The world is standing on its head. Priorities are so totally screwed up that it seems unlikely they will ever get straightened out.

There was a time when people mattered. There was a time when governments had the concerns of people in mind when running a country. There was a time when elections had meaning, and democracy was not just an empty word. When people actually had a say in what was legislated in their country. When ethics and justice were ideals anchored in people's minds. When a Constitution meant something – to the Government and to the people.

No more. The moral compass was declared obsolete and superfluous decades ago. 'The Constitution is just a piece of paper.' International courts and the Geneva Conventions are 'quaint'.

So why have things changed so radically? What made these changes possible? Greed. Greed has won out over all decent attempts to keep the world livable, for us and for generations to come. There are still voices heard that demand a return to a humanitarian world order. But how can they be heard over the din of exploding bombs? How can they be heard over the screaming hatred that's tearing the world apart, that's poisoning the minds of the people who might otherwise have seen through the fog of greed and power hunger?

The greed that rules the world feeds on the hatred of everybody who is not like us. The people who hold the reins of power get the masses to toe the line by pouring fuel on the fire of fear. The flames of hatred and fear are kept burning easily. Propaganda makes them the dominant features in the life of a nation. They have become the poisoned blood of a country that was for decades looked up to by the rest of the world. But hatred and fear in the long run can only weaken a nation.

How can the masses hear the voices of those who are trying to save the planet from constant wars and from environmental disaster? How can they hear any voice of reason over the deafening noise of propaganda? What is called ‘America the beautiful’ is filled to the brim with glaring billboards, with a never-ending stream of commercials on radio and television, with 'news' that is an exact replica of what the media are paid by the powers-that-be to serve up as infotainment of the masses. News that is anti-news, news that hides the truth, that distorts the truth, that presents a cartoon world, which is a courtesy of the mass media and its sold-out talking heads. Instead of reality, we are spoon-fed baby formula propaganda. The world presented to us by our sociopathic rulers and their lackeys looks like a clumsy, black-and-white drawing by a five-year-old.

How did the world get to be so distorted? How did our vision get to be so blurred? How did our priorities become so artificial and so callous? Instead of cooperation and compassion there are wars and destruction. Instead of acceptance and tolerance, there is hatred of the Other. There are never-ending wars because our rulers want to dominate every last square inch of the planet. The arms manufacturers rake in billions. They call it Pax Americana and the masses are still gullible enough to believe that the U.S. wants to create a world of peace and freedom. Why, of course, the U.S. military is in Iraq to install democracy and a better life for its people. And how devoutly they care for the lot of the Iraqi people! How can anybody still today believe in this game of smoke and mirrors?

They are bragging loudly about American values – as if it wasn't perfectly transparent to a person with a half-lucid mind that all they are pushing us into is consumerism and soulless entertainment. Those are what they call values.

The rulers of the world with hearts of stone are the leaders of the giant corporations. The corporations that dictate their script to the government. The corporations that are the government. They own the politicians, the legislators that we naively elect, believing that they are working for us, for the people. They own the judges and the courts that are supposed to protect our citizens' rights, our human rights. They own the agencies that are supposed to protect our food and our environment. All those agencies that we so naïvely believe are there to save the land, the air, the water, the wetlands, the mountains, the wildlife and all of nature's unbelievable treasures.

Not only are the corporations poisoning the minds of our people, they are poisoning the planet that we live on. Propaganda controls the people's minds and our echo systems are ruined by the bio-tech multinationals with unlimited power. What nature has produced with the cooperation of man for thousands of years is now being converted into one huge experimental laboratory with one destructive goal – cold profit, no matter at what price, even at the cost of the destruction of the planet.

How can the corporations get so much power? Because the media are completely in on the deadly game. Everybody gets paid off to sing their tune. And those few who try to buck the trend to lawlessness, who try to prevent the destruction of the planet get thrown into a pit of silence  and oblivion. The rule is, Don't buck the system!

Corporations – politicians – the mass media, the triumvirate that run the business of the planet. This triumvirate is so intertwined that there is no way of knowing where one begins and the next one takes over.

Democracy was always more or less an illusion, but at this time more so than ever. The very concept has been fading for decades, and by now it's almost invisible. The right to a clean election, the right to a fair trial, the right to food, the right to a good education and to health care are now taken away from us. Are people even aware of what they are being deprived of?

Instead of being a word full of deep meaning, democracy has now become an empty slogan that is used as a pretext for the neocon Middle East policies. The battle for dominance in the Greater Middle East has totally different goals than spreading western-style democracy. Anybody who tries to see through the thick fog of propaganda should be able to see that the real goal is control of planetary resources, one country at a time until the world is one big United States of America.

We the people no more have the right to know what is being done in our name, what is being done with our tax money. Most of our money goes to wars and corporate profit. What used to pay for education and social services is cut back to a drop in the ocean.

A huge amount of the spoils from wars and the destruction of nature goes to the top 0.1 % of the population. They see it as their obvious right to splurge and play games with the fate of the world while there is wide-spread poverty and hunger among millions of Americans who can't even afford health care. Let them starve, let them die. What use are those poverty-stricken people anyway?

What ought to be the priorities of the nation is dealt with as if we the people had no rights to live a life of true values, a right to a good education, to a life in peace and dignity and a right to have our voices heard in matters of national and individual importance. Wake up America! We have a right to be rewarded for hard work, we have the right to choose the life we want to live. Instead we have become the slaves of the masters of greed, to be exploited the way black people were outrageously exploited in the days of slavery.

And there is not even ONE man or woman in a position of political power who screams out 'Stop the wars, stop the killing, stop the injustice, stop the hatred.' No, we are made to believe that the never-ending wars are necessary because they are wars against 'terrorism', a convenient term that became a trade-name for the dirty wars blamed on 9/11 . Sure, there was terrorism, terrorism that we created, we the United States of America, through our greed and unending efforts to steal the resources of the entire world, to dominate the planet, to own the world.

And the pundits of the mass media nod their heads and say, We are the best, so we have rights that others don't have, we alone can dominate the entire world. We have to own the food, we have to own the oil, we have to control the world with our military bases that are installed on all the continents of the planet. We are building the thousand-year Reich.

But hubris is always followed by a massive downfall. The power-hungry madmen who run the world today will see the end of their self-proclaimed empire, and the end is not far away. The lack of realism will spell the doom, the lack of understanding how the world is a place with thousands and thousands of different life styles, each one with an equal right to exist. This total lack of clear vision is going to spell the downfall of this self-sufficient and arrogant empire. The invader can never win in a country where the people are fighting for their own survival and their

dignity. The people will always win out in the end.

The empire is in tatters and the total undoing of its once awesome-looking powers is close at hand.