School Reports for University and College made

High School History X

“Almost everyone and everything you take for granted is a lie.”

A hush fell over US History class, and every eye was on the man in the tweed jacket who stood before us with chalk in hand.

“You need not bring your textbooks to this class again as long as I am teaching you. You need not mind the syllabus given to you at the beginning of this course as I will be your teacher for the remainder of the year. Mrs. Jennings has been diagnosed with cancer. You do need to, however, get acquainted with my name.”

And that was how he began it. Prompt, unapologetic. He said his name was Cartwright- Professor Cartwright.

“You will address me as Professor, or Professor Cartwright. I didn’t spend eight years in Berkeley for you to call me ‘Mr. C’, thank you.

I could tell the thought of having a professor in a high school history class was frightening some of my classmates who were long used to coasting through Mrs. Jennings’ fluff parade with gentle serenity. Poor Kyle Frasier looked like he was going to shit a brick wall. The party was over.

“Now, I’m told you left off at the end of World War II. I’m tempted to go back and revisit some of the bullshit your textbook and teacher, God bless her, tried to cram into your pliable teenage brains, but I suppose this is as good a place to start as any. A quick disclaimer: some of you might object to what you hear in the coming weeks, but remember, I’m doing you a favor. Knowledge is power and you better believe I plan on empowering you goddamn castoffs. What I’m going to tell you is not disputed, just marginalized. This is the information the publishers keep out of your textbooks. This is the kind of information that is kept off of corporate-owned news. This is the kind of history that you probably won’t hear anywhere else, so you’d better listen up.”

And that was how I met Randal Cartwright. From that day on there was no time wasted on pleasantries, none of the usual substitute teacher falderal. He never passed out a worksheet then sat behind the desk and read a book. He was like a man possessed, spitting out the dregs of American history at breakneck speed; the Empire laid bare.

“American foreign policy post-WWII... Where do we begin? What do you want to hear first? You need to know that the things our leaders are able to rationalize in the name of protecting our business interests are many and they are not reserved to any one period of time. If you think we’ve stayed on top by hard work and playing fair, you’ve been grossly deceived. Coercion, deceit, drugs, and murder have been the name of the game in any corner of the world you care to look.

“Let’s start with something easy. A quick review of our relations with, say, Guatemala. Sound good? CIA documents show that the CIA created, trained, and armed death squads in Guatemala as part of its coup and destabilization of the democratically elected government in 1954. Why? President Arbenz, a democratically elected leader proposed mild land reform for the benefit of his country’s swelling ranks of poor. He’s elected as the pro-capitalist reform candidate by 60% of the vote. There was a problem, though. United Fruit Company, which had representatives high in US government including the State Department and the CIA, was having none of it. So what happens? Does the home of the free side with democracy? Wrong. The Central Intelligence Agency falsely paints him as a red and organizes a coup de tat. And in his place we install a military junta and Guatemala’s democratic rights are gutted.

“But we do get cheap bananas in every supermarket.”

And he just kept going on like that, pausing only to sip from a bottle of water between anecdotes. He discussed coups in Bolivia, Panama, Iran, and Chile with the ease of a man who spent years researching. Every fact fell jarringly into place like a piece of the puzzle, making a clear picture of what I had always seen as a jumble of colors.

After a few days I became familiar with his modus operandi. His favorite thing to rail against was what he called the “Corporatocracy”, businessmen in government office using their positions to enrich themselves and expand the Empire. After listening to him speak for a while it failed to shock me when he said that 6 of the 7 CIA department heads came directly from Wall Street businesses. It no longer shocked me that war profits from the current conflict were benefiting companies associated with high-ranking officials, profits reaching to the billion and trillions. The more he talked, the sicker I felt, until right around the time he started talking about the Gulf of Tonkin incident- the pretext for the Vietnam war- and I felt like throwing up.

“The collusion and intermarriage of government and business is not restricted to either party, folks. This has been going on for a long time, and lobbyists in Washington are not the half of it. You’d better buckle your seatbelts.

“In 1954 international leaders, bankers, and business men began meeting annually in what is now called ‘the Bilderberg Group’. This is big, people. You might want to ask yourselves why you never heard of it. The most powerful people in the world meet every year with no…. media…exposure.

“How can this be? When we look at G8 summits, they’re all over the press. And that’s only eight world leaders. So why not Bilderberg meetings? Royalty, banking, politics, media, and industry coming together to talk business and there is virtually no media outcry? It’s very simple, ladies and gentlemen: when you own the media, you can dictate what is known to the majority of the people. Every newspaper, TV station, and most radio stations in this country are controlled by a precious few corporate interests. This, sadly, is undisputed.

“Viacom owns CBS; General Electric owns NBC; Disney owns ABC; and News Corporation owns Fox Broadcasting Company. . And not one of these affiliates dares to cover this group of global policy makers-whose participants include former and future Presidents- because the leaders of these corporations are in attendance. High-ranking journalists are invited, but only on the condition that no stories appear. Secrecy is their policy. This may sound looney tunes to you, but again, this is not disputed- just ignored. They’ve successfully loosened the FCC ownership rules for Radio and TV, allowing huge conglomerates to dominate the market. Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, a legendary investigative reporter named George Seldes observed that ‘it is possible to fool all the people all the time—when government and press cooperate.’ And that’s precisely what we’ve got here. That’s what you’ve grown up with.”

I felt like I was waking up from a daydream and into a world that was foreign to me. Everything I had known Randal was smashing to bits and grinding into the floor with his brown loafers. The free press, democracy, and my own moral high ground was being eroded beneath my feet. A sneaking suspicion in my gut that was growing for years suddenly gave full voice to anger, righteous and pure at what had been perpetrated in the name of my country and without the knowledge of its people.

I couldn’t stop turning it over in my head, like a washing machine full of rocks. I thought the CIA sponsored coup of Chile’s Salvadore Allende and the murdering military dictator, Pinochet, that we installed in his place; Henry Kissinger’s denial any US involvement. The contras in Nicaragua, the CIA coup in Iran, American-trained right wing death squads in Latin America raping and murdering, elected leaders mysteriously dying, investigative journalists killing themselves out of the blue, CIA drug smuggling. And all the while news outlets focused in on bullshit, faux news meant to distract. Celebrity gossip or sex scandals slapped on the boob tube and given the name journalism, while the real crimes are sideswept.

It was funny; I looked around and saw my classmates enthralled, hanging on his every word. I would of thought it impossible with the version of history class Mrs. Jennings used to teach us. They never paid attention to the compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott decision, none of the traditional history unless it was bloody and violent. But here they were, rapt at his edification.

“I’m assigning you a new book to read in place of your text: ‘Confessions of An Economic Hitman’. It’s a quick read, but the insight it gives is invaluable to understanding the scale of the deception of what I’m telling you. It’s written by a man whose job it was to go around the world to third world countries and convince them to take out huge loans from banks like the International Monetary Fund, for the purpose of investing in building infrastructure. Not only was this cash funneled to American companies, but the catch was that these loans were so big and the countries so poor, they would inevitably default on the payments, leaving American corporations free to go in and demand their pound of flesh in whatever way they chose; natural resources, political support. You name it. This is how the term “third world debt” came into being, and this is how we got our worldwide Empire from a non-violent standpoint. Although that might be misleading, because it certainly caused harm to the indigenous peoples of “banana republics” like Ecuador.

This is how oil companies got to drill in the highlands of the Amazon rainforest. By the way, you should know that their pipeline there has leaked over twice the amount of oil dumped by Exxon Valdez directly into the fragile Amazon rainforest. Beyond that, they dumped thousands of gallons of toxic waste water into the Amazon itself and left standing pits of wastewater for humans and animals to fall into. But you haven’t been told about that, because it didn’t happen in America and because it happened over a long period of time. Well now you know, ladies and gentlemen. Now you know.”

The next few weeks were surreal. Professor Cartwright never asked much of us, except that we listen closely, and on occasion research a topic. We all assumed he was breaking some rule by straying off the usual course path as a Mrs. Jennings would have taught us, but no one in our class told on him. It was a silent agreement. We all wanted to hear more.

One week he assigned us homework. He asked us to research on the internet, through independent news websites and even Youtube documentaries, about subjects he assigned. It was brilliant. Instead of him teaching the class, he taught the class to teach itself. He passed out group topics so that we could do presentations in front of the class. My group’s topic was the Council on Foreign Relations. Others got the Trilateral Commission, the Bohemian Grove, the Federal Reserve and so on. No one balked at doing the work, they were excited to uncover more. After all, we were exposing mass fraud, Nazi money-launderers, drug smugglers, election-riggers, and war profiteers in the highest ranks of American society.

I began to see Professor Cartwright as more than a teacher. To me he was a bona fide revolutionary. He was Thomas Paine. He was Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one. He knew he wouldn’t last long here and he didn’t care. No one ever got close enough to him to ask, but I think that in his mind he was doing God’s work, infiltrating the education system to spread the truth in one small pocket at a time.

Eventually he moved beyond historical events and got in to talking about our health and what we eat and drink. By now I wasn’t surprised in the least when he informed us that the FDA had also been infiltrated by representatives of multi-national corporations. Our trust in government oversight would be our downfall.

“There’s a lot to cover in this topic, but there’s one monster who has for years been behind some of the worst swindles in history. You all need to inform yourselves about a company called Monsanto, because it’s sure as shit that they’re involved in making the things you eat and drink. Monsanto began as a chemical company, and in that capacity they achieved widespread fame for their invention of PCB’s and Agent Orange. They’re also tied into production of Aspartame, the artificial sweeter, and Bovine Growth Hormone, which is given to cows to increase milk production. Aspartame is alleged by the FDA to be safe, although it is a neurotoxin and handfuls of independent scientists say it causes cancer in lab rats. Coca-cola itself was originally of the position that it was unsafe to use for human consumption, but that was before the FDA gave it the green-light. On Reagan’s first day in office he fired the FDA chief that was blocking Aspartame. Donald Rumsfeld was the man who was its prime pusher.

“Now, onto the topic of your milk. Bovine growth hormone is also linked to cancer in lab studies, and at the very least causes Mastitis in cows, an infection of the mammary. This means there is puss in your milk and to combat the puss, added antibiotics that are absorbed by your body. So, my little hormonal friends, do yourself a favor and buy organic. You’re teenagers, you don’t need any more hormones, human or bovine.”

And the hits just kept coming. We spent an entire week researching agribusiness around the world, namely Monsanto Corporation, which boasts Donald Rumsfeld as a former board member and Clarence Thomas as a former lawyer. Their entrenchment in the Washington bureaucracy was truly stunning to behold, enabling them to go through with the patenting of life in the form of Genetically Modified crops and then fast-track them to consumers with zero tests on health risks. He laid it all out for us to see: the increased use of herbicides and pesticides on a global scale despite promises that GM crops required less chemicals, the suing of farmers for having Monsanto patented genes cross-pollinating into their crops, the firing of prominent scientists who uncovered severe health risks with GM food, and finally Indian cotton-farmers committing suicide en masse as a result of the heavy loans taken out to support their failed GM cotton crops which had promised high yields, but delivered bankruptcy.

Professor Cartwright told us that 70% of the food in the supermarket included genetically modifies crops and that 90% of modified crops came from Monsanto, the same company that dumped PCB’s on poor rural blacks in Alabama when it was known to be cancer-causing.

By the first month you could say I was in a deep depression. Everywhere I looked I saw insidious influence, government doublespeak, corporate poisoning of the population. My parents noticed I had stopped eating most of the food they prepared for me. I was constantly checking labels, looking for neurotoxins like MSG and Aspartame. I didn’t drink tap water anymore, it had to be filtered Aquafina. I didn’t drink coke, because high fructose corn syrup was going to give me type two diabetes. I was beside myself with hatred for advertisements, mainstream news anchors, radio, mainstream music. It was all a lie that said everything was OK, that we could just ignore the suffering of millions and retreat into our enclosed little worlds. I wanted to tear down the establishment, not because I was for anarchy or communism, but because it had grown oppressive to the freedoms inherent to human life.

I was freed from ignorance just to be caged in paranoia. I wanted to be put back into the Matrix of mass media, back when I knew that people were basically good and that our country was incorruptible. But the moment I had the thought, I immediately hated myself for giving birth to it.

Only three and a half weeks after he started teaching us, Randal had the misfortune of going through a parent-teacher conference, after which he was promptly fired. Of course no one can be entirely sure, but the story goes that during a heated argument, Professor Cartwright called Kyle Frasier's mother a "neo-cunt".

She stormed into Principle Blackwell's office in a towering rage of fundamentalist fervor, steam practically pouring out of her ears, her little powdered face combusting in starbursts of red. Fire and brimstone rained from the ceiling along with sharp accusations of socialism, subversion, and paganism in public schools. Randal didn't stand a chance. When Blackwell learned he'd gone off the beaten path, he was sacked before lunch ended. No traces of his tenure as our teacher were left behind, save a tweed jacket left on his chair.

Professor Cartwright's replacement was a woman named Prudence Hapley. The first day she introduced herself and then put on a VHS from TimeLife about the first Gulf War. In all its talk about Saddam's biological and chemical weapons capabilities, it never once mention that America had sold them to him, or that he had been our ally only a few years prior.

We were given a worksheet to go along with the video tape, while Prudence- or Miss P- sat at her desk doing crossword puzzles in the morning paper.

I don't know where Professor Cartwright ended up. But not long after he left I found out I got into Berkeley. I had no idea what I wanted to study, but I was ready to leave that place. I didn’t know what I could accomplish but I knew I had to spread the word; that our system of government, although raised from the most fertile soil and looked after with the best intentions, had long ago rotted and withered on the vine.

I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but I did have just the right tweed jacket picked out for whatever came next.