The dictionary says "radical" means "going to the root, essential, fundamental, forming the basis, affecting the foundation." In this sense, and at this moment in today's extremely unstable world, shouldn't we all seek to be as radical as we possibly can? Not radical extremists as conventional expression would have it, but instead seeking in the most humanly correct way possible to get at the truth of the matter?
It is difficult to sort through the roaring onslaught of information clutter. Bookstores barrage us with what sells regardless of what's real; news channels fling fragments of disassociated facts. It takes a serious personal effort to learn what the mainstream media (owned and controlled by a handful of global corporations) tries so hard to keep from us. But we have two immediate opportunities to cut through the chaff here in the Inland Northwest.
Noam Chomsky, will speak at Gonzaga University's Martin Centre at 7 p.m. on April 21. Since Sept.11, citizens the world over have tried harder to learn the truth of our time, and Chomsky's many years of comprehensive and honest - and therefore marginalized - scholarly research are now in great demand.
Chomsky tells us public opinion is very carefully studied by those who would run our country, hiring "the most reputable organizations that monitor public opinion," but the results are rarely publicly released. They know a solid majority of us want to reverse the militarization of our nation, act cooperatively within the United Nations rather than unilaterally without, eliminate nuclear weapons, join 140 other nations in the Kyoto treaty on global warming, be legally bound by the international accord against genocide, honor Article 51 of the U.N. Charter under which pre-emptive war is a crime, subsidize the rapid deployment of proven renewable- energy technologies, and fund universal education and health care. They know, but they don't want us to know. They know. That's why they lied about WMD.
Then Scott Ritter will speak at the The Met on May 10. A U.S. Marine intelligence officer for a dozen years, then chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM), Ritter was vilified by mainstream media for his courageous, honest and truly patriotic assertion that the facts did not show Iraq a threat worthy of war. Now we know he was right.
What if we have grown up in an Alice in Wonderland nation, where the truth of history has been turned upside down, and the very choices our national leaders continue to make only bring us closer to the brink of human destruction? No longer do warnings that this is indeed the case come only from far out on the so-called "radical" fringe. Indeed, they come increasingly from the hallowed core of establishment USA, from respected, highly-credentialed scholars like Chalmers Johnson, professor emeritus and civilian consultant to the CIA for years; from former Marine Corps commanders like Scott Ritter; and from the cautiously understated Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
What if oil and the strategic domination of Earth's resources are the true reasons for sending our youth to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq? What if it wasn't "communists" we fought in Vietnam, Nicaragua and so many other places, but fundamental movements toward self-determination, surging popular movements that sought to prioritize using their natural resources and labor to benefit their own people rather than exporting them away on ludicrous terms dictated by "structural adjustment" programs?
What if this desperate "us against them" effort to control Earth's resources relies on a truly fatal misperception of scarcity? What if renewable energy resources and sustainable water, agricultural and fisheries practices really can swiftly realize global economic abundance? This is what experts have said, engineeringly sound demonstrations have proven, and polls have consistently shown most U.S. and world citizens choose.
But instead we're told we must gird our loins for inevitable wars, build a Star Wars fantasy-bubble to hide in, undermine the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons so we can build battlefield-scale nukes, scuttle our participation in the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming and construct (despite the usual denials) permanent military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. But what if these entirely unnecessary choices only hasten what those strategic analysts writing recently in the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences called our "ultimate doom?"
It's time to get radical, think of our children and seek to get at the truth. If we do so, we'll find out what the opinion surveyors don't want us to know. Then we'll have the power to no longer just dream but really build a world of shared abundance that makes us all safe.
Mike Nuess is a 40-year Spokane resident, a cum laude graduate of Gonzaga University, and author of the recent book, "General Plenty - Always and Only the Path to Peace."
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