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

Enter the Empire

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Comfort and Masquerades


The wealthiest nation-state the world has ever seen has for the last sixty years been standing atop the upper crust of humankind, basking in the splendor of unfathomable richness, enjoying unprecedented standards of living, accumulating power and control at tremendous speed and becoming, at the expense of the planet and its inhabitants, the latest incarnation of Rome. America, that city on a hill, from where modern man’s guiding light emanates, that nation anointed by man’s imaginary deity, has, since the end of World War II, become the most powerful nation humankind has ever produced.

Today, 300 million people live inside its borders, enjoying levels of comfort and luxury never before seen. America has for the last two centuries become the nation whose attractiveness has become a magnet to millions upon millions of immigrants from all corners of the globe. No other nation on Earth has the wealth of the United States, and only a few countries come close to matching its immense power. It is this enormous wealth and comfort, leaps beyond that of most nations, along with myriad number of freedoms and rights for decades granted its people, that compel humans everywhere to try to migrate inside its borders.

Indeed, while most people of the world, billions strong, still struggle to subsist and survive on a daily basis, scrapping to eat, clothe and house themselves, living in shantytowns and slums and shacks and ghettos and cardboard huts, lacking the basic infrastructure and investments for adequate living, most citizens of the new Rome face no such hurdles or difficulties. To the millions residing inside the bowels of the Empire, the obstacles, anxieties and problems facing billions never become an issue or a reality that must be confronted on a personal and daily basis. Indeed, the gap between Americans’ standards of living and that of most of the world’s people is enormous to the point of absurdity.

Most Americans do not go hungry, they do not subsist on two or five dollars a day, or anywhere close to that, having to toil in sweatshops or relying for food on the scavenger techniques of family members combing through a landfill. They do not have to combat embedded corruption or the complete looting of their treasure. Americans have not had to live in tyranny, in dictatorship, in despotism, having to suffer the consequences of turmoil, of disease, mass drought and internal strife. They have not had to suffer through insecurity, war, and state sanctioned rape and murder.

Americans enjoy liberties, freedoms and rights that few peoples are allowed to possess in their native lands. In fact, it is those nation-states that are under the grip of America, those with puppet regimes loyal to the Empire and not their people, that paradoxically are prevented from enjoying the freedoms and rights and liberties that the Empire bestows upon its populace. It is those American sponsored dictators, royalty and puppet politicians that are often cited for fostering and nurturing the worst violations of human rights. It is in those foreign lands dominated by America where one is likely to find that democracy is non-existent and the rights of the people easily expendable.

Yet, it is those freedoms that Americans take for granted that are in many instances denied to billions, and it is those rights strongly desired by billions that are presently being eroded in America by the indifference of millions. For, in reality, the Empire has rarely, if ever, cared for the rights and freedoms of the peoples of the world, though to hear her words would be to believe the opposite. Actions, however, speak louder than words. And in her actions, the Empire has shown an indifference to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for billions of human beings. This truth can be seen in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where for years billions of people have been held captive – much to their detriment and suffering – to America and her puppets and proctors.

To the elite that control the Empire, the principles of the American Constitution and Bill of Rights are but a hollow illusion designed to wet the pants of human beings everywhere, especially to the citizens of the Empire itself. Like much of what America stands for, with its glazed and revisionist history, its self-created exceptionalism, its fictional values and beliefs, these documents are but a myth used as a tool to pacify and retain a compliant people. By offering the necessary amount of freedoms and rights, by allowing us to have liberties we demand, the elite placate the fire within us, containing a populace that is better controlled through calmness than by anger and animosity. Content with our conditioned illusions and myths, our belief that we live in the greatest nation the world has ever seen, we are less likely to stir trouble, even as the Empire decimates and subjugates the planet.

There is no doubt that those living inside the belly of the Empire have a much better life than most human beings, yet it is also true that because of this comfort level, because of our high standards of living, we are less likely to rise in anger or frustration. We are less likely to question the state or its elite, thereby helping to maintain a status quo where the powerful are free to grow in power not only over the rest of the world, but over us as well. Because we live in adequate comfort, with few worries of survival or fears of entering perpetual indigence, we are less likely to demand change or confront the criminality of leaders.

Indeed, the genius behind our silent passivity, our indifference to confront wrongdoing, our inability to detect what is being done to us, is in the elite giving us a bigger piece of the pie than has ever been given the masses. The elite of the Empire has found that by granting us slightly larger crumbs, bones and scraps than before, by willing to forego slight sums of change, the masses can be more easily directed and controlled. By giving us what amounts to a comfortable lifestyle, beyond the realm of squalor and subsistence, under the illusion that we own our own destiny, that we are not serfs or slaves to the system, the elite have discovered a formula that in essence is the gift that keeps on giving.

Not only do the masses remain passive and quiet, not only do they obey commands better and become more acquiescent to the dictates of the elite, they also become even bigger cogs in the system itself, becoming the spark plugs of Empire, the automatons of capitalism, consuming and producing, producing and consuming, returning all wages earned back to their masters, all for a little extra comfort, a little extra ego boosting. The elite formula for success is thus an attack on our human need to live in comfort, in attacking our inability to control our vices such as greed, gluttony and the desire to continue accumulating material wealth.

Thanks to the extra crumbs, bones and scraps given to us the elite are better able to unleash the machinations of the system upon our unsuspecting masses. Together with the continued and purposeful dumbing down of America’s youth and the incessant manipulation of our minds through television, the comfort level we have today – though never before attained by human beings – has created a populace slow to wake and slower still to question.

The genius of all three mechanisms mentioned above, intertwined and fused together like a new strand of mutated DNA, is that the modern day version of Rome is free to do as it pleases, both domestically and abroad, without suffering the repercussions and animosity of its citizens. With its most potent enemy – the people themselves – contained and in check, free of anger and the flames of dissent, the elite at the helm of the Empire can stay the course well into the future, heading straight to long-planned goals of continued exploitation, subjugation and control over billions of human beings.

Thus can be seen in this present incarnation of Empire building that, unlike most nations, domestic disturbance, protest and dissent in America remains a controllable nuisance bearing no threat to the system. Compliant and obedient, the American people have little to complain about, certainly no grievances to bear or demands to be made, unlike so many billions of human beings who take to the streets in united anger and resentment, their flames still lit passionately with the call of injustice or the shout of corruption. In many parts of the world, taking to the streets to demand change remains a power not yet extinguished. In America, this power of the people has for all intents and purposes been made obsolete, with the fire of protest and dissent now extinguished by a flame-retardant called greed, gluttony and the pursuit of materialistic comfort.


Empire Addicted, People Castrated


The materialist freedoms given over the last two centuries to the citizens of America have allowed the nation to prosper magnificently in the short run. However, these freedoms have been granted without seeing or envisioning the irreparable damage being done to it in the long term. It can be said that in order to secure short-term prosperity and unparalleled wealth accumulation, the long run success of the Empire has been sacrificed, for unsustainable accumulation of wealth cannot be maintained without destroying the very bosom that feeds it sustenance in the first place. Thus, in a battle between saving the environment and saving the Empire, the environment will sadly, and to our great detriment, always lose.

The destruction of the environment, from where natural resources are derived, later becoming the wealth and capital of the Empire, will thus continue unabatedly until it can be exploited no longer, for the environment is a finite resource, not an unending stream of dollar bills coming off the printing presses. With the depletion of the world’s environment and its resources already under tremendous strain and pressure, the Empire will not be able to sustain its wealth and power, forcing it to confront the reality that the same short-term thinking that engendered its power has now guaranteed its collapse. To combat this potential threat to its hegemony, a nation already saturated in arrogance will become even more predatory, more imperialist, forced through greed and gluttony to target regions of the planet whose resources, both human and natural, it desperately craves.

Like a heroin addict desperately in search of a fix, a rising Empire whose vision and greed only allowed it to see in the exploitation of the short term will find itself in need of an ever-greater hit, for like an addict, ever more quantities are needed to satisfy an ever-increasing craving for a high. Therefore, in its pursuit for the last vestiges of wealth accumulation through resource exploitation, the Empire will be forced to become ever more authoritarian, both at home and abroad. It will become ever more desperate, ever more willing to push the limits of human morality. To sustain itself, to attain the same level of gluttony that only increases with each passing decade, the world entire will become fair game to the war machine of the Empire. This will of course include its citizens as well, for most have been, are and will become expendable in the pursuit of global hegemony.

The very freedoms and rights of the citizenry will in the approaching future become hindrances in sustaining and expanding the Empire, for to maintain and enhance its power well into the future, the Empire must inevitably become even more imperialist, more predatory, more criminal in nature. In short, in order to sustain its ever-growing appetite, its addiction to comfort and wealth, it must dominate ever more egregiously the nations, peoples and resources of the world. The quest for Empire is akin to making a deal with the devil, though the demons you create along the way are not beholden to any deal. And, as invariably happens, imperialism and the quest for Empire abroad results in the loss of freedoms, rights and liberties at home, for Empire and freedom are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed concepts.

In order to dominate nations and peoples, in order to rape and pillage and exploit foreign resources and land, the Empire must make extinct democracy at home, for the will of the people must not be allowed to be heard. It must destroy freedoms and rights, the better to control a population, the better to rule an Empire. Inevitably, the Empire fears its own people most, for only the people can put a stop to it and its imperialist machinations. Therefore, the power granted the people must be methodically altered or abolished, whichever is easiest to accomplish, whichever is cheaper to implement.

Done gradually, over the course of years, quietly and without debate, the elite thus succeed in castrating the means by which the people can light the flame of change. Once the masses wake to a nation without rights and freedoms, once they open their eyes to a state without democracy and liberty, it is too late to rise in unity. The damage has been done, the laws have been erased, the rights have been eviscerated. Before the masses know it, under the rubric of fear and insecurity, under the guise of patriotism and defending the fatherland, democracy has been replaced by authoritarianism, rights and freedoms have given way to a police state, and liberty's death knell has begun to sound the last cries of a nation that is no more.

In 21st century America, the so-called New American Century, the fireworks ushering in the rise and further pursuit of Empire began on September 11, 2001. On that day, as anybody with an IQ of over 80 can plainly see, as has become quite apparent to anyone still not blinded by faith or vested interests, the World Trade Center was demolished by elements of the American government and the military-industrial-energy complex. Corporatist America had risen from the ashes and pulverized concrete of lower Manhattan, unleashing the psychological war on the American people needed to embark on a course for naked imperialism. What had for decades been done clandestinely through market colonialism and economic genocide would suddenly be made visible through the unleashing of American military might.

While imperial building through clandestine domination had succeeded brilliantly over the years, it would only be through military might and conquest that Empire could continue its heavenly dictum of manifest destiny. Only through the acquiescence of the masses could Project Empire be allowed to flourish. Using the fear and insecurity of the people against themselves, using the chosen Arab scapegoat as America’s new evildoer extraordinaire, marketing the much needed protection of the nation against dark-skinned bogeymen, the usurpation of our freedoms and rights commenced, just as the elite had always wished, just as had been planned.

The subsequent Patriot Act and its progeny, the acceptance of torture and false imprisonment, the decimation of habeas corpus, due process and the Constitution, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, the burning of the Geneva Convention and the marginalization of the United Nations has utterly and devastatingly destroyed the last 200 years of human enlightenment. Yet not surprisingly, the American people have remained silent and passive to a one sided war against their freedoms and rights, choosing to believe their protection from fictional enemies is worth the complete destruction of their cherished freedoms.

Such is the genius of comfort, materialism, television, dumbed down education and the inside job of 9/11 that today most Americans remain oblivious to the present state of their country, and their lives. Through the horrific acts of 9/11, the people consented, under the spell of hatred, in an orgy of warmongering rapture, to the continued assault both of their last remaining rights and to an undeclared war to build and maintain Empire.

The consequences of this submissive act will haunt the world and us for years to come.


Extinction and Usurpation


With every war for resources, quest for land and battle for geostrategic and geopolitical territory the Empire will face growing opposition from many of its own citizens, most tired of and opposed to war, tired of sacrificing, both treasure and blood, and many outraged at the crimes of their government. With growing unpopularity at what is being done, with growing strains on the masses and with the resulting blowback from nations and peoples being threatened, attacked and decimated, the state will erode all those powers granted the people.

Over the course of time, the state will make extinct the freedoms and liberties and rights that no longer serve the interests of the Empire and its elite. For to the state and its Establishment, those powers given the People over 200 years ago have no more relevancy in the modern world, in the modern America, a nation simply fulfilling its heavenly mandate of manifest destiny. To those in power the corporatist element now running the nation, democracy, freedom, rights and liberties are an outmoded inconvenience, having become a hindrance in governing what is invariably turning into an authoritarian state. For we have become the Pax Americana, an empire to rival and surpass Rome, fulfilling a mandate sent from the imaginary god above.

In its pursuit of Empire, America is only laying claim to a path she has taken since its inception, that of taking the logical giant leap beyond her shores and borders, creating a reality far beyond the known, or expected, creating for herself a righteous seat beside the great empires of history, following manifest destiny to the upper reaches of human achievement, fulfilling the destiny her delusional elite undoubtedly have concocted for themselves. This path to Empire, to the detriment of billions, including millions within her borders, seems like the next step for a nation-state that since its inception has never stopped expanding, either economically or territorially, incorporating greed and gluttony into its mantra, in the process laying waste to man and land in unfathomable measures, caring nothing for environmental degradation, carbon dioxide emissions, economic strangulation, mass death, untold suffering and the inescapable poverty for billions of human beings.

The United States of the Founding Fathers, of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has long since vanished over the last century, victim to its own success, its own addictions and greed. It is no more, even if it ever was, even if we believe it to still be. Capitalism, in its most toxic stages, along with unrestrained power and control by the elite, has made sure of that. Like a greedy, pathological corporation, America has grown by leaps and bounds, becoming addicted to its own hubris, its own wealth, arrogantly wishing the destruction of competition and the monopolization of its culture. It has undertaken a hostile takeover of the world, exploiting, oppressing, invading and subjugating both people and land, caring only for power and profit, reaching out to new markets for cheap labor and resources. Like a predatory corporation, it has bought out regulating bodies, today controlling all aspects of the World Bank, the IMF, WTO and the United Nations, dictating to the world how reality will be run.

The America we believe in is no more and this reality must be understood by the people residing inside its bowels. The America of our youthful brainwashing, of our lifelong conditioning, of fictional television shows, of our dreams and ideals is a myth, a fantasy that, while ingrained deeply into our minds, must be understood for the reality that it at present is. It has become a Grim Reaper for millions, an economic torturer to millions more, using both economic and financial methods to ruin the lives of billions whose only faults lie in being born in lands the Empire covets, underneath resources her insides crave.

It destroys families and livelihoods through its control of banks, corporations, governments and neoliberal institutions, creating mass poverty and hunger, mass unemployment and oppression, mass migration north. For it is easy to blame brown skinned immigrants for crossing as undocumented workers, traversing scorching hot deserts to reach a better life, risking death and crime to seek the pursuit of happiness. For when food runs out man must go in search of it, lest he stay to die of hunger.

Of course to millions of the Empire’s citizens, themselves products of migration, it is much harder to accept that it is the Empire itself, and its consumer gluttony in particular, that demands the exploitation of third world labor and resources, of cheap foodstuffs, timber, oil and minerals. It is the Empire itself that creates the conditions by which the poor of the world are forced to migrate inside America. Unable to compete with unfair trade practices that make farming unprofitable, unable to secure employment because the Empire’s tentacles destroy a nation’s safety net, unable to afford the Empire’s products and prices, unable to make a living due to privatization of the state’s enterprises, forced to accept the slave wages offered by the Empire’s corporations, the poor of a nation, especially one bordering the Empire itself, must make a decision that to anybody with an ounce of empathy, is quite obvious.

Such is reality for billions of humans who stand not a chance at having a fruitful life as long as the Empire dominates and controls human reality, all throughout the world, as long as its citizens continue to believe it is American exceptionalism, not its market colonialism and economic genocide, that are the true reason for the migration of today’s undesirables and untouchables into America. It is this delusion, that America is the great city on a hill, the true beacon of light for the world, and not the reality that it is the great birth mother of human suffering and indigence, that must be made extinct.

Empire or no empire, whether from developed or undeveloped lands, we are all humans, bleeding the same color, suffering the same fears, experiencing the same emotions. We, all 6.7 billion of us, are stuck in this little planet. We are all in this human reality together.


Delusions of Manifest Destiny


What began as a great experiment in human enlightenment has turned into a genetically modified monster, going from late 18th century miracle to a phenomenon on steroids, catapulting beyond its own age, wisdom and control, becoming an overgrown Frankenstein now unleashing terror upon the world. Once a state among nations, America has become an Empire among client states, its massive tentacles reaching to all corners of the planet. America is indeed an Empire, transforming itself over the last sixty years into a giant monolith, becoming a schoolyard bully, an insecure tyrant, pretending to be humankind’s salvation, clandestinely assuring our collapse.

Its militancy continues to grow, with 750 military bases worldwide. It invests more on military spending than the entire world combined, obviously preferring the nurturing of soldiers than the education of its people. For years it has abandoned the needs of its people, showing the world that its priorities lie in expansion, exploitation and in dumbing down its citizenry than in providing healthcare and education, even as it is the wealthiest nation on the planet. It has made it known that it prefers to lead through aggression and military might than in the ability and intelligence of its people. It has shown that it cares nothing for its citizens, seeing them as expendable automatons, mere cogs in a system of unsustainable production and consumption. To the elite, we are collateral damage in pursuit of Empire, whether we die in new Pearl Harbors or in the inevitable blowback of an Empire gone awry.

The Empire, thinking itself exceptional and omnipotent, has begun overextending itself throughout the world. It has begun to rub shoulders with powerful and potential adversaries. It has unleashed forces in Central Asia that might invariably become the harbinger of armed conflict between itself and Russia and China. The world’s last remaining oil fields will soon become battlefields between the world’s heavyweights, for the age of resource wars is upon us. Soon the dwindling supplies of natural resources, with oil and water being the most important, will create violent competitions among nations and peoples, for embedded in our nature is the instinct of survival. In the next few decades we will witness war like we have never seen it, with the Empire at the helm, eager to conquer and destroy, eager to defend puppets and tyrants, ready to exploit and control the last vestiges of humankind’s resources.

The exploitation of Africa, central Asia and perhaps South America is setting the world on a collision course with an enormous iceberg whose giant size we cannot yet see, or fathom. Wars between the Empire and would-be superpowers, with the potential to end all life on Earth at the push of a few buttons, could be an inevitable result of the confrontation that is slowly, but surely, growing and heating up. This trend can be seen, and is readily apparent, through a pattern of behavior that the Empire is exhibiting, thinking itself the heir to Rome, an unbeatable entity whose reign will last a millennia. This hubris can be seen through threats, intimidation tactics, over-extension into lands controlled by others and through its reckless endeavor to upset the global balance of states. With such arrogance, greed and an addiction to its consumerist and capitalist system, with so little regard for history and its many lessons, can war with Russia or China be far behind? Will future wars of aggression against third-world nations rich in natural resources continue?

Will the American people ever wake up to the destruction of their cherished rights and freedoms, knowing that one more 9/11 false flag type incident will be enough for the elite to make extinct all remaining illusions of liberty and democracy? The lust for Empire in America has blinded the elite to reality, and its people to the approaching storm. The world entire has realized the danger to the world of the unrivaled superpower, hijacked by greed and addiction to vice.

Rising superpowers are aware they are being targeted and threatened, for what was the Iraq invasion turned debacle but a preemptive move against Russia, China, India and the European Union, designed to control Iraq’s vast oil fields? What is the approaching storm in Iran but the continuation of the Empire’s power grab of natural resources, of putting in place those nations who have not fallen in line with the Empire’s vision of the future? What is Afghanistan but a beachhead into central Asia, a pipeline route to vast oil fields, a grand prize in the great chess match between nations?

In the grand chessboard of geostrategic and geopolitical realpolitik, the invasion and occupation of Iraq served notice that the Empire was declaring the 21st century America’s century, fully willing to embark on a most ominous journey of resource acquisition and control, through war, if it had to, through peace, if rivals acquiesced and submitted, bending down to kiss the royal ring of Empire. Iraq was and is seen as a new American colony, its oil now belonging to the Anglo-American enterprise, its 100 acre embassy, larger than Vatican City, serving to remind the world that Iraq will never be abandoned, it will never be relinquished. Its prize, besides the oil fields, is the geostrategic location it provides, opening up a giant military presence in the Middle East and central Asia. The availability of its two rivers, providing enormous amounts of water to the Arab world, assures America of control over the Middle East in this respect as well.

The endgame, of course, is Empire, the inevitable continuation of manifest destiny, begun long ago, traversing through time and space, exterminating everything in its way. The opportunity to be recorded in history as a rival to Rome has also become a large incentive to those whose egos are larger than their intellect. The endgame, as always in the system called capitalism, is resource control, human exploitation, wealth maximization, competitor extermination and power unrivaled.

This is the new ideology of the new America, not your grandfather’s or mother’s nation, not the country of innocence, of yesteryear, of tradition, altruism and virtue. The new America is the Pax Americana, where to see its reality one must look at its actions, not its public relations, its trends, not its words. In this new America you and I are mere numbers, cogs in the system, the collateral damage in the pursuit of Empire. In this new America, profit is put ahead of people, the rights of corporations are placed in front of those of humans and the freedoms and liberties we once enjoyed are mere hindrances and obstacles to those wishing to destroy the very fabric of what once was a great beacon on a hill.

Enter the Empire, but be made aware, through its door lies a new paradigm, a new America, land of the meek, home of the slave. Through rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air nations are attacked, thousands of people are killed. In the dawn’s early light can we see the carcass of dying freedoms and rights, of a democracy that is but a mirage of control, a predetermined manipulation. In the new America We the People have become We the Sheeple. The government of, by and for the People is now a government of, by and for the Corporations. We are ruled by corporatists and criminals, and soon a police state we will have.

Enter the Empire at your own risk, for she cares not an ounce for you or me, her beauty destroyed by greed and gluttony, her virtue made extinct by fascists and elites. Her foundations have crumbled, her pillars have collapsed. Where once was a city on a hill today only ruins of a once great nation stand, buried in the indifference and laziness and passivity of her once great people. The beacon of light that once shone bright no longer lights the world, for its flame now stands extinguished, its warm and comfortable glow made extinct by our own delusions of exceptionalism.

America is the Empire called, inevitably destined to fall, just as all Empire’s fall, a result of her greed, gluttony and arrogance, of her ignorance and her abandonment of the People. For while in the short term the Empire may seem prodigious and powerful, unrivaled and unmatched, history and the human condition teach us that in the long term she will overreach, overextend, become ever-more corrupted and become, invariably, the latest victim to her imperial hubris, the last creature to suffer her unwelcome fate.