Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday 6 January 2015

TomDispatch.com: A Regular Antidote to the Mainstream Media
January 6, 2014
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Feeling Insecure in 2015
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: All I can say is thank you!  The generosity of this site’s readers was spectacular last year. In particular, your response to my annual mid-December appeal for bucks bowled me over. It’s wonderful to begin 2015 knowing that the money is in the bank to continue our operations. I thank every one of you who visited our donation page. We’ll do our best this year to live up to your expectations. Tom]
A Self-Perpetuating Machine for American Insecurity 
Welcome to the National Security State of 2015 
By Tom Engelhardt
As 2015 begins, let’s take a trip down memory lane.  Imagine that it’s January 1963.  For the last three years, the United States has unsuccessfully faced off against a small island in the Caribbean, where a revolutionary named Fidel Castro seized power from a corrupt but U.S.-friendly regime run by Fulgensio Batista.  In the global power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union in which much of the planet has chosen sides, Cuba, only 90 miles from the American mainland, finds itself in the eye of the storm.  Having lost Washington’s backing, it has, however, gained the support of distant Moscow, the other nuclear-armed superpower on the planet.
In October 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower instituted an embargo on U.S. trade with the island that would, two years later, be strengthened andmade permanent by John F. Kennedy.  On entering the Oval Office, Kennedy also inherited a cockamamie CIA scheme to use Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro.  That led, in April 1961, to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in which, despite major Agency support, the exiles were crushed (after which the CIA would hatch various mad plots to assassinate the new Cuban leader).  What followed in October 1962 was “the most dangerous moment in human history” -- the Cuban missile crisis -- a brief period when many Americans, my 18-year-old self included, genuinely thought we might soon be nuclear toast.
Now, imagine yourself in January 1963, alive and chastened by a world in which you could be obliterated at any moment.  Imagine as well that someone from our time suddenly invited you into the American future some 52 Januaries hence, when you would, miracle of miracles, still be alive and the planet still more or less in one piece.  Imagine, as a start, being told that the embargo against, and Washington’s hostility toward, Cuba never ended.  That 52 futile years later, with Cuba now run by Fidel’s “younger” brother, 83-year-old Raul, the 11th American president to deal with the “crisis” has finally decided to restore diplomatic relations, ease trade restrictions, and encourage American visitors to the island.
Imagine being told as well that in Congress, more than half a century later, a possible majority of representatives remained nostalgic for a policy that spent 52 years not working.  Imagine that members of the upcoming 2015 Senate were already swearing they wouldn’t hand over a plug nickel to the president or the State Department to establish a diplomatic mission in Havana or confirm an ambassador or ease the embargo or take any other steps to change the situation, and were denouncing the president -- who, by the way, is a black man named Barack Obama -- as a weakling and an “appeaser-in-chief” for making such a move.
Perhaps that American visitor from 1963 would already feel as if his or her mind were being scrambled like a morning egg and yet we’re only beginning.  After all, our visitor would have to be told that the Soviet Union, that hostile, nuclear-armed communist superpower and partner of Washington in the potential obliteration of the planet, no longer exists; that it unexpectedly imploded in 1991, leaving its Eastern European empire largely free to integrate into the rest of Europe.
One caveat would, however, need to be added to that blockbuster piece of historical news.  Lest our visitor imagine that everything has changed beyond all recognition, it would be important to point out that in 2015 the U.S. still confronts an implacably hostile, nuclear-armed communist state.  Not the USSR, of course, nor even that other communist behemoth, China.  (Its Communist Party took the “capitalist road” in the late 1970s and never looked back as that country rose to become the globe’s largest economy!)
Here’s a hint: it fought the U.S. to a draw in a bitter war more than six decades ago and has just been accused of launching a devastating strike against the United States.  Admittedly, it wasn’t aimed at Washington but at Hollywood.  That country -- or some group claiming to be working in its interests -- broke into a major movie studio, Sony (oh yes, a Japanese company is now a significant force in Hollywood!), and released gossip about its inner workings as well as the nasty things actors, producers, and corporate executives had to say about one another.  It might (or might not), that is, have launched the planet’s first cyber-gossip bomb.
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