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CounterPunch
January
11, 2003
My Flag Held
Hostage
By PHILIP FARRUGGIO
Film can imitate life--so rare nowadays, but its
out there if we look hard enough. In Barry Levinson's 1997 satire
"Wag the Dog", one sees how the "powers that
be" can manufacture a crisis to mask domestic problems--carrying
a nation right into a war. In Norman Jewison's chilling 1975
"futuristic" (yeah right) "Rollerball",
one sees how the corporate controlled state can destroy the
"individual", and what once was "history",
to suit their agenda. Finally, in Harold Becker's 1996 "City
Hall", the mayor of NYC, played by Al Pacino, gives the
most rousing speech this writer has ever heard, in fantasy or
in reality. Pacino's Mayor Pappas, attending the church service
for a young black boy killed innocently during a "cop and
robbers" shootout, bellows to the congregation about how
"this city should be a Palace".... where a society
melds together in safety and harmony.
They have succeeded in stripping me of
"my flag". They, the common man and woman, influenced
by the political bosses through the corporate owned and controlled
media, have forced me into "hiding" my flag. I no longer
display it in my windows, my lawn, my car, or on my lapel. "They"
have made it "their flag", representing a different
America than the one I have come to love and cherish. To paraphrase
Mayor Pappas, they have taken over "my palace'!
My flag did not wave from the frigates
and the aircraft that have bombed away innocent lives these
many decades since the "Big One". My flag did not wave
from the corporate offshore factories that exploited (exploit)
the cheap labor pools throughout the underdeveloped world--much
to the detriment of my neighbors here,now forced to become part
time salesclerks wearing foolish high school nameplates. My
flag will not be there on those troop transports taking America's
finest low and middle income youth to destroy some country (
and its own finest youth) in the name of some mega-mergered
oil conglomerate! Finally, it is not "my flag" that
incites the ever increasing terrorist populations throughout
the world with what it has come to represent. All that hype
and spin about "their flag" symbolizing freedom and
democracy is just that. "My flag" represents those
noble axioms--"their flag", the confederate one used
by the political and military--industrial bosses--it represents
nothing but "profits over people"!!
Before condemning me for my principles,
you out there who waves and wears "their flag', pause for
a few minutes. Take five. Go to the library, the "public"
library that "they" wish to privatize, and get yourself
some of the many documentary films of WWII. Check out the ones
about Germany in the 30's and early 40's. Look at those myriads
of flags seemingly all over the place. Check out the powerful
rantings and ravings of the paperhanger. See how the masses
"Zig Heiled" so "mesmorizingly obedient"
to their Fatherland and their flag. Whoever said "history
repeats itself" was a genius.
Philip A Farruggio is a baby boomer Brooklyn NY born, bred and
educated (Brooklyn College '74). He can be reached at brooklynphilly@aol.com
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January
4, 2003
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Something
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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