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, Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. How about Orwell's Big Brother?

 

I think too many journalists in the so called capitalist democracies have deluded themselves about the ideal of FREE SPEECH in these societies. May I recommend leftist professor Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" for a more sober perspective on all civil liberties here?

Wikipedia link to Zinn's book

Was the McCarthy era paranoia all about FREE SPEECH rights even for moderately liberal scholars or political activists? It is well documented how a leftist party with which I was a presidential elector in 1980, The Socialist Workers Party, was harassed, sabotaged, and illegally spied on. The SWP did finally win its lawsuit against the FBI. But the damage was done.

Presently numerous activists who protested Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan have their own tales of persecution to tell. And Talk Radio in America is particularly odious for its 24 hour right wing thug view of the world. They always rant about creeping socialism. But they would also silence any intellectually honest-and courageous-militant socialists.

Yes, if they could, the American FBI would love to obliterate my comments here rather than defend to the death my right to say this.

The talk of FREE SPEECH is mostly cant. When the ruling class does not like it they call it HATE SPEECH or just un-American and subversive and unpatriotic.

Even the famous Ralph Nader- now associated with the Green Party–can barely get a fair hearing in the capitalist news media.

And I must point out that too many individuals -even conservative types-have lost their jobs just over something they said.

As Professor Zinn pointed out, free speech is very problematic here. After suggesting that our Memorial Days just might glorify war more than they honor our war dead, he lost his column in a major newspaper. So much for FREE SPEECH in America!

And with the president of Israel coming to America to address the Congress, can anybody here criticize Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians without being branded anti-Semitic?

And so I hear: "Karl Marx was a self-hating Jew!

Forget about democratic DIALOGUE in the United States. Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. He is Orwell's Big Brother!

( published in Le Point ( France ) on Jan. 12, 2015 by Michel Colomes:"Obama Isn't Charlie", WATCHING AMERICA)

But Charlie Hebdo was indeed Islamophobic trash, John

Link to Charlie Hebdo Magazine

John, I did do a background check on this cynical and nihilistic Charlie Hebdo magazine group in France. They did not belong to any great journalistic tradition, falling below American junk news tabloids in standards of accuracy and decency.

One comment rings true for this socialist- not interested in maliciously offending one fourth of the human population: "Charlie Hebdo wrote and drew about many issues but lost many readers over recent years because of its Islamophobia and racist content."

All the socialists with whom I associate completely reject terrorism as a sane political strategy. But we won't idealize these hateful New Atheist types, on the left or on the right.

And a lot of phony cant phrases in that huge demonstration in Paris. "Free Speech?" As American historian Howard Zinn points out in his "People's History of the United States," capitalist ownership of the news media tends to smother the free speech of ordinary people and nearly all third parties. I should know. I was a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers Party here in Rhode Island in 1980 and 1976. And a presidential elector for the American Communist Party way back in 1972.

Red Eye Radio is always unmasking sinister socialist plots-hatched even in the White House! But they never let any socialists speak for themselves.

Ron Ruggieri, Cranston

To: John DePetro <john@630wpro.com>