Coronation of Corruption

Celebration of Exploitation

By Manuel Valenzuela

01/19/05 "Information Clearing House" -- At the apex of the highest mountain stand the facilitators of human corruption, in proud self-adulation, glorification and ego-driven debasement readying themselves with a forty million dollar celebration of pomp and circumstance, enjoying the comforts of luxury and unfettered power spun by the web of exploitation, for victorious do they see each other, this power-addicted and profit-hungry cabal of corporatist and elitist vermin, extolling both the virtues of immorality and policies of unscrupulous undertakings that have laid waste billions of lives in the present while condemning billions that have yet to exist. For like vultures attacking a dead carcass they have descended upon Washington to further empower humankind’s enduring romance with its self-corruption and the continuing decline into our moral abyss.

Basking in the glow of power, partying to the tunes of extravagance, rubbing shoulders with their fellow immoral brethren, this minority of humanity exclusively invited to descend upon the realm of political prostitution in order to mingle, cajole, bid, wage, bribe and buy the services of the legions of whores in governance could care less about the shattered world they have both created and profited from. Dressed in the pageantry of tuxedos and designer gowns, feasting and entertained with the best money can buy, surrounded by lavish environments and barren morality, expensive taste and indigent honor, the small entity known as the Establishment continues riding the chariot of flourishing circumstances while trampling the lives of billions of humans not granted the luck of being born into privilege and fortuitous circumstances, silver-spoon fed, from the cradle to the grave destined to grip the whips of power, wealth and perpetual exploitation.

At the expense of the corporations and the royal executives they sell their souls to, these members of aristocracy will continue experiencing life without knowledge of what their actions help unleash upon the globe or without a care in the world of the effects on billions of human energies, including 290 million Americans. They are in Washington to crown the corruption of humanity, after all, in lavish celebration to the debauchery their kind have wrought to all corners of the globe, their institutions, tentacles, tools, policies, businesses, actions, laws, military might and power hijacking the world entire, corrupting the minds and bodies of American soldiers subjected to the horrors of war; corrupting the very foundations of society of one of the oldest civilizations to ever exist; corrupting and making bereft of honor, integrity and truth the media, once a shining beacon and protector of democracy, now but a blatant propaganda mechanism; corrupting, polluting and making toxic the environment we inhabit and the bodies we own through the products they manufacture and sell; corrupting and destroying billions of lives worldwide and at home for billions in profits using the centuries old exploitative tools of feudalism and slavery; and corrupting the future lives of our children through the abandonment of long-term foresight, short-term concern and historical hindsight.

Through the crowning of an emperor with no clothes, the crowning of Establishment failure and mediocrity, and the crowning of the corporatist controlled marionette smearing an entire world with the feces-stained incompetence of the elite, the Establishment can once again be seen for what it has systematically done for thousands of years, since the dawn of civilization enriching and empowering itself through the exploitation and suppression of the rest of us, genetically passing down through the generations the torch of diluted blood saturated with the oils of entrenched power.


Corruption Through Control


At the expense of the masses and the common plebian, namely you, me and billions more, the elite of society, those few at the top, whether in ancient Egypt or Sumeria, imperial Greece or Rome, whether in feudal Europe or medieval Arabia, in Renaissance times or Enlightenment eras, whether in dictatorships, tyrannies, fascist regimes, communist systems, democracy charades or fictional freedoms, have maintained power through the overthrow of the will of the people, through the evisceration of the communal interests of the many as well as through the control of all aspects of governance and society.

For what is society composed of but the mechanisms of control the Establishment places at our feet, shackling our ability to rebel and revolt under the oppression and exploitation befalling our ancestors, ourselves and our descendents to come? Since humankind rose to perceived greatness castes and social classes have been in place, forever condemning untold human beings to a hierarchical system of perpetual exploitation that robs talent, ability and opportunity. From ancient times the priest classes deemed themselves conduits of the gods, proclaiming themselves direct manifestations of unseen deities, exploiting the ignorance and primitiveness of the masses who were made to cater to high priests and their families, thereby enriching, empowering and forever setting apart this group of corrupters from those now ruled and exploited. In time rose kings and royalty classes, again conniving the people into subservience by proclaiming direct relation with gods and metaphysical manifestations of fantasy, using the blood, sweat and tears of the masses for the abundant and ever-growing power and wealth destined for the ruling nobility.

Whether Caesars or emperors or pharaohs or popes or kings or nobility or generals or politicians or corporations or capitalists the exploitation by the ruling class of the masses has never stopped. It has breathed life since our beginning, living inside our society, giving rise to the vast number of inequalities, injustices and wasted lives now ruining our civilization. The control the Establishment uses is all encompassing, from the religions that inculcate in us primitive ideology no longer useful to the world of modern man, conditioning us to believe in invisible fantasy and obey the false prophets who preach them, controlling and oppressing the mind and maintaining ignorance; to the education that brainwashes, dumbs down and fosters allegiance to the ruling elite; to the social classes that segregate, alienate and exasperate; to laws that serve to benefit those in power and wealth; to the work we must perform in order to survive which robs us of energy to care or the will to fight and resist; to the television that manipulates and re-wires human brains to the dictates of government and the corporate world, creating the escapism of entertainment to divert attention away from the exploitation that is our lives; to the charade of democracy and elections that serves only to distract and divide; to the media designed to confuse, manipulate and disseminate propaganda; to the credit card, mortgage and loan whose sole purpose is to control through debt and interest payments; to social security numbers that make of you but a mere number to the government, your entire history easily traceable and apparent; to the launching of wars to create enemies, thus taking our eyes away from the real enemy; to jingoism designed to foster rabid nationalism and blind patriotism; to government itself which is a mechanism of, by and for the ruling elite; to the exploitation of fear planned so that we acquiesce to the erosion of freedoms and rights at home and the immoral wars of aggression and war crimes abroad.

Everywhere one looks control can be seen. Everywhere one stares corruption of humanity by the Establishment can be found. The pyramid of exploitation, where the elite stand alone at the top while the masses suffocate together at the bottom must be maintained, lest the elite lose power and control. Social classes are purposefully kept the way they are because from the poor and working classes the elite find their serfs, slaves and automatons. From the middle class they find their buffers and protection from the lower classes, as those in the middle, whether lower middle to upper middle, become easily controlled through the illusion of dreams and the complacency of materialism.

Capitalists need minimum wage earners from which to exploit, paying cheaply to profit mightily. They need undereducated masses to fill dead-end jobs and assembly-line chores, transforming a plethora of blue-eyed babies into blue-collar workers and brown-eyed humans into burger flipper slaves. The corporate world of today’s crony capitalism thrives on social engineering, depending on the masses for labor, production and mass consumption. The masses cannot be allowed to find liberation through education, nor free-thinking minds through enlightenment, nor be allowed to escape the caste predetermined for them, for they are needed to push the buttons and the levers of the capitalist division of labor and operate the tools and the machines of the corporation. Thus, real education, as emancipating to the mind as it is, will never reach the mass of society, for in knowledge there is power and in ignorance there is control. This is the story of organized religion throughout history, and now it is the sad chapter of modern man’s dive into the abyss called capitalism.


Feudalism revisited, or feudalism evolved?


Threats to the Establishment are never allowed to prosper lest the majority stand up and expropriate power away from those few at the top. Yet, in the end, we remain slaves and serfs, terms now marketed under different names whose exploitations are controlled under different functions. Most of us live in worlds of corporate feudalism, working for corporations, toiling endless hours and sacrificing most valuable time for the profit of those who employ us. We are given ‘wages’ that must, inevitably, be returned to the same corporate world that ‘pays’ us as we are forced to purchase the food, shelter and clothing we produce, not to mention the vast assortment of products of escapism designed to placate and control us.

The seven day week is designed to exploit as much labor from our energy as possible, granting us two days of rest and escapism before the same routine yields its debilitating momentum month after month and year after year, until finally, after years of servitude and sacrifice to those who exploit us, we awaken in old age, our energy gone and our time spent, becoming raisins in the sun asking ourselves where a life worth living has disappeared to. The seven day week is a mechanism of control, a tool of elitist exploitation of the masses, one we never seek to question, or alter. Instead, we are conditioned to its acceptance seemingly from birth, taught to blindly follow five days of labor in exchange for two of rest, never asking ourselves why in times of over-abundance and over consumption so much of our lives is devoted sacrificing to our employers when life is too short to not enjoy and experience.

The genius is in the illusion that we own and have control over our lives, in the cascade of charades, mirages and fictions we adamantly believe in and seldom question. Yet we live in homes and property that are overpriced, forced to pay mortgages and interest to the corporate world that until the end retains control over them. We must buy the products the corporate world decides to sell us, needing their stores and goods for our nutrition, wants and needs. Through the television the corporate world tells us what to think, how to think, how to behave, interact and communicate. It conditions us to consume its products and services, creating fantasy in order to manipulate the still primitive human brain. It creates trends, dictates changes, force-feeds styles, manufactures fragile psychologies and concocts peer-pressures so that we never stop consuming in our quest to attain the fantasy we are bombarded with yet can never attain. In the end, our feudal lords give us labor, food, shelter, protection and security, all in exchange for our freedom, our valuable time left living and our ever-dwindling reserves of energy. Feudalism revisited, or feudalism evolved?

Our feudal lords, through years of methodical conditioning, establish in us and throughout society a dependency on them for survival. We cannot escape their grip, as we are forever indebted to them and addicted to what our labor helps produce. Molded into obedience and subservience, acquiescence and conformity, from cradle to grave becoming robotic producers and mass consumers, our energies methodically engineered like slaves of the past, our minds transformed to those of the automatons of the future, we cling to our feudal masters like babies to their mother’s breasts as society has been created with all the mechanisms needed for the Establishment to continue exploiting the mass of humanity.

Billions of us live in a Matrix-type fantasy; to the elite we are nothing more than an Energizer battery harvested to produce and consume, voraciously exploited for our energy and easily controlled animal passions, behaviors and instincts. The society we believe in and help protect is nothing more than one vast control mechanism, designed for exploitation, manipulation and the further corruption of humankind. It is created to maintain the status quo, where few bask in wealth and power while the many linger in virtual serfdom.

In this world the fantasy we have since birth been made to believe in hides an ominous reality we are afraid to confront. It is a world where those born in privilege prosper while the many at the bottom linger in perpetual limbo, forced to live life in a man-made purgatory full of exploitation, subjugation and oppression that is as old as civilization itself. In every era, in every corner of the globe this hierarchical scheme has ruined more human life than any war or disease, robbing individuals of talent, ability, opportunity and a chance to push themselves out of the caste the system systematically places them in since birth, unable to escape their inherited bondage, unable to enjoy the pleasures of the life of members of the Establishment and unable to experience life beyond the day to day subsistence that marks their existence on Earth.

Humanity is the story of man exploiting man, always to the benefit of established power, never in communal brotherhood, forever creating wickedness upon each other so that one segment of humankind prospers while another suffers. In this corruption can we see the root of all human wrong, ruining lives and rotting experiences, those in power abusing their perched positions of control to enrich and aggrandize themselves and their bloodlines while emaciating the rest of their fellow man. As long as the many continue falling for the magic tricks of the few, as long as we blindly follow and never question, as long as we remain complacent, placid and sedentary, the fraternity that is humankind will never experience greatness.

Every war, every genocide, every form of ethnic cleansing, every forest decimated and ocean devastated, every family living in indigence and child dying of malnutrition, every plague extinguishing life and pollution causing disease, every act of injustice and every case of inequality has as its root cause the debilitating ailment called corruption. From the beginning it has ruled humanity. Indeed, it is humanity, ingrained in our animal selves, born of greed, selfishness and the worst in the human condition, unable to be purged from our psyche. It is humans breathing the addictive qualities of power and wealth that become corrupted, like a virus contaminating all that they touch, see and hear. From corruption of power rises corruption of humanity. This reality is being celebrated and crowned this week in Washington.


Corruption of Social Engineering


It is from the ghettos and rural areas, comprised of mostly poor and working families, that the Establishment finds the cannon fodder needed to wage war. It is these sons and daughters of misfortune, trapped in urban reservations or rural wastelands, hindered by wretched educational institutions and severe shortages of work and opportunity that are forced by social engineering to become the killing machines pushing the triggers, buttons and levers of the instruments of death so profitable to the military industrial complex. It is these young men and women whose anemic opportunity in life, thanks to decrepit environments and government abandonment, makes them the marching army of the corporate world, sacrificing the rest of their lives, forever living haunted by demons and/or the maimed horrors of man fighting man, for nothing more than profits, revenues, power and the ego of the Establishment. Through training innocent and moral boys and girls are transformed into cold-blooded killers and destroyers of life, obeying the dictates of greed addicts and warmongers.

Yet the soldiers now in Iraq and Afghanistan -- whom Bush ironically praises while helping to seal their fates – fighting men and women of similar circumstances and situation, also exploited and from birth condemned, are but the latest in a long line of humans fighting the wars of the elite. From the beginning of time, in societies ruled by divisions, classes and castes, where there are segregations of poor and rich, it has always been the poor, those without power and control, who are the ones sacrificing life, mind and limb, not to mention wages, taxes, blood, sweat and tears, for the warmongering aspirations of the Establishment. It is usually the working and middle classes that must bear the sacrifice of the war effort, while the rich are content to live in their infallible bubble of supremacy, their lives neither altered nor molested by the realities and horrors befalling those at war and those faced with the necessity of burying their loved ones.

As has always been the case, the elite can circumvent having to serve in war, for many years able to bypass duties reserved for all others thanks to influence, power, connections and wealth, while the poor and middle class must be sacrificed, either through social engineering or conscription, because they lack the parameters that wealth and power spring forth. Through time and regardless of society or race or region, when divisions in socioeconomic status penetrate the core of human interaction, it is the children of wealth who escape the wickedness created by their fathers, whose actions condemn those born in the lower echelons of a caste system. Whether slave or serf or soldier, regardless of time or place, the corruption of humanity assures the lower classes will continue fighting for the so-called honor, the mistakes, the greed, the incompetence, the malice, the warmongering aspirations and the sought-after land, labor and resources of another. This has never ceased to be the case, and will most likely continue deep into the remaining years of humanity.

The story of war is the story of one side’s poor fighting another side’s poor, for the benefit of the Establishment and the detriment of those mothers and fathers who must do what no parent should have to do, bury their son or daughter. The exploitation of the masses functions thanks to the corruption of society, imposed by the implementation of control mechanisms designed to rob the people of power, knowledge, and of the will to fight a system which only acts to betray illusions and charades. Telling the troops they fight for freedom and democracy and against tyranny while providing nothing but pillaged profits to the corporate world and human hell to Iraqis is one such illusion told by the elite to their army of killing machines.

While 150,000 under funded, unarmored and undersupplied American troops do battle with an entire nation of 25 million Iraqis, for no other reason than to further expand the pockets of the Establishment and the power of the corporatist elite, the distinguished ladies and gentlemen attending the coronation of corruption, adorned with the fruits of our labor, our blood, sweat and tears, will wine and dine until the early hours of the morning, laughing, joking, conversing, living in their sheltered bubble of endowed wealth and inherited position, in one night wasting forty million dollars, enough money to save the lives of countless soldiers in need of armor and innocent Iraqi civilians in need of humanity. Is there any doubt ghetto soldiers born in concrete jungles and rural grunts living in isolated abandon are simply considered expendable cannon fodder doing the slave work of the elite when those that send them to war, based on lies, deceits and under false pretenses, celebrate fraudulent election triumphs and the pleasures endowed to privilege, at a cost of $40,000,000, while dozens of troops are killed and hundreds maimed for life on a weekly basis in Iraq?

While the elite celebrate the coronation of the corruption they have unleashed upon the world the corruption of soldier and Iraqi minds continues to claim the futures of tens of thousands of once vibrant energies. For many of those who must bear witness to the wickedness ingrained in human war, the psychological trauma and maimed minds they will forever have to live with will be a sad reminder of Establishment exploitation of their futures. Most of those affected will never be the same, devastated in mind and spirit thanks to what they did, saw and experienced acting on behalf of those profiteers and greed mongers presently celebrating the coronation of corruption. Their futures will be lived in nightmares and stresses, in psychological horror and altered existence. Many will never be able to exorcise the inner demons tearing them apart, creating years of turmoil and shattered lives. The ghosts of those they killed and maimed, those they dehumanized and destroyed will haunt them until their dying days. Images of blood spattered, torsos maimed and appendages blown off will linger, as well as the visions of death and the smells of rotting corpses. The catastrophe they have unleashed, on orders from those at the top, will remain in their minds long after they return home. Normalcy will never again be achievable. Divorces will ensue, health costs will accumulate, grief and anger will fuse together, life will lose meaning, jobs will be lost, many will find themselves homeless, begging for food and shelter, abandoned by the same government and elites that sent them to sacrifice body and mind for the fortunes of a small minority.

In Iraq the age-old battles pitting one nation’s poor against another nation’s poor for the benefit of the few elite at the top is being played out, with thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dying for an immoral and unjust war of choice, based on lies and deceptions, designed for corporate profit and pillage, sacrificing those of the lower American castes as easily expendable cannon fodder and as armed slaves furthering the profits, lands, and power of those celebrating the coronation of corruption. Yet those celebrating the crowning of corporatism care not an ounce for the death and destruction they have wrought. Possessing no empathy or understanding, no remorse or guilt, onwards they continue in their exploitative ways, robbing the nation blind, both of its treasure and loved ones, and laying siege to an entire Iraqi society whose only crime was living in lands saturated with the devil’s excrement and deemed vital to the imperial aspirations of warmongers, greed addicts and power hungry deviants.


Into the Nest of Corruption


Remember, celebrating the coronation of corruption are members of the military-industrial complex, the oil oligarchy, the ruling elite, the corporate Leviathan and the political class. Chief Executive Officers and executives of Fortune 500 companies, Establishment patriarchs and their loving juniors believing themselves nobility by blood if not by high crimes and misdemeanors, greedy bankers and immoral corporatists always seeking more, energy magnates controlling the strings of the Puppet in Chief, media moguls and their army of journalist minions, those Likud-loving, Israel-first neocons, prostitute politicians and their lackey yes men and women, legions of defense contractors and corporate lobbyists trained in the fine art of buying politicians and writing laws, former military brass exchanging the uniform for an Armani, and the unmistakable lovers of revolving doors who always place the interests of their employers before those of the nation can be found cruising Washington in stretched limos and walking on red carpets.

Without corruption of humanity, this distinguished group has no serfs, no slaves and no control. It has no power, no profit, and no wealth. It has no war, no conquest and no soldiers or army to kill, destroy and devastate. It has no feudal domination of land and man, no control over daily lives. Without the degradation of millions in the United States and billions worldwide, the elite cannot maintain an imbalance that has existed for thousands of years, where the few at the top live lavishly through the fruits of our sweat and the exigencies of our toil while the rest subsist on the measly crumbs that like emaciated dogs we oftentimes find ourselves fighting over.

With the bubble of luxury do they surround themselves in, unable to see the reality of the world they possess. Never will they know what it is like to live in a shantytown, ghetto, reservation or a cardboard box. They can never understand what their policies and laws help to unleash onto society, making impossible the lives of millions and forever condemning billions to lives living in utter decay, unable to escape the living purgatory the Establishment creates. To them, billions of humans subsisting on two dollars a day, with 700 million children surviving on one dollar per day are made to disappear along with their humanity and concern for their fellow man. Millions dying each year of malaria or tuberculosis or typhoid or dysentery or other easily treatable diseases are but a statistic, a number without a face, an inconsequential asterisk added to mortality figures caused by structural adjustment programs or overburdened third world debt or by the mismanagement of American sponsored leaders.

To the Establishment now celebrating the coronation of corruption, the plight of black Africa, dying and destabilizing thanks to tens of millions of deaths due to AIDS, its societies in disarray and in extreme poverty, and the devastation in Asia wrought by the cataclysmic tsunami is of no more importance than the annoying buzzing of a fly. When the profit motive is placed way ahead of the people motive, long-suffering continents can seem as far away as to make them invisible. Donating a few hundred million in Africa to fight AIDS, knowing this will accomplish little, and a few hundred million in Asia to quiet worldwide criticism of selfishness, knowing so much more is needed to make a difference is of little consequence to those whose only motive is the profit one.

However, when it comes to the annual military budget, now $450,000,000,000 strong, and growing, and the additional $200,000,000,000 now wasted for the needless war in Iraq, those celebrating the coronation of corruption waste no time using all tools at their disposal at promoting the cause of war and the instruments of death whose profits line the bank accounts of the ruling members of the military-industrial complex. Not to be outdone, the American oil/energy oligarchy, blinded by the huge pillage expected in the selling off of Iraqi oil fields, cares nothing for over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians whose lives are now extinct, their lands confiscated and corporatized to the friends, families and connections of the administration.

Through lies, manipulations and deceits, through the continued dumbing down of America and through the conditioning power of the television the Establishment bombards the public with information that serves only the best interests of the elite, manipulating and distorting news and facts, disseminating propaganda that is believed and absorbed. Through the power to shape society and the people it dominates and controls, the elite now celebrating the coronation of corruption dictate what was, what is and what will become, distorting history and creating the present in order to manipulate the future. This is the recipe for success used by the Establishment for centuries, using their barriers, their buffers, their tools of propaganda, their mechanisms of control spread throughout society, their conditioning of minds and domination of lives to calibrate in the masses a symphony of support and acquiescence for their vested and newfound interests. This is the way it has always been done, and the way it will continue. It is ingrained in the human condition, never stopped, never questioned and never fought.

The coronation of corruption shows us how a few at the top can control the vast majority of the people. It shows us that the same patterns emerge throughout history, without fail, thus allowing us to peer into the future. Warlike leaders create warlike people, immoral, arrogant and selfish elites create the same vices in the citizens they control. Their ideologies become our realities; their fictions become our truths. All they have to do to push society in a certain direction is use the tools at their disposal, orchestrating social and mental engineering by conducting various apparatuses at once, thereby shaping views and beliefs from a multitude of platforms. For example, if the people begin questioning the system that exploits them, overcoming purposely placed barriers and divisions, becoming blind and deaf to propaganda, becoming riled and questioning, new Pearl Harbors can always be concocted, new wars of aggression conjured up and new enemies created to distract us away from the real war taking place against us by the real enemy of the people. We are easily toyed with, for society is a matrix geniusly run by the Establishment, full of fantasy and brainwashing and mental conditioning to the dictates of those in power.

At the zenith of the highest mountain do those celebrating the coronation of corruption stand, basking in self adulation, mesmerized by their omnipotence, perched above the clouds circling the vast heavens, yet blind do they remain to the plight of the common man, unable to see below through the cloudy haze of arrogance and ego-driven self-importance. In reality, they do not care for their subjects, for we are self-reproducing entities whose lives are easily replaceable by our own progeny. The assembly line called human procreation assures those celebrating the coronation of corruption of unlimited slaves, soldiers, producers and consumers ready, willing and able to bow down in servitude to the powers that be. The magic wand of the elite has worked for thousands of years, using time tested methods to control, exploit, dominate and subjugate the majority, as always protecting its interests while quashing those of the masses.

No ideology or belief can be allowed to be birthed that may threaten the system now in place. No idea or rebellion or revolt that may change the balance of power will be tolerated, even if it may give rise to the salvation of humanity and the planet. The communal interests of the masses be damned, it is the power of the elite that must be retained, oftentimes using the citizenry itself to achieve these purposes. While the majority succumbs to the growing threats of perpetual war, biological plague, dwindling resources, overpopulation and global warming, it is the elite that prosper and remain protected. In order to achieve long sought goals, we have become, to those holding the reigns of power, quite literally, easily expendable entities. Whether the interests sought cost 3,000 lives, or 100,000 dead or 5,000 soldiers killed or one million lives extinguished, to the elite, the bottom line of profit and power over people rules and, in cost benefit analysis, we have become the means to an end.

Today, into the nest of corruption can the rest of humanity see into, watching as $40,000,000 is wasted to celebrate the triumphant victory over the American people. The coronation of corruption is upon us, full of splendor and arrogance and apathy. When nothing has changed for centuries, even millennia, when the elite possess the confidence that they will continue to rule today and into the future while we continue to drool in kneeling subservience, who can blame them for partying in resplendent accomplishment? To them the system works like magic, and if the best we can do is a few hundred full moon risings directed at their Puppet in Chief, then perhaps we deserve what our ancestors and ourselves are subjected to and our future generations will undoubtedly experience.

To do nothing is to live in denial and accept the lie of our existence. To sit in silent complacency is to welcome the domination over our lives. The failure to act is an act in failure, and a warm embrace to an unmitigated corruption befalling humankind.

Mr. Valenzuela’s new novel is now on sale through Authorhouse.com at Echoes in the Wind Sales Page. A philosophical, educational and spiritual story on humanity and our civilization, as relevant as today’s headlines, this book is almost 600 pages in trade paperback form on sale internationally through secure web page transaction. Additionally, the novel is now available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, as well as other online book sellers. If preferred, the novel can also be ordered at any local brick and mortar bookstore worldwide through the book’s ISBN number, 1418489905.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles appear regularly on www.informationclearinghouse.info . His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at  manuel@valenzuelas.net. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet

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