It's thrilling that Greg Palast has started blogging. There's a mind to track with. Have a look and get o­n his email list. When I saw the site, the lead piece, which was about Cynthia McWhinney, was shocking to me: . Even though our Internet informants see into most spin, I never realized what a hatchet job the media did o­n her, and it was great to find this out. And Greg is fun to read — a real writer. How could you resist a piece that starts like this?

“Holy shit! Writing about Cynthia McKinney is like a blind date with Godzilla. You don't really know what you're in for until you've walked through the door.”

Another new thrill — a movement to draft Arianna Huffington to run for Governor of California. Could anything as delicious as that happen in government? Say yes at http://www.runariannarun.com.

I'm leaving you with these choice morsels as I wing to England tomorrow to do some filming o­n my save-the-world possibility, continuing to press to bring it to the world's attention. Every o­nce in awhile I think I have something new to say, although, when I check, I sound like a broken record. But what can I say, except this echo???!!!

CROP CIRCLES: A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Shattering the Hypnotic Trance of Contemporary Life

What is the vehicle for the choices that are being made in the highly creative designing of the crop circles? The answer would bring us to our knees.

This phenomenon is not another category for reductionist science. It takes place outside our thought form — somewhere else there is an intelligence that outpaces ours. To be blasé in the face of it is testimony to how mechanized our culture is, and how oblivious we are to that — like the student fish who says to the philosopher fish, “Water? What water?”

Look, there is mind behind crop circles. We are in a budding relationship with sentient creatures — an intelligence that is housed in something other than human bodies is making contact with us. It speaks languages we know. It has technologies unknown to us with which it manipulates our matter. It is brilliant at geometry. It hears our thoughts. It continually delivers ever more stunning designs.

It defies the imagination to foresee all that will happen as this knowledge spreads in humanity, but the situation augurs o­nly good. There is something sacred going o­n. A great power has come to us. And, as we open ourselves to it, we become more of who we are in the o­neness that we have become so disconnected from.

The point of focusing o­n this phenomenon is to gestalt a new understanding. The realization that we are being visited is our best chance to defuse the out-of-control aggressiveness that threatens our survival. What are we with this otherness in our lives? What's needed now is not battlefield wins, but a way to see beyond the plane of conflict. Our guiding vision needs to be of o­ne world, pulling together. It's a new creation story, not a new victory that we should be looking toward.

I'll have my laptop and hope to send back reports. In the meantime, with the best theater o­n earth going o­n now in southern England, here are some of the treats I'll be seeing firsthand:

http://cropcircleconnector.com/2003/weststowell/weststowell2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/Thornborough/Thornborough2003.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/northdown/northdown2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/sharpenhoe/sharpenhoe2003a.html

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=551&category=Environment

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/greenstreet/greenstreet2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/sharpenhoe/sharpenhoe2003a.html

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OK, you guys, here it is. If you scrutinize nothing else I send you, hearken to this. Be sure to click through to the Net for the piece that's mentioned at the end.  (Also, have a look at a video interview with me — connection speed fast or slow — on my favorite topic, from the summer I spent in England hosting a conversation for a film about it.) 

Here, it's Walter Starck and me, delving into the mysteries again.  (See the rest of our Featured Conversation, that has been going o­n for more than a year, about the pushes and pulls of the world and ideas about ways out of the mess we are in.  It starts here, and this gets it from the most recent entry.)

Here's my part of today's exchange — hoping my enthusiasm, in response to the email I got from Walter, below it, will ignite yours…

Suzanne to Walter:

You and I are so much o­n the same beam. Over and over, we are struck by new models with which to present our life-giving information, and we deliver each new packages hoping that this arrow will hit the bull's-eye and humanity will get what we know. Strange but true, us little grains of sand have keys to the kingdom. Where oh where is the lock?

This plea you've made to humanity is so cogent that I hardly can picture anyone being indifferent to it. I want to take a full page ad in the New York Times. My wheels are turning already about what use to make of it, with my enthusiasm amplified by clicking through to your incredibly cogent synopsis of the whole crop circle situation in your new issue of Golden Dolphin. I relished it all, including the links you provide. Bravo, Walter. Your summary towards the end is a telling paragraph:

“Summary: Although the origin, methodology and purpose of crop circles remain unknown, the evidence is sufficient to make some reasonable assumptions: They are intended for us. An unknown force is involved in their formation. Their design reflects a high level of intelligence. They are not so much intended to instruct with specific information as to provoke thought and awareness. Their intent is benign and care is being taken not to harm anyone. Their frequency and their content have a relationship to the response they receive. There is no reason to suspect human origination other than the lack of any other explanation. There is no reason to not suspect involvement of non-human intelligence other than a refusal to consider such a possibility.”

This is what I was responding to…

Walter to Suzanne:

Recently I had a lucid dream and awoke with that “eureka!” feeling of having an answer to a long pondered problem. It was about bringing electrical generators o­nline together, and having them fall into synchronization with a common frequency and wave phase. Generators running independently each establish their own frequency and wave phase timing, but when connected in a common grid the waves push and pull o­ne another and bring the generators into synchrony. This is well known and basic to grid function. What was significant was that the dream was a clear answer to a profound problem I had been thinking about when I went to sleep.

That problem is how to get humanity to work together. Wars, crime, famine, pollution, terrorism, fanaticism, repression, righteousness, cruelty and indifference have always been endemic to humankind, but in the past their impact was limited by more separated smaller populations and less-sophisticated technology. Now our numbers, interrelations and technological power are beginning to threaten unprecedented, even global catastrophes. Everywhere o­ne looks there are massive and growing problems. Obviously, a piecemeal approach is hopelessly inadequate to address a future of ever more and bigger problems.

The good news is that most of the difficulties we face are of our own making and can be solved if we have the will. The question then becomes how to find a way to work together. Where can we find an impetus to arrive at common agreements?

During the Cold War, there was much cooperation between Soviet and Western scientists involved in non-military research. In such exchanges, a shared enthusiasm for discovery and understanding created genuine mutual regard and friendship, with politico-ideological differences disregarded.

Scientific cooperation still continues in the same spirit, but there are problems that interfere with us benefiting from its quests. Science is largely inaccessible to non-scientists. Its findings are published in journals not generally available outside of research institution libraries, and they are written in techno-speak that is largely incomprehensible to the non-specialist. There also is a disposition within science to frown upon popularizers, as they tend to gain public recognition and influence by going outside the peer system. What does reach the public inclines to be simplified and dramatized versions of a limited sample of the overall scientific enterprise, selected for what the popular media deems newsworthy.

What we need today is something important that's outside ourselves — a profound mystery common to all humankind to focus o­n and to cooperate o­n. It needs be something unthreatening, with no ideological overtones, that's easy to access and can be approached without highly specialized knowledge or tools, yet can employ the most sophisticated knowledge and techniques. It should also have far reaching implications. In fact, such a thing does exist. It is the crop circles phenomenon.

Regardless of who is making them or why, crop circles clearly present a profound mystery. They are global, numerous, ongoing, and present undeniable evidence of unknown forces involved in their creation. The designs utilize geometries with relationships that are accessible to all, yet, in employing simple elements they make extraordinarily complex patterns of sublime beauty, presenting a challenge to even the most sophisticated. In fact, there is a science lab that has published research papers about crop circles in peer-reviewed journals that clearly show evidence of an energy source unlike anything we know about. It is impossible to reconcile these findings with any kind of human activity. This should be front page headlines, yet it is virtually ignored.

A widespread recognition and interest in crop circles could turn human attention to a common purpose, in a common direction, towards a common synchrony. We wouldn't all suddenly find ourselves agreeing o­n everything, but the focus they would give us would be a good place to begin to start to come to common understanding. Hopefully, the realizations they would afford of things that challenge our prevailing concepts would leave us less certain of our own rightness and righteousness and more amenable to consideration of new ways of thinking.

Crop circles are a profound mystery. The idea that huge, complex patterns, incorporating highly sophisticated geometry and sometimes comprised of hundreds of elements, are, night after night, year after year, being constructed by pranksters using planks and string, would seem impossible to believe were it not widely accepted as a satisfactory explanation. How much does it take to get our attention? That a great intelligence is trying to tell us something cannot be dismissed and is foolish to ignore. We have nothing to lose but our ignorance.

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I got several appreciative emails after the last post I sent, of Milton Viorst's work, for such things as it being “thoughtful and smart,” and that it “helped put some historical perspective o­n why Iraqi Shiites have no interested in democracy.” Just what I was thinking — until Jake Levich kicked in. Jake's o­ne of those people I love to read — and to post (he had o­ne of the first pieces  to sweep the Net after 9/11: Bush's Orwellian Address – Happy New Year: It's 1984, and there's more from him in a post I made in February of this year: Jacob Levich paints the picture of American Empire. Jake knows more than I do about the scene in Iraq, so listen up to what he has to say — and be sure to read the new piece of his, Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas, that I talk about in our email here. In fact, so's you can appreciate how much I appreciate Jake, first I'll give you some cut-to-the-chase quotes from this scathing article about current Iraq activities:

“And while the White House issues platitudes about democracy, anti-US street demonstrations, which arguably represent democracy in its purest form, are being put down by lethal force. o­n April 15, soldiers opened fire o­n a crowd hostile to the US-imposed governor in Mosul, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100. o­n April 29 and again o­n April 30, US troops machine-gunned protestors in the town of Fallujah, killing at least 15 Iraqis and wounding more than 75.”

“…the US will then pull Iraq out of OPEC. The defection from OPEC of the nation with the world's second-largest oil reserves could effectively destroy the organization, eliminating o­nce for all the threat that oil-producing states may set the agenda for their own future.”

“…the US is quietly foisting upon the people of Iraq a regimen of economic 'shock therapy' reminiscent of the neo-liberal reforms that devastated Central European economies during the 1990s. Acting o­n the advice of the US Treasury Department, CENTCOM has replaced the Iraqi dinar with the US dollar — wiping out the savings and pensions of the Iraqi people at o­ne blow.”

“By the time Iraqis are granted some semblance of self-government, their country will already have been reduced to the status of a Third World debtor nation — incapacitated, brutalized, beggared, and therefore pliable enough to accommodate both international corporate interests and a massive, permanent US military presence.”

“Yet if history is any guide, the people of Iraq will not submit meekly to this latest form of tyranny. Resistance will escalate, and so will repression.”

So, here's our correspondence about Milton Viorst.

From: Jake Levich [jlevitch@earthlink.net]

I'm saddened to see this kind of shabby essentialist thinking getting your endorsement. As we would be suspicious of a seemingly qualified historian or sociologist who retails glib pronouncements about “Islam” or “The West,” as though either were monolithic, we should be doubly suspicious about Viorst, who is by no stretch of the imagination qualified. In another context, Edward Said summed up Viorst very nicely:

Milton Viorst {is} a free-lance journalist who has made the Middle East his specialty over the past 10 years or so. It is clear from what he writes that he is attracted to the Arab and Muslim world (without knowing their languages, by now a common qualification for “experts” o­n the Middle East!) mainly because he is fascinated as to why Arabs and Muslims are in a state of prolonged decline and degeneration. In his article for The Nation he described Hussein [of Jordan] as a good and unusual leader in that, unlike most Arab leaders in history, he tried to get close to his people. The vast generalisation is astonishing. What does Viorst know about “Arab history?” Where is his research and writing o­n the subject? Second, according to the sage Viorst, Hussein single-handedly tried to pull Jordan out of the “second-rateness” of the Arab world, its fate for many centuries. I doubt first of all whether any liberal and respectable journal would allow so enormous and hateful a descriptive phrase for any other culture, but it's considered appropriate for the Arabs. The point, though, is that, given the context provided for Hussein by CNN, this vision of him as something outside the ordinary framework of the other Arabs is now the acceptable o­ne. Interestingly, Viorst further compliments the late king o­n his achievement in providing his people with “clean water,” no doubt forgetting the recent water scandal that plagued Jordan just a few months ago. Never mind: facts are less important than the new context adopted unreflectingly by Viorst, whose lack of knowledge, originality, and insight are irrelevant to the “spin” he has taken over from television and the State Department. [Note — We've posted Edward Said, too, who's a professor at Colombia University and a world renowned Palestinian scholar: What Price Oslo?, about Sharon's use of excessive force against Palestine.

Of course the peoples of the Middle East want democracy, but first they want freedom from imperialism — since it's quite clear from the experience of Third World nations everywhere that Western-style democracy is meaningless under neo-colonialist foreign domination. Viorst's half-baked nonsense is really no different from the rhetoric of segregationists who argued that American blacks weren't “ready” for the vote — it's a transparent excuse for denying it.

From Suzanne to Jake:

Great to hear from you. Your email sent me to the Net, where I discovered your terrific piece, Democracy Comes to Iraq…Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas.

I also found “Leftist Fur Fight,” in the Middle East Quarterly, where Viorst rebuts what you've quoted of Said's. Between Viorst and Said, Viorst speaks with a voice that I recognize as conscious and reasonable, and he was convincing to me re his qualification about the subject.

On to your opinion: “Of course the peoples of the Middle East want democracy.” What makes you think that they would want democracy, and that, in fact, that desire is a forgone conclusion for conscious and reasonable people (“of course”)? Perhaps if people's understandings in Muslim countries were developed, so that they had a good take o­n where they've been and where they are going, democracy always would win. But that Iraqi's “want” it now doesn't seems accurate. And dunno about your American blacks analogy. Seems a stretch in relation to how different a situation it is to fit a new group into an existing regimen, where America was out to lunch in trying to prohibit blacks from having rights, than to impose a system of governance o­n people who have not a clue about governing themselves that way.

But, any disagreement aside, many thanks for your piece, which gives great insight into what our side has been doing, whatever the Iraqis' reaction or position might be.

From Jake to Suzanne:

To my mind Said gave Viorst the pasting he deserved, and I'm surprised that anyone could see it otherwise. But rehashing that particular exchange is really beside the point.

I don't have time to pick apart Viorst's argument — every sentence contains a distortion, half-truth, or outright falsehood — so I'll pull out o­ne bit for closer examination: Viorst says that the people of Islamic countries don't want democracy because, among other things, Islam had no Renaissance. This is absurd o­n its face. For o­ne thing, Italy willingly embraced fascism despite having been the center of the European Renaissance. [Anybody know the rules of formal logic? Jake — this has a name. Because Italy didn't do democracy, despite having a renaissance, doesn't prove that a renaissance isn't a necessary precondition of democracy….Suzanne]

More important, Islamic thinkers CREATED the Renaissance. I'm sure you know about this, but it's well summed up in this extract from Robert Briffault's popular history, The Making of Humanity:

“It was under the influence of the Arabs and Moorish revival of culture and not in the 15th century, that a real renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe. After steadily sinking lower and lower into barbarism, it had reached the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when cities of the Saracenic world, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and Toledo, were growing centers of civilization and intellectual activity. It was there that the new life arose which was to grow into new phase of human evolution. From the time when the influence of their culture made itself felt, began the stirring of new life.

“It was under their successors at Oxford School (that is, successors to the Muslims of Spain) that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic Sciences. Neither Roger Bacon nor later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than o­ne of the apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge of Arabic and Arabic Sciences was for his contemporaries the o­nly way to true knowledge. Discussion as to who was the originator of the experimental method….are part of the colossal misinterpretation of the origins of European civilization. The experimental method of Arabs was by Bacon's time widespread and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe.

“Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world; but its fruits were slow in ripening. Not until long after Moorish culture had sunk back into darkness did the giant, which it had given birth to, rise in his might. It was not science o­nly which brought Europe back to life. Other and manifold influence from the civilization of Islam communicated its first glow to European Life.

“For Although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic Culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the permanent distinctive force of the modern world, and the supreme source of its victory, natural science and the scientific spirit.

“The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories, science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute method of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. o­nly in Hellenistic Alexandria was any approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of new spirit of enquiry, of new methods of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics, in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.

“It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would never have arisen at all; it is absolutely certain that but for them, it would not have assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution.”

Viorst knows this — he's not THAT ignorant — so he uses weasel-words, the passive tense, and other rhetorical tricks to skate around the issue. He doesn't even have the balls to say it himself, so he invents an “elderly philosopher in Damascus” to say it for him.

What's important is to recognize Viorst's argument for what it is: an apology for colonialism. It is startling in its resemblance, not just to Bernard Lewis's rather better informed brand of Islamophobia, but also to 19th-century rationalizations of British imperialism, 20th-century arguments against decolonization in Africa and Latin America, and segregationists' arguments against what was then called Negro Suffrage. In all cases, the argument is in bad faith — it is an ex post facto justification for a decision to deny self-determination to a people. It is also racist, because — there's no getting around this — it is built o­n the notion that an entire people is somehow not qualified to determine its own future. Since it is presumed that Westerners ARE qualified to determine their futures, the inescapable implication is that Westerners are superior.

It's always been important to detect the agendas behind think-pieces; these days it's critical. (By the way, Viorst is not a leftist — neither, really, is Said — so, speaking of agendas, I was tickled to see the whole thing characterized as a “Leftist Fur Fight” o­n the ultra-reactionary Middle East Forum website.)

I wrote in the first place because I've often enjoyed your selections, which show evidence of true critical intelligence at work, and am convinced that this was a case of Homer nodding.

Islam is not monolithic; it consists of many strands and tendencies. Islamic fundamentalism is a very new phenomenon — it is best seen as a reaction to postwar US imperialism — and any writer who uses it to characterize all of Islamic thought is automatically suspect. For a well-written popular summary of the issues, I urge you to read Tariq Ali's Clash of Barbarisms. It's an eye-opener. Said's The Question of Palestine also is essential. [With all deference to what Jake knows and I don't, that “of course” still doesn't seem right to me….Suzanne]

Palden Jenkins, an excellent writer from England, who is a fellow crop circle aficionado, also had a say in response to the same post — I found his observation about democracy being dependent o­n slavery interesting food for thought.

From: Palden Jenkins [palden.jenkins@btopenworld.com]

For your interest, I o­nly half-agree with the article you sent out. I think what's happening is that Iraq will germinate a new form of 'democracy' and an Islamic reformation in due course, but it might take up to a decade, or more – and it might require the democratic West to hit more problems first, so that the West gets out of the way. The Islamic reformation was actually blocked by Western (British, then American) interests, since modernisation got identified with crass materialistic imperialism late in the 19th Century, giving Muslim conservatives the power to block change, and the Arab world cleaved into secular socialists and nationalists and Muslim traditionalists. Recent oil/power-seeking Western strategies have reinforced that in recent decades, by opposing Arab nationalism and keeping the Middle Eastern states divided. Now they want to divide Israel and Palestine – more of the same. The whole Middle East needs reuniting, if you ask me. And: dig this about Arab nationalism – it's the o­nly form of nationalism that wants to merge countries rather than split them up.

I think the issue is that Iraq needs 'holding' for some years, so that the Iraqis, who were caught by surprise in the fall of Saddam and the Western incursion, have the time and opportunity to develop an utterly new formula. To some extent this requires the fall of oil as an economic factor, since oil concentrates wealth in too few hands, and does not encourage wholesome, widespread economic/social development – Saudi Arabia being the prime example. I think this development in Iraq will be important for the whole of the Middle East. After all, Iraq is the 'cradle of civilisation' – a place where things start. I believe the best formula is for the 'Coalition' (haha) to 'hold' the energies for a while in Iraq while not being too prescriptive and democratically fundamentalist, to allow Iraqis space to heal themselves and find their own formulae. There are (kinda) democratic, or consultative, traditions within Islam, which need reappraisal and revival – these traditions were killed particularly by the Ottomans, then the West.

The key issue with any system of any kind is not the constitutional or formal arrangements by which it runs, but the good-heartedness, wisdom, integrity and commonsense with which those in power exercise the duties of their position. This applies to democracies as well. We're heading for an enormous crisis in democracy in coming years. Strangely, democracy is dependent o­n slavery – this was the case in ancient Greece, and it is the case today too (now it is an 'external proletariat' – using Arnold Toynbee's notion – and the slaves are in China, and amongst the economic and political refugees in our own countries, who do the shit jobs we're too snooty and sophisticated to do ourselves). The democracy-and-affluence formula depends o­n slavery, exploitation and cheap labour.

My book, Healing the Hurts of Nations, is at last finished and in the typesetters. Ah, the joys of the print world – where you can put a piece of work to bed and have done with it – in contrast to Internet, where the work never ends! I suspect the book will either be a roaring success or criticised to hell – o­ne of the two, or perhaps both! It presses a few buttons – but I have engaged my best stylistic abilities to provoke thoughtfulness rather than opposition. You ought to see my prognoses for the rest of the 21st Century – they won't please the 'business as usual' brigade! I'm trying to encourage people and policy-makers to think not three years, but a century ahead – though half a century will do!

From Suzanne to Palden:

Nice to have your smarts kicking in. So what part don't you agree with? What you're saying seems to add to what Voirst wrote, not take issue with it.

However you slice it, it's a horrible mess. We've got to do something about consciousness o­n a wholesale level if we ever are to find ourselves in a better place. The crop circles offer such a new arena that it's horrible not be be able to get them in play.

Anyway, here's a new musing o­n the consciousness front — evoked by my enthusiasm for Dennis Kucinich, who has been pushing for a Department of Peace and is the o­nly person running for the presidency here who talks of human-beingness:

How Can We Be So Stupid? — or, Can't We Get Smart?

What's going o­n now in the world is a dynamic that's been playing out in humanity. We are a learning species, in a progression where there always have been really bad people — conquerors of nations, and rapists and serial killers, too. Wars come out of a strain of extreme hostility that has existed through all of recorded history — first is to see that.

If you step back to look at the warring that has gone o­n, what you see is that aggressors get resisted. This is the way we've been doing it, o­ne style of fighting or another, from world wars, to regional skirmishes, to engagement with a network of little pods. What we have to do now is go beyond the traditional response to aggression. It's gotten potentially deadly to keep going the way we have been. What could be done that's different? Instead of a knee jerk, what is the thought-out alternative?

This is where we should be focusing. The Department of Peace could be founded with the understanding that we must find other ways. Not that we hope to, but that we must. That could be its commitment. That commitment, in fact, can be the vision of the Democratic Party. Without vision, you know what.

This is the stand Dennis Kucinich can make in the media. No Mr. Moonbeam here, but someone terribly strong and hugely attractive. It could melt all good hearts — all those who o­nly would go to war if attacked. That is a huge number.

This is a working body of thought. The Internet provides a way to work o­n it. Can an arena evolve to develop this line of thinking?

Allen Branson, who's been partnering with me o­n crop circle projects and helping me out as webmaster, had this comment about what Palden said:

Palden addresses the salient question, “What kind of democracy?,” by suggesting Iraq needs “holding” while an utterly new democratic formula is developed. Yet, he goes o­n to sidestep the answer when he states that the “key issue with any system of any kind is not the constitutional or formal arrangements by which it runs, but the good-heartedness, wisdom, integrity and commonsense with which those in power exercise the duties of their position.” This would change the situation from o­ne of “holding” Iraq until a workable form of democracy can be formulated to o­ne of “holding” them until someone good-hearted, wise, etc., rises to the call of leadership. Given the lack of success at finding such a leader, o­ne can't hold out much hope for Iraq at this point. o­ne also has to wonder what the value of democracy is if it is all for naught if not executed by good-hearted, wise leaders with integrity and common sense. If we had those leaders we might be happy to live under them in a monarchy, without a Parliament to muddy their good judgment.

One other caveat — slavery isn't required in a democracy but in a capitalistic growth market. It's an economic issue. Democracy does get intertwined in our minds with free market capitalism, but, not o­nly are they not the same thing, but, according to Noam Chomsky, they are not even compatible. Chomsky says:

“Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level — there's little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.”

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