HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO TELL A LIE THAT BIG?
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The world’s biggest liar still alive is George W Bush. He concocted a tall story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Since the invasion of 2003, those who remember, are still waiting for accountability for a war where NO weapons of mass destruction were uncovered. By Hiroyuki Hamada.
It was quite expected but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the US backed propaganda organization, the White Helmets (1), has effectively received an Oscar for the short documentary film about them. Which, of course, indicates that it is not just acceptable to twist facts and call a group of people with documented criminal activities “heroes”, but it is acceptable to award them with cultural, artistic and humanistic recognition. And it is all for the sake of waging a colonial war against a country that does not quite follow the imperial ways (2)(3).
How much does it cost to tell a lie that big? What is the human price of making people complicit in a project of death and suffering? What consequences do we pay in erasing facts and twisting history when we regard ourselves as cultural beings? But all these questions are perhaps trivial compared to the 500,000 deaths, displacements of half of the population, and all the destruction inflicted by the imperial assault against Syria so far.
This is a huge operation involving many layers of the establishment and the society at large. How can so many people claim to be blind to the facts and accept the lies and deceptions?
The western governments lie about the power dynamics on the ground in Syria while supporting proxy terrorists. The media parrot the official narratives and promote fabrications of facts and analyses. Artists contribute by making up stories to help people visualize the lies as a part of a manufactured “reality”. All these efforts are supported by the financial interests that profit from the war efforts and the subsequent neoliberal colonization of Syria. And we must note that Syria is only an example among such nations as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nicaragua, Ukraine and many others. (4).
And I hate to criticize those people who are finally raising their voices against the US government after being silent for eight years under President Obama - after all I didn’t know how “effective” President Obama was going to be in serving the corporate powers either. I thought it was great that we had a black president for the first time too. But, thousands of drone assassinations and that includes the innocent civilians, huge bank bailouts, jailing whistleblowers, seven wars, and global surveillance? How could we close our eyes?
But OK, that was that.
But now, I must express my objection if suggesting we resist the whole system as it is keeps attracting such responses as “Trump supporter”, “Putin lover” or “Assad apologist” by those who wish to forward their political party agendas, agendas that stiflingly operate within the imperial framework.
People come to the States because the plunder of the imperial conquests are gathered in the US. Those conquests have destroyed their communities, economies and cultures. If any people deserve to enjoy the prosperity of the empire, the first priority should be given to the immigrants.
What sort of excuse do they have in supporting a corporate party state guided by spy agencies, Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex? What authority do they have in determining an appropriate governance for the Syrian people?
The question becomes very urgent when what they support for the Syrian people are Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups and their violent theocracies, when the majority of Syrians support President Assad’s secular governance.
How could anyone be so suggestible as to be an apologist for the criminal empire? And they claim to resist Trump and do away with discrimination of the immigrants, racism, gender discrimination and so on. How? By relying on the establishment of corporatism, colonialism and militarism?
The corporate parties have been funding the massive war machine with 1000 military bases, 17 spy agencies, and over half of our taxes in order to colonize other nations to give profits to exploitative corporations that squeeze our lives back home. And attacks against immigrants, racism and gender discrimination are all tools, as well as results, of such exploitations BY THEM. So how?
It’s so obvious. We see the same people, who deplore how the immigrants are treated in the US, actively supporting the colonial war against Syria, violent US foreign policies against Latin American nations, demonization of Russia and so on. How could they not see the dots being connected?
People come to the States because the plunder of the imperial conquests are gathered in the US. Those conquests have destroyed their communities, economies and cultures. If any people deserve to enjoy the prosperity of the empire, the first priority should be given to the immigrants. Let’s welcome them and let them take over the nation as it is as much theirs as it is ours. If that is not happening, the US must stop interfering with other countries.
I am sick of hearing the establishment trying to convince us that things are so complicated and hard to understand in order to blind us, silence us, exclude us, exploit us and subjugate us. I mean, where do we even begin the conversation? The premises are lies. Facts are lies. History is a lie. The conclusions, the policies, motives and results are all lies.
I think we just have to come up with a functional system that works for all of us, and politely, in a civil matter, with proper due process, ask those war criminals, war profiteers and corrupt politicians to go stay in prisons. The only legitimate reason for armed forces to exist is to help support such a democratic process for the people.
(1) http://dissidentvoice.org/2017/02/the-white-helmets-go-to-hollywood/
(2) http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/syria-crisis/1135-day-before-deraa.html
(3) https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/
(4) http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/13/the-great-leap-backward-americas-illegal-wars-on-the-world/
Note: Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Lori Bookstein Fine Art. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York. Visit hiroyukihamada.com. The above article was posted at CounterPunch.
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4 Responses to “HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO TELL A LIE THAT BIG?”
The US didn’t tell the truth about WWII either. Kind of an habit you may say
By Tronald Dump on Mar 8, 2017
Every intel service on Earth declared that Saddam had WMD’s, but by all means, keep telling yourselves the comforting lie that Bush made it all up. If the hysterical leftists wish to desperately cling to this fiction, let them explain how Bush is a liar, while Bill Clinton is not, even though Clinton declared publicly that Saddam had WMD’s in 1998:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0f5u_0ytUs
Either Bush, Clinton and every intel service on the planet lied about it, or none of them did.
By Counter-Revolutionary on Mar 8, 2017
You have to admit the part where Bush pretended to search for WMD’s in his office at the White House was irresistibly funny; Who said Reagan was the best acting president ?
But still where were they ? You can’t hide them like this under the desert rug. Or else US troops are really ineffective after all.
The world knows Saddam was punished because of 9/11 just like Japanese were punished by Nagasaki and Hiroshima because of Pearl Harbour.
It’s all about revenge. No one is fooled about the US true motivations anymore
By Tronald Dump on Mar 9, 2017
…however, what the “world” seems to forget is that Bush did not rush in for the so-called “punishment.” As a matter of fact, the U.S. (and United Nations) gave Saddam months and months of warnings — that he kept thumbing his nose at, to allow the U.N. inspectors to come into his country - but he denied this time and time again. Had Saddam allowed the U.N. inspectors to search for the WMD, the war would not have happened. It was only as a last resort that the U.S. said “enough of this” - as did the rest of the world. What people forget is that when Bush took us into this war, he had the highest approval rating of any president up until that point in history. We only went to war because Saddam would not allow the inspectors in. That was a huge red flag. There have been many scenarios given in which Iraq had plenty of time during those months of evading inspection to get any WMD out of the country. It’s an historical fact, as well, that Saddam had used WMD on the Kurds previously, so this was not an unreasonable assumption, but rather one made on prior history.
By Bodhisan on Mar 11, 2017