DemocracyNow!: the cold slap in the face of reality, just like DU

[lostnfound]

Before logging on to DU this morning, I flip on the TV for a few minutes, and start to be lulled into soft thinking about Gerald Ford. Awww, of all the Republican presidents in recent history, he was the best, I am thinking. At least he was reasonable. Yes, he pardoned Nixon, but at least he also pardoned the draft dodgers. He was, the FOX news caster says regretfully, "his own man". CNN touts its upcoming special about Ford via Larry King.

Aha! It's 7:15 AM! I can flip to Public Access TV and at this hour it won't be filled with wanna-be-televangelists from tiny churches trying to become the next Joel Osteen or Ted Haggard. Nope, at the blessed hour of 7 AM it's got the visual version of Amy Goodman & DemocracyNow! There she is, immediately reminding me of East Timor. Uggh. So a third of the East Timorese were slaughtered with the consent of Gerald Ford and those bloody monsters Kissinger and Brzezinski? Yes, and Ms. Goodman was there. The ugly facts served up with no sugar. Why do I prefer this caustic medicine over the sugary fantasies served up by the 'News' channels?

Why indeed.

What is it that DN! and DU (!) keep bringing me back to, aside from a sometimes-bitter truth? They bring me back to MY goals: Peace. Justice. Human Rights. Democracy.

They help me recognize which players and activities in the world are supporting those goals, and which are working against it. Any time the 'News Channels' are giving a lovely sugar-coated eulogy, DN! and DU (!) remind us, don't be lulled into thinking that These were one of The Good Guys.

The flip side is that when the 'News Channels' barely mention the death of someone like Rosa Parks, DN! and DU (!) will be there fleshing out the picture to bring it to life, or devoting an hour to a man or woman who most definitely WAS one of The Good Guys. Sometimes the lives of people I'd never heard of, like Victoria Gray Adams or Andrea Dworkin or James Forman, are expounded, and in hearing of their acts, my sense of "the possible" is expanded.

I am too weak and too easily distracted, but I do know that these are MY goals and MY values: Peace. Justice. Human Rights. Democracy.

Thank you to the truthtellers, like the cast of DemocracyNow! and the 'cast of thousands' on DU, for helping me keep my eye on the ball.

[babylonsister]

1. Terific post, lostnfound! Yes, the media whores sugarcoat everything,

especially when it pertains to a former prez. Thanks for your dose of reality and I agree; DU (!) and DN! do tend to tell the unexpurgated truth to inform and educate. I'm beholden to both!

[Tom Joad]

3. I call it History Denial. In the case of East Timor, it might be called Holocaust denial.

We must remember US complicity, or we will repeat the crime.

[Tom Joad]

2. Even here, my post on the subject of East Timor and Ford complicity

is met with angry words about this "basically good man" who did make mistakes (complicity in the death of hundreds of thousands of non-europeans is a "mistake"... do it to White people and it is a crime ... i guess that is the thinking)

Here is the post. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2982626

Yes, Amy doesn't serve up the Disney History version.
She keeps it real.

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Thanks for this great post, lostnfound, and

may the Higher Consciousness be praised for the existence of DN and DU. Amy Goodman is a treasure. SG

[herbbrown]

5. Amy's the Best

Thanks for reminding me to listen today to DemocracyNow.org . Amy Goodman is a true American hero!

[donheld]

9. Can you imagine America without Amy Goodman?

No thanks I don't want to. Without and a few others speaking truth to power this country would be in a word: Gone.

[Kolesar]

6. America is an imperialist, colonial empire

That fleet exists not so that we can bring "freedom" to the corners of the world, but so that we can control the governments around the world. From that control, the imperialist titan that we are ensures the wealth of the financial class by controlling the financial markets and taking the resources (petroleum being primary). The military euphemism is: "representing our interests".
Yes, I know I said empire twice in the subject line :)

[malaise]

10. Well said

100% accurate.

[Bjornsdotter]

7. Wasn't it LBJ

...that said "It was too bad Jerry Ford played football without his helmet?"

Sorta sums him up for me...

Cheers

[H2O Man]

11. It was LBJ.

A strange man, who had a great understanding of human weakness.

[eridani]

8. Noam Chomsky--Why Americans should care about East Timor

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/east_timor/comment/chomsky.html

In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by its own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. The United States and Australia knew the invasion was coming and effectively authorized it. Australian Ambassador Richard Woolcott, in memos later leaked to the press, recommended the "pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian realism," because it might be possible to make a better deal on Timor's oil reserves with Indonesia than with an independent East Timor. At the time, the Indonesian army relied on the United States for 90 percent of its arms, which were restricted by the terms of the agreement for use only in "self-defense." Pursuing the same doctrine of "Kissingerian realism," Washington simultaneously stepped up the flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, and the public was kept in the dark.

The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. Its failure was explained by then-UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his memoirs, he took pride in having rendered the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" because "he United States wished things to turn out as they did" and "worked to bring this about." As for how "things turned out," Moynihan comments that, within a few months, 60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War."

The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new arms provided by the Carter administration. The toll to date is estimated at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to population since the Holocaust. By 1978, the United States was joined by Britain, France, and others eager to gain what they could from the slaughter. Protest in the West was minuscule. Little was even reported. US press coverage, which had been high in the context of concerns over the fall of the Portuguese empire, declined to practically nothing in 1978.