Why May Day?

Friends,

We find ourselves living in a time of danger and tumult. How exhilarating! How lucky we are to have an opportunity to do something meaningful, something beyond ourselves, something that contributes to the advancement of our human family. Let's remember our history. Let's celebrate. And let's kick some serious a**!

-B  


http://www.tompaine.com/why_may_day.php

Why May Day?

Geov Parrish May 01, 2006Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange . He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net

For many older Americans, "May Day" brings to mind images of phalanxes of Soviet soldiers, goose-stepping through Red Square behind massive tanks, while millions of onlookers obediently cheer. For some, "May Day" is a pagan holiday, Beltane, known more (and loved) for maypoles or other fertility rituals than for political struggles. But May Day, the political version, is an American holiday—one celebrated for the last century everywhere in the world except America, and one whose origins are well worth remembering.

Because May Day began as a strike for basic workplace rights we're now in the process of losing. And that strike was largely by immigrant workers, which is exactly what America will see when immigrants and their supporters strike, march and rally across the country on a “National Day of Action for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” on this coming Monday—May Day.

Chicago, in 1886, was a rapidly growing city, a polyglot of immigrant languages and cultures. On the first May Day—May 1, 1886—"International Workers' Day" began as a series of general strikes in Chicago and other Midwestern cities for the eight- hour day. Some 340,000 workers participated; it was a campaign that had already been going on strong for quite some time.

But the strike took on particular significance when, two days later, police attacked striking workers at McCormick Reaper, on Chicago's south side. Four workers were killed and over 200 injured. And at a demonstration to protest the police riot on the following day, May 4, a bomb went off at Chicago's Haymarket Square—the infamous "Haymarket Massacre" that killed eight police and wounded 60. The bombing led to death sentences for eight leading anarchists, including several German immigrants, convicted with no evidence at all for conspiracy to commit murder.

Three of the anarchists were pardoned before their deaths, the other five posthumously. But the public and police hostility to organized labor that was whipped up over Haymarket meant that, in turn, May Day became an international labor rallying cry for the right of workers to organize in general, and for the eight-hour day in particular. By the end of the decade, May Day was a holiday celebrated by workers and workers' movements in every industrialized country in the world.

It still is—now, in fact, it's observed globally. Except, ironically, in the land of the holiday's birth. The holiday's burgeoning popularity led Congress, in 1894, to establish "Labor Day" in September to honor American workers—a holiday established, not by ordinary workers themselves as an expression of empowerment, but by big business and their Congressional apologists as a way to try to dictate what workers were and weren't allowed to celebrate. One day belonged to the workers; the other 365 to big business, and we were to work as many hours of those days as business pleased.

The strategy failed, of course. Eventually. It took another entire generation of struggle, but by 1912, federal workers were granted the eight-hour day; and in 1917, while America was desperate for the cooperation of unions in the war effort, the Eight Hour Act became law. And there, one would think, the matter was settled.

Okay, quick: Do you actually work only eight hours in a day? Only 40 hours in a week? Five days?

Not very many of us do, any longer. We stay longer in the office, we take work home with us, we take work everywhere with us, because at some level we fear that if we don't, either the company will fail or it will replace us with people who'll make those sacrifices. Nor, in the land that gave birth to May Day, do workers here get anywhere close to the vacation or sick day benefits we get in other industrialized countries. And let's not even talk about health care coverage, which isn't even linked to one's workplace in most of the industrialized world—it's accepted as a universal need and right.

Here, our system has already rendered health care too expensive to obtain without insurance. Now, it's denying more and more of the workforce health insurance that covers meaningful parts of the cost of actually getting sick, or, for nearly 50 million of us, any health insurance at all. Income for most working families is not keeping up with inflation. And for all of these effective losses in compensation for our work, we're still working harder and longer hours than our grandparents.

It's not too different now, really, from 1886. Then, as now, big business was exploiting the desperation and relative powerlessness of cheap immigrant labor, and in the process trying to depress the wages and establish exploitative precedents for all workers. Then, as now, much of the rest of the public feared and distrusted a part of the labor force that often didn't even speak English. Then, as now, the immigrants had finally had enough. And marched and struck.

Today the largest yet wave of immigrant marches and rallies will take place in scores of cities across the United States. Their immediate focus is proposed congressional reforms, the most prominent of which is a ruthlessly exploitative “guest worker” proposal backed by President George W. Bush that would leave immigrants' legal standing wholly at the mercy of a single employer. But the larger issue is America's imposition of corporate-friendly trade policies that have decimated economies in Mexico and elsewhere, spurring economic emigration to America, while at the same time exporting millions of better-paying jobs from America itself.

The immigrants' struggle is not just legal, but economic, and a matter of self-respect and self-preservation; it is, in important ways, the leading edge of a struggle all American workers are facing. Today, find the immigrant march in your community. Join it.

Happy May Day. 

###

The Logic of Withdrawal

http://www.alternet.org/story/34122/   

The Logic of Withdrawal

By Anthony Arnove, In These Times
Posted on March 28, 2006, Printed on March 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/34122/We find ourselves in a remarkable situation today.

Despite a massive propaganda campaign in support of the occupation of Iraq, a clear majority of people in the United States now believes the invasion was not worth the consequences and should never have been undertaken.

Likewise, people strongly disapprove of the foreign policy of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, particularly their position on the war in Iraq. In a September 2005 New York Times-CBS News poll, support for immediate withdrawal stood at 52 percent, a remarkable figure when one considers that very few political organizations have articulated an "Out Now" position.

The official justifications for the war have been exposed as complete fallacies. Even conservative defenders of U.S. empire now complain that the situation in Iraq is a disaster.

Yet many people who opposed this unjust invasion, who opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions on Iraq for years before that, some of whom joined mass demonstrations against the war before it began, have been persuaded that the U.S. military should now remain in Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi people. We confront the strange situation of many people mobilizing against an unjust war but then reluctantly supporting the military occupation that flows directly from it.

In part, this position is rooted in the pessimistic conclusions many drew after the February 15, 2003, day of international demonstrations -- perhaps the largest coordinated protest in human history -- failed to prevent the war. This pessimism was exacerbated by some of the leading spokespeople for the antiwar movement, who misled audiences by suggesting that the demonstrations could stop the war. As inspiring as the demonstrations were, it would have taken a significantly higher degree of protest, organization, and disruption of business as usual to do so.

The lesson of February 15 is not that protest no longer works, but that protest needs to be sustained, coherent, forceful, persistent, and bold -- rather than episodic and isolated. And it needs to involve large numbers of working-class people, veterans, military families, conscientious objectors, Arabs, Muslims, and other people from targeted communities, not just as passive observers but as active participants and leaders.

We will need this kind of protest to end the occupation of Iraq. But we will also need to be able to answer the objections and concerns of thoughtful, well-meaning people who have been persuaded by one or more of the arguments for why U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, at least until "stability" is restored. Below, I outline eight reasons why the United States should leave Iraq immediately, addressing common arguments for why the United States needs to "stay the course."

The U.S. Military has no right ro be in Iraq in the first place.

The Bush administration built its case for invading Iraq on a series of deceptions. The war in Iraq was sold on the idea that the United States was preempting a terrorist attack by Iraq. But Iraq posed no threat. The country was disarmed and had overwhelmingly complied with the extremely invasive weapons inspections. In a rare moment of honesty, Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN in March 2001,"I don't believe [Saddam Hussein] is a significant military threat today."

As the case for war has crumbled, so has the case for occupation, which also rests on the idea that the United States can violate the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and all the laws of occupation, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which clearly restrict the right of occupying powers to interfere in the internal affairs of an occupied people.

The United States is not bringing democracy to Iraq.

Having failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the first big lie of the invasion -- the United States has turned to a new big lie: George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice, John Bolton, and their friends are bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Democracy has nothing to do with why the United States is in Iraq. The Bush administration invaded Iraq to secure long-established imperial interests in the Middle East -- the same reason Washington backed Saddam Hussein as he carried out the worst of his crimes against the Iraqi people, the Kurds, and the Iranians.

By invading Iraq, Washington hoped not only to install a regime more favorable to U.S. oil interests; it hoped to use Iraq as a staging ground for further interventions to redraw the map of the Middle East. Several U.S. bases have been established in Iraq and are likely to remain long after U.S. troops are expelled. All of this has nothing to do with democracy. In fact, the United States has long been a major obstacle to any secular, democratic, nationalist, or socialist movements in the region that stood for fundamental change, preferring instead what is euphemistically called "stability," even if it meant supporting the most reactionary fundamentalist religious forces or repressive regimes.

The U.S. government opposes genuine democracy in the Middle East for a simple reason: if ordinary people controlled the region's energy resources, they might be put toward local economic development and social needs, rather than going to fuel the profits of Western oil companies. Democracy cannot be "installed" by outside powers, at gunpoint. Genuine democracy can come about only through the struggle of people for control over their own lives and circumstances, through movements that are themselves democratic in nature.

When confronted with such movements, such as the 1991 Iraqi uprising, the U.S. government has consistently preferred to see them crushed than to see them succeed.

The United States is not making the workd a safer place by occupying Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq has made the world a far more unstable and dangerous place. By invading Iraq, Washington sent the message to other states that anything goes in the so-called war on terror.

After September 11, India called its nuclear rival Pakistan an "epicenter of terrorism." Israel has carried out "targeted assassinations" of Palestinians, bombed Syria, and threatened to strike Iran, using the same rationale that Bush did for the invasion of Iraq." You don't negotiate with terrorism, you uproot it. This is simply the doctrine of Mr. Bush that we're following," explained Uzi Landau, Israel's minister of public security.

Furthermore, the invasion of Iraq is spurring the drive for countries to develop a deterrent to U.S. power. The most likely response to the invasion of Iraq is that more countries will pursue nuclear weapons, which may be the only possible protection from attack, and will increase their spending on more conventional weapons systems. Each move in this game has a multiplier effect in a world that is already perilously close to the brink of self-annihilation through nuclear warfare or accident.

Meanwhile, the invasion has also quite predictably increased the resentment and anger that many people feel against the United States and its allies, therefore making innocent people in these countries far more vulnerable to terrorism, as we saw in the deadly attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004, and London on July 7, 2005.

The United States is reviled not because people "hate our freedoms," as Bush suggests, but because people hate the very real impact of U.S. policies on their lives. As the British playwright and essayist Harold Pinter observed," People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget. They strike back."

The United States is not preventing civil war in Iraq.

Perhaps the greatest fear of many antiwar activists who now support the occupation is that the withdrawal of U.S. troops will lead to civil war. This idea has been encouraged repeatedly by supporters of the war. "Sectarian fault lines in Iraq are inexorably pushing the country towards civil war unless we actually intervene decisively to stem it," explained one U.S. Army official, making the case for a continued U.S.presence.

But Washington is not preventing a civil war from breaking out. In fact, occupation authorities are deliberately pitting Kurds against Arabs, Shia against Sunni, and faction against faction to influence the character of the future government, following a classic divide- and-rule strategy. Taking this idea to its logical extreme, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues, "We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind." Such arguments are not just the fantasy of keyboard warriors like Friedman, however. As the journalist A.K. Gupta notes, "the Pentagon is arming, training, and funding" militias in Iraq "for use in counter-insurgency operations." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said such commandos were among "the forces that are going to have the greatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgencies."

In addition, the Iraqi constitution, drafted under intense pressure from occupation authorities, essentially enshrines sectarian divisions in Iraqi politics. And, finally, despite all of its rhetoric about confronting Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq, the United States has in fact encouraged it, bringing formerly marginalized fundamentalist parties such as the Dawa Party and the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq into the Iraqi government.

The United States is not confronting terrorism by staying in Iraq.

Iraq has never been the center of a terrorist threat to the United States. Each month, further evidence emerges that the Bush administration went to great lengths to suppress facts that undermined its case for war, while touting bogus evidence in its support. As the New York Times reported in November 2005, "A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document."

Al-Qaeda made its first appearance in Iraq only after the invasion, a predictable outcome of the U.S. occupation. In reality, the United States engaged in state terrorism under the pretext of fighting a terrorist threat that did not exist in Iraq, and in the process greatly increased the likelihood of individual and organizational terrorist acts targeting the United States or its proxies abroad.

Even more circular is the idea that the United States has to stay in Iraq until it "defeats" the resistance to the occupation. The occupation itself is the source of the resistance, a fact that even some of the people responsible for the war have been forced to acknowledge.

The United States is not honoring those who died by continuing the conflict.

One of the most cynical reasons for staying in Iraq was advanced by President Bush in response to the growing public criticism over the mounting deaths of U.S. soldiers and the deliberate campaign by the administration to suppress images of the returning coffins.

Speaking to a carefully targeted audience in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he fled to escape the protest of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in Iraq on April 4, 2004, Bush made a rare public acknowledgment of the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We owe them something," he said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists."

Sheehan herself had the best response to this attempt to manipulate people into supporting continued occupation, asking, "Why should I want one more mother to go through what I've gone through, because my son is dead?. . . I don't want him using my son's death or my family's sacrifice to continue the killing."

The soldiers in Iraq have not died for a "noble cause," as Bush claims. Whatever personal motivations may have brought them into the military, they died for oil, for empire, for power and profit. More deaths and injuries of Iraqis and of U.S. soldiers will only compound the tragedy of the numerous lives already lost.

The United States is not rebuilding Iraq.

The contractors now in Iraq are not there to help the people of Iraq but to help themselves, drawing on their close ties to influential politicians to secure contracts and profit from what Pratap Chatterjee rightly calls the "reconstruction racket."

The reality is, Halliburton, Bechtel, and the other companies in Iraq are looting the country far more than they are rebuilding it. Iraqis have been forced to pay elevated prices to import oil, benefiting corporations like Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, while ordinary Iraqis have to stand in lines sometimes for days to buy gasoline. Project after project remains unfinished. Hospitals are in shambles. Electricity is still at woefully inadequate levels.

As the journalist Naomi Klein eloquently observes, "The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry" of economic strangulation.

The Iraqi people are perfectly capable of rebuilding their own society, in fact far more so than foreign soldiers or contractors. To the extent that there have been any social services or security in the last two years, it is primarily Iraqis who have provided it. During the years of sanctions, Iraqis also showed their immense resourcefulness in holding together their badly damaged infrastructure. Iraqi engineers, teachers, and doctors have long been among the most educated and best trained in the Arab world. It is ultimately a racist worldview that believes Iraqis cannot rebuild or run their own country.

The United States is not fulfilling its obligation to the Iraqi people for the harm and suffering it has caused.

Understandably, many opponents of the war now believe that the United States has an obligation to the Iraqi people and therefore has to stay to "clean up the mess it has created." MoveOn.org, which grabbed headlines and signed up millions of online members with its anti-Bush campaigning, refuses to call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq because, in the words of its executive director, Eli Pariser, "There are no good options in Iraq." [Editor's Note: MoveOn.org's current public position is that it supports an exit strategy including the proposal by Congressman Jack Murtha that would withdraw troops from Iraq.] Using this same logic, leading anti-sanctions and antiwar groups such as the Education for Peace in Iraq Center have formally adopted positions in support of occupation, if somehow a more enlightened occupation, and therefore against immediate withdrawal.

We must confront the bizarre logic of saying that the people who have devastated Iraq, who encouraged and enforced sanctions that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the last decade, who have failed at even the most basic responsibilities as an occupying power, who are the source of the instability in Iraq today, are the only ones who can protect Iraqis from hunger and anarchy. In no other area of our lives do we accept such logic, but when it comes to the crimes of empire, we are supposed to continually ignore history. The "doctrine of good intentions" exculpates all crimes.

The reality, however, is that the U.S. occupation, rather than being a source of stability in Iraq, is the major source of instability and ongoing suffering.

Moreover, those calling for immediate withdrawal do not advocate a position of isolationism and of simply walking away from any obligation to the Iraqi people. Does the U.S. government have an obligation to the Iraqi people? Absolutely. An obligation for the crimes Washington supported for years when Saddam Hussein was an ally. For arming and supporting both sides in the brutal Iran-Iraq War. For the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War. For the use of depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs, daisy cutters, and white phosphorus. For the devastating sanctions. For the humiliation and deaths caused by the 2003 invasion, and for the great damage the occupation has caused since.

But the first step in meeting this obligation is to withdraw immediately.

If there were any genuine justice for the people of Iraq, not only would the politicians responsible for this unjust war face prosecution for their crimes, but the U.S. government would be required to pay reparations to the Iraqi people and to the families of U.S. soldiers who have been maimed and killed by its criminal actions.

In demanding an end to the U.S. occupation, we do not need to call for some other occupying power to replace the United States. We should allow the people of Iraq to determine their own future. This means, as Naomi Klein has argued, that in addition to calling for an end to military occupation, we should be calling for an end to the economic occupation of Iraq and the cancellation of all debts that Iraq still owes from the previous regime (many of which still have not been forgiven).

If the Iraqis ask for outside assistance, that is their prerogative. But it is their decision, not ours, to make, and that decision can only be freely made if the United States, United Kingdom, and other occupying armies withdraw completely and end their economic, political, and military coercion of Iraq.

This article is adapted from Anthony Arnove's forthcoming book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, due out on April 18 from The New Press.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Weapon of Mass Destruction

"The industrialised nations spend about 900 billion dollars to defend their national borders," the Brazilian president said. "But they allocate less than 60 billion dollars for development in poor countries, where hunger has become a silent weapon of mass destruction." --  Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva at the '06 Biodiversity Conference    

Theft From the Hungry

E

very gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Black to the Future

A recent report from the Whittier Daily News (in GOP-dominated Orange County) included the following example of the dwarf statesmen running our Democracy into the ground.

........

About 80 percent of those surveyed (by the Pew Research Center) described Latin American immigrants as "very hard working" compared with 63 percent nearly a decade ago.......

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, chalked up the survey's conclusions to partisanship. "It's a liberal-biased poll," he said. "It's the opposite of the truth."

Rohrabacher, who joined Tancredo to blast the Senate guest worker measure, said a temporary worker program like the one backed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. would only attract more illegal immigrants, he said.

"We do not need more people from foreign countries coming in and taking American jobs - even jobs in the fields," he said. "I say, let prisoners pick the fruits. Let's not bid down the wages of American workers."

(Yeah, baby!!!!)    

Porcelain Throne(s)

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in few hands and the republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth

I've been lucky enough to find someone who's long known the truth of the words posted below. Long before we become entangled in our Western "mind," we are feeling creatures, joyous in the moment, immortal....lacking nothing.


Published on Friday, March 24, 2006 by Inter Press Service

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth
by Mario Osava

CURITIBA, Brazil - Emotions and sensitivity are "the essence, the core dimension of the human being," said the Brazilian theologian at a panel on "ethics, biodiversity and sustainability". The panel formed part of the Global Civil Society Forum, held parallel to the Mar. 20-31 Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8).

It is not reason but feeling that is involved in our first contact with reality, and "today's great crisis is not economic, political or religious, but a crisis of affect, of the capacity to feel a connection with others," he said.

It is indispensable to "take care of all living things," and science shows that cooperation is the "supreme law of the universe," he added.

"The world is not made up of objects but of relationships. It was cooperation that made possible the leap from animal to humanity, and without it we are dehumanised, which is what occurs in the case of capitalism," the theologian told around 300 activists, most of them small farmers.

He added that the principle of responsibility underlies the criticism of transgenic products, the need to take precautions in the face of unpredictable and unknown consequences, the possibility that genetic modification of food could break down the balance between the "billions of bacteria" and molecules that make up a human being.

Boff, who left the priesthood after suffering sanctions at the hands of the Vatican for expressing "dangerous ideas" over the past two decades, has outlined his ecological concerns in several books. He has been invited to give talks at several panels at the COP8.

Boff is one of the founders of liberation theology, which is based on a "preferential option for the poor", whose proponents' involvement in the struggles of the poor and marginalised sectors of the population often brought them into conflict with a more conservative Catholic Church hierarchy in the past.

The expression "sustainable development" is "a deception to undermine the demands of environmentalists" by joining together two contradictory concepts, he told the participants in the Global Civil Society Forum.

Development "comes from the capitalist economy," which supposes a constant rise in production, consumption and wealth as part of an illusion of "infinite resources," while sustainability has to do with biology, "the dynamic equilibrium of interrelated beings," he said.

In order for the consumption levels of industrialised countries to become universal, "two additional planet earths" would be needed, he said.

But earlier international conferences have already concluded that by continuing along that road, the earth would no longer be sustainable by 2030 or 2035, and would suffer major catastrophes, said Boff. "We have become the earth's Satan," said Boff. "Either we change or we die."

...............

Blackface Environmentalism: Chevron Meets Al Jolson

Ten years ago Thursday --Nov. 10 to be exact -- writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Nigerian activists were executed as enemies of the state. They somehow imagined they could successfully protest the repression of millions people by a handful of soldiers and a smattering of multinational oil conglomerates. Needless to say, they were mistaken.

To celebrate Saro-Wiwa's quixotic misadventure, Chevron is running full-page advertisements declaring its commitment to bettering humankind. The ads -- which ask if we should worry about "the world" consuming two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered -- feature a bulletin board dotted with a maps, drawings of oil derricks and a cuddly photo of happy-go-lucky Nigerian children mugging for the camera.

The darkies are happy and gay (as they once were at their Old Kentucky Home) because they know the Great Corporate Father loves them. He is concerned with their well-being, and that of the planet. Financial Times in hand, perched on his porcelain throne, he intones, "Inaction is not an option. But if everyone works together, we can balance this equation. We're taking some of the steps needed to get started, but we need your help to get the rest of the way. willyoujoinus.com."

If you're experiencing goosebumps, they're undoubtedly indicative of a healthy appreciation of globalization at its finest.

At the edge of energy's frontier -- or more specifically from inside a Port Harcourt jail -- Mujahid Doubo-Asiri is busy imploring armed followers not to blow the roof of a couple of Chevron oil production facilities. The prospective action threatens some 28,400 barrels a day, about one percent Nigeria's total oil output. It seems the "warlord" spoke too plainly when he called for the disintegration of the government. Lackeys of Chevron and the other companies say Duobo-Asari is running a protection racket and want him to keep his trap shut. He, on the other hand, claims to be fighting on behalf of the Ijaw, the largest ethnic group in the Nigerian delta.

Lord knows the Ijaw help. Most of the delta's 20 million people live in extreme poverty, right alongside an industry that produces billions of dollars in revenue for Chevron, its competitors and a zombie government unwilling to find the money to provide running water or electricity for its huddled masses.

Nigeria is the world's sixth largest oil producer, with oil accounting for more than 90 percent of its income. Yet human rights groups note that in a country where corruption is rife, it is widely understood that a good chunk of oil money ends up in Swiss bank accounts controlled by pilfering officials. Successive strongmen have been loathe to any disruptions of oil flow.

Sadly, the Delta is one of the largest wetlands in the world. The Atlantic Ocean sits at its doorstep and a network of inland waterways crisscross the once fertile region. Oil industry pollution, however, has made fishing lucrative over the years. Essentially, the people have been forced into servitude to the oil companies and slowly being starved to death.

Behind barbwire fences and iron bars, Chevron has operated in Nigeria for almost 30 years. Inside installations spread across the country, bought-and-paid-for police and paramilitaries guard precious corporate assets. Outside, meanwhile, local communities struggle in poverty and squalor, travel in dug-out canoes, sleep in straw huts, and get by without electricity, clean water, roads or health facilities, notes human rights group CorpWatch.

Back at the ranch, Chevron is lauded as a model corporate citizen. Bill O'Reilly, its fearless CEO, is feted with the pomp and circumstance of a feudal lord. Verily he remains the $10 million-a-year flame to which we moths are invariably drawn. The corporation embodies all things bold and beautiful, providing high-paying jobs, comfortable homes, solid moral values and sky-high stock options.

Earlier this year, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a breathless story about Chevron's beneficence toward San Ramon, which in 2002 became corporate headquarters following the oil giant's hair-raising escape from the sinful City. More than the increased consumption and business/property tax revenue generated by an estimated 2,500 employees at Chevron Park, city fathers are ga-ga over the company's "mostly unheralded mostly unheralded contributions to local business, educational and cultural activities" that helped once-sleepy suburb shed the unwelcome nickname "San Remote."

Although short of the tent-city it recently set up for 1,500 displaced refinery workers in Pascagoula, Miss., the company has been awfully busy doing good deeds here at home. The Chronicle reports Chevron spearheaded a fund drive to raise thousands of dollars in corporate donations to save the local library from severe budget cuts. Meanwhile, it's donated about $6,500 a year to fund the San Ramon Senior Center van and given money to support the city's annual Art and Wind Festival, Fourth of July fireworks show and summer concert series.

That's mighty generous for a corporation that enjoyed obscene revenues of $155 billion in FY 2004. Even among clear-eyed detractors, Chevron can seemingly do no wrong. When anti-Iraq War protestors gathered outside the company's pearly gates, they reportedly told the mayor, "Your police are so nice. If we have to be arrested, we'd like to be arrested in San Ramon.''

It's a good thing they weren't Nigerian.

According to a suit filed in San Francisco federal court, Chevron paid soldiers $109.25 a day after they attacked two villages, killed four people and set fire to numerous homes. Stamped with Chevron's logo and the name of its Nigerian subsidiary, the soldiers' invoice surfaced this year as part of a legal action aimed at holding the company accountable for the 1999 attacks. For its part, Chevron acknowledges the bill as a cost of doing business, paying soldiers to guard its facilities in an area purported for "piracy and ethnic combat." A spokesman said the Nigerian government covers the soldiers' salaries but Chevron pays them an additional sum for taking a "hardship" post.

Readers searching for a happy ending will have to wait until oil runs out. Unfortunately, that date with destiny is much closer than we Energy Hogs (as a post-Hurricane Katrina President Bush is wont to call us) are willing, or able, to admit.

It is clear Chevron knows oil production is peaking. Soon, it'll be all downhill from here, right into the abyss. Then, we Americanos will have to hoist our big butts out of our SUV's and pound the pavement, begging cups in hand. Meanwhile, oily egg-zek-u-tives take their ill-gotten gains to Martha Stewart-outfitted off-shore platforms to lavish petroleum-product trophy wives and multi-hued au Peres.

As for Saro-Wiwa's children, they'll just have to keep smiling for the camera and hope the Great Corporate Father doesn't forsake them.

###

DUBYA GOES TO WASHINGTON

"I think Bush is going to fashion himself a 21st Century Franklin Roosevelt. This is a question of his legacy." -- Stephen Moore, Free Enterprise Fund

DUBYA GOES TO WASHINGTON

On the backlot of our nation's capital, where dreams of democracy are factory-farmed for ever-hungry audiences, this summer's blockbuster is in full production. Starring George Dubya Bush, an upright soul pines for simpler days when God-fearing Americans were unsullied by Big Government. At great self-sacrifice, and considerable expense, he gathers kinfolk and belongings and heads to The Beltway, where he battles -- and, ultimately, triumphs over -- the commonweal's most treacherous enemy: Social Security.

Along the yellow brick road, he meets and enlists selfless lobbyists, broad-minded think-tankers, under-appreciated CEOs and courageous business coalitions eager to help realize his utopian dream. No more will women, children and the elderly be held hostage by wicked Democrats. No more will injured and disabled workers be manipulated by evil New Dealers. In Dubya's free market world, all will be left to their own ingenious devices, free to sink or swim on their own accord, beholden to no other citizen, free to invest and consume to their heart's content. Every man a king; or, at least, an owner.

So the story goes.

If the corporate media are to be believed, the Bush administration's effort to "reform" social security is a straightforward attempt to confront a looming, if somewhat murky, fiscal "crisis." In the he-said/she-said rate journalism, any difference (or similarity) of opinion is simply that. All viewpoints are created equal although not given equal time. Ideology is window-dressing and, therefore, unworthy of serious examination. And what is actually a bitter and long-standing argument about what kind of society we should have -- and what we owe each other as citizens -- is reduced to a horse race on ESPN.

A NEW DEAL

Without doubt, Social Security has done more to help America's poor than any other federal program. It was set up with one goal in mind: making sure old people didn't die in the gutter. The program is based on a formula that pays lower-income workers a higher share of their contributed wages than those who earn more, essentially redistributing income downward. Government figures show old-age poverty in America has dropped from the 1930's rate of roughly 50 percent to about 10 percent today.

Getting that result wasn't easy.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1932, the country was mired in the Great Depression. Three years after the stock market crash of 1929, ten million Americans were unemployed; another eighteen million were on relief. Businesses were hemorrhaging red ink and the country was in crisis.

To stem a rising tide of dissatisfaction, Roosevelt's administration opted to "reorganize capitalism... to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system...to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion...(the) organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help, (and) general strikes in several cities," writes Howard Zinn.

Brushing aside the privatization-based policies of the Republican administration of Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt called for a "new deal" for working people being hustled in a card game fixed for the rich. His administration closed all banks to assess their fiscal soundness. With backing from a Democratically-controlled Congress, it loosened credit, insured deposits through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking.

Equally controversial was the administration's use of public funds to kick-start the economy. It created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Works Administration, the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration. The administration also took a direct role in developing the country's natural resources, establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration.

But the Great Depression lingered. In California, novelist Upton Sinclair campaigned for governor on an "end poverty" platform. Meanwhile, Louisianan Huey Long took his ''share the wealth'' movement national. In an early version of talk-show radio, populist firebrand Rev. Charles Coughlin blasted bankers and other societal parasites to an audience of millions. Broadcasting from The Shrine of the Little Flower over the airwaves of WJR in Detroit, the founder of the National Union for Social turned the rage of the so-called Common Man into a spiritual crusade.

"We are determined," he railed in 1993, "once and for all to attack and overpower the enemy of financial slavery; to oppose and to defeat those who still support the ancient heresy of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few...In this venture can we rely on you, on every sane American to take his place in the ranks of justice? The real fight is just beginning."

TAKE TWO

Shuffling the deck again, the Roosevelt administration forwarded the Social Security Act, which made available retirement benefits and unemployment insurance, and matched state funds for mothers and dependent children. (It excluded farmers, domestic workers, and old people; and offered no health insurance, prompting historian Paul Conkin to note: "The meager benefits of Social Security were insignificant in comparison to the building of security for large, established businesses." )

Nevertheless, to avoid creating another welfare-type programs vulnerable to future political attack, Roosevelt insisted the program be self-supporting, which resulted in the creation of a trust fund. To build a future reserve, the New Dealers doubled the initial level of the payroll tax to 2 percent, applied up to a cap that was initially set at $3,000 of income. This compromise added a regressive aspect to the plan, shielding the highest income brackets.

"The public, strongly supported the new program, but conservatives attacked it as a socialistic scourge," Roger Lowenstein of the New York Times writes. "Playing on the fact that each worker was to receive a government number, the Hearst papers published front-page illustrations of a man wearing a chain with a dog tag. Henry Ford said Social Security could cost Americans their basic freedoms, like the right to change jobs or to move from one town to another."

Opposition didn't stop there.

In the media scripts of the day, the Hyde Park patrician was denounced as a "traitor to his class." The economic elite -- the same group that Dubya now serves -- considered Roosevelt a threat to their interests and treated him accordingly. On the editorial pages, he was subjected to constant barrages and denounced as a would-be dictator. Foreshadowing media attacks on Clinton, FDR's reputation further suffered from posthumous revelations about an extramarital relationship.

However, "The issue that sparked the loudest protest was one that still burns today: the trust fund," Lowenstein notes. "Alfred Landon, the Republican who ran against Roosevelt in 1936, called (social security) 'a cruel hoax' on the American people. His platform, sounding uncannily that like that of Republicans today, stated, 'The so-called reserve fund . . . is no reserve at all, because the fund will contain nothing but the government's promise to pay.' "

When the New Deal came to an end, the country -- and capitalism -- remained intact. The rich still controlled the nation's wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police, newspapers, churches, colleges......the same system that had brought depression and crisis -- the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need -- remained, Zinn notes.

More important was the long-term political impact.

Since the Civil War, Republicans had dominated presidential politics. Between 1856 and 1932, only two Democrats were elected to the White House, with neither gaining a majority of the popular vote. The New Deal weakened previously Republican blocs of midwestern farmers and African Americans, resulting in a new and powerful Democratic coalition. In 1936, Democrats became the nation's majority party and remained so for decades.

In his 1936 campaign against Kansas governor Landon, Roosevelt blasted Republicans as "economic royalists" and "reactionaries." Ultimately, however, it was WWII rather than his policies that pulled the country out of its economic nosedive. Still, this only son of Mayflower descendants became known as the 20th-century president most connected to America's poor and underprivileged.

"I should like it to be said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match," Roosevelt said. "I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master."

TRUST FUND BABY

As previously mentioned, the social security trust fund was created not for budgetary reasons but political ones. For decades, the fund was left alone. In 1983, supply-side economics and swelling unemployment pushed the system into a modest deficit (it was taking about a nickel less than each dollar spent). Declaring doom's pending arrival -- in about 31 years -- current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan led a commission that proposed a series of benefit cuts and tax increases later embraced by President Ronald Reagan and Congress.

Not everyone agreed. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York called Greenspan's scare a phantom. The proposed increase, Moynihan said, just masked the drop in tax revenues stemming from Reagan's tax giveaways. Characterizing the plan as "thievery," he said the rich were benefiting from stolen goods, essentially keeping income tax cuts while the people below them paid more.

Ultimately, Greenspan's plan generated more money than was needed to pay benefits and the trust fund began to swell, first by tens and then hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This allowed Mr. Reagan and the first President Bush to present annual budgets showing much lower deficits.

"What the government actually did with the excess Social Security taxes was use them to allow the rich to enjoy big tax cuts. It used the excess Social Security tax to make up for part of the taxes from which the rich were excused in 1981. If effect, the government took dollars from Joe Lunchpail so the rich could stuff even more into their silk pockets," writes David Cay Johnston.

"That is, the money was used in a socialist scheme to redistribute income. Only instead of taking from those with big incomes to dole out money to the poor, this money was used to redistribute income up."

Because social security is a pay-as-you-go system, current workers contribute payroll taxes to provide benefits for the retired, the disabled and their families. Program administrators estimate payroll taxes will start falling short in 2018. By 2042 -- with the trust fund exhausted -- the only money left to pay benefits will come from annual payroll taxes, about enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits.

THE BIG FIX

Off-stage, Dubya's war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich have plunged the federal budget back into an ocean of red. Shouting the system is "broke," he wants to let workers divert one-third (up to 4 percent) of their payroll tax deductions from the trust fund into 401(k)-type accounts called Personal Investment Accounts (PIAs).

Touting an "ownership society," Dubya claims he wants workers to have their own piece of Wall Street. What he doesn't say is that the stock market remains the privilege of an elite group with nearly 90% of all shares held by the wealthiest 10% of America's households.

Worse still, his plan, if enacted, would deplete the trust fund even faster. At the same time, these PIAs would be managed by banks, Wall Street brokers, insurance companies, mutual funds. These financial institutions would levy administrative fees and other surcharges if participants switched from one fund to another, left or re-entered the workforce, or arranged for annuities at retirement.

At the same time, these financial institutions would make huge profits from the interest they would charge for financing the federal government's additional borrowing of $2 trillion in "transition costs." (Dubya's administration plans to offer Treasury Bonds at above normal interest rates.) And more profits will be had from reinvesting the several trillion dollars worth of PIAs.

A REGULAR GUY

Within the myth-making factory that is our political process, Dubya has been re-costumed from a silver spoon baby into a hard-scrabble, up-by-his bootstraps, bible-totin' oil man. With regularly scheduled leg-ups from media squires, his family has "elected two presidents in close succession...gained control of two of the four biggest states and developed their extended family into an entourage akin to the lesser royals who deputized for Britain's House of Windsor," writes Kevin Philips.

Hollywood production's aside, however, Dubya's inheritance is unmistakable. "Dynasties," Philips notes, "tend to show continuities of policy and interest-group bias -- in the case of the Bushes, favoritism toward the energy sector, defense industries, the Pentagon, and the CIA, as well as insistence on tax breaks for the investor class and upper-income groups." Just as he wanted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's head because he "tried to kill my daddy," Dubya has long been gunning for Social Security.

While a prep school senior at Andover, he got a copy of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign manifesto, "Conscience of a Conservative." Goldwater -- who 40 years ago was considered a little too edgy by middle-of-the-road Republicans -- claimed the program "it is not actuarially sound" and said he wanted "to make Social Security solvent, to improve it."

In 1978, while running for a West Texas congressional seat -- using money from raised from Daddy's business buddies and Mommy's Christmas card list -- Dubya told an audience at the Midland Country Club social security "will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes." Ideally, he said, people should be "given the chance to invest the money the way they feel."

Two decades later, as he prepared in 1997 to run for President, then-Texas governor Dubya consulted with Jose Pi?era (architect of Chile's ill-fated conversion to private-market retirement under a military dictatorship) and Ed Crane (head of the Cato Institute and a determined crusader for toppling Social Security). At the time, he said: "I do believe that privatizing Social Security is the most important issue facing the nation."

Another right-winger puts it more bluntly.

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," said Stephen Moore, president of the Washington-based Free Enterprise Fund, which backs privatization. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

STICKING TO THE SCRIPT

But that stuff isn't in the script.

In the Age of Dubya, the name of the game is spin. Think tanks, supposed experts, public relations flaks, editorialists/propagandists and network talking heads are all enlisted in an unrelenting campaign of disinformation.

"Back in 1981, the symbolism of a television show like Dynasty might have been acceptable to the Regans, but two decades later, Republican officials had a warmer kind of screen image in mind for the Bushes. 'When you're talking about Clinton fatigue, part of it is that we loved Ozzie and Harriet,' explained Ron Kaufman, George H. W. Bush's former political director. 'We really did. People want Little House on the Prairie to be real, and the Bushes represent that.' "

In a recent New York Times story, reporters David Barstow and Robin Stein wrote: "Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies...have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years."

"Many" segments, they continued, "were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their production...In essence, (these) video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters."

Unfortunately, this kind of propaganda seems a lot more reliable than having Dubya explain his social security plan himself. In a February public appearance in Tampa, he said: "Because the...all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those...changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be...or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled."

So much the better, then that faux reporters like Karen Ryan, Armstrong Williams and Jeff "Gannon" Guckert shill for Hack-in-Chief Karl Rove, whom GOP apparatchiks gleefully describe as running the social security scam like any other political campaign. The typical Rove (formerly senior presidential adviser and now deputy chief of staff overseeing domestic and international policy) campaign targets key constituencies; marshals the Republican Party apparatus; enlists allies among Democrats; encourages well-heeled outside supporters to mount attacks on the opposition.

"I don't think there is any question that Karl Rove is masterminding the whole Social Security strategy," Stephen Moore said. "There are regular meetings the White House has with all the groups to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymnal."

"The White House feels it can't afford to lose on this," he said.

As they did during the last presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee geared up a research operations center and an online petition drive. (The committee manages a database of 1.4 million volunteers.) "We're setting up an operation that is employing a campaign- type infrastructure, campaign-style tactics and really bringing election-year intensity to the debate,'" said Brian Jones, RNC communications director.

In January, the Washington Post reported Dubya's buddies were launching a market-research project to figure out how to pitch privatization "in the most comprehensible and appealing way" while Republican marketing and public-relations gurus were building consulting teams to promote it.

"The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away," the Post said.

The key is to stay "on message."

To make Republicans just that, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, came up with a 108-page social security playbook outlining political benefits and communications strategies. Among the main points -- 1) Suggest That GOP Lawmakers Create a Sense of Panic, 2) Insist This Won't Hurt Their Chances of Re-Election, 3) Tell Them to Sell the Plan With Idealism, 4) Suggest That This is a Possible Huge Conservative Victory.

Talking points, meanwhile, include directions to use "simple language" and "small numbers;" say "personalization" not "privatization;" emphasize "building wealth" as opposed conserving "nest egg(s);" acknowledge concerns but don't get trapped by them; and never, ever admit "social security lifts seniors out of poverty."

The sales strategy also instructs Republicans to write constituent letters saying, "If social security disappears, 15 million seniors will find themselves living on the streets. No one wants that to happen. That is why I support moving only a portion of current payroll tax into personal accounts, while the rest continues to support the guaranteed floor of protection."

MOVIE NIGHT

Instead of getting meaningful information about who stands to gain from social security "reform" -- i.e., a scheme to redistribute money from the majority of people who work to the minority of people who work for and own banks and brokerage firms -- we get a remake of Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in which Dubya fights for us little people. (In the 1939 classic, Jimmy Stewart plays a boy scout leader and local hero. When a senator from an unnamed middle America state dies, Stewart gets appointed by a corrupt governor. He goes to Washington where he learns the harsh realities of politics. The David-and-Goliath plot was one of the first movie portrayals of government as corrupt.)

An example of the "typical American" Dubya's trying to help is Tad DeHaven. On December 9th, the CBS Evening news profiled DeHaven in a report on social security. He was characterized as a "poster child for Social Security reform: 28 years old, a college graduate, in the work force for six years, getting married next May, expected to retire in 2042. That's the year Social Security goes broke."

CBS doled out candy about DeHaven's personal life but never said he worked for the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative lobbying group dedicated to Social Security privatization. Nor did it report he has also worked at the allied Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. Still, the network noted DeHaven "is fully on board the plan to establish private accounts for Social Security" and "argues doing nothing is not an option."

Meanwhile, on January 11th, ABC's Good Morning America profiled Bill and Vicki Wilson, a two-income couple with two kids and "retirement 20 years off. The show enlisted "expert" Michael Tanner (of the Cato Institute) to analyze their situation. Tanner said under the current system, Bill should receive approximately $2,250 and Vicki $2,200 per month-- but that there's a "catch."

Not having to bother with an opposing viewpoint, he wrongly claimed that if the Wilsons turned over some money to private investment accounts it "would be enough to bring you back up above what you otherwise would get" after proposed benefit cuts. But the numbers he gave showed them worse off after privatization. With benefit cuts and "a small investment in a private account and a modest return," their total Social Security benefits under the privatization plan were estimated to be about $300 less per year than the income that they would get if the system were unchanged.

MEDIA LOBBY

Dumping social security is big business. There'll be plenty of money to go around. It just doesn't make sense for corporate media to rock a boat holding one big happy family. In fact, many of the business groups backing "privatization" share lobbyists with the same media companies that are supposed to provide the information necessary to an engaged, responsible citizenry.

In 2000, the parent companies of the Big Five television and cable broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox) dole out nearly $27 million on lobbying firms. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2003, "the lobbying expenditures by the broadcast industry jumped 74 percent while the Federal Communications Commission considered further relaxation of monopoly ownership regulations

More specific examples include Walt Disney (ABC) and General Electric (NBC, MSNBC) which share the lobbying firm Verner, Liipfert et. al, with Aetna Inc., the Heritage Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, PhRMA, General Motors, Philip Morris, Citigroup, and weapons makers Raytheon, Harris Corp. and the Carlyle Group (which employs Dubya's Daddy). The News Corporation (Fox News Channel) and GE shared lobbyists with Enron a year before it imploded, as well as with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major player behind the privatization plan.

With billions of dollars up for grabs, corporate America is pulling out all the stops. Republicans and their business allies plan to spend anywhere from $50 million to $200 million pitching privatization. Supporters include representatives from the conservative 60 Plss Association, America?s Community Bankers, the National Retail Federation, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Business Roundtable.

The Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security -- which counts the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the corporate-funded USANext as members -- has launched a $20 million "Generations Together" outreach effort. The counterfeit grass-roots campaign hopes to recruit 100,000 volunteers to pack town hall meetings and rallies, and make phone calls and write letters to Congress.

Meanwhile, Progress For America, a group of Dubya backers like A. Jerrold Perenchio, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Univision Communications Inc., is airing commercials using images of FDR saying: "It took courage to create Social Security; it'll take courage and leadership to protect it."

FADE TO BLACK

In the climactic scene of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," Jimmy Stewart exercises his (pre-Patriot Act) First Amendment right to speak his piece. Standing before a pre-dominantly cynical audience of fat cat legislators, Stewart filibusters -- another quaint vestige of democracy -- for 23 hours to stave off trumped up corruption charges and keep himself from being tossed out of the Senate.

As he does so, a radio commentator observes:

"Half of official Washington is here to see democracy's finest show, the filibuster, the right to talk your head off, the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form. The least man in that chamber, once he gets and holds that floor by the rules, can hold it and talk as long as he can stand on his feet providing always, first, that he does not sit down, second, that he does not leave the chamber or stop talking. The galleries are packed. In the diplomatic gallery are the envoys of two dictator powers. They have come here to see what they can't see at home. DEMOCRACY IN ACTION."

Later, he stalls for time by reading portions of the Declaration of Independence, then trots out some down-on-the-farm insights on American ideals:

"Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose... I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a - a little lookin' out for the other fella, too...That's pretty important, all that. It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all."

Railing against "jungle law" and trumpeting "human liberties," an exhausted Stewart winds up his speech saying, "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place. Somebody'll listen to me. Some... "

Stewart staggers, faints and collapses on the floor, dumping over a basket of telegrams. The female love interest screams from the gallery. The tragically corrupt senior Senator from Stewart's unnamed state rushes from the floor toward a cloakroom. Shots ring out. He struggles with lawmakers who prevent him from killing himself.

In true Hollywood fashion, he screams in a public confession: "I'm not fit to be a Senator. I'm not fit to live. Expel me! Expel me! Not him." Returning to the Senate floor, he proclaims, "Every word that boy said is the truth! Every word about Taylor and me and graft and the rotten political corruption of our state. Every word of it is true. I'm not fit for office! I'm not fit for any place of honor or trust. Expel me!"

Unlike Stewart, Dubya's "ownership" America is strictly dog-eat-dog.

"I love the idea of people being able to own something," he says. "People from all walks of life, all income levels are willing to take risks to start their own company. ... And I like the idea of people being able to say, I'm in charge of my own health care ... I particularly like the idea of a Social Security system that recognizes the importance and value of ownership."

So it is written, the financially fortunate -- the five percent of the empire clutching 60 percent of its wealth -- hold no civic obligations to the rest of us. With the "law" on their side, they can rape and pillage to their hearts' content, free to roam in tricked-out Humvees in search of fresh consumables. In this global context, social justice is the cost of doing business, ownership "a populism born in the Hobbesian belief that we all struggle alone in a world where life is nasty, brutish and short."

Verily, the words of the prophets Smith, Friedman and Greenspan have been made flesh. Even the lowest among us is merely a capitalist unborn, a sacred fetus of the Free Market awaiting re-birth amidst not 73 virgins but a bottomless trust fund and unlimited credit. We are God's little entrepreneurs, celebrated Masters of the Universe, sanctified and infallible, spreading goodness and democracy through merger, acquisition and the occasional "police action."

If there is anyone among us who knows why we may not be joined together in this holy fantasy, let him not speak but be scorned as "liberal," "traitor," "perverted" and "God-hating." Let us pray the evil-doers find Christ's love -- under the owner's manual and a 9 mm Glock -- in the glove compartment of a brand new Cadillac Escalade. And forgive them the sin of considering their brother's future in poverty's gutter.

###

SOURCES

"A People's History of the United States," Howard Zinn
"The Populist Persuasion," Michael Kazin
ibid Zinn
"A Question of Numbers," Roger Lowenstein, New York Times, January 16, 2005
"Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich And Cheat Everybody Else," David Cay Johnston
ibid
"American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," Kevin Phillips
"Neutering Social Security," Jim Hightower...
ibid Philips
The Complete Bushisms, http://slate.com/id/76886/
"CBS, CNN Mislead on Social Security," Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, December 13, 2004
"ABC Muddles the Social Security Debate," F.A.I.R., January 14, 2005
"The Media Lobby," Alexander Lynch, March 11, 2005
"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," http://www.filmsite.org/mrsm.html
ibid
George Bush, on his "Ownership Society" agenda, Dec. 16, 2004, from "Corporate Americans," by Joshua Holland, AlterNet, posted January 18, 2005
ibid

Joshua (Part II)

By the time Monday arrived, Joshua was his cheerful self again. Although he saw Ms. Navidad every day, he had little opportunity to speak more than a few sentences to her during regular class hours. From his desk, he surreptitiously lifted his head to watch her move about the classroom. Whenever she leaned down to instruct and support another student, the sight of her breasts made him dizzy.


He grew increasingly agitated as the week wore on and rushed toward his tutorial like a thirsty man to an oasis. By mid-day Friday, bright sunshine had burned off the morning fog and filled everything with a pleasant glow. Picking his way through pockets of students, he swung by his locker to drop off his jacket. Shielding the lock with his left hand, he leaned close and turned the dial with his right. He opened the locker, removed his jacket and tossed it inside.

Turning around to leave, he spotted Ray Young and Lamont Thomas.

"Hee-ey boy," Ray gave Lamont a nudge in the ribs. "There's the claw." Pushing themselves off the wall, the two boys stepped forward and blocked Joshua's path.

"Whassup Captain Hook?" Ray said.

"Yeah, whassup, hook?" Lamont echoed.

The greeting surprised Joshua. Both basketball players, they were popular in the way that bullies are. They rarely spoke to him. Still, he craned his neck upward and returned the salutation. "What's up?"

Ray grinned. A sliver of gold framed one of his front teeth. "I hear you're going out for the team." He pointed at Joshua's left hand. "Can you dribble with that thing?" Lamont snorted.

Joshua raised his left hand and smiled. "It is very strong but not as good as my old one." The prosthetic was state-of-the-art. He'd been fitted for it when he'd arrived in California. He was very proud of it, even though its cocoa brown hue didn't match his own charcoal black coloring.

"How you s'posed to get some with that?" Ray asked. "You like to squeeze a girl's booty clean off." His mouth resembled a grimace more than it did a smile. Lamont tittered and raised his head like a small animal sniffing danger in the air.

Joshua was unruffled. "I have this." He wiggled a stiff middle finger forward and back. A slight whirring sound accompanied the gesture. Using his other hand, Joshua grabbed his crotch. "And I have this."

Lamont guffawed, then fell silent under a sharp look from Ray. "You hecka funny," he said, returning his attention to Joshua. "Hecka funny." He stepped closer and barked loudly so nearby onlookers could hear. "You won't be so funny with my foot in yo' ass." His stale breath made Joshua squint.

Before Joshua could respond, a stern voice came from several feet away. "What's going on here?" Arms crossed, Ms. Navidad glared at Ray and Lamont. Neither spoke. Softening her eyes, she turned toward her Joshua. "Is there something going on here that I should know about?" she asked.

Joshua's eyes swept across the two boys in front of him. Ray's face was impassive but his clouded eyes threatened. Lamont's sense of humor receded. He inched backward, as if to go after it. Looking past them, Joshua answered. "Nothing, mademoiselle."

"In that case, let's break this up," she said.

"We have a lot of work today." Using a brushing motion, fingers pointing at the ground, she waved Joshua to her. "Let's get started." Joshua flashed broad teeth as the boys parted to let him pass. Stepping between them, he said, "See you, brothers." Joining the teacher, he continued down the hallway and rounded the corner.

Once inside the classroom, Ms. Navidad asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes, mademoiselle." He set down his backpack and pulled out his lunch and workbook. "Why would I not be?"

Ms. Navidad twisted her nose as if fending off a noxious odor. "You shouldn't hang around boys like that."

"They were just playing around."

"They're thugs."

"What is thugs?"

"Gangsters."

"Like MTV?"

"No, not like MTV."

"I'm sorry, mademoiselle," Joshua said. "I don't understand."

"Never mind," she said. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. Taking a slow, deep breath, she smoothed the front of her dress with both hands. "Let's get started." She dragged a plastic chair next to her desk and tilted her head toward it. "Start with exercise thirteen."

Slightly confused but warmed by the teacher's obvious concern, Joshua resolved not to make matters worse. Content to be near her, he worked quietly, stopping only for an occasional bite of his lunch. The day's exercise, a series of word associations, needed little explanation.

After a half-hour, Ms. Navidad broke the silence. "I'm sorry about that."

"About what, Mademoiselle?" Joshua asked.

"Losing my temper."

Was she embarrassed? Joshua wasn't sure. "For what did you lose your temper?"

"Why did you lose your temper?" she corrected.

"Why did you lose your temper?" he said.

The young teacher paused, uncertain how to answer the question. "There are a lot of things about America you haven't learned about yet, dangerous things."

Joshua chuckled.

"I'm serious," Ms. Navidad said.

The boy adopted a more serious expression "What kind of things?" he asked.

"Many things," she said.

"In Berkeley?" Joshua appreciated the teacher's sincerity but could not hide his skepticism.

"And people," Ms. Navidad said.

"What people?" Joshua asked.

"That's not important right now," the teacher said. "You just need to be careful about who you spend your time with."

Oh, I see, Joshua thought. "You mean Ray and Lamont?" He saw the truth flicker beneath the teacher's mascara'd lashes.

"I worry about you." Ms. Navidad tried to lighten her tone. "In America, you are defined by who you associate with."

Joshua smiled. "My mother used to say that."

Smiling in return, the teacher wagged a long fingernail. "Well, your mother was right." She gave him a look so tender he let loose a small gasp.

"I'm serious," Ms. Navidad said. "Those boys are not like you. They will never be like you."

"What do you mean?" Joshua asked. Her words confused him. He wondered whether the problem lay in his deficient English skills.

"You're different, that's all," she said. "Special."

Special, he thought. His heart swelled. "Thank you, Mademoiselle."

"It's true," Ms. Navidad said. "And you need to pick your friends very carefully." She reached out and touched his arm. His skin tingled beneath her fingertips. A tiny wave of electricity swept through his body.

"You do not need to worry about that, Mademoiselle," Joshua said, happily. "I already have the best friend I could have."

"Oh, really?" The teacher asked. "And who might that be?"

Joshua lowered his eyes then raised them again. Giving the teacher a shy smile, he said, "You, mademoiselle."


* * * * * * * * * * *


For the rest of the afternoon, bliss hovered over Joshua. It buffeted his eardrums like a conch-shell's quiet roar. It brushed his face and the back of his neck, leaving him giddy, light-headed. He hadn't felt such delirium since his ninth birthday party when, inside the compound of his grandfather's house, he sang and cavorted with his father's kinsmen. And had his first taste of cane wine.

Later, when he settled into bed, he plunged into deep slumber. As he fell, his spirit wriggled loose and swam among the shadowy faces in the darkness above him. A girl no older than five had an empty socket where her right eye was supposed to be. An old man was missing his left ear.

Beyond these trunkless heads, past the ceiling but below the sky, a crowd began to form. Milling closely together, the group was segregated by sex. Men and boys on one side. Women and girls the other. All were dressed in bright robes that flowed about them as if blown by a gentle breeze. From below, the horde threw off colors so varied and bright that it seemed they stood locked inside a giant prism.

As he floated near, they parted like water beneath a ship's bow, enough to let him between them but so close he could feel their rustling garb against his skin. They leaned toward him, as if trying to speak, but their gaping mouths stayed mute. Their faces were strange yet familiar. He didn't recognize them but felt he should have.

Suddenly, a young woman appeared before him. She held a baby in her arms. She turned sideways to better show its face. As she did, it began to cry. The wails hurt Joshua's ears so he covered them.

The silence broken, the previously mute horde let loose a torrent of shouts. "We are hungry. Why do you not feed us?" As one, they stepped and opened their robes. Their ribs and stomachs were torn apart. Squirming maggots and damp earth nestled amidst glistening entrails.

Bony fingers scooped out wriggling mounds of dirt and worms. Raising their hands, they cradled the squirming mass as supplicants might before an altar.

Joshua retreated. Stumbling, his feet came out from under him. He plunged backward, headlong into what felt like a ever-darkening funnel. Eventually, he found himself nestled inside a cramped space. A hard flatness pressed against his shoulders and back. He was unable to lift his head. He twisted and squirmed but could not escape.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself. Stale air enveloped him. He peered down the length of his body to his toes. It seemed like he was inside some sort of box. Not a box. A coffin.

Panic seized him. His muscles tightened, as his body prepared for flight. Unexpectedly, the coffin's lid dissolved. Sunlight flooded the box. A rain of dirt quickly followed. Earth settled around and on top of him, growing heavier by the moment. Tiny rocks and sand filled his mouth and nostrils. He began to suffocate.

Coughing, he awoke.


* * * * * * * * * * *


"Did you see the volcano story on television last night?" Ms. Navidad asked. "Isn't that near where you come from?"

Joshua had seen the story, too. "No, mademoiselle. That happened in Goma. I come from Kabinda, which is...." He searched his mind for the correct word. "To the southwest, not far from Mbuji-Mayi."

The teacher rose from her chair and reached high above her head in an effort to relieve some of the pressure that had gathered in her lower back. "Do you still have family there?" As she lowered her bare arms, she caught sight of Joshua's thirsty gaze. She indulged him with a smile.

Embarrassed, he yanked away his eyes and hurriedly gathered his belongings. "Those who are left moved north to Kisangani. Most of them are from my mother's side," he explained. "Things have been very difficult for them. They wanted to take me in but had no more room."

The teacher's demeanor turned sympathetic. "What about your father's family?"

"All dead."

A thick quiet shouldered in between them. This was the first time she'd ever asked about his family. He'd said little about them, even to his adoptive parents. Regardless, he wanted her to know everything about him.

"My parents were killed when my father hadn't enough money to pay the monthly tax to a local warlord," he continued. "The Kioko family has been in the diamond business for ten generations. Everybody knew we were fair. We never cheated anybody. Even when rebels seized the Senga-Senga mine, they still came to us to have the diamonds appraised and prepared for sale.

"As payment, my father withheld the customary portion for himself. Soon, even that became too much. The warlord cut the portion smaller and smaller, telling my father it was a 'business tax.' He also did not like my father because we were Mongo while he was Luba. When my father protested, they beat him."

Joshua went still for a moment. He sighed, then continued.

"They killed him in front of us, me, my brother Jacques and my mother. When they shot him, I yelled, 'Papa, papa!' I was very small. There was nothing I could do but clutch my mother. My eyes were full of tears.

"Then, the rebels pulled her from the arms of me and my brother and dragged her into a back room. When my brother moved to protect her, an older boy banged his head with the butt of a rifle. They left him bleeding in the middle of the floor.

"One of the younger soldiers stood over me with a gun. I crawled into a corner and wrapped my arms around my head to keep out the sounds of her screaming." Joshua folded his arms. With the fingertips of his right hand, he scratched the crease inside his left elbow, just above the plastic sleeve of his prosthetic hand.

"A long time passed. When they finally came out, the warlord ordered the boy with the rifle to take me with him. When I hesitated, my brother nodded for me to go. I was afraid and could not speak. With my eyes, I begged him to let me stay with him. His face became rock and he turned way.

"I lifted myself and walked toward the door. I felt sick to my stomach. My legs were like rubber. The shot came before the screen door closed behind me." A teardrop trickled past Joshua's nose. "The soldier told me, 'Turn around and the same thing will happen to you.' "

He sat, head bowed, rocking almost imperceptibly, for several minutes. Laughing footfalls slipped under the classroom door and clattered around them. Roused, he lifted puffy eyes to Ms. Navidad's.

"That's horrible," she said, breaking the silence. "Your poor mother."

Joshua kept quiet, opting instead to gaze at this woman's face, the shape of which somehow reminded him of home. Still, her eyes, recently wide with horror, began to narrow. They jerked back and forth, as when dreaming. He watched dark clouds gather above her brow. Slowly, her words began to fall.

"I don't understand how your father could do business with.....with criminals?" Ms. Navidad looked strange. Perhaps spirits had taken hold of her. "How could he do that to your family?"

Joshua's eyes skittered over the tile floor as if searching for the truth of what had happened. Despite his teachers' praises, his English still wobbled on spindly legs too weak to carry the weight of what he'd endured.

"How could he do it?" Her voice was shrill. She clasped her hands in her lap, wringing them so hard the muscles of her forearms and biceps flexed in angular displeasure.

Joshua knew his father loved him. But he was dead, as were his mother and brother. How could that be his father?s fault? ?My papa was a good man, a kind man."

"A good man takes care of his family," Ms. Navidad said. "He protects them and keeps them from harm."

"What can you say to a man with a gun?" Joshua asked.

The teacher's mouth twisted as if she'd bitten a lemon. Her brown eyes receded into a field of white scorn. "He did such a wonderful job that you landed here in California living with people you barely know, people who, out of the kindness of their hearts, took it upon themselves to do something your own parents couldn't."

The implication struck Joshua so hard his ears rang. Her indignation reverberated inside his skull as loudly as any church bell. The din made him woozy and nauseous. A damp heat began to envelope him. His fugitive forearm throbbed inside his plastic limb. Absently, he cradled the contraption in his right arm. "My papa loved me," he said, voice cracking. "He loved all of us, no matter what you say."

Realizing she'd gone too far, Ms. Navidad forced a brittle smile. "I'm sure he did." She patted him on the shoulder. "I'm sure he did the best he could."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Ms. Navidad's slack of sympathy cut Joshua deeply. His bruised heart seemed to be drawing blood inward from his extremities, sapping his enthusiasm and leaving him more lethargic by the day. His adolescent mind had no words for what he was experiencing. The stultifying isolation was vaguely reminiscent of his time spent at St. Leopold's orphanage.

Before his disagreement with Ms. Navidad, Joshua had never imagined his father responsible for the misfortune that had befallen him and his family. When he thought of his father, Joshua remembered long fingers caressing his face or playfully pinching his ear. Unlike Joshua, his youngest son, Mukunzo Kioko had never hurt anyone. He had treated his wife with reverence and respect, neither raising voice nor hand to his children. Despite his risky vocation, he?d never owned a gun, believing his honor and faith were protection enough.

Had he been wrong? If so, how could Joshua hope to atone for his survival, much less for the things he'd done along the Congo River's shadowy banks. Sure, he was not alone. Many children had done the same. They had chosen life. He wondered if Ms. Navidad would have done the same.

Meanwhile, his father began to call on him. Hovering in the darkness, he remained silent. Instead, Joshua's older brother chided and admonished. "Titi, how can you say nothing?" Jacques asked again and again. "How can you let that woman talk about our papa that way?"

Jacques' words grew stronger with each passing night, unraveling Joshua's sleep and resolve. As he flayed under sweat-stained sheets, the nocturnal anger gradually took hold of him. "What has happened you, Titi? How can you let her dishonor our family?" his brother asked. "What do you think she's going to say about you?"

"I'll tell her," Joshua, still sleeping, answered. "She'll understand."

* * * * * * * * * *

Joshua was in no mood to study. He didn't care that the state-wide exam was scheduled for next week. He just wanted to sleep. When he plopped down beside Ms. Navidad's desk, rather than opening his notebook and preparing to get to business, he started blurting out the thoughts that had been consuming his nights.

"Would you kill for food?" he asked abruptly.

She bent forward and, using her left hand, reached for the desk to steady herself. She held the poise for several seconds, then answered. "What kind of a question is that?"

He raised his face and searched her eyes. "If you had to, if there was no other way, would you kill for food?"

Crossing her arms tightly, and folding one leg snugly over the other, the young teacher leaned back in her chair. It let loose a tense squeak. She sat coiled and still, like a voluptuous yogi. "I don't think I could ever kill anyone, for any reason.?

Joshua shook his head. "You've never been hungry? Really hungry?"

"Not in the way I think you mean it."

"Hungry enough to eat whatever you could get your hands on," he said. "A monkey. Snake. Crocodile. Bugs. Worms. Tree leaves."

The teacher could not hide a look of disgust. "I -- "

Joshua broke in. "In some parts of my country, the only people with food are those with guns." He began to rock back and forth, as if burrowing into the chair and below it into the floor. "I want to tell you a story about a boy I knew," he continued.

"The last time the rebels crossed the Burundi border, many people in Kabinda found it hard to find food. Jumokwe was my age. His family was not as prosperous as mine. His father did odd jobs around the town. He sometimes drove a truck.

"On one of these trips, he never came back. Jumokwe's family thought he'd been killed but his body was never found. Afterward, the family still lived on the eastern edge of town. It had became too dangerous for Jumokwe's mother and sisters to find water or collect wood. My mother began sending me over with a basket of food. It was not far by bicycle and not too dangerous.

"One day, I was stopped on the road by a group of rebels, a dozen boys or so. Some were no bigger than me. One was the Jumokwe's younger brother. He was eight-years-old.

"Before that time, I had never seen a Kalashnikov rifle. The one Jabare carried seemed as tall as he was. It hung from a big strap slung over his shoulder. He had no shoes but wore two belts of bullets across his chest like a white man I saw on a move poster.

"He was small but very mean. When I saw him, I said, 'Jabare, what are you doing here? Does your family know you are here?' At first, he said nothing. He just stood there, looking at me with empty eyes, as if he did not know me.

"So I said, 'Jabare, don?t you recognize me?' He walked up and stood beside me. I stayed on my bicycle. I was too scared to do anything else. The barrel of his rifle was close enough to touch.

"Using it to point toward the ground, he motioned for me to take the basket from the handle bars and set it on the ground. The other boys laughed when I did so. A tall boy with a machete and a scar on his neck picked up the basket. When they started to go, Jabare whispered to me. 'Tell my mother I am safe.'

"Later, after my family was killed, I learned most boys come from villages that had been attacked by the army or by rebels. Some were orphaned. Others kidnapped and used as minesweepers. More than a few, like Jabare, ran away."

Ms. Navidad's arms still guarded her front but she had placed both feet flat on the floor. The forward shift of her body made her seem closer. "What ever happened to him?"

"I never saw him again." The response resonated in the air between them, creating a phantom who drifted in the warm currents. For a moment, they shared an invisible embrace as ghostly hands drew them together at the shoulder.

"You were a soldier?" Despite the question, there was something in Ms. Navidad's eyes that suggested she didn?t really want an answer.

"Yes."

The teacher uncrossed her arms and rubbed her palms together. Taking a deep breath, planted her elbows on her upper thigh, folded her hands and propped them under her chin. "Have you ever killed anybody?" She peered at him, as if he possessed something of great value. A tiny sheen of perspiration shone above her top lip.

Joshua felt bare, as bare as the time he'd been stripped and beaten for taking another boy's rations. He hadn't been told the rations of a dead soldier became the property of the officers. Still, he'd considered himself lucky at the time. He'd largely avoided the belt's buckle.

"Yes." Joshua spoke in a hush, not conspiratorial but intimate. He could see the tension in the teacher's neck and shoulders. Her breath brushed his face. It was the closest he had ever been to her. He was sorry she was afraid. The moment's intimacy wrapped itself around him, exposing buried words and distant visions.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

"The first time?" he answered.

She tilted her head back slightly. For his part, Joshua turned his head a little, as if catching the memory in the corner of his eye.

"I had been with the group for only three days. We were patrolling south toward Karnira. Three boys were sleeping under a tree when we came across them. They must have walked far because none of them had stayed awake to keep watch.

"The oldest was the same age as I am now. He was dressed in Khaki shorts and a black T-shirt. It had a logo on the front of it. I had never seen it before. A few months ago, not long after I arrived in the United States, I saw the same logo which read, 'Miller Genuine Draft.' On his head, he wore a faded red beret.

"The middle boy wore just a pair of slacks. He was the only one with boots. The smallest wore tennis shoes that were too big for his feet, with Velcro straps. He had a pair of green cotton shorts with a piece of white string for a belt, and a stripped T-shirt with the figure of a Samurai on the left shoulder and a small orange sweatshirt with a torn zipper in front. His beret was newer and had a small silver star in front.

"The young captain who was our leader woke the oldest with a kick to the face. Seeing that, the other two had no desire to fight. They never reached for their weapons. Besides, we were too many.

"For many reasons, the captain was angry that day. We had traveled 10 kilometers in three days. The jungle was very thick around the river. He did not want to waste ammunition on hunting.

"Still, he told the three boys he would give them a chance for their lives. He would give them a five-minute head start, then send us after them. In that way, their fates would be in their own hands.

"The smaller boys began to cry. At the same time, they eyed each other like animals, sizing up their chances for escape. The oldest one, the one who was kicked in the face, proposed that they split up. I suppose he thought he was stronger and would have a better chance without the younger ones.

"Hearing that, the captain laughed but agreed. The older boy looked relieved. The others became angry and wiped away their tears. We opened a space in the circle around them to let them run through. The two younger went first. Together, they ran across an open field toward a stand of Acacia trees. Beyond the trees was a dry gully leading to a river.

"The captain then told the oldest boy that his turn had arrived. As he turned to run, the captain took out his pistol and shot the boy in the leg. He fell to the ground and screamed wildly. 'Liar. You promised you would let me go.'

"The captain's smile disappeared. He walked over and said, 'You have no right to your life. Those smaller boys trusted you to take care of them and protect them like an older brother. Instead, you sought only to save your own skin.'

"The color drained from the boy's face. He could see his own death. The captain called me over and said, 'Joshua, look at this boy. This is what a coward looks like. We will have no cowards among us.'

"Then he looked at me for a long time. I didn't know what to do. I looked around at the others. Their faces were blank. An older boy, Augustin, was cradling his rifle in front of him. He walked over and handed it to me. It was very heavy.

"My legs were trembling and the Kalashnikov shook in my hands. It was very quiet. I could hear the breathing in the boy?s throat. I don't know how much time passed but after some time I raised the barrel, pointed it at the boy's chest and squeezed the trigger.

"I had heard gunfire before but I had never fired a weapon. The sound startled me. A look of surprise was on the boy?s face. Dark, red blood poured out of him and piss ran down his leg. He started to moan, louder and louder

"Although I knew better, the whole thing seemed like a dream, very far away. Only the rifle felt hot in my hands. I was happy to return it. The captain nodded to me and we left."

Joshua stopped and stared off into middle distance. He kept still, as if ready for ambush.

During his recitation, Ms. Navidad had retreated into the back of her chair, as if withdrawing from an open furnace. She remained seated but had withdrawn with such intensity as to suggest toppling over in awkward escape. With each new detail of the story, her eyes rounded in ever-increasing horror, revealing yellow puddles at the bottom of white irises.

Joshua turned and looked at her. She stared back like prisoners he'd seen, all eyeing the chain saw, transfixed by its whirring teeth while wincing at its devilish whine. His heart sank.

"Is that what you wanted to know?" Joshua's voice remained that of someone eager to please. He squinted in youthful hope.

"There's more?" She squealed rather than spoke. Above her flared nostrils, her eyebrows played tug-of-war as her thoughts wrestled behind her forehead.

Joshua immediately regretted asking the question. "I don't understand," he sputtered. He thought she wanted to know about him, about his life. Now, he wasn't sure. "More?"

"More killing." Her fear became fury. "More death."

"I thought you wanted -- "

"I wanted to know about your incredible journey.....how a boy like you had come so far." Water welled up in her eyes. She dropped her head and pinched the bridge of her nose with a manicured hand.

"Journeys are not only about ends, mademoiselle," Joshua replied. "They are also about beginnings."

* * * * * * * * * * *

In bed that evening, feelings of despair filled Joshua. He stomach was queasy. He felt fatigue and anxiety. He wanted to flee yet felt unable to move. He seemed barely able to fill his lungs from one moment to the next.

It was not a boy's despair but that of a soldier. In the darkness, he began to feel the weight of the lives he'd taken. They sat squarely on his chest, like some red-eyed carrion awaiting the sound of his last exhalation.

He cradled himself in his small arms. Closing his eyes, he carried himself back in time to his dead mother?s embrace. Shortly, he felt the softness of her cheek on top of his head, her breast and heartbeat against his ear, her hard, gentle hands on his back and shoulders, and the expanse of her lap.

After a while, he could hear her soft laughter, her teasing and coaxing. "Give mama a smile, boy. Don't cheat me." His eyes drew water at the beauty of it.


-- THE END --