My dear Muhammad Ali: During the kafuffle over the rigging of George Bush's 2000 election, I wrote a satirical article asking why the US army didn't intervene. “What is wrong with it,” I asked sarcastically? My sarcasm was aimed at third world armies. I forgot that armies intervene – or are asked to intervene – only when the state is under threat, not because of the shenanigans of politicians. Now that the US state is under threat due to the economic meltdown… Read on. We live in amazing times. There's been watershed after watershed. Since you were born in 1988 the USSR lost the Afghan War; the Cold War ended in 1990-91 with the collapse of the Soviet state, giving birth to many new countries, as did the east European states in the Soviet bloc; there was 9/11 and now the capitalist system is failing. You have just seen the world stood upon its head in only one month. Russia, the forerunner of communist states, has gone capitalist while America, the standard-bearer of free market capitalism and its concomitant ‘liberal democracy', is going socialist, fascist and undemocratic! There's talk that Congress was threatened with martial law if it didn't pass the bailout bill. There's talk that George Bush has signed some order allowing troops to be deployed on the streets of America for possible crowd control! There's talk of dire things. See their duality that I have been talking about for years? When third world armies intervene to save their states from damage or possible collapse, they become immediate pariahs. Sanctions are imposed. The cry of democracy goes up to destabilize them again. Remember how Clinton refused to shake hands with our president. But when their own state is threatened, they have no compunction in threatening their legislators with martial law and allowing troops on the streets to quell rioting by those who have been conned out of their life's savings by corrupt bankers who are the masters of America's political process. Would Clinton now like to shake hands with his own president? For no reason is it said that America's is “the best democracy money can buy.” It doesn't stop there. A new currency is being quietly discussed and so is a possible a new country, a merger between the USA, Canada (for its energy resources) and Mexico (for its cheap labour). Best way renege on debt too. Unfettered capitalism is reincarnating itself in even more satanic form – socialism for the rich and market forces capitalism for the poor! What else is socialism when you subsidize and nationalize banks? What else is the absence of democracy when you leave millions of home ‘owners' homeless and small investors to the mercy of capitalism's market forces and their consequences? What happened to human rights? “There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed,” Gandhi said. This has become starkly evident not only with the financial meltdown but with the global food and energy crises as well. The amorality of capitalism has come to the fore. Its much-vaunted efficiency has gone down the drain. That efficiency was based on “survival of the fittest” – law of the jungle. There were too many people working too hard to make too few filthy rich. Greed piled upon greed until it went beyond avarice. Finally, the American people balked at bailing out the immoral rich who had brought them to their knees. “Why should we pay to save them?” they asked. So the bailout bill failed the first time. No problem. Threatened with the gun their hearts and mind soon followed. The bill passed the second time. The truth is that unregulated market forces capitalism has failed, just as the Soviet command economy failed. Bailouts are not going to help. Let the inefficient and unprofitable fall has been the mantra of these pseudo capitalists. But you cannot be capitalist when the going is good and socialist when the going gets tough. There has to be a reinvention of the system, a new social democratic economic system that is equitable and not based on imaginary money. The failure of the bailout is evident from still falling markets. It's primarily because of the CDS, the Credit Default Swaps that total between $55 and 63 trillion! It also hasn't restored confidence because it is only a short-term Plan-A to give temporary life support to banks. Where is Plan-B that will bring life back to the economy, which can only be a major structural overhaul of the system? How will they get rid of their over $11 trillion debt, 40 percent of which is owed to China and even more to Japan? If they don't bridge their horrendous trade deficit, how will the dollar regain value and stabilize? How will they get rid of their huge fiscal deficit? Above all, what are they going to do with their CDS that left AIG needing a transfusion of $85 billon? That too was not enough. AIG has now asked the FED to give it another $37.5 billion? Where will it stop? Any wonder there's talk of martial law and a new currency, the ‘Amero'? Don't believe me? Read Rand Clifford's article, “America be Truly Afraid” in Crosscurrents.org dated October 6, 2008. He says: “Leaks: (March 13, 2008) The House of Representatives held only its sixth closed session since 1812, and the first since July 1983, when it secretly discussed US support for the Contras in Nicaragua. The publicly stated reason for the recent closed session was for members to discuss new citizen surveillance provisions. However, conversations off the record have indicated that the meeting was primarily about nine key issues: 1) The imminent collapse of the US economy to occur by September 2008. 2) The imminent collapse of US federal government finances by February 2009. 3) The possibility of civil war inside the USA as a result of the collapses. 4) Advance round-ups of ‘insurgent US citizens' (those opposing the New World Order) likely to move against the government. 5) Detention of those rounded-up at ‘REX 84' camps constructed throughout the USA. 6) Possibility of retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses. 7) The location of ‘safe facilities' for members of Congress and their families to reside during expected massive civil unrest. 8) The necessary and unavoidable merger of the United States with Canada (for its natural resources) and Mexico (for its pool of cheap labor). 9) The issuance of a new currency for all three nations as the proposed solution to the upcoming economic Armageddon…” Rand Clifford's novels are ‘Castling', ‘Timing', ‘Voices of Vires', and ‘Priest Lake Cathedral', published by Star Chief Press. Naomi Wolf is the author of ‘Give Me Liberty' (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the sequel to the New York Times best seller, ‘The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot' (Chelsea Green, 2007). She wrote this in Alternet on October 8, 2008: “Thousands of troops are deployed on US streets ready to carry out ‘Crowd Control'. Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.” Background: “The First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing ‘unruly individuals', and the management of a national emergency. “George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the US He has also legally established that in the ‘War on Terror', the US is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the US is also a battlefield. “He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined ‘insurrection' or many other ‘conditions' he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus – habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial – in the event of an ‘insurrection'. With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters ‘insurgents' staging an ‘insurrection' is strengthened. “US Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill: ‘The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere…Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.' “If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat.” Now talk! Or as we say in Punjabi, ‘hun gull kar'. – The writer can be reached at [email protected] __