America built a prison and put the world on Death Row

John Kaminski The other shoe
November 24, 2003


My life is like a cage of pain. Oh, I'm healthy enough for my age, though I eat too much junk and don't exercise enough.  I talk to the most brilliant people, caring people, the ones most aghast at the way the world has become a slick cistern of vicious lies, where the truth is what powerful men say it is, and the old values like honor and sacrifice are laughed at by teenage boys boogie boarding in the surf and trying to figure out a way to live their lives without working. In this still warm November sunshine, trudging aimlessly along a pristine beach, amid shorebirds scurrying for their next meal, I feel like I am on Death Row.

    Of course I am embarrassed to say this, with my easy life and available contentment all around me. I am shamed by men like Ernst Zundel, who languishes in his tiny prison cell in Canada, abused by callous guards and corrupt judges, who can speak of the noble nature of mankind and how it is time to organize that urge and rise up against the maniacs who enslave us with their jingoistic doublespeak. How can he, who has so little, see so much freedom, and how can I, who have so much, feel so imprisoned?

    Sometimes I imagine I am living the life of the world, and try my darnedest to see where it is going, where things are headed. I haven't seen any dolphins this year, all year. Used to be, last year and before, I'd see them everytime I looked out to sea. But red tide's been in all summer. Shouldn't swim in it. Get a sore throat. But usually it doesn't smell like it sometimes does, when it makes you cough. The blight doesn't keep the tourists away. They're happy enough to have escaped the snows of New Jersey. But it miss my dolphins. It's not a good sign.

    And I miss other things, too. Yes, of course that girl who lit my life but insisted I was lying. That's probably a lump of coal that will never leave my throat. But I miss my country, too, the one I was taught to believe meant liberty and justice for all. What a joke that was, when you finally get around to reading how George Washington slaughtered Indians in Ohio or American soldiers went around executing peasants in Vietnam without anybody ever hearing about it until 40 years later.

    Of course, of course, and about American soldiers murdering innocent families in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom, right? Freedom from life, is what.

    I miss my country, the one I was taught I had. I think soon too I will miss my planet, given the condition of the fractured ionosphere, the particulated air, the poisoned oceans, and the toxic soil. (A friend put her hands in her garden in a well-heeled Sarasota subdivision recently and came out with chemical burns that took weeks to heel.) This is not to even mention the radioactivity being spread around the planet. You know. It's in the bullets. Oh yes, and also in the sperm of the soldiers who come home in one piece.

    In the bright sunshine, dimmed somewhat by those curious chemtrails in the sky, I feel like I am on Death Row. And it's more than the doctrinaire existential dilemma of turning 59. Death from old age would be a comfort to look forward to. It's just that more and more I feel hope is being systematically removed from the world. That a great extermination is about to take place. And, through my inattention to things economic and my willingness to speak about my dreams, I am in the lead phalanx on America's inexorable death march toward Camp Ashcroft.

    Others I talk to share my malaise. I hope they have more food in their cupboards than I do. But they too will face this moment.

    It was compelling to read the other day of the interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine of retired Gen. Tommy Franks saying one more terrorist attack in this country and all Constitutional guarantees will be terminated. It is one of the great satisfactions of my life that ten minutes after the so-called terrorist attacks of 9/11 I exclaimed, "This was an inside job!" It's nice to have been proven right, even though a majority of Americans have yet to catch up with the obvious evidence.

    Looking forward to that first Red Alert, where nobody will be allowed to leave their homes, and the military will come around, checking out everybody, house by house, no doubt dragging a few away kicking and screaming. Or, maybe they'll sedate you on the spot.

    It was somewhat reassuring today to read a letter from a Wyoming newspaper stating that anybody who would work as hard to prevent an investigation into a crime obviously had something to do with the crime itself. This is a revelation that is slowly dawning on all Americans: that all those people in New York and Washington were murdered, not by Arab terrorists, but by rich businessman and contemptuous bankers, who are all still profiting from the business of mass death.

    Yet the realization comes too slow, too late. Not one politician dares even whisper the sentiment. OK, LaRouche.

    I am reading increasing signs that the bottom is about to drop out of the American dollar. They're talking bread lines in '04. That will be a great campaign slogan for all those disgusting Democrats who steadfastly refuse to discuss the real issues that are destroying America and the world right before our eyes.

    In the meantime, with freedom and the health of the planet precariously hanging in the balance, the needless killing continues: not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Philippines and the Congo ... you know the list - it's long. The needless killing also continues here at home. Did you know that deaths from reactions to properly taken medicines exceeds the totals for auto accidents and cancer? Check out those new designer drug ads on TV and imagine how many extra people they're killing. I love that story about how the death rate goes down when doctors go on strike.

    That's the place America has come to, and Americans deserve it, too, because of their sheer, selfish inattention to what has been happening, to what has been done in their names. And as with the extermination of 60 million native Americans that has served as the models for genocides by both Stalin and Sharon, Americans don't really care about who gets killed as long as those sale prices stay low.

    It's a sunny day. I feel like I'm on Death Row. I feel like the Earth is on Death Row, and America, George W. Bush in particular, is the executioner.

    It feels like the other shoe is about to fall. Will it be an environmental catastrophe, the bursting of the Earth's atmospheric bubble by America's satanic tinkering with the ionosphere, or the collective poison of chloroflourocarbons (or was it fluorochlorocarbons?) denuding our protection from the sun's potentially deadly rays?

    Will it be from some designer disease like AIDS or SARS or Ebola suddenly lurching out of control as the American government continues to insist it is tinkering with these poxes only for defensive purposes?

    Will it be chemtrails to finally choke the life out of us, or that government-issued bronchitis that everybody seems to have right now? Or will we all die of thirst when all the water supplies are finally privatized and firmly controlled by multinational corporations? Who will make the decision on who will drink and who will not?

    Perhaps some new electromagnetic pulse weapon to blow our brains out through our ears in a single, massive moment?

    Will we be blown to bits by a suitcase nuke planted by the Mossad and blamed on al-Qaeda? Does everybody know yet that all these explosions all over the world are being carried out by the CIA/Mossad operation known as al-Qaeda? And speaking of that, have you heard anything new out of the official government investigation into 9/11? No, I didn't think so.

    Will we be beaten to death, or at least seriously injured like they were on the streets of Miami last week for simply trying to express their First Amendment rights (oops, sorry, we no longer have Constitutional guaranteees) and protest the continuing destruction of the American economy?

    Will we be spirited away in the middle of the night for pointing out that all those peasants murdered in Afghanistan and Iraq lost their lives for reasons that were demonstrably untrue? Or that the U.S. government prosecutes poor people for misdemeanors committed trying to stay alive, but doesn't prosecute rich people who kill millions and steal millions? That is truly American justice, and maybe should be codified in the Patriot Act. Hell, maybe it already has been.

    Will it be the food that will get us, or the Diet Coke? Or will it be our own children who will kill us, recently arrived back from "police action" in Iraq and joining our local constabulary, and eventually treating their own families just like they did those hapless folks in Iraq?

    Or will it be starvation, the worst way of all to go. Many already face this problem; many more are sure to in the next few months when prices rise like they did in Argentina and the money is suddenly worth next to nothing.

    The other shoe. It's about to drop. The giant leather sole of a combat boot, about to press down on our very own faces. Be sure and listen carefully when it does, when you see the last light of day snuffed out by the giant jackboot of corporate America smashing down on your face. You will hear "The Star Spangled Banner" playing smartly in the background.

    This is what the storied history of America has evolved into. Liberty and justice are gone, and the phrase "under God" is a meaningless campaign slogan to anesthetize churchgoers who refuse to think or listen. America's penchant for building prisons is now a worldwide operation. There is no one to stop it ... except you. What chance do we have? We are all on Death Row.

    Except for a certain, chosen few - those who are willing to lie, cheat, steal and kill, and take the money for doing it - we are all Palestinians now.


    John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," temporarily unavailable on the web, but available by writing to the e-mail address above. More of his columns, however, are available at http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html