Don't start sending tin foil hats. I do not ascribe to "conspiracy theories." I'll leave that to the geniuses so smart that they can connect dots with lines that do not exist. On the other hand, it does not take a genius to realize that politicians do "conspire" to create the best environment for growth of their own power. They create alliances, called political parties, to further that goal.
In a democracy, they must convince everyday citizens to give them the power to increase their power, so those alliances demonize the opposition and propagandize their own greatness. Politicians and Parties are known to lie, cheat, and steal to create a convincing perception that they are honest, caring, and benevolent. That kind of snowjob takes a lot of money and marketing and a near fanaticism in volunteers to the cause. It's no wonder that Citizens distrust Politicians. The closer one is to a political campaign, the more one understands the dirty tricks used to convince others to parrot it.
Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and Islamism are economic systems where as Democracy, Republics, Communism, and Islamism are forms of governance. Islamism is not to be confused with Islam, just as Capitalism should not be confused with Christianity, nor Atheism with Communism. The concepts may be based in or marketed to the followers of particular religions, but it does not mean these major religions are synonomous with the forms of governance or economic systems.
Regardless of any naive belief in altruistic benevolence in governments, they are in the end a monopolistic corporation. While democracy is often used interchangeably with Republic, the concept is that the Citizens themselves have the means to peaceably change the leaders and governance of their monopoly. This is in stark contrast to Monarchies, Islamism, and Communism where the only methods of changing government is violence and war.
Governments, like all corporations, require money to operate and hence they embrace an economic system and a means to extract finances from those that create things of value. In a capitalist republic, this is in the form of taxes on the wages of Citizens and Corporations. In a socialist dictatorship, i.e. communism, the government claims the means of producing wealth and products as owned by the corporate monopoly of the government itself and acts as employer to the citizenry, paying them whatever it deems necessary to keep them from rising up in revolt after it has created an armed force great enough to control them should they decide to.
Islamism in its current stage of evolution was created by the Ayatollah Khomeni and is led by his replacement Khameni. It is in some ways a hybrid of the other governmental and economic systems which creates a deity like head of state, probably modeled off the Holy Roman Empire and Egyptian Pharoes. As part of the Iranian Constitution, the Ayatollah is not only the "Supreme Leader" of the State but also the "Spiritual" leader with the power to set aside parts of the Koran, which necessarily makes him a heretic to Islam and a dictator.
Free Market economics will always take place no matter what type of system is in place. In it's purest form, these free markets will most often be called "black markets" as they attempt to "cheat" the governmental monopoly of its pound of flesh. Governments necessarily attempt to squash such endeavors and our own is no different. The IRS has seen record increases in funding this year, specifically to crack down on "tax evaders." Municipalities have turned to increased enforcement of traffic laws to increase revenue not available through raising property taxes.
In communist dictatorships, the black market is often bartering. Farmers might trade their eggs for wheat or meat and be jailed for theft of government property as opposed to being jailed for tax evasion. Islamism uses not only the force of monopolistic law but the authority of God himself to take their pound of flesh, though it does so with the recognition that free markets will survive. It uses tithes and taxes to fund the dictator's largesse, based on the premise of his closeness to God.
The differences between communist dictatorships and islamist dictatorships is really not that great, as far as who chooses the supreme leader. China and the former Soviet Union had "Politburos," the party elites decide amongst themselves who would be the "Premier." Iran has the "Council of Experts" formed by the top 12 "religious" leaders of the Nation. Though the politburo was formed of those that declared themselves atheist, the Council of Experts is formed of those that declare themselves muslim. In both cases it is the richest, most powerful people of the government, unelected by the people.
As mentioned, no corporation, not even the government monopoly, can operate without financing, but tyrannical dictatorships need sufficient amounts of money to maintain power by providing sufficient luxury to the means of tyranny, the armed force. Benevolent dictators are rare in the annals of history and most maintain power through sheer force. The aftermath of the Iranian Elections is but one example, while Prague Spring is another.
Revolutions also need financing and rare is the case that a Nation has the means to finance its own monopoly, particularly a tyrannical dictatorship and indefinitely fund revolutions abroad. And yet tyranny has a tendency to seek to expand its power. Communism sought world domination. It's sister, Fascism sought world domination. Its father, Monarchy, often sought regional domination and international expansion through Empires. Islamism also seeks world domination, but rather than call itself an Empire, it calls it the "Caliphate," or the "Ummah."
And Islamism has expanded. Born in Tehran, in a bloody coup of a democratic movement to overthrow a monarch, the Ayatollah Khomeni created the first modern islamist dictatorship. He immediately moved to expand that westward into Iraq, but the brutal tyranny of Saddam was having none of it. In response, Iran looked instead to The Sudan and to Lebanon and to Palestine. Africa is an incubator for dictatorships, for violence, for war and revolution and The Sudan proved to be the first complete success for Iranian Islamist expansion, as much through alliance and "diplomacy" as funding terrorism and violence.
Palestine is as much a rallying cry as anything else, but it is a place of agitation and recruitment and a ready slogan for the cause. There is no doubt that Palestinians live a life of misery, but both the solution to that and the cause of it can be debated. When Iranian run Hamas or Hezbollah launch Iranian made mortars and rockets at Israeli schools from Palestinian schools, they want Israel to counter-attack the source of attack, a school. That's "Revolution Tactics 101:" create animosity in the people you want to recruit towards the government you want to oppose.
And when a Palestinian blows up a school or bus in Israel, that too is "Revolution Tactics 101:" create distrust by the opposing group in the people you want to recruit. This leads to crackdowns on the oppressed by the government you oppose. Tyranny and Terror thrive on hatred and it is little surprise that Hamas TV takes story lines straight out of Nazi Germany. The rise of anti-Semetism did not begin with Hitler. It was just an easy tactic for him to rise to power. He was so power hungry that he latched on to it despite being 1/4 Jewish himself.
Jews simply make an easy target, moreso in the early 1900's than today. In nearly every part of the world, Jews are a minority and hence easy to overpower with the primary ethnicity of the Nation. Their culture of education means they are also likely to rise to prominence in business and politics. In fact, Jews can be found of nearly every strand of politics, even anti-Semite politics. Hitler was 1/4 Jewish and Ahdiminijad is rumored to be of Jewish ancestory. Stalin and Hitler both accused Jews of being part of the other tyrannical extreme.
Because, in those days, Jews were minorities everywhere and had no Nation to advocate for their protection, it was a relatively low risk endeavor to demonize Jews. Because many Jews were also successful and hence often owned wealth, it was a high reward endeavor to strip them of that wealth. Because it was a low-risk, high reward endeavor, more than one extreme ideology developed around the concept of doing so. To make it more palatable to the majority of the citizenry, propaganda machines were built around demonizing Jews and their "evil capitalist ways."
And yet traditionally, Judaism and Islam are not enemies. Up until the 20th Century, Islam was a protector of Jews, moreso than was Christianity. But as anti-Semetism rose in Europe, secular fascists such as the Ba'aths as well as Islamists found an easy prey for the hatred that could fuel their tyrannies. Anti-Semetism today remains one of the most accepted and diverse hatreds in the world. Conspiracy Theories often center on it.
The establishment of a Jewish state did not end anti-Semetism. It concentrated it. It united the secular Ba'athists with the Islamists in an "international" struggle. Hamas TV, a puppet of Iran uses the same propaganda myths of kidnappings, body part stealing, and other Satanic rituals as a part of their means to build fear of Jews today that Hitler's propaganda machine did in the 1930's. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been central to numerous political and international struggles, to the point that the actual facts are relatively unknown and certainly difficult to prove.
But it was that international racism that propelled Hezbollah and Hamas, instruments of Iran into power in Lebanon and Gaza. While Gaza was taken by Hamas both at the ballot box and by violence, Hezbollah took south Lebanon by violence and bribe. Hezbollah has formed a shadow government there that the UN refuses to challenge and that Lebanon is powerless to counter. Both have moved into the final stages of islamist revolution by means of elected political party arms, in hopes of achieving the same level of legitimacy as did the PLO with Fatah.
Iran directly funds and arms both Hamas and Hezbollah, to include providing the finances for Hezbollah to pay Lebanese for the damages caused in the most recent war they started with Israel. Why? In order to build popularity for their shadow government and increase recruitment for their illegal army of terrorists there.
But Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists do not depend on the finances of Iran and the Sudan alone. Like many other "ideologies" that espouse a dictatorial tyranny, it justifies criminal enterprises as a means of finance. Somali piracy, common crimes, and organized crime along with drug trafficking and blood diamonds are all means of financing terrorism. Kidnappings, blackmail, and fraud are all justified as Allah's will on the enemy (us and any other entity that oppose islamism). Fraud and other financial crimes include "charities" whose donors may or may not know to what they're giving.
War On Terror News ©2007-2009 War On Terror News ARM, all rights reserved.
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