Sunday, December 13, 2009

You Lie!

When I listened to Obama's Nobel Prize war speech and heard him say this
"Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms."
I wanted the blood of the millions of East Timorese, Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Haitians, Chileans and others murdered by the US "strength of arms" to cry out "You Lie!"

Then on Sunday morning I had to hear NPR feature not one, but TWO stories on an assassination carried out under Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. In spite of discussing the dreadful state of repression under Pinochet, neither story made any mention of the strong role played by the United States in instigating and supporting the Chilean nightmare.

This brought me back to Obama's speech. No wonder he can get away with saying something so blatantly and obscenely false. The news coverage of events that would contradict such propaganda disappears down the memory hole again and again.

6 comments:

goggledogger said...

...yeah...more and more 1984. War is peace. The killer gets to tell the story. Of course is a story of how the killer was righteous and oppressed because of their righteousness and killed to liberate the masses, who are now free to be gulagged in Guantanamo and bagram. Obummer, indeed.

John said...

Thanks for remembering the up to 200,000 East Timorese killed by the Suharto regime in a U.S. backed invasion and occupation. There are those of us sill seeking justice and accountability. Just go to http://www.etan.org.

Juan "Toss" Ensalada said...

Yeah, The Schoool of the Americas, what a GREAT education! Remember Diplomacy 101? I loved that class! You know, all the guns and bombs? I love the smell of diplomacy in the morning...

Anonymous said...

Look up Operation Condor and you might wonder just how dictatorships involved were able to torture, "disappear" and kill opposition (which seems to have been largely made up of leftists, union organizers, and those seeking return to "democracy"). Of course NPR haslittle sense of irony and even less a sense of history.

edk

Nate Bowman said...

Great point.
Great title.
Great concept.

GRUMPY DEMO said...

Good series of posts.

Hope you're feeling better (maybe cold Midwestern Winters are good for carpal?)

Or can be that NPR just got you really, really pissed off?

Maybe both?