by Ray Jason
Every October I foolishly get my hopes up as the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize approaches. My dream is that the committee will finally proclaim that the greatest obstacle to world peace is American Imperialism. And then they will elaborate on this by insisting that only when the U.S. Empire has vanished, can global harmony and justice prevail. Therefore, they award the prize to some courageous writer or film-maker or activist who has been battling this death-spewing Leviathan.
But once more they have refused to
notice the 800 pound War Lord in the middle of the room. They have again chosen the “path most
taken – the spineless one,” and bestowed the award on some noble but uncontroversial
candidates. By misdirecting our
attention away from the indisputably evil scourge that is U.S. foreign policy,
they have once again blockaded the road to actual Peace on Earth.
But perhaps I should question why I
even expect those at the Nobel to be noble.
After all, they somehow forget to bestow the prize on the greatest
peacemaker and liberator of the 20th Century - Mahatma Gandhi. And then they intensified the shame of such an
oversight, by bequeathing the award to one of the most genocidal monsters of
the same century - Henry Kissinger. He
received the prize even though he master-minded the secret and massive bombing
assault on the innocent peasants of Laos and Cambodia. He was also instrumental in enabling the
murderous regimes in East Timor and Chile.
In all of these atrocities, he denied his involvement until the evidence
finally drowned his lies in truth.
Then they award the 2009 prize to
newly-elected Barack Obama, who had done exactly ZERO to move the world toward
peace. Certainly he had excelled at
delivering altruistic platitudes fed to him via his teleprompter. But his actions desecrate his words. Here are some bullet points that come to mind
without even having to do any deep research:
·
Obama vowed
during his campaign to close down Guantanamo on the first day he was in
office. He has now been enthroned for
over 2,000 days, and this mockery of justice and due process remains open.
·
El Presidente has
overseen the “Pivot to Asia” thereby ratcheting up tensions in the Pacific, and
further lining the already diamond-studded pockets of the Military Industrial
Cyst.
·
He has continued
to encircle Russia with NATO bases in direct violation of agreements reached
with them after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
·
President Obama
has one-upped his recent Oval Office predecessors by secretly overthrowing the
democratically elected government of the Ukraine. (Although it is not a secret to those who get
their information from the alternative media.)
He has installed a puppet regime there to do the West’s bidding. This particular strategic blunder is extraordinary
because of the sheer lack of prior research about which group of “freedom
fighters” they were backing this time.
The U.S. has a long history of supporting vicious, genocidal
dictators. Indeed, the operative phrase
has long seemed to be, “Yes, he is a ruthless tyrant – but he is OUR ruthless
tyrant.” Well, in this obscene instance
they have managed to either knowingly or unknowingly find themselves a band of
swastika wearing neo-Nazis to “spread democracy.”
·
His
Administration continues to destabilize any government whose resources or
strategic position could be valuable to American Global Capitalists. Libya and Syria and Egypt being recent examples
of this divide and conquer tactic.
·
He did nothing to
end or lessen the latest Israeli butchery in Gaza. And he looks the other way when the Zionists
grab more of the West Bank.
·
Instead of
denouncing the planet-wide electronic surveillance carried out by the NSA on
both enemies and allies, the President is an apologist for such despicable
conduct. If it serves the bankers or
corporations or the military, it is okay with him.
·
He has prosecuted
more whistleblowers than any president in the last … well, actually … more than
all the previous presidents combined.
·
He has
established an imperial beachhead in Africa by instituting AfriCom. So who knows how many poor African countries
our Special Forces are now clandestinely destabilizing under the cloak and
dagger banner of JSOC? Check out Jeremy
Scahill’s brilliant reporting on this topic.
·
And saving the
best for last, he has become PRESIDENT GOD.
Every Tuesday he pontificates on whom should be “neutralized” by drone
strikes based on intelligence from agencies who are wrong so frequently that
their efforts would be considered comedic if they weren’t so tragic. And since His Omnipotence is protecting
“national security,” what does it matter if the collateral damage splatters
women and children all over the roadside?
So, let me see – that’s TEN bullet points that
instantly sprang to mind without even having to do a google search. Just one of these should immediately disqualify
a person for consideration by the selectors in Norway. (Yes, not Sweden. For some mysterious reason the Nobel will
mandates that a committee of parliamentarians in Norway choose the Peace Prize
winner.) How these judges continually
ignore the most significant impediment to world peace just astonishes me. Are they really a panel of Norwegians - or a
clan of super-patriotic Nebraskans? Assuming that they are not malevolent but
simply misguided, let me remind them of why U.S. foreign policy is justifiably
scorned by most of the planet.
·
The U.S. now has
over 800 military bases blanketing almost the entire planet. These forces are not stationed there to
protect the population. Their role is to
enforce the will of the American multi-national corporations who bleed the
cheap resources or slave labor from these nations. These installations also siphon enormous
wealth to the Military-Industrial Cyst.
·
The U.S.
continues to spy on … well, essentially everyone that their advanced technology
allows them to spy on. Their excuse is
that they are protecting us from terrorism, but it is common world-wide
knowledge that the CIA and the Pentagon fund, arm, train and unleash large
numbers of terrorists. The only difference
is that these groups are designated by the captive mainstream media as “freedom
fighters.”
·
Since World War
II the United States has attempted to overthrow 50 governments - and most of these had been democratically
elected.
·
One of the main
operating principles of modern U.S. foreign policy is the Wolfowitz
Doctrine. This decree calls for the use
of whatever tactics are necessary to keep another nation (think China and
Russia) from becoming strong enough to threaten America’s dominance of the
world.
·
Since WWII the
U.S. has dropped bombs on the people of 30
countries.
·
Unsatisfied with
just ruling the planet, American political and military elites have now adopted
a policy of “full spectrum dominance.”
This means that they also want to dominate outer space and cyberspace as
theatres of war.
·
Since the Second
World War, U.S. military and intelligence operatives have attempted to
assassinate more than 50
foreign leaders (some of them multiple times - such as Fidel Castro.) And they have attempted to suppress populist
or nationalist movements in 20
countries.
And so, for you selectors in Norway, struggling to
regain some relevancy for your Peace Prize, hopefully this will clarify for you
what an 800 pound War Lord standing in the middle of Planet Earth’s living room
looks like. And now to assist you even
further in regaining some respect for your extremely tarnished award, let me
suggest some very worthy candidates.
If I had the financial ability to designate a Sea Gypsy Philosopher Peace Prize,
these would be some of the individuals on my short list. I would be delighted if the Nobel Committee
would research some of these gallant Warriors of the Pen, who have dedicated
their lives to unmasking the true, evil face of U.S. foreign policy. Here they are:
·
Daniel Ellsberg …
This whistleblower, who released the Pentagon Papers, had a
profound influence on winding down the senseless and obscene Vietnam War. He even suffered prison time as a result of
this courageous act of conscience. He
has continued ever since to battle the American War Machine. Here is one of his insightful quotes about
Vietnam: “It wasn’t that we were ON the
wrong side, we WERE the wrong side!”
·
Oliver Stone …
When this man crafts a brilliant anti-war movie such as Platoon, he
knows of what he speaks. As an idealistic
but foolish young man he went off to Vietnam to help protect democracy and got
a profound lesson about the true nature of war and in particular of its
senseless lunacy. He was wounded both
physically and emotionally. But he has
converted those scars into a body of cinematic art that reveals more about the
true nature of power than probably any other director. And he continues to use his art to bring more
light into a world deliberately cloaked in darkness and doubt. His TV show “The Untold History of the United
States” brilliantly exposes the vast and profound difference between what
leaders tell us they are doing and what they are actually perpetrating – and I
use the word “perp” deliberately.
·
Cindy Sheehan …
When she lost her son in the Iraq War 2, she had the courage to ask the
question which so many other parents of dead soldiers only voiced to themselves – “What did he die for?” Since his death, she has devoted her life to
anti-war activism using a variety of approaches from running for office to her
most daring campaign during which she pitched her tent and lived in protest near
President Bush’s Texas vacation compound, which became known as Camp Casey in
honor of her dead son. She has been
arrested time and time again as she continues to throw herself on the gears of
the American War Machine.
·
John Pilger …
This Australian, who has spent much of his life revealing the filthy underbelly
of Empire and Globalization, is an investigative journalist and brilliant
documentary film-maker. In his very
first film he shocked the world by revealing that U.S. troops in Vietnam had so
deeply lost their belief in the war, that many of them were turning mutinous. That was the first expose’ in a lifetime of
fine work unveiling the true motives of those in power as they plunder the
planet.
·
William Blum … This
tireless campaigner, who looks like everyone’s harmless uncle from Syracuse,
has actually been a valiant super-hero when it comes to shining light on the
dark secrets of U.S. overseas malignancy.
His books document with incredible thoroughness the atrocities that
those behind the American Throne have been visiting on the world. But besides being encyclopedic, they are also
riveting reading. Such scholarship
combined with literary flair is a rare combination.
There are many other peace campaigners who I deeply
admire and who deserve consideration from the judges in Oslo. I will be glad to steer them towards these individuals,
and in this regard my email address is right here at my blog. Naturally, I realize that they will never contact
me, and in fact, they will probably never even see this essay.
But unlike the fool’s valor of Don Quixote who flailed
away with his fractured lance at imaginary demons that were actually just
windmills, our adversaries are very real and deserve the scorn of all persons
of good will. I refer to them in my work
as The Malignant Overlords. These people,
who are so pathologically addicted to domination that they want to rule the
world, must be stymied and defeated. And
awarding a prestigious Peace Prize to heroes who actually crusade for Peace,
will certainly help in this often hopeless but eternally noble quest.
