Shortly after coming to Bratislava I met a man who told me, “You know, after 1989 we realized that the lies the capitalist west had been telling about the communist block were true, but then we began to realize that the lies that the communists had been telling about the west were also true.” Another young man once told me he thought that communism had failed because of corruption. “You are probably right,” I told him, “but not exactly in the way you think. It wasn’t because your system was more corrupt than ours, but rather because western corruption was stronger than yours.”

I didn’t realise at the time the depth of truth in my statement. It seems to me now that what is really happening at the moment in international politics is something similar to the time of the Second World War or the Cold War. War and fear of war makes a lot of money for the “privileged” class and helps maintain societies in obedience. Since the end of the cold war the capitalist world has been looking for new ways of manipulating the masses, keeping people in obeisance and concentrating money and power in certain hands. Is it really such a coincidence that the Bush family helped finance both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, as well as being on very close term with the Bin Ladens?

The current game appears to be to create even more hate of the west on the part of the Arabs and hate of the Arabs on the part of the west. They already have the perfect martyr/leader for the Arabs in Osama Bin Laden and a perfect enemy for the west in Arab terrorism, as well as the perfectly hate-able enemy for the Arabs in the Jews and America. Obviously the arms, machines and oil business, both legal and illegal, is going to flourish again, putting money and power into the hands of those at the top of the heap.

If we read some of the literature from the annals of communist thought, we will see this is exactly what they were saying about the first and second world wars (and here you will see why it was necessary for Stalin to dispose of all the true and committed communists – I mean those who believed communism was the way to a truly democratic society where all workers had a share of the profits of their labor). On the other hand, this “socialistic criticism of the capitalist system (in spite of being humanitarian, egalitarian and, we might say, even Christian) was not able to overcome the power structure of world capitalism, because it did not take into account the dark side (evil) of human nature and the human penchant to “have more” than one’s neighbor and enjoy privilege.

Please show me the person who wouldn’t like to be rich, famous and powerful (not to speak of beautiful and sexually attractive), or to have a new car and big house in the countryside (and a sexy secretary), or at least lower taxes, better social services and free health care. It is exactly this aspect of human nature and this kind of corruption which destroyed communism (from within and without) and will take us into more wars and rumors of wars, social instability and injustice.

Remember Hitler said, “Give them the big lie.” “And what is the big lie?” he was asked. “The one they all believe,” he answered.

And remember what George W. Bush said when somebody quoted Lincoln’s famous statement? *“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time...” “Yeah,” Bush said, stopping him, “…and those are the ones we have to concentrate on.”

Same old game, baby. Put on your skates, warm up your hockey stick. And chose your side.