Valenzuela's Veritas

In ominous times truth always finds a way out from darkness into light. Always. Through truth knowledge grows into the power and strength to question the actions of governance. In times that try men's souls it is those who seek enlightenment who are truly free. Given the choice of possessing ignorance or knowledge, even when ignorance would lead to an easier life, I would choose knowledge,thus escaping the life of sheeple, escaping the bondage of not knowing, not caring and not understanding.

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Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. He encourages readers to surf the collection of over 100 essays he has written which can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet. He welcomes comments at euromeximan@yahoo.com

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

American Taliban: The Ignorant and Damaging Politics of George W. Bush

It is said that evolution is an unstoppable force, be it biological or societal. Progress seems to be the hallmark of human civilization since the dawn of mankind’s birth in the forests of Africa to our eventual Diaspora throughout the globe. Every man, woman and child owes their existence to the first ape-like hominids that, not too long ago in the giant clock of Earth’s history, left the trees for the savanna, later to spread to all corners of our only home. Every race, ethnicity and color was at one point primitive, at some time labeled barbarian by more "advanced" civilizations, during the brief domination by our species of this most wonderful home. From barbarians we became "civilized" men and women, escaping our tribal inclinations for the sake of exploitation at the hands of feudal lords, anointed kings, corrupted church leaders and elite capitalists.

Yet throughout time immemorial, a constant has always been man’s progress away from our primitiveness and animal instincts. Of course progress and human behavioral evolution do not change overnight. It takes thousands, even tens of thousands of years for our behaviors to evolve away from our animal urges and passions. We are, therefore, still very much the animals we have for centuries distanced ourselves away from. Our animal instincts are the symptoms of our disease; our thirst for blood, violence and war, our passion to dominate and selfishly exploit, the ceaseless hunger for territory and resources, the need to procreate. Revenge, fear, love, hatred, selfishness, greed and violent manifestations of unfettered anger all owe their existence to our inability to control – along with our denial – our animal selves.

There is no doubt we have come a long way. Our ability to control our violent selves has given way to a greater respect for human life. We are no longer the methodical killers we once were or the inhumane punishers of yesteryear. We respect laws, institutions and a person’s right to life. Humanity’s progress has changed a lot of things for the better considering the incessant pursuit of violence scarring our historical existence. The growing concern for human rights is a great leap forward and a natural and inevitable step in our civilization’s evolution.

Progress and humanity are not mutually exclusive. Only on rare occasions do we take a step behind, regressing back to earlier times. The more natural inclination has been a progress towards better and greater things. This inevitability arises because of the greater enlightenment of mankind as we progress as a civilization. It cannot be stopped. To try and halt what is humanity’s move toward greater progressiveness is to mettle in powers beyond man’s control or understanding. Yet those with conservative and status quo inclinations continue their dead-end quest to subvert civilization’s natural tendencies toward the betterment of the species, toward progress.

One only needs to look at the Catholic Church to see great attempts at curtailing progress only end in miserable failure. Time and time again the Church has tried to fight progress, only to be sent reeling back to its dark dungeons of ignorance. At times it has succeeded in stopping progress’ onward momentum, yet these attempts only serve to temporarily halt their eventual demise. Today, the Catholic Church’s failure to evolve along with progress has left it a microcosm of its former self, impotent and unable to change humanity as it once did.

Even with the great power of the Church in the last thousand years progress was only impeded, never squashed. Humanity’s natural and never-ending pursuit of progress is a momentum not even man’s greatest forces can hinder. As a result, we live in modern times of scientific and human wonderment and not in the dark ages of unyielding ignorance. Mankind’s road to progress may be filled with bumps and obstacles but it is nevertheless clear and straight, always heading upwards in the inevitable movement away from conservative agendas designed to impede our pursuit of bright stars and the betterment of world civilization. In the end, the great momentum of progress trumps all human endeavors to halt that which cannot be stopped.

History is the movement of progress, of leaping forward and not backwards, of escaping our troubled past and embracing a better future. It is awakening and not remaining in hibernation, of challenging and not acquiescing, of moving to accept mankind’s inevitable changes and not our mistakes. Like all else in the universe our society evolves, it does not remain stagnant. Evolution is about perfecting errors, of betterment for the sake of self-preservation and of improving life for the better. This is progress, and it constantly points up, not down.

All of man’s time on Earth has been a progressive movement; our historical record, archeological sites and civilization’s many realities lend credence to this fact. Those who try to maintain the status quo and conservative dogma are fighting an unwinnable battle, as our history proves over and over again. The hindrance of progress, though sometimes effective in the short term, is an experiment destined to fail over the long-term life of man. It is reality; it is human civilization.
The collective human experience pushes us towards a greater understanding and empathy for our fellow man. Slavery, once common among all groups, is now mostly a thing of the past.

Racism and fear of others different than ourselves is beginning to dissipate, slowly but surely, thanks to our pluralistic society. We now abhor crimes against humanity, war crimes and apartheid. The incessant wars and battles constant throughout our existence that devastated mankind are now controlled and less severe. We embrace women’s equality when for thousands of years they were considered the inferior of man. Growing virtues of fighting inequality and injustice continue to gain momentum. The idea of the separation of church and state, once considered heresy, is now common. Respect for other species and their plight is quietly growing. Science, once hindered by those in power, has given us the tools to understanding who and what we are. All of the above has been made possible because of progress. Human history simply leads us in this direction.

The collective human experience is pushing all together in sympathy, understanding and solidarity. Greater freedoms and liberties now make us happier beings than our long lost ancestors; our lives have more meaning, purpose and independence than those that came before us; we are so much more educated and enlightened, more cognizant of the world we inhabit. This is called progress, and it bends over to nobody. It cannot be defeated nor destroyed. Its power lies in the billions of human energies that have existed before, walk today and crawl tomorrow.

While we might sometimes think the opponents of change and the army of status quo conservatives has the upper hand and is succeeding in hindering society’s ever-steady flow of progress, this is a vastly distorted fallacy. When in doubt, simply look towards the vast volumes of history. That is proof enough that progress will not and cannot be altered. Progress is winning this war on human enlightenment and betterment in a landslide, and those who would like to see it eviscerated can only smile in their delusion that the conservative way has triumphed. We have two million years of human evolution that tells us otherwise.

No group epitomizes the army of status quo conservatives more than the Taliban of Afghanistan. This group of religious zealots enacted anything and everything that impeded progress. I will refrain from describing these many beliefs but it is fair to point out that the people of Afghanistan along with their culture and society suffered tremendously thanks to the conservative views imposed on them. The limited progress Afghanis initially had was severely amputated thanks to the Taliban. Fortunately for the world, this group is no longer in power, though through George Bush’s failed "war on terror" they are slowly but surely revitalizing themselves.

In the United States we have a group, conservative and unenlightened, ignorant to the tunes of history, in many ways similar but not as extreme as the Taliban, that is trying to impose unclimbable walls of razor sharp wire around progress for the sake of attempting to change our society to suit their conservative agenda. George W. Bush, the American Taliban, heads this group.

Warmonger extraordinaire, creator of doctrines of pre-emption and perpetrator of offensive wars for imperial expansion, the American Taliban sits perched high above his vulture’s nest. As governor of Texas he allowed for the execution of more prisoners than any other governor, and is proud of it. His thirst for blood is unparalleled, his apathy for fellow men nonexistent. His appetite for blood has led to the murder of tens of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban used ropes and bullets to kill and execute; American Taliban uses cluster and smart bombs, Apache helicopters, fighter jets, lethal injection and the pathetic state of legal representation for the poor.

A born-again Christian, espousing Jesus as his favorite philosopher, American Taliban does not seem to understand, grasp or want to implement those same teachings he holds in such high regard. This is hypocrisy, preaching from the pulpit to satisfy the callings of his core constituency while unleashing furious fires of hell on Earth onto both peoples and lands.

American Taliban lied to the world in order to invade Iraq. He and his administration deceived all Americans, distorting and contriving information and intelligence in order to sell their pre-9/11 planned war to the public. As a result, more than 510 US soldiers have died and more than 10,000 have been injured in some form. Countless more Iraqis have suffered the same fate. Yet lies so severe as to merit impeachment and resignation go unchallenged by an impotent Congress unwilling to act.

A DNA stained dress brought forth impeachment, causing no damage or death, no government impropriety or severe disorder, yet meticulous and malfeasant lies are allowed to continue. Lies unheard of in American government history have been committed by the American Taliban yet he remains in office, surely already planning the next bundle of lies for the next expedition into unjust and unwarranted wars. Excuse after excuse, lie after lie, American Taliban is showing the great honor and integrity he once promised to restore to the now smeared White House.

Domestically, American Taliban and his conservative cohorts have declared war on the growing number of gays in this country. The Taliban administration has commenced a civil rights battle eerily similar to the one fought in the last century against African-Americans. Out of fear of what they do not know or care to understand they label and segregate. Out of their own ignorance and small-mindedness they discriminate and belittle. Enraptured by their own ideologies they fail to realize that the movement is too strong, that progress cannot be defeated. The exact same thing is happening to gays as happened to blacks decades ago. In the end, we will see the same result: freedoms, liberties and protections for the persecuted class. Who is the American Taliban to impose his backward ideology on an entire segment of society? Who is he to say that two people that love each other cannot marry or raise wonderful children?

Whether we agree or disagree with the gay lifestyle, we cannot marginalize out of our own fears, belief structure and ignorant hereditary conditioning. With over half of marriages today ending in divorce, and knowing that the Christian church once forbade divorce, considering it a sin, who is the American Taliban to say that a marriage or union should or should not exist? It should not matter who is getting married, and to prevent love from prospering in a world desperately in need of it is to espouse all that is wrong with mankind. We now live in the 21st century, not the 15th, and we must evolve accordingly, along with the times.

In this sense the American Taliban is trying to hinder progress, like many leaders before him, only to find that the momentum is too great and the energy too encircling to stop. This next wave of civil rights battles is as inevitable as a full moon, given the constant state of change of America. The fight for gay rights is not the first struggle for equality, nor will it be the last. It is those insecure, ignorant and traditional entities, however, that fight tooth and nail to maintain their perceived belief structure based on archaic thousand-year-old beliefs and fables. In the end, they will lose their battle, as they always do, and progress will once more rise like a giant wave to swallow ignorance back to its rightful place.

In another arena women’s rights are being diminished through the passage of a ban on partial birth abortion. This maneuver by the American Taliban is designed with the eventual outlawing of all forms of abortion in mind. The strategy employed is one of baby steps, of eviscerating abortion rights one tiny step at a time. This battle is seen as lasting several years, through the appointment of conservative judges to the bench that share the same conservative views as the American Taliban. Methodical and meticulous, this strategy has as a purpose the destruction of women’s right to choose. Again, women’s right to choose is fundamental progress, fought for centuries by women and men alike in order to equalize women’s rights. This was another battle for equal civil rights. And, as usual, progress eventually won.

Now, American Taliban has succeeded in curtailing one form of abortion, robbing women of a right they by birth should have as free human beings. Who is the American Taliban to impose his belief and dogma onto millions of women? What makes his ignorant policies supercede what a woman can decide based on her own life and mind? This attempt by the American Taliban is nothing more than a political charade to please his base, namely fundamentalist Christians.

Women’s right to chose is an inalienable right endowed to all females. It is they alone who can and should decide their fate. By robbing women of this right, the American Taliban is fighting centuries of progress, years of hardship and determination. He is trying to subvert a woman’s equal rights, making her a subjugated class considered different than men. He is saying that the state can make a better determination of what is right for a woman better than she can make on her own. And, lest we forget, abortion rights are themselves a result of progress and of our society evolving with the times.

American Taliban is imposing his own ignorant and backwater beliefs onto a nation of 285 million people. Is he a god to have this right? I know god appointed him to conduct the war on terror, but to also eviscerate women’s rights as well is probably a little far fetched. After all, god might just be a woman. She did, after all, grant Earth, its creatures and man the power to evolve. If she did not want progress in our civilization, why would she create nothing but progress throughout our history? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

A great unsettling dilemma that has only gotten worse since the American Taliban cheated his way into the White House is the state of our children’s education. Today, our children are being made more ignorant than ever with the No Child Left Behind façade. Our schools are teaching to the standardized test, ignoring the necessary tools for ensuring the prospering of creativity and free thought. Every child is different, every child learns in their own unique way, yet through the American Taliban’s mirage our children are being taught like automatons. They are being denied that which is most necessary in order to become an oasis of brightness and intelligence. The end result is a generation of ignorant children turned slave-like adults.

The most fundamental years of a child have now been converted to mush. Today, all children are being left behind, and this will have a dramatic effect on our nation’s future. Our kids are being turned into docile creatures of conformity, trained to never question authority, think for themselves and to always follow orders and what those in power tell them. Systematically being made ignorant to history, art, music, the world, languages, the environment, the real world, philosophy and liberal sciences, they are slowly becoming hypnotized robots of the state, the future assembly line of exploited workers that will enrich the elite oligarchy. The eventual fall of the Roman Empire was in part a result of this same phenomenon.

Ignorance is being used as a tool while education is slowly turned into an instrument of manipulation and conditioning. With the ever-rising cost of higher education, less and less of our children will be privy to the liberated mind knowledge creates. Instead of an educated society that asks questions and demands answers, we will have a low wage, easily manipulated and exploited one subservient to those in power. The American Taliban is assuring himself and the oligarchy of the loyalty of millions of children whose destiny we are all condemning due to our continued acquiescence to the destruction of millions of young minds.

The American Taliban is also engendering onto our children the teaching of sexual abstinence in our nation’s schools. This belief, conservative and blatantly Christian fundamentalist, holds that only by abstaining from sex will sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies be stopped. This theory goes against every human impulse and animal instinct. The changing of hormones and chemicals in the bodies of young adolescents cannot be stopped by preaching abstinence. To do so is ignorant and dangerous. We cannot fight human biology with antiquated views of frivolous fantasy.

We have all been there; teenagers are creatures jumping with hormones and horniness. They are going to be sexually active, especially in today’s world, it is a fact. It is at this time of development that we become capable of sexual reproduction, just like any other mammal. Again, we might not like it, but biological evolution does not change overnight, it takes eons. It is nature, pure and simple, and to deny this reality is to live delusions of falsified pretenses.

Our children are being taught scare tactics in school by preachers of abstinence designed to misinform and further ignorance. Disinformation about contraceptives and their usefulness only helps to place our children in more peril. The end result is to further ignorance, STD’s and unwanted pregnancies. American Taliban is using our schools to impose his Christian fundamentalist ideology that exacerbates rather than alleviates problems. This is the wrong approach, a contradiction with reality and a backward policy that is better suited for the 1500’s.

We can see yet again how American Taliban, through his policies and politics, fosters ignorance and danger onto our society. He is once more trying to subdue progress for the sake of conservative beliefs. He is trying to make America stop the incredible societal advancement it has created. The politics of the American Taliban are but another manifestation of how conservative groups have historically attempted to curtail progress. These policies end up hurting rather than helping the nation. Denying the awesome power of society’s and mankind’s progressive inclinations is to fall prey to a vicious cycle of torment and self-deception. One cannot fight with inevitability or history or the collective conscious of humanity.

What American Taliban has done over the last three years has been to try and erode the progressive movement to the point where he can impose his conservative agenda on the nation. He has divided the country based on the politics of hate and fear, segregating us into groups and subgroups so that we are unable to unite against him and his cabal. Scare tactics divide us into rich and poor, minority and majority, urban, rural and suburban, gay and straight, religious and secular, lower, middle and upper class and educated and uneducated. They are designed to segregate us, grouping us with who we associate with and think ourselves as. As a result, we fight each other over fictional issues concocted by the American Taliban instead of fighting the real problem together. It is easier to conquer and subdue weak and separate group divisions than by fighting a united monolithic centurion yielding exceptional strength.

In the end, American Taliban will fail, as all that have fought progress eventually do. Those who know nothing of history usually end up repeating it. Those who do not understand human civilization or its constant movement towards progress cannot triumph over that which they do not comprehend. Ignorant arrogance is ignorance nonetheless.

The constant battle between conservative and progressive agendas is as human as eating and sleeping. It creates a better civilization and society because the incessant clashing of ideas fosters compromise and debate. It opens eyes and extinguishes ignorance because, in the end, after much fighting and hardship, progress is proclaimed triumphant and society is made better as a result.

Our civilization today is the culmination of thousands of years of struggle and evolution, of progress’ forward march through time in spite of constant threats and hindrances, having survived nefarious leaders and self serving powers, becoming the torch that lights our way into the future’s murky tunnel. There is no reason to doubt that this truism will continue, much as it has for the majority of human existence, much to the great detriment of the American Taliban.

Sunday, January 25, 2004

American Ali Baba: George W. Bush and the Stealing of America

Iraqis have a slang term for those whom they believe guilty of thievery and chicanery, those people who steal, lie, cheat and are endowed with low levels of scruples. This term, Ali Baba, in reference to the great fictional work Arabian Nights and its story, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, has, since the occupation began, spread throughout Iraq’s population when talking about American soldiers, and, to a more extreme personality, George W. Bush.

To the Iraqis, our nation and our occupying army are Ali Baba’s, plunderers of resources and usurpers of foreign lands. George W. Bush is seen as the greatest Ali Baba of them all, a thief and a liar, enriching his friends, cronies and contributors through the privatization of most of Iraq’s economy, businesses and government institutions, laying waste to a proud nation and ruining the lives of millions of its citizens. Colonizing and occupying Iraq under the façade of bringing freedom and instilling democracy, Bush is fooling nobody in Iraq.

Everyone living in the cradle of civilization knows what America came for, everyone can see that without black gold and strategic base locations, Iraq would be allowed to decay into oblivion much like the many nations of Africa that are in need of greater intervention than Iraq. In the great geopolitical game of Empire building and world domination through economic and military prowess, fantasies and propaganda fool no one. Iraq is but the playing field; not the first nor the last.

And so Ali Baba has come to Iraq, returning in a rather mutated force, intent on stealing, plundering and oppressing, enriching and pilfering, destroying only to rebuild, installing crony capitalism and debauched democracy not for the benefit of Iraqis but for that of the oligarchy back in America. Ali Baba and his many thieves have been reborn, American style, a gross distortion of the noble tale told by generations of Arabs.

The term Ali Baba can also be borrowed by us to anoint onto our President, (with no insult intended towards the original Ali Baba) for he has wreaked havoc onto our nation, stealing, plundering and decimating so much of what we have in this rich and powerful nation. George W. Bush, Ali Baba. Ali Baba, George W. Bush. Thief, liar, debauched inheritor of dishonor and nefarious consciousness. Creator of an unbalanced world, yielding arrogance, ignorance and apathy, spawning unnecessary hardship at home and throughout the world, smirking and strutting from fund raiser to fund raiser, raping our lands, waters and air, leaving everyone behind, robbing our nation’s wallets of its treasure, its loved ones for his wars.

American Ali Baba has stolen America from each of us, 285 million Americans, of all creeds, colors and beliefs. He has stolen what we once were, our way of being, our high hopes and vision, the bright flame of idealism that once lit and inspired a world and the collective fraternity of a world sympathetic to the horrors of 9/11. What once enlivened the people of the world to make our shores their home has been trashed. What at one point was the country boasting the greatest liberties and freedoms now suppresses each more every day. The bastion of democracy, the espouser of human rights, the altruistic leader of nations has given way instead to a malignant cancer spawning deadly tumors throughout the planet.

The virus that was born in November 2000 has spread its deadly pathogens from coast to coast, robbing us of America, from sea to shining sea, from the tallest peak to the lowest valley, from the largest city to the smallest town. We are slowly hemorrhaging to death; the sickness we have been infected with grows stronger while we become weaker. American Ali Baba’s hands of perpetuating failure have clenched our country tightly, sucking away our energy and vitality, slowly despoiling yet another entity that has had the misfortune of being touched by his grasp of death.

For three years our spirit has been drying up, resembling the dry river beds now common thanks to global warming; the drought, the curse of American Ali Baba is upon us, condemning us all. It has enveloped us as our stupor continues unawakened, ever dormant, allowing the thief to continue his pillage and his cronies the power to ceaselessly leach our pockets of everything that once belonged to our collective being. Will we ever awake? Or will our eyes next open when the backbone and flesh of what America once stood for is gone, forever decayed, remaining but brief sentences in the short life of the Pax Americana?

Under the pretext of terrorism American Ali Baba has meticulous taken our freedoms and rights. He has stolen our civil liberties, our right to protest, our freedoms of speech and assembly. Protest is curtailed and monitored, free-speech zones act as a hindrance rather than as a beacon to free speech. Any American can now be taken from his home, without notification, in essence disappeared, perhaps never to be seen or heard from again. The government can come into our homes without our knowledge. It can oversee what we read from libraries and bookstores. Personal information from our lives is now stored and surveyed; our Internet habits can now be monitored. Police now act with impunity and punish without accountability.
Intimidation and blunt use of force are now standard operating procedure. Our major cities are under increasing levels of martial law. We are seeing the rise of a police state, a cocktail fusion of the old Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi. Can the evolution to the Nazi Gestapo be far behind?

American Ali Baba and his junta of thieves have made us less secure, not more. His trumpeting calls for pre-emptive offensive imperial wars have created a new arms race as those who see themselves in the crosshairs of the Bush war party seek deterrence from the Evil Empire. The proliferation of WMDs is a natural consequence to those seeking protection from invasion. The race has begun, the clock is now ticking, "enemy" states are rushing to acquire man’s deadliest weapons. As a result, the entire planet has been made less safe.

The Iraq invasion and subsequent harsh occupation has created an oasis of resentment among sand filled terrain, an assembly line of new fighters eager to battle what they see as the greatest evil on the planet. Thousands willing to die have been born in the Fertile Crescent through the dropping of bombs and spraying of bullets, watered by the carnage of gushing blood. American Ali Baba has robbed us of our security, our sense of safety, through his unjust war and ignorant sojourn into Empire expansion he has opened us up for reactions to his frivolous actions.

The hate of the world is upon us, opening up doors of karmic repercussions and embittered reciprocation. We have only American Ali Baba and his ravaging Rasputins to thank.

His thievery and chicanery have made of us paranoid worshipers of fear, manipulated observers of color-coded propaganda eagerly displayed by corporate media to drown out our inherent right to live happy, content lives. We are made to fear and grow insecure; we are purposefully made to subconsciously associate protection from fear and "terrorism" with the pillager of safeness and security, American Ali Baba. Through this systemic conditioning American Ali Baba and his political messiahs extol his perceived yet fictional qualities as protector of America and bold leader in the face of terror onto the nation’s citizens.

The politics of fear has been unleashed, manipulating our emotions to assure his re-election and the further erosion of our American way of life. Fear has been imported onto our shores not by boogie men but by American Ali Baba and his Department of Homeland Insecurity, changing the fabric of our society, damaging the lives of both our progeny and ourselves.

American Ali Baba has stolen from us the tremendous show of solidarity exhibited by the entire brotherhood of nations after 9/11. Today we are hated throughout the globe for our unjust wars, our economic acts of genocide, arrogant indifference to the troubles of the world, spurious unilateral decision-making, sponsored acts of international terrorism and the debilitating effects of market colonialism that have been unleashed onto the people of the world. Our nation is seen as a rogue state, a spoiled brat that cannot seem to grow and mature. Because of American Ali Baba we are seen as the cancer that is infecting the planet.

To billions living the reality of humanity and not the dream of perched deities, America is the terrorist nation, responsible for millions and millions of deaths in the last 100 years, creating utmost misery and poverty in lands far and near, caring not for the planet’s future but for the ravenous appetite bellowing from deep inside the Beast’s entrails. American Ali Baba is seen as the greatest threat to world peace, the most dangerous man on Earth, a symbol of all that is wrong with American-imposed crony capitalism and debauched democracy that has wrought decimation to both man and land, in all corners of the globe, in every country and every region. He has stolen from the world the hope of peace, universal fraternity and a civilization free of inequality and injustice.

The corporate Leviathan has grown exponentially thanks to the exploits of American Ali Baba. The masses grow weaker, the Leviathan only stronger. Worker rights are disappearing; longer hours and less pay have appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Overtime is vanishing, ergonomics standards cater to the corporation. We are being made robots and automatons of the Leviathan; our blood, sweat and tears are being sacrificed in the name of making the elite richer. The gap between rich and poor continues to increase under the watchful eyes of American Ali Baba as he continues to swindle the people of their wages, benefits, healthcare and life. We must become more productive if we want to keep our jobs. We slave ourselves for the Leviathan; our lives grow unhappier as we realize the futility of our ever-growing working hours and dwindling leisure time.

Already millions have been laid off, their jobs sent oversees to exploit the slave labor espoused by and created for American Ali Baba’s neo-liberal cabal of subjugation. Close to three million jobs have vanished, unemployment does not diminish. Soup kitchens seem full, homelessness is once more a scar ripping open our proud faces. American Ali Baba and his henchmen have eviscerated healthcare in a land that is the richest in the history of the world. We are the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare coverage. Forty-three million people walk the streets of the Empire without healthcare. And laws and regulations signed by American Ali Baba and his henchmen benefit only the Leviathan while we are left to suffer disease, pain and sickness.

American Ali Baba has destroyed our once fiscally disciplined government. Our surplus is in tatters, the deficit is a monument to ineptitude and all the while the Robin Hood of the Rich keeps taking from the poor to fatten up the offshore bank accounts of the miniscule percentage that comprises his elite and oligarchic friends, cronies and contributors. American Ali Baba has squandered our treasure, now making it easier for him and his junta to devastate and implode the social programs they have been targeting for decades. Education, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, veteran benefits, Social Security and many other services can now be under-funded and gutted under the pretext of the ever-growing deficit. Millions of Americans will be affected; the Leviathan’s owners will further enrich themselves as we descend further down the well of decadence.

We are being robbed of the magnificent environment that still exists in our country as American Ali Baba does everything in his power to grant the Leviathan any and all carte blanche to rape, pillage, pollute and scar our national forests, lands and waters. Forests are being ravaged along with all its inhabitants; ecosystems are being eradicated; skies are being polluted with toxins and chemicals; lands are being devastated and scorched through fossil fuel and mineral exploration; lakes, rivers and oceans are becoming cesspools of waste. This is all thanks to the exploits of the corporate Leviathan and the thief of all that is precious, American Ali Baba.

Denying the real threat and existence of global warming, an imminent danger more real than "terrorism," capable of killing hundreds of thousands, American Ali Baba continues to pervert reality and spin fantasy in order to protect his friends in the oil/energy cartel. He is stealing all of us of our future; he is condemning our children to a world of hell. If no action is taken soon, Earth will in time resemble the barren plains of Mars whose images we see thanks to our robotic rovers polluting and trashing the Red Planet today. A greater thief of life does not now exist.

The American flag has been stolen from us; our patriotism has been hijacked by a thief, claiming both for himself and his army of rapacious followers. Red, white and blue has gone missing, especially if you dissent, criticize, seek accountability, transparency and the truth. To question American Ali Baba and his government is to be unpatriotic; to demand justice and truth is condemned. Secrecy and corruption run rampant; invisible winds circling the White House, settling where the buck stops: the Oval Office.

Honor and Integrity were but marketing gimmicks to win an election; they are nowhere to be found on the streets of Washington or in the West Wing. American Ali Baba, it has become readily apparent for three years now, has neither scruples nor virtue, instead caring only for his rich friends and the corporate Leviathan. This is pretty obvious, it seems to me, when nothing has been done for the masses and everything for the corporations. That should tell you who American Ali Baba is, what he espouses and where his loyalties lie.

Through hallways and chambers, the putrid smells of greed and dishonor roam freely, eroding our trust in government and in those seeking higher office. American Ali Baba will be remembered as the worst President to ever inhabit the White House. History will record his attempts to impose corporatism onto the American people, in essence stealing our rights, freedoms and democratic principles and giving them to our corporate masters. The masses have been made worse, our minds have been brainwashed, our country usurped from our endlessly working hands and the continued highway robbery of the American spirit continues unabated. We have but American Ali Baba and his gang of miscreants to thank.

The US has been set back many years, and the damage done by Bush will not be easy to undo. Each day American Ali Baba remains in office is a day more decimation is unleashed and the farther we fall down the underground abyss to Hades. Each day the stealing of America only intensifies.

The quicker we purge what never belonged the quicker we can rebuild the country that once was and that can still be, continuing our march to greatness as moral leader of the brotherhood of nations. We still have time, but first American Ali Baba must be excreted from our nation’s pores, giving way to a new light of hope and leadership that arises from the people like a new horizon emanating from the virgin morning eastern sky.

United as one we must stand, shoulder to shoulder we must march, resounding our calls for change on our way to saving our land and our planet from the unbalance created by the negative energy that is American Ali Baba. We have ten months to work on it. The ramifications of failure are not easy to contemplate.

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Flames of Hope Still Burn Bright

In the spirit of the New Year, where new beginnings emerge and past transgressions fade away, and in light of doom and gloom times, I thought it appropriate to take a small break from the reality enveloping our lives and instead write about Hope. Hope for the future, for the salvation of the United States, for our children and the world’s collective will to live in peace and happiness. We live in times that are difficult to bear or contemplate, on the verge of corporate takeover of our lives and the future of our children. Greed and selfishness are all-encompassing, odiously becoming 21st century virtues to strive for, slowly splitting apart the fabric of society. Corporate media spews propaganda and ignorance twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We are led by a village idiot, of that there is no doubt, a puppet to the great Leviathan that is destroying the cherished principles this nation once stood for, spawning death, destruction and suffering around the world that will in time have karmic repercussions.

Yet in spite of this, in spite of the daily erosion of freedoms and liberties and democratic institutions there lies that which cannot be erased or manipulated, that which remains free inside our conscious, and that is the principle of Hope. A Hope that lies deeply ingrained in us all, in our unyielding belief that these times are but a blip on the radar screen that will disappear with the dawn of a new day and the continuation of a new year. Hope, that great and noble human trait, sprinkled with utopian visions of the way humanity ought to be and idealistic dreams of how this world can indeed exist, cannot be touched by Bush or Ashcroft or Cheney or the whore called corporate media. Hope is ours to keep and spread, to store away until the day when our faith gives way to reality and reality launches us powerfully into a new course of human understanding and way of living.

Like a virus, Hope is easily spread from host to host, its level of contagious infection dependent on the level of Hope existing in the person. With the arrival of a new year Hope is at its highest point, illuminated in the faces of those who believe in its power to inspire and endure. Only with the passage of the months, as cold gives way to warmth, as dreams give way to reality, does Hope transform to passivity. The high mountain peak that once shone for miles on end as a beacon of Hope slowly becomes the vast desolate desert of negativity. The intrinsic cynicism of the Bush administration causes Hope to dwindle and dreams to shatter. Keeping Hope alive during these times is an odyssey that becomes harder the more we realize the trouble we are headed towards.

With each word Bush speaks, with each action he takes and with each policy implemented it is easy to lose both Hope and sight of that which in the darkest corners of complacency still burns bright. The human spirit cannot be extinguished either by edicts or power addicts, by one man or a cabal of charlatans. Those at the top of the mountain eventually must come down, and, in the case of autocrats, their path down the steep slope is one of bumps and bruises, turmoil and implosion. For the end result of their wicked actions is the accumulation of negative energy, of action and reaction, cause and effect, of karma growing ever bigger with each facetious wave of their destructive wand until the day arrives when it unleashes so much bloated negative energy back at their faces of contempt and their policies of destruction to render them powerless and impotent. It is only a matter of time, and action.

The bright Flames of Hope must pass forth from hand to hand, coast to coast and person to person. It cannot be allowed to flicker out and die. The cabal of miscreants sends blizzards and tempests of fury and corruption trying to extinguish the collective fire that inside us refuses to relinquish both dreams and wishes for a more just and equal world. The cartel of cronies, having not an ounce of understanding or interest between them for the common people and seeing in us nothing more than mere plebians from which to harvest their wealth and power, emphatically grip the sledgehammer of enslavement tight with both hands, smashing it down on the Flames of Hope. Again and again they strike, sparks lighting up the night sky in their vain attempt at sequestering us from what rightfully belongs in our domain. With each strike our freedoms, liberties and democracy are eviscerated more and more, sending shockwaves of fear throughout forests, valleys, mountains and rivers, eroding our Hopes and aspirations that have been ingrained in our national psyche for generations. Our fear makes them stronger; it grants them more power and audacity to continue leaching us of our once-proud happiness and way of life. We must not stumble, we must not hesitate; we must not give up or relegate ourselves to a future that need not exist in a world nobody wants to contemplate.

The United States is the next step in human evolution, an amalgam of diversity, living together and becoming one indivisible human race. We are the pioneers, the experiment, the first world region to be fully integrated as one world, as one people. From all corners of the globe we are from, of different skin pigmentations and ethnicities we belong, yet here we are, one and all, the future living in the present, a world breathing together, in harmony, in the same nation. At no time in human history has a broad sample of all the peoples of the world gathered to call a nation home. We have formed a world society; we have formed the future today. We are but the first, but by no means the last. We are the next step in human civilization, that time not too far in the distance when the concept of a nation will be but a brief asterisk in history, made extinct by the progress of time much like the tribe, the clan, the city-state, feudalism, monarchy and empire.

The day is fast approaching when we will call ourselves citizens of the world, not of a nation. An era when what affects one affects all, when to assist one region is to assist us all. The inevitability that is the fast evolving human civilization is leading us in that certain direction when our planet will be our nation, when all the people’s of the world will be our fellow citizens. When that day arrives – history has been pushing us toward that end since the beginning of time – we will no longer be separated, national rivalries will cease to exist, war-like leaders will be made obsolete and the betterment of the peoples of the world will be made a reality. The inevitability that is the coming together of the entire human spectrum is happening in the US today. This vast experiment is the tip of the iceberg, and it must not be allowed to melt and disappear because underneath lies a monolith ready to spread the Flames of Hope to a world in desperate need of a stalwart light to follow through the bewildering maze that is the dark and ominous passage of the present.

The next stage of our development will be the grandest of them all because in order to survive as a species, the coming together of the world will be a necessity. It will be our only salvation, and it will unite all those who have been purposefully segregated by the powers that be. Through the communalism of the world our humanity will experience its greatest revitalization and the Flames of Hope will burn bright, illuminating the planet for all to see. It will be our greatest moment.

Equality and Justice will prevail, fraternity among peoples will lead to understanding, and those at the top, those who have been using, abusing and exploiting the masses for time eternal will finally kneel down to the gods of justice and equality as karma makes its unpleasant presence known. From then on, the nations of the world will unite as one, national flags, those symbols of segregation and division, will be eliminated, giving way to one united world symbol of humanity.

The Flames of Hope burn bright knowing that BushCo will eventually fall, disappearing from the expansive history of the world, being nothing more than a second in the twenty-four hour clock that is human history. The pestilence will pass, as it always does, the malignant cancer will die and the entire world will rejoice as it purges the wretched disease from its surface. History will once more repeat itself, excreting the waste that created so much trouble, suffering and decimation back to the shithole it crept out of. The principle of karma does not disappoint.

The well of Hope is eternal, a spring of life that does not dry. It provides life, sustenance and warmth, a belief that malevolence will be eradicated like the scourge that it is. Hope gives us confidence that while the short run is full of traps and pitfalls, trials and tribulations, the long run sees the effervescent sunset of the neocon loonies and the corrupt Bushes disappearing over the twilight horizon. It sees Cheney being hunted by pheasants into a pit of black gold, Rumsfeld being devoured by inner demons of past and present and Ashcroft carrying his ignorant fundamentalist log of wood up his personal Golgotha from which he can sing his psalms of forgiveness for the chaos he helped create.

Flames of Hope see balance returning to the planet as the corporate Leviathan is defeated by the will of the people and the power of the united. It sees air, land and waters free of the toxins and pollution that are destroying man and land. Hope returns to normal the crap that today constitutes food, gladly provided by the Leviathan, that serves only to fatten us up, filling our bodies and arteries with future disease. The Flames of Hope burns the Leviathan to a crisp, as people worldwide rejoice at having their chains of servitude torn apart, free once more to live meaningful lives of happiness.

Burning brighter and brighter, growing in size and power, the Flames of Hope reaches six billion humans, guiding us through the dark caverns of Washington D.C. and the cold abyss of feeble leadership. Like a million bats reaching for the freedoms of a night sky we erupt out of our dark cave in a giant symphony of fraternity and solidarity, reaching deep into the halls of Congress and the White House, reclaiming the land that once belonged to the people and the principles that once made this nation great, replacing the power and greed addicted prostitutes at the top with an assembly of scrupulous and honorable representatives that place the interests of the citizens above their own.

The power of the people, united, as one, will sweep over the oligarchy and the Leviathan. Great tidal waves of discontent and of peaceful revolution at the hands of the citizenry will make the giant corporate beast melt and wither. It will make of Bush a silver spoon fed crybaby returning to Crawford to despoil yet another entity that has the misfortune of getting touched by his hands of perpetuating failure. We can wish of Flames of Hope burning bright, reducing to ashes a shriveled and dry Bush in a powerful manifestation of might.

The sands of time are ready to indulge us in another one of those great leaps forward, when man thrusts ahead in a logical next step in civilization’s evolution. When humanity decides to expand its dimensions great things usually follow. We have reached, therefore, that era in time when we must cleanse from our great Earth that trash that is helping rot all that we have come to know and cherish. The evil that is materialism and consumerism is slowly making us all dead men walking. It is raping and pillaging the beauty that once was, transforming our only home into a scarred and barren emptiness devoid of wonder and greatness, pussing from its bowels all the poison we have injected into its once healthy body. Materialism is changing humanity, making us selfish beings intent on acquiring everything we don’t need and disposing of all we do. It is making us users of mind altering pharmaceutical drugs, our unhappiness being drowned out in the cocktails of stupor we so eagerly purchase as we try to escape the misery that our materialistic world has entrenched us with.

Working perpetually longer hours every year for the perceived benefit of higher wages and a better, happier life, we slave ourselves for the few elite exploiters who care not an ounce for our well-being. Our lives suffer, we are made less happy and before we know it our once vibrant energies have dwindled with the advance of age. In the end, a life worth living has been relegated to a life worth working, years of sacrifice gone and squandered. Our own personal lives have been laid to waste, sacrificed to our corporate masters. We only live once, we should take advantage of it. All people die, not everyone truly lives. We must truly live. Under the current exploitative system, we live to work instead of working to live.

In the meantime, our children get educated by a corporate media that has become parent, teacher and role model to them, inculcating them in the virtues of materialism and consumption, trained to produce and consume, to not question authority and to never think for themselves. Before we know it they have grown up right in front of our passive eyes, transformed into obedient worker bees, blindly obeying, believing and following what their corporate masters command.

The system has gone awry, the infection of greed has immersed itself into everything once deemed good and anything now prospering as bad. The Leviathan wages war on the masses; longer hours, more stress, less wages and benefits; sacrificing lives for work; government laws and regulations are enacted in favor of corporations at our expense; pollution is slowly killing many of us from inside; our children are growing up obese and sick; unilateralism, cronyism and corruption run amok; we are indebted for life, our savings have been gobbled up by the Kenny Boy Lays of the world. Flames of Hope and solidarity are together our only salvation from this behemoth and the oligarchy that runs it.

United we must stand, saying enough is enough; the masses becoming a monster one-hundred million times greater than the corporate Leviathan will never be defeated. Taking our country back from the grip of autocracy is only possible united in spirit and energy, putting aside our differences and interests for the benefit of mankind.

A new era of human understanding must be born. Flames of Hope must give way to a willingness to make hope reality and reality perpetual. We are ready for a new Renaissance, a rebirth in humanity and in our mental perception of how we treat each other, and the planet. Resources must be shifted away from death and destruction, away from the militarization of the globe and towards opportunity, equality and education. Peace, not war. Equality, not injustice. Assimilation, not exploitation. Fraternity, not divisiveness. Solidarity, not selfishness. We are ready to launch a new civilization, a new understanding of how to live. It is time to take a giant leap forward by disposing of the backwardness we have been living in for too long. Flames of Hope are reawakening from their long hibernation, ready to light the way to a new tomorrow. Our present leaders know not what they do, they are but a few. Why allow them to bring us all down with them when we can all climb to greatness together?

Our primitiveness has supposedly been over for centuries. We must prove it. If we remain as we are, primitive and animalistic, unable to control our animal instincts and urges, eventually we will destroy each other. We do not stand a chance if we revert to our old ways. The symptoms of our disease are too strong, their attachment to us inescapable. Only a rebirth, a Renaissance, similar to the one in Middle Ages Florence, full of energy and optimism, absorbed in confidence and vision, can release us from these Dark Ages we are presently encapsulated in, being led to extinction by those who do not know what they are doing.

We must move away from unsustainable carbon energies and towards those everlasting of the sun and wind. The technology is there, the resources unlimited, the horizons prosperous. Advancing in time means advancing away from our primitiveness in energy extraction. Black gold will destroy us all in fiery hurricanes of unfettered nuclear power. Our transportation must shift away from gasoline. It is time to retire the internal combustion engine. The interests that be will fight for its continued use. Too much wealth is to be made; too much power to be accumulated. We must fight harder to make antiques of this technology that has served its purpose. The future is now; sun and wind await us.

A new appreciation for the planet we inhabit must be created. Mother Earth must stop being despoiled and raped. She is slowly hemorrhaging to death, and she is beginning to cough up the malignant tumor called humanity. Her immune system is fighting back, trying to extract us from her surface. Global warming and the destruction of the world’s forests and oceans will soon unleash consequences we are not ready to understand. We must respect our only home, we must save it and its creatures, of which we are but one. A new understanding of Earth and how it functions is of paramount importance.

It is time to break free from the rusted iron shackles that have for too long gripped us in servitude and subjugation. The Flames of Hope are ready to shine brilliantly, guiding our society to a more just, equal and enlightened fusion of humanity. Free of exploitation and abuse, free of hatred and racism, a world of all for one and one for all. Flames of Hope desire to discard those whose aim is to divide in order to control, those whose power lies in ignorance. Their kryptonite is education and knowledge, the potion that disintegrates them into dust is an awakened populace tired of being misled and lied to.

For too long the scourge has used the system that has been in place for millennia for their own selfish reasons, killing opportunity and talent, drowning opposition and revolution, engendering poverty and suffering for the exploitation that inherently fattens their bank accounts and expands their power. The new Renaissance must eliminate these symptoms of our disease through the enlightenment of billions. Education is the cure, the vaccine we need to inoculate ourselves from the pestilence we have created and the creation that is exploitation.

The Bush must burn, the Flames of Hope must be allowed to ignite, free to prosper, free to warm the world in its entirety, free to take the inevitable next step in human evolution. An Enlightenment and a Renaissance have been trying to come out of the shadows of human forgetfulness, knocking on our door ready to unleash a new chapter in our history, desperately wanting to save us from ourselves by erasing the vices and evils that we have spawned during the last six hundred years.

The Flames of Hope, however, must arise from the will of the people. They cannot spark on their own. Only we can initiate what we want to achieve. Only we can ignite the Hopes and dreams of humanity. Putting aside all we have been inculcated with, drawing a blank foundation, erasing and remedying the fruitless brainwashed education ingrained in us since birth is a good start. We must challenge all we have ever been taught, questioning authority and the history we think to be true, turning upside down the society we have grown accustomed to, that same organism that to our detriment we keep alive and that effortlessly endangers millions. We must question leaders and the dogma that benefits no one except them. A new solution must be implemented, through the collective brainstorming of the entire human species, that in essence defends us from ourselves and sets in motion a mechanism that will transform human interaction and understanding, making of our society that which it is capable of achieving, and prospering in.

Our future is together, as one, one planet, one people. It is inevitable, the path our civilization has been evolving towards since we left the jungles of Africa. Our world is now a giant village, we are all part of the same tribe, of all shades and colors, beliefs and views. Our diversity, if managed right, will be our salvation. If we allow ourselves to degenerate into what a few at the top have in store for us, we will not survive. We will become the first species to self-implode, driving ourselves into extinction, leaving the world to the cockroaches and the scorpions for them to become the next species to rule the planet. The inevitability that is human communalism is upon us, the time to change our ways has arrived. Let us fulfill our destiny, now rather than later, before the errors of our ways send us all on the path of the dodo.

As we progress on the clock of time, Hope must not be allowed to dissipate. The Flames of Hope must always burn brightly, warming us from inside, keeping alive the dreams and goals of humanity, allowing progressiveness to dominate human evolution and lasting long enough to pass the strong Flames of Hope to our children. It is they who inherit this world; it is they that must live in our mistakes, trying to correct the error of our ways. To them the Flames of Hope must burn brightest, and we must insure that they become heirs to a better world than exists today. If not the degeneration of humanity will continue, and the road to extinction will be made that much easier.

It is time to awaken from our decades long slumber. Humanity is ready for a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment. In fact, we need a new rebirth, a deviation away from our present course and towards principles of peace, equality and justice, fraternity, solidarity and love. We must follow and embrace the principles of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus and Buddha and others like them. The rascal warmongers must not be allowed to infect us with their brand of humanity.

Our animal instincts must be controlled, our primitiveness abandoned. There is such greatness in our species and civilization, and we must realize that the future is together, in celebration of our diversity, in appreciation of our differences. In the end, we are all humans, we are all the same species inhabiting the same planet, and today, more than ever, we need to realize that we can no longer escape the consequences of our actions and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We are killing ourselves, our humanity and our future. Our great indifference must instead be turned to great action. A new Renaissance awaits us; a new human Enlightenment that changes our reality for the betterment of all who inhabit the Earth. Only the Flames of Hope can save us from becoming another dominant species fossilized for posterity to record.

The confidence that Hope engenders is the salvation that awaits us; as long as Hope exists the Flames will not extinguish and their brightness will lead us to the Promise of a new day. Flames of Hope Still Burn Bright, waiting for humanity's call to action.

Sunday, January 04, 2004

Exploitation of the American Soldier, Part II of II: Of The Vietnam Example, Guinea Pigs and Systemic Abuse

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders. – Ralph Bunche

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. – Aesop

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
– Plato

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons. – Croesus

The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.
– Plutarch

Only the dead have seen the end of war. – Plato

[What ‘Bring 'em on’] showed the world was that the Commander in Chief has not an ounce of compassion for the men and women that he sent into harm's way. – Dennis O'Neil, BringThemHomeNow.org, 11/19/03

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-classed muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...."
- Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940) Major General (U.S. Marine Corps)

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln

"No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it."
- Samuel Johnson

[Writer’s note: Due to the length of the second part to this series, I would suggest, for more enjoyable reading and in order to better absorb the material contained herein, reading one section at a time. Reading the entire part II might become overwhelming and is not what I aim to achieve. Part II is split into three sections and should be read as three separate articles joined together in spirit and relevance.]


The Vietnam Example

To fully understand the epidemic that is the exploitation of the American Soldier one need look no further than the 250,000 to 500,000 homeless veterans that on any given day wonder the streets of the United States. Up to half a million veterans, mostly those who fought in the terror-filled jungles of Vietnam, have been forgotten in time, left to fend for themselves lost among concrete jungles and steel-glass canyons. Forgotten by a government that sent them across the globe to fight the evildoers of the moment, namely Communists, most men fought in ghastly battles, witnessed appalling atrocities, experienced death firsthand and saw gruesome injuries that scarred them for life.

War is hell, and soldiers do not easily escape from these flames of enveloping terror when returned home. The repulsion of what they were forced to both see and perpetrate in the name of freedom, liberty, democracy and the American way left many as psychologically fragile as fine china. For years veterans have had to deal with knowing they were part of war, that most evil of human endeavors, that brings out the worst in the human condition. Many returned impregnated with the horrible demons of what they witnessed on the battlefield, perpetually unable to exorcise the wretched memories of their testosterone-stressed-filled adventure in death and destruction.

Millions returned home after a bitter defeat, with 58,000 of their comrades devoid of their once beaming energy, packed in body bags, their bullet or shrapnel ridden corpses testament to the ultimate sacrifice that to this day has lost all purpose and whose pain still lingers in the minds of millions of young boys now turned middle-aged veterans who fought a war without meaning, in a land lost in time for an ideology that could not evolve with reality. Today the scars, both mental and physical, remain entrenched, making up to half a million once young and brave soldiers homeless indigents of unjustified hopelessness, unable to escape the awfulness of what was forced upon them by a system and a cabal of elites whose only purpose was defending their ideology, increasing and maintaining their power and enriching their pockets.

Vietnam is perhaps the best but by no means the only example of what happens when those in power are left to their own devices and unleash the torture called war onto young conscripts, confident, brave and unafraid, mostly low and working class, sent to destroy, kill and expand the power and wealth of a few exploiters of human flesh.

We only need to see how the biggest, and perhaps only winner of the Vietnam War, the military-industrial complex (MIC), enriched itself tremendously through years of warfare, death and destruction, using soldiers to carry out its assembly-line, profit-making scheme of immoral business ventures born out of the misery of millions that fattened up shareholder wealth and ingrained into government the growing and unfettered power of the MIC. Through the millions of tons of bombs dropped, instruments of war produced (helicopters, tanks, munitions, etc..) and the perpetual stream of profit from waging such a prolonged war the MIC’s power grew. Today the MIC and government are one and the same, and wars are but part of the business of making profit. This is a reality we have been made blind to.

Unfortunately, our soldiers are the mechanisms by which the MIC, the Leviathan and the government elites unleash and spread their evil wrath onto the world. Soldiers have become pawns, the instruments that pull triggers, aim weapons, push buttons and destroy infrastructure, the human brain necessary to operate the MIC’s collection of apparatuses of destruction and death. They are expendable, of course, easily replaced by the next wave of caste or government instituted drafts. War is a boom to the MIC, of huge importance to its oligarchy. There is vast profit and power to be made in war, just ask today’s defense contractors, and the biggest war profiteer in the Iraq war, Halliburton, of Dick Cheney fame.

These entities survive and prosper by manufacturing an unending flood of instruments of death, by supplying the vast resources necessary to conduct war. And the stream of these products smeared in blood must never be allowed to run dry which is why blood must continue to be spilled. Machines of war must be created, used and destroyed, only to be manufactured again and again, shipped out to be used and recycled in a vicious circle of malevolent profit making. Think about it, who really profits and gains from war? It is today but a business to the United Corporations of America, and the reason fear has been metastasized into our psyches during the last couple of years. Chasing ambiguous boogie-men, today’s version of evildoer, assures the Leviathan of perpetual war, hence perpetual profit and exploitation. Enemies must exist in order to continue building the war machine, and fear is the tool the oligarchy has created that affects our emotions of insecurity, thereby making us passive citizens following Bush and his cabal of charlatans from war to war.

Many of today’s forgotten homeless veterans struggle to survive frozen winters outside and blizzards of mental anguish inside, self-medicating themselves with drugs or alcohol, the only escapes from the permanent state of turmoil their minds live in. The horrors of war cannot be released; the human brain is too fragile and susceptible to the brutalities of man fighting man, of man killing his own kind, of being witness to the shouts, screams, suffering and
death of men, women and children as they are bulldozed into the realm of lifeless cadavers.

War is that most ignoble of human creations in which lower classes fight each other to the death for the benefits of the few elite-greed-infected bastards that blink not an eye at the death and maiming of those young “plebians” they sent to war in far away lands to fight those same brothers being exploited by the powerful on the other side. In the end, victory or defeat matters not to the dead and injured who have gained nothing and lost everything, returning home to an easily forgetful government that throws veterans into the bowels of indifference, tossing away the key and washing its hands clean of the human catastrophe it created.

Sacrificed for the benefit of a few at the top, today’s Vietnam, Korean and Gulf War Veterans, and those the war has made homeless in particular, are a perfect example of the utter disregard and exploitation of the American Soldier by both government and society. Those men who are forgotten, sacrificed, thrown out into the street and left for dead, fed to the hungry wolves of misery, slowly decimated from within are the creation of the man-mad pillager of lives called warfare. In essence, their lives are sacrificed for the betterment of Leviathan’s oligarchs and government cabal of miscreants.

A government that without remorse allows those veterans who fought its battles and its wars to freeze during frigid winters and pick food out of garbage bins in order to survive is a disgrace and a monument to ineptitude. Sacrificing lives, body and mind for the perceived good of the nation our soldiers return home, to a world that has been transformed, a reality that has been altered and an indifferent government that has no more use for them. Rather, they become but a mosquito to the Leviathan and power junta, a nuisance aimlessly roaming the streets, surrendering their remaining pride in order to beg for pennies. Like ghosts they live among us, invisible at night they hide from the unkind winter temperatures in cardboard-made sleeping boxes, appearing by day on sidewalks, palms extended, watching the world they were once part of pass them by.

To survive the stresses of battle is not to survive the wars that follow, where a surviving soldier must reintegrate himself or herself back to society, family, work, finances and the life that once was. The true struggle begins, that which is stronger than any enemy: the battle with oneself to overcome what the mind cannot purge. Flashbacks of battles won and lost, of deaths seen and avoided, memories of comrades maimed and killed, stresses that are manifested from the will to survive in a state of self-preservation and the ever recurring sounds, tastes and smells of war attack the mind, making reintegration back into society oftentimes a futile and complex undertaking. The clash inside commences, that violent whirlwind that morphs together memories and stresses of war and of the life that previously existed, creating a vortex of self-destruction that leads to a veteran’s complete loss with self, and the new reality that has become his living hell. Post-traumatic stress disorder may erupt in the aftermath of war or in years subsequent, exploding out and releasing those demons that have been festering inside waiting to envelope the veteran with their claws of memories past and nightmares present.

From moral law-abiding citizen, young, energetic and full of hopes and dreams, where virtue and respect for humanity is ingrained, soldiers are methodically transformed into programmed automatons of carnage, devastators of lives and lands and efficient killing machines without remorse for the consequences of their actions. This creates a quagmire in the mind as one must shift and abandon what was once believed to be sacred, namely the value of human life, and replacing it instead with the indoctrinated duty to kill and destroy. Thus, the soldier is torn until his first battle and first kill, after which time the sacredness of human life morphs into one of self-preservation and thirst for extinguishing the enemy. The military’s lethally trained soldier has now become its cog of violence and war; the alteration from youthful dreamer to destroyer of dreams is finalized.

Many who survived did and do return to a semblance of normalcy, able to reintegrate and continue living seemingly fruitful lives. Their inner demons are minor. Yet many do not, and are forced to confront their all-encompassing mental demons without the assistance of the same government that helped foster them in the first place. And so, the exploitation having been completed, their purpose achieved, the veteran is discarded and abandoned, forgotten and left to cope with the scars of the “glorious” and “freedom fighting” war he was sent to fight. Meanwhile, those who supplied his instruments of death and destruction reap the profits, the Leviathan enriches itself and those at the top like Bush, born with a silver spoon up their ass and with no understanding or empathy for those born in the lower echelons of the caste system get to pat themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on the newfound power and riches added to their portfolio of exploitation.

That was Vietnam, a blood infested swamp of hell that resulted in defeat and in the collective destruction of millions of American soldiers, in life, limb and mind, sacrificed in the jungles of south-east Asia from which the demons of war were exhumed and returned embedded with our soldiers like a potent pathogen bent on unleashing self-destruction from within. Forgotten once brave and decorated soldiers have become, pariahs in society, walking aimlessly in their own worlds of escape, once fruitful and promising lives laid to waste, forced to loiter, beg and pick trash, fighting their inner selves and the demons of war while their government begins implementing the vicious cycle of decimation onto a new generation of young, brave and cocky men and women. This is what becomes of those who fight the wars of the oligarchy and powerful; this is the sacrifice they must make, ruining their lives, minds and futures fighting their fellow man. This is how they are repaid for their services. This is the reality of soldiers turned veterans, of the devastation of war and the effects of the violence we are capable of unleashing onto the world. The example that is Vietnam is discarded by the elite, only to be repeated today, tomorrow and into the future with each regeneration of the assembly-line we call human procreation. This is Iraq. This is us.

In the military it is one’s duty to never leave anyone behind. When it comes to homeless, injured, amputated and mentally destroyed veterans, however, it seems to be the modus operandi. It is the exploitation of the American Soldier.

Today, many experts fear the next great wave of homeless vets and psychologically ravaged citizens are in Iraq fighting for their lives. The next generation of exploited men and women is systematically being converted into mentally fatigued, overtly-stressed and physically scarred individuals that will return home with the horrors of what they have seen and done in the desolate deserts of Mesopotamia ingrained into their now fragile minds. This is the sacrifice made; this is the reality of Bush’s war.

Through the physical and mental loss of our loved ones our government declares victory. Through the devastation unleashed onto humanity Bush tries to assure re-election. Through the alteration and usurpation of our soldier’s lives and minds Bush claims triumph over evil; through their enslavement to the Leviathan and government oligarchy he claims to further assure our freedoms and liberties. In the end, evil is unleashed under our name, our freedoms and liberties are eroded more every day and we come closer to becoming the slaves and serfs of yesteryear as the war the Leviathan has spawned against us and our loved ones grows in intensity.
Guinea Pigs Dressed in Camouflage

Forced Vaccinations and Experiments

It cannot be emphasized enough how soldier lives are destroyed or seriously altered by the government and its war activities. Just recently, a court order was imposed banning the forced anthrax vaccination of troops by the military that in many soldiers was causing sickness and maladies. Brought to the courts by a group of soldiers, the court in essence found that the military was experimenting its unproven vaccine on troops who were being used as guinea pigs. The Pentagon in not deterred, however, as it has gone back to court seeking to have the ruling applied only to those who were part of the complaint, in essence seeking to continue the vaccination plan to all other members of the armed forces. Soldiers are being pressured and punished if they refuse vaccination, and many have not been told by the military of the court ruling.

Throughout the decades the military has performed such “experiments” on soldiers through vaccinations, inoculations, experiments, poking and prodding, trying to uncover the effects of chemical and biological warfare on humans. Under the guise of the Cold War, from 1955 to 1975 the government used the military to experiment on tens of thousands of soldiers, oftentimes without consent or knowledge, exposing them to radiation, biological contaminants, blister and nerve agents and psycho-hallucinatory drugs such as PCP.

These experiments, with our soldiers being used as guinea pigs, only serve to damage the well-being of military men and women in an attempt to see what the effects and damage will be if the vaccine is applied to the general population. Our soldiers are being poked and prodded, serving as an experimental group, studied over time to see what health effects manifest themselves and what dangers are to be expected, and avoided. Guinea pigs dressed in camouflage are no different than guinea pigs living in cages. Enlisted to serve in both war and as samples of experimental exploitation, the American Soldier is but a slave serving the dark interests of those who lack humanity.

A definite pattern begins to emerge over decades of abuse and exploitation of soldiers, and that is the extent by which the military will expose its own to the evils it has created with a disregard that is nefarious and criminal in nature. This pattern has not stopped, it gets covered up or stone-walled when confronted, and it continues on its pervasive pattern of criminality and indifference that like an unstoppable tank runs over the lives of so many members of the armed forces who believed they would never be betrayed by a government they swore to serve and defend. What follows are but a few examples of this systemic pattern of behavior.

Hydrogen and Atomic Bomb Testing

The exploitation of the American Soldier for the benefit of the government is an ingrained part of the system. Soldiers have been used as guinea pigs for decades, oftentimes used as subjects sacrificed for the evils of mankind. A perfect example is that era, beginning in the aftermath of World War II and continuing until the early 1960’s, when our government began testing atomic and hydrogen bombs. Soldiers would be called into these areas, such as the Nevada desert, and placed in strategic locations throughout the fallout area of the blast, oftentimes in very close proximity to the mushroom cloud that ensued. Once the experimental bomb was detonated soldiers would have to withstand the powerful blast winds and concussion, thereby being exposed to radiation levels never before experienced by man. Guinea pigs in camouflage, exposed and tested, in all likelihood studied and analyzed to determine radiation’s effects on humans.

This exploitation resulted in numerous cancers, diseases, perpetual health problems and birth defects. The progeny of these soldiers have also been made to suffer through genetic birth defects. Men from all branches of the armed forces were subjected to these tests, many larger in power than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Numbering over 100 in the course of two decades, these tests and the ensuing health effects, many of which have taken over 20 to 30 years to develop in soldiers and their children, have also affected citizens living downwind and in close proximity to the tests. In total about 900 bombs were detonated in the Nevada deserts from 1950 to 1963, unleashing 178 times more radioactive fallout than the accident at Chernobyl.

For years the Pentagon and government have stonewalled, withheld, suppressed and covered up attempts at uncovering and exposing these truths. Over 300,000 military men and women and 100,000 civilians were used as guinea pigs during the course of the tests. For soldiers, to try and decline forced participation meant court martial, dishonorable discharges, treason and jail. For all involved, it has meant a life of suffering at the hands of the government. Meanwhile, the exploitation of the American Soldier continued.

Agent Orange

The Vietnam War provides us with another example of criminal exploitation of soldiers by our government leaders with that famous herbicide chemical named Agent Orange. Sprayed by C-123 cargo planes over the conifer jungles of Vietnam where American troops abounded in order to defoliate and clear the thick green cover of foliage and flora that offered protection to the Viet Cong, the chemical was oftentimes inhaled and absorbed by soldiers, both American and Vietnamese, penetrating their lungs and/or skin and disseminating throughout the body. Up to 19 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides were dispersed from 1961 to 1971. Agent Orange was poison, designed to kill plant life in order to facilitate the further destruction of Vietnamese land and people. American troops were exposed to this devil’s concoction and the results were disastrous.

Upon returning home, Vietnam veterans began dying of disease, most notably cancer. To this day, those still alive suffer horrendous pain from the aftereffects of Agent Orange, the chemical the military unleashed onto its own. Children of soldiers exposed have been born diseased or deformed. Hundreds of thousands were exposed over the course of a decade, never imagining that the chemical they thought was helping them survive would later decimate and destroy their lives, and that of their children.

Agent Orange’s effects have not been relegated to American Soldiers, however. Vietnamese soldiers have suffered the same diseases, have died in larger numbers, and their children continue to suffer the consequences of American indifference. Absorbed into the countryside, the herbicide has filtered into soils and water tables, devastating farming and large populations. Vietnamese children have and continue being born retarded, deformed, sick and dead. In Vietnam, Agent Orange has become a WMD, and it has ruined both lives and land to this day.

Gulf Wars I & II and Depleted Uranium (Gulf War Syndrome)

More recently, the introduction of Depleted Uranium (DU) as a key component of America’s military arsenal has created a present wave and future catastrophe of disease and death among US troops, most notably those that served in the first Gulf War. DU, made of nuclear waste and used in military shells, munitions, missiles, bullets and tank armor, has made of Iraq a nuclear dump that has ruined the environment. Hundreds of tons of DU material has been used in both Gulf Wars, Kosovo and Afghanistan, releasing into the environment minute particles of vaporized uranium that linger in the environment and in the air, penetrating into water tables, food supplies and cities. The usefulness of DU, its inexpensive production, troop armor protecting strength and target penetrating ability, had made this weapon a useful instrument of war – if the aftereffects are not taken into consideration.

It is estimated that anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 American veterans who served in Gulf War I have died of mysterious diseases and maladies, most notably cancers, neurological disorders and immunodeficiency illnesses and diseases. It is estimated that 40,000 to 80,000 more will die in the next twenty to thirty years as the effects of DU run their course. Only about 150 members of the military died during the actual fighting in Gulf War I.

Half of the 700,000 troops used in Gulf War I have reported serious illnesses, however, with many suffering chronic illness. Hundreds of thousands suffer from the so-called Gulf War Syndrome. There is a strong indication, and indeed a growing likelihood, that the use of DU by the military is the primary culprit. Most of these veterans are in their late twenties and early thirties, in the prime of their health, cleared as healthy before the war in military conducted medical physicals. Added to these diseases is the growing evidence that DU is responsible for the large number of genetic birth defects, gross mutations of fetuses, miscarriages and stillborns arising from veterans of Gulf War I.

The implication for veterans of Gulf War II and Afghanistan is mind boggling. The example of Gulf War I and its health related implications is but a small ripple compared to the coming tidal wave approaching Gulf War II veterans and our society. Estimates say that the US and Britain used five times more DU munitions in 2003 than used in 1991. When up to 350 tons of DU munitions was used by the Pentagon in 1991, the ramifications for the present and future health of American soldiers is worrisome at the least and calamitous at worst.

The same diseases, cancers and fetal deformities and miscarriages being discovered by our soldiers are widespread throughout the population of Iraq and now Afghanistan as well. Coincidence? Not likely. Of course the environmental disaster DU has unleashed will eventually disappear, in 4.5 billion years. Meanwhile, Iraq’s population has shown steep increases in cancers and genetic birth defects, numbers never before seen in such quantities for a sample nation, except perhaps in post WWII Japan. It is not a far-fetched statement to say that Iraq and its citizens will be devastated for generations to come. The government purposefully allowed the use of uranium rich DU munitions, exposing both soldiers and civilians to one of the worst weapons of mass destruction. Make no mistake, Iraq and Afghanistan are now nuclear dumps, their citizens are dying in incredibly large numbers and the US government, along with corporate media complicity, is covering up this growing pandemic that would rightly outrage the entire planet if it was exposed for the war crime that it is. We must stop the use of our own WMD’s on both land and man before we ask others to stop theirs.

The government has remained quiet on the subject but a growing landslide of evidence is pointing to the morbid conclusion that in Gulf War I and now II the US military and government, in order to pro-rate American deaths from “during the war,” (in essence minimizing death during the war) to a gradual death rate in the immediate decades “after the war,” and in order to prevent large numbers of casualties that would inevitably alienate the American public, -- think “Vietnam Syndrome” – used DU armor and munitions, knowing full well its dangers to troops and innocent civilians, deciding the slow and clandestine death of troops after the war was better than thousands of casualties that had been expected during it. This happened in 1991, and, with more than a decade to correct its actions, the Pentagon instead relied more heavily on DU in 2003 when mounting evidence showed the effects of DU on humans. Can we dare bring to light and investigate this criminal exploitation by those at the top of our loved ones?

Soon, American troops will return from Iraq, and deep within them will grow an embedded poison, a weapon of mass destruction that will linger inside their bodies until the day arrives that DU decides to begin its evil process of annihilation. We must keep on eye on these veterans because many will die, many will give birth to the most deformed babies you will ever see and the government/military will speak not a word. The cover-up and stonewall will be methodical, both by government and the corporate media, for the implications of what is happening to our soldiers and Iraq’s citizens will send shockwaves throughout the world. Payments of this criminal deceit may run into the hundreds of billions, devastating entire industries. An objective investigation would most likely lead to the incarceration of those at the top and expose this nation for the evilness of its wars. Thus, the DU enigma will never see the light of day, and veterans will be swept underneath the rug of disregard, gathering cobwebs as more and more veterans die off.

The evils of DU are visible in Iraq, they are visible in Gulf War I veterans and they will soon be visible in many of the men and women today serving in the cradle of civilization. Nuclear war was unleashed on Iraq and Afghanistan by our military. In the end, it is our own sons and daughters that must pay the price for this most wicked of actions, this most unmoral of wars. And we have our own government to thank for the coming decimation that will in the next few years and decades devour our loved ones and the children they bear.

Systemic Abuse of Veterans and Soldiers

As soldiers struggle to survive in the desert sands of Iraq the Bush administration is waging its own war at home against them and their families. In order to help pay for the enormity that has become the Iraq quagmire, Bush has cut or held down numerous soldier and veteran benefits and services. Bush has cut off access to the VA’s health care system for approximately 164,000 veterans. The President is also trying to cut off $1.5 billion in military family housing and medical facility funding in his 2004 budget, a 14 percent reduction. The White House also opposes a proposal to give National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon’s health-insurance system. The General Accounting Office has estimated that one of every five Guard members has no health insurance.

The war by Bush against members of the armed forces continues as the White House tried to roll back recent increases in monthly imminent-danger pay, from $225 to $150, and family-separation allowance, from $250 to $100, for troops being shot at in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the administration, the military’s pay raise for men and women in desperate need of better wages was a paltry 4.1 percent hike for higher ranks and a 2 percent raise for the lower ranks, a raise that does not even cover the rise of inflation. The White House labeled as “wasteful and unnecessary” a very modest proposal to double from $6000 to $12,000 the gratuity given to families of those soldiers that die on active duty, an amount that would not cover a year of expenses and that does not even surpass the poverty line for a small family.

The White House budget for Veterans Affairs cut $3 billion from VA hospitals even with the large number of casualties returning from Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. VA spending today averages $2,800 less per patient than nine years ago. Bush has raised VA prescription drugs co-payments for veterans more than 200 percent even at a time when veterans of Korea and Vietnam begin aging and see themselves in greater need of medicines. With hundreds of thousands of Gulf War I veterans suffering various chronic illnesses and diseases, this move further erodes the necessary mechanisms needed to live a life with the least amount of pain.

Further proof of the war being waged against members of the armed forces is Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to shut down 19 commissaries, military-run stores that offer discounted food and merchandise that helps low-paid enlisted troops and their families get by, with the possibility of closing down 19 more. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also trying to determine whether or not to shut down 58 military-run schools for the children of soldiers. Listed above are but a few of the tactics used by the Bush administration to strangulate soldiers, veterans and their families. Expected to fight and sacrifice lives, they are now being forced to sacrifice benefits and pay, education and healthcare. How much more can be asked of our sons and daughters before they and the nation begin wondering what Bush is doing? They deserve better, perhaps not Bush’s silver spoon but definitely some dignity and appreciation.

These moves by the Bush administration have lacerated those tools members of the military and their families need in order to live their lives with a semblance of meaning. Bush is in essence shackling soldiers and their families to a collective chain of apathy and exploitation. As these men and women head into combat zones, willing to sacrifice limb, mind and life, their benefits, pay and services are being decimated by the same man putting their lives on the line. It is a slap in the face to at the same time send soldiers to die abroad while slashing their benefits at home. It is a slap in the face to all veterans who courageously served their country in battle only to have their benefits reduced. And the person responsible is a chickenhawk who escaped his duties and now smirks and struts while terrified, maimed and killed soldiers return home, telling the world to “bring it on,” in essence challenging the world to kill those men and women he sent to fight his war.

The exploitation of the American Soldier is methodical and arrogantly shameful. It is enslavement and oppression. It is the continuation of a mercenary army created to fight for and defend the interests of the Leviathan and the oligarchy. The illusions of “fighting for freedom,” “our way of life,” and our “democratic principles” is but a mirage designed to hide the real reasons behind Bush’s wars. Through propaganda the American people are being lied to and misled down the path of perpetual war. Through the use of fear and terror Bush propels the Leviathan’s war agenda, scaring the populace into acquiescing to exporting terror abroad and importing the erosion of freedoms and liberties at home.

Meanwhile, the Leviathan’s hostile and open war against Americans continues without us realizing what is being done to us. Blindly we believe what is shown; ignorantly we follow what is said. We no longer question authority nor self-educate ourselves. To many Americans Bush is the second coming of Christ, a most trusted man of honor and integrity. Reality, however, is altogether different. His policies are completely the opposite of Christ’s teachings. The worst president in history is destroying this nation, and he is bringing us all down with him. The rise of the fascist state of Amerika begun in 2000 will accelerate in 2004 and become a possible reality in 2005 with a further degrading of our rights, democracy and liberties, the acceleration of a police state and the complete usurpation of government and our representatives by the Leviathan and its puppet in the White House.

All this will be accomplished thanks to the invasive and systematic cloud of fear the administration has released into the fabric and environment of this country. The instilling of fear into an ever jumpy and paranoid nation by the administration is the ultimate WMD, (weapon of mental deception) destroying our once free and open society, scaring us into submission and making of us fearful citizens devoid of a once vibrant energy. If we do not stop fearing the illusion of evil Bush has indoctrinated us with, we will soon really have something to fear, and that is the terror of living in a fascist state.

In order to continue their perpetual profit-and-power-pillaging-war fighting ghosts and goblins the MIC, Leviathan and oligarchy will unleash a government enacted draft after the election of George W. Bush in 2004. Large troop numbers – at present not available through the “all volunteer” army – are needed to quench the three-headed monster’s greed-infested appetite for power and resources. All governmental and state action taking place today is clandestinely leading to this most ominous circumstance, one need only open his/her eyes. As is usually the case, those in the lower castes will become the great majority of draftees, brought out of their reservations and turned into mercenaries of the oligarchy.

Trained to become lethal killers of humanity, our sons and daughters will be dehumanized, exposed to the inhuman emotions of war and battle, death and blood. Spread to those regions our feudal lords deem strategic and necessary, our soldiers will decimate both land and man, becoming both a plague of locusts devouring everything in its path and a malignant virus hemorrhaging the planet. The Evil Empire, now openly and arrogantly waging war throughout the world, no longer acting clandestinely to determine geopolitical destinies as it has done for decades, will need vast amounts of cannon fodder and armies to guard the many lands, interests and resources of the Pax Amerikana and the United Corporations of Amerika.

The exploitation of the American Soldier will increase, the draft will take from our homes those young lives we most cherish. Conscripted to serve the Leviathan and oligarchy, trained to kill their fellow exploited man with the MIC’s instruments of death, our young loved ones will die and suffer. They will become maimed, both physically and mentally, scarred for life, becoming the disposable refuse our government throws into its landfills.

The story of the American Soldier is a story of ceaseless exploitation, of ceaseless sacrifice to the interests of the elite oligarchs and of ceaseless bravery in the face of ceaseless obstacles. No longer fighting for freedoms or liberties or in defending our borders or ways of life, soldiers now fight for the profits, resources, power and ideology of the Leviathan and oligarchs. The poor continue to be subjugated; they continue to fight like the serfs and slaves of old for the interests of the elite few.

The story of the American soldier is the story of human war, of the rich and powerful using the poor in the continual cycle of exploitation. It is the story of humanity, of civilization, and of the unrelenting and time honored tradition which by our indifference to act we inherently decide to live in. Through our passivity and unwillingness to force change we are condemning ourselves to the coming future that awaits us. A future that has been both our past and our present, and inevitably, the continuation of what has been, and what seems to remain. The symptoms of our disease, it seems, cannot be cured, and slowly our sickened and palpitated society chains itself to its cold and dreary death bed awaiting the inevitability of our lives.