Tag Archives: power class

The Easiest Job on the Planet

It is difficult to muster any feeling other than nausea when looking at this photo of war criminals. Linked arm in arm, this junta marched boldly through the streets of Paris today, proclaiming their steadfast commitment to freedom of speech in the wake of the tragic attacks that left 12 dead at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and resulted in 5 more in the ensuing manhunt. The nausea comes when any person of conscience shirks the corporate media’s imposed amnesia and remembers the mountains of corpses amassed by each of them, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen to Gaza to Libya and beyond. It also comes when one remembers the horrendous abuses and assaults on freedom of expression in the form of crackdowns on protestors and prison sentences for journalists in their own countries. This display was, of course, for one reason alone. It signals a new page in an unending war of imperialistic aggression, dressed up in the sanctimonious garments of western superiority.

Unlike most of the protestors who joined the march today, freedom of speech is meaningless to this gang of miscreants. But it is a useful phrase to employ when stoking the flames of social and racial hatred. Anti-immigrant fervor is already reaching fever pitch in much of Europe where austerity measures, imposed on the population by the very ones gathered today in Paris, have resulted in misery for millions. This spectacle provides a convenient distraction from their outright plunder and malfeasance. It gives them an exit from the ramifications of their murderous and cruel policies. And with a subservient press in tow, the same one that virtually ignored every other mass protest against their tyranny, their job has become the easiest one on the planet.

Kenn Orphan 2015

The company you keep, the atrocities you ignore.

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Few in the civilized world would ever see the beheading of a human being as anything less than abject evil. A state that executes scores of people every day, many on charges of apostasy or sorcery, routinely imprisons and tortures people with different ethnicities or religious beliefs, and has been implicated in supporting various terrorist factions throughout the Middle-east is deserving of the most scathing reproach. The state that I am referring to in this instance is not IS (Islamic State). It is one of the United States biggest allies; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There is a veritable mountain of evidence documenting the ongoing, systemic brutality of the House of Saud and the medieval theocracy it imposes. The Kingdom stones women to death for witchcraft or for being unaccompanied. It amputates the limbs of men accused of stealing. It crucifies anyone displaying a religious symbol that is not Wahhabist (ultra-fundamentalist Islam). Immigrant workers, too, are not spared from the savagery. Treated as slaves with no rights, they are routinely raped, beaten and murdered with impunity.

It would be accurate to designate the IS as fiendishly barbaric. Yet when it comes to denunciation of the tyrannical House of Saud for routinely carrying out the same atrocities, and doing so for far longer, the United States is curiously quiet. There may be paltry criticisms here and there, but nothing tantamount to the priggish blustering we see recently emanating from Washington regarding IS. This is for an important reason.

Within the halls of empire such hypocritical rants are essential to advancing its interests, which are unequivocally tied to its wealth and power. The American empire is an expert at the art of spinning atrocities to align with its foreign policy objectives which line the pockets of the weapons and fossil fuel industry. And with a corporate media in tow, the job is anything but difficult.

Once again we are witness to the ratcheting up of war rhetoric and the endless war machine working itself into a self-righteous frenzy. Once again the corporate media dutifully serves its masters in regurgitating state narratives as absolute truth. Once again we are doused with collective amnesia as they court the doom of war. And once again we are chided for daring to remember the last time they lied to us, and the tremendous cost it exacted.

Kenn Orphan 2014

They are Preparing, and We Should Too.

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The militaristic crackdown on largely peaceful protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, this past summer, following the shooting death of an unarmed black youth should not be seen as an anomaly. In fact, American police forces have been steadily militarized over the past decade by the Pentagon, which according to a recent report has made it a priority to address the risks of social unrest that will undoubtedly arise as climate change worsens. It would be supremely naive to think their preparations are concerned with community development, supplying adequate resources or social justice. To be sure their approach will be in line with their history and will be about social control and the suppression of dissent.

Americans got a taste of this approach during the lock down of Boston last year in the search for the alleged perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing. For the first time in this century an entire American city was placed under what could accurately be defined as a type of martial law. While this may have been voluntary, few would deny that defying the lock down would have been met with severe consequences. Americans saw a major US city transform into something that resembled the streets of Grozny or Sarajevo. Tanks rolled down leafy New England streets. Police sharpshooters trained their sights on picket fenced, saltbox houses. Families were marched out of their living rooms and down the sidewalks with hands plastered to their heads. And all of this proceeded with nary a protest or whimper from the mainstream media. On the contrary, this over the top spectacle garnered praise from politicians and reporters alike. And after it was over many in the public lined the streets to thank a jackbooted police force, even though the alleged terrorist was discovered by a civilian.

America is experiencing an intractable drought across much of the southwest. In the northeast and west, catastrophic flooding and record rainfall is fast becoming the norm. In the mid-west the Ogallala aquifer, the dominant source of water for the country’s agriculture, is being fast depleted. And in the west the Colorado River which supplies tens of millions of people with drinking water is beginning to show a severe slowdown. With such extremes comes crop failure, water shortages and species extinction. Many scientists are also deeply worried that the methane clathrate gun has been fired triggering runaway climate change. And regardless of anti-science politicians who are on the dole of the fossil fuel industry, the Pentagon is taking all of this very seriously.

With the collapse of essential services and the failure of leadership to mitigate the damage, public anger will undoubtedly rise. It is within this kind of perfect storm that atrocities are often committed and tyrannies are frequently born. The Pentagon and other powerful government agencies have demonstrated time after time that their first priority is to protect corporate interests. Understanding all of this is crucial to facing what may be on the horizon. Maintaining an independent media is key to avoiding the pitfalls of mass paranoia, scapegoating and divide and conquer strategies that the corporate media is expert at. And it is only through grassroots community organizing and non-violent protest that ordinary people can find the leverage needed to hold the established power class accountable and at bay, and assert the innate dignity of all human beings even in the midst of calamity.

The Pentagon’s approach for dealing with the dire times that lie ahead is nothing less than terrifying. Social control appears to be their goal. Violence seems to be their method. And they have all the equipment needed to enforce their plan. Peaceful resistance and solidarity is the only viable response ordinary people have.

They are preparing. And we should too.

Kenn Orphan 2014

(Photo on top is of an unarmed protestor in Ferguson Missouri facing a militarized police force/AP)

Looking South

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There is no justice for the victims of western imperialism, at least not in the American courtroom. This year, a U.S. court of appeals ruled in favor of Chiquita Brands International who admitted to funding the United Self-Defense Committees of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing paramilitary group, that slaughtered scores of Columbians in recent years. It underscores a long history of corporate impunity that is drenched in the blood of the poor.

On December 6, 1928 thousands of Columbians were massacred in the town of Ciénaga on behalf of the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands International. The slaughter of these workers was at the behest of the US government who threatened to invade Columbia to defend UFC’s interests. This was only one example of this company wrecking havoc and subverting democracy throughout the hemisphere with the assistance of the US government.

In 1954 a mercenary army hired by the United Fruit Company and assisted by the US government, staged a military coup which overthrew the democratically elected, reform oriented government of Guatemala and replaced it with a fascist, military dictatorship and, essentially, neo-feudalism. When some Mayans protested their oppression all Mayans in the country were collectively punished, culminating in the genocide of nearly 250,000 people and creating at least 1 million refugees.

Israel was also complicit in the genocide, supplying arms and training mercenaries. General Rios Montt, the military general who is largely blamed for directing the slaughter, gave his personal thanks to both the US and Israel for assisting him in the rape, torture and slaughter of the country’s indigenous population. Montt was an evangelical Christian minister and a personal friend of both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He was also unquestioningly supported and praised by President Ronald Reagan.

“President Ríos Montt,” Reagan said, “is a man of great personal integrity and commitment . . . . I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”

According to a 2004 report on the massacre by the Inter-American Court on Human rights, Montt’s forces:

“separated the children and the young women aged from about 15 to 20. Then the massacre began. First they tortured the old people, saying they were guerrillas, then they threw two grenades and fired their guns. Finally they sprayed petrol around and set fire to the house… [The next day, Buenaventura Manuel Jeronimo] emerged from his hiding place to see the destruction they had caused. Along with Eulalio Grave Ramírez and his brothers Juan, Buenaventura, and Esteban, they put out the flames that were still consuming the bodies. Those that weren’t totally charred showed signs of torture, as did the naked bodies of the youngest women.”

Another account was from a survivor:

“After having killed our wives, they brought out our children. They grabbed their feet and beat their heads against the house posts. I had six children. They all died, and my wife as well.. All my life my heart will cry because of it.”
– sole survivor of San Francisco massacre in Huehuetenango, Guatemala

General Mott was charged with genocide, but his monied legal team has successfully stalled due process of the trial on technicalities.

United Fruit Company (Chiquita Brands International) was also complicit in aiding the Honduran dictator General Oswaldo López Arellano into power, later deposed, in 1972. Fast forward to 2009 it is not too difficult to connect the dots between the coup that removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who proposed a 60% raise in the minimum wage, to Chiquita, who vehemently opposed such a move.

We are seeing the tragic repercussions of neoliberal economic policies that allow US corporations to spread tyranny and terror abroad in the name of profit. Now thousands of child refugees are flowing over the border, sent by their families in a desperate attempt to escape the hellish conditions that are a direct result of US foreign and economic policy. If the American government was serious about stemming the flow of immigrants to the US it would begin by holding corporations accountable for their crimes and abuses. But despite the catchy slogans, imperialism is about dominance and plunder, not democracy and human rights.

There is hope to be found, but it does not lie in the kangaroo courts of oligarchs or corrupt governments of US supported banana republics. Several South American nations, spurred on by the courageous persistence of the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, have mounted laudable opposition to US imperialism. But their struggle does not come without consequences. They may not suffer the unjust isolation that Cuba has, but they face a tide of belligerence from the corporate media and undoubtedly covert subversion from Washington.

Nevertheless their struggle against corporate tyranny should stand as testament to the persistence of social justice. And Americans may soon need to look south for inspiration as we face what is fast becoming a corporate police state here at home.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Miltarism: an Ideology of Death

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“Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.” – Arnold J. Toynbee

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica depicts the tragic results of militarism. In this epic painting he captured the horror suffered by the residents of a small village in the Basque countryside, bombed mercilessly into ruins. It is a powerful display of the reality of war in that it shows the victims are disproportionately civilians, animals and the earth itself.

Since World War II more civilians have been killed in armed conflict, despite having protection under international law. Americans have largely been shielded from the atrocity that is war. We do not see the bodies of children blown apart by US drone strikes or the humiliation and terror that comes from being occupied by a foreign army. It is because of this ignorance that militarism has flourished.

Militarism is the aggressive reply to every social problem. It is extremely profitable and therefore a perfect partner of capitalism. Its merchants have been successful in convincing the public over and over to believe the insane contradiction of war bringing peace, bombs bringing democracy and occupation bringing justice. They are masters at massaging our innate fears, those fears that produce the most visceral responses to manufactured illusions of imminent danger.

The powerful pull out the most primitive emotional reactions in us, responses we developed in ancient fields when we needed to escape the very real predators that lurked around us throughout the long history of our evolutionary heritage. They stoke primal paranoia of the other and encourage scapegoating as a means of alleviating the anxiety associated with the unknown and the responsibility of ethical conscience. They distract us from their malfeasance. They provoke rage at imaginary threats against the homeland, the religion, the tribe. In essence, they manufacture the belief that militarism is inevitable, even desirable.

The boogieman needed to maintain militarism changes faces, but they are almost always two-dimensional figures whose evil is absolute. Whether they be communists or Islamists, the pretext is always the same; they are cast as an immediate threat to western civilization and must be dealt with in the most violent way possible. Unsurprisingly, this ideology has wreaked havoc around the world.

Decades of neoliberal economic policies, arms deals, military coups, toppling of democratically elected governments, and the support of practically every despotic and corrupt regime the world has ever known has created a 21st century map of the world that contains more human caused catastrophes than it does countries. This long and bloody history of exploitation has enabled fanatical or extremist movements, loosely based on religion, to sweep entire regions. It has deftly created them with each new massacre and atrocity borne as a gruesome trophy to its fury.

But the mayhem abroad inevitably returns home. Militaristic societies create a machine that eventually consumes them from the inside. They lurch towards self-destruction because they feed on the pillars that support them. The arts, humanities, and science all become casualties of their rapacious appetite for growth. Jingoism replaces critical thinking. Infrastructure crumbles and the social safety net is dismantled. The well being of their citizens is reduced to a hollow promise of protection against an imaginary enemy, while the real needs and dangers are ignored. Civil rights and liberties become nuisances that get in the way of the machine, and are therefore crushed.

Militarism is the religion of America. It is the cornerstone of our culture and the currency with which the state interacts with its citizens as well as its neighbors. It is the language mass media uses in its denigration of the poor, the immigrant and the downtrodden. It is the method used to address all forms of crime. It is the very core of our economic system, based upon the rape of the natural world and the exploitation of the weakest among us. And it is the wall that prevents us from achieving lasting peace and true justice.

Picasso’s Guernica serves not only as a warning, but also as a prediction. His painting underscores the tragic futility of militarism and how it always targets the most vulnerable. It is an ideology of death that builds nothing and takes everything. It is a monster that feeds off fear and, sadly at the beginning of the 21st century, shows no sign of slowing down.

Kenn Orphan 2014

The Map Out

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One of the most harrowing challenges of modern life in the West is navigating through the massive desert of mindless, materialistic consumerism. It is within this landscape that a soul can become lost and drenched in despair. From the endless stream of vacant eyed wraiths that glide down catwalks, to the pervasive advertising that never ceases to demean the values of empathy and compassion and hollow out any meaning associated with human connection, to the entertainment industry which revels in the depths of cruelty it can sink to, the onslaught on the psyche is both constant and merciless.

The American shopping mall is a reflection of this nightmare of ravenous cupidity and a message of stark disenfranchisement to the ever growing underclass. Its glossy finishes and plastic displays erect a wall of defense against anything remotely human or sacred. It entices the youngest of our society with the promise of fulfillment and social status through the acquisition of objects, the alteration of their faces and bodies, and the tacit abandonment of any connection with the natural world and all the beings that inhabit it. Concrete and glass monoliths of corporatism drive home the deepest sense of alienation and desolation by design. It is a fantasy land of the cruelest fakery, replacing the lively, chaotic and thoroughly interactive market place with the impersonal, the absurd, and the surreal. Exported around the world to some of the most impoverished nations on the planet, it is a unique, exclusionary and effective form of imperialism.

The Big Box stores, in contrast, make no pretense to that kind of romanticism. They sit shamelessly on seas of pavement in wetlands, lush meadows or downed forests, scraped and drained clean of their original life and inhabitants. They are a reflection of what America has become; a stark and depersonalized vision of depravity within the setting of a dying ecosystem. Their plastic and glossy objects fill giant bins as they fill our oceans and river systems. Their clothing racks conceal the stain of sweat shop slavery. They exude the callousness of a factory farm, encouraging and cheering on aggression, prodding livestock into its maw of spiraled decadence. This is the architecture of banal cruelty and indifference.

Understanding this landscape it should not come as a surprise that stories about vampires and zombies dominate contemporary, popular entertainment. These themes perfectly mimic the corporate capitalist economic model which glamorizes and celebrates the ghoulish and the macabre, while it rapaciously feeds upon the most vulnerable and powerless members of society for profit. The monsters in these tales are almost always fascinating, beautiful or so powerful as to be envied, while their victims are generally bereft of any identity at all. And this is exactly the way the wealthy elite want ordinary people to think of themselves. This ideology may contribute to the emergence of the mass shooter phenomenon, but it also underlies the mass acceptance of the police state model which relies on the violence of the state to reinforce the boundaries of class, and to bolster the mythology of the superiority of the powerful and wealthy.

The map out of this nightmare is often masked by the empty promises of having more stuff, altering ones outer appearance or conforming to socially acceptable shallowness. Advertising, social media and the political class, which sanctify the zombification of modern society, demand we attune and respond to their dictates and Siren song, lest we be banished from the corporate kingdom. Of course exclusion is terrifying to the elite and serf alike. We have been trained to avert our eyes from the homeless, the working poor and the far flung slaves to our insatiable consuming. If we dare look we might see our collective future. We might see exactly how our separateness is a grand deceit, a scam. And in doing so we might indeed shun otherness for the embrace of actual human beings. Free or revolutionary thought cannot be tolerated in a capitalist corporatocracy where denial, jingoism and conformity are embedded in the liturgy.

But we are coming to the end of the illusion, for better and for worse, sooner rather than later. The planet’s ecosystems are wailing from the misery our way of life has inflicted upon them. They are dying. And the humanity that has been enslaved to continue this insanity are beginning to recognize their chains. Mass extinction is fast closing in on us. All of us will be forced to face this reality whether we want to or not. An industrial, consumerist society, based upon an endless growth economic model on a planet with finite resources, is impossible to sustain. It will eventually collapse.

If there is map out of the cemetery that we have long dug for countless species by our selfish indulgences and out of the wreckage of civilization, that irony of all ironies, it may very well lie in the chance, however remote, that some of us will emerge from the ruins long enough to tell a different story of who we are. Perhaps we will have enough time to honor all that we had and mourn all that was lost. And perhaps future generations, if there are any who survive, will not hate us too much for the brutality we tolerated and the ecocide we caused.

Perhaps.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Photo Credits:
-An abandoned shopping mall in Mid-west America and is credited to Seph Lawless, courtesy of TWC (The Weather Channel)

-Courtesy of the Philosopher’s Stone

-Black Friday shoppers and is stock footage (Techno Buffalo)

-Devastation in the Niger Delta from oil pollution. Agence France Presse.

-Camel dead from consuming plastic waste. Plastic Pollution Coalition

-A polar bear on a ever dwindling Arctic ice sheet/PA

We are all Kelly Thomas

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Kelly Thomas was a 37 year old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia. On July 5, 2011, Thomas was brutally beaten to death by three police officers in Fullerton, California. Despite his repeated cries begging for mercy, calling out to God to save him and for his father, and apologizing to the officers over and over, they continued to beat him until he was completely unrecognizable and unconscious. This can clearly be seen in video and audio surveillance as well as through numerous testimonies of eye witnesses. Thomas never regained consciousness and succumbed to his injuries five days later in the hospital. Despite all of this, Thomas’s killers were acquitted.(1)

(A photo showing the head injuries Kelly Thomas sustained from the police assault. He was hospitalized, and died five days later having never regained consciousness. Source:KTLA)

Were this an isolated case, outrage at such behavior would most likely be projected primarily at the officers and their blatant violation of the role they play in society. But this is not an isolated case. Incidents of gross overreach of police power, malfeasance and excessive force, and extreme violence emerge daily. This, coupled with the burgeoning prison and surveillance industrial complex, which is increasingly becoming privatized, and an immoral and untenable “War on Drugs” which really amounts to a war on the poor and people of color, creates a situation that in most nations would raise the specter of a police state.(2) In reality, the officers in this case did not violate the conduct expected of them or the rule of law in their role as police officers. On the contrary, they fulfilled them.

In a spate of State and Federal Supreme Court cases the courts have come down almost unequivocally on the side of the police. In most states the police do not have any obligation to protect a citizen from harm.(3) At the federal level, the SCOTUS has enshrined the right of police departments to conduct strip searches for any arrest.(4) Statistically, there has been a sharp increase in the use of SWAT teams to address what most would consider to be non-violent drug offenses. When we consider the concurrent trend of police departments acquiring military equipment, including armored tanks, this increased use of SWAT as the preferred method of dealing with the public, as vile as it is, makes logical sense.(5)

Perhaps what is most troubling about the rise of police and state brutality is the seeming complacency of the public. The invasive practices of the TSA at airports, the codification of the NDAA indefinite detention of American citizens without the requirement of due process, or the Constitutional infringements by the NSA aside, it was the effective lockdown of a major US city following the Boston Marathon bombing that was most indicative of this. Tanks rolled freely down leafy, suburban streets while residents were marched at gunpoint down sidewalks with hands placed firmly on their heads. Yet despite the fact that the police had little to do with the capture of an injured, bleeding 19 year old, the media, politicians and many ordinary citizens normalized and even applauded the draconian measures taken.(6)

(Armored vehicles roll down a street in Boston. Source: Associated Press)

Cajoled by a lapdog, corporate media into accepting our situation as necessary, or even desirable, and marrying it to the government’s spurious, grossly inflated and unending, global “War on Terror,” the general public is chided as at best unpatriotic and, at worst, reckless anarchists or terrorist sympathizers should they object to the increasing incursions into civil rights and liberties. The attacks on 9/11 created an atmosphere which favors totalitarianism wherever the opaque concept of “security” is threatened. (7ab)

Cases like Kelly Thomas, or Keith Vidal, a teenager who also suffered from schizophrenia whom police fatally shot to death in front of his parents for carrying a screw driver(8), or the state troopers that fired several rounds into a minivan filled with children (9) beg us to look at this grave situation with unwavering urgency. The numerous men and women who have endured invasive body searches, including vaginal and anal probing, at routine traffic stops(10), or the countless dehumanizing “stop and frisk” incidents in cities across the country (11), or the scores of young people spirited away to prison from high school (12), or the violent, organized crackdowns on the Occupy movement (13) illustrate the rising tide of state animus against the public, and particularly any kind of behavior they view as anti-social, a threat to property or dissent. Unchecked power, unprecedented since the Civil Rights Era and the Anti-war protests in the 1970s, has created a state that is growing more belligerent by the day.

(NYPD officers assault protester at Occupy Wall Street demonstration. Source: Reuters)

The tragic case of Kelly Thomas illustrates how poverty, homelessness, under-employment and mental illness have become criminal offenses. Indeed, the gutting of social programs, including those services for the mentally ill, has seen a concurrent rise in state brutality toward the poor and the most vulnerable. And as the economy is perpetually poised for the next bubble to burst, the gap between the super rich and devastatingly poor grows, and climate change ravages an environment already fragile from excessive exploitation, the prison industry will undoubtedly gain more ground and the militarization of the police will most certainly expand.

If there is no public outcry and substantive change, the United States will end up looking more like one of the foreign dictatorships that it has for so long upheld and supported through overt and nefarious means, indistinguishable from it in its ruthlessness. Callous disregard and utter contempt for the very elements that make a society civil will be codified and enshrined. Because to a state with no restraint or respect for human life and no due process to speak of, we are all Kelly Thomas, and in the end we are bound to share his tragic fate.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

Kenn Orphan 2014

(photo on top is of Kelly Thomas. Source: CBSNEWS)

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/officers-acquitted-in-death-of-kelly-thomas/2014/01/14/3e660b24-7d24-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html
2. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/american-society-police-state-criminalization-militarization
3. http://disinfo.com/2010/03/the-police-arent-legally-obligated-to-protect-you/
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html?pagewanted=all
5. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-team-nation.html
6. http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/funkhouser/col-boston-marathon-bombing-police-appreciating-public-servants.html
7a. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/01/americas-police-state-marches-on-media-in-tow/
b. http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/spotlight-on-police-violence-fails-to-illuminate/
8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janine-francolini/candles-are-lit_b_4563593.html.
9. http://www.krqe.com/news/crime/state-cop-shoots-at-minivan-full-of-kids
10. http://www.alternet.org/border-agents-touched-vagina-and-anally-probed-fruitless-search-narcotics
11. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/bill-bratton-sworn-in_n_4533202.html
12. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-school-to-prison-pipeline-a-nationwide-problem-for-equal-rights-20131107
13. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Where True Hope Lies

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One of the most persistent myths of the American empire has been, and continues to be, exceptionalism. It is a belief rooted in white supremacy that allowed the European colonizers to ethnically cleanse much of the continent’s indigenous population; and to justify building its infrastructure and economies from the forced labor of African slaves, migrant workers from Asia and Irish indentured servants. This eventually led beyond the borders of America to the occupation and forced annexation of the sovereign nation of Hawaii with the imprisonment of their Queen, and the colonial subjugation of the Philippines, and the domination of virtually all of Central America and the Caribbean . Almost all of the United States’ national history, roughly 210 out of 236 years, has been involved in some military conflict. This history is more important today than ever before, because the empire never ceased expanding; and its rapacious consumption and aggressive militarism imperils virtually all life on the planet.

The reach of the American empire is now in over 148 countries around the planet, with over 600 military bases and covert, “black sites” and military support of some of the most brutal regimes humanity has ever known. From the wholesale bombing of Laos decades ago to the indiscriminate drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Syria, American imperialism has barely taken a breath between its expansionist exercises. Branded under ambiguously noble terms like “humanitarian intervention” or “the War on Terror” or “protecting US interests,” the persistent doctrine of imperialism for the maximization of capitalistic profit is marketed and sold to the American public.

It is unsurprising that most Americans are glaringly ignorant of this history. That is by design. And despite the revelations of the empire’s malfeasance by courageous whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, many Americans still remain trapped in a mindset that begets a ruling elite and allows for their continual exploitation and plunder. Now this wealthy power class, aided by the world’s biggest military, is fatally drunk on their own hubris, collecting untold fortunes from the rape of the natural world, the theft of indigenous resources, and the global suppression of dissent. Their crimes are whitewashed with the eager help of the corporate owned media; and they do this with impunity thanks to the institutions that they bought and paid for, openly and secretly, at lavish, well heeled fundraisers, exclusive, high end dinner events, and back room “trade deals.”

The ghosts of America’s global massacres still roam. They have no glorious tombs in which to repose. No wreath clad monuments grace their dusty graves. Their ends were met in the killing fields of Honduras, and Guatemala, and Palestine, and Iraq, and Yemen, and Laos, and Vietnam, and Indonesia from a brutality paid for in full by the US taxpayer. Their ghosts haunt any prospect of fairness and justice in imperialism’s latest manifestation of barbarity: neoliberal capitalism. And their descendants, those who slave at sweatshops in Bangladesh for multinational clothing corporations, or who pick pesticide-laden vegetables in fields in Nicaragua for Big Agra, or are kept from leaping to their deaths in slave towers that furnish computer software giants their products, call out the hypocrisy of “free trade” for the malevolent lie that it is.

With each passing year it becomes clearer that the strife wrought around the globe, decade upon decade, by the robber barons and plutocrats is returning to heart of the empire itself. It is the natural outcome and saga of oligarchy that the tyranny we sow abroad will be the tyranny we shall reap at home. And with climate change accelerating and species extinction exploding before our eyes, the end result will be nothing less than terrifying.

But we are still fortunate to have access to the people’s record. Despite their chains or the dank prison cells they have been assigned to, people around the world are rising up. Their struggle to confront the demons of the past and the story of their enslavement is frightening beyond anything else to the oligarchy. And that is why they are fighting back like never before, codifying their tyranny brick by brick into the bedrock of society with the help of a subservient mainstream media. In many cases they appear to be winning; but it isn’t over yet.

True hope lies in defiance of tyranny and brutality. And it is measured in the depths of our capacity to speak out and to care. There is not always a happy outcome to this, but that is not what hope is really about anyway. It could be said that the pages of human history are drenched in the blood of innocents and bound up with their bones, but understanding it as such pays no respect to the untold courage of those who stood up, often shaken and terrified, who refused to be a part of the killing and often ended in the shadows of a mass grave for doing so, those who nurtured the core that gives a human life meaning and worth. Their legacy is one which history will ultimately remember. Despite the tremendous drive to silence them, their story is in all of us; and there is nothing anyone can do to sponge that away.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Photo Credits:

-Photo on top is courtesy of Art Archive and is “Glorious Victory,” by Diego Rivera. It depicts the 1954 CIA coup against the democratically elected government of Guatemala.

-Photo of Queen Liliʻuokalani (September 2, 1838 – November 11, 1917) the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was deposed from the throne January 17, 1893 following a coup d’état orchestrated by US military forces (Marines) at the behest of powerful US and European business interests. The wealthy white class of Hawaii had long awaited the opportunity to seize control of the government and with the help of an all white militia, the Honolulu Rifles, they were able to establish a provisional government which eventually led to the annexation of the Kingdom into the United States of America. It is widely seen as one of the most blatant acts of American imperialist aggression of the 19th century with repercussions lasting till this day. On November 23, 1993 President Clinton signed the Apology Resolution which “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum” (U.S. Public Law 103-150 (107 Stat. 1510), but does little more than provide a weak nod to an outright overthrow.

-Political Cartoon circa 1914: “What the United States Has Fought For”
Text on cartoon: “Before the United States intervened in behalf of these oppressed peoples. Philippines-Spanish oppression. Hawaii-Industrial slavery. Porto Rico, Cuba-Spanish yoke. Isthmus of Panama-Quinine. After the United States had rescued them from their oppression. Philippines-Philippine Assembly, Education, Busine[ss] Prosperity. Hawaii-Prosperity. Porto Rico-Prosperity. Cuba-Self gov’t, prosperity. Panama Canal Zone-Health.”

-RNC Tweet

-Wall Street elite dinner with Ben Bernanke. Reuters/Lucas Jackson

– An Iraqi family grieves the loss of family following US airstrike. Photo, Getty Images.

-A heart wrenching photo of Vietnamese women and children in abject terror at Mỹ Lai just before being mercilessly killed by US troops, 16 March, 1968. Photo: Ronald L. Haeberle.

-Henry Kissinger confronted by CODEPINK. Associated Press

-Mass protest against austerity, neoliberalism and US imperialism in the Philippines. Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP

The World Bank’s Plan for Water

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The World Bank, perhaps the best example of a “front man” for today’s corporate, capitalistic, economic policies, eagerly promotes and defends the gospel of neoliberal capitalism, which Wikipedia defines as: “privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.” But however it is spun, it is essentially organized crime with an official seal. It takes poor nations, previously colonized, exploited, and enslaved, and says “here, take this impossible loan to pull yourselves out of the impoverishment we imposed on you for centuries, and in return we will allow multinational corporations to take your resources and enslave your people in low wage, sweat shops.”

And water is its next project.

Echoing mission statements of multi-national, mega-corporations, it recently declared that water should be privatized. In other words: owned. Shelter, food, air and water are essential to life. Shelter and food have already been privatized around the planet. Air is still out of reach although they are polluting it as fast as the other three. But water is what they are eying now.

(Coca Cola extracts huge quantities of water in India, often robbing poor communities of their only access. Photo credit: Oxfam)

Water sources around the world are being consumed and polluted by industry at a staggering rate, and communities that suffer from this exploitation seldom have any legal recourse against the offending companies. From Michigan to India to Africa, huge corporations like Coca~Cola and Nestle have bought up aquifers, wells and springs, and have sold back the water they extract in huge quantities to already impoverished communities at a highly inflated rate.

(Boys transport water jugs in South Sudan. Photo credit: Geoff Pugh/Oxfam)

The impact of water, or the lack of it, often spawns or exacerbate conflicts. Syria has suffered for years with an intractable drought; and many attribute the civil war that has claimed thousands of lives to this crisis. If water continues to be privatized we will undoubtedly see this tragedy repeated the world over as poor or disenfranchised populations are forced to relocate to urban areas or neighboring countries. Add to this the other dire ramifications of climate change, and the dust bowl conditions it induces, and the privatization of water becomes just one more banal cruelty inflicted on the poor.

(an Iraqi farmer sits by a trickling stream in Dayala province. Photo:Reuters)

Recent events in Detroit attest to the reality that this battle for human life and dignity is not merely a “third world problem.” Water rights are being assaulted everywhere. In this once thriving American city, it has become a tool of social control. The city has “shut-off” water to thousands of residents due to their inability to afford the exorbitant cost. It has effectively informed the public that it’s “right to life” is only viable insofar as their ability to pay for it. The part that racism plays in all of this is troubling too, as most of the communities targeted are disproportionately people of color. This is all unfolding in the richest nation on the planet; yet the situation has deteriorated so much that the United Nations has been called in to investigate.

The world over, ruthless profiteers have been trying to convince the public that it is natural to attach a dollar sign to everything, including water. For example the former CEO and now-Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, of Nestle was quoted as saying “access to water is not a public right.” Under their scheme, they aim to own all rights to it, and only the wealthiest will be able to pay the extortionate cost assigned to it.

(A protestor in Detroit, Michigan. Photo credit: Occupy.com)

Whether it is Detroit, Michigan or Nagpur, India, access to clean water should be understood as a fundamental human right. But, like so many other rights, it is being systematically stripped away from us by corporations, industry and their henchmen at the World Bank. All things considered there is one certainty, this issue is destined to become a defining feature of the 21st century, and, perhaps, the most important struggle against this new age of tyranny.

Kenn Orphan 2014

(Photo at top: Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestle. Credit: AP)

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