Market Farming

["Steve Gilman" <sgilman AT netheaven.com>]

PART 2...............................

        I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S.
sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially
Angola)
that began in the 1970's and continues to this day and has resulted in the
deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded of the shock and
horror I felt as the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989
and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture George H. Bush's CIA
partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega.

        I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah
of Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the
deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979. And the continuing shock as
I learned that the Ayatollah Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and
who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA
payroll, while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.

        I was reminded of the shock and horror that I felt as I learned about 
the
how the U.S. has "manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support of
Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in
their native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions
forthe people of  Palestine. I was shocked as I learned about the hundreds
of towns and villages that were literally wiped off the face of the earth
in the early days of Israeli colonization. I was horrified in 1982 as the
villagers of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Israeli allies with
direct Israeli complicity and direction. The untold thousands who died on
that day match the scene of horror that we saw last Tuesday. But those
scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national media to
inflame the American public.

        The events and images of last Tuesday have been appropriately compared
to the horrific events and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted
in the deaths of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to the fact
that the country that inflicted the terror on Lebanon was Israel, with
U.S.
backing. I still continue to be shocked at how mainstream commentators
refer to "Israeli settlers" in the "occupied territories" with no sense of
irony as they report on who are the aggressors in the region.

        Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half 
of
the 20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975,
especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed,
crushed, shot and individually "hands on" murdered in the "Phoenix
Program"
(this is where Oliver North got his start). Many U.S. Vietnam veterans
were
also victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy
makers themselves knew the criminality of their actions and policies as
revealed in their own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released byDaniel
Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation. In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our
Presidents from Truman to Nixon continually lied to the U.S. public about
the purpose and conduct of the war. He has stated that, "It is a tribute
to
the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us,
it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled."

        I was continually shocked and horrified as the U.S. attacked and 
bombed
with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the
infant daughter of Khadafi. I was shocked as the U.S. bombed and invaded
Grenada in 1983. I was horrified by U.S. military and CIA actions in
Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia. The
deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.

        The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. It is merely 
a
list that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the economic
and intellectual elites. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the
public discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the
analysis that the U.S. actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily
civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to these elites and policy makers. A
conservative number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and
military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people.
Repeat--8,000,000 people. This does not include the wounded, the
imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr.
stated in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the world's
leading purveyor of
violence." Shocking and horrifying.