{"id":360053,"date":"2018-05-07T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T02:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=360053"},"modified":"2018-05-07T03:00:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T02:00:38","slug":"willing-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/willing-slaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Willing Slaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Willing believers in lies are willing slaves, because lies are coercion of the mind, as opposed to coercion of the body (slavery by physical violence instead of by mental violence, which is called \u201clies\u201d); and anyone who willingly complies with any type of coercion when escape from that coercion is available (and this is precisely the situation when the lie has been disproven and exposed and when the truth has already been clearly demonstrated) is a willing slave, of the mental type \u2014 a mental slave, instead of a physical slave; and a willing<\/i> slave, to-boot, a participant in his or her own suckerdom. <\/span><\/p>\n

For example, members of the U.S.-and allied armed forces are willing slaves after the outright lie<\/span><\/a>, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2002, became exposed and no such WMD were found in Iraq by the forces of the lying invading governments, the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. and its allies were clear war-criminals. Anyone who \u2014 after such clear-cut proof that the U.S. and its allies are aggressors on the basis of lying and deceiving their followers to invade and destroy nations that (like Iraq) had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the U.S. \u2014 continues, nonetheless, to consider the U.S. and its allies to be anything other<\/i> than international war-criminals who endanger the entire world by invasions that are based on lies, is simply and clearly a willing slave. Plenty of them exist, not only as warriors for the U.S. regime, but as many other types of mental slaves, around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

In that instance, of Iraq 2003, no question remains: the U.S. was clearly and unequivocally an international war-criminal. A crucial date was 7 September 2002, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair both said<\/span><\/a> that a new report had just been issued by the IAEA saying that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a nuclear weapon. The IAEA promptly denied that it had issued any such \u201cnew report\u201d at all, and the \u2018news\u2019 media simply ignored the denial, which the IAEA then repeated weeks later, and it again was ignored<\/span><\/a>; so, the false impression, that such an IAEA report had been issued, remained in the publics\u2019 minds, and they consequently favored invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein before there would be, as Condoleezza Rice warned the next day following Bush-Blair, on September 8th, a \u201cmushroom cloud\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It was all just lies \u2014 lies that were believed by the public, at the time, and even believed by many for a long time after we invaded. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of these lies were derived from torturing detainees<\/span><\/a> \u2014 torturing them to say what the U.S. and British regimes<\/span><\/a> wanted them to say. But all were concocted by the perpetrating dictators. Like CIA Director George Tenet told his boss, George W. Bush, fooling the public into invading Iraq would be a \u201cslam-dunk.\u201d<\/span><\/a> The CIA evidently thought that the American people would be gullible suckers instead of citizens in a functioning democracy, and at least that judgment by the CIA turned out to be \u2014 and still remains today \u2014 true.<\/span><\/p>\n

The day after that 7 September 2002 unquestioned lie by Bush, that Iraq was only six months from having a nuclear weapon, the New York Times<\/i> bannered \u201cTHREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and continued further as stenographers to the White House, by reporting that, \u201c\u2018The jewel in the crown is nuclear,’ a senior administration official said. \u2018The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card.\u2019” The fake \u2018news\u2019 \u2014 stenography from the lying Government and its chosen lying sources \u2014 came in an incessant stream, from the U.S. Government and its \u2019news\u2019 media, which continue to fool the public to believe both themselves (the \u2018respectable\u2019 \u2018news\u2019 media) and the demonstrably lying Government that these \u2018news\u2019 media represent against the U.S. regime\u2019s selected foreign targets, such as Honduras 2009, Libya 2011, Yemen 2011-<\/a>, Syria 2011-, Ukraine 2014, and Yemen 201.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, President Bush, on 12 September 2002, addressed the U.N. General Assembly:<\/span><\/p>\n

We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions. But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced \u2014 the just demands of peace and security will be met \u2014 or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Events can turn in one of two ways: If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission. The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable \u2014 the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom, and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In 2002 and early 2003, the drumbeat for aggression against Iraq was like Hitler\u2019s drumbeat in 1939 for a \u2018defensive\u2019 invasion against Poland<\/span><\/a>. It was a succession of one lie after another. But, yet, to this day, many Americans, and even some non-Americans, still trust the U.S. Government not to lie its way into aggression, even into aggression which destroys<\/span><\/a> a nation that the U.S. regime claims to be trying to \u2018save\u2019, so that the U.S. regime\u2019s true intentions are clearly very different from the benign ones that are being asserted. Believing any longer in such a Government, and in its press, is therefore to be a willing mental slave, of a regime that actually endangers the entire world (and which Government non-Americans consider to be the world\u2019s most dangerous<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest approval ratings of George W. Bush are above 60%<\/span><\/a>, but Hitler\u2019s favorability everywhere remains low on account of his having lost World War II.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s successor Barack Obama, who lied his way into destroying Libya 2011<\/span><\/a>, Syria 2011-<\/span><\/a>, Yemen 2011-<\/span><\/a>, and Ukraine 2014<\/span><\/a>, also has higher than a 60% approval rating from the American people<\/span><\/a>; so, there must be lots of mental slaves in both of America\u2019s political parties.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob Kall, the owner of an \u2018alt-news\u2019 site, OpEd News, headlined on April 21st, \u201cGoogle Continues its Attack on Alternative Media, Boosting Top-down MSM\u201d<\/span><\/a> and claimed that \u201cUnder the guise of addressing the problems with \u2018fake news,\u2019 Google has used it’s almost monopoly search engine position to decimate search results for bottom-up, grassroots alternative media.\u201d In any event, America\u2019s largest corporations and their \u2018news\u2019 media definitely are collectively pushing the narrative that the problem of fake \u2018news\u2019 stems from anyone but themselves<\/span><\/a>, and this view that they are pushing is certainly a lie \u2014 that\u2019s just a historical fact, by now \u2014 and it\u2019s more like the opposite of the truth than being the truth, though the American public still believe that lie<\/span><\/a>, as if they had learned about \u2018Saddam\u2019s WMD\u2019 not from the mainstream \u2018news\u2019 media, which every intelligent American now recognizes to be actually the propaganda-media that assist the ruling regime to fool the public into supporting the regime\u2019s invasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

By no means are the U.S. regime\u2019s mouthpieces only in America. For example, on April 19th, an article by me at Greanville Post (originally posted at Strategic Culture) headlined \u201cHow the Guardian newspaper fulfills George Orwell\u2019s prediction of \u2018Newspeak\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/a> and described propaganda-techniques which that particular British newspaper employs in order to deceive its readership. As of now, there are three reader-comments to it at reddit<\/span><\/a>. One is \u201cSo the article accuses a newspaper of being extremely biased (which isn’t the same as newspeak), whilst basing it’s views on evidence from extremely biased sources, such as the Syrian government. The story is itself propaganda and has zero relevance to collapse.\u201d My article didn\u2019t say that the Guardian is \u201cbiased\u201d but that it deceives. There is a big difference. Furthermore, it wasn\u2019t \u201cbasing it\u2019s views on \u2026 the Syrian government\u201d etc., but instead described how the Guardian had lied about what the Syrian Government had said. The second comment was \u201cAgreed. The article is propaganda, not even very good at that.\u201d The third was \u201cThats all I could think as I was reading it.\u201d Each reader can judge whether or not those readers were willing slaves. In any case, those commenters were apparently unable to specify anything in my article that\u2019s false. And, if truth-falsity is not the only appropriate standard, then what could \u201cpropaganda\u201d even mean or be referring to, about that aritlce? Ultimately, to be a willing slave to lies, is to apply a different standard than truth\/falsity. Apparently, many people do apply such false standards. Perhaps that\u2019s why the U.S. and its allies are free to invade and destroy nations ad nauseum<\/i> \u2014 nations, moreover, which had posed no threat to the attackers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Willing slaves to lies, endanger far more people than merely themselves. Without a believing audience, the liars would be powerless.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Willing believers in lies are willing slaves, because lies are coercion of the mind, as opposed to coercion of the body (slavery by physical violence instead of by mental violence, which is called \u201clies\u201d); and anyone who willingly complies with any type of coercion when escape from that coercion is available (and this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":132954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[30,96,535,541,526,524,754,523,49,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-360053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-media","13":"tag-propaganda","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-syria","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-usa-news","18":"tag-warfare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}