"So why are we waging war on the poor and oppressed?"
"I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All
this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally."
---Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980)
Contrary to the perpetual barrage of bovine fecal matter spewed forth by our beloved corporate media whores, terrorism is not an imminent threat to the continued existence of moral, peaceful human beings. Certainly there are groups and individuals who kill innocents in pursuit of demented agendas. However, by and large, those labeled “terrorists” by the Bush administration and their unofficial mouth-pieces at Fox News and similar outlets are people who are simply using "asymmetrical warfare" to resist the ongoing oppression, exploitation and subjugation of an imperialist aggressor.
Increasingly, United States foreign and domestic policies are determined by a relative handful of cynical bourgeois, some of whom are not even US Americans. Their malevolence is exceeded only by their avarice.
True to their deceitful natures, the moneyed elite have contrived the “War on Terror” as an attack on those bold enough to violently oppose their enslavement. Yes, the latest campaign to enforce Pax Americana is simply a new front in the “War on the Poor and Oppressed.” Humanity has been embroiled in an epic struggle between the pecunious and impoverished since it developed agriculture, abandoned nomadism, and began the acquisition of wealth. Industrialization, consumerism, materialism, debt slavery, wage slavery, hyper-competitiveness, egocentrism, and the myriad of ills spawned by American Capitalism have catapulted the plutocracy into the stratosphere in terms of wealth and power. They are not about to quietly relinquish their ill-gotten spoils.
Despite the deepening misery and increasing numbers of indigent human beings, our corporate masters and their loyal propagandists assure us that the class wars are over. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s rush to embrace “free markets” “prove” that Socialism and Communism are utopian failures. The United States and the countries it has conquered (sorry, that’s liberated), are meritocracies. For those of you in rags, riches are just around the corner. Simply get off your lazy posteriors and apply a little elbow grease. Such tripe rolls easily off the tongues of those pulling down six, seven or eight figure incomes, people who nestle safely within the confines of their gated communities and rest upon the comfortable support of their inherited or plundered fortunes.
Yet far from having ended, thanks to the tireless efforts of Goldwater, Buckley, Nixon, Reagan, Cheney, Bush, and a host of other neo-fascists, the enduring socioeconomic struggle has reached a fever pitch. Tragically, the ruling elite have utilized their formidable agitprop to beguile the confused masses into believing that our depraved system’s victims (and their champions) are the enemy.
Consider:
In stark contrast to George Bush, a man responsible for the deaths of a million or more Iraqis and Afghanistanis plus thousands of US Americans in New Orleans and Iraq, Hugo Chavez has no blood on his hands. And Chavez, a man who has mitigated the suffering of millions of people, is the “threat”.
Resistance fighters battling to expel an imperialist foreign occupier which has been waging genocide against the Iraqi people since the Gulf War are “terrorists”. The invading hordes are hailed as “liberators”.
Ridiculously out-gunned and out-financed Palestinian groups like Hamas, which resort to violence in a desperate attempt to counter brutal Zionist ethnic cleansing, Apartheid, occupation, and colonization, commit “acts of terror” when they kill Israeli civilians. Conversely, Israeli IDF forces are “fully justified” when they commit murder on a much wider scale because they are “defending Israel’s right to exist”.
One can find numerous other instances of the empowered establishment vilifying and attacking the “wretched refuse”, but let’s rewind a few years for a revealing look at a specific example of the pernicious machinations of the opulent. Concurrently, we will also explore a potential solution to the cancer of American Capitalism which plagues the Earth and nearly every living being on it.
Free at last?
Liberation Theology, a movement widely embraced by Central and South American priests and bishops in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, traces its roots back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was hanged in 1943 for his resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. Interpreting Christ’s teachings as a clarion call to devote their lives to the struggle for social justice and human rights, people like Don Helder Camara, Leonardo Boff, Dorothy Stang, and Oscar Romero faced harassment, punitive action from the Vatican, persecution, and assassination in their quests to uplift the exploited, violated, and destitute.
The Red Bishop
Taking on both the Vatican and the military dictatorship that ruled his home nation of Brazil from 1964 to 1985, the Red Bishop, Don Helder Camara, was a fearless advocate for the down-trodden. World renowned for relentlessly assailing the ruthless Brazilian government for human rights violations, Camara attacked the Right Wing elements of the Catholic Church with equal vigor. Before Pope John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, his reactionary confidant, effectively silenced most liberation theologians (because of their Marxist tendencies), Camara managed to significantly advance the cause of humanity in Brazil.
Camara is noted for once having said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”
"I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All
this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally."
---Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980)
Contrary to the perpetual barrage of bovine fecal matter spewed forth by our beloved corporate media whores, terrorism is not an imminent threat to the continued existence of moral, peaceful human beings. Certainly there are groups and individuals who kill innocents in pursuit of demented agendas. However, by and large, those labeled “terrorists” by the Bush administration and their unofficial mouth-pieces at Fox News and similar outlets are people who are simply using "asymmetrical warfare" to resist the ongoing oppression, exploitation and subjugation of an imperialist aggressor.
Increasingly, United States foreign and domestic policies are determined by a relative handful of cynical bourgeois, some of whom are not even US Americans. Their malevolence is exceeded only by their avarice.
Despite the deepening misery and increasing numbers of indigent human beings, our corporate masters and their loyal propagandists assure us that the class wars are over. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s rush to embrace “free markets” “prove” that Socialism and Communism are utopian failures. The United States and the countries it has conquered (sorry, that’s liberated), are meritocracies. For those of you in rags, riches are just around the corner. Simply get off your lazy posteriors and apply a little elbow grease. Such tripe rolls easily off the tongues of those pulling down six, seven or eight figure incomes, people who nestle safely within the confines of their gated communities and rest upon the comfortable support of their inherited or plundered fortunes.
Yet far from having ended, thanks to the tireless efforts of Goldwater, Buckley, Nixon, Reagan, Cheney, Bush, and a host of other neo-fascists, the enduring socioeconomic struggle has reached a fever pitch. Tragically, the ruling elite have utilized their formidable agitprop to beguile the confused masses into believing that our depraved system’s victims (and their champions) are the enemy.
Consider:
In stark contrast to George Bush, a man responsible for the deaths of a million or more Iraqis and Afghanistanis plus thousands of US Americans in New Orleans and Iraq, Hugo Chavez has no blood on his hands. And Chavez, a man who has mitigated the suffering of millions of people, is the “threat”.
Resistance fighters battling to expel an imperialist foreign occupier which has been waging genocide against the Iraqi people since the Gulf War are “terrorists”. The invading hordes are hailed as “liberators”.
Ridiculously out-gunned and out-financed Palestinian groups like Hamas, which resort to violence in a desperate attempt to counter brutal Zionist ethnic cleansing, Apartheid, occupation, and colonization, commit “acts of terror” when they kill Israeli civilians. Conversely, Israeli IDF forces are “fully justified” when they commit murder on a much wider scale because they are “defending Israel’s right to exist”.
One can find numerous other instances of the empowered establishment vilifying and attacking the “wretched refuse”, but let’s rewind a few years for a revealing look at a specific example of the pernicious machinations of the opulent. Concurrently, we will also explore a potential solution to the cancer of American Capitalism which plagues the Earth and nearly every living being on it.
Free at last?
Liberation Theology, a movement widely embraced by Central and South American priests and bishops in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, traces its roots back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was hanged in 1943 for his resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. Interpreting Christ’s teachings as a clarion call to devote their lives to the struggle for social justice and human rights, people like Don Helder Camara, Leonardo Boff, Dorothy Stang, and Oscar Romero faced harassment, punitive action from the Vatican, persecution, and assassination in their quests to uplift the exploited, violated, and destitute.
The Red Bishop
Taking on both the Vatican and the military dictatorship that ruled his home nation of Brazil from 1964 to 1985, the Red Bishop, Don Helder Camara, was a fearless advocate for the down-trodden. World renowned for relentlessly assailing the ruthless Brazilian government for human rights violations, Camara attacked the Right Wing elements of the Catholic Church with equal vigor. Before Pope John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, his reactionary confidant, effectively silenced most liberation theologians (because of their Marxist tendencies), Camara managed to significantly advance the cause of humanity in Brazil.
Camara is noted for once having said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”
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