The Different Face of the Third World War

The Different Face of the Third World War

By Siv O'Neall article link

May 13, 2010 | Axis of Logic

Make no mistake. The third World War is right here. Now. It has been here for longer than you would believe.

The world is at war. Unrelenting, genocidal war. Another war that is a racket, but with a different face and a different racket. A war that kills millions, as is usually the case. There are two sides to this war, but it is not the East against the West. It’s not even the South against the North. It is not a geographical war. It’s a class war. It is the Poor against the Rich on all five continents. And right now the Rich are winning.

A brief look back

The much touted Founding Fathers wanted nothing more praiseworthy than an oligarchy, a country ruled by an elite where Blacks and women were not citizens with equal rights, not even the right to vote. Women only gained the right to vote through the passage of the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1920.

In spite of the half-heartedness and hesitations by President Roosevelt and some egregious mistakes that had serious consequences, the end of this era still came out as far more people-friendly than anything the country had seen before. Labor unions experienced tremendous gains during the thirties and Social Security was created in 1935.

Fast forward to Lyndon B. Johnson and his signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, obviously a big step in the direction of democracy. U.S. citizens were now convinced that their country was not just the most prosperous in the world, but also the most moral, the most free and the most civilized. And the most powerful.

The social contract that stemmed from the last Great Depression has been torn apart bit by bit in the decades that followed. The second-rate movie actor Ronald Reagan took the first big steps towards corporatism, intrinsically accompanied by total contempt for the people. This glamorous president who was playing Hollywood with the country seriously set about undermining the social safety net, a gradual thawing of programs focused on the welfare of the citizens.

The war has become globalized

Things are changing however. The sudden collapse of the Twin Towers and the screams of dying people made it possible. Civil rights have been dramatically stifled through the Patriot Act, furtively steered through a Congress in shock and almost total ignorance in October of 2001. The country has since then been in a state of permanent war.

We are living the war. It just has a different face. I am not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan. I am not talking about the renewal of the Cold War, as the U.S. Empire is staking its last pennies on establishing influence in republics of the former Soviet Union, desperately trying to outdo Russia in countries where the main or the second language is Russian. In these countries dependence on Russian oil and gas is of such primary importance that even Ukraine has had to listen to the loud voices of the people and move over to the Russian sphere, for economic and certainly also for cultural reasons. The U.S.-supported orange revolution is over. Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is history.

This current war has no borders. War is globalized, like everything else steered by the obscene organization that rules the world of today. The hugely powerful multinationals in collusion with the governing bodies of the world have orchestrated a way of running the world which seems to them to be a given winner. It is not even Whites against the brown peoples who by far dominate the world population. The White upper-class people are of course scared out of their wits knowing well that one day soon they will be outnumbered even in their own home countries, which is most of the West. Racism, in each individual country and globally, is very clearly part of this ugly war.

However, globalization is the ruling principle of today’s war. If the Chinese want to take a part in this upper class war on the poor, they are welcome to the country club. If the Indian political leaders are willing to make a deal with the multinationals, they are also taken into the club as full members. But at the origin of the scheming by the Neocon cavemen, the Multinational Money Men alone are the Übermenschen; the secondary collaborators get a fair share only because, for financial reasons, their weight is impossible to ignore.

The U.S. leaders may finally have realized that there is no way they can win a geographical war in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in Africa or anywhere else. They are now having a hard time extracting themselves from the senseless wars that are going on full speed in Afghanistan and now also Pakistan, turning both these countries into a maelstrom of ubiquitous local wars. Iraq is a ruined country but the U.S. will probably manage one day fairly soon to withdraw most of its military, declaring victory.

The reasons for this unending war (and possibly the solution to it) is the major equation we have to solve in order to understand the world we live in. It is not the United States alone that is in this war. It is not a war of one country against another country. It is the multinational corporations that are sucking up the entire wealth of the world, leaving the crumbs to the people so that they can survive as the slaves of the powerful leaders.

The center of gravity has changed in this new world of robots and money makers. Washington is no more the unilateral leader. The U.S. government has turned into a group of yes-sayers to the Big Corporations that are spread all over the planet. The world economy is in free fall, but you are soon about to see the top Money Men come out of the squeeze with all their billions intact, if not multiplied.

Poverty kills

The poor are being squeezed almost out of their existence and the educated and formerly prosperous middle classes are disappearing from the rosters of the comfortable class that included, for instance, middle-range businessmen, managers and intellectuals. Medium-sized businesses are being squeezed to death and the educated middle classes are seen as less and less essential in a world where money alone rules. Education and the arts are dying a slow death, not being considered as necessary, in fact seen rather as a menace to the new world order where dumbed down and docile slaves are the kind of pliable citizens the power people thrive on.

Small retail businesses are being squeezed out of existence by the Walmarts and the Carrefours all over the world. Subsistence farmers are being bankrupted by huge industrial farms every day. In Africa, the family farms that provided for the basic needs of the family and possibly left some produce over to sell at the local market are being killed by the requirements by IMF and the World Bank, the two major contributors to worldwide poverty.

The big money lenders demand, as a requirement for a loan, that the poor farmers produce flowers and fruit for export to the rich West and are thus forced to buy food products imported from the West, in particular from the U.S. They can’t afford buying all the products they need for a decent livelihood. They go bankrupt and they move to the enormously overpopulated shantytowns around the megacities of the world, Lagos, Cape Town, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangkok, Mexico City, São Paolo, Shanghai, etc., and even the outrageous slums in the richest country in the world are fighting against obscene poverty, hunger and malnutrition1. One billion people, almost one tenth of the population of the world now live in shantytowns all over the world.

The war on the poor people across the world

The war on poverty has taken on a new meaning. It is a war on the poor. The poor are the major victims of the Third World War. AIDS and other diseases, violent droughts, inundations and natural catastrophes are used to eradicate the billions of poor people who are seen as dead ballast that is making the steering of the ship difficult to handle. Dead mass that is better gotten rid of - by any means available.

If nature comes to their help, so much the better. Let the victims of hurricane Katrina keep getting swallowed up by poverty and early death. Let Haiti disappear as an island for poor people where those victims of hundreds of years of cruel colonialism were managing to squeeze out a living only by sheer willpower, in spite of the ruining of their environment by these colonial powers. New Orleans and Haiti will now be made into luxury tourist sites for the wealthy who don't know what to do with their money.

Let the poor victims of the scandalous gigantic BP oil leak in the Gulf die a slow death, deprived of their livelihood as hard-working fishermen or the owners of small businesses by the shoreline. The entire area is now polluted beyond repair or at least suffering the devastating impact of the disaster through the destruction of the offshore, shoreline and significant tidal wetland ecosystems, due to criminal neglect by the oil company and by the government2. It is the little people who will be suffering from this devastation for years to come. The big companies always keep their profits intact.

The progress towards civil rights and a government for the people has been in steady decline ever since the big steps forward that were made by FDR and LBJ. In fact, the U.S. leadership, in tight partnership with the Big Corporations, has taken increasingly big steps towards stifling every effort in favor of people’s rights or easing the plight of the poor that might have appeared (and been ignored) on the Washington radar, emanating from people-friendly organizations. The Supreme Court which is supposed to rein in the other two branches of the Government, has been stacked with regressive judges and even the last vestiges of democratic rights are in danger of being overruled by that Court.

The ‘War on Terror’ serves the purpose of idealizing the West and demonizing the Arab world, the Islam religion and all people of darker skin color. The war was not born out of 9/11. The ‘War on Terror’ had been invented well before that shocking event. Defeating the Taliban, taking over Iraq and the Middle East had been in the eye of the Washington telescope for a long time.

But the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, whoever was the real agent behind the deed, served to reinforce the making of the U.S. citizens into docile lemmings, flag waving non-thinking ‘patriots’, blind to the killing of their civil rights and the making of the Constitution into a quaint document.

The base of Neoconservative ideology

Globalization enters the stage. It too has been a long time coming. Washington is now going to wage a war without borders, a war of economic conquest that will make Washington into the capital of the Planet. They are probably capable of seeing that a unilateral world is no more realistic, but the U.S. power people are certainly counting on Washington carrying the heaviest stick in the fashioning of the world into a money making machine. Multi-nationalism will have to be accepted. U.S. leaders don’t even need to steep the world in ‘Americanism’ by spreading their gospel of consumerism and ignorant worship of ‘the only free and civilized country in the world’. The corporations are doing the work for them. Buying is the only remaining virtue.

Thinking and straight vision are doomed, killed in the cradle. History is taught the way it suits the U.S. leadership and the apathy of ignorance is taking over the populace. News is skewed to fit the powers that be. The media has been bought up by Big Money and has become infotainment, the opium of the people. Hand in hand with religion of course. Patriotism and fundamentalist religion become the ersatz for critical thinking. Only the sheep and lemmings are encouraged. People who don’t toe the line are tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

This is the New World Order. The Neocons are sitting on the throne. Democracy is gone. Corporatism alone rules the world. Countries all over the planet are turning into police states where people are not expected to have any constitutional rights.

So what is the center-piece of this new war? It is getting rid of the poor to make room for the super rich. Reducing the world population by all possible means. By starving the masses, by spreading diseases, by killing and rendering homeless millions of innocent civilians. Sure, drones and missiles still have an important function to fill. Only the rich so-called elite is going to have any say at all in this paradise for the leaders of the world. The question they don’t seem to pose is: Who is going to buy the products and who is going to make them, other than the Chinese and people in sweatshops in the third world?

Recolonizing Africa still looks like a possibility for Washington, even though they are in for a hard fight with China on that continent. Ruling over the oil rich Middle East and Central Asia still seems like a half-won goal for the U.S generals and politicians. Globalization is going to serve as a magic wand for Washington to extend its rule to countries via the multinational corporations. They can not possibly invade China, nor India, nor Russia, nor Brazil. But they plan on being the bosses in the running of the world corporations and that way they will still come out as the winners. The stealing of the national resources of countries all over the world will be reinforced and turned into the hands of the corporations. But the signature on the document will be Washington’s. They make trade deals with the countries they can’t conquer and the future is theirs.

The Colossus is bleeding

However, what is the real future going to be like? What the present rulers don’t take into account is people’s never-ending fight for their own freedom. For self-rule. For their dignity.

People are rising up all over the world. They don’t want to be globalized, to become numbers in a world of increasing profit for the wealthy only. They don’t like to lose their savings because of the zero-producing speculation of a tiny clique of callous gamblers. They don’t like for the government to use their tax money to bail out banks who go bankrupt when their CEOs still get billions of $ in bonuses.

They don’t like money for education and social budgets to be cut short and their children to be faced with up to $100,000 in loans for their college education to pay off after graduation - even though they can’t get decent jobs. They don’t like jobs to be outsourced to low-paying countries and business plants to be closed down in their home town, leaving them jobless. They don’t like to have to pay higher taxes because the rich hide their profits in tax havens, such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and hundreds of other nations.

One day they are bound to see that Europe, which they call socialist – the horror! – can afford free university education, good health care and decent social services, partly because European countries spend a fraction of the outrageous amounts of the people's money the U.S. spends on its military budgets.

Major Southeast Asian countries have formed their own free trade zone, AFTA – 'ASEAN Free Trade Area'. They simply don’t need the West. And China alone is now the world’s second largest economy, having passed by Japan in 2009. Several Latin American countries are equally leading a life increasingly independent of the U.S. Empire, forming their own free trade zone, MERCOSUR, passing on the profits from their national resources to their own people3.

Is it finally becoming obvious that globalization the way Milton Friedman and the Chicago School boys saw it – shock and awe, conquer and buy – is just not going to work?4 The world economy is in a meltdown and the dominoes are falling in Europe after the upcoming bailout of Greece. The effects are spreading to the far corners of the world. More and more countries were already turning their backs on the U.S. - Turkey, Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and others have no use for the former Empire any more. And the Middle East is burning.

Was it maybe an illusion that the planet could be made into one huge corporation with the U.S. as its CEO?

Are the people in all parts of the world going to follow the example of the Greeks and put all business to a standstill unless they are given their rights? Is a people’s revolution finally about to take the stage away from the usurpers?

References

1. See Mike Davis and Planet of Slums A Dickensian world of Victorian poverty is being recreated, but on a scale that would have staggered the Victorians.” Tomdispatch Interview: Mike Davis, Green Zones and Slum Cities.

2. Louisana Workers denounce BP’s oil spill response

3. For more information on NAFTA and MERCOSUR - see Siv O’Neall: ‘ Capitalism Is Dying a Natural Death’

4. ‘Blurred Clarity: Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economic Have Much to Answer For.’

© Copyright 2010 by AxisofLogic.com

Siv O'Neall is an Axis of Logic columnist, based in France. Her insightful essays are republished and read worldwide. She can be reached at siv@axisoflogic.com.

Axis of Logic Biography and Articles Siv O'Neall

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The Different Face of the Third World War

Can Liberty Be Advanced Through Violence?

Can Liberty Be Advanced Through Violence?

by Butler Shaffer article link

November 1, 2010 | LewRockwell

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

~ Albert Einstein

A Republican candidate running for Congress in Texas has set many minds and mouths atwitter with his suggestion that, should state tyranny ever become a problem in America that could not be resolved by political means, the use of violence, while "not the first option," would be "on the table." There is a deep-rooted frustration and anger among millions of Americans directed at the entirety of a political establishment that is forever employing lies, deceit, contradictory reasoning, violence, increased regulatory and taxation schemes, Federal Reserve monetary policies, wars, expanded police and surveillance powers, and other practices that advance corporate-state interests at the expense of ordinary people. Those upset with such behavior have tried resorting to the politically-acceptable means of bringing about change. They have gone to voting booths to support candidates who promise to "get the government off your backs," or "no more taxes," or to not engage in "nation-building." With but a handful of exceptions, those elected turn around and violate such promises, leaving the disenchanted voters to seek out other political saviours at the next election.

The current "Tea-Party" movement began as yet another expression of popular disaffection with our politicized society. It was, however, quickly co-opted by the same right-wing franchise of the political establishment that participated – in bipartisan efforts with its left-wing branch – in the construction of the modern empire. Just as in the 1994 Republican Party’s congressional victories, persons of libertarian sentiments will discover that dressing a Tea-Party candidate in a three-cornered hat will not change his fundamental character as a pimp for the prevailing order.

When the futility of using institutionally-approved methods for making change become increasingly evident to people, it is not surprising that many might look to violence as the only effective solution. Students of social psychology often speak of the "frustration/aggression" hypothesis, wherein a repeated interference with goal-directed activity may result in a resort of violence. As Fred Berger expressed it, where 

certain segments or groups within the population are systematically exposed to these weaknesses in the ability of the legal system to provide or protect security, those subjected to such treatment come to feel "left out" of the social process, come to regard themselves as the "victims" of the social and political scheme, rather than full participants in it. . . . Such conditions tend to foster counter-violence and retaliatory disorder. . . .

In a world in which it has become evident to so many that the institutional order exists to promote the interests of the few at the expense of the more numerous, is it so remarkable that such an awareness would be responded to with anger and violence? To regard oneself as being endlessly at the mercy of increasingly malevolent forces that one is otherwise unable to control or resist, can produce a sense of hopelessness that may lead to violence directed against its perceived source.

How is one to respond to the systemic violence that is the lifeblood, the very essence, of the state? Society has always been a struggle between the "invisible hand" of a peaceful and productive order that arises, without direction, as the unintended consequence of people pursuing their own interests, and the "iron fist" of institutionally structured violence we have been conditioned to equate with "social order." I have defined "government" as "an institution of theft, predation, rape, destruction, and mass murder, the absence of which, it is said, would lead to disorder."

To understand political systems, and to learn how to protect oneself when dealing with them, one must cast aside all of the illusions and lies in which we have been trained to see them. They are defined, even by students of government, as agencies "enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory." There is nothing, nothing, that the state ever does that does not derive from a presumed authority to employ whatever amount of deadly force its officials deem necessary – or just convenient – to achieve its ends. Contrary to the mantle of "public servant" in which they like to cloak themselves, government employees – from the president on down to janitors – insist upon their power to compel obedience by force.

The mainstream media and high-ranking government officials have been feigning righteous indignation over the city officials in Bell, California, who paid themselves gargantuan salaries – one as high as $800,000 per year, and with retirement pay nearing $1,000,000 annually. What is most upsetting to such critics, however, is not the enormity of their racket, but that these local officials failed to conform themselves to established methods for the looting of taxpayers. Like the Claude Rains police chief in the movie, Casablanca, who informs Humphrey Bogart that he is "shocked to discover gambling" going on in his business – as he receives his gambling payoff from the croupier – the town government of Bell will receive a selective criticism of its behavior. Government defense contracts; hundreds of billions of dollars in "stimulus" gifts to favored business interests; the refusal of the Federal Reserve system – or of Congress – to reveal the beneficiaries of its monetary policies, these and other politically-correct forms of looting will pass without significant comment from right-thinking people. Nor, in contrast with the Bell racket, will much be made of the fact that a current candidate for governor in California has spent $141.5 million of her own money in an effort to get elected. Why? As one who understands that people act in order to be better off after acting than they would have been otherwise, what returns does this woman expect from her investment? Who is insisting upon an explanation from her?

I have long been of the view that parents have a moral obligation to keep their children from living under tyranny. As such, how do I go about the task of helping to make their world one in which they may enjoy the conditions of peace and liberty? My experience convinces me that participation in electoral politics is more than futile: it only adds energy to the system; it confirms the central premise of all political thinking, namely: important change can occur only within the halls of government. Besides the fact that the electoral process is unavoidably rigged in favor of the status quo, it also assures that, no matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected. Voting is designed to give people the false sense that they are in control of the machinery and the policies of the state. Emma Goldman got it right when she said that "if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal."

My opposition to voting arises from the same sense as my opposition to other forms of violence. Implicit in efforts to persuade the state to act according to your preferences – whether through voting, lobbying, or threats of force – is the idea that, should you prevail, others will be compelled to abide by what you have chosen for them. Voting is anything but the peaceful alternative to violence: it is premised on the coercive machinery of the state being employed on your behalf should you prevail in amassing a greater number of people on your side than do others.

More direct forms of violence – as some suggest to be the ultimate solution to statism – is likewise inconsistent with a condition of liberty. Violence is an expression of reactive anger, born of unrequited frustration. Violence is the very essence of the state: can one expect mankind to free itself of political destructiveness by adopting its very essence?

We will not become free when the state goes away. Rather, the state will go away once we are free. "Freedom" is a very personal quality, wherein the individual enjoys a centered, integrated life, free of the conflicts and contradictions that make up our normally neurotic lives. We must learn to respect the inviolability of one another’s lives and other property interests if we are to enjoy this inner sense of being free. A need for liberty is what we have in common with one another, but we will only grasp this fact when each of us is free of the inner forces that keep us divided and in conflict.

We have conditioned our minds to think of ourselves in conflict-laden ways, be they nationalistic, religious, racial, gender, or other forms of separation. Our political masters have trained us to think of one another in "we/they," "us" against "them" categories, divisions that are – like the scapegoats upon whom we play out our conflicts – changeable to suit the political needs of the moment. The fear of unseen "communists" that helped fuel the Cold War, has morphed into the concealed "terrorists," with each serving the same purpose: to expand the power and plundering of the state. Only by our individual ending of such divisive thinking and discovering the inner sense of non-contradictory wholeness that respects the inviolability of our neighbors’ lives and interests, can we become free.

"Liberty," on the other hand, is the condition in which free men and women can live together in society. Trying to twist or manipulate unfree people into social systems – even those grounded in a verbal support of liberty – will never foster liberty. This is why the Constitution was doomed from the start: there was too much conflict and contradiction in the minds of most people to allow for the assemblage of free men and women. It is also why, once we have discovered the inner meaning of freedom, constitutions – and the governments they create – will be wholly unnecessary for a condition of liberty. This is part of the meaning of F.A. Harper’s observation that "the man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."

How can a person whose mind and conduct is grounded in a divisive thinking that considers violence as a means to wholeness, be regarded as "free"? Free of what? Is it not evident that resort to violence can never be a means to liberty; that such methods presume a fundamental separation of interests that would reduce society to the Hobbesian dystopia of "all against all"? If a group sought to dismantle the state by violent means, is it not clear that it could accomplish such ends only by amassing coercive powers superior to the state itself; that it would have to become a super-state? And if this group were to be successful, it would dare not dismantle itsown machinery, lest another group sought to recreate the previous apparatus; it would have to remain diligent in policing the thinking and actions of others who might be inclined to favor a more structured society.

One can no more advance liberty through violence than he can regain sobriety by embracing an alternative brand of alcohol. The state is a system that enjoys a monopoly on the use of violence. It is no answer to this destructive menace to introduce a competitor who employs the same means and seeks the same ends, namely, to construct society on the principle of the power to compel obedience to authority.

Albert Einstein got to the essence of the problem when he declared that "force always attracts men of low morality." I understand how being frustrated by others as we pursue interests we are entitled to pursue can generate intense feelings of anger. But it is not out of reactive rage or desperation that we can discover our individual freedom and the resultant liberty we can share with our neighbors. It is such divisiveness that keeps us enslaved to the state. We need to discover what we share with one another, namely, a respect for our individuality that can arise only from the integration of our rational and emotional energies into a focused intelligence. If mankind is to avoid the fate of being the first species to intentionally make itself extinct, we must transform our own minds, and abandon our ageless and contradictory efforts to force others to be free!

Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

LewRockwell home page

Can Liberty Be Advanced Through Violence?

The Last Generation of Mindkind on Earth

The Last Generation of Mindkind on Earth

by William John Cox article link

Febuary 21, 2007 | The Voters

The following essay was written many years ago and, although a little lengthy for the Internet, it is posted here for those who like to mix a little philosophy with their politics.

Should the citizens of the United States engage in a peaceful political rebellion to avoid economic disaster and future wars founded, not upon wishful thinking and hopeful denial, but on a simple and specific agenda for effective collective action?

Is not the desire for freedom a universal trait of all sentient beings? Otherwise inequality of opportunity forever retards the intellectual evolution of their species.

Discussion: Once the melody of freedom's song is raised in democratic harmony, it echoes throughout the heavens for all to hear, as there is but peace in all of the universe, and it has been that way for all of eternity. No being, truly thinking, makes war instead of exploring the stars, for without peace, no being can fly far from their birth planet. They can only foul their nest and peck their siblings to death, thinking conditions beyond their nest are the same as surround them, never knowing that there's no Star Wars, except in the blind fantasies of those who never learn to see.

Danger. If there is but peace in all the universe and it has been that way for all of eternity, what then must we do to have any voice in our fate? Are we to continue living in fear of atomic-tipped missiles in the former USSR? Is there a more real danger that one day some small dispute ignites a financial war and China dumps its dollars or OPEC begins to trade its oil in Euros? Or, what if some other tiny economic turmoil twists the stock, bond, currency, and real estate markets into a chaotic contractual tailspin, and for whatever reason, in a single day, paper and electronic money simply cease to have economic relevance and virtually all legal wealth is eliminated? Then, only gold and other metals will have any real value; not silicon, plastic, or credit ratings.

Quick. Then, when there's no gasoline for sale, nor cabs to call, my spare change will be worth more than your former millions, and my bicycle will get me farther than your BMW. Without electricity and wave transmissions, your telephone, computers, televisions, DVDs and stereos are worth less than my knife. If all houses are for sale and all apartments are for rent, all titles are worthless, and all property is available for the taking. If everybody is looking for work, nobody will be hiring. If everything worth stealing has been stolen, you will find nothing to eat, no matter the caliber of your gun, or the number of your last few bullets.

Much like the Earth being struck by a giant asteroid, perhaps one-third, half, or even three-quarters of us, billions all over the world, could all be dead in a matter of months. No possessions, no livestock, no grain, no fruit, no game, nothing: Nothing to eat but the flesh of our own kind, starting with the babies, who will be the first to die.

Dirty. Will it be a blessing if the troubles are prolonged? Unless something is done, unless we, together, take positive action, things will steadily get worse instead of better. Negatives will multiple negatives, violent crime will continue to increase, and the social ills which compel the forgotten to riot will remain uncured.

Fires, floods, earthquakes, and other disasters will not cease to occur, but our governments will cease to do anything to help anyone. At first, as now, our governments will cut to the "basics," and finally will do nothing but collect taxes, sacrifice our youth fighting local warlords, and impose the death penalty for all crimes, either immediately or through forced labor.

Lost Knowledge. The downward spiral may be less steep but just as deadly, for we will soon lose the collective genius of the last two or three generations of accumulated race knowledge. As we gather here together at the threshold of galactic awareness, we stand to lose all we've learned and conceived of in just the last century. Once the last skulls that once contained our vast database of information and experience are laid in the ground – at that moment, the flame of our collective intellect will flicker and die.

When the daily quest for food leaves no time in the day to teach the little children to read, the last surviving texts will be of small value except to start a fire. And, at that precise moment, when the last of us who can read these words and comprehend their meaning, sleep our last dream, we, who once shared these thoughts, will cease to be; our words will be silenced and our learning lost, and our tears and toil will have been for nought.

The Last Generation. Along with our concrete castings, twisted girders, ancient carvings in stone and other megalithic artifacts, eons from now, a few scraps of our language may be found to identify us as the last generation of one of Gaia's children, an aquatic primate, known as human, who once climbed out of the lakes, through the trees and along the rivers, sailed in boats and settled distant shores and waterways around the world, harnessed the atom and flew to the Moon.

There the story will end, and across the universal field of mind and along the eternal corridors of time it will be whispered of how the human infant's first few breaths in the breeze of wisdom were smothered by the wasting virus of deception, hatred, and war. Of how it lay struggling in its earthly crib, looking up with fevered eyes through the cosmic window, fighting with all the strength of its existence, fortified by the antibiotics of knowledge, and its healing properties of wisdom, yet still too weak to see. Nothing more can be said, for we were stillborn.

Song of Mindkind. Or, celestial history may record that we, the last generation of the second millennia following the time of Jesus, fifteen centuries after the teachings of Muhammad, were the last generation to suffer war and who survived birth as Children of Mindkind on Earth. Then, songs will be sung and stories told of our joining minds in a powerful signal of freedom, of the moment our souls sensed the secret and soared with the Spirit of Wisdom to vibrate the waves of eternity with the melody of our children's voices, so they may be forever heard to harmonize in the Universal Choir of Peace.

Reality of Now. As glorious as that image may be, now is now, and let's face it folks; things are bad and the future is looking worse. So, what can we do?

First. We must overcome our fear, and the anger and distrust it compels, and recognize the actual and potential power available in the relatively free, well-educated and communicating society we still enjoy in the United States. We must concentrate our individual vote into its most powerful political focus ever, for if we don't use it with responsibility, we are certain to lose it with alacrity.

Next, we must see us for who we really are. Much like the old advertisement for Ivory soap, we are 99.44% pure. If we look at the totality of the billions of human decisions made every day, worldwide, including all the software, blueprints, CAD drawings, business plans, PERT charts, budgets, contracts, planting of crops, even deciding in the morning what to wear to work, or what to eat at lunch, we will find that we mostly tell each other the truth and closely cooperate to get most things done with the help of others we trust. Otherwise, things simply wouldn't work; you couldn't drive down a highway without striking another car, and you couldn't put your children to bed in the evening without whimpers of hunger.

Travel anywhere in the world and visit any home, and you will only find families struggling each day to live and who love and cherish their babies. They all want a better life for their children, and they mostly teach them the best way to earn it is to tell the truth and work hard.

From the moment we struck the first flint and created language to teach the making of fire and tools, our species has been defined by our ability to mentally synapse beyond the limitations of instinct, acquire and expand knowledge, and to teach the tool of learning and the value of exploration to each new generation. Now, as we learn to step from the fertile fields of Earth into the mind field of time, and to surf the waves of information along the seashores of space and to cast our net upon the wisdom of eternity, we must continue to trust and increasingly respect one another's thoughts on various subjects, though opposed to our own. For, they may be based upon better information or different insights, and even if wrong, we will all profit more from civil, constructive discussion, than from dissension, deception and destruction.

Though some are so sly as to forever lie, and the ability to deceive and disassemble will forever be seen by some as a value in achieving group or individual goals, and though many will forever respond to fear with a violent hatred of others, and real fear once felt can never be erased, and although everyone may forever try to cheat on their taxes, these emotional matters of conscience are but a weak pathology on our physiological soul, best cured by the light of truth and the balm of understanding.

Courage. Each of us must find within ourselves the individual courage to perform one simple rebellious act and elect to decline protection of the computerized secret ballot. Instead of responding like lab animals pushing a touch screen in response to the latest ten-second television smear ad, we can each take a little longer to vote and to carefully consider the candidates presented on the ballot by the various parties and factions who vie for our vote. Once we decide, we can demonstrate our literacy by carefully writing in our personal choice for president of the United States, whether or not his or her name is or is not on the ballot.

Presently, half of all voters don't bother to go to the polls. But, if only 15 to 25% of us were to write in our vote, trust that the politicians will be scrambling to ensure that all votes cast for them are legally counted, as they should be for anyone registering a willingness to accept votes cast in their name for any office of public trust.

Uncomplicated statutes should ensure that existing parties would continue to provide consensus for people with similar political views and the organization and resources to promote those views, and all Constitutional institutions, including the Electoral College would continue to function as intended. There would only be a simple adjustment in who does what. Instead of being offered phoney political platforms, devoid of substance or clearly defined policy, we the people would debate and express our desired policy and elect those candidates most committed to enact it.

National elections could become festive and joyous events, with real political parties to celebrate the end of electioneering and relief from hired advertising. Perhaps there could be a paid holiday and voting could extend over a three-day weekend. It might even take a week to count all of the ballots, and there might have to be a run-off and debates between the top two candidates.

Who can know for sure what may happen? But, surely, the election process which evolves will have to be better than the one we have now, when media exit polls decide elections by the morning coffee break in Iowa, and the loser concedes by lunch time in California. But, by more effectively achieving a better personal understanding with our government and those we elect to represent us, we citizens would gain greater control, our lives would be less restricted, and our vote could become a sacrament of social and civic freedom.

Confidence. Next, we must insist that the ballot include for our vote the twelve most relevant and critical issues facing our government during the upcoming four-year term. Our vote would be an expression of our collective judgement in the making of our own national policy. We would not make law: That is what our elected assemblies are for. However, the voice of a 51/49 percent split would be far different than the roar of an 89/11 vote in curbing the influence of powerful and wealthy special interest groups. If we simple voters are smart enough to earn money and to figure out how to pay our taxes, we are also smart enough to collectively express basic policy to guide our government, and to personally vote for whomever we consider most qualified to act in accordance with our desired policies.

Duty. Everywhere in the universe, on every planet with sentient life, in every nation on Earth, and in every society, every person has a universal right and duty to act, individually and collectively, to secure essential freedom for the nurturing and education of their children. Otherwise, if we, individually, sit around doing nothing except wait for the leadership of our politicians, whose only idea of making policy is to increasingly proscribe otherwise legal behavior, increase penalties, and take away rights (except when they are caught), we will find ourselves alone when our individual worlds collapse around us.

Options. The Voters agree only that inherent in any right to vote is the option to not vote, or to vote and to nullify the election if no viable alternatives are offered. They agree to politely disagree on all other issues and elections. Thus, The Voters takes no position on the various questions which are offered as a sampling of political issues that could be addressed in a National Policy Referendum.

Choices. Should we imagine, however, that all policy questions were thoroughly debated, and such a large margin of voters answered as to be an undeniable expression of desirable public policy, and that sympathetic representatives were elected to work out the best ways to implement those policies, we can for a few moments reflect upon the kind of life we might enjoy here in America, or in any other nation, country, state, or society whose free electors so elect.

Family. The society which evolved from such an election could not be a utopia, for the daily problems of life never go away until solved, and parents will always have to work hard to raise their children and to teach them to survive. But, the society could be one in which our government becomes more compassionate and caring about our family needs and less concerned about itself.

Every citizen, irrespective of wealth or status, requires certain necessities every day of their life, and for those with responsibilities of family, matters of health, education and freedom of travel are essential to social survival. To meet these core needs, all citizens could be equally helped by the resources of national Health, Education and Energy Corps. Each Corps would have its own national service academy, with admission by congressional appointment, and would commission officers dedicated to serving the citizens of a free society and their families.

Then, every parent and every child's burden of caring for the illnesses and injuries of family members would be lightened by the compassion and basic care provided by their Health Corps. Each of your children would receive a minimum community college education, to absorb the vast knowledge that challenges their comprehension and receive better training for employment, and each would be personally encouraged and tutored by the data and resources of their Education Corps. Third, you could treat your family to a inexpensive annual vacation, visit distant relatives, and explore National Parks across America, using free electro-magnetic energy along the interstate highway system fueled by the pool resources organized by your Energy Corps, which draws upon massive micro-wave energy from space collectors and supplies excess capacity to local power companies.

Except for staple food stamp and school lunch programs to help preserve our national agricultural capacity and reserves and the health of our children, the role of the federal government in public welfare would be sharply limited. The primary responsibility for individual and family assistance would be borne by state and local governments, and sustained by the sharing society of the American people and their friends and families.

The work ethic and the essential value of individual labor would be instilled in all students, and those who elect to be sponsored and trained by the Education Corps to contribute, without compensation, at least one year of valuable public service upon adulthood, would earn a baccalaureate education.

The tremendous intellectual energy released by providing equality of opportunity to all children would manifest itself in solutions to our problems which will otherwise never be found. The most imaginative cures for diseases and creative scientific discoveries will be envisioned, not by the children of the wealthy and intellectual elite, but by those who would otherwise never have had a chance to learn. Only unimaginable power has the energy to propel us to the meaningful places within our universe and into its related dimensions – not the puny machines of war we are presently wasting our money on.

A Just And Civil Society. As the virus of deceit and hatred can never be completely eliminated from all who have become infected, personal violence and other serious crimes will continue to be inflicted upon justice could be more finely focused on the most serious crimes, with alternative family courts having the primary responsibility for resolving most cases resulting from alcoholism, drug addiction and other situational offenses.

To eliminate the gigantic profits which feed organized crime and public corruption, and to end the "War on Drugs" against our own society, medical doctors could be authorized to prescribe low-cost drugs for those who become addicted and who elect to participate in an educational recovery and treatment program. Concurrently, local communities could be authorized to collect fees and issue permits for the growing of a few marijuana plants for personal use and for controlling the agricultural cultivation of hemp for the commercial manufacture of clothing and other lawful purposes.

Confinement for serious offenses could be both swift and consistent with the preservation and enhancement of all existing Constitutional guarantees. The judicial exclusion of relevant evidence as a Constitutional remedy for Fourth Amendment search and seizure violations by law enforcement officers could be replaced in those states which enact an alternative civil remedy which provides minimum damages for violations, irrespective of the crime or its punishment, and concurrently within those communities which establish Peer Review Councils, consisting of public and police members to peacefully act together as peers to resolve complaints of police misconduct and to formulate the policies which guide the actions of their local officers.

The primary responsibility for law enforcement would continue to be borne by the people in local communities working as peers with those they appoint to exercise the restraint of police authority and empower to legitimately lay hands on those of us who violate the freedoms and rights of others. The motivation and manner in which we apply physical restraint to ourselves defines, perhaps more than any other single factor, the very nature of justice in any society and the probabilities of its survival.

Personal ownership of firearms can never be entirely prohibited, but legal and civic responsibility for licensing, registration and reasonable purposes would be established by state and local statutes which balances individual protection with community concerns.

Ultimately, in every society placing a supreme value on life, the final responsibility forever rests, at law and in conscience, upon each who elects to possess or use a firearm in detriment of the rights of others and who, without justification, either pulls the trigger, or doesn't.

The role of the federal government in criminal law enforcement would return to its historic place of being restricted to those offenses clearly having a national effect. However, the United States must continue in its responsibility to provide leadership in matters of justice by assisting local and state authorities, as requested, and by establishing a national Justice Academy, along with those of Health, Education, and Energy. Officers of all corps would first be schooled together in the values of a free society, before being specially educated to serve as professional health, education, energy, police, probation, court, and correctional administrators.

With equal access to a fair and impartial justice system, a more civil society would emerge. One in which people are more likely to respect the rights of others and to treat them with dignity, and in which individuals are less likely to respond with violenceand anger when their own sensibilities are offended.

Foreign Adventures. As a matter of principle, we must renounce the use of military and economic warfare against the peoples of other nations as an instrument of foreign policy, except in response to an armed invasion or nuclear attack. For other provocations, the president should present the evidence to Congress and identify the individual offender who presents the gravest danger and who controls the threatening instruments of power.

Rather than asking for a Declaration of War, the president could request a simple resolution of Congress naming the accused in a Warrant of Apprehension, demanding he present himself at the World Court of Justice at The Hague to personally answer charges brought there under International Law by the United States against the nation whose government he purports to represent.

Should the accused fail to appear, he would be declared an outlaw, a sizeable reward offered for his apprehension, and we could begin using the most effective media available to inform the people of the outlaw's nation of our grounds for concern and to reassure them that we mean them no harm. We would ask only that they distance themselves from the target of our apprehension and the anticipation of authorized means to secure his personal submission, including the use of deadly force, in whatever form or fashion.

Every member of the United States military service would first receive basic training as emergency medical and rescue technicians by the Health and Justice Corps to become skilled in the performance of their first duty to care for themselves, their compatriots, and the lives of we citizens they are sworn to protect.

Intermediate military training would field a coherent, mobile, well-equipped, and tactically facile force of fighters capable of kicking a** in multiple languages, each individually committed to the home return of all who share the risk of death. Advanced justice training would enable those most capable of more refined individual discretion to work more independently in exercising authority of force outside the United States in actions not requiring group weapons and tactics.

Allied with the Health Corps and the airlift capacity of its large fleet of hospital aircraft used to shuttle patients and relatives to advanced treatment centers, and equipped with the technological spin-off generated by a free and exploring society, the actual use of military force would likely become increasingly rare, but would forever remain rapid in its deployment tactics, and decisive in its strategic effects. For, rather than waiting in the barracks, every position would be staffed by two fighters, with one near home and in training on a yearly rotation, each poised to respond worldwide to any disaster, natural or military, that excites our common concern.

Our military and national intelligence assets exists only to protect and inform us, and have no legitimacy when used within our borders against we citizens of the United States, not for law enforcement or any other aggressive purpose, for no such authority was ever granted by the states to their union, a reservation enshrined by the Second Amendment.

Free Enterprise. No organization or business would ever again have to worry about health costs or worker's compensation claims, they would only have to join hands with their workers in a truly free enterprise system where the interests of labor and capital are balanced in the workplace through negotiation for the greatest service or production at the least cost.

Social Security would continue to provide all workers with the mobility to shop their services throughout the national job market and to retain existing minimum retirement and disability rights. And, states would continue to ensure that their businesses and workers insure for temporary disability and unemployment compensation.

Workers should have an election to also voluntarily participate in a supplemental independent retirement pool funded by untaxed individual savings and union pension plans to primarily invest in the small businesses of America and the municipalities of its citizens, and with insured minimum investment limits.

The role of government in litigation and regulation would largely become one of passively establishing fair and objective standards for use as rebuttable presumptions by injured or aggrieved plaintiffs, rather than having government intervene as an opponent against individuals and their organizations.

For the long haul, American businesses could obtain supplies and ship products throughout the continental marketplace and to the best ports for export over the interstate highways, paying only a fair commercial toll to draw upon the low-cost reserves of the Energy Corp's space power pool.

Fair Transaction-Tax. In our seven-trillion-dollar annual economy, all this could be easily paid for by a fair tax of less than ten percent on all spending, that is, a simple toll on each use of the economic system. Since the poor, working, middle and small business classes have fewer and smaller financial transactions, the wealthy and their multinational corporations, who've always had to spend a lot of money to avoid having any taxable income, would share proportionally in paying the toll for their traffic on our economic highway and their use of our courts to enforce their contracts.

A fair exemption from taxation on spending for those who elect to provide their family with health and education services, and on the cost of basic food and housing, for those not on welfare, would allow the free market to largely provide these necessities.

Money placed into legitimate savings accounts and its earned interest would not be taxed until it is withdrawn and spent. Gifts and bequests of money would not be spending by the donor, but the transaction tax would be paid by the beneficiary when the gift is spent, if not saved.

Foreign Trade. To the extent they are owned by American citizens, businesses, corporations and other organizations would not pay a toll on their payroll, as salaries would be directly passed through to their employees to spend. The additional tax paid by foreign owners would be the price of access to the services of our healthy and well-educated workers and our system of justice.

Inasmuch as imports are first sold at the border, tariffs could be replaced by the up front collection of the toll-tax when foreign corporations first sell their products to their American corporations to sell to us.

Foreign registration and ownership of U.S. patents, copyrights, and other legal protections would also carry a toll on all protected transactions, allowing non-citizens to share the cost of our courts to enforce their rights.

The Search. Lastly, as we cast about in space for sources of safe energy and the knowledge and wisdom to use it, we will become privileged to participate in the peaceful exploration of our universe and its related dimensions, so our children can play the eternal game of mindfully searching for the rarest find of all: A small blue, white, and green planet, with a slight tilt and a large stable moon in warm orbit around a long-lived, medium yellow star, a tiny speck of light, gently sheltered midway to its gaseous giant Jovian siblings, waltzing in the stardust along the whispering wisps of lonely virginal spiral galaxies, shyly waiting to be noticed. Once found, these cradles of life are so precious as to never be lost sight of, or to be forever infected by the virus of deception, hatred and war.

The Discovery. We will never be invaded from space, and our natural disasters cannot be prevented. We will be lovingly watched until we learn the truth about the cause of the disease which infects our minds and troubles our souls. Then, when enough of us learn the use of love to soothe the reptilian instinctual fears existent in all of us, we will we be able to seize the courage to peck through the shell of our ignorance and to soar on the winds of time. But, if we've been birthed prematurely and lack strength to evolve, then here someday the dolphins or another of Gaia's children will learn to fly, and may wonder of we and why?

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book is, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at http://www.yourenotstupid.com. He is currently working on a fact-based political philosophy.

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