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## How electromagnetism is encoded in the structure of the universe

Electromagnetism is thoroughly misunderstood in modern physics although it has a highly quantitatively successful theory describing it via the Maxwell’s equations with $U(1)$ symmetry.  The universe has four rather than three macroscopic spatial dimensions and electromagnetism really has $SU(2)$ symmetry and is in reality a four-dimensional force — indeed, it is the ‘grand unification force’.  The purpose of this note is to explicate how the Maxwell’s equations for $SU(2)$ electromagnetism arise naturally from the scalar wave equation on quaternions, in the process naturally producing Clifford algebras, spinors, and other parts of the machinery that is invoked during the study of Dirac operators in geometry.

Geometric machinery for Dirac operators have been built up in the following setting:  for an even dimensional oriented riemannian manifold M, one defines the Clifford bundle C(M) whose fiber at each point is isomorphic to the Clifford algebra of the cotangent space.  Recall that the Clifford algebra is isomorphic to the exterior algebra of a vector space but instead of the exterior product, the product operation on it satisfies $vw = - \langle v, w \rangle$.  Then a Clifford module $E$ over $M$ is a vector bundle on which the Clifford module acts.  A connection on $E$ compatible with the Clifford action is a Clifford connection, and then a Dirac operator is defined on sections on E as a composition of the connection and the Clifford action.  On the other hand, there is much simpler level at which this machinery can be unpacked and give us a much simpler view of structure of electromagnetism.  If we take the Dirac square root of the scalar wave equation on quaternions, we will naturally motivate this entire machinery naturally as follows: the Clifford algebra of a real four-dimensional Euclidean space consists of 2×2 matrices of quaternions, the spinors are pairs of quaternions, and the Dirac operator then becomes an operator on pairs of quaternions which squares to Laplacian on both factors.  The square root of the scalar wave equation produces the classical Maxwell’s equations with “curl” replaced by the Dirac operators.

Recall that mathematically, waves are described by the scalar wave equation.  A function $F(t,x)$ that describes a wave with speed $c$ satisfies the equation

$\frac{\partial^2}{\partial t^2} F = \Delta F$

where $\Delta$ is the standard Laplacian, which is just the sum of second space derivatives on $\mathbf{R}^n$ and can be defined in terms of the metric on a riemannian manifold.  This is a fairly generic equation describing waves.  It is an interesting observation that this simple wave equation on quaternions automatically produce Maxwell’s equations, including the decoupling of electromagnetic fields, spinors, and Clifford algebra when we take the “Dirac square root”.  Mathematically, this is a fairly simple exercise but it is a less prosaic observation physically, because it tells us that electromagnetism is a phenomenon that is encoded in the structure of the universe itself and not something that requires design by a deity, for example.  With this in mind, the claim of S4 physics, that 4D electromagnetism is the grand unification force, gains potency.

## Cartan’s structure equations for hypersurfaces on a 4-sphere more precise than ‘gravitational’ field equations

Cartan’s method of moving frames can be used for the study of hypersurfaces on a four-sphere of fixed radius.  We have argued elsewhere that the actual universe that we inhabit is a metric sphere of four spatial dimensions.  Suppose M is a smooth three-dimensional submanifold isometrically immersed in a four-dimensional manifold N, and suppose we chose an orthonormal coframe $\omega$ adapted to the submanifold.  Then

$d\omega_A = \omega_{AB} \wedge \omega_B$

and

$d\omega_{AB} = \omega_{AC} \wedge \omega_{CB} - \frac{1}{2} K_{ABCD} \omega_C \wedge \omega_D$

When N is a four-sphere of curvature k, the riemann curvature tensor is

$K_{ABCD} = k ( \delta_{AC}\delta_{BD} - \delta_{AB}\delta_{BC})$

so that its contraction $K_{ABCB} = 3 k \delta_{AC}$ is the constant Ricci curvature of the sphere.  Now for an adapted coframe,  we have $\omega_4 = 0$ on M, and $d\omega_{4i} = \omega_{4i} \wedge \omega_i = 0$ and so by Cartan’s lemma we have:

$\omega_{4i} = h_{ij} \omega_j$

Now $h = h_{ij}\omega_i \omega_j$ is the second fundamental form.  Let us now carefully note how the second Cartan structure equation specializes on M.  First note that since $\omega_4$ vanishes on M, in the curvature term, only $K_{ijpq} \omega_p \wedge \omega_q$ survives for $p,q = 1, 2, 3$ and we can write the second structure equation on M as:

$d\omega_{ij} = \omega_{i l}\wedge\omega_{lj} + \omega_{i4}\wedge\omega_{4j} - \frac{1}{2}K_{ijpq} \omega_p \wedge \omega_q$

Ok, now what we do is write the Cartan structure equation for M intrinsically with $K^M_{ijpq}$ as its Riemann curvature tensor and take the difference from the equation above:

$0 = \frac{1}{2} K^M_{ijpq} \omega_p \wedge \omega_q - \frac{1}{2} K_{ijpq}\omega_p\wedge\omega_q - \omega_{4i}\wedge\omega_{4j}$

Next, we expand out the terms $\omega_{4i} = h_{ij}\omega_j$ and consider the equation on coefficients of $\omega_p \wedge \omega_q$ which produces:

$\frac{1}{2} K^M_{ijpq} - \frac{1}{2}K_{ijpq} - h_{ip}h_{jq} = 0$

Here we take a trace on $j=q$ using the Einstein summation convention to get a difference of Ricci curvatures of the submanifold and the ambient sphere for the first two terms and on the third term we also obtain the mean curvature.  The middle term is

$\frac{3}{2} k \delta_{ip}$

after the trace, and the third is  $H h_{ip}$ where $H$ is the mean curvature.

So we have three terms that correspond in the Einstein’s gravitational equation as the Ricci curvature of the physical universe, the ‘cosmological constant correction’ coming from the Ricci curvature of the ambient sphere (our constant is $h^2$ which matches the measured cosmological constant by the Lambda-CDM model because our ambient manifold is a sphere of radius $1/h$) and then the term involving the second fundamental form which corresponds to the ‘stress-energy tensor’ of the gravitational field equation.  As a quick sanity check, we note that for a 4-sphere to produce the right scale for equations like the Schroedinger equation would require a radius of the order $1/h$.  Such a sphere then would produce a scalar curvature of the order $h^2$.  The measured value of the cosmological constant by the established Lamdba-CDM model is ~ $10^{(-47)}$ GeV^4. Note that Planck’s constant is $h =4.135667 \times 10^{(-24)}$ GeV, which implies $h^2 \sim 1.6 \times 10^{(-47)}$ GeV. This means that $S^4(1/h)$ whose “cosmological constant” is $h^2$ is a close match to observation.  This is positive because the mismatch between quantum-physics extrapolated ‘vacuum energy’ and the cosmological constant have been a source of a fairly large disagreements in some previous efforts towards grand unification.

## Some ideas for decision-making in a planetary Republic

I have argued elsewhere against representative democracy as a system that is incoherent with the ideals of Republic, which are Truth, Justice, Freedom.  Decision-making in a hypothetical planetary Republic of 7 billion is an open and interesting question.  If the primary restriction of a Republic is consistency with ideals, then regardless of any sort of majority opinion, no decision can be made that is inconsistent with the ideals.  In the internet age, it is silly to limit ourselves to the model of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ decisions because in principle there is a possibility of interactive decision-making which can take advantage of information technologies and artificial intelligence to give the decision-maker intelligent responses and information that allows them to make decisions not only based on credible information but also analyses of the consistency with the ideals.

Practically, we face a global political crisis of vast proportion today because the corporate media have utterly failed to produce truly unbiased media for the people, an issue that has been addressed here.  Bob McChesney writes concisely:  “As the basis of self-government is an informed citizenry and as the Fourth Estate, and as the institution with primary responsibility for making an informed citizenry possible, the existential crisis for news media is in fact an existential crisis for self-government.”  But there is also the problem of access and summary information.  The better sources of summary information, such as The Economist, are expensive and follow a particular ideology — which we know can be flawed as they repeatedly called for war on Iraq and the threat of weapons of mass destruction there that were entirely false.  Today we have highly ideological think-tanks which provide various sorts of views for the public.  On any particular issue, it is a gigantic chore to compile the pertinent facts in a balanced manner.  Thus the idea is to produce some open information system that can provide responses to decision-making scenarios for individuals that has some guarantees that can ‘educate’ the decision-maker in the process of decision-making.

Let me give a picture that might clarify what I mean: So suppose we lived in a Republic of 7 billion — and say that we had it structured so that it’s an internet-based company of equal owners so that eliminates poverty and military jingoism. Now a pure Republic should not care about people’s personal lives because individuals are sovereign. Now suppose a decision is required about whether some group of people can mine for gold in a community. The important issues in this case are local effects and then global effects on gold. In this case the weight should clearly go to the local people in a just system regardless of the arguments made for the benefits in the total system. So I think a ‘democracy’ model also does not work here because for all I know, maybe the ‘majority’ don’t care about what the locals think but a Republic must anyway.  This example is from a real case.

## Hatred, racism, and the Abrahamic religions

Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
O’er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair, — these are mine empire

(Shelley, Prometheus Unbound)

Before the reader gets upset and flustered, let me declare that I have never been religious in the 38 years of my life, although I am Muslim by birth.  Furthermore, let me point out that there is no genetic evidence of multiple races that has any statistical significance, as announced by the Human Genome Project in April 2009.  I believe extremely strongly that the human race is a single race and the various ‘race’-characterizations that have developed with European imperial expansion primarily are ideologies rather than scientific truth.  Ultimately ‘racism’ is based not only on superficial differences in characteristics but on a power relationship: ‘race’ today is based on the model that essentially Hitler’s Germany had reinforced, the idea of master races and slave races.  The historical ‘mismeasure of man’ had been addressed eloquently by Stephen Jay Gould partly as a response to “The Bell Curve” which attempted to find, by extremely flawed methodology, differences in ‘intelligence’ by race.

Racial hatred manifests itself in a dehumanizing and treating as subhumans certain groups of people.  Racism cannot be justified without a feeling that certain groups of people are lower in the evolutionary chain than others.  Indeed, racism is a metaphysical construction ultimately.  The religions reinforce racism — Gore Vidal has written about how Christian evangelism has reinforced racism against African Americans in the US.  Let me give examples of anti-Arab racism in Israel which are poignant because there is a widespread belief in America that Palestinians are violent antisemites, or racist against Jews which must be put in context as well.  Here is an example of a rabbi who pronounces that the Palestinians must perish in a plague which is particularly interesting because he is the founder of the Shas party which is in Netanyahu’s coalition.  And here is an example of a state-endorsed rabbi who supports violence against Palestinians as well.  These are important examples because racism against Palestinians is an important part of the state ideology that mixes religion with nationalism in Israel.  These are also less well-known aspects of (some parts of) Judaism.  This is clearly not the Judaism followed by a majority but it’s significant.  The case of Israel is special in that there is also a whitewashing of facts in the west about the creation of Israel: the forcible removal from their land of around 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 which is whitewashed in the west as a ‘voluntary’ leaving but Israeli historian Ilan Pappe investigated in some detail the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  One can detect provisions for forcible removal of Palestinians in Plan Dalet.  This ethnic cleansing has left many Palestinians in neighboring nations still unable to find a home.  It is often also falsely believed that there were no significant population in the region west of Jordan, which is also false, as can be verified from the demographics compiled by a distinguished Israeli statistician.  This is a fundamental fact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is a source a great deal of rage and hatred.  Israeli historian Tom Segev calls this episode an open wound in Israeli society.  Thus in the Israeli narrative, which has been widespread in the west, there has been a shift to blaming the victims in a sense, for the source of Arab terror is not quite simply based on hatred of Jews but a reaction to harm done to the Palestinians in the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and then again from the occupation of Palestinian lands from 1967.  Then of course, Arabs were branded ‘terrorists’ for a larger American imperial agenda.  The reaction perhaps to these claims is a comparison by some in Israel of a heightened comparison to Nazi German antisemitism, which requires consideration as well.  Israeli nationalism cannot accept the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 without marring the foundations of the nation state, and indeed there is a law prohibiting the commemoration of the Nakba that is defied by some.

In the case of Israel, we have a complicated mess because of the tangle of events in the Second World War that led to the creation of Israel — thus on one hand there is the history of a victim population of a great crime in Europe who had followed a semi-idealistic path to a ‘land without people’ in what is Israel today which happened to have been populated for centuries by Palestinians.  This idealism, however was a racist enterprise from its very beginning, as Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana relate here.  We have here a clash of narratives at many different levels.  In the end, the winners of the Second World War, which was essentially the American empire which is the power behind the creation of Israel.  The fact that the American empire had little problem with racism throughout its history is exceedingly clear before and after 1948, for the nineteenth century Manifest Destiny in America was steeped in precisely the appropriation of land by ethnic cleansing .  In this particular case, we have the unique situation of a colonial enterprise which had to erase the history of the native population to establish itself citing an ancient connection of the external population with the land that had been inhabited for hundreds of years.  Thus we have the strange situation where we have a state that is repeatedly referred to as ‘the only democracy’ in the Middle East which is a democracy for Jews, half-a-democracy for its Arab citizens (who have much more limited rights, e.g. they cannot own land in 93 percent of Israel) and a brutal military dictatorship for the lands under occupation since 1967.

Now it is the general prejudice in America that Islam is a ‘religion of war’ and is fundamentally violent, and while this is a complicated topic, it cannot be denied that Sunni suicide terrorism had been fomented by militant Islamism that we have seen in the past couple of decades.  On this issue, it is worthwhile to consider the violence compared between Christianity and Islam.  The political component of American anti-Muslim racism can obviously be traced back for the entire century but it is partly inherited from the Crusades.  An interesting view of the socially accepted anti-Muslim racism can be found in Belen Fernandez’ study of the work of the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

It is impossible to hate without narratives, without resentment, without some righteous rage.  The religions promote hatred of the ‘other’ in many ways but primarily by making others have malicious or malevolent intention towards us.  It is impossible to hate without a sense of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, a feeling that the others have intention to harm.  We hate when we feel demeaned or harmed, as the resentment boils up.  This is why it is almost certain to me that 9/11 was a false flag operation because it makes very little sense that the Islamists whose interests were localized in the “Islamic strip” would undertake a completely unlikely-to-succeed terrorist mission and yet be able to coordinate four airplanes to hit their alleged targets with accuracy and effectiveness in demolishing skyscrapers.  That false flag was clearly designed to invoke anti-Muslim hatred from the American public and the Christian west generally.

Past wounds generate resentment and hatred, but these hatreds cannot be reinforced without separate religions that reinforce the divisions.  The Crusades had lasted now for over a thousand years.  The divisions have deepened making it more difficult to step out of the racism.  Nationalisms are like religions in a similar manner.  The us-versus-them divisions of national identity allow us to have less empathy for human beings, to consider them lower than us, less worthy of respect.  Iraq veteran Mike Prysner eloquently argues that racism is the most powerful tool in the American military for their ability to operate dehumanizing people in ‘other countries’.

## American empire’s relation with Iran and China

The American imperial planners I think had a long term view of transitioning the holy war of anticommunism into a literal Crusades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union by 1991.  While perhaps the actual planners of the attacks in 9/11/o1 were not known by the public administration, it is clear at least to me that 9/11 was an imperial false flag designed to ‘seal into stone’ the revival of a literal anti-Muslim Crusades in the Middle East targetting Iran replacing Soviet Union and it has recently come to light that the Israel-centric neoconservative cabal that had taken over the National Security State well before 9/11 had plans for regime change in Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon leaving a perfectly legitimate hypothesis that they had planned the false flag.  Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that the Global War on Terror is simply a cover for imperial resource grab operations with its expected response as the target of the war.

Iran had stopped working on nuclear weapons according to the US intelligence agencies in the fall of 2003 but now there is a sharp push for IAEA support backing the American claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapon activities that has been pushed strongly by Israel who mentioned unilateral airstrikes against Iran but the Israeli press has released accounts suggesting Mossad sabotage of an Iranian facility.

In the APEC summit, Obama spoke to Medvedev and Hu with lukewarm responses for backing more sanctions on Iran.  Obama then went to comment in the US military base in Darwin Australia that US plans to have a strong presence economically and militarily in the Pacific region which China considers its backyard.  An interesting observation is that Iran’s annual GDP growth has averaged around 5%, in the past decade and the sanctions put on it in 2010 for alleged work on nuclear weapons has not slowed the pace of growth.  It had been revitalizing an economic bloc eastward with Turkey, Pakistan and ex-Soviet Republics that was created in 1985.

Let me give my own views about these events.  First, I find it personally preposterous that Israel, which has 400 nuclear warheads should be complaining about the possible nuclear threat of Iran given that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons.  But more seriously, an interview with a former IAEA inspector reveals that the report that was released with a great deal of fanfare does not contain any new evidence that Iran is actually conducting any nuclear weapon development that is particularly threatening to peace in the region or the world.  We can safely assume that this is a piece of the political strategy to isolate Iran that fits in with the project of transforming the American imperial target towards the Middle East.

Now the interesting new development is Obama’s attention to military dominance in the Pacific contra-China.  This reveals that Obama realizes that the anticommunism war transformed into an anti-Islamic Crusades is not the right strategy for the American empire and is refocusing aggression towards China.  This also suggests that China is unwilling to support more sanctions against Iran.

We know that China had supported the US dollar as the global reserve partly because they held $1137 billion in US Treasuries in August of this year. From my point of view it is also clear that the issue of ‘peg’ to the US dollar is a smokescreen for China’s decision to find indirect ways of controlling the dollar to benefit their own economic objectives as a rising economic power. Compared to the tepid 2.5% growth of the US economy with 9% unemployment, recent Chinese GDP growth includes figures like 10.3% in 2010. All this is well-known. At the same time, what must also be well-known is that Chinese GDP growth is based on sharp inequalities in China which had suffered a wave of workers strikes. China is America’s largest foreign lender, holding$1148 billion of US Treasuries the past September but of course the real story is that while US had found that the unpegging from gold in 1971 allowed it to force central banks to keep their reserve in US Treasuries that the Fed can control, thus allowing US to wage imperial wars (“The Global War on Terror” is just a cover for generic imperial resource control war with the expected reaction in its name) making Europe and Asia pay for these, China had decided to invert the control by essentially operating a quantitative hedge fund using the dollar as its currency with controls on ‘hot money’. China’s top 1% owns 70% of its wealth and it had cheap labor without much protection so they could play this game to grab control of the global reserve currency indirectly. I had been talking about a currency tug-of-war throughout the past year. It’s really a war for economic influence of a rising planetary empire.

## What happened to Libya?

The great historian Immanuel Wallerstein wrote a piece about Arab Spring in terms of the “1968 current” being revived.  There are some powerful insights in the piece but I want to take issue with the following analysis of what happened in Libya:

We should start the story with France and Great Britain – the fading ex-colonial powers. They were both badly caught with their pants down in Tunisia and Egypt. Their leaders had, as individuals, been personally profiting from the two dictatorships. They not merely supported them against the uprising, but actively counselled them on how to repress.

Finally, and very late, they realised how big a political error this had been. They had to find a way to redeem themselves. They found it in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi had also, just like the French and the British, fully supported Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. Indeed he went the furthest, deploring their resignations. He was obviously deeply frightened by what was happening in the two neighbouring countries. To be sure, there was not much of a true “1968 current” in Libya. But there were plenty of discontented groups. And when these groups began their revolt, he blustered about how hard he would repress them.

France and Great Britain saw their opportunity here.

This is an analysis that has several problems, of which the most severe is hiding the true power structure of the planet, for it is neither France nor Great Britain but the American planetary empire which has global imperial power.  The fundamental facts that distinguish Libya from Tunisia or Egypt from the point of view of American power must be re-iterated, which is that America has a daily oil demand of 20 million barrels per day.  If we then turn to the EIA data on Libya we find that with 1.8 million barrels per day production it ranks 17th in the global oil production and with 43.66 billion barrels proven reserves it ranks as the 9th largest oil reserves in the world.  WikiLeaks cables had shown that in 2008, Russia’s Gazprom had made a bid to buy out the entire Libyan oil and gas infrastructure towhich the American administration had been opposed.

This status of Libya as a strategic asset is sharply distinct from both Tunisia and Egypt, and there was a western arming of “rebels” in Libya, who had direct links with al Qaeda and Taliban, against Gaddafi regime and then military intervention that led to his murder.  Unlike in Egypt where there is a widespread discussion about the reformation of a civilian government, in Libya, western armed proxies without much political discussion about the sorts of democratic discussions that took place in Egypt or indeed in Occupy Wall Street movement in New York have been known to massacre so-called ‘loyalists’ of Gaddafi for example in Sirte while NATO bombings have been systematically justified as being for ‘protecting civilians’.  An informative interview regarding this issue is by Phyllis Bennis.

The American empire intervened in Libya primarily for resource-control and France and Britain were both secondary clients to the planetary military empire led by America since the end of the Second World War.  They had put a geographical wedge between Tunisia and Egypt with a neocolonial proxy government replacing that of Gaddafi.  Now with the fabrication by the liars who had lied about Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ of an Iranian nuclear weapon project that recently produced an IAEA report that claims a ‘military dimension’ to Iran’s nuclear energy project, with heightened rhetoric and Iran mentioning possibly blockading the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions on the Iranian central bank and oil exports threatened by the EU countries, we can see the strategic value to the American empire of this resource grab at Libya, as Libya is being set up as the fallback for shortfall that can be produced by Iran, 18% of whose exports go to EU.  At its peak Libya produced 1.6 million barrels per day, and Iran exports 450,000 barrels per day to EU, so it’s obvious that with the NATO control of Libya, they feel they can meet the shortfall from Libya. This is one of the reasons why Iran-Venezuela alliance is of concern to the US.

## The Occupy Wall Street Movement is the real counter to the “Global War on Terror”

The claim that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the real counter to the “Global War on Terror” seems like an odd connection to make that requires some elaboration.

First, we need to understand what the “Global War on Terror” really is.  Once we get past the anti-Muslim racism and consider the major conflicts of the world in terms of a planetary military empire and its discontents, we can get some insights about the strategic uses of suicide terrorism.  One has to cross off 9/11 from the list of real acts of terror conducted by forces such as Islamic militants because that had been a false flag to begin the ball rolling, a showcasing of the remote-controlled aircraft technology among other things that was followed by General Atomics remote controlled drones active in Pakistan/Afghanistan to Yemen and doing surveillance in America.  Indeed, it is quite stunning that people in America still believe that 9/11 was conducted by Muslim terrorists given the dual strategic goals of free rein in imperial objectives in the Middle East and a police state in America were established post-9/11 as a strategic reassertion of American military empire after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, who had written about the logic of suicide terrorism in his 2005 Dying to Win has given the characterization of suicide terrorism distilled from cases around the world as a specific rational strategy used by certain militant groups to attempt to expel ‘modern democratic militaries’ from territories they consider homeland.  Although Sunni Islamists have been practicing this form of terrorism, it is certainly not a religious phenomenon, as the Tamil Tigers had used it in Sri Lanka for example.  Pape’s characterization of suicide terrorism is succinct and it can be assumed safely that this characterization has been known well before the “Global War on Terror” was begun by the war planners of Empire.   In particular, the “Global War on Terror” can be seen as a generic pre-emptive characterization of imperial efforts for other purposes — such as control of strategic resources, politics, people, etc. with the foresight that suicide terrorism would be a result of operations.  Indeed, there was never in Iraq’s history a single case of suicide terrorism before the US/NATO invasion in 2003.

Thus resistance to empire in terms of militancy and violence are fully co-opted in the ‘counterterrorism’ in the imperial military operations globally.  By the way, both false flags and characterizing imperial wars as a response to aggression is not very new:  the Gulf of Tonkin false flag had allowed the American empire to invade Vietnam, and even in the nineteenth century Manifest Destiny period, lands were conquered by provoking violence and then responding.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, as a nonviolent global movement that precisely targets the financial nerve of planetary empire, Wall Street, is precisely the counter to the “Global War on Terror” if it can spread globally.  We must understand that the Occupy movement faces a daunting planetary power structure that needs to transform if their fundamental demands are to be met.  Furthermore, it has the transformative potential to end suicide terrorism as an obsolete political strategy.  The movement towards nonviolence has been seen in the long Palestinian struggle for recognition of their plight for the past 60 years and the Occupy movement is much more potent for it is a positive movement that has resonance across the planet.