excerpt from the book
The Terrorism Trap
by Michael Parenti
City Lights books, 2002
How we are being manipulated by this political government...
We are pretty much familiar with the economic system’s unsteady performances which make our daily lives distressful… , the latest being the much publicized home mortgage foreclosure epidemic throughout our society, as well as the tremendous gas price burden most people all wage brackets are enduring…, while the responsible corporations are accumulating record breaking billion dollars profits.
We cannot expect corporations to have a social conscience when capitalism’s economics compels them to either PROFIT or BUST. It’s the SYSTEM , not the corporations, that causes our high cost of living while our wages remain unable to keep up without going into debt. No social conscience in the economic system of capitalism. We can do better, as is comprehensively explained at …http://www.peopleforanewsociety.org/
But capitalism’s perennial failures to service our society’s need for domestic peace and prosperity (for all) have also brought upon us the horrors of periodic wars with other nations…, again by the system compelling the corporate controllers to pursue the profit- promising resources found in other nations …, resources like oil, which they have not been able to acquire through peaceful means…, and with the obedient cooperation of OUR(?) political representatives, whose commitment to capitalism is without question, have dispatched our military to take coercive control of the oil reserves of others in the name of “Bringing Democracy” to that land. And where there has grown resistance to U.S. global pursuits for resources, including cheap labor, in some 38 other countries…, many whose names often are unfamiliar to us until there is a military uprising …, those anti corporate movements have been identified “for” us as “Terrorist” enemies…., and for some measure of corporate global security, the U.S. government has stationed troops and military machinery in many other nations..
The government’s use of the term, “Terrorism,” is today’s buzz word which is meant to impress upon us that “The enemy is everywhere, and We, the People, must, for our own survival, get behind whatever this Congress, and this Administration, and the next ONES, decide should be done, and must be supported, without protest, by the American people…, regardless of the costs in human life and social treasure.
The irony in all this that our government propaganda, used to JUSTIFY the economic and military invasion, of other nations whose cultures are not in tune with those in the Western societies…, all the more seemingly plausible, has been given a boost by the autocratic rulers of those nations, who, for their own population control needs, align us, the American people, with the U.S. corporate hegemony designs for their lands…, and today
we hear “Death to all Americans.” …. a U.S. corporate legacy to which we are all now subject.
To have a pretty keen perspective on the background for all our present domestic apprehensions about what is happening throughout the world where our kid soldiers are spending their time, and more appalling, giving their lives… , one of the most comprehensive analyses available to us has been recorded by Michael Parenti, an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer, whose works can easily be accessed on Google.
The following is an excerpt from Parenti’s the book, The Terrorist Trap…Published by City Lights…2002. This book is worth a studied read for all of us need a basis for confronting capitalism’s advocates with empirical evidence and practical alternatives to the current autocratic economic and political government institutions which deny us entry into a genuine democratic relationship with ourselves in necessary social institutions.
***** From the Terrorist Trap…
…………This is one way how capitalism has poisoned our government and has plunged our society into a cauldron of fears and insecurities...
“Washington policymakers ( policies which We, the People never had a chance to vote for...) claim that US interventions are motivated by a desire to fight terrorism, bring democracy to other peoples, maintain peace and stability in various regions, defend our national security, protect weaker nations from aggressors, oppose tyranny, prevent genocide, and the like. This all sounds good, and most of would endorse such motives..., if these were true.
“But if US leaders have only the best intentions when they intervene in other lands, why has the United States become the most hated nation in the terrorist's lists of bad guys?
“People from all walks of life around the world denounce the US government as imperialist. Do they see something that most Americans have not been allowed to see?
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