U.S. Foreign Policy Hypocrisy!

Link to Debs Canton Speech at the Zinn Education Project

As a citizen of the United States I can only wish that our own-literally bought and sold-news media were as honest as this commentary on the mind boggling hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy. Did the working class people here ever decide that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was a great friend of the United States, that socialist Cuba was a perennial enemy, that Israel-simply as another STATE-could do no wrong? After the collapse of the old Soviet Union we find fault with Czar Putin?

I just read Eugene V. Debs' famous, eloquent, and most instructive "Canton Speech". The American plutocracy has always operated under the banner of freedom and democracy. Will young working class Americans continue to die for the same Wilsonian blather that the old socialists ridiculed?

What cant over FREE SPEECH here! "Je Suis Charlie". Humbug, I tell you. Humbug!

EUGENE V. DEBS HOME
 –TERRE HAUTE,
VIGO COUNTY, INDIANA

( comment on article  published in Altavoz ( Peru ) on Jan. 28, 2015 by Editorial, "The Hypocrisy of the United States" , WATCHING AMERICA )

No, don't make the same mistakes as the Americans ( WATCHING AMERICA )

As a citizen of the United States and a democratic Socialist , I agree with you completely that you don't need a Belgian version of the Patriot Act or a European Guantanamo.

The FREE SPEECH as ABSOLUTE chants in recent Paris demonstrations were also demonstrations of exquisite French hypocrisy. Could their "socialist" president be completely oblivious to the Marxist view of the limitations of bourgeois "free speech"? And what about the ringing call for the workers of the world to unite? Did the old socialists exclude poor downtrodden RELIGIOUS people of the world? Nothing could be less in the spirit of revolutionary socialism than to mock the great faiths of human civilization.

Those "scientific" socialists -influenced by historical materialism- simply believe that a people freed from the nightmare of capitalist oppression and misery would be more free to rethink their religious beliefs. Of course, it was a great error of the Russian Bolsheviks to make their state officially atheist. Here, America has a better idea: separation of Church and State!

( comment on article published in Le Vif ( Belgium ) on Jan.14, 2015 by Hubert Van Humbeeck , "If Jan.7 was the European Equivalent of Sept.11, we can't make the same mistakes as the Americans")

A truly Orwellian paradox

I am presently staring at today's Providence Journal front page -pondering a truly Orwellian paradox: "After attacks, crackdown on hate speech" (Jan.15)

And it seems that pure HATE can be combated by the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, on its way to terrorize not the fanatical few but the religious many in an Islamic country. But just days ago there was a multitude of people in Paris crying out that free speech is ABSOLUTE.

 

But the good Pope Francis disagrees. Don't insult MY mother! Well I am certainly not holier than the Pope. But I would dismiss any insult to my dear departed mother as being simply uninformed. At least I thought she was a peach.

Does he also mean: "Don't insult Holy Mother Church"? In the good old days there was the not so Holy Inquisition. But the Church has finally repented  of this extravagant solicitude for the Faith. As the late radical professor Howard Zinn said, this FREE SPEECH is very enigmatic in the most democratic countries on earth.

To: letters@providencejournal.com

Obama right to snub mass hysteria Islamophobia

 As a socialist I can only encourage mass action in the streets in defense of democratic values. But beware cant phrases like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: And "Free World." Can't we at least make our world safe for our ONE PERCENT plutocracy?

Forget about Equality and Fraternity. Not long ago our very patriotic Cold War fanatics wanted to end Godless Communism with a nuclear bang. I just heard right-wing Red Eye Radio here in Rhode Island ( 630wpro.com ) suggest the same thing for quickly ending the scourge of international terrorism. "Obama is weak!" they rant.

President Obama is wise to snub mass hysteria Islamo-phobia – in France or here in the United States. Cant phrases start wars- as in the Great War, the war to make the world "safe for democracy... the war to end all wars."

Would Ayn Rand ask you to die for bourgeois Free Speech? That is not in keeping with the "Virtue of Selfishness." And it is so cozy in your Wall Street office. $$$ is the business of America. Let working class suckers fight your wars!

( Comment  on Houston Chronicle article: "White House: U.S. should have sent other officials to Paris",  Jan 12, 2015 )

World wide terrorism: is real life all about lifeless phrases? (Coming Providence Journal demonstration)

Like every other half-alert American citizen, I am following the latest terrorism news from France. Local radio reports that a group headed by a benevolent physician of the Muslim faith will soon demonstrate outside the Providence Journal building. The group supports FREE SPEECH rights everywhere. And so does the newspaper -within the limits of sound business considerations, of course.

But is real life all about phrase mongering? Do real life human beings become terrorists just because the damned majority do not insist that "God is great!" every minute of the day?

Link to "Los Caprichos" – A collection of 80 prints which were an artistic experiment:
a medium for Goya's condemnation of the universal follies and foolishness in
the Spanish society in which he lived.

 We are reducing these terrorists to comic book images. All the better to continue to wage an Orwellian war against perceived enemies of the American Way of Life everywhere? Will our obtuse arrogance end this eternal war?

Did not Marx make a good point when he suggested that eating, working, producing and reproducing were the fundamentals of human society? The human struggle for existence pre-dates any holy texts– secular or religious.

Our own Just Judges sit in judgment on these pathetic terrorists as if they never read a word of Marx or Darwin or Freud.



To: letters@providencejournal.com