Holiday Hypocrisy

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/662/81/

 

Saturday, 13 January 2007 by Stephen Lendman

 

Borrowing the line from Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore: "Thingsare seldom as they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream." It's as truehere in the US today as it was in 19th century England, and its messageexplains how to understand and view our affairs of state and why thetitle of this essay was chosen - to reflect on our national federalholidays that, in fact, represent something much different than thestated reasons we commemorate them for. Eleven such holidays arereviewed below moving chronologically through the year post-New Year'sDay discussed briefly at the end because it's part of the Christmasholiday season celebration.


Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister, political activist, renownedorator, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the most noted leader of theAmerican civil rights movement until his assassination in Memphis onApril 4, 1968, two months before Robert Kennedy met the same fate in aLos Angeles hotel a day after he won the Democrat primary in hiscampaign for the office of president that year. In mid-January, King'sJanuary 15 birthday is commemorated as a federal holiday as it has beensince it was for the first time on January 20, 1986 after Ronald Reaganreluctantly signed the legislation authorizing it in November, 1983. Hedid it in spite of his personal opposition, only capitulating after thebill authorizing it was passed in both Houses of Congress withveto-proof margins.

After King's death in 1968, Representative John Conyers introduced abill in the House to make his birthday a national holiday. It was along struggle from then till it was finally achieved because of racistopposition in the Congress against honoring a black man led by formerSenator Jesse Helms who accused Dr. King of having communist ties aswell as making other outlandish slurs against his good name andaccusing him of opposing the Vietnam war which he certainly did withpassion and eloquence that may have led to his death.
Helms was a hard-liner throughout his public life (like too many othersin the Congress then and now), and his career was characterized bymean-spiritedness and a lifelong opposition to democracy, diversity andaffirmative action as well as his racist support for segregation andefforts to deny black people their constitutionally mandated rights.Some may also remember his 1990 reelection campaign waged againstHarvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte, NC, in which Helmsdisgracefully used a racist ad to counter his opponent's lead in thepolls. It was called "Hands" and showed a pair of white hands crumplinga job-rejection letter with a narration explaining he was bestqualified and needed the job a racial quota gave to a less deservingblack man. It worked, overcoming Gantt's lead and helped reelect Helmsundeservedly.

Martin Luther King Day is the only national holiday commemorating anAfrican American, but it took over 15 long years of campaigning to getit authorized and over two more before it was first observed. It tookeven longer for Dr. King's day to be finally recognized in all 50states for the first time on January 17, 2000. It likely only happenedat all because the Congress finally was moved to act after receiving apetition with six million signatures that was the largest number evercollected supporting a national issue. Sadly, it happened because anassassin's bullet took his life much too soon.

To this day, the question remains: who killed Martin Luther King, butit's not hard to imagine why. James Earl Ray was accused of being thelone assassin, at first pleaded guilty in 1969 after being arrestedearlier and held in jail for eight months. He was sentenced to 99 yearsin prison, never got a trial, and retracted his guilty plea three daysafter making it claiming his lawyer deceived him - to no avail. Thecase was closed and his fate was sealed even though later evidenceuncovered casts great doubt on his guilt. He nonetheless spent the restof his life in prison dying on April 23, 1998 at age 70. Today his nameis hardly ever mentioned in the dominant media nor is any attempt madeto clear it, which is no surprise.

But if Ray didn't do it, who then had a motive and might have. Everyyear commemorating his birth, we note and honor Dr. King's memorable "Ihave a Dream" speech while ignoring the most important of his dreamsincluding the speeches he made supporting them. King was the foremostof our nation's civil rights advocates, but he also wanted to end thecountry's long history of exploitative materialism and culture ofmilitarism supporting it. He wanted everyone's civil rights respectedand honored but also was dedicated to pursuing social justice,promoting non-violence, and was unreservedly against war, becomingincreasingly vocal in his opposition to the one raging in Vietnam usingpowerful language like calling the US government "the greatest purveyorof violence in the world."

King had already won great victories in his civil rights battles withthe passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of1965 that for the first time gave African Americans the rightsguaranteed them under the Constitution that Jim Crow laws in the Southdenied them for decades. It was his public stand on the other greatissues driving him that caused those in power concern. No Kingcommemorative today ever mentions his memorable "Beyond Vietnam" speechdelivered to clergy and the public on April 4, 1967, one year to theday before he was assassinated in Memphis. It was an heroic andspellbinding moment with Dr. King at his eloquent best calling for anend to the war and violence. It also may have been a defining moment inhis life that had a single year left in it.

King knew he lived on the edge because of his beliefs and his abilityto reach and profoundly influence a vast audience in the country andthroughout the world. He rightfully believed his life was in danger andit might just be a matter of time before it was taken. We don't knowfor sure who, in fact, killed him if it wasn't James Earl Ray whichseems very unlikely based on the best evidence now known. We do knowwho had motive, cause and easy opportunity to do it most any time orplace. We also know if the US government was behind it, what part of itlikely got the assignment.

It may have been the FBI with its long record of abuse against targetedenemies of the state that includes extensive documentation of itsCointelpro operations from the 1950s till the early 1970s but likelynever stopped and has to be more active than ever now in the age ofGeorge Bush and its culture of illegal surveillance, witch-hunting, andimperial justice. In earlier years, the FBI targeted organizations andindividuals on the left as well as those considered radical includingnon-violent ones like The Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement,and Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Dr.King himself because of Director J. Edgar Hoover's obsession with thecivil rights leader and his near-fanatical efforts to defame and defilehim.

The CIA has an even more disturbing record of lawlessness as part ofits overall mandate to collect and analyze intelligence about foreigngovernments, corporations, organizations and individuals as well asconduct whatever covert, "black bag," or extrajudicial state-sponsoredassassinations assigned it that in half a century ran into the hundreds.

Since it was created in 1947, the CIA's record has been documented indetail including in the works of author, researcher and former StateDepartment employee William Blum in his books Rogue State and KillingHope detailing the shameful record of US foreign policy and the CIA'srole in it since WW II. It includes carrying out state-sponsoredassassinations including those against foreign leaders unwilling tosurrender their nation's sovereignty to ours based on imperialmanagement with no outliers allowed - reason enough to remove them withCIA operatives often assigned the task but taking care to do it withenough discretion to make it look like the long arm of Washington wasuninvolved.

Through the years the methods used have included a "rogue element'sbullet, a hard to detect poison or an "unfortunate" plane crash thatwas the method of choice to murder Panamian president Omar Torrijos in1981 and Ecuadorian president Jaimi Roldos in a helicopter crash thesame year. Sometimes other "plane accidents" are like the oneCIA-trained Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) personnel, led by Ugandan-bornand US-trained Paul Kagame (at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas' Command andGeneral Staff College), arranged with surface-to-air missiles to shootdown the aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana andBurundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994 that led to theethnic slaughter that year. It elevated "our guy" Major-General Kagameto power and later to be president of Rwanda where he let US forcesoperate freely in the country using it as a base to pursue the greaterprize Washington sought in the resource-rich Congo (DRC)even though ittook hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to do it and millions inCongo where war for its spoils still continues but gets littleattention.

Probably the best known and most infamous state-sponsored assassinationwas the CIA-orchestrated coup and murder of Chilean president SalvadorAllende on another September 11 in 1973. It ended the most vibrantdemocracy in the Americas replacing it with the brutal 17 yeardictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who unfortunately died onDecember 10 without ever having to answer for his crimes againsthumanity. So far neither have those in authority at CIA or higher-upsin the Nixon administration like Henry Kissinger. He played a key rolein the coup plot, ironically the same year he won a Nobel Peace Prize,as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and now must checkwith the State Department for legal advice before traveling abroad forassurance he won't be served with a warrant for his arrest anddetention.

That kind of record through the years shows CIA and its operatives mayhave been behind the murder of Martin Luther King to remove a powerfulvoice whose influential opposition to war and support for non-violenceand social justice conflicted with this government's agenda of imperialconquest for power and profit.

If one or more FBI, CIA or other US government assassins murderedMartin Luther King, the federal holiday commemorating his birth mockshim and stands as a shameless deceptive act dishonoring all he stoodand worked for in his short 39 year life. It also makes his day ofobservance an act of collective guilt by the nation responsible forending a noble life that might have accomplished far more if he'd had achance to continue pursuing the goals he hoped to achieve but never gotthe chance. Maybe that was the whole idea and the reason he wasn'tallowed to go on with his work.


Presidents' Day is observed on the third Monday of February, wasformerly celebrated as Washington's Birthday, and now states have theoption to use either designation or some other one if they choose asAlabama does commemorating Washington and Jefferson Day. They can alsopick another day as Georgia does observing Washington's birthday theday after Christmas.

The period around this time is often used as an occasion for schools toteach students the history of US presidents, especially Washington,Jefferson, Lincoln and some of our other noted ones. If only thatoccasion were used to teach real history (like found in Howard Zinn's APeople's History of the United States) instead of the fiction leadingyoung minds to believe these historic leaders were larger than lifeheros, noble in purpose and service to the nation in its highestoffice, and now deserving to be revered and remembered with a fewfurther immortalized in granite sculpture carving at the Mount RushmoreNational Memorial on stolen Lakota Sioux land in South Dakota's BlackHills.

No past president gets more reverential treatment than our first, thegeneral who led the Continental Army against the British in thenation's war of liberation from the Crown. He became our firstpresident by coronation because he ran unopposed twice, and he's nowknown as the "Father of the Country" because he was its leader in warand then "selected" as its first head of state. Students are nevertaught that Washington expressed great aspirations referring to the newnation as a "rising empire" even at its birth and backed his sentimentswith deeds to help make it one. He did it during the Revolutionary Warby his savage acts against native Indians, all of whom he consideredsubhumans (or American Untermenschen). He compared them to wolves and"beasts of prey" and called for their total destruction much like theway George Bush today calls for defeating "terrorists" lesswell-defined than the ones Washington's had in mind and went aboutdestroying ruthlessly.

He dispatched General John Sulivan and 5,000 troops to attack thenoncombatant Onondaga people in 1779 with orders to destroy all theirvillages, homes, fields, food supplies, cattle herds and orchards in ascorched earth campaign to annihilate them. He wanted to kill as manyas possible and did. He also wanted their land (like Bush today wantsIraq's oil) and took it by force, including from the Onieda people whoaided Washington when he most needed help at Valley Forge. The truthabout the nation's "Father," kept out of young minds in school, was ourfirst president and all others after him pursued a policy of genocideagainst the nation's original inhabitants who lived mainly in peace forthousands of years on the lands we came uninvited to and took fromthem.

It began in 1492 when Columbus and those with him first arrived inwhat's now Haiti exterminating virtually the entire estimated eightmillion native Arawak, or Taino, people. The genocidal slaughter of allNorth, South and Central American Indian peoples followed reducingtheir population by about 100 million or as much as 98% of theiroriginal numbers. This is our shameful legacy of a new nation conceivedas a great democratic experiment never tried before in the West outsideof ancient Athens for a few decades but only for a privileged minorityin it then and now.

It was never intended to be one for the nation's indigenous peoples.Their presence impeded what came to be known by the 1840s as the our"Manifest Destiny," or virtual divine right, to expand west and southseizing all the land from coast to coast south of Canada from thepeople living on it who were exterminated as well as Texas and thenorthern half of Mexico we wanted including the prized possession ofCalifornia.

Also excluded from our grand vision were the many millions of blackAfrican captives sold into slavery and sent to their harsh fate in thenew world "democracy" where those surviving the oppressive MiddlePassage voyage, at the cost of 50 million lives lost some believe, wereheld in brutal bondage as human property to serve against their will orbe sold like commodities to another master.

This is the true legacy of Presidents' Day. It commemorates thenation's leaders who led the nation making it grow by a state policy ofgenocide and imperial expansion for wealth and power at the expense ofthose in the way of the privileged class whose only concern forordinary people was and still is the use they could get from them. Tryfinding that history in a secondary or college text (unless Howard Zinnor a few others wrote it) or mentioned in the corporate-controlledmedia the next time this day of dishonor is observed.


Easter is a day of great religious significance, but only forChristians who worship Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ. It's notobserved by many around the country or world of other religious faithsor none at all. Still, in the US, Christian observances take on specialmeaning in a nation first settled and founded by those of Christianfaith even though most came for secular reasons, not to escapereligious persecution. The Founders believed church and state should beseparated, and Jefferson first spoke of "a wall of separation" betweenthe two in 1802 after freedom of religion was mandated in the FirstAmendment to the Constitution that came into force in 1791.

Still, throughout our history, many believed the nation was a Christianone and tried to tear down the separation wall the Founders erected.That view became especially prominent since the ascendancy ofneoconservative influence, beginning with the election of Ronald Reaganin 1980, as these hard-liners want the country governed by Christianprinciples, including Judaic ones as well, but give short shrift toothers and demonizing them the way Islam is now condemned as somethingsynonymous with "terrorism" and "Islamofascism."

In the US today, all Christian holidays of importance get prominentmention and due reverence paid them, especially Christmas and Easter,the two holiest days in the Christian calendar. Prominent Jews, too,aren't ignored, many have near-equal status with Christians, and mostnon-Jews in the country know about special Jewish holy days like theYom Kippur Day of Atonement and Rosh Hashanah New Year even if they'renot sure why they're commemorated.

But try finding any mention of a Muslim holy day other than a generalrecognition of Ramadan (established in the year 638) withoutexplanation of what the month-long observance in the 9th month of theIslamic calendar signifies. This period is considered the mostimportant and blessed month of the Islamic year, and it's believedthere are about as many Muslims in the US as Jews as well as about 1.8billion of them worldwide (compared to an estimated 13.3 million Jewsoverall in 2002), a number surely large enough to warrant its adherentsrespect but instead only finds them wrongly condemned as a collectiveAntichrist and threat to national security.

Easter is commemorated between late March and late April (and earlyApril to early May in Eastern Christianity little known about in theUS) and is also known as Resurrection Day. It's the most importantreligious feast of the Christian liturgical year and thus gets dueprominence in prayer and public displays of religious observance. ButAmericanized flair goes much further taking full advantage of a chanceto commercialize almost anything. So around this period there areEaster Sunday parades and other non-religious promotional activitiesand expressions that always manage to be emphasized - even on the daycelebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which observers believeoccurred on the third day following his death by crucifixion between 27and 33 AD. The Roman Catholic Church gives this period specialrecognition with an eight day feast called the Octave of Easter. It'salso the time of year when the Jewish seven day period of Passover iscommemorated, marking the Exodus of the Israelites from enslavement inEgypt, that also now gets more prominent mention in the country as partof the effort to market anything, even important religious days andperiods of observance, but only ones celebrated by Christians and Jews.

In a nation obsessed with and addicted to a culture of consumerism,even marketing the Almighty is fair game. Easter then, like otherholidays and special days in the calendar, is just another day to beexploited for profit along with it being observed for the event andsignificance it commemorates. It's a subject left for the end of thisessay when its most frenzied expression arrives between Thanksgivingand the New Year celebration. It's the time of year when corporateAmerica's only interest in the spirit of the season is how to make abuck out of it - as many as possible because that's the make-or-breaktime of year they rely on and must do well in to have the year overallbe successful for owners and/or shareholders. So with Thanksgivingdinner still being digested, they practically scream "let the holidayshopping begin," and let it continue right into the new year almostunabated.

It happens on Easter as well, whether it's new outfits for the season,a day or two on the town, vacation travel or any other way the businesscommunity can exploit an occasion to get the public to part with itsresources spent on everything imaginable people never knew they neededor wanted until the power of round the clock advertising convinced themtheir lives would be unfulfilled without them. Discussion of thissubject will be picked up later in this essay to show it's quiteacceptable to exploit a religious holy day for profit even if itcorrupts the reason it's commemorated that should be an occasion forsolemnity and not for the consumerism that defiles it. But corporatebottom lines aren't enhanced by religious reverence or observance - atleast not until the big business finds ways to sell its wares in placesand at times of worship and can get away with it. It's hard to imaginethey're not trying to figure out how to do it.


Because both days are related, they're discussed under a singleheading. The first, Memorial Day, is commemorated on the last Monday inMay and was first observed in 1866 and called Decoration Day beginningin 1868. Usage of Memorial Day wasn't common until after WW II andwasn't the holiday's official name until federal law called it that in1967. The day is an occasion to honor the nation's men and women whodied in military service to the country. More on that in a moment.

Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day inEurope, that originally commemorated the end of WW I on the 11th hourof the 11th day of the 11th month of the year in 1918 when the gunswent silent, or were supposed to. It was first observed in the US in1919 and made a legal holiday here in 1938. In June, 1954, Congressenacted legislation changing the holiday's name to Veterans Day.

Both holidays would never be needed in a nation dedicated to peace, butone committed to perpetual war for an unattainable peace dishonors itsyouth in life and disingenuously honors those who died in imperial warsfor conquest and plunder. Nations waging wars only guarantee more ofthem in an endless cycle of violence, militarism, brutality andshameless inhumanity to those made to suffer and die in combat theaters- so the privileged who get to stay home can profit from them.

People don't want wars but can always be made to support and fight inthem using the proven method of choice that always works - fear basedon shameless lies and deception by governments with hidden motivesunrevealed because who would go along with them if they did. Only bydeceitfully scaring people enough to believe the nation's security isthreatened will they support foreign wars and fight in them thinkingthey have no other choice. When traumatized enough, those wanting peacecan be convinced to go along with the most outlandish schemes plannedthat if ever explained would be condemned and never supported.

If people only knew the wisdom of iconic investigative journalist IFStone, they'd know in times of war, or events leading to it, truth isthe first casualty. He told young journalists that "All governments arerun by liars and nothing they say (about anything) should be believed,and on another occasion shortened it saying, "All governments lie."

Serial lying is the defining characteristic of the Bush administration,but all others earlier were duplicitous as well including the one ledby the Republican former president just passed whose short two and ahalf year tenure only gave him less time to commit fewer crimes of warand against humanity. He managed to do his best with the time he had,yet we honor him instead of exposing his shameless acts deservingcondemnation.

It's almost like it's preordained and in the country's DNA that thisnation is warrior state sending its expendable youth to fight and diein foreign wars but not for national security, honor or the rights offree people anywhere. It's always for wealth and power that conquestand plunder afford the privileged who get to stay home safe and incomfort letting others do their dying and then shamelessly hold a dayof remembrance honoring them for their sacrifice. This is the longtradition of this nation that since inception in 1776 has been at warwith one or more adversaries every year without exception from thattime to the present.

These two federal holidays warrant special condemnation. They representa galling legacy of endless wars and false patriotic glorification ofthem including the so-called "good" one about which there was nothinggood at all. Choosing days to honor the dead who sacrificed everythingis a sacrilege and failure to note they died in vain on the alter ofpower and privilege for the few. Their deaths assure an unending cycleof violence and killing with legions of nameless, faceless grave sitesahead known only to those experiencing unconscionable loss.

These commemorative days stand above the others as symbols of thisnation's depravity and ultimate crime against humanity and wasted livesit's taken. They ignore what Lincoln hoped for at Gettysburg inNovember, 1863 when he said "we here resolve that these dead shall nothave died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth offreedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for thepeople shall not perish from the earth." He knew the horror of war andunderstood for that to be they must end. He also feared they would notand had to reflect that future wars would take their leaders to newbattlefields in an endless cycle of death and destruction wars alwaysguarantee.

Future commemorations of past wars should chart a new course - a vowpledging they'll end, and this nation resolves never again. Remembranceshould then be an act of contrition and path to redemption, honoringthe living, and taking a sacred oath of non-violence promising to standby it for all time. It should be a solemn dedication to equity andsocial justice for all in a state of peace renouncing wars and theshameless holidays in their honor. One day they'll be no more warsbecause no one will go fight in them. When it comes, days of memorialand honoring veterans will end replaced by a Peace Day honoring theliving and sacredness of life so those past dead finally won't havedied in vain. Pray it comes soon.


Along with Christmas, no federal holiday is more celebrated than theday of the nation's independence from the British Crown declared onJuly 4, 1776. Coming in the summer with good weather across thecountry, it's a day of parades, outings, and baseball at all levelsthat many years ago nearly always meant so-called major leaguedouble-headers that was a big occasion for young boys growing up in"big league" cities whose dads took them out for an endless day at theballpark. It's also a day of commemorative and exulting fireworks andother expressions celebrating the nation's history, liberation andtraditions - not the truths about them but the acceptable illusionstaught in school and extolled by the dominant media and theirdisingenuous allies in academia and the clergy who go along propagatingthe nation's myths.

Young minds are never taught the nation's real history, just what'sfalsely glorified with all ugly parts about important events andleaders responsible for them suppressed to assure a new generation of"good citizens" is properly trained, just like the ones preceding it,assuring those in it will be loyal to the state because they believethe mythology about the country schools at all levels teach is thegreatest on earth.

We should commemorate the glorious achievement of our Founders andtheir Revolution that liberated the nation from a repressive Britishmonarchy and aristocracy replacing it with an experimental system ofgovernment never tried before in the West outside its imperfect form inAthens in ancient Greece for a few decades. After the war ofliberation, the Founders met in 1787, in the same Philadelphia StateHouse where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 yearsearlier, to frame our historic Constitution and later our Bill ofRights ratified in 1791.

It was historic and glorious, but much was left undone and to bedesired. Only white male property owners got the most fundamental ofall rights in a democracy until 1850 - the right to vote that shouldhave been federally mandated for all male and female adults in thecountry but wasn't. In addition, slavery was a national shame until the13th Amendment freed black people, who were just property until 1865.But they still never got real liberties until the civil rightslegislation of the 1960s completed what the Constitution and itsAmendments left undone. Even so, from then to the present, AfricanAmericans and others of color have always had far fewer rights andprivileges than the nation's whites, and shamefully our society is assegregated today as it was in the 1960s before the landmark civilrights laws were passed guaranteeing this would never happen again. Itdid, and it's hardly a reason for people affected and all others ofconscience to celebrate on July 4 or any day.

The nation's native Indians have even less to celebrate, the smallnumber of them remaining of the 100 million or so throughout theAmericas slaughtered without mercy from the very earliest days beforethe nation was liberated from the British Crown. Native Americans livedon these lands for thousands of years in relative peace. It wasn'tuntil white settlers and "Western civilization" arrived that everythingchanged for the worst.

When the first European settlers came in the late 15th century, theywere accepted and at times aided by the nation's first peoples whopreferred peace to conflict. But native graciousness wasn't returned inkind, and it led to the great push West and South and near totalextermination of the many great Indian nations given no rights orquarter in our grand new democratic experiment for the privileged few.It was only in 1924 that indigenous peoples got any rights with thepassage of the Indian Citizenship Act when there were hardly any leftto enjoy what little they got grudgingly. Getting no rights at all werethe many millions never born because their ancestors were slaughteredin cold blood leaving no new generations to follow.

Even today, in the 21st century, over 80 years since Indian people gotcitizenship including the right to vote, no peoples overall in the"land of the free" have fewer rights as citizens or live in moredesperate poverty and despair unaddressed and virtually ignored thanthe original inhabitants of this vast continent for whom justice longdelayed is justice never gotten. No day is ever held honoring thesecourageous people acknowledging their sacrifice for what the privilegedfew now enjoy.

Why would any of them, even as citizens, have reason to commemorate thedate of the nation's "liberation" that for them only meant thecontinuance of their destruction and denial of their proud cultures.Today the traditions of our original inhabitants are unknown by thegreater public, they're untaught in schools, and they're ignored by thedominant media that only disgracefully mock and demonize Indian peoplein films and society as drunks, beasts, primitives and savages, nobleor otherwise. What native American could respect a government speakingonly with forked tongue and acting like real savages making andbreaking treaties, taking their lands, destroying their welfare andfinally their lives. The kind of "liberation" this nation brought tothe people of Iraq for the past 16 years, we gave our originalinhabitants for 500 years "liberating" them, like Iraqis today, fromtheir liberty and lives.

Others in the nation also have little to celebrate on this or any otherday. Today it's truer than ever in an age of extreme greed,unprecedented wealth disparity, galling corruption and virtualabandonment of the rule of law by an administration and Congressuncaring about the rights of ordinary people anywhere. Through lies,deceit and contempt for humanity, they created a state of permanent warand disregard for the needs and human and civil rights of the majority.They also ignored and exacerbated conditions for the growing millionsof poor, persecuted and deprived, who have no reason for joy on our dayof "liberation" that gave them no rights or "free" society fruits fewof them ever enjoy. Today, tens of millions of poor people, especiallythose of color, are practically condemned as criminals for theirdisadvantaged state, through no fault of their own, in a corruptedracist society worshiping wealth, privilege and all the interests ofcapital at the expense of those having none.

Newly arrived immigrants also have little to celebrate, especially theunwanted and exploited ones of color from the South forced to come herebecause their nation's leaders and ours destroyed their lives at homeby the oppressive NAFTA trade pact enacted to enrich corporate giantsat the expense of ordinary working people, mostly living south of theborder in Mexico.

Muslims from everywhere, including citizens already here, have littleto celebrate as well, in a nation defiling Islam in the age of GeorgeBush equating them all with "terrorists" threatening the nation'ssecurity. Thousands threatening no one have been illegally hounded inwitch-hunt roundups since 9/11, held in secret detention, unjustlydeported, and given no rights including due process to clear theirnames. Their "crime" is their faith and color in a nationconstitutionally mandating all its people can worship freely now nolonger valid and abandoned along with all demonized, unwanted, poor anddeprived peoples condemned for who they are because they're not whiteand privileged - the only race and class in the country exempt from theharshness directed against all others. Shame on the nation on its dayof "liberation" and all others that strayed from its foundingprinciples never granted to all and still only offered a chosen few.


Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each yearsince the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882. Around theworld outside the US, socialist and labor movements are observed on May1 to recognize the social and economic achievements of labor movementsand working class people in them. This day gets limited attention inthe US, but where it's observed here it's commonly to commemorate theHaymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in Chicago that followed the May 1general strike in the city for an eight hour day leading to theviolence that broke out on the 4th.

Labor Day became a national federal holiday when Congress passedlegislation for it in June, 1894, a time when working people had fewrights. It took many painful years of struggle and strife before theygot any of the ones finally achieved grudgingly from management onlywanting to exploit them for profit. Only by organizing, taking to thestreets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police andNational Guard forces supporting management against working people,paying with their blood and lives did they finally gain an eight hourday, a living wage, on-the-job benefits and the pinnacle of labortriumph in the 1930s with the passage of the Wagner Act establishingthe National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guaranteeing labor had theright to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for thefirst time ever.

All of it was won from the bottom up. Management gave nothing untilforced to and neither did the federal government always siding withbusiness interests unless and until enough people power forcesWashington to yield legislatively or face possible serious workstoppages or even a national insurrection - all this in a democracyclaiming to represent all people, the great majority of whom happen tobe ordinary working ones.

Since a worried Congress passed the landmark 1935 Wagner Act andFranklin Roosevelt signed it into law in dire economic times when thosein power feared the worst, the state of organized labor rights hasdeclined, especially post-WW II. They then went steeply in reverseduring the Reagan years when the administration openly showed disdainfor working people in its one-side support for management. It continuedunabated, under Republican and DLC Democrat administrations, and todaystands at a multi-generational low ebb. Since coming into office in2001, the Neanderthal George Bush neocon administration intensified itsassault on the social contract government once had with its people andhas been openly contemptuous of ordinary workers with little interestin their rights and welfare.

Since the years of labor's ascendency, corporate America in league withgovernment shamelessly denigrated unions and the rights of workingpeople to organize in them. In 1958, one-third of the work force wasunionized, but now the figure is barely above 12%, and it's below 8%among non-governmental employees or the lowest it's been in sevendecades. Worse, most jobs are low-pay service sector ones because thenation's manufacturing base and many higher-paying jobs in finance andtechnology have been offshored to developing nations where workers canbe hired for a fraction of the salaries paid here or as virtual serfsat below poverty wages to fill legions of factory jobs in countrieswhere fair practice worker standards don't exist.

Nonetheless, on the first Monday each September this nation remembersits working people with a federally-mandated holiday in their "honor."Some honor when it's disingenuously given at the same time workerrights are ignored, forgotten, and uncared about by a governmentbeholden to capital and defiling ordinary wage earners deceived on thisday with meaningless bread and circus droppings leaving out whatworking people need most: good jobs at good pay, essential benefitswith them, and a government that really cares by doing what counts most- fighting for their rights every day. On Labor Day and all others,that kind of reverence is off the table making a mockery of the daynamed for the people it claims to honor, respect and serve but neverdoes.


No federally mandated holiday raises public ire more than the onecommemorating Columbus, mentioned above briefly. It honors a genocidistwhose arrival on what's now Haiti began the systematic mass slaughterof 100 million native human beings so this man and those coming latercould go home bringing "as much gold as (those sponsoring them)need....and as many slaves as they ask." The lure and lust for it gothim 17 ships on his second voyage and 1200 men aboard them. They wereexpected to bring back the riches they found including the human onesheaded for bondage. They went from island to island in the Caribbean,took their native Indians as captives, found no gold, but took hundredsof human beings instead back to Spain with the half or so of themsurviving the journey put on the block for sale like sheep or goats buttreated much worse.

The Arawak people deserved better. They were friendly and receptive tothe new arrivals, greeting them with gifts, food and water making themfeel welcome. They were much like Indians on the mainland - friendlyand hospitable enough to make it easy for those arriving to subjugateand kill them because they came to conquer, enslave and steal theriches of the new land. Peaceful Arawak people subjected to thispredation got their first taste of "Western civilization" with swordsand daggers that later were guns, cannons, and assorted other superweapons of war matched against their simple and crude weapons bycomparison for hunting, not warfare. It wasn't hard guessing who'dprevail.

It all got worse after the beginning and lasted 500 years with thedeadly cost to native Americans already explained. Still we celebratethe serial killer who began it all, call him heroic, and honor his nameand legacy on the second Monday each October as we've done since thefirst celebration was held in San Francisco in 1869. Today parades andother celebratory events are held in his honor that include speeches bypoliticians who desecrate the grave sites of the millions sent to thembeginning with this man who slaughtered the first ones as a predatoryparticipant in what was the start of the greatest genocide ever.

Instead of commemorating October 12 as the day this man arrived in thenew world (now the second Monday in October), Americans should condemnit as a day that will live in infamy as it is by the few nativesurvivors whose ancestors perished by his hand and the many whofollowed for conquest and plunder.


Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday of Novembergiving thanks to the Almighty for the year's blessings and bounty. Butmost people wouldn't imagine its intent by the way they spend the dayreplete with self-indulgent overeating of traditional foods for thefull four day weekend period when there are family gatherings, paradesand, most important for ravenous merchants, the official start of theChristmas holiday shopping season beginning the day after theThanksgiving and continuing till Christmas eve as long as stores remainopen that are about as long as people want them to.

This holiday, like all the others, is also replete with mythologytaught young minds in school about the Pilgrims inviting native Indiansto share their bounty in a show of brotherhood and friendship with anarray of foods the early settlers never heard of that were indigenousto the Americas and introduced to them by local native people. ThePilgrims had nothing to do with this tradition that began with EasternIndians observing fall harvest celebrations for centuries before thefirst settlers arrived - never called Thanksgiving even after they did.

While George Washington had days for national thanksgiving, moderncelebrations of the holiday only date from the Civil War in 1863 whenAbraham Lincoln wanted a way to boost morale and patriotic fervor ofthe Union Army at a time it needed it. He tried doing it by proclaimingThanksgiving a national holiday for the first time. It had nothing todo with the Pilgrims nor were they ever mentioned until 1890, and theterm Pilgrim was never even used until the 1870s. So much for tradition.

The Thanksgiving holiday is also a way to promote Americanethnocentrism and cultural superiority over all others by claiming theAlmighty views our society as special the way ideological Zionists feelJews are "the chosen people." It's a short step from these views tojudging all others everywhere as inferior, especially ones ranked lowin the racial, religious, ethnic or cultural pecking order - likeblacks, Latinos (especially from countries like Mexico), and today'snumber one demon target - all Muslim "radicals and extremists" meaningall of them are by implication and are "Islamofascist" terrorists aswell.

Worse, they and others are what "we" say they are in a time of"universal deceit" when "telling the truth is a revolutionary act," asOrwell told us. He also said in our kind of society "war is peace,freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The public believing itis a testimony to the power of the dominant media Orwell understood inhis day over half a century ago before the age of television. If hewere living today he'd be aghast at what now goes on where the dominantcorporate-controlled media and PR allies act as nationalthought-control police programming the public mind into compliance withwhatever the country's power structure wants us to believe - to itsadvantage and against ours.

Giving thanks on a special day of Thanksgiving also serves anotherpurpose. It has special religious overtones that in the US areChristian ones as this country always was a Christian nation with overthree-fourths of the people in it identifying themselves of that faith.It's been that way even with the traditional separation of church andstate, but today the thinking and influence of fundamentalistChristianity in American Protestantism poses a special threat to thoseoutside it. This extremist movement became dominant in the 1980s underRepublican rule and reemerged even more virulently with the election ofGeorge Bush. What's disturbing and dangerous is that hard-rightideologues like Pat Robertson, who thinks it's all right to assassinateforeign heads of state he dislikes like Hugo Chavez, are close to theseat of power where their views hold great sway.

The US was founded as a secular state, and the Constitution's FirstAmendment guaranteeing freedom of religion has been interpreted by theSupreme Court as requiring a "wall of separation" between church andstate prohibiting the government from adopting any religion ordenomination as official and requiring the government to avoid undueinvolvement in religion, its trappings or expressions.

That status is now in jeopardy following the introduction of the"Constitution Restoration Act of 2004" in the Congress and reintroducedin near-identical form in 2005. If reintroduced again and adopted inthe 110th Congress, it would turn the US into a de facto theocracy eventhough its supporters deny that's its intent. Don't believe them.

Support for the bill is led by Dominionists like Pat Robertson and atleast those remaining of the 28 House and Senate sponsors like him inthe last Congress, who support tearing down the sacred wall betweenbetween church and state so the US can be governed by Christian dogmaas they interpret it. It would make lawbreakers of those of otherfaiths, or none at all, disobeying whatever parts of Christian canonthe bill designated the law of the land - a very scary prospect forabout 75 million non-Christians in the country and many others ofChristian faith who won't go along.

If adopted, this bill will remove the Supreme Court's  authority to challenge the right of anyone in or affiliated withfederal, state or local government to acknowledge "God as the sovereignsource of law, liberty, or government" - the Christian God, that is.Any judge at any level interpreting the Constitution otherwise wouldhenceforth be subject to impeachment and prosecution in the new UnitedStates of America ruled by the Pat Robertson types of influence in it.Anyone jittery? It would also likely elevate the Thanksgiving holidayto one of obligatory Christian observance, even for non-Christians,advancing its current optional religious overtones to mandatory status.

Already the way Thanksgiving is celebrated today in the US is a sham.While barely thanking the Almighty for the year's blessings and bounty,if it's done at all, no heed is paid to the many millions of poor,deprived and oppressed peoples around the country and world whosedesperate state is the result of our government's actions. It alsoignores the systematic dismantling of constitutional rights at homealong with the denial of essential social services to growing millionswho otherwise aren't able to get them. And it fails to acknowledge ourown dereliction in failing to take personal action opposing theseabuses against humanity and the rule of law because we're toodistracted or involved in other things - like over-indulging on a dayto remember our blessings.

Those giving thanks on this day should reflect on their obligation tooppose these crimes of state and the harm they inflict on others andour own well-being. They need to demand real change by holding electedofficials accountable and removing those failing to act responsibly.They also need to learn their history discovering how it began - thatthe nation they call America once was the land of its originalinhabitants for many thousands of years who lived on it mostly in peaceuntil we, as uninvited settlers, arrived, took it from them andslaughtered nearly all of them in the process for the past 500 years.It's not just thanks we should give on this day. It's forgiveness forthis enormous crime our forebears committed most people don't even knowabout shamefully.

Journalism Professor Robert Jensen has it right in his article calledNo Thanks to Thanksgiving. In it he suggests we would go a long waytoward progressing morally if we replaced our "white supremicist"annual Thanksgiving Day tradition of overindulgence with a "NationalDay of Atonement" accompanied by a self-reflective collective fastingfor the "original sin" of our forefathers even if our own came muchlater or from a different part of the world. Establishing that as asacred tradition would be an important step toward a day when we mightreally have something to "give thanks" for every day in a land withleaders resolved never to repeat the crimes of the past and just ascommitted to public service instead of only to an elite part of it.


Christmas is observed worldwide by Christians and many others onDecember 25 by tradition (other than the Eastern Orthodox Church doingit on January 7) to honor the birth of Jesus Christ even though it'swidely acknowledged not to be his birthday. Along with its religioussignificance, it's also a time for other celebratory events like winterfestivals, Kwanzaa from December 26 - January 1 for Africans Americansreconnecting to their African cultural and historical heritage, and forJews the Hanukkah Festival of Lights commemorating their struggle forsurvival and for Jewish children to serve as their Christmas with giftsfrom parents just like their Christian friends get.

The Christmas season is also a time for what can only be characterizedas the national obsession of shopping and consuming that traditionallybegins the day after Thanksgiving, runs through Christmas eve and thenpicks up again and continues into January largely resulting from acompulsion to buy and holiday gift cards, year-end bonuses and otherresources gotten or borrowed to do it with - for all the things notreceived as gifts and anything else Madison Avenue creative minds canconvince people to want then or any other time of year.

If one dominant trait characterizes American culture above all others,it's a variant of the consumerism of the kind economist and sociologistThorstein Veblen called "conspicuous" in his 1899 book The Theory ofthe Leisure Class. Back then Veblen wrote about the habits of the"nouveau riche" of that era that had accumulated great wealth and spentlavishly to display it "conspicuously" rather than to satisfy needs. Ifhe were living today writing on consumerism, he'd have to write anentirely different book in a society hugely different from the one heknew. His title might be something like The Theory of the SpendingClass or A Society Obsessed with Spending or Consumerism encompassingeveryone able to spend any amount above the bare subsistence level orwhat's done for basic needs everyone has.

The term "consumption" originated hundreds of years ago referring tothe infectious disease now called tuberculosis or TB. But its originalmeaning bears significance in today's consumerist society even thoughthe kind of consumption meaning to spend that everyone does foressentials is worlds apart from gluttonous consumerism covered in thissection that refers to discretionary shopping and spending for thingspeople don't need but buy anyway with all the negative effects on thosedoing it beyond their means or even within them as well as the overallharm to a society addicted to excess consumption.

"Consumption," the disease, or untreated TB, was called that because it"consumed" people from within causing them to slowly and painfullywaste away and perish. The analogy today is the great mass of consumersspending beyond their means and relying heavily on highinterest-bearing credit cards charging up to 20% or more. It's placedmillions precariously in debt over their heads and growing numbersbecoming unable to service it because of unexpected financialexigencies like from uninsured medical expenses. It's resulted in anear-plague of personal bankruptcies that in 2005 affected over 2million people, 30% above 2004, and may rise still higher in 2006 andsucceeding years unless people curb their spending habits. Even thosesurviving that fate face an endless burden of high debt service handledby monthly credit card and/or bank or other lending agency paymentsthat enrich them at the expense of borrowers never able to get out fromunder an obligation grown oppressive.

This would never happen in a society free from an addiction to spendexcessively that in the US is extreme enough to be called a nationalpathological dysfunction and diagnosed as an obsessive-compulsivedisorder (OCD). It's a psychological or psychiatric anxiety onecharacterized by obsessive or repetitive thoughts and relatedcompulsions or tasks and the rituals employed to relieve the obsession.In the US, it's an obsession to shop and buy, and the compulsion is togo out, spend and do it. When done excessively the way it is here, itfits the clinical definition of a pathological social disorder thatturns out to be deadly for many who get themselves in debt bondageincreasingly resulting in bankruptcy.

In the West, but especially in the US, many tens of millions ofotherwise normal people are "obsessed" with the need/desire to shop andaccumulate all the things they never knew they wanted or needed untilthe Madison Avenue mind manipulating masters convinced them their livescouldn't be fulfilled without them. Economist Paul Baran once describedtheir influence as being able to make us "want what we don't need (allunessential consumer goods and services) and not....what we do (likegood health care, education, clean air and water, safe food, and goodgovernment providing essential services)."

For those afflicted with the national neurosis of consumerism, reliefis only possible through ritual shopping and spending, even if it meansdoing it with borrowed funds at high interest rate carrying charges andthe risk of future insolvency. Clinicians would characterize thisbehavior any time of year as abnormal and harmful, but during theChristmas shopping season it becomes a socially pathological orgyrising to the level of an out-of-control spending frenzy.

It's also an effective societal control technique as consumers outshopping or distracted by the vast array of other bread and circusattractions around them (the commercialized sights and sounds of theseason to create a buying mood), are focused away from affairs of stateand all the harm those in power do through them. While people are gluedto their TV sets or out at malls shopping for the latest fashions, toysor trinkets, most don't pay enough attention to their government wagingwars of aggression, destroying civil liberties and the rule of law,cutting social services, harming the environment, and failing in itssocial obligation responsibilities to society because they conflictwith the elitist agenda of power and privilege it wants the publicknowing nothing about.

They also fail to understand their over-indulgent consumerism feeds thecorporate beast allowing it to grow, prosper and become even morepredatory in a society based on savage capitalism, out-of-controlgreed, corruption at the highest levels in business and governmentusing our misappropriated and stolen tax dollars, and iron-fistedmilitarism and homeland security enforcers supporting an imperialjuggernaut on the march to make the world safe for big capital thatneeds armies of over-indulgent consumers to help it get bigger. Themore we shop, the further it marches in search of new markets,resources and cheap labor replacing the more expensive kind at homethat may have its future consumption impaired if if doesn't cut back onthe excess amount of it now.

Adam Smith, the ideological Godfather of capitalism, understood thedangers of concentrated wealth and power and wrote about it in hisseminal work The Wealth of Nations. He explained an "invisible hand" ofunseen forces worked best in a free (meaning fair) market with manysmall businesses competing locally against each other. He railedagainst the concentrated mercantilism of his time like the British EastIndia Company of his native UK, where he was Scottish born, even thoughit prospered quite well on ordinary consumption when there was no suchthing as the kind of consumerism endemic in the US today.

If Smith were still living, he'd be appalled by today's kind ofmonopolistic capitalism that was unimaginable in his day, but heunderstood its danger in writing about what he called the "vile maximof the masters of mankind....All for ourselves and nothing for otherpeople." Smith's work was important in its day, but in modern Westernsociety he'd likely have discovered there is no "invisible hand" makingmarkets efficient.

Today markets need countervailing government intervention (calledregulation) to make them work best for everyone, not just the onescontrolling them for their own self-interest that's the way they worktoday with corporate giants allowed freewheeling unrestrained freedomletting them quash defenseless weak competitors that can only surviveand prosper if regulations call for a level playing field where no onegets unfair competitive advantage over anyone else. That doesn't existtoday as giant transnationals make their own rules, and they're allstacked in their own favor.

Further, under today's neoliberal market rules, the compulsion toconsume exacerbates the problem. It lets monopoly capitalism functionlike a giant vacuum cleaner growing ever larger by sucking intocorporate coffers and growing bottom lines all the resources fromaddicted consumers including all they can borrow in an endless cycle ofbinge shopping and spending in a culture gone mad with the need toaccumulate and overindulge especially during the Christmas holidayseason.

Whatever Christmas once was, it no longer is, and it corrupts societyand the spirit of the man whose day of birth it honors and the messageof love and faith he gave his followers. It came in his teachings,deeds and sermons like his famous Sermon on the Mount when he said to"turn the other cheek" and preached the central tenets of the TenCommandments that include loving thy neighbor, not killing and doingunto others as you'd want them doing to you. The consumerist US societyis one of receiving, not giving; of accepting predatory capitalism orat least not opposing its harm; of ignoring essential people needs andrights; of swearing fealty to shopping and spending while turning awayfrom or not caring about our fellow men, women and children throughoutthe year, especially at this holy time for Christians whose thoughtsshould be on those most in need and what can be done to help them.

It's a sad testimony to our society and how most in it are easilymanipulated to support what benefits those with wealth and power at theexpense of the greater good of all others. Christmas in America is nowthe defiled spirit of out-of-control excess unmindful of the unmetneeds of most others close by and around the world our culture ofsavage capitalism exploits for profit. For them, Christmas is only "BahHumbug," and Santa only Scrooge - all take and no give.


The first day of the new year comes one week after Christmas and isjust a continuation of the long holiday season beginning afterThanksgiving, reaching a climax around Christmas, ebbing slightly for aday or so and building again to a final celebratory welcoming of thenew year with another overindulgent bout of eating, drinking, partying,and using whatever funds remain for more discretionary spending inJanuary and thereafter in succeeding months gorging on nonessentials.

The new year is also a traditional time for resolutions including somewith merit like losing weight, resolving to stop smoking and gettingfit. Most are quickly forgotten, and the most important ones are nevermade: to work for peace on earth, good will toward others, loving theyneighbor, and respecting the rights of all people everywhere, treatingthem as we'd want them to treat us in a society of caring and sharingwith equity and equal justice for all. Wouldn't that be a wonderfulsolemn resolution for the new year along with a sacred commitment tokeep it throughout the year and every one thereafter once the holidayseason ended. Long ago in simpler times before the old world was calledthe new one and was named America, it was that way. It can be again ifenough of us want it to be.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site atsjlendman.blogspot.com.