Either You are WIth Us or Against Us: A Discourse on Terrorism

Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it…. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter… Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love… Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed…. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
- John Milton

If you are a terror to many, then beware of many. --Ausonius

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. --Mahatma Gandhi


January is a month in which we celebrate one of the most respected world personalities of modern times, Dr. Martin Luther King. He was one of those few select human beings endowed with certain unalienable gifts that throughout the annals of history changes the world for the better, assisting in the evolution of civilization and helping to unravel the evils of the day for the betterment of humanity. Dr. King was a monument to what all human beings should aspire towards. Yes, he had his faults, he was human after all, but his undaunted courage in the face of tremendous obstacles helped lift the dormant spirits of millions of marginalized Americans and opened a new dawn of hope to this nation’s fractured society.

The exploits of Dr. King cannot be underestimated, and his teachings, speeches and philosophies should be made mandatory learning material for all people of this country. He was a visionary and a prophet, both a hope to millions and a threat to the few powerful elite. With the help of his army of supporters he changed the fabric of society, the belief structure of a nation growing up and the opening of goals and dreams once thought impossible to reach. Dr. King was a true American Patriot.

Under constant threat of death he rose and faced down the barrels of the invisible guns pointed at him. Under constant threat of imprisonment he tore open the bars of oppression and subjugation. Facing a government and a society not willing to unhinge the chains of quasi-enslavement he walked proudly through the streets of America, raising his voice so all could hear, demanding change, equality and justice not through the threat of violence but through the power of peace. To the end Dr. King, in circumstances not one of us could imagine, knowing death could strike him down at any moment, continued preaching his philosophies, sacrificing himself during times that were most likely under extreme duress so the rest of us could one day walk side by side in his dream. Today, we are all better women and men as a result.

Yet if Dr. King were living in today’s environment of terrorism and suspicion, of enemy combatants and evildoers, under the ever watchful eye of Bush and his marauding maniacs, he could very well be caged like an animal down in Guantanamo. When the Bush mantra is "either you are with us or against us," Dr. King would certainly be seen as a threat to the establishment and to the Bush Administration. Dr. King’s philosophy of change through non-violent means is the sword that pierces the dragon’s breast, the kryponite that weakens the powerful establishment. No weapon is stronger than non-violent revolution; no army can withstand its force. In today’s world of eviscerated democracy and perpetually-diminishing rights and freedoms, however, Dr. King would most inevitably be persecuted, as he was in his day, though to a much greater extent.

Any perceived threat to the establishment and to Bush gets the well-thought out, exploitative marketing propaganda campaign designed to make enemies of anyone not in the administration’s pockets. Labeled "unpatriotic," "terrorist sympathizer," "treasonous," "enemy combatant" or as "cavorting with the enemy" those who do not follow Bush’s idea of how the nation and the world are run are subjected to a public relations blitzkrieg not seen since the days of McCarthyism. Those who refuse to lie to the American public or who refuse to cover up the plethora of Bush lies, distortions and deceptions are scorned, smeared and trashed. The fine-tuned propaganda campaign to debase the opposition has penetrated into the minds of the masses. September 11 unleashed the perfect mechanism by which to silence anyone with contrary views to Bush and his cabal of crusaders. This allowed the administration to do anything and everything it wanted.

If Dr. King were alive today, in the same capacity as before his death, awakening and inspiring, educating and leading, it is not far fetched to believe that Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft would have labeled him any of the vast names designated under the fictitious "war on terror" designed for the opposition. Dr.King would never be allowed to question authority, the government’s perpetuating downward spiral that is ruining this country, the Leviathan’s ever-increasing power and control of the nation, the military-industrial complex’s maximizing profit motives by seeking perpetual war and death, the energy/oil oligarchy’s insatiable thirst for the world’s oil nor Bush himself. He would have never been allowed to stir the oceans of ignorance, in the end creating tidal waves of enlightenment and discontent as people minds were made free from the grip of brainwashed diatribe.

In Bush’s world, Dr. King would be a terrorist. If you are not with us then you are against us. To question us is to be unpatriotic, even treasonous. To not blindly follow Bush and his failure of leadership, integrity or honor is to be an "enemy combatant."

In Bush’s worldview, where the battle is between the forces of good (the US) versus evil (anyone else who is not with us) and between the Empire and Barbarians, many historical figures who dared question those in power would be labeled "terrorists," many undoubtedly to be disappeared and sent to Guantanamo. Those figures who dared question authority, the evils of the elite, the exploitation of Empires, established dogma and civilization’s ills would today be rotting in cages, sent to suffer brutal repercussions at the hands of the nation that espouses and demands human rights onto to world.

One man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Take, for example, the case of Jesus Christ. Jesus grew up under the exploitative hands of the Roman Empire, its proctors, along with corrupt and gluttonous Jewish high priests who had turned the Temple into a debauched market of greed. He grew up ever mindful of Roman occupation, exploitation and subjugation of his people. When he finally decided to speak his mind and try to embolden people into not accepting what had been placed at their feet he became the political activist that he was. He spoke of peace, love and forgiveness, of the need to give, share and empathize.

He called for change, at all levels of society, seeking justice and equality, honor and salvation. He criticized the high priests for their corrupt ways and trashed the Temple market in a rage of anger. He was a champion to the poor and less-fortunate, the downtrodden and the hopeless. He offered passion and hope, confidence and a better way of life.

Christ became a freedom fighter to the masses, a terrorist to the Romans and the high priests. If he were preaching the same philosophy today, fighting the Pax Americana instead of ancient Rome, what label would Bush place on him? Jesus changed the world, his teachings, powerful and necessary, continue to be taught to this day, though hardly listened to anymore. His philosophies, much needed for our survival, were corrupted by the church in the 2000 years since his death. Freedom fighter and activist, seeking change through peace, non-violence, love and equality, crucified by those at the top, those with the power that saw him as a threat to their continued existence and as an example for future agitators.

What were the prophets of the Old Testament if not activists seeking a betterment of people and society? They too were freedom fighters, yet in their day to go against those in control and power meant certain death. Seeking justice, equality, freedoms and rights meant persecution, just as before, just as now. The freedom fighters who brought down communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s were heroes, but if they did the same to Bush today they would be hung for treason.

The French resistance who fought the Germans, the Jewish resistance that clashed with Nazis in ghettos, those who fought in the American War for Independence and the French Revolution, would they all be terrorists today? Would Martin Luther, Galileo and Darwin be labeled "terrorists" under the Bush definition even though they revolutionized the world through their actions? We romanticize freedom fighters in movies or theatres, be it William Wallace in Braveheart, Joan of Arc, Les Miserables, Gladiator, Michael Collins, The Patriot, Schindler’s List and so on. In Hollywood, to fight for freedom, survival and the rights of your people is glamorized and accepted. In Bush’s bubble and brainwashed world, it is castigated and annihilated.

India presents us with another great human being in Gandhi that would today likely be considered some form of "terrorist." Gandhi espoused non-violent remedies to troubles afflicting his country and people at the hands of the British Empire. He organized, helped awaken hundreds of millions, mobilized a new movement that through peace brought the British to their knees, and eventually out of India. Yet he was a man fighting the system, fighting for justice and equality, freedom and rights. A greater freedom fighter has not existed. Yet in today’s world, where Bush decides who is and who isn’t, Gandhi might be persecuted and jailed, caged and beaten, treated as a terrorist. One man transformed an entire nation, and left behind the keys to human survival in his teachings. But he fought the powerful, the entity in control, much like Jesus or Dr. King, and suffered their same fate.

Real terrorists do exist, Osama bin Laden being the most prominent, destroying 3000 lives in order to fight the evils of the Great Satan. But to hundreds of millions around the world, bin Laden and Al-Qaeda represent a new breed of freedom fighter that struggles against the vast expansive and exploitative grip of American Imperialism. We in this country need to understand why so many people espouse such sympathy and admiration for bin Laden and his kind. Only then can we understand what drives them to slam hijacked planes into tall buildings.

We need to understand the role the US government, military and Leviathan play in the decimation of millions of lives through the various mechanisms imposed to assure the spoils of Empire. To hundreds of millions, we are the terrorists through the actions of our government, and this has only been amplified through Bush’s policies of death, destruction and suffering. Bin Laden fights us because of our economic and military exploitation around the world that causes misery and torment to billions. He attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for this reason, seen as symbols of the methods by which the US subjugates billions of people worldwide. The roots of terrorism must be understood before we unleash the whirlwind that will spread even more seeds of hatred around the world. The so-called war on terror must focus on the root causes of terrorism and not its branches.

If you pull out the root the branches cannot flourish, they cannot bloom. If you fight the branches the roots do not die, they only spread. This is why the war on terror is destined to fail, lasting into perpetuity, killing thousands of our loved ones and robbing us of the vast amounts of money needed to rebuild our people and our land. This is the reason Bush must be defeated in November, because to re-elect him would mean the continuing and never-ending war on terror, the enactment of the draft, and the continued usurpation of both our wages and our loved ones to the military-industrial complex and the Leviathan.

The war on terror can be won, but only if we pull it out from its roots, devoting a new philosophy of peace, non-violence, communalism, assistance, education, and openness to the billions of souls living in misery, endemic poverty, disease, suffering and lack of opportunity, understanding their cultures and their needs, their reasons for hating us and their need for a life worth living. In most instances, the US and its policies are to blame; our actions create reactions which come back to haunt us.

Bush is falling directly into bin Laden’s trap, creating entire waves of new recruits, helping transform the Middle East into a fundamentalist enclave ready to erupt. With every Muslim death, usurpation of their lands and futures, ill treatment of their people, continued poverty of their lives and support for the atrocities of the Israeli government against the Palestinians by Bush the hatred only intensifies, the fire only rages, searing higher into the air with each act of humiliation. This is no way to fight a war that cannot be won by the use of the sword being plunged into the belly of misery and hopelessness. But in Bush’s world, terrorism must be made perpetual in order to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the Leviathan and the oligarchy. There is method to Bush’s madness.

The more "terrorists" are created the more wars will be fought meaning increased levels of profiteering, imperialism, resource allocation, people subjugation and the greater the excuses will become to instill fear into an already paranoid American public. The so-called war on terror is nothing more than a vicious cycle that is designed to make war endless, terrorism ceaseless, profit everlasting and power omnipotent. It is a way to control the American people into acquiescing to every dictate Bush seeks on his way to robbing us all of our freedoms, rights and democracy and of the nation we once knew to be true.

If terrorists are to be pursued, captured and killed, then we must also unleash our full fury and might and go after all kinds of terrorists, not just Muslim fundamentalists. I am talking about those people who without remorse or apathy pollute and pillage our world, our bodies and our minds. I am referring to those who rob us blind, stealing our life savings and our wages.

Environmental and financial terrorists, those living among us, should also see the wrath of the war on terror. Do these individuals not terrorize when they release pollutants and toxins into the only air we can breathe? Do they not terrorize when they poison our water, our food and our bodies? Do they not terrorize the world when they spew and leave barren forests and oceans? Is that not terrorism? After all, they kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, many more times than bin Laden and his fanatical followers. Don’t the Kenny Boy (at one point W’s best friend) Lay’s of the world terrorize when they rob millions of their life savings, basically enriching themselves at the expense and misery of millions? Are these people, such as those at Enron, not terrorists? They severely affect the lives of millions, altering their ways of life, forcing many to suffer agony and stress at the thought of the impotence they now find themselves in.

What defines a terrorist? Who defines one? Is the military-industrial complex (MIC) a terrorist because it lives off of people’s death, maiming and suffering? That is exactly what bin Laden does, and he’s labeled a terrorist. Why not the MIC? Building instruments of death, knowing that your products will kill and maim and cause pain and suffering, should in many instances label you a terrorist. After all, you are spawning and furthering terror, are you not? You are perpetuating murder of human beings and violence among us.

Is the Leviathan to be considered a terrorist entity? It pillages and exploits both workers and consumers, after all. It ruins lives, kills hundreds of thousands through its products and pollutants, and does everything in its power to rob power from workers. It destroys our planet, is warming our globe, uttering in a new era of human death and suffering.

Should our own government be labeled a "terrorist government?" It is quite apparent that it terrorizes the world, indeed, has been doing it for many decades, affecting billions of lives through its economic, military and financial apparatuses, ruining lives, making misery endemic, poverty perpetual, opportunity non-existent and exploitation all-encompassing. Our government has financed, supported and fostered hundreds of despots, dictators and monarchs that have laid waste to hundreds of millions of lives. Is this considered "terrorism?" If to cause so much suffering and ruination is considered terrorism, then we are guilty. There are many reasons why we are hated throughout the globe, and it is time we become aware of what our government does to billions of humans in our name. It is not pretty, and it is not right.

If Bush were on the losing side of the war on terror, might he be labeled a terrorist? He has unleashed mass murder and suffering onto the world, after all, killing so many thousands and injuring so many more. Throughout the planet he is considered the most dangerous man in the world, the gravest threat to world peace. Does this make our President a terrorist? Does his support for the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel make him a terrorist? To dehumanize is to terrorize, as is the unleashing of harsh collective punishment onto an entire people. He has been responsible for the death of at least 10,000 Iraqis in a war that we all know was unjustified, based on lies, deceptions and dishonor. If history were not written by the winners and those in power might he be labeled a terrorist? Might he be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity? Might he be labeled: Wanted: Dead or Alive?

At home, Bush has made worse the lives of millions of Americans through his callous disregard for the people in his quest to enrich his friends in the Leviathan. Three million jobs have been lost, worker rights have all but disappeared, healthcare benefits only the elite and the corporations, education gets worse and worse, poverty keeps increasing and our loved ones are being sent to his illegal war to die, return maimed or psychologically fractured for the benefit of the powerful. His administration terrorizes us with incessant calls of fear, of boogie men ready to strike. Every fear factor orange terrorizes, creates paranoia and erodes America more every time. Is this not terrorism? To many, this would be considered the work of a terrorist. To us, he is called the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Terrorism can take many forms; it can hide underneath many masks. To side with power might give you immunity to continue your reign of terror; to fight it makes you a target and a threat. Those in power judge who is and who isn’t, for their benefit they determine and label, accuse and persecute. The books of history are full of terrorists, of freedom fighters and those in between, their titles decided more by the victors than the truth. We live in dangerous times, from threats both here and abroad, with enemies known and unknown, those dressed in clear sight and those hiding behind masks of innocence. Today our most cherished historical figures, those who sought better ways of living for all by fighting the system through peace, non-violence and love would be labeled "enemies of the state," treasonous individuals fighting against those in control, those who decide what it and what isn’t. They would be called terrorists.

It is in times such as these that we must rise and challenge those notions of good versus evil, black versus white, waking up from our conditioned minds to see the reality that has been thrust upon us. The veil of ignorance must be lifted, the shades of gray must make way. A collective introspection of what is happening in the world today must be applied. For the end result soon approaching, which few dare speak, but that reality wants to warn, is that soon you and I might find ourselves being called "terrorists," caged like animals, made to disappear, for the simple God-given right and freedom to oppose, judge, debate and discuss what Bush is doing under our name.

The winds of totalitarianism are fast approaching, and the day when we can speak our mind in opposition to what our government is doing will soon erode, gone like the many rights and freedoms that no longer exist. To oppose and question authority, to fight against the injustices and the exploitation, to try and awaken millions to what is slowly happening to them might mean that we are stripped of our rights and freedoms, pursued and persecuted, and, in the end, silenced. Threats to the establishment have never been accepted, and, with so much power in Bush’s claws of despotism, this will continue to be the rule rather than the exception.

For in the end, freedom fighters and true patriots are but terrorists to those in power, and, in many cases, real terrorists continue walking our steel-glass canyons and concrete jungles, robbing us of all we have, polluting our sickened bodies, raping and pillaging our land and water, heating up the planet, killing those we love and cherish, sending our sons and daughters to fight for profit and firing, exploiting and ruining our ever-worsening lives and the country we have grown to respect.

As always with words and semantics, the definition of terrorism lies within those who are led to believe and those who refuse to be misled. The key is understanding deep inside yourself what you believe to be true, of going beyond what corporate and governmental brainwashing and conditioning makes you think is right. Wiping clean the fiction that has enveloped us for three years, throwing it down the pipes of sewage and realizing that we are being lied to is our only hope of returning to what we once were. Only you can decide, based on what your hearts and minds tell you, who is what, what is who and how to proceed along the path to the truth. Only then can a full discourse of the word "terrorism" and its meaning be completed and the fear that we have been living under erased.

The Human Hell and the Demons of War

Branch Warfare and the Evolution of Aggression

The pages of history, those monuments to humankind’s brief rule over the planet, are replete with violence, death and destruction. Indeed, it can be argued successfully that war, genocide, ethnic cleansing and human violence against each other have defined humanity’s tumultuous existence on Earth. We are inseparable from death and destruction, suffering and violence. Turning the pages of the little we know of our own past, one thing becomes quite apparent: Throughout time, in all corners of the world, mankind has lived side by side with war, destruction and death. We have defined our existence through the self-inflicted violence we unleash upon ourselves. What is it about the human condition that espouses in us a propensity to grossly annihilate ourselves, inflicting horrendous misery onto our kind?

Violence and humanity were born conjoined twins out of the thick canopy of our ancestral home in the Eastern African jungles. Even in the ape-like appearance and behavior of our primate selves could our violent genes be seen. Competition forced upon us the will to survive through the defeat of competitor groups. Wars waged high in the canopy became the first symptoms of our disease. Group versus group, competitor versus competitor, the violence ingrained in us manifested itself in the primitive battles and hollowed screams of our long-gone ancestors.

Branch to branch, foot by foot, with nail and teeth the prelude to modern warfare was born.

Struggling over territory we fought interlopers; competing for finite resources we waged battles. Our drive to procreate pitted male versus male in animalistic bouts of combat that killed, wounded or banished. The winner of such fights controlled fertile females, claiming new forested territory as a result, thus becoming the new procreator of genetic bonds, killing off genetic competitor’s offspring if he had to. Survival of the fittest ensured that only our most able ancestors succeeded and passed on their seed to future generations.

In a world of survival that depended on an ability to defend the group and protect territory from alien invaders our primate ancestors had to evolve violence. Only those who developed the greatest propensity to violence and those who possessed the best skills in combat could be assured of survival. Thus, it was these skills and propensities that got passed down generation to generation, eventually becoming attached to our evolving makeup. Survival of the fittest demanded that violence become part of the human condition, a necessary and adaptable behavior needed to survive and thrive.

To fight or fail, to battle and win, our early days, full of competition for sexual mates, territory and finite resources, became the primitive engenderer of the violence that befalls humanity today, just as it has throughout history. To develop aggressiveness, propensity to violence and skill in combat assured our ancestors lived another day. To fail in battle meant almost certain extinction and genetic banishment. It was those who survived, those who are today our most direct predecessors that were the most violent, the most lethal and most adept in aggression whose genes we eventually inherited.

The greatest symptom of our disease today was spawned in the wars of survival emanating in the now forgotten days of yesteryear. The virus that causes so much death, destruction and misery today was forged before we knew what we would eventually become. Out of necessity, out of adaptability and based on the laws of nature humankind arose from the jungles bipedal and intelligent, predisposed of violence and competition. The laws meant for the animal world mutated in form and substance with our ever-evolving brains, creating the most lethal, self-destructive and violent mammal the world has ever spawned.

Conditioned Minds, Hidden Realities

Our mistake is not wanting to see who and what we truly are. It is living in the delusion of our grandeur and the imposition of our omnipotence. It is neglecting to acknowledge the reality of our origins and the truth behind our behaviors. It is living in the delusion that we are something we are not. Thinking ourselves placed on this planet through the hands of our metaphysical idol, we believe in the façade of the magnificence of our civilization and the perfection of our existence.

Failing to erase the delusion of our god-appointed reign over the planet or the deity-inspired anointment over all living creatures we blindly devour anything in our path, destroying the knowledge of our being by the evisceration of our home. Thinking ourselves a completely different entity than the mammal world we belong to, we refuse to realize that from our cousins our behaviors arise. All mammals derive from a common ancestor, a rat like creature that evolution transformed to the plethora of diversity our species is slowly making extinct. It is only natural, then, that we share many of the same traits and behaviors as our blood relatives. As an example, we share over 98 percent of the same genes as a chimpanzee, while we share over 90 percent of the same genetic makeup as a common mouse.

To study the animal world is to in many ways delve into the far and not so far reaches of human behavior, peering through the unobstructed lens creatures sharing many of our traits comprise. To study the behavior of our closest relatives is to dive into the deepest wells of human evolution and seeing who and what we really are. By understanding that which we fail to escape but refuse to acknowledge better humans can we all be made to be.

We fail to understand where we come from, what we once were and how evolution works. Thinking ourselves immune to the same laws of nature encapsulating the rest of the animals world we are in essence abandoning an enormous chunk of information that can allow us to better understand the human condition. We do not comprehend that evolution works in eons, not decades, that behaviors and genetic mutations transcend generations and that much of what we think of as human nature today was first brought to light hundreds of thousands of years ago, long before the arrival of civilization, technology and religion.

Our religions have made us believe in the exquisite creation of our civilization and in the chosen ascendancy of our almighty sovereignty. They have, through the perceived greatness of our species deriving from the heavens above, guided us on paths of human myths, not realities. Created before our minds could conceive of or understand our relationship with the animal and natural world, religion furthered beliefs at odds with our animal selves and our own behavioral and instinctual evolutions. It condemned the idea of us as animals inclined with many of the same characteristics as the mammalian world. Instead, its dogma demanded that were gods onto ourselves, rulers of the planet, created by our deity in its same image.

Religion commanded that we look upon ourselves as separate entities from anything living on Earth. We were placed on the planet by powers higher than ourselves, created out of thin air, becoming human the moment we took our first breath. Evolution was non-existent, as was the idea that humankind was once part of the animal world. Our evolving physical and mental realities were never taken into consideration, nor the truth of the natural world that enveloped us.

Religion that was created thousands of years ago continues to control our lives today, with the same primitiveness of days gone by and with the same belief structure that fails to include the knowledge and intelligence we possess today. It is these mechanisms, along with our inability to escape the cloud of self-aggrandizing delusion hovering above us, that continues to plague our advancement.

We live in the denial of our existence, believing us superior and chosen, unable, unwilling really, to accept that which our minds and egos refuse to acknowledge. For to degrade ourselves as having risen and indeed being part of the world of the beasts and mammals would be to strike down the fallacy of our own self-absorbed greatness that has led us down the wrong road for the last ten-thousand years. Conditioned for millennia to believe in our own hegemony and importance, we have been led astray, lost in our concrete jungle ecosystems, wandering aimlessly on our road to perdition, passing through the ruins of the knowledge that can save us but that we are destroying, even as we refuse to accept the reality of our creation and the truth behind our behaviors.

The animal world that birthed us have we abandoned, along with the vast knowledge it possesses. The keys to understanding ourselves lie in front of our eyes, in the world we refuse to acknowledge and only seem to want to destroy. Instead primitive we remain, thrust upon our violent selves by our refusal to evolve past the dogma of ancient times that was born to ignorance and fear. A perplexing quandary has arisen that denies the truth behind our ways and the understanding we desperately need to squash our demons. In light we see no evil and in darkness the truth remains.

The grand lie we live of our god-like divinity has for centuries clashed with the great truth of our animal-like reality. Except we are too delusional to see beyond the mirage of greatness we espouse onto our fragile egos. The great fallacy of our omnipotence is corrosively leading to the impotence of our continued existence.

Part II

Evolving Brain, Advancing Civilization, Destructive Violence

Spit out of the jungles by evolution after we landed on solid ground from the dense branches of our trees above, we began our great Diaspora, ever-slowly traversing savannah, desert, forest, tundra and oceans, reaching the far reaches of the globe. Yet within us we carried the virus that to this day continues to plague our existence.

Attaching itself to the human condition like a blood-sucking leach firmly entrenched on a mammalian body, our propensity towards violence has never left us. Like many species of animal, including our primate cousins, aggression and violence are deeply entrenched in our psyches. The real danger, however, lies in the evolving brain we have over the millennia allowed to develop.

What separates our aggression from the instinctual one residing in the animal kingdom is our capacity for intelligent, analytical and cognizant understanding. That is, our intelligent brain has the capability to mutate our many passions, emotions and aggressions into organized violence against our own kind, done methodically and purposefully, thereby superceding any instinct we might possess to the great detriment of our fellow man. The threat to our race is that unlike animals, whose aggression is minimal and based on instincts of survival that also serve the laws of nature, our propensity towards violence exerts pressure to endanger our own kind thanks to the complex mechanizations of the mind. Our deep thinking and highly intelligent brain unleashes violence not according to the laws of the jungle but for much more sinister purposes dealing with our highly volatile and misunderstood animal passions.

With feelings of anger, hatred, competition, revenge and jealousy so ingrained into our animalistic selves, it becomes extremely difficult to sequester them in our daily lives. These emotions, and the reactions inherent in such circumstances, are unique to the human race. It is our species that can act out violently against such passions; we are the only animal that can direct our passions in violent outrage, whether at one person, an entire army or an absolute nation. Our vast superiority in intelligence over the animal world, combined with the same behaviors and propensities as our mammal relatives, makes us much more dangerous animals than previously existed. It is our mind, combined with our animal passions, that allows our violent and aggressive selves to mutate to the kind of destruction, death and misery we are so capable of.

It is this Molotov cocktail of human intelligence and animal passions that makes of man that most dangerous of animals. Intelligence and passion, when mixed together, can create a volatile concoction that has been manifested in the often bloody history of man.

When combined with the collective brain of the many, such as in the case of tribes or nation-states, the propensity towards violence against competitors or rivals becomes even greater, escalating into full-fledged war. The same parameters that led to fighting among our primate ancestors and the animal world of today helps bring to the surface the human hell that has shackled us from our earliest beginnings and that today leads to untold levels of misery worldwide.

Competition for food, resources, sexual partners and territory condemn humans to releasing into the open the virus of violence attached to our psyches that lingers hibernating in the innermost closets of our minds, ready at any moment to makes its ominous entrance into our lives.

With our more intelligent mind, however, new non-nature parameters that open the scabs of violence have emerged in the last several hundred thousand years. As differences of religious dogma arose, eroded and mutated throughout tribal societies, so did the propensity for war based on differences of belief. Indeed, wars of religious inclinations have killed, maimed and destroyed more humans than any other excuse for warfare. The untold suffering caused by religious wars cannot be adequately described in words. The “my god is better than your god” syndrome, combined with the ‘my religion is the true and only religion’ belief in which battles for the true religion continue to be fought, has condemned hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of human spirits to the nadir of nothingness.

Wars of religious proclivity are the greatest example of the malignant human hell that legitimizes the murder and killing of our fellow man. Added to the already prevalent munitions of aggression our animal selves are born with, this breed of violence, encompassing a small timeframe of our life on Earth, against differences of religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, beliefs, goals and vision of the world, has elevated the violence against one another to a scale the first humans to inhabit the world could never possibly envisage.

Conflict has defined human society from time immemorial. Our gravitation to violence has characterized our existence and our history. After leaving our cradle in Africa, from our earliest nomadic tribal predecessors to our most advanced societies today our fate has in large measure been determined as a result of warfare. Competition for land, homes, food, sexual partners and resources were once the sole reason for human combat. Today, added to those just mentioned we can include the much more sinister wars based on differences of religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, beliefs and goals. With the advancement of human civilization our primitiveness only grows. The introduction of new anthropological creations in human societal evolution have only exacerbated the need to kill one another. The reasons for human hell keep increasing with the advancement of our existence and the continued growth of our species.

Conquest, usurpation, power and control have sealed destinies and advanced humankind to where it stands today. It is these same that will help seal our fates the more we clash and more we bump into each other’s vested interests. Under growing pressures for the finite space available and as nation states compete for Earth’s dwindling resources, the human hell we have known since the dawn of time will only resurface once more, continuing to dance alongside humanity’s unsustainable desires, animalistic passions and our voracious inability to understand the complexity of who and what we truly are that has scarred us during our entire time on Earth.

The Human Hell

What is it about war that makes beasts and demons of man? What is it about destroying our own kind that unleashes such anger and passion? What is it about the human hell that returns us to the savage and barbaric days of the past? Our animal and primitive selves are resurrected with the call to war, opening in our minds the collective memories of an entire history of death, destruction and misery. The human hell opens the conveyor belts of accepted violence, a time when those in power make it moral to destroy a fellow human energy along with the advancement of entire societies. The human hell allows warmonger leaders to condemn to death the citizens comprising the military while permitting those who survive to destroy their fellow men.

From nails and teeth to stones and branches to arrows and spears to guns and cannons to missiles and bullets the human condition has evolved. Along with us, however, is our twin called violence, sitting on our side waiting patiently for the bells of carnage to be heard, clandestinely shrouded in the inner bowels of man, released with the call to arms that mutates us back to the animal world we claim to rule, not be part of. For violence knows that she will eventually reap what man sows, commandeering entire armies of enraged men to become exactly that which human morality and religion stands firmly against.

Through the cross-hairs of a rifle or the aiming of a weapon man stops being man. He who fires and aims has become beast while he who is fired upon is but a subhuman target, losing all personality and humanity. The human hell turns man into beast, Jekyll turns into Hyde and the world becomes a bastion for the demons running rampant in the human condition. Atrocities become accepted, rapes become desirable, carnage fills the air and humanism erodes more and more with each new devastation of land and man.

The human hell legalizes those most heinous crimes our civilization condemns. It makes heroes out of war criminals, replaces justice with destruction and executes devastation upon innocence. Murder and cold-blooded execution are given the legal justifications never granted in society. The losers of war become war criminals while the victors become war heroes, to be honored and rewarded for the crimes against humanity they helped perpetrate. War presidents are given full reign to decimate tens of thousands of civilians and to make toxic entire nations, ruining countless lives in the process.

The human hell orchestrates a symphony of macabre manifestations, unleashing the most deadly weapons known to man upon cities and standing armies. Artillery rains down from the clouds, missiles strike like thunder from the gods. Bullets spray mercilessly onto fragile human bodies while rockets devastate both homes and lives. The human hell war is called, released from the innards of the human condition, magnifying the worst symptoms in our disease.

Death, destruction and misery enliven the energy that feeds from human blood. The animal inside us awakens with the adrenaline rush of death and survival. Hatred, anger, animosity and revenge are spawned as our animal selves usurp our human minds. Humans become worthless, their lives easily taken, their deaths expected. Entire cities are sacked, children and women are murdered without impunity, human morals and virtues are made extinct. Human hell makes monsters of entire peoples acquiescing to the crimes against humanity being committed in their name.

The enemy is hated, though he is unknown. The desire to kill him grows, though he never hurt us. Unleashing pain upon him and his people is ingrained into our minds, though we fail to realize he is as human as us. The human hell blinds us to a humanity we once possessed, unearthing our animal passions that, combined with our human intelligence, causes a weapon of death and destruction, unrepentant, unrelenting and unforgiving. The human hell makes man the incarnation of evil, released upon civilization, thrusting decimation upon our own kind.

It is evil born of man that our religions warn against. It is our violent selves our scribes write about. It is man at his worst that we must fear.

The development of stereotypes, differences in beliefs and racial identity, the arrival of fears and ignorance, ethnic and cultural complexities, different goals and ways of seeing the world, auras of superiority along with competitive pressure for land, food and resources contribute to the ever-growing need to unleash the human hell onto our environment.

Genocide and ethnic cleansing have, along with war, been a part of the virus we call human violence from the very beginning of human understanding. Entire groups have been extinguished, entire regions cleansed of humans. It goes on today as much as it did sixty years ago. Our history has been marked by genocide after genocide, ethnic cleansing after ethnic cleansing, war after war. After every atrocity cries of ‘Never Again’ rise as if this time humanity will learn its lessons. Yet, as we know too well, the cries go mute as the deaf ears of mankind once more tremble with yet another thunderous blast from a hail of bullets and missiles wiping out an entire grouping of people.

In the unrecoverable echoes of our lost humanity can be heard wails of ‘Again and Again,’ never learning from our atrocities or the evil born within us. War, that most dastardly of all human hells, as old as our first pioneers and as dangerous as the most venomous human to ever walk among us, has created Holocaust after Holocaust, monopolized by no group of humans, distributed to all corners of the globe, regardless of skin color, ethnic makeup or religious beliefs.

War is hell on Earth, affecting humankind throughout time and space, inconsequential to the perceptions we might have or the delusion we might live. War makes demons of our soldiers, free to roam alongside evil as it infects once placid men who respected human morality in peace but exterminate its principles in war. Through war humankind returns to our primitive selves, becoming the smartest of animals, capable of exterminating its own kind and setting free the misery that has befallen every generation of humanity from the time of first beginnings.

The absurdity of human war has yet to be stopped, for we have yet to fully understand who and what we truly are. Inside us lie the answers; in knowing the animal world lays our salvation. We claim ourselves the epitome of modernity, of civilization and of knowledge, but ape like creatures prone to violence is our reality, intelligent, sure, self-destructive, you bet. War has never ceased, and there is no reason to believe that is one day will. War is violence, and violence is humankind. Our reason is no match for our animal passions; our younger, analytical mind is easily clouded by our older, primitive one.

The salvation to the greatest symptom of our disease has been at our hands since the first human opened its eyes. Yet over the course of our brief stay on Earth we have been made blind, thanks to our own devices, to a reality that is as humbling as it is frightening. Our egos refuse to listen, see or touch that which emanates from all corners of the globe. We fear knowing that which for centuries has been denied, afraid that we will see that we are not what we once thought ourselves to be.

The human hell will continue to linger and determine our fates. It will continue to maim, murder and decimate. For as long as we have walked this now scarred Earth the demons running in our veins have dominated us, corroding our societies and humanity, manipulating us toward unleashing the great evil living within us. In the end, the human hell called war will be our demise as our inability to comprehend who and what we are will crash with the ever-expanding lethality of our technologies. From rocks and sticks to mutually assured destruction, our violent selves have never changed. Except today’s version of yesterday’s rocks and sticks could conceivably annihilate entire regions and indeed the entire surface of the planet.

Warfare is ingrained inside the human condition, unrelenting and dominating. We have yet to exorcise this most terrible demon from our wake. Humanity and violence are conjoined twins, it seems, inseparable brothers thriving off each other. Where man goes violence and war soon follow; where violence is found man will most certainly be found. In all regions of the globe, in all peoples and societies, violence lingers about and controls us, from spousal abuse to declared war among nations. All it needs to resurrect itself from outside the crate that lies hidden in our mind is a war like leader eager to launch the trumpets of war. All that is needed for violence to release its most toxic cancers upon our civilization is for good men to do nothing upon the calling of the masses.

As long as we fail to understand the world around us and the true psychology of the human condition violence and war will continue to lead to death, destruction and untold misery. As long as we remain ignorant and silent to the control violence has over our race children will continue to be buried by their parents. For, as Plato is claimed to have once said: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

To deny the fruit of our impulses is to deny the very existence of our being. Our denial and failure to accept the reality of what we are is guiding us down the road to perdition. The corrosive unwillingness to delve into the internal realizations of our past, present and future will inevitably lead to our never putting a stop to the dastardly deeds our species is capable of unleashing upon ourselves and the lands we inhabit.

As a result, ‘Never Again’ will continue to be shouted in vain after yet another war, act of genocide or ethnic cleansing. The impotence of such words will only be seen in light of the omnipotence of continued human violence and war. In time, ‘Again and Again’ will come to be seen as the perpetual reality that haunts our existence, plaguing humanity from the beginning to the very end. We seem incapable of stopping ourselves from repeating a history that is all too familiar to us.

In truth, perhaps our very existence is defined by war and violence, and addicted we have become to the horrors our creative energies wreak upon our world. Maybe violence is as ingrained a part of our psyches as love, affection and happiness are. How else do we explain an entire existence, spanning many hundreds of thousands of years, scarred by death, violence, destruction and suffering? Only when we confront our animal selves and escape this delusion of ourselves as almighty creatures of chosen prowess will we find respite from our evil ways. Until then, only the dead can be assured of never again experiencing that most devastating of human hells called war.

The Bubble Burst :Replacing Tyranny with Tyranny

Through a dozen pictures that have circulated the globe faster than the plague American citizens’ delusional perception of the invasion of Iraq as being perpetrated in the name of freedom, democracy and marketed as bringing people refuge from tyranny to an entire nation has burst. The occupier’s true intentions have manifested themselves through the visible tip of an enormous iceberg still submerged below the surface. False pretenses have given way to sickening realities. The bubble Americans have been brainwashed into living under has exploded, popped by appalling images of torture and dehumanization.

The false perception ingrained into our easily controlled minds of noble intentions in lands far removed from our shores is imploding with each new revelation, with each new atrocity and war crime committed by those wearing boots made in the USA. As hard as it is for us to want to acknowledge, America and its military pandemic does not spawn goodness or honor in Iraq. It does not espouse virtue or fraternity with the Iraqi people. It is but the greatest tool for Empire building and corporate domination. It is the ultimate instrument a handful at the top exploit to achieve their sinister goals. Enslavement and subjugation of Arabs are its purpose; possession of strategic and natural resources for future wars its goal.

American foreign policy is not what millions of hypnotized sheeple have been made to believe. Its malevolence is only surpassed by its temerity, unleashing wave after wave of misery onto billions worldwide. What we are witnessing in Iraq today is the consequence of allowing our leaders free reign to decimate the lands and people of Earth for decades. Iraq is the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Latin America all rolled into one. It is black America, indigenous America and Palestine. It just so happens that the focus of the world’s media has shifted the cameras onto the Fertile Crescent. American foreign policy is the ultimate “evildoer”; the Bush administration and the neocons that control it the rotting carcass sending pestilence spewing into our collective air.

Let us cut through the all-encompassing fog of bovine fecal matter and come out of the grand illusion that our military is serving noble deeds by ridding the world of evil, fulfilling our calling that Bush has received from his god. On the contrary, our military is the essence of evil itself, resurrected to engender misery and destruction, occupying once sovereign lands, murdering and maiming thousands, making homeless thousands more and planting the seeds of unfettered hatred in the minds of millions.

The natural consequences of an occupying army are the perceived aura of superiority and omnipotence that is spawned in the minds of its soldiers. This can be seen by an oppressive occupation that has devastated an entire society, resulting in countless casualties through the continued rapes, humiliations, deaths, injuries and exploitation of a population. Occupying armies and its soldiers devastate people, thinking themselves invincible and beyond reproach. They become gods onto themselves, free to pillage, destroy, humiliate, rape and torture, knowing that they are the rulers and the makers of laws, thinking themselves untouchable to the consequences of their war crimes. It is history, and it is one more virus in the human condition.

The farce of our military bringing happiness, freedom and democracy to millions is being eroded by each new act of barbarism being committed. To believe in the nobleness of America’s occupation of a nation is to be trapped in the quicksand of propaganda. It is to be trapped in a corral of manipulation knee deep in lies, its festering aroma of decrepit fictions penetrating every cell comprising our minds. Freedom, democracy and respite from tyranny are not being brought into Iraq, they are being taken away, slowly eroded by a few at the top who have created this most nefarious of messes.

What we are seeing today is the beginning of the occupier’s monstrosity, a barbaric recording of a most ignoble history that in the weeks ahead will shame an entire nation back to reality. A pile of sand will soon become a mountain of disgrace. If pictures tell a thousand words, the ones slowly trickling into our conscious will undoubtedly collect for posterity the systemic abuse of Iraqis at the hands of American soldiers. An avalanche of evidence is headed our way, and Americans better be prepared for the coming onslaught. The bubble of goodness and altruism has popped. It is time to smell the air of reality the winds of carnage have brought forth.

America in the eyes of the peoples of the globe will never be the same. The hypocrisy of our illusion is giving way to the animosity of a seething world.

Crimes against humanity are being committed in our name, draped in the American flag, smearing a once great defender of human rights in the unconscionable sewage of the worst evils lingering in the human condition. The stars and stripes has been replaced with the bombs and bullets; the red, white and blue of the Founding Fathers has been transformed into the blood soaked, flesh stained, rubble laden, hate engendering, skull and bone creating symbol of oppression. A once great symbol of hope has become a purveyor of worldwide anger, no longer respected and no longer welcome.

As the world turns so does the once-positive perception of America as a beacon of freedom and defender of human rights. The tangled web we weave continues to entrap us, spawning karmic energies of revenge, slowly eating us from the inside out. America is reaping what it has sowed, planting the seeds of oppression and harvesting the bountiful crop of worldwide hatred. Anger against the United States continues to boil, the cauldron continues to burn and images of mutilated American soldiers/mercenaries/citizens burning and hanging will continue to be born.

The photos now shaming an entire nation are but a microcosm of the massive monolith of crimes against humanity systematically being perpetrated by American forces in Iraq and hidden by those wearing stars and bars. For every photo taken thousands of war crimes go unnoticed. For every recorded act of dehumanization thousands get lost in time.

We must ask ourselves why Iraqis’ hatred has only grown over the course of the last year. We must try to see through their eyes, stretching our capacity to understand and empathize with a people who have been occupied, humiliated, dehumanized, tortured, oppressed, maimed and murdered.

Over the course of a year American forces have lost the battle for the hearts and minds. Now the battle is against bombs and bullets, hatred and revenge. How can it be possible that over the course of a year an entire population has turned against the “liberators” and “defenders of freedom and democracy”? How is it possible that American forces have in one year accomplished what Saddam could not do in decades? Rebellions and insurrections are growing, revolution and outright hostility expand, calls for jihad and for freedom from occupation can be heard in the warm desert air, emanating from mosques and minarets.

What Saddam and Osama could not achieve in a lifetime America has created in a year. The unification of the Arab world is taking place. George the Lesser is, after all, the uniter he claimed to be.

The revolution to displace a tyranny has begun.

From the beginning of the invasion Iraqis were seen by American forces as subhuman. The British have said it, the Iraqis have lived it and the world now knows it. Over 10,000 Iraqis have died, many more injured and maimed. The occupying power does not even care to keep count. From the beginning innocent citizens have been murdered in cold blood, from checkpoints to streets to houses, American forces have killed with impunity, shooting indiscriminately, bombing without remorse.

Trigger happy soldiers are living out their favorite video game, spilling real blood and maiming living appendages. The fantasy of digital malice has morphed into the distorted reality of human malevolence, and real people with real lives, dreams and thoughts are dying.

Heavy-handedness has been the hallmark of the occupiers. Entire towns have been enveloped by razor sharp wire; bulldozers demolish homes, crops and lives; soldiers barge into homes, ransacking lives and possessions; thousands of innocent men are incarcerated, taken away from their families; the scores of innocents killed get no justice; entire cities are bombed without regard for human life; ambulances are shot and destroyed; hospitals are commandeered and mosques targeted; snipers murder anyone passing through the crosshairs; soldiers shoot wounded insurgents; young boys celebrating a burned convoy are shot and killed; women are raped and beaten; prisoners are tortured and humiliated; an entire population is oppressed and dehumanized, left to rot away its eroding existence.

Of course when your army is trained using the Zio-nazi handbook for occupation to expect anything less is to underestimate the Israeli treatment of the people living inside its indigent concentration camps.

Iraqis are seen, like their Palestinian brothers, as subhuman, treated like animals, dehumanized and humiliated, oppressed and left in the squalor of their exploitation. The actions of the occupiers are evidence to this belief. Protecting the oil ministry but not the relics of history or culture during the initial invasion should have been the first signal that America cared nothing for ordinary Iraqis. An invading army without an understanding of culture, history or the world was unleashed onto the cities and streets of Iraq. Arrogant, ignorant and out of touch with the many peoples of the world, American soldiers have in the course of the last year destroyed the minimal good will that once existed towards America in Iraq. Unaware of how the rest of the world thinks, the military’s actions have only exacerbated Iraqi, Arab and world anger.

If leaders of a nation represent and espouse the beliefs, qualities, intellect and principles of their people, then the debacle in Iraq was to be expected, for those under the rule of the Commander in Chief are but extensions of the President. Could we hope for anything more when George the Lesser is but an incurious, immoral, unscrupulous, selfish, uncultured, arrogant, unworldly and apathetic creature of dubious intellect and weak mental strength?

What has America become? What are we transforming ourselves into? What have we wrought to a people that with each glaring stare at the camera manifest complete and utter anger and hatred toward those now decimating both land and people? You didn’t think throngs of Iraqis celebrating after every American convoy is set ablaze is pure Hollywood orchestration, did you? The hate America has spawned in the Fertile Crescent can be seen throughout Iraq, in every camera angle and with each new passing day. Even the censored reporting by the corporate media cannot in all instances hide this truth.

American representation abroad is anything but altruistic. The sham blurted out by the government and corporate media that our soldiers are fighting for freedom, democracy and an end to evil is the exact opposite of what is transpiring. We are not bringing freedom, we are eviscerating it. We are not bringing democracy to Iraqis, we are spawning Empire. We are not ending evil, we are breeding and harvesting it.

If our calling from the Almighty is to unleash the storms of evil, suffering and hatred onto the world, as Bush seems to think, then only its recurrent floods of cause and effect will we reap. If our calling is to rid the world of evil and to bring freedom to all people then we must eliminate the Bush cabal and the neocon puppet-masters that are helping to seal America’s fate.

America’s bubble has burst. Its citizens are being awakened to the evils done in their name. No longer can one look at the oppressive occupation in Iraq and seriously say that the military is bringing freedom and democracy to Iraqis. No longer can we believe the incessant lies spewing like a geyser of hot bull manure out of the mouth of the Liar in Chief, who claims freedom loving people have been liberated from the torture chambers and the tyranny from the one-time American puppet dictator. We have replaced one form of torture for another. We have replaced one form of dehumanization for another.

Even Saddam, as despicable a tyrant as he was, never committed the dastardly act of forcing collective nakedness and homosexual poses upon Arab men. To commit such a grave sin upon Muslim men, in a part of the world that condemns such actions, is to stoop to levels even the most evil and vile tyrants dare not cross.

The sheer audacity to humiliate an entire Arab and Muslim world through the occupation and oppression of Mesopotamia, and seem to not care about the consequences of those actions is to betray the enormous bubble Americans have been living in for far too long. Concerned only for the well-being of the land stretching from Pacific to Atlantic, apathetic to a much larger globe and quite ignorant to culture, history and the world’s heterogeneous peoples, we have, through our fascination with ourselves, been made incapable of understanding the plight of billions of people who encompass the same planet as us.

Ours is a culture concerned only for the individual, for materialism and the almighty dollar. We have been made blind to realities, deaf to suffering and impotent to knowledge. In the misguided belief in our own omnipotence the crumbling foundations of our society we have spawned.

We are ignorant to the world, its people and its plight. We have no respect for culture, history or other civilizations. We fail to understand the views, beliefs, religions, philosophies and ways of thinking of the many diverse peoples we are forced to share Earth with. In our self-delusional aura of pomposity and superiority we are condemning our future. In our haze of self-aggrandizement the bitter harvest of putrid seeds is being collected, to be replanted and watered, contaminating the soils of America and the energy that lies within.

Iraq and the occupation debacle are the greatest testament to this truth. We are all responsible for the humiliation and devastation our military and leaders have unleashed upon the cradle of civilization. We are the smiling soldiers, we are the thumbs up and proud arrogance; we are the exploiters and the oppressors, the bullets and bombs. Our acquiescence and submission to the crimes against humanity wearing the red, white and blue make us all complicit. The bubble has finally burst. Saddam is what we have become.

The occupation has replaced one tyranny with another. Saddam has been reincarnated, and it wears Uncle Sam’s boots, made in the USA, stomping on Iraqi faces, kicking Iraqi ribcages, smearing Iraqi homes and slowly but surely kicking up a ferocious and oncoming storm of Muslim sand.

From the fall of Baghdad to the siege of Fallujah to the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and everywhere in between, the exponentially growing American mistakes are sinking an entire nation deeper into the quicksand of Mesopotamia. The swamp of resentment is growing, the putrid smells of death rising and the hornet’s nest of jihad expanding. Iraq is not Vietnam, but more and more, it appears to be America’s looming graveyard.