What with "late-breaking news" pouring from the propaganda engines' many outlets --TV, internet, radio, newspaper, and all-- things sometimes seem hard to follow.

But there's an easy way to see your way clear -- just remember everything's exactly what it looks like.

That's it.

So when the government starts disappearing its citizens into military prisons --no lawyers, no charges, no contact with the outside world-- you needn't concern yourself with "dirty bombs" or even the later, buried news that there was neither a bomb or attempts to make one.

Just remember "it's exactly what it looks like" --an innocent civilian being snatched off the street and handed over to the military with no prospect of release. That's all it is.

Or take the recent major address at West Point by the U.S. president. You hear "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. [...] Our security will require...a military...to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world ... preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."

Well, it's exactly what it looks like --the hyperpower claiming the right to rule the world as a military dictatorship.

What about Israeli actions in the West Bank? The entire population put under house arrest backed by shot-on-sight orders, while troops bomb and machinegun their way through houses and hospitals, bulldoze powerlines and orchards, rip up water and sewer lines, and leave behind hundreds of dead children, thousands of men in camps with numbers printed on their forearms, and a land incapable of supporting human life.

You hear it's "self-defense" aimed at "destroying the terrorist infrastructure," but isn't it a merciless drive to expel the native population off even more land? Easy to see --it's exactly what it looks like.

And how about the CEO of the WorldCom corporation declaring himself "shocked ... shocked" to "discover" that the company's balance sheet didn't report nearly four billion dollars of expenses?

Yep, it's exactly what it looks like. A huge, brazen, jawdropping, breathtaking, letter l--i--e, LIE.

Of course things aren't always quite this simple. You still need information that doesn't even get misrepresented --things you're just not supposed to know about.

Like the economic collapse of Argentina, a staggering calamity for people there, now threatening to engulf Brazil and the rest of the continent. That's news that gets buried somewhere in Saturday's business section.

Or the beginning emergence of real union battles in the U.S. --sometimes over contracts, sometimes over the right to organize-- led by rank and file workers, often immigrants.

But the most important buried story is in Cuba. Not much chance you heard they recently held the largest demonstrations in world history (if not in sheer numbers, certainly in participation --nearly nine million of an 11 million population). They were protesting Washington's latest threats and reaffirming support for their revolution.

Major news, but there's more. Over eight million Cubans petitioned parliament for a constitutional amendment to make socialism "irrevocable." And the whole country took three days off work for discussions and the final vote to pass it. (Looks like a complete and final answer to the oft-asked question, "What's going to happen when Fidel dies?")

But the biggest part of the story is why all this happened. It's simply that the Cuban people --more conscious, educated and literate than any country's-- understand what's going on.

Plus they know what to do about it.

After all, the trajectory of world events is, well, exactly what it looks like. The Third World faces ruination by economic collapse and unchecked epidemics --and virtual extermination isn't sitting well with the natives. The Empire is driven to declare "world war ... lasting longer than our lifetimes," erecting garrison states around the world, while its economic bubble begins to burst.

"An unprecedented confrontation is taking place," explains Cuba's president, "in a new historical stage between the force of just ideas and the murderous ideas of brutal force."

Revolutionary Cuba's concept is to clarify what's going on as widely as possible, and to rely on the power of the peoples.

So while protests, clashes and general strikes sweep across Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, Fidel publicly calls the presidents of most Latin American nations "garbage," diplomatic consequences be damned.

No surprise that the biggest of all the actions against the Empire are in Cuba. They're the only ones who run their own government. They have no homelessness, illiteracy, or charges for health care or education --and most valuably-- absolutely no fear of the world hyperpower.

And that's why their president confidently declares that Bush "is in no position to respond to the political challenges that Cuba could throw at him. It is like sailing on a big paper boat --full of lies and demagogy-- that cannot endure the wind or the waves."

Meanwhile. "in the face of [threats], many peoples of the world will look hopefully to the American people as the only one capable of putting a straightjacket on, or stopping, the bigots in their lust for power, abuse and conflict."

And so Cuba agains extends another hand towards the people of North America as well as South, holding a big July Fourth celebration with its top artists doing Gershwinn, Kern, Chuck Berry, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent, Pound, Whitman, Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, Ginsberg, and Alice Walker.

The evening ends with Cuban and U.S. children singing John Lennon's "Imagine," its opening words going "You might say that I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one......"

Put it all together and the picture's clear --the rulers of the world driving it towards a wall at a-hundred-miles-an-hour, while Cuba rouses the passengers to seize the wheel. Yes, it's "an unprecedented confrontation in a new historical stage between the force of just ideas and the murderous ideas of brutal force."

Exactly what it looks like.

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