Chalmers Johnson: Smartest Man You Never Heard of !

[stewert]

This article was written by a guy named Chalmers Johnson, I saw him on C-SPAN last night.
He is one well informed and very smart person. Ask yourself why this guy has never been
on the factor, he would crush O'Reilly like a bug in a debate. If this guy ever got on the
factor there would be nothing left but a wet spot on O'Reilly's chair when Chalmers got
done with him.

Yet he has never been on the factor, or any other cable news show that I have seen. This
man was one of the most informed and smart people I have ever seen anywhere. But I had
never even heard of the man, what does that tell you about our media. It tells me they
don't let people like him on tv because he will tell you the truth, not the corporate
right-wing bullshit you get from the cable news media.

Read this article, he also has a new book coming out called the sorrows of empire.

America's Empire of Bases

by Chalmers Johnson

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or
do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world
through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens
are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet.
This vast network of American bases on every continent except
Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of
bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high
school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this
globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and
nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind
of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies,
technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other
nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are
creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers
whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation,
Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl
Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington,
John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate
numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the
people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or
e-mailing to one another.

Full Story:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm

Here is another article he wrote about the Iraq wars, it's from his new book.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/johnson1.html

[sweetheart]

1. Yes, he's brilliant

Here's a thread on his latest book:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=111x19786

[Kathy in Cambridge]

2. I'm reading "Sorrows of Empire"

and it is quite a book!

I saw that BookTV event a few weeks back and then received his book for my birthday. I highly recommend his book.

[not systems]

3. I read "Blowback" and ...

recommend it highly.

It has a lot of details of the history US involvement in Asia.

[nostamj]

4. he's great!

the c-span show was amazing. "Sorrows of Empire" is on my (ever-growing!) must-read list

[stewert]

5. BTW.........

When I said smartest man you never heard of I meant average Americans, not the
informed political junkies here. But I was serious when I said I had never heard of
the guy. And I consider myself to be pretty well informed, if we actually had a liberal
media I would have heard of this guy before last night.

My dad watched him too and he was amazed at how smart Chalmers was and how
informed he was. He asked me who the guy was and where have they been hiding him,
I said I have never heard of him before last night.

The guy is a genius, he answered every question with no notes. I am wondering if he
has a photographic memory or something. I was very impressed, my 1st thought was how
come I have never seen this guy on any media shows.

[goclark]

6. Where Is The Liberal Voice In The Media?

Here is yet another voice that can barely make it to prime time TV.
It is a sin and a shame to not be able to listen every day to scholars with a "Liberal View"

What is happening with the Liberal Channel that Gore was suppose to get? We need it desperately!

When I think that a dummy like O'Reilly is the top spokesman on television, I cry. He is s t u p i d. No brain. Nada

[sweetheart]

7. I predict a meeting of chalmers and the hostile media

This is a quote from his book. If he is held up as uber intelligent,
then bush cannot stand. THe republicans are going to pull no
punches to defame Chalmers. I have tremendous respect for him in
writing this work.

These quotes from "sorrows of empire".

As the economic analyst william Greider concludes, "Instead of
facing this darkening prospect, Bush and team
regularly dismiss the worldviews of these creditor nations and
lecture them condescendingly on our superior qualities. Any
profligate debtor who insults his banker is unwise, to put it
mildly.... American leadership has... become increasingly
delusional - I mean that literally - and blind to the adverse
balance of power accumulating against it.

This quote is rather strong, and he'll have to defend it to the
letter which i am sure he can.

This second quote challenges all the orthodoxy of our entire economic
system as it has functioned since the inception of the country.
Dennis Kucinich!!! has the most in common with Chalmers, IMO.

It should be understood that there was no need to create the WTO.
There was no crisis in international commerce between 1986 and
1994 that required rectification. International trade was expanding
nicely under the GATT formula. The WTO was created because the
United States discovered that it could be created. Concretely, it
had two objectives: to try to manage the growing trade rivalry among
the leading industrialized countries, particularly the United States,
the European Union, and Japan, and to ensure that the Third World
was prevented from using trade as a legitimate instrument for its
industrialization, thereby threatening the neoliberal global economic
structure.


He openly accuses the government of criminal misbehaviour.
He's brilliant, a man of great goodwill, how cool.

Do you think the media are gonna not try to tar and feather this man?

Good fortune to you Dr. Chalmers. You are in my prayers.

[nostamj]

8. great chalmers quote on the failure of the WoT...

By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy, however, is that it accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military remedies to terrorism. As the prominent British military historian, Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq only increased the threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults of 2001, there were five major al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years since then there have been seventeen such bombings, including the Istanbul suicide assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC Bank. Military operations against terrorists are not the solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon."