wow ... a great piece ... on Western (North American & European) imperialism & pro-Western propaganda on spreading lies about the regions of the world it doesn't like. The writer's books might be amazing, too.
Although, I haven't yet visited many of the places he mentioned in the opinion piece, I definitely agree with the parts that most residents of the West are completely ignorant & live in their own little bubble.
People around the world think Western countries became such developed countries because of their hard work & discipline. Heck no !!! They weren't even developed nations until the second world war. Sustainable development takes decades upon decades, sometimes, even centuries. Islamic empires in Middle East, Spain, North Africa, & South Asia were around from 700 AD to 1920s. That's almost 1200 years of Islamic rule on a big chunk of the world. On the other hand, if you may recall, the whole European continent was destroyed to ground during the second world war. Before then, several prominent business & political elites, in the West, became rich on the back-breaking slave labour of thousands & thousands of African-American slaves. Heck, even now, "slaves" are "employed" in the form of minimum wages, which is unsustainable for people to live on, in every industry, from agriculture to hospitality to restaurant to manufacturing. British, French, & Spanish soldiers looted whichever countries they invaded or controlled, from Africa to Asia.
What people forget to see is that how America & its allies in NATO, UN, G8 etc. started to play political games around the world, after 1945, to keep the developing world in constant chaos; for example:
a. foreign wars & invasions on lies, for example, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea (one country divided up & still at war).
b. supporting civil wars & dictators, for example, US supporting dictators of Middle Eastern countries (even Saddam Hussein was a friend of US at one time) & dictators of South American countries (Nicaragua, Chile, Panama etc.).
c. pushing weapons in developing countries like a drug dealer pushes drugs on people, for example, from South America to Africa to Middle East, countries are encouraged to buy more & more weapons to fight anyone, domestically & internationally, to the point that the leaders of those developing countries start seeing every problem as a nail to be solved by a hammer (weapons).
Whichever countries didn't / don't go along with the West, those countries were / still are politically & economically blocked (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran) & Western media go into hyperdrive spreading lies about those countries, all over the world.
If you think developing countries are inhabited by savages, please ask yourself:
1. How many countries did Brazil invade to develop itself?
2. How many countries did China invade or waged war upon to develop itself?
3. How many countries did Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or Zimbabwe or South Africa or even Libya (during the reign of Gaddafi) invade, or waged war, or caused civil wars in other countries?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After my two days marathon discussion with Noam Chomsky, (at MIT in 2012), a bestselling book was born. Later this year a film will hit the cinemas.
Noam & I discussed Western imperialism, & the terror it has been spreading around the world. After WWII, at least 50 million lives were lost. Lives of those whom Orwell used to call “unpeople”; lives brutally interrupted as a result of Western-led & orchestrated wars, invasions, coups & proxy-conflicts.
We discussed at length the Western propaganda, which, for centuries, worked extremely hard to justify everything from the colonialist insanity, to supremacist & exceptionalist theories.
After my encounter with Chomsky, I decided to dedicate at least 2 years of my life to visiting most parts of the world, where the Empire had been striking; where it was attempting to bulldoze all opposition that was standing on its way to the absolute control over the planet.
My goal was Quixotic - a monster, 1000-page book, exposing & confronting techniques & dogmas utilized by the Empire in all corners of the globe, for purposes of destabilizing “rebellious” nations, overthrowing “unruly” governments, or simply grabbing natural resources.
As a philosopher & investigative journalist, I was aiming at both defining how the Western dogmas & propaganda work, & at giving concrete examples of the horror into which our planet was once again descending.
In the past, I have lived & worked on all continents, from Oceania to South America, North America, Africa, Europe, Asia & the Middle East. Throughout the years, I became convinced that the natural development of the human race was interrupted, derailed & forced into dark alleys by extremely selfish, perverse group of people & the states, which I call The Empire.
The Empire is “fundamentalist”; it believes, religiously, in its cultural & racial superiority. It is convinced that dominating the world is its sacred right. To achieve its goal, it is using imperialism, colonialism & savage neoliberalism. It is willing to sacrifice millions, tens of millions of human lives to achieve its goals.
I witnessed its crimes on all continents. And I finally realized that it is my duty to define its actions & deceits.
Soon I decided on the title of my book: “Exposing Lies of The Empire”.
It is clear that the Empire lies & that it uses some of its best brains to spread fabrications, as well as billions of dollars in cold cash. It is because the arrangement of the world is grotesque & thoroughly absurd. And only propaganda, shaped to perfection, can guarantee that status quo is maintained. Propaganda & submissiveness of a brainwashed population (in the West), which accepted such propaganda in exchange for at least relatively privileged position in the world.
I talked to Westerners in Paris, London & New York, & I was stunned how little “freedom” there really is, how intellectually cowardly the citizens of the Empire are. In hundreds of art galleries of Paris, I encountered almost no political art, nothing that would make people dream of a better world. In Europe, the level of knowledge about the ‘surrounding world’ (that very same world which basically feeds the continent) was close to zero. Very little was known about the crimes that the Empire is committing.
Europeans are self-promoters, defining themselves as educated & refined, but well over 99% of those I challenged could not name even one Korean writer, or Japanese painter, of Chinese classical musicians. Any elementary school kid in Beijing or Tokyo can produce dozens of names of Western cultural icons from the top of their head.
China is different. It is obsessed with knowledge! I spent days in Beijing & Shanghai theatres, opera houses & galleries. I spoke at Tsinghua University (they ran a 2-day seminar on my work) in order to understand Chinese students better. I drove some 5,000 kilometers all around China. I always knew that the Western media has been openly & shamelessly spreading lies about the PRC, trying to shout loudly & continuously, that China is not a socialist country, anymore. In fact, anybody who knows it well can testify that it is socialist & its tremendous success derives from this very fact.
I visited North Korea, as it was celebrating its 60th anniversary of victory. I spent time talking to North Korean citizens, from farmers & workers, to artists, even to the Vice President. I was enormously impressed – by the housing, public transportation, culture. People were cool. My interpreter was devouring mountains of potato chips, picking my brain about South American music, while asking me for advice on how to deal with her cautious boyfriend. It was all very “normal”. I saw more propaganda all over South Korea, than in the North. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun interviewed me on the subject, but no Western mainstream publication would run such a story.
I was writing my book as I went: each country smeared by the Empire & “rehabilitated” by me – one chapter. A story about some outrageous lie – another chapter...
Zimbabwe – I read in the Economist & on the BBC site that crime there is endemic, that there are no functioning operation theatres in Harare’s hospitals, that Harare is “the worst city on earth”. I went. All lies. There were dozens of operation theatres in several hospitals. After Nairobi where I was then living, & after Kampala & Kigali where I was often working - three darlings of Western imperialism, as Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya have been plundering & ravishing the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan & Somalia on behalf of Washington, Paris & London - Harare felt safe, beautiful, cultural; the capital of the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa. While in Nairobi, more than half of the people live in appalling slums & misery, I found only about one square kilometer of slums in Harare.
South Africa, struggling to shake off its terrible legacy of apartheid, is another target of negative Western propaganda. It is because the country is, despite many hindrances, still marching forward, inspired by the left-wing ideology.
Parallel to writing my book, I was filming several documentary films for TeleSur & PressTV, to keep afloat. I went all “around Syria”, where NATO trained & financed “Syrian opposition”, including ISIS, in the refugee camps of Jordan & Turkey. I travelled to Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The West destabilized, ravished one of the greatest countries of the Middle East, as it ravished the entire region.
I worked in Bahrain & Iraq where, at some point I stood on the bridge blown up by ISIS, looking at two villages bombed to the ground by the US, the city of Mosul only 6 kilometers away. All actors of this bloody, nightmarish drama were actually related or produced by the Empire’s “foreign policy”, or were part of the Empire themselves.
Lies of the Empire are piling on top of each other. “India, the largest democracy”! Anyone who knows this country, even my luminous Indian friends like writer Arundhati Roy (author of The God of Small Things) & documentary film-maker Sanjay Kak, feel unwell hearing this cliché. India is free only for the elites. It is built on the “ideals” of British colonialism. I call it “securistan”.
In my book, I am showing examples how the Empire tries to destroy Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Eritrea, China, South Africa, & Iran – through outrageous propaganda & through manufacturing of the “opposition movements”. Last year I spent 2 weeks in Hong Kong trying to understand how the brains of local students work, how they were indoctrinated, & made to fall for the Western dogmas, how they are made to antagonize China. The parallel with the strategy that the Empire is using in order to destabilize & smear Cuba, Venezuela & Russia was striking.
I drove all around Ukraine, realizing how close most of the people there felt towards Russia. I talked to workers at the city of Krivoi Rog, to grandmas in the countryside, to students in Kharkov & Odessa: the West created the conflict in Ukraine & pushed it to complete absurdity, dividing 2 great nations with virtually the same culture.
I also studied environmental destruction in Oceania & Indonesia. In Micronesia, entire nations may have to be soon evacuated because of the global warming. I wrote entire book on the topic, several years ago, but “Exposing Lies of the Empire” is also touching this shocking subject. All over the Oceania, the Empire created “culture of dependence”, & destroyed enormous old & fascinating civilization.
“Exposing Lies of The Empire” is now in print, but I do not feel that the journey is over. 822 pages ... is actually very little, comparing to thousands of horrendous stories that the Empire is triggering all over the world.
There is no time to take a break. Pseudo-reality & outright lies of the Western imperialism have to be confronted.
My work on the second volume of “Exposing Lies of The Empire” has already began. The book will keep expanding. It is “the process”, which will never end, as long as the imperialism reigns.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker & investigative journalist. He has covered wars & conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky "On Western Terrorism" is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel "Point of No Return" is now re-edited & available. "Oceania" is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia & the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. He has just completed the feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history & the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America & Oceania, Vltchek presently resides & works in East Asia & Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.
Although, I haven't yet visited many of the places he mentioned in the opinion piece, I definitely agree with the parts that most residents of the West are completely ignorant & live in their own little bubble.
People around the world think Western countries became such developed countries because of their hard work & discipline. Heck no !!! They weren't even developed nations until the second world war. Sustainable development takes decades upon decades, sometimes, even centuries. Islamic empires in Middle East, Spain, North Africa, & South Asia were around from 700 AD to 1920s. That's almost 1200 years of Islamic rule on a big chunk of the world. On the other hand, if you may recall, the whole European continent was destroyed to ground during the second world war. Before then, several prominent business & political elites, in the West, became rich on the back-breaking slave labour of thousands & thousands of African-American slaves. Heck, even now, "slaves" are "employed" in the form of minimum wages, which is unsustainable for people to live on, in every industry, from agriculture to hospitality to restaurant to manufacturing. British, French, & Spanish soldiers looted whichever countries they invaded or controlled, from Africa to Asia.
What people forget to see is that how America & its allies in NATO, UN, G8 etc. started to play political games around the world, after 1945, to keep the developing world in constant chaos; for example:
a. foreign wars & invasions on lies, for example, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea (one country divided up & still at war).
b. supporting civil wars & dictators, for example, US supporting dictators of Middle Eastern countries (even Saddam Hussein was a friend of US at one time) & dictators of South American countries (Nicaragua, Chile, Panama etc.).
c. pushing weapons in developing countries like a drug dealer pushes drugs on people, for example, from South America to Africa to Middle East, countries are encouraged to buy more & more weapons to fight anyone, domestically & internationally, to the point that the leaders of those developing countries start seeing every problem as a nail to be solved by a hammer (weapons).
Whichever countries didn't / don't go along with the West, those countries were / still are politically & economically blocked (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran) & Western media go into hyperdrive spreading lies about those countries, all over the world.
If you think developing countries are inhabited by savages, please ask yourself:
1. How many countries did Brazil invade to develop itself?
2. How many countries did China invade or waged war upon to develop itself?
3. How many countries did Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or Zimbabwe or South Africa or even Libya (during the reign of Gaddafi) invade, or waged war, or caused civil wars in other countries?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After my two days marathon discussion with Noam Chomsky, (at MIT in 2012), a bestselling book was born. Later this year a film will hit the cinemas.
Noam & I discussed Western imperialism, & the terror it has been spreading around the world. After WWII, at least 50 million lives were lost. Lives of those whom Orwell used to call “unpeople”; lives brutally interrupted as a result of Western-led & orchestrated wars, invasions, coups & proxy-conflicts.
We discussed at length the Western propaganda, which, for centuries, worked extremely hard to justify everything from the colonialist insanity, to supremacist & exceptionalist theories.
After my encounter with Chomsky, I decided to dedicate at least 2 years of my life to visiting most parts of the world, where the Empire had been striking; where it was attempting to bulldoze all opposition that was standing on its way to the absolute control over the planet.
My goal was Quixotic - a monster, 1000-page book, exposing & confronting techniques & dogmas utilized by the Empire in all corners of the globe, for purposes of destabilizing “rebellious” nations, overthrowing “unruly” governments, or simply grabbing natural resources.
As a philosopher & investigative journalist, I was aiming at both defining how the Western dogmas & propaganda work, & at giving concrete examples of the horror into which our planet was once again descending.
In the past, I have lived & worked on all continents, from Oceania to South America, North America, Africa, Europe, Asia & the Middle East. Throughout the years, I became convinced that the natural development of the human race was interrupted, derailed & forced into dark alleys by extremely selfish, perverse group of people & the states, which I call The Empire.
The Empire is “fundamentalist”; it believes, religiously, in its cultural & racial superiority. It is convinced that dominating the world is its sacred right. To achieve its goal, it is using imperialism, colonialism & savage neoliberalism. It is willing to sacrifice millions, tens of millions of human lives to achieve its goals.
I witnessed its crimes on all continents. And I finally realized that it is my duty to define its actions & deceits.
Soon I decided on the title of my book: “Exposing Lies of The Empire”.
It is clear that the Empire lies & that it uses some of its best brains to spread fabrications, as well as billions of dollars in cold cash. It is because the arrangement of the world is grotesque & thoroughly absurd. And only propaganda, shaped to perfection, can guarantee that status quo is maintained. Propaganda & submissiveness of a brainwashed population (in the West), which accepted such propaganda in exchange for at least relatively privileged position in the world.
I talked to Westerners in Paris, London & New York, & I was stunned how little “freedom” there really is, how intellectually cowardly the citizens of the Empire are. In hundreds of art galleries of Paris, I encountered almost no political art, nothing that would make people dream of a better world. In Europe, the level of knowledge about the ‘surrounding world’ (that very same world which basically feeds the continent) was close to zero. Very little was known about the crimes that the Empire is committing.
Europeans are self-promoters, defining themselves as educated & refined, but well over 99% of those I challenged could not name even one Korean writer, or Japanese painter, of Chinese classical musicians. Any elementary school kid in Beijing or Tokyo can produce dozens of names of Western cultural icons from the top of their head.
China is different. It is obsessed with knowledge! I spent days in Beijing & Shanghai theatres, opera houses & galleries. I spoke at Tsinghua University (they ran a 2-day seminar on my work) in order to understand Chinese students better. I drove some 5,000 kilometers all around China. I always knew that the Western media has been openly & shamelessly spreading lies about the PRC, trying to shout loudly & continuously, that China is not a socialist country, anymore. In fact, anybody who knows it well can testify that it is socialist & its tremendous success derives from this very fact.
I visited North Korea, as it was celebrating its 60th anniversary of victory. I spent time talking to North Korean citizens, from farmers & workers, to artists, even to the Vice President. I was enormously impressed – by the housing, public transportation, culture. People were cool. My interpreter was devouring mountains of potato chips, picking my brain about South American music, while asking me for advice on how to deal with her cautious boyfriend. It was all very “normal”. I saw more propaganda all over South Korea, than in the North. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun interviewed me on the subject, but no Western mainstream publication would run such a story.
I was writing my book as I went: each country smeared by the Empire & “rehabilitated” by me – one chapter. A story about some outrageous lie – another chapter...
Zimbabwe – I read in the Economist & on the BBC site that crime there is endemic, that there are no functioning operation theatres in Harare’s hospitals, that Harare is “the worst city on earth”. I went. All lies. There were dozens of operation theatres in several hospitals. After Nairobi where I was then living, & after Kampala & Kigali where I was often working - three darlings of Western imperialism, as Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya have been plundering & ravishing the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan & Somalia on behalf of Washington, Paris & London - Harare felt safe, beautiful, cultural; the capital of the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa. While in Nairobi, more than half of the people live in appalling slums & misery, I found only about one square kilometer of slums in Harare.
South Africa, struggling to shake off its terrible legacy of apartheid, is another target of negative Western propaganda. It is because the country is, despite many hindrances, still marching forward, inspired by the left-wing ideology.
Parallel to writing my book, I was filming several documentary films for TeleSur & PressTV, to keep afloat. I went all “around Syria”, where NATO trained & financed “Syrian opposition”, including ISIS, in the refugee camps of Jordan & Turkey. I travelled to Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The West destabilized, ravished one of the greatest countries of the Middle East, as it ravished the entire region.
I worked in Bahrain & Iraq where, at some point I stood on the bridge blown up by ISIS, looking at two villages bombed to the ground by the US, the city of Mosul only 6 kilometers away. All actors of this bloody, nightmarish drama were actually related or produced by the Empire’s “foreign policy”, or were part of the Empire themselves.
Lies of the Empire are piling on top of each other. “India, the largest democracy”! Anyone who knows this country, even my luminous Indian friends like writer Arundhati Roy (author of The God of Small Things) & documentary film-maker Sanjay Kak, feel unwell hearing this cliché. India is free only for the elites. It is built on the “ideals” of British colonialism. I call it “securistan”.
In my book, I am showing examples how the Empire tries to destroy Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Eritrea, China, South Africa, & Iran – through outrageous propaganda & through manufacturing of the “opposition movements”. Last year I spent 2 weeks in Hong Kong trying to understand how the brains of local students work, how they were indoctrinated, & made to fall for the Western dogmas, how they are made to antagonize China. The parallel with the strategy that the Empire is using in order to destabilize & smear Cuba, Venezuela & Russia was striking.
I drove all around Ukraine, realizing how close most of the people there felt towards Russia. I talked to workers at the city of Krivoi Rog, to grandmas in the countryside, to students in Kharkov & Odessa: the West created the conflict in Ukraine & pushed it to complete absurdity, dividing 2 great nations with virtually the same culture.
I also studied environmental destruction in Oceania & Indonesia. In Micronesia, entire nations may have to be soon evacuated because of the global warming. I wrote entire book on the topic, several years ago, but “Exposing Lies of the Empire” is also touching this shocking subject. All over the Oceania, the Empire created “culture of dependence”, & destroyed enormous old & fascinating civilization.
“Exposing Lies of The Empire” is now in print, but I do not feel that the journey is over. 822 pages ... is actually very little, comparing to thousands of horrendous stories that the Empire is triggering all over the world.
There is no time to take a break. Pseudo-reality & outright lies of the Western imperialism have to be confronted.
My work on the second volume of “Exposing Lies of The Empire” has already began. The book will keep expanding. It is “the process”, which will never end, as long as the imperialism reigns.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker & investigative journalist. He has covered wars & conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky "On Western Terrorism" is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel "Point of No Return" is now re-edited & available. "Oceania" is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia & the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. He has just completed the feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history & the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America & Oceania, Vltchek presently resides & works in East Asia & Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.
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