Overthrow, Over and Over

By Laura S. Washington

The old saw goes, "the trend is your friend."  Let's try that one again. Stephen Kinzer's new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books) puts the kibosh on that notion. Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, deconstructs [RETURN TO ARTICLE]

  • Reader Comments

     Page 1 of 1 pages

    As valuable and timely as these insights are, Mr. Kinzer’s views do not address what is happening both (I) inside our own country and (II) outside of the context of physical borders of sovereign nations.

    (I) Our “leaders” are turning this country into a fascist state.  In the fascist view, the state is the end and the individual is the means.  This is the exact opposite of the democratic philosophy.  For e.g., see:
    http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm and http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14_pts_2.htm

    How are they getting away with this?  One example:
    There are 4 elements in making decisions, whether it’s which shirt to wear to a party, or whether to ask sons and daughters to risk their lives to fight a war:
    1.  Frame, or structure the question
    2.  Gather intelligence
    3.  Come to conclusions
    4.  Learn from feedback
    If you improperly frame the question, you can set out (or, alternatively, set others out ...) to solve the wrong problem by creating a mental framework that causes you (or others) to overlook the best options, to gather the wrong intelligence, and to come to the wrong conclusions.  Here is a must-see for understanding how those speaking at the 2004 RNC (ab-)used framing to drive their agenda:
    http://www.oldamericancentury.org/gopconstrm.mov

    Here is a good breakdown on why the war in Iraq, and arguably in Afghanistan, was an act of aggression, and not a “just” war:
    Go to this site:  http://www.platofootnote.org/, click on “lectures”, and click on “just war”.  What he doesn’t say is that if the war is not a “just” war, then it is an act of aggression—a war crime—and our “leaders” are war criminals.

    In the words of TJ Templeton, we have “...a small cadre of corporate elite have formed a fascist organization which has usurped the United States government through a questionable election and sympathetic court, installed their members in the top levels of the executive, diplomatic, and military offices, and have hijacked the nation’s policy to fit their fascist agenda.”

    Now, on to (II), what is happening outside of the context of physical borders of sovereign nations… 

    Noam Chomsky once said that “The free flow of capital creates what some international economists call a virtual senate, meaning financial capital can impose the social policies that it chooses on governments, and it can punish those that it chooses by capital flight that naturally restricts democracy and undermines the possibility that people can participate in socio-economic planning.”  In other words, corporations have made governments their puppets and have created institutions like the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) for their own protection.  I’ve borrowed some quotes and concepts from Shiva

    United States Posted by nyvegan on Jun 17, 2006 at 8:08 AM

    NYVEGAN,
    Good post on the WTO , have you tried links ? 
    No 1<
    No 2


    No 3

    <blockquote>Americans lack a fundamental understanding of the string of failures that our country has used to feather our own nest. It

    France Posted by frog on Jun 24, 2006 at 3:04 PM
     Page 1 of 1 pages
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