Empire or Republic: from
James Petras
Introduction
On May 29, 2011, President Obama visited
Coincidentally the same week Afghan President Karzai condemned the killing of a family of 14 by a NATO fighter bomber, running the total to several hundred civilians killed so far this year and thousands over the decade.
The relation between the civilian deaths in
Geography of Tornados
Every year at least 20 major violent tornadoes – with winds exceeding 200 mph – hit “tornado alley” and beyond, including central Texas, northern Iowa, central Kansas, Nebraska, western Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Each and every year at least sixty are killed and several hundred are maimed and injured. This year, through May 2011, over 519 have been killed, 25% of whom were in mobile homes, almost three times as many as those in standard houses.
In other words, these tornado-related deaths are predictable, annual, and region-specific and have a higher incidence among low income households. Government agencies and academics have compiled data banks and time series information mapping the route, frequency and impact of tornadoes.
Information about the nature of killer tornadoes is plentiful. Nevertheless deaths mount from year to year. Fear and insecurity stalks the region’s most susceptible to the violent whirlwinds, even as the Congress and White House have increased personnel and funding for ‘Homeland Security’ twenty fold over the decade .The current budget is over $180 billion. If we add the deaths caused by other ‘natural’ disasters like the flooding of
The reason is clear: ‘Homeland Security’ (HS) is an Orwellian misnomer. The agency is not concerned with domestic, civilian, American security. HS is part of a military-police response to imagined overseas threats, which have not materialized or at least have not produced deaths comparable to tornadoes and floods in the last 11 years.
HS spends billions and employs thousands to investigate, spy and harass citizens engaged in legal-constitutional activities. HS and the Pentagon spend tens of billions on overseas infrastructures – buildings, bases, camps -and over 900 billion in arms. HS and the Defense Department forcefully intervene militarily throughout the world via overt and clandestine operations.
To be precise HS intervenes offensively overseas, attacking civilian targets, while it fails to engage domestically to protect American civilians who are left defenseless in the face of predictable natural disasters.
HS and the Pentagon’s sustained violent overseas operations are rejected and regarded as a hostile imperial intervention by the civilians in those countries adversely affected. In contrast, defenseless citizens in the
The current activity of HS destroys lives abroad and neglects survival at home: It has nothing to do with our “homeland” and even less with our “security”. Five percent of HS budget would have prevented many of
Systemic Bases of Perpetual Domestic Neglect
Death from ‘natural’ events raises a fundamental POLITICAL question: Why is the budget of Homeland Security and the Pentagon directed overseas, toward destructive, offensive, military activity rather than to domestic, constructive, defensive activity to protect American lives and productive economic activity?
The problem is systemic not due to some personal flaw or political idiosyncrasy of the moment. The structures of the
Nevertheless, the entire political spectrum, the two parties, the Congress and the White House over the past 30 years, have created an artificial consensus in which overseas wars, foreign aid to patrons (Israel) and clients (Pakistan and Egypt) absorbs the greatest percentage of budgetary spending. No political or economic leadership has stepped forward to articulate the obvious connection between global expansion and domestic decay; to forcefully state that the deterioration of the republic is a direct product of the vast resources channeled into military and economic empire building. Who on
Listen
Their message is loud and clear:
Small towns and trailer parks do not count! You have your 2nd amendment (the ‘right to bear arms’), you have your ‘small government’, and you have your flags: ‘Wav ‘em and weep’ as tornadoes blow down your houses and your sons and daughters return wrapped in flags to the Battle Hymn of the Empire!
Conclusion
One might argue that community storm shelters won’t break the Treasury or reverse the empire. More to the point, their absence, from the federal, state and local political agenda, is emblematic of the total subordination of domestic
Conquering
When you hear the tornado warning, it’s up to you. As a proud, free American you can find a rock to crawl under and say your prayer: the Federal government and Homeland Security have the Endless, World-wide War against Terror to fight and cannot be bothered by a
We exaggerate: Obama will jet in and speak before the cameras in solemn terms of the ‘tragedy’ and ‘courage’ of the people of
In the meantime, as the empire continues to grow it destroys its own people, just like the sow that devours its offspring.
by JK | Change in a society is not measured in years but in scores of years. The 1960s constituted the last noteworthy change in our country. Today, we are on the cusp of change again, dramatic, epochal change—change that hopefully will reverse the downward slide we have faced of late. This pending change is born from the discontent of the dispossessed majority and from the erosion of prospects for the rising generation. Unease is felt all over America, among every group, in every geographical setting — in all walks of life. It is not slaked by establishment ideals: diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, egalitarianism. Indeed, these ideals, and their misguided application by our leaders, fan the flames of our discontent and will drive the tumultuous change of the 2010s.
