Aohell

Might As Well Start Here...

Ouane Rattikone was a drug dealer. What makes him more important than, say, Snoop Dogg is that Ouane Rattikone was the commander of the Laotian Air Force during the Vietnam War. When Alfred W. McCoy interviewed Rattikone for his book, The Politics of Heroin, the General showed McCoy his ledgers of every drugs transaction, so as to dispel any rumors he'd shorted anyone in the heroin business.

Right after McCoy interviewed Rattikone, he contacted the US embassy in Laos. He said he'd heard from sources very close to the general that he was a drug dealer. The US embassy denied Rattikone had any link to drugs, dismissing whatever that source said as a pack of lies.

To me, that is the equivalent of the government insisting that 2+2 = 5. Worse, the government expects every patriotic American to believe 2+2 = 5 in that case and any others where lies are necessary to justify the moral high ground of the government.

At the time, the Nixon administration had launched a war on drugs to drive heroin production from Turkey out of America. It worked. Turkish heroin and opium production plummeted. "The French Connection" smuggling heroin from Turkey faced intense persecution, and faded from power in America.

All this happened at the same time the US intelligence networks in Southeast Asia cooperated with Rattikone, the Binh Xuyen criminal gangs, Nationalist Chinese generals turned Burmese warlords, and Thai government officials - and almost the entire South Vietnamese parliament - in a deal where they provided support for the US position in the region while the US intelligence protected their heroin distribution network from prosecution.

Yes, I could talk about US intelligence drug deals with the Contras and Afghans, but they're not much different from this case. A war on drugs on one hand, dependence on drug dealers on the other to fight some other war.

How did the United States government get in such a bizarre state? How insane does the world have to be for such a thing to happen?

Or am I asking the wrong questions? Is this just a natural state of affairs sensitive minds suffer under, all the while dreaming of a better world to come because of the seeds they sow today?

Given how this story isn't isolated, I'm inclined to believe it's a natural state of affairs. We're just being lied to horribly in this latest version.

There was a time in which those who had power held their power because... well, just because. Why does Pharaoh want a pyramid? Because he's the Pharaoh, that's why. How do you know someone is a king? Because he's not covered in excrement. Simpler times.

Back then, if a king acted like a complete bastard, the peasants had to put up with it. Any peasant rebellion could kill off a few nobles, but would get ruthlessly suppressed later on. Better to just fly under the radar and be thankful for getting Sundays off.

Problems happened when people other than the king got rich. Those rich guys wanted to run things, too. Most places developed an aristocracy to handle the influx of rich people. In Athens, the rich guys got together and made a democracy, except that the demos in question was made up only of the rich guys. There never were any pretensions towards having commoners vote on matters of policy. Why? Because.

Fast forward to the American Revolution. There was a true anarchic spirit in that movement, as embodied in the Articles of Confederation. I read that document because I had always wondered why it was so rotten compared to the Constitution. It wasn't. There were some really nice parts in it, especially the limitations on the powers of the central government and the mandatory term limits. Both of those helped to keep an impersonal supernational government from crushing the rights of the citizens of the nation-states making up the United States.

By the way, I see the same paranoia about the UN in many people who nevertheless swear by the overriding powers of the current federal government. I find such a dichotomy chillingly hilarious.

Anyway, the Articles of Confederation were anarchic. Pretty much everyone agrees on that. But I now see that anarchy as a good thing, compared to what followed. So much of American political mythology depends on the Articles of Confederation being little better than the situation in Somalia, for the writers of the Constitution to rescue with their blessed document.

Yes, the United States were in disarray, as should be expected after the disruption of an 18-year war. That disarray wasn't the fault of the Articles of Confederation, and there were many men around who would argue just that. Please don't sling arguments at me about how wretched the United States were back then. I'll believe that as much as I believe the US Embassy in Laos denying Ouane Rattikone dealt heroin.

The real rescue afforded by the Constitution was to the powers and wealth of the top families of the United States. These guys did not want to see a rabble running the show any more than the Athenians did. Anti-rabble measures are evident throughout the Constitution: the Senate, the Electoral College, no term limits, imprecise wording about state and national powers, and no mention whatsoever of personal rights except as pertains to property ownership.

The Constitution was so unpopular, in order to get it ratified the Federalists had to promise a Bill of Rights. It was nevertheless unpopular and states like Virginia and New York ratified it by the slimmest of margins. Pennsylvania's legislature had to resort to trickery to get it ratified there. I take my pseudonym, Neo_Brutus, from the pseudonym of one of the anti-Federalists, "Brutus".

"Brutus" lacerated the writers of the Constitution:

"We find they have, in the ninth section of the first article declared, that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless in cases of rebellion,-that no bill of attainder, or ex post facto law, shall be passed,-that no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States, etc. If every thing which is not given is reserved, what propriety is there in these exceptions? Does this Constitution any where grant the power of suspending the habeas corpus, to make ex post facto laws, pass bills of attainder, or grant titles of nobility? It certainly does not in express terms. The only answer that can be given is, that these are implied in the general powers granted. With equal truth it may be said, that all the powers which the bills of rights guard against the abuse of, are contained or implied in the general ones granted by this Constitution."

"Brutus" then predicted a government with no legal restrictions on its actions would put its subjects into a state of vassalage.

And so the arguments in favor of a Bill of Rights went., and so the Bill of Rights got added to the US Constitution. But almost from the beginning, the Bill of Rights meant nothing to a government bent upon circumventing it for its own aggrandizement.

When Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law, there went the protections of the First Amendment. Sure, victims could argue against them in court, but their rights had nevertheless been overridden Would that the government had not taken such measures in the first place! As it is, a court challenge is a torturous process, covering many years and uncountable legal fees - and the US government can appeal any ruling against it to the Supreme Court.

And what of the Supreme Court? What enforcement powers does it have? When the Supreme Court ruled against President Jackson's ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee Nation in Georgia, Jackson said the court could find its own enforcers and carried on with the ethnic cleansing.

Now, back in the days of the Pharaohs and Caesars, none would ask why Jackson got away with that. The answer would be simple: Because. But in the Constitutional government, that sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen. This is where the mythology of the US reveals itself to be divorced from the reality of the US.

As the monied elites of America consolidated power over time, they did so on a national scale. Their greatest coup was in getting corporations considered as citizens under the 14th Amendment. Equal rights for former slaves? Ha! The 14th Amendment is a get out of jail free card for every corporation in America. This is no recent perversion: very soon after its ratification, that amendment has been sheltering companies from hostile legislation, leaving them free to engage in rapacious practices.

And let us not be fooled by the dire warnings against monopolies. Oligopolies can produce even more rapacious circumstances than monopolies, and that is exactly what the US has dominating its economy. Ours is no free market. Ours is full of barriers to entry and barriers to competition, all erected by the leading corporations of the nation to secure their advantages behind the cloak of law.

Yes, just because something is legal does not mean it is moral. Just because something is illegal does not mean it is immoral. The law will apply when it suits the needs of those in power, do not ever forget that.

We are taught the myth of the progressiveness of the income tax. The rich are supposedly taxed at a higher rate than the poor, right? That is nonsense, and we should recognize it as such. The poor are already paying a higher percentage of their income than the rich in the form of sales taxes. Add to that the burden of paying income taxes without specially-crafted loopholes, and the poor pay a greater share of their income than the rich. The income tax system as it is now is regressive, not progressive.

I mentioned the poor: I should define them. Anyone who is one dread disease away from financial ruin is poor. I am poor. If I become ill due to cancer, my family will be ruined in paying for treatment, or I will die and leave my children and wife without my support. I would add that anyone who is one job away from financial ruin is also poor. If you were to lose your job today and never be allowed to work another day of your life, would you be ruined? If so, you are poor.

There is one more way to identify the poor: they do not purchase politicians or political favors. The rich do that. Read the tax code, if you dare. There are paragraphs describing outlandish loopholes to the tax code which seem to apply to nobody in the nation... then that one return comes in, with a reference to that outlandish law. As Ferdinand Lundberg noted in his book, The Rich and the Super-Rich, suddenly the pieces all fit together.

Who wrote that law? A lawyer working for the person whose return cites it. How did it get passed into law? That same lawyer who drafted it is also that person's congressman, senator, or a close personal friend or business associate of the same. In the quid pro quo world of Washington politics, every congressman will vote for these loopholes if all the other guys vote for his.

These rich stand above the law because they can pay their way to that place. This is not cynicism on my part: this is obvious fact.. Their corporations can commit felony after felony, yet no-one goes to jail. In fact, those corporations can pollute, abuse labor codes, and other malfeasances at will, pay a fine, and carry on with their psychopathic behavior. Chevron once colluded with the MPLA to invade the oil-rich area of Cabinda. The Cabindese thought they were a sovereign nation after Portugal jettisoned its colonies. Chevron and the MPLA made them part of Angola. Saddam Hussein goes on trial for his crimes against humanity, but when a corporation sponsors a war of aggression, it enjoys the profits of victory.

On a more personal level, the rich have much better access to means of evading punishments for criminal activities I will not belabor that point, as it should be obvious that if judges and prosecutors have their prices, it is the rich, not the poor, who are best equipped to pay.

In times of war, it is the rich who profit. Both the Kennedy and Bush families made profits in World War Two selling vital war materiels to Nazi Germany, even while the US was officially at war with that nation. They were indicted under the Trading with the Enemy Act, and then proceeded to carry on violating the act - the money was too great to pass up. They made their fortunes in Vietnam and are making them in Iraq.

Their congressmen and presidents keep the wars going as long as possible. The Cold War ended, but America did not see a peace dividend. The War on Terror has now stepped up as America's interminable conflict. To keep these wars going, our intelligence services rely upon horrible criminals to cooperate with our spying efforts. The thugs and killers give us information we give them protection from prosecution so that the war may continue and, by continuing, increase the profits of the great corporations fueling that war effort.

Americans today are subject to a higher rate of taxation than the French under Louis XVI. While we've had a good run of mythology promoting our supposed rights and freedoms, they are no greater than those of an ancient peasant living out of notice of his imperial masters. Like the hapless peasant of yesterday, if the modern American pays his taxes on time and doesn't get uppity, he can pretty much do as he pleases, provided he also shows up to work on time and isn't prone to disorderly conduct or acts of violent crime.

Today, instead of a hereditary king, America has a rotating king, chosen by the aristocracy from a list of hand-picked candidates. The media owned by the aristocracy touts the virtues and vices of the candidates, but does not allow discussion of other alternatives. The congressmen chosen by the aristocrats will vote in favor of making the rich richer, but prefer to do so with laws they say will provide great benefits to the poor. Lies such as those are vital in order to perpetuate the mythology of America as a great, caring nation.

Our rotating king and the congressmen are constantly sending the poor of America to go and die for profits in the defense or oil industries. These wars entangle top levels of government in association with the top levels of the criminal world and we, the commoners, the poor, are made to swallow the whole untrue equation in order to perpetuate the myth that it is the people at large, and not some aloof aristocracy, which runs the nation.

We live in a trap. Complaining about it does no good. We must instead look for a way out of it. How can that be done?