WITNESSES TO HISTORY

DIANA JOHNSTONE—This snide and incoherent broadside against genuine independent anti-imperialist writers comes at a time when Washington’s aggressiveness is reaching new levels of intensity and many antiwar writers are confronted with growing attempts at marginalization and even censorship. It is so timely to brand them all with the label “anti-imperialism of fools.”

To reply to the labelers in their language, let me say that the promoters of this despicable letter are practicing the imperialism of foolers. The gambit is to fool people into seeing imperialism in so many places that it is neutralized. The United States has a military budget that exceeds that of all its major adversaries and allies put together, operates nearly a thousand bases all around the world, destroys countries one after the other by sanctions and subversion, clearly wants to change regimes even in Russia and China, and practices nuclear war games on their borders.  Its world hegemonic pretensions are blatant and frightening.

JANICE KORTKAMP—China of course hasn’t been shredding one country after another in endless wars sold with pure lies like the US war machine has. Reports usually say at least a million people, but in reality many millions are dead now because of US wars and interventions just in the past 20 years. Tens of millions have been displaced from their homes. Economies and infrastructures of several countries have been laid waste. Trillions have been spent and trillions more are unaccounted for by the Pentagon. Thousands of Americans have been killed in these conflicts with thousands more suffering from PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse and addictions, unemployment, homelessness, while suicides among veterans and active serving are far above even the horrific civilian rates.

JOHN RACHEL—There are sites in Nevada devoted to storing the toxic byproducts of nuclear fission. For example, Yucca Mountain was being prepared as a massive depository for life-threatening waste. It’s time to reinstate funding for this project and get it ready for a new form of toxic sludge. It’s huge, far from anything or anyone else, just waiting to be put to good use. 

Perfect, I say!

The perpetrators of our oppression deserve their own truly “private space”.

We deserve to be free from their pathological obsessions and devious manipulations.

It’s practically the definition of a win-win proposition!

We should spare no expense nor any speed. Lock them down now! Let them take it all with them. Ship their yachts and private jets, their stores of wealth in every transportable form, send it all packing, dump it all in those spacious Yucca Mountain caves.

CYNTHIA CHUNG–As discussed in part one of this series, with the Eisenhower-Nixon victory in 1952, the culmination of years of political strategizing by Wall Street Republican power brokers, the new heads of the State Department and the CIA were selected as none other than Foster and Allen Dulles respectively; and they would go on to direct the global operations of the most powerful nation in the world. It is for this reason that the 1952 presidential election has gone down in history as the triumph of “the power elite.”

CYNTHIA CHUNG—With the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, likely ordained by the CIA, on Nov. 2nd, 1963 and Kennedy just a few weeks later on Nov. 22nd, 1963, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 on Nov. 26th, 1963 to begin the reversal of Kennedy’s policy under #263. And on March 17th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period. The Vietnam War would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy’s death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans, and 30 years if you count American covert action in Vietnam.