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The thin red line that separates big
business and war has always been tenuous; today that line has all but
disappeared. That’s a line that is drawn in human blood and sacrifice,
and we must come to see it clearly if we are to survive as a people or a
nation.
What has been taking place since
the Bush administration came into office is nothing short of a major shift
in the policy stance of the United States, both at home and abroad. The
decades that have led up to this point were only prologue, to this
overarching reach for global dominance that is spelled out clearly in the
Bush Doctrine of 2002.
This shift in how we make our way
in the world is taking place now on two opposite tracks at the same time.
In the case of oil: Citing our need for that resource we have moved to
seize oil and oil pipelines in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and have failed
in both cases. At the same time, citing our ever-increasing need, our
military is using about half the oil we have, just to fuel the aggressive
wars that we started to get more of that precious commercial substance.
This has a direct effect on prices at the pump, at home, and represents a
colossal waste of this resource we claim to value over life itself.
The second face of this new thrust
of American military might is being taken, to back American companies that
have no-bid government contractual interests, in the direct outcome of
these wars for profit. Their public stance is that we "need" the
oil for the economic survival of American national interests — yet there
are other ways that the oil could be obtained without these huge costs in
public treasure or private lives, on all sides. This simply would involve
changing public policies and instituting the system of values that we say
we’ve promoted for over 200 years. The fact that our behavior does not
support that rhetoric is finally being seen by the entire world.
Look closely at how all of this
has worked out in Iraq. We have spent 200 hundred billion dollars, and what
do we have to show for that? That was taxpayer money, but the government
had no plan, so much of what was spent was wasted. But there was a huge
profit made by those we contracted with, even before the war began, to take
care of certain tasks and to see to the seizure of the oil fields and the
building of 14 US bases in that country. In addition these people created
their own private army (15,000 +) at $1,000 per day per person, to provide
protection for the corporations, and those projects.
There was no concern whatever for
the lives of the US military personnel, that were merely being used to
create the excuse to steal the resources and make the bases possible. The
lives of our soldiers counted for nothing in their scheme, which is why the
president and the White House wants to keep the number of the dead to a
bare minimum — as far as the public is concerned. Government went so far
as to classify the deaths, and make their number and their funerals into a
national security secret.
What the American public has still
not recognized is that we are paying both the corporate profiteers and
their mercenaries, by way of those secret contracts with the companies,
while taxpayers are also paying for both the wars and the troops as well.
Another fact that seems not to have stuck in the public’s mind is that
every single thing this administration has undertaken from the beginning
day of its term in office, has been a complete and utter failure. This
truly is the gang that can’t think, or plan, or even shoot straight. And
everyone here is paying for these follies that border on massive
criminality, and still the pretenders have no plan.
When it came to 911, the
commission has said that this government has utterly failed us, but that
the commission is "not about laying blame." Why not? These people
failed the nation in the only real job they ever had, which was to protect
the country and the people.
So government, which has yet to
even apologize for its failures, will just continue with business as usual
with no repercussions at all. On what other job, when something of that
magnitude that results in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people happens —
when has there been no one to be blamed? Especially when those who failed,
had been sworn, to keep exactly that kind of event from happening?
Bureaucracy is what the commission
investigated, not the crimes of 911. Bureaucracy is the government, and so
cannot find itself guilty of any crimes: which is why we needed an
immediate and thorough investigation; yet the government blocked that
outside look for nearly three years. Now we hear from yet another
self-serving committee that recommends yet more figureheads. There were
already figureheads in place, but none of them were charged. How will
having yet more idiots make anyone any safer? Government has failed us. The
specific individuals need to be charged and tried, for only that will begin
to remove the stain upon the nation.
We need to get more streamlined;
we need more accountability, not less. Bush and his outlaws have expanded
the size of the federal government and part of that increase is and was to
hide the crimes they wanted to commit. The bureaucracy hides the crimes of
this government, by design, and serves as the first line of protection for
the upper echelons of the elite that are the beneficiaries of what the
crimes were created to produce. The attacks of 911 were all too convenient
and fit perfectly with plans that had been drawn up well before Bush even
took office. The white wash of these crimes is proof of the extent of elite
complicity in all of this. This war on Islam, is only the latest invented
enemy to stoke the fires of the military-industrial complex in their
continued rape of the taxpayers, on their way back to the days of the
robber barons, when there were no regulations of business or corporations
— because all that mattered were their profits.
Look at the farce of HOMELAND
insecurity, that’s not about protecting us — that’s about controlling
us. And now the committee is calling for greater concentrations of
Intelligence, for an Intelligence Center, and for a Counter-Intelligence
Czar. This is all about spying on US citizens and has nothing to do with
anything like a war on terror. One thing that seems to have gotten lost, in
all of this, is what we say we’re fighting. These people are nothing but
a bunch of individuals — the closet thing to what we're doing now,
intended or not, is what the early Christians did in the Crusades.
Those we are attacking number in
the thousands, not the millions. These people are not a nation, they are
not a formal army; this is a fight over ideas and policies and our desire
to take what is not ours. We have been trying to enforce our theft of other
people’s property with the US military, in the name of protecting this
country and ourselves from terror.
Are we safer now, of course not!
What we’re actually doing is creating more enemies every hour that we
stay in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our actions are destabilizing nations around
the planet because Bush has made breaking laws part of every political
situation anywhere. What a real government would do is look at changing our
barbaric policies, around the world, as the best path toward getting what
we say we need for national survival. Brute force, with no legal basis for
that force, is not the way to succeed in getting what we say we must have.
Part of why we took up this course
has to do with the changes that the super neo-conservatives, and the
radical Christian right have been ardently advocating for decades. This
appears to be neither conservative (those usually opposed to change), nor
Christian (opposed to theft, murder, and greed as well as covetous
behavior). Instead what the support of these two fiercely aggressive groups
has done is to buttress the global interests of private enterprise, at the
expense of people everywhere. And the resultant onslaught of change that
has been forced down the throats of the world will not vanish anytime soon.
In private company dealings the
goal is purely profit. The reason that people choose their governments is
to protect themselves from exactly this kind of licensed theft, under cover
of legitimate business interests, which this scheme truly is. This uncouth
practice was the widely practiced case before the crash of ‘29. After
that market crash a whole system of laws were passed to prevent this kind
of out-of-control, unchecked greed from ever happening again. The last of
those protective laws was eliminated under Clinton.
Government, after 1929 took charge
of certain aspects of our lives, to protect the public from the greed of
unscrupulous politicians and big business. These laws were designed to
reign in the excesses of the robber barons. When, under Reagan, private
companies began to privatize government services and programs, all of what
we had set up to protect ordinary people from the scavengers and thieves
began to fall apart. Companies mostly consider only profit margins; the
government must consider the public and the needs of the citizens that make
up the vast majority of the people.
What the Thin Red Line marks is
the separation between us, and those that would enslave us for their own
ends. It sounds brutal but that is what these last four years have been
about — the removal of the last of our freedoms and the beginning of our
enslavement to the domination of elites, that have no use whatever for
people, except perhaps as wage slaves in their corrupted corporate empires.
Finally, there is
how-this-happened. When we let Nixon kill the national draft, we opened the
door to chaos. Citizen-soldiers were once this nations hedge, against
unlawful or unwarranted conflicts, because in theory the sons and daughters
of everyone might have to put their lives on the line. But with an all
volunteer force, a mercenary army in reality, we left the nation open to
the temptation of using the US military to prop up commercial ventures,
that could be wrapped in the flag and sold wholesale as patriotism.
The Roman Empire lasted quite
awhile, but as soon as the Roman Legions began to be composed of too many
conquered people, instead of citizens, the days of their Empire were
numbered. Today about 40 % of those fighting in the front lines in Iraq are
not American citizens. One might wonder if their deaths are even counted
among the "Americans" killed in action. www.rense.com/
What seems to have made all this possible, is that as a people we seemed to
have stopped caring about others, whether next-door or on the other side of
the planet. What was once thought of as American-values is now something
that is apparently completely out of date: We seem to have forgotten that
death comes to all of us — it’s how we live that really matters.
Typical politics are now also a thing of the past. This November 2nd
is about a lot more than labels, or political positions, this is about the
people’s right to be heard. This is also about whether we will just be
bulldozed once again by the spin-masters that will be out there on all
sides, to insure that we no longer have a voice in whatever happens in the
near future and beyond.
Many have said it better; but what matters most of all right now, is the
power in a single human voice. – So why not begin by increasing yours?
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