Into the Valley of Catastrophe: Crusade of Surge and Siege, Part Four

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Read Part Three


Barbarians At the Gates


From the very beginning, the American crusade of surge and siege – with much of it predating the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; think to early 20th century agreements with Saudi royalty of protection for petroleum, or the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected nationalist leader, or CIA coups and installing of tyranny, or support for Saddam, or provocations of war, or fanning the flames of violence, or importation of billions worth of weapons – has been a catastrophe for the people of the Middle East. For years the United States has guided policy and fates in the region, with its unchallenged domination of and immoral support in the regimes of the Middle East causing a complete devolution of a dynamic, intelligent and proud amalgam of peoples, continuing a stagnation of a civilization that has given humanity so much, and which has so much yet to offer.

It has been the support of tyrants, dictators, generals, kings, princes and sheiks which has had the most profound effect in the lives of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims, altering, perhaps indefinitely, the very foundations of a culture, and religion, that has for centuries been bombarded by the Judeo-Christian values of the western world. From Napoleon to Hitler, from the British Empire of old to the American Empire of today, from French domination of the Levant to the ceaseless criminality of Little Sparta in Palestine, the Middle East has been invaded, colonized, raped, pillaged, oppressed and exploited by western powers for decades.

It has been divided and torn apart according to the desires of colonial powers; it has been invaded countless times by Christian Crusaders seeking some combination of god and glory, power and control, hegemony and imperialism. Throughout European, and later American, interventions in the region, countless numbers of Arabs and Muslims suffered and died. It has been the west, and not the peoples of the Middle East, that have for centuries been the aggressors, the barbarians at the gates of Muslim cities, those doing the invading and occupying, those raping and pillaging, those with the messianic delusion to convert and civilize and control the Arab world.

It has been the west that thinks itself the superior race, thinking Middle Easterners inferior, sub-human heathens. It has been the west that ignores the plight of the dehumanized and the oppressed, all the while enjoying the spoils of plunder, over time becoming morbidly obese with the gluttony and greed cheap oil engenders.

The people of the Middle East were not, after all, the ones responsible for the Napoleonic Wars, nor the creators of two World Wars, nor the destroyers of entire cities, nor the barbarians giving rise to Holocausts, or thousand year old persecutions, nor the ones responsible for the death of tens of millions of human beings during the 20th century. The people of the Middle East were not planting puppet regimes throughout Europe and the Americas, nor were they wishing to convert, civilize and control the western world. They are not the ones in pursuit of imperialism and hegemony.

They were not bombing and killing and seeking vengeance outside their region until after the Second World War, after America, with help from her allies, decided the Middle East was to become part of its sphere of influence. Indeed, for centuries living in peace and respect, in the same lands, cities and neighborhoods, Arabs of Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith have long maintained a balance of tolerance between Muslim majority and Jewish, Christian minorities that has only been disrupted with the arrival, and the manipulations and gross injustice, of the western colonial powers.

For decades preferring to control the region by proxy, in a clandestine manipulation of populations and territory, the United States has become a catastrophe upon the peoples of the Middle East. Its vast assortment of puppets and castrated proctors have proceeded to decimate the lives and futures of millions, over the years maintaining a firm grip over nations through the devastation of freedoms and liberties and rights, along with the implementation of authoritarian and despotic policies. Unwavering in its support of these tyrants, America has condemned millions to the brutality of dictatorships, to the censorship by despots, to the corruption of incompetents, to the regressive policies of control, to the backwardness of monarchs.


Sponsoring Tyranny


Possessing the largest, most plentiful and best developed oil fields known to man, one would be inclined to believe the Middle East a bastion of equality and justice, with standards of living equal to or surpassing those of the industrialized world. We would expect a thriving democracy pregnant with the freedoms and liberties inherent in wealthy nations. We would also expect, as we do with rich European and American nations, that the countries of the Middle East would possess a high degree of education among its population, allowing for rule of law and foundations of secularism to prevail. We would expect a thriving middle class, with employment at levels supportive of such dynamics. We would expect peace and balance.

Instead, in the land of black gold there exists not a shred of democracy, nor an ounce of freedom and liberties, nor an appearance by redistribution of oil wealth. In the lands where humankind first developed civilization, Machiavellian authoritarians rule, police states flourish, and backwardness prevails. Here, where a few elite are reaping the bountiful rewards of having oil below their feet, or having the lands deemed strategic to the Empire, accumulating millions and billions of dollars in profit, building majestic palaces and living the lives of gods, the vast majority struggle to survive and make a decent living. Here, in the land of kingdoms and fiefdoms and gold-plated palaces, the majority of Arabs and Muslims live in indigence, finding work only as the serfs enabling their Arab lords to live in luxury. Millions manage to survive only because their masters throw a few insignificant crumbs and bones their way, a minute sum of the enormous oil and gas windfall they greedily ensnare for themselves.

While millions subsist on meager jobs, millions more struggle to find meaningful employment. Unemployment in the region is therefore high, with military-age males the hardest hit. Without employment there is no source of income to survive; there is no morale to feel proud of; there is no sign of opportunity, no sign of a future. With an education that is insignificant, for that is how kings and dictators want it, millions have no option but to become easy targets to the propaganda and the manipulations of their lords.

Indeed, in order to better control the population, education has become a tool of indoctrination, with millions of dollars invested by the elite into religious institutions that brainwash and mold vulnerable minds to the fantasy of theology and the backwardness of extremist ideology. Subsidized and sponsored by the same kings and tyrants, these schools, rather than move society forward towards progressive goals, instead succeed in devolving into backwardness and fundamentalism. Many Muslims simply have no choice but to attend these schools, for oftentimes they are the only schools around, in the process helping indigent families cope with the realities of daily life.

So long as ignorance prevails, and as long as knowledge and leanings of modernity are sequestered and mired in the inescapable grip of poverty, the Middle East’s despotic leaders will remain secure and without fear of their own people. So long as their people are not educated to the methodical condemnation of their lives by kings and despots, leaders will reign, sitting on the thrones of gold, feasting on the spoils thrown at them by the Empire. This reality the Empire tolerates and even encourages, for a controlled, undereducated and powerless people are more likely to remain compliant and passive than those who see with open eyes the pillage of their land and the injustice of their leaders.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, together with lack of education and feelings of injustice, oppression and inequality lends itself to the fomentation of extremism, just as it does in any culture, especially a form of extremism which lashes out both at domestic despotism and foreign control and support of that same despotic rule. Using fundamentalist theology to manipulate desperate minds experiencing desolate, unfulfilled lives, radical men of Islamic faith reach out to the many whose lives have been castrated by leaders supported by the Empire.

Radicalism in the Middle East, born of frustration, oppression and lack of opportunity, growing due to inequality, unfairness, injustice and persecution, nurtured by a corrupted and hijacked interpretation of modern Islamic faith, and manifesting itself through violent acts of terrorism, is a symptom of the disease called market colonialism, of an imperialism that cares nothing for people living in misery and perpetual suffering, where the west props up and supports and finances its cadre of despots and tyrants in the region, with their full array of crimes against humanity being protected by the Empire itself, at the expense of the native populations, in order to control the region’s, and the world’s, most valuable resource. Turning to Islamic extremism, then, is a symptom of anger, of hopelessness, of the presence of the Empire itself.

Islamic fanaticism, like its American, and Christian counterpart, thrives on the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the ignorant, and in those searching for meaning to lives heavy in suffering and pain. Like all forms of fanaticism, the Islamic variety grows and thrives by listening to the angry and the oppressed, providing answers and solutions that help maintain a semblance of understanding in a cruel world. It is those who have become easily manipulated and easily deceived that fanaticism aims to reach, for in these lost souls new, molded flames can be lit.

Thus, by combining the fanaticism all theologies possess with the living, walking carcasses left behind by America’s propped up tyrants and kings, gorging on the spoils of oil, too greedy to share with their people, together with American interference in the region, a grassroots resistance is birthed that finds solace and solutions in the beliefs of the past, thinking, rightly, that the devastation of their lives is a result of modernity –albeit a debased form of it – and its corruption by authoritarians sponsored by the west.

Deceived by extremism to hate all things western, because the root of their ills is indeed a product of the western world, they fail to see the reality that true fault lies not in western progressiveness, which is humanitarian, communal and universal in nature, but in the despotic character and oppressive policies of leaders that will not free their subjects to the great virtues of real democracy.

Here, America and her puppet allies in the region have made a vital and egregious error, for in inducing high levels of indigence, uneducation and dissatisfaction, in allowing despotism to rule and the voice of the people to disappear, thereby creating a Molotov cocktail of anger and resentment aimed at the Empire and Arab leaders, they have fostered instability and resistance, some in the form of anti-Americanism, some in the form of terrorism, most in the form of a society that grows more eager for change every year. Together with a perception that America has embarked on a Crusade of Surge and Siege against the Muslim world, and that her armies are engaging in mass murder and destruction of Muslim peoples, the only avenue for change is being found inside the mosques of radical ideology.


Error Personified


Instead of giving Middle East populations a larger share of the oil bonanza pie; instead of decreasing the verticality of the hierarchical pyramid, thus making society more just, fair and equal, with better standards of living, better education and more progressiveness; instead of allowing the Empire a just, balanced and reduced access and control to oil; instead of banning the pillage of revenues and resources, where capital benefits only the elite; instead of investing in enlightened education, helping to bring out of darkness millions of minds; instead of using oil revenues and investing in the wellbeing of their people; instead of halting billion dollar purchases in the west’s defense industry, amassing arms for wars that will never come, using weapons sales to funnel petro dollars back to the Empire; instead of alleviating hardship, resentment and anger; instead of sponsoring freedom and liberty and greater rights; instead of abiding by and protecting human rights; instead of encouraging an open, democratic society, the American amalgam of dictators, tyrants, kings, princes, sheiks and generals have done the complete opposite, thereby cementing in stone continued resistance, continued acts of terror, continued anti-Americanism and continued efforts to violently overthrow the region’s rulers.

In order to suppress, repress and control those elements seeking to bring down the region’s tyrannical regimes, the leaders of these states have created a ruthless police state based on oppression, fear, intimidation and paranoia. To combat the anger prevalent in the population, America’s puppets must enhance a surveillance and spying society, creating a police state that has perfected the art of despotic rule. Torture, disappearances, the evisceration of human rights, unlawful arrests, persecution and false imprisonment are but some of the weapons used by these rulers. Yet the Empire maintains firm support of these leaders, a fact not lost on the population at large.

Right to assembly, right to free speech, freedom of the press, the right of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, the right of due process and of protections against unreasonable search and seizure are freedoms not afforded to the peoples of the Middle East. These are freedoms and rights America does not care to ask or demand of its puppets. Free elections and the will of the people are but hollow dreams that cannot be given to the masses, for if allowed to vote, tyrants and kings and dictators and generals would be thrown out. To the Empire, democracy is only democracy when the people elect America’s chosen leaders, her new puppet upgrade. If the masses elect someone other than America’s champion, democracy becomes null and void, the will of the people become obsolete and collective punishment becomes policy, and state-sponsored terror. To the Empire, democracy is valid only when fraud or theft returns to power her most loyal and obedient proctors.

The people of the Middle East do not hate the Empire for its freedom and liberties, nor for its way of life. On the contrary, they would love the same freedoms and liberties, the same respect for human rights, and perhaps a better standard of living than they presently enjoy. They hate the Empire for its transgressions in the region, for its continued support for tyranny, for its hypocrisy in talking democracy and systemically supporting despotism, for its rape and pillage of both land and people, for its addiction to oil that has brought nothing but ruin to the people of the region, for its one-sided support for Israel and its apartheid and state-sponsored terrorism in Palestine, for its genocide and destruction of Iraq and its people, for promising Afghan reconstruction but only succeeding in furthering a decline to a failed state, for its quite obvious indifference to the misery and suffering of Arab and Muslim peoples, for its continued Crusade of Surge and Siege that only threatens to engulf the region in flames and further decimate the lives of millions.

Democracy and freedom cannot prosper in these conditions, for despotic rule and free societies are mutually exclusive. In fact, the populations of these nations have very few, if any, freedoms and rights to speak of, and millions are handcuffed to the heavy handed rules and regulations of the state, many of which resemble those of the Middle Ages. When democracy is spoken of, it represents illusions and mirages, not the will of the people, but the charades of the elite. In the Middle East, democracy is a whispered demand, yet an unfulfilled reality. It remains a dream of millions, and an enemy of the few. In the Middle East of reality, and not that of American fiction, tyranny dominates and democracy is nonexistent and all the while, American hypocrisy festers in the mind of the disillusioned.

Of course the United States is fully aware of the methods used by its tyrants to control the population, yet the support, whether diplomatic, financial and militarily, is as constant as it is unwavering. This tacit support of tyranny by the Empire, even when it speaks of bringing freedom and democracy, speaks of the high level of hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in the Empire. That American sponsored tyranny has catapulted the region into backwardness, that it has furthered the evolution of fanaticism, that it has given rise to resistance and terror, that it has made impotent the infinitesimal attempts at building democracy, and that it has created decades of suffering, poverty, oppression and lost opportunity can only be denied, as it usually is, inside the Empire itself. Inside the fires of imperialism, that is to say inside the Middle East, this truth is well known, and understood.

That human beings resent despotism and tyranny is a self-evident truth; that they build resistance and resentment to colonial machinations and imperialist assaults on their lives is earthly reality. That most human beings want simply the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness without barriers or hindrances or the control of the state is an absolute manifestation of who we are. To be human – and yes, the people of the Middle East are, in fact, human – is to seek and want justice, fairness, equality and fundamental human rights. It is to fight oppression and stand for dignity and honor.

What we abhor as a species are illegal, aggressive invasions and brutal occupations of innocent states, exploitations and repression of the individual and criminality and mass murder that is allowed to transpire and go unaccountable. What the people of the Middle East want is exactly what the western world already has. What they want is freedom from imperialism, freedom from tyranny, freedom to exploit their own resources, for their own benefit, for their present and future generations. What they seek is a chance to be human at the dawn of the 21st century.

What they ask is that they be seen the same as any other person in this planet, possessing the same emotions, fears and opinions, the same behaviors and desires. What they seek is the empathy and understanding for the lives they must endure, the tyranny they must live under and the Crusade of Surge and Siege the Empire has imposed on them.

So close your eyes, contemplate reality and not spoon-fed fantasy, envision and empathize, try to understand alien pain and suffering, put yourself in the shoes of the millions being strangulated by the Empire, and prepare to enter the fires of imperialism.

Inside the Fires of Imperialism: Crusade of Surge and Siege, Part Three

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Due to the great response and interest "Crusade of Surge and Siege" has had over the last week, I have written a fourth and final part to the series. Along with part three, "Inside the Fires of Imperialism," part four, "Into the Valley of Catastrophe," has now been published.

For those wishing to read more about the brutality of America's occupation in Iraq, along with its consequences, I suggest my previous essays, "Operation Iraq Forever," "Holocaust Redux," "The Killing Fields:Ghosts of the Walking Dead," and "Dear Terrorist Child." These essays convey aspects of America's Crusade that are not covered in this essay.

Also, it should be noted that the Israeli/Palestinian issue has largely been left untouched in this series. That topic is an issue reserved for its own essays, some of which have been written already, and so which are yet to come. For those interested, please see "The Untermensch Syndrome: Israel's Moral Decay," "A Malignant Tumor On the World," and "The Walls That Divide Us."

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Read Part Two

Through Middle East Eyes


In order for the peoples of America and the West to understand what has been and is currently being done to the peoples of the Middle East we must envision ourselves as human beings living and going through life in that most troubled of regions. We must exercise a humanist form of empathy that places us squarely inside the lands of desert and sand, the lands of the people of the Bible, of terrain full of mirages and complexities, of alien and unfamiliar cultures and languages and religions, of a history that predates any western beginning or thought, of a complexity we know almost nothing about.

We must see through the eyes of peoples we do not understand and are completely ignorant of, of peoples we have been conditioned through ceaseless propaganda to disdain and oftentimes hate. We must, in order to see into resurrected Crusades, know the unknown, so that we cease to fear what is foreign and alien. We must contemplate life as it currently exists for the people of the region, not the life we are made to believe in, nor the hazy reality imagined in our minds. For the sake of the millions now dead and dying, for the sake of the dispossessed and the suffering, the maimed and mentally destroyed, we must have an understanding of life in the Middle East, life inside the fires of imperialism.

We must, in order to comprehend the catastrophe befalling the peoples of the Middle East, imagine ourselves as people living under tyranny, under occupation, under oppression and modern day colonialism, in lands where the devil’s excrement abounds, where it makes blind monsters of men, where conflicts are born from the interpretations of fables and mythology, where theological differences succeed in both dividing and conquering, and where western colonialism has and continues to inflict great damage on millions of Arabs and Muslims.

If we are to understand the suffering and oppression of the Arab and Muslim people of the Middle East, we must confront the Empire and its omnipresent grip over the region; a powerful nation with omnipotent control over lands whose resources are needed to run the engines of hegemonic power; a hegemonic Goliath that methodically and calculatedly rules over dozens of little David’s by proxy, intimidation and through puppets. Indeed, to fully understand the 21st century’s version of yesteryear’s crusades, we must journey to the lands where greed and petroleum mix, where neoliberal capitalism and market colonialism fuse, where economic genocide and hegemonic drive intermingle and where the grand pieces of the global chess match collide.

For this present Crusade is not about reclaiming Jerusalem or the Holy Land, or of converting the heathens and barbarians into good Christians. It is not about conquest in the name of a god or a religion, nor a crusade to determine a clash of civilizations. No, this Crusade is about conquering and controlling petroleum, a resource unknown by past Crusaders. This Crusade is about conquering and controlling geostrategic land, about appropriating for the Empire the region’s vast fields of oil and natural gas and the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates.

This Crusade is a neoliberal one, designed to inject American style debauched democracy and corrupt capitalism into the Middle East. This Crusade, this invasion and occupation, this folly into mass murder and mass destruction, this criminal enterprise to appease the gods of greed and of the Almighty Dollar, is an ideological struggle initiated by the masters of neoliberal economics, who, together with those enamored with American Manifest Destiny, have for decades decimated the lives of the people who inhabit this condemned region.

As such, as much as we must see ourselves through Arab and Muslim eyes, we must also look inwards, towards our own selfish way of life, searching our self-centered egos and our ethnocentric bubble of delusion. We must learn to see and accept the role we have in the great damage done in our name. We must learn to understand, and acknowledge, that so much of the Crusade of Surge and Siege is a direct consequence of our gluttony and greed, our insatiable hunger for wealth and materialistic goods, our addictions to comfort and convenience and our complete and utter abandonment of humanist values as death and destruction is rained down on Arab and Muslim peoples.

In many ways, we, with our ever-expanding demands for better and greater standards of living, for more complete comfort and luxury, are the engine that runs the Empire’s economy and thus its power, and that of its rulers. It is the People that give sustenance to the Empire’s actions, and it is us who inevitably depend most on Middle Eastern petroleum. Indeed, every engine needs energy to give it life, to keep it operational, to maintain its many parts in harmony, to make sure of sound performance and of engine health.

This energy, of course, the energy we depend on for the continued survival of our “way of life” and our “values,” -- by which we naturally mean greed, comfort, gluttony and the standard of living no other nation enjoys – the energy that helps guarantee our “democracy and capitalism,” -- by which we mean the exploitation of the people of undeveloped nations and the market colonialism holding them hostage, all to maintain our “way of life” – as well as our addictions of mass consumption and materialism, comes directly from the black gold that permeates beneath the surface of the lands we inhabit, mostly from the nations of the south, whether it is the lands of Arabs or Muslims or Latin Americans or Africans.

The Crusade of Surge and Siege is thus a natural manifestation of our own vices and sins, of our unwillingness to part ways with a life no other people can claim to possess, and which becomes ever harder to simply abandon the longer it lasts and the more it continues to grow. Our gluttony has continued its devastation on the peoples of the region, decade after decade, because those living inside the Empire refuse to part ways with an unsustainable way of life due to an uncontrollable addiction to greed and a plague-like, insatiable appetite for materialistic goods. In the end, while we can feel good by blaming corporations or leaders, it is We the People who ultimately shoulder the blame for an indifference and a gluttony that stoke the flames that grant life to the engine of the Pax Americana.


Region Condemned


At the crossroads of humanity, connecting east and west, located in vitally geostrategic positions, the Middle East has long been a prize for any aspiring Empire. Many powers have invaded and occupied these lands and peoples, only to inevitably be violently thrown out over time. History is saturated with the hubris and folly of Empires long since disappeared, whose arrogance and wealth ended up but rotting, decaying carcasses when their adventures with the Middle East came to a less than triumphant conclusion.

The Middle East has always been resistant and hostile to invasion and occupation, with its people using the accumulated wisdom of generations, and that of thousand years old civilizations, together with a silent patience that buys time and studies how best to defeat its enemies, preying on its victim like stealthy lions on a hunt. Over time, these peoples have developed guerilla warfare and the experience of multiple occupations, slowly, and methodically, castrating the invader, one soldier, one supply line at a time. In a region that has seen much suffering, destruction and death, a war of attrition against these peoples cannot be won. Ideas of time, of black and white thinking, of the definition of victory, of analysis and reason, of the necessity for vengeance, of death, and of war and battle are interpreted and seen differently from western views. The failure to understand this reality has ruined the armies of powerful empires.

Many of the now defunct powers, it seems, failed to learn and understand human history, only to repeat the mistakes and the delusions of predecessors. They failed to read between the lines, failing to see a cornucopia of red flags. The region is as dynamic and as complicated as it is tempting, with theology, history, culture, society, territorial claims, commerce, ethnic and tribal affiliations mixing in a cocktail of fiery anger, aggression and turmoil against those powers that have tried to tame such a varied and mysterious land.

With the short-sighted machinations and the complete ignorance of the region of the last century’s western European powers the fate of the modern day Middle East was sealed. Like Africa, the Middle East we know today is one of artificiality, one that never before existed until the west imported the fictions of imaginary lines of division. Western, colonial power exceptionalism, with its belief in Judeo-Christian superiority and its belief that it was civilizing the inferior, “sub-human” Arab and Muslim peoples, created imaginary borders out of thin air, as always in its ignorance and hubris and geopolitical self-interest, carving nations where none dared exist, and where none should ever have been birthed.

Dividing lands, sects, ethnicities, tribes and peoples based on colonial powers’ interests and intentions was a mistake that condemned millions of people and resulted in a contemporary Middle East whose volatility, and importance to the world’s powers, makes it a region of immense conflict and of potential danger to the world entire. Colonial follies have led to the region’s greatest animosities and injustices, together with its greatest crimes against humanity, fating millions to live inside a geopolitical puzzle carved by the hands of the west.

Failing to take into consideration tribal, sectarian, ethnic and cultural dynamics, or the realities of Islamic theological differences, or centuries-old territorial claims to land, or the longstanding resistance to foreign invasions and occupations, or the injustice of claiming and stealing the land of continuously native peoples, or the sensitivity of the Islamic faith to and resentment in foreign entities occupying lands deemed sacred and holy, European powers set in motion the inevitable clash between the rich north and the resource rich, geopolitically necessary Middle East.

Of course the indigenous peoples of these lands had their destinies, and that of their descendants, decided for them by yesteryear’s colonizers. Today’s Crusade of Surge and Siege owes its genesis to Europe’s indifference and ignorance, to its catastrophic errors. In its short-sighted appetite for power, the long-term volatility of the region has been compromised. Yet since only sub-human infidels would feel the consequences, the west continued adding fuel to the fire.


Claws of Control


When the volatile liquid of petroleum, together with that of natural gas, are included into the Middle East cauldron – a reality that escaped all previous powers exerting force in the region before the turn of the 20th century – what emerges is a geopolitical and geostrategic prize on a scale not seen by emerging Empires before. Indeed, control of the region and of its resources – for oil, natural gas and water are today and will invariably be into the future of great strategic importance – will decide the fate of the present Empire, as well as those waiting in line to rise when America begins her decline, as she is presently doing. It is in this region where the destiny of the modern world will be decided, and it is those who dwell there who will be forced to endure the grand chess match played between powerful competitors.

Control of the region, while signifying control of its resources, also means control of the spigot, of the pipelines feeding and fueling economies, of access to these same resources by other nations, as well as control of the waterways granting passage to tankers headed to all corners of the globe. Control the Middle East’s oil fields and you control the world. Controlling the Middle East, especially having a firm grip on those lands where oil and gas abound, virtually guarantees that the Empire’s oil and gas companies, today gorging on the profits that war, insecurity and control engender, will assume major investments in, and the enormous profits from, extracting, refining, transporting and selling the Middle East’s resources. It guarantees the continued plunder of the Middle East’s oil by American energy giants.

Through control of resource-rich nations, the Empire’s energy conglomerates are granted access to and possession of these precious and finite resources, such as oil and gas, that would otherwise escape their colossal grasp. Such was the purpose of illegally and aggressively invading and occupying Iraq, where, years prior to invasion, the state and the industry unilaterally, and in secret, carved up Iraq’s existing and potential oil fields. This symbiotic relationship between the state and the corporate world, whereby the muscle and the power of the state are used to protect and further the interests of the energy industry, at great detriment to the people of the resource-rich nation, along with the knowledge, capital and resources of the industry being used to impregnate the Empire with cheap and abundant oil and gas, to the great benefit of its economy and hegemony, to the great detriment to all other potential rivals, is a classic example of corporatism, the fusion of state and profit.

The state thus secures for the energy industry those nations possessing large amounts of tapped and untapped oil reserves, only to later receive the benefits from conglomerates in the form of subsidized petroleum prices, control of oil and gas supplies, along with tax revenues from these companies and their products which, thanks to rising petroleum prices, further enhance the state’s coffers and further enable a transfer of resources, in the form of paying exponentially higher prices at the pump, away from the pocketbooks of the American people and towards the corporate and establishment world.

With a government saturated with corporate executives, lawyers and lobbyists, many from the energy and defense industries, and a revolving door of opportunity between the halls of power and the halls of profit that never seems to stop and in fact only continues to gain momentum, it is easy to see why America’s foreign policy in many ways mirrors the interests of the corporate world, especially those of the energy-industrial complex. Thus, the Crusade of Surge and Siege is a reflection of a corporate world swarming the Middle East like vultures ready to feast on the spoils of war. It is easy, too, to foresee where America will be focusing its muscle and its might in the near future, for one simply needs to follow the trail of black gold, the trail of greed and money.

As such, Central Asia, with its collection of despotic Stans, together with Iran, with its vast oil and gas fields, will most likely follow in the footsteps of Iraq – with her oil – and Afghanistan – with her strategic location and pipeline route – as the next targets of the Empire, whether militarily, through buying off of leaders or through market colonialism. Already on the radar screen are the countries of Western Africa, with valuable proven and potential oil reserves, with nations such as Nigeria already feeling the strain of possessing the devil’s excrement, already reeling both from western energy conglomerates meddling in the domestic affairs of these governments and through the pillage of their natural resources. It is the people of these lands which are at present already feeling the effects of oil and its many vices and corruptions. As usual, it is the native people inhabiting oil rich lands that will never see one drop from the massive profits oil creates.

The thirst and addiction for oil is also the reason Venezuela has become of such importance, for Hugo Chavez has become the exception, not the rule, to the Empire’s demand that a nation’s oil not be used for the good of the people. He has not sold out his nation, and his people, to the dictates of the Empire. With enormous reserves of proven oil, said to rival or even surpass those of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela is an obvious choice for American intervention, and will most likely become a victim of the Empire’s hegemony before too long. Its intransigence against the Empire’s commands will not be tolerated much longer.

Its crime, indeed, Hugo Chavez’s crime, which no oil-rich nation or leader is allowed to commit, is redistribute the nation’s oil profits to its citizens and to the state’s growing treasury. Venezuela’s crime, and why she is now a target of the Empire, is having the audacity to use its own resources for the betterment of the population, and the state itself. What has made the Bolivarian state a pariah of the Empire, placed in the waiting line for the Empire’s firing squad, is that it refused to comply or sacrifice its people to the demands of America. Her great error, in the minds of the American establishment, was to destroy the cancer of neoliberal economics, the so-called Washington Consensus, the disaster of debauched capitalism and market colonialism. For this indiscretion, together with its decision to keep oil revenues within the interests of the nation, instead of allowing American energy conglomerates to pillage oil and revenues, Venezuela is now a target of American hegemony.

The lessons to be learned from the harsh teachings of the Empire have been absorbed by the Middle East’s kings and dictators. The oil beneath your sand belongs to the Empire, not your people. It belongs to America’s energy-industrial complex. You will sell your oil at the prices selected by the Empire, at the supplies it seeks, as always in American dollars. You will increase or decrease supply as the Empire sees fit, as always to the benefit of America. The spigot ultimately is under the control of the Empire and, if your oil supply is threatened by an enemy of the Empire, your nation will be invaded and occupied by America’s legions. You will be protected only because the Empire protects its lifeblood.

If you obey and remain loyal to the Empire, not your people, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams, allowed to rule over your lands, allowed to remain a viable Middle East leader. If you fail to learn the lessons of those who no longer rule, or those no longer alive, you will cease to rule, cease to exist and cease to be a friend. You will be overthrown, replaced and forgotten. From Mossadegh to Saddam, from Iran to Iraq, to question or challenge the Empire is to seek the wrath of blood and the full might of America’s military. To even think of nationalizing your oil, or of retaining its wealth for the benefit of your people will unleash shock and awe on your land. These lessons have been memorized and incorporated, never to be broken, never to challenge the dictates of Empire and never to interfere with its unquenchable thirst for the devil’s excrement.


Empire Unhinged


What is transpiring in the Middle East is, more than anything else, a symptom of a disease a long time in the making, of the natural tendencies of Empire to accumulate for itself the blood that grants it life and the oxygen that makes it grow. Empires old and new have always sought to maintain and indeed expand their power, their hegemony, their standards of living, their “way of life.” They never seek to reduce their influence or minimize their footprint on the world; they can never lower the expectations of their population nor slow down the engine that has brought them to such power. They almost always seek to expand their economies and their domain, always trying to increase growth.

As such, with sustainability being anathema to their chosen path, with Empires becoming victims of their own hubris and success, with greed and thirst for power consuming its elite, with comfort, laziness and gluttony possessing its people, the Empire, either willingly or forced, must stay on the present course and must retain and ratchet up the same machinations that have for decades assured supremacy. Thus, caught in a vicious circle of its own making, the Empire must increase its power and domination and must continue its path of imperialism, of conquest and of pillage, all in order to satiate its people, its elite, its economy and its own power-induced, greed addicted ego.

Failure to maintain the ever-more difficult course of Empire would allow rivals the fresh air to grow and challenge, it would result in the growing unease of its people, and it would open the door for maturity and decline. The Empire is akin to a massive corporation succeeding under a neoliberal capitalist model, where to survive and thrive, expansion and dictatorial power are the rule, not the exception, where return on investment is demanded, with expectations of profit and returns higher every year, with market share growth part of the formula, with success ultimately lying in the exploitation of worker and Earth, of the uncompromising, merciless crushing of competition, and the buying, or acquisition of, smaller potential rivals.

By placing high barriers to entry, by possessing unmatched capital and profit, by integrating vertically and horizontally, by accumulating the infrastructure, resources and relationships its challengers need to grow, by dominating the market through its sheer size and strength, and by securing the unilateral power of monopoly a corporation can maintain its dominance and power, thereby keeping potential rivals at bay, and its stockholders happy. Failure to grow and expand exponentially usually means failure to survive, with investors fleeing what is perceived to be a sinking ship, and competition ready to cannibalize a dying company. Without growth on an almost annual basis, decline is sure to follow. Such is the reality of empire, much to the detriment of the empire itself, much to the detriment of humanity, and much to the detriment of Earth.

Empires continuously seek to maintain and grow, not slow down and shrink. For this reason America will not slow down its imperial ambitions, just as it will only demand that its hegemony be allowed to expand. It will seek to crush all competition, just as will try to grow at the expense of the rest of the world. The Middle East, the breadbasket of the world’s energy needs, is a region, and a prize, that no modern empire can be without, and thus, of paramount importance to those elite for whom imperialism and Empire is the next logical step in the evolution of America. The pursuit, protection and control of Middle East oil and gas is the only logical answer to the question of why America has established permanence in the region, why she invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, why she seeks to impose her will on Iran, and why she supports, finances and helps maintain in power the cadre of puppet kings, princes, sheiks, generals and dictators that rule the nations of the region.

What is occurring today, and will continue to intensify well into the future, is the expropriation of the Middle East directly into American hands, with the Empire planting the seeds of hegemony and control over the region’s vitally important natural resources, as well as its vitally important geostrategic terrain, for a permanent – or “enduring” in Orwellian speak – and unchallenged stay. Every new military installation or base already or presently being built confirms to the thinking world, which excludes the American masses, that the United States seeks not only complete control of the Middle East, but the exclusion of all potential rivals. Through its actions, America has let it be known that the Middle East is off limits to Russia and China, with Europe allowed inside the fringes, that it is the sole domain of the Empire, and that she will be in the region for as long as oil and gas flow freely from the inner organs of the Arab and Muslim underground.

The American flag has firmly been planted in the great majority of Middle East nations, with the Empire’s military establishing permanent Crusader castles and garrisons and bases, in dozens of countries, to secure for the realm the spoils and rewards of the region. At present, in the Middle East is where the lifeblood of the Empire lies, along with that of the industrialized world, where its energy for the foreseeable future is secured. Naturally, then, it is this region, more than any other, that must be protected and defended and taken off the grand chessboard before emerging rivals rise and old challengers think themselves resurrected. It is in the Middle East where a permanent footprint must be established, where the Empire must claim the divine right to plunder, rape, destroy and subjugate. The great catastrophe of the Middle East will thus continue well into the future.

It is the black energy that lies below humanity’s feet that propels the Empire and its people to unmatched wealth and power. And so, in order to understand the Crusade of Surge and Siege, in order to give prominence inside the conscious mind of billions to the genocide inside Iraq, the crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and the human rights violations throughout the Middle East, we must come to an understanding that as long as petroleum fuels the human condition, as long as carbon-based engines and products dominate our civilization, wars and invasions and occupations and the oppression of entire peoples will continue unabated by today’s present Empire, with its corresponding brutality and barbarity and violence and destruction and mass murder continuing to haunt us until either we put an end to our insatiable thirst for oil, or our insatiable thirst for oil puts an end to us.


Read Part Four

Crusade of Surge and Siege: Part Two: Cages of Conquest

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Hear No Evil, See No Evil


Americans’ ever-enduring, catatonic sleepwalk through the Empire’s vast array of bread and circus, as always produced by the Ministry of Truth and the Department of Propaganda, better known as the corporatist media, has succeeded in the creation of an ignorant, incurious and dumbed down populace completely bereft of knowledge of what is done in its name. With no concern for or understanding of geography, cultures, history, alien societies, the outside world and of the imperial aspirations of the Empire, Americans have proved easy targets to the manipulations and deceptions of the corporatist world. Seemingly unwilling to gain knowledge of anything outside American Idol or the weekly NASCAR rat race, the soldier ants and worker bees of the Empire are content to circumvent the horrors of war and the myriad crimes against humanity committed in their name in order to maintain their beautiful minds at peace.

Indeed, the corporatist media has triumphed in completely erasing America’s two disastrous occupations of Muslim lands from the peoples’ conscious and concern, in effect shifting the ongoing debacles away from the daily reality of Americans and towards the abyss of a most cavernous memory hole. Methodically and systematically, the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, with all their inconvenient truths, with all their disturbing realities, with all their corresponding death, suffering and destruction, have virtually vanished into a vacuum of nothingness, transported by the corporatist state into a clandestine and secretive reality, making of these disasters non-existent nightmares that vanish upon the waking of a new day.

This propaganda by omission, this “out of sight, out of mind” machination has virtually erased from American reality the disasters unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus guaranteeing in the public mind a complete ignorance in or understanding of a barbaric continuation to occupations stuck in the quicksand of fierce resistance and never-ending guerilla warfare. Thus, America’s aggressive wars, its imperial occupations, its crusade of surge and siege that has done so much harm to millions of people, not to mention to the moral standing of the nation, have become non-existent memories under cover of fog and haze.

To the American people, the hegemonic occupations now descending further into quagmire have become invisible creations that only surface in the rare instance that a branch of the corporate media goes off script and produces footage of death, destruction or suffering. Otherwise, the war against West Asia remains a figment of our imagination, a reality when our beautiful minds want it to be, an inconvenient truth that becomes fiction the moment we decide it is so.

As such, having been conditioned through the corporatist media’s ceaseless dehumanization propaganda to believe Arabs and Muslims sub-human enemies, having been manipulated into hating America’s new enemy and having the corporatist media erase Iraq and Afghanistan from the memory hole, the American people have developed a disturbing, almost criminal indifference for the millions of human beings dying, suffering or otherwise being affected by the Empire’s wars and occupations. To a vast majority of Americans, the malignant tumors that are Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, together with what they represent, are as hazy and as far removed from reality as last week’s episode of a favorite sitcom. These cesspools of immorality rarely, if ever, register in the beautiful minds of most Americans, only bothering the conscious when photos, video or whistleblowers surface to incriminate torturers, leaders and patsies. Only then are we forced to confront one of the myriad number of inconvenient truths the red, white and blue does across the globe.

When truth does not surface, however, we revert back to willful ignorance, aided by the fictions of television and the comfort of consumerism, for deep down, inside the dark recesses of our mind, we know exactly what is done in our name, though we chose, willfully, to erase it from memory, to suppress the reality of American criminality. Using denial and delusion in conjunction with conditioned brainwashing and manipulation, we have decided that crimes against humanity do not exist if those crimes are done to sub-human enemies. Thus the barbarian horde at our gates becomes undeserving of human rights and international laws protecting human beings because they do not fit our definition of human.

Thus, never do we seek to know the ugly realities of places like Guantanamo, nor how America’s gulags, with their brutal methods and tactics, will inevitably affect our way of life, or question why they exist in the first place. For us, America’s black sites are reserved for the evildoers wanting to destroy our way of life. Little do we realize, though, that our way of life is being eroded at these very same sites, one right at a time, done not by terrorists, but by those managing our descent into the breadbasket of despotism. Remaining passive, obedient, silently acquiescent and possessing the attention span of a gnat, hundreds of millions of Americans thus concern themselves only with what new toy they can add to the family collection, or what new product they can obediently purchase next, or what new reality show will entertain them the most. After all, we must preserve our “way of life”.

If Guantanamo and what it stands for does not directly affect us, if torture and perpetual suffering and dehumanizing conditions and sadistic treatment and the destruction of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights only affects the dreaded dark skinned Arab or Muslim, then America’s beautiful minds need not concern themselves or have empathy, they need not contemplate the inflictions of wickedness on their fellow human beings, they need not realize the crimes done in their name, nor the evisceration of American morality, nor the new normal being established, nor the precedence beings set, nor the trial and error being conducted, nor the techniques being experimented and refined, nor the machinations of tyranny being perfected.

Thus, through our transcendental customs, our American “way of life,” of methodically following the exploits of celebrities dead or dying, of aimlessly producing and consuming, as always becoming hypnotized by modern day court jesters, jousters, gladiators and chariot races, as well as exhibiting idol-worshipping, messianic-like followings and tendencies over the Corporatist Party’s current crop of presidential contenders, we have chosen to ignore the plight of the innocent – for most prisoners are – in Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and other places of ill-repute. We have thus chosen to be good Americans, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, mistaking ashes for snow, and pretending the evil done in our name does not exist.


Reincarnation of the Habitual


To look inside one of America’s gulags is to look back at dark history, to times of brutality and primitiveness, using the tunnel of hindsight to peer at the dungeons of the Roman Empire and of the Middle Ages, with their chained and caged collections of dissidents, enemies and scapegoats, their persecuted and tortured, and their sadism and thirst for blood; it is to step back in time to days of Inquisitions and torture chambers, to eras of witch persecutions and heretic trials, of silencing threats to power and spawning a black cloud of fear and intimidation throughout society.

It is a return to days when humans had no right, to nights of barbarism, to the depravity and indecency of our mammalian past, to the possession of the human mind by the wicked demons inherent in man. Looking inside America’s gulags helps us remember that over and over, for as long as humankind has walked the plains of Earth, when authoritarians rise, as always carried high on the shoulders of fear and insecurity, morality, integrity and human rights become lost in a sea of tyranny. These institutions of immorality help us see beyond the veneer and the hypocrisy that those espousing freedom and liberty propagate, helping erase the fog of deception those claiming to be defenders of human rights engender.

America’s archipelago of gulags proves, once again, that the “western” mantra of values, modernity and morality is nothing but an empty shell built on self-adulation, delusion and echoes of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. This hollow and cynical vociferation falls flat upon the challenge of evolving human rights, for in its claim of moral superiority, hiding behind the theoretical wonders of Judeo-Christian tradition, supposedly progressing away from the primitiveness of our past, the “western” tradition has been one of continuous mass murder, repression, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, suffering and destruction, most aimed directly at the peoples of the “south,” most directed at people not possessing the genetic mutation that turned skin color pale.

American gulags and its system of extraordinary renditions, green lighted at the very top of the food chain, proves to anyone not blinded by delusions and propaganda that America is not now and has never been morally superior to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of the republic, morality has given way to imperialism. Whether done through proxy, by puppets or by America’s own hands, control over the peoples of the world has usually involved some form of tyranny, as always dependent on the vast funding, financing, political support and training of the Empire. However, where once hidden under the veneer of democracy and freedom, under the ruthlessness of puppet dictators, America’s sordid, though clandestine, past has come to the surface thanks to the exposure of its methods and techniques, becoming an open acknowledgement of past indiscretions and present malfeasance.

From the School of the Americas, to research into psychological and physical torture at McGill University, to perfecting the art of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” to support of every tin pot dictator and junta in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, to the training of their thugs, enforcers and torturers, America has always possessed the wickedness of human malevolence. Its claims of being the defender of human rights is and has always been hypocritical at best and farcical at worst. Today we can see the real America at Guantanamo and its extension of gulags and torture chambers, the America the world entire has known for the last century but that Americans are just now waking up to. For today’s gulags are evolved creations of yesterday’s criminality, just as they will be the inspirations for tomorrow’s tyranny.


Entrapment


Guantanamo, with its cages and sensory deprivation and barking dogs and dehumanization and its stress positions and forced feeding and extremes of cold and hot and its isolation and its medical/psychological experimentation and its waterboarding and its darker, more sinister methods of torture yet to be exposed magnifies American tyranny and her hypocrisy, her injustice and depravity, her criminality and arrogance. It exposes, more and more, the charade that the war on terror is, how the purpose of Guantanamo is not the imprisoning of terrorists, for most there are guilty only of bad luck, persecution, retribution and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but the methodical evisceration of the Constitution.

For Guantanamo, and its siblings, are a culmination of desperation, an attempt to rationalize the supposed existence of Arab and Muslim evil, an attempt to validate a fictional war on terror by incarcerating people falsely labeled “terrorists.” It is as much a torture center as it is a public relations and propaganda institution, a way to manipulate the American public both that Arab and Muslim terrorists exist, and that the American government is succeeding in bringing the terrorist threat to justice. It is a Hollywood-style set with its corresponding fictions and illusions of reality, a scam to convince Americans that a war that is concocted is indeed real, that it is being won.

The reality of the gulags exposes how an initial hunger for vengeance immediately after 9/11 has led to the imprisonment, suffering and torture of thousands, and how, knowing the falsity of charges and the innocence of men, America steadfastly continues shackling injustice, deciding to stage-manage the illusion of guilt as well as sacrifice the innocent to the continued myth of the so-called war on terror.

Kidnapped, traded in for money, picked up by a giant net of vengeance and imprisoned thanks to false accusations by rivals, the men at Guantanamo have become patsies in a world unconcerned for their rights. They are caged in a land of limbo, lost to the outside world, made to disappear, their lives practically an empty shell of their former selves . They are the scapegoats of American mendacity, labeled “terrorists” so that we can feel secure and protected, so that we can believe that evildoers hate us for our freedom, for our way of life. They are the poster children that grant the military-industrial complex a perpetual stream of blood money, a ceaseless parade of war, an endless flow of propaganda. They are, quite simply, the bread that gives authoritarianism sustenance, the wine that makes drunk with joy the enablers of fascism. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead men walking, ghosts without closure, phantoms forgotten by humanity.

Innocent of criminality, these individuals have been subjected to brutal and sadistic torture, as always leading to false confessions, their barbaric imprisonment and systemic dehumanization more a manifestation of American culture than of their resistance and human spirit. Many have been physically tortured, yet it is the more corrosive damage of psychological torture that has destroyed their minds, and their lives. Many will never return to normalcy, for what their minds have surely been subjected to no human brain should have to endure. Many have become the guinea pigs of psychologists and doctors experimenting with various methods of torture, trying to make torture more effective, more efficient.

Many have quietly, and conveniently, under cover of darkness or media blackout, been returned to their native countries, their innocence confirmed by their release, and by the silence of America. Forced to sign papers preventing them from speaking of their horrors, or from suing their torturers, they return a shell of their former selves, damaged beyond repair, scarred for life, forever to relive the horror they experienced in their nightmares and flashbacks. Yet many remain, shackled to American propaganda, held hostage to the illusions of the war on terror. As long as the fiction lives their guilt is assured, their imprisonment guaranteed. As long as tyrants fear persecution and imprisonment for criminality, they will live in cages. As long as they are used as the meat feeding the dogs of tyranny, they will remain encaged. As long as the authoritarian leadership seeks the continued erosion of the Constitution, and of our rights and freedoms, they will linger in perpetual purgatory, becoming the rotting carcass fed to the vultures of fascism.

Guantanamo’s cages cannot yet be opened and made empty, for to do so would be to expose the fictions, the charades, the method to the madness, the sheer immorality of the Empire. It would be to acknowledge injustice of innocence, the depravity of liberators, the criminality of leadership. Guantanamo’s gates cannot yet be closed, for the Crusade of Surge and Siege must continue, the enemy must exist, profits must remain, our rights and freedoms and liberties must be destroyed. New precedents of American legality must be established, kangaroo courts must convict, enemies must be punished, propaganda must manipulate and the innocent must be executed in order to increase leadership popularity, to refresh propaganda, to feed fear and to politicize elections.

America’s leadership is fully aware of the innocence of the vast majority of prisoners, yet cannot force itself to act against its own inhumanity. For to do so would be to admit mistakes, acknowledge criminality, condemn policies and destroy the authoritarian dream. Closing Guantanamo would expose the façade, the hall of smoke and mirrors, ending the subtleties of fear and intimidation being built around the American public. Perhaps more than anything, freeing the innocent and closing America’s torture centers would confirm the monstrosity of what America has become, destroying the foundations of a new normal being developed, maybe even shattering the bubble of manipulation cast over the population.

As long as Guantanamo remains the motives of fascists will survive, and the indifference of the American people will be assured. As long as its cages are occupied, as long as its torture rooms resonate with the screams of agony and suffering, Guantanamo will be the symbol of a new Amerika, one at war with the Arab and Muslim world, an Amerika at war with its people, and itself. As long as it remains a stain on humanity, America’s clandestine past and her immediate present will be exposed to more and more people, thereby freeing truth and knowledge, liberating the brainwashed and emancipating the manipulated.

Inside America’s gulags the future of the nation is being determined, one malevolent policy at a time, one sadistic interrogator at a time, one tortured soul at a time. It is here where our way of life is being altered, perhaps forever, not by terrorist evildoers hating us for our freedoms, but by fascism’s enablers doing the work of those domestic evildoers that hate us for our freedoms, for our way of life. In this Crusade of Surge and Siege, the Arab and Muslim victims have become a bridge of precedence set and normalcy born reaching out towards America, becoming the scapegoats and patsies granting access, and an omnipresent reach, to tyranny rising over that city on a hill once known as the United States of America.


Part Three: Inside the Fires of Imperialism, to be posted 25 February, 2008

Crusade of Surge and Siege: Part One of Three

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Homeland Born and Bred


Sojourn into the outer recesses of a nation bordering on madness, into a land deeply disturbed and emotionally bewildered, a world of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, of fanaticism and fundamentalism, entering a case study into fantasyland and escapism, taking a pilgrimage into realms both of purposeful ignorance and blindness, , of electing lifelong incompetents based on wanting to have a beer with them, walking through the dark valley of indifference, climbing the monolithic mountain of hubris, finally reaching the hallowed halls of smoke and mirrors, a place where only the blind lead the blind and where the deafening roars of death and destruction are easily suppressed in delusion and denial. Journey, if you will, into a nation that lost its moral compass inside the dungeons of fear and hatred.

Enter what fascists call the Homeland, what patriots used to call the United States of America, now named, simply, and appropriately, Amerika, a place where corporations enjoy more rights and protections than the People, where corporations – through their products and policies – help kill hundreds of thousands of human beings every year in the name of profit over people, making them mass murderers on a scale reserved only for humanity’s worst; a land controlled by the military-energy-industrial complex, with war the engine for unimaginable profits; a nation now without a Constitution, nor a moral standing; a country that has developed a thirst for human blood and an appetite for destruction; a land of Manifest Destiny leaving death, suffering and destruction in its wake; a sadist entity that develops and refines its crimes against humanity it inflicts upon the people of the world by first practicing them on its own citizenry.

It is inside the bowels of the Homeland that the malignant cancer that afflicts the country can be seen. The inner tumor inflicting constant pain can be seen through the eyes of a people so psychologically damaged by the never-before seen pressures on the human mind caused by capitalism run amok— conditioned to live to work and not work to live, thinking that work will set them free – that no nation on Earth has more citizens taking anti-depression and mind-numbing drugs in order to bandage an otherwise perpetually open gash. It can be seen through a people so internally despondent that only escapism through hours of fantasy-television watching or ceaseless consumption of materialistic goods, a modern version of bread and circus, can alleviate the stress and the pressures and the fatigue and the frustration and the anger developed in the pursuit of empty promises, of fictional dreams, in a world of the unreal.

Crisscross the land of the free and the home of the brave to see those who serve and protect abuse the people they serve. Tour Taser Nation, a land where authorities routinely inflict electroshock torture on the People, pulling the trigger first, asking questions later, as always enjoying inflicting pain and suffering on both innocent and guilty. Students, suspects, the infirm, the handicapped, pregnant women, motorists, the elderly, those asking questions, those protecting their rights and yes, now even children, all can be electroshocked into submission in a legalized form of torture that seems to grow by the day.

Taser Nation has become Torture Nation, zapping one unsuspecting citizen at a time, conditioning the population towards the new normal of police brutality and state-sanctioned intimidation. Welcome to the Land of the Brownshirts, a place where respect for human rights and loving your neighbor as yourself is now frowned upon, a place where bullying, intimidation, harassment and a budding police state are the new normal.

Take an excursion into the vast hinterlands of the Empire’s prison system, a network of concentration camps holding over two million human beings, most imprisoned for petty drug violations, most black or Latino or working class white, many suffering serious mental health problems, many trapped in a vicious circle of indigence, unemployment, incarceration and oppression at the hands of the state. Ostensibly designed to rehabilitate, these jails do the opposite, exacerbating mental anguish, frustration and anger, easing the transformation of human beings into rotting manifestations of lives lost and altered. It is here where Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib find their genesis.

These prisons, these cages of solitude and loneliness and madness and survival and violence, are where American society discards itself of the unwanted, the undesirable, those not comporting to the mores of Puritanical code. America’s vast prison system is where those fated from birth to the lower echelons of society’s caste system end up, those millions tattooed with the shackles of American society’s perpetual enslavement, destined to forever live in ghettos, inner city reservations and Bantustans, devoid of opportunity and a future, forced to dwell upon the realities of metaphysical imprisonment, desperate to survive either by illegality or escapism, oppressed and subjugated by authorities, marginalized by society, discriminated against by the state.

It is here, in these rotting machinations of rusted iron, metal bars and decrepit institutionalization, of fetid squalor and sadistic reality, where America’s brigade of automatons makes its problems disappear, creating an entire state and privatized prison-industrial complex dependent on crime, guilt, sentencing and prisoners. It is inside these penal institutions that America’s sadists and authoritarian personalities work, brutalizing and torturing inmates, oppressing and exploiting individuals, fomenting racism and hatred.

It is here where America trains her torturers and her malevolent warriors, her “bad apples” and her fascist enablers, exporting lessons learned abroad, infecting the innocent of occupied lands with the cruel and inhuman punishment that is as American as apple pie. It is here, in these creations of human hell, that crimes against humanity are perfected. It is inside the gates of hell that experimentation becomes indoctrination and where brutality becomes legalized torture.


Rise of a New Crusade


Enter the periphery of the Empire, where fear and hatred together form silent acquiescence to myriad crimes against humanity, where indifference and unconcern leads to war crimes going unpunished, where ignorance of the outside world leads to ignorance of forgotten occupations, where ballots cast help ease into power corruption and criminality and mass murder, where the two headed hydra of the Corporatist Party colludes to condemn millions in Muslim lands to premature death and wretched suffering, where critical thinking is shunned and backwardness embraced, and where progressive, humanist ideals find castration by the knives owned by those living inside the bubble of primitive and extinct days long since passed.

Traverse a nation conditioned to hate the Arab and Muslim world – a land of a billion strong – with its corresponding depravity of jingoism and xenophobia boiling beneath the surface, ready at a moment’s notice, or upon the happenstance of new Pearl Harbor events, to explode in searing anger, for a populace injected with the venom of fear and ignorance easily unleashes its wrath on the chosen dark-skinned scapegoats of the undeveloped world. Programmed fear and molded hatred born of inside jobs and false flag events have unlocked the flames of bigotry from the inner demons of the Empire, creating sub-human scapegoats whose only crime is inhabiting lands the vampire of hegemony needs in order to satiate its ceaseless craving for power and control. Thus, in the lands where black blood flows and the devil’s excrement spills you will find the Empire’s dripping, black stained fangs.

Enter, if you will, the land of Christian soldiers and born-again leaders, a terrain belonging to the army of Jesus and to the vengeful, disastrous deity of Old Testament belief, marching off to victory with a cross in one-hand and an M-16 in the other; a nation of bible camps, bible conventions, bible thumpers and Bible Belts; of mega-churches, mega- proselytizers and mega-hypocrisy; of fanaticism and fundamentalism; of illogical – and damaging – belief in the myth of creationism and the delusions of abstinence; of agents of intolerance, thirst for conversions and theocratic fantasy; of protection and respect of life only if life is that of a zygote, not an actual human being caught in war, terminal disease or endemic suffering; a place where belief in myth and fable and of the never seen is given prominence over reality and reason and modernity’s treatises; of blind faith trumping sound science; of a nation self-professing and monopolizing blessings by humankind’s archaic and historically grossly incompetent divinity; of extremist theism, evangelical psychosis and reactionary emotion; and of evangelical sheep being led to pasture by wolves dressed in shepherd’s clothing.

Indeed, enter the eye of the Middle East storm, the creator of hatred and blowback, the father and mother of the fictional war on terror, the epicenter of the crusade of surge and siege, the fulcrum of Christian extremism, the home of the American Taliban, the disseminator of the self-fulfilling prophesy of a so-called clash of civilizations. From the Cathedrals of Consumerism to the Enormous Edifices of Evangelism, from the Hubris of Imperialism to the Arrogance of Righteousness, it is the Empire itself, holding debauched neoliberal capitalism in one hand, the mutated, distorted principles of the Cross on the other, that has birthed this latest of Crusades into the lands of ancient history.

For it is America, through military might and the power of its weapons, though financial intimidation and market colonialism, that has proclaimed itself heir to the throne of Western imperialism, arrogantly declaring itself the next in line, of humankind’s great historical powers, to reach the apex of Empire. And so, as the maker of mankind’s new reality, as the molder of human destiny, the Pax Americana, through its legions of neoliberal capitalists, religious extremists, corporatist stooges and delusional neocons, has created a collision all its own making, a vicious cycle of hatred born and vengeance sought, of cause and effect, of boomeranging blowback, of making an enemy where none existed, of declaring war on an entire region of the planet.

Thus the fictional war on terror builds the momentum for it to invariably become real, for one billion Muslims – the vast majority peaceful and moderate – to see, and firmly believe, that a Crusade of Surge and Siege has thus been thrust upon them by Christian and uber-capitalist Amerika. By this method the fictional war on terror feeds itself, growing from an invention of fascist Amerika in search of enemies into a mature manifestation of anger and hatred, a true, and artificially engendered clash of civilizations gorging on the boiling animosity of East versus West.

Through momentum that has been building since September 2001, the architects of creative chaos, the designers of bogeymen, the fathers of shock capitalism, and the makers of artificial fear have coalesced into an amalgam of malevolence, planting the seed they hope will sprout a perpetual battle between Muslim and Christian, America and Middle Easterners. In the desert landscape of Muslim lands they have found an oasis from which to plant and grow a modern day crusade, not to reclaim the Holy Land, but to simply claim the vast fields of the Devil’s Excrement; not to rain freedom and democracy on uncivilized people, but to firmly plant permanence in strategic lands; not to bring Christianity to barbarians, but to violently force neoliberal capitalism down the throats of the Muslim world. Such is the method to the madness of the Crusade of Surge and Siege.


First they came for the Muslims…


Navigate from coast to coast, witnessing the persecution of Arab and Muslim groups, most set up by the same government that later concocts charges and smears against them in the usually unsuccessful attempt at maintaining the illusion of insecurity within the greater population. The state propagandists realize that in order to maintain the chimera of an enemy, that in order for the idea of terror to coagulate in the minds of the people, the illusion must be maintained that indeed an enemy exists. It must be made to look as though the enemy lives among us, that it is domestic as well as foreign, that it is planning to attack our way of life. This, of course, also creates the fantasy that the state is our protector, and that in order to protect us, we must sacrifice even more rights and freedoms for security.

The use of scapegoats, in this case the use of naïve, oftentimes incompetent, illiterate, indigent and sometimes even mentally deficient groups of Arab or Muslim men, usually with no political power and no financial resources, is part of a formula of fear designed inside the rubble of the Twin Towers that has been used to terrorize the American people into submitting to a fascist, despotic state. With every persecution of Arab and Muslim groups, charged with planning terrorist activity, usually with little or no proof, usually later found innocent by a court of law, the state further cements the fiction of fear and the illusion of perpetual insecurity in the citizenry. Propaganda makes bogeymen of scapegoats and scapegoats make obedient cowards of us all.

Of course every new persecution is met by a thunderous manifestation of corporate media coverage, bombarding the airwaves with the fictions and illusions of the charade that is the war on terror. There are enemies in our midst, we are told, dreaded bogeymen intent on killing us, trying to shoot up a mall, or blow up a building, or murder our children. Yet, as usually happens, when the alleged plot is discovered for the lie that it is, when the state is forced to drop charges, when a court of law throws out the case, when the innocent’s voice is validated and the condemned are once again free, there is not one camera or reporter or journalist ready or willing to bombard us with the truth. The blitzkrieg of guilt is suddenly replaced with the utter silence of innocence.

The damage, however, has already been done, for in the eyes of tens of millions the parade of fictions and the presumption of guilt that has so readily been beamed by the corporate media have already established the fear and insecurity that America is under siege by the barbarian horde and its evil religion. The illusion has thus been established, the excuse to erode yet more liberties has been successful, and the scapegoat has again been made the object of growing hatred. The people have again been manipulated, conditioned to hate the very idea of a Muslim or an Arab. The enemy has again been vilified, dehumanized and ostracized, the very term “Muslim” becoming denigrated, its practitioners and believers made to wear an invisible crescent moon on their breasts, becoming in many eyes unwelcome pariahs in the land of immigrants and the home of freedom.

Every new so-called uncovered plot, every new so-called uncovered threat, every new depiction of evil incarnate is, of course, used by the Ministry of Truth to validate the belief that the state is protecting us, that our sacrifice of freedoms and rights, that our submission to a police state has been of great service, that it is indeed working and must therefore continue, no matter how intrusive it becomes, no matter how much it destroys the Constitution and no matter how large Big Brother continues to grow. In the end, the formula of illusion, of imaginary enemies, of chosen scapegoats, works to create a harmonious narrative of terror abroad and terror at home, of a war on terror that must be perpetual and ceaseless, of a state working diligently to secure our freedom, our way of life, the American way.

The formula creates a submissive, compliant and acquiescent citizenry, one that does not blink at the mass murder of millions in the Middle East, at innumerable war crimes, at the use of torture and the creation of gulags. The scapegoating of Arab and Muslims by the state and the corporatist media has succeeded in fomenting a xenophobic hatred and anger against those people emanating from and residing in the Middle East. The mission has been accomplished, for the masses, thinking that the shredding of the Constitution has not affected them because they are not terrorists and have done nothing wrong, have voluntarily eviscerated their own rights and freedoms, for eventually, the crimes and horrors and human rights violations and erosion of liberties committed against the scapegoat class inevitably is imputed onto the majority. In a proto-fascist nation such as America, it is only a matter of time.

First the state comes for the chosen scapegoats, using them as the key to unlocking the rights and freedoms of the masses. The scapegoat is the excuse, the mirage to eviscerate the Constitution in the shadows, with the masses blinded to reality, and creating a new normal of fascism and tyranny. Thinking they are safe from the claws of the state, the masses eagerly give up more power and freedom and liberty in the belief that only the enemy is being targeted. Eventually, before the blink of a collective eye, the masses themselves are being eavesdropped, spied on, surveilled upon, interrogated, harassed, controlled, tortured and disappeared. Eventually, it is their rights and freedoms and liberties that no longer exist.

Told today’s eavesdropping and illegal wiretapping by the state is to spy on the few Muslim terrorists, and that immunity for state and corporations is needed for our vital security, we later learn that all Americans have been illegally spied on, that Big Brother is watching and listening and monitoring us all and that we have no recourse to halt or file suit or seek accountability against the same companies doing the spying. Thus yesterday’s malfeasance and criminality become the present’s new normal, and the closer we approach the precipice of despotism.

The formula works every time authoritarian entities are determined to destroy the fabric of a free and democratic people. It is written in humankind’s history books, yet it remains ignored and unlearned by those who refuse to know the history of man. It is in our history that our tendencies are deciphered. It is in our past that our patterns can be anticipated. In the end, compliant Americans become good Americans, freedom is replaced by tyranny, rights and liberties are usurped by a police and surveillance state and a constitutional past becomes a new normal of authoritarianism and corporatism.

This is what happens when the majority ignores the plight of a scapegoated minority that is powerless to fight the claws of a despotic state. This is what happens when the first signs of smoke over the horizon are seen and ignored, only later realizing, much too late to escape its wrath, that a raging inferno enveloping everything in its path has arrived. First they come for Muslims, then they come for us all.


Part Two of Three, "Cages of Conquest," will be posted on Tuesday, 19 February, 2008

The Year of Living Dangerously: Part Two of Two

Read Part One


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An Absence of Will


Under constant manipulations, lies and propaganda, a nation of courage has become a nation of cowards. A nation that once questioned its leaders now falls lockstep behind them, blindly following criminality and corruption. A nation that once stood for protests, strikes, marches, sit-ins, challenging the government and seeking accountability now prefers sitting comfortably on couches or chairs, watching the world pass by through television sets or laptops, some becoming arm-chair activists, most simply rotting away their lives, preferring the life of a couch potato, passively ignoring the destruction of rights and freedoms, silently acquiescing to myriad number of crimes against humanity, and obediently shopping, purchasing and consuming according to the dictates of the corporatist world, their new god the Almighty Dollar commanding them to congregate at the Cathedrals of Consumerism, the Malls of Materialism, told to do their job and be good consumers, spending what little they have, even consuming with money that they do not have, and must therefore borrow.

What dreaded dark skinned bogeymen could never achieve Bush, the Congress and the mainstream media have succeeded marvelously at implementing. Under the constant threat of terror, we have failed to see the fusion of government and corporations, now more than ever, as well as the mutation of government into the instrument of profit, revenue and the bottom line. We have failed to see who, in fact, the true terrorist entities are, what the true threat to our way of life, our liberties and our rights is. We have become blinded to the political duopoly, the two-headed hydra, working in synergy and collusion, not in the interests of the people, but for the corporate world.

We fail to see that there is no choice, that elections are predetermined, and oftentimes orchestrated by the Ministry of Truth, that an opposition party is but a façade, that only the Corporatist Party exists, its two hands simply performing a juggling act, each taking its turn running the three ring circus we know as government. In our delusions of grandeur and exceptionalism we have become blinded to the reality that democracy is a sham, that real democracy is a threat to the corporatist element, that America has done more to destroy real democracy around the world than any nation on Earth.

“Democracy,” it turns out, is a synonym for American imperialism, a disguise to ram neoliberal devastation down the throats of billions, a method of controlling populations through puppets disguised as leaders. It is only democracy if our corporatist elite approve of its victors, only if they pledge allegiance to the Empire, at the expense of their populations. Hypocritically, the nation that espouses freedoms, rights and democracy tolerates and supports dictatorship and tyranny if it protects our interests, but libels and slanders real democracy if it audaciously protects the interests of the people. Thus, in the halls of smoke and mirrors only illusions do we see. In the desert of delusion only mirages can be reached.

The dark recesses of fear have made us forget that the Constitution is not just a piece of paper, that its principles are the foundation of the nation, that in its words and meanings are the cornerstones of what and who we are as a people, and what we as a species aspire to reach. Its contents are the eternal spring that secures our liberties and rights and freedoms, yet we have forgotten that it exists, and thus, have allowed its meanings and principles to be castrated. Today, the Constitution gathers dust in the annals of history, now a forgotten remnant of humankind’s past, becoming a relic reserved for a museum, its words no longer read, or understood, or defended against the agents of tyranny who have always tried to destroy what it stands for. Sadly, the Constitution has been disappeared, both in practice and in the imagination of the very people it was designed to protect and inspire.

Unfortunately, in our euphoria of comfort, mass consumption and materialism, in our concern for security and protection, in our myopia of short term happiness at the expense of long term vitality, in our hatred of those different than ourselves, in our haste to seek revenge and deliver wrath on those scapegoated for our suffering and emotional train wreck, in our complete abdication as informed citizens and knowledgeable human beings, and in our demonstrated cowardice and silent acceptance as American-style wickedness is delivered to millions of innocent human beings, we have forgotten who and what we are as a people.

We have allowed ourselves to fall hypnotized for the myth of egoist-induced exceptionalism, basking in our perceived greatness, claiming ourselves the greatest country on the planet, as if it is true just because heavenly deities make it so, even with our complete ignorance of the world outside our borders. We have used our unchallenged, unrivaled power, which we have simply chosen to abuse and mismanage, to arrogantly destroy our standing in the world, in the process eroding international relations, international law as well as the sisterhood of nations.

Our unquenchable hunger for imperialist expansion, which the masses nonchalantly approve of through our indifference, is conveniently excused by our historical call from the heavens above to a manifest destiny seemingly promised us by humankind’s gods. If we ever looked deep into the mirror, we would see that America suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, bordering on megalomania, becoming an insecure, paranoid, schizophrenic nation that must resort to allocating military budgets that annually exceed all those of the entire world combined. In our reality, might makes right, peace is secured through perpetual war, we are made safer by creating enemies, not alleviating their grievances, and talking to your enemies is seen as cowardice. In no other country on the planet are the teachings of Jesus Christ so hypocritically preached, but never practiced.

In our view, happiness is secured, not through living life, but by consuming and producing in ever-increasing and unsustainable levels. In our reality, slavery equals freedom and work will make you free. We are so happy, in fact, that we consume the most psychotropic pharmaceutical drugs in the world. Depression, stress and feeling unfulfilled, it seems, are keys to nirvana and heavenly bliss.

We continuously fall for the lies and the propaganda, the manipulations and deceit, believing ourselves blessed by unseen deities, living in a city atop a hill, showing ourselves off as a beacon of light upon the world to behold, and aspire to become. We have been blinded by a false patriotism that condemns those questioning the state while celebrating those sheepishly following its every command. We have been entrapped by jingoism and xenophobia laced in blatant bigotry and racism, thinking ourselves superior to all other people on Earth, even when we are comprised of representatives from all peoples of Earth. We are sheep, lemmings and followers, always mesmerized by talking heads, pundits and the so-called “experts”, never thinking on our own, always doing what media propagandists spit out.

We have done nothing to stop aggressive wars, the ultimate crime against humanity, resulting in the death of well over one million innocent souls, all of which we could care nothing for. Only American dead, of course, need to be mourned, counted and considered human. Only we are worthy of life, and death, and recognition. The suffering we have allowed our government to inflict is not of our concern. We have shamed ourselves in our passive acquiescence to torture, executions, gulags, extraordinary rendition, untold levels of suffering and the disappearance of thousands. We bask in indifference at the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and at countless other secret prisons worldwide.

We did nothing in the abandoning and discarding of the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law and in the trampling of the Bill of Rights. Yet the very nature of what we have chosen to ignore, to erase from our beautiful minds, is rapidly coming to our own land. We ignore what our nation has done to the majority of the world at our own peril. For the tyranny so pronounced, today and in recorded history, where America has vital interests to protect will soon reach us. We have taken the bait, almost continuously swallowing the hook cast by the corporatist world of profit and state, falling for each dirty trick reeled our way, assiduously falling for the propaganda of the corporatist media. We have allowed corporatism to run rampant, allowed ignorance to prevail and America to be altered, forever. Perhaps, then, we deserve what we get.


The New Normal


As we followed the tunes of the Pied Piper straight into the river of megalomania, as we slept through violence and destruction, as we sleepwalked the Constitution to the incinerator, as we dreamed the impossible dream, as we basked in the vices of greed and the Almighty Dollar, as we dined on denial and delusion and deception, our nation has been stolen from under our feet, transformed into a nation that has clandestinely spawned a growing police state, with a burgeoning surveillance society, becoming an authoritarian enclave, reared by indifference, nurtured by ignorance, protected by jingoism and xenophobia.

America is slowly, yet inevitably, becoming a country of repression, suppression, oppression and persecution; of perpetual fear and perpetual war; of growing militarism and fascism, of the entangled fusion of state and profit; of an absence of rights, freedoms and liberties; of so-called democracy that is today but a sham, a concoction of snake oil and farce where choice is but a fleeting illusion, where candidates are selected through the manipulations and illusions presented by the Ministry of Truth, where elections are but a mechanism of control, and of deception, where decisions are made not by those who cast the votes, but by those who count them; and so-called representation of the people a mirage to hide the selling of government to the highest bidder by a two-headed hydra whose dual purposes of expanding power to corporations and unleashing further imperialism for the empire, both at the expense of the people, have furthered the steady decline of the nation into the grips of corporatism.

The corporatist war against the American people thus continues unabated, its slow, yet assured, manifestations and reverberations crisscrossing the country like an invisible tsunami. With giant clandestine waves crashing ashore, the tsunami of the last seven years has eroded, with reckless abandon, the foundations of the Constitution and of the nation itself. All that is needed for authoritarians and corporatists to complete their project, all that is needed for America to descend fully into the depths of Big Brother and complete surveillance and a thriving police state and martial law and tyranny and a final shredding of the Constitution, and thus our freedoms, rights and liberties, is another shock to our senses, whether it be economic or societal collapse, whether a depression or through another false flag operation or yet one more preemptive war in the Middle East. All that is needed for this evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing, just as has been done for the past seven years, just as has been done for the last several decades.

For without so much as a protest or a whimper, the blood of liberty and freedom is hemorrhaging from the soul of every American. Paralyzed by corporatist-induced fear and ignorance, catatonic to the clear signals of an approaching cyclone of American style-fascism, hypnotized by the warmth and comfort that consumerism and materialism provide, the American people have become blind to the war being waged against our interests, and our lives. Yes, the crusade by corporatists, neocons, neoliberals and natural born authoritarians against the citizens of the nation has gone largely unnoticed, albeit with a few clusters of informed patriots desperately trying to sound the alarm of the coming storm.

The infrastructure of tyranny has meticulously been built, deeply embedded within the system itself, under the radar from the majority of the people, in complete collusion by the political duopoly and all three branches, its foundations created by the decimation of the Bill of Rights, the destruction of civil liberties, the construction of draconian laws and regulations – sometimes birthed in secret or in full openness – ,the insertion of precedence or opinions validating criminality and tyranny, and by the conditioning of the populace, in order to insert the “new normal” into the consciousness, of propaganda meant to indoctrinate us into accepting all levels of wrongdoing and criminality both by the state and the corporate world acting in unison, from torture to executions to mass murder to the need for constant surveillance of our streets, of our communications and our daily lives, and to the refusal to prosecute mercenaries guilty of crimes against humanity.

The new normal has penetrated our nation, and our psyches, since that dreadful day in September 2001, making sure that the political pendulum shifted further to the right, further to the tendencies of authoritarianism, making the Democratic Party a reincarnation of yesterday’s Republicans and mutating the Republican Party towards a full embrace of the tendencies of fascism and authoritarianism. Gone, perhaps forever, is a valid progressive ideal in politics, a left of center belief that was once evolving and leaning towards the social democracies of Europe, with an emphasis on doing what was best for the whole, not just the individual.

Shifted, too, are the political leanings of tens of millions of Americans, away from the values of progressiveness, and hence those of Jesus Christ, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., turning instead towards the comforts of security and protection, albeit false comforts, finding solace in extremist and predatory theology, in the scapegoating of the different and the unknown, in the groupthink emotions of nationalism and tribalism, in the ignition of flames inherent in jingoism and xenophobia, in voluntarily placing blind, loyal faith in media and the state, in embracing Big Brother security, in welcoming authoritarian false promises, and in freely, and gladly, giving up freedoms and rights in exchange for protection by the state.

Indeed, sacrificing an entire nation’s freedoms and rights, both in the present and future, in exchange for a false sense of security -- born and bred by corporate and state propaganda, of an enemy concocted and over-exaggerated – and purposefully looking the other way as the country becomes more and more corporatist, in essence abandoning our citizen role in preserving to our progeny what we inherited, will forever denigrate our generation’s legacy. In history’s future volumes, today’s American generation will be forever recorded as having fulfilled a complete and utter collapse in the face of cowardice, ignorance, indifference, fear and materialistic comfort, becoming incapable of preserving and fighting for the foundation of the nation, namely, the principles embodied in the Constitution.

For the generation that so easily gave away the rights, liberties and freedoms that had been preserved for centuries, fought in blood, sweat and tears, in bravery and courage, in wars and battles, and instead allowed itself the pleasure of getting raped by American corporatism, only negative connotations will be recorded. America, sadly, has devolved from the Greatest Generation to the Coward Generation, – or the Failure Generation – in only a few short decades, in only a few mutations of the gene pool, in the span of nothingness in the realm of history’s vast plethora of sad stories.

With the arrival of the next shock to the system, the next catalyzing and transformative event, the next preemptive act of aggression, the next Gulf of Tonkin-like staged event, the next false flag act of terror to scar our psyches, or the next economic strangulation designed to pillage ever more wealth from the working and middle classes, the elaborate and carefully implanted infrastructure of authoritarian rule will be allowed to awaken.

All the laws that have been put in place validating martial law and a surveillance society and Big Brother and warrantless wiretapping and intrusive invasions of privacy and domestic spying and dissident arrests and torture and a police state, as well as those laws that have destroyed habeas corpus and due process and the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and all freedoms, rights and liberties we used to hold dear will emerge like a malignant virus that has laid dormant inside a body for years, cautiously hiding and buying its time until that day when chaos reigns supreme, when fear induces stress, suddenly springing to life with the onset of a weak immune system, launching an onslaught against antibodies made impotent to fight off its orchestrated and calibrated assault by years of conditioning, brainwashing, gluttony and fear.

All that separates America from Amerika is one shock, one event, one opportunity for those whose enemies are freedom and democracy to orchestrate the Amerika of their sinister dreams. Most do not know the seriousness of the threat, nor the perilous danger roaming among us, nor the sinister ideology of our so-called leaders, nor how imminently close we are to a vastly different America. For this cabal, this domestic enemy, the people are the obstacle, the real, and true, enemy. It is this group that is our greatest threat, our real enemy.

Until we realize that we have been led to believe for the last seven years is but a charade, that the “war on terror” is but yet one more method of control, that our pursuit of terror has led us in the wrong direction, that the real terrorist entity is domestic, not foreign, that we have been unleashing hell on Earth on the wrong, and innocent, people, and that it is this internal threat that hates us for our way of life, we will never stop the hemorrhaging of our freedoms, rights and liberties.

One day we will awaken to a nation we will not recognize, a nightmare on a hill, a beacon of tyranny, a land of the meek, a home of the slave. Every day that passes is a day corporatism advances, and we retreat, a day it grows in power, and we lose strength. Every day that is allowed to transpire in favor of the corporatist element is a day the People’s chains of bondage grow stronger. Every day we let pass is a day we slide further down the corporatist black hole, allowing our minds to become more ignorant, our reality to be created by the Ministry of Truth, our lives to be further shackled to the invisible dungeon of Amerika’s tomorrow.

One day, in the not too distant future, we will awaken and open our eyes only to see that what we once took for granted no longer exists, what we assumed would always exist has been made extinct, what we forgot even existed has been washed away, what we failed to study and understand has been revised, and what we failed to cherish and defend has been destroyed, forever.

We will finally realize what our fathers and mothers and grandparents and great-grandparents found out only through the spilling of blood, sweat and tears, experienced through many years of activism, bravery and the uncompromising power of the people united. We will realize, after it is all too late, that those in power give nothing and, if given the chance, take away everything; that everything the people at present have, that every freedom, right and liberty embedded in the foundations of America have been sought, demanded, struggled, fought for, defended and protected.

It is only because of generations of Americans past that we enjoy our privileges, with each successive generation safeguarding what was once gained, and fighting for what needed to be attained. This trans-generational wall of solidarity built the accumulated freedoms and rights we had at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Sadly, if we fail to act, if we fail to wake to the sounds of alarm, the wall will come undone, eroded by what we have become as a people, the unbreakable brick and mortar, constructed over 200 years of struggle, crumbling and succumbing to the powerful tsunami of corporatism and authoritarianism fast approaching our shores.

The Year of Living Dangerously is upon us. The sorrows of empire have arrived. In this struggle, America entire is Ground Zero. The clock is ticking, the time is wasting. Would we rather live in tyranny, or fight for freedom? Live in our America, or the corporatist Amerika? In this fight for our way of life, which citizenry will show up: yesterday’s version of the People, or today’s? The choice, as always, is ours.


Read Part One