Library:Superpatriotism - Revision history

Literallywho Ingodsname: Typo

2025-07-13T11:11:18Z

Typo

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	In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, and again during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, sporting events took on an increasingly patriotic hue, especially in their televised presentations. Impressions of the American flag along with glowing images of "our fighting men and women" floated across the TV screen in pregame warmups and during breaks in the play. Some of the game-time commercials even featured US military personnel using the advertised products.		In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, and again during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, sporting events took on an increasingly patriotic hue, especially in their televised presentations. Impressions of the American flag along with glowing images of "our fighting men and women" floated across the TV screen in pregame warmups and during breaks in the play. Some of the game-time commercials even featured US military personnel using the advertised products.

	Along with militarism and patriotism, sporting events sometimes enlist another nationalistic adjunct: religion. Some football players, moved by a divine urge—or perhaps by a desire to maximise their time on camera—assume a posture of prayer in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. Some genuflect and make the sign of the cross. During key moments of play other team members on the benches will affect a praying posture, an act of devotion that is often rewarded with camera attention. Some baseball hitters are given to tapping different parts of their head and upper body in what seems like a religious ritual, or maybe it's just some voodoo thing. One famous baseball slugger, Barry Bonds, upon hitting a homerun, points with both his hands up to the sky as he begins his trot around the bases, thereby claiming divine assistance for his feat. God, it seems, is a San Francisco Giant fan. (In fact, an investigation in early 2004 implicating ~~Bond~~ in the use of performance-enhancement drugs suggests that his inspiration may be less ethereal and more substantive.)		Along with militarism and patriotism, sporting events sometimes enlist another nationalistic adjunct: religion. Some football players, moved by a divine urge—or perhaps by a desire to maximise their time on camera—assume a posture of prayer in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. Some genuflect and make the sign of the cross. During key moments of play other team members on the benches will affect a praying posture, an act of devotion that is often rewarded with camera attention. Some baseball hitters are given to tapping different parts of their head and upper body in what seems like a religious ritual, or maybe it's just some voodoo thing. One famous baseball slugger, Barry Bonds, upon hitting a homerun, points with both his hands up to the sky as he begins his trot around the bases, thereby claiming divine assistance for his feat. God, it seems, is a San Francisco Giant fan. (In fact, an investigation in early 2004 implicating Bonds in the use of performance-enhancement drugs suggests that his inspiration may be less ethereal and more substantive.)

	When it comes to ''international'' sporting events, the "Number One" syndrome is activated full force. Instead of bringing Americans closer to other nations, international contests seem to fuel a winning-is-everything mentality, an unrestrained aggressive rah-rah competitiveness that defeats the purpose of goodwill games.		When it comes to ''international'' sporting events, the "Number One" syndrome is activated full force. Instead of bringing Americans closer to other nations, international contests seem to fuel a winning-is-everything mentality, an unrestrained aggressive rah-rah competitiveness that defeats the purpose of goodwill games.

Literallywho Ingodsname: /* America—Love It or Leave It */

2024-09-28T20:31:58Z

America—Love It or Leave It

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	"America" was made an issue in another way at about that same time. Many Latin Americans and some Canadians, along with some US peace advocates themselves, were—and still are—opposed to applying the terms "America" and "Americans" to the United States and its citizens. They argue that "America" refers to the entire Western Hemisphere and is not to be appropriated by one particular country in the Americas. In fact, people in other Western Hemispheric countries call themselves Brazilians, Chileans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Canadians, and so on. They do not identify themselves nationally as Americans. They just do not want US citizens to do so.		"America" was made an issue in another way at about that same time. Many Latin Americans and some Canadians, along with some US peace advocates themselves, were—and still are—opposed to applying the terms "America" and "Americans" to the United States and its citizens. They argue that "America" refers to the entire Western Hemisphere and is not to be appropriated by one particular country in the Americas. In fact, people in other Western Hemispheric countries call themselves Brazilians, Chileans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Canadians, and so on. They do not identify themselves nationally as Americans. They just do not want US citizens to do so.

	One might wonder why the appellation "America" should be coveted by ~~anyone~~ anyone at all. It derives from explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who happened to be a despicable slaver and plunderer, every bit as ruthless as Columbus. (In this book I apply the terms "America" and "American" to the United States and its citizens because that is the unavoidable nationalistic idiom I am addressing.)		One might wonder why the appellation "America" should be coveted by anyone at all. It derives from explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who happened to be a despicable slaver and plunderer, every bit as ruthless as Columbus. (In this book I apply the terms "America" and "American" to the United States and its citizens because that is the unavoidable nationalistic idiom I am addressing.)

	To this day, US political leaders continue to wrap themselves in the flag, branding all opposition to their policies as attacks against the nation itself. In the 1992 electoral campaign, the older Bush responded to Bill Clinton's criticisms of the economic recession as follows: "My opponent says America is a nation in decline.... Well, don't let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially someone running for president."<ref>George Bush, acceptance speech, quoted in ''The New York Times'', 21 August 1992.</ref> Thus, he misrepresented criticisms of his administration's faltering economic policies as an attack on America itself.		To this day, US political leaders continue to wrap themselves in the flag, branding all opposition to their policies as attacks against the nation itself. In the 1992 electoral campaign, the older Bush responded to Bill Clinton's criticisms of the economic recession as follows: "My opponent says America is a nation in decline.... Well, don't let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially someone running for president."<ref>George Bush, acceptance speech, quoted in ''The New York Times'', 21 August 1992.</ref> Thus, he misrepresented criticisms of his administration's faltering economic policies as an attack on America itself.

Literallywho Ingodsname: Removed category

2024-08-24T23:33:09Z

Removed category

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	== ProleWiki annotations ==		== ProleWiki annotations ==
	<references group="Note" />		<references group="Note" />
	[[Category:~~Incomplete library~~ works]]
			[[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]

Literallywho Ingodsname: /* Real Patriotism */

2024-08-09T01:58:30Z

Real Patriotism

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	== Real Patriotism ==		== Real Patriotism ==
			IN CONTRAST TO THE SUPERPATRIOTS, there are the real patriots who care enough about their country to want to improve it. Their patriotism has a social content. They know that democracy is not just the ability to hold elections. Democracy must also serve the needs and interests of the ''demos'', the people. Real patriots educate themselves about the real history of their country and are not satisfied with the flag-waving promotional fluff that passes for history. They find different things in our past to be proud of than do superpatriots, such as the struggle for enfranchisement, the abolitionist movement, the peace movement, the elimination of child labour, and the struggle for collective bargaining, the eight-hour day, occupational safety, and racial justice and gender equality. In the real patriot's pantheon can be found Tom Paine, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, John Reed, Eugene Victor Debs, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, Jeanette Rankin, Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson, A. J. Muste, Harry Bridges, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King—and the millions in the ranks who championed social justice.

			Real patriots do not easily succumb to popular fears about external menaces that are propagated by the plutocracy. Instead, they note the things that people really ''should'' fear: the potentially catastrophic threat of global warming, the baneful and overpowering influence of money in our political life; the growing instances of electoral coercion, fraud, and thievery; the overweening and unaccountable power of corporations, the rampant corporate crime that plunders billions of dollars from the public treasury and private savings; the underfunding and deterioration of public services; the gargantuan profit-driven military budget; the runaway national debt that siphons hundreds of billions from the public treasury each year and threatens the entire financial structure of the nation; the repressive laws that steal away our liberties under the guise of homeland security; and the oil-driven foreign policy of perpetual war and unlawful aggression that has made the United States the most feared and hated nation in the world.

			While running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) spoke about the "two Americas" we have today:<blockquote>"One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life. One America—middle class America—whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America—narrow-interest America—whose very wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even Congress and a president.</blockquote>Real patriots ally themselves with that first America Edwards describes. They struggle for fundamental social change. They want to tax the rich, not low-income working people. They want to develop renewable nonpolluting wind, tidal, and solar energy sources, and swift safe mass transit systems with less reliance on toxic fossil fuels. In contrast to the profit-oriented conservative superpatriots who repeatedly profess their love for America but seem unconcerned about America's forests, rivers, wildlife, wetlands, water supplies, and overall ecological health, the real patriot puts environmental concerns before everything else, for without a livable ecology nothing else will survive. Real patriots advocate a freedom of speech and freedom of ideas in the major media that would include dissident Left views as well as the usual right-wing and conventional opinions we are constantly exposed to. Real patriots want some relief from the evasive, fatuous, mealymouthed, know-it-all empire-boosting pundits and conservative or otherwise insipid commentators. They want major media debates on the basic assumptions behind US foreign policy and free-market globalism. They want to reclaim the nation's airwaves, which belong not to the network bosses but to the people of the United States.

			Some real patriots want a government that will go directly into not-for-profit production. They want a fair chance given to worker-controlled enterprises and public ownership. If private industry cannot provide for the needs of the people, cannot build homes and hospitals enough for all, then the public sector should do so—not by contracting it out to private profiteers but by direct production as during the New Deal when public workers made tents, cots, and shoes, and canned foods for the destitute—a not-for-profit production that created jobs, served human needs, and expanded individual spending power and the tax base, all done without the parasitic private investors making a penny on it.

			Real patriots want to open up our political system to new political parties, not just two capitalist globalistic empire-building parties, not just one party that Red-baits and liberal-baits and the other that lives in fear of being Red-baited and liberal-baited. We need to do what numerous other democracies have done and institute proportional representation, ready ballot access to dissident parties, convenient voter-registration conditions, public campaign funding for all candidates, and free TV time for all political parties.<ref>For instance, see the electoral reforms initiated by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, in Michael Parenti, "Is Nicaragua More Democratic Than the United States?" ''CovertAction Information Bulletin'', summer 1986, 48–50, 52.</ref>

			Real patriots are not afraid of dramatic changes—if they are in a democratic direction. They want the fundamental democratisation of the political process and the economy of this country. As Mark Twain put it more than a century ago, his loyalty was not to his country's institutions and officeholders as such. His loyalty was to its basic principles of democracy, to the understanding that "all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have ''at all times'' an undeniable and indefeasible right to ''alter their form of government'' in such a manner as they may think expedient"<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., ''Mark Twain and the Three R's'' (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 179–80; the quotation is from Twain's novel, ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889).</ref> [italics in the original].

			In sum, real patriots are not enamoured of the trappings of superpatriotism but are interested in the substance of social justice. A twelve-year-old named Charlotte Aldebron reminds us that we ought to give less attention to patriotism's icons and more to its human content.<blockquote>The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain. School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.<ref>Charlotte Aldebron, "What the American Flag Stands For," ''Heartland Review Quarterly'', October 2002.</ref></blockquote>This concept of real patriotism is not a new notion. During the early part of the twentieth century, school-teachers who were part of the Progressive movement advocated a "civic patriotism" in which the "work of a patriot is not so much to fight and die for his country, as it is to work and live to make it a grand nation."<ref>Quoted in O'Leary, ''To Die For'', 192.</ref> In recent times we have seen stirrings all across the country. Consider the many real patriots who are not ready to trade in their civil liberties on the promise that an all-knowing, all-powerful government will keep them safe and sound. Millions of Americans seem to agree that there is no safety in living under the abusive powers of a police state. In an Associated Press poll of September 2003, two-thirds of the respondents said they were concerned about the possible loss of freedom posed by laws supposedly designed to defend us from terrorism. By early 2004, more than 240 state and local governments across the United States had passed resolutions condemning the misnamed repressive Patriot Act, including the city of Chicago and the most populous county in America, Broward County of Florida, with 1.6 million people. The state governments of Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont also renounced the act. And in November 2003 the House of Representatives voted to withdraw funds from two key provisions of the act.

			Soon after, the American Civil Liberties Union reported a considerable increase in membership in 2003, and it was joined in its work against repressive legislation by several conservative groups and individuals, including the Eagle Forum. The American Bar Association formally denounced military tribunals and attorney-client monitoring. The American Library Association issued a protest against the section of the Patriot Act that allowed federal law officers to obtain records of our reading and computer usage at libraries, and prohibited librarians from warning us about it.<ref>Jennifer Van Bergen, "Bush, Media, and the Bill of Rights," 9 July 2003, [http://www.truthout.org www.truthout.org].</ref>

			Meanwhile, fewer Americans are equating militarism with patriotism. In 2003, the National Lawyers Guild reported that rising numbers of soldiers were seeking legal assistance in refusing to fight or attempting to withdraw from the armed services. And the number of young people who say they would never consider joining the military rose from 40 percent in 1980 to 64 percent in 2000, even though job opportunities diminished during that period. Nor did the 9/11 events boost recruitment or reverse the trend.<ref>''San Francisco Chronicle'', 2 March 2003; and Van Bergen, "Bush, Media and the Bill of Rights."</ref> This does not mean that young people love their country less, just that they do not wish to devote themselves to the risks and horrors of war.

			Almost two-thirds of Americans in one survey agreed with the statement: "The US plays the role of world policeman more than it should"; and only 12 percent thought that the US should continue as "preeminent world leader in solving international problems."<ref>Survey reported by Foreign Policy in ''Focus'', 1 May 2003, [https://www.fpif.org www.fpif.org]. </ref> Once again the people are ahead of their leaders not because they are so much smarter but because they have their own genuine interests at heart rather than those of the global aggrandisers.

			Finally, real patriots are internationalists. They feel a special attachment to their own country but not in some competitive way that pits the United States against other powers. They regard the people of all nations as different members of the same human family.

			In 1936, individuals from many countries and all walks of life joined together to form the International Brigade, which fought in Spain to protect democracy from the fascist forces of Generalissimo Franco. Charles Nusser, a veteran of that great struggle, relates this incident of international patriotism: "Sam Gonshak and I, both Spanish Civil War veterans, were in Guernica on June 1, 1985 [to commemorate the Spanish Civil War]....I will never forget the speech of the organizer of the gathering. He referred to Sam and me as 'Patriots of the World.' There have always been too many patriots in various countries straining to get at the throats of patriots in other countries."<ref>Charles Nusser, letter to ''The Nation'', 6–13 January 1992 (italics in the original).</ref>

			"Patriots of the World" who happen to live in the United States want to stop destroying others with jet bombers and missiles and US-financed death squads and start healing this nation. This is not just a good and noble ideal, it is a historical necessity. It is the best kind of security. Sooner or later Americans rediscover that they cannot live on flag-waving alone. They begin to drift off into reality, confronted by the economic irrationalities and injustices of a system that provides them with the endless circuses and extravaganzas of superpatriotism, heavy tax burdens, a crushing national debt and military budget, repeated bloodletting in foreign lands, and sad neglect of domestic needs, denying them the bread of prosperity and their birthright as democratic citizens. We need a return to reality. We need to unveil the lies and subterfuges that so advantage the wealthy plutocracy. We need to pursue policies at home and abroad that serve the real needs of humanity. Then we can love our country—and peace and justice too.

	== References ==		== References ==

Literallywho Ingodsname: /* "Why Do They Hate Us?" */

2024-08-08T21:02:53Z

"Why Do They Hate Us?"

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	== "Why Do They Hate Us?" ==		== "Why Do They Hate Us?" ==
			WE CRITICS OF US FOREIGN POLICY HAVE argued that the best road to national safety and security lies neither in police state repression at home nor military conquests abroad but in a foreign policy that stops making the United States an object of hatred among people throughout the world.

			Terrorism is a vicious form of political action directed against innocent and defenceless people, as the March 2004 massacre of train commuters in Madrid again demonstrated. Along with denouncing such attacks, we have to try to comprehend why they keep happening. The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon raised the question among many US commentators and citizens: "Why do they hate us?" How could anyone want to do such a thing to the United States and us nice Americans? A number of the right-wing pundits who overpopulate the corporate media maintain that the "Islamic terrorists" attack us because we are prosperous, free, democratic, and secular; they want to change our ways. As CBS-TV anchorman Dan Rather remarked, "We are winners and they are losers, and that's why they hate us."

			In fact, if we bother to listen to what the terrorists themselves actually say, they hate us not because of who we ''are'' but because of what we ''do''—to them and their region of the world. The individuals who bombed the World Trade Center the first time, in 1993, sent a letter to ''The New York Times'' declaring that the attack was "in response for the American political, economic, and military support to Israel... and the rest of the dictator countries in the [Middle East] region."<ref>''The New York Times'', 9 January 1998. This and the next two citations were kindly provided to me by William Blum.</ref>

			In November 2001, in his first interview after 9/11, Osama bin Laden had this to say: "This is a defensive Jihad. We want to defend our people and the territory we control. This is why I said that if we do not get security, the Americans will not be secure either." A year later, a taped message from Osama bin Laden began: "The road to safety [for America] begins by ending [US] aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The [terrorist] incidents that have taken place... are only reactions and reciprocal actions."<ref>''Los Angeles Times'', 13 November 2002.</ref>

			As early as 1989, former president Jimmy Carter told ''The New York Times'': "You only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers—women and children and farmers and housewives—in those villages around Beirut. As a result of that... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what... has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks."<ref>''The New York Times'', 26 March 1989.</ref>

			The Iraqi resistance to the US occupation (during 2003–2004) did not seem impelled by a hate-ridden envy of the United States as such but by a desire to get the Americans out of Iraq. The Iraqis resented the USA not because it was so free, prosperous, and secular but because US forces had delivered death and destitution upon their shattered nation. As exclaimed one Iraqi woman, whose relatives were killed by US troops, "God curse the Americans. God curse those who brought them to us."<ref>''San Francisco Chronicle'', 11 January 2004.</ref> Under the US occupation, unemployment had climbed to 50 percent, and villages and towns went without electricity, water, and sewage disposal for many months. Meanwhile, US companies were pumping out Iraqi oil, and privatising and expropriating the country's entire economy.

			An in-depth, five-year study of religiously motivated terrorism was conducted by Jessica Stern, who interviewed religious militants of all stripes. She found men and women who were propelled neither by hatred of US prosperity and democracy nor by nihilistic violence. Rather, they held a deep faith in the justice of their cause and in the possibility of transforming the world through violent sacrificial action.<ref>Jessica Stern, ''Terror in the Name of God'' (New York: Ecco, 2003).</ref> The United States was not envied but resented for the repression and poverty its policies had imposed upon their countries.

			The bombings and invasions inflicted by US rulers upon the peoples of other nations are all for their own good, our rulers would have us think. Why the targetted populations cannot see this remains a mystery to the sponsors of Washington's "humanitarian wars." When asked why he thought some countries had a "vitriolic hatred for America," George W. Bush offered his superpatriotic mystification: "I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. Like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."<ref>''The Boston Globe'', 12 October 2001.</ref>

			But even the Pentagon allowed that what US leaders do abroad might have something to do with inciting terrorism. A 1997 Defense Department study concludes: "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."<ref>US Department of Defense, Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DOD Responses to Transnational Threats, October 1997, Final Report, vol. I. [http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsh/trans.pdf www.acq.osd.mil/dsh/trans.pdf], cited in William Blum, "Myth and Denial in the War Against Terrorism" forthcoming article.</ref> Such "US involvement," it should be noted, often consists of a state-sponsored terrorism that attacks popular movements throughout the world, killing labour leaders and workers, peasants, students, journalists, clergy, teachers, and anyone else who supports a more egalitarian social order within their own country.

			People throughout the world are fearful of a US military empire, with an unanswerable destructive capacity never before seen in human history. The global force consists of about half a million troops stationed at over 395 major bases and hundreds of minor installations in some 120 nations, with large-scale deployment in 25 countries; 8,000 strategic nuclear weapons and 22,000 tactical ones; and a navy greater in total tonnage and firepower than all the other navies of the world combined, consisting of missile cruisers, nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, and destroyers that patrol every ocean.

			US bomber squadrons and long-range missiles can reach any target, delivering enough explosive force to mangle the infrastructures of entire countries—as demonstrated against Iraq in 1990–1991 and Yugoslavia in 1999. US satellites and spy planes survey the entire planet. In addition, the United States is developing a capacity to conduct war from outer space. With only 5 percent of the earth's population, the United States expends more military funds than all the other major powers combined.<ref>On US military spending, see ''Defense Monitor'' November/December 2003, publication of the Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C. On the US military empire, see the collection of articles in Carl Boggs, ed., ''Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire'' (New York/London: Routledge, 2003).</ref>

			Whole societies have been undermined and shattered not only by US bombings and invasions but by US sanctions and monetary policies that have imposed a debt peonage and poverty upon struggling nations. US-sponsored terrorism—in the form of death squads, paramilitaries, US-supported invasions, and occupations—has taken millions of lives in scores of other countries. Maybe all this has something to do with why they hate us.

	== Real Patriotism ==		== Real Patriotism ==

Literallywho Ingodsname: /* Rulers of the Planet */

2024-08-06T00:24:56Z

Rulers of the Planet

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	== Rulers of the Planet ==		== Rulers of the Planet ==
			US LEADERS HAVE LONG PROFESSED A DEDICATION to democracy, yet over the last century they have devoted themselves to overthrowing democratic governments in Guatemala, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Greece (twice), Argentina (twice), Haiti (twice), Bolivia, Jamaica, Yugoslavia, and other countries. These governments were all guilty of pursuing policies that occasionally favoured the poorer elements and infringed upon the more affluent. In most instances, the US-sponsored coups were accompanied by widespread killings of democratic activists.<ref>On Afghanistan, see the discussion in my ''The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond'' (San Francisco: City Lights, 2002), chapter 4.</ref>

			US leaders have supported covert actions, sanctions, or proxy mercenary wars against revolutionary governments in Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Iraq (with the CIA ushering in Saddam Hussein's reign of repression), Portugal, South Yemen, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timor, Western Sahara, and elsewhere.

			US interventions and destabilisation campaigns have been directed against other populist nationalist governments, including Egypt, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Syria, Zaire, Venezuela, the Fiji Islands, and Afghanistan (''before'' the Soviets ever went into the country).

			And since World War II, direct US military invasions or aerial attacks or both have been perpetrated against Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Somalia, and Iraq (twice).<ref>See the sources in previous note.</ref> There is no "rogue state," "axis of evil," or communist country that has a comparable record of such criminal aggression against other nations.

			Be it a social democratic coalition government as with Allende in Chile or Árbenz in Guatemala, a populist nationalist one like Iran under Mossadegh, a Marxist-Leninist government as in Cuba and Vietnam, even a right-wing nationalist government as Iraq under Saddam Hussein—all had one thing in common, a desire to reclaim some portion of the land, natural resources, capital, labour, and markets that had been preempted by local plutocrats and giant foreign corporations.<ref>For evidence of these various cases, see my ''Against Empire''; and the writings of James Petras, Gregory Elich, William Blum, Edward Herman, and Chalmers Johnson.</ref>

			In contrast, US leaders have been markedly supportive of dictatorial capitalist client-states like Chiles (under Pinochet), the Philippines (under Marcos), Iran (under the Shah), Zaire (under Mobutu), Peru (under Fujimori), apartheid South Africa, autocratic Turkey, feudal Saudi Arabia and feudal Kuwait, and other autocracies like Turkey, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In short, Washington policymakers are less critical of democracy's real enemies than of capitalism's democratic opponents.

			US intervention in Africa is a story in itself. Through the World Bank and the IMF, US leaders have demolished African economies, including their public health and education sectors. Most African nations have sunk into a debt structure that leaves them in peonage to Western investors. US leaders also have fueled eleven wars on the continent, resulting in the death of more than 4 million people, with millions more facing malnutrition, starvation, and deepening poverty. Washington has given arms and military training to fifty African countries (out of a total of fifty-three), helping Africa to become the most war-torn region in the world. During the 1990s alone, thirty-two African countries experienced violent conflict.<ref>Asad Ismi, "Ravaging Africa," ''Briarpatch'', February 2003.</ref>

			All this well-fueled strife has enabled the United States and other Western interests to attain control of Africa's abundant resources. The more war-ravaged and poverty-stricken are the African nations, the more ready they are to sell their labour and natural resources at rock-bottom prices. Asad Ismi reminds us that almost 80 percent of the strategic minerals that the USA requires are extracted from Africa, including cobalt, platinum, gold, chromium, manganese, and uranium, ingredients needed to make jet engines, automotive vehicles, missiles, electronic components, iron, and steel.<ref>Ismi, "Ravaging Africa."</ref>

			Africa also accounts for 18 percent of US oil imports (as compared to 25 percent from the Middle East), with new reserves yet to be tapped. The African continent in toto has been designated a vital interest area to the United States. Plans are in progress to build new US naval and military bases on the continent. And according to the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (composed of representatives from the Bush administration, the oil industry, Congress, and some foreign consultants), Washington intends to establish a regional military command structure in Africa "which could produce significant dividends in the protection of US investments."<ref>Dena Montague, "Africa: THe New Oil and Military Frontier," ''Peacework'', October 2002; also Ismi, "Ravaging Africa."</ref>

			Not just in Africa but across the entire world, US policymakers have militarised nation after nation to fuel the military capacities of cooperative capitalist nations. In 2004, worldwide arms sales by the United States to other countries was about $40 billion, much of it going to nations like Saudi Arabia that do not even remotely maintain a democratic facade. Since World War II the US government has given some $240 billion in military aid to train, equip, and subsidise some 2.3 million troops and internal-security forces in more than eighty countries, not to defend these nations from outside invasion—since few have ever been threatened by attack from neighbouring countries—but to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic insurgency.

			How can we determine the purpose of this military aid? By observing that: (a) US-supported military and security forces and death squads in these various countries have been used repeatedly to destroy popular reformist movements and insurgencies within their own borders that advocate some kind of egalitarian redistributive politics. (b) US-sponsored forces have never been used to assist a popular reformist, let alone revolutionary, movement in any of these nations. (c) The regimes most likely to win US favour are those that are integrated into the global system of neoliberal corporate domination, that leave their economies open to foreign penetration on terms that are singularly favourable to transnational investors. (d) The regimes that are targetted as anti-West or anti-American are most likely to be committing the sin of egalitarian reform and national self-definition. And when there are no longer any leftist reformist governments to compete against, US globalists begin competing against other capitalist powers.

			US leaders have long struck a defensive pose: America is besieged by menacing opponents; we have no choice but to maintain this enormous military apparatus. In reality, far from having their backs to the wall, US policymakers have been pursuing total world domination. This policy has been explicitly enunciated by a right-wing think tank called Project for the New American Century (PNAC). A lengthy report of September 2000 titled ''Rebuilding America's Defenses'' lays out PNAC's vision for US global control, including a huge boost in military spending, an unwillingness to be bound by the restraints of international law, and a dramatic expansion of a US military presence and use of force around the world.<ref>Gregory Elich, "Imperial Enterprise: War Mongers Run Amuck," ''Swans'', 17 March 2003, [http://www.swans.com www.swans.com] .</ref>

			Not only did the PNAC report serve as a blueprint for the Bush administration, but many of PNAC's members became White House policymakers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Numerous other PNAC members came to occupy important posts in the Bush administration, mostly in the Defense and State Departments.<ref>Other PNAC members in top positions in the Bush administration: Richard Perle, Eliot Cohen, Devon Cross, Stephen Cambone, Richard Armitage, Lewis Libby, Don Zakheim, and William Kristol.</ref>

			The goal of the PNAC plan is to take full advantage of America's unparalleled ability to maintain the United States "as the world's preeminent power." The intent is anything but defensive. Every means of coercion and domination is to be assiduously pursued. ''Rebuilding America's Defenses'' even hints that the United States might develop biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes" in order to "transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." "The goal," concludes Gregory Elich, "is nothing less than to expose the entire globe to the threat of US aggression while depriving relatively well-armed nations of the means of defense...."<ref>Elich, "Imperial Enterprise."</ref>

			The PNAC report bemoaned the fact that US public opinion might not go along with a totalistic global policy unless it felt compelled to do so in response to "some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor." In another one of those seemingly fortuitous happenings that work so well for the plutocracy, the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon served as just such a catastrophic catalyst.

			The role played by the Bush administration before and during 9/11 is still a subject of some controversy. The White House ignored repeated warnings proffered by the intelligence agencies of eleven other nations regarding an impending attack. Two senior Israeli intelligence experts journeyed to Washington a month before the attacks to alert the CIA and FBI to cells of terrorists said to be planning a big operation. The list they provided contained the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, but none of them were arrested. A month before the attacks, one FBI agent wrote about a plan afoot to crash into the Twin Towers; that report was ignored.<ref>Michael Meacher in ''The Guardian'' (UK), 6 September 2003; also ''The Daily Telegraph'' (UK), 16 September 2001; and ''Newsweek'', 20 May 2002.</ref>

			In the year before 9/11—as legally required—the US military launched fighter planes on at least sixty-seven occasions to chase suspicious aircraft or airliners that had moved significantly off their flight plan. But on 11 September itself, in the almost two hours during which the four airliners were hijacked and the attacks occurred, not a single US fighter plane took flight.

			President Bush's own behaviour suggests cover-up. First, he unsuccessfully opposed the formation of an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the events around 9/11. Then he tried to appoint former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to head the investigation, a man whose entire career had been devoted to dissembling and misleading the public. Then Bush refused to hand over numerous documents requested by the commission. Meanwhile, US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice initially refused to testify and Bush backed her refusal, only changing his mind after much public pressure. And finally, he and Vice President Cheney refused to testify under oath, agreeing only to appear together at an off-the-record meeting. What did they have to hide?

			The administration's recalcitrance made no sense until it is set against the PNAC plan with its explicit longing for "a new Pearl Harbor." The PNAC populated White House seems to have done nothing to prevent the attacks despite any number of warnings. The disaster of 11 September 2001 served them well. Like another Pearl Harbor indeed, it mobilised public opinion behind US global objectives. After 9/11, and in keeping with the PNAC plan, Bush took a number of momentous steps.

			First, he announced a "war on terrorism," inviting all the nations and organisations of the world to get in lockstep behind his administration, declaring: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." Henceforth all other countries were to be categorised as either ''cooperative'' (accepting US hegemony) or ''adversarial'' (not letting US leaders have their way in all things). Any recalcitrant nation ran the risk of being targetted for US attack.

			Second, the White House declared that it would not be bound by any previous treaties or accords. International law was now nothing but an irksome restraint that the world's only superpower would brush aside whenever it wanted.

			Third, Bush announced the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The nuclear arms race was to resume, and the USA would win it handily by establishing total domination of land, air, sea, and outer space.

			Fourth, Bush removed the US signature from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. The court was a wonderful step taken by many nations to prosecute leaders and operatives of any nation who violated the human rights of others. Instead, US leaders pressured various countries to grant immunity from prosecution for all US governmental and military personnel.

			Fifth, the White House announced its right to wage preemptive war against any nation it disliked. Various countries were fingered as being on Uncle Sam's hit list—some of the same ones as listed in the PNAC plan: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Syria for starters.

			Sixth, war was pursued in Afghanistan, and major military bases were established in several other Central Asian states.

			Seventh, a war of conquest was launched against Iraq. The PNAC plan, published a full year before the September 2001 attacks, shows that the Bush administration had intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was still in power.

			Eighth, the White House embarked upon a massive escalation in military spending, with $176 billion allocated in just the first six months of the war against Iraq. Given the enormous deficit that resulted from this kind of spending and tax breaks, Republicans called for cuts in the domestic budget, specifically such frivolous luxuries as health care for the elderly, disability assistance, environmental regulations and protections, old-age pensions, and public education. So the Empire feeds off the Republic.

			The PNAC plan envisions a strategic confrontation with China, and a still greater permanent military presence in every corner of the world. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world's natural resources and markets, power to privatise and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere—including North America—the blessings of an untrammelled global "free market." The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of ''American'' global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower or, for that matter, any potential regional power such as Iraq. In chapter seven I noted that US superpatriots believe their nation is possessed of matchless virtues that no other nation can claim. The United States supposedly has a special mission to fight tyranny, uplift less fortunate nations, and create a better world—even if that entails killing large numbers of anti-American infidels abroad. But the truth is US leaders are not dedicated to advancing social justice and democracy in the world. Their real dedication—as they sometimes will say—is to create a US-dominated free-market globalism. Such a patriotism is better recognised by its real name: imperialism.

	== "Why Do They Hate Us?" ==		== "Why Do They Hate Us?" ==

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Support Our Troops (Cut Their Benefits)

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	== Support Our Troops (Cut Their Benefits) ==		== Support Our Troops (Cut Their Benefits) ==
			BEING THE SUPERPATRIOTS THEY ARE, THE plutocrats equate military service with true patriotism. But while they heap praise upon those who "serve our country," they themselves rarely join up. The men and women who enlist into the military come disproportionately from blue-collar and lower-middle-class families. They are often young people who have trouble finding a job or cannot afford a higher education. Graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton rarely sign up for the Marines. They head for law school or Wall Street or the family business or their favourite avocation. As prime examples, consider the ''chickenhawks'', a label applied to those privileged leaders who are virulently hawkish on war but strenuously evasive of military service.

			Topping the chickenhawk list is President George W. Bush. In his youth, he won entry into Yale University more on pedigree than performance. Later on, seeking to evade the draft, he got himself admitted to the Texas Air National Guard despite his low score on the pilot aptitude test. As he explained it without a hint of apology, "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."<ref>Quoted in ''The Nation'', 14 November 2003.</ref>

			Bush was accepted into the Guard ahead of hundreds of other applicants who were waiting to join in order to escape duty in Vietnam. His unit, the 147th Fighter Group, was nicknamed the "Champagne Unit" because it had so many sons of Texas privilege. How he jumped to the head of the line is itself a story. A rich Houston businessman and longtime friend of the Bush family approached Ben Barnes, then Speaker of the Texas House, and asked him to help George W. gain entry into the Guard. Only when questioned under oath did Barnes admit that he had spoken to the Texas Air National Guard on Bush's behalf.<ref>''The New York Times'', 15 February 2004.</ref>

			Bush's payroll records show that he failed to report for duty for eight months between May 1972 and May 1973. He failed to take a required flight physical examination in 1972, and was suspended from flying, an action that should have set off an inquiry but did not. In February 2004, the White House released documents that purportedly proved that Bush had shown up for duty in 1972 with the 187th Fighter Group in Alabama (to which he had transferred in order to work on a political campaign). But White House officials could not say what duties he performed (nor could Bush), and no one in the 187th came forward with recollections of having served with him. His commanders say he did not appear for duty at bases in Texas and Alabama where he had been assigned during that 1972–1973 period.<ref>''Los Angeles Times'', 11 February 2004; ''The Boston Globe'', 10 February 2004; ''The New York Times'', 13 February 2004; also on Bush's early career, see Joe Conason, ''Big Lies'' (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 2003). For a complete listing of chickenhawks in the Bush administration, see [http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html].</ref>

			Instead of being prosecuted for desertion, Bush was awarded an honourable discharge eight months early in order to attend Harvard Business School. Bush's military records should have contained paperwork explaining why he was allowed to leave well before his enlistment period ended, but no explanation has been released. It seems this presidential superpatriot received favourable treatment to get out.

			Then there is Vice President Dick Cheney, who explained why he did not serve during the Vietnam War: "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Cheney received draft deferments as a college student. Upon graduating he was able to avoid the draft by getting married. But in 1964, the government announced married men would be drafted, unless they were fathers. Nine months and two days after that announcement, in an act of superb timing, the Cheneys had their firstborn.

			Other high-ranking superpatriotic members of the Bush administration who avoided the draft included Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, and Andrew Card; so too Republican congressional leaders Trent Lott, Denis Hastert, Dick Armey, and Tom DeLay; and we must not forget right-wing media hawks like George Will, William Kristol, and Rush Limbaugh.<ref>Tim Harper, "Pentagon Keeps Dead Out of Sight," ''Toronto Star'', 5 November 2003.</ref> DeLay reportedly said that he would have served but all the draft slots in his area were taken up by blacks. And rabid radio reactionary Limbaugh got a medical deferment because of his "anal cysts"—a condition that normally responds to treatment but in Limbaugh's case proved oddly incurable for the duration of the Vietnam War.

			One is not required to have served in the military in order to formulate governmental policy. Indeed, the principle of civilian rule is enshrined in our Constitution. What is so objectionable about the superpatriotic chickenhawks is not their lack of combat experience as such; it is the hypocritical disparity between their tough jingoistic war stance and their own active avoidance of the draft. They pursue wars with all their hearts and minds but not with their bodies. They escaped conscription by using draft deferments, dubious medical exemptions, and family influence.

			Years after Vietnam, now occupying prominent public positions, these same chickenhawks again brayed for blood, this time targetting Iraq. Once again they were ready to send other families' offspring into the fray, not their own. They equated militarism with patriotism and preached sacrifice and devotion to flag and country. Yet their own patriotic sacrifices consisted mostly of sticking tiny American-flag pins into the lapels of their high-priced suits.

			If patriotism means supporting our troops, then no one is more lacking in patriotism than the ruling plutocracy. In 2003—2004, hundreds of US troops who had been wounded in Iraq were warehoused for months at places like Fort Stewart, Georgia, in hot, dirty, overcrowded cement barracks waiting for medical treatment. They had to hobble across the sand to use the bathroom, and had to pay for their toilet paper. And only after protests from the US Senate did the White House stop charging wounded soldiers $8.10 per day for their hospital meals.<ref>''The Washington Post'', 17 January 2003; UPI, 17 October 2003; CBS News, 18 January 2003; CNN Report, 17 July 2003.</ref>

			Many of the badly wounded said that they were seeing their pay and health benefits severely reduced now that they were no longer fit for active duty. More than 200,000 veterans of earlier wars have had to wait six months or longer for their first appointment with the Veterans' Administration. Thousands have waited years to get into overcrowded and understaffed VA hospitals to receive disability assistance, often being unable to pay their own living expenses in civilian life.<ref>''San Francisco Chronicle'', 12 May 2003; Gannett News Service, 23 October 2003; ''The Washington Post'', 17 January 2003; ''Army Times'', 30 June 2003.</ref> Not surprisingly, a large portion of the homeless are veterans of past wars, some with untreated mental and physical ailments. In February 2002, at the very time he was sending thousands of troops to fight in Afghanistan, Bush Junior proposed tripling the cost of medications to needy veterans. In 2003 his administration announced it was cutting off access to its health care system for approximately 164,000 veterans, and slicing out $1.5 billion in military housing and medical facility funding. Also in 2003, while heaping praise on the men and women doing military service, Bush refused a congressional request for a relatively modest $275 million to cover veterans' health care needs. In his 2004 budget, he slashed $2 billion from the VA's already insufficient funds. The Bush administration even ordered officials to stop publicising health benefits available to veterans. While praising the National Guard and Reservists for serving in Iraq, Bush opposed a proposal to allow them access to the Pentagon's health insurance system. His administration also announced its plan to reduce monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones.<ref>''The New York Times'', 9 October 2002; and Associated Press, 1 July 2003.</ref>

			There are other strange ways that the plutocracy supports our troops. For experimental purposes, the government has repeatedly exposed US military personnel to dangerously toxic substances. From 1962 to 1973, the Pentagon used potentially harmful chemical and biological agents in fifty secret tests involving thousands of unwitting US troops, a fact that was not publicised until 2002.<ref>''The New York Times'', 11 August 2003.</ref> In addition, thousands of "GI guinea pigs" were subjected to atomic bomb tests after World War II, tens of thousands were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and many more were contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) during the Gulf War of 1991. The Pentagon never warned their own troops about DU, and for years officials denied that a problem existed. Over 183,000 Gulf veterans filed for disability, complaining of aching joints, memory problems, nausea, and illness. Almost 10,000 have died prematurely. Many family members also have sickened, and a disproportionate number of Gulf veteran offspring suffer from birth defects.

			Populations in Indochina, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Colombia, and elsewhere that have been exposed to DU or Agent Orange or other toxic sprays have suffered in far greater numbers than have US service personnel and their families, but these foreigners do not even enter the superpatriotism equation except as defenceless targets.

			One of the things plutocrats like about war is its huge financial cost. The more taxpayers' money spent on war contracts, the more plentiful are the profits. Many supplies and services, including those related to food and housing, traditionally performed by soldiers, have been handed over to private contractors such as Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. The result is that US troops in Iraq endured months of poor living conditions, inedible food, and low-performing equipment. Some of the private contractors even failed to show up because of the dangers presented by the Iraqi armed resistance.<ref>Associated Press, 19 September 2003, and ''The New York Times'', 10 December 2003.</ref>

			In 2003, a report by the Congressional Budget Office revealed that only about $2.5 billion out of the $4 billion expended monthly on the Iraq War could be accounted for by the White House and the Pentagon! Meanwhile, the Pentagon barred French, German, and Russian companies from competing for the multibillion-dollar contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. All the reconstruction and oil extraction business was given to Halliburton, Bechtel, and some seventy other US firms, usually at noncompetitive fees set by the companies themselves.<ref>''The New York Times'', 10 November 2003.</ref>

			In 2003 the Bush administration sought to block a group of American veterans—who had been tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Gulf War of 1991—from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets that a federal court had awarded them. Administration lawyers argued that the frozen assets would be better spent on Iraqi reconstruction contracts. "No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering they went through," said a White House spokesman.<ref>Tim Harper, "Pentagon Keeps Dead Out of Sight," ''Toronto Star'', 5 November 2003; ''The New York Times'', 9 November 2003.</ref> And so, no amount of money was allocated to them.

			As American casualties mounted in Iraq, President Bush turned a cold shoulder to the grieving families of the slain servicemen and women. For the first time in US history, dead Americans were brought home in secrecy. Bush would not attend military funerals or memorials as previous presidents had done. The Pentagon notified all news media that no television and photographic coverage was allowed of coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base. The military brass explained that this was to "respect the privacy of the families." Actually, with no pictures of flag-draped caskets, the public was less likely to think of them. Even the term "body bags" was no longer used. The spin artists at the Pentagon now referred to the plastic encasements that carried slain soldiers as "transfer tubes."

	== Rulers of the Planet ==		== Rulers of the Planet ==

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	== Are the Plutocrats Patriotic? ==		== Are the Plutocrats Patriotic? ==
			OF THE PEOPLE WHO OCCUPY THE HIGHER circles of government and industry, most are from wealthy backgrounds. They and their loyal minions populate the boards of trustees of corporations, foundations, and institutions of higher learning. They own or otherwise have ready access to the giant media conglomerates. Some of them finance conservative think tanks. The more politically active among them move in and out of the top policy positions in Washington. Though relatively few in number, they own the lion's share of the nation's material resources. They set the interest rates and control the money supply. They play a dominant role in determining the wage levels and working conditions of millions. They enjoy oligarchic control of the major technologies of industrial production and communication. Taken together, these various elite groupings compose what might be called a ''plutocracy'', a system of rule by and for the wealthy.

			They do not operate with perfect cohesion. They sometimes have differences among themselves, and endure confusions and setbacks. Still, on the basic issues they hold to a common class interest, dedicated to seeing that the capital accumulation process continued unabated. Their wealth served their power and their power serves their wealth.

			Plutocratic rulers are among the major purveyors of superpatriotic enthusiasm but they rarely practise what they preach. They hail the idea of a "healthy America," yet they resist universal health care programmes, defund public health services, and work closely with the giant pharmaceutical and insurance industries to make health care highly profitable for a few corporations and painfully expensive for the rest of us.

			They urge us on to ever greater feats of economic sacrifice and self-reliance, and tell us not to expect "government handouts," while they and their giant firms annually pocket hundreds of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees, bailouts, risk capital, equity capital, export subsidies, and enormously lucrative government contracts. They insist that everyone should shoulder the burdens of public debt and public expenditure, but they repeatedly push through tax cuts for their wealthy class. In addition, they regularly enjoy billions in tax credits and tax write-offs, and often are outright tax evaders. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that offshore subsidiaries and tax havens cost the US Treasury $70 billion a year and billions more in unpaid state and local taxes.<ref>Center for Corporate Policy newsletter, October 2003, Washington, D.C.; and Jonathan Blattmachr, "The Loophole Artist," ''The New York Times Magazine'', 21 December 2003.</ref>

			Superpatriotic plutocrats also manifest little interest in conserving America's environmental treasure. Instead, they allow timber and mining interests and agribusiness to plunder our natural terrain. They pursue fossil fuel and nuclear energy policies that wreak havoc on our land, water, and atmosphere. They treat the natural resources of the country as so much disposable material for fastbuck profits. They say they love America even as they inflict gashing wounds upon its landscape.

			The ruling elites intone endlessly about family values, moral character, and clean living while themselves falling well short of these standards, being no more pristine than the rest of us in their personal lives and often seriously corrupt and dishonest in their public capacities—as the Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, Harkin, and other multibillion-dollar corporate scandals demonstrated. The corporate criminals used illicit accounting schemes and insider trading to filch billions of dollars from worker pension funds and small investors. The cost of low-level street crime in 2002 was $18 billion, while the cost of antitrust violations and other corporate crimes was $250 billion.<ref>Street crime costs are reported by the FBI; corporate crime costs are estimated by criminal justice scholar Francis Cullen, cited by M. M. Acosta in ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 16 November 2003. The FBI refuses to keep the statistics on corporate crime.</ref> Such criminality does not fit well with the plutocracy's claim to civic virtue and patriotism.

			It cannot be very patriotic to pilfer federal, state, and local treasuries and squander US tax dollars. Yet in the hands of our superpatriotic plutocrats, the federal surplus of $281 billion that existed in 2000 dissolved into a budget-busting deficit of $480 billion by fiscal year 2004, due mostly to huge subsidies and multibillion-dollar tax cuts to very rich individuals and corporations.

			It is not very patriotic to routinely overcharge the US government for supplies and services, or submit falsely bloated noncompetitive bids for government contracts, or provide shoddy goods to US military personnel in combat zones. Yet in February 2004, the Pentagon opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton, the giant Texas oil-services firm, for overcharging the US government at least $61 million for fuel transported into Iraq from Kuwait. US military commanders in Iraq told Pentagon chiefs that they lacked sanitary services and blastproof barriers that a Halliburton subsidary was supposed to provide. Halliburton was also being investigated for overcharging $16 million for meal services to the military and various other potentially scandalous dealings.<ref>''USA Today'', 20 February 2004; ''The New York Times'', 24 February 2004; Associated Press, 11 March 2004.</ref>

			It is not very patriotic to engage in war profiteering. In November 2003, a provision was inserted into the $87 billion spending bill slated for Iraq that would have made it a felony to overcharge the government for any goods or services intended for war or reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a Republican-controlled congressional conference committee deleted the provision from the final version of the bill.

			It is not patriotic to fix prices in order to overcharge American consumers billions of dollars for goods and services. It is not patriotic to evade occupational safety standards, to force employees to work unpaid overtime, to violate the National Labor Relations Act by firing workers for their union organising efforts. Yet these are all common plutocratic practices.

			The plutocrats profess a devotion to American democracy, yet through their state security agencies they repeatedly violate democratic practice and principle, resorting to harassment and suppression of dissident organisations, launching police attacks on street protesters, using planted evidence, false arrests, wiretapping, infiltration, and other dirty tricks against law-abiding citizens whose only crime has been to voice criticisms of plutocratic policies at home and abroad. The US Patriot Act allows federal agents to conduct surveillance and searched against any US citizen without having to show probable cause. The government now has broad access to everybody's business and personal records, including library and book-buying habits.<ref>Joseph A. Palermo, "Here We Go Again, Reliving History with the Patriot Act," ''Because People Matter'', January/February 2004.</ref>

			The plutocrats have been subverting what is left of our democratic sovereignty in a series of "free trade" agreements with other capitalist nations. With such accords as GATT, GATS, NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA, the private corporations of one country can enjoin the government of another country from implementing environmental regulations and consumer and worker safety standards if these are deemed to be "restraints on trade." The "free trade" agreements can prohibit federal, state, and local governments from providing not-for-profit human services when such services create "lost market opportunities" or in other ways "interfere" with the investments of foreign corporations that want to enter these markets.

			The accords are designed to gut essential public services and protections. The superpatriots in the White House have imposed these agreements upon us with no consultation or approval by governors, state assemblies, or city councils, with virtually no public input, and in the face of opposition from the peoples of countries throughout the world, including the United States. What is being lost is not only the public services and regulations themselves but the ''democratic sovereign right'' of Americans (and peoples of other nations) to promote such protective laws and programmes. The free-market right to invest is elevated above every other public right, including the right to self-governance. In effect, the international moneyed interests assume a veto power over most public policy and democratic legislation.<ref>John R. MacArthur, ''The Selling of "Free Trade": NAFTA, Washington and the Subversive of American Democracy'' (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000); and Chris Slevin, "Bush Poised to Trade Away Sovereignty," ''Public Citizen News'', May/June 2003.</ref>

			The plutocrats tell us of their devotion to building a prosperous America for all. Yet many companies move their manufacturing beyond our borders to low-wage markets. In 2004, the White House released a report that officially endorsed this policy, saying in part, "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make it or provide it domestically."<ref>Quoted in ''Democratic News'' (publication of Democratic National Committee), 13 February 2004.</ref> As a consequence of this outsourcing to cheap labour markets abroad, US manufactory employment lost 2.7 million jobs in 2001 to 2003 alone. By early 2004, with the economy showing signs of coming out of a long recession, job growth lagged so far behind that people spoke of a "jobless recovery."<ref>Sam Zuckerman, "Feeble Growth in U.S. Jobs," ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 7 February 2004; and the special report "Looking Offshore," ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 7 March 2004.</ref>

			The goal of the transnational corporation is to become truly transnational, poised above the sovereign power of any particular nation, while being served by the sovereign powers of all nations. Cyril Siewert, chief financial officer of Colgate Palmolive Company, could have been speaking for all transnationals when he remarked, "The United States doesn't have an automatic call on our [corporation's] resources. There is no mindset that puts this country first."<ref>Quoted in ''The New York Times'', 21 May 1989.</ref>

			The hypocritical quality of the plutocracy's patriotism is nowhere more blatantly displayed than in its dealings with the Nazi regime before and during World War II. After Adolph Hitler took state power in Germany in 1933, he set about establishing a repressive reactionary government that abolished labour unions, drastically reduced wages, eliminated worker benefits, ignoring occupational safety standards, privatised various state enterprises, heavily subsidised big business, and drastically cut taxes for the very rich. Hitler also pursued an aggressive foreign policy that sent tremors across Europe. He annexed Austria, the Czech Sudetenland and eventually all of Czechoslovakia, and launched a massive arms buildup that augured a major war in Europe.

			It was not long before numerous US corporate giants, including Du Pont, Ford, General Motors, Texaco, General Electric, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, Goodrich, Standard Oil of New Jersey, J. P. Morgan, IBM, and ITT were doing a booming business in the Third Reich, unable to resist the low wages, low business taxes, and high profits. Henry Ford, Irénée Du Pont, Tom Watson of IBM, Torkild Rieber of Texaco, and other plutocrats became great admirers of Hitler. "America's corporations made a lot of money in Hitler's Germany; this, and not the Führer's alleged charisma, is the reason the owners and managers of these corporations adored him."<ref>Jacques R. Pauwels, "Profits ''Über Alles!'' American Corporations and Hitler," ''Labour/Le Travail'', 51, Spring 2003.</ref> There were other reasons why they adored him. Some, like Henry Ford, openly shared Hitler's antisemitism, and all of them welcomed his anticommunism, seeing Hitler as a saviour who would vanquish the Soviet Union and rescue Europe from Red revolution. If the acts of political terror and mass murder perpetrated by Führer disturbed the US plutocrats, they gave little sign of it.

			When Hitler launched his war of conquest in 1939, the US plutocrats willingly collaborated—and continued to do so even after Germany and the United States became belligerents in December 1941! Throughout occupied Europe, they made eager use of the slave labour provided by Nazi authorities. According to declassified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of the two Bush presidents, made lush profits off Auschwitz slave labour. His Union Banking Corporation helped Thyssen make the Nazi steel that killed Allied soldiers, and helped finance Thyssen's coal mines which regularly worked Jewish prisoners to death. The Bush family is heir to these Holocaust profits.<ref>See Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, ''George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography'' (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, 1991); and John Loftus and Mark Aarons, ''The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People'' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).</ref>

			US-owned factories in Nazi occupied Europe supplied the tanks, trucks, fighter planes, bombers, oil imports, synthetic fuels, synthetic rubber, and advanced communication systems that greatly enhanced the Nazis' capability to wage war. Without these crucial materials, it would have been impossible for German forces to kill American and other Allied troops, sink American ships, and bomb British cities. Likewise, IBM prospered in Germany and the occupied territories by supplying the technology needed to identify, enslave, and exterminate millions of European Jews and other victims.<ref>Charles Higham, ''Trading with the Enemy'' (New York: Dell, 1983); Reinhold Billstein et al, ''Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor during the Second World War'' (New York: Berghahn, 2000); and Edwin Black, ''IBM and the Holocaust'' (London: Crown Publishers, 2001), 297–99.</ref>

			Throughout the war, US corporate chiefs were able to maintain direct ownership and control over their German subsidiaries with minimal interference from the Nazis, who were primarily interested in keeping war production going. US authorities did nothing to stop the big companies from servicing the Nazi war machine. President Roosevelt even gave an order not to bomb US corporate properties in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Thus, while the German city of Cologne was levelled, its Ford Factory—providing armed vehicles used to kill American troops—was untouched; after a while it was used by German civilians as an air raid shelter.<ref>Eyewitness report by E. F. Patterson, ''Ramparts'', August 1974; And Pauwels, "Profits ''Über Alles!''"</ref>

			There was so much propaganda at home praising Big Business for building America's defences and winning "the war of production." US leaders needed Corporate America's technology and oil resources as much as did the Nazis, so they looked the other way and did nothing about the cozy relationship between Hitler and US business. Trials and imprisonment would have made it difficult for the corporate collaborators to assist the US war effort, Charles Higham notes. Furthermore, the US government feared that a scandalous exposure would have damaged public morale, caused strikes, and perhaps incited mutiny in the military ranks. With the advent of the Cold War—which US leaders did so much to provoke—it was considered all the more imperative to disregard the Nazi collaborationist role played by Corporate America.<ref>Higham, ''Trading with the Enemy'', 12–15.</ref>

			The story gets worse. After the war, rather than being prosecuted for aiding and abetting the enemy, ITT collected $27 million from the US government for damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. And General Motors received over $33 million for damages. Ford and other companies collected considerable sums. Faced with class-action lawsuits in 1999–2000, growing numbers of corporations admitted having used and profited greatly from unpaid slave labour supplied from Nazi concentration camps.<ref>''The New York Times'', 29 April 2000.</ref> But no US corporate manager has ever been prosecuted for complicity in these war crimes.

			If this is patriotism, then what is treason?

	== Support Our Troops (Cut Their Benefits) ==		== Support Our Troops (Cut Their Benefits) ==

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The Menace from Within

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	== The Menace from Within ==		== The Menace from Within ==
			THROUGH MUCH OF OUR HISTORY WE have been warned about this or that alien peril. But the perceived threat does not always come from abroad. Throughout much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the business-owned press stoked an antiradical hysteria among the general public by targetting the "dangerous classes" within the USA itself, specifically the poor, the underemployed, and anyone who organised for decent paying jobs and better work conditions. Labour agitation was stigmatised as a menace to the American Way of Life.

			True Americanism was equated with an uncritical acceptance of the corporate business system. "Industrialists joined publishers in branding labour activists as communist, anarchist and un-American," writes O'Leary. "Graphics regularly pictured Uncle Sam guiding American workmen away from the influence of swarthy agitators. The term ''un-American'' first came into significant usage as a political epithet during this period when 'true Americans' used it against striking immigrant workers and later against any militant opponents of the economic order, immigrant or native-born."<ref>O'Leary, ''To Die For'', 61.</ref>

			In 1886, during a time of substantial labour unrest, Theodore Roosevelt, himself a rich employer, talked of setting worker against worker in the name of patriotism: "My men are hard-working laboring men, who work longer hours for no greater wages than most of the strikers; but they are ''Americans through and through''. I believe nothing would give them greater pleasure than a chance with rifles at one of the mobs."<ref>Quoted in Sender Garlin, ''Three American Radicals'' (Boulder, Colo: Westview, 1991), 155 (italics in the original).</ref> The Ford Motor Company sponsored Americanisation programmes for its employees: patriotism was equated with labour discipline and compliant worker attitudes. Other business firms fashioned programmes modelled after Ford's.<ref>O'Leary, ''To Die For'', 238, 242.</ref>

			War often brings out the worst aspects of superpatriotism. In 1917, as the nation plunged into hostilities with Germany, domestic labour disputes were treated as acts of outright disloyalty. President Woodrow Wilson warned that the "masters of Germany" were using American liberals, socialists, and "the leaders of labor" to "carry out their designs."<ref>O'Leary, ''To Die For'', 227.</ref> Federal and state authorities suppressed radical publications, issued injunctions against strikes, harassed and gaoled labour organisers, and launched legislative hearings, mass arrests, deportations, and political trials against labour militants. About a thousand people were sentenced to prison for denouncing the war as a "rich man's venture," some for as much as thirty years.<ref>See William Preston Jr., ''Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933'', 2nd ed. (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois, 1994).</ref>

			In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, corporations like Ford took matters into their own hands, hiring mobsters and company thugs to beat union organisers and terrorise strikers.<ref>See Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais, ''Labor's Untold Story'', 3rd ed. (New York: United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, 1972; and Thomas Reppetto, ''American Mafia'' (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).</ref> Corporate-sponsored ultranationalist violence occurred in other capitalist countries as well. During the rise of fascism in Italy, Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, and Japan, "patriotic" goon squads were hired by business owners to smash labour unions and leftist political parties and publications.<ref>Barrington Moore Jr., ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy'' (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 298.</ref>

			Sometimes the menace from within consisted of nothing more than an influx of poor and peaceful immigrants. For generations, successive waves of newcomers—with their different appearances and alien ways—were seen as undermining the American Way of Life. Those immigrants who manifested any political deviancy or labour militancy risked incarceration and deportation.<ref>Preston, ''Aliens and Dissenters'', passim.</ref>

			More recently, in 2002, with the much hyped "war on terrorism" in full swing, the federal government ordered 82,000 immigrant men to register with federal enforcement agencies. The targetted group consisted almost entirely of persons from twenty-four Muslim countries. Not a single person caught in this dragnet was charged with a terrorist crime. Approximately 13,000 were indicted for overstaying their visas or for relatively minor violations, such as failure to report a change of address. Thousands were held incommunicado or summarily deported. Thousands more faced prolonged detention without a hearing or benefit of legal counsel.<ref>Report by Tammy Johnson, ''ColorLines Magazine'', 2003.</ref>

			Another alarming issue regularly magnified by the authorities and the media is the problem of crime. More than a half-century ago, Dwight Eisenhower campaigned his way into the White House on a platform that promised to fight "communism, crime, and corruption." In all the years that followed, political officeholders have heaped praise upon themselves for tirelessly waging a ''war on crime'' and a ''war on drugs'', outdoing each other in trying to appear "tough" on this issue. Police and prison budgets skyrocketed, as did prison populations (the latter consisting heavily of nonviolent drug offenders serving draconian sentences). Under such bombardments, public apprehension about crime accelerated far more precipitously than the actual crime rate.

			Today America is a nation feeling itself under siege from its criminal element. It is a land of gated communities, heavily guarded apartment towers, and millions of households armed with guns ready to dispatch unidentified trespassers. Fear of crime is supplemented with fear of ethnic minorities, terrorists, immigrants, foreigners, gays, feminists, rampaging teenagers, and outspoken peace protesters—in what amounts to a generalised ''culture of fear''.

			Menacing images are implanted in our brains during our most imaginative and malleable years. In the United States, millions of children spend thousands of hours in front of the television set each year, ingesting a steady diet of violence-ridden programmes. By the time the average teenager is graduated from high school he or she will have witnessed about 13,000 TV killings and many times that number of assaults, fistfights, robberies, shoot-outs, rapes, and attempted rapes. A survey by the National Institute of Mental Health found that the level of fear among children increases with heavy television viewing. Very young children, unable to grasp the motives behind the violence, tend to see almost everyone on TV as involved in a universal mode of brutality and threat.<ref>David Pearl, ''Television and Behavior'' (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Mental Health, 1982).</ref>

			Not just children. Adults too ingest a steady diet of shows that feature every known violent act. Deranged murderers terrorise train passengers, kidnappers torment and kill their captives, terrorised women careen about in their homes stalked by determined intruders, vampires slurp the blood of trembling maidens, ghoulish maniacs massacre people with chainsaws, and so on. In 1992, in my book about the entertainment media, I wrote, "After enough days, months, and years of consuming this kind of fare, we might well be ready to vote for authoritarian law-and-order candidates, support the death penalty, increase military spending, bomb Iraq, buy a gun, and shoot anyone who strolls across our lawn after dusk."<ref>Michael Parenti, ''Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment'' (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1992), 114.</ref>

			Numerous movies and television shows regularly glorify the rogue cop who operates outside the law in order to more effectively vanquish the evildoers. Ridden with fear, the public is not squeamish about tough law officers who throw away the rule book. If anything, many citizens cheer the police onward regardless of how brutally they might behave—whether in crime shows or in real life. People who live in fear of being harmed by perpetrators are not too concerned about individual rights and other constitutional niceties. The last thing they want is for police to "have their hands tied" in their war on crime.

			Children's adventure shows and video games also help propagate a culture of fear, and provide the dehumanising practice of destroying human targets. One recently marketed electronic game designed for eight to thirteen-year-olds offers a "new race of powerful hybrid warriors" who contest alien invaders trying to take over the world.<ref>Described in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 14 December 2003.</ref> A study of the most watched children cartoon shows reveals a pattern. Episodes tend to have one main evil leader who is accompanied by ferocious animals or by foreigners with unpleasant accents or other odd-looking characters who turn out to be sadistic scientists and assassins.<ref>See Petra Hesse and Ted Stimpson, "Images of the Enemy on Children's Television," ''Propaganda Review,'' summer 1989.</ref>

			In the thriller films pitched to older audiences, the basic paradigm is roughly the same: The world is swarming with fearsome aggressors who want to do us in. Virtuous Americans are menaced by evil foreigners, communists, cutthroats, diabolic geniuses, screaming savages, alien space invaders, giant asteroids, slimy serpentine creatures from beneath the lagoon, murderous mutant microbes, and other natural and supernatural perils. The ordinary people seem unable to defend themselves through collective action. Their role is to run hither and thither screaming to be saved from the menace. And saved they are—after suffering enough casualties—by individual heroes or state authorities who resort to generous applications of violence to make everything nice again. Good guys and their enemies never got together to negotiate a peaceful settlement. They only meet to go at each other's throats.<ref>For a more extended discussion, see my ''Make-Believe Media'', chapter 10.</ref>

			Fed a lifelong diet of such offerings, many Americans have little difficulty accepting the picture painted by our leaders of a world full of vicious adversaries, lurking within and without our borders, just waiting to pounce upon us. These malefactors can only be deterred by more police, more prisons, more repressive laws at home, and a huge high-tech global military establishment to deal with the menace abroad.

			Frightened people in want of protection do not desire rulers who are overly scrupulous about the methods they use. They prefer ones who are unfettered by the niceties of international law and justice. They want leaders who will stop at nothing when dealing with enemies who themselves purportedly will stop at nothing. They believe we need to fight fire with fire; we need to be ruthless and unsparing in order to prevent the evildoers from messing with us; we must maintain our credibility as a great power by demonstrating our willingness to act forcefully anywhere in the world. Just as many Americans cheer the tough rogue cop who protects them from sinister perpetrators at home, so do they rally around the tough national leader who protects them from one or another perceived global menace.

			In early 2003, on the eve of the second war on Iraq, Americans reached new levels of superpatriotic panic when they turned their fear—and with it their hostility—toward the French. The ''French''? France vetoed the US resolution calling for United Nations support of military action against Iraq. Other UN Security Council members such as Germany, Russia, and China also failed to support the US resolution. But it was the French who dared to play the lead opposition role during the debate. US media pundits and right-wing talk show hosts lost no time in launching Francophobic attacks: How dare the French try to keep us from having our way against Iraq. Don't they remember how America rescued them in World Wars I and II? If it wasn't for us, they would be speaking German today. In any case, what is a second-rate nation like France doing with a permanent seat and veto on the UN Security Council? In his ''New York Times'' column, that tireless and tiresome apologist for US empire, Thomas Friedman, declared, "France is becoming our enemy" and "This French mischief" is misleading the European Union.<ref>''The New York Times'', 18 September 2003.</ref> For Friedman, the war against Iraq was the "most important liberal, revolutionary US democracy-building project" in decades, "one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad."<ref>''The New York Times'', 30 November 2003.</ref> How could the French not see this? On Fox network's ''Special Report'', columnist Morton Kondracke grumbled, "I think the French are perfidious." His fellow right-wing panelist, Fred Barnes, agreed, calling the French "untrustworthy."<ref>Quoted in ''The New York Times'', 9 February 2003.</ref>

			Among some of the more unravelled superpatriots there was talk about returning the Statue of Liberty to France and erecting a newly fashioned monument of our own. Numerous eateries, including the cafeteria in the US House of Representatives, sprang to our nation's defence by renaming french fries "freedom fries." In various parts of the USA, French restaurants reported a drop in patronage, and groceries and supermarkets noted a decline in the sale of French wines and cheeses. Some French cultural events in the USA, including films, art shows, and concerts, were subjected to boycotts and even threats from anonymous callers; some were cancelled out of fear that something untoward might happen. Not unsurprisingly, the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, bemoaned the campaign of "denigration and lies" that seemed to overtake America.<ref>Stephen Sartarelli, "Where Did Our Love Go?" ''The Nation'', 12–19 January 2004.</ref>

			The hostility expressed toward the French was soon projected onto the French themselves. By criticising US actions, they were in effect siding with our "enemies," thereby demonstrating their own enmity toward us. An American travel agent in Paris, interviewed on NPR, having scheduled a tour of France for some thirty Americans, reported that all but one had cancelled their reservations. The one exception was a man who said he would make the trip only if given round-the-clock bodyguard protection. In 2003 many other would-be US tourists called off their trips to France, not wishing to subject themselves to the perils posed by the implacable Gauls. It should be noted that less fearful Americans visiting or residing in France reported no incidents of violence directed against them by angry French mobs. It seems the perfidious French had no idea that they were supposed to be preying upon American visitors.

			At about that time, an acquaintance of mine, who works as a physician's assistant in Las Vegas and whose family has resided in the USA for generations, tells of a patient who noted her French-sounding name tag and asked in all serious, "Should I be worried?" Indeed, he should. He should be worried about why he is so easily manipulated by his rulers into entertaining wacko apprehensions.

	== Are the Plutocrats Patriotic? ==		== Are the Plutocrats Patriotic? ==

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	{{~~Infobox library~~ work\|title=Superpatriotism\|image=Superpatriotism cover.PNG\|author=Michael Parenti\|publisher=[[City Lights Publishers]]\|published_date=2004-09\|type=Book}}		{{Library work\|title=Superpatriotism\|image=Superpatriotism cover.PNG\|author=Michael Parenti\|publisher=[[City Lights Publishers]]\|published_date=2004-09\|type=Book}}

	'''''Superpatriotism''''' is a book by political scientist [[Michael Parenti]] discussing [[Statesian nationalism]] and chauvinism, published in 2004.		'''''Superpatriotism''''' is a book by political scientist [[Michael Parenti]] discussing [[Statesian nationalism]] and chauvinism, published in 2004.