Average 9 minutes to read

Description: Michael Parenti, Savvina Chowdhury, Sarah Regan panel: “State of the Struggle” - at the Peoples’ Movement Assembly in Olympia WA, Oct 20, 2012

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0cppowPtU

Transcript

SPEAKER 1: ..whatever you want to talk about.

MICHAEL PARENTI: Okay, that’s what I’m going to do - talk about whatever I want to talk about. I think when you talk to people about US involvement and US foreign policy, try to appeal to their self-interest, rather than to their high moral, good feeling, charity feeling, like ‘be nice to other people in the world’. Many Americans can’t do that because they’ve been frightened out of their wits. And when people are afraid they’re not going to be kind. If they feared that you are going to do something terrible to me, they’re ready to surrender their rights, they’re ready to follow the leader, they’re ready to bomb the hell out of you and kill and destroy everyone of your houses that are standing, if it means making their hearth and home and their children and themselves safe.

So to say to them, “bombing these other people is bad and you shouldn’t do it” - in fact I don’t wanna underestimate people, because at times when they see there is a lot of killing, they do get turned off and do start asking questions, “Why do we have to be there, where is Yugoslavia, why are we suddenly bombing and killing people, why are we dropping depleted uranium in the Danube River which is drinking water for 30 million people, and why should we be doing those things?” And Bill Clinton had to really knock out Yugoslav media to make sure they continue with their campaign to demonize the Serbs and tell you about the wicked murders, and then to demonize the Libyans and Gaddafis and then demonize the Syrians and demonize Iran and demonize North Korea. The world is full of demonized people if you listen to our leaders and that is in order to get the support of the people behind the building of a world empire which involves a systematic destruction of things. Now, the empire that the US has built consists of about 400-500 bases around the world, maybe more, some say 700, depends on how you define a base. And all of that we’re told is needed to protect us. We need to be protected because there are people who are jealous of us, or because we’re prosperous, we’re secular, we’re this or that.

It used to be the communists were after us - I remember that all through my school years. Communists here, communists there, communists in Hollywood, communists in your schools, communists gonna get your mama. Communists were everywhere. And then when these ruthless bloodthirsty communists who were just drunk and driven for power and wanted power, when they disappeared, when they resigned their governments without a shot being fired, there was a lull there. There was a terrible period where the empire had run out of enemies to justify its existence, and then finally thank god, pretty soon came terrorism. The terrorists, the Muslims terrorists especially, and Al-Qaeda and yet Al-Qaeda is being used by the US in Libya to destroy the Gaddafi government. And it was government by the way, you never heard that term used, it was always the Gaddafi regime, like today in Syria it is the Assad Regime. They give you the words to demonize the leader. And the policy is to demonize the leader - Noriega in Panama suddenly he was an admirer of Hitler. They found one copy of an old Life magazine in his headquarters, which the cover had Adolf Hitler on it, so it’s Life magazine loved Hitler it seems, and they started telling you how he was a secret admirer of Hitler and this justified George Herbert Walker Bush bombing [El ???] - working class district in Panama - and invading and occupying Panama. Panama’s real sin was that it had a leftist military. Panama’s real sin is that it had developed social programs for the ordinary people in education and well-being. That’s what Panama was doing wrong, Panama’s real sin was that they wanted to own the canal zone which cut right through the middle of their country and they didn’t want the US telling them what to do and that really is what happens.

What the US does is they demonize the leader of a particular country, one weeks its Noriega, terrible Noriega, we all heard about that, the next week it’s Saddam Hussein, the very same Saddam Hussein who was torturing and murdering and killing people a few years before - but he was killing the right people, he was killing communists, democrats, constitutionalists, when he was doing that and even wiped out the whole left wing of his own Ba’ath party. When he was doing that he was Washington’s poster boy, they loved him, they kissed him, they had their pictures taken with him and all that. It was when he got out of line on the oil quotas, he wanted a larger oil quota to sell more Iraqi oil, which would’ve threatened prices - too much oil glut, prices go down - prices go down, profits go down. And George Herbert Walker Bush started talking about Saddam Hussein as worse than Hitler. And so he was demonized.

So that’s the process, its a very rational and very consistent process and what it does is it plays upon people’s fears. And that November just before the Gulf War, the polls showed 75% of the American people were against getting military involved in the Gulf, in Kuwait and against Saddam Hussein. They started then putting out polls about if Saddam Hussein has - the term weapons of mass destruction had come into vogue yet - they said if he had nuclear weapons, would you then support - well, yeah right if he was gonna destroy the world, would you support stopping him from destroying the world? Is that a loaded question or not? And the polls went the other way suddenly 75% of the people supported intervention in the Gulf War. So they’ve learned to play on the survival fears of the American people, convince the people that there’s a world out that’s encircling us all the time and about to get us.

And this is why we, unlike every other country in the world, we, unlike China, unlike Russia, unlike Denmark, unlike Spain, we need to have these 100s of military bases all over the world. We need to have these nuclear aircraft carrier fleets floating around in every ocean and making port in almost every region of the world to protect us from these imagined and conjured enemies. It’s a very consistent US policy. Do not join those critics who say, US policy is stupid, its so foolish, it gets all mixed up, why do we keep getting into these silly messes, it’s stupid, you’re stupid if you think the people who own and run this country are stupid. They do this and they are very consistent. And the consistency is they always attack anyone who wants to use the land, the labor, the natural resources, the capital of his country for self development. And that was Saddam Hussein’s sin. That after he did all this murdering and torturing and all that and the US loved him for awhile, he then refused to privatize the economy. That economy was totally state-controlled and owned, Iraq had the highest standard of living in the Middle East. He suddenly took on the policies of the very people he had jut killed and he was seen now as a nationalist. Saddam Hussein’s sin was that he committed economic nationalism. Noriega’s sin in Panama was that he committed economic nationalism. Assad’s sin in Syria was he modernizing, he was putting out a social wage, he had social programs, the refugees that came from Iraq and Libya, he gave them full benefits and such. He was using the resources of his country for the well-being of the people, rather than to make the world safe and profitable for the Fortune 500 and that is what is all about.

That empire that is being built, so much bigger and stronger, there’s a whole bunch of literature, books coming out, Chris Hedges, others, Chalmers Johnson, who’s dead now but he’s wrote a couple, it was all about the twilight of the empire, the end of the empire, follies of empire, the decline of empire. It’s not declining at all, this empire’s getting bigger and bigger. It’s got monster bases now in Eastern Europe in Kosovo. It’s got bases in Kyrgyzstan. It’s budget has doubled under George Bush and it has increased under Obama to record heights. It gets about a trillion dollars a year of money. The empire is stronger and bigger than ever and people are being frightened as much as they can be frightened. We should also remember that this empire feeds off the republic. This empire gets its money and its wealth from the republic. Every tank goes back to Eisenhower’s speech, every tank, every plane, every drone and all that means one less school or library or health clinic or the like. We have a republic that is sinking down to Third World level. We have a republic that is closing its public clinics. We have a republic that can’t even build decent housing for its people in these communities, we have homelessness. Come look at Berkley, it’s interesting, part about Berkley they don’t tell you, they always talk about “Oh, the left, the tradition of them,” you walk downtown Berkley it’s like walking down skid row, number of people standing around needing help, needing housing and such. So that’s what it’s about. It’s a very rational, very consistent goal. It attacks any leader whether he be a dictator or democratically elected like Milošević was - and demonizes that leader to convince you that this is the worst devil that you could ever see and we have to got to get rid of him for humanitarian reasons and for our own security. And any leader who uses the land, labor and resources of the country for communal purposes and for collective needs, that guy is sooner or later targeted. And it supports any leader, democratically elected or dictator, doesn’t matter, it’s where he stands on this line - if that leader opens up the country and says, “come on in boys, it’s all yours, come on in, the land, the natural resources, the labor, I can get you workers who will be working for you for pennies an hour, you just give me, my brother Jose, a little money to pay us off,” or today, it might be, “my brother Abdul, pay us off, and we’ll take care of these people if they get out of line, and we’ll be your proud allies and good friends and all that,” and that’s what it’s all about.

Let me just end by saying that what people believe the US is doing in the world and what the US really is doing is one of the great propaganda feats of modern times. And so what we have to do is bring to people the information that is very consistently being kept from them in the major media. Thanks, I threw a lot out at you in just 10 minutes there, but you get what I’m saying, I know you do.