COASTAL POST (415)868 1600 FAX (415) 868 0502 P.O. Box 31 Bolinas CA 94924 http://www.coastalpost.com email: editor at coastalpost.com february, 2003
Dinosaur Empire
by frank scott
The intellectually challenged shut-ins who run the empire and report its news would make a fascist blush. The white house gang tells the world that it will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, spitting in the face of international sovereignty . Washington houses the most dangerous collection of warhead lunatics in the world, but Iraq must submit to a degrading national strip search, for weapons of mass destruction.
Corporate media reports this as a reasonable policy, to battle an evil monster whose alleged threat enables imperial power to be exercised more crudely than ever.
Official opposition plans its next assault on reason in the 2004 campaign, and, except for a small group of progressives, is totally useless . But the people continue taking actions that often speak louder than words. The future will tell whether those actions help create a political voice that can translate them into government policies .
Americans not only demonstrate against the pending slaughter; the families of some who were killed on 911 even travel to Iraq on missions of human understanding. They give substance to thoughts of peace and justice, while their government desecrates those ideas, the media treat them with silence, and the official opposition argues for a military draft as a feeble sign of its dedication to democracy .
Some governments caution America to slow its rush to more slaughter. They whisper that it might look better to wait for the United Nations to give the kill signal. Once it is ordered to do so , of course, by the US. Meanwhile, the enormous global buildup of American troops continues, as do the regular bombings in the no-fly zones. This exercise in murderous hypocrisy is carried out, like most of the empire's policy, in complete disregard for national or international law. Nor does it honor moral laws, like those regularly cited by the Judeo-Christian holy warriors whose oily jihad is being conducted on behalf of “civilization”.
Acting in a historical void empty of the wholesale terror practiced by all of the west, and claiming to combat the retail terror of 911 inflicted by some of the east, the empire moves with frightening power, speed and stupidity. It threatens disaster for everyone, especially Palestinians and Iraqis who bring the historic subjugation of the third world up to date, with their continued suffering at the hands of the corporate empire's main military outlet, in USrael.
A more expansive racist atmosphere prevails in the USA , with middle eastern people, many not only legal immigrants but also citizens , treated as criminals or worse , simply for being what they are. The one American group acknowledged as being better because of what it is - the rich - continues to thrive, no matter what the circumstances .
The president offers this class a tax cut instead of a much deserved increase, calling it a boost for the economy, meaning theirs , not ours. Their economy bursts with profits, from immaterial financial scams, but especially from weapons sales and other war-budget entries. The proposed tax cut means more wealth for the top of the American pyramid, increasing the financial gap that separates it from the great majority, and is made less visible by credit cards and disinformation.
An economy that loses jobs during its holiday season of hysterical consumption is an economy in trouble, but hardly is heard a discouraging word in mass media, filled with exciting tales of pending slaughter , happy talk about brave servicemen primed to carry it out, and breathless bulletins about celebrity escapades and sports scandals.
The good news that media cannot deny includes a Republican governor calling a temporary halt to death sentences. But the moratorium on legal murder in one state needs to become a greater call for its end in the whole world. War is the worst form of capital punishment, administered to masses of innocent and guilty alike. It is sanctioned in laws created by moral perverts who exercise a double standard in applying a legal air brush to murder. The notion that killing people is okay if you do it according to a rule book is as obscene as the idea that child molesting is legal if performed by college graduates who wash their hands before violating infants .
War is the ultimate form of capital punishment, and it thrives as long as capital economics rule the world. Ending the legal right to mass murder calls for economic change, but it will not occur without democratic change as well. The problem is that the empire must be taken down by the very democratic and humanitarian action which it strives to make impossible, and by a humanity greater than the expression of one nation’s people. But that democracy must have a base in the heart of imperial darkness, where it should be understood that the present regime merely continues the policies of past regimes, if more blatantly.
As this is written , the annual World Social Conference at Porto Alegre is bringing together an international assembly working for a future of hope and peace, based on radically different practices of governing and economics. The people of the US must join that assembly, in greater numbers , or be seen as part of the problem which makes a peaceful future impossible.
The American empire has become a monstrous dinosaur, trampling thousands under the colossal weight of its wars, littering earth with its gigantic turds of polluting waste and unaware that it is already extinct . In its brutal state of uncontrol, It threatens to destroy everything. Americans need to play a much greater role in ending its terror, or we will go down with this overgrown, dumb and mortally dangerous beast. Individual charity begins at home, and so does social revolution, which is what it will take to stop the dinosaur.
Copyright (c) 2003 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
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frank scott email: frank at marin.cc.ca.us 225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901 (415)457 2415 fax(415)457 4791