Jeremy Scahill, May, 2016: The Assassination Complex [View all]

[ancianita]

Last edited Wed Jun 15, 2016, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Scahill's Seattle speech from last month, a video paraphrasing of this latest book of the same name. Click into the 10 minute point if your time is tight.

He reviews Vietnam protest history, pre-digital age, of the Berrigan brothers, their fight against the "good order" of militarism which has been the preview of our current global police state. Scahill mentions the
weak arguments against the acceptable militarist "enemy" philosophical framework of invasion and killing policies or debates.

Good ideas: " ... If we are just tethered to our electronic devices...then how are we actually going to confront any of the ills facing our society...Obama being surrounded by white guy frat boys like Ben Rhoades who have his ear on American foreign policy...all our candidates are in favor of a kill list..."

About halfway:

“…We are doing today what the Israelis have long done … run an international assassination program…

We have the burden of living in The Empire…in the most powerful nation on Earth… For us to decide that we just want to sort of veg out, and let it be on cruise control, or check our conscience at the door of every four years’ election -- it means that we’re a part of this problem.

If we don’t start paying attention to what’s being done in our name around the world; if we don’t take real interest in it, if we don’t defend the people that blow the whistle on it, if we don’t have the time of day to get away from our machines and our computers and our daily grind life to do a little something to try to raise these questions in society, then we’re a major part of the problem.

The moment you cede any portion of your conscience to a politician is the moment you stop participating in the struggle for any kind of democratic values…

Bernie Sanders supported regime change in Iraq…voted for the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, authored by the neocons…supported the sanctions on Iraq…supported the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam under Bill Clinton, bombing Iraq every three days, saying ‘we’re protecting the Shia and the Kurds and ended up killing more of both than Saddam’s people…

Then he says Hillary loves regime change. Okay, Bernie, I agree with you... But what’s your answer about your record in supporting regime change in Iraq before it became cool among the Republicans. You were there vocally supporting that. Now that’s not the same as voting for the invasion of Iraq, but the invasion of Iraq couldn’t have happened on a legislative level had they not passed that bill in 1998 that codified regime change as the law of the land.

Now some people blast anyone who criticizes their particular messiah. Hillary’s people are very vicious on social media and come after you, nd; anyone who criticizes Hillary becomes a sexist immediately, like BernieBros… but then when you criticize Bernie Sanders…you’ve done some vile act by pointing out facts.

Journalists are supposed to present information with no regard to who the politician is. We’re supposed to hold the politician accountable whether they’re Bernie Sanders, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. Our job isn’t to be partisan warriors for any particular cause. And if we’re not a grown up enough society to deal with the facts and realize that our messiahs are actually not messiahs, what business do we have calling ourself a democracy or a democratic Republic. We don’t have any business doing that…

We all have to take a humility pill about where we are in this country, the state of empire, our impact in the world, the perception of our country, because of all of these wars, because the Nobel Prize winner and … Dick Cheney … ended up on the same page when it came to the legitimizing and normalizing assassination as a central component of our national identity.

Not just our national security policy, but our national identity, we have become a nation of assassins because we don’t say anything about it. We veg out. Rachel Maddow makes us all feel good. Bernie Sanders says we’re part of the revolution. That stuff is plastic. What’s real is actually assessing who you are in the country you live in and what you’re doing to change it or alter that path…”

Well worth your time from one of the best journalists we have.