We begin the new year as we ended the old ; preparing for an assault on innocent iraqis, calling it war, as though involving equal military powers. The major context, and not a subtext of this manufactured crisis is that light skinned dominators make murderous and impossible demands on darker skinned subjects. Western history marches on.
Some distraction from the imperial plan was provided by the joyous holiday season of love, peace and consumption. The year end shopping orgy may have needed more viagra than was available, but figures are not yet in to show whether the economy is very troubled , or only slightly very troubled.
Mind management has placed corporate crimes in our collective unconscious, while the regime and its opposition make us conscious of how much they love our country, while they rape our democracy. Recent mass detentions of legal immigrants are another frightening sign not only of racism, but complete disregard for constitutional rights .
In an ugly display of U.S. led arrogance, nations armed to their teeth have demanded that Iraq submit to having everything but it’s leader’s underpants inspected in a search for hidden weapons. Any Iraqi attempt at openness is treated as a trick or a lie , by our governing lynch mob.
The staggering hypocrisy of a nation which has invented and used the most deadly weapons ever devised by science insisting that Iraq is a menace to humanity because it may be armed is evident to all but the war heads in Washington, and the air heads in media. Because Iraq may someday have a nuclear weapon, it must be destroyed, before the fact. This, while our corporate-racial affiliate in the middle east, israel, stockpiles nuclear weapons and regularly employs murderous firepower on an occupied Palestinian population.
The U.N. continues to operate under American domination. Its members privately express contempt for the USA, but publicly scrape and bow in obedience, fronting for this outrage of diplomacy. Maybe this year, it will become an independent international body that expresses the majority will. Maybe.
The vast, empty space between the president’s ears is filled with nonsense by advisers who are often fanatics, at best mild skeptics, and at worst, nearly insane. If these national nut cases weren’t enough, further guidance on the fictional threat comes from rich Iraqi exiles, possibly less in touch with their native land than are the deranged exiles of Miami. Those light skinned gusanos from Cuba – who immediately became more affluent than darker skinned Americans living here for generations – now await Castro’s death, in expectation that Cubans will welcome them back, having forgotten their class treachery and support of the tyrant, Batista.
Some of the Washington Iraqis are advocates of democratic change, but most are like our regime puppets in Afghanistan. These exiles are upper-class supporters of western, market values, with little or no connection to the people of their nations. They have more in common with their foreign, white “benefactors”. From fanatic loonies in his cabal, and international hustlers in the iraqi exile community, our presiding pinhead devises a comic book policy that would be hilarious, if it were not so deadly .
The pitiful opposition speculates about which nonentity it will run for president in 2004, with the nation facing more problems than can be solved by one inept corporado, let alone a party of corporate servants . If the Democrats were our only hope for the future, we would be without hope . They continue to represent a lesser evil; a polio chosen when the alternative is cancer. They seem enlightened only by comparison to the endarkened Republicans, but both represent the status quo of capital controlled private markets , and a strangled public sector that is gasping for breath.
The race bigotry of imperialism is not only evident in foreign affairs, where the light skinned dominate the dark in global fashion. Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. Our nation’s institutional racism is only cosmetically covered by affirmative tokenism for individuals from groups long locked out of mainstream power. Behind the cosmetics, the truth can be seen in America’s prisons, filled by the black and brown, presided over by the white. it isn’t odd that many see the globe as a larger prison, with the majority of darker poor subjected to the domination of the lighter rich , who use their handful of tanned servants in high places to make corporate capital look good.
The recent obsession of some to turn Lott into a pillar of dung is useless; it does nothing about the policies of institutional racism. Attacking the individual’s speech, it neglects the system’s actions. Lott was mistakenly overt in language about a situation that is supposed to remain covert in practice. But no matter who runs the senate or sits at the “very” white house, it is the material policies of the empire that need change, not the language of corporate employees who simply maintain it.
Happily, many are not fooled by the lies of our government and media. The idiotic fiction depicting iraq as a menace to the USA is not believed by a substantial minority of citizens. They have openly demonstrated their differences with the regime , and polls have begun to show greater public doubts about the policy of slaughter, disguised as war. And this under a deluge of propaganda that would have people cowering under their beds, believing that Hussein, terrorists, Christ killers and anti-semites all menace the earth from headquarters in “the middle east”.
2003 does offer hope, but none of it comes from our government or its official opposition. The global community calling for humanity and peace is striving for democracy, and it includes millions from the USA who oppose war. The need for new organizations to achieve that democracy will be a most positive outcome when it is realized. In hopes that this year will bring it closer; Happy 2003.
Mr. Frank Scott contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Bolinas, California. It was first published by the Coastal Post.