Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Vietnam: A butchered memory of war

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Vietnam: A butchered memory of war

Click here to access article by Nick Turse from Asia Times Online.

Turse introduces his thesis by a fascinating imaginary of our future around 2053 by projecting present day trends. In the process he illustrates the meaning of the quote attributed to Winston Churchill that “history is written by the victors.” Turse illustrates this with only the Vietnam War, but all wars and oppression of domestic opposition have been treated similarly.

Actually, nearly all information, entertainment, and educational material is written by the ruling class or the "victors". If you stop to think about it, the origins of all ruling classes can be traced to their ancestors' victorious inflictions of violence upon their adversaries who frequently were ordinary workers or peasants. So, in order to maintain their rule, ruling classes falsify all kinds of information to justify their rule and the existing unjust social/economic order that they have imposed on their subjects.

That is precisely why every person who aspires to be a fully free and independent human being must work at finding alternative sources of information that is reasonably accurate.