Author: Antifa

The 300 million hominids of the USA — who still charmingly refer to themselves as “We, the People” — have long since been surpassed and supplanted by America’s publicly traded corporations and ultra-rich investors, who are now the genuine citizens of the United States, able to vote with dollars, create votes with dollars, massage votes with dollars, manufacture public support for votes with dollars, write all the legislation to be voted upon, choose America’s legislators by means of donating dollars to favored campaigns and, of course, make plenty of dollars out of all of these efforts.

It is a closed system of government of, by and for corporate aims, and those corporate aims are a closed system as well, a system of aiming for short term profits, stablilized monopoly markets, and unregulated access to the resources of “lesser” nations.

What about you and me?
The role of hominids in our advanced capitalist system is to participate economically within the national platform, which is currently the 50 States but will soon become the entire North American continent — the North American Union. Whether the three governments of Canada, Mexico and the USA ever actually merge is utterly beside the point — a distraction. Once their business environment and regulatory, tax, and legal structures operate uniformly, allowing a larger national platform for these increasingly supra-national corporations to operate within, the goal is won.

Three uniformly corporatized governments sharing water, oil, cheap labor, and military defenses is just good old American cost cutting and efficiency.

If these super citizens cannot tell the difference between doing business in any of these three “sovereign nations” then there is no effective difference, to them.  The difference will all be felt by the hominids of these three nations, who will then be thrice removed from the original intent of their former governments, which was the simple idea that the people would rule over themselves by representatives duly elected.

That’s right out, mate, in the corporatized system of government. In the new American century, hominids are debt-ridden consumers — or they are troublemakers.

The role they play is that of cattle. They are plants to be harvested. They are parts. They are either functioning parts or bad parts, destined for the dumpster. There is a bottom line to consider, after all.

The owners of the American government are the owners of 85% of America, and of virtually all of America’s capital. The operators of the American government are the selected representatives of its super citizens, and their career goal is to drive the nation in the corporate quest for resources, customers, growth, profits, and power all around the globe.

The notion of minding the nation’s infrastructure, culture, future, and taking care of the people as any kind of priority is quite literally insane under this system, wherein the people are not the people anymore — only business entities are people now. That’s who the government is here to serve.

There is only the need for PR, spin, and lip service to the hominids, who are encouraged to partake of staged horse races called elections, to blog, to write letters, to sign petitions and make phone calls, to gather in conventions to flex their non-existent political muscles, non-existent because political muscle is spelled d-o-l-l-a-r-s. If you cannot outright buy a political representative — including seeing to his comforts and status and perks throughout his lifetime —  then you do not have a political representative.

Just as a lobbyist is someone who pushes a certain agenda for pay, a political representative is a lobbyist who pushes the agenda of those who pay for his election, and see to his needs after political retirement.

The need for lip service to keep the hominids apathetically participating creates War Party Left, and War Party Right, both of whom feel totally free to ignore hominids in any number at any time in favor of assiduously serving their paymasters — the super citizens we call corporations, and the super rich.

And why not? They actually, physically, own the whole place. It’s not our country anymore, financially. It’s theirs. They’ve earned it from us using the miracle of compound interest, and now they want it run to suit themselves, and expanded into overseas empire to suit themselves.

If the hominids of America want to rule themselves, they have to take their country back. That won’t be done by working within this closed system. The system has endless loops of wasted efforts and wasted words to contain the hopeful, the optimists, the dedicated, the wide awake fire breathing citizens who throw themselves into changing the system from within.

The Owners know to put such people into one or another of these endless loops, and burn them out in a few short years. In the past hundred years, there has not been one such creature seen to accomplish change from within. There have been many thousands of excellent people burnt, worn out, crushed within the system.

The system has one, and only one, Achilles heel. It cannot continue without hominid participation. No cooperation from the people, and the system gums up, breaks up, and falls down.

They can carry capital away to foreign shores. They can take what they can carry. They cannot take the physical nation away from 300 million hominids who are squatting on it, calling it their country.

When Americans take to the streets of their nation in millions upon millions, and say, “This nation does not belong to the bankers and billionaires, it belongs to us!” then the system will reboot, and people will be people once more.

It will not reboot itself.

I strongly suggest that everybody, everybody, get out of line.

As in the Japanese game of Go, all efforts in the Middle East by both Israel and America are to ‘surround’ and thus control someone else’s territory.  The goal behind seizing territory varies — lebensraum for Jewish families, or sovereignty over sweet crude still in the ground. No matter the goal. Capture the turf and you get whatever is of value there. You win by putting region after region under your control.

Seize control of the State, and then tell that State to control its populace.

In real world terms you establish hegemony. You establish puppet states, protectorates, trade partners, client countries who will not wander from your wish list on pain of punishment.
Israel and America are both pursuing enormous attempts to float unsinkable life rafts in an ocean of Muslims. These are high maintenance projects that could capsize if left to survive on their own merits.  If it weren’t for the Holy Land, the Israeli people would have been better advised to establish their own nation in Utah, Paraguay, or Mongolia. But they never will; they wanted Israel and now they want Greater Israel.

If it weren’t for America’s need for Middle Eastern oil, and America’s need for the world’s oil to continue being sold in dollars predominantly, we wouldn’t know or care any more about the Middle East than the Tales of Sinbad. Even after four years of war, America is still not interested in the Middle East, just the oil. We’ve only put six people in the Green Zone who speak Arabic, for Chrissake. Nope, we just want the oil turf, and control of the market. That lets us print mountains of money that other nations have to have, and hold. That lets us run a ruinous annual trade deficit, and ignore a national debt that should have sunk us in the mid 1980’s.

America’s core goal in the Middle East is to carve out our “Syriana” over there, a crescent of docile client states stretching from Lebanon right on through Persia to Pakistan. After that, we want Greater Syriana, which means creating client states up into the Caucasus and Caspian region, so that Russia does not default to being the sole energy superpower in the coming century. After that, we want to dominate the whole planet, and outer space as well. That’s America in the new century, plain and simple.

You score points in the game of Go by taking, by taking territory and by making the population within it your prisoners.  It is a game of clever theft, and clever theft in return. You can invest your all in surrounding a territory only to have your opponent — at the very last moment, with one small move — surround your effort and take your all. You ended up carving out a superb territory, only to gift it to your enemy intact and entire.

The Great Game in the Middle East, and in this world at large, is a game of Go, a game of clever theft by turns. It can only be played across the entire board, carving out multiple territories at once, regularly risking everything on the tiniest corners and intersections of interests. None of it is in your control even when it is. What has been carved out can become part of a greater slice of ground later, and then a greater slice again at a later stage.

All ownership is temporary, and all control is relative.

In real world terms, the Great Game is inherently incapable of being over, of ending with this or that result. Victory? Victory is a temporary edge, nothing more. If victory in any area is not exploited, risked, and put into the immediate service of seizing even more ground, then it is effectively surrendered at that point, awaiting only the enemy’s leisure to pluck it from your hand.

Who sees the world this way?  Who seizes states and nations and regions as if they were squares on a board?  Who lives and breathes in this Extreme Game mode? Who has access to the military and monetary wherewithal to make these kinds of moves? Who takes thrones from kings, and who denies democracies their elected leaders?

Is it the housewives in their kitchens?  The farmers in their fields? The cubicle rats in every major metropolis on Earth? Do they launch great offensives upon the cubicles across the way? Who is carving up the planet and denying it to the other carvers for however long they can?

It is the power behind all thrones, all democracies. Capital. Hugely concentrated, massive capital as it seeks to jockey and position itself to advantage. Capital is not money. Money is something you spend, money is a medium of exchange, something to replace the bartering of chickens. Capital is not about dollars, rials, rubles, euros or pesos.  It is about parity. It is about not losing ground.

Fitzgerald said it well, “The very rich are not like you and I.” No, they are not. Money is not real to the ultra rich. There is no concept of money to the mega wealthy lords of our planet. There is only the ranking of one fortune compared to another fortune.  There is only influence, standing, power. There is only relative wealth to measure at that level of mind boggling affluence. All great fortunes are as far removed from the working man’s concept of money as the moon is from a street lamp.

You can graph fabulous, massive capital. You can show yourself that you are worth more than the GDP of 83 nations and all their inhabitants.  But no human mind can actually conceive of that kind of capital in terms of money. It is as meaningless as putting an aircraft carrier in your shirt pocket.

In the capitalist system, a nation’s capital and governance gradually flows upward into the hands of a very few people, usually those who monopolize the Central Banks, which are present in every developed nation in the form of privately held, for-profit investment corporations. The control of each nation’s economy, through the control of its money, allots a daily percentage of profit from every single money transaction within that economy unto those capital investors at the very top.

Like the House Rules at every casino in the world, the odds are stacked in favor of the casino. Just a bit. Just a little bit. That’s all it takes. Let the games be played for an hour or for a century, the outcome is a mathematical certainty — the House wins.

In the globalized capitalist economy we currently enjoy, a little bit of interest on every bit of currency in circulation goes to the Central Bank of your country with every venture of capital into the system. The loan brings back interest on top of the loan, and this little bit of interest accrues to the ultra wealthy who made the loan. At the top of the lending pyramid is your national banking system’s top bank. The Bank of England. The Federal Reserve. The Bank of Nigeria. Your nation’s highest bank.

That bank does not belong to your nation, or to your government. It belongs to fabulously wealthy, private, individual investors, hailing from every country of the world, through their stock holdings in banks and corporations and investment funds which own the actual Central Bank stock in your nation. These individuals were born into these mega fortunes, and trained to manage them (or hire competent management) through their lifetimes. These individuals are of no importance; they are just placeholders for their fourscore years on Earth. When they die, they turn to dust like the rest of us, and their fortune turns over to the next in line.

This is how capital is amassed, into mountains of money a million miles high, and then passed on to the next generation. It has been accruing for centuries, but with the emergence of the global economy in the most recent few decades it has come into its own as the true power behind all thrones.

These vast, vast private fortunes drive economies, which drive politics and statecraft, which ostensibly govern the world for the benefit of the inhabitants. These capital mountains are intertwined in all their activities and goals, and they seek the one thing all capital seeks which is growth. What, truly, is a sovereign nation state to this network of one percent of humanity who control well over 51% of all wealth? Nations are squares on a board, and their control is up for grabs.

When does a Go game end?  Well, the game pieces are unlimited, but the game board is usually 19 by 19 squares.  There is a physical limit of space, and so the game ends with either that limit being reached, or the exhaustion of the players. Unlike the real world, the game of clever theft is not carried to absurd lengths.

In real world terms, the physical world is limited in resources and territory. The planet Earth is a spaceship, after all, tumbling along through space.  When someday a single corporation owns every accessible atom of the planet, and rules the lives of every creature upon it, the Great Game will have ended. That is the logical result of globalized capitalism. The House wins, in the end, everything.

Long before that occurs, most likely during the lifetimes of people walking around today, the world will turn from this course by existential necessity. You cannot let clever people have everything, to run as they feel will benefit themselves and their fortune. It is only during this transitional period we call the Post Industrial Age that such an absurdly unbalanced and ungovernable power center is permitted to exist, or to hide in plain sight.

Toward the middle of this century, the tiny thefts performed upon our daily human transactions by the usury of capitalists will be recognized as the debt slavery that it is.  Usury is a parasitic practice for the benefit of the parasite.

Massive capital is a marvelous tool of civilization.  It has always been the power of kings, and the power behind kings. Amassed capital comes from everyone alive and working and buying and selling and existing.  It does not need to flow into a few private hands; it can just as easily flow from everyone to a centrally managed national or even world fund.  Pyramids were built with it in the past. Wars were fought with it. Men went to the moon with it. We will colonize other planets with it.

We will save ourselves, and this planet with it.

Massed capital is perhaps the greatest tool humankind ever invented.

But it will be restricted to power games between the ultra wealthy few human beings who claim to own it, and own nations, until such time as it is recognized as the common lifeblood of every terrestrial creature, and not the property of fortunate vampires who guard an immortal treasure taken drop by drop from us all.

That day is coming as inevitably as the end of a Go game. One fine morning, everyone will recognize that there is no point in continuing a game of clever theft to absurd lengths. As massive capital pushes human lives further and further from their own space, and their own resources, everyone will realize that there finally is nowhere left to move.

Game over.

It is at that point that human civilization will begin.

In the year 2050, after petroleum became too rare and valuable to be legally burned anywhere on Earth, China, the American Union, the European Union, India and Russia looked back with satisfaction at how well they had handled the great Drawdown of Middle Eastern petro products.

Avoiding world war through a series of permitted localized wars, the ownership of the petroleum was always kept away from the Middle Eastern masses, and placed in the control of appointed local oligarchs instead.

The strategy was to view the nations of the Middle East as a collection of leaky buckets. The oil would inevitably flow, out of one bucket or another everyone knew, and so it was of no concern if this bucket or that one needed to be broken or kicked over now and again to keep the handle in approved hands. It would fill up again, and the oil would get to all the proper places in time. It was a matter of maintaining reliable local management.
In the wrong hands, in the hands of the uncouth natives of these leaky lands, oil monies would foment socialism, would dilute capital, and lead to global instability, above and beyond the local variety.

This was the key to the near unanimous policy of managed chaos in the Middle East that emerged in the opening years of the 21st Century, and continued through Depletion. The twin goals of preserving the petroleum for foreign nations while preserving it from the indigenous populations dictated all local politics, and all the local wars that followed.

These huge Muslim populations, destined for utter penury once their greatest natural resources were extracted and burned in distant engines of industry, merely needed to be kept in turmoil and internal jihad for the few brief decades it took for foreign pumps to drain their futures dusty dry.

The Owners of our Ownership Society are those persons who own actual shares in America’s corporations. These legal entities, who are considered Super Persons under American law, increasingly own all the physical and financial assets of the country, and face fewer and fewer consequences for operating them without regard for the common good.

These legal entities are increasingly international in nature and financing and operations. They have no more loyalty to any one country or currency than they do to raw numbers on a spreadsheet.

These Owners are increasingly recognizable as America’s foreign lenders — the Saudis, the Japanese banks, the Chinese and Asian banks. More and more of the physical and financial assets of America belong to them — every day — than belong to Americans. It’s all legal and correct. They bought them up fair and square with solid money. That isn’t the issue.
It is this: whether these Owners be foreign or native, it is not in their interest to have the huge, consumer-driven American marketplace reverse its mad shopping spree, or drive less, or save more, or become more energy efficient, or reduce its carbon footprint and emmissions at the expense of industry, or to return control of its political apparatus to the people instead of the corporations. None of that is the reason they invest in American assets, mortgages, loans or government.

They want America strung out, baby, and bleeding assets and money. If America decides to start living within its means, and saving for the future, and passing on surpluses to the next generation, and rebuilding its energy and industrial sectors then control of America’s physical and financial assets will begin to slip away from the current Owners, and back to America’s working class.

The American Dream is a real nightmare to the current Owners, be they foreign or native.

The Owners like things the way they are headed right now. No change is welcome, or going to be welcomed, or going to be permitted if these Super Persons have any say in it. They prefer to keep things rolling along, to keep bleeding the remaining assets and efforts of the middle and lower classes into higher, tighter hands.

They prefer to put the whole population, and the next two American generations, in hock up to their ears. That’s the Owner’s goal. Call it consumer culture, write up TV adverts and happy jingles about consumer toys, offer discounts and deals on all sides, make the rubes come to the malls, and mortgage their homes to do so. That’s the goal. Git ‘r done!

These next few years in America’s experiment in self-government are either going to be organized around reversing this class warfare, this bleeding out of a dying empire, or it is going to be a lot of smoke and noise and screaming about inane political puppet shows of absurd proportions, with the end result that things keep rolling along.

Nothing short of a massive, popular uprising against this institutionalized theft will change the absurd course we are on.

Nothing can cause — or prevent — that uprising as effectively as our national media. That means, right now, a free press freely informing an awakened electorate is where the entire battle lies.

Right now, that media belongs to the Owners. And it lies. And lies. And lies. The Owners view is the only view permitted. The only ads allowed are for politicians backing the Owners. All bloggers, pundits, news anchors, letter writers, and unwashed persons are the Enemy, and they are to be hushed, ridiculed, and destroyed.

Once the dollar “devalues sharply,” and the American populace wakes up to find that the dollar in their pocket is worth a dime, and the nation’s physical and financial assets belong entirely to a very few, very wealthy Owners it will be entirely too late. Even bloody revolution will be of little avail at that point.

The only political events of the coming two years that will matter, in the long run, are efforts for a free American press and an informed American electorate.

Change will not come from politicians of any sort or stripe. It is not in their power to make such changes. They are representatives of the Owners, or they wouldn’t be there. They were funded by the Owners, and elected by uninformed lemmings.

The change will come from the people, and it will need to overwhelm the media, and the government, and the Owners.

We citizens pass the bottle, place our bets, stare at this tipping point in America’s history, and face a private choice of gambling on it, investing in it, swimming upstream, or getting the hell out of the river.

Only a precious few Americans will be delighted with where we are headed.

The Military Commissions Act passed through our American Congress this week, like bacon through a goose.  There are numerous lessons to draw from the way Congress lubricated this excrement out the poop chute, but dwelling on them distracts from the core lesson.

Which is that our Congress actually did it. That this bi-cameral legislative body did indeed pass the Torture R Us Bill, and within a comfortable margin.  They brought down the US Constitution with one shot.

Gentle Reader, if there is a singularity at the core of this great American experiment, and at the core of all Western jurisprudence, if there is a soul at the heart of all Western civilization since the Dark Ages, it is the concept of habeas corpus — that no human being can be deprived of their liberty without soon facing their accusers, soon seeing the evidence against them, and soon standing trial before a jury of their peers.  That is our true Rock of Ages, and our Congress just threw it out.
The legal phrasing of the Military Commissions Act is so vague, so lacking in definitions and specifics and safeguards, that it applies to literally everyone — everywhere.  No person, and no class of persons, is ruled out.  Anyone, including every single American citizen, may be deemed a supporter of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers on the word of another person — and be arrested, imprisoned and tortured on that basis alone, with absolutely no recourse to law, to the courts, or to the norms of the Geneva Convention.

This law applies directly to you.  You can be denounced, and disappear.  Without the guarantee of habeas corpus, you go away without any remedy, without any rights.

All American and Western jurisprudence rests on habeas corpus.  It is the very definition of a free person, upon which all laws regarding free persons then stand.  Without it, all our laws ring hollow.

The difference that losing habeas corpus makes to our Republic is the same as the difference between a man before he is shot, and after he is shot.  The man is still there, afterwards.  But he is no longer there.  The vitality and life is absent; only the shape remains.

Our elected Congress easily and cheerfully threw habeas corpus right out the window this week, which also means they made their own powers and procedures completely irrelevant hereafter.  It means that recovering and reforming from this obscenity upon our legal rights and traditions will not come from within this legislative body.  They think they are incumbent royalty, free to rule and to hand pick their successors — they have made themselves mere court jesters now, and nothing more.

They are fools who literally know not what they have done.  They may as well have voted out the law of gravity, and yet called themselves wise.  They have destroyed all credibility in their powers to perceive or administer justice especially, and they can never regain their standing.

If this Congress were to come to its senses, and vote habeas corpus back into full effect tomorrow morning, it would have no more meaning than if they also elected habeas corpus Prom Queen, awarded it the Medal of Honor, took it to out to a power lunch, sent its children to college, hung it from a steeple, or put it on parade.  These fools have already demonstrated on national television that they have no grasp of what it is, what it means to our Republic, or what they have done to our Republic by chucking it.  These idiots who did this ridiculous, ridiculous thing clearly haven’t the souls or intellects to repair matters, or to know what they’ve repaired if they should chance to repair it, or be forced to repair it.  These people are beyond irrelevant now — they are dangerous morons.

There are only two ways to climb out of the latrine Congress has dropped America into:

1) Reform Congress — change out the persons in this legislative body via elections, or change their behavior via overwhelming public pressure.  We’ll call this approach Working Within the System.

2) Remove Congress — by impeachment, by arrest, by revolution.  By means other than the occasional rigged election.  We’ll call this Working Within the Larger System, that system being the inalienable rights of man, the system upon which our original Revolution was founded. That tradition dates as far back as the Magna Carta, back many more centuries than our brief experiment in government sans a King does.

For example, can the Governor of New Jersey have that State’s two senators arrested on their return home for the campaign season?  Can they be impeached and then tried in the State legislature for violating the Constitution and their sworn oaths of office?  Can the State legislature strip them of their office, and appoint new representatives who know the American Constitution from a campaign contribution?

If this hasn’t been done before, well, it is high time to begin a fine American tradition.  Americans don’t live under Kings.

Can your State do the same for their Senators and wayward Congresscritters?  Why in the world not?  There is no question that whichever morons voted this thing through committed treason to their office, to the nation, and to the Constitution.  Those are simple and stark legal facts.  These morons have placed themselves subject to arrest for their crimes overseas and domestically, from now on.  Condoning torture is an international war crime, and crime against humanity, and there is no statute of limitations upon it.

This Republican regime is behaving in ways that clearly reveal that they do not see themselves being the minority party at any future point. This does not mean they are purblind idiots – no, it is much worse than that — it means that they do not intend to permit the Democratic Party to win at elections, ever again.

That simply can’t happen.  Not after the crimes that have been committed and swept under the veil of secrecy.  That can never happen.  Even if it happens, it cannot be permitted.

You may rest assured that this November’s election will be another case of widespread electoral theft, just like the previous three.  The Democratic Party will go along with it after some obligatory grumbling, just like after the previous three.  Do you know why?  It is because the Democratic Party is ten times more committed to being seen as playing by the rules, as persons working within the system, than they are to doing what is right, moral, principled, American or even effective.  They are devoted to keeping up appearances and roles and positions, not to democracy.

This was the very cause of death to the Weimar Republic of Germany, whose liberals and democrats held good order, and gave exemplary speeches from their shrinking island of propriety and perspective as gangs of lawless criminals foisted a fascist regime upon them. They did no more than rhetoric and writing, and that is never enough.  To merely speak, to merely write, is to concede to propaganda, to political theater, to bullying and to bluster.  Those are all potent political weapons – speaking and writing of sound reason and grand hope are meandering surrenders compared to them.

Do not look to the Supreme Court to heal this mess.  It will take years to get a challenging case heard at that high level, and even when it is heard and this bill is promptly deemed utterly unconstitutional, the GOP will simply push another version of this bill through, and start the court cycle all over again.  Or, stack the court anew in their favor.

Whatever it takes, because the GOP will be in power for many years to come — if they are not stopped.  Until they are stopped.  Until they are stopped, they will not cede control of the nation they now rule, not for anything, not for anyone.  Certainly not for the sake of the law.  They are operating well beyond the law already.  They are the law, until they are stopped, and disabused of that notion.

This torture bill is a raw power grab. This bill is a coup.  This bill is treason.  This bill is a revolution because it has overthrown the very cornerstone of all our laws, of our entire Constitution, and of all our international treaties and conventions.  No laws mean anything after their founding principle has been removed.  Congress and the President swore an oath to protect and preserve our Constitution in exchange for our trusting them to handle the day-to-day affairs of our nation.

Yet this coup went out over the airwaves; it was beamed into our living rooms.  It went down with all eyes upon it.  The revolution WAS televised, Mr. Trippi.

It follows that this raw power grab, this legislative coup, is only going to be countered by a raw power grab on the part of the public or by our military refusing to continue violating their own oaths to the Constitution by the following of orders from a treasonous regime.

We are operating beyond the system from here on out, like it or not.  There is no further result or recovery to be obtained by working within the confines of the present corrupted system.  It needs to be stopped, and started again, with new personnel.  In 39 days another national election will be stolen, leaving the GOP in full control, at which point even the most naïve rubes among us will be hard pressed to believe the system still works.  The dimmest bulbs among us will perceive that the spark has gone out of our lives.

For America is not merely a place, or a melting pot, or some ethnic strains, or some culture or language or other discernible feature of this geography or its people. Those are details, not the soul.  The soul of America is an idea.  The bright idea that all human beings are free, equal and subject to whatever laws they choose for themselves.  Take that idea away, and you take away America.

We did not think up this idea.  We got it direct from our European fathers, who had just been through five centuries of unremitting religious wars and still not managed to extricate themselves from bloody-minded theocracy and monarchy.  If America stands for anything, it is the direct and outright rejection of Kings and Priests ruling over the common man.  In passing this torture bill, Congress has stepped way beyond anything we ever authorized them to do.  They had no right, and have no right, to edit our Constitution at their whimsy, or the whimsy of King George.

Harder choices have faced ordinary Americans than we ordinary Americans face today.  We are not lesser people than our ancestors – they, too, had to be roused to righteous anger by the ongoing crimes of despots.  So it will be for us.

The monarchists and theocrats who staged this coup have crossed a bright line in the sand for the vast majority of Americans.  Now we will see whether the Republicans or the free range Americans will win this struggle.

Because it’s definitely on, brother.  One species or the other is about to become extinct.

Some things in life we choose.  Sometimes there simply is no choice, no second option provided.  A car wreck, a house burned down, a terminal illness, a King at play with our lives and fortunes — those kinds of choices, when you find yourself in brand new territory in a heartbeat.  When you say, “No more, by God! No more!”  When you are suddenly thrust into those “times that try men’s souls.”

Valley Forge.  It was a real place, and a real low point.  Do you know why all those miserable, starving, would be Americans, those shoeless soldiers stayed all winter in their soggy tents and log shelters, back in the first days of our nation?  Do you know why they stayed, suffered, and then re-enlisted almost to a man in the pale light of early spring?

Rather than go home to their wives and children and their own affairs?

Why on earth would they do such a thing?  Why stick?  Why ask for more?

It was because every man there faced a personal choice of going home to live out his days under British tyranny — under the whims of King George — or of cleaning that long rifle and going after the Hessians and Redcoats.  Those first citizens of our newly declared Republic could not bear returning home to live under tyranny, and bow down before King George.  They could not go home to their wives and children because they knew their wives and children were not free, but subject to that King and his royal appetites.

When you cannot bear one way of living, you will put up with anything — including death — to get something else.  Anything else.  When you cannot bear to see your children living under King George, you stay at Valley Forge, and you sign up for a losing fight even with no pay, and no shoes on your feet.  That’s still better than tyranny.

That’s exactly where this country came from.

Not from the Bible, and not from quitters.  It came from the hearts of brave, grown up people who would not bow before any King, anywhere, even at pain of death.  The men of Valley Forge considered and made that choice while huddled around their paltry fires and stewpots during that long and bitter winter.  Freedom from a King meant more to them than anything else.

That is the same personal choice facing every American in this ripened Republic of ours, this Republic that is rotting from the top, this Republic that we will not be able to keep, if our GOP despot has his way.  Either we refuse to live under the current and growing tyranny of King George, this treasonous Congress, and this stacked court – or we make ourselves comfortable, teach our kids how to bow before their human lords, and get them ready for endless war, constant surveillance, and Christian theocracy.

If they ask about freedom, shut them up. Tell them it’s a fairy tale.

On September 28th, the majority of the members of our Congress broke their individual oaths of office in a wholesale manner, violated our Constitution, transgressed dozens of American and international laws and norms and treaties — and yet they assume you will get over it, that you’ll keep working within the system through election after faked election, that you’ll keep hoping to come to some arrangement with King George.

If you do, you are not the stuff this nation was made of.

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war to Whack-A-Mole
To shove some shit back in its hole
This is a war to cancel the American Dream
A war that will continue ’til we cancel this regime

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know
This is the war that cannot end
Or Bush will have to make amends
Both the House and Senate might be sent up for trial
And frog-marched off to Leavenworth to stay there for a while

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is the war that will not cease
Not while our debt load can increase
For generations we’ll be paying the bill
So Cheney, Bush and Rummy can get out there and kill!

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This ain’t some war on your TeeVee
This is a war on you and me
Our Constitution has been shredded and cut
And you won’t be a citizen the moment you say, “What!?”

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war for Muslim oil
A war to capture foreign soil
Since we don’t make nuthin’ here in Murka no more
Let’s export some Shock n’ Awe. Let’s go start a war

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war to rule the world
To keep the dollar bill unfurled
This is a war to prop up a Republican Fuhrer
And they’re not gonna quit this thing, of that you can be sure

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war to change the rules
Yes they take all of us for fools
They plan to draft our children and make us live in fear
Anyone who’s out of line will simply disappear

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

They bring our nation to its knees
They grab and torture whom they please
They turn the world against us and they steal as they do
And all the blood and money it will come from me and you

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is the war that never ends
Your deployment will extend
When there’s not much left of you but torso and head
They’ll toss you out into the street because they need the bed

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war for Jesus Christ
He wants a pet-ro-le-um heist
He wants waterboarding! He wants testicles wired!
Pass the ammunition — it’s a Crusade that’s required!

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

This is a war that will not end
‘Til we come home again, my friend
‘Til we remake America the land of the free
Not untill America’s returned to you and me

This is the war that never ends
Yes it goes on and on, my friend
Some people started fighting it a long time ago
And now they keep on fighting it because it’s all they know

October 1st marks the 60th anniversary of the closing gavel of the Nuremberg Trials — the true Trial of the Century just passed.  For four years, the top 24 Nazi leaders, instigators and perpetrators had to sit through seeing their crimes fully explored and revealed.  After the final gavel fell, most of these Nazis went to the hangman or to prison.

Most importantly, the Nuremberg Principles established that for all nations, whether they became signatories to the Principles or no, there is no excusing these crimes by any individual of any nation by means of claims that they were ‘just following orders,’ or by virtue of being a government official or head of state, or by claims of not knowing that it was a war crime, or of not being capable of stopping such crimes. No such excuses are allowed under international law.
The precise standard of absolute personal responsibility for war crimes that has been in place since that distant October morning has never been vague or uncertain — if the crime factually happened, and if you were present, or you were aware of it, or you took any part, or you failed to attempt to stop it — you committed a war crime, or a crime against humanity. And, there is no statute of limitations, none whatsoever, on these crimes. You are completely subject to prosecution, wherever you may be, for every remaining day of your life.

Sixty years since the final gavel fell, and the Nuremberg Principles established by those trials are now openly violated by the United States of America — crimes against peace, wars of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Both political parties, both sides of both Houses of Congress, by absconding from their sworn oaths and duties to  our Constitution and our obligations to world peace, have left themselves entirely open to prosecution for permitting, abetting, conspiring and engaging in elective wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace. By the precise standards of absolute personal responsibility for war crimes established by the Nuremberg Principles, not a one of America’s Senators or Congress members may walk this earth as free men and women from this day forth. They all belong to the same category now — they are non-prosecuted war criminals until such time as they actually are prosecuted.

Perhaps their trial will be held in the ancient city of Nuremberg.

Who was charged in the original Nuremberg Trial?

There were two dozen prominent Nazi leaders, officials, and officers.  They were prosecuted as individuals, and as members of one or more of six “criminal organizations” of the defeated Nazi regime that were also prosecuted.

These six criminal organizations were:
the political leadership of the Nazi Party,
the Schutzstaffel (the infamous SS),
the High Command of the German Army,
the Gestapo,
the Sicherheitsdienst (the Intelligence Branch of the SS),
the Sturmabteilung (the Brownshirts).

What were these military, political, police and intelligence organizations charged with?

The charges against them (and the individual members of them) were:

   1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace
   2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crime against peace
   3. War crimes
   4. Crimes against humanity

In order to constitute the court, and to prosecute the crimes of the Nazi regime, the Nuremberg Principles were created and agreed upon by the Allied Powers, most particularly the USA, Russia, Britain and France.  The seven  Nuremberg Principles are:

Principle I

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his  Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

    (a) Crimes against peace:

        (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

        (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

    (b) War Crimes:

    Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

    (c) Crimes against humanity:

    Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on  in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

The horrific revelations of crimes against persons and whole populations revealed during the four-year Nuremberg Trial, and subsequent lower level Nuremberg Trials, fostered unanimous international agreements and treaties to prevent any recurrence of such crimes against humanity from ever recurring.

These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the Genocide Convention of 1948, the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War in 1949, the Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in 1968, and the Supplementary Protocols strengthening the Geneva Convention in 1977.

How America’s Senators, Judges, Congress members, military officers, police and intelligence agency personnel behave under the absolutely illegal and immoral scenarios pursued by the radical Bush Administration rests entirely on their individual heads.  No excuses are permitted, as long as a moral choice to participate or not is even remotely possible.  If these political, military, police and intelligence personnel do not stand against the Bush Administration, they will stand trial some fine day for participating, and for not standing against it.

When their trial comes, upon some unforeseen day between now and the end of their lives, not a one of them will be afforded any excuse for their complicity or participation in the capture, torture, interrogation, imprisonment, trials, punishment or death of any human beings under this Administration.

This Administration is a criminal organization by the clear definitions of the Nuremberg Principles. So are the government and military and police and intelligence organizations that follow the directives, orders and policies of this Administration.  So are the individual members of those organizations.  Just as the High Command, political leaders, intelligence, police and political operatives of the Nazi Administration were tried, convicted and variously hung or imprisoned, so will all participants in this criminal Bush Administration be variously hung or imprisoned if they do not leave off any and all participation in it and with it.

Stand apart from this radical Administration. Take no part in it. Get as far away from it as you can.

Or, stay the course and go down with it.  Live with the shame of it for the remainder of your days.  Tell your grandchildren that you were ‘just following orders’ — but don’t try telling that to the judge.  Live in fear of your pending trial for as long as you may live, wherever you go. When every nation on earth is calling for your trial, where do you think you will go?

We will find you, no matter where you seek shelter from justice. Every nation on earth has long since agreed to the pursuit and prosecution of people like you. We will bring you to the docket, and you will answer for your participation in the Bush Administration.

Get out. Get away.  It is no longer just a question of Bush and Friends being impeached and imprisoned.  With the wholesale adoption of torture of any kind whatsoever, with the elective war of aggression on Iraq, and the imminent war of aggression on Iran, the Bush Administration and every government, police, political and intelligence organization that obeys its policies are clearly crossing the Rubicon, fully qualifying as ‘criminal organizations’ under the clear principles of international law.

Bush is not your King. Bush is not your Fuhrer. Bush is a traitor to his oath of office, and our Constitution.

Choose.

The world’s economy rests on the solid foundation of the dollar, which rests on the solid foundation of the oil trade. America doses and overdoses on the ocean of petrodollars that flow through our economy, and America’s military defends that river of petrodollars and the consequent foreign investments in our T-bills it brings.

That’s the Dollar System. That’s the way the world works.  It’s an American monopoly, and it belongs entirely to the wealthiest five percent of Americans.  The Dollar System is what lets our elites run up an insane $8.3 trillion national debt, and keep right on printing green paper money as if it were real.  It’s taken for real, all over the world, day after day, so what’s the difference?  A worldwide infrastructure of globalized capital and corporations and livelihoods and nations and civilization rests on the Dollar System. Lo, it is sacred above all else.

Nothing — repeat — nothing will be permitted to threaten, block, or break this monopoly, this Dollar System. That is absolutely negatory, good buddy.  No elections, no ethics, no humanity, no rules, no laws, no international treaties, no civil unrest, no melting ice caps, no protesters, no drowning polar bears, no guerillas, no army, and no nation will be permitted to stand against it — absolutely nothing is off the table, including nookyuler war, says Mistah Bush.
The coming war on Iran, whether it is this October or next spring, is to preserve the American dominance of Middle East petro development and market trading, and to open the way to further American political and economic dominance northward from Iran, into the gas and oil belt of the Caspian Basin.  Then it’s on to Venezuela!  Wherever the planet’s petro products are, that’s where the American petrodollar has to stand tall, or fall hard.

This coming war on Iran is unnecessary.  If Iran would roll over, appoint the late Shah’s son their King, and invite Exxon to privatize their oil industry, this war need not happen.  But, they won’t. That makes them evil.  Saying no to America is the most evil, awful thing that can happen. Anywhere. Ever. Even on other planets, when we get there, they had better not say no. That’s just evil.

If America’s political and economic elites fail to destroy Iran and its allies — Syria, the Shia of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and any other freedom loving fools over there who stand against the total sway of the Dollar System — well, these American elites might as well hand in their school ties and water boards and limo keys and pinstripe suits and Cuban cigars and their keys to the Watergate Hotel’s poker suite right then and there because the party’s over from that moment, including both political parties.  As they say around the halls of Congress, “Ya can’t make salad without lots of green!”

The Dollar System is why China and Russia are willing to join in the current Security Council pressure on Iran to cease their nuclear enrichment, which enhances Iran’s independence, which enhances the Middle East’s independence, which threatens the Dollar System.  China and Russia are not currently prepared to lose the Dollar System, any more than Europe is. Some day, certainly. Not yet. Not right now, anyway.

China in particular has a symbiotic economic relationship with America. They use us to grow their economy 20 times faster than they could hope to otherwise, and we use them to live on borrowed monies and borrowed tomorrows.  It will eventually come to an unpleasant end, but not during this election season, which is as far as anyone in America can see into the future so party on WalMart, and Shell, and Wachovia, and Boeing, and Halliburton and ABC and Donner and Blitzen . . .

The Dollar System is why the Democratic Party is not fighting the GOP on anything serious, and never will. This is their Dollar System, too. This is the way the world works.  Do you seriously expect them to upset it?  They want to be in charge of it, not upset it.

Gentle Reader, do you seriously expect the Democrats to actually choose America’s defunct unions, dying middle class, imaginary manufacturing base, suffering small business sector, and its uninsured and undereducated masses over the oil and banking and defense industries?  Aw, come on now . . . pull the other leg.  In fact, pull my finger.

A genuine opposition party in American politics has not existed since 1980, when the Democrats became a wholly owned partner to the GOP.  They now operate AS opposition, but are careful to provide no real opposition. That would give the Dollar System heartburn.  Prominent people get shot in such times. Small planes crash. People are spoken to firmly about their options. Honorable gentlemen shake hands, and the world works as it has before.

The Dollar System is why the New York Times, the WaPo, and every other major media outlet are onboard with this Iran shakedown, and anything else the Dollar System may need for its explication, explanation, furtherance, sustenance, daily care and feeding. This is their Dollar System, too.

Six major corporations own and operate over 85% of the newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and magazines in the USA. None is in disagreement with the way the world works.  None of them thinks twice about the way the world works.  They look after the Dollar System, no matter what it does to the country. No matter what it does to the country, they will be fine, as long as they keep reporting that there are two sides to every issue, and no hard facts. The facts are the No Man’s Land, between the trenches. Journalism has become the art of keeping the population firmly in their opposite bunkers and trenches, lest facts be discussed, or the future perceived.

In America, the future is next week.  History is yesterday.

What in hell do America’s wealthy elites and internationalized corporations care about America’s future, anyway? They have disconnected their financial survival from the USA, and have less and less stake in its citizen’s safety or success with every passing tick of the clock. All they care about is continuing the political passivity and the spending and borrowing habits of the American consumer.  I mean citizen.  I mean prey.

They keep that consumer culture going by endless media ads for consumer goods, consumer lifestyles, consumer politicians, consumer cars, and consumer wars to fuel them.

It’s the Dollar System.  It’s the way the world works.

So, what’s not to like?

The internets are full of words and warnings about Professor James Lovelock’s latest book (“The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.”) and his views, and his C.V., and his credibility. Most of these essays and comments explore how to dismiss, disprove or ignore him. Or, how to whistle into the abyss he has revealed.  Or, how to survive what he describes is coming, if it comes. When it comes.

Well, he is talking plainly about hell AND high water, and right soon, he is. He is talking about only two hundred million humans surviving this century we’ve already begun, and only by migrating to a newly temperate North Pole to grow food as we can manage.  He’s talking about seriously scary stuff.

The editorial and blog reactions to his tome are uniformly hasty brews of false bravado and fear. To paraphrase Woody Allen somewhat, ‘I don’t fear the end of my species — I just don’t want to he there when it happens.’
Or, to quote Daffy Duck directly, “I’m not like other people — I don’t LIKE pain.”

For who truly fears a killer asteroid, or an H-bomb? How do you fear such a thing?  It’s extremely unlikely; you don’t see it coming, and you’re only there for a millisecond before — poof!  It’s quick and painless.

But guaranteed death?  By the billions?  Over a century? That’s sounds like a personal prescription for Death by Discomfort, the worst way a human can go. Better a bullet in the brain pan than hunger, cold, wet, or slowly succumbing to the galloping shits. Yet, that is what Professor Lovelock predicts, based on hard facts and figures.

Certain, slow, hard death.  For you. For me. For everyone we know, and everyone we love.

Human nature being what it is, the unspoken aim behind most lively Lovelock discussions is, ‘how might I find MYSELF among the lucky creatures at the North Pole, still eating well and making babies after this mass extinction unpleasantness is all tidied up? What about ME?’

The very thought that occurs to every sentient pig in the trailer as their Peterbilt rig pulls into the abatoir. These other pigs are goners, for sure.  But I’ve got a plan.’

People do have plans for surviving Lovelock’s Lament. The internet tubes are full of them.  Most involve five acres, a paid mortgage, some fruit trees and a picket fence.

Lord! Do they write these things as tragedy? Or farce?

Fortunately, these are just the opening reactions to the bad news from St. Giles On The Heath. In days ahead, we will hear more thoughtful responses and discussions, taking into account that warlords and cannibalism are rather more likely than picket fences.

But Lo! the global warming discussion just got one hell of a jolt. Which is all to the good.

Because the prime and lasting value of Lovelock’s book is to stain the trousers and skirts of walking apes everywhere — of humanity.  Getting ourselves off our collective duff is the most critical, most healthy, most sane thing that can happen at this juncture. If the threat of imminent death by discomfort is what it takes, well, someday we can all tell our grandkids that’s what it took.

Only fear will start the herd towards a safer and more comfortable pasture, away up North where grass doesn’t grow.

Yet.

We’re all human. So our first reaction to this scenario will be fear — maintaining our life. Our second will be concern for maintaining our comfort level (planning for picket fences at the North Pole). Our third will be progeny — will our children, our knowledge, our legacy survive?

Factually, we can start right now to step beyond the fear reactions:

One, the stark choice of whether it is too late to do a damned thing about global warming is moot. Even if it is too late to avoid a wild ride, it is not too late to work on reducing the effects we have set in motion, nor is it too late to save as many people, and as much of our human heritage, as possible. As people get over their initial fear, they will see surviving this as a species as a gigantic job to be done, and we will start to see results in this direction.

Owning and operating Spaceship Earth will emerge as the guiding principle. The First Directive.

For example, atmosphere CO2 scrubbers will be a growth industry in a few years, kind of like blogging in the ‘Ought decade of the 21st century.

Two, if things proceed as the Professor predicts, and especially if people begin to die by the hundred million, nations and regions will circle the wagons and begin to command their populations and resources in detail.

To what aim? Certainly not plutocracy or oligarchy or theocracy or ideology of any faith or flavor. That won’t last to the weekend.

No, the aim will not be the comfort, or survival of the elites or of anyone in particular — it will be ‘saving the best of ourselves’ for better times. Bunker mentality, yes, but with a noble purpose of rising above the situation. Lifeboat mentality, with everyone in it for the whole nine yards, for one another, for common goals instead of private ones. You’ve seen this at work in every beseiged wartime population, historically.

Three, the warlords and the dispossessed. With entire nations, and regional alliances, vying for territory, resources and survival there will be zero patience or sympathy for outsiders, nor for charity toward them. When the societal goal is preserving the best of the human experiment, no one will countenance bringing along the unskilled, unlearned, sick, weak, or hungry.

Mercy has never been the human forte. It never will be. It was always a luxury, and will continue to be one. Warlords will rise and rule for a time among refugee populations. They will not be tolerated among or against the civilized enclaves striving to preserve knowledge, wisdom and technology.

Fourth, science and religion — the true battle of civilizations. People everywhere will always want to live in myths about reality rather than reality, just as they always have and as they do today. It’s a human trait too deep in our brain stems to eradicate.  But, as the survival of some remnant of our species on a broken down Spaceship Earth becomes the collective goal, the one true goal, religions that do not serve this goal will erase themselves or be erased.

No biggie. Religions are far more adjustable than factual. One of the chief virtues of a good story is that it grows up as you do.

Conspiracies? Dark legions of evil plotters?  Are there plans among the elites to save the elites only?  To premptively nuke competitors?  To starve whole continents? To release genetic plagues that only kill Chinese, or blacks, or Russians, or Arabs, or short people with too much back hair?

So what if there are? No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

We are the enemy. And we have been contacted. No plan is going to proceed as planned, especially not any kind of Us versus Them plan. Not on Lifeboat Earth.  The wealthy and the learned had better roll up their sleeves and pitch in with the rest of us, or it’s over the side in a hurry — the same choice you and I face. The only plan that will proceed as expected is the plan to work together.

The only certainty is that whomsoever does stand among those fabled 200 million at the North Pole, when they finally do ring in the 22nd Century about four score and fourteen from now — they will not be warlords, wealthy, blue bloods, refugees, religiously insane, stupid, starving, or plain dumb lucky. None of the above.

They will be, the the very last one of them, people who relentlessly qualified themselves and cooperated on getting themselves there. They will be people who pulled all together, and only all together.  And they will each and every one of them hold the gift of knowledge, wisdom, and earned experience left behind by the millions of human beings who helped get them there, or gave them something to carry forward.

There’s your work. There’s your job.  You won’t be there.  You won’t make it, not unless you are young enough to still be reading books about Dick, Jane, and Spot.  But you can make it happen, and you can make your mark upon it.

When we marched against the Iraq war back in Ought Two and Three, that did about as much good as going to the movies.  When we voted in 2000, and 2002, and 2004, that also did about as much good as going to the movies.

Because the fix is in, including fixing the mainstream media to not report on the voting machines’ obtuse relationship to reality and to election polling. When every voting discrepancy, everywhere in the nation, goes to the GOP’s advantage — that’s not a story??

“At Fux News, Ignorance Is Job One.”

Whatever the outcome at the hustings this November, it won’t be an accurate count of the voters’ stated wishes. A voter’s choice isn’t sacred, it is a thing that is no longer actually desired or required; in fact, it is getting to be a damned nuisance.
A vote is something unpleasant left on the sidewalk, it is something that needs cleaning up. If the common people don’t have the sense to vote how they’re supposed to, well then people who know how things work these days will just have to pick up after the idiots.

And maybe post some signs so they don’t do it again.

And how do things work these days?

Well, among the six billion persons walking around on this blue planet, a vanishingly small percentage — about one percent — own and operate the whole place because they have gotten a hold of most of the capital, and they accrue more capital all the time.

For example, in America, with point three billion people, a mere 14,000 families own over 51% of the cash, stock, and assets of the nation. A mere 5% of the US population owns 85% of what’s ownable from sea to shining sea.

You can be damned sure that our government, at every level, is highly sensitive to the needs of this tiny, tiny slice of our population. There’s we, the people, and then there’s The People Who Count. The Haves and the Havemores, who have hired eight lobbyists for every one of our Congresspersons, and who fund his multi-million dollar reelection campaign.

Hae you hired eight full time Washington lobbyists for your Congresscritter? Do you pay for his media-heavy  reelection campaign? No? Then why do you think he cares what you want, need, or say?

These guardians of amassed capital pay brilliant, educated people to run their corporations, and to lobby and guide their government, world trade bodies, the WTO, media corporations, universities, banking, publishing, defense industries, arms sales, the drug trade, pharmaceuticals, insurance — the whole slew of functioning and money-making enterprises out there doing the global capitalization thing. They pay them to run it in their favor.

The owners and operators at the very top are vanishingly few. But they own damn near everything, so what they say goes. And what they like to see is that they own a little more of everything, every day.

Because the prime goal of capital is to protect itself, and to increase itself. Like a python taking a tighter grip every time its victim breathes out, massed capital first kills its competition, and then tweaks the laws and regulations, the norms of behavior, the supplies and demands, the marketplace itself — further in its favor every day. Bit by bit, the human resources and natural resources and ways and means of this world are accumulated into fewer and fewer hands.

Hands that are tied by the need to maintain and accrue even more capital. When you have a billion dollars, you don’t go out and spend it — you increase it.

You increase it, even if that means taking it penny by penny from the several billions of people away out there who live on a dollar a day or less. All those pennies add up, inexorably, until one day you have two billion dollars. Then three. Then four. There is no upper limit, no stopping point.

And if taking all those pennies meant taking the oil and natural resources and prospects and liberty of impoverished nations and populations for yourself, so what? That’s just how things work around here; get over it — or you’ll never have five billion. Or six. Or seven.

What will happen in this 21st century will be something like what happened in America and France back in the days of Revolution, when people up and decided that Liberty was just like air and water — it was just out there for everybody.

During this century, people everywhere will up and decide that capital is the lifeblood of their nation, and that it is not meant to flow into the mouths of a very, very few vampires whose only waking goal is to get even more.

People are going to nationalize capital, even here in America. Individual people will be restricted to owning and operating no more than a billion dollars. Or five hundred million. Or a hundred million, tops, as their personal walking around money.

The rest will be taxed, and put back out there into the many hands of the nation. Like Liberty, money will be seen as the property of the people at large, and once that concept takes hold, it will not be possible to drain a free people of their ways and means for the obscene benefit of the insatiable few.

This will happen because Americans will not spend this century living twenty-five times better than the Chinese, or Indian, or African, or Brazilian, or Bolivian person. Americans will spend this century learning to live more like them. We have no Manifest Destiny to live twenty-five times better than other human beings, no matter what Mister Cheney and Bush say. They speak for vampires when they say those things.

Part of the American adjustment to emerging global realities during this century will be getting these corporate vampires off our backs, and putting the wealth and ways and means they have siphoned from us back into our own pockets, and our own communities.

If that means nationalizing the defense industry, the oil industry, Microsoft, WalMart  and Starbucks — it will happen. It won’t be bloody, or uncivilized, or unkind.  Bill Gates will still be walking around with a hundred million in his hip pocket. It’s just that whatever further profits he wishes to earn will flow to public education, public healthcare, public transportation, and the care and feeding of our national family, not to his personal and private General Fund for Utterly Crushing Competitors.

Throughout history, when the few take too much from the many then empires fall, borders change, and heads roll. They bring it on, they bring it on themselves. George Bush likes to compare himself to Churchill, and Abe Lincoln.

He has more in common with Marie Antoinette.