The Poisoning of Democracy

The invasion of Iraq has been carried out for many reasons according to supporters of this massive crime against humanity. The line they've been touting most recently is that the Iraqis are being murdered in an effort to install democracy. They point to elections as proof that this is indeed the case.

What they fail to point to is the fact that forcing democracy onto any
society is profoundly anti-democratic.

They also define democracy on the lowest standards imaginable. The
simple act of voting satisfies their criteria.

But if the wrong people are elected, the people will be punished.

In recent examples of this we've seen Hamas win an election in
Paelistine. As a result, the Palestinians are being punished for
electing the wrong party. The Americans do not accept Hamas and are
rejecting them as legimate representatives of the people. An election
was held in Iraq but the Americans did not like who was selected by the
elected representatives and demanded that the Iraqis pick an acceptable
leader. They had tried their level best to install their own puppet,
Allawi, without success.

We've also just witnessed the Americans overthrow the elected leader in
Haiti.

But this is an old story. Americans have been installing puppets all
over the world for the last hundred years. They installed the Shah of
Iran and are now fixing to punish the Iranians for ridding their own
society of an American puppet. They have also installed puppets
throughout Latin America. 'Democracy' is not always used as
justification for brutal slaughters.

Unlike the imperialist dictatorships of old, the Americans will install
democracy only if the ballot box can be controlled by the American
puppets. This is usually done through massive propaganda efforts,
bribes, assasinations, rigging elections, and spending copious amonts
in favour of their man.

The Americans don't want the responsibility of actually running the
crushed society. What they want is control of the wealth for what they
term 'American interests', which is code for corporate profits.

But in Iraq, this song and dance may take some unexpected and ugly
turns. It already has.

What really must be called to question is the acceptability of one
nation presuming itself to have the legitimate power of the UN and
control of the world. As was stated at the Nuremburg tribunals, the act
of waging war contains within it all war crimes. Of this, Bush is
guilty and many Iraqis are dead and many more are disabled. Still, many
more will be severely psychologically damaged. The children in Iraq are
the most vulnurable. The damage that the Americans have done in Iraq
will take generations to undo.

And they call it democracy.

It is no less sinister than a foriegn communist dictatorship invading
other nations for the other nations own good. A case in point is the
Chinese invasion of Tibet. The Chinese will argue that they did it for
the good of Tibetians. Their argument holds up. Prior to the Chinese
takeover the people of Tibet were living in harsh material conditions
barely able to scrape a living from the hostile wilderness of their
plateau in the Himilayas. Now they are much better off materially as a
result of the Chinese presumption of knowing what is best.

But the people of Tibet didn't want to be saved. They didn't want
communism and they didn't want their way of life overturned.

What the Chinese did not understand about Tibet is that they have a way
of life that was not communism and it was not democratic. Their laws
and their way of life were based in religion. You may not agree with it
but it is their way and the Tibetians have a right to it. They still
want it back today. The Chinese had no idea that the Tibetians had a
far better life even though they lived in harsh and starving conditions
than they could possibly have living under communism. For Tibetians,
Buddhism has far more potential for genuine happiness than materialism
could ever come close to. And that is something you or I can agree or
disagree with, but their way of life is their business, not ours.

Even if you are naive enough to believe that the Americans are invading
Islamic countries to install democracy, you have to consider the fact
that some societies have priorites and methods that we cannot
understand if we are not Muslims. And Islamic societies are far more
foriegn to occidental sensibilities than Tibetians are to the Chinese.

The bottom line is the Americans have no business in Iraq or in Iran or
anywhere else outside America. The fact is the pretense of democracy
being shoved down the throats of those lucky enough to survive the war
is a most profound perversion of the term, democracy. To those of us
that would fight to preserve it (in our native land), this perversion
is poison.

America's New War of Terror

'Leaks' are suggesting that America will bomb the people of Iran. The rationale provided is that they will take out infrastructure that could help develop nuclear weapons.

Seymour Hersh reported on April 17 that Bush is referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "potential Adolf Hitler," and sees "regime change" in Tehran as the ultimate goal. Now this story is being reported by mainstream American media. If state propaganda sources such as CNN, Fox, and mainstream media in general are reporting it, it very likely means that the Administrion is intentionally making the statement to the world. The message is a particularily sinister one.

"This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war," Hersh reported, quoting a nameless, faceless senior Pentagon official. The White House does not deny the report.
Prior to this, Washington has been ratchting up its rheoric against Iran. They have been whipping up hysteria that Iran poses a threat to Western civilization. Their programmed drones repeat it and fan the flames. We have seen this all happen before. We've seen this happen three years ago.

CNN reports, "A former senior defense official is cited as saying the planning was based on the belief that a bombing campaign against Iran would humiliate the leadership and lead the Iranian public to overthrow it, adding that he was shocked to hear the strategy."

In other words, the Iranian public will be punished for their defiance toward the self appointed and fascistic rulers of the globe.

The report also suggests that there has been serious discussion of using nuclear weapons against Iran. It is ironic that they call others terorists and they wage war on other nations for potentially doing precisely what America does with impunity. But the threat of using nuclear weapons is very likely just that, a threat. Doing so would be beyond the pale. It would result in consequences for America that cannot be imagined at this point. Even now, prior to this new war of terror on Iran, people the world over, including Americans, are asking the question; America, what have you become?

State Terrorism

This is one more example in a long line where America metes out colletive punishment to whole populations for not falling in line under the New World Order. The intent of the American State is to terrorize populations that defy their designs on world domination; to teach us all a lesson. This is aimed as much at the populations of Cuba, Venezuela, and all nations that do not follow the dictates of the ruling classes in America as it is aimed at the people of Iran. It is their intent to show the world ferocity and brutal ruthlessness. They want reports of torture, concentration camps and massacres of civilians known to the world. America is making an ominous declaration and it is puffing itself up to instill fear. It is telling us;
'Stand against us and you will face the consequences and those consequences are death or terror for you, those you love, and your society.'

The Iranian people owe the Iraqi resistance many thanks. There is no way the Americans will have the ability or the stomach to wage war on Iranian soil
at this point. That level of terror is not an option for them. Iranians will likely face bombs dropped from an altitude near space. The Iraqis have shown
the world that the imperialists are cowardly murderers that must hide away in safe forified 'zones'. They will huff and puff and slaughter and kill but
they are highly vulnurable. America certainly lost the mystique of invincibility that it had been promoting. The world's superpower may have all the latest toys and war gadgets but they cannot defeat a determined population consisting of people that must fashion bombs from under their kitchen sinks.

Hopefully, the Iranians are building very deep shelters for the whole population and not just the ruling classes. The Americans then can destroy property but the loss of human life will be minimal.

Terror may be reduced to annoyance and again, the invincible might of Uncle Sam will reduced to a naked emperor, quivering and embarassed as it stands
uncomfortably under the glaring spotlight of the world stage.

Rise Up

Three years ago we took to the streets. We marched en masse in winter of 2003. Bitter and dangerous wind chills didn’t weaken our rage. Cold weather didn’t seem to dent the numbers, numbers that were remarkable and inspiring and these numbers covered the planet. Warm or cold, the people were out in force. On the other side Bush was screaming and bellowing, ”Either you’re with us or against us” to quivering lap dog politicians everywhere. We, for our part, showed clearly that we are against Bush and we are with the Iraqi people.

Now, three years later we are tired. We are tired of writing and reading about Iraq. We are tired of the daily report from the grim reaper. We are tired of bombs and kidnappings and casualties – of Operation Slaughterhouse or Operation Bloodlust. We are tired of the lies and the propaganda. We are tired of this quagmire. The killing has jaded and hardened us. We’ve had enough. We just want it to stop and we seem to have lost the energy to fight the war pigs.

If we feel war weary, perhaps we should consider the citizenry that has been deemed, by the hawks and their yellow journalists, “insurgents”. The term gives us the impression that it is the beleaguered citizens that are the cause of the war. It’s as if the citizens of Iraq are the invaders as the Americans complain about the problem of ‘foreign fighters’. Should we suppose that the people that have been deemed foreigners in their own land are tired of this war? Should we suppose that they should have lost the energy to fight the war pigs? They are beyond tired, jaded, and hardened but they have no choice but to protect themselves. They will continue to fight until the foreigners are driven out.

We can’t stop. We must continue to support them and defeat Bush and his war machine. Now is not the time to relax with this. Now is the time to fully support the Iraqis and in so doing, support the hapless soldiers that are there.

The soldiers and the Iraqis are shooting and bombing each other and no have qualms. The soldiers are fighting Bush’s oil war and have no stake in it whatsoever. The Iraqi people are faced with these young men from the hungry side of the American spectrum. But their real enemy is those from the far other end, the ultra oil rich; the obscenely wealthy. The real enemy will never don a helmet or carry a gun. They use the poor for that. And so they kill each other; working class Iraqis against working class Americans that have far more in common with each other than they do with Bush or the capitalists that make it all possible.

Both the American soldiers that have found themselves in hell and the innocent people of Iraq can’t afford for us to be tired and bored with the whole thing. They need us now and they need us to resurrect our anger and outrage.
They need us to make politicians and weapons and oil capitalists uncomfortable. They need us to take to the streets and they need us to demand, not ask, DEMAND, that they put an end to this war crime now.

This is not a game or a rehearsal. This is not a hint of the coming fascism of the American capitalist state. This is the real thing. This IS the fascism of the American capitalist state. People are dying and being tortured as you read this. It is your duty as a human being to play a part, to contribute to its end.

Three years ago we made a difference. The politicians that would love to cozy up to Bush had a very hard time doing so. They were between a rock and a hard place and we were that hard place. We were thousands of angry and outraged citizens on the streets screaming bloody murder.

Three years on and the people of Iraq have been collectively and horribly abused. It will be many generations before they recover from this biblical war crime. And we didn’t stop the war – yet. The mess Bush made has sunk into civil war. To assume that the Americans should still be there for that reason brings up the question; why?

As people with conscience, as people with compassion and humanity, we must consider the hell that the people of the Garden of Eden endure on a daily basis thanks to that snake in the White House. Then we must act and act in any way that will decapitate the serpent of empire.

Don’t let yourself go to sleep. Read alternative newspapers and web sites. Join anti war movements. Urge family and friends to stand up now and help countless Iraqi children, women, men, escape the hell that they have endured for the past three years. Recovery will take a long time. The sooner we start, the better off we all are.

The three year anniversary showed that the passion is still strong to force an end to this war. It will take more action on the streets, in the news and over the internet to put the fires out. Goal number one; get the Americans out of there. The Iraqis are working hard at achieving this, so should we.

The Reich

e·vil
adj. e·vil·er, e·vil·est

Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.
Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet.
Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens.
Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil reputation.
Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.

n.
The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.
That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction: a leader's power to do both good and evil.
An evil force, power, or personification.
Something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction: the social evils of poverty and injustice

(lifted from dictionary.com)
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There is a grouping, a category, or a political type that appears to be utterly evil and they are consistently enough that way that we can predict where they will stand on any given issue. They will stand on the side of starvation, death, and immeasurable misery for people that are powerless and in need. It is as if they relish the misfortune of the misfortunate.

In the interests of objectificaion, let's say that there is a category of people that consistently favour war over peace. They consistently support those with power over those that have little or none. They support death and misery and scorn attempts to relieve human misery and pain.

Where They Stand

Poverty: This category of human beings support any policies that cut social support for those in need (eg. cutting spending on health care).

Wealth: They support greed and they support the rich (they won't complain about spending on plunder, war, and conquest).

Racism: They are generaly racist.

Immigration: They see immigrants as threats. They crave uniformity and social conformity.

Law and Order: Favour harsh rigid laws against the poor and liberal discretion for the wealthy.

Death Penalty: In favour of it.

Nationalism: Highly nationalistic and patriotic to the point of a willingness to kill people in foriegen lands for no other reason than 'we are at war'.

Feminism: Highly distrustful not only of feminists but of women as well.

Gay Rights: Homosexuality is seen as a problem.

Religion: They generally support religious movements that are conservative. They would hang Jesus but are often devout Christians.

War: Always at the ready to support the state in the mindless slaughter of human beings.

The State: Loathe state functions that distribute wealth or interfere with the aims of the very wealthy.

The State: Enthusiastically support the state in war efforts, prisons, or any other oppressive functions.

If such a category of people exist; people that support poverty, obscene wealth, racism, patriarchy, nationalism, the death penalty, religion as a social control mechanism, war, the state etc., we could make the reasonable argument that they fit into the above definition of evil that was lifted from Dictionary.com. We have the misfortune to know that such people not only exist but they enjoy ominous influence and control over the rest of us. They are not only the backward and naive lackeys. They run the governments of America, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and most governments and corporations on the planet. The reason for this is that they consistently support the wishes of the wealthy and powerful and in many cases are one and the same. Any politicians that are not wealthy must function as the paid whores of the wealthy.

Such people are generally categorized as right wingers and this category has significant and really surprising cohesion. That is, most right wingers consistenly support an ideological framework that is consistent with the above charges. There are exceptions however. But if there are too many exceptions they are no longer in the category.

Their response to this unflattering snapshot will be to rationalize their views (eg. the death penalty deters crime (in the face of evidence to the contrary)), deny them (I am not a racist), avoid them (there is no torture if there are no pictures), or blame victims (they blew up the twin towers).

Perhaps the idea that they are evil is a little harsh and unforgiving. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the average right winger is merely a patsy.

The average rightist will argue tooth and nail that any and all attempts at feeding the poor will result in a Joseph Stalin type of totalitarain tyranny. There is a man standing behind him with moneybags that has convinced him that he needs his wealthy master; that to interfere with his masters structural scam is to open the door to disaster. Moneybags is saying to his stooge that the stooge is indebted to the master for his livilihood and everything he owns. Rock the boat and all will be lost.

But then there is another sentiment that is not so forgivable. This right winger knows that he is in recept of the spoils of hegemony. He knows that war is about plunder and that state supported dictatorships in the far reaches of the globe force people to grow cash crops to feed him as reasonable prices. He knows that oil wars will keep the oil supply close to his Ford.

Both types - the quisling little idiot under his masters table and the psychopath - are not mutually exclusive from each other. Most on the right are a mixuture of both.

Crime and evil harm countless innocent people every day and stupidity is no excuse for crime. Stupidity doesn't forgive those that make the slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan possible. You can't say that you are not responsible for killing kids when you speed in a drunken state through a school yard and you can't say you're not responsible for 'collatoral damage' just because you mindlessly support war.

The conclusion is that the right wing is evil. It is, apparently, a sound and valid argument.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Saddam Hussein may soon be executed and at the end of his life, he is the main character in a drama that no fiction writer would concoct. The writer would be deemed mad; out of touch with reality. Saddam finds himself in hyper reality however. Fitting perhaps, for a man that has lived a surreal life.

Show Time

This show trial has now resumed after a hiatus. Prior to that, the trial had been a public spectacle on the world stage. Now, at its resumption, the unprincipled lynch mob that presents itself as a trial adheres to its lynch mob quality of legal professionalism. It promises to remain a public spectacle on the world stage. The trial grinds along as lawyers are murdered, witnesses for Saddam risk their lives by testifying and witnesses against him are hidden and unnamed. The court room is an ongoing reality show on par with Jerry Springer.

It is in our interests that this trial is legitimate in the eyes of the Arab world, the Iraqis, and in the world as a whole. Saddam Hussein has been a tyrant and has ruthlessly killed scores of political opponents. A kangaroo court, such as it is, will not get at the nitty gritty of what has happened in Saddam's life. He will be found guilty and perhaps executed but in the eyes of everyone that has the flimsiest respect for legal processes, this will not be legitimate. It will simply be some of what Saddam meted out come home to roost. A wave of karma from the depths of hell, but not legitimate.

Getting to the truth of not only Saddam's crimes but what his accomplices have done in the past is an important chaper of the history of the Middle East. It is also an important chaper in American history and learning what has happened will educate us in the art of tyranny. This is an art that we better understand because tyranny isn't going to disappear tomorrow or the next day. We need to understand what makes these psychopaths tick.

A fair and open trial, carried out preferably outside a war zone, conducted under the auspices of the UN, would serve to illuminate the charatcer of not only Saddam Hussein, but of all those that have cultivated his demonic rise to power. The problem is that the very same powers that helped him rise to his throne where he sat for so many years are the ones that are building his gallows today.

His Accomplices

There is a murky world waiting to be exposed. In that murky world there is plenty of evidence showing Saddam and the Americans in cahoots. Not only during the bloodbath between Iraq and Iran in the 80s, but well before that. In the 1980s, Saddam and Western governments collaborated against Islamic Iran. Iran had recently thrown out another American placed tyrant willing to liberally slaughter opponents, the Shah. It was quite natural then for neo cons such as Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher to applaud and support Saddam's criminal Iran war. He is not, by the way, being tried for this particular crime (the Iran war), his grandest crime of all.

Well before the atrocities of the 80s and 90s, Saddam was a CIA stooge and anti-communist thug. In the 1950s, the threat of communism gaining a foothold in Iraq was a serious threat to the Americans. The Americans overthrew General Kassam in Iraq in 1963 and had developed close ties with the Baath Party to this end. At the time, Saddam was a minor stooge who was willing to kill to advance his station. In 1958 he had served six months in jail for killing a relative who was a communist. After that the CIA said, 'he's our man'. A month after the coup in 1963, Saddam retuned from exile in Egypt (having fled after his part in attempting to kill Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem in Baghdad) and went to work as a torturer and killer of communists in the Fellaheen and Muthaqafeen detention camps.

In 1968 the Baath Party successfully fought its way into power and gained control of Iraq. Again, this had the backing of the CIA. In 1979 Saddam grabbed the reigns of power amidst his passion for the anti opposition purges he was conducting at the time.

In 1980, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. They used brutal means of collective punishment against the people of Iran and backstage, there was applauding and cheering from the very same folks that are fixing to execute him now. Ronald Reagan sent Rumsfeld to Saddam in 1983 and 1984 to discuss cooperation between America and Iraq (They had fallen out after the Baathists warmed up to the Soviets). They discussed the war, further arming of Iraq, economic collboration, the provision of intelligence, loans and so on. Rumsfeld does not want Saddam talking to the world about what was said behind closed doors. At the times Rumsfeld knew he was using poison gas and he also knew that Saddam was buying military weaponry from American firms.

The Iraqis slaughtered Kurds using poison gas and likely used American helocopters to do it. The Americans responded in the most lackluster way they could. They had no choice but to condemn it, but they made sure that Saddam knew that it would not alter diplomatic or economic relations. In the UN the Americans engineered a statement that condemned the use of chemical weapons without naming names. The Americans knew that he was using poison gas against the Kurds and they did nothing.
It is no surprise that the Americans are not going to expose this murky world that they and Saddam shared. It is this as a backdrop to the farce, the bizarre show trial that is going on today. Saddam had accomplices to his crimes, not only in Baghdad, but in Washington as well. In some cases it is the very same individuals that were involved back then as are involved now with this spectacle.

If he takes the stand and is free to speak, he will have stories to tell. As it is, the judges at the trial have the time delay and the switch to shut off the microphones when something is said to offend the hangmen. He may talk about how the West helped him in the manufacture of chemical weapons. He may discuss collaboration and deals that are well buried in the private world of madmen.

Working for the Enemy

Don Bragg and Elvis Hatfield toiled in dangerous conditions to provide food, clothing, shelter and Christmas toys for their children. Unfortunately, their employer was their enemy. Their employer placed profit above the safety coal miners and the miners died as a result.

The two miners died in the Alma mine in West Virginia. This tragedy follows on the heels of 12 other miners deaths in West Virginia who died in an explosion.

Class Conflict

The governor of the state is busy making proclamations that mine safety will become a priority - starting now. Politicians and owners always make such proclamations after workers deaths. What else are they going to do? Part of the problem is defined in the question; Why do miners work in such dangerous conditiuons in the first place? Mines are inherently dangerous, yes. But there is no need for deaths in coal mines. Death is preventable.

The problem is essentially this. The more owners have to pay attention to health and safety for employees, the less profit they make. It is in the interests of owners to ignore safety. A safe mine requires inspections, equipment that is working properly, and a particular kind of culture. That culture is a culture of safety and that includes the safety to report dangers with no fear of reprisals. A culture where managers actually want workers to report safety problems.

Unfortunately, the culture of profit has an inherent fear of bosses built in. If managers cut the most coal with the fewest stoppages for maintenance and safety problems, they will be slapped on the back by their bosses and congratulated. On the other hand, if a manager is always complaining about cutting coal too fast or overheated bearings or bad roof conditions, he will not be a manager for long.

Evidence of this is apparent in an interview with an anonymous miner in the New York Times (Ian Urbina, Jan.22) who asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisals from his employer. He said that he had put out a fire in the same place on December 23rd and reported it to his boss who ignored it. This is the crux of the matter. The miner lives in fear. Not only the fear of being killed in the mine, but he lives with the fear of losing his livlihood. Not only miners know this oppression but many other workers that face danger at work can understand exactly the plight of this double and conflicting fear. If they say anything about what they can see that might kill them, they will be out of work. If they lose their jobs, not only do their wives and kids face destitution, they also face the stigma and the direct pain of poverty.

In the very narrow frame of reference within American economics and politics, there are no choices. From that perspctive it is the profiteer that is God and the provider of wages and security. It is the same force that is forcing you to risk your life for bread that has created the job in the first place. Either you work for the owner or you take your chances at Wal Mart or on welfare.

The mine owners have state and federal politicians on their side. The politicians will not impose legislation that will affect profits because politicians and profit makers are working in their own best interests. The only way the miners get anything out of it is that they are granted the privelige of risking their lives to make profit for the owners who bribe politicians and often know them personally.

The governor said that he will impose legislation on Monday to improve mine safety. But as Democrat Nick Rahall (another local politician) suggested, "...every coal mine health and safety law on the books is written with the blood of miners". This again reflects the reality that no safety or regulations are put in place without force. Any safety measures or regulations run against the tide of neo liberal, free wheeling, unbridled, capitalism. Anything goes; the bosses are feudal lords. For the governor to remin a good governor in the eyes of his lords, he will shuffle this off until the heat dies and let it go. Either that or he will get a bill through that has no teeth.

The Enemy

The mine is owned by the Massey Energy Company, a rabid privateer with a strong anti union bent. The mine is actually operated by Aracoma Coal which is owned by Massey. It is part of Massey's operating strategy to use subsidiaries to avoid the extra expenses (wages, safety rules, etc.) that a union would force upon them.
Massey Energy fought hard against unions in the past and has shut down mines to then re open them under the name of a subsidiary. Massey energy is well connected, not only to local and state politicians but to the Bush administration as well. It is no surprise that there have been cutbacks to federal safety mechanisms such as mine inspectors under Bush's reign. As losely regulated as it is, the Alma mine still manageed to receive over 100 warnings from the federal mine and safety body (MSHA) in the past year.

West Virginia tragedies are not isolated incidents. Miners have gone for too long down into mines they knew would kill them and yet, to feed their families, did it anway. In coal mines and many other workplaces, workers face living with dangerous conditions and keeping quiet about it or face loss of wages. This double layered oppression is unacceptable and cruel. Miners should not have to live in constant fear and neither should any other worker. They often find themselves in an enviornment where speaking up would mean not only the risk of being fired but also of social ostracization as a trouble maker or rabble rouser.

Today and tomorrow miners will continue to travel down into the bowels of the earth, fishermen will go out to sea on poorly equipped ships, and workers will force themselves into plants run by petty tyrants. They are torn between their very rational fear of being killed and the smiles on their wives faces trudging home with Christmas presents for the kids. They are torn between the social acceptance that goes with being a worker and the rejection and stigma that goes with not having work. They are torn between pride and fear of death. And each time the miners look up and see that round diminishing hole of light at the surface disappear into a pinhole and then into blackness they have to wonder whether they will ever see sunlight again.

Slaughter in Bajaur

On Friday, January 13, an American air strike killed at least 18 people in Pakistan. Eight of them were women and six of them were children. Children that had to be protected from scary things like ghosts and goblins by their mothers were suddenly snuffed out by American bombs. Those that survive will live in fear for the rest of their lives after such a brutal and inhumane event. After such a slaughter, it will be imposible for mothers or anybody else make those children feel secure. The psychological impact of war on the survivors is far more severe than most people imagine.

Collective Punishment

This is not an aberration and that is what is most alarming. We have come to look at such events as if its just another American mistake. How many times have innocent villagers been massacred by Americans? The Americans will say that they have received bad intelligence and deem it an unfortunate event. But what is really going on here is collective punishment. This feature of American foriegn policy is not new. The sanctions that were imposed on Iraq killed many thousands of Iraqi children and some estimate that over one million Iraqis have died as a result of them. It was collective punishment on a grand scale. The mass slaughter that is still happening all over Iraq is an extension of this. What happened in Falluja was another example of collective punishment when Falluja was singled out after American bodies were abused in public. There are many more.

What will happen regarding the attack in Bajaur on the 13th, predicatably, is that the Americans will say that they acted on false information. What is important to notice here is that they won't deny they did it. They want the world to know they did it.

The Americans reasoning is that if the human misery is bad enough, the victims will rise up and replace the status quo with something that can facilitate peace. Peace will only occur when the Americans are placated. That is the mesage. The imperial view is that if they instill a sufficient amount of fear in people, the people will behave like quislings and cowards. Although this formula doesn't seem to be working the murderers still hold fast to the theory.

This recent incident occured in the Bajaur region of Pakistan which is considered by the Americans an area where pro Taliban sympathies run high. The government of Pakistan was forced to lodge a protest against U.S. forces after they recently killed eight villagers in the nearby Waziristan area. But Pakistan has an spineless puppet firmly in place, General Pervez Musharraf, who is controlled by Bush, and is incapable of speaking against his master. Don't expect anything but weak lip service that is aimed to placate legitimate anger in Pakistan.

The Americans immediately follow such events with loud proclamations that the attack killed some cartoonish enemy of the American people. This serves to remove attention from the fact that what they are doing is as evil as what they accuse the enemies of America of doing. The American media are lulled into the hypnosis of power. They will report on who al-Zawahiri is with all the depth and analysis of any cartoon and the dangers of radical Islam with the same simplistic style. This has been an ongoing pattern and while the drones in mainstream media report from their hypnotic stupor, the administration plans and carries out further criminal massacres of innocent civilians.

Above the Law

Another sustantial aspect of this latest war crime in Pakistan is that it happened in Pakistan. Again, the Bush administration is pushing the envelope in terms of what is acceptable for the empire. They not only disrespect the soveriegnty of deemed enemies, they also treat the soveriegnty of friendly nations and puppets with disdain.

This particular redefinition of what is acceptable (attacking people in non warring countries) is that there are rules for the American empire and there are rules for all the rest of the nations on the planet. The supreme commander can kill, arrest and torture people, and they can do it in any corner of the world. But if any other country should behave in such a manner, the empire would rule them to be dangerous tyrants. This attack within the borders of Pakistan is tacitly accepted by Pakistan, by mainstram media and many world leaders as another event in America's war on terrorism. If this attack against Pakistan is accepted today, it will be accepted tomorrow when it happens in Venezuela or Iran and everywhere else the day after.

The formula they use is to commit further and more outlandish atrocities and not deny it. They justify it in terms of the security of America, the war on terrorism, or some bizarre style of pre emptive self defense. They deem it war and within this context, anything is possible. The problem is that people and particularily American people, seem to swallow it. The formula seems to work well for them. The views of the average American are well out of step with the rest of the world. It has that spooky aura of Nazi Germany or Communist Albania.

War Crimes

Since the adminisrations slaughter of foriegn Taliban in Deceber of 2001, they have commited countless war crimes. They have waged war, plundered, taken hostages, used chemical weapons, transported prisoners to secret locations, tortured them, slaughtered civilians repeatedly and so on. They should not comfort themselves with the thought that these crimes are not being counted. They are being counted. History will never absolve the Bushites. On the contrary.

If they were to be judged and prosecuted on the standards of the International Military Tribunal against German war criminals in Nuremberg; Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and many other members of that cabal would be hanged.

This indiscriminate attack on the villagers in Pakistan is just one more example of collective punishment and it is another event that is, by any standards, a significant and major war crime.

Let us not become jaded. We cannot normalize slaughter or get used to it. If we allow the psychopaths do do this to our minds, they will have won an important psychological victory. At least 18 innocent people have been murdered by the Americans in Pakistan. Let's not forget it. And let's not forget the individual incidents that have caused such pain and misery for so many people, particularily those in Iraq. Let us make a list. In the future, it will be useful.

A Demand for Peace in 2006

At this time of year we look at the past and hope for a better new year. A happy new year. But if we gaze into the crystal ball and have a look, we may shudder in horror. Chances are, the future will be filled with danger. The danger may be confined to the Middle East in the short term, but further on, we are all in grave danger.

The fact that the Americans lost the war in Iraq sets up a rather gruesome scenario. Imagine a world map to be a large game board with four players sitting at the table. One player represents America, the second player represents China, the third, Russia, and the fourth, Europe.

The first two players are most worriesome.

To win the game, control of resources, and particularily oil, is key.

Player two had not been a serious factor until recently. But now China, with a population of well over one billion, has been growing and growing an increasing thirst for oil to sustain its industry and higher standard of living.

The Decline of the American Empire

Bush gambled in Iraq and lost. For the Americans, the stakes were high. Winning the war would mean that they not only gain control of the vast oil resources in Iraq, but they would also be in a key position to control the politics of the region. Losing this war has consequences that may cripple the empire.

America spends approximately as much as the rest of the world in its military. This has nothing to do with defending its borders. It has everything to do with control and plunder. What America has lost the world over is respect. That loss of respect as well as a general loathing for not only the Iraqi massacre, but military interference in countries all over the world, has a substantial impact on their global influence. Iraq has shown the world that all the hype about The New World Order and their military might is just that; hype. Bush said that he has political capital after his last election. An ironic statement given the fact that America has gone into deep debt in that respect.

To make matters worse for the Americans, its traditional backyard, Central and South America have swallowed too much of the poison medicine that has been force fed to them by the Americans. They have had enough. America and the IMF and World bank have plundered Latin American nations to the point of crisis. Chavez of Venezuela has been using oil wealth to not only help the people of Venezuela but in neighbouring countries as well. Throughout Latin America, there is a resurgence of leftist energy as well as deep suspicion about the motives of the American state and private enterprise. Moderate socialists such as the recently elected Evo Morales in Bolivia have taken a sharp turn to the left to gain electoral support. Even his opponent, Jorge Quiroga, had done his best to distance himself from the Americans during their final debate before the election.

Perhaps most telling on the subject of respect is what is happening at the moment in the Canadian election. The Americans are openly attacking Prime Minister Paul Martin for his apparent anti American stance. The Americans charge that his attacks on America are a ploy to win the election. What is most significant about this is that the closest country to America, both geographically and politically, is Canada. But to win an election, to appeal to the electorate, cadidates must distance themselves from America and particularily, Bush.

For the past century and particularily the past 50 years, America has been able to control and influence heads of state all over the globe. World leaders in true quissling fashion, bowed to the might of American wealth, bribes, and the threat of military intervention. The key ingredient here was fear. The Americans used fear on a number of levels.

Tactics of the Empire

The tactics used by the empire to take control where they wanted to gain control were first, to use fraud and to seduce leaders with wealth and trinkets.
In this fascinating article (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251) about his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, spells out the methods the empire uses to take control. Here is an excerpt from the interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman. "And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq." -Perkins

Their tactics, including all out war, failed in beleagured and impoverished Iraq. World leaders over the globe are thumbing therir noses at Bush and people the world over are not only thumbing their noses at him, but showing open contempt for Bush and American power generally. Where in the past it was politically advisable to sidle in with the Americans, it has now become a political liability.

Iraq

The Americans hoped to walk through Iraq and set up a puppet govenment. It backfired as a result of the political capital of Iranian born Ayatollah Sistani who demanded elections. As a result, Iraq will be governed by Shi'ite clergy either behind the scenes or explicitly. They have made vain attempts to install criminals such as Allawi and his cousin, Challabi, but it isn't working. We can predict then, that their next move will be to try to buy the Shi'ites. It probably won't work. The Americans don't understand the sincerity of a true faith in and fear of God. They will assasinate politicians and they will try and try again, but they will fail in Iraq.

The stupidity and insanity and greed that has taken Bush and his masters into Iraq has proven to be their biggest liability. It continues to be their biggest liability and it will continue to be. At this point everybody knows their game and they don't understand that. They are far too arrogant.

The scenario in the Middle East is one of increasing independence from American influence. It is likely that Iraq and Iran will forge an alliance and it will be quite natural given the Shi'ite populations in those countries. This also threatens Saudi Arabia with a large Shi'ite population and a large pool of oil. The spoiled princes of Saud can't be sleeping comfortably with threats not only on their doorstep, but within Saudi Arabia itself. A population that will be emboldened along with the whole Islamic world with the defeat of the Americans in Iraq.
Iraq is situated in a very strategic position geographically, but politically as well.

The Global Gameboard

Click on this link for a list of American interference incidents in foriegen nations since world war two:

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa02.html

At this point th empire is in a desperate situation. They cannot afford to lose in Iraq but it is impossible for them to win. If history is an indicator, they will not simply cut their losses and run, at least not yet. The people of Iraq will have to endure more war through 2006. The Americans will try to maintain as much influence as possible.

It is also possible that Bush will be foolish enough to raise the stakes and attack Iran to try to cut the influence of the Shi'ites in the Middle East. It is not probable however. Doing so would not only be a further risk, but it would completely scrap any shread of credibility America may maintain at this point. The possibility that Iranian and eventually Iraqi oil may be exported mainly to China is a significant threat to them however. An expansion of the present war is certainly within the realm of possibilities.

But there are compelling situations cropping up all over the globe. Perhaps most significant is the developing situation in Latin America. While war is being waged in Iraq, the Americans are developing a military presence in Latin America that is unprecedented. Even poor countries like Haiti are important to the Americans at the game board. While busy in Iraq, they weren't too busy to invade and usurp the legitimate government of Aristide. Chavez would be well advised to surround himself with body guards in 2006. Not only Venezuela, but other Latin American countries are increasing exports of raw materials to China. The future may see more military activity in South America.

Standing up to the Americans has proven to not only be possible as in Iraq, but a worthwhile endeavor as shown when the Argentianians have shown the IMF the way to the door. The Argentians and now the Iraqis have shown the world that defiance of America is no pipe dream. It can be done. The Americans are attempting to show the world the cost of defiance through the bloody massacre of thousands of innocent people.

As America fumbles and trips, the Chinese seem to know exactly what they are doing. Russia is watching and waiting and Europe may carefully distance itself from Uncle Sam. Everybody is getting a sense of direction and it isn't going well for the empire. Where this game could go eventually would make today seem a picnic.
At this point in history, when imperialism has reached its zenith, the father of all imperialists has received a staggering blow. As the situation becomes more desperate, the possibility for more war increases. Unfortunately, this is not a game. It is very real and this year, as in 2005, that reality will be felt mostly by the people of Iraq. Beyond that, the struggle for control of the planet's wealth may place many of us in the same brutal situation as the Iraqis are today.

The year 2006, perhaps more than ever, demands a call for peace. We all have a part to play. In fact this is not some obscure game that is out of our reach. In reality, we can make a difference. The time to be meek has passed. Demand peace for the people of Iraq in 2006. And if you don't care about the people of Iraq, consider this: War clouds are on the horizon whether you see them or not and you may be swallowed up by them beyond 2006.

Good Bye Tookie Williams

Arnold Schwarzenegger held the power of life or death for Stan 'Tookie' Williams. Choosing death serves absolutely nobody. He made the choice to legally murder Tookie Williams. He made the choice to appease the racist bloodlust of those that vote for him and that is why Tookie Williams will die tonight.

Mr. Williams is accused of murder. But to murder a man to appease voters is a deed, evil of biblical proportions.

Peace to you Mr. Williams. The world knows that you are a good man. Let us pray that you will never again see the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger in any realms you may find yourself.

The Art of Tyranny

Condoleezza Rice is making the rounds in Europe, ostensibly defending the American practice of extraordinary rendition; that is, the practice of secretly kidnapping and torturing what it deems to be suspects. But that is merely a ruse and given the nature and history of that administration, it would be reasonable to suggest everything they do is has an ulterior motive.

It is a ruse, a distraction and a smoke and mirrors game. The real intent of Rice's admission that people are rounded up in the middle of the night and spirited away to secret prisons across Europe as well as locations all over the world, is to normalize such practices. This has been happening throughout the Bush administration's time in power. They have provided a thin and flimsy defense for the most horrific crimes imaginable, including the mass slaughter that continues to grind along in Iraq with no relief in sight for the poor innocent people of that abused country.

Within the context of these thin and flimsy rationalizations, Rice and apologists for this practice of normalizing fascism make claims that they are in the process of installing democracy and freedom in these assumed international backwaters. In the meantime, they are torturing detainees, waging illegal war, and locking people up without trial. The contradictions are too obvious. They have no intention of persuading people that they are democratic or champions of freedom. Within the context of which they are operating, it would take exceptional naivity to even entertain faith in this barely visible veneer of good intentions.

They are and have been sending an implicit message to the world. No only to the international community, but to the American population as well. That message is that the very underpinnings of modern legal principles means nothing; that this is The New World Order and we are in charge. Cross us and you will be crushed whether you are defending your country or even if you are an unfriendly or independent news source.

Rice maintains that the U.S. does not condone torture, a statement that Bush has recently been repeating. When can we remember reasonable leaders repeating, over and over again that they do not condone torture? It isn't done because reasonabe people don't torture people. The people that would make such utterances would be generals in Latin America in the 80's, the tyrants of Asia or Africa, the Stalinists and so on. They said they didn't do it because they indeed did it. If you will torture, chances are you will also lie. Those kinds of defences occur within a context of tyranny, they are the smoke from a burning fire.

Rice also said in her recent news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that they need good intellegence to face down the threat of terrorism. They need to defeat the terrorists that wantonly kill civilians and Rice made the distinction between that and collatoral damage. This splitting hairs and justification of bombing the life out of civilian populations again is a means of normalizing state terror and tyranny.

Previous to this news coference with Merkel, Rice chastised Europeans for criticizing the American practice of rendition. She said that interrogations of these suspects have saved European lives. This is a loaded statement. First, it blows the cover off the rationale for the renditions. They are to interrogate people outside the restraints of the law. In other words, Rice is admitting here that the detainees are tortured. Secondly, there is a hint here that European lives are more valuable than say, Iraqi, or Arab lives. Rice also reminded some Europeans that their hands are not clean either and they better just shut up. Europe is nowhere near as comfortable and not only are the population and the media unfriendly to the spirit of fascism but many politicians are as well. An all party committee in Britain recently issued a report that said even giving permission to fuel fligts to collect prisoners in the Middel East would breach interntional law. Europeans are recognizing that they are in bed with the devil.

European leaders may be genuinely disgusted at these practices or maybe they have to deal with a more informed and sensitive domestic population that does Rice. In any case, they must at least show a degree of outrage at these practices. Enter stage Right; Condoleezza Rice and the traveling road show. One of many that have graced the world stage over the past five years with the same mesages repeated over and over; We don't torure and murder because murder means this and torture means that.
European leaders have been collaborating with the Americans in the war on terror and have proven to be pliable and weak. Now they are in a position where they must cooperate with the devil or be exposed for all they have done in that collaborative effort. Over 400 rendition flights have landed in Germany. It is no wonder than that Merkel appeared a little nervous standing next to Rice. She had to choose her words very carefully.

Perhaps all world leaders, with exceptions such as Chavez and Castro, have publicly wrangled with the Americans for domestic consumption and at the same time colluded with them behind the scenes. There is a price to pay for this 'dealing with the devil' sort of cowardice. The price is, when you do it, the devil gets control of your soul. And that is exctly what this devil does best; it controls anything and everybody it can.

Throughout history, world powers have emerged with the intent to dominate and terrorize with the aim to take over the world, no less. It is happening again and it is America that is doing it. And when this happens, the true nature of political leaders is exposed. Their slippery cowardice is evident for all to see. They side against those they see as weak in order to curry favour from those with power. Even the most elemental morality is ignored in this persuit.

Is the is the duty of all of us to keep on top of this process and to talk about it and to write about it. Above all, it is our duty to stand against the tyrants and their accomplices and to stand in solidarity with the victims. As Bush himself said, you are either with us or against us. Let him know in no uncertain terms that we are against him. He is the alpha and the omega of terrorism.

(Previously published in MWC NEWS)

The Nature of the Beast

Humanity has slipped into the grip of an alien and alienating force. It is no exaggertion to describe this force as a phantom. It has no mass, no shape or colour, or no basis in tangible reality. It is located in the abstract. This entity is more powerful and potentially horrific than anything that has been manufactured in the imaginations of fiction writers. Reality indeed is stranger than fiction. This entity has taken control of the world in a very short time. It directly impacts the psychology and every aspect of the lives of a large portion of humanity. We have been shaped by it and in turn, we have shaped it. This dialectic however is changing and our influence over our alien monarch is waning.

That ghost is capitalism itself and we instictively pay homage to it. We know where we came from and we know that it is this force that delivered us. We have an inkling that it is naturally democratic and somewhat gentle and kind. But there are some unavoidable flaws in that dim view. Especially in the recent past. The problem seems to be that the whole thing is turning on us and although we always knew it had a malevolent streak, we thought we could live with it. To decide properly whether or not we can continue to live with it into the future, we must examine its very nature.

The nature of capitalism is predatorial, it is hungry, and it is dominant over the affairs and lives of human beings. It demands to be fed and like a shark, it must keep moving and eating or it will die. It will root out every corner of human habitation, usurp the culture and traditions, and take over. It has no human sentiment or moralistic constraints. It will support human habits that will support it and will ravage any and all that stand in its way.

It is worth pointing out that it is a phantom and exists only in the realm of illusion if we aim to study its nature. It is as surely from the realm of the abstract as a dog or a chair exist in the realm of tangible reality. Capital itself is represented in money and money has no substance or value in itself. A coin means nothing more than a round piece of metal to anybody that has not been taken possession of by the phantom. But to those of us that have been taken under it's spell, money rules our lives.

Capitalism was born in humble surroundings. Some bookkeeper, somewhere in the mists of history, discovered that wealth can be increased through a relatively simple process. If a worker is hired to make a chair and is paid less than what the chair is sold for, the difference goes into the pocket of the person that hired the worker. If one hundred chairs are made in this way, there is that much more for the sorceror. As capitalism grew from these humble roots, its nature changed. It is, by its very nature, a powerful revolutionary force. It never remains still and it is an ever growing shape shifter. It does however have tendencies and a nature that render it predictable to a large degree. What is happening today was predicted well over one hundred years ago and if we study the nature of capitalism, we can get a general sense of where we are going.

The energy that drives its growth is profit. As the beast grows more and more massive, the potential for profit diminishes in a given unit of exchange and as a result, the terms of human exploitation become increasingly severe. Henry Ford may have had the luxury of actually paying his workers well enough to buy the cars, but those days are long gone. There is increasing pressure toward lowering wages. The capitalist state may have had the foresight to implement social spending measures in the 1930s to the 1970s creating more demand for goods and services, but those days seem to be behind us. Social democratic politicians are as severe with cutbacks and belt tightening as those from the right.

Capitalism has grown from domination of small shops and enterprises to the domination of the state and now it is in the process of taking over the world. As we continue to feed it's increasing demand for more and more wealth, its traditional source of food can no longer satisfy a now ravaneous and insatiable appetite. Workers cannot fetch the portion of wealth that they had enjoyed in the hay days of capitalism. Instead, capital must seek out better terms of exploitation and it does this in parts of the world where people are happy to work for a pittance to escape the ravages of starvation and poverty.

It has grown to a point where the quaint competitive nature that urged free enterprise no longer exists. Local merchants are crushed under the weight of large international monpolies. It has become a hungry psychopath that has literally has taken over much of the world and there is no escaping its grasp. We are in its clutches. And what that means to any given individual has a lot to do with his or her position, or relationship, to capital. If I am a producer of capital, my situation for myself and my children get more and more desperate as the years roll by. If, on the other hand, I am a capitalist, my power and wealth grow dramatically through time. To me, this is not a demon but a god.

This is a system that has provided for human needs to an extent that could never be imagined by people that preceded its development and growth. But as it matures, and it matures at ever increasing rates, it becomes increasingly inhumane. The meeting of human needs has always been a residual effect of this system and that is what gives it legitimacy and the amazing sticking power that it has. Caring for human needs is not a sentiment that is a characteristic of capitalism however. It is not a trustworthy or even desirable means to satisfy human needs. It has the soul of a psychopath and if humans must be slaughtered or deprived in order to optomize capitalistic conditions, so be it.

CEOs that make decisions based in human sentiment or compassion will not be CEOs for long. Investors will fire them and hire CEOs that will maximize profit. For instance, corporate managers might make a decision to follow Henry Ford's footsteps and pay workers enough to create demand. Investors will bail on that enterprise of fire the managers because on the level of international monopolies, competition is not dead. And THAT is a huge problem that promises to become a significant military threat. Other corporate interests will chew up and spit out idealists in the coliseum of imperial capitalism.

At this point, capital has become concentrated and it controls and is controlled by large international capitalist entities. National states have become subservient to international imperialism. Financial oligarcies not only have control of modern states, but they also have a stranglehold on developing nations. Through the World Bank and the IMF, they demand that the people of developing states feed the growing monster. Social programs and public services are not tolerated if they might result in providing for the people that are suffering if a concimitant restraint on profit is part of the equation. The monster will place control of basic needs in the hands of foriegn capitalists (or domestic capitalists) and they will put their price on vital needs. They will privatize electricity, food, medicine, and even water.

The acquisition of colonies by large powers has taken on a new sense of urgency. In the past few decades we see solomn serious importance heaped upon free trade agreements, privatization, and globalization. This is spun as the salvation of every developing corner of the world. What is happening today is coloniel expolitation on speed. Prior to the development of true capitalism, England, France, Spain and other imperial nations have plundered colonies and stole their wealth with barely a veneer of fair play. Often, they commited genocide and stole the wealth of the people outright. The wealth of nations and rich people was something close to a zero sum game then and increasing wealth meant taking it by force. And now, in these days of mature capitalism, we are returning to the mathematics of a zero sum game and worse when we consider the aggregate of human needs in the world opposed to the wealth that is alive in circulation. The need for creating new markets, finding cheap labour, and appropriating raw materials is greater now than ever before. The American state spends over a billion dollars a day on its military which is roughly equal to what the rest of the world spends. The American military is the claws and the teeth of this ever growing monopolist imperialism.

What is most disturbing is the potential that exists for massive world wars in the future. Huge trading blocks are competing for limited resources with the pressing need to keep feeding their own hungry ghosts. The alliances that are developing now, perhaps unwittingly, are preparing the stage for another major world war. Discussion of major wars has gone the way of the USSR. Many actually believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of history as if the cold war was the war to end all wars. China is developing into a major world power with its own hunger for oil that will soon be insatiable. Russia, China, America, and Europe are all positioning themselves for control of this vital commodity. It is no accident that oil billionaires have taken control of the most powerful state and the most powerful military in the world; the United States of America. Control of oil is vital.
The ugly slaughter that is happening today in Iraq may be a glimpse into a far worse future. Economic and political policies are dictated by the needs of capital. Politicians of all stripes are increasingly under the dictatorship of this ethereal monarch. It is no exaggeration to conclude that humanity has come under the spell and control of a non human phantom, a ghostly psychopath, that has but one need; the need to grow. Futhermore, this inhuman spook not only has the capacity, but it is in its very nature to destroy humanity.

What we do know is that the war in Iraq is not about weapons of mass destruction or implanting democracy at gunpoint. Iraq was invaded by oil billionaires and you don't hafta be a rocket scientist to figure out why. What is truly frightening is the speed with which capitalist powers can suddenly rally masses of people to pound war drums and march in step. This is the handiwork of yet another appendage of the grand spook; the yellow corporate media. And as we become seduced, we too become mindless murderous drones caught under the spell of a force that could make Adolph Hitler seem soft and sentimental. Even the poison of nationalism will perish when capital has no more use for its useless sentimentality.

What is needed now is analysis and debate on the true nature of capitalism, imperialism, war and politics. We must stand up against war and plunder and we must fight the excesses and ambitions of our malevolent master. At this stage of the game, we need more than awareness and debate. We need action and we need it now. Imperialism has already started to consume the flesh and the life of human beings. And if we understand the nature of the beast, we have to conclude that things are only going to get worse.

(Previously published in MWC News)

A Poem of Peace

The Smell of Fascism

You may have noticed a sickening smell wafting through the lands of the free and the homes of the brave. The sickening smell of tyranny and cowardice has seemingly put a spell on politicians, pundits, and much of the population. The cowards quiver in fear and beg the iron barbs of the state to tear human beings to shreads and beg for protection against sinister brown skinned foriegners. They hype up terrorist threats everywhere and massacre civilians in Islamic countries and then spew hatred about the threat of Islam.

This isn't the first time that the smell of fascism has hypnotized masses of people.

In 1933 somebody set fire to the home of Germany's Parliment, the Reighstag. A month prior to that event, Adolph Hitler had gained power. The fire itself was far less significant than how that fire was used, politically, by Adolph Hitler. Immediately following the razing of this building, Hitler removed any teeth that may have existed in law that could be used to protect human rights and liberties. He inacted the Decree Against Treason as well as The Decree on the Protection of People and State.

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers were demolished and the Pentagon was hit, killing thousands of people. As a result of this, the American state responded with The Patriot Act. A number of Prime Ministers marched in step, rather zombie-like.

The perpetrators of these crimes, both the fire in the Reighstag and the attack on the twin towers, provided a pretext for the destruction of legal principles that are the defining characteristic of free societies. They helped provide the necessary conditions to build a fascistic state.

The Spirit of Fascism

It may be argued that bona fide fascism requires certain attributes and what is happening now doesn't quite cut it. But what is hapening now has the smell and the taste of the spirit of fascism. Terror Law supporters may argue that Hitler despised Jews or that other speciific characteristics make Hitler's fascism different than whats happening now. At the same time, the zombies support the arbitrary detention of Arabs for security reasons. We must look a little deeper and find the common sentiment beneath both these particular displays of racism. We will notice a strong sense of nationalism, xenophobia, as well as a desire for increased security and state power.

The spirit of fascism grows from fear and mass hysteria. It is a sentiment that holds a rigid ideological line and takes aim at differences and dissent. It is a spirit that wants, above all, control. The underlying hypothesis is that those with power have it because they are superior to those that do not and that those with the power have a paternalistic right to arbitrarily control and to punish their underlings. Individually, fascists adore their superiors and despise those they perceive as weak. The fascist spirit is the ultimate coward. It will turn in its neighbour and it will step on a victim. It will smile at power and spit on human needs. It does not tolerate the reality that humans are quirky, funny, unpredictable, and lovable. It is a spirit with no sense of humour.

Fascism has powerful natural enemies such as rationality and justice. Human beings are also natural enemies of fascism. They must be manipulated into its acceptance. It's power does not come from rational or caring human beings. It's father is violence and its mother is fear. Fascism imposes the arbitrary will of the most violent leader over everybody else. Prototypes of fascism are criminal gangs and state dictatorships. It's worst enemy is light and it thrives in the shadows. The light of rationality will burn away its irrational hatred and aggression. Its champions are children of pathological fear turning them into racist inhumane tyrants. They build concentration camps and murder people indiscriminately.

Legitimate Authority

Modern civilizations have suffered and continue to suffer tremendous growing pains. But their have been some remakable developments and achievements in this process, not least of which is the development of rationality as the foundation of authority. Prior to this, monarchs or clergy could arbitrarily impose their will over society. They could decide that so and so should be locked away, tortured, or killed on a whim. They could decide that war should be waged on another country. They would sacrifice many of their own subjects to kill citizens of another land. A law that would suit the ambitions of the monarch or the upper classes would simply become law. But this is an aberration and alien to our collective human soul. The spirit of democracy is not.

The spirit of democracy is very old and if we really examine it, we will notice that it is a characteristic of primitive hunter gatherer societies. It has never been snuffed out through the ages by brutal tribal chiefs, ruthless kings, or tin pot dictators. It remained alive through human decency and has gained legal legitimacy in the light of rationality. Even in the darkness of the middle ages, the magna carta was born from a feud between an English king and his barons. That document gave law an air of rational legitimacy. And as societies developed, laws became increasingly subservient to the spirit of rational authority. The constitutions and charters that define modern states are rooted deep inside human rationality. We have become accustomed to and have taken for granted the expectation that laws, as well as our rights and freedoms, are securely attached to those roots. We have come to expect to be protected by legitimate legal principles from the arbitrary dictates of those with financial or military power.

The line between freedom and tyranny

If we examine the line that seperates fascistic or arbitrary power from legitimate rational authority, we will notice that we have recently slipped across to the other side; to the side of arbitrary tyranny. What we have taken for granted has been betrayed and we have been betrayed. What is truly remarkable is the ease with which this has taken place and that very few have even noticed. Unlike the blunt edged fascist battering rams of Hitler or Pinochet, these crypto fascists are relatively subtle and slippery.

What makes this betrayal so very bitter is that we have collectively suffered and fought for such a long, long time to develop and preserve basic human rights. We have suffered the unplesant trepidation of living amongst known criminals and have allowed dangerous people to inhabit our commuities for the greater good; the good of freedom. We have collectively chosen not to live in a predictable and locked down society. We live with crime as well as unpredictable and unpleasant behaviour. We have fought and died in wars to defend and preserve our basic freedoms. And now the authorities are locking people up and shooting and bombing people that are completely innocent. Their rationale: that they want to protect society from terrorism.
Here is the line between freedom and tyranny: We cannot act against people before they commit the crime. We cannot detain or kill people to prevent them from acting. We have to wait until the crime is commited and we have evidence of the crime or the planning (intent) of the crime. We need the evidence.

And, no country can wage war on another. The waging of war is a crime that contains within it, all war crimes.

We have crossed that line into the world of tyranny. One act of terrorism and the Disneylike facade of capitalist states is ripped away, exposing a rusty iron skeleton and razor wire.

Criminalizing Dissent

Most recently the media has been buzzing about Tony Blair's defeat over the Terrorism Bill. This media distraction places all our attention on the politics of popularity and partisian intrigue. It removes our attention from the fact that Blair did not lose at all. He got his Terrorism Bill through. He was apparently adament about allowing authorities to detain suspects for 90 days with no evidence or charges; they settled for 28 days. What is more significant than that number is that the bill effectively outlaws dissent. For instance, it makes illegal the "glorification" of the preparation of terrorist acts. This is not within the realm of rational law by any stretch of the imagination. It is subjective enough to grant the state a free hand to arrest people for dissent. Prior to this, Tony Blair was spending much time with the media warning of the dangers of extremism. Extremism again is one more example of language that is subjective enough to be meaningless and as a result, paving the way for arbitrary state power. The spirit of fascism relentlessly seeps through all the cracks and the holes that riddle the minds of the daft cowards. Blair is not alone with this. The other states that have enacted anti terror legislation have also criminalized dissent.

This bill is built upon the backs of over 100 peices of legislation put in place to make sure Britons are safe from terrorism.

There is something well rooted in stupidity about believing that legislation can be passed that will protect citizens from terrorism. If terrorists want to poison water, shoot up shopping malls, or wear suicide vests in English or American crowds, there is no legislation that can stop that. These draconian laws have been passed in western democracies such as Germany, France, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Canada, the United States and Sweden. Tony Blair is not stupid and neither are the rest of those that are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that our basic freedoms are stripped away. The fact that all these countries are passing quite similar 'anti terror' laws is cause for suspicion and alarm. This is not just a matter of abstract laws that might be abused some time in the future. The Americans have started operating concentration camps complete with torture, secrecy, and arbitrary detention.

Before 9 11 happened, there was massive and unprecedented dissent against capitalism. This was unlike the protest movements of the 60's. In the 60's there were protests against the war or for civil rights. But now the protesters were marching against capitalism. These protests were a reaction against globalization. Not only that, the size and the organization of the protests were quite impressive. These protests and this movement was organized and energetic. Organizing and mobilization can easily be facilitated now with new technology and the internet. Revolution could come out of the blue with speed never before imagined. The sense of control they had enjoyed with spinless drones on mainstream media lulling the crowd into a fog of runaway brides or the latest gossip on the rich and famous has slipped away. Now, information is spreading like wildfire and alternate news organizations are sprouting everywhere. Dissent is growing everywhere as the masses reach out to share ideas and real news. A genie has escaped its bottle and there is no way to get it back in.

And it is this reality, not Bin Laden, that has the cowards shaking in their cowardly boots. The cowards are doing their utmost to create more Bin Ladens and more terrorism to turn our reality into a fascist nightmare in order that they may live according to the standards they have grown accustomed to.

(This article has been posted at MCW News)

Our Wealth is Our Work

Leftists tend to react against capitalism almost instinctively. There are no shortage of reasons for this reaction. The profit taking system is explotive and predatorial. It is a cause of war and oppression. We hesitate to write the sequel to The Black Book of Communism, which would naturally be The Black Book of Capitalism, not because we cannot find capitalist crimes. Rather, the job would be so overwhelming that we would need several lifetimes to complete it.

To its credit, we can say with certainty that capitalism has pulled us out of the muck of feudalism. It has altered the human world dramatically and it would be hard to argue against the assertion that it has made the human condition better overall. The effect it has had on human freedom, laws, and on our reliance on empirical knowledge is unmistakable. On top of that, it has made our material condition far better than it would be if capitalism had never developed.

On the other hand, it looks as if capitalism has gotten to the point where it has outlived its usefulness. If we could argue that its excesses and problems would eventually diminish; that it has within it a self repair mechanism, then we could argue to hold the course. But all the evidence points to the contrary. With increasing speed, the true nature of capitalism and the capitalist state, most obviously represented by the American state, is making itself known. It cannot hide itself behind Keynsian principles or riviting speechs any longer. The plight of the working classes is becoming more severe and the brutality of the state apparatus is becoming more pronounced.

From the capitalistic perspective, the workers themselves owe their wealth to the risks and the initiative of capitalists. If it were not for their investment of capital, the working classes wouldn't have jobs or any tax base to build social services on. The working classes would return to scrounging in the muck for subsistence or worse, they would build a Stalinesque fascistic state.
But those arguments assume that wealth starts from capital and, naturally, from capitalists and that the working classes are naturally tyrannical and the wealthy classes are naturally egalitarian and democratic.

However - consider this:

All over the world we find ourselves in the midst of a grand globalization experiment that has devastating consequences for the vast majority. The promise is, it will get much worse.

What we see unfolding before us is the economic experiment penned by Milton Freidman, Mises, and Hayek as well as the French economist Say. This is not a sinister plot drawn up by the Bushes or the Cheneys. Bill Clinton was as hard on social programs and easy on the ultra rich as any president before him. Tony Blair and other supposed moderates are indistinguishable from the extreme right. This globalization, so called, is not as much a project as it is a manifestation of the place we find ourseleves in the growth and development of capitalism. They don't have control of it any more than you do. Perhaps it isn't so much that the Bushites and pretty much all capitalist state politicians are following the teachings of the Freidman ilk gurus as it is they are responding to the whims of capitalism. The gurus were merely prophetic. Perhaps this is more the natural development of capitalism than an experiment.

If we examine the guts of economics, we must start by asking ourselves how wealth is created. From there, we may consider human needs and distribution.

Freidman, Mises, and Hayak have seperated themselves from the fundamentalist perspectives of Adam Smith and Ricardo who knew that it was central to scientific economic study to understand the answer to this question: What is it that that determines value? They saw an objective measure of value as a precondition for coming to terms with understanding questions about wealth distribution or market dynamics. Smith suggested that it is labour that determines value. Ricardo's ideas followed from Adam Smith's findings and developed a seperation between use vaue and exchange value. These ideas would be later elaborated on by Karl Marx. It isn't surprising that the marginalists focus more on supply and demand curves or marginal utility curves than they consider the more fundamental question. It could be argued that they have made up their minds prior to their inquiry and the more fundamental perspective does not bode well for the ethics around the claim that it is the capitalists that have the natural right to own and control the bulk of the wealth. When we examine the basis of neo liberalism, we can see, beyond a doubt, that it is shallow and that it is vulgar economics.

The notion that superficial marketing and profit grabbing will produce what is best for society is on very thin ice in these days. For example, a given society may need more cancer research or health care or housing. The market suggests however that more profit can be made by producing hoola hoops or handphones. The capitalists will naturally produce hoola hoops. Capitalism is very good at producing trinkets, shiny toys, and killer hamburgers but as we can see from the world we live in, basic human needs are considered a nusance if there isn't a profit in it.

We can see that advanced capitalism is not living up to the promise of stability or equilibrium. Capitalism is showing itself to be an anarchistic loose hose, flipping and whipping depending on the mood of speculators. Rather than stability, the economy is subject to the whims of a grand global casino game. We must go deeper to discover what it is that determines value. We must go to Ricardo, Smith and for more depth, Marx.

The theory of supply and demand helps explain the price of something in a given time or place but it does not explain why things have the exchange value they have. The labour theory of value packs a far greater punch if we are to understand the nature of wealth. According to this theory, the exchange value of commodities is determined by the amount of labour measured in working hours necessary to make them (given current levels of technology). Shirts sell for less than computers because it takes less time (human hours) to make shirts. In a given unit of time, a worker can produce many shirts but only one computer. Smith and other economists tested this theory by comparing prices of commodities with the necessary labour time needed to produce them. They found that while it does not explain the exact price of things, it does explain why they exchange for their approximate prices. This theory takes the mystery out of the concept of value by relating it, exchange value, to human labour. Consider the fact that the basis of capitalist economies is surplus value, that is, the hours of labour beyond what the worker is paid for and the value that is appropriated by the capitalist; that this is the basis of the wealth of capitalists. And when we consider what can be done with labour power in terms of developing priorities, goods and services, we may then consider possibilities beyond the poor and short sighted rationality of the marginalists, popularly known today as neo-liberals. We might abandon the superstitious nonsense that the theft of the value that is produced by labour as an indispensable ingredient to economic success. In other words, we can afford to abandon the notion that exploitation, war, and theft are necessary evils for societies to function well. At that point, we may go beyond the tyranny of psychopathic greed and develop a sane and humane world.

Everything around you that you own and use is the result of effort of a vast army of unseen workers. The great attribution error of history is the erroneous assumption that we need the owners of money to make it all possible. When we really examine the situation, the capitalist class don't even manage businesses. They simply play the grand casino and hire workers to manage it for them. Managers are not them; managers are us. And managers are as dispensible functionaries as any of us on an individual basis. But no class of functionaries are more dispensible than the owners because they serve only as parasites. We can do without them and their political lackys utterly.

We are all in this together and we are the ones that make this world work. We can afford to abandon the superstitious nonesense that we need wealthy masters to care for us. They can take their rightful seat in the history of societies development and we may salute them. But the time is also coming where we tell them to get a job and contribute to wealth creation and distribution.

Every dime that reaches a rich man's pocket is created by workers. Miners, manufacturers, truck drivers, writers, and managers work to create all that is around you. The chair you are sitting on, the PC you are using, and everything else that you have is wealth and it is the creation of work.

Capitalism has served us well to be sure. But it has become an abstract inhumane psychopath. It's face is no longer the family business. It's face has disappeared. It is sick and humans are suffering. Like all things, it has a birth, a process of development, and an ending. Where that death is placed in history is up to you and me.

(This article was previously published in MCW News)

Grand Theft Argentina

The people of Argentina perhaps feel a little shocked and maybe even a bit awed at the sight of the President of the United States proclaiming another bout of grand theft after such a short time following the criminal plunder of their country by his clients, bosses, and bretheren. The President of the United States, the spokesman for the very same theives that looted the country the last time is back around, salivating over the prospect of stealing billions more.

Neo-liberal policies have been the ruin of Argentina. Argentina has actually been under the neo-liberal gun since a military coup occurred in 1976. The militarys economic policies reversed decades of protectionist policies aimed at encouraging industrial development and internal development. International money speculators were invited in at that time.

In 1989 Carlos Menem was elected on socialistic principles and once in power, he turned 180 degrees and implemented neo-liberal economic polices. Domingo Cavallo, (Harvard educated) became the finance minister. They operated under the guidance of the IMF and opened the Argentinaian goods market to trade. They opened the capital markets to unrestricted foriegn capital inflows. They privatized all state enterprises. They pegged the peso to the dollar to curb inflation. This screwed Argentina's potential for export. They privatized the mail, the airports, the banks, the rail system, social security, the national oil company, the phone companies, gas, water, electricity (all public utilities) and subways. They were sold to the rich at rock bottom prices. This all placed Argentina in a very precarious position. At the first sign of trouble, the parasites could easily run off with all the wealth. And they did.

The IMF run the Hayak, Mises, Freidman doctrine to the letter. They force developing nations to open their economy to foriegn investment and allow publicly owned utilities to be sold to the highest bidder. They are to balance budgets even at the expense of sick, the elderly and those down on their luck. They restrict the role of government as much as possible. They cut wages and social programs.

The IMF would have blacklited the USA in the era of the New Deal.

The neo-liberal economy effectively moves wealth from the bottom strata of society to the top. This is really what it is all about. It is an expensive large scale scam. They use public money to pay off debts and then sell the entity to the highest bidder. The investors walk off with a money tree and have no loyalty whatsoever to those they steal from. When times get tough, they simply walk away with the billions of dollars. Under neo-liberalism, if you are in the top 20% income, you win. If you are in the bottom 80% you lose.

There are essentially four steps that the IMF encourage or force countires to take. They are: First, privatization. This is blatant theft.

(2) Capital market liberalization; allowing the capitalists to run away with the bank when things get hot. They also want to seduce speculators and will force high interest rates to do it. The clear winners here are the international banks and the US treasury (which controls the World Bank) .

(3) Market based pricing mechanisms and cutting subsidies to food, water, gas, etc..

(4) Free Trade. Well of course.

The 1990's were a period of privatization of state run enterprises and de-regulation in Argentina. The nation has been at the mercy of the global capitalist casino and has payed a hefty price. Following the lead of the likes of Milton Freedman and Augusto Pinochet, the Argentina government adopted a private pension fund and this has been a contributing factor in their recent economic crisis. The Insurers of Retirement and Pension Funds (AFJP) has bled 300 million of workers pension dollars a month into the hands of international capitalists. They have also introduced zero deficit economic policies which includes slashing the 2002 budget by 7 billion dollars as dictated by the IMF.

Throwing pension funds to the so-called free market has allowed foreign investors steal workers pension funds. They pitched the idea of privatizing pension funds as a method to "generate domestic savings" and to enhance economic growth and job creation. What it did do is create an opportunity for vultures from Wall St. to make a quick profit and leave.

The economic crisis had been brewing for some time and it devestated that nations economy when those neo liberal chickens came home to roost.

The workers of Latin American countries have been plundered and impoverished under the greed and ideological nonesense of modern capitalism, or neo liberalism. But the very same thing is happening to America, Canada, Europe and all industrialized countries. Evidence of that is evident in the urge we all feel to qualify that word, "industrialized". It should be post-industrialized. We too wil be sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered at the alter of capitalism. What happenes tonight in Argentina wil happen tomorrow in New York, Paris, and London.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

In recent years the warm and fuzzy coating has fallen away from the modern capitalist state. Or more accurately, it is being torn off. On one hand the social programs that were used to keep the lower classes happy are being reduced and removed. Where people were coaxed into docility before, the future does not have docility in the cards. As a result the state will force political compliance.

The shift has already occurred. We have slipped over the boundary into the world of the nightmarish police state. How this was accomplished was quite impressive. At this point most people still have not noticed and those that do, for the most part, welcome the change. They welcome the increased security. They like to take flights without the worry of terrorists blowing them out of the sky. They like to live in cities without the worry of terrorists bombing subways or randomly shooting citizens.

What these people don’t realize is that the enemy is not who they think it is. The enemy is actually the power that claims to be protecting us.

The fact is that if terrorists want to blow up airplanes, poison food sources, or randomly kill people in way imaginable, there is simply no way of stopping them. Those that tell you that we need increased security are not doing so in an attempt to curb terrorism. They are doing so to curb YOU. You see, you are their enemy and they know it but you don’t. They are already taking measures to prepare for a war against you and you don’t even know what is happening. In fact, you don’t even recognize your own enemy and when you do, we will likely have little room to maneuver.

Prior to 9/11 there was Seattle and Quebec. There were protesters organizing against capitalism. This was landmark. There were protest movements in the West before and they were against war, against poverty, for woman’s rights, or for gay rights. But this is the first time that America and the West has had massive and popular protests as part of a building movement against capitalism itself. This was monumental and the significance has apparently been lost on the geniuses that spin opinions in the mainstream media.

The occurrence of 9/11 couldn’t have come at a better time for those that would like to create a world-wide police state. The most disturbing aspect of this is that the keepers of the state, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, liberals or social democrats, Labour or Conservative, are all on the same page. The Labour Party in Britain, a social democratic party, has put in place draconian measures that rival the neo cons in Washington. This transcends the notion of a neo con conspiracy.

The big question, the question we all need to ask ourselves is whether or not these new laws can be used to stifle democratic dissent. The answer is clear and the answer is undeniably 'yes'. The reason that that question and answer are so very important is because the very foundation of free societies has been pulled out from beneath us. For hundreds of years societies have been evolving toward greater freedom and human rights from the Magna-Carta to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we have been steadily going in a progressive direction. That is until recently where the war hawks have usurped the whole damn thing.

The fact is that if you live in America, Canada, Britain or Australia, you no longer live in a free society. That the difference is hardly noticeable as we go about our day by day lives is part of the problem. That reality is evidence of volume of accomplices that are working in concert, including most mainstream media, most politicians, as well as those that have designed this Orwellian landscape. They have pulled off a master coup as they had us distracted by war and rumors of war.

For the moment let us give them the benefit of doubt.

Assuming that the politicians of today (eg. Bush, Martin, Howard and Blair) are very sincere about fighting terrorism and that these anti-terrorist laws are really intended to give the police and the spooks enough leverage to protect citizens from terrorism. Let us imagine that these draconian laws will deter terrorists and safeguard society from random acts of violence. Let's also assume that these laws are not intended to stifle dissent. The question then arises about future politicians that may use these laws against politically incorrect but peaceful protest. What is to stop some future politicians from using these laws to effectively police and eradicate political dissent? What will prevent them from tossing people such as unionists, boycotters, and protest organizers in the hoosegow forever?

But, as we know, we don't have to wait for some unscrupulous future fascist leader to see how opressive these laws can be. The people that are tortured in concentration camps today will tell us that it has already happened.

The fact that the reaction to this by the media, the legal profession, as well as the pre-9/11 protesters is merely a whisper is perhaps a result of incredulity rather than antipathy. For most people the reality of crossing the boundary into a world of arbitrary authoritarianism has not sunk in. The whole thing is too outlandish, too far out and too surreal to process in most reasonable minds. It just doesn’t compute (What – we have slipped into a police state? Nah – can’t be).

Canada has not done much, relative to other countries, to make it a target of terrorism. But the shredding of the freedoms and rights of Canadians has occured nonetheless. You'd almost think it was some sort of world wide conspiracy.

Canada has passed legislation that gives the state the power to literally throw you in jail and throw away the key and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. You can't even see a lawyer if you have been targeted.

Bill C-36 allows the state to detain people on the suspicion that they will commit a crime. The individual could be barred from legal council in closed hearings. People involved in protest movements or strikes could be prosecuted this way.

So far, it seems that it immigrants and particularly immigrants from Islamic countries that have been singled out by the New World Order. It may very well be that state oppression is selectively discriminating against this particular ethnic group to bolster public support for political repression. The propaganda suggests that Muslims are prone to terrorism.

The potential iron net is far greater however. The wording of the act permits the state to act against those who may “seriously” interfere with essential services. Threats to economic systems are deemed worthy of prosecution. This could be defined as an act of terrorism. Planning such activities could be reason enough to land you or me in jail. Surveillance may be carried out without the blessing of a judge. This bill throws out the checks and balances that are necessary for a free society.

Read what Canadian lawyer, Rocco Galati has to say regarding this bill:

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC_1984.htm

Other previously free societies have also passed similar laws including the United States, Britain, and Australia.

There are sufficient laws in place to check crimes and terrorism. This new reality we now live with is not meant to curb terrorism. That is merely a ruse. It is aimed at removing our freedom to organize dissent against capitalism. Stopping terrorism could be achieved if the killing and oppression would end.

As Noam Chomsky said, the way to stop terrorism is to stop terrorizing.

In the past the rationale for war has been to preserve freedom. Today, the enemies of freedom are our elected politicians and those they serve. The enemies of freedom have slipped in through the back door. It is your duty to recognize this. Otherwise, all those that sacrificed their lives for freedom in the past have done so in vain.
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"19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society." -Rocco Galati