by Stephen Lendman

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan coined the term. He did so addressing the National Association of Evangelicals.

He called communism "the focus of evil in the modern world." Don't "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire…and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil," he said.

Cold War politics returned. More venomously than earlier. Putin is targeted. He's public enemy No. 1.

Doing so turns truth on his head. Paul Craig Roberts justifiably calls him the world's moral leader.

A previous article said he shames his Western counterparts. He makes Obama look buffoon-like.

He does it with straight talk. Telling it like it is. Explaining what people most need to know. Unambiguously. Truthfully.

Polar opposite US politicians. Featuring Big Lies. Scorning vital truths. Supporting wrong over right. Making the world safe for monied interests.

Permanent war is official US policy. So is mass extermination. Begun centuries earlier.

Doing so reduced America's indigenous population to a tiny fraction of its original numbers. Millions were slaughtered in cold blood.

Centuries of slavery were horrific. Black Africans were captured, branded, chained, force-marched, beaten, encaged, and stripped of their humanity.

Around 100 million were sold like cattle. Millions perished during deplorable Middle Passage conditions.

Genocidal US policy continues in new forms. Technological advances facilitate it. America's killing machine knows no limits.

One genocide follows others. Countries are ravaged and destroyed. Tens of millions perished.

Winning hearts and minds don't matter. Stomping on people remains ongoing.

Death squad diplomacy eliminates nonbelievers. Madness defines US policy. Police state harshness criminalizes right over wrong defenders.

Making the world safe for democracy is pure fantasy. America tolerates it nowhere. For sure not domestically.

High crimes are rewarded. Upside down reality endangers everyone. Popular needs go begging.

Conquest, occupation, colonization, and exploitation are prioritized. Ordinary people are on their own sink or swim.

Wars are considered peace. They rage without end. Things go from bad to worse.

Propaganda works as intended. Minds are manipulated to support war. Truth is suppressed. Fear is stoked.

Patriotism, national security, and democratic values are highlighted.

Longstanding US policy prioritizes militarism, wars, homeland security, and related operations.

Doing so has nothing to do with external or internal threats. Nor humanitarian intervention. Nor responsibility to protect.

Nor spreading democratic values. It's about advancing America's imperium.

What Michael Parenti calls "the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries."

"(T)he dominant politico-economic interests of one nation" over others. "(F)or their own enrichment…"

"(S)tealing land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people." Dominating other economies and political systems.

Accumulating enormous amounts of wealth in the process. Using money to make more of it. Increase power. Gain market control. Exploit resources and labor.

Societies are destroyed and remade. Nations are pillaged for profit. Populations become disenfranchised. Workers become serfs. Local cultures become mass-market consumer ones.

Agribusiness replaces local farming. Competitive industries are eliminated. Foreign investment crowds out local capital.

Dominance legitimizes capital's divine right. Plunder assures obscene profits. Capital accumulation demands more. Profiteering becomes a be-all-and-end-all.

Democracy is pure fantasy. US elections are pre-scripted. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process.

Candidates are pre-selected. Big Money owns them. Key outcomes are pre-determined. Voters have no say.

Both major parties share blame. They're two sides of the same coin.

Not a dime's worth of difference on issues mattering most separates them. Americans get the best democracy money can buy.

Independents are shut out. Media scoundrels ignore them. Voter disenfranchisement is rife.

Millions can't vote because of past criminal records. Mostly what civilized societies call misdemeanors. Excluding prison. Assessing small fines or warnings.

Half of eligible voters opt out because their interests aren't addressed. Losers are declare winners. And not just for president.

Electoral democracy is pure fantasy. America is constitutionally flawed by design.

We the people aren't served. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. Tom Paine called voting "the primary right by which all other(s) are protected."

America's corrupted process makes it impossible. Democracy is a figure of speech. A four-letter word. A sham no just society would tolerate.

No country in world history did more harm to more people over a longer duration than America. None match its ruthlessness.

Its shameless human and civil rights records. Its pariah state status. Its genocidal high crimes against peace.

Its global gulag. The world's largest by far. Filled with thousands of political prisoners.

Supplemented by global torture prisons. In dozens of countries. Operating out of sight and mind.

Crime bosses make policy. Monied interests control them. New World Order ruthlessness is official policy.

International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Washington rules alone apply.

The Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) is one of nine likeminded UN bodies. Each responsible for overseeing a particular treaty's implementation.

UNHCR documented US human rights abuses. Assessing its noncompliance with International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provisions.

Fundament human and civil rights. Signatories are required to respect free speech, assembly and religion.

Electoral rights, due process and judicial fairness. Self-determination and other universally accepted rule of law principles.

UNHCR condemned grave US human rights breaches. Citing institutionalized torture, drone killings, and failure to close Guantanamo.

Mandatory immigrant detentions and mass deportations, as well as lawless NSA spying, among other issues.

It criticized Washington's failure to uphold human rights standards worldwide. It cited whitewashed CIA renditions, forced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Excessive secrecy was raised. Torture victims denied redress. Permitting torture-coerced confessions as evidence. Despite America's Supreme Court banning it.

Enforcing guilt by accusation. Denying habeas rights and judicial fairness. Substituting kangaroo court justice for the real thing.

Police states operate this way. America is by far the worst. At home and abroad.

Disturbing death penalty imposition disparities adversely affect America's most disadvantaged. African-Americans, Latinos and other people of color.

Justice is a four-letter word. Excessive force is used with impunity. Including beatings and gun-related deaths.

Dissent is criminalized. So is homelessness. Juveniles sentenced to life without parole. For homicides based on flimsy evidence or none at all.

Adults can face life imprisonment for alleged "non-homicide related" crimes. Abusive prolonged solitary confinement persists. Doing so constitutes torture.

Mandatory immigration detentions are reprehensible. Mass deportations deeply troubling.

Obama disgracefully expelled more immigrants and others than all his predecessors combined.

Murder, Inc. is official US policy. Death squads operate in 130 or more countries. So do CIA agents licensed to kill.

US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe. Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights.

No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It's official Obama policy. Diktat authority denies justice to anyone ordered killed.

Obama self-appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. He decides who lives or dies. Who's lawlessly indefinitely detained.

Equity and justice don't matter. Fundamental freedoms are disappearing in plain sight. Tyranny replaced them. It's almost full-blown.

Anyone anywhere may be thrown in military dungeons. Indefinitely held without charges or trial. Based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all.

Due process, civil protections, and judicial fairness are null and void. Presidents may order anyone arrested and imprisoned for life without charge or trial.

Abuse of power replaced rule of law protections. It's happening in real time. Obama abuses diktat power. Unitary executive authority.

The late Chalmers Johnson called it "a ball-faced assertion of presidential supremacy...dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo."

Obama exceeds the worst of his predecessors. He usurped the power of life and death. Including against US citizens.

Prioritizing killing drones, death squads, or other means. Eliminating America's enemies alone matters. Real or invented makes no difference.

Waging war on whistleblowers. Nonbelievers. Muslims. Latino immigrants. Environmental and animal rights activists unjustifiably called terrorists.

Anti-war activists. Global justice supporters. People associated with so-called "undesirable groups."

Presidents have public emergency powers. Enabling them to declare martial law. Suspend constitutional protections.

For so-called national security reasons or none at all. Deploying US troops on US streets. Militarizing state and local police forces.

Doing it to suppress whatever is called disorder. Including free expression, the right of assembly. petitioning government for redress of grievances publicly.

Opposing imperial lawlessness. America more than ever is unfit to live in. Unsafe by any standard.

Ruthless. Repressive. Cruel. Malicious. Vicious. Violent. Lawless. Criminally culpable of high crimes against peace.

Legal protections don't help. No one is safe anywhere. Advancing America's imperium matters most.

So does serving wealth, power and privilege. America the beautiful benefits them alone. Others take the hindmost.

Humanity is ruthlessly targeted. Battlefields shift from one theater to others. Gangsterism is official US policy. It's the American way.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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