How Should An American Socialist Dress?

"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law." ~ Louis Sullivan 

To Sullivan, "function" didn't mean merely "utility" or "pragmatic use." Instead, it meant something like "life force." His "form follows function" dictum expressed a kind of essentialist vitalism. The "essence" of a thing in nature (an eagle, a cloud, a river) is its life force. This life force results in the outward form of that thing. In Sullivan's own words, "Unceasingly the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things."

"Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling."

Every Force Evolves a Form

One problem with "form follows function" is that it is tautological - it presupposes that every form in the natural world exists as it does because of functional requirements. We start with the end result (the form), look backward toward its origins, and assume that the results were inevitable. But there are any number of reasons why something might have a particular form (chance, malevolence, whim, purposeful design, play, folly, and numerous combinations thereof).

A better, less tautological mantra comes from Mother Ann Lee (1736–84), founder of the Shaker movement in America: "Every force evolves a form." From this perspective, form doesn't simply, dutifully follow a set of functional requirements. Instead, dynamic forces gradually forge resultant forms. These forces aren't simply functional; they can also be communal or spiritual, as was the case with the Shakers.

For working designers, "every force evolves a form" is a more useful rule. The design process actually begins with something that doesn't yet exist but needs to exist, and it moves forward toward a formal result. Function alone doesn't drive the resultant form. The form evolves from the holistic forces of the project—audience needs, client desires, ethical obligations, aesthetic inclinations, material properties, cultural presuppositions, and yes, functional requirements. "Function" is rightly seen as a single, isolated, quantifiable aspect of the overall "force" driving the form.

True, the Shakers did esteem utility. They found it beautiful. According to one of their slogans, "That which in itself has the highest use, possesses the greatest beauty." But more forces were bearing on the form of Shaker furniture than mere utility. The teachers of the Bauhaus also esteemed utility, but the forms of their furniture are far from identical to the forms of Shaker furniture because a host of other historical, philosophical, and material forces in addition to mere utility were affecting and evolving both forms.

What is the Function of Clothing?

The primary function of clothing is to improve the comfort of the wearer. In hot climates, clothing provides protection from sunburn or wind damage, while in cold climates its thermal insulation properties are generally more important. Shelter usually reduces the functional need for clothing. For example, coats, hats, gloves, shoes, socks, and other superficial layers are normally removed when entering a warm home, particularly if one is residing or sleeping there. Similarly, clothing has seasonal and regional aspects, so that thinner materials and fewer layers of clothing are generally worn in warmer seasons and regions than in colder ones.

Clothing protects people against many things that might injure the uncovered human body. Clothes act as protection from the elements, including rain, snow and wind and other weather conditions, as well as from the sun. However, if clothing is too sheer, thin, small, tight, etc., the protection effect is minimized. Clothes also reduce the level of risk during activity, such as work or sport. Clothing at times is worn as protection from specific environmental hazards, such as insects, noxious chemicals, weapons, and contact with abrasive substances. Conversely, clothing may protect the environment from the clothing wearer, as with doctors wearing medical scrubs.

Humans have shown extreme inventiveness in devising clothing solutions to environmental hazards. Some examples include: space suits, air conditioned clothing, armor, diving suits, swimsuits, bee-keeper gear, motorcycle leathers, high-visibility clothing, and other pieces of protective clothing. Meanwhile, the distinction between clothing and protective equipment is not always clear-cut, since clothes designed to be fashionable often have protective value and clothes designed for function often consider fashion in their design.

The wearing of clothes also has social implications. They are worn to cover those parts of the body which social norms require to be covered, and act as a form of adornment, as well as other social purposes.

Cultural Aspects

Gender differentiation: To promote sexual equality, socialist men and women should dress the same.

Social status: Socialists, whose goal is a classless society, should avoid the wearing of the western business suit and necktie.

Ethnic and cultural heritage: People may wear ethnic or national dress on special occasions or in certain roles or occupations.

Future trends

The world of clothing is always changing, as new cultural influences meet technological innovations. Researchers in scientific labs have been developing prototypes for fabrics that can serve functional purposes well beyond their traditional roles, for example, clothes that can automatically adjust their temperature, repel bullets, project images, and generate electricity. Some practical advances already available to consumers are bullet-resistant garments made with kevlar and stain-resistant fabrics that are coated with chemical mixtures that reduce the absorption of liquids.

Does American Socialism Have a Dress Code?

1. The 'dress code' of American Socialism is common sense. Recycled or surplus clothing is always a good choice. 
2. Throw on loose fitting jeans or cargo pants. You're a Socialist now, you don't have the inclination to buy pants that are tight fitting. Just as long as they cover you up they're doing their job just fine.
3. Wear a plain, solid colored, button-down work shirt, or polo shirt. Black or dark blue are good color choices.
4. Don boots. They should look like you haven't cleaned them up since you bought them years ago. For summer wear, sandals are appropriate.
5. Sport a plain, beat-up looking overcoat. It should be warm and practical, and not all that easy on the eyes. (Army surplus field jackets are always good.)
6. Formal wear: Sun Yat-sen Tunic
7. Everyday wear: Classic Mao Jacket
8. Casual Wear: Vintage Vietnam Fatigue Jacket
9. Head-wear:  The Che Beret
10. Foot-wear: Classic 'Communist' Sandals

That should give you some food for thought....

Communal Housing Is Coming Of Age

Seniors are beginning to see the advantages of shared living complexes.

GRASS VALLEY, CALIF. — Suzanne Marriott's brave drive into the future started with a traffic jam, which gave her a lot of time to think about what she was getting herself into -- and out of.

Newly widowed and recently retired, the lanky 64-year-old was making her way to the Sierra foothills to meet a group of complete strangers that she might just spend the rest of her life with.

Left behind in the rearview mirror was a sprawling ranch house in Castro Valley, near Oakland, that managed to be full and empty all at once, jammed with the stuff of a long, happy marriage but drained of life since the death of her husband, Michael, from multiple sclerosis six months before.

For decades, the couple, avid backpackers and mountain bikers, had wandered the world together. Now she was striking out on her own, placing big bets on the rest of her life and on a nascent movement called senior cohousing.

Marriott was betting that she could join a group of like-minded people -- all relatively healthy and not that old -- and together they could build a community that would be something between commune and condo complex.

She was wagering that they could all live there to the end without burdening family members or enduring life in an institution picked by somebody else. And she hoped they would have fun in the process.

So as Marriott navigated Interstate 80 toward her fellow pioneers in late-life living, she was more curious than terrified.

"I wanted to see if there was a way to make more meaning in my life now that Michael was gone," she said. "We'd been together 30 years. I thought I was being led to something that would be meaningful and be a way to move forward."

In the 18 months since she hit the highway, Marriott and her future neighbors have done something only a few groups of forward-thinking seniors in America have accomplished.

Along with the architects who imported the idea of cohousing from Denmark 20 years ago, they have designed their 30-unit complex from the ground up, complete with an elaborate common house where they plan to dine together several nights each week.

They've attended scores of meetings, made thousands of decisions -- all by consensus -- buried one beloved member and welcomed others. They have pledged to "support each other through rough times, whether physical, emotional and/or spiritual." They have learned how to listen and how to disagree.

And if all goes according to the meticulous planning of the 16 women and four men who have so far signed on, Wolf Creek Lodge will break ground in spring here in the heart of Gold Country. It will be California's second elder cohousing community and only the fourth such project nationwide; a dozen or so others are in the works.

"Many people don't have an extended family, or it's an extended dysfunctional family," Marriott said. "We'll have this close community for, well, the rest of our lives."

Poor By the Numbers

A household must earn $37,105 a year to afford the national average two-bedroom fair-market rent of $928 a month. A full-time worker would have to make $17.84 an hour to afford the average 2 bedroom if no more than the recommended guideline of 30 percent of income is spent on housing. 

The average American family of four spends 20% of their income on food and drink. (Roughly $8,000 per year.)

Clothing accounts for another $2000... Transportation another $8000... Entertainment (to keep your mind off of how poor you are) another $2500...

Hey, we're at $32260 - and we haven't even thought about medical insurance, or a host of other things people spend their hard-earned money on! That's $15.50 an hour! If you make less than that you are poor, and, without medical coverage, that poverty will lead to an early death!

A moral economy for our own time would certainly take on the unbridled accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority (and the planet). It would also single out for special condemnation the creation of an ever-larger stratum of people we call "the poor" who struggle to survive in the shadow of the over consumption and waste of that top one per cent.

Some facts: early in 2011, the US Census Bureau reported that 14.3 per cent of the population, or 47m people - one in six Americans - were living below the official poverty threshold, currently set at $22,400 annually for a family of four. Some 19m people are living in what is called extreme poverty, which means that their household income falls in the bottom half of those considered to be below the poverty line. More than a third of those extremely poor people are children. Indeed, more than half of all children younger than six living with a single mother are poor. Extrapolating from this data, Emily Monea and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution estimate that further sharp increases in both poverty and child poverty rates lie in our American future. 

Some experts dispute these numbers on the grounds that they neither take account of the assistance that the poor still receive, mainly through the food stamp programme, nor of regional variations in the cost of living. In fact, bad as they are, the official numbers don't tell the full story. The situation of the poor is actually considerably worse. The official poverty line is calculated as simply three times the minimal food budget first introduced in 1959 and then adjusted for inflation in food costs. In other words, the US poverty threshold takes no account of the cost of housing or fuel or transportation or health care costs, all of which are rising more rapidly than the cost of basic foods. So the poverty measure grossly understates the real cost of subsistence.

Moreover, in 2006, interest payments on consumer debt had already put more than four million people, not officially in poverty, below the line, making them "debt poor". Similarly, if childcare costs, estimated at $5,750 a year in 2006, were deducted from gross income, many more people would be counted as officially poor.

Nor are these catastrophic levels of poverty merely a temporary response to rising unemployment rates or reductions in take-home pay resulting from the great economic meltdown of 2008. The numbers tell the story and it's clear enough: poverty was on the rise before the Great Recession hit. Between 2001 and 2007, poverty actually increased for the first time on record during an economic recovery. It rose from 11.7 per cent in 2001 to 12.5 per cent in 2007. Poverty rates for single mothers in 2007 were 49 per cent higher in the US than in 15 other high-income countries. Similarly, black employment rates and income were declining before the recession struck.

In part, all of this was the inevitable fallout from a decades-long business mobilisation to reduce labour costs by weakening unions and changing public policies that protected workers and those same unions.  As a result, National Labour Board decisions became far less favourable to both workers and unions, workplace regulations were not enforced and the minimum wage lagged far behind inflation.

Inevitably, the overall impact of the campaign to reduce labour's share of national earnings meant that a growing number of Americans couldn't earn even a poverty-level livelihood - and even that's not the whole of it. The poor and the programmes that assisted them were the objects of a full-bore campaign directed specifically at them.

Corporate Capitalism would have every American worker living like a slave, the minimum wage as the norm, living in a cardboard box, eating one meal a day at MacDonald's, poorly educated, and without adequate medical treatment... That's the trend. That's where this country is headed...

Is this the life that you want for your children? Your family? Your self?

If not, you had better wake up. 

And, that's the Truth!

US Wages War Against the Poor

Widespread poverty and further welfare cuts have created a need for revolution in America.

We've been at war for decades now - not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it's been a war against the poor, but if you hadn't noticed, that's not surprising. You wouldn't often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it's been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed - until now.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in US politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

By making Wall Street its symbolic target and branding itself as a movement of the 99 per cent, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem. Only a short time ago, the "morals" issue in politics meant the propriety of sexual preferences, reproductive behaviour or the personal behaviour of presidents. Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection for insurance and pharmaceutical companies and financial deregulation, was shrouded in clouds of propaganda or simply considered too complex for ordinary Americans to grasp.

Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protesters have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan "We are the 99 per cent" reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren't far off: the increase in income of the top one per cent over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80 per cent)

The movement's moral call is reminiscent of earlier historical moments when popular uprisings invoked ideas of a "moral economy" to justify demands for bread or grain or wages - for, that is, a measure of economic justice. Historians usually attribute popular ideas of a moral economy to custom and tradition, as when the British historian EP Thompson traced the idea of a "just price" for basic foodstuffs invoked by 18th century English food rioters to then already centuries-old Elizabethan statutes. But the rebellious poor have never simply been traditionalists. In the face of violations of what they considered to be their customary rights, they did not wait for the magistrates to act, but often took it upon themselves to enforce what they considered to be the foundation of a just, moral economy.

Rampant poverty and further welfare cuts have created a need to move towards a moral economy of the many, not the few. Now more than ever, we need socialism in America. Not just 'welfare socialism' where the politicians can systematically cut the people's benefits as they please - but a real militant socialism that will establish a people's democracy and redistribute the nation's wealth.

And, that's the Truth!

Fight Police Brutality!

When unarmed peaceful civilians are killed or brutalized by the police, they are being killed by agents of the government that is supposed to represent them. It is this failure of government that must be addressed.

Here are 5 Ways To Stop Police Brutality:

1. Protests

Police stations, city hall and other government venues must be protested against and marched on after every incident of police brutality.

2. Record the Police

We must use our cameras every time police harass us to catch them in the act. Then we can use the Internet and the viral media to expose these actions worldwide. In their heyday, the Black Panthers would do this.  They had a police watch and would follow the police with a camera and record their actions.  Now that cameras are so cheap and people have cameras on their phones, it is a lot easier to hold the police accountable for their actions.

3. Vote Out Politicians Who Condone Police Brutality

Politicians who do not address issues like police brutality must be voted out of office. Rappers should be spending a lot less time glamorizing black on black crime and dissing each other, and more time documenting police brutality. African American entertainers and activists have a strong voice in America and they must also use that voice to fight the problems in our community.

4. Engage in Dialogue With the Cops

We must use moderate police organizations to work with the police to stop police brutality. Groups like '100 Blacks in Law Enforcement' have done a lot to combat police brutality and people should work with them as an intermediary to deal with community issues with the police.

5. Take Legal Action Against Police

We need to take legal action as well. The best way to hurt police brutality is by hitting them in the pocket. If the police keep on getting sued for brutality they’ll be forced to deal with the issue. Every incident of police brutality should be reported to both the government and the media.

The people pay taxes and therefore they also pay police salaries. Police should be in the communities to serve and protect not to harass and arrest. The war on drugs is really a war on minorities. Americans are treated like insurgents in occupied territory and not citizens in need of protection. We need to end so-called 'wars' waged by our government on American citizens.

And, that's the Truth!

How To Be A Socialist

Socialism is the answer to over-population!

"You can't make an omelet without breaking any eggs." or "How many Republicans are there in the United States?" (Answer: There are 47 million registered Republicans in the United States.)

Does this right-wing propaganda poster give you any ideas?

Keep in mind that Corporate Capitalism STARVES  14,235,000 CHILDREN TO DEATH in the world every year! (So, in ten years their murder rate is over 142 MILLION - and that's only children, and only from hunger!) Here is a system that has murdered 23,000 innocent bystanders with drones, pointing the finger at socialists for killing people. Its laughable. But its not funny...

So you want to be a Socialist?

Socialism refers to collective ownership of the means of production, thus a classless and stateless international society and the end of exploitation and oppression. It was used as a synonym for communism by Marx, Engels, and many other socialists at the time, but it has also been used to refer to either a 'transitional stage between capitalism and communism' proposed by Vladimir Lenin.

1.- Read Marx. Read and analyze the writings of Marx and Engels' Das Kapital for a comprehensive economic analysis of capitalism and the theory of surplus value. Consider the concept of "common ownership of the means of production" or "workers control of the means of production".

2.- Read interpretations of Marx. For basic introductory books about Marx consider the following;

Introducing Marx by Rius (the best),

Introducing Marxism by Rupert Woodfin,

Marx's Kapital for Beginners by David N. Smith and Phil Evans,

An Introduction to Socialism by Leo Huberman

Marx: A Beginner's Guide by Gill Hands,

Rebel's Guide To Marx by Mike Gonzalez,

Socialism: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Newman

Marx: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer.

3.- Read Leon Trotsky on international socialism. In Defence of Marxism, The History of the Russian Revolution and The Revolution Betrayed.

4.- Consider studying less well-known socialist writers. Such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Rosa Luxemburg and Daniel De Leon.

Writings of Daniel DeLeon by Daniel DeLeon

What is Property by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin

The Basic Bakunin by Mikhail Bakunin

The Essential Rosa Luxemburg by Rosa Luxemburg

The Rosa Luxemburg Reader by Kevin B. Anderson

5.- Buy clothes and stickers with socialist slogans. Some people may ask you about them.

6.- Tell your views to people both moderate and extreme. Moderates may agree with some a few things you say, but free market enthusiasts will have a lot of differences with you. Know all you can about history and figures so that you can try to sway the opinions of different people. Collaborate and plan with your supporters. Remember, that many believe that socialism enslaves and oppresses the middle class by handing out unaffordable goodies and then levying higher and higher taxes on those who can supposedly afford to pay. Be prepared to discuss the particulars of countries using the most socialist systems, and know the measures they are taking to try to create a sustainable system.

7.- Read socialist newspapers and magazines. This will keep you up to date on current affairs. Magazines and news sources such as The Green Left Weekly[2], Indymedia[3], Red Pepper[4], Socialist Worker[5], Socialist Review[6], International Socialist Journal[7], New Internationalist[8], New Left Review[9], New Politics[10], ZMag[11] and Socialist Standard[12]. Etc.

8.- Organize solidarity in your workplace. Getting involved in the workers organization movements is generally considered something socialists engage in.

9.- Attend the World Social Forum and the left forum in New York City.

10.- Join a socialist party or organization and campaign for socialism.

Tips

The Marxists Internet Archive is a good resource and has a good student section.

Warnings

* Some purported "socialists" really want wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few rather than the many.

* Social democrats or welfare capitalists are not the same as socialists.

* Keep in mind that many people equate socialism with state capitalism or Communism. Before you start discussions with these people, understand and explain the differences to them.

* If you are going to argue with someone, keep it civilised.

Things You'll Need

* An independent mind

* The willingness to test all ideas with thoroughness.

* The will to act on what you have learned.

* The will to swim upstream the rest of your life, if need be.

Read:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/index.htm

Corporate Capitalism Pushes World to Brink of War

While local police use excessive force and violence against OWS protesters, the U.S. government, completely controlled by the 1%, continues to attempt to spread "freedom and democracy" of this exact same kind around the world. Reports come in daily about beatings, clubbings, tasering, a female having her bicycle thrown at her and disabled veterans being abused.

Meanwhile, Libya attempts to free itself from this "freedom and democracy" scourge brought to Libya by thousands of terrorists: murderers, psychopaths, head chopping nut cases - that enjoy bodily mutilation even when the body is already dead - raping women, looting, burning. Oh, the joy of freedom and demon-crazy compliments of NATO lapdogs of Corporate Capitalism.

NATO literally dumped this murderous trash into the country, to fight alongside local criminals and traitors in order to plunder the country's resources. But NATO did more than drop illegal weaponry, including chemical and biological agents... white phosphorous, depleted uranium, sarin. Outbreaks have occurred of tuberculosis due to biological weapons.

The water supply has both been bombed out of operation and poisoned. Western citizen taxpayer money was spent to "break the backs" of Libyans who will not submit to the terrorist government of NTC.

Now to move on to the brinkmanship being created with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Logic tells us that since the government of Iran gave its support to NATO and NATO's terrorists in Libya (a fruitless, thankless ill-conceived and cowardly decision) that they should be cut loose from our efforts at defense for the innocent. But a sense of humanity won't allow the world to do that and abandon them as they abandoned Libya to NATO terrorism.

One has a human duty to stand between murderer and victim. One has a human duty to expose lies that get people killed. One has a human duty to protect those being falsely accused.

The people are not the government. These people are descendants of a great culture and civilization who have shown compassion and kindness to their neighbors in distress. They don't deserve to suffer the fate of other victims of Corporate Capitalist imperialism. We must keep trying to succeed where our efforts did not prevent these horrors in the past.

No matter what, imperialism, colonialism and greedy capitalist exploitation must be opposed on every front it rears its ugly head. Other sectarian concerns must be set aside. The left has to get their collective heads out of the sand. Where, pray tell, is the anti-war movement?

Most Americans and westerners, when thinking of Iran, only see images of "hostages" being held, they've been taught to moan, groan and whine about it, but mostly to hate, without thinking about what precipitated that event.

They have have been led to believe that their countries were innocent victims of BAD, bad people and that their countries never do anything wrong, anything bad, anything evil when the opposite is true.

You see, Iran had elected a democratic, nationalistic government, that of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. His government didn't think it was exactly fair that Iran get only 15% of the profits from their own oil, while the remainder went to British interests. They nationalized Iranian oil for the benefit of the Iranian people.

Therefore, a coup against Mossadegh, perpetrated by the United States, put the bloody dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into power. He was only too happy to please his benefactors with agreements beneficial to them.

The Shah's government got the help and guidance of the CIA in creating the Iranian SAVAK, a vicious, brutal, fearsome secret police, something that the Iranian people can hardly forget.

Then the United States armed and instigated Iraq to attack Iran, with the unspoken goal of weakening both countries. They provided the very chemical and biological weapons they demonized Sadaam Hussein for. They also introduced nuclear energy to Iran. How's that for irony?

The U.S. is fast becoming a hopeless case unless the people wake up. All presidential candidates want war with Iran with the exception of one (not likely to be elected either probably for that very reason).

Corporate Capitalist instigated wars are fought to keep the military industrial complex booming, read rolling in cash, controlled by the one percent elite, while everyone else has to pay the enormous costs that allow that privileged elite to get richer, fatter and more arrogant.

In the process, jobs are lost, taxes go up, homes are lost to foreclosure, people are denied a health care system because millions are spent on the propaganda designed to create the illusion that hard working fellow citizens don't deserve health care if they cannot afford it, it's just that horrid thing known as 'socialism'.

But the same people think nothing of the multi-million billion trillion dollar welfare handouts to the banks and corporations. They think nothing of the trillions being spent for war operations, bombs and keeping bases overseas...but heaven forbid a poor person get a stinking $100 treatment in an emergency room with some form national health insurance.

There have been a succession of incidents that in essence are acts of war against Iran. First, there were the Twitter terrorist attacks at election time. There was the Stuxnet cyber attack.  There have been explosions on Iranian military facilities. Several Iranian scientists have been murdered. Then the drone flights to conduct espionage which culminated with Iran's downing one such craft.

The west moves for more and more crippling sanctions. Never forget to learn from history...that every war has begun with the imposition of sanctions. The result? We stand precariously on the brink of confrontation... World War III!

The senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Ali Ashraf Nouri, said that the Iranian government has made the decision to close the Strait of Hormuz where a significant portion of the world's oil passes if the country's oil exports are blocked. There is nothing that gives justification for such a blockage.

Then from the other side, an American threat:

"We made very clear that the United States will not tolerate the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz," Panetta told CBS television. "That's another red line for us and that we will respond to them."

Really, Panetta should take that "red line" and cram it where the sun don't shine, who gave US the right to cross the ocean thousands of miles away and bother these people who haven't done anything to any one?

U.S. behavior in making threats and taking actions against Iranian rights to develop peaceful nuclear energy are in violation of the Nuclear Non Prolifteration Treaty and the UN Charter in threatening war. Yet the mainstream corporate controlled media does not communicate these facts to the public.

With all the ships converging in close proximity in the Strait of Hormuz, an ideal opportunity presents itself: The sinking of the USS Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Korean ship sinking they tried to blame on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea... American or Israeli ships or aircraft can be given Iranian markings and attack a U.S. ship in order to serve as a false flag pretext for starting a war with Iran.

Millions of lives will be lost in the process as the U.S. and Israel are conducting operations in close proximity to Russia, making it entirely possible for the atmospheric contamination to carry over by weather patterns onto the territory of Russia. Russia cannot tolerate this situation.

In Libya, we have seen how drug addicts, alcohol fiends, psychos and rapists have been used as cheap short cuts to achieve resource grabbing. The world is already quite familiar with the lies, the false flag operations, the need to create an excuse to start something frequently used by the U.S.A.

The workers of the world need to cut them off immediately, in such an instance, and not give them any sympathy or support, just the opposite. If people allow these things to happen and progress as in the past... 2012 - if the world manages to survive until the end of it - will be a year fraught with unknown danger.

Does anybody really want to risk global nuclear war so the 1% can make more $$$? 

I don't think so!