THE PAST IS PROLOGUE
Get Past
the Last Decade
If you read this article, you’ll get an excellent overviews of the worst
nightmares
of the past decade. These are nightmares of a
mass trauma-induced nature that
creates the type of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which
surrenders
conscience by adapting to terror-for-tyranny tactics as
though they were normal.
Obviously, if we are to
wake up from this nightmare, we must culture
conscience.
How else do we own our own
lives, health and government without such a culture?
“Conscience
is the most sacred of all property.”
~ James Madison, Chief Architect of the Constitution
~~~ Article
follows ~~~
The Real Top 10 News Stories of the Past Decade
Published on
Friday, January 1, 2010 by alternative news website
CommonDreams.org
by
Robert Freeman
The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the
last decade. The wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new
frugality. This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture:
pacification. It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are
looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.
The amazing thing
is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really mattered, those
that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, and the relation
of the people to their state and society. Those stories paint a picture of
danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the
corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult
truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.
So here, in no
particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really
matter.
-
Iraq
was all premised on lies, yet we're still there.
Saddam Hussein wasn't pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction. He wasn't
involved in 9/11. He wasn't engaged with Al Qaeda. We know all these things.
And we know they were false at the time they were proffered. Yet, there we
are, with no intent to leave, our very presence spitting in the face of
International Law and the international community we so unctuously pretend
to respect. [To read a newspaper editorial showing the blatant lies of top
US leaders used to promote war in Iraq,
click here]
-
The fact that
2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%.
John
Kennedy's social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats. But over the
last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income
earners. Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in
wealth as a result of the housing collapse. The banking bailout and the
health care "reform" debate showed as never before the extent to which
corporations have captured government and use it to redirect national wealth
to themselves and their owners. [For revealing media reports on startling
income inequality,
click here]
-
The Global
War on Terror [GWOT].
Or more specifically, the ease with which the "GWOT" has replaced the Cold
War as the justification for the ever-increasing militarization of society.
What happened to the post-Cold War "Peace Dividend"? The
U.S. continues to spend more on the military
than all the rest of the world combined. It continues to maintain over 700
military bases around the world. And it continues to manufacture excuses for
foreign interventions whenever weapons makers and military logistics
companies need more profits — which is forever. [For a top U.S. general's
highly revealing two-page essay exposing the roots of war,
click here]
-
Bush knew of 9/11 long
before it actually happened.
Three years before Bush took office, the neo-cons'
Project For a New American Century
called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to
galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle East oil. And even before
the event itself, Bush-as-president was warned dozens of times of the
imminent attack, the most notorious being the August 6, 2001
Presidential Daily Briefing
titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Amazingly nothing was done
to prevent the attack. But even less is it advertised that Bush knew. [For
more powerful information on this,
click here
to read the two-page
summary of major media reports with links raising serious questions about
9/11]
-
The surrender of civil
liberties.
Despite the Fourth Amendment supposedly protecting us against unreasonable
searches and seizures, the government can now read your email and listen to
your phone calls without any probable cause. The Obama administration has
gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended
during the Bush administration. We are much less free, much less protected
from brutalization by our own government than we were just ten years ago.
[For key major media articles revealing major erosion of privacy,
click here]
-
The Supreme
Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election.
This isn't even a historical controversy anymore. Al Gore won the national
popular vote by 570,000. And we now know he would have won the Florida vote
as well if the vote counting had not been stopped by the Supreme Court. This
was literally a right wing judicial coup d' etat, so it's understandable
that it's never mentioned in the "right" kind of circles. [For more critical
information on this, read a BBC reporter's story
available here]
-
The
Neo-Feudalization of the American economy.
The top 1% of wealth holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while
the bottom 40% own absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, workers are saddled with
$12 trillion of national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will
bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives. This is
the working definition of feudalism, where the rich own everything and
everybody else has nothing but their proffered labor and their obligations
to their masters. The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the Bourbons would be
jealous. [For intriguing major media articles on powerful secret societies
intent on keeping the rich in power,
click here]
-
The failure
of "the free market" to sustain prosperity.
The "free market" has long been an ideological dodge used to resist real
government regulation of the economy. Still, the ideal was supposed to
deliver prosperity in a stable, sustainable matter. Now we have the greatest
global economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the
government transferring $11 trillion to the banks
to cover their sociopathically greedy bets that
went bust. All in the name of deregulation, with future regulation
vigorously resisted. Is this a deranged country or what? [For amazing media
articles showing blatant greed, secrecy, and manipulation by top banks and
bankers,
click here]
-
The collapse of the media.
We once imagined it would guard the hen house. Yet that was an anomaly, a
freak event around Vietnam and Watergate when it slipped its leash. Since
then,
sixty independent media outlets have consolidated into five,
all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the perpetrators, laundering
their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the truth tellers. In every
story mentioned above, the mainstream media have worked to ensure that the
people didn't know the truth about the forfeiture of their government, their
wealth, their security, and their rights. [For concise summaries of 20
award-winning journalists revealing how vitally important news stories are
shut down by corporate media ownership,
click here]
-
The meaninglessness of
elections.
This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest
electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Barrack Obama has
betrayed everything he ran on. In nearly every case where he had the
opportunity to confront power — in financial bailouts, financial regulation,
health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming,
national surveillance — Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against
the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more
cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard
Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of
people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year
into it. [To understand why this has happened and what you can do to make a
difference,
click here]
History paints
decades with broad brushes – the Roaring Twenties, The Depression, World War II.
Historians will look back on the Naughts as the time when Americans Lost Their
Country. It was the decade when all the institutions that they believed would
protect them – the media, the courts, Congress, the market, a messianic new
president – in fact betrayed them. It will forever more be a different country.
Robert Freeman
writes on history, economics, and education.
Email to:
robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.