The iconography of America is shorthand for many global fears: the Bush administration but the focus
 http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/56885.html

This is the war on terror, the war of economic exploitation – WTO, and the war against Islam to deny them freedom or the oil resources they posses. For the ruling class these wars are necessary because they have lied to their own people on the nature of economics, oil dependency and the consequences of unequal and rapid cultural change brought on by Globalization and technology. – AND the present is just the beginning of the battles that sweep the planet.



A Super Power Target:

Anti-Americanism : The Greatest Force in History

A Collaboration of

The Committee to Liberate Kidnapped Colombian Guerrillas Held in US Prisons

And the Guantanamo Hunger Strike Against US Terrorism

We the EXTARDITABLES and THE ILLEGAL DETAINEES want everyone to understand how deep and long held is the evil called the USA. And we want everyone to feel stronger because everyday in every way millions of people come to see the power behind this evil – the US Government and the Oligarchy of World Capital.


A great benefit to the US with the end of the Cold War (WWIII) was the decline in anti-US propaganda and documentaries (mostly Soviet). Apparently the now terminal condition of mass absentia and the erosion of historical memory enable the US to lie, torture, incarcerate and ignore or break international law at will or whim,: A Power unto itself.

When A US helicopter crashes anywhere, I celebrate. When a suicide bomber ignites, I am inspired. When GW Bush moves unilaterally with force, my heart beats with excitement. When I see a sniper rifle I want to kiss the sky. To be real in this sickened world is to be on fire!

Against the total fascism of everything associated with Yankee Imperialism and their desterate lies, I spit on the lifestyle of most US citizenry. I spit on their drugged-out, materialistic, individual-mania and their culture that has not one good aspect to it.



The US of Amnesia and The Tide of Anti-Americanism
(Go Away Gringo !) --
"Erosion and “Reversal of Historical Memory: The re-emergence of colonial wars and colonial rule in the 21st century and the growth of national liberation movements and anti-colonial resistance reflect the erosion of historical memory in the imperial countries, among Western intellectuals as well as sectors of the masses (especially in the US) and the elites.
The “erosion of historical memory” was evident in Europe between the two world wars, as Germany re-armed and prepared to conquer and colonize Europe. Germany’s pacifist, and even revolutionary, anti-military consciousness immediately following World War I lasted at most 15 years, after which the Nazis were able to launch Germany into a new frenzy of re-armament and territorial conquest. In the post-WWII period, US mass anti-war sentiment reflecting the horrors of death and disability have been of short duration: A brief 5-year period after World War II (1945-49) before launching war on the Korean peninsula (1950-53); followed by mass “anti-war” sentiment from 1953-1963; the US invasion of Indo-China and the 12-year war (1963-1975) led to the re-emergence of very extensive mass anti-war sentiment which continued for 15 years till the First Gulf War. During the 1990’s, US anti-war sentiment temporarily re-emerged just prior to the Second Gulf War (January-February 2003) and then virtually disappeared, at least from the streets. “Mass historical memory”, history teaches us, can be a temporarily powerful sentiment in imposing restraint on the militarist side of imperialist expansion, but history also demonstrates that “memory” can be eroded and overcome over time (shorter or longer) by determined imperial decision-makers and propagandists.

James Petras on Imperialist War :  http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=12606

The Dripping Fat of the US Brain Sears the World’s Sensibility

George Bush can venture abroad only with an army of guards, spies and staff. He essentially takes over part of a country wherever he goes. Since the days of America's Founding Fathers, America has regarded "the foreign world" with suspicion. Never more than now, it seems. Under George Bush, anti-Americanism has reached new heights. (Pew Research Centre).

Anti-Americanism spans the globe, it mutates according to local conditions, and it is seldom straightforward. The iconography of America is a shorthand for many global fears: the Bush administration, a Republican-dominated Congress, Hollywood Cultural Imperialism, a spendthrift nation of borrowers living off their unfair advantages in global banking and investment, a place where millions of foreign students are corrupted or disappear, the Shinning City land of economic opportunity, a big regional power, the big world power, irrationally deadly drug war policies, the memory of something once done by the United State, a set of political values that have enshrined rule by the rich in the name of a false freedom, a manipulated democracy reduced to WTO Tribunals, and economic neo-liberalism, and so on.


Some of these fears and anti-Americanism may wax or wane in importance according to time, circumstance, propaganda or wishful thinking. Contradictory views of America exist as many want to believe in the US even as they know its intrusive ways, how it uses people and countries and often supports death squads and rightwing coups. Down with America! rings from the streets of most of the world and from the movements for sovereignty from billions of poor people. And let us not forget obesity epidemics, that dripping fat and the images of a pudgy white smugness. One can spot it in Cheney's snarly smile and Condi's puffed cheeks. The divine right of American superiority resounds from its smart bombs and the billions piling up in Wal-mart, Exxon and Citi Bank.


Bush Creates Enemies Out of French Fries and an Axis of Evil

France is a country that rails against American hyper-puissance (hyper-powerdom). Most French silently or not cheer when rustic or celebrant thugs lay waste to any McDonald's and many believe the attacks on the twin towers were "an appalling deception" to justify American adventurism. France is also home to Gaullism, a form of right wing nationalism saturated with anti-Americanism. From France to Australia people go to American movies, take holidays in the United States, eat in McDonald's (rustics permitting) and shop in places that look much like American giant stores. Still in most polling more than 50 percent of the people in most countries perceive American influence as harmful. In several it is over 70 percent.(BBC World Service January2005)


Iran has had the largest radically anti-American fervor continuing strong for the longest time. Protests and sermons denounce the Great Satan and all his doings (Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-America from its roots to its technology and blasphemy). Anti-Americanism is central to the ideology of Iran's ruling Shia clerics.


The affection for America among the less-pious Iranians and among the young is a form of anti-regime defiance that might evaporate quickly if their country were attacked.

The US has a long history of deceptions burned into Persian memory: the Shah (with help from the UK Little Satan), the US Hostage Crisis, the asset seizures, blockades, shot down airliners, the oil platforms that the US attacked in the Iran-Iraq war and the murky US support for Saddam Hussein. Now Iran must cope with the complete chaos introduced into the region by the brutal invasion and a perpetual occupation right next door (Both doors: Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pakistan). America's surreal campaign to spread democracy across-the region is itself regarded as another imperial and illegal act of interference.


Infinite Fuel for the Fires of Anti-Americanism

In Palestine and the feeling among Muslims almost everywhere is that the United States is pro-Israeli Zionists, anti-Palestine and indeed anti-Islam. This is a feeling that has intensified, according to the polls, since September 11th 2001. Anti-Americanism is nowhere more acute than in the Muslim world. In Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country, anti-Americanism is weak but widespread. People are happy to curse the United States-a current rumor suggests it could have given warning of the December tsunami but chose not to. Insurgent attacks in Indonesia have been directed at Americans and their allies and so have not provoked a strong domestic revulsion.


In all Arab countries near majorities of people are clearly ready to take up arms in pursuit of al-Qaeda's jihad. Arab anti-Americanism is a younger phenomenon than its European counterpart. It shares with much of Europe the distaste for the banality and ultimate wickedness of American materialism. Except the Arabs (less than Europe) are under direct threat from the US and their US-backed Arab leaders. The newest wave of anti-Americanism became widespread in the Middle East with America's open support for Israel after the 1967 six-day war. Until then the US allies seemed the greater evil: for example the British-French-Israeli attempts to overthrow the Nasser regime in Egypt. But since 1967 America has been considered by Arabs to be incomprehensibly pro-Israeli: the source of much of the national budget for the Israeli government and its massive war machine. And the source of many many US vetoes in the UN that would have restrained and condemned Israeli occupations.


In plenty of other places anti-Americanism flourishes. In Greece it was America's backing for the rule of the colonels (1967-74) and the bludgeoning of Serbia. In Spain, it was the support of the Franco regime, first through indifference (1936 –39) and then with American military bases (1950s). Some say Spain's dislike for America pre-dates Spain's modernization. When American soldiers arrived at Torrejon and other bases in the 1950s, the Spanish left saw them as collaborators, not liberators. Most of the left in Europe is anti-American, for familiar reasons: America is materialist, imperialist, interventionist, etc. And right-wingers, too, are sometimes hostile toward the Cowboy Gringos.


Latin Americans may think they have better reasons to harbor a grudge. Mexico, for instance, lost half its territory to the United States in the war of 1846-48. In 1996 with the signing of NAFTA Mexico lost the rest of its territory, except for parts of Chiapas (Zapatistas-Internationalist-held) and Mexico City (student and radical-held). In the January BBC survey, only 11% of Mexicans had a mainly favorable view of the influence of their northern neighbor, less. even than the proportion of Argentines, who are in other respects more hostile. Cubans have resented the United States ever since 1898, when their hard and long-fought war of independence against Spain was in effect stolen from them by the Yanquis prosecuting the Spanish-American war. The United States then made some 30 military interventions in and around the Caribbean in the next 30 years, many of them under Smedley Butler, a marine corps general, who summed up his career thus:

“I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”


For most of the 19th century, Latin Americans-including their great liberator, Simon Bolivar-had drawn inspiration from the American colonists' anti-British revolt. But the war of 1898 and the interventions that followed turned most of them against the great power next door. The hostility remains, in varying degrees, though 20 years of US arranged wars have whipped many of the people into submission with the usual elite-controlled rigged democratization, emigration and trade. (Especially in Central America)


Other nations that have experienced American meddling also continue to resent it. For evidence, just go to Congo, Somalia, Egypt, either Korea or the Philippines (an American colony for half a century). Even Canada, which has never suffered hyphenated Americans (which may help it avoid anything worse from its neighbor than ignoration and disdain) is perpetually critical of the United States.


Asians seem to be more pragmatic and business like with the US. Vietnam which lost about 5 million of its people to America's military seems to harbor little hostility towards its old foe. It helps that Vietnam has not had any subsequent reason to fear direct violence from the US. And they have no US military bases. In the Philippines, America was considered far too friendly to the kleptocratic and ruthless Ferdinand Marcos. In every country with American bases, any outrage by American servicemen-the rape of a Japanese child, the running over of two South Korean girls, the severing of an Italian cable-car's wires-tends to strengthen latent hostility.


The vigor of anti-American feeling varies even among peoples who seem to have no good reason for less anti-Americanism. The Japanese defeated in war, Tokyo fire-bombed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki irradiated with atomic bombs - seem far more pro-American than South Koreans. The mere fact of being a great power ready to intervene (in, say, Kosovo) is enough to make enemies. And the US no longer knows how to buy or bully its way out this wellspring of hate. (Many hates)


Why, Anyway, Should America Care if a Bunch of Foreigners dislike it, or affect to?


As a military and economic power without rival, it should not be too worried. Yet America needs the co-operation of other governments if it is to conduct trade, combat drugs, reduce pollution and fight terrorism. Moreover, Mr. Bush is now committed to spreading "freedom" across the Middle East, indeed across the world. If foreigners, disillusioned with America, believe this is merely a hypocritical justification for getting rid of regimes he dislikes, the task may be harder.


The Shining city loses its luster. This may reflect the greater cynicism of the worldwide audience 40 years on. But the polls suggest it also has something to do with Mr. GW Bush. Polls find that opposition to Mr. Bush is stronger than anti-Americanism in general, and that the particular had contributed to the general. Asked how Mr. Bush's election had affected their views of the American people, 42% said it had made them feel worse towards Americans.


It is accompanied by another view, increasingly common among pundits, which holds that America is losing its allure as a model society. Whereas much of the rest of the world once looked to the United States as a beacon, it is argued, non-Americans are now turning away. Democrats in Europe and elsewhere who once thought religiosity, a belief in capital punishment and rank hostility to the United Nations were intermittent or diminishing features of the United States now see them as rising and perhaps permanent. Such feelings have been fortified by Mr. Bush's doctrine of preventive war, Guantanamo, opposition to the world criminal court and a host of other international agreements. One way or another, it is said, people are turning off America, not so much to hate it as to look for other examples to follow-even Europe's. If true, that could be even more insulting to Americans than the rise in the familiar anti-Americanism of yesteryear.


The American right likes to accuse its foes of "anti-Americanism". Most of its targets are foreigners. But, from the right's point of view, there are plenty of un-American leftists at home too. Conservative congressmen labour over laws to prevent leftists from burning the American flag. Conservative talk-show hosts are forever uncovering anti-Americanism at Har¬vard or on National Public Radio (both disgustingly centrist from an international view). And conservative activists are forever shouting at liberals: "Why don't you move to France?" Many foreigners might assume that charges of un-American behavior went out with Joe McCarthy. Fresh examples occur or else are cooked up as needed. The right foamed at the mouth over Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, when it discovered (belatedly) that he had written an article on the day after September 11th that described the victims of the atrocity as "little Eichmanns". ("true enough, they were civilians of a sort," the Boulder professor had opined, "But innocent? Gimme a break.")


Then the right foamed about Eason Jordan, CNN'S chief news executive, who told a group of bigwigs at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the American army was deliber¬ately targeting journalists to kill them; he denies he said this, but admits he left the wrong impression. Mr. Jordan was probably just sucking up to a group of glamorous foreigners rather than expressing any deeply held philosophy. He has now re-signed. Mr. Churchill, being an academic, still has a job. Is domestic anti-Americanism really a doctrine that pervades the American left, as conservatives charge? Or is it an eccentric phenomenon blown out of proportion by a vicious conservative attack-machine?


The right has powerful arguments on its side. The first is that leftists, from the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss to John Walker Lindh (the Marin County-bred "American Taliban"), have been caught doing treasonous things. A radical lawyer, Lynne Stewart, has been convicted of helping a cli¬ent, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to contact his supporters – an action that could put her in prison for 20 years. More generally, prominent leftists have indulged in language, which is extremely critical of their country. Back in 1969, Susan Sontag reflected that "it is self-evident that the Reader's Digest and Lawrence Welk and Hilton Hotels are organically connected with the Special Forces napalming vil¬lages in Guatemala"; after September 11th, she interpreted the outrage as "an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alli¬ances and actions." Michael Moore has compared Iraqi insurgents to Minutemen and said modern Americans are the stupidest and greediest people on the face of the Earth. Comrades Sontag and Moore would insist that they were opposed to American foreign policy, not America, but the vast middle classes never read beyond the occasional headline or Fox News update. There is also a private tradi¬tion on the American left of rubbishing their countrymen as vul¬gar morons, especially compared to sophisticated Europeans.



So anti-Americanism does exist on the left, but it is hardly its exclusive preserve. There are plenty of loud-mouth critics of American policy on the right. The American Conservative is as rude about American imperialism and the Iraq war as the Na¬tion–but nobody really accuses Pat Buchanan of anti-American-ism. As for dismissing American culture, Mr. Moore is less acerbic than one of the right's patron saints, H.L. Mencken. The Public In¬terest and the New Criterion worry about popular culture. Robert Bork thinks America is slouching towards Gomorrah. Pat Robert-son and Jerry Falwell agreed that September 11 was a punish¬ment for America's liberalism on abortion and homosexuality. Was that less anti-American than Ms Sontag?


By the Left, a Quick March


Moreover, the odd thing about the American left (from an international perspective) is how caught up it is in passion for America. It is hard to think of any foreign left-of-centre party that would brandish the flag as often as the Democrats did in last year's election campaign, or that would have made so much of its candidate's warrior past. The American left seems no less convinced that America is a special country. They just have a different view of what makes America special. Liberals think that America has been defined by its commit¬ment to equality of opportunity (hence their worries about cut¬ting inheritance tax); by its commitment to the separation of church and state (hence their worries about faith-based social policy); and by its enthusiasm for human rights (hence their worries about torture). When liberals created People for the American Way, they did not see it as a covert People for the French Way. The real battle-line in the culture wars is not be¬tween pro-Americans and anti-Americans; it is between two groups of patriots who have slightly different ideas about what makes America America (with the regional battle-lines bearing some similarity to those in the civil war).


This carries a warning for two different sorts of people. The first is anti-American foreigners: they should not take clowns like Mr. Moore or Mr. Churchill as typical. Americans are a patriotic bunch –and this patriotism stretches from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The second is the American right. So far, conservatives have played the un-American card extremely well; but when it comes to un-American purges there is always a danger of overreach. A domestic and global overreach builds along with the certainty of more American right wing election victories. Pentagon budget overkill fuels profits and fears everywhere. The American left – especially the academic left - wanders the field confused.


A great benefit to the US with the end of the Cold War (WWIII) was the decline in anti-US propaganda and documentaries (mostly Soviet). The US used to have to worry about public opinion concerning prison growth, murder rates, wide spectrum drug abuse (from kids to the elderly) or its heralded stingy benefits for its own poor, foreign aid scams, covert assassinations, etc. Apparently the now terminal condition of mass absentia and the erosion of historical memory enable the US to propel itself emitting a stain of lies, torture, secret incarcerations and disdain for international law at will or whim,: A Power unto itself.

The reasons that foreigners have to hate the US are also reasons why many Americans may come to see how their government has deceived them and made them the target of the world's jokes and of its bombs.




Addendum:


There is a War spreading across the world like a wild fire. This is the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Warfare. This doctrine is primarily targeted at Psychology – at manipulating people to rally to the US flag or to accept US domination. Following the psychological attacks the US will commit the mass-murder and subversion of any power, culture, military force or ideology that might prevent total US domination and exploitation.

NOTES _ How the Rich will use Global Warming, collapsing nations/regions and real and fake terrorism, elections – etc – further their conquest and psychological warfare plans/actions/strategy/operations/ and alliances.
Since 1948 the US has declared its desire and need to control the whole planet – especially vial resources and interests. (see: Behind the War on Terror )


Since 1967 there has been little that citizens of the US or the world could do that would stop the conquests of the US-Euro Empires. Attacks and disruptions within the US-UK are where the Empire is most vulnerable – due to the psychological effects on the spoiled people and the impact these attacks would have on financial markets/ consumption and investments.


Sensing the strength of Islam and its warriors who with 4GW will soon control half of the world’s oil and a vast reservoir of knowledge and capital with which to challenge and ultimately impoverish the West. The West would quickly crumble into Argentine-like powers if they could no longer exploit and dominate the rest of the world. Bush and nearly all of the US government and academic institutions have grasped this crisis – a veritable threat to their entire culture and privelidge. So, they support – if not Bush – then at least the need to prop up the world system – i.e – in other words - to re-establish the terms of domination.


Policies of Iraqi occupation; threats to Iran and Syria; acquiescence in Israeli Zionist genocide; and bullying allies and the UN are accepted with near unanimity by the all leaders in the US and Europe.

This is the war on terror, the war of economic exploitation – WTO, and the war against Islam to deny them freedom or the oil resources they posses. For the ruling class these wars are necessary because they have lied to their own people on the nature of economics, oil dependency and the consequences of unequal and rapid cultural change brought on by Globalization and technology. – AND the present is only just the beginning of the changes – social – cultural – economic and political that will sweep the planet.




Diversity:



Wednesday March 05, 2003 at 08:19 AM
 http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/109180.php

"I MADE THE RING FROM A BULLET AND THE PIN OF A HAND
GRENADE"

When Palestinian liberation fighter Leila Khaled hijacked her first plane in 1969, she became the international pin-up of armed struggle. Then she underwent cosmetic surgery so she could do it again. Thirty years on, she talks to Katharine Viner about being a woman at war.



Anti-Americanism:

A Collaboration of

The Committee to Liberate Kidnapped Colombian Guerrillas Held in US Prisons


And the Guantanamo Hunger Strike Against US Terrorism


We the EXTARDITABLES and THE ILLEGAL DETAINEES want everyone to understand how deep and long held is the evil called the USA. And we want everyone to feel stronger because everyday in every way millions of people come to see the power behind this evil – the US Government and the Oligarchy of World Capital.


Apparently the now terminal condition of mass absentia and the erosion of historical memory enable the US to lie, torture, incarcerate and ignore or break international law at will or whim,: A Power unto itself.

When A US helicopter crashes anywhere, I celebrate. When a suicide bomber ignites, I am inspired. When GW Bush moves unilaterally with force, my heart beats with excitement. When I see a sniper rifle I want to kiss the sky. To be real in this sickened world is to be on fire!


Against the total fascism of everything associated with Yankee Imperialism and their desterate lies, I spit on the lifestyle of most US citizenry. I spit on their drugged-out, materialistic, individual-mania and their culture that has not one good aspect to it.



The US of Amnesia and The Tide of Anti-Americanism
(Go Away Gringo !) --
"Erosion and “Reversal of Historical Memory: The re-emergence of colonial wars and colonial rule in the 21st century and the growth of national liberation movements and anti-colonial resistance reflect the erosion of historical memory in the imperial countries, among Western intellectuals as well as sectors of the masses (especially in the US) and the elites.