MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS ESTABLISHMENT TOOL

The establishment controlled Mainstream Media rules America with raving right wing partisans, sex scandals, Sarah Palin and a steady dose of Obama Kool-Aid while the real news can only be accessed through the Internet : Allen L Roland

There is a reason I do not have a television set and seldom read the Mainstream Media. The reason is I’m a truth seeker and truth teller and I, and million of Americans, now realize that we cannot find the truth in the establishment controlled mainstream media ~ and that President Obama answers to Wall Street and the mainstream establishment.

Here’s a perfect example ~ Here is a short synopsis of 5 WikiLeaks 2011 world wide news revelations that the American mainstream media is virtually ignoring, courtesy of AlterNet’s Rania Khalek; "5 WikiLeaks Hits of 2011 That Are Turning the World on Its Head -- And That the Media Are Ignoring “

Let's also take Libya where The Pentagon and its NATO partners are engaged in one of the most obvious and intensive propaganda ploys in their military operations since the days leading up to the "Coalition of the Willing" attack on Iraq.

As Wayne Madsen reports on June 8^th ~ “ There has been no mention by the Western media, in their zeal to promote the Pentagon and NATO line, that some Libyan rebels acceded to the government's offer of an amnesty if the rebels gave up their weapons. After rebels handed over their weapons in Misrata and in the western mountains, NATO increased its bombings of the two regions…Neither is there mention of the disposal of the bodies of the victims of rebel violence: the mass burning of bodies of victims to erase any trace of crimes against humanity committed by the U.S.- and NATO-backed rebel forces…As we have seen in Libya, and before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank,Darfur, Rwanda, Somalia, and Yemen~modern-day corporate journalists are mere stenographers for their corporate masters who, in turn, control the puppet strings for the marionettes in Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome and Berlin.” See article ~

http://www.mathaba.net/news/libya

Meanwhile, The financial cost of the U.S. campaign in Libya is set to exceed $750 million, according to a leaked Department of Defense Memo. The 'eyes-only' DoD dossier said the U.S. had already spent $664 million in Libya by mid-May - a running cost of $60 million a month since the bombing began in March. At the current rate of spending, the U.S. will have to shell out at least an extra $274 million till the end of the current 90 day no fly zone extension period - bringing total expenditure to a minimum of $938 million.

And why is all of this information available to the world and American public, if they choose to read it?

Because, as Glenn Greenwald ( Salon ) writes ~ “ The reason ~ the only reason ~ we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. Virtually the entirety of the Post article -- like most significant revelations over the last 12 months,especially in the Middle East and North Africa~ are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures.”

The only antidote for the shameless propaganda and hypocrisy of the Mainstream Press is transparency and the truth ~ which the Obama administration and the establishment continually avoid ~ because Americans don’t demand it or perhaps don't want to hear.

As such, the only Presidential candidate who is a veteran and opposes not only our illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as our now illegal participation in regime change in Libya is Ron Paul. The mainstream press is scared to death of a Ron Paul presidency which is why they ignore him ~ but the American public is increasingly responding to his anti-establishment message.

True conservatives, Independents and even progressives, who are no longer drinking the Obama Kool-Aid ~ such as myself and Justin Raimondo ~ see Ron Paul in a far different light during these turbulent times when truth and transparency are at a premium.

Here’s Raimondo’s take on Ron Paul on June 9^th ~ “As libertarianism becomes more visible, politically, and gains ground in the GOP, the enemies of freedom are poised – on both the right and the left – for the attack. Libertarians have never had to deal with this problem before, in the main because their movement was considered marginal, if it was considered at all. Today, however, the situation is quite different: a wave of “anti-government” (i.e. pro-freedom) sentiment is sweeping the country, and the realization that libertarians were the original tea-partiers – coupled with the electoral success of that populist upsurge – has the Establishment in a panic. What we’re seeing is a two-pronged, left-right attack on libertarians, with the initial forays in the foreign policy realm.

The main thrust of the attack is naturally directed at the leader of the libertarian movement, the man who has done the most to make libertarianism a significant political force in the modern world, and that man is Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Ron has single-handedly raised the profile of the movement way beyond what anyone imagined only a few years ago. A lot of this has to do with Ron’s prescient warnings about the state of the economy, and the bursting of the real estate bubble, which have given him the kind of authority he never enjoyed in all the years spent crying in the wilderness.

However, Ron’s prescience isn’t limited to economics: unlike most conservatives, Ron was clear from the very beginning that our foreign policy of global intervention would blow back in our faces some day, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks confirmed his view in a way that was not, at first, readily apparent. Yet Ron kept making this point, even in the wake of the war hysteria that followed the attacks, and ten years anon – as a war-weary and dead broke America staggers and seems about to fall – his views are seen as prophetic rather than marginal....” See complete article ~

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/06/07/ron-paul-vs-the-gop-establishment/

The mainstream media is on the verge of irrelevance for the truth has revealed that it is mainly a tool of the establishment. The more we seek the truth, the more this discrepancy will become obvious ~ as well as those who misuse it. Wikileaks, as such, is providing tough independent media for those who actively seek truth and transparency ~ establishment and main stream media be damned.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/mainstream-media-is-establishment-tool.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

ARAB SPRING REVEALS AMERICA'S MORAL AND ECONOMIC FALL

The Arab spring uprising is rapidly revealing the chinks in America’s military colonialism and financial terrorism as well as the moral and economic cost of our imperialistic misadventures in the Middle East: Allen L Roland

For decades, the United States has provided military aid, facilitated the sale of weaponry, and transferred vast quantities of arms to a host of Middle Eastern despots in order to protect our oil and financial interests. Arming Arab autocrats, however, isn't only the work of presidents past. A Tom Dispatch analysis of Pentagon documents finds that the Obama administration has sought to send billions of dollars in weapons systems ~ from advanced helicopters to fighter jets ~ to the very regimes that have beaten, jailed, and killed pro-democracy demonstrators, journalists, and reform activists throughout the Arab Spring.

The Western Old World Order armor of control, manipulation and military oppression is now being clearly seen by the world who watches American made military aircraft, tanks and armament being used by Arab despots to quell these pro-democracy demonstrators, journalists and reform activists throughout the Arab world. So the Arab spring rebellions are revealing the true source of America’s moral and economic fall ~ an out of control Military Industrial complex fueled by greed and controlled by a Wall Street corpocracy ~ which President Obama obviously answers to.

Three ongoing military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are costing the U.S. a fortune and give no comfort to the nearly 14 million unemployed Americans. With food stamps and a minimum wage the only hope for many, a career at McDonald's has now become very appealing. 3 minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnUllnfebZ8

But what the world doesn’t see is the financial terrorism being actively practiced in the Middle East and North Africa ~ particularly in Libya. Max Keiser (RT) explains the term 'Financial Terrorism' where International Banks like Goldman Sachs have been looting Libyans money and were able to siphon billions of dollars from that country because they excel in financially raping countries by cheating and stealing through monopoly, deceit and lies.

Six minute must see Video: Max Keiser’s explains financial terrorism and leaves a message for the world "Revolt now or be a debt slave" for life. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28262.htm

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious ~ makes you so sick at heart ~ that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." Mario Savio / Berkeley / December 2, 1964

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/arab-spring-reveals-americas-moral-and.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

VOYAGER 1 AT EDGE OF DEEP SPACE WITH ITS MESSAGE

Each Voyager spacecraft carries a phonograph record--a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. . Image: NASA JP

Thirty-three years into its voyage into deep space the space-hardened craft of Voyager 1 nears a milestone in its journey out of the solar system. But within this small craft is a gold plated copper record disc with 115 images and natural sounds of nature as well as songs of celebration and greetings from a small pale dot in the vast black void of our solar system called Earth: Allen L Roland

Professor Edward Stone, was asked in 1972 to work part-time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as chief scientist for a new space mission, one that would probe the limits of the solar system and eventually enter interstellar space ~ and now, 33 years after the launch of Voyager 1 and 2 , he says the goal is in sight.

Harvey Leifert writes in Scientific America of this historic event ~ "Voyager 1 is the most remote human-made object," Stone says. "It's now 115 astronomical units from Earth," that is, 115 times farther than Earth is from the sun, or "a bit more than 10 billion miles [16 billion kilometers]." Voyager 2 has traveled somewhat slower and in a different direction and is now around 14 billion kilometers from Earth.

Both Voyagers are still within a "bubble" created by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles radiating outward from the sun at 1.6 million to 3.2 million kilometers per hour. This bubble, or heliosphere, exists, says Stone, because a magnetic field from outer space, likely resulting from the explosion of supernovae five million to 10 million years ago, is pushing back against the solar wind.

In the past six months, Voyager 1 has signaled that the radial speed of the solar wind is zero, meaning that the spacecraft is approaching the final boundary of the solar system, the heliopause. Stone and his colleagues had not expected Voyager to reach this point for several more years, meaning that the boundary lies closer to the sun than they had thought.

It may take a year or more of data analysis to confirm that Voyager 1 has actually crossed the heliopause, which is a flexible boundary, Stone says. There probably will not be a eureka moment when it happens. We will continue to receive data from the Voyagers until around 2020 or 2025, Stone says, well after they have left the solar system.

Leaving the solar system, he says, will be "a milestone in human activity." Both Voyagers will likely outlive Earth, he notes. When, billions of years from now, the sun swells into a red giant, the Voyagers, albeit with their radioactive generators long exhausted and instruments frozen, will continue to wend their lonely ways through interstellar space and remain on course for the unknown, bearing a record disk and images of 20th-century Earth, music from many of its cultures, and greetings in dozens of its languages. They may be the only evidence the human race ever existed." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cosmos-incognita-voyager&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20101221

The contents of that copper record disc were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by the late Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in 55 languages, along with printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.

So now imagine, if you will, at some point of distant time ~ an Intergalactic spaceship retrieving a seemingly lost frozen space vehicle and cautiously examining its contents and coming across this strange gold-plated copper disc. Of course, they may not be able to fully decipher the languages but the music most certainly would connect to them. And here is a song, composed by Scott Deturk and sung by myself, that I suggest just might give them a heart felt glimpse of our mother earth and its inhabitants. Click on and enjoy ~

You are My Mother, Earth

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/voyager-1-at-edge-of-deep-space-with.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

RON PAUL / A TRUE CHOICE FOR 2012

Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who will bring the troops home, the only candidate who has the guts to speak his truth and the only candidate who stands up to the lobbyists, corporations and the Federal Reserve ~ He’s my guy for president: Allen L Roland

Truth seeker and truth speaker Ron Paul, the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve demanded yesterday that the Fed fully disclose details of billions ~ perhaps trillions ~ in secret emergency loans it made to almost every major bank in the U.S. and overseas during the financial crisis or face a congressional subpoena for the information.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, said he wants to know “how much, when, where and why” from Fed officials when they testify about the loans at a subcommittee hearing today.

It’s finally Ron Paul’s turn ~ the majority of Americans are fed up with politics as usual, Obama’s broken promises and a government that answers to Wall Street and the corporate elite at the expense of Main Street and a rapidly vanishing middle class.

Political apathy reigns and myself and millions of Americans long for a genuine political truth teller who will not only bring our troops home from our illegal occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan but will take on the lobbyists, corporations and above all the consistently wrong and secretive Federal reserve. I am convinced that person is Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul.

To me the deciding factor is not party affiliation, since both parties have sold out to corporate interests ~ the deciding factor is integrity and Ron Paul stands tall in that category against all comers ~ especially Barack Obama.

Thanks to the magic of this ten minute must see video tape we can see what the economic geniuses at the Fed and CNBC were saying about the future back in 2005. It would be a comedy if it weren't for all the people who believed them and drank the Kool aid, including Obama, but there were a few who did not and were absolutely right. One of them was Peter Schiff ( President Euro Pacific Capital ) who correctly warned of the debt bubble and coming recession and the other was Congressman Ron Paul who directly took on Wall Street stooge and Fed chief Ben Bernanke and asked the tough questions ~ which he is still doing.

Video:

http://www.realecontv.com/page/1817.html

As Walter Block effectively explains in The Maroon ~ “If Ron Paul can somehow win the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, he will have an excellent chance of beating President Barack Obama in November 2012. He will, of course, face great obstacles in the Republican primaries, but if he can overcome them, it ought to be all downhill after that.

Why will the congressman from Texas have a good shot at beating a sitting president during wartime?

Paul can out-left Obama on foreign policy and personal liberties, thus making gigantic inroads on the latter's progressive base while at the same time maintaining his right-wing credentials on economics.” See article ~

http://www.loyolamaroon.com/in-my-opinion-ron-paul-can-triumph-in-2012-1.2560304

Don’t make the mistake of taking Ron Paul lightly. As my progressive friend Richard Scheck correctly says ~ “Ron Paul represents the best hope for those who considers themselves on the left. He is anti-war, anti WTO, anti-Wall Street while being pro-growth and pro-civil liberties.”

In case anyone needs a reminder of what an epic train wreck Obama has beenfor the nation, here' a short video that sums it all up. Obviously, it was made by a Ron Paul supporter but it effectively cuts to the chase.

2 minute Video: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1110.html

The Progressives could well have their champion in Ron Paul and rise from the grave where Obama buried them, with his false promises, over the past three years. I for one am fed up with Obama’s imperial presidency!

Here’s a 9 minute CNBC May 31^st interview with Ron Paul where he answers some very intelligent questions and effectively explains why he should be president and that his ideas are really mainstream. Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5InQozHv10

Join the Revolution and take back our Republic

http://voteronpaul.com/newsDetail.php?Ron-Paul-can-triumph-in-2012-3332

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ron-paul-true-choice-for-2012.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

QUOTES & QUESTIONS ON MEMORIAL DAY 2011

Could it be that we have lost the true cost of war as we morn its dead ~ could it be that flowers and flags can never justify the inhumanity of war ~ could it be that all wars are lost because there are no true winners and lastly, why are we not questioning H.R. 1540 ~The Forever War Act of 2012 as Ron Paul most certainly is: Allen L Roland

Here are some thought provoking quotes and thoughts to mull over on memorial Day 2011 and then a must see 5 minute video of Ron Paul speaking on the House floor about the death of the Republic as Defense Authorization Act H.R. 1540, aka The Forever War Act of 2012, was recently overwhelmingly approved. The law authorizes the United States to use military force anywhere it says there are terrorists, including within the borders of our own country. It represents the largest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.

The founders of our Republic were seriously opposed to handing this much power over to the executive branch, fearing tyranny. If enacted into law, this provision will make Obama a dictator who can wage war anywhere and without the consent of the American people and it’s duly elected Congress ~ and many in the past have warned of the danger of an out of control war making machine.

President Eisenhower most certainly warned us all about the out of control military/industrial complex but here is a 21^st century updated thought provoking warning by Joe Rogan that War is a Racket ~ with X rated language, so be so warned. Nine minute video ~ http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1119.html

And of course, CNN loves war! The whole channel is designed to make war seem dramatic and inevitable, because it makes money ~ as seen in this 5 minute video on its fake CNN Gulf War reporting http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1098.html

When people say "support the troops" but aren't fighting to bring them home and keep the criminals who run these wars in check, I wonder how serious they are about helping anybody. Others have expressed the same doubts about war ~

“War destroys. Peace creates. War is decay and death. Peace is growth and life, sunlight and air. War kills men. Peace maintains them. Artillery does not reason, it asserts.. A bayonet has point enough, but no logic. When the sword is drawn, reason remains in the scabbard.” ~ Col. Robert Ingersoll

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace - more about killing than we do about living." ~ WWII General Omar Bradley

"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." ~ WWII Gen. George Patton

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers"-- Jose Narosky

"It can never be lawful for a righteous man to go to war, since his warfare is in righteousness itself; nor to accuse anyone of a capital charge, since it makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word or by sword, since it is the act of putting to death which is prohibited. It is always unlawful to put a man to death." ~ Lacantius

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore (individual citizens) have the duty to (refuse to obey) domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." ~ Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

“We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.” ~ Blaise Pascal (17^th century mathematician and philosopher whose father lost his entire savings because of France’s national bankruptcy caused by the debt incurred during the religious Thirty Years War)

“If you had seen one day of war, you would pray to God that you would never see another.” ~ The Duke of Wellington (celebrated for being the victorious British general at the Battle of Waterloo, June 1815)

“I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is Hell.”~ Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who orchestrated the infamous scorched earth policy that terrorized the Confederacy in his “March to the Sea” in 1864.

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder and it is the working class who fights all the battles, the working class who makes the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely sheds their blood and furnishes their corpses, and it is they who have never yet had a voice - in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class (the “plutocrats”) that invariably does both. They alone declare war. They are continually talking about patriotic duty. It is not their patriotic duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." Eugene Debs, antiwar activist, union organizer and Socialist candidate for president who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking out against WWI. He received a million votes as a 1920 write-in candidate for US president while he was in jail!

"Military power is as corrupting to the man who possesses it as it is pitiless to its victims. Violence is just as devastating to the soul of the perpetrator as it is to the body and souls of those who are victims of it" -- American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee

"All through history it has been the nations that have given the most to generals and the least to the people that have been the first to fall." ~ Harry Truman

"All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice." ~ George Orwell 1984

Well, here is a larger evil which is evidently escaping the notice of many Americans on memorial Day ~ but not Congressman Ron Paul standing alone on the House floor who calls The Defense Authorization Act or H.R. 1540 (aka The Forever War Act of 2011) ~ which was overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives on May 26^th by a vote of 322 to 96 ~ “the Last nail in the coffin of our Republic“… but is anyone really listening? Five minute video.

http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-house-floor-speech-republic-almost-completely-dead/

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” – Abraham Lincoln

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/quotes-questions-on-memorial-day-2011.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

MEMORIAL DAY 2011 / WAR IS STILL AN OLD RECYCLED LIE

Three dead Americans in Afghanistan ~ Why?

War is a waste so why do we celebrate it with parades, flags and glorious war stories when, in reality, they are fought by our youth who are but pawns in the hands of old men ~ seduced by power and greed ~ who are more than willing to waste our most precious resource on illegal wars, occupations and the on going maintenance of an out of control military/ industrial complex : Allen L Roland

The aspect of control and domination is a precipitating factor in all wars, and it is also the principle aspect of ego consciousness ~ which is directly contradictory to our innate propensity to unite and cooperate, which are the principle aspects of soul consciousness and the Unified Field .

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Dwight D. Eisenhower

On this Memorial Day 2011, America is still enmeshed in a costly and illegal war and occupation of Iraq, rapidly increasing its military presence in illegally occupied Afghanistan and preparing for the possibility of war with Iran. Humanity is still hanging from that cross of iron and paying a heavy price for this ongoing folly.

The American War Wagon has not slowed down in 2011 but is accelerating ~ with little if any deep reflection on the true human and moral cost of this insanity.

On this Memorial Day 2011, much of the media will roll over backwards to glorify war and all the soldiers slaughtered in wars. Tributes to the dead are easy; the dead don't talk back and if they did they would most certainly say ~ why?

To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why ?: W. H. Auden: "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier"

Kristina M. Gronquist calls it the OLD LIE ~ Dulce et decorum est - Pro patria mori ( To die for one’s country is sweet and becoming )

It's from the poem “Dulce et decorum est” by the English poet Wilfred Owen, 1893 -1918, killed at the front a few days before the Armistice and nothing could be further from the truth.

Here's an excerpt from Gronquist's timeless article written on Memorial Day 2005 ~ " The media will continue, this weekend, to suppress the truth, which is that the war in Iraq is a massive foreign policy failure; Iraq is a failed state, an incredibly chaotic unstable mess where tens of thousands of Iraqis have died needlessly. Unworried Americans will say we can’t judge Iraq yet, we have to “wait and see,” because down the road, if oil rich Iraq becomes a (Western-style) democracy “it will all be worth it”. These are such easy words to utter, from the armchair experts on democracy for Muslims, so smug with remote controls in-hand. Yes, tell the loved ones of one million dead Iraqis that someday the deaths of their family members will all be worth it, as your own children scurry about safe and warm...
On Memorial Day we will blithely ignore the massive protest and hatred that our polices, occupations, torture and wrongful imprisonment have inspired in the Muslim and Arab world. Come to think of it, many Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans aren’t enthralled with our foreign policies either. But an empire can ignore the common sense of the global masses of people who oppose war, and we can easily choose not to try to understand root causes of anti-American sentiment. C’mon ­- America, it’s Memorial Day, tune that negative reality out and turn on your television for yet another glorious war hero story." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8970.htm

We must now face the hard cold reality that War is an insurmountable human waste and an old recycled lie ~ not a cause for glorification and celebration ~ and then demand action from our political leaders to end this waste by no longer funding our foreign wars and occupations.

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”-- John F. Kennedy

“The most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children ~ not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women ~ not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”- John F. Kennedy, American University commencement address, Washington, 10 June 1963. (Four months later Kennedy was assassinated.)

Mohandas Gandhi said it best ~ What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction of war is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty and democracy?

As such, the greatest threat to world peace right now is the war mongers, such as the United States. Hermann Hesse put it bluntly ~ "The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans”

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/memorial-day-2011-war-is-still-old.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net