What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
How to Spot a Police Spy
Is it the
guy who asks you after the meeting about how the antiwar movement
needs to get "serious" and asks you lots of questions
about terrorism and "fighting back"? Jennifer Van Bergen
reports, first-hand. Part
2 of our series on what really happened on 9/11/2001: the physics
of collapse, and how not to make a "pancake" by Manuel
Garcia, PLUS Engineer Pierre Sprey on why "controlled demolition"
theories are off target.What
you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul
Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are
funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch.
Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
It is evident to me that the United
States government believes that any individual or group of people
that works to prevent it from implementing its agenda are terrorists.
Furthermore, I contend that the government's plan is not the
people's agenda; but some of us will be required to sacrifice
our lives in order to help them execute their will, and all of
us will be required to sacrifice our freedoms.
I also contend that the government
overwhelmingly represents the interests of wealth and power;
that its strength is derived from corporate bribes, rather than
from grass roots populist support; that it exists to execute
a Plutocratic agenda of world domination, while neglecting the
needs of the overwhelming majority of the people.
I charge that the government
is engaged in immoral and criminal conduct on a global scale.
That it does not conform to the norms of civil society; that
it is sociopathic, and flagrantly violates domestic and international
law. The form of government that we have does not serve the citizenry-it
preys upon them. It is not a government of the people, for the
people. It is government of the corporations, for the corporations,
by the corporations-a corporate Plutocracy.
The sole purpose of Plutocratic
government is to spread the gospel of free market economics and
privatized wealth, and to extend the hegemony of capitalism to
every corner of the earth. Its god is the almighty dollar. Championed
by right wing extremists, it is equally endorsed by cowering
neo-liberals in Congress. Its funding is derived from corporate
sources and extorted tax contributions from the citizenry.
I contend that the government
routinely breaches the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that
it was sworn to uphold; and that it circumvents domestic law
through the frequent use of presidential signing statements that
effectively render civil law null and void. The recent passage
of the Military Commissions Acts that resulted in the suspension
of habeas corpus, passed into law with the aide of fourteen Democrats,
is beyond onerous-it is morally vacuous and criminal.
The executive branch of the
government, in particular, has run amok; it disdains the daily
struggles of ordinary citizens, and is engaged in class warfare
against its own, and the world's working people. It conducts
terrorist attacks on its own citizens, and against civilians
abroad.
It is widely known abroad that
the U.S. government is practicing extraordinary rendition in
order to torture, maim, and kill its suspected enemies; it imprisons
innocent people all over the world indefinitely, without due
process and without charging them with any crime.
We bear witness to the crimes
of a rogue government that invades sovereign nations, bombs their
cities into piles of rubble, murders with impunity, imposes harsh
economic sanctions, denies women and children life saving medical
treatment, and steals their oil and mineral wealth. Hypocritically,
it calls those who resist occupation, terrorists.
I further contend that the
government is engaged in a campaign of unlawfully monitoring
the communications of its citizens, including the infiltration
of Quaker religious orders that preach doctrines of peace over
those of war, and is increasingly stifling free speech and the
right of peaceful assembly. Our hard won civil liberties are
giving way to an emerging police state. The prying eyes of paranoid
government are everywhere.
Thus we are left with an illicit
government that routinely commits crimes against humanity under
the pretense of executing a war on terror. To its eternal shame,
it has unleashed the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon
upon its own citizens without just cause. These agencies are
monitoring our computers, tapping our phones, and tracking our
movements not to protect America from terrorists, but to protect
the Plutocracy from those who would expose it.
What does it say about a government
when those who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law are
targeted as enemies of the state or as terrorists? Is this what
Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the constitution intended?
The assassins of truth have
the audacity to feign faith in god while daily committing unholy
acts of terror against peace loving people at home and abroad.
With the deftness of a public relations firm, they are using
religion as a weapon against a guileless flock that blithely
follows its every command, even as it leads them to the slaughter
of an Armageddon of its own creation.
By these acts and worse, the
U.S. government defines Democracy. It has been empowered to do
so by Republicans and Democrats alike.
I hereby assert that the hidden
purpose of the U.S. government is not to serve the needs of the
people or to make the world free and democratic, as it so boldly
claims; it is to accrue ever more wealth to the obscenely rich,
the global elite. Its intent is to do to the U.S. what it has
done to Iraq; to revoke the Constitution and the rule of law;
to bankrupt the federal treasury and to privatize everything
that is publicly owned. Ultimately its objective is to pursue
the religion of unregulated free market capitalism, and to establish
global corporate rule.
It seems to me that any government
that does not serve the people and treats those who uphold the
Constitution as terrorists is not a Democracy; and we should
refrain from calling it by that name. Governmental power that
is not derived from, and subservient to the people, is illegitimate-a
form of authoritarian dictatorship as vile as Communism.
When an institution that was
purportedly created to serve the needs of the people is no longer
accountable to the people, and operates in secrecy, we can be
sure that sinister powers are in motion. Those responsible are
not only obscuring truth and revising history; they are knowingly
and willfully assassinating truth, and mocking the very idea
of Democracy.
Government that is controlled
by capital, rather than a moral imperative to serve the public
good, is a danger to the world. Such government is not only misguided
and inherently unjust; it is hostile to Democracy and opposed
to peace.
A government of the people
would have a very different agenda than a Plutocratic regime.
It would provide no cost health care to its citizens, free higher
education to anyone who wants it; and it would not squander the
federal treasury on unprovoked war that will not end in our lifetimes.
Such a government would not overthrow democratically elected
governments abroad. Nor would it throw its support behind terrorist
states like Israel, and it would not finance brutal dictatorships
like Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, as has been the history
of the American government.
Democracies do not betray its
citizens by outsourcing jobs to sweat shops in other parts of
the world in order to maximize corporate profits and to drive
down wages. They do not wage war on sovereign nations based upon
lies and innuendo; they do not occupy other countries, and they
do not plan additional wars and occupations at the behest of
corporate lobbyists against nations that pose no threat to them.
Democracies do not sentence
their youth to fight and die under false pretenses in order to
open sovereign nations to corporate plunder and capitalism.
Plutocracy, I contend, is the
outgrowth of the capitalist system that values private profits
above all else. Under this sickly paradigm people are dehumanized;
reduced to mere commodities on a par with a lump of coal or a
pool of oil. It is a system that knows the price of everything
but the value of nothing; and it is driven by insatiable greed.
Democracies derive their power
from the people, all people being equal, and the distribution
of wealth being equal. Plutocracies derive their power from the
private ownership of immense wealth and property that represents
a small percentage of the aggregate population. In the capitalist
system, only those with wealth and property have legal standing
and representation in government. All others are second class
citizens with second class rights and subservient to the Plutocracy.
It is about time that we learn the difference.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer
and social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia.
He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
