"You don't know what's happening here, do you, Mr. Jones?"

I don't know what the relationship between sulfur and the devil is, but as Mr. Chavez repeated it several times, it must have escaped what I had thought was my good Christian education. Of course, American pundits were quick to jump on that "tinhorn dictator", our own dictator wearing a solid sivler star, or is is that a spoon? More than twenty years ago Reagan was pushing the "evil empire" and his chilluns, the neocons, have their own axis of evil. All these epithets are provocative though vapid rhetoric. Let's everyone demonize everyone else. It certainly fits with American culture which more and more is a war of all against all. It's just competition, just a be all you can be society. And for nearly all of us we can't be much since wealth is flowing away from us to the winners.

Listening to "conservative" commentators one of them made an astute observation: reflecting on the week's events, including Chavez, his impression was that the world was "moving on" while the US was standing still. His senses were on the mark: the US is fighting a counterrevolutionary war around the world. Freed from choosing sides in a Soviet-US worldspace, nations are feeling their independence, flexing their muscles and seeking a way forward that doesn't require submission to US captial. Of course, there is only one true opponent to capitalism and that is socialism, and since Soviet leaders sold out their countrymen for disorder, destruction and a few billion dollars, the world's budding socialists will have to make do without Soviet protection.

Seeing the poverty and death that the Bush/Cheney junta is unleashing upon the world, I decided to look into the past, as in just how evil was Reagan's evil empire? This is a complex task, and very time consuming. One thing that stands out, in quite stark relief, is that the USSR seems to have been a brake upon the unchecked aggression of the US. Today we have an America uncontained and the picture is ugly.

And if one studies the history of the USSR and its relationship with the US it quickly becomes obvious that to really understand things you have to go back decades, you have to learn about Stalin and the socialism he built and the methods he used and the reasons things happened as they did. Looking through my local, very well-stocked library, they have dozens, literally, of books just on Stalin, and they all mimic each other and even use each other as sources. But we know all about Stalin, don't we? The world's worst monster; the biggest mass murderer; inventor of the personality cult; creator of the gulag; a megalomaniac; etc. And if you really look deep, reading original source material, you find very little of this. The evidence that Stalin murdered 20-30 million Soviet citizens basically doesn't exist. That difficult and painful times occurred and that many suffered is undeniable, but to take anecdotal reports of famine and spin these tales into deliberate murder through starvation is grandiose; more, it's grotesque. For example, one writer does the usual Western thing in belittling Soviet statistical reports (they always lie, you know) then reverses course and chooses to believe their census reports of 1929 and 1939 and an expected growth rate and concludes that 10 million people disappeared (or were never born, he allows) and attributes these to famine deaths in 1931 alone, an acknowledged bad year early in the collectivization compaign. And this guesswork alone is the source that Stalin murdered 10 million people in 1931.

Even if it were true that the Soviet population were short 10 million, a more reasonable surmise (there are not enough facts for an inference,which is logical deduction, or for a conclusion) would, in 2006, and given the death and birth rates in post-Soviet Russia, be that in tough times the birth rate falls drastically due to fears and uncertainty about the future and that this rate takes years to recover. Should Sachs from Harvard be charged with crimes against humanity because his advice to the Yeltsin government caused so many "deaths?"

The sources that most of these writers use are few, inconclusive, and slanted. A favorite one is Leon Trotsky (Bronstein). Reading old Soviet material it seems the Trot had it in for Stalin from the beginning and the best surmise I could form is that it was based on class snobbishness. Trotsky always derided Stalin for crudeness and stupidity. Both Lenin and Trotsky were petit-bourgeios in their backgrounds while Stalin was raised a true proletarian. I was surprised by this discovery. An obvious thing I thought I'd find was Stalin's authoritarianism but it turns out that the Trot was even worse: he wanted to militarize the factories with non-compliant workers subject to military discipline,ie, shot. I thought I'd find that Stalin was power-mad and revelled in being king of the heap, and a bit, well, slow. But if you look through as much source material as you can you will find... what? Stalin had a first class intellect, a prodigious memory, difficult and aggressive in debate though not in a personal way. He would not suffer fools or laziness or incompetence but with fact-based, well-reasoned arguments anyone might win the day. To Stalin none of this was personal. He lived simply and a leather, fur-lined coat that he wore in the winte r of 1917 he was still wearing 36 winters later at his death.

There is a lot more to say, and to learn, about the Stalin era. It seems he wasn't crazy, or stupid, or incompetent or bloodthirsty. But I already know about a lot of the lies our Leaders and Teachers tell us in the United States. Why shouldn't much, if not most, of their tales about Uncle Joe be lies as well? The world is moving on, trying to find ways of living peacefully, harmoniously and survivably. Meanwhile, Dubya and his reactionary, counterrevolutionists are fighting to keep back the tide and us under heel. So much we need to learn; so much we need to do.

What Can 9/11 Teach Us?

When I saw the "new" Osama videotape on the nightly news the first thing that came to mind was that it had been released by the Republicans or the administration. Such is the cynicism that five plus years of Dubya's "leadership" has caused. Actually, not having seen the full video and not knowing Arabic I, like all of you, am forced to rely on the media to do the interpreting for me. But we know trusting journalists and media owners to educate us puts us at peril. So I don't know what to make of it; what it is supposed to mean; why it is both old and newly released. It has been reported that Osama wanted the US to invade Afghanistan to further incense Muslims and that Bush was all too obliging, and that the Iraqi invasion was icing on the cake for anti-American recruiting. If Osama or AlQaeda is behind the release of the video maybe he wants to help Republicans in November, the idea being that Bush is Osama's unwitting(?) accomplice.

There are several competing conspiracy theories about 9/11. The official one is that Osama, once a CIA asset in the mujihadeen war against the USSR in Afghanistan, used Taliban-led Afghanistan to develop and deploy suicide bombers to attack America. It's been reported that in the days before 9/11 the US sought agreement with the Taliban to build a pipeline from former Soviet republics (primarily Turkmenistan) through Afghan territory to Pakistan and India. The purpose was to use natural resources open to US control and to ice out Iran, the logical competitor. These reports include threats from the US representatives to bomb Afghanistan if they refused. Then 9/11 occurred and we simply invaded. Other reports exist that the Taliban offered to turn over Osama to the US if we provided some evidence of his guilt. It has never been clear to me just why and how Osama was tied to 9/11 and this latest video release hasn't increased my knowledge. Currently, the Taliban resurgence should be worrisome to Americans; the British in the 19th century and the Russians in the 20th couldn't subdue and hold that country. What makes us think we can succeed today? At any event, this resurgence is throwing the monkey wrench into the proposed Turkmenistan-Baluchistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline and Indians are hurriedly intensifying their discussions with Iran over getting natural gas from an Iranian pipeline. All of this does help to explain why we invaded Afghanistan in the first place and why we haven't found Osama and why Bush doesn't really want to talk about that. Both invasions and occupations, Afghanistan and Iraq, are part of a policy of increasing domination of US-based capital over world energy resources, and if we bomb Iran that will be part of that same policy. The old saw, useful in Watergate: follow the money. It is about oil; and economic domination in general.

Akin to a magician or mesmerizer, Bush wants to control our focus, our attention. He wants us only to see what he is willing to show, and to believe only what he preaches. And his prime motivator is fear. When the 9/11 events were researched and reviewed it was found that US intelligence was, in fact, pretty good. Bureaucracy, interagency communication, disinterested leadership were at fault. People failed, not law or technology! But from those days in 2001 we've had a steady drumbeat demaninding more draconian laws, more intrusive spying, more and more secrecy. Perhaps one day we'll have a president who wears a hood so malefactors won't be able to identify, find and harm him. Never having been a supporter of Clinton, nonetheless, in comparison he seemed more intelligent and a lot less dangerous than our current leader. Clinton was impeached over lying about sex acts. Bush got reelected by lying about Iraq, and starting an illegal, aggressive war. Listening to the news I often think that a group of bright 9th graders would make both better leaders and better journalists. Intelligent youths would see to the heart of matters and ask provocative questions that cut to the quick. In the world that we know, it takes many years of indoctrination to learn to lie well and to become stupid enough to swallow those lies. So much for education.