like to get up early on saturday mornings at six o'clock and on sunday mornings on k f c are in everett at seven o'clock so there's three opportunities to hear alternative radio which is incidentally celebrating its twenty fifth year of independent broadcasting this year and i've been traveling all over the us and outside giving talks and talking about independent media and  particularly in this time of ever more concentration and monopoly control of the airwaves how important it is that those lifelines those nodes radical progressive thought be nurtured and cultivated and supported by a citizen really that is in desperate need for accurate information so the title of this evening's talk imperial wars imperial media and i just thought like one i could easily reverse that imperial media imperial wars they they can be reversed because without imperial media imperial wars are very difficult to carry out and maybe we can find out why is that why is it necessary that an imperial system which i contend the united states is and i hope to persuade you of that this evening why is it that it needs to work so hard to bring the citizenry in in line to get the citizens of this country to support foreign intervention wars bombings airstrikes of version's coup d'etat overthrows of democratic governments from iran to guatemala to chil gilbert who was born in austria he joined the american army after he came to the united states and because of his fluency in german he was assigned to growing in at nuremberg during the to introduce it we got around to the subject of war again and i said that is gilbert said contrary to that of today i do not think the common people very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction and then girling shrugged according to gilbert and responded why of course the people don't want war why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece naturally the common people don't want war neither in russia nor in england nor in america nor for that matter in germany that is understood but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship and then  gilbert responded well look there is one difference in a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives and in the united states only congress can declare  wars responded to gilbert oh that's all well and good but voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders that is easy all you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger it works the same way in any country herman gurning it's interesting that gilbert says at the time unite it's only been in the united states it's only the congress that can declare wars well we've seen since the end of world war two a huge concentration of war making powers in the executive where military actions and interventions and bombings and some versions are carried out by the white house in the name of national security national defense and that every elusive american interests whatever they may be in any particular time so we have examples in korea laos cambodia vietnam grenada panama the first gulf war there's the second gulf war the attack on afghanistan the bombing of pakistan which i keep going the bombing of somalia the bombing of yemen all of the latter incidentally accelerated under the change you can believe in president b now imperialism is not a topic for polite discussion that is to say in the pages of our elite media like the new york times or the washington post and the wall street journal you'll certainly never hear the word discussed on the charlie rose hour or the news hour with jim lehrer or any of the prestigious programs on national public radio like morning edition or all things considered it's basically a taboo topic except when other imperialisms are talked about in a historical manner so it's quite ok to talk about british imperialism french  the belgium imperialism in the congo and rwanda dutch imperialism in indonesia etc but us the adjective us or american is never a fixed before the imperialism it simply doesn't exist except as how is in points out in his wonderful book a people's history united states and in this book here originals in there's a little period between eight hundred ninety eight and nineteen zero two or so when there is something called american imperialism when cuba is invaded the philippines are invaded conquered puerto rico is conquered and that was it and then we went back to our role of liberating people spreading democracy bringing the joys of the free market which has had such success here in the united states with twenty to twenty five million people unemployed as we speak millions of people who've lost their homes and the perpetrators of these economic crimes simply you know laughing all the way to the bank in fact they are the bank you know and right now as i speak most of those wall street bankers are in their palatial homes in the hamptons on long island enjoying a lovely early summer weekend thanks to the generosity of the american people so it's ok to talk about those historical imperialisms but never about actual u s imperialism and let me just quote michael parenti here imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and the blitter raiding entire civilizations yet is yet it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics media commentators and political leaders when not ignored outright the subject of imperialism imperialism has been sanitized so that empires become commonwealths and colonies become territories or dominion imperialist military invent interventions become matters of national defense national security national interests and maintaining stability one of those magical words of propaganda the us is always looking for stable regimes led by moderates you should be able to decode this propaganda what is a stable regime for thirty years hosni mubarak who was the dictator of egypt who ran the country with an iron fist violated or had all kinds of human rights violations torture extrajudicial assassinations killings at cetera he was described as a moderate as a moderate leader and egypt was a stable ally in the middle east so if we were to translate this because we need a running commentary you know when you when you watch n or fox or listen to some of these radio programs we should have simultaneous english translation so that people understand what is actually you know going by from from the from the chatter roddy classes the chattering classes the pundits the experts who know so much about the world you know even though they don't speak a word of arabic or do or farsi or turkish or any of the languages or cultures that they're dealing with that's ok the words that you know that are coming by like stable regime moderate leader means obeys washington's dictates that's what that really means and so all of a sudden we're surprised when egypt erupts in a room in revolutionary fervor january eighteenth and within three weeks the mubarak dictatorship is overthrown and in this three week period from just starting on january eighteenth until february eleventh you notice i noticed and heard on national public radio for the first time adjectives describing mubarak as a despot a dictator a tyrant a hardline ruler someone who had violated human rights where were they for thirty years you know they were in the same place where they were when they couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in iraq and completely swallowed the bush propaganda line when the corporate media including the new york times could not see this tsunami of a financial crisis unfolding you know they didn't send any people into poor neighborhoods where mostly people of color were victimized by the financial elites who offered people who had no savings and no income housing mortgages oh no problem you don't need any money and then they had these escalating clauses which you know in the first year it seems like well i'm not i don't have to pay anything and then second and third fourth years you had these huge spikes in mortgage payments that put these people underwater and has further pauperized and already indigent class no one has been held concert accountable for these economic crimes now i'm not talking about bernie murdock made off and you know the reason shenanigans that hedge fund managers and insider trading that's a different thing i'm talking about the banks making loans to people that they knew could not possibly pay these loans back was that criminal behavior or not i mean maybe you should have a discussion of that anyway the corporate media the new york times which has the largest news staff in the united states they in the washington post and wall street journal and some of the other papers they didn't send anyone into those neighborhoods to talk to people to go into newark to go into to oakland to east a and to talk to people that were getting these loans if they were the canary in the mine had we heard those voices then perhaps the catastrophe that's been unfolding and continues to unfold in terms of this ongoing economic downturn they call it a downturn you know it's it's the worst economic collapse since the one nine hundred thirty s and it has produced levels of unemployment not percentages of unemployment because there is a difference there during the depression unemployment was twenty five thirty percent but the workforce was infinitely smaller today there are many more people out of work and when you hear you know this figure of nine point one nine point two completely bogus piece of data datum because the actual unemployment figure is at least double that some some people like the economist richard wolffe at n y u says it's close to twenty percent if you include people that have simply given up on finding a job if you include people that are working a couple of hours a week at i hop or work as a greeter at walmart or target for a few hours a week and they're counted as part of the workforce they want to have full time jobs but the jobs are simply not there so we see that means the connection between  imperial wars imperial media media and what's happening with the economy here at home of course the media don't make any of these connections i mean there are just huge gaps in terms of reporting about the military industrial complex the fact that the united states has seven hundred thirty five military bases around the world i'm not talking about brenton in bangor and to everett and what you have right fort lewis you know this is one of the major military militarized areas of the united states the pacific northwest i come from another area like that colorado with fort carson the air force academy lowry air force base and  other military installations and the billions of dollars that are spent on maintaining all of these overseas bases for what supposedly to defend the united states from whom from the al kayaks that are going to come ashore at in seattle from the camel caravans that have come down from the cascades and occupy it washington state the population is kept in a state of fear it's right out of all wales ninety four if you really want to get a good understanding of this look at nine hundred eighty again and see how big brother was able to terrorize the population into more and more and more loss of liberty more and more constriction on movement even criminalization of thought criminalization of dissent look at what happened in the last couple of months in the midwest in minneapolis and chicago where people who dissented four i think literature as our inductee roy the great indian writer reminds us it is the closest way to get to the truth sometimes even more than noam chomsky or you know michael parenti or you know maybe we should turn to literature to have a better understanding of what's going on in our society and in the world and let me just turn to what i think is one of the best single descriptions of imperialism belgians were doing in the congo where they carried out a campaign of mass murder resulting in the death of literally millions of people in central africa this is conrad writing they were conquerors and for that you want only brute force nothing to boast of when you have it since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others they grabbed what they could for the sake of what was to be got it was just robbery with violence aggravated murder on a great scale and men going at it blind as is a very proper way for those who tackle the darkness the conquest of the earth this is the line the conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complection or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much what we deems it conrad says is the idea only an idea at the back of it not to send a sentimental pretense but an idea an unselfish belief in the idea something you can set up and bow before and offer a sacrifice too so we see that with the with the french with their missy own civilities with the americans with manifest destiny with the british with the white man's burden it's always some grand idea about that there's going to liberate the world that's going to deliver the precious bounty of the free market to those who do not enjoy  the capitalist economic system so there you know they're constantly inventing new reasons new explanations new rationales to justify their aggression and he's always cloaked in lofty terms that's extreme and extremely important part of this because if you just tell the american people we're going to iraq to benefit exxon mobil how about incorporation k b r and a few other contractors like blackwater you merican people say i don't know if that's such a good idea but it's about preventing the evil jew dictator from doing more acts of evil someone we had supported throughout the nine eighty s by the way and had on armed to the teeth during some of his worst atrocities that is saddam hussein that of course goes right down orwell's memory hole complete amnesia there is no memory since you know we live without any history all the media reports are all a historical it's as if things are just happening right now saddam hussein is evil we have to do something about it end of story know background how he got evil is he really evil what's the criterion for evil etc none of that another example of imperialism from literature is from a very obscure novel that  ll wrote right after he had returned to england from having served five years as a policeman in the period british force stationed in burma which at that time was under british india rule and so this was a very edifying experience for all well i because he really saw the mechanics of imperialism if you read his essays shooting an elephant and  hanging you understand what it means to be a policeman and imperial force on a day to day level and and orwell writes in one of those essays i never felt so hated as when i walked down the street with these stairs that people you know gave me because of what i represented they didn't know who he was but he represented that white christian power that was imposing itself on the gin and tonics with the other white people and read london illustrated weekly and hobnob with the with the with the master race but he's been repeatedly denied entry into the club despite his you know best efforts but as all right he had a passionate admiration for the english which a thousand snubs from englishman could not shake he would maintain with positive eagerness that he as an indian belong to an inferior and degenerate race his faith in britain in british justice knew no bounds now he's talking to the main protagonist in the novel whose name is  florrie the man in flori who is a a timber merchant in burma whose has some skepticism about what the british are really doing in burma and in india you know this white man's burden delivering you're the bounties of european civilization and so florey is trying to persuade vera swami that you know you're kind of off the mark here i wouldn't be so anxious to want to be a member of this club you know so you can sip gin and tonics you know while behind your back they are calling you a walk in other very deprecating terms so he says to my dear doctor to the indian doctor how can you make out that we are in this country for any other purpose except to steal it's so simple the official holds the burman down while the businessman goes through his pockets the british empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the to the english it's a very interesting exchange not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings all that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever necessary or will also says if liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear and in a time of almost universal lying telling the truth is a revolutionary act so there again it goes back to the need for a media that speak the truth to the american people rather than act as a megaphone for in the imperial interests of the state and the uk economic interests of wall street and you know interest that talking about our interests in the region now what might that be i'd like to know if you have any interests in iraq maybe you have some oil wells there are great vineyards you've got a gas station going i don't know about fast food service little homeless little to bully on the side maybe your old falafel king maybe you know the american people have interests in iraq that that we don't know about you know if the real reasons we're told as to why the us intervenes around the world as i suggested earlier in my remarks the american people and its so called representatives less and less representing the people might not be so willing to jump on the bandwagon and salute the flag and march in their parades and beat their breasts about you know usa usa and that kind of thing we just saw again with memorial day last week the endless repetition of those hollow lines that every single president has had cascading from their mouths as long as i can remember i'm almost sixty six you know about our brave men and women and men in uniform who have made the ultimate sacrifice who have defended this country so that we can live in freedom that's almost a direct line some variation of that and then you have the salutes the the taps you know the laying of the refit at arlington and all of this you  know it's beyond ritual now it's almost like an unconscious action that has been completely hollowed out of any real meaning if we ever asked the question why have thousands and thousands of people died in these wars perpetrated largely initiated by the united states it might lead to some very embarrassing and uncomfortable answers and so nobody wants to go there you know that these kids you see in fort lewis or that i was you know looking at yesterday and in everett you know they could have been eighteen and nineteen they're brainwashed into thinking they're there defending freedom they're about spreading democracy around the world it doesn't occur to them that they're there about you know they're there to defend the interests of the fortune five hundred of the forbes four hundred that but that's not a way to get them you know to enlist you know i want to let me see if i have this other piece of paper i am ok i'm just going to read off some names of towns here garland texas playing well michigan sardinia ohio citrus heights california can't camp a puerto rico bel air kansas newcastle pennsylvania west salem ohio burnette texas new philadelphia ohio medical lake washington now this is from my local paper in boulder colorado the daily camera it is a list published of u s servicemen and women killed in action in various wars around the world what did you notice about and i know the geography of the united states pretty well i've traveled quite a bit i don't recognize a single town that i read that people here maybe someone who's here from medical lake washington just the name of a town maybe there's someone here from a plane well michigan  so what is it what does it tell you about who is who signing up for these wars who gets to go overseas young kids from small towns around the country that have maybe a seven eleven and maybe a gas station and maybe there's a big box store eighty miles away and there's nothing going on and they don't have any job prospects join the military the military has again  jog jobs program for out of work americans since the economy is unable to produce work for people the military through the military industrial complex the extension of wars overseas has become a source of  employment i mean i find that that listing sad to read as well that these you know mostly naive kids who have been totally brainwashed have never been exposed to amy goodman or noam chomsky or howard zinn or any of kind of radical independent voice all i've heard you know since they've been growing up is you know limbaugh and glenn beck and you know that kind of thing the dribble on the radio and the pullout of iran t v you know pick your poison cyanide or you know arsenic deadly in both instances now in obama's speech in iraq where you know he was celebrating the fact that we are gradually withdrawing u s military forces there of course he did mention our interests in the region which are of never articulated but it's i think it's about oil and natural gas but that's a wild guess you know i'm i'm a conspiracy theorist and i believe in u f o s and area fifty one iran as well and the little green people walking around can't be oil that would motivate our great leaders to engage in military aggression and don't call it aggression it's always defense you know we were always defending ourselves how is insead he was a decorated bomber in the world war bombardier in world war two after he came out of the war at that time it was called the war department it's very honest that's what they did was the department of war they conducted wars then in one nine hundred forty seven it was renamed as the department of defense and that alerted xin to the fact that you know we are now going to enter it wasn't called that then but the age of war well where language becomes a manipulated and becomes the opposite of what it really means so war is peace ignorance is knowledge peace what is the other one ignorance is knowledge war is peace you know there's a third component to the orwell trilogy war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength that's from one nine hundred eighty four as well so obama is telling you no in his very serious stentorian tones tones you know it's great to have a president you know i'm a former english as a second language teacher i appreciate someone that can complete a sentence that has that has verbs that has pronouns that has subjects and this is not a small thing you know after eight years of the previous mangling of this language we call english so he's you know enormously articulate gifted charismatic and a tremendous public speaker he told us the american people throughout our history america has been willing to bear the burden of promoting liberty and human dignity overseas so i'm wondering you know as he said that did he know about the destruction of democracy in guatemala overthrowing the arbenz government or the destruction of democracy in iran overthrowing the democratically elected government of mohammad  or the destruction of democracy and you know chilling overthrowing the end they or the various the coup in brazil which destroyed the democracy there introduced a brutal military dictatorship  i wonder if obama who apparently went to harvard and columbia you know in the ivy league education is aware of the history of the united states and it's particularly the recent history since the end of world war two when the u s becomes the global robo cop becomes the enforcer you know chomsky likes to tell people you know the best way to understand u s foreign policy is to use the mafia model so what do you mean by what does he mean by that and i'm going to paraphrase and add some of my own little wrinkles here to chomsky's description of this well you have the the head of the mop the godfather who sits in washington d c and around the world you have various capos local cops on the beat who pay homage to the godfather you know when he comes into the room kind of  genuflect kiss his hand you know pass him a white envelope you know that he discreetly puts in his pocket which is you know full of cash and do you know it blesses them and says you know you know keep up the good work then you have  some stirrings in among in the hinterlands of these some of these countries younger capos who feel you know the godfather's lost his edge you know he's kind of getting bloated and you know he doesn't see so well and he's he's isolated himself he only gets advice from a few of his you know local captains and he's from his family you know let me set up my own little operation here why not i got you know i know people in jersey i'm from brooklyn you know we can get some you know prostitution numbers you know all kinds of rackets going to trafficking you know gambling heroin why not cocaine from colombia you know let's let's let's get going here so the godfather at this point has one of two options he can ignore what's going on this challenge to his authority which would completely undermine his ability to rule because if that koppel is able to be successful then the other around the world will get wote did you just see what happened in jersey those guys are getting away with it the godfather has lost his power you know he's lost his mojo and so  any attempt you know i'm using this as a metaphor for independent nationalism any attempt to break out of the u s orbit to come out from us had germany or out from under the thumb has to be brutally crushed that starts you know right away and right at the end of of world war two you had you know as i mentioned the destruction of democracy and in several countries and the undermining of independent arab nationalism nasser was immediately attacked and undermined and eventually destroyed sukarno was attacked nehru and india were seen as a great threat to the united states because they were being forced into by either the soviets or the united states they wanted to create a third way completely undermined by the united states and it was you know it even then the  was you know our way or the highway you're either with us or you're against us there's no middle road so india was was you know huge enemy of the united states to the point hard to believe that now to the point where the united states was supporting the genocide of bengalis in east pakistan and sending the fleet to defend the pakistani military junta which was in opposition to what india was trying to do in creating a bangladesh an independent bengali state you know all of this is forgotten in fact even to say is forgotten is not i don't think accurate i don't think it was ever know for something to be forgotten it has to be somewhere in the you know in the atmosphere it must be in the aquifer we must be drinking from it in many of these instances the information is simply not known because of the nature of he said this on numerous occasions as long as i am president we will maintain the finest fighting force the world has ever known now ten years ten years after  the invasion coming invasion of afghanistan the beginning of the war on terror we have to ask ourselves how has the country changed what does it look like compared to what it looked like provide gainful employment with meaningful live and a living wage for people who want to work can we have the finest arts programs in in the history of the world these are these and these are things i think we should strong for as a community and as a country but they're totally marginalized because of the power and the weight of the military industrial complex which pushes around these  senators and representatives to get whatever basically they want in terms of new new military contracts more and more you know submarines and aircraft carriers you know a nice thing you see you go down to everett you'll see an aircraft carrier united states has twelve aircraft carrier groups twelth not one of the country has one aircraft carrier group so you see an aircraft carrier is not just the aircraft carrier it's the destroyers the cruises the minesweepers the helicopters the jet planes all the whole kit and caboodle that score it's an aircraft carrier into out to sea so you see the seven seas now have become virtual american lakes where these these ships carry out missions as they're called and then obama talked about you know better days lie ahead even though the nation may be traveling i mean this is right out  of a potboiler speech right out of reagan you know morning in america things are going to get better over you know we're always on the rise don't worry you know we'll be just fine why because we are unique we are singular this is again by point bipartisan claptrap that you hear from the democrats and the republicans it was articulated in the mid one nine hundred ninety s by madeline albright who called the united states the indispensable  nation and she was asked what do you mean by that we can see farther into the future well if they could have then maybe they could have seen nine eleven maybe they could have seen the economic collapse maybe they could have seen the fact that there were no weapons in iraq  maybe they could have seen the fact that you know al qaeda has been largely marginalized that the taliban in afghanistan were very weak that afghanistan did not have to be invaded in order to pursue the criminal criminal activities of basically retail terrorists that is they conduct retail terrorism what do i mean by that individuals in small groups who organize themselves and carry out despicable  acts this is not an endorsement for retail terrorism it's a terrible thing but in terms of scale retail terrorism is dwarfed by what by state terrorism which is wholesale the united states has the greatest military power as obama blows in the history of the world it is able to inflict tremendous violence on other people's witness what's going on in the endless bombing campaigns in pakistan which is i thought making that already parlous country even more parlous you know as it is on this long march toward disintegration as  describes it in that particular book and you know and all along so you have this the focus of course is entirely on retail terrorism there is no focus on wholesale terrorism they are the evil doers these small gangs who and here i mean the role of propaganda is is so critical in generating support for these which i would contend not just immoral but criminal activities  carried out in our name how is it done well gerbils had an idea it would not be impossible to prove with significant significance sufficient repetition and to psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle they are mere words and words can be molded into all they clothes ideas in disguise so with constant repetition you can convince people that a circle is a square and and a square is a circle hitler said basically the same thing with constant repetition we can convince people that having this how and hell is heaven these are just terms that can be manipulated and molded and of course when you have a compliant media working basically twenty four seven acting as an echo chamber being lap dogs with laptops and basically stenographers i mean they're not doing journalism this is not journalism journalism is to use a what once was a noble profession was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable that is now totally reversed journalism as it is practiced today is comforting the comfortable afflicting the afflicted or well again circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip but the really well trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no so it's not like you know gates is calling up someone at the new york times and says you know do this or do that it's no one's going to call up the seattle post intelligencer or whatever you know or the the times has the intelligence lost its logo it's gone ok so the oregonian or whatever paper the oakland tribune it's not as crude as that they don't have to the fact that that journalist is there or that editor is sitting in new york or washington they know the parameters they know you know what we say goes as chomsky paraphrases george bush the first they know what they can say and what they can't say no one needs to pressure them into following the party line so they jump like the circus dog without a whip because they're really well trained this is a great book incidentally called propaganda and the public mind  last night and there was a run on all the books i've just got a couple of copies of it with saeed and targeting iran one copy of tariq ali and howard zinn i hope you are able to pick those up at the end of my talk and perhaps we can go into some q and a in just a moment with a little bit more about propaganda one of the fathers of the american public relations industry is edward  he was a member of the creel commission also known as the committee on public information which created by woodrow wilson in world war one to manipulate the american public to support the in the u one nine hundred seventeen this is going to come as a shock to you new york banks lend tons of money to the french and to the british and in one nine hundred seventeen it looked like the british and french were going to lose to the germans and what did that mean those banks were never going to collect their loans now i know it's hard to believe but this was an example of washington intervening on the behalf of actually took from call propaganda this came out in one thousand nine hundred twenty eight this was at a time with the term propaganda still had some cash it wasn't as pejorative as it is now particularly after what the nazis did in terms of propaganda but before that it was a legitimate term you propagated information it was about disseminating information in fact it starts from the catholic church in the fifteenth sixteen century when they sent the pope was worried about inroads from heretical sex like you know the protestants and others and so he was wanted to make sure that the one true faith would not lose any of its followers and he sent out missions around europe and the rest of the world to propagate the think that's what they were called and so it was a propaganda effort it bernies wrote this in one thousand nine hundred eight the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country and invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country through the constant conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses and this is done through constant repetition and indoctrination so you have not just the military industrial complex but i would add to that a military industrial media educational complex because our colleges and universities are not providing our students with tools fork critical thinking to dish deconstructing first of all to identify propaganda and ten and then to deconstruct it so you have a full scale failure of a system that has produced what we are facing today basically a civilization in co op collapse spline it in huge distress from  in copenhagen and has in the other recent conference in cancun which where nothing happened in terms of climate change except to give corporations the right to pollute provided they provide a little tax so apparently you know they can carry on business as usual if a small fee is paid you know general smedley butler is a real american hero i wish we knew more about him and would be the subject of documentary films and novels and books and newspaper articles the only american soldier to win the medal of honor twice marine corps commandant he saw imperialism up front he was and apparatchik he was one of the soldiers of the empire so this is what he said after he left the marine corps i helped make mexico safe american oil interests i helped make haiti in cuba a decent place for the national city bank boys to make money i helped in the raping a half a dozen central american republics for the benefit of wall street the record of racketeering is long i help your refine nicaragua for the international banking house of brown brothers i brought light to the dominican republic for american sugar interests in china i helped see to it that standard oil went it way on molested during those years i had as the boys in the backroom would say a swell racket i was rewarded with honors medals and promotions looking back on it i feel i could have given al capone a few lessons the best he could do was operate in a few dishes in chicago i was operating across the globe smedley butler and he was a stoolie then for some of the corporations have been renamed you know then they were called utah copper international knicker nickel bethlehem steel u s steel dupont utah copper central leather company and a condor the so these are the most some of those now have been transformed into other multinationals but the beat goes on ah ok my dear friend and comrade howard zinn comes to  rescue he says our objective should be to build paced painstakingly patiently but energetic energetically a movement when it reaches a certain critical mass would shake whoever's in the white house in congress into changing national politics policy on matters of war and social justice howard always used to say it doesn't matter who's in the white house who's outside the white house is what counts and we saw the story of democracy recently in in madison wisconsin to a lesser extent in michigan and some other places it's important that that is sustained that a spirit of rebellion returns to energize our democracy which is fast becoming more and more you know i don't like to use the term fascism because it just conjures up some you know images i think that are that are not accurate you know people acting on behalf of the interests of the corporations and not of of the people of this country corporatism benito mussolini called it corporatism the gentleman is just accurately said to be hopeful in bad times howard's and says is not just foolishly romantic it is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion sacrifice courage and kindness when we choose to emphasize in this complex what we choose to emphasize in this history will determine our lives if we only see the worst it destroys our capacity to do something if we remember those times in places and there are so xin says where people have behaved magnificently this gives us the energy to act and the least the possibility of sending this spending top of a world in a different direction and if we do act in however small a way we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future the future is an infinite succession of presence and to live now as we think human being should live in defiance of all that is bad around us is itself a marvelous victory and as our inductee roy said at the world social forum another another world is possible if i listen closely i can hear her coming thank you