a long time.

While you are trembling in your shoes in fear that the flotsam and jetsam of the nation will rise up and take away your wealth, you need to understand that the workers of this nation, and of the world, own a part of that wealth. You did not get where you are because you were such a exceptional specimen alone. Your initial idea found its time and a market but the realization of the idea required the participation of many others, from those to whom you sold shares to those who consume the product. Your facilities likely were built because whole communities of people gave you revenue breaks, built roads and other essential infrastructure, and provided a pool of skilled workers educated by the community. Your original idea was likely refined and further perfected by the combined knowledge and experience of those employees and undoubtedly is not the same formulation that propelled you into the market. Your consumers come from the community and beyond and are individuals who choose to buy your product or service and can just as easily decide not to. It is also likely that there are other John Galts out there who could easily step into your shoes and you would not be missed at all.

Bottom line is that the dynamic that is at play in this nation has nothing to do with your rugged individualism and everything to do with your responsibilities to the communities which gave you success. It has everything to do with respecting the humanity at the most basic level of those who work for you (either by providing labor or materials or services) or purchase from you. They are individuals as well and deserve the same considerations for health, personal security, and well being that you demand for yourselves. They deserve to be rewarded for their contributions in a manner which affords personal dignity and respect from you. These individuals as a community provide the foundation in which your base your claim to wealth. Beyond the money, these individuals are the nation's greatest wealth. You are just one individual who happened to be in the right place at the right time and there are millions of others willing to step in and take your place, some of them with a greater appreciation for the community from which they rose.

toys....that is the message I want someone to have the courage to stand up and say. They took your jobs and told you that you could make a living by just sitting at a phone and selling things...the jobs of the future. After you bought the biggest house you could get and double or triple mortgaged it, put a van and a sedan in the garage with a boat and a pickup to haul it (on credit), filled the house will the right furniture and sleek appliances, bought all the electronic gadgetry so you could keep up with your friends, filled your closets with designer clothing and shoes, and acquired all the knowledge of upper crust culture you could. You learned the lifestyle of the rich and famous and you bought the bill of goods they sold you that you could live it for free while they picked your pocket clean and emptied your bank accounts and retirement plans. They laughed at your gullibility and got you to elect handpicked accomplices to write the rules to allow the theft. And now that you look around you in the devastation they left in their wake you find that your schools will take a generation to rebuild and your children are being educated to curriculums shrilled into existence by people who would have better living in the 5th century to get dead end jobs that pay minimum wage. Your manufacturing jobs were sent overseas under the guise of supporting "free markets" and streamlining operations. You are no longer self-sufficient as a nation and so hooked into other failing systems that all drop like a stone in disaster.



Rolled out with the media seasons and on cue, they sold you out. Yes, they gave you toys while they took away your financial security, your personal wellbeing, and your rights. Now what are you going to do to get them back?

Abeer was the 14-year old girl that a was brutally raped and murdered by several US soldiers. Hadeel was her little sister, and Fakhriya and Qassim were her mother and father. They were murdered in cold blood by the same troops. It really bothers me, and I've been guilty of this too, that we tend to refer to them as "the Iraqi girl" or the "14-year-old Iraqi girl" or "the Iraqi family." Let us learn their names. God knows, the press will not talk about them by name, nor with they even allow this young girl her adolescence, referring to her in terms that imply she was an adult.

Abeer, Hadeel, Fakhriya and Qassim. Remember their names, and demand justice for them. Hold those in power accountable while we do the other two.