Our creature comforts have made silent cowards of us all.

... absolute power corrupts absolutely. - Lord Acton

All a man can betray is his conscience. - Joseph Conrad

"We do it because we can," the military man said smugly. And by such philosophy, the corporate American war machine tries to take the world to its grave.

The former general and recent Secretary of State Colin Powell's words still ring in my ears: "We don't count the Iraqi dead," he said. Perhaps it was because he knew he couldn't count that high.

For a month I've looked around for something positive to say, something encouraging, uplifting, productive ... and failing that, perhaps something consoling, some obvious explanation of the twisted perversion that has wrapped its petrochemical tentacles around the throat of humanity and keeps squeezing.

Across the gray landscape of languid lies and malevolent misconceptions, I see nothing to cling to. No ray of hope. Only lies, self-serving twists of what used to be called logic. Freedom is no longer safe, they tell us. You must have a number. And while you're at it, take this toxic vaccine, and no, you won't be able to sue the manufacturer if you get sick. Just do it, as the slogan commands us.

The right to a fair trial is no longer guaranteed. You can be put in jail or executed for reasons that can be kept secret. And still, on the crumbling streets of America, most people go about their business as if nothing has happened.

Sensible people, who in the deepening darkness of their own secret hearts must realize something has definitely happened, that something definitely will happen. Sensible people, suddenly afraid to speak what they really believe for fear their neighbors will overhear and tell someone with a gun and a uniform, or worse, an employer with an important contract who wants no employees who don't agree with the way things are. And then, they think, paralyzed by fear, who will feed the kids? Scared silence follows.

Who would have thought that democracy would come to mean tyranny? OK, Orwell. And many other now unpopular voices, never heard in our manacled media.

Who would have thought, when all was said and done, that America would turn out to be the chief threat to the survival of all life on this planet? But as the announcer always reminds us, this is why we play the game. You never know how it will turn out.

How it has turned out is like this.

No one dares to speak the truth in America, because if they do, they will be removed from the corrupt system of profit-making that enables them to remain smug and secure (they think) in their never-paid-off homes. Just think of all those well-paid journalists and broadcasters who pretend to be such authorities on what's going on in the world.

Not one of them dares to mention, as they wax opportunistically compassionate over the quarter million dead from the suspicious tsunami in the Indian Ocean, that a nearly equal number of equally innocent corpses has been generated by their own hypocrisy in the gutters of various Fallujahs in countries they can barely remember the names of. Nobody's even talking about the continuing genocide in central Africa.

Not one of them dares to mention that two brothers counted more than 80 percent of the votes in the recent American election (and both of them were publicly enthusiastic about re-electing the tyrant in office), that there were discrepancies in the counting of those votes ONLY in places where there was unverifiable computerized voting, and that poor people everywhere were physically and mentally discouraged from going to the polls. Or that even the candidate who lost didn't really object to losing.

Not one of them dares to mention that America, their country, is deliberately killing its own soldiers by (1) putting them into a poorly organized military deployment where they will likely be killed by the very people they are trying to rape, kill, and intimidate into accepting the corporate totalitarianism that the killers don't even realize they are supporting, and (2) by polluting their bodies with dangerous ammunition that will kill them with cancer a few short years down the road. Almost no one realizes 10,000 Americans have died as a result of the first Gulf War. A few of the pundits (are you listening, Mike Ruppert?) mention that population reduction is a good idea, however, giving us all just a glimpse of the blood in the teeth of their smiles.

And not one of them dares to mention the contrived horror of 9/11, and the self-serving lies that followed, the total coverup that was called an investigation, and the vigilante hysteria that followed, unleashing a mindless bloodlust to kill who they told us to kill, who just happened to be people they wanted to steal from.

We see from American behavior in Iraq - the endless and deliberate killings of innocent bystanders, the indiscriminate bombing of a population we insist we are rescuing, and the corrupt prevention of independent reporting on the terrible crimes we are committing - that the United States is a nation of conscienceless killers, who have absolutely no regard for the welfare and safety of wholly innocent people who happen to reside outside their borders. Americans hide their atrocious deeds in self-serving rationalizations that nobody really believes, not even, I suspect, the people who are uttering them.

And we see from American behavior inside America - the acceptance of their government's lies about 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and continuing promises of further invasions of other innocent countries - that the United States is a nation of foul, cowardly, heartless, psychotic and unprincipled murderers, who have blackmailed the rest of the world into accepting their racist imperalism and aggression at the point of their very big guns.

There is no terror threat. It was invented by the Israelis in the White House who wanted to take the focus off the genocide going on in Israel. The 9/11 deception will not be solved until the Israeli component of it is unearthed, and right now, that won't happen because the entire 9/11 skeptics movement is riddled with Israeli moles and Zionist apologists.

How long will the world wait to do something about this menace, now that it has been proven that no matter how many actual Americans disapprove of this consumately sociopathic behavior, they are powerless to stop the corporate war machine, which they support by their silence, from plundering the planet into an irreversibly toxic condition.

By their actions over the past century, Americans have revealed themselves to be psycho killers in pursuit of profit at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

They must be stopped, and if Americans can't stop themselves, then someone else must, for the benefit of what is good and right and noble and honest.

The real terrorists are the Americans (and their sidekicks the British, the Israelis and the Australians), and the rest of the world needs to wake up to that before it's too late for everyone.

If the United States were ever to consent to the auspices of a genuinely honest World Court (which is why we won't), its leaders would easily be convicted of widespread genocide and crimes against humanity, and be sentenced to the maximum penalty.

By their silent complicity, the American people are accessories to all these horrendous crimes before, during, and after the fact, and deserve the same punishment as its leaders.

It's a little something to remember when on that fateful day the world finally comes calling to repay America for the gifts it has bestowed upon the world.

Just don't say you didn't know. Because people with guns don't listen.

John Kaminski's Internet essays can be seen on hundreds of websites around the world. They have been collected into two anthologies, the latest of which is titled "The Perfect Enemy," about how the Zionist-controlled U.S. government created the terrorist group knowns as al-Qaeda.

skylax@comcast.net

by John Kaminski, 2-1-5