Long Live the King

By Dustin Axe

Michael Jackson is truly one of the most remarkable people to have ever lived. His life was one of flamboyant clothing and hair, bizarre behavior, mystery and controversy, and above all entertainment. His cinematic music videos, jaw dropping dance moves, and unmatched singing makes him superior to all. He really is the King of Pop. Michael Jackson is without a doubt the world’s number one entertainer of all time. Not only is he the best musician of all time, but he’s pretty good at making us laugh. He's the butt of every joke imaginable, and one can’t help from laughing when he adopted a chimpanzee or when he appeared in court dressed in pajamas. To be sure, Michael Jackson’s death came as shock to many people who have been entertained by him for decades.

I remember using a VHS to record and watch the Martin Bashir interviewed of Michael in 2003. When it was over I danced around my room and got lost in his music like I always do. I remember thinking how disturbed he was and how horrible absolute fame and wealth must be. Michael told stories about his childhood and he tried to give us insight to who he really was. He seemed to be a genuine person who lived a tragic, yet magnificent life. It’s hard to understand it.

To really understand someone you must overlook outward appearance and behavior, and instead focus on underline emotions. Michael was abused by his father and denied a childhood. He spent 90 percent of his life as an international superstar. Imagine having no childhood and being a prisoner in your own home. Imagine always being in the limelight and your appearance constantly ridiculed by your father. I’m sure this would create emotional problems for any of us. Now imagine having absolute wealth that allowed you to purchase anything you wanted. The theater, zoo, amusement park, statues, prescription drugs, and continuous cosmetic surgery are nothing more then Michael seeking earthly solutions to underline emotional insecurities.

In a world of materialism, science and money enables any of us to find these “solutions.” Do we not all alter our own appearance in one way or another and take prescription drugs that make us happy? How many of us go to tanning beds, dye our hair, and purchase things that supposedly enrich our lives. All Michael did was do it bigger and better then anyone, something he did in every aspect of his life. He may seem bizarre, but in a way, we are all Michael Jackson.

I have always been a Michael Jackson fan, and I have always defended his bizarre behavior and criminal accusations. He was a self proclaimed Peter Pan who loved binging around children partly because he was denied a childhood, and partly because children didn't ask for money or tell him what to do. We’ll never know for sure if he ever cross the line with those boys, but we do know he tried to help disadvantaged and sick children. This is evident though his music and charity work, and in a sense he was a role model for these children. How many performing artists do illegal drugs, carry guns, and abuse spouses? Michael never did any of this, so let us remember him, not for his faults, but for his intentions.

Michael Jackson’s death is an event people will remember. As I am writing this there are millions of fans waking up all around the world who are hearing for the first time that he is dead. He is one of the most well known people to have ever lived, and people are already comparing his death to Princess Diana's. When I saw an internet headline that read “Michael Jackson goes into cardiac arrest” I immediately thought nothing of it. This is coming from a guy who wears a germ mask, walks under an umbrella no matter what the weather is like, and who sleeps in hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I thought this was Michael being Michael. Unfortunately, he passed way today, June 25, 2009, from cardiac arrest. He was 50 years young. I am absolutely shocked.

The world lost an icon today. I remember growing up watching Michael Jackson videos in the 1980's, and I remember his 1993 Super Bowl halftime show as if it were yesterday. His music career dwindled in the 1990's, because of a personal life full of lawsuits, trials, plastic surgery, divorce, and scandals. I always paid attention to his trials and I kept up on tabloids. I laughed and shook my head at his antics, but I always remained a fan. In 2001, I remember waiting for months for his newest album, Invincible, and hours before it was due out I was dancing to “Billy Jean” and “Smooth Criminal” in my dorm room. I went to Wal-Mart in West Lafayette that night and I had it in my hands at midnight. I had to get employees to open the boxes. I wasn’t alone.

As a good friend of mine, Mark McCormick, put it, Michael Jackson makes music come to life. This is so true. Personally, I have no musical talent at all. I can't sing, dance, or play an instrument, but I always find myself lost in his music, singing and dancing, wishing I had talent like him. I attempt to do the worse moonwalk you’ve ever seen, but it’s fun as hell!

His death comes a few days before a scheduled tour in July 2009. Lets be clear here, this wasn’t a comeback tour. It’s important to remember that MJ has never left. His music has always been here and it always will. There are millions of people all over the world who absolutely love his music and millions more will discover it after his death. He is the most influential and successful entertainer of all time. Michael Jackson will NEVER die.


Rest in peace.

The War on Terror

By Dustin Axe

President Obama has repeatedly regarded Afghanistan as the top priority of his foreign policy agenda. As a consequence, there has been an escalation of fighting in the region and increase concerns about advances by the Taliban into Pakistan, as well as untold civilian deaths. On May 6, 2009, over 100 innocent people, including children, were destroyed by U.S. war plans. Total deaths could reach 200. If so, that would make this single act of terror the most deadliest since the start of the campaign to topple the Taliban in 2001. By shamelessly killing innocent people, the United States has brought nothing but more terror to a country wrecked by war for over 30 years. Author Noam Chomsky wrote, "There is no flag big enough to hide the shame of killing innocent people ."

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, President Obama writes, “I wonder, sometimes whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline." He wrote this just before he expanded the war in Afghanistan, where the armies of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union threw in the towel. I agree with the President; Americans are ignorant of history, and so is he.

Just what is the “The War on Terror?” The U.S. spends billions of dollars on high-tech weaponry and it sends soldiers all over the globe to wreck havoc on the world in order to defend itself against loosely organized bands of terrorist. According to FOXNEWS footage, these terrorists train on monkey bars and practice leapfrog, a child’s game. The Bush Administration claimed these individuals hate freedom and democracy. Yet, these terrorists appear to be targeting military and economic symbols of U.S. hegemony around the world--the World Trade Center, embassies in Africa, the U.S.S. Cole, and basically anything associated with the Pentagon, including the Pentagon itself. This should be a clear message that these so-called terrorists do not hate freedom or democracy, rather they hate U.S. global occupation.

Millions of people, not just Islamic fundamentalists, but good-willed people all over the world, dislike America, largely because of our military influence. We are the most militaristic country, above and beyond everyone. Of the 121 nations evaluated for the Global Peace Index in 2007, America is ranked 96, between Yemen and Iran. The United States has 700 military installations throughout the world and over 310,000 military personnel stationed in 120 countries. How did it come to this?

For the last half of the 20th century the Military Industrial Complex was justified by a cold war with the Soviet Union. This included nuclear armament and endangering the world with nuclear proliferation--the U.S. has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world five times. It also included building bases and stationing troops in satellite nations around the world and fighting wars in Korea and South East Asia.

But a brief review of the history of our new “War on Terror” reminds us that much of our problems in the Middle East are a direct result of twenty-five years of failed foreign policy, dating back to the Reagan Administration. Reagan's cabinet gave billions of dollars in aid and military support to Saddam Hussein when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons against its own people; armed and trained Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; funded and trained terrorists in Central America; and ended the Iran-Contra scandal by secretly selling weapons to Iran.

The Reagan administration triple the national deficit in only eight years party due to the $2.5 trillion spent on the military, which is more than all the money spent on the military since the end of World War II. Some pundits and historians claims this helped win the Cold War. Though, many believe it was more Soviet reforms then anything. Either way, the Cold War ended and millions of people gained freedom. However, the way it was done has given us our problems today. Not only did the Reagan administration break the law, but it provided arms and created alliances with terrorist networks and brutal dictators all over the world.

Unfortunately, the same men who served under Reagan for eight years, also served under George Bush I, and they serve George Bush II. Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove, etc. all played major rules. These men and women are opportunists with no moral convictions. They find quick military solutions for the moment, and in the process they recklessly disregard cultures, traditions, religions, and governments of other countries involved, ultimately creating even bigger and more global consequences for the future. Twenty-five years of failed foreign policy has given us new problems involving the same names today: Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden.

U.N. sanctions in the 1990's, implemented by the United States, deprived innocent people of medicine, water, electricity, and basic necessities for life. This cost hundreds of thousands of innocent people their lives in the 1990's under the Clinton administration. The current occupation of Iraq has killed more then a half million people.

Currently, the War on Terror further warrants a massive military budget and global military occupation. America spends well over $400 billion a year just to maintain the military during peace time. Add another $500 billion or more for the War on Terror. For 2008, President Bush requested between $600-$700 billion, including money for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Adjusted for inflation, these current wars have cost more than every war in American history with the exception of World War II.

The War on Terror is based on preemptive war on countries with abundant resources that have little to nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism. In order to justify war in Iraq the Bush Administration lied to the American people leading up to the war's beginning in March 2003. He repeatedly said there were WMD's in Iraq and a direct link between Saddam and 9/11. Finally, in June 2009 former Vice President Dick Cheney admitted to these were lies by saying, "I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true."

If the United States was engaged in a “just war” with clear objectives and enemies that were directly threatening its citizens it would have no problem fielding an army pumped up on nationalism. But, instead, these wars are unjust and based on lies, so President Bush had to lie to the American people, as well hire private military companies, such as Xe, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to maintain occupation.

In short, the War on Terror has been completely fabricated. It is nothing more then propaganda justifying an interventionist foreign policy all around the world, used by corporations to increase profit and to protect international finance capital. The words, “War on Terror”, are nothing more than propaganda used by leaders to justify an endless war that benefits corporations. Throughout all of history when pharaohs, kings, emperors, caesars, and presidents speak about “national security” and protecting “our interests” they are really talking about protecting the economic interests of the rich. The interests of Haliburton and ExxonMobil are not the same as the interest of average Americans. Michael Moore was right when, during his 2003 Oscar acceptance speech, he said, “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”

Further analysis of the War on Terror reveals that most acts of terror are carried out by domestic terrorists. Ironically, they are often by right-wing, Christian fundamentalists, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which has been terrorizing, lynching, murdering, and intimidating blacks, Jews, and immigrants for over a hundred years. Not only did the government not protect victims of violence from the KKK, but it actually participated in state sponsored racism and violence. Unfortunately, a black president, a poor economy, and continuous non-white immigration has led to more and more domestic acts of terror. In the first half of 2009 a prominent abortion doctor was assassinated in Kansas and a neo-Nazi, white supremacist stormed into the Holocaust Memorial Museum with a rifle and opened fired on guards. These terrorists, along with the likes of Timothy Mcveigh, are from the radical Right, but be sure, the Left has produced domestic terrorists, as well. Ted Kozinski, the Weather Underground, and the Earth Liberation Front are only a few. The point is most acts of terror, both past and present, have been carried out, not by Islamic fundamentalists, but by Americans.

If America chose to work on things humanely and bilaterally, we would be in a position to rule the world--peacefully. If America was a kind "global citizen,” by waging peace on the world, we would no longer be feared and hated; we would be loved and respected. America would have a peaceful say in everything countries do, and we could lead a “community of power” against tyranny and hate. And if Americans chose to rule justly and democratically within our own borders by treating all our citizens with respect we would have less problems here at home. Instead of wasting a 1 trillion dollars in Iraq while levees break in New Orleans, steam pipes break in New York, and bridges collapse in Minneapolis we should insure that all Americans have affordable housing, retirement plans, health insurance, adequate schools, and unemployment relief. This is real national security in a time of economic hardship.