John Pilger | New Statesman | 12.31.2009

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate, Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”

Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies”. He called this “global security” and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which the US has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying your country.”

In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said that “the world” supported the invasion in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. In truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition. He said that America invaded Afghanistan “only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden”. In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over Bin Laden for trial, Pakistan’s military regime reported, and they were ignored.
“Hearts and minds”

Even Obama’s mystification of the 9/11 attacks as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the twin towers were attacked, the former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik was told by the Bush administration that a US military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as “stable” enough to ensure US control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go.

Obama’s most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda’s attacks on the west. His own national security adviser, James Jones, said in October that there were “fewer than 100″ al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but “a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power”. The war is a fraud. Only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of “world peace”.

Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose. Under the disturbing General Stanley McChrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan is a model for those “disorderly regions” of the world still beyond Oceania’s reach. This is known as Coin (counter- insurgency), and draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings. Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, it aims to incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbeks against Pashtuns.

The Americans did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They built walls between communities which had once intermarried, ethnically cleansing the Sunnis and driving millions out of the country. Embedded media reported this as “peace”; American academics bought by Washington and “security experts” briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true.

Something similar is planned for Afghanistan. People are to be forced into “target areas” controlled by warlords, bankrolled by the CIA and the opium trade. That these warlords are barbaric is irrelevant. “We can live with that,” a Clinton-era diplomat once said of the return of oppressive sharia law in a “stable”, Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the “humanitarian crisis” and so “secure” the subjugated tribal lands.

That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia, where ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once-peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam, where the CIA’s “Strategic Hamlet Program” was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Vietcong – the Americans’ catch-all term for the resistance, similar to “Taliban”.

Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the Americans in both the Iraq and the Afghanistan adventures. Ethnic cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance – these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people. And yet, for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds.
Imperial cemeteries

The most telling forerunners of the Obama Plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and his general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself. The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed. Imperial cemeteries are their memorials. People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it.

“It was curious,” wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same – everywhere, all over the world . . . people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same – people who . . . were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”

OK, which L prez campaign did you find “real,” and why?

btw, I think Beck makes a good point: If the Obama Administration’s Communications Director cites Mao as a hero, that’s deeply concerning and really, really poor judgment. Admiration for zealots of any kind, but especially mass murderers, by someone in the West Wing is unfathomable.

For all its flaws, the Barr campaign was the “real-est” since Clark, and probably a LOT more real.

ROFL!! I had no idea you were a comedian.

That’s almost as good as the one liner in Denver about how it was going to be a $20 million campaign.

LvMI, OTOH, seems MUCH closer to partisan Rs. Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Peter Schiff….

You’ve left us hanging, btw, on what you mean by “get real.” For all its flaws, the Barr campaign was the “real-est” since Clark, and probably a LOT more real.

* Walter Williams
* John Stossel
* Ed Clark
* David Friedman
* Thomas Sowell
* Tom Palmer
* Ron Paul
* Larry Elder

Williams, Stossell, Friedman, Sowell, Paul, and Elder have all been contacted on numerous occassions by LP members up to and including former prez candidates and sitting Party chairs. None has budged from a loud “no”.

Clark is probably good and done with putting his entire life on hold for the LP; and it’s not like he’s a spring chicken any more. Doesn’t he deserve quietitude and gratitude, rather than further demands?

Wishful thinking led us to Barr. Libertarians need to get real. After thirty years of speaking for the LP, Ruwart richly deserved her shot, but was turned away. In 2012, we’re going to get yet another wishful-thinking selection, unless some attitudes change.

BTW, Elder has made clear that he has a lot of differences with the LP. Here’s a few in this article.. There are lots more areas where he disagrees with the LP; enough so I’ve heard at least one reformer say he shouldn’t be considered a libertarian.

Tom Palmer — I haven’t read enough of his work to know whether I could support him for the presidential nod. Is he even interested? Since his buddies at CATO are all deeply wedded to the Republican Party, I’d say him running for the L nomination would be a long shot.

On another subthread, Beck might say he’s becoming more of a libertarian, but once again Libertarians need to ignore such empty hype and actually listen to the conservative mouthpiece for a while. I do. Mostly just for the entertainment value. For example I thoroughly enjoyed his video clip of that woman in the Obama administration who cited mass murderer and thief Mao TseTse-Fly-Tongue as one of her philosophical heroes.

I know, I know — “Don’t all Obamanoids worship mass murderers like Che, Pol Pot, and Mao?”

My understanding is that David Friedman & Ed Crane want out of Iraq. I know John Stossel thinks that the war was a mistake but I don’t know what he thinks the military should do now.

Also Tom Palmer was one of the main figures in the whole paleo vs. beltway argument & you can bet that this would replay that situation all over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJgHS6SLEe4

Beck as LP POTUS nominee is a straw man, employed to mask the lack of good arguments against the LP trying to unite — and increase the number of — voters in the libertarian quadrant.

seems like a far fetched wish list:)
BTW my friend Brandon has a class with Walter Williams this semester . So flippin jealous I am!

* Walter Williams
* John Stossel
* Ed Clark
* David Friedman
* Thomas Sowell
* Tom Palmer
* Ron Paul
* Larry Elder

Feeding trolls is contra-indicated, especially when all they bring to the picnic table is a straw man.

Glenn Beck for LP President.

Sure he used to be a fear monger and pass off novelists as terrorism experts who know what secret conversations took place between Osama and his Imam. Sure he used to favor domestic spying, warrantless wiretaps, torture, undeclared wars, GOP deficits, and GOP bailouts, but the minute Obama was sworn in, Beck became a libertarian!

Hooray for the LP!!!

Where are my pom poms?

Glad I could be of help. Any time you feel the need let me know and I’ll set aside some time to help.

Don’t forget write one letter this week. That’ll break the logjam and get things movin’.

a) lower taxes and spending, a 2% tax cut and defunding the National Endowment for Arts

b) The USG wages too many wars, we need a “humble foreign policy”, for example, no more wars like Yugoslavia and bringing home our troops from Haiti.

c) The Bill of Rights should be defended, I will appoint only strict constructionists to the Supreme Court.

Libertarian Neal Boortz was right to have supported Bush, George W. Bush is a libertarian!

The LP needs to abolish litmus tests and purge the absolutists if they don’t pass the big tent….litmus test, er uh….St Louis Accord…..uh, won’t be fooled again.

The LP’s growth rates and prez vote totals from 1975-1980 vs. 1980-85.

When big-tent Lism was ascendant, we grew. When litmus-test Lism was ascendant, we shrank.

Intuitively, the broader we define anything, the more you get of it. Politics is a numbers game, so, all else equal, more people, more resources, leads to more effectiveness.

We don’t have the resources to conduct elaborate polling, but I suspect I know the answer from these poll questions:

1) Do you support

a) lower taxes and spending
b) no taxes and spending
c) more taxes and spending

2) The USG wages
a) too many wars
b) too many wars since all wars the US has fought are evil
c) not enough wars, we should impose our will on the rest of the world

3) The Bill of Rights
a) should be defended; government has been whittling it away
b) Government is antithetical to rights; government’s very existence guarantees that our rights will be violated; insurance companies will defend our rights far better
c) We have too many rights; in the name of security, we should give up MORE of our rights

My assumption is that the a)s would do very well, and perhaps garner majority support. The b)s might register single-digit support. And, frighteningly, c) might do well, too.

You write:

“In my case, the prize is peace and liberty. The best way to express those values is through a vibrant, effective LP. The primary obstacle to that expression is intra-party carping and litmus testing, the implicit judging of NOT L that’s held the LP back all these decades. (There are other obstacles, like ballot access laws, but my diagnosis stands.)”

A “diagnosis” usually implies some evidence. Care to provide any?

Near as I can tell, MLK and Gandhi were pretty focused — eyes on the prize. In my case, the prize is peace and liberty. The best way to express those values is through a vibrant, effective LP. The primary obstacle to that expression is intra-party carping and litmus testing, the implicit judging of NOT L that’s held the LP back all these decades. (There are other obstacles, like ballot access laws, but my diagnosis stands.)

Hence, the need for the St. Louis Accord. With it, those interested in liberty can agitate without playing internal defense.

One might think that you see Gandhi as a model, granted you don’t specifically say so. We need to remember Gandhi also agitated for peace. He didn’t give the authorities much rest.

People who seriously take him as a role model remember that and go out and actually do something. And we should be agitating for peace just as Thoreau did before Gandhi and Martin Luther King did after him.

We can’t just wait for it to happen. We need to do something for it.

Every week we need to write one letter to a congresscritter, or to a newspaper, or some such action.