Category: ThinkableWords

Words that induce thought…

When all is said and done

What could I add to a quote from Robert Fisk’s recent piece The shaming of America about the recent WikiLeaks disclosure of “The Iraq War Logs”? Not a fuck of a lot. So;

The truth, of course, is that if this vast treasury of secret reports had proved that the body count was much lower than trumpeted by the press, that US soldiers never tolerated Iraqi police torture, rarely shot civilians at checkpoints and always brought killer mercenaries to account, US generals would be handing these files out to journalists free of charge on the steps of the Pentagon. They are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told…

Typical Fisk fashion, pure class!

The Iraq War Logs

Yesterday I posted an entry citing a talk Chris Hedges recently gave concerning his new book, The Death of the Liberal Class. In said talk he mentioned a few bits of interest that have relevance to what I’m writing about today, illusion and war. Speaking of illusion and war, on Friday WikiLeaks “leaked” the largest classified military leak “that has ever been released into the historic record”, some 391,832 documents, otherwise known as “The Iraq War Logs”.

Putting aside the predictable reactions and infantile tactics we’re now witnessing from, both, the Obama Administration, and their lackey’s, the mainstream media, nothing I’ve read or watched since Friday is, at least in part, as powerful as what Josh Steiber wrote in an open letter to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, An Open Letter on the Needed Response to the Upcoming Wikileaks Report;

I write on behalf of those around the world who are ashamed to have to listen to the President, along with military and political officials, express their great angst over leaks while seeming to ignore the realities of what those leaks reveal about the very nature of these wars. When you fail to take account for what has been done in our names, funded by our taxes, and fought by those who believe that the U.S. should represent something noble, we will search for and tell the truth; if you are ashamed by citizens practicing the accountability that our country was designed to demand, then that says more about you than about us…

I’m urging people who are not so willing to drink the Kool-Aid to check out a the aforementioned letter by Josh Stieber, a couple video’s, featuring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (explaining the logs and defending the logs), and lastly Friday’s Democracy Now! appearance by America’s “most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971”.

Please do yourself a few bits of important reading and watching today…

Accepting Myth as Reality

I just watched Chris Hedges give a talk concerning his new book, The Death of the Liberal Class. And I know I say this much too often to remain relevant anymore, but if you’ve ever taken my advice and actually visited any of the websites I’ve cited here in the past, I assure you this is not the time to start ignoring me. Everyone must witness what was said for themselves.

In short;

We can’t talk about hope until we’ve grasped reality…

Keep in mind, I saw these series of video’s after reading Yves Engler’s piece UN vote reveals what world thinks of Canadian foreign policy this week.

We all, Canadian’s most definitely included, need to swiftly remove our heads, as abruptly as possible, from our collective hind parts and stop accepting myth (a.k.a. illusion) as reality…

What Must Dolphins Think?

Make no mistake! The future will judge us. And judge us harshly!

For those unaware, today marks 6 months since BPs Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, “killing eleven workers and triggering the worst oil spill disaster in US history.” On today’s broadcast of Democracy Now! they interviewed writer and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams, where she spoke some mighty haunting words;

One of the most moving stories was really flying with a barefoot pilot named Tom Hutchings. In the American Southwest, we would call him a coyote. Again, an activist, he was taking people, as a volunteer for SouthWings, anyone who would go with him, to fly over the Macondo well site. We went with him on Day 100. Upper right-hand corner of the New York Times, you know, remember the article that said most of the oil is gone, 80 percent. You remember a week later, Carole Browner of the Obama administration said 75 percent gone, poof, Mother Nature is doing her job. What I can tell you is that as we flew out to the Gulf to what they call “the source” to see the Deepwater Horizon rigs, for as far as we could see, for as wide as we could see, for as long as we could bear it, oil. All we could see was oil. I mean, it’s just—I wonder, where is our outrage? And I was saying to Tom, this brilliant pilot, you know, that must have made twenty, thirty, forty flights at his own expense, “Why isn’t this story being told?” And he was saying that most of what we’ve heard has been shore-based knowledge. I mean, there were rivers of oil as wide as the Mississippi itself. Stunning. When I asked him what has stayed in his mind most in terms of his witnessing, he said that when they were burning the oil off the surface of the sea, he remembers on the edge of the flames seeing a pod of dolphins, side by side by side by side, watching, simply watching the ocean burn…

Forget being judged by people who, more than likely will never exist — or at least in the same way we do now, if we continue to carry on like we have — what must those dolphins think?