A while ago I went to visit friends in Germany. They live in the mythical Black Forest, not far from a town where the famous author and Nobelist Hermann Hesse was born. My friends are enlightened Catholics, habitually indulging in the aesthetic glory of a well-ordered High Mass.
Until recently. Because recently their parish priest accepted the proverbial apple, offered by a determined Eve with angelic features and lovely hips. Which led to her impregnation and his unconditional dismissal. The latter signed by the regional bishop with a few footnotes we better do not reprint here, for fear to scuttle the shop once and for all.
Let me begin with some observations about Conspiracy, which can lead to the end of Democracy and the Government of Laws. Conspiracy is a symptom of a decaying State. In a functioning democracy with freedom and diversity of opinion, only outlaws are attracted to conspiratorial practices. In a democracy, the citizenry has no need of them.
There are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.
The year is sometime in the future. The Wall has come down. The tunnel is closed. The past has been buried with the dead. The old hates have been dissolved. The memories of mutual Holocausting have brought a mutual compassion to fuse two populations. Zion and Hamas are now a crossing of two avenues in the distance. Smoke still fumes from the locale, from the scar of an old earthquake. Yet love somehow has blossomed in the desert like so many olive groves in the shadow of its warmth. The child of that love is called Palisraelestine, a land of milk and honey, an Elysian grove, Eden if you wish. Still with me?
The Destablisation Template
In her 2002 book titled, "Water Wars," noted author, social activist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva called privatizing water:
