“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” — Thomas Jefferson

A Happy May Day, Comrades!

Now more than ever the lie of capitalism reveals itself in the crimes it commits against us all in the name of the Great God, Profit. In the name of profit, millions are deprived of food, reduced even to eating dirt. Meanwhile corporate executives take home bigger and bigger fortunes, even when they mismanage their corporations into ruin, taking thousands of American homeowners with them. Apologists and spin doctors who try to convince the world that insatiable corporate greed is beneficial (or at least benign) are beginning to run out of room for their prevarications and rationalizations. In this country and others, they have inculcated us in a cult of consumerism that has succeeded in turning us into placid, passive cattle who must constantly graze on new pastures to ensure the delusion of ever-increasing returns for investors. The result: a Second Gilded Age not unlike the conditions that existed in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, with the concomitant results of decreasing life expectancy, reduced access to overpriced health care, and an erosion of the middle class that might yet prove irreversible.

Our government does nothing except abet and assist this. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to no effect and for no good reason other than to redirect that money into the pockets of corporations deeply tied to the President and Vice President. For every war crime George Bush and Dick Cheney should be tried for, there is another crime of fraud for which they also should receive swift and harsh justice.

May Day exists not to glorify the equally criminal Soviet system that hijacked Russia and Eastern Europe for generations, but to say to the world that the workers of the world, who are the bulk of humanity itself, deserve the recognition and implementation of their unalienable rights and redress for the inequalities that over-reward a tiny few at their terrible expense.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who has worked to bring equality and democracy to his own country since his surprising electoral victory in 2005, offers a sort of “Ten Commandments” for a better world:

1. Put an end to the capitalist system
2. Renounce wars
3. End imperialism and colonialism
4. Protect the right to clean water
5. Promote the development of clean energies
6. Respect Mother Earth
7. Treat basic human services as basic human rights
8. Fight inequalities
9. Promote diversity of cultures and economies
10. Live well, don’t live better at the expense of others

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