Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Test yourself

The following Quick Political Scholastic Aptitude Test (QPSAT) with its 
one (1) multiple choice question has become a popular item on the Internet 
and in a wide range of publications critical of US policy.

Here's a partial list of the countries that the US has bombed since the 
end of World War II: China (1945-46), Korea (1950-53), China (1950-53), 
Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Guatemala (1960), 
Vietnam (1961-73), Congo (1964), Laos (1964-73), Peru (1965), Guatemala 
(1967-69), Cambodia (1969-70), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), 
Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-present), Sudan 
(1998), Afghanistan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999).

Question: In how many of these instances did a democratic government 
respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result? Choose one of the 
following:

(a) 0, (b) zero, (c) none, (d) not a one, (e) zip."

In fact of course, establishing a "democratic government respectful of 
human rights" was never the real aim of any of these bombings, regardless 
of the rhetoric that poured forth from the White House and the State 
Department.

In a number of the countries listed, governments representing popular 
democratic movements succeeded in achieving office despite the US 
bombing.

In others the bombing (usually combined with other military action) was 
successful in blocking progressive, people's governments from taking power 
or in forcing them from power (as in Grenada, Congo, Guatemala).

In all cases the true aim of the bombing was to further the interests of 
the US ruling class, which has no real interest in human rights 
whatsoever. US hypocrisy has been exposed time and again, US lies 
uncovered time without number, and yet there are still people on the left 
who fall for them.

Hitler used to call it the technique of the big lie. If the lie was big 
enough, some of it was bound to be believed. The US has refined the 
technique: now the lie can be subtle, it's the delivery of the lie that has 
gone big.

Tell it frequently, relentlessly, using every means of mass communication -
- each reinforcing the other — and control the sources of information so 
that there is no contrary view in any mass media, and you have a lie that 
people will believe, at least for the time that it is needed, anyway.

* * *

Raw hide!

The German Culture Minister, Michael Naumann, says that Berlin will 
continue to demand that Moscow return art treasures which it took from Nazi 
Germany.

Talk about hide! The German fascists pillaged the art treasures of the 
Soviet Union in WW2. What they couldn't steal they systematically and 
wantonly destroyed.

Soviet losses in cultural artifacts, works of art, architecture, historical 
sites and so on rivalled in magnitude their losses in human life, social 
development and economic wealth.

Much of the stolen art has never been recovered. Buried in hideouts, 
secured in bank vaults, or stashed abroad, it is still in the hands of the 
pillagers.

At the end of the war, the victorious USSR claimed from Germany many works 
of art as reparations for Soviet art losses. They were not "looted" from 
Germany, they were not stolen.

Mainly paintings and sculptures, they were sent to museums in the Soviet 
Union, they were not secreted for the future enrichment of individual 
fascists and their families, as was done with the stolen Soviet art 
treasures.

Russia's parliament, the Duma, passed a law to prevent the Yeltsin 
Government from returning art to "aggressor countries".

Although the Constitutional Court ruled that this law breached the 
Constitution, it said Germany could not appeal for the return of the art 
trophies because it had been an aggressor country.

Russia's Culture Minister Vladimir Yegorov suggested that Moscow would 
consider swapping items seized from Germany for Russian art looted from the 
USSR and still held in Germany. This didn't seem to go down well with Mr 
Naumann.