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Land of ‘Murka’ An Inside Look at George W. Bush’s “Murka” By Manuel Valenzuela Decline and Decrepitude  03/07/05 "Information Clearing House" - - From the highest mountains to the lowest valleys a great energy has gone missing from the land once known as America, its pulsating and vibrant warmth no longer felt as the enveloping mist of the last four years spreads far and wide, from sea to shining sea, penetrating every porous cavity of escape. An energy of positive realms and humanist inclinations has been imprisoned, wasting away in the dungeons of human malice, replaced with the negative manifestation of an alternate universe devoid of light, spawned by miscreants hijacking the idea and principles of what the land once known as America was.  From clear-cut forests to urban jungles, from golden prairies to steel-glass canyons, from arid deserts to honeycomb-looking, cookie-cutter suburbs, the winds of parallel worlds blow, causing drought throughout, poisoning lands once bountiful, bringing communal sickness to millions of citizens. In their surreal manifestations and hypocritical inclinations swaying and tilting the lone superpower into dimensions of lunacy, hatred and decrepitude, the winds of alternate universes have collided with those of normalcy, love and prosperity, transforming, for the worst, a nation and those residing inside it, creating a schism where non existed, helping send humanity on a collision course with itself, its most dangerous and formidable enemy.  Come inside the belly of the beast, journeying outside the box of conditioned realities, venturing into new realms of thought, acquiring open minds and nascent understandings, willing to question what is thought to be known and what has been learned, no longer blind to new ways of seeing the world and no longer deaf to the wailing truth of a nation in utter pain and mental anguish. Inside the belly of the beast the world presently finds itself trapped in, exploring through polluted bowels birthing malignant cancers spread by corporate indifference, continuing into diseased and enlarged entrails of gluttonous addictions, traversing black-blood veins soaked in oil, peering into the empty brain cavity of empire exhibiting corrosive mental disorders created by society itself, showcasing non-existent attention spans, Alzheimer's-like amnesia, medicated chemical imbalances laced with conditioned fear and insecurity, and the remnants of anti-depressant, hyperactivity sequestering cocktails eating away the minds, imaginations and futures of youth.  Inside the belly of the beast will we venture into, witnessing the overflowing testosterone of the human animal, the hate-filled, violence-seeking, fear controlled and deranged xenophobia of half the population, the ignorance fed by gutted educations and dumbed-down televised fictions, the castrated courage of the sane half of its citizenship, the silent acquiescence by the citizenry to mass murder and war crimes, the government and corporate controlled minds of people turned sheeple and the wisdom-lacking behaviors of so-called leadership.  Let us observe a youthful empire in freefall, a nation in decadent decline, collapsing under its own weight and its own self-induced ignorance and unenlightenment, drunk off its arrogance and self-proclaimed aggrandizements of magnificence and manifest destiny. Let us be witness to a land in disrepair, a population in mental anguish. Let us examine a country decrepit in true moral values, empathy and wisdom, a nation quick to rise and fast to fall, lacking the experience of history and the wisdom of time.  The Land of ‘Murka’ awaits, George W. Bush’s America, opening its realities and its gates, showing us its pariah lands, polluted environs, corrupted capitals, unenlightened communities and deluded citizenship. Let us look inside the window of reality, beyond the veil of delusion and deception, for history, it seems, is once more upon us, begging to be studied and learned, fearful of again being ignored, for we are witness to the rapid decline of one of the shortest empires to ever befall mankind, a second rate attempt at imperial hegemony that fails to stand side by side with the great Empires of history.  The end of Empire is near, a matter of mere decades. The symptoms of decline are all-encompassing, a manifestation of growing too fast and learning too slow, of basking in the glow of superfluous narcissism and embracing the delusion of grandeur, of succumbing to the demons of greed, power and wealth, of allowing the population to rot in the stupor of unenlightenment, of misallocating treasure and plundering budgets, of seeking hegemony and finding acrimony, of arrogantly calling for preemption and finding only overextension, of allowing the addictions and demons of capitalism to corrupt society, leadership and collective thought.  The foundations of an empire absorbed in megalomania are crumbling, slowly but surely rotting to the core, a victim of its own hubris, indifference and complacency, in time to fall with the tremors of an earthquake of its own creation. This the Land of Murka cannot stop, for its inertia has been set in motion, its momentum into self-implosion has been accelerated by its own hand of decadence. Though full of talent, ability and millions of good, decent people, the lessons of history has it yet again failed to learn nonetheless, and so is reaping what it has sown, yielding a rotten harvest made barren by the fruits of its actions and the drought wrought by consequences it fails to understand. The faster they rise the quicker they fall, products of their own self-implosion, like an immature, overgrown and undisciplined child, tied to the comatose grip of mind-altering and numbing prescription pills, orphaned and lacking parental oversight, never allowed to grown up and mature, failing to understand human society or civilization, failing to learn the behaviors and interactions of man, the lessons of history and the humbleness of greatness. Never suffering like all peoples before, never experiencing the growing pains of empire, never understanding the wisdom that comes with history, never learning the pitfalls of imperial aspirations, the empire only 200 years old cannot see its inevitable decline, preferring the comfort of denial and a life living in delusion to the unpleasantness of truth and the sobering truth of reality.  In the end, whether the Pax Amerikana fall fast or falls slowly, history tells us in a most certain way that it will most certainly fall. Humankind will only benefit to this reality, ridding itself of yet one more embryonic wannabe in a long line of often failed and seldom succeeded attempts at long-lasting empire building. The Pax Amerikana, a mere uncomfortable digestive gas movement in the long history of man, is not the first empire to rise, and will certainly not be the last. In time, this most uncomfortable gas, which continues to stink up much of the planet, becoming a festering nuisance to billions suffering under its wicked grip, will inevitably come out the sphincter of humanity, disappearing into thin air, carried away by the winds of history and bringing relief to a constipated world.  Its usefulness did have its merits, however, leaving behind a certain legacy, just as all imperial systems are want to do. Yet it will also leave its dangerous downside, its most ignoble contributions to humanity, embedding in civilization corruptions, exploitations, behaviors and decadence that will not readily be fixed, helping bring us closer to self-destruction. It served its purpose, coming along according to our path of development, contributing to our progressing evolution as a civilization. In time humanity will seek greener pastures, desiring to leave archaic and primitive empires behind, instead pursuing systems and leaders in tune to our evolving mental and civilizational growth. New players are already lining up to take its place and in time it might be wise to teach our progeny Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi or Portuguese.  This Land of Murka Inside the Land of Murka do we find ourselves residing in, the land of greed and the home of the slave, where eagles no longer soar, where long held principles have been disappeared and where dreams have turned into hollow fantasies. Murka is the land where nightmares become reality, where fantasy is turned to truth, where delusion and deception become principle, where lies are forever believed, where parallel universes and alternate worlds exist, where Pandora's Box is alive and well and where vicious cycles perpetuate their destructive forces upon the lower castes of society.  Murka is the land of profit over people, revenues over integrity, corporations over citizens, pollution over environment, the bottom line over universal principles of humanity, injustice and inequality over justice and equality, greed over reason, and the addiction to wealth over the virtue of moderation. The principles of Murka reward pursuit of materialistic wealth over pursuit of happiness, the love of the individual over that of the entirety, the addiction to labor over the love of life and the love of money over the love of family.  The religion of millions of Murkans is the Almighty Dollar; their god is greed; their temple of worship the television monitor sitting in the center of family affairs, like an idol being adored and venerated for hours at a time, its commands being obeyed, its lies and deceptions being absorbed just as its fictions manipulate human brains, rewiring minds and conceptions of a real world that will never attain the perfection seen on the monitor, sending reality spiraling into the vortex of psychological confusion and mental unhappiness.  It is here, in this land of surreal belongings and parallel dimensions, inside a nation of depraved delusion and unenlightened ignorance, that criminals and murderers and manipulators and exploiters of human flesh are rewarded, protected and extolled, elected to higher office, promoted in business, enriched with treasure and power, and given the bonuses that come with expanding the bottom line and the wealth of the Establishment. Whereas good, honorable and virtuous citizens, and there are tens of millions of you out there, are walked over and trampled, becoming the kicking dog of the alpha males and females, forever kept oppressed and subjugated, those lacking in honor and integrity, full of selfishness and apathy, willing to ruin lives and sell their souls to the demons of greed for a climb up the hierarchical pyramid, are rewarded throughout life, thriving in their wealth born in sin and in their power accumulated over years of flattening the best society has to offer.  Only in Murka do laws, rules and regulations defend and protect corporations, entities exhibiting actions of a psychopath along with the tendencies of psychopathic behavior. Hiding behind the laws they create, mold and help birth, these psychopaths kill tens of thousands of guinea pigs/people each year through their actions, behaviors, disregard for the environment and by the vast assortment of cancer-causing, disease-forming, chemically-manipulated, toxic-infested products they shove down our throats. In another world, in another time, if corporations were human beings, they would be sitting, cowering in shame, chained in their cells on Texas' death row, awaiting execution by barbaric means for the mass murder of tens of thousands of human beings that have perished and been made to suffer thanks to their products and actions. In Murkan society, however, vice is given precedence over virtue, immorality is rewarded over integrity, acquiescence is chosen over dissent, submission to authority is sought over the protesting of wrong, and callous indifference to the plight of others is smiled upon over concern for anything that does not expand the bank accounts of the Establishment. Indifference, cold-blooded disregard for human life, deranged motivations empowered by greed and actions and products that befall toxic fates and lifeless futures onto the population are cherished and acceptable principles running in the veins of corporate miscreants, lackeys and shills. It is in Murka, after all, where malfeasance is seen as virtuous, a highly praised human "trait" that, although condemning millions of humans, generates billions of dollars in profits. In a land where money is king and greed is an omnipotent addiction, vice becomes virtue just as morals become extinct.  The virtues of Murka are taught at schools and universities, forming the minds of future criminals and murderers and exploiters of human flesh, bombarding the mind with the need to expand revenues and profits, brainwashing youth to follow the dictates of corrupt capitalism, making its principles sacrosanct, holier than thou relics thriving off the behaviors and emotions of the human animal. Many schools of higher education help cement the idea of prolonged and ceaseless labor, of cutthroat competition, of individual glory and of the virtue of sacrificing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to suit the interests of the Establishment, planting in the thoughts of sponge-like, developing brains the subservience to authority that will last an entire lifetime, slowly laying the groundwork for perpetual loyalty not to humanity, but to the corporation and the elite that owns it. Where the Few Prosper and the Many Serve Within the boundaries of Murka crony and corrupt capitalism thrive, becoming the frontier of exploitation and indifference, where the few elite prosper while the masses flounder. It is a place where the bright rays of sunshine fall warmly on those at the top, though forever blocked from reaching the many below by the omnipresent shadow of greed and love for the Almighty Dollar. In this land the crimes of the Establishment get rewarded with the fruits of enrichment and protected through laws enacted while the small breaches of the masses result in lifelong oppression through the whips of control. Murka is the epitome of human wickedness disguised as American corrupt capitalism, where working and middle class citizens are exploited for their valuable blood, sweat and tears by the few whose wealth and power only continues to grow with each new day of hard labor millions of people are forced to endure. Having precious energy squeezed from their weak bodies day in and day out, millions of workers struggle to survive on a daily basis, living paycheck to paycheck, meal to meal, perpetually looking over their shoulders for the next massive layoff, downsize or outsource that might further plunge them into the abyss of subsistence.  In Murka unemployment grows, employment declines, wages fall, prices go up, hours increase, exploitation continues, deficits skyrocket, budgets expand, the surplus erodes, debt increases, slave jobs rise, meaningful jobs disappear, the dollar plummets, the economy implodes, unenlightenment festers, tax cuts to the rich few continue, the poor are made poorer while the rich are made wealthier, uncertainty prospers, fear is conditioned, insecurity expands and the mental health of average citizens continues to plummet with the onslaught of economic rape, the pillage of national treasure, the fraud of corporate profiteering and the corruption of government institutions, all benefiting the corporate Leviathan and the Establishment that runs it.  The population residing in Murka has as destiny a life working like a slave, imprisoned like a serf, bound to the dictates of an employer and the commands of a system that see but an automaton in the factory and not a living spirit of humanity; indebted to a society that shackles us from cradle to grave, making us lifelong servants trained to produce and consume, robbing us of life, energy, precious time, family and happiness; forced to return our living wages to the same feudal masters we work for in order to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves; and forever destined to be trapped in a purposefully conditioned vicious cycle of materialism, consumerism and ever-exceeding unsustainability that is robbing our humanity, destroying our planet, and condemning our progeny to a future that gets more dangerous by the day. Meanwhile, basking in the spoils of human exploitation the Establishment's power increases exponentially through the pilfering of our treasure, the vast control of government, the systematic -- and quite purposeful -- eruption of the budget deficit, the lowering of taxes paid by the elite minority, the evasion of taxes by the corporate world and the destruction of the nation's social programs. The middle class is being ripped apart, slowly gutted through methodical policies designed to increase the gap between the lower strata and upper castes. The nation's social programs are being eviscerated under the rubric of fighting the mushrooming deficit created by Republicans while the rich minority makes billions of dollars in exploited energies and untaxed wealth while sacrificing little to the common good.  Like the good moralist, virtue-emulating and Jesus following clan they claim to be, conservatives have, since 2001, and like the good hypocrites they are, declared class warfare against the lower, working and middle castes, reducing expenditures on welfare programs affecting the poor, including those offering medicine, shelter and food to children. To the followers of Christ, it seems, the poor are "lazy" and "lesser humans," thereby deserving the life they have in a world of "survival of the fittest." Lack of compassion and empathy go hand in hand with burgeoning ignorance, racist inclinations, delusional theory and callous, elitist indifference, after all.  In Murka, the richest and most prosperous nation the planet has ever seen, a land of unsurpassed wealth and comfort, hovering in resplendent abundance, forty million citizens live life without health insurance; millions go to bed hungry every night; millions of children living in indigence suffer malnourishment and uncovered health problems; millions have been or soon will be fired from their jobs, outsourced by companies to protect the bottom line, moving jobs across the ocean to the next bottom dwelling slave nation to offer cheap human exploitation; employment benefits to millions of unemployed do little to nothing to comfort insecurity and fear of tomorrow; homelessness only increases, growing daily along with poverty and mentally maimed Iraq war veterans; tens of millions live paycheck to paycheck, making nothing more than the slave payment called minimum wage; millions more are and will forever be indebted to their credit card lenders who charge criminally malfeasant interest rates; education budgets are being eroded at all levels, and the attempt is being made, rather successfully, to prevent the lower castes from ever advancing forward and never setting foot inside a bastion of higher education. The Control of Education The Establishment of Murka, as well as those in any other nation, understands perfectly well that in order to eviscerate the middle class, in order to increase the lower castes of the nation, the masses must be reduced to pebbles in a vast ocean. The easiest way to achieve this goal is by destroying the education, and by consequence the thinking mind thus created, that a population receives. Starting from the cradle, in those early years of utmost importance in brain development, the Establishment of Murka is purposefully failing to fund many aspects of infant and child education.  These policy decisions affect lower and middle class toddlers exclusively, most of whom are forced to attend unequal, unjust, unfunded and devastatingly unprepared educational districts from birth, segregated by racist policies, socioeconomic status of families and by the social engineering tendencies of the Establishment. As those children of the wealthy never need the assistance of government for education, it is easy to see who is targeted and who pays the ultimate price in assuring the continued hegemony of today's stratified society.  Already behind their rich counterparts, and falling behind more and more each year of schooling, the majority of Murka's children, slowly growing up, living in both rural pockets of isolated backwardness and urban reservations of decrepit underdevelopment, will be subjected to education systems disgraceful in their socioeconomically engineered segregation and in their abandonment to and failures in the priorities of our progeny's future. When the Establishment needs massive slave labor to exploit for years to come, assembly-line and burger flipper serfs to abuse into perpetuity and military conscripts turned cannon fodder to help wage the wars of profitable conquest and imperial aspirations, one can see, quite readily in fact, the ultimate purpose behind the deliberate dumbing down of Murka's children, most of whom have had their fates sealed long before they become a sparkle in their parents' twinkling eyes. The dumbing down of Murka's future continues until the end of high school, by which time it is hoped the child has either dropped out of school completely, thereby beginning a life of servitude or imprisonment, or will become a victim of environmental circumstance, meaning the now young adolescent is woefully unprepared for higher education and decides instead to pursue a life either relegated to the lower strata of society or decides to "voluntarily" caste draft himself into a military serving the interests of corporate and elitist power, becoming the cannon fodder of profit and the tool needed to expand the wealth of the elite.  The Establishment hopes that by this age dreams have been dashed, negativity has flourished, the pursuit of a prosperous future has been eroded, positivism and idealism have been extinguished, and the fatalistic assumptions of a defeated mind have set in. This way, the decades remaining in the life of the socio-engineered citizen will be used to further enrich the elite, with the person forced to work at the margins of society until the end of her working days, performing low paying yet arduous jobs while being exploited until old age, with her capitalist employers maximizing and squeezing from her every last ounce of energy she is capable of producing revenue and profit, and milking the newly minted automaton/slave for everything she has.  When multiplied by hundreds of millions of citizens, calculating the unimaginable profits of exacting prolonged hours of labor paying minimal amounts of wages while offering token benefits and non-existent political power, one can surmise how much the Establishment benefits from investing heavily in the formation of a dumbed down, defeated and unenlightened citizenry, each of whom will toil in burdened purgatory for decades at a time, living paycheck to paycheck, never rising above the caste chosen for them, born to enrich and empower their feudal masters.  This extinguishing of lives, ruination of futures and predestined selection into castes has resulted in innumerable millions having their abilities, talents and natural rights to opportunity quashed, never to escape the dungeons of oppression and exploitation, never to tap into the vastness of their potential and always to waste away in a life created, from the first gasps of air to the last dying breath of life, serving the elite minority in the historically perpetual hierarchical saga of the human condition that is the powerful few exploiting the weak majority.  Branded, rebranded and marketed again and again throughout the Ages by those in power, the perpetual exploitation of the masses, whether existing under the term slavery, manorialism, feudalism or capitalism, the concept remains the same, changing in name only and in the slight increase in freedom granted the masses. Repackaged and relabeled, as if to create illusions of rights and charades of freedoms, exploitation, subjugation and oppression of the lower strata of humanity by those at the top has never ceased to exist, giving the appearance of extinction, only to extend its devastating tentacles once more, this time born again under different circumstances, conditions, eras and level of human progress, claiming change yet delivering only a more refined and clandestinely oppressive system than before, as always evolved to further increase the power, control and wealth of the Establishment.  With the birth of a new being the same vicious cycle will once more renew itself, embedding the demon of predestined engineered fates into each new generation born into the lower castes of Murka, making of human energies nothing more than exploited and easily replaceable armies of production, consumption and war molded to suit the needs and interests of the Establishment. Through the assembly line called human procreation, manufacturing billions of entities worthy of exploitation, the Establishment has more than enough conduits of energy to exploit. With so many of us caught in the same vicious cycle, with millions needing to work for survival, seeking a low supply of jobs, the Establishment can do with us as they wish, paying low, asking for prolonged hours of sweat and toil, more easily controlling the masses, making us defeated drones never to stir the pot of discontent. We are easily replaceable, after all, for behind us stand thousands more eager to take our place if we happen to deviate away from the automaton/slave role designated us. Control Through Television Furthermore, the evisceration of education fuses with the dumbed down escapism and fictions of television to create a population addiction to and reliant on modern civilization’s new drug of choice. In television the Establishment and the government it owns have found the most powerful tool at their disposal to control, condition and manipulate a population to the dictates of power. Simply put, the television has become, in the span of a few decades, the fireworks erupting in the wet dreams of every Joseph Goebbels alive today, a propagandist’s manna from heaven and the Establishment’s weapon of choice in the pursuit of mind control and thought manipulation.  Television has become the heroin of the masses, a powerful escapist drug deviating stressed psychologies away from reality. For hours at a time, the human mind, never before bombarded with the stresses experienced today, can relieve pressure and relax to the tunes of a fictional world of beauty, perfection and orchestrated wonderment, a world that the natural human condition can never duplicate or achieve. Lost in fantasy and entertainment, the mind travels to locations far and wide, surfing the waves of channels in search of the greatest pleasure, and the most comfortable escape.  Today, the experiment of television has been a rousing success as subsequent generations of citizen’s fall prey to the heroin inside their homes. Never before a part of human evolution, the television suddenly appeared without study or research into its effects on the human brain, captivating millions of citizens half a century ago. For over fifty years entire generations of children have been subjected to the now known damages of television, creating in the population of Murka, a group that watches by far the most hours of television in the world, a series of behavioral, emotional and psychological anomalies that no human society has ever had to confront.  The children of days long gone are now baby boomers, and today their children and grandchildren are succumbing to the catastrophe that is the television. From a young age blitzkrieged with the repetitive, rapid and throbbing images of fictionalized entertainment, made privy to stimuli never before experienced by the young, developing human mind, toddlers, and later children, undergo a rewiring of their brains and a systemic manipulation of behaviors and emotions associated with an internal confrontation between the reality of life and the fictionalized fantasy they watch on the monitor.  After years of incessant television watching in youth, with the monitor having become parent, teacher, role model and trusted friend, with primate minds now under the spell of fictionalized conditioning and brainwashing, the adult citizen easily falls prey to the deceptions, manipulations and dictates of the Establishment. Using highly addictive and much needed escapist television programming as the hook and drug used to captivate and capture the attention of the masses, those in power fill the airwaves with the subtle yet powerful mechanisms of control, conditioning the masses to the direction they want society to take.  Through their advertisements the corporate world indoctrinates the masses with the products to be used in our daily lives. This way, we are introduced to products and ideas we have no choice but to purchase and incorporate. Using deceptive images of fantasy and perfection marketed to us, designed through methodical psychological research whose results yield the best way to manipulate the human mind, we are made to believe that if we purchase the products and services we see we will invariably achieve the perfection we see and the fantastical life we become enraptured with. Using our fragile egos against ourselves, the Establishment succeeds in conditioning us to make a necessity out of purchasing their goods and services. Never mind that the human condition will never achieve the perfection of body, mind and lifestyle we see, nor that we can ever hope of becoming the characters, and the fictionalized modes and behaviors, the television monitor regurgitates into our homes.  Through the television the Establishment not only controls what it wants us to buy and how it wants society to evolve but our subservience and acquiescence to the system as well. When it wants war it bombards the channels of propaganda with the images and pundits that will best mobilize an entire nation. Corporate media will distort, deceive and manipulate so-called news to suit the needs of a government and corporate world trying to convince a mostly placid citizenry of the significant need for war. Taking the form of blatant propaganda, the Establishment formulates a cocktail of lies, fantasy, emotionally-charged and psychologically-manipulative jingoism, over a period of time pushing the right buttons that will mutate a drone-like population, concerned only for their daily lives, into a reincarnated manifestation of past generations, creating a frenzied, rabid, blood-thirsty, scapegoat-searching war culture under the hypnotized grip of the television and the powers that control it.  Using fear and the threat of insecurity to manipulate the people, corporate media, in bed with government, over the years having become the mouthpiece of government control, unleashes a barrage of propaganda, in images and pro-war commentators, to arouse in the population the false sense of security that justifies military action. This way, debate is silenced and dissent is disappeared on the airwaves as once again the corporate media, the gatekeepers of information, allow us only to see and hear the point of view they want us to incorporate into our psyche. Voices of reason and of intelligence are ignored, banished from imparting important thoughts of wisdom, thus making it virtually impossible for the population to ever know there are other options besides the horror of war. With corporate anchors, journalists, reporters, commentators and executives pushing into our monitors an exclusively pro-war, jingoistic viewpoint, blitzkrieging us with their propaganda-laced images and opinion, over months of constant threats of fear and insecurity, denying the public from ever seeing or hearing truths and realities, it therefore becomes rather easy, with a population addicted to television viewing, to mobilize a nation for war. With the marriage of government and corporate power, truth disappears just as much as falsity prospers. With both entities profiting from the spoils of war, it is in each other’s best interest to work together to disseminate the seeds that will invariably spawn the rebirth of a dormant war culture.  Once again the system is at work, knowing how easy it is to control the minds of a dumbed down population that has been well trained, and some might say socially engineered, to never question authority, never think outside the box, never seek accountability and never think for itself. Easily manipulated, millions of Murkans are conditioned to believe, from a very early age, that anything emanating from television is sacrosanct. Thus, everything they watch is reality and anything they hear is truth. Anchors and reporters become trusted personalities voicing reticent opinions whose veracity are seldom, if ever, questioned.  Never do millions of Murkans stop to think of the many vested interests in corporate media, of the intricacies of profit and revenue, of the need to expand shareholder wealth, of the purposeful demonization of Arab peoples and the sugarcoating of anything Israel, of just why there is such an imbalance in the coverage and commentary of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, of why exactly there is such protection of and propaganda for the present administration. In reality, this failure of the population to ever question the interests of television, both clandestine and made public, is a symptom of the system at work, where children are brainwashed and conditioned so that as adults they will be easier to manipulate and control.  Whomever controls television controls the masses, along with whatever interpretation of reality is created for our consumption, and this certainty can best be seen in the Land of Murka, where the system serves to keep truths hidden and realities far removed from public discourse, where the media, acting in concert with government, whitewashes, omits and sugarcoats vital information the population is never allowed to receive, where, using the formula of constant repetition, the corporate media succeeds in planting that information into the public mind that will best serve both the interests of its parent companies and the Establishment.  Murka has become a nation addicted to its heroin, fed to us by the drug dealer called the Establishment, perpetually keeping us in the escapist world of television. The heroin injected into our homes distracts us from ever seeing reality. It is designed to manipulate and control at once, transforming the population into a sedentary herd of sheeple who never question what is told them. Over the years millions of citizens have used this most dangerous drug to escape lives of frustration, unhappiness, desperation, depression and loneliness, never realizing that with every hour they watch, with every show they are glued to, with every channel they surf their minds are turned to mush, becoming conduits of ignorance, molded into muscles in desperate need of gossip and sensationalism, no longer thinking for itself.  The Establishment has perfected its machination of propaganda, creating the realities it wants into society, forming whatever truth that will be of the greatest benefit, not to society, but to itself. Whatever reality it wants to create and disseminate is quickly absorbed by a population eager to feed off the mammary glands of television. The Establishment, the corporate world and government have for years told us how and what to think, how to act, who to obey and where to follow, condemning our minds to obedience, our lives to conformism and silent acquiescence.  We have been made sheep, one and all, some more than others, becoming, over years of conditioned receptivity, members of the army of fantasy, unknowingly conscripted from birth, our minds rewired through the tools of the airwaves, made subservient creatures dumbed down by Establishment created education and television, following the commands of our masters, bowing in eternal submission to powers both known and unknown, falling prey to their deceptions and manipulations, allowing them to do with our minds as they please. For the elite, nothing has ever been easier; nothing has ever been more successful. From cradle to grave, our minds thus become their slaves.  Conclusion to “Land of Murka” coming Thursday…  Mr. Valenzuela’s new novel is now on sale through Authorhouse.com at Echoes in the Wind Sales Page. A philosophical, educational and spiritual story on humanity and our civilization, as relevant as today’s headlines, this book is almost 600 pages in trade paperback form on sale internationally through secure web page transaction. Additionally, the novel is now available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, as well as other online book sellers. If preferred, the novel can also be ordered at any local brick and mortar bookstore worldwide through the book’s ISBN number, 1418489905.  Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles appear regularly on www.informationclearinghouse.info . His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet