"Immigration" Reform: The Problem Is War And Poverty, Not A Lack of Passports.

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(Wall in Tijuana marking the deaths of people trying to get into the U.S.)

When Marie Antoinette, the "It" girl of pre-revolutionary France, was told that the people were starving because they had no bread, she said "Let them eat cake." She thought this was a reasonable solution -- a way to solve the problem. But she was wrong, because she did not understand or acknowledge what the real problem was. The problem was that the people were desperately poor and could not afford to buy bread or cake.

Now, as then, the problem in this country and the world with "immigration" isn't really a problem that can be solved by making visas, "guest" worker programs, or passports more readily available, will not be solved or even ameliorated by amnesty programs. The problem isn't "immigration" -- the problem is war and poverty. Desperate, grinding, hopeless poverty in which much of the world lives.

Two Percent of the people in the world own Fifty Percent of the world's wealth. If we simply take that 50% away from those 2% and redistribute it, that would allow people to stay in their own countries and live decent lives. It is never a good thing, not a real solution, to promote policies and programs to make it easier for poor people to send their children to other countries to do slave labor, so they can send money back home. That's not much of an answer to anything.

The "solution" being proposed of making it easier for people to immigrate is a bubble-headed approach, a denial of the reality. It is not progressive, liberal, or kind to suggest we should "help" the mothers of 12 year old children send their children to the U.S. to mow lawns and scrub our toilets. We're not really "helping" when we do that.

The real problem is that the U.S. has, throughout its history, oppressed, militarily invaded, attacked Mexico and South and Central America, stolen resources, propped up dictatorships, tortured, murdered, disappeared people, sponsored despots and dictators, all for the sole purpose of driving the people into the dirt and leaving the entire continent subdued so U.S. multinational corporations can extract the wealth with minimal interference or expense.

That is why these countries have to send their children to the U.S. as slaves. Because the U.S. has destroyed their countries. Why don't we just pay reparations to the people -- people to people -- and let them re-build their own lives. That along with staying out of their countries and letting them finally use their own resources for the benefit of their own people. That would be a real solution to the real problem -- the problem of poverty, and of hoarding of wealth by the few. Let South and Central America finally be free to develop their own economies without interference from the U.S. If Mexico has any brains, they should look south instead of continuing to align themselves with the U.S. and against their Central and Southern American neighbors.

One of the pet projects of many progressives in the U.S. and in other countries is the support of movements to "reform" immigration laws. Essentially they propose that anyone who is living in a country without having the permission of the country to be there should be granted amnesty, a right to stay and to become a citizen. They also propose that all other people should be allowed to move freely into the magnet countries, to work, live, go to school, use all the public services available to citizens, and to become citizens if they choose.

The people who support these "reforms" of immigration laws are entirely short-sighted in their analysis, although they may well be compassionate in their motivations.

The end result of these "reforms" will simply be to flood developed countries with the desperately poor people from third world countries, to smash all countries down to poverty, destroy nations that now provide a decent living for their own citizens. Moving millions of poor people into a developed nation has the effect of draining the resources of the developed nation. The surge of desperate workers also has the effect of bringing down wages, working conditions, benefits, and eliminating job security.

It is simply a fact that when there is a labor shortage, workers have more power in negotiating with their employers for better wages, benefits, working conditions, and they have more job security because it is difficult to replace them. And the opposite is also true: when there are thousands lined up to fill one job, the wages plummet, benefits are non-existent, job security is eliminated.

Current TV had a two-hour special on about immigration around the world, and they showed the desperate measures taken by the poor to reach a developed nation where there might be jobs. One segment was on Africans who cross the ocean in rafts to reach Italy in the hope of finding work there. Many die on the voyage. For those who survive, once they arrive in Italy, the illegal immigrants are unwanted, live under bridges, and have miserable lives. But even sleeping on the ground under a bridge is a better life for them because there is no work in their own countries.

One segment showed young people from Guatemala who jump onto tanker trains (they call it the "Death Train"), hang onto bars to ride through Mexico. Among the dangers are that they may slip, lose their grip, fall asleep, or get hit by something and fall off the train, get run over by the train, and have arms or legs cut off. This amputation from the trains is so common that there is a special recovery home in Mexico which provides help to all the people who have lost arms and legs because they fell off the trains. Once they reach northern Mexico, they still had to walk for three days through the desert to reach the United States.



Why do they do it? Because there is no work in their own country, there is extreme poverty, and they need to find work, at whatever the risk, so they can send money home to support their families.

The United States has a long and disgraceful history of intervention, use of military, secretly funding death squads, training military right-wing dictatorships in torture, fomenting coups, destroying efforts at democracy nevermind socialism, opposing efforts to use the resources for the benefit of the people, in Mexico, Central America, and South America.

http://www.deansbeans.com/coffee/deans_zine.html?blogid=653

(Waiting For The Death Train)

We have created such chaos, disruption, and despair throughout the region that there is nothing there for the people, so of course they try to leave. But where should they all go? Why shouldn't they stay in their own country and be paid reparations for the harm we have done. Or even just "help" so they can support themselves on their own land.

See http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads1.htm:

"Central America, circa 1979-87. According to Americas Watch, ... 40,000-50,000 Salvadoran citizens killed by death squads and government forces [supported by the U.S.] during this period; still higher numbers in Guatemala. Chomsky, N. (1988), The Culture of Terrorism, p. 101"

"Central America, 1981-87. Death toll under Reagan in El Salvador passed 50,000 and in Guatemala it may approach 100,000. ... Death toll in region 150,000 or more. Chomsky, N. (1988). The Culture of Terrorism, p. 29"

"Central America, 1982-84. Admiral Bobby Inman, former head of NSA, ... complained that the CIA was hiring murderers to conduct operations in Central America and the Middle East. Toohey, B., and Pinwill, W. (1990). Oyster: the Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, pp. 215-6"

Of course this ignores the direct involvement of the U.S. in staging the coup in Chile in 1973 to overthrow Allende and install a military dictatorship, and our support for similar coups, military dictatorships, and bloodbaths against the citizens in Argentina. Not to mention our ongoing military occupation of the nation of Columbia to support another cheap despot and dictator.

Whenever there is massive immigration from one country to another, we need to look at the reasons. Sometimes it's war, sometimes it's drought or other environmental problems. But in this country, the cause of immigration from Mexico and from Central America is extreme poverty and destruction of their own countries. Since the U.S. has treated much of the area as a colony for decades, using our military to prop up dictatorships and supporting our corporations in stealing the wealth, the U.S. should begin paying reparations to the people of the countries that we have harmed.

Instead of demanding more liberal immigration laws, we should demand real assistance for the people of those nations. Instead of finding a cot for some recent child immigrant to sleep on, we should send them back to their own homes (to their own mothers) with money to build houses, and with investment programs to create jobs, with the education and tools to develop sustainable agriculture to feed themselves and their communities.

The problem is not immigration. The problem is poverty, war, and the destruction of their own countries. Let's help them rebuild so the children can stay home with their own mothers, which is as it should be.

"World Wealth Levels, Year 2000"

"The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER)."

Other findings:

The richest 1% of adults own 40% of the world's assets.

The richest 10% of the people own 85% of the world's assets.

The bottom 50% of the people in the world only own 1% of the wealth of the world.

A household that has $2,200 per adult in total assets ($4,400 total assets for a married couple) is the top 50% of the wealthiest people in the world.

The study also has a factor which it uses to describe the inequality of wealth in the world, which is very high. The number they calculate using their own formula is 89%, which they describe as meaning that if one person took 99% of all the wealth, and the other 9 people in a group had to share the remaining 1% of the total wealth, that is how our world is divided up today.

Authors of The World Distribution of Household Wealth, December 2006, include James Davies, Professor, in the Department of Economics at the University of Western Ontario, and Edward Wolff, Professor of Economics, New York University. For full article, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/unu-pss120106.php

Waylon Jennings - Honkytonk Heroes.

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Mr. E And The Introductory Sentence.

My high school freshman year English teacher was named Mr. E. He started the class by teaching the students how to diagram a sentence, something I had learned in 7th grade in a different school district. So I would fight to stay awake, eyelids almost meeting as I drifted off in the warm afternoons in the fall, until he would spot me and ask me to answer his question about where did "very" go, and I would pop open my eyes, look at the blackboard, and tell him where to put "very."

Mr. E called us in at the end of school, in the spring, and asked us what grade we thought we deserved. I said "A." He almost fell out of his chair, and said I was the first student who had ever said that. I don't know why he was so surprised: I was quiet, not stupid. I got the A.

Mr. E seemed to tolerate instructing 14-year-olds in basic English grammar and composition, but his true passion lay in the Thea-Tre. He taught drama in upper grades, and was the director, producer and everything else of the school plays each year.



When drama season began, Mr. E would wear a black beret to school everyday, all day. When he thought no one was looking, you could see his face collapse into a baffled despair, wondering how he had ended up instructing teenage suburban adolescents from tract homes with tv sets and barely-literate parents, and why he was not living in Paris, spending his days in cafes by the Seine drinking coffee or wine and debating the modern-day value of the Greek classics with other pretty and handsome young, talented people, all of whom would have had good paying jobs in the theatre, living in fabulous flats while writing their novels and waiting for fame to corrupt them. How did he end up in the suburbs. What a miserable fate.



I remember Mr. E spending what seemed like forever teaching us to write the introductory sentence. And after months on that insufferable topic, we actually proceeded to writing a complete paragraph. The introductory paragraph.



Little did I know that years later, I would think of Mr. E on an afternoon in May when a calm spring breeze blew the sound of chirping birds on a warm wind through the screens in my window.

If you don't get the introductory sentence right, you cannot move forward. No novel, no screenplay, no play, no article, no blog piece. You need the introductory sentence. It must grab the reader, compel them to read more.

Here's one I've been playing with for awhile.

Months later, as her bound body was dumped into the dark freezing waters of the Pacific, she regretted having picked up the phone that day, wished she had overslept and showered late, or gotten up early and went out for coffee, or simply declined the offered work even though she needed the money, but her bitter tears of regret quickly disappeared into the cold wet grave of the ocean as her oxygen-deprived brain went black.

So, what do you think?

Too girlie?

Too sentimental?

Dean Baker Is Not In the Happy Business.

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Dean Baker is a noted economist, not a cheerleader, not a paint-and-body-shop guy eager to cover up the damage that's been caused to our nation's economy by terrible federal government policies. Below he discusses unemployment. You would never know to listen to most politicians and most economists, that we have a disastrous unemployment level in this country, with absolutely no national ideas or commitment from the federal government to try to put Americans back to work. All they talk about is war, more money for Wall Street, and keeping the rich people happy.

Baker: 2010 and The Unemployment Crisis
SOURCE: TruthOut

“The country faces a serious crisis in the form of a manufactured crisis over the budget deficit. This is a crisis because concerns over the size of the budget deficit are preventing the government from taking the steps needed to reduce the unemployment rate. This creates the absurd situation where we have millions of people who are unemployed, not because of their own lack of skills or unwillingness to work, but because people like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke mismanaged the economy.

The basic story is very simple and one that we have known since Keynes. We need to create demand in the economy. The problem is that, as a society, we are not spending enough to keep the economy running at capacity. Prior to the collapse of the housing bubble, the economy was driven by booms in both residential and nonresidential construction. It was also driven by a consumption boom that was in turn fueled by the trillions of dollars of ephemeral housing bubble wealth.

With the collapse of the bubbles, both residential and nonresidential construction have collapsed. There is a huge amount of excess supply in both markets, which will leave construction badly depressed for years into the future. Together, we have lost well over $500 billion in annual demand from the construction sector. In addition, the loss of the ephemeral wealth created by the bubble has sent consumption plummeting, leading to the loss of an additional $500 billion a year in annual demand.

The hole from the collapse of construction and the falloff in consumption is more than $1 trillion a year. The government is the only force that can make up this demand. However, this means running large deficits. To boost the economy, the government must spend much more than it taxes.

The stimulus approved by Congress last year was a step in the right direction this way, but it was much too small. After making adjustments for some technical tax fixes and pulling out spending for later years, the stimulus ended up being around $300 billion a year. Even this exaggerates the impact of the government sector, since close to half of the stimulus is being offset by cutbacks and tax increases at the state and local level.

The answer in this situation should be simple: more stimulus. But the deficit hawks have gone on the warpath insisting that we have to start worrying about bringing the deficit down. They have filled the airwaves, print media and cyberspace with solemn pronouncements about how the deficit threatens to impose an ungodly burden on our children.

This is of course complete nonsense. Larger deficits in the current economic environment will only increase output and employment. In other words, larger deficits will put many of our children’s parents back to work. Larger deficits will increase the likelihood that parents can keep their homes and provide their children with the health care, clothing, and other necessities for a decent upbringing. But the deficit hawks would rather see our children suffer so that we can have smaller deficits.

In spite of the deficit hawks’ whining, history and financial markets tell us that the deficit and debt levels that we are currently seeing are not a serious problem. ....

The story is that we are forcing people to be out of work - unable to properly care for their children - because people like billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson and his followers are able to buy their way into and dominate the public debate. The reality is that we have an unemployment crisis today, not a deficit crisis. The only crisis related to the deficit is that people with vast sums of money (i.e. the people who wrecked the economy) have been able to use that money to make the deficit into a crisis.
http://realtyinfusion.tumblr.com/post/378530725/dean-baker-unemployment-crisis-2010

And here he warns about the real estate bubble which he says is still inflated, and will still need to come down before it hits bottom.

2002 was the year [Dean Baker] published “The Run-up in Home Prices: Is It Real or Is It Another Bubble?” [He predicted the collapse of the housing bubble long before anyone else did].

Fast forward to 2010, and what’s his take on today’s housing market? “We’re still in a bubble,” that’s his blunt conclusion. Baker is a startling contrast to the recovery rhetoric of TV talking heads, and he doesn’t see our Great Recession housing market as a temporary thing:

“If anything, I expect housing to be weaker than normal rather than stronger over the next decade. People who say this is a temporary story, there’s no real reason to believe anything like that.

As a matter of policy I can’t see that we want people to buy a house in 2009 that’s 10-20% higher than it would sell for in 2011. ...

Dean Baker currently works for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington DC based “think tank” he co-founded with Mark Weisbrot. ...

Blackshaw: You have said that the tragedy of the economic crash is how preventable it was. Can you explain?

Baker: It was easy to see it was a bubble. We had an unprecedented run-up in house prices. If you look back a hundred years, from 1895 to 1995, housing prices nationwide were on track with the overall rate of inflation, but in the mid-1990s they began to hugely outpace inflation. By 2006, after you adjust for inflation, they had risen more than 70 percent. This created more than $8 trillion in housing “wealth.” It should have been easy for any economist to see, but Alan Greenspan, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, either didn’t see it or, more likely, saw it but let it keep growing to ever more dangerous levels and just figured it would work itself out. The Federal Reserve Board is most directly responsible for preventing bubbles and could have taken any number of measures to prevent the run-up in house prices.

Critical Thinking in Economics

Here’s another gem from the interview, where he casually runs through his entire job description:

Blackshaw: At what point did you first become aware of the bubble?

Baker: I noticed it in 2002, after Greenspan gave testimony that there wasn’t one. His arguments did not make any sense. He cited four factors that supposedly provided a basis for the rapid rise in home prices: shortages of land, environmental restrictions on new construction, rising incomes, and growth in population. But they did not square up. Environmental restrictions had been in place since the 1960s and had not become stricter in the 1990s. Income growth was not particularly strong at that time, and population growth was actually slowing. There was no obvious reason why the supply of land should have suddenly pushed up housing prices. Plus, if it had been supply and demand in the housing market causing these huge price increases, one would have expected comparable increases on the rental side, but rents were going nowhere.

I started looking more closely at the historical trends and found that for forty-five years housing prices had kept in step with inflation, and suddenly they were outpacing it. That seemed like a bubble to me.
http://blog.realtyinfusion.com/interview/dean-baker-on-the-2010-bubble


I remember reading years ago that Dean Baker had sold his family's home, and they were renting a house instead of owning. That is because he believed the real estate bubble had run its course, and the collapse was going to wipe out a lot of people. But not him.

In the 1950s, the average income was around $5,000. A new tract home cost between $15,000 and $18,000 or 3 to 4 times gross income. By 2000, the average family income was $55,000, yet many new homes were selling for $500,000 and higher, which is 10 times gross income. (I think the chart above shows national income vs. cost of all housing, not just new housing.) That increase in the cost of a home compared to average income is a good indicator of why the housing market needs to come down even more.

If people have to pay 11 times gross to buy a home, that means they never have enough money to weather a bad spell, or unemployment, or medical problems. It also means they will likely never pay off their home. The idea of home ownership becomes an illusion. Everyone is renter, they just like to think they own. When you owe $300,000 on your home when you retire, you don't really own it. You're just renting.

To return to a fair price, houses would have to come down to around $200,000 for a new home, which means used homes would be $150,000. That means we've still got a long way to go in the overinflated markets.

The point? Economists see and understand when our economy is being manipulated, but most of them don't say anything, allowing the manipulators to loot the nation, allowing the public to be victimized. We see the same thing over and over: a bubble is created, and the federal government people in charge of our economy stay silent. Is that silence purchased, sold to Wall Street? We have seen 50% of the public's investment in Nasdaq stolen from them and put into the pockets of Wall Street. We have seen houses run up by two and three times their worth by banks, real estate developers, and Wall Street which bought the shaky mortgages and turned around, put them in a blender and whirled, then sold off the mushed-up concoction to the publoic as "secure" investments. Lots of people make money, but most working people are the victims of these con jobs. Why is our federal government silent in the fact of this ongoing theft?

If, for example, Greenspan had simply publicly said that Nasdaq was being overvalued, people would have pulled their money out and it would have gone back down to a reasonable level. If Clinton and Rubin had not worked together to eliminate restrictions on financial institutions, then banks would have been restricted to only loaning 80% of the value of a home, and most of these bad loans would never have been made, real estate would not have run up in value because most people could not have afforded to buy at the inflated prices unless they were given 100% financing. Of course the government could have and should have halted any trade agreements as soon as they saw American jobs being taken to other countries. But they did nothing. And the result is that our economy is in the toilet.

Should "Terror" Suspects Be Given Miranda Warnings?

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In this country, when a defendant is arrested, they are given what are called "Miranda" warnings. If you watch TV, you know those warnings. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

We are in a time of national stress over a type of criminal called the "terrorist." Much like the "communist," of the 1950s, and the "anarchist" of the 1920s, the "terrorist" is defined as being not limited to one nation, not clearly identifiable since they blend into society, they are almost mystical because they can fool all of us, much like the Invisible Man, they can put on a cloak and become invisible and move among us spreading their evil.

When the "enemy" is so diffuse, so hard to identify, their national identity uncertain, then law enforcement tends to overreact. They want to suspend civil liberties. Take away the rights of "them." Joe Lieberman, a despicable viper who does nothing for this country, has now introduced a law to take away "their" citizenship if they are accused of having done something. Stern punishment for vague accusations.

A few weeks ago a naturalized citizen, originally from Pakistan, allegedly packed a car full of what could have been explosives and parked it in Times Square. Luck prevented the bomb from detonating, but good old fashioned police work led to the arrest of the suspect.

But that's not good enough for the fascists among us. Instead of applauding the police and the federal government for doing an excellent job, they are now clamoring that the suspect should not have been read his Miranda warnings. Because, you know, if he was, then ... something. I'm not even sure what they think would happen.

I don't think these people want to get rid of the Miranda warnings for "terrorist" citizens originally from Pakistan. I think they want to get rid of the Miranda warnings, and all limits on the police state, which exist for the protection of the citizens of this country. They don't care about the Times Square bomber having rights. They care about the rest of us not having rights.

Most of the restrictions on the police power of the state are not really for the benefit of the defendant or the accused, although they certainly do benefit. But the restrictions are put into place for the benefit of our country, our society, all our citizens.

The reason we have a law that requires a person who is arrested be immediately advised that they do not have to speak, they have a right to an attorney, is because the police in this country (and throughout history in every country) sometimes are so convinced of the defendant's guilt, so eager to get the bad guy, that they will beat him until they get a confession.

Most of the restrictions on the police are the direct result of the police abusing their authority, beating prisoners, tricking prisoners, lying, planting evidence, sneaking into people's homes without warrants or reasonable cause. The police do what is almost inevitable, given the pressures they are under. Our constitution pushes back, telling the police that no matter how much pressure they are under, no matter how horrible the crime, they will respect the civil liberties of people in this country. This is not a police state and it is not a dictatorship.

Historically the people who are members of less popular groups are the ones who are most likely beaten, tortured into confessing, sometimes killed while in jail. Who are these unpopular people? It varies over time. In the 1920s, when the U.S. Attorney General, Palmer, worked with the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover to enhance their own power, they led a nationwide assault on foreigners who they called "anarchists," and deported them all. These were called the Palmer Raids. In the 1950s, it was the "communists" they were after, which led to the execution of the Rosenbergs in what might have been the first Cointelpro case of the despicable and murderous Mr. Hoover.

Homosexuals have always been denied rights by the police, often brutalized and demeaned and humiliated because they are considered inferior. Black people certainly have been beaten and murdered by the police, framed, imprisoned, sometimes hung. The entire Black Panther Party was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover for elimination, and many were falsely imprisoned, many were simply murdered. Hispanics have been routinely denied any civil rights in our country.

Chinese people were so hated at one point in our country that they were routinely deported or detained without rights. There was a special law called the Chinese Exclusion Laws specifically intended to keep Chinese out, get rid of the ones who are already here. No civil liberties for Chinese Americans, even those who had been here for generations. Native Americans have been simply slaughtered when the dominant state could not find a legal crime, the nation's leaders declaring them all to be savages who needed to be executed.

Usually these barbarities are carried out to "defend white womanhood and Christian society." It's pretty funny, in a sick way. Here we are again: the Christian Nation wants to kill everyone. We learn nothing.

The bush-cheney regime went a long way to take away all the legal protections that exist for the benefit of the people in this country. And don't kid yourself for a minute: the Muslim from another country who is tortured today could be your cousin from Kansas tomorrow. Abuse of power and violence by the state tends to spread, not to contract. The main question is whether Obama intends to restore the constitution or to further destroy it. It's not looking good.

White Tiger Cubs, Rico and Kico.

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Happy Mother's Day to every mother who loves white tiger cubs.


Two white tiger cubs were born on March 8 in a zoo in Germany. They have been named Rico and Kico.


The birth parents (Bianca and Paul) rejected the cubs, so they are being raised by some very lucky surrogates.

In their feature film debut, meet Rico and Kico:

May 7, 1954: Vietnamese Defeat French At Dien Ben Phu.

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This is an important day in history, but not many people in the U.S. know it, care about it, or think about its significance. On May 7, 1954, the Vietnamese defeated the French in a famous battle and rout called Dien Ben Phu.

Before World War II, France claimed Vietnam as a colony, used its people as slave labor or servants, and stole its resources. The French fled the advancing Japanese during World War II, and the Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the Viet Cong, fought against the Japanese.

After World War II was over, the leaders of the allied forces met on several occasions to congratulate each other on defeating fascism, and to divvy up the world among themselves. Vietnam sent a delegation to one of those meetings, and told the powerful leaders that they wanted their independence. They were told no. They were told that their nation "belonged" to the French, and that was that. Except it wasn't.

The Vietnamese just kept fighting, this time against the French. French public sentiment turned against the war (other French colonies such as Algeria were also rising up in wars of independence) but the Americans provided aide and advisors to the French to help them maintain their Vietnamese colony. On May 7, 1954, it all collapsed, the French were defeated, and the Vietnamese were successful.

Except that the war was not over, because the U.S. decided it would step in, begin taking over from the French, and the U.S. would beat this poor peasant nation. After all, we've got the strongest military in the world, right? Of course the U.S. stayed and stayed, killed and killed, but eventually were forced out of Vietnam after murdering 2 million of their people and dumping poisonous chemicals all over their nation which has created a tragedy of cancer and birth defects in the civilian population. The U.S. has not done a thing to help those poor people.

Some of the idiots in this country insist we should have stayed longer, killed more. They feel personally demeaned because their government did not just nuke the whole country.

Now we're in another war. Actually lots of them. Among others, we're in a war against Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations in the world, a country where our own top military leaders have admitted there are about 100 members of al Queda. So we send in hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight about 100 al Queda.

People hoped Obama would end this tragic war, but he has instead escalated it. There is no rational explanation for that escalation except the one suggested by the war's opponents from the outset: the western oil corporatoins want to run pipelines across the nation of Afghanistan, but the only way they can do that is if the U.S. keeps its military there to protect the oil pipelines, to be used in stealing the oil and gas from Afghanistan's neighbors.

We have 104,000 mercenary contractors in Afghanistan working for the U.S., being paid enormous salaries by the bankrupt and unemployed taxpayers of the U.S. Don't we deserve an honest answer about why we have 104,000 private mercenary contractors occupying Afghanistan?

We have about 100,000 military troops in Afghanistan. Total military and private contractor mercenaries inside Afghanistan is over 200,000. For what?

Now we hear that the U.S. is focusing on new nations. First, Pakistan. The U.S. is directing Pakistan to attack regions of its own nation, and is receiving quite a bit of resistance to those orders. The U.S. continues to threaten to attack Iran. For what? Iran helps other people in the middle east who are fighting against the U.S., or so we are told. Which one of these does not belong: Iran? Or the U.S. We don't belong there. It's not our oil, they are not our nations. We need to end these wars.

Or, Obama may simply keep them all going, permanent war. Keep the defense corporations rich, keep the working people with an unemployment level over 10%, do nothing. Make sure the Democrats don't get blamed to ending a war, God forbid, what a terrible reputation that would be.

Many Democrats believe they lost elections because they eventually supported ending the war in Vietnam. It was too little too late by too few politicians, first. And second, if it was true, which it is not, they should be proud to be called peacemakers. Instead, the Democrats push war and cause killing for no legitimate reason. Much like the Republicans.

End the Wars. All of them. Bring the troops home. Now.