Investigative Journalist I.F. Stone Died 20 Years Ago Today
June 19th, 2009 |
| Rowland Scherman |
| Izzy Stone |
I.F. Stone, the investigative journalist extraordinaire who died twenty years ago today on June 18th, 1989, spoke at the University of California, Berkeley at the Vietnam teach-in.
His words still echo with truth for today…
I.F. STONE: I cannot understand the fury in the press and among the respectables against the teach-ins. The State Department has it almost entirely its own way. The government line dominates the press and the radio and the TV. Why are they so frantic? When, for a little while, in a few moments and on a few campuses and a few places, a voice of dissent is heard, a little bit of debate has begun. Are they so unsure of themselves? Are they secretly so weak about their own point of view that they fear to have it exposed to public debate and public examination? You know, when the State Department holds its conferences, it never invites the opposition. It never invites a critic. It doesn’t even invite critical newspapermen to private briefings, for fear they might ask embarrassing questions. The atmosphere of the State Department is very much like that of the big government agencies in Moscow. You get the same apparatchik atmosphere, the same regurgitation by bureaucratic parrots of the official line. And this is what we have to deal with in our own country.
You know, there’s a great deal we don’t know about war and about why men fight. We know a lot about what people have said were the reasons they were fighting for. But modern psychology has taught us that the explanations people give for their activities are rarely the truth. And so it is in this case.
One of the reasons for all the trouble our country is in around the world, I think, is that we possess so huge a military establishment. If a country doesn’t have soldiers, it takes a slight and makes a protest, and that’s the end of it. But when it has an enormous military apparatus like ours, the tendency is to try to solve all kinds of political and economic questions by military means, a process that’s something like trying to repair a watch with a sledgehammer. And conversely, as long as we have a large military establishment, it’s going to be looking for work to do to maintain its appropriations, to get its promotions, to prove its usefulness, and to avoid technological unemployment. And all this miasma about wars of liberation that is so central to what is happening today in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic is really a reflection of the military’s desire to find work to do. The “war of liberation” neurosis is made to order for the military.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now did a show on him today.
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Tags: Democracy Now, I.F. Stone
June 19th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I had almost forgotten how astoundingly sane I. F. Stone was, and how much the establishment media, not to mention the political establishment, were afraid of him. Maybe “afraid” is not the right word. But — their reaction had something to do with fear because when Izzy Stone investigated something or analyzed something, you could count on 100% integrity, honesty and rationality, all qualities foreign to the aforementioned power structure.
Stone was one of the greatest journalists of all time, and is still virtually unknown, a very sad commentary.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
He didn’t work on assignment for a corporate, chain newspaper. He knew freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one…
June 21st, 2009 at 11:45 am
This is so true and if you analyze it, it makes since. We have been so brain washed with the excuse of patriotism that we can’t think for ourselves any more and point the finger in the wrong direction by saying “if i serve my country,” am doing the patriotic thing. This is all true when our country has been attacked without provocation, which has never been the case, but they find a way to blame some one, some where so as to justify their actions. Little attention has been placed on the country recovery. After a recession, a conflict is created to put people back to work at the expense of the “citizen army,” not mercenaries, just to justify our armament industries which are the only beneficiary of wars and the cost are carried down for generations to come as we could see at present. NAPOLEON once said it takes 3 things to win a war, money, the will to fight for a cause you believe in, are mercenary army so as to fight away from the mother land such is the case of FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION.
I saw this poster and i thought it was good for the country:
from the Petersburg Times Newspaper on Sunday May 17,2009 The Business Section asked readers on ” How Would You Fix The Economy?” This was a bright answer i thought.
Dear Mr President:
Please find bellow my suggestion for fixing America’s eonomy instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan: There are 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
#1)They Must retire.Forty million job openings -Unemployment Fixed
#2)They Must buy a new American Car.Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry Fixed.
#3)They Must either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -Housing Crisis Fixed.
It can’t get any easier than that!
If more money is needed, have all members of Congress and their constituents pay their taxes.