Edward R Murrow on America

Famed reporter, journalist and author Edward R Murrow on America and our history:

"They were ahead of the law, ahead of education and established institutions. They made their own...There grew up a tradition of violence and lawlessness... They fought a four-year civil war. And the status of the Negro...is still one of the greatest problems facing the nation. I believe we lynched only three or four of our black fellow-citizens last year, which is some improvement...

We...engineered a frontier incident with Mexico. We took that huge territory of Texas, and what is now California... Later on, we were to land marines in Nicaragua and Haiti, narrowly avoid war with Germany over Venezuela, and create a heritage of mistrust amongst the South American peoples as a result of high-handed methods and dollar diplomacy. Cuba and the Philippines came into our Lebensraum...

And all the time we were despoiling a continent. We cut the top off it, and sent the timber floating down the rivers. We ploughed the prairies, wasted our soil... Later on in this series you will hear about the New Deal, our racial problems, and how we came to be a nation of which one-third is ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed. You will also hear something of our achievements."

--Edward R. Murrow from his "Meet Uncle Sam" series.  Quote taken from the book

MURROW: HIS LIFE AND TIMES by A. M. Sperber

Links:   Edward R. Murrow - Wikipedia

An American soldier's take on the Iraq War and the US

"My initial reaction was disgust.  And then sickness.  And shame.  Because I, I felt kind of embarassed for myself.  It's almost living your whole life in a lie.  Like you're lying to yourself and you're being lied to.  And you feel like you're, you're being sheltered from everything that is real.  So I, I got, I got frustrated and I got pissed and I got bitter and the more that I got bitter and the more that I learned, I should say the more I learned and the more I experienced in the Army, the more bitter I became and the more angry and frustrated I became with growing up in a family that wanted to shelter me from reality, a society that wanted to shelter me from reality, a government that wanted to shelter me from the disgusting, immoral and illegal things that they do.

Now I know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  You know, I want to focus on making sure that another kid doesn't make the same mistake as me.  I don't want our country and our government and our Congress to be sending kids off to war to fight and die for oil or economic colonialism and military bases around the world.  And I feel it is my duty no matter what I do with my life, no matter what my job is, what my career is.  I feel it is my duty to constantly, constantly work to change that.

I do have hope.  I mean, I have hope, um, in the people of this country.  I don't have hope in the government."

--Jared Hood, Denver, Colorado

Links:  http://jonorlandophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ivaw21.mov
https://www.ivaw.org/