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Truth Through a Soda Straw
John Grant
The truth about American politics is this: disguised by the theatrics of squabbling Democrats and Republicans, Washington governs according to limits prescribed by a fixed and narrow consensus. The two main parties collaborate in preserving that consensus. Doing so requires declaring out-of-bounds anything even remotely resembling a fundamental critique of how power gets exercised or wealth distributed.
-Andrew Bacevich
Barack Obama has two serious leak problems.
One is a real leak -- of oil from the bowels of the Earth into the Gulf of Mexico and onto the shores of the Gulf States. The other is a metaphoric leak -- of information from the vast reservoir of secrecy our military and its wars have become.
Dishonesty, the notion of “too big to fail” and Bacevich’s consensus are at the core of both leak problems.
In the case of British Petroleum and the Deepwater Horizon explosion, we know how a back-slapping, good ol’ boy network has led to a lack of oversight and regulation. As we learned from the financial disaster, the arrogant single-focus drive for profit leads to corners being cut and, in the case of BP, the absence of any kind of Plan B to deal with great gobs of uncontrollable orange goo gushing from a hole over a mile beneath the sea’s surface.
The secrecy leak is different. In this case, President Obama is trying to stop leaks that tap into the too-big-to-fail corruption and dishonesty within a huge enterprise directly under his control: The Pentagon.
The United States Military is the largest self-contained, self-aggrandizing enterprise in the world. As militaries everywhere tend to do, it protects itself as an institution and uses its power to co-opt whatever elements of the culture it feels it needs or can benefit from.
Central America is the perfect small-scale model. In Guatemala, the military is an institution that always trumps elected civilian leadership. In El Salvador, military officers are deeply involved in banks and business ventures. In Honduras, the general who mounted the 2009 coup has been appointed to run the lucrative Hondutel phone system. In fact, the much-ballyhooed one-term limit for presidents in Honduras exists precisely to limit a civilian politician’s power vis-à-vis the more stable military institution.
Only naiveté or delusional patriotism explains why Americans do not realize this dynamic also exists here in the US...
For the rest of this story by ThisCantBeHappening war-and-peace correspondent JOHN GRANT, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net. ThisCantBeHappening is a new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper.
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There is something wrong with this article. Our president does not have a leak problem in the Gulf; instead, the "People" have a leak problem. And the problem is not the leak it self, it goes much deeper. Or one could say that this is much more simple than all these writers tell us, as though they had no intention to explain this to us and instead just wish to print something that puts them on the page.
Ideologies is what I am talking about. Or should I say, it is the way us humans have been misbehaving. It is about responsibility. Doing the right thing, I suggest you read up on this, and the long article I provided is a very famous paper written by a guy who knew ideologies all to well. He wrote it in a hurry, but spend many hours I am sure trying to articulate this strange animal. It really shows how he had a grasp on this easy topic, by how he uses real simple examples of how "going along to get along" is causing most our big problems.
I once meet these kids who were of native American heritage. I could not help but notice that these young people really seemed to be respectful of others, and I said they must of had a wonderful teacher. And I was so wanting to know this wisdom, and was ready in all my heart to listen to their advice. As though I would need to sit down to hear this all, it must of been a very through lesson taught over many years. So I asked them what all they were taught. They laughed, and said it was there mother. I was curious as to why they thought this was funny. They replied and said that there mother taught them "one thing", and she kept saying this all the time. They said that if you did this one thing, then all other falls into place. It is "responsibility" that was taught.
So I use this lesson now, and apply it to this article written now. There would not be a leak if the employes, my friends, my neighbors; if they would have only been responsible while at their work. If they could have only told us and their boss that what being done for the name of money is wrong. And if their friends like me and you, if only we had been responsible; when we became aware of the problem unfolding. And the wikileaks leak is actually a good kind of leak. It shows us that people can have courage to say the truth even if it hurts. That a message needs to come out of this, and it is this. That when in the military, you should put "truth" above all else. And if you feel you are doing wrong, then you must stop and tell the world. That you just can't "go along" because others want this of you. And if you think the penalties are great for telling the truth; well, the results of these collective inactions is far worse. An example, would be the Gulf Oil Disaster. It is no spill. It is the biggest sign today, showing that the people on this planet are cowards, and need to change their ways. Or else...
Please read the following article, it will change your life; mine too.
Václav Havel: The Power of the Powerless
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html...