Reflexions on my outburst yesterday and on how to best deal with the Wahabi phenomenon

This morning when I woke up and re-read my post yesterday and the comments it elicited - in particular the amazing comment by Lysander -  I felt that this was such an important issue that I decided to return to it in a separate post rather than to do so in the comments section.

First, I have to admit that what I posted yesterday was not so much a post as it was an angry outburst: in a few short paragraphs, I counted four "exterminate", one "shot on sight" and several attempts at adequately characterize these people including "crazed Wahabi thugs", "most evil and bloodthirsty animals", "beasts" and "vicious thugs".  Clearly, I was truly disgusted and angry.

And then I read Lysander's very moving comment and I realized that for all our superficial differences in nationality or religion, he feels exactly the same way as I do, and I think that there is something very important here.

(Lysander, I hope that you will forgive me for putting the spotlight on you, but your beautiful comment deserves no less; and since we are both using an alias, I hope that there is no harm done by this).

Lysander wrote: And this sort of thing happens so often and in so many different circumstances, that it is impossible to believe it is an "isolated incident."  I fully agree.  One can find all sorts of excuses, engage in endless discussions about "oppression" or even "alienation", but this is rubbish.  All sorts of people have been oppressed worldwide, and millions still are.  Most ethnic groups and probably all religions have, at one time or another, been oppressed.  But there seems to be only one group which always and systematically feels the urge to literally soak their hands into the blood of victims whose throats they slowly slit while screaming "God is great" from the top of their lungs.  Just in the 20th century there are many nations which suffered horrendously at the hands of oppressors (must I really write the full long list here?) and none of them engaged in such behavior.

Any normal and sane person feels sympathy and compassion for the victims of oppression, but what happens when this same person realizes that the victim itself is far more evil and vicious than the oppressor?  Does that not trigger a natural sense of rage?

Lysander wrote: I'd rather live under the most extreme police state of Hafez al Assad than under rule of these reptiles.  Exactly!

God knows I am no fan of the Assads (or of Gaddafi, or even Saddam), but when I see the actions of these Wahabi I also feel that we are talking about two different dimensions, different orders of magnitude, different species even: on one hand, we observe a typical corrupt and repressive regime with its Mukhabarat and torture jails, while on the other hand we have reptiles, inhuman crazed fanatical zombies (what else can I call them?!) who make the former look almost decent!

Lysander wrote: Nor is this barbarity confined to Syria. Somehow it has metastasized to my own Egypt, where you may have heard about the mob murder of an Egyptian Shia' cleric and his 4 companions this past Sunday.

I got a lot of flak for my categorical stance in full and unconditional support for Putin's mercyless war on the Chechen insurgency.  And I assume that a lot of people concluded that because of my Russian ethnicity I was supporting "my side".  Honestly, I was not.  First, I also supported the actions of the Russian military and security services in the first Chechen war even though the country was ruled by Eltsin whom I loathe to a degree hard to express in a few short sentences.   And second, believe it or not, I actually had rather sympathetic feelings towards the Chechen desire for independence.  First, because they never invited the Russians to the Caucasus (like the Georgians had) and, second, because they always courageously resisted the Russian presence in Chechnia.  At a time when so much historically Russian land was being artificially cut off from Russia (like the Ukraine!), the secession of tiny Chechnia really did not matter to me, or to most Russians.  Anyway, whether one believes me or not, my reason for supporting Putin's merciless war on the Chechen insurgency is because, unlike most people in the West, I was fully aware of what these reptiles, as Lysander calls them, where doing: the exact same stuff as they are doing today in Syria.

But of course, when they were doing so in Chechnia and Russia, nobody could give a damn: the West was, as always, supporting anything anti-Russian while the Muslim world - with the huge exception of Iran - was engaging in the usual "right or wrong my Ummah" the knee jerk support for anybody claiming to be Muslim.  The same happened in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I have also tracked the actions of these Wahabis in Bosnia and Kosovo, and while I will gladly admit that most Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars were not nearly as vicious and cruel as the Chechen insurgents, a non-trivial amount of them was.  In fact, in Bosnia a lot of so-called Mujahideens had been flown in by NATO and they also behaved exactly in the same manner.  Again, nobody cared or, if somebody did, it was, of course, the fully support the Wahabis again.

Do you remember the famous quote by Putin about Chechen terrorists?  Here is what he said:  We will hunt them down everywhere.  If we find them at the airport - then at the airport.  If, forgive me, we find them in the toilets, we will exterminate them there.  Enough, this topic has been settled. (Мы будем преследовать террористов везде. В аэропорту — в аэропорту. Значит, вы уж меня извините, в туалете поймаем, мы в сортире их замочим, в конце концов. Всё, вопрос закрыт окончательно).  Since he was using rather slangish expressions, it is hard to accurately render the strong emotion of his words, but I will say that Putin clearly, even crudely, conveyed two simple thoughts: 1) no negotiations 2) extermination.  Clearly, the man "had it".  And so do I.  And so does Lysander.

Here again, I have to return to Lysander's own words: quite frankly, I'm of the opinion that Bashar's mistake was not that he was a dictator, but rather that he was far too lenient with these lizard men. His father would have dealt with them in such a way that "hell would have held no surprises for them" as one pro-Syria blogger I like to read would say.  How can I possibly argue with Lysander in this case, while fully agreeing with Putin?!  Of course I can't.  He is absolutely right.

I will honestly tell you that this is very disturbing for me.  Both my religion and my personal philosophical and ethical outlook on life give me a strong disinclination towards concepts such as "merciless extermination" or "giving hell", but what can I say: when I think of Wahabis I really, sincerely and honestly do not see any other possible way.

This is why I speak of "crazed thugs" and Lysander speaks of "reptiles".  I think that we are trying to express a very disturbing and even distressing notion: that these people are not fully human anymore.  And while I hate this thought, and while I am disturbed by its implications, I have to agree with it.  People who crucify others, who slit their throats of elderly men, who issue fatwas allowing for the rape of girls in the name of God, people who can torture while screaming "God is great" are simply of a qualitatively different nature.  The same goes for cannibals who eat warm blood soaked organs on video to make a point.  If I think long and hard of the best way to describe them I can only come up with the following word: Satanists.

Lysander then wrote this: That latter incident has in the last few days caused me to embrace Shia Islam. Now I'm not very religious, but in terms of world view I'm very much in agreement with the Shia' values of resisting injustice and overcoming betrayal.

Lysander  - these are beautiful words and may God bless and protect you for such a movement of your heart!  Did you know that in the first centuries, when Rome was still pagan, there were quite a few instances of Roman pagans witnessing the martyrdom of Christians who suddenly spontaneously spoke up and declared themselves Christians only to be either thrown to the bests or beheaded on the spot.

I believe that there is a profound human instinct which tells us that if we cannot help an innocent victim then we have to join it and share its fate.  Furthermore, when people are killed for their faith, especially by Satanists, they are considered as "martyrs" or "shahids" which in both Greek and Arabic means "witness".  Witnesses of God's truth in the face of a worldly lie.  Christianity even believes that such people are "baptized in their blood" and therefore are recognized as Christians saints even if they never were formally baptized or even educated in the faith.  Yup - we believe that a pagan who sides with a martyr and gets killed for that himself instantly becomes a Christian martyr and saint!

Lysander - you say that you are not very religious (-: although it is quite obvious to me that you are far more religions than you know :-) but that "in terms of world view I'm very much in agreement with the Shia' values of resisting injustice and overcoming betrayal."  Well, I can tell you that while I am neither a Shia nor a Muslim, I also fully share that worldview and that I immensely admire the Shia with whom I feel a very deep sense of common ethos even if our dogmatic theology (to use a Christian expression) is different.  I can certainly honest say that I feel much much closer to Shia Islam than to any other form of Islam and that my admiration for the Shia themselves is also deep and heartfelt.
 
I think that your way of embracing Shia Islam (especially in the spirit of the beautiful words of Iran's FM Salehi) is indeed not a renunciation of genuine Sunni Islam.  In fact, I see your action as supra-sectarian: it is aimed at bringing you as close as possible to all the martyrs/shahids and God which you currently see as most effectively/consistently done through Shia Islam.  I see your decision and declaration as a deeply ethical and moral one and I commend you for it!

Coming back to the situation in Syria I have to admit that I am rather dismayed by my conclusion that a negotiated settlement is impossible.  Unless all the parties join forces together and agree to expel or destroy the terrorists (as the G8 Communique urges them to), I see no point in any discussions.  And since I see no sign from the putatively "non-terrorist part of the FSA" they they are even considering turning against their own military's "shock troops" (al-Nusra & Co.) what can we expect?

These "FSA moderates" remind me of Maskhadov.  By all accounts he was not a crazed beast like Hattab, Gelaev, Basaev, Raduev or Baraev - but he simply could not do anything against them, and that gave him no other option than to fight with, rather than against, them and like the rest of them, he was eventually killed by Russian Spetsnaz forces.  Maskhadov was the prototype of the "non-terrorist part of the Ichkerian insurgency" and yet it did him - or anybody else - no good.  I fear that the putatively "non-terrorist part of the FSA" are just like Maskhadov - irrelevant.

So what then?  By the year 2000 Putin had enough forces to through at the Chechen insurgency and physically eliminate it.  By 2000 he also had the priceless help of two charismatic leaders: Akhmad Kadyrov and then his son Ramzan.

In response to a comment I recently wrote this (slightly corrected): My gut feeling is that Wahabism must be combated by non-Wahabi, traditional, Sunni Islam. The local authorities must either be Sunni Muslim themselves or, at least, support traditional Sunni Islam. Look at Chechnia - on one hand Russian soldiers killed enough insurgents to defeat them militarily, but on the other hand it took a guy like Kadyrov, who is very openly and militantly Muslim and traditionalist, to beat back the Wahabi ideology in a way which the Russian military and all its firepower could not do. As for Putin, he went as far as to grant Chechnia a degree of autonomy which, frankly, is not quite in line with the Russian Constitution. Why? Because he understood that he had to do the maximum humanly possible to accommodate the kind of society Kadyrov wants to build: a very strictly traditional Sunni society, but one with in which Wahabis are quite literally shot on sight.  The Iranians are, of course, doing the same, but being Shia they have natural limits on how much they can do. Same for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This brings three questions to my mind.  Does Bashar al-Assad have what it takes to be a "Syrian Putin"?  Can the Syrian military smash the insurgency like the Russians did it in Chechnia?  Is there a "Syrian Kadyrov" who can beat back the ideology of the insurgents?  At best, my own replies are two, rather timid, "maybes" and one "dunno".  Assad has done better than expected, the Syrian military has performed brilliantly.  And I have no idea if there is a "Syrian Kadyrov".  And if NATO intervenes directly, I am not sure at all what would happen.

There is one more thing which explains my outburst yesterday.  The fact that even though images of Wahabi atrocities are constantly showing up on the Internet, there are still so many people who chose to look away, to pretend like this is irrelevant, that this is an isolated case.  This trend to minimize or "explain away" that which is clearly satanic in nature has to be categorically denounced.  Sadly, mankind has a long history of wars, civil wars and violent uprising and insurgencies and by now we should all know what these tragedies inevitably involve (I even wrote a full article about that).  This is why the quest for a moral definition of a "just war"  from the Mahabarata to the UN Charter is such an important endeavor: it embodies mankind's quest to make sure never to engage in this ultimate evil if there are other options available.  Still, I can understand somebody trying to rationalize the truly inevitable consequences of war, in particular if this is a just war (by whatever definition), but to rationalize the actions of these Wahabis under any excuse at all is, I submit, morally categorically unacceptable.  Why?

First and foremost because Wahabi atrocities are presented by the Wahabi themselves as normative.  Why do others say that these are isolated incidents involving a minority of extremists when in reality they are clearly a part of a consistent pattern, repeated everywhere and justified in the name of God?

Second, while other religious have, of course, committed atrocities, this is the only case I know of where the name of God is gleefully evoked at the moment of torture and death.  True, the Jesuits are famous for their ad majorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God) as a justification for the most barbaric crimes and atrocities, but this is precisely that - a justification for something otherwise hard to accept or condone, whereas the Wahabi's use of "Allahu Akbar" is not a justification as much as a Satanic doxology directly linked to the atrocity committed.

Third, while it is true that hatred breeds hatred and atrocities breed further atrocities,  I am unaware of any instances were atrocities are systematically committed in a joyful, almost festive, mood.  The only similar case I am aware of is the numerous lynchings of Blacks in the USA (south and north!) which were often announced days in advance in newspapers and which were organized with barbecues, ice-cream sales and a generally festive atmosphere.  But for all their elegant dresses and pretenses at being "gentlemen" we are dealing here with a population with no history, no culture, the primitive rudiments of pseudo-Christianity, no philosophy and with a moral and ethnically sophistication roughly equal to the one of the Cro-Magnon or Neanderthals (watching a few cowboy movies is enough to prove this point).  More importantly - the US authorities, for all their other faults, never considered these actions as normative and did take the measures needed to eventually stop them.  Finally, I would note here that Blacks in the USA, for all the horrendous atrocities which have been committed against them for centuries, never took revenge in the Wahabi manner, not the Socialist Blacks, not the Christian ones, not the Muslim ones. Huey P. Newton, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X would have been appalled if any other their followers would have acted like the Wahabis systematically do.  Yes, there have been isolated acts of Black violence, but these were either revolts against the slave owners (Nat Turner) or truly tiny groups (BLA).  The absolute majority of Black political activism in the USA was always resolutely non-violent.
 
Unlike the US "southern gentlemen" Wahabis pop-up in countries with a long history, a rich cultural tradition and sophisticated civilization which included several ancient and refined religions and philosophies.  As an Orthodox Christian I immediately think of such intellectual giants as Saint John of Damascus and Saint Ephrem the Syrian but I am sure that any Muslim could easily come up with his own list of famous Syrian Muslims.  Bottom line is this: the Syrians are not cowboys, and Wahabism in Syria cannot be excused or even explained by a lack of education or culture.  Neither can Egyptian Wahabism or, for that matter, Iraqi Wahabism.  These countries are all "cradles of mankind" and not some barbaric frontier.

I strongly feel that there simply cannot be any excuse for Wahabism - not in the repression from others, nor in some assumed lack of education or culture.  My personal conclusion is that we are dealing with a demonic, satanic anti-religion which is fully centered on the hate of "the other" whereas "normal" religions are all centered on the love for the other.  To speak in defense of Wahabism, to seek excuses or explanations for their atrocities is to defend Satan, literally.

Finally, in conclusion, I will say that for all the clearly emotional nature of my outburst yesterday, I do stand by my conclusion: I don't see the point of any negotiations with the FSA, "Friend of Syria", the Syrian National Coalition or any other political entity or military force which is in any way associated with, or allied to, the Wahabis in Syria.  In fact, the only people worth speaking to at this point are those who share what I call the "Putin approach" to Wahabism: immediately stop and desist or be exterminated.  Alas, at this point this means only Russia, Iran and, possibly, China.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but after my outburst yesterday I felt like I needed to sit down and take the time to lay it all out, to get it off my chest, and to make my views available for discussion or criticisms.  If somebody can convince me that there is still room to negotiate, I will be immensely grateful as my conclusions at this point are rather disheartening if not depressing: they are a painful admission that the only way to deal with the current violence is much more violence, something which no sane person can welcome.

So please tell me I am wrong!

Kind regards,

The Saker

Marital infidelities and the military

I have to confess that my post yesterday was a little tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I did think that the women who tempted those generals were not "worth it" (judging by their looks, at least), and I do believe that many, if not most, men in the totally over-sexed Western society end up being sexually frustrated to the point of becoming unable to control even their most basic sexual urges. It is an irony that an completely over-sexed society like the American one ends up producing men who are as sexually frustrated as the Saudis who live in a society which is fantastically repressive in sexual matters...

Anyway, I was thinking about the implications of my thought that these women were not "worth it". As opposed to Anna Kushchenko who would be "worth it"? Can marital infidelity ever be "worth it"?

This brought to my mind an interesting conversation I had once had a long time ago and which I want to share with you.

About twenty years ago or so I had the opportunity to spend a few months working on a project with a former Deputy Commander of the US "Delta Force". I used this opportunity to interview him at length about his career, Delta Force operations and his views on many other topics. One day, we were sitting and discussing the type of soldiers Delta recruited and trained. This was a topic of special interest to me since I had become good friends with an ex-commander of the Soviet KGB Spetsnaz unit "Kaskad" and that through this friendship I had become quite well informed about how Kaskad recruited, trained and operated (The comparison between Delta and Kaskad is not what I want to discuss here, but I will say that the difference in philosophy between these two crack units was immense). Anyway, after listing all the characteristics required to be considered a candidate for Delta, my colleague suddenly said the following: "... and, of course, we never take divorcees".

I thought that I must have misheard, to I asked him to repeat and, sure enough, he repeated that divorced soldiers could not apply to Delta. I have to admit that I was quite astonished and I asked him to explain why divorced soldiers could not become Delta operators. This is the reply he gave me (almost verbatim, I vividly recall this conversation):

"You know, we typically spent anywhere form six to nine months away from our families, and this puts a great deal of stress on everybody. Sadly, a lot of families are not capable of living with these types of hardships, and we would never blame one of our operators if his wife decided that she could not continue to live like that. However, we have a zero-tolerance policy for any marital infidelities or divorces if initiated by any of our men. Why? Because there are only two occasions in a man's life when you take a sacred oath: to your wife, and to your country. If a man is capable of betraying his sacred oath to his wife, he is also capable of betraying his sacred oath to this country, and we don't need men like that in Delta".

At that time I was not married, but I have to admit that his logic made perfect sense to me. You are either of the type who considers your oath as unbreakable or you are not. I have now been blissfully married to a wife which I totally worship for 19 years, and I have to admit that it has been ridiculously easy for me to remain true to my marital vows (I love my wife more with every passing day), but I also have seen friends struggling in their marriages, some even divorcing, and I have to say that each time I see somebody breaking his marital vows I also see somebody whom I simply could never fully trust since he already committed perjury at least once. I personally find the logic of this Delta officer absolutely rock-solid.

Let me immediately add here that I have no idea at all whether this is actually what takes place in Delta or not. I have a hard time believing that Uncle Sam would spend an immense amount of time, efforts and resources training a Delta operator only to kick him out for doing that which is so prevalent in the rest of US society. The officer I interviewed was the only Delta operator I ever spoke to, and maybe he was expressing some wishful thinking of his. I really don't know. But my post today is not about Delta, its about this basic fundamental question:

What does marital infidelity tell us about a man? Can we really make some broad conclusions simply based on the fact that a man cheated on his wife or not? In other words, can a man who cheats on his wife be considered a man of honor or not?  Can such a man be trusted?

To the risk of alienating many of those who will read this, I have to say that I personally believe that cheating on one's spouse is a fundamentally dishonoring act, something which is never "worth it", something which cannot be excused in any circumstances.

In marriage, both spouses literally give themselves to each other. They voluntarily "renounce themselves" for the love and sake of the other, and they accept the same gift from the other person. Think about it: for decades Mrs Petraeus (to use this example) probably lived only for the love and sake of her husband, and he accepted that. He came home, and she fed him. He was sick and she nursed him. He was sad and she encouraged him. And yes, he wanted sex and she gave herself to him. For the full duration of their marriage, the spouses renounce their own wants and needs, and give totally themselves to each other. And then, Mr. Petraeus, like some pimply teenager, suddenly decided that his sexual urges are an emergency which need to be addressed no matter what?!

Forgive me if I come across as a bigoted, intolerant and judgmental enforcer of reactionary morals, but I can think of no circumstance which could excuse the cynical and deeply dishonorable betrayal of a sacred oath (and many years of acceptance of the loving dedication of a spouse) for the sake of some late-life sexual gratification.

Before the modern era (which I think began after World War I), adulterers were often expelled from the officer corps. Yes, I know, many men did have mistresses, often not even well hidden. And the old European society did have a deep hypocritical streak about it. But at least officially the concept of personal honor and the honor of being an officer were upheld. Whereas today, all that is asked from an officer is the ability to be a skilled solider and commander. Personal integrity or honor really do not matter any more.

Now, I understand that the kind of personal immorality which we now see from Generals Petraeus and Allen is to be expected from a military culture which openly accepts homosexuals and refers to them as "gay". I know that the post-Christian Western society has basically degenerated to the point where it is unable to articulate anything around the concepts of "right" or "wrong". A society begins by declaring that "God is dead" and you end up having "leaders of the free world" like Clinton and his infamous "cigar".

But the fact that our society as a whole has gone crazy and is basically unable to categorize something as right or wrong does not mean that this is true in all the segments of society.  This is not true on a personal and family level were there are still plenty of people living according to ethical and moral principles, and this is not necessarily true of the military where somewhat abstract concepts such as "honor" often mean the difference between life and death.

Men in combat are fundamentally dependent upon each other. For example, it is a sacred principle in most elite combat units to never leave a man behind. One common feature of the training of both Delta and Kaskad (nowadays its name has been changed to "Vympel") is that it is centered on the failure or success of the entire group rather than of the individual. This type grueling training is specifically designed to created unbreakable bonds between the various operators who, once in combat, will act as one entity, fully willing to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the others. I find that most interesting as the type of psychology which is developed in special operators is, in fact, exactly the one which traditional Christianity aims to foster between spouses!

Many people are aware of the following verse in the Epistle to the Ephesians of Saint Paul:"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands" (Eph: 5:22) but far less people are aware of the verses which comes right after that:"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it .  That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.  That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.   So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. (Eph: 5:25-28).  Not only does Saint Paul say that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church (!), but he even adds that a husband should sanctify and cleanse his wife making her holy and without blemish.  In other words, even if the wife has "spots" (defects, sins, weaknesses, etc.) Paul exhorts the husband to not only not turn away from such a wife, but to endeavor to make her "without blemish" by his Christ-like infinite love and self-sacrifice for her.  Amazing, no?

There are no excuses here for "my wife is fat" or "she is a bitch", or "I need companionship".  Just as in a special operations unit you do not leave a fellow-operator behind because he is a "jerk" or somebody with whom you had a conflict.  Both in marriage and in elite combat units the "other" is more important than the "self".

The reality is that personal immorality in general and sexual immorality in particular, has devastating effects not only on society in general, but also for the military as in institution.  Sure, our leaders still speak of "honor", but what kind of honor can they be speaking of when they basically deny the very existence of the concepts of "right" and "wrong"?  How can a sexually immoral person be a national leader or a commanding officer?  How can a sexually immoral person even pretend to be a father?

If sexual immorality is debasing for society as a whole because it undermines the very core building unit of any society - the family - it is also especially devastating for the military whose corporate culture is based on the concepts of honor, duty and self-sacrifice. It is really no wonder that the actual performance of the US military has been so bad since, at least, Korea, when it is mostly lead by men with no principles and no morals.

Admiral Fallon called Petraeus "an ass-kissing little chickenshit".  This is as good a definition of an immoral person as I have heard.  Think of Clinton, of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of Sarkozy, of Moshe Katsav, of Berlusconi and all the rest of them: aren't they all ass-kissing little chickenshits?

I strongly believe that real men (yes, I believe in that concept), at least in my definition, do not cheat on their wifes and I also believe that real men are by definition always deeply moral and principled in all their actions, be it as officers, as husbands, fathers or friends.  Ideas such as "God is dead" or "beyond good and evil" sound very "cool", but their practical application always means the decay and eventual death of the entity which attempts to live by such fallacies.  You begin with such nonsense, and you end up being ruled by an entire generation of ass-kissing chickenshits.

The Saker

Yes, I am my brother's keeper

By Siv O'Neall, Axis of Logic Columnist

The polarized world

Do we need further proof that greed is not the solution for a sound economy? Do we need further proof that capitalism is foundering? Do we need further proof that ignoring the poor is not the way to make the world go round? That selfish accumulation of wealth is not the key to peace of mind and a life worth living?

The weirdoes who are presently at the helm of the world don't know a thing about what a good life is all about. A half-starving family in India may well have a more meaningful life than high-riding madmen who accumulate riches and who never stop striving for more – the very people who are ruining the lives of the poverty-stricken slum dwellers in the third world, people who were once farmers, poor but self-sustaining. Now they are scavenging on the garbage dumps on the outskirts of the big cities. The goals in the lives of the poor rich people who are ruining the earth couldn't be more out of joint.

There is certainly no beauty in desperate poverty, nothing positive in being deprived of the decent lives of billions of the earth's population. But the poor soulless billionaires who have set as a goal in their lives to destroy the lives of millions, so as to wallow in luxury in their secluded mansions, are the victims of their own selfishness and their disastrous misjudgment of the human psyche.

Why haven't those criminals who are the mad founders of 'disaster capitalism' been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail a long time ago?

Then again: Why was Hitler so very close to conquering the world?

Love and solidarity have so many ingenious and dangerous enemies – the ones who know nothing about the humane qualities that hold us up and keep us together in a community, spiritual or geographical. Those are the dangerous fanatics who construct edifices of world domination theories in an attempt to compensate for the lack of anything constructive in their lives. They are trying desperately to use power and wealth to cover up the emptiness of their inner beings.

The world before the meltdown

There are two major problems today. And don't miss the forest for looking at all the trees. There is the willful murder of the poor and there is the killing of the environment, thus ending life on earth as we know it.

Greed is the ultimate cause in both these disasters. Lack of vision and lack of the urge to live a meaningful life of love, solidarity, and intellectual challenges are the secondary factors that have shaped our modern world since large-scale expansionism became the leading urge for a handful of madmen who wanted to rule the world. Greed combined with utter lack of empathy, such as is seen in today's deranged heads of state and corporations.

In order to rule the world, they have been working very deliberately and consistently on expanding their territories and on spreading their so-called culture all over the world, to make us all into Disneyworld-going, shopping-mall-loving, and anti-intellectual robots. Dumbing down the people was one of their prime goals. Robots do what their propagandized brains have been made to indulge in. Which is more television propaganda, digesting preposterous lies (such as spreading democracy and freedom and fighting 'terrorism'), more consumerism, more borrowing to make for more indebted and dependent consumer addicts. Once they are indebted heavily and propagandized to a state of mental vacuity, thought the ruling madmen, we'll command all their movements. They will be helpless victims in this wonderful world where only the lives of the very few have any real importance. The rest of the people of the world will get by on the scraps from the rich man's table and, since they've been dumbed down, there is nothing they can or will do to change anything.

What the people of the world want more than anything else is peace. So the clique who runs the show invents the Pax Americana. Trumpets are blowing and flags are waving. Wow! To begin with people went hysterical with ostentatious patriotism. Pax Americana, democracy at home and abroad, freedom for all people. The United States of America, always the fighter for freedom and prosperity for all its citizens. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! U.S. citizens were floating around on clouds of slogans.

The U.S. brand of patriotism replaces true solidarity. Fear makes the people at home deaf and blind to the true nature of the aggression of the powerful – those same madmen who have lost all touch with reality. There is no attempt to actually try to understand the way foreign peoples react to the cruel acts of domination by the superpower. There is only a naive belief in the possibility of remaking the psyches of the vanquished masses. Making them into a brand of new-age Americans.

"O brave new world that hath such people in't!" The United States dominates the planet with hundreds and hundreds of military bases on all five continents. People all over the world would be sold to the 'American' way of life and they would just be begging to get more McDonalds, more Disneyworlds, more shopping malls. The non-thinking gluttons for self-aggrandizement would see their mirror images in people all over the world. Steeping the world in the red white and blue virtues is seen as a lark. Patriotism is for Americans, the rest of the world is just supposed to be grateful for the civilization that the U.S. domination is bringing to them so generously. Since the only civilized country is the United States, the rest of us must be oh so grateful for the opportunity of sharing in this civilization. The total ignorance of the U.S. leaders and of most of its citizens as to what real civilization is all about and its long and wonderful history is appalling.

Doubt is rearing its head

But something has gone sour. The American people are beginning to see that maybe we are not fighting for peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe we were not fighting for peace in Somalia, maybe we were not fighting for peace anywhere in Asia or Africa. Wasn't this Pax Americana costing them too dearly at home? Weren't they all paying for this war that their sons and daughters were being killed for? Weren't the Big Corporations making huge profits while they suffered foreclosures of their homes?

Was there ever going to be an end to this horrid war? No, say the masters of war, there will be a war without end. Finally a word of truth. And the people began to see that they'd been had. The madmen at the helm of their own country and a huge part of the rest of the world were the only winners. They were the kings for a day in this world without compassion, without a vision for the future, without a plan for how to make their gambling craze be compatible with the survival of the planet. The gambling became a goal in itself and the short-time winning spree made the madmen dizzier than ever and things got a bit out of hand.

There was one value in this setup and its name was money. Paper money, useless money, huge fortunes that only increased the poverty at home and in the third world, but, or so said the 'wise men', they themselves were going to be immune to any wild fluctuations on Wall Street. Let the poor people lose their homes, they themselves would sit comfortably in their mansions. Let the hurricanes blow, they were always going to be protected by the high walls surrounding them. Family values be damned. The phrase had been useful as a political slogan but values were barely needed any more. The people were made powerless and totally malleable to the whims of the masters of war. The slogans of Patriotism, Terrorism and Eternal War were on the agenda of the day.

The end of winner take all

And then the bottom fell out. The U.S economy was in shambles and the crisis spread to the rest of the world. Can this meltdown of the world economy possibly lead to a rethinking in the minds of the ruling 'elite', the bankers and Wall Street conmen who are now scrambling to put a lid on the violently boiling stew? If compassion does not work for the psychopaths who rule the world, can reality tell them that something went terribly wrong? Their monolithic machine hit a massive wall.

Will this be the final proof that raw capitalism does not work? Will the Big Money men finally understand that there has to be production behind capital gains, not just speculation for short-term gains? And who are the producers? You and me. The producers were the people who are now laid off and hurting, who lost their homes through the urge to get into deep debt that was preached to them by the bankers. Preached to them by the Wall Street prophets who have not lost their fortunes or their standing. Only the workers are hurting. This government takes care of its own.

When will the people finally be able to convince Big Money that their wealth is due to the ceaseless efforts of the workers? That they must have a share in the profits or else the economy is bound to tank. Again and again. No buyers, no profits. The Big guys can sit safe on their big estates only for so long before they too begin to hurt. You don't eat shares and derivatives. You don't go on luxury cruises when there is noone to make up the crew. (noone in one word is perfectly correct)

Even the people who don't understand the words compassion and sharing will find one day that speculative short-term gains do not make the world go round.

Being your brother's keeper

How about reinstating an equitable way of running the ship? When will the leaders of the world see that with the billions of the world's population who are starving or on the edge of starvation, the lack of equilibrium on the planet is not going to be solved by letting those billions starve to death?

The people who fail to understand that we are all born equals and that the only humane thing to do is to be your brother's keeper have to do some serious thinking. If your brother is starving it's not because he is lazy, it's because he was never given a chance to earn a decent living, or else you, the criminals who rule the planet, took it away from him. Given equal chances to make a decent living to begin with, the human being is instinctively a hard worker. If you ruined his chances to look out for himself, it's your responsibility to restore his rights to a decent life.

Call it socialism, call it welfare if you like; but I call it repairing the damage caused by colonialism, expansionism and corporatism, and the effects of a game of loaded dice that you invented. You naively believed that you could run the world without the cooperation of the honest people, the workers, the producers, the ones who were not brought up to become rapists and predators. You thought those people could be exploited indefinitely, until they conveniently died from starvation and overwork. In the meantime, you had reaped all the profit possible from their delivering diamonds and gold from the mines in the Congo or in the badly constructed and ill-secured mines in your own country where several deadly accidents have occurred in the past few years alone. Who cares? There are millions of unemployed workers who are waiting to take their dangerous jobs. That's the way you planned your game of Big Profit.

How unfortunate for you to realize finally that your wealth is not going to go on multiplying endlessly, with just a tolerable number of victims of your greed every year. How unfortunate for you to realize that you have to be your brother's keeper or else the economy will come to a screeching halt.

Was democracy a dream only?

If it's unrealistic to think that we might be able to change the minds of the madly accumulating psychopaths, today's world leaders, or to put them in straitjackets, we can at least hope for a future world where humility, cooperation and concern for the Other will reign, instead of fear.

When will we all have a voice in where the world is going? When will we get some semblance of democracy back?

Can we finally have some degree of basic human rights and decency in the running of the world? Please.