The psychologically destructive conundrum of war: ’Thou shalt not kill’ vs. ‘Go get ‘em and kill for your country’

bill moyers...

What It’s Like to Go to War

excellent interview... i wish everyone could listen and absorb this kind of thoughtful exchange about the ugliness of war...

as a vietnam army vet and with 8 visits to afghanistan under my belt (fortunately not connected with the military), i never cease to be amazed at how constricted and narrow is the "news" reporting from the regions where our prized young adults and the future hope of our country are being psychologically scarred, physically wounded and dying... not only is our media reporting all about glorifying our troops and body counts (theirs and ours), it is also conspicuous in its complete disregard for the fact that the "enemy" consists of fellow human beings who, for the large part, want nothing more than we want - food and clothing for their families, a roof over their heads, access to education and health care, the chance to live in peace and quiet, and the opportunity and means to support themselves... dehumanizing those we are told we must kill is just part of the brainwashing...

i have received my health care from the veterans administration for the past ten years and it is among the finest health care i've been privileged to receive... i would strongly recommend that every american citizen should regard it as his or her sacred duty to spend one hour a year in the lobby of a va hospital to personally witness the ceaseless parade of human wreckage that is the legacy of our endless wars...

as a final comment, i object strongly to the use of the term "warriors"... in our society which has already been heavily indoctrinated to accept endless war as a way of life, substituting terms like "warriors" and "warfighters" for "soldiers" and "members of the military" is a subtle means of further glorifying the means by which our rich elites send off struggling members of the lower classes to insure that their access to even more riches goes undisturbed...

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Moyers to Americans: Read the Declaration of Independence this July 4

as always, good stuff from bill moyers...

from raw story...

Bill Moyers Essay: The Difficult Truths Behind Independence Day

June 29, 2012

It’s important to remember that, behind the July 4th holiday, are human beings who were as flawed as they were inspired.



for a very long time, i have wished bill moyers would run for president...

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The increasingly corrupt banking industry and the multiple ways the U.S. Government continues to prop it up [UPDATE]

glenn highly recommends the following moyers & company youtube clip and, after watching it, i strongly concur...

If you can find 25 minutes or so this weekend, I can’t recommend highly enough this segment from this week’s Bill Moyers program, with Yves Smith and Matt Taibbi, discussing the increasingly corrupt banking industry and the multiple ways the U.S. Government continues to prop it up.

[UPDATE]

here's a link and a few paragraphs from matt taibbi's rolling stone article from 21 June...

[T]his just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.

The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being ­cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What's more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street's secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves' cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about "getting a button man to clip the capo," on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like "pull a nickel out" or "get to the right level" or "you're hanging out there" – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.

the scale of corruption is breathtaking...

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Bill Moyers talks with Angela Blackwell about optimism

a stunning quote...

"23 million people in the u.s. do not live within a mile of a place to get fresh fruits and vegetables"...

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Bill Moyers: How ordinary people can fight ‘Citizens United’

i still think bill moyers ought to run for president... he could pick stephen colbert for his vp...

from raw story...

In this clip, commentator Bill Moyers answers a question frequently posed to him by viewers — “How can ordinary people fight ‘Citizens United’?”

The controversial Supreme Court ruling enshrines the notion of “corporate personhood” into law, giving companies many of the same rights and protections as U.S. citizens, allowing businesses to pour unlimited amounts of money into influencing political contests.

Moyers urges viewers to believe in themselves as agents of change, to stick together and understand that there is real power in numbers. He quotes an African proverb, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.”

He concludes by giving contact information for two organizations fighting the “Citizens United” ruling, Move to Amend and Free Speech for People.

Ask Bill: How can ordinary people help to overturn or nullify the Citizen United Decision? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

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Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co., on what Occupy is accomplishing

Ask Bill from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

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Yay...! Bill Moyers is coming back to TV this weekend...

i had read about this earlier but am so very delighted to see it happening...“

Bill Moyers Journal” ended in April 2010 because Mr. Moyers, now 77, said he needed a break from the incessant demands of weekly television. But there’s no sign he is easing up this time around.

The new show, which begins this month on public television stations, has a different name, “Moyers & Company,” and a warmer set, featuring a blue-and-green background. But much will carry over from the old program, including Mr. Moyers’s thoughtful interviews with thinkers who wouldn’t otherwise get much television face time and a focus on the country’s most pressing political and economic questions. “I’m coming back because in tumultuous times like these I relish the company of people who try to make sense of the tumult,” Mr. Moyers writes on his Web site, billmoyers.com.

In an interview in his sprawling new Manhattan office he said that during his break he explored the possibility of a documentary on Lyndon B. Johnson, the president he served as press secretary, but decided that “today is more interesting than yesterday.”[emphasis added]

i repeat... yay...!

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