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"Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Each and every state that does not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its own security". 

"The reasons are still there to repeat what happened”.
– Osama bin Laden

We’re just scared out of our wits, aren’t we?  An entire nation of frightened people, looking for someone bigger to save us.  The Anybody But Bush contingent is afraid of George W’s dictatorial belligerence, and of what will happen to what’s left of our economy and civil liberties should he be elected.  I haven’t dared try the Vulcan mind meld on any Bush supporters so far, but it’s fairly obvious, given their martial rhetoric, that they believe that only Bush can save us from terrorists and evil-doers. 

So at the end, according to BBC, “Bush and Kerry trade terror jibes”, the campaign bickering turned upon the “terror” issue.   

Bush accused Kerry of following “the path of weakness and inaction". 

Kerry countercharged that President Bush missed the chance to capture Bin Laden when he was cornered. 

Quien es mas macho?  Which gunslinger is strong enough, smart enough, ruthless enough, to hunt ‘em down and smoke ‘em out and keep the town from being shot up by the bad guys? 

And what does the Boogie Man In Chief, Osama bin Laden, have to say about all this?

Ironically, what he tells us is the truth.  No one can save us but ourselves.  Our security is in our own hands.   

What, in his opinion, would guarantee our safety?   

More bombs, more troops deployed, more incarcerations and searches and surveillance of our own citizens?  Should we simply turn out our pockets and drop every penny we have into national “defense”, when we already have more than enough firepower to destroy this planet a couple of times before we move on the next one?  Should we feed more and more of our young people’s bodies into the maw of war, and slaughter many more thousands of civilians all over the world? 

No, there is a much cheaper, easier way out of this mess.   

In bin Laden’s words, “Each and every state that does not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its own security". 

Yeah, that’s all.  Just leave other countries alone.  Respect their sovereignty.  Don’t bomb their cities.  Don’t demand their resources and loyalty and cooperation at gunpoint, as the U.S. has been wont to do for more than a century. 

Not such a hard thing to do, one would think.  So the president who would truly assure our safety would propose the following: 

End the occupation of Iraq.   

Now.  Pull those U.S. corporate paws out of that monkey trap, pull the troops out of the hell of occupying a nation that doesn’t appreciate tanks rumbling through its streets and bombs obliterating its families and homes.  Unfortunately, many, even in the so-called “anti-war” contingent, have fallen for the “we broke it, we have to fix it” excuse for continuing the slaughter there.  “Oh, but we have to stay now.  If we suddenly pull out, there would be chaos, slaughter, civil war, etc.” 

Say WHAT?  Every single day of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, there is slaughter, chaos, and destruction.  How would things be worse there if U.S. forces stopped “pounding Fallujah” on a regular basis?   

And what better crucible can exist for the grief and outrage and desperation in which “terrorism” is forged? 

Stop supporting the genocide in Palestine. 

Both Bush and Kerry pledge their strong support to Israel, and both would continue to fund and arm Sharon’s merciless campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.  Now really.  Doesn’t it stand to reason that decades of funneling billions of dollars a year into the support of a brutal, expansionist, self-proclaimed theocracy just might arouse that country’s neighbors’ ire against us? 

Withdraw support of economic globalization and its totalitarian destruction of the working class.   

President Clinton was the midwife at the birth of the NAFTA monster, and is in part responsible for all the human lives and livelihoods it has devoured since 1994. 

These economic assaults on other sovereign countries, backed up as they are by deadly force, will naturally arouse rage and opposition and the use of deadly force in return.  As Bob Marley sang, “A hungry man is an angry man”.  So angry, and so threatening to the ruling class on this planet that the most determined and violent suppression of any protests have been brought down upon those opposing the FTAA and G-8 summits.

Whatever the outcome of today’s election, the U.S. occupation of Iraq will continue.  The IDF and Israeli settlers will continue to occupy and terrorize Palestinians.  Both Kerry and Bush have promised to continue to use deadly force to control land and resources in the Middle East. The U.S. will continue to swinishly consume a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources, creating deadly poverty and inciting outrage all over the globe. 

What bin Laden said about the causes of terrorist attacks on the U.S. was true yesterday, and will be true tomorrow.   

"The reasons are still there to repeat what happened”. 

No one bigger will save us.  Until we take our government into our own hands, rather than sitting back and waiting for the ruling elite and its media whores to present us with a “choice,” we will be in peril both abroad and in our own country. 

So long as we shrug and sigh and cast our votes for the “lesser of two evils” in election after election, we cast our vote for the evil of brutal capitalist expansionism that puts us in deadly danger, that empties our treasury, impoverishes our nation, and forces us to give up our own children to slaughter and be slaughtered by others.  Our toil for their wealth; our blood and grief and loss for the power lust of a few parasitic recipients of passive wealth.

I have wondered, watching the absurd and petty spectacle of the presidential campaigns, reading of the growing poverty and desperation in our own country, even amidst the most obscene and rapacious consumerism, and seeing reports of continued massacres of civilians throughout the world by our government and as a result of its policies, “Are we a nation of feral swine, or of sheep being led to slaughter?” 

If we were worthy of the designation, “free country,” as even school children declare this do be, we would take our security and our destiny into our own hands.  We would not flock to vote for any evil. We would realize that no one bigger will save us, and would begin to organize among ourselves to do just what our Declaration of Independence dictates in the situation in which we find ourselves: 

If a government ceases to derive its “just powers from the consent of the governed”…”it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their happiness and safety.” 

*The Book of the SubGenius:
Lunatic Prophecies For The Coming Weird Times

Bulatlat 

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© 2004 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

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