Do You Really Want a War with Russia? (Reposted/ Video & Text)
FREEDOM 101 – Jason Hirthler and Jeff Brown share their stories of hope, on China Rising Radio Sinoland
Downloadable SoundCloud podcast (also at the bottom of this page), as well as being syndicated on iTunes and Stitcher Radio(links below):
[dropcap]P[/dropcap]ictured above is Jason Hirthler on the left, in New York and myself on the right, in China. We are twelve time zones apart, geographically halfway around the planet from each other. Yet, we have both succeeded in coming out of the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist closet, continue to work at normal jobs and have friends and family who respect us. We empathize with you that it may seem like mission impossible. We too face the foghorn of withering Western propaganda, with its relentless societal pressure to conform and be a mindless Myrmidon in the mainstream matrix. But, it can be done.
That’s you on the left and the elites’ mainstream media on the right. There’s only one solution: quit watching, listening to and reading their brainwashing propaganda. It’s like a bad drug that makes you stupid and babble. I know, because I used to be a muttering idiot myself. Then, get smart and find your freedom elsewhere in the information world. Read on…
In today’s discussion, you can see by the long list of tag words that Jason and I covered a lot of fascinating and interesting territory. Listen to our stories about how we gained our freedom and dignity, so you too can find the will to liberate your innate intelligence and the courage to unshackle your powers of reason. Regardless of your age, it is never too late. Jason figured it out in his forties, me in my late fifties. Everyone has their own unique life experiences through which to take their journeys of discovery and enlightenment. And there is a critical bonus. It gives you the knowledge and satisfaction of not living the rest of your life as an imperial ventriloquist dummy. That in itself is priceless.
1950’s British ventriloquist Peter Bough on the right and his dummy Archie Andrews, on the left. They are playing the perfect allegory of the West’s deep state and its manipulated masses, respectively. That’s also me on the left, until I was about 58 years old, when I took my life-changing journey across China, in 44 Days (https://ganxy.com/i/88276/). You too can choose to not be Archie Andrews. Read on…
The French have a wonderful proverb, A clear conscience makes a soft pillow. Jason and I both took our separate paths to get there, but we can finally say we sleep soundly at night. You, us, we all deserve the sweet dreams of self-respect.
Jason’s résumé is impressive. He is a writer, media critic, and veteran of the digital communications industry. As a digital media strategist, he is familiar with the techniques and tactics commonly used by mainstream news media to shape narratives that disguise imperialism. He is interested in the false historical narratives that underpin the foreign policies of the United States and which ensure those policies are only feebly resisted. To that end, Hirthler has published more than 150 articles across a variety of progressive sites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and The Greanville Post. He has also authored two collections of his political essays, The Sins of Empire, and most recently, Imperial Fictions. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
You can read Jason’s work here:
Counterpunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/author/hav3h/
Dissident Voice: https://dissidentvoice.org/search/?q=jason+hirthler&sa=Search
Greanville Post: https://www.greanvillepost.com/?s=jason+hirthler
To start debrainwashing, may I suggest replacing your four favorite mainstream media bookmarks with the three aforementioned websites, along with www.chinarising.puntopress.com? I promise you that overnight, your IQ will go up ten points and your self-worth will suddenly find a noble purpose.
Jason and I talked about a few things to follow up with, on your journey to freedom and dignity:
You can read the prologue to Book #2 of The China Trilogy (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/05/19/the-china-trilogy/) here: http://chinarising.puntopress.com/china-rising-the-book/
Jason recommended Alex Carey’s book, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Carey
He also likes reading Paul Street, David Harvey and Anthony De Mello: https://www.paulstreet.org/, http://davidharvey.org/and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_de_Mello.
I mentioned Edward Bernays and his classic treatise, Propaganda: http://whale.to/b/bernays.pdf
I also talked about socialist Upton Sinclair and his history changing investigative book, The Jungle: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm
The book I mentioned about the US’s drive to become a global colonial power is: The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7323969-the-war-lovers
Friends and fans of China Rising Radio Sinoland, it’s time to get smart, and to gain your freedom and dignity from our parasitic elite owners. They may own the system, but they can’t control your brains, once you make the decision to cross the Rubicon and into the realm of clarity and truth.
So, just do it. And when you are ready to celebrate leaving the matrix, send Jason and me an email (jasonhirthler@gmail.comand jeff@brownlanglois.com). We’d love to hear your stories of redemption and newfound liberty.
Finally, while you are attending your own Freedom 101 class, don’t forget to read Jason’s and my books. Sharing is caring. Keep posting our work on all your social media. Your contacts will be glad you did.
Or better yet, buy one of Jeff’s books offered below.
Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is also currently penning an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, to be published in late 2018. Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.
Jason’s résumé is impressive. He is a writer, media critic, and veteran of the digital communications industry. As a digital media strategist, he is familiar with the techniques and tactics commonly used by mainstream news media to shape narratives that disguise imperialism. He is interested in the false historical narratives that underpin the foreign policies of the United States and which ensure those policies are only feebly resisted.
Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Three Who Made A War
Paul Craig Roberts
SOURCE: Author’s Page
The editors say: Besides imperialist lust, Anglo-Saxon racism against the Spanish fueled the eagerness to punish what was seen as an “inferior” breed holding a disproportionate and therefore unjustified piece of the planetary pie. Same reasoning played a role later, in the wars against Mexico, also largely based on lies and provocations.
Their adversary was Speaker of the House, Thomas Brackett Reed, “the Czar,” the most powerful politician in Washington. Reed, an honest and incorruptible politician, saw Lodge’s policy of “American exceptionalism” as naked imperialism that stood in total opposition and in great danger to American purposes. Reed saw Roosevelt’s war lust as a diversion of national purpose from the reconstruction of an economy that increasingly served a shrinking minority at the expense of the American people. But Hearst, Roosevelt, and Lodge made “peace” an epithet. The American people, whose gullibility is never-ending, were captivated by war-lust. Reed lost confidence in the American people whom he so well served. Reed could find no moral purpose in pushing the country toward war over nothing but fake news reports by “yellow journalism.”
Only a few years previously, Reed had had to halt the Cleveland administration from going to war with Great Britain over a British boundary dispute with Venezuela concerning mineral-rich land claimed by British Guyana. Somehow this boundary dispute, which had no more to do with US security than Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Georgia, Ukraine, and the South China Sea have today, was seen as a “threat to US national security.”
Roosevelt and Lodge were ecstatic over the possibility of War with Great Britain. War was its own goal. Roosevelt wrote to Lodge: “I don’t care whether our sea coast cities are bombarded or not; we would take Canada.” Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, hard facts prevailed over American war lust. The American navy had 3 battleships. The British had 50. If only Washington had gone to war with Great Britain over a British boundary dispute with Venezuela. The total destruction of the American navy and coastal cities might have taught Americans a lesson and made the population less lustful for war and more suspicious of Washington’s war lies: the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Crimea, etc.
Roosevelt and Lodge searched for a weaker adversary than the British navy and settled on Spain.
But how to bring about a war with a declining and tired 400-year old empire far removed from American interests?
Hearst, desperate to sell newspapers, knew what to do. He hired the artist, Frederic Remington, a painter and sculptor much worshipped by American conservatives today. Remington provided a drawing, filling half of the front page of Hearst’s New York Journal, of a comely nude young woman surrounded by sinister Spaniards. Hearst alleged that three lady passengers on the US mail steamer Olivette were strip-searched in the Harbor of Havana, Cuba, by leering Spanish males.
America had a rare moment of rational thought and philosophical reflection during the brief period of its Founding Fathers. Ever since America has been a country of pulp romances and court histories written as “chivalric derring-do.” Hearst asked where were the knightly American males who would rescue womankind from these indignities at the hands of cruel, wanton, Spaniards.
Hearst repeated the story with Evangelina Cisneros, “a beautiful young woman from the gentlest of families.” In Hearst’s story Evangelina went to the Island of Pines to beg for her elderly father’s release from the cruel Spaniards. As she resisted the sexual advances of the leering Spanish prison commander, she was thrown into a squalid prison for prostitutes.
Having created his heroine, Hearst rushed to rescue her. Hearst hired the son of a Confederate cavalry colonel, Karl Decker, to rescue the fair lady. Thousands of words were printed to describe Decker’s daring rescue, but what really happened is that Hearst bribed the Spanish guards to let her go from her comfortable hotel room. Having freed “one Cuban girl,” Hearst wanted to know “when shall we free Cuba.”
Teddy Roosevelt wanted to be the star of the event. Senator Lodge and the American newsman Richard Harding Davis made it so. Teddy charging up the hill, leading the Rough Riders, not urging from behind, defeated the Spanish all by himself and won the war.
What did it mean for the Cubans, a mixed and varied peoples, who had been fighting the Spanish for independence for years before self-righteous, self-serving Americans saw the opportunity to advance their interests and careers?
For Cubans, it meant swapping one master for another.
General William Shafter, the American in charge of the invasion force, declared: “Why these people [Cubans] are no more fit for self-government than gunpowder is for hell!” Calixto Garcia, who had been fighting for thirty years for Cuba’s liberation from Spain, was not allowed to be present when Spain surrendered Cuba. It was purely an American show devoid of the revolutionaries in whose name the war had been fought.
Roosevelt wrote home that the Cubans had fought badly and were not responsible for their liberation from Spain. It was Teddy and his Rough Riders who brought freedom to Cuba. The Teller Amendment passed by Congress in 1898 guaranteeing independence to Cuba was superseded by the Platt Amendment of 1901. The Platt Amendment gave Washington the right to intervene in Cuba whenever Washington pleased.
It finally dawned on Cubans that “civilization,” a word used by Americans, meant “denying the darker races the power to govern.” In 1908 Cubans who had fought against Spain formed an independent political party. They were massacred by the thousands by the Cuban government now more sensitive to pleasing Washington than to the voice of its own people.
The story of American intervention is the same everywhere. American intervention has never benefited any peoples except those allied with Washington and American corporations.
Hearst’s rival in yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, whose name ended up on a prestigious journalism award. Today the entire US print and TV media engage in the yellow journalism of the Hearst/Pulitzer era. Yellow journalism has helped to keep America in wars as nonsensical as the Spanish-American war ever since the 21st century began. The neoconservatives have resurrected Lodge’s “Large Policy” of American imperialism justified by the doctrine of American exceptionalism.
If Americans were to read three history books, they could free themselves from their self-righteous delusions that endanger all life on earth. Those books are: A People’s History of The United Statesby Howard Zinn, The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, andThe War Lovers by Evan Thomas.
No one who reads one of these books will ever again believe that the US government in Washington is the “light unto the world,” the “exceptional and indispensable” government that brings “freedom and democracy” to the conquered provinces of the American Empire.
Washington is the home of warmongering self-interested parties that have no concept of compassion or justice and serve only their own power and enrichment. Americans are as indifferent to the populations that their government bombs as Teddy Roosevelt was to the prospect of his own country’s coastal cities being bombarded. As Russia’s President Putin reminded the world on March 18, 2014, the US prefers the rule of the gun to international law.