Carl Herman :Exposing 8th grade US History textbook lies Nov 27, 2010
The following is what I wrote and delivered to meeting participants concerning our school’s 8th grade US History text; a leading national textbook. Surprisingly, the textbook company author in attendance was in agreement (this person co-authored the 7th grade text). All of Social Science teachers and administrator managing our department are also in agreement. We’re developing primary source documents for our students to read and then compare to the text’s account of history to see these lies of omission and commission for themselves.
Consider the 5-minute PuppetGov video, “Simple card tricks for war” on the left as an historic and artistic expression to show how Americans are lied-into wars.
Teaching in a social justice and historically accurate frame
Thank you for meeting with us today to discuss how to best use our text. What I have to communicate is central to any student learning accurate US history, and of critical importance if we want our students to be empowered with factual accuracy to develop powerful voices for social justice in our world of the present. What I say can be embraced easily if our attention is on the facts; but our communication is likely to fall short of that goal. I present the following in good faith for factual accuracy; I also provide documentation for verification and more complete explanation. These notes represent only a minimum investment of my time in analysis and notation of the beginning of the text, wars, and the central issue of who creates money for a nation. I promise that my motivation is exactly what I state: commitment for our young adults to learn factual US history.
The bottom-line of my communication: your text lies by omission and commission in its account of history in crucial areas of war, power, and money.
You should consider my own history for credible background. This is my 27th year teaching, and I’ve always had a “hobby” in social justice. For 18 years I worked with members of Congress that led to two UN Summits for ending poverty. The first was the 1990 World Summit for Children; the largest meeting of heads of state in world history. The second was the 1997 Microcredit Summit; with heads of state and the UN being so satisfied with our work that our organization (RESULTS) was asked to manage nations’ progress toward the Summit’s goals. Our work in communicating the value of Microcredit was a large part for it being honored with the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2006. I’m very-well trained to write with comprehensive accuracy and complete documentation that satisfies academic challenges, and to anticipate political attacks that use rhetorical fallacies when opponents have no factual basis for argument.
After 18 years, I left lobbying because the “leadership” of both political parties would only and always lie to us, lie to the press, and renege on their promises. US “leadership” was not only disinterested in ending poverty, they were interested in making it worse by supporting IMF and World Bank loans that caused increased debt in developing countries with inevitable privatization of resources to US companies (consider best-selling author, John Perkins, with his “Economic hitman” work). Importantly, US corporate media were willing accomplices. In 1997, I began to “follow the money” in my research. I’m now a leading national writer to explain, document, and prove unlawful US wars all based on lies. I’m also among our nation’s leaders who research, educate, and lobby for financial and banking reform. My 250 articles are linked on over 5,500 websites with a total readership of ~1,000,000.
Who was the real Columbus? Your text omits Columbus’ diary entryto enslave all natives with 50 soldiers, 2nd voyage: 17 ships, 1,200 men that accomplished slavery and absolute destruction of natives. Your text omits the total hypocrisy of the Spanish’ alleged religion: slavery, stealing gold, genocide, torture, rape versus Jesus’ only Commandment of love. The textbook presents these facts at the end of the chapter as some kind of open question, devolving into “he said, she said,” rather than what the evidence says. The facts discredit any account of Columbus as “hero,” while revealing such conclusions as rhetoric not only unsupported by the facts, but refuted by them. This type of historical accounting lays the foundation of US history out of context to understand the present of unlawful US wars with prima facie motive for resources and money. If the beginning of US history could be viewed in this frame, the present would also be considered in the same frame. I recommend the middle school-appropriate history of Howard Zinn’s, A young people’s history of the United States. SE:
Life in the colonies: Your text omits religious hypocrisy for slavery and intolerance of other faiths. Failure to state this “Big Lie” of doing the opposite of “love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and love each other as I have love you” justifies current “Christian” US presidents waging Orwellian unlawful wars, failure to end global poverty when the investment is less than 1% of GNI and saves a million children’s lives every month. From this obvious conclusion of government doing the opposite of the religion’s one commandment, religion should be framed a Machiavellian manipulation of the public.
Economic ignorance: Currency Act of 1764 with the central issue of national “debt supply” rather than “money supply” in the Bank of England, supplanting government authority to create money. This is one of the few “trillion dollar” issues of history that the text misses entirely and therefore cannot address the present transfer of trillions of dollars to bank cartels in the US. The Federal Reserve is the same structure as the Bank of England; we have the exact same problems today. Search on the Internet, “Open proposal to US higher education” by Carl Herman for complete explanation, documentation.
Independence: failure to explain the central claim that British acts are unlawful under the 1689 Bill of Rights. Text devolves into ad hominem and “he said, she said” rather than hammer the point we need to know today and base in history: government will pass “unlawful laws” that citizens must recognize or only have Constitutional government in name only. Americans today cannot see current US wars as not even close to lawful. The history of British acts in violation of their own law would help.
Bank War: failure to understand again the central issue to a nation of who creates its currency. This is included in the Civil War with Greenbacks and the rest of the 19th Century with Greenback Party, Populist Movement, William Jennings Bryan, and even the allegory of this history in the Wizard of Oz. This issue is the heart of national debt with no plan to ever repay it, the recent economic implosion, foreclosures, unemployment, and more. Don’t believe me; learn this central fact.
Mexican-American War: failure to call the President a liar in his justification for war and opportunity to document Lincoln’s courage to truthfully call the president a war-mongering liar in Congress. This fails to deliver history we must know to understand unlawful wars of aggression today. For documentation, search “Carl Herman” and “Abraham Lincoln” and you’ll find my three articles on Lincoln that include this revealing testimony from the Congressional Record (here, here, here).
Hawaii: failure to call this an unlawful war to destroy another nation’s government and dominate its resources and strategic military location for a Pacific US naval base. Zinn nails this.
Spanish-American War: failure to explain treaty to allow US invasion of Cuba at will; status as client state of the US. See Zinn.
Philippines: failure to account for total Filipino war deaths as probably 50 times the book estimate, and the US hypocrisy of empire in the Philippines that includes another strategic military base. Yup; see Zinn’s work.
Panama Canal: failure to call US actions as acts of war against Colombia.
“Fatal mistake” for WW1, Wilson “tried to avoid war”. YOUR TEXT LIES BECAUSE YOU DO NOT KNOW THIS AND DO NOT DOCUMENT IT WHEN THE FACTS REVEAL INTENTIONAL US WAR!!! Failure to identify US propaganda, “War to end all wars,” “War to make the world safe for democracy” when it’s a war to defend empires of the French and British. Failure to show transfer of empires’ colonies from losers to winners. Failure to explain zero national security threat to US in WW1 and US choice for war against public opinion. Failure to explain Zimmermann Telegram as a German response if, and only if, the US declares war on Germany and the laughing Mexican government response to such an idiotic/unrealistic/lying proposal, failure to document destruction of 1st Amendment right to complain about the war and jailing of the war-opposition leaders. Students should read Zinn regarding this warto consider professional history in factual opposition to your propaganda.
20th Century overview: failure to explain US invasions of Central and South America for de facto colonial empire, Iran 1953, etc. (General Smedley Butler’s book, and his testimony to end the fascist 1933 Business Plot to overthrow US government by leading corporate powers). This is a huge omission that paints the US as law-abiding in wars. What about the US 700+ military bases around the world?
MLK was assassinated by the US government according to the only trial held; the family agrees with the verdict. RFK and JFK are just as obvious government lies/cover-ups in government “revisions”, the actual evidence, and in the opinion of the public. Read thisfor explanation of this game-changing history.
9/11 (torture-induced testimony) and “War on Terror” omits the US wars are not close to lawfuland outright lies about “evil doers.” The US are the terrorists in these unlawful wars because it’s the US who is in violation of all laws pertaining to war. War law is easy to understand; you ignore it. Out of all the lessons of human history, why do you omit the crystal-clear letter and spirit of war law that ends wars of choice forever???
Ending hunger: The largest meeting of heads of state in history, the 1990 World Summit for Children, presented solutions to this problem. The US only and always reneges on funding promises; despite it costing less than 1% of GNI. The US rejects programs that end poverty while earning profit: 1997 Microcredit Summit. This costs the lives of a million children every month. The US instead prefers World Bank and IMF programs that get developing countries in debt in US currency and then have US companies privatize their resources. Your lie of omission does nothing for the 30,000 children who died from preventable poverty today. Please read this.
Conclusion: every US war from Mexico, Hawaii, Spain, WW1, WW2 (Pearl Harbor set-up for attack), Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin lies and unlawful War of Aggression), “War on Terror” are all based on lies. YOUR TEXT omits this. YOUR TEXT presents US government without academic integrity to state “emperor has no clothes” lies; especially damning in the present when these young men and women will consider military enlistment.
Either the authors know this history will never be published and surrender these facts for propaganda, or they need correction of their obvious and damning errors.
From my personal experience of engaging in politics and economics at the level of global summits, I know from personal experience how “leadership” lies. These lies persist because corporate media propagandizes in central policy areas of power and money, and general intelligence levels do not yet pierce this propaganda (we might be very close; see data in “Open proposal to US higher education”).
From my academic research, I’m comfortable that the above information is factual and irrefutable. I stake my professional reputation on these factual accuracies, and am happy to explain further and provide full documentation. Don’t believe or disbelieve; neither meets academic and professional standards to evaluate factual claims! “Open proposal” is my strongest academic paper, and includes experts you’ll recognize to support the “emperor has no clothes” obvious facts. I appreciate your attention to these disturbing areas of inquiry. I close with invitation again to focus on factual understanding to reveal our true history. Carl Herman