corrente

"They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought the governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen power to intrench themselves in their privileges." ~ from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

4 In the August 28, 2006 issue of The New Yorker a look back at Upton Sinclair's life and work: UPPIE REDUX? Upton Sinclair’s losses and triumphs

4 New York Review of Books, August 10, 2006:
Mindless In Iraq, By Peter W. Galbraith

Goldfarb [Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq by Michael Goldfarb] describes a young Republican, sent by the Bush administration to instruct the Iraqis on democracy, who explained to a gathering of tribal and community leaders assembled at the Baghdad Hunt Club that "a political party exists to channel power.... Once you have political power, then you can create, you can do what you want with government, right?" Goldfarb comments:

To people who had survived the Ba'ath, a political party that really knew how to channel power, the lecture must have seemed ridiculous.... By now I was full of slow-burning anger. My friend Ahmad had died for this? So some kid could stand inside a privately guarded compound, explaining that "a political party exists to channel power" on a street guarded by American soldiers in a city where, one year after the overthrow of Saddam, the original meeting site [at a Baghdad Hotel] was so insecure that local police could not defend it? This was bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq? The most powerful nation in history had rendered itself utterly powerless here.

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