spokesperson"; 1994, in New York joined "a gathering of
global activists working on trade issues that led to the formation of
the International Forum on Globalization, that assumed a major role in
building global awareness of the dysfunctions of corporate-led economic
globalization"
MICHAEL
PARENTI - political scientist, historian, media critic, full-time
political activist, on the advisory boards of
Independent Progressive
Politics Network, and
Education Without Borders; New Political Science
and
Nature, Society and Thought: scholarly journal of Marxist studies;
of his books, most influential:
Democracy for the Few, 2007,1974,
translated into 18 languages;
Contrary Notions, 2007;
Superpatriotism,
2004;
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient
Rome, 2003;
The Terrorism Trap, 2002;
Blackshirts & Reds: Rational
Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, 1997;
Against Empire 1995;
Inventing Reality: the Politics of News Media, 1986,1993;
Make-Believe
Media: the Politics of Entertainment, 1992;
The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race, 1991;
Trends and Tragedies
in American Foreign Policy, 1971;
The Anti-Communist Impulse, 1970;
appeared in the 1992 documentary
Panama Deception and the 2004
documentary
Liberty Bound; [Parenti's views from
Wikipedi article:] that
racism serves several functions for ruling interests: divides the
working class against each other, creates a "super-exploited" group of
people who are forced to work at below scale wages thereby depressing
wage levels for the entire workforce, distracts the (U.S.) white
population from its own legitimate grievances by providing an
irrelevant scapegoat in the form of minority populations; has
criticized the tendency among many who profess to be progressive to
downplay the importance of class; that national debt in fact works well
for certain interests, the greater the debt, the greater the upward
transfer, as the government continues to borrow money from those they
should be taxing.
"The national debt is in effect a way of privatizing
public spending and defunding the federal budget, The bigger the debt,
the less money available for domestic programs, and the more money that
goes from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers to rich creditors"; that
Iraq was targeted for "having committed economic nationalism," with a
state-run economy that pretty much shut out Western investors, that The
same holds true for Yugoslavia, both countries were bombed and invaded,
and their public economies were shattered; wrote
The Demonization of
Slobodan Milosevic, was head of the U.S. chapter of the International
Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic; that many on the left continue
to deliver impassioned and blanket condemnations of deceased communist
countries, Parenti states,
"Those of us who refused to join in the
Soviet bashing were branded by left anti-communists as 'Soviet
apologists'; that
"despite the well-publicized deficiencies, crimes,
and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist
systems that were worth preserving, such as the free medical care and
human services; affordable food, fuel, transportation, and housing;
universal literacy; gains in women's rights; free education to the
highest level of one's ability; a guaranteed right to a job; free
cultural and sporting events, and the like." He supported Gorbachev's
campaign of perestroika and glasnost until 1990 when it became evident
to him that the Gorbachev reforms were leading to the implantation of
free-market capitalism and were, as he saw it, bringing hardships to
the common people; that entertainment media indoctrinate by propagating
values in keeping with their corporate ownership and corporate
advertisers; that Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy
as a veritable Shangri-La" ignoring its negative aspects.
JOEL KOVEL - politician, academic,
writer, and eco-socialist, an advisory editor of
Socialist Resistance;
in
THE ENEMY OF NATURE - The End of Capitalism or the End of the
World gives a clear and easy to comprehend analysis of the basics
of capital function and its dire need to be all-engulfing and
all-overwhelming; sees capital as not just an economic system but as
the present manifestation of an ancient rupture between humanity and
nature -uses the Bhopal Union-Carbide industrial disaster as an
example; believes that
capitalists are driven to continuously generate profit through a
combination of intensifying exploitation and selling to new markets.
This means that capitalism must grow indefinitely to exist, which seems
impossible on a planet of finite resources; suggests that the
capitalist system itself is self-perpetuating, fueled by extra-human or
impersonal forces; sees capitalist expansion
"reducing the sensuous
vitality of nature to the cold exchangeability required for the
accumulation of capital, while submerging "the majority of the world's
people to a mere reservoir of labor power" as it penetrates communities
through
"consumerism and depoliticization"; follows Marx's theories
about the contradiction between use values and exchange values,
stresses that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent,
where certain essential activities - such as caring for relatives
full-time and basic subsistence - are unrewarded, while unnecessary
economic activities earn certain individuals huge fortunes;
"capitalist expansion" is seen by Kovel as
"being 'hand in glove' with "corrupt and
subservient client states"; believes
that state or self-regulation of markets does not solve the crisis
"because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation, which is 'unacceptable' for a growth-orientated system; foresees an
"evolving
into a new and malignant variation of fascism" that echoes Rosa
Luxemburg's "stark choice" between
"socialism or barbarism"; criticizes many
within the Green movement for not being overtly anti-capitalist; notes that
"events in nature are reciprocal and
multi-determined" and can therefore not be predictably "fixed"
socially -technologies cannot solve social problems because
"social
problems are not mechanical"; advocates the non-violent
dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on collective
ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers and
restoration of the Commons. For Kovel, the main prefigurative steps are
"that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system, and that
they include a consistent attack on the widespread belief that
there can be no alternative to it," which will then
"deligitimate the
system and release people into struggle"; uses the term
"Eco-socialist
revolution" to describe the transition to an eco-socialist world
society, reforming money to retain its use in
"enabling exchanges"
while
"reducing its functions as a commodity in its own right" and
"repository of value -thus breaking the back of the value function of
money and the redirecting the vast reservoir of mainly phony value"; advocates activities that have the promise of
"breaking down the commodity form". This includes organizing labor,
which is a
"reconfiguring of the use-value of labor power" -forming
cooperatives, allowing "a relatively free association of labor";
pursuing
"ecological production" that goes beyond the socialist vision
of the emancipation of labor to "the realization of use-values and the
appropriation of intrinsic value
"forming localized currencies", which
he sees as
"undercutting the value-basis of money"; and supporting
"radical media" that, in his eyes, involve an
"undoing of the fetishism
of commodities"; Internationally, believes in the immediate
cessation of speculation in currencies; In 1998 ran as the
Green Party
candidate for US Senator from New York; believes that the mainstream
Green movement is too easily co-opted by the current powerful
socio-political forces.
JOHN PERKINS - renegade economist and author,
Peace Corps Volunteer in
Ecuador 1968-70 -this experience launched him in the world of
economics and later to writing; best known book is
Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man (2004), an insider's account of the exploitation or
neo-colonization of Third World countries by what Perkins describes as
a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government. His
2007 book,
The Secret History of the American Empire, provides more
evidence of the negative impact of global corporations on the economies
and ecologies of poor countries, as well as offering suggestions for
making corporations behave more like good citizens; studied at
Boston
University School of Management during the 1960s; spent the 1970s
working for a consulting firm where he was employed after first being
screened by the
National Security Agency and subsequently hired an
alleged
NSA liaison and after much extensive pre-employment screening,
trained as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of
corporate hegemony. As a chief economist at a Boston
strategic-consulting firm served as an 'economic hit man' for 10 years,
helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinational corporations
cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy
and awarding lucrative contracts to American business; tells that over
the years news agencies have reported accusations of the NSA using its
top echelon network to obtain confidential commercial information from
foreign companies and pass it along to their US competitors in
'economic warfare'; after several years struggling internally over the
role he was playing in crippling foreign economies, quit his consulting
job; founded and directed a independent energy company; since late 1980s involved with non-profit organizations in Ecuador
and around the world. One is
Dream Change, dedicated to shifting
consciousness and promoting sustainable lifestyles for the individual
and global community; in
Secret History of the American Empire (2007)
points out that Indonesia is significantly worse off economically and
socially than it was in the 1970s; gives a central role in his story of
training and high living as a government level con man to the
National
Security Agency engaging in international economic sabotage; appears in
the documentary movie
Let's make money (in German) 2008, by Austrian
director Erwin Wagenhofer; in
Hoodwinked (2009), pulls back the curtain
on the real cause of the current global financial meltdown, how we've
been hoodwinked by the CEOs who run the corporatocracy: those few
corporations that control the vast amounts of capital, land, and
resources around the globe and the politicians they manipulate. These
corporate fat cats, Perkins explains, have sold us all on capitalism, a
predatory misguided form of geopolitics that encourages a widespread
exploitation of the many to benefit a small number of the already very
wealthy. Perkins has also written on indigenous cultures and shamanism.
Dennis
Kucinich - courageous
U.S. Congressman; consistent defender of the
defenseless; an entirely honest speaking candidate for the U.S.
presidency. There are many other congressmen doing good while balancing
within the plutocratic controlled House.
Bernie Sanders - the only
U.S. Senator identifying himself as a socialist; represents people not capital.
Even
Che Guevara didn't rule out revolution coming through elections -
Sanders and Kucinich manage to stay honest. It's not out of the realm
of possibilities that Cynthia McKinney could get back in office and
with other bring the wisdom of revolution into the halls of Congress.
This
list is meant to encourage all who suffer the awareness of the infamy
of U.S. foreign policies breeding back-blow terror and economic
oppression at home.
Yours truly believes that all eighteen of them are
supremely aware that those attempting merely to make the inhumane,
murderous criminal insanity, of totally materialist, mindless control
and priority for private capital growth and accumulation a bit less
monstrous, must guard against being more acquiescent to its continuance
than to working for its being replaced with something more intelligently human.
They are all positive about the noble character of humankind and are
dedicated to protecting life.
This
list of a few worth telling friends about is no way meant to understate
appreciation for all the less profiled thousands or hundreds of
thousands of kind and loving men and women whose concern for the
predicament of their fellows has inspired millions around them to fight
for peace and justice and a happier world.