Are the bad guys on the move again?

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Karl Heidenreich
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Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

I know that this could turn political, specially for US members, but...
Have anyone noticed that lately the bad guys are on the move again?
In Korea, that finally after many years was running lose came to terms with US policies, is again launching rockets and continuing the nuclear program.
In Irak it´s insane leader now goes wild, even in Europe, and he acts as if he is standing solid ground. Maybe he is, I don´t know.
The Taliban has become more agressive and bold. Pakistan can be in serious trouble soon (if not it is right now)
In Latin America Chávez has become a simbol of fight and people are changing from "tolerating" to "like him". And he has a cohort of his own now: Evo Morales which is as stupid as anyone can be; Corea of Ecuador; Ortega de commie of Nicaragua and others like to sing the chorus to this guy from time to time like Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
The world has become an anti US place as I can remember when Jimmy Carter was the US president. and being During the Carter years the USSR was expanding and being as powerfull as she ever become. When Reagan came things changed. Don´t misunderstand me: I will never, ever, say that Bush was like Reagan. Bush was one of the worst US president ever. But it seems that the world is perveicing, again, a weakness that is dangerous.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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RF
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Karl, this is a matter of your perception. Are you implying that Barack Obama is another Jimmy Carter?

Incidently the North Korean missile launch was a failure.

Iraq and Afghanistan - the previous US administrations failed to finish the job and blew it. Not Obama's fault, he simply has to pick up the mess.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

RF:

I quote myself:
Bush was one of the worst US president ever.
Maybe is a matter of perception, you´re right. I remember that I was twelve or thirteen years old when I told my dad that it seemed to me a mistake for the US not to produce the M1 Abrams or the B1 bomber on the grounds expressed by Carter because the Russians will surely upgrade their own similar equipments. Also I told him (he was quite pro Carter in those years) that the way he was handling the Nicaraguan crisis was going to end with a communist takeover there. I also remember the night of July 17, 1979 when the sirens of San José raged anouncing that Somoza had fled to Miami and that the sandinistas had won the insurrection. Also remember how, a year later, the sandinistas were killing our frontier guardsman, threatening with invasions, infiltrating russian agents into the universities and sindicates to prepare the ground for a "social movement". But more impressive was the day I saw the first photos of the US embassy hostages in Teheran and the impotence of peace lover Carter. I remember all and hope that does not happen again because I don´t see any Reagan in the horizon to come and save the day.

Anyway, maybe you´re right and I´m just a litte paranoid. Let´s talk about this in a year or two: I hope I´m mistaken.

Best regards,
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Bgile »

I'm not a great fan of Carter either, but he wasn't responsible for the Iranian revolution. That happened because there was a brutal dictatorship in place and the people finally got the courage to rise up against it. I don't think their current leadership is much better, but that often happens with revolutions.

The same thing happened in Cuba. Castro at least doesn't seem to have enriched himself at the expense of his people like Batista. I suspect many Cubans are better off today than they would have been under Batista, and they would be a LOT better off but for the US embargo. I think the average Cuban at least gets better health care than the average US citizen. Most unemployed citizens in the USA don't get any health care at all unless they get so sick they show up in the emergency room.

I believe there is a very real possibility of revolution in the USA someday, because right now 1% of the population takes in 20% of the income. A few years ago it was 8%. The middle class is shrinking, and this is very dangerous over the long term. I'm not one of the 1%, but at least I still have a job. The next generation won't do as well as their parents did. My son and a goodly number of his friends are unemployed. The situation isn't nearly bad enough for revolution, but if it keeps getting worse as the years go by ... It scares me a little, but I probably won't be around by the time it happens.

In any case, an idea like Communism wasn't responsible for revolutions. It merely provided a hope for people that were already being exploited by others that it might provide a more equal allocation of resources. Unfortunately it is an idea that doesn't work very well in practice unless you have a leader who is extraordinary and doesn't use it to enrich himself.

/off soap box
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Bgile wrote: ....the Iranian revolution. That happened because there was a brutal dictatorship in place and the people finally got the courage to rise up against it. I don't think their current leadership is much better, but that often happens with revolutions.
The people rose up against the Shah, yes. But it was not a spontaneous rising, it was organised and led through a vehicle of religous fundamentalism, and of course paves the way for an even more brutal dictatorship. No popular uprising against that - no leaders, no organisation and plenty of dupes on the streets backing the theocracy.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Bgile wrote: The same thing happened in Cuba. Castro at least doesn't seem to have enriched himself at the expense of his people like Batista. I suspect many Cubans are better off today than they would have been under Batista, and they would be a LOT better off but for the US embargo. I think the average Cuban at least gets better health care than the average US citizen. Most unemployed citizens in the USA don't get any health care at all unless they get so sick they show up in the emergency room.
In the late 1950's the Batista regime was so corrupt that the Eisenhower administration originally backed Castro. Only after coming to power did Castro declare himsrlf to be Marxist-Leninist.

Whether Castro has really benefitted Cuba long term is I think questionable. Two points are frequently mentioned in support of communism in Cuba, the example of healthcare as raised here, and that Castro has ruled for the benefit of the people and not to enrich himself.
Healthcare provision is certainly more available than practically anywhere else in Latin America and you don't need to pay at the point of using them. But the quality of that healthcare in terms of up to date medical facilities, drugs etc may not be as good as in the developed countries, and the US embargo is always quoted as the reason for Cuba not achieving a substantial rise in living standards to that of the first world.
Would Cuba have developed far better without US political interference and blockade? I think it would be better, but not dramatically so. Castro would have served his people better by not embracing publicly the marxist-leninist ideology, by not having Soviet missiles installed in Cuba, and by allowing some degree of private enterprise and private initiative in Cuba on the same scale as used by Tito in Yugoslavia. The US originally embargoed Cuba because of the expropriation of US property and commercial interests there - a less confrontational approach could have scaled down US hostility.

The key for me is this. If Cuba has benefitted under Castro, how come some two million Cuban exiles and their descendents now live in the US? People tend to vote with their feet where there is no ballot box.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

Bgile wrote:
I believe there is a very real possibility of revolution in the USA someday, because right now 1% of the population takes in 20% of the income. A few years ago it was 8%. The middle class is shrinking, and this is very dangerous over the long term. I'm not one of the 1%, but at least I still have a job. The next generation won't do as well as their parents did. My son and a goodly number of his friends are unemployed. The situation isn't nearly bad enough for revolution, but if it keeps getting worse as the years go by ... It scares me a little, but I probably won't be around by the time it happens.

/off soap box
The changes in the US in terms of geographical shift in population and changes in demographic/ethnic composition are gradual, as are shifts in the distribution of income. Revolution I don't think is on the agenda short term.
Long term there are other problems looming for the US, which will interlink with the changes in population. These are of an environmental nature, the growing shortages in water supply in the west, the subtle gradual changes in climate affecting agriculture, coupled with the long term rising costs of fuel and metals and other materials. There is also the influx of people from Mexico, looking for a better standard of living, incresing the pressures on population and resources in the US. Quite how that will pan out in the next thirty years remains to be seen - I have even seen predictions that in fifty years time the USA will be a majority Spanish speaking nation.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

There are definitely revolutionary pressures building in most countires at the present time and for the record; political and economic revolution is the expression of a clash of class forces working class and ruling class.

For far too long now the issue of class has been clouded by the intellectuals who insist on citing social strata as expressions of class. They are nothing of the sort. We cannot choose our class, we either work for our living or we get others to do the work for us.

Those who do the work are the working class and those who use their labour are the ruling class. There is no happy land between the two, despite the fact that in times of boom the edges can become blurred between worker and boss. During a boom the working class tends to lose it's class identity to a degree and that is how the politicians were able to convince many among the working masses that they had become "middle class" simply because someone had decided to change the wording of their social designation.

The middle class are those people who might own a shop or a small factory, their numbers are so small that their input to the class struggle is minimal and ultimately they will have to chose where to stand - with the workers or with the bosses.

I am a nurse and I considered it an insult that I was to be looked upon as middle class and it is true that many of my co-workers saw themselves as such having been told the news. Very few nurses in Britain these days consider themsleves "middle class" they have once again donned the mantle of "Worker" and are proud to wear it. The antagonism between ourselves and the "suits" is acute at present and augers not well for industrail relations in the NHS.

The intellectuals can be seen as middle class also. They do so little work for the vast salaries they enjoy that they have just about lost touch with the real world. They have loud mouths but have no social weight and can be left to pontificate whilst the rest of us consider the most important questions - "Will we have jobs next year and will we still be able to feed, house and clothe ourselves and our families?" Then; "If the suits cannot solve the problem perhaps we can do better."

What is pushed out of the back door often flys back in through the kitchen window and however hard the good and the great try to diminish class distinctions, inevitably they fail and can only effect a delay in the development of class consiousness. That is probably truer today than at any time in world history.

Our betters have shown themselves to be utterly worthless, wanting in principle and bereft of any ideas of a way through the crisis - the crisis that they and their system have inflicted on us all. Whilst exhorting us to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, they have had their hands in the till and this has gone right through the whole system. Even our labour politicians - workers representatives of all people - have been found to be corrupt. This behaviour at the top of the tree in the banks, the stock exchanges, in industry and in parliament is an expression of despair. They have lost faith in their own system and thought to line their own pockets before the crash came. They knew it was coming and they were terrified, not least because of the groundswell it would cause among the masses.

We have right to be indignant.

Leon Trotsky coined the political phrase; "The wind blows only the tops of the trees at first." Meaning that those at the top of the tree are more exposed to changes in the economic system than most and can see the change long before it visits it's wrath on the rest of us.

Karl Marx showed that; although society rests on the economic bedrock, changes in the economy do not bring immediate change in social attitudes, but that once society begins to move, an improvement in the economy does not halt that change. The world working class is bigger and stronger than at any time in human history and the effects of inertia and momentum will play a very great part in sweeping the old order away. This will be especially true in China, where turmoil is already breakign out.

The period through which we are passing is one of change; change from sleep to awakening of the masses. Our leaders in parliament and the trade unions have grown soft and have shown that they will support the industrialists and the bankers before they will do anything for us. They will eventually be replaced by better more vibrant elements, but until that time the working class is paralysed. The political paralysis is global and it is during such times that religious and ultra-left/ultra right organisations make the most gains, because many people are looking to extreme measures to satissfy their desire for change. For example the British National Party, a modern version of the nazis has gained a couple of seats in the European Parliament, wilst the masses who hate them loked on. A bad development, but not the end of the world - they will not gain the mass support that Hitler had.

The global political paralysis among workers will pass and the big danger for the existing system is that the passing of the paralysis will occur at more of an even rate among the industrialised nations. Class awakening then will be global. The globalisation which the industrialists thought to inflict on us limiting our ability to increase our wages will blow up in their faces, as it has created identical working conditions in the industrialised nations. That will bring a more rapid and more powerful upsurge of the class struggle. It is uniformity of conditions which gave birth to the trade Unions in the forst place. It will mean that the conditions under which the Russian revolution of 1917, which started out democratically and degenerated through isolation five years later, will be relived but at a far higher level than could have ever been envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky.

The masses will move - nothing can stop that - and revolution will be upon us sooner or later. The big question will be; can a sound leadership be found to steer the revolution away from the stalinist degeneration of Russia and the distorted revolutions built on the model of the corrupted Russia in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Burma and North Korea, plus the Russian satellites who found thier own revolutions through Russian occupation. There is nothing inevitable about stalinist degeneration - it was an aberation, but one with far reaching cionsequences. If the industrial might of Europe comes under the control of workers the world will feel the benefits and there will be no turning back - no isolation for the revolution. That btw takes no account fo the revolution which is developing in the USA. Combine Eurpoe and the USA in a world revolution and we will feed the masses in the starving and underdeveloped world.

The mass movement on the path to revolution is democratic from the outset and it requires heavy force to wrest democracy from working class hands, once they have tasted it. Workers democracy controlling a planned economy, is farther reaching and produces far better results than any form of parliamentary democracy which is designed to protect the rights of the bosses and the profit motive. An estimated 23 million Russian workers died as a result of Stalin establishing his dictatorship against the democratic aims of the workers. This dictatorship became a model for other equally hideous dictatorships and differed very little from the dictatorship in Germany under Hitler.

It is my firm belief that if the revolution is successful, the masses will be too strong for the forces of counter revolution (Stalinism, Fascism and Gorbachevism) to turn back the clock.

Once the genie is out of the bottle he is unlikely to be persuaded back.

Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by RF »

The above post is a fairly standard marxist polemic. These issues have already been covered in great depth on this forum, but it seems the totalitarian paradigm carries on unchanged, the holoism carries on being impervious to reasoned debate.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by lwd »

Vic Dale wrote:...For far too long now the issue of class has been clouded by the intellectuals who insist on citing social strata as expressions of class. They are nothing of the sort. We cannot choose our class, we either work for our living or we get others to do the work for us....
This is a demonstrably false dicotomy. The text that follows which uses this as its foundation is thus of questionable value.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Bgile »

I found it puzzling that Vic started by claiming the problem was with "intellectuals". Marx and Trotsky and Castro and many other Marxist revolutionaries were intellectuals. Vic is an intellectual and so am I, but neither of us are "ruling class".

Odd.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Everything from Vic puzzles me.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

I am not the bad guy here. I am just the news reader and if the news does not accord, there is not a thing that you or I can do about it. History will unfold as it will and we can understand it or just let it happen to us. I would prefer the advantage of foresight over astonishment anytime and to date I have not been far wrong in most of my predictions. I don't use a crystal ball, I just try to understand society and the class forces involved.

Firstly, "totalitarianism" is a form of government which will not permit of dissent or alternative opinion and which will not allow free expression. A healthy worker's state thrives on freedom of expression. Both Lenin and Trotsky supported freedom of the press, even a press which published ideas in opposition to them and to the revolution. When the anarchists demanded the right to detach from the revolution and go off and form a commune, Lenin's answer was; "let them go. They can have their experiment and when they have grown up they can rejoin us."

The totalitarians were Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Caetano, Franco, Pinochet, Batista and Castro.

RF has cited Castro as being a marxist. You don't become a marxist just by making a declaration, you have to go through some sort of revolutionary school, and study the great works, then learn to apply the lessons to the modern situation and in regular revolutionary activity. More to the point you have to understand the marxist method and I do not see any of that in Castro's works. He is good at the revolutionary phrase, but he has clearly understood little of what Marx and Lenin wrote. In this he stands on the same untutored ground as Stalin and Mao and all the other totalitarian dictators who have espoused Marx, yet trodden his name into the mud by their actions. Castro was driven into the hills as a petty bourgeois intellectual and came down a few months later a marxist. Bravo! How did he manage that?

It would be wrong to say that Castro acheived nothing on coming to power, he and the other stalinist leaders stand at the heads of nations which have brought their people from utter ruin and starvation at the hands of imperialism and autocracy, to a position where their people are fed and housed and enjoy a lifestyle which would still be denied them had they not shaken off the oppressors. The sad fact is they did not go far enough and that is the problem when power rests in too few hands, it requires the imagination of the masses to really carry society forward. The masses have nothing to lose by taking matters into their own hands, whereas dictators - even well meaning ones - will use armed force to guard their power and can only act as a parasite on society, they ultimately contribute nothing, but squander great wealth justifying their positions.

There is no false dichotomy in exposing the malicious lie that class and social strata are one and the same. That particular act was deliberately perpetrated to cloud the issue and make it difficult for workers to clearly identify themselves. It didn't work. Social strata describe the earning power of workers, from those in poorly paid work through to the highly paid managers of industry, passing across Doctors and airline pilots as examples of well paid workers. These strata then go on to include the captains of industry and the idle rich who holiday constantly, whilst their managers keep the show running. The social strata tell us nothing about class and the class struggle, which though some may care to ignore it is constantly at work despite them.

In the present crisis, social strata will hold less and less importance, because those near the top may well not be there for much longer and as general earning power declines the bench marks will have to be redrawn. What will stand out most starkly is the difference between the working class and the ruling class.

Frankly I resent being called an intellectual. I am a worker and my description is "Nurse" I am not and never will be an intellectual. If Bgile says he is an intellectual; does this mean that he spends the bulk of his time as a word-monger, or does he do something useful to earn his crust? Lenin and Trotsky were active revolutionaries long before they put pen to paper in the literary sense and earned their place at the head of the worker's movement by hard and dangerous work among workers, under a brutal and autocratic czar. They learned to write as workers representatives under the most exacting of conditions, conducting correspondence by secret writing using the most rudimentary methods and materials - milk or urine. To call them intellectuals is to miss the point by a mile and openely demonstrate how little is understood of the men themsleves and the work they engaged in.

Writing and discussion is an intellectual process true, but because a man engages where necessary, the intellect can in no way be the meter by which to describe him. I like a glass of wine on occassion but that does not make me an alchoholic or even anything of a "Drinker" for that matter. Writing and discussion for the revolutionary are tools and from my own experience as an active revolutionary, the vast bulk of one's time is given over to organisation, obtaining paper, printers and secret premises, raising cash and selling papers, tending to those who have lost heart, or those who have given too much and had nervous breakdowns and helping those who are new to find their feet. The class struggle is the hardest battle of all, because there are no short cuts to victory. It is all up hill and with no guarrantees, no career path and with few tangible results - and yes, that is where I learned to write.

I would like to see the intellectual who would choose such an exacting path, when they can find glory and adulation with a few well chosen words. The intellectual seeks ultimately to immortalise himself through recognition as the authority in his field. His life's work is directed at promoting himself. The revolutionary writes with a purpose - that of overturning the old order and unseating the rulers by unleashing the will of the people. There is a distinction.

Vic Dale
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Bgile »

In order to carry on a discussion one needs a common language.

in·tel·lec·tu·al (ntl-kch-l)
adj.
1.
a. Of or relating to the intellect.
b. Rational rather than emotional.
2. Appealing to or engaging the intellect: an intellectual book; an intellectual problem.
3.
a. Having or showing intellect, especially to a high degree. See Synonyms at intelligent.
b. Given to activities or pursuits that require exercise of the intellect.

n.
An intellectual person.
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Re: Are the bad guys on the move again?

Post by Vic Dale »

To Bgile.

You have found ground between the adjective and the noun and concluded that anyone who "engages" in intellectual (adj.) discussion is an "intellectual" (noun). Which basically means that anyone who can think and speak and use intellect (noun) to make a point is an intellectual (noun).

Well done Sherlock. You have succeeded in dissolving the focus and blurring the distinction to the point that the very word "intellectual" as a noun no longer has a purpose. A description is supposed to specify, to distinguish and if everyone is an intellectual, then no one is an intellectual, the distinction is completely lost and the word is meaningless.

I think you probably are an intellectual.

Meanwhile the class struggle marches on. At first the class antagonism shows itself in questions of national liberation. On seeing the economic turmoil in the advanced countries the neo-colonial world begins to agitate for liberation so as to insulate themselves from the crisis - the crisis having made it's effects felt on them first. There is no future in these liberation demands, because part of the economy of the advanced nations rests on sucking cheap goods and raw materials out of these lesser nations. The oppressors will not readily part with this advantage. This is why there are so many seemingly pointless wars and conflicts raging at the present time. Indigenous armies in Pakistan and Sri -Lanka have recently been unleased in unprecedented acts of savagery against independence movements and as usual thousands of hapless innocents have become caught up in it, losing thier lives their kin, their homes and their livelihoods.

The justification for armed aggression in the under developed world is usually defence against terrorism, and protecting defencless people where unruly elements are bent on taking power. By unruly they mean people who are not likely to maintain a friendly (subservient) attitude to the advance nations. Notably these nations have never invaded or threatened anyone else, but somehow there is justification for armed aggression from Britain and the USA, who kill and main countless thousands of local people in Afghanistan for example, so that their women can be educated??? So that their women will no longer have to wear the burka???

Al Queada has been wheeled in as some justification for the incursions, but Al-queada can only find justification for it's existence in the anger and indignation of the oppressed peoples of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other parts of the Africa and the Middle east. Too right people are ready to resist and when they see their kids and other family members torn apart by ruthless aerial-bombing campaigns, just because the target is where they happen to live, they look in desperation to the best known body who will stand up to the invaders. They seek bloody revenge for their loved ones and that is where Al-Queada gets it's justification. It is also the justification of extreme religious fervour. Any holy man who says "death to the invaders" will get an echo.

There is no future for the hungry masses with Al-Quaeda or the lunatics who impose strict religious law. The future has to lie with the people themselves. The masses must take control of society. They will have precious little future under the heel of Britain and the USA or with the religious fanatics.

History has proved that the only body capable of wresting society from the madness which prevails at the present time is the industrial working class. They have the power to paralyse society and they also weild immense productive power. Let them once feel that power by bringing things to a halt - a general strike - then let them feel their productive might when they switch their machines back on again. The general strike in the right circumstances can itself pose the question of power and it is under such conditions that the holy men, the terrorists and the invading armies run for cover. The holy men cannot match the spread of ideas and the terrorists cannot show their faces for fear of being lynched.

Even the army cannot move for fear of splitting along class lines and the invading armies, they too can split under the duress of the right class appeal - even from people whom they consider foreigners. It is a salutory lesson for the rifleman who learns that the man whom he has just been shooting at has so much in comon with him. The armed fight unites and bonds them in a way that no civilian unity can match. That is why the famous "football match" between the Brits and the Germans at xmas 1914 shook the generals so badly and has a political impact which is still felt today.

The first world war was brought to an end by the Russian revolution, which spilled over into Germany, France and even Britain. Revolution knows no national boundaries and the ideas spread like lightening. For many years, black magic was suspected as the cause of the rapid spread of class solidarity. Just think of the sudden change; here was Europe locked into a bloody and senseless war from which none could extricate themselves. It had sapped all economies to the point of ruin and killed and maimed many millions of young men who should have been the life-blood and the productive might of all nations. The biggest travesty in world history, the greatest unstoppable madness was brought to a halt by the will of the masses in Russia, who simply said "Enough!" That word found an echo in other war-bound nations and the effect threatened the very fabric of the old orders. Monarchs were brought down and nations teetered on the brink of revolution.

The situation today is likely to get far worse before it can improve. Our leaders of the top nations lack the wit or the will to pull their troops out of the fight, despite the fact that they have no idea how to proceed and seem to lose track of their aims from day to day. The mass of people are torn between support for the troops who have no choice but to go and fight, laying down their young lives to no good purpose and hatred for the government who sends them. Brown is universally hated despite only being in the job a few years. Obama the newbie is enjoying a honeymoon period, but that will not last and already rumblings are being felt from the mass of people whose hopes were raised to expect better.

There will be no winners from any of this armed madness, except the arms manufacturers. They will continue to make their billions and god help anyone who gets in their way. There is not a leading politician on the planet who would dare threaten the profits of the arms-makers by ending the war. Kennedy tried and look what happened to him. Only the mass of the people can make the necessary change and the process of change has already begun, though little of this will appear in the "yellow press" or on the "lie box" (TV).

It is my belief that the conflict will boil over into a full blown war unless some sense prevails. The whole of the Middle East is pregnant with the possibility for war, Afghansitan boils over into Pakistan, Iraq is far from stable and Iran is ready to become the prime mover in the campaign to rid the Middle east of the influence of the USA and it's little dog - Britain.

I have said little yet of Africa, where antagonsisms are building and major armed conflicts are likely to breakout in the near future. The expeditionary forces from Europe and the USA will become diffused, unable to make any meaningful contribution to the situation. Already they are finding it hard to cope in Afghanistan, add another half dozen countries to that conflict and there will be real trouble. Ultimately, far from being a "peace keeping force" they will end up as catalysts for war, as anyone who thinks they have the USA on-side will think to have a go and settle old scores. The US will be forced either to support or withdraw in ignominy.

If you sow the wind you can easily reap the whirlwind and the USA's incursion into the Middle East has every possibility of developing into a bloodbath of major proportions as the economic crisis bites deeper and old antagonisms rise once again to the surface.

Vic Dale
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