{"id":38219,"date":"2018-09-24T06:52:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38219"},"modified":"2018-09-24T06:52:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:52:09","slug":"blue-angels-the-naked-face-of-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38219","title":{"rendered":"Blue Angels: the Naked Face of Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue Angels: the Naked Face of Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

The United States is a military empire that was built and is maintained by organized violence.<\/p>\n

The origins of this country lie with the military conquest and either destruction or forced resettlement of indigenous people. Today, the modern American lifestyle is maintained, as Thomas Freidman (someone with whom I agree on very little) writes, by the \u201chidden fist\u201d of the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cMcDonalds cannot flourish without MacDonald Douglass,\u201d Friedman wrote. \u201cAnd the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley\u2019s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am reminded of this fact every August. August brings Seafair to Seattle, and with Seafair comes the Blue Angels, a Navy\/Marines squadron of F\/A-18 fighter bombers that travels the US each year, entertaining the public for an annual cost of $37 million.<\/p>\n

As these jet aircraft roar overhead, I cover my ears and wince at the spectacle of widespread public adulation. These war machines are worshipped. Earlier today, I watched a five-year-old boy cheering and yelling \u201cyee-haw\u201d as the fighter formation shot overhead. Out on Lake Washington, a toxified remnant of what was once an ecological paradise, other Seattle residents on boats and rafts raised their hands towards the jets in supplication. As five aircraft passed directly overhead, I watched one white American man hold a can of beer above his face and pour the liquid directly down his throat.<\/p>\n

For thousands of people, the roar of an F\/A-18 fighter bomber is the last sound they ever heard. The F\/A-18 aircraft played a major role during the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Between these two conflicts, more than a million civilians were killed\u2014many of them in bombings. The same jet continues to be used in Syria, in Yemen, in Somalia, and elsewhere all around the world.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blue Angels: the Naked Face of Empire The United States is a military empire that was built and is maintained by organized violence. The origins of this country lie with the military conquest and either destruction or forced resettlement of indigenous people. Today, the modern American lifestyle is maintained, as Thomas Freidman (someone with whom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[21856,5493,259,21855,21857,21858,21859,827,844],"class_list":["post-38219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-blue-angels","tag-counterpunch","tag-empire","tag-max-wilbert","tag-military-empire","tag-organized-violence","tag-thomas-freidman","tag-united-states","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38220,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219\/revisions\/38220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}