In 1994, Ramsey Clark wrote in his The Fire This Time – US War Crimes in the Gulf, “The greatest crime since WWII has been US foreign policy,” in Crime in America, 1970, “Crimes are meant to be prosecuted,” and in Challenge to Genocide, 1998 that ‘investments in the illegal and genocidal use of the nation’s Armed Forces, CIA and mass media will be made unprofitable and brought to an end through prosecution under the law’
Every Memorial Day perceptive Americans witness a holiday meant to mourn soldiers fallen in defense of their country used by the media, controlled by investors in the Military Industrial Complex to praise genocidal crimes against humanity perpetrated since end of World War Two by a government, as President Franklin Roosevelt once confided, “owned by a financial element in the centers of power.”[1]
In 1994, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, perhaps America’s most prestigious defector from the US war establishment and renown fighter for justice for war victims, wrote in his The Fire This Time – US War Crimes in the Gulf, “The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy.” In Crime in America, 1970, he emphasized, “Crimes are meant to be prosecuted.” In Challenge to Genocide, 1998, Attorney Clark explained that ‘highly profitable investments in the illegal and genocidal use of the nation’s Armed Forces, CIA and mass media will be made unprofitable and brought to an end through prosecution under the law.’
I have been privileged to know Ramsey Clark as a friend over many years, know of his suffering to see good people so mercilessly deceived, and hear him encourage me and others with his often repeated, “Keep the faith,” by which we understand he means faith that ultimately truth will prevail and our efforts rewarded.
Because of Ramsey, I can put useless recrimination aside, while joining in deep mourning for those Americans (some of them buddies of mine), so brutally deceived and destroyed, and more lovingly remembered because of it.
This Memorial Day is only for them and those who mourn their loss.
Tomorrow, one shall with renewed dedication work to bring the pathetic deceivers to justice, bring justice for their surviving victims, and most importantly at the same time save precious lives from being taken in the future.
End Note
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
— Letter by FDR to Colonel House, dated 21 November 1932
For further Memorial Day reading, see articles published by OpEdNews, US, CounterCurrents, Kerala, India and Minority Perspective, UK
Most War Dead Are Civilians, On Memorial Day, Mourn Them First, for to honor only US military dead is to glorify the military mindset. Non-Americans watching CNN in Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq will likely be squinting in grim incredulity at American indifference to the loss of THEIR country’s lives. Memorial Day is NOT Veterans’ Day, but a day of solemn mourning, let’s be inclusive.
Good Americans Mourn First the Millions America Slaughtered, Then Mourn US Soldiers (OpEdNews May, 2013) Besides mourning our own, mourn the patriots of US invaded countries that ‘fell’ fighting against overwhelming odds, and their civilian countrymen and countrywomen and children who fell ‘in harms way’ of those US invading forces. Nothing less than this can dent the Memorial Day adulation for dying for what Rev. King called “atrocity wars to maintain predatory investments
Vets Ask “Mourn For Those Killed By Americans in Battle in US Wars of Aggression!” OpEdNews, May, 2012, “On this Memorial Day, Veterans For Peace asks you to mourn not only for Americans killed in battle, but also for those killed by Americans in battle, to accept that these war deaths did not have to happen–that they were actually in vain. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died in American wars of aggression. That is a tragedy and is a truth that must be accepted and for which we must take responsibility.” VFP President.
Mourn! Not Honor!, Our Dying in Dishonorable, Murderous Wars Save the use of the words ‘honor’ and ‘praise’ for someone like Muhammad Ali, who refused to do what we, for all our good intentions, unfortunately went along with.
MOURNING THEIRS (ALONG WITH OURS ) VERSUS HONORING OURS & OUR WARS A pretty slick suckering-in, that military use of the word “honor.’ as indiscriminate praise for killing designated enemies of the corporatist governed US, as if they were enemies of the American people. Honoring them as heroes draws a boy in to prove his manhood. Mourning dead military is a turn-off for boys considering enlisting. Mourning is anti-war! Bad for war profits. “Honoring’ is pro-war! Good for the stock market.
A Memorial Day Press Release From Some American Veterans We will no longer participate in selective mourning only America’s war dead. We will mourn all victims of war, the millions of civilians, the hundreds of thousands of our designated enemies fallen in their motherlands, and then, having put others first, as in common humility, will we mourn the tens of thousands of our very own fellow citizens who sacrificed their lives for, or thinking it was for, the good of our nation.
Memorial Day! Americans Honor Military that Collaterally Slaughtered Millions of Non-Caucasian Children
Article describes how Memorial Day will evolve into a day of mourning not only the military deaths of friends and family but a day of mourning for having been deceived by a media owned by profiteers in the genocidal use of America’s Armed Forces all around our blessed world, and of intense interest in the prosecution of everyone responsible for their shame in the eyes tens of millions of victims of their lamentable ignorance.
Jay Janson is an archival research people’s historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden, Germany Vietnam and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining,
