Lunatics Rule

Another of capitalism's wonderful necessities is war. 

The New York Times book review of the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s ("The Iran-Iraq War" by Peter Razoux) tells us that the eight-year conflict killed one million people. In one brief offensive in 1983, the Iranians are believed to have sustained 7,000 dead; thousands of men were electrocuted while wading across a swamp; Saddam Hussein sacrificed a whole battalion to test out a new nerve gas; the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered a southern Iraq city to be 'a Persian Stalingrad'; Hussein commissioned a toy company to manufacture gold-colored plastic keys that children could wear around their necks "as a reminder that their detonation by mines or slaughter by machine gun fire would unlock the gates of paradise." 

 Clearly we are still in a very primitive state when lunatics like this can command and rule a country. Only a social and political revolution will rid the world of this type of behaviour.

 John Ayers.