“Schizophrenic Individualism”: Lonely Connection

Children near open sewer
 large slumKibera, Nairobi, Kenya 

In search of “Solidarity,” credible kindness

Excerpting, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

In her article in “Chronicle of a Mess Foretold,” author and journalist Silvia Swinden writes,  “The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and TTIP (The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, aka U.S.-EU ‘Free’ Trade Agreement) continue hurtling toward their coveted objective:

…to create the largest “free” trade zone ever seen in the world, in reality the largest U.S. and Multinational Corporations area of total control.

Nation states will be powerless to defend themselves (see Argentina v Vulture funds dress rehearsal in the news this week).

"Shock and Awe"
U.S. in Iraq

“China and Russia [are] negotiating the formation of a bloc to slow down this new advance of predatory capitalism. They are even talking about dropping the dollar as the international exchange currency for oil and for the accumulation of reserves.

“We know how that went when Saddam Hussein (sold Iraq’s oil in Euros) and [Muammar al-] Qaddafi (wanted to establish the Gold Dinar to sell Libya’s oil) went that way.

Anti-U.S. demonstration
in Libya

“So it is not surprising that Russia and China want to look big and powerful (in this case there are WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and they will not be hidden, rather likely they will be shown prominently) if the U.S. begins to make noises about ‘protecting human rights’ or ‘bringing democracy’ to their citizens.

“This advance of the neoliberal agenda was not lost to Silo [Argentine writer, philosopher and founder of the Humanist Movement] who in 1991 wrote his ‘First Letter to my Friends’ …. It is interesting to review it," she says, "not only because of its insights about the history of economic power and violence but also because it contains a fresh point of view about the new sensitivity that is developing and the way, a nonviolent way, it can be the basis for an alternative way … ── through reconstruction of the social fabric carried out by simultaneous personal and social change.”

 

This is an excerpt from Swinden’s posting of Silo’s 1991 First Letter to my Friends

“History demonstrates that peoples have advanced when they have demanded their rights from the established powers, and that social progress has clearly not been the result of some automatic trickle down’ of the wealth accumulated by one sector of society.… 

 “The regionalization of markets, like the demands for local and ethnic autonomy, underscores the disintegration of the nation state.… Since economic processes reflect human intentions and interests, in light of events, we see nothing to support the belief that those with control over the well-being of humanity are concerned with overcoming the difficulties of others less privileged than themselves.…”

Protests al-Assy Square
 Hama, Syria 2011

C

hange, Relationships among People

Protests Tahrir Square
Cairo, Egypt 2011

“Our companions at work, school, in sports—even old friends—have all taken on the character of competitors.… 

Anti-war 

Never before has the world been so closely interconnected, yet each day individuals experience a more anguishing lack of communication. 

Never before have urban centers been more populous, yet people speak of their ‘loneliness.’ 

 Never before have people needed human warmth so much as now, but any approach to another in a spirit of kindness and help elicits only suspicion.

Protests
Algiers, Algeria, 2011

 “This is the predicament to which our hapless people [have] been abandoned, each isolated individual being led to believe in the greatest unhappiness that he or she has something important to lose—an ethereal ‘something’ that is coveted by all the rest of humanity!”

H

uman Change

“In sharp contrast to other times, so full of empty phrases meant only to garner external recognition ──today people are beginning to find value in humble and deeply felt work, work done not to enhance one’s self-image, but rather to change oneself and bring about change in one’s immediate environment of family, work, and friendship.

“Those who truly care for people do not disdain this work done without fanfare, this work that proves so incomprehensible to those opportunists who were formed in an earlier landscape of leaders and masses—a landscape in which they learned well how to use others to catapult themselves to society’s heights.

Anti-war 

“When a person comes to the realization that schizophrenic individualism is a dead end,

…when they openly communicate what they are thinking and what they are doing to everyone they know without the ridiculous fear of not being understood,

…when they approach others not as some anonymous mass but with a real interest in each person,

Protests Jordan

…when they encourage teamwork in both the interchange of ideas and the realization of common projects,

…when they clearly demonstrate the need to spread this task of rebuilding the social fabric that others have destroyed,

Iran 1979

…when they feel that even the most ‘unimportant’ person is of greater human quality than some heartless individual whom circumstance has elevated to what is, for now, the pinnacle of success—

“When all this happens, it is because within this person

A.N.S.W.E.R. USA

destiny has once again begun to speak, the destiny that has moved entire peoples along their best evolutionary path, 

the destiny that has been so many times distorted and so many times forgotten, but is always reencountered in the twists and turns of history.

Arab Spring

Sources and notes

“Chronicle of a mess foretold: TTIP and TPP seen from Silo’s 1991 letter,” posted by Silvia Swinden, June 21, 2014, in Humanism and Spirituality, International, International issues, Nonviolence, http://www.pressenza.com/2014/06/chronicle-mess-foretold-ttip-tpp-seen-silos-1991-letter/

Dr. Silvia Swinden is Pressenza London Bureau Chief, retired Forensic Psychiatrist and Coordinator of the World Centre for Humanist Studies in the United Kingdom. She is also author of From Monkey Sapiens to Homo Intentional: The Phenomenology of the Nonviolent Revolution (Adonis & Abbey, London 2006), http://www.dw.de/swinden-dr-silvia/a-17629952

Silo

Argentine writer, philosopher and founder of the Humanist Movement, Silo (pseudonym of Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos) gave speeches and wrote books, short stories, articles and studies related to politics, society, psychology, spirituality and other topics. His years January 6, 1938 – September 16, 2010, Mendoza, Argentina, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Cobos

Images:

Children near open sewer in Kibera, a large Nairobi, Kenya, slum

Protests (center streaked) in al-Assy Square, Hama (Hamah), central Syria 2011

Protests with flag streamer Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt

Protests (between buildings) Algiers, Algeria

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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No Time for Justice: USA as Global Threat

Exceptionalism that Threatens All

Editing and commentary by Carolyn Bennett

When exceptionalism as acted out in foreign and domestic policy and practice means exempt ── that everybody except the exceptional are subjected to or otherwise constrained by the rule of law, moral principles, conventions, constitutions and or declarations guaranteeing universal human rights; that these exceptional reserve for themselves a standing code of impunity, of lawlessness, of cruelty ── then they are the greatest threat to the world’s peoples and to their lives, to world peace and freedom.  

There is a congenital and chronic display of madness in evidence that must be excised or exorcised, balanced, checked or otherwise restrained.

W

herever it happens whether it is in Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Libya or Syria or Ukraine or Somalia or Japan or in New York ── the United States is the carrier of a congenital disease of paranoia, separatism, “gated-ness” that manifests in authorities’, public officials' (presidents, governors, police) and concentrated power’s failure to obey and to uphold laws and the rights of human beings as human beings. This rottenness will not abate as long as extreme self-centeredness and “otherness” pervades public and private spaces. 

There’s no point in feigning occasional outrage or even real outrage occasionally when the ground, the groundwater has been poisoned ── by narrow-minded media, government, militarists, advertising, religion and other sectarianism, by propaganda, inordinate, often laundered, money hijacking and privatizing public space and airwaves creating subliminally and often blatantly an endless stream of dogma that brainwashes, coercing group-think and banishment of “other.” In this onslaught, this inundation, we (the masses) are lulled into our own annihilation. 

We accept the unacceptable and aid in creating and recreating our own dark and toxic minds; we disconnect from and are insensible to humankind (who we are, Homo sapiens, no more and no less) ──whether in Asia or Africa, Europe or Australia, in the Americas or more narrowly in the parks of New York City, USA.

Global Human Costs 

U.S. Violent Imprint Abroad

GLOBAL: UN News Centre global reports Human Costs of Endless Wars: “UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report shows that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.… The annual survey also notes that

Global Human Costs 

Global Human Costs 

3.5 million refugees, or one-third of the global total, were residing in countries covered by UNHCR’s [UN High Commissioner for Refugees’] Asia and Pacific region.

Of these, more than 2.4 million were Afghans (69 per cent) in Pakistan and Iran.

Sub-Saharan Africa was host to more than 2.9 million, or one-quarter of all refugees, primarily from Somalia (778,400), Sudan (605,400), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (470,300), the Central African Republic (251,900), and Eritrea (198,700). 

USA in Iraq

IRAQ: Democracy Now Headlines June 20, 2014, “[U.S. President Barack] Obama Deploys 300 Military Advisers to Iraq, Leaves Open Potential U.S. Strikes”

Democracy Now Headlines June 19, 2014, “Report: U.S. Conditions Iraq Military Intervention on [U.S. INSTALLED Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki Resignation”

PressTV Headlines June 20, 2014, “U.S. military instructors trained Takfiri militants of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) at a secret base in Jordan in 2012, informed Jordanian officials say. The officials, who were not identified, revealed to American news website WorldNetDaily (WND) that dozens of ISIL members received training as part of covert aid to militants fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Mississippi, USA
1964

 LIBYA: Democracy Now Headlines June 19, 2014, “Libya Condemns U.S. Raid on Benghazi── Libyan Foreign Ministry spokesperson [says],“‘The government [of Libya] condemns [United States's] unfortunate attack on Libyan sovereignty, without prior knowledge of the Libyan government, in a time [in which] the city of Benghazi suffers from security disruptions.’”

U.S. Violent Imprint at Home

U.S. SOUTH Fifty years tomorrow June 21, 1964: in Nashoba County, Mississippi, USA, Americans murdered three other Americans: civil rights workers James Chaney, age 21; Andrew Goodman, age 20; and Michael Schwerner, age 24. The young men had been working with voter registration of Negro citizens during “Freedom Summer” and had gone to investigate a church burning. In the course of doing the work, Mississippi law enforcement had arrested the young men “on trumped-up charges, imprisoned them for several hours, and then released them after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.” The Klan “beat and murdered them.” And later evidence presented in court showed that “members of Neshoba County’s law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan had conspired to kill” the civil rights workers.

New York City, USA
1989-2014

U.S. NORTH Twenty-five years from Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner ● 25 years illustrating a pathological NO TIME FOR JUSTICE: Someone else committed the 1989 Central Park crime and talked about committing it; but New York police had no time for justice. They “railroaded” five teenagers “into making incriminating statements against themselves and each other.” Later DNA evidence identifies the actual rapist police had failed to catch; he comes forward and confesses to the crime. Though the five men are then exonerated, the head of New York’s government refuses to make these victims, these injured, whole. 

 

James Nye’s  synopsis at the UK Daily Mail Online today: “The ‘Central Park 5’ - wrongly convicted for crime which shocked the entire nation - to settle with New York City for $40 million: •Central Park 5 - Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam,

USA in Pakistan

Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise - to settle 25-years after the crime •Convicted of the April 1989 rape and beating of 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili • Crime stunned nation after Meili was left for dead and with no recollection •Central Park 5 were all aged between 14-16 and claimed the NYPD coerced them into confessions •They all served between seven and 13-years behind bars •In 2002 new DNA evidence discovered a convicted rapist was responsible •He confessed and the men were exonerated of the brutal crime •The men, now in their late 30s and early 40s have spent more than a decade fighting for huge settlement.”

A

s this exceptionalism violates all ── and as a serial killer escalates as it violates, unconscionably── it violates all of us. 

Sources and notes

“Central Park 5,” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2663382/The-Central-Park-5-wrongly-convicted-crime-shocked-entire-nation-settle-New-York-City-40-million.html

New York Daily News, June 19, 2014, reporting by Michael Feeney, Ginger Adams Otis, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/central-park-40m-settlement-article-1.1836991

Democracy Now Headlines June 20, 2014,

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/headlines

PressTV HEADLINES, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/06/20/367852/us-trained-isil-at-secret-jordan-base/

“The Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner,” Infoplease,

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmjustice4.html

“Libya Condemns U.S. Raid on Benghazi Suspect; Obama Admin Invokes Self-Defense,” http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/19/headlines

“‘War’s Human Cost’: World’s population of displaced tops 50 million, UN refugee agency reports,” http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48089#.U6RzsI0g-1s

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Deepening U.S. violence against Iraq impels anti-war push-back

Occupation, Militarization
Must End

Editing and excerpting 

Carolyn Bennett

Associated Press Recap

U.S. Occupying Personnel

“The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world,” roughly 5,000 occupying U.S. personnel. Additional U.S. personnel deployed by the U.S. State Department occupy three U.S. consulates: in Basra (southeastern Iraq, the country’s principal port); in Irbil (Arbil, an ancient town in northern Iraq, 48 miles east of Mosul in the foothills of the mountains that rise to the east, also links by roads to Turkey, Syria, and Iran); and in Kirkuk (northeastern Iraq, 145 miles north of Baghdad).

Today “more than 100 U.S. military personnel” are deployed in Iraq “in a section of the U.S. Embassy that coordinates U.S. foreign military sales to Iraq.” Scores of U.S. Marines, “more than 100 …provide security at the embassy.”

Sending further U.S. military for training Iraqis was officially curtailed when “Baghdad rejected Washington’s insistence that [U.S.] troops be granted immunity from prosecution [impunity] while in the country.” However, a fairly large training mission was based at the air base in Balad, about an hour northwest of Baghdad, from which “three planeloads of Americans were evacuated” this past week.

U.S. Mercenaries

Also in Iraq are former “Pentagon contractors” [Americans] turned “Iraqi government” contractors who “have been providing a range of military sales support and training” related to “weapons and other military equipment purchased [by Iraq] from the United States.”

U.S.-armed against Iraq’s own people

Iraq is reportedly scheduled to purchase 36 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes priced tagged at “$3 billion.” Together with these, the United States “has recently sold a variety of high-end equipment, including hundreds of Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, tank ammunition, grenades, rifles and other weaponry [ and] the Pentagon recently notified Congress of plans to sell an additional $1 billion in military equipment to Iraq.”

 

U.S. death toll (estimate)

The United States (its people, government, military) fought an eight-year war [actually more than eight years of U.S. presidencies extending to the George H.W. Bush administration] against the Iraqi people and ousted their president, Saddam Hussein. Monetary Cost estimate in the 8-year period: “hundreds of billions of dollars.” U.S. deaths estimate: exceeding “4,400.” 

U

.S. in Iraq 2003-2009-2012 (estimates, incomplete toll)

Wikipedia notes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

U.S.-led multinational coalition death toll: 4,486 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012; information on Iraqi military and civilian casualties less precise, less consistent.

Lancet Study figures based on household survey data:

654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006. Estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths including deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.; 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95 percent confidence interval) were estimated to be due to violence: 31 percent of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24 percent to others, 46 percent unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56 percent), car bomb (13 percent), other explosion/ordnance (14 percent), airstrike (13 percent), accident (2 percent), unknown (2 percent). A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92 percent of those households asked to produce one). 

Body counts: 

Associated Press

110,600 violent deaths

March 2003-April 2009  

Iraq Body Count project

112,667–123,284 civilian deaths from violence; 174,000 civilian and combatant deaths
March 2003-March 2013 

Classified Iraq War Logs 

109,032 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths
January 2004-December 2009 

Classified U.S. military documents released by WikiLeaks in October 2010 

Iraqi and Coalition military deaths ● January 2004 - December 2009
109,032 deaths: “Civilian” 66,081 deaths; “Host Nation” 15,196 deaths; “Enemy” 23,984 deaths; “Friendly” 3,771 deaths

With all the pain and suffering U.S. officials have brought to the land and people of Iraq, they and their  “partners,” who comprise a lethal cabal in America's relations with the world, still haven't had enough blood. They are resuming their belligerent threats and lectures with a view toward compounding the residual harm of post-war, expanding a hostile occupation, and deepening Iraq’s pain with even more violent aggression. 

Some Americans want this cruelty to stop. I'm one of them.  

Anti-war Push-back

T

he A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition calls the nation to attend NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ

Nationwide demonstrations Friday and Saturday June 20 and 21 ── Included in this call to action, in addition to ANSWER, are Code Pink, World Can't Wait, and others.

T

he anti-war movement must mobilize “to tell the Obama administration that the people of the United States absolutely oppose any new war on Iraq. We cannot sit by idly when the Pentagon may be about to open a new chapter in its history of death and destruction.”

No New U.S. War on Iraq! Initial posts

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/emergency-actions-no-new.html

Washington, D.C.
Monday, June 16, 5 p.m.
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Initiated by Code Pink and other organizations
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave

Los Angeles, CA
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
Pershing Square
(Corner of 5th & Hill)
Downtown LA

San Francisco, CA
Sat., June 21, Noon
Corner of Powell and Market Sts

Sacramento, CA
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
16th & J Sts

Eureka, CA
Sat. June 21, Noon
County Courthouse, 5th & I Sts

Fresno, CA
Saturday, June 21st, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Peace Corner - Blackstone & Shaw

Tallahassee, FL
Sat., June 21, 12:30 p.m.
Florida State Capitol
400 South Monroe Street

Chicago, IL
Sat., June 21, Noon
Federal Plaza
(Adams and Dearborn)

Twin Cities, MN
Wednesday, June 18, 5 p.m.
Lake Street/Marshall Ave., bridge between Minneapolis & St. Paul
More information at 612-522-1861 or 612-827-5364

Albuquerque, NM
Fri., June 20, 6 p.m.
UNM Bookstore
(Intersection of Central & Cornell)

New York, NY
Tuesday, June 17, 5:30 p.m.
Outside Democratic Party where Obama is speaking
Gotham Hall, 1356 Broadway, between 36th and 37th Sts
Initiated by World Can't Wait
Friday, June 20, 6 p.m.
Harlem Armed Forces Recruitment Center
76 W. 125th St (2/3 trains)

Philadelphia, PA
Thursday, June 19, 4:30 p.m.
15th and Market Sts

Sources and notes

“A look at the U.S. presence in Iraq,” Robert Burns, Associated Press, June 14, 2014

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/look-us-presence-iraq-075331501.html;_ylt=AwrBJR7WKp9TOzsAO.zQtDMD

“NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ: Actions at the White House in D.C., in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Albuquerque, Sacramento and many more cities on June 20 and 21!,”

http://www.answercoalition.org/

Emergency Actions Nationwide: NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ, June 13, 2014, post

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/emergency-actions-no-new.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Gaullist fights “Tooth and Nail” for Sovereignty

Sophie&Co’s June 9 Interview with Marine Le Pen

Minor edit for TIN by Carolyn Bennett

Marine Le Pen is a French lawyer and politician, a Member of the European Parliament, and Leader of France’s Front Nacional Party (the National Front). I was interested particularly in her insightful comments on sovereignty because I believe them to be instructive of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, its plutocracy over democracy, and its seriously flawed character and practice in international relations.

“Sovereignty is the foundation of democracy,” Marine Le Pen said. “Without sovereignty, there is no democracy. Having the freedom to cast a ballot in a ballot box is one thing; but if the people you elected with your ballot have no power because the actual power was transferred to a supranational body, then we are no longer in a democratic process. … ‘There are two ways of establishing totalitarianism – either all of the powers are united together, or we transfer all the power to a supranational body.’ …”

Marine Le Pen’s Gaullist foreign policy

… [W]e are for leaving NATO, for France leaving NATO, we have a [Gaullist] vision of what international politics must be like. 

We are for developing our relations with Russia, without breaking ties with the United States. 

We believe that France must maintain its relations with all of the world’s great nations, and we do not want [imposed on us] a way of seeing things by anybody. 

We aspire to have the freedom to determine the quality and the level of our international relations.

Defend ourselves against whom? Defense against China? Le Pen is asked and answers, The suggestion “almost makes you laugh.” 

De Gaulle, 1961, at Wikipedia

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (November 22, 1890 – November 9, 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II and in 1945 secured a seat for France on the United Nations Security Council. De Gaulle led the writing of a new constitution founding the Fifth Republic (1958) and served as its first president (1959 to 1969). 

Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy strategy as president (Gaullism) asserted France as a major power “independent of ‘Anglo Saxon’ (American and British) influences. He withdrew France from NATO military command—although remaining a member of the Western alliance—and twice vetoed Britain's entry into the European Community. [Wikipedia note] 

Marine Le Pen’s Danger warning of Singular Voice

“[S]uch and such decides who is on the good side and who is on the bad side, and this can change at any moment. 

The good guys of today will be the bad guys of tomorrow, and maybe the bad guys of today will become good tomorrow── if Washington decides that it is to their advantage to make them good.

 It is a shame, since there is a substantial amount of mistakes that have been made at an international level under Washington’s influence, especially in Syria. 

“We were the only ones among the French political parties to oppose intervention in Syria, the first and only ones who, from the beginning, said that we were arming Islamic fundamentalists, who would, if they did win, implement a reign of terror like they did in Libya. This was, once again, because of us. We helped them come to power.

“This is the American method, the international American method: they defend their interests, or they think that they are defending them, since sometimes they make serious mistakes. What is terrible is that European countries no longer have a say in things. There are no more sovereign nations in Europe that can be the voice of reason for peaceful settlement of conflicts, the voice of balance between different interests of different nations.”

Marine Le Pen’s pro-Sovereignty, anti-Trans-Atlantic Free Trade scheme

“[T]his is an opportunity for the United States to carry out military integration, and maybe tomorrow, economic integration, to extend the scope of its influence. The free-trade agreement that the United States want to sign at any price is really just another way to tie the European Union, in a quasi-definitive way, to the United States.

“This is, once again, a loss of independence, not to mention the catastrophic consequences that this free-trade agreement would have for us in terms of agriculture, industry, defense, etc. So this is much more a geopolitical treaty than a purely commercial or economic treaty.”

If within the theoretical concept of a free trade agreement (FTA) ── in addition to eliminating tariffs, import quotas, and preferences on most (if not all) goods and services traded among trade bloc signatories ── people are free to move across countries, it would also be considered an open border” agreement. It may also be considered the second stage of economic integration. [Wikipedia note]

Le Pen says the National Front “formally contests and will fight tooth and nail the “ultra-liberal policy,” the “transfer of sovereignty” implicit in the signing of “the Trans-Atlantic treaty with the United States.” She says she believes the trade agreement “goes against the sovereignty of the people and the economic, social, and international interests of France.”

Something to think about. 

Sources and notes 

“Marine Le Pen: ‘EU robbed us of all liberties; we should fight to get them back’”

Sophie Shevardnadze, SophieCo,_RT, June 9, 2014, http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/164660-europe-politicans-victims-ukraine

Elections to the European Parliament have brought groundbreaking changes in the structure of EU’s most powerful body: right wing parties along with Eurosceptics, and outsiders just a few years ago, have now taken the political scene.

Front Nacional party in France gets the majority - signifying that people want change; the same with other nations.

What now? Is the European change of course inevitable? What will happen to the Union itself?  [Sophie Shevardnadze asks]

Sophie&Co spoke with special guest Marine Le Pen, leader of the France’s Front Nacional Party.

Also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_agreement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

“Eric Cantor loses U.S. House seat in shock upset” AFP Michael Mathes reporting, June 10, 2014 10:36 PM:

Economics professor at a Richmond, Virginia, college David Brat defeats powerful party insider and U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the former reportedly backed by the Tea Party, the latter the Republican Party. Primary election all 243 precincts reported 55.5 percent Brat, 44.5 percent Cantor. Brat “barely received media airtime, was outspent by Cantor by more than 25 to one.”

http://news.yahoo.com/cantor-loses-us-house-seat-shock-upset-005050699.html;_ylt=AwrBJR4zBJpTo2cAeYrQtDMD

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy


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Exemptional Exceptionalism 
A Delusional people and nation
Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett

“In [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s reinterpretation of World War Two the joint struggle with the Soviets to defeat Hitler’s European empire became a grand American crusade for democracy, human rights, multiculturalism and immigration,” Nebojsa Malic continues.

Is that why less than 50 years after fighting Hitler, the U.S. was helping his allies in the Balkans? 

Why Washington repeated the Munich travesty seventy years later, even while trumpeting ‘No more Munichs!’ to justify its belligerence around the world? 

Why sixty years after Hitler attacked Poland, NATO attacked Yugoslavia without provocation or cause? 

And why ignorant Anglo-American leaders accuse Russia (!) of ‘acting like Hitler,’ even as they back Hitlerites in Ukraine? 

“After all that, the Emperor has the sheer gall to say the ‘United States of America is [sic] and will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.’ Wow.…

“What is one to make of this insistence on American exceptionalism (and exemptionalism), which has long since stopped bordering on delusional and crossed right over into Behind-the-Looking-Glass land?

“…… Those who landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 weren’t fighting and dying for an American Empire, or the world revolution – but for an America defined by those who rebelled against King George and absolutist monarchy.

“Yet, here their country is, seven decades later ── a carnival of rust, going broke on a worldwide crusade to spread ‘democracy,’ allied with the Nazis and their heirs, being ruled by pen and by phone, and being subjected to chicken hawks croaking, ‘Empire today, Empire tomorrow, Empire forever!’”

Nebojsa Malic's words are so poignantly powerful in truth, they need no further comment.

Sources and notes

“Is this what D-Day was for… Glorification of America as ‘the one indispensible nation’? … At the D-Day commemoration [U.S. President Barack] Obama had the sheer gall to say the ‘United States of America is and will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.’” By Nebojsa Malic, June 7, 2014, posted in News, Antiwar.com then at Stop the War Coalition UK, http://stopwar.org.uk/news/is-this-what-d-day-was-for-glorification-of-the-united-states-as-the-one-indispensible-nation#.U5SNgPldWWG

Bosnia-native Nebojsa Malic is a historian who specializes in international relations and the Balkans and has written many essays on the Kosovo War, Bosnia, and Serbian politics. During the Bosnian War he had exposure to diplomatic and media affairs in Sarajevo. He resides in the United States.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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