A serf is a feudal subject, as you know, not quite a slave but imprisoned in a system of exploitation. Land owners also owned the labor of the people living on the land, so if you were a serf, you had to work at certain times of the year to get in the Master's crops, and you were also subject to other injuries and insults like wars and class-based rape. If you didn't work you could be imprisoned or slain.
Today we have it much better--if you don't successfully compete for work, you get to live on the streets and die of hunger, exposure, cop beatings, untreated medical conditions, or what have you. Or you can be imprisoned for one excuse or another--an incredible 2.3 million are in the US--and perhaps survive in total real slavery for a while, after which you're kicked out onto the streets, to compete for an insufficient supply of jobs with people who haven't yet been imprisoned. As I said, it's a good thing we've made such progress. For example, we have the Thirteenth Amendment saying that you can't be enslaved, except if convicted of a crime, or enlisted in the Armed Forces.
Next time you're out and about, have a look at the faces and conditions of the people begging with signs, and tell me whether maybe that conditions your attitude about keeping work, paying rent or mortgage, et cetera. Don't tell me in too loud a voice, though, because this is the Land of the Free and who knows who might hear what you say, and repeat it to your boss. That wouldn't be good.
You can't be drafted to be sent off to the wars, though, because at least you're not some god-forgotten serf. We all know people who have voluntarily joined the armed forces, young men and women who selflessly gave up their opportunity to live on the streets. It's hard to say that the wars are vicious imperial adventures, because you never know who might be listening, maybe one of those kids returned alive in most of their pieces, or the family members thereof, who might haul off and stomp you for saying such a mean nasty truth, and then the cops might arrest you and charge you with fighting and there you'd be on the streets when all was said and done, where you'd be free to speak your mind again if you were inclined to.
I can imagine if my kids had been to Iraq or Afghanistan and had their sanity or their means of locomotion explosively removed, I might be a bit testy if you mentioned that it was all for a lie, and that 9/11 was a stunt pulled off by Dick Cheney's buddies and nanothermate packed into the corners of World Trade Building Seven and all that, so best to shut up and enjoy the freedoms these fine young people have been fighting for, after all. Freedom isn't free, you know. You have to pay the price, you have to sacrifice for your liberty.
I was taught to sing that in sixth grade, and I sang it loud, with the other sixth graders in my military hometown, and I don't think I sang it quite loud enough to reach the veterans who stayed home in their wheelchairs, but I know there was one colonel there who enjoyed it and then went back to work on his Austin Healey Sprite because that's all he ever did after he got shot in the head, they say by his own troops, removed the pre-frontal lobe that neatly you know, and it was no use talking to him about whether it was a good idea to invade Vietnam because he's say they invited us and did I want to be a Communist. But that was then. You never step into the same river twice, that's what I heard, and I'm sure it applies to the Mekong.
Now the question is whether to bomb Iran, and the Israelis say they're gonna have to do it because maybe the Iranians are building a bomb and it wouldn't do to have a bomb threatening them, since they have hundreds of satellite-guided nuclear weapons on jets, submarines and missiles and might be riled into flattening Iran if Iran were to flatten them. This is a case of just haveta do it, and the US loyal press wants to be sure that you understand that there's no way Israel could just blow it off and maybe not go to war, and negotiate a trade deal or something instead, because you know that maniac Ahmadinejad is another Hitler and said he was gonna kill everyone, wipe them off the map.
It's hard to argue, because after all the Iranians do have their big Day of Hating Israel coming up who knows why they take that attitude anyway, they aren't grateful I guess, and who knows they could maybe put a homemade nuke on a motorboat or something, since no one thinks they could get one of those old F-4s past five hundred Israeli modern jet fighters, and anyway it's hard to get a first-generation nuke under a thousand pounds and the F-4s bless their fifty-year-old US-made hearts can't carry that kind of load at speed. We're just talking reasonable here, no one expects Israel to sit around with Hitler waving a maybe nuke at them, that was bad last time with Hitler and all, can't let it happen again, which is why they had to corral Palestinians with a wall and bomb the crap out of every man child and woman they could get a bomb onto last year--it was that Hitler thing and if they hadn't done that he would have reincarnated as homemade missiles and suicide bombers.
So that's just the way it is and it's bombs away. I have it right here from Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
"The U.S. should begin preparing crippling sanctions on Iran and publicly make clear that a military strike is possible should the Iranian government press ahead with its nuclear effort, a bipartisan policy group said. “If biting sanctions do not persuade the Islamic Republic to demonstrate sincerity in negotiations and give up its enrichment activities, the White House will have to begin serious consideration of the option of a U.S.-led military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities,” said the study from the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington."
So there you have it, it's bipartisan; so don't tell me everyone doesn't agree on this, the US has to get ready to blow up Iranians too. If you're not Democrat or Republican you're some sort of god damned lunatic, everyone knows that, so just praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. This is a free country, and you can be a Republican or a Democrat if you want to, so shut up or just admit you're a wing nut.
Our betters in the corporate-approved press also want you to understand that this is a pressing matter, bombing Iran I mean, and it can't just wait around. http://thestar.com.my/news/
LONDON (Reuters) - Israel will be compelled to attack Iran's nuclear sites if Western powers cannot agree crippling sanctions against Tehran by the end of the year, a former Israeli deputy defence minister said on Wednesday.
Ephraim Sneh, who holds no position in the current Israeli government and was speaking in his personal capacity, told Reuters it was not clear the United States and European Union had the decisiveness to take such steps, which should include tougher banking and oil curbs, by year's end.
"We cannot live under the shadow of an Iran with nuclear weapons," he said in an interview on a visit to Britain. "By the end of the year, if there is no agreement on crippling sanctions aimed at this regime, we will have no choice."
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That's the word from the Man, baby, and you'd better believe it, because Hitler's out there and it's bombs away by Christmas, no screwing around this time, we really mean it. Ask any bipartisan. And it's the US' fault for not starving or bombing those Hitlers earlier, according to the same guy.
He points out that if Iran gets a bomb, which you know they could if they took all the uranium from their reactor and re-enriched it from three percent to ninety-five percent it could happen they're Hitlers,
"-- Immigration to Israel would stop.
More able young men and women would emigrate to pursue their future in places seen as more secure.
Investment in Israel would be reduced.
Decision-making by the cabinet would be hostage to the fear of Iranian nuclear retaliation. The processes of government would thereby be "substantially distorted".
Extremist forces in the Middle East would be empowered.
Iran would pressure moderate forces in the region to toughen their positions in contacts or negotiations with Israel, for example in discussions over Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt would seek to obtain nuclear weapons themselves, bringing about a Middle East "fully loaded with nuclear weapons."
That's what he said, and we wouldn't want a Middle East fully loaded with nuclear weapons because the several hundred that Israel wields are enough already. And you can imagine how messed up things would get if the Cabinet was held hostage and all distorted, giving away the Golan Heights and giving in to empowered extremists, nobody would be left in the country anyway, and Egypt and Syria would want nukes which they probably never thought about before.
Everything would go to hell, remember now, if we don't join the Israelis in bombing Iran by Christmas, that's the word. There's no choice. And there's no reason to be squeamish, to go out in the streets and scream or something, because it will be a surgical bombing you know, with smart weapons, and nobody will die that wasn't going to grow up to be a damn terrorist anyway, the ungrateful little thugs. Probably some terrorist journalist from Al-Jazeerah is already planning to go there to take unnecessarily bloody pictures to put in the liberal press and upset our brave veterans who died for our freedoms, they should be shot.
All we want to do is keep the peace, we're peaceful people and our twenty thousand nuclear weapons and world's largest military expenditures are for peace, so don't start with that leave-the-journalists-alone stuff, you know what they did to us in Vietnam and we probably would have won the war if it weren't for photos of little girls burning, that was so unfair to our troops, that kid was probably faking it and I bet she had just planted a bomb.
Besides all this liberal posturing is gonna get us nuked from Venezuela. Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who you may have seen on UniMentiras, excuse me I mean Univision, alerts us all to the Caracas-Tehran axis, hitlers all over the place when you don't get tough, and he said in Murdoch's Australian that "Regardless of how one thinks liberal democracies should respond to Iran's development of nuclear weapons, Chavez's involvement has unsavoury implications for the Western hemisphere. Should the Tehran-Caracas relationship evolve into a nuclear Venezuela, or a Venezuela acting as a nuclear base for Iran, Caracas's ability to destabilise neighbouring countries that are resisting Chavez's attempts to subvert them would be exponentially augmented. Not an edifying prospect for those of us who would rather see Chavez - and the line of populist tyrants from which he descends - relegated to horror museums."
You know, those wax museums that have a wax statue of, say, Hitler. You'd better watch out, I'm telling you why, because if you don't go along with a bombing campaign by Christmas it's the Battle of the Bulge all over again and I don't mean your waistline.
This sort of thing is why Obama is forced, forced I say, to insist on an extension of the Patriot Act. No it's not the fact that the US war industry depends on it and they could sink him in the press outlets they own lock stock and barrel, it's necessary toughness against terrorism, and you don't support terrorists do you? I should hope not because they're after our freedoms and this takes tough measures to combat, so don't give me that freedom crap. If you want freedom and liberty then stop whining about your damn liberal freedoms and liberties and equalities, and what is it going to be next, I suppose you want us all to get sex changes or something, when are you going to understand that we have to be tough?
All those people pointing to the third building to fall on 9/11, you know, the damn World Trade Center Seven, and saying it fell like it was full of timed explosives for no reason-- they are traitors. Traitors! They should be taken out and shot. Those forty stories of World Trade Center Seven fell instantly into their own basement because there was a fire on the roof and the planes that hit World Trade Centers One and Two probably shook it or something, it's been proven by Popular Mechanics and National Geographic and who know what all, and don't start with that liberal pablum about how Popular Mechanics lost its editorial board and replaced it with Chertoff's relative and other ringers, that's traitor talk. If it weren't for traitors like you we'd probably already have won in Iraq and Afghanistan, which reminds me....
We've got to increase our troops in Afghanistan, because if we don't, the Taliban will probably sneak shoe bombs and poison pens into our aircraft and use then to blow up our skyscrapers. What? That's the truth! Stop looking at me like that!