By Numerian posted by Michael Collins

On December 7th of this year – the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor – the United States will celebrate seventy years of perpetual war. September 11th will commemorate one aspect of this long war – the War on Terror – but the calendar could be filled with other bellicose starts and stops: the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the War in Iraq (parts I and II), the Afghanistan War, and various incursions into places like Nicaragua, Grenada, the Balkans, and even South America as part of something called the War on Drugs.

What’s it like to be at perpetual war for nearly three-quarters of a century? Americans have become a fearful people. They are so alarmed at the possibility of a terrorist attack they have willingly given up important Constitutional liberties, even to the point of submitting to intrusive and degrading inspections at airport security. Fear of crime is such an undercurrent of American society that all new cars come with theft alarms. Americans spend billions of dollars yearly to protect themselves from identity theft, and they are greeted at supermarkets with sanitary wipes because of the fear that some stranger left dangerous bacteria on the shopping cart. Fear has caused Americans to turn upon themselves: Democrats against Republicans, Red states against Blue states, liberals against conservatives, Christians against the non-religious, rural against urban, South against North, blacks against whites, the middle class against poor people, and so on. This is a fractured nation, but at the same time a highly militarized nation, and is it any wonder that Americans love their guns, even though firearm violence kills 39 Americans every day?

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By Michael Collins
Part I of III

WASHINGTON - Selected to run by the powerful and wealthy, promising the public one thing and delivering another after elected, the President of the United States is the focus of a new political doctrine - the unitary executive. The office of the president has rapidly become a law unto itself over the past ten years. (Image)

Some time before February 2010, the President of the United States authorized the assassination of a U.S. citizen living overseas. The citizen was identified by the White House as a terrorist.

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Michael Collins
Uruguay's left wing political coalition, the Broad Front party (Frente Amplio), retained control of the presidency in the November elections. This wasn't just any election. The winner, flower farmer Jose "Pepe" Mujica, was the victim of imprisonment and torture during Operation Condor in the 1970's as a result of his efforts as a Tupamaro rebel. During that period of military dictatorship, the new president spent fourteen years in prison, including two years confined at the bottom of a well.

Mujica won 48% of the vote in the initial round of elections on October 25. He then pushed his total to 52% for a comfortable victory in the November 29 runoff voting against Conservative candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle who gained 44% of the vote. In the 2004 elections, outgoing President Tabaré Vázquez, also of the Broad Front coalition, won with just over 50% of the vote.

Mujica set an expansive tone in his inaugural speech by stating, “My government will be a government of open doors, and above all a negotiating administration … we will demand commitment, compromise and hard work” MercoPress, Nov. 30. He then announced meetings with President Lula da Silva of Brazil and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

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