Vietnam Was As Much A Laboratory Experiment

If I Were A Teacher, I Would Recommend That All My Students Very Hurriedly Read Most Of Orwell's Books, Especially 1984 And Animal Farm, Because Then They'd Begin To Understand The World We Live In.

We Are Beckoned To See The World Through A One-way Mirror, As If We Are Threatened And Innocent And The Rest Of Humanity Is Threatening, Or Wretched, Or Expendable. Our Memory Is Struggling To Rescue The Truth That Human Rights Were Not Handed Down As Privileges From A Parliament, Or A Boardroom, Or An Institution, But That Peace Is Only Possible With Justice And With Information That Gives Us The Power To Act Justly.

The British Labour Party Has Always Had A Very Strong "atlanticist Component," With An Obsequiousness To American Policies, And Blair Represents This Wing. He's Clearly Obsessed With Iraq. He Has To Be Because The Overwhelming Majority Of The People Of Britain Oppose A Military Action. I've Never Known A Situation Like It.

Journalists Don't Sit Down And Think, "i'm Now Going To Speak For The Establishment." Of Course Not. But They Internalize A Whole Set Of Assumptions, And One Of The Most Potent Assumptions Is That The World Should Be Seen In Terms Of Its Usefulness To The West, Not Humanity. This Leads Journalists To Make A Distinction Between People Who Matter And People Who Don't Matter.

Classic Nineteenth Century European Imperialists Believed They Were Literally On A Mission. I Don't Believe That The Imperialists These Days Have That Same Sense Of Public Service. They Are Simply Pirates. Yes, There Are Fundamentalists, Christian Fundamentalists, Who Appear To Be In Charge Of The White House At The Moment, But They Are Very Different From The Christian Gentlemen Who Ran The British Empire And Believed They Were Doing Good Works Around The World. These Days It's About Naked Power.