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Fourth of July Lies

by June C. Terpstra - Open-Publishing - Sunday 3 July 2016

July 03, 2016

Be it with the farce the US has made of democracy and humanitarianism or US manufactured terror wars and assassinations the greatest of the Fourth of July lies told globally is that the USA is a free country that liberates “others” so it’s citizens can remain “free”. In actuality, the USA is the country that mass incarcerates and kills its own citizens more than any other country while creating illusions of freedom. The American revolutionaries of the 1700’s sponsored a new nation with a constitution built on genocide and “native removal", slavery of Africans, and consistent repression of workers. Since World War II, the United States actually dropped bombs on countless countries. These include but are not limited to: China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954,Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73,Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983,Lebanon 1984, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-1999, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998-present, and Yugoslavia 1999, Iraq 1998-present, Libya 2011, and ongoing in Syria and Yemen. The United States has also assisted in coups throughout the world with an on-going focus on Latin America where the CIA was responsible for assassinations of political heads of state.

For over five hundred years whether it’s Europeans calling themselves Catholics or Puritans; Europeans calling themselves Zionists; or the capitalist crusaders of the USA it’s never a good thing for indigenous populations to have invaders "settle" on indigenous land to which the Euros say they have a “divine right”. Their mantra of "God told me it’s mine" means the shit is hitting the fan for the people of the land.

The descendants of these Europeans have a chaos and destruction campaign going on today in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Sudan. The war hawks are down right rabid when it comes to taking over the Middle East. They also have their sights on Africa and they continue to go back to South America for coups against those leaders who have risen against the US hegemony.

De-programming the minds and the hearts from the powerful propaganda machine that poisons the intellectual and emotional capacities of people in the USA is an arduous task. From birth to death cognitive and emotional dysfunction is embedded within and imprinted onto the “Exceptional American”, who has been exceptionally uneducated, exceptionally overstuffed and ill fed, and exceptionally programmed for violence. The national religion, an ugly mix of Calvinism and evangelical Christianity, is the ultimate expression of greed and manifestation of death wishes destroying any human love for the poor and downtrodden.

Most “home grown” in the USA have not been taught the essential features and underlying intentions of the US constitution: centralized power at the national level by a marriage between corporations and the state, a system of checks and balances which strengthens private power, a system of separation of power which prevents a simple majority rule by and for the people, with an eroding bill of rights which protects property but which fails to guarantee participation by the people). The obedient folks in the U.S.A. are exposed to hundreds of Hollywood films, after-school specials and school projects that prioritize USA dominance, rabid consumption at the cost of the planet, and the repeated story of “The Jewish Holocaust” with a capital “H” as opposed to the “always forget” facts of Indigenous Holocausts of North America, Africa, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria promoting the take-over of as many countries as possible by the very real axis of evil, real dictators, and real gangsters—the corporate-government elites of the USA, Britain and Saudi-Israelia. The people of the USA, Europe and Israel do not see themselves as the oppressors, the occupiers, the killers and the torturers they really are. They have convinced themselves of their superiority in all things and their exceptionalism to all the rules of decency, ethics and even law. The moral education system they have deconstructed forms a cognitive lens which views greed and aggression for “capitalist democracy” as their right.

As the greedy power elites manipulate legislation against immigration in their home countries while increasing criminalization to profit private prisons they simultaneously give the orders to bomb and plunder. They enslave the poor with debts while giving them “equal opportunities” to work in their sweatshops, agri-businesses, oil fields, diamond, copper and gold mines. The privatization of the prison industry (corporate owned prisons funded with tax dollars) creates an entirely new industry, which is dependent upon filling prisons cells to make a profit. This is accompanied by the equally disturbing trend towards the use of extremely cheap prison labor forces that make more profits for private industries than even sweatshops produce.

The same CIA cited by the Church Committee investigation on the revealing that 140 of CIA personnel consisted of professional propagandists who fed false stories about Cuba and the Soviet Union to the press back in the day are even more active in every from of media imaginable. The CIA co-opts countless journalists, including some of the biggest names in the business to pump its propaganda stories into our media be it the right wing, center or left wing. In today’s media sloganeering always support the troops because freedom isn’t free, and “we” fight over “there” so “we” don’t have to fight here because war is peace and safety/security is better than freedom.

The hate campaigns of past and present are slick and the propaganda program in the military and the media are one and the same: Hate the native, kill the native, and steal the land. The government media wing employs henchmen of all political ideologies who prance and dance for their masters in social media, mainstream media and independent media. They engineer pseudo journalism outlets, academic programs and vacuous propaganda films intended to scare white Americans and white Europeans so they will support “nuking” commies/Russians, Muslims, the poor and people of color to “kingdom come”. Today’s propaganda from Trotskyites turned neo-conservatives and neo-liberals hawks are as factual as the myths of the Fourth of July.

Let us not attempt to recreate or reform systems of domination. This tired planet cannot survive the games that the greedy play. To offer the people scams of debt based capitalism, sweatshop communism, neo-liberal hawkism, neo-conservative elitism, anti-racist racism, and liberal austerity is obscene, as these methods produce nothing but more poverty for the majority. The time for dialogue with the system is over. Our strategies now must be focused on the many acts of creation, invention, rebellion and resistance that it will take for us to live our visions of self-determining communities in liberated territories.

June Terpstra, Ph.D. is an activist, educator and university lecturer in Justice studies, Criminal Justice and sociology. She has founded numerous programs for homeless, abused, youth and oppressed people in the U.S.A. She is presently teaching courses on law and terrorism, social justice, resistance, criminology, and juvenile Justice. She is a former Community Research Fellow and doctoral graduate of Loyola University Chicago.