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EXPECT, because they are such callous killers themselves. So, treat them with the respect that they DENIED to "enemy combatants," and mete out truly appropriate punishment--confiscation of all war profits, and community service to benefit wounded vets. (I wasn't kidding about that. I really want that to happen. Rumsfeld carrying bedpans. Ye-e-e-es! And NOT for humiliation! Rather, to revive his frozen soul.)
You see, I've been thinking a lot about South America, recently, and also South Africa. What prevented bloodbaths in those countries--after the fascists were disempowered? What prevented public hangings of the dictators' bodies from the rafters? What prevented the excesses of the French Revolution? Think of the horror those peoples' endured! Violent retribution seemed INEVITABLE. But it did not happen. Instead, these societies are constructing better governments out of the ashes of the past. In South Africa, it had a formal name: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In South America, we've seen seeming miracles, like Michele Batchelet--who was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet--elected president of Chile! And a full-blooded, indigenous, Andes Indian elected president of Bolivia! And a US-backed military coup FAILING in Venezuela, because their democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez, was so revered--tens of thousands of people pouring into the streets to stop the coup. And Fidel Castro (utterly reviled by our corporate news monopolies) helping to solve the problem and preventing a revolutionary bloodbath.
It's as if some beneficent spirit has floated over these countries, whispering, "Peace, peace, peace!" into everybody's ears. End the cycle of violence. Make love, not war!
I think that we, in this country, are at the center of the vortex of change--from humanity's brutal past, to a different and better future. We are THE most heavily propagandized people on earth (except maybe North Koreans), and THE most heavily burdened with war profiteers and other nefarious parties. The global corporate predators who are causing all the trouble were spawned HERE, and they have taken measures to disempower us, so that we cannot use our sovereign rights as a people--especially our right to vote--to curtail them and/or dismantle their inhuman corporate monopolies (as we should be doing). It is very, very difficult for us to see out of this vortex. It's as if they have put blindfolds on us, and told us to shut up and don't move. "You are powerless! You can do nothing!" And we are vulnerable to that message, as a people, because our forms of communication have been hijacked, and we are only just developing alternative forms (word of mouth, and our "Committees of Correspondence," the internet).
WONDERFUL things are happening in other places--truly amazing developments, like the triumph of democracy in Latin America, and also what appears to have been world unity on preventing the Bush junta's nuking of Iran (which included our own military's opposition to it). The Bush junta is in truth a very rickety regime with almost no support in the U.S., and none in the rest of the world. I think 35% approval among Americans is probably a kindness (of the corporate news monopolies). They're down to their small wingnut base and its multi-billionaire promoters--and have been in that dungeon for at least 1.5 years, beginning with a dismal and unprecedented 49% on the very day of Jr.'s second inauguration, and going into a steep fall thereafter, with no bounce, no matter what they do. Likely this will start being fiddled again as we approach Diebold II in November, but still, the upshot is that the great majority of Americans despise these criminals. The propaganda is now so transparent, it nearly evaporates before they open their mouths.
I know we are all consumed here with what Israel has done. But Israel's invasion of Lebanon may be a symptom of the crumbling of the Bush regime. It has been the goal of the Bushites all along to invade Iraq, Syria and Iran, to gain control of some of the earth's last reserves of oil. However, EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT of the American people oppose any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war, and the whole world opposes it as well. So they've gone to PNAC-Plan B: get Israel to do it. And Israel, out of fear, desperation and possibly blackmail (the Bushites hold the purse strings) has gone right along with it, and become a Bush Cartel pawn. Israel's leaders may also sense the end of the Bush junta, and want to gain some strategic advantage before their only ally in the world is dethroned. Bad mistake. And bad mistakes all along the way by Israel's leadership, which has ended with Israel's only friend being the fascist, Saudi-loving, bin Laden-loving Bushites! Some friends. Israelis need to do something dramatic to disassociate their country from these pariahs. Invading Lebanon is about the worst thing they could have done. Apologizing to Iran (for helping destroy their democracy in 1954, and inflicting them with the torture-loving Shah), calling for Truth and Reconciliation in the Middle East--amnesty, forgiveness, peace--and embarking on a NEW PLAN, one say, with the goal of a Middle Eastern Cultural and Ecological Renaissance, would be the best. The world would weep for joy! Israel would instantly gain billions of new friends--and they wouldn't need the Bush Cartel, which everybody could then kick out of Iraq.
Then we put Rumsfeld to work in a VA hospital.
Positive envisionment. That's the thing. Don't think of death and retribution. That's what these criminals feed upon. Think of life, and rebirth.
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