Big Brother Is Already Here
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of
power.” – Daniel Webster, United States Senator and Secretary of
State (1782-1817)
By End The Lie
September 30, 2012
I see a lot of articles about the massive growth of surveillance
and loss of privacy.
The authors of the articles often say they’re concerned that a
“big brother” society might be the result of it.
Might? You can absolutely count on it!
If you’re a betting person you can bet big and win big, if you
can find anyone gullible enough to take your bet, that is.
Technology gives authorities more power and I think we all
know authorities love power. That’s why they’re authorities.
People in positions of authority have more privileges and perks
than the rest of us.
From some Barney Fife-type right up to the president, people
who get power like it.
They want to keep it, and they want more of it. And that is
precisely what technology does.
Take the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents
for example.
One day they are unemployed, then they answer an ad on a
pizza box and almost overnight they have real authority, real
power,
and they can instantly turn your life into a nightmare.
If one of those minimally trained rookies singles you out as
suspicious because of something they thought they felt when
they groped you, or a shadow they thought they saw in your
x-ray, the full weight of the legal system can come down on you
immediately – including handcuffs, strip searches, and detention.
So in essence, everyone in the chain of authority is your master,
no matter how low their official rank may be, because they can
cause armed police to appear and take you away.
People with very little training, no knowledge of the law, and no
actual police experience now have enormous power over all of us.
To make matters worse, the TSA is expanding its operations.
George Orwell, author of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, wasn't
clairvoyant, he was just wide awake.
He could see technology advancing, and being keenly aware of
human nature, he knew what was coming.
And it is.
Much of what was depicted in 1984, is already, or is rapidly
becoming, a fact.
Already the majority of citizens who are “plugged in,” that is
connected to the various electronic grids through cell phones,
computers, credit cards, etc., can be quickly traced – legally
or not – to their current location within a few paces by anyone
having some auspice of authority.
That in turn can be used to predict future movements and can
linked to databases housing the person’s entire life history, which
includes their friends and family.
Everything you’ve ever done, said, purchased, or showed the
slightest interest in is being recorded somewhere. Naturally
there are almost certainly going to be lots of mistakes in the
data.
Those of you who naively think they have “nothing to hide”
should remember this:
“Under any condition, anywhere, whatever you are doing,
there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.”
– Robert D Sprecht, Rand Corporation.
It’s the people who think they have nothing to hide that are
in for the biggest shock.
Everyone has something they want to keep private if they just
think about it. Everyone.
Privacy is all that stands between the average citizen and prison,
and that’s why technology’s threats to our privacy are so serious
and why we should all be a whole lot more than just concerned.
People can quote the Constitution as much as they want but
the snooping by government and private industry will still keep
growing.
It’s as certain as the perpetual wars for resources. There’s
just no way anyone is going to stop the surveillance trend.
The technology has arrived and the authorities have always
wanted to protect their status and corral the citizens.
What better way than to spy on everyone constantly – to run
us all through turnstiles of one kind or another, check our ID,
measure our stress, grope us and x-ray us, scan our retinas,
take our fingerprints, tag and stamp us all like cattle and
sheep.
“The NSS [National Security State] is an instrument of class
warfare, organized and designed to permit an elite, local
and multinational, to operate without any constraint from
democratic processes. This allows the bulk of the population
to be treated as a mere cost of production.” – Edward Herman,
economist and author of The Real Terror Network.
And that’s what it’s all about.
It has never been about security for the country, it’s about
security for those in charge, the rulers and authorities.
They like their privileges and their roles. They want to keep
them and they don’t want any pesky citizens challenging them.
Our “superiors” hate to be questioned or challenged. They
loathe it.
It forces them to either back down, and lose the respect of their
peers and maybe lose their jobs, or to punish you in some way.
Guess which course they will usually choose.
To authorities, rebellion is a much greater crime than simple law-
breaking. Challenging authority – insubordination – is one of the
worst crimes of all.
Any authority that doesn’t immediately put you in your place risks
losing his or her authority. “The function of any security checkpoint
is to show who’s boss.” – Richard Ben Cramer
Every day I read of more advancements in surveillance technology
and at the same time I read of more abuses by the police like
heavily armed SWAT teams sent to enforce minor violations and
ending up shooting people.
On top of that they often have the wrong address or they conduct
the raid on clearly false pretenses.
You see, power begets more power, and more power begets more
abuses of power. The two things are inseparable and create a kind
of feedback loop.
George Orwell merely saw the obvious.
The future of surveillance is very easy to predict because
human nature is so predictable.
Authorities like power and more surveillance means more
power for them.
More surveillance means more income for the companies
that build it.
More surveillance means more jobs for people who maintain
and enforce it – technicians and private police forces.
And because of the poor economy there’s a huge labor market
from which to choose workers and guards for our prisons.
Let’s not forget, prisons are now a source of cheap labor for
big industries as well.
So being concerned only over the growing surveillance and policing
is like being only concerned about the flames shooting from under
the dashboard of your car, or being only concerned about the
swarm of carpenter ants emerging from your kitchen cabinets.
You can absolutely count on surveillance growing and becoming
more intrusive, and you can count on big industries and government
being in charge and promoting it more and more.
And of course the people who control the surveillance technology
also control police forces.
The ultimate goal of cell phones, smart meters, biometrics,
GPS, the internet, etc. is to connect everyone to a common
electronic grid so that everything we do and everywhere we
go can be monitored if some authority somewhere chooses to
do so.
What appears to most people to be clever inventions and
conveniences are likely to be the instruments of our captivity.
The authorities, whether it is governments, corporations,
or a mixture of both, will have us all on a very short leash.
Who are the authorities? Who might be in control of all this
security?
Smart, dedicated professionals obsessed with fairness, accuracy,
and protecting civil liberties?
I think we already know the answer to that question.
I’ve been trying to be optimistic but the tide is increasingly
apparent; there is little the public can do to completely stop
the growth of the police state.
Do nothing, and it grows. Fight back, and that will be used
as an excuse to expand it as well.
We can only hope that there is sufficient independent spirit left
in people to quietly resist and undermine the apparatus enough
that it might fail because of maintenance costs, as some of the
red-light cameras have.
With virtually every article I’ve seen on this topic, there
has been people who have commented “privacy is dead,
get over it,” or words to that effect.
I’m not exactly sure what to do, but I am certain that denial,
complacency, and meek submission won’t help.
There’s an old proverb that says, “A fool and his money are
soon parted.”
Well the same goes for a fool and his freedom.
Privacy is part of freedom and when you lose one you’ve lost
the other.
Free people must resist the constant intrusion into our private
lives by faceless bureaucrats and corporate profiteers as much
as possible.
Without resistance nothing can possibly get better, only worse.
And there’s no bottom to worse.
http://endthelie.com/2012/09/28/big-brother-is-already here
/#axzz27zNt7PCY
Hello America, My name is Tony Whitcomb and I am the Founder and CEO of Expotera. I have created Expotera, as well as this Blog, to let the good, honest and hardworking Citizens of this Country know that the Revolution has now begun. Power To The People!!
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
When Will Radical Become The Norm?
When Will Radical Become the Norm?
By Solomon Comissiong
Black Agenda Report
September 29, 2012
Institutional Racism, war, white supremacist values, prison and
military industrial complexes, sexism, and police brutality are all
routine aspects of American society.
These are norms that far too many Americans have come to except
as just that – norms.
Xenophobia, plutocracy, and a society that places profits well
before the interests of human beings are also spot-on descriptors
of America.
Although some Americans may see these things as bad elements
within any society, far too many have accepted them within their
own.
American Exceptionalism is a mental illness predicated on the
delusional idea that America is the "gold standard" for the rest
of the world to follow.
The American Exceptionalism myth has well prepared the public
to overlook their country's numerous flaws – seeing them, in some
warped way, as positive traits.
This destructive way of thinking affects Americans from all walks
of life and political persuasions. Even the so-called American
"progressive," sadly, believes that they represent some kind of
socially liberal fresh air needed to improve society.
Unfortunately, these neo-progressives' ideas are limited just like
the imaginary world they, too, enjoy residing within. The limited
"changes" they are willing to address essentially sustain the overall
status quo.
And those whose ideas are actually seismic, and could improve
humanity, if collectively fought for – are labeled as "radical."
This labeling of many sensible minded individuals plays a significant
role in confusing people who would make excellent social justice
fighters, if only they weren't so mentally programmed.
They have been trained to associate the word "radical" with
something that is automatically negative or impractical, without
ever examining the ideas of those labeled "radical."
This way of thinking is no accident; it is as planned as America's
electoral politics.
Many American minds have been carefully crafted within
laboratories otherwise known as public schools and university
classrooms. They have been indoctrinated to buy into ideas
that are inhumane in nature and celebrate people who were
barbaric.
Naturally when presented with ideas, systems and individuals
antithetical to "The American Way," they are seen as "bad,"
"wrong," or, yes, even "radical."
Those that speak out against the US's insatiable appetite for war
and destruction are conveniently characterized as "radicals" or even
social deviants.
Those who believe these narratives are unaware that their minds
are trapped within an alternate reality where up is down and down
is up.
They are sadly programmed to eschew things that are rooted
in humanity not realizing how they have lost their own sense
of morality.
If more Americans could escape this alternate, yet nefarious,
mental prison, they would start to comprehend how they have
been cleverly trained to fight against their own human interests.
Far too many Americans dwell within a constant state of
government sponsored consternation. Americans have been duped
in to believing that "socialism" is actually something evil that poses
a threat to their society.
Many foolishly fail to realize that a more socialist society would
bring them, and their loved ones, things like a true universal
healthcare system, free or extremely low cost tertiary education,
and affordable housing for all, to name a few benefits of life within
a truly socialist society.
Instead of embracing positive aspects of a more socialist society
Americans blissfully suffer under a regime predicated on raw
rugged exploitation.
Americans embrace capitalism while, at the same time, a great
many fail to truly understand this unforgiving economic system.
If most fail to understand capitalism, it should be of no surprise
that even more lack any understanding of socialism; they have
been well trained not to.
Americans eat whatever psychological poison is fed to them by
the corporate media and government, alike. American citizens
have methodically been taught to believe they reside within the
world's most free and open "democratic” society.
They have heard these lies hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times.
Those devoid of critical thinking skills quickly believe false
narratives if they are repeated often enough. This strict, yet
implicit, propaganda is virtually ubiquitous, which makes it
all the more effective.
Training the American mind to believe that the US is a "gold
standard" for all other societies to mimic also trains the same
mind not to ask for things that should be seen as human rights.
This is why, despite the fact that over 40,000 Americans die
each year simply because they lack health insurance, a socialized
healthcare system is seen as an "entitlement" that would break the
US federal budget.
And those who press for a single-payer socialized healthcare
system are deemed "radical."
Those advocating for things like socialized healthcare and
free tertiary education are "radical," evil socialists who
want to eviscerate Americans’ so-called "liberties."
The socially engineered American mind does not see the spending
of a trillion dollars a year on the military as something that breaks
the budget or robs them of their opportunity to obtain quality
healthcare for all.
Somehow it is justified to spend over a trillion dollars a year on
things like imperialist wars, which murder countless innocent
civilians from other countries.
This is not considered a radically evil action put in place by
radically evil politicians.
The two-headed corporate party dictatorship (Democrats &
Republicans) recently held their political conventions in
Tampa Bay, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina, respectively.
For those who have somehow found a way to break away from the
American system of indoctrination it was a most depressing sight.
It was a human sea of sheep-like people who have bought in
to the hypnotic political rhetoric fed to them.
It mattered not that the political food they were swallowing was
filled with empty calories, and much like eating a box of doughnuts,
it was superficially "sweet" yet devoid of substance – and ultimately
harmful.
Most of the convention goers were going there to willingly be
led by their political shepherds.
These people, like many Democrats and Republicans, have been
trained to base political merit on fancy conventions replete with
amoral politicians and their well-crafted speeches.
It matters little whether the speeches are hollow and ultimately
baseless.
Much of the American voting populace are attracted to shiny
trinkets that distract them from tangible actions necessary
toward building a better society.
For instance, every four years since 2000, the Democrats roll out
their political Godfather, Bill Clinton, to use his forked tongue as
a tool to galvanize an already sycophantic base of voters/zombies.
These folks are ready and willing to vote for whomever
the Democratic Party places in from of them, just like
their Republican counterparts, regardless of what they say.
Facts anchored to their destructive policies matter little – they
often refuse see their political masters' polices as destructive.
They have, in essence, been trained to look no further than
the shiny surface.
This is why politicians like Bill Clinton and his buddy, Barack
Obama, can say whatever they like, to tens of millions of their
“supporters.”
Watching Democratic convention goers while Clinton and Obama
gave their speeches was similar to witnessing members of a cult
as they hang on to every word spit forth by their leader.
And for this African/black writer, it was especially depressing to
see other African/black people buy into the rubbish being fed to
them without realizing that as long as they blindly support this
political party they will see no tangible or progressive changes in
their/our communities' living conditions.
Bill Clinton is a man who, while president, endorsed a number
of actions that negatively impacted the African/black community.
He expanded the building of prisons far beyond that of the
radically evil Ronald Reagan.
Clinton made sure that black and brown communities were heavily
policed and remained within a perpetual police state via his "tough
on crime" polices.
And Clinton, like his chum Barack Obama, used military force
to attack Africa, not only in Somalia but also in Sudan when he
bombed a vital pharmaceutical plant.
Bill Clinton is only a mythological friend to African/black people
where he exists within the minds of those who are hopelessly
obsequious to their Democratic Party puppeteers.
Bill Clinton is a man filled with a laundry list of evil deeds that he
voluntarily committed, such as executing a mentally challenged
African/black man while he was governor of Arkansas.
When you see scores of African/black people cheering Clinton
on, as if they are at a sporting event, you must then realize that
you dwell in a society that considers talk of eviscerating white
supremacy and institutional racism as somehow "radical."
Clinton and Obama have convinced people of color that they
give a damn about them, despite the fact that their policies
are antithetical to their interests.
America is like a manufactured zoo habitat, created by white
supremacist Euro-Americans, capitalist elites, and imperialist
warmongers (to name a few of the menagerie of the wretched).
The American habitat is replete with distractions methodically
positioned to, not only control the natives thinking, but also to
maintain a status quo that is deleterious for the entire planet.
Among these distractions is the baseless rhetoric spewing from
the mouths of white liberals and conservatives, as well as from
black operatives like Michael Eric Dyson and Al Sharpton.
Dyson and Sharpton work for the interests of the white liberals
that write their checks.
You can rest assured that if the likes of these two characters were
working in the interests of people of color, or real progressive
change, they would not be paraded across TV airwaves controlled
by corporate media like MSNBC (Comcast/General Electric).
Black commentators like them are paid rather well to euphemize,
downplay and flat out not mention issues impacting Black/African
America.
Malcolm X had a term for individuals like these: "House Negros."
Their job is not only to keep black/African people from thinking
comprehensively about certain issues; it is to help funnel people
of color in to the Democratic Party's traps.
All these roads (traps) lead to the status quo.
Ideas and plans that would lead people of color towards necessary
collective organization geared at social justice, equality, and
liberation, are deemed "radical" and are, therefore, to be "feared."
Socially radical ideas and actions are needed to rearrange this
society in to one that facilitates justice, equality, and peace.
America reigns as one of the most unequal and socially unjust
societies on earth.
America does not only commit injustices within its own stolen
and manufactured borders, the US exports terror, injustice,
and plunder.
These words are only deemed "radical" or "a shock" to those who
have, unfortunately, spent their entire lives within the illusionary
house built for them by the state.
This is the only housing the US government is willing to socialize.
A government that voluntarily places itself within a constant
state of war should be been deemed radically nefarious.
Sane and humane societies reject war and global plunder. Most
Americans seem to embrace, or at the very least, accept it. They
reside in the smallest of "worlds."
Americans have allowed themselves to accept whatever poisonous
narrative is mentally fed to them by their butcher-like government.
Many Americans have bought into the idea that there are
"humanitarian wars" that "their" government engages in.
And those are the wars the easily fooled support.
Facts and innocent lives from other countries matter little.
The name of the game in American society is superficiality, which
is why the political candidates that spend the most money usually
win the elections.
Americans are generally not interested in studying the fine
print that comes on the labeling of their favorite candidates.
Like toddlers, many American voters are attracted to whatever
"shiny" trinkets are presented to them each election cycle.
Barack Obama was one of those new "shiny trinkets" that masses
of Americans gobbled up without any regard to what they were
politically devouring.
Within their politically manufactured world, they were doing
something of social significance – they were "change agents,"
just like the man they hoped to elect in 2008, Barack Obama.
It really didn't matter what he said or how he voted while in senate.
His support of things like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), and expanding America's imperialist war in Afghanistan was
not even an afterthought.
They conveniently forgot the fact that they opposed those
types of draconian and anti-democratic policies during the
criminal Bush/Cheney reign of terror.
And now that Barack Obama is president, a war-mongering
president, these faithful Democratic Party cheerleaders have
decided to make excuses for their president's reprehensible
policies and actions.
Obama starts a war with a North African nation (Libya)
under false pretenses, and they say, "he had to do it."
He orchestrates more drone attacks than George Bush could have
ever wished for and Obama's supporters defend his monstrous
actions without pause.
Obama supporters have even found ways to create excuses for
his deceptive signing of the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA), something that makes the Patriot Act pale in comparison.
Obama signs anti-worker Free Trade Agreements and deports
more than one million people – once again – "he had to do it!"
In a virtual world created by white liberals and conservatives,
alike, "leaders" like Barack Obama are seen as "progressive."
Their actions, no matter how despicable and destructive, are
not only tolerated, they are embraced.
And within this same world black political snake-oil
salesmen/women like Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry
and Al Sharpton are anointed "black leaders" and "progressives."
However, those who reject the status quo are labeled as
"radical" or "anti-American."
If opposing imperialist wars, white supremacy, capitalism,
institutional racism, and all forms of injustice, make one
"anti-American", you may include this author within that
rubric.
If America were a more humane society, truly centered on equality,
justice, and peace, these actions would never be seen as "radical"
they would be the norm.
Those who truly want to make this world a better place have their
work cut out for them.
Nevertheless, the work must be done – humanity depends on it.
America may be a country with an abundance of social potential;
however, it continues to fail miserably at achieving that potential,
if it is even trying at all.
Many Americans, due to government-sponsored social engineering,
only see the world they are allowed to see.
They don't see the brilliant lessons to be learned outside of
America's manufactured borders and they certainly don't see
the beautiful society (and world) they, and future generations,
could dwell in.
It is imperative that those of us who see these things continue
to speak out as loudly as we possibly can.
We need to continue to organize as hard and diligently as we can.
We must never accept injustice in any form, no matter what the
person looks like that is delivering it.
Reject the "boxes" the corporate political parties try to place us
within. Create open spaces free of walls and inhumane restrictions.
We need to reorganize and create a new and more just society –
one where the term "radical" is applied to those who support wars,
imperialism, institutional racism, sexism, white supremacy, plunder
and injustice (in general).
Those are the social regressive radicals.
We all need to do work that is meaningful and conducive to being
labeled (not by ourselves but by others) as socially progressive "radicals."
Hopefully, one day actions deemed "socially progressive" and
"radical" will be considered the norm.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author,
and the host of the Your World News media collective
(www.yourworldnews.org).
http://blackagendareport.com/content/when-will-radical-become-
norm
By Solomon Comissiong
Black Agenda Report
September 29, 2012
Institutional Racism, war, white supremacist values, prison and
military industrial complexes, sexism, and police brutality are all
routine aspects of American society.
These are norms that far too many Americans have come to except
as just that – norms.
Xenophobia, plutocracy, and a society that places profits well
before the interests of human beings are also spot-on descriptors
of America.
Although some Americans may see these things as bad elements
within any society, far too many have accepted them within their
own.
American Exceptionalism is a mental illness predicated on the
delusional idea that America is the "gold standard" for the rest
of the world to follow.
The American Exceptionalism myth has well prepared the public
to overlook their country's numerous flaws – seeing them, in some
warped way, as positive traits.
This destructive way of thinking affects Americans from all walks
of life and political persuasions. Even the so-called American
"progressive," sadly, believes that they represent some kind of
socially liberal fresh air needed to improve society.
Unfortunately, these neo-progressives' ideas are limited just like
the imaginary world they, too, enjoy residing within. The limited
"changes" they are willing to address essentially sustain the overall
status quo.
And those whose ideas are actually seismic, and could improve
humanity, if collectively fought for – are labeled as "radical."
This labeling of many sensible minded individuals plays a significant
role in confusing people who would make excellent social justice
fighters, if only they weren't so mentally programmed.
They have been trained to associate the word "radical" with
something that is automatically negative or impractical, without
ever examining the ideas of those labeled "radical."
This way of thinking is no accident; it is as planned as America's
electoral politics.
Many American minds have been carefully crafted within
laboratories otherwise known as public schools and university
classrooms. They have been indoctrinated to buy into ideas
that are inhumane in nature and celebrate people who were
barbaric.
Naturally when presented with ideas, systems and individuals
antithetical to "The American Way," they are seen as "bad,"
"wrong," or, yes, even "radical."
Those that speak out against the US's insatiable appetite for war
and destruction are conveniently characterized as "radicals" or even
social deviants.
Those who believe these narratives are unaware that their minds
are trapped within an alternate reality where up is down and down
is up.
They are sadly programmed to eschew things that are rooted
in humanity not realizing how they have lost their own sense
of morality.
If more Americans could escape this alternate, yet nefarious,
mental prison, they would start to comprehend how they have
been cleverly trained to fight against their own human interests.
Far too many Americans dwell within a constant state of
government sponsored consternation. Americans have been duped
in to believing that "socialism" is actually something evil that poses
a threat to their society.
Many foolishly fail to realize that a more socialist society would
bring them, and their loved ones, things like a true universal
healthcare system, free or extremely low cost tertiary education,
and affordable housing for all, to name a few benefits of life within
a truly socialist society.
Instead of embracing positive aspects of a more socialist society
Americans blissfully suffer under a regime predicated on raw
rugged exploitation.
Americans embrace capitalism while, at the same time, a great
many fail to truly understand this unforgiving economic system.
If most fail to understand capitalism, it should be of no surprise
that even more lack any understanding of socialism; they have
been well trained not to.
Americans eat whatever psychological poison is fed to them by
the corporate media and government, alike. American citizens
have methodically been taught to believe they reside within the
world's most free and open "democratic” society.
They have heard these lies hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times.
Those devoid of critical thinking skills quickly believe false
narratives if they are repeated often enough. This strict, yet
implicit, propaganda is virtually ubiquitous, which makes it
all the more effective.
Training the American mind to believe that the US is a "gold
standard" for all other societies to mimic also trains the same
mind not to ask for things that should be seen as human rights.
This is why, despite the fact that over 40,000 Americans die
each year simply because they lack health insurance, a socialized
healthcare system is seen as an "entitlement" that would break the
US federal budget.
And those who press for a single-payer socialized healthcare
system are deemed "radical."
Those advocating for things like socialized healthcare and
free tertiary education are "radical," evil socialists who
want to eviscerate Americans’ so-called "liberties."
The socially engineered American mind does not see the spending
of a trillion dollars a year on the military as something that breaks
the budget or robs them of their opportunity to obtain quality
healthcare for all.
Somehow it is justified to spend over a trillion dollars a year on
things like imperialist wars, which murder countless innocent
civilians from other countries.
This is not considered a radically evil action put in place by
radically evil politicians.
The two-headed corporate party dictatorship (Democrats &
Republicans) recently held their political conventions in
Tampa Bay, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina, respectively.
For those who have somehow found a way to break away from the
American system of indoctrination it was a most depressing sight.
It was a human sea of sheep-like people who have bought in
to the hypnotic political rhetoric fed to them.
It mattered not that the political food they were swallowing was
filled with empty calories, and much like eating a box of doughnuts,
it was superficially "sweet" yet devoid of substance – and ultimately
harmful.
Most of the convention goers were going there to willingly be
led by their political shepherds.
These people, like many Democrats and Republicans, have been
trained to base political merit on fancy conventions replete with
amoral politicians and their well-crafted speeches.
It matters little whether the speeches are hollow and ultimately
baseless.
Much of the American voting populace are attracted to shiny
trinkets that distract them from tangible actions necessary
toward building a better society.
For instance, every four years since 2000, the Democrats roll out
their political Godfather, Bill Clinton, to use his forked tongue as
a tool to galvanize an already sycophantic base of voters/zombies.
These folks are ready and willing to vote for whomever
the Democratic Party places in from of them, just like
their Republican counterparts, regardless of what they say.
Facts anchored to their destructive policies matter little – they
often refuse see their political masters' polices as destructive.
They have, in essence, been trained to look no further than
the shiny surface.
This is why politicians like Bill Clinton and his buddy, Barack
Obama, can say whatever they like, to tens of millions of their
“supporters.”
Watching Democratic convention goers while Clinton and Obama
gave their speeches was similar to witnessing members of a cult
as they hang on to every word spit forth by their leader.
And for this African/black writer, it was especially depressing to
see other African/black people buy into the rubbish being fed to
them without realizing that as long as they blindly support this
political party they will see no tangible or progressive changes in
their/our communities' living conditions.
Bill Clinton is a man who, while president, endorsed a number
of actions that negatively impacted the African/black community.
He expanded the building of prisons far beyond that of the
radically evil Ronald Reagan.
Clinton made sure that black and brown communities were heavily
policed and remained within a perpetual police state via his "tough
on crime" polices.
And Clinton, like his chum Barack Obama, used military force
to attack Africa, not only in Somalia but also in Sudan when he
bombed a vital pharmaceutical plant.
Bill Clinton is only a mythological friend to African/black people
where he exists within the minds of those who are hopelessly
obsequious to their Democratic Party puppeteers.
Bill Clinton is a man filled with a laundry list of evil deeds that he
voluntarily committed, such as executing a mentally challenged
African/black man while he was governor of Arkansas.
When you see scores of African/black people cheering Clinton
on, as if they are at a sporting event, you must then realize that
you dwell in a society that considers talk of eviscerating white
supremacy and institutional racism as somehow "radical."
Clinton and Obama have convinced people of color that they
give a damn about them, despite the fact that their policies
are antithetical to their interests.
America is like a manufactured zoo habitat, created by white
supremacist Euro-Americans, capitalist elites, and imperialist
warmongers (to name a few of the menagerie of the wretched).
The American habitat is replete with distractions methodically
positioned to, not only control the natives thinking, but also to
maintain a status quo that is deleterious for the entire planet.
Among these distractions is the baseless rhetoric spewing from
the mouths of white liberals and conservatives, as well as from
black operatives like Michael Eric Dyson and Al Sharpton.
Dyson and Sharpton work for the interests of the white liberals
that write their checks.
You can rest assured that if the likes of these two characters were
working in the interests of people of color, or real progressive
change, they would not be paraded across TV airwaves controlled
by corporate media like MSNBC (Comcast/General Electric).
Black commentators like them are paid rather well to euphemize,
downplay and flat out not mention issues impacting Black/African
America.
Malcolm X had a term for individuals like these: "House Negros."
Their job is not only to keep black/African people from thinking
comprehensively about certain issues; it is to help funnel people
of color in to the Democratic Party's traps.
All these roads (traps) lead to the status quo.
Ideas and plans that would lead people of color towards necessary
collective organization geared at social justice, equality, and
liberation, are deemed "radical" and are, therefore, to be "feared."
Socially radical ideas and actions are needed to rearrange this
society in to one that facilitates justice, equality, and peace.
America reigns as one of the most unequal and socially unjust
societies on earth.
America does not only commit injustices within its own stolen
and manufactured borders, the US exports terror, injustice,
and plunder.
These words are only deemed "radical" or "a shock" to those who
have, unfortunately, spent their entire lives within the illusionary
house built for them by the state.
This is the only housing the US government is willing to socialize.
A government that voluntarily places itself within a constant
state of war should be been deemed radically nefarious.
Sane and humane societies reject war and global plunder. Most
Americans seem to embrace, or at the very least, accept it. They
reside in the smallest of "worlds."
Americans have allowed themselves to accept whatever poisonous
narrative is mentally fed to them by their butcher-like government.
Many Americans have bought into the idea that there are
"humanitarian wars" that "their" government engages in.
And those are the wars the easily fooled support.
Facts and innocent lives from other countries matter little.
The name of the game in American society is superficiality, which
is why the political candidates that spend the most money usually
win the elections.
Americans are generally not interested in studying the fine
print that comes on the labeling of their favorite candidates.
Like toddlers, many American voters are attracted to whatever
"shiny" trinkets are presented to them each election cycle.
Barack Obama was one of those new "shiny trinkets" that masses
of Americans gobbled up without any regard to what they were
politically devouring.
Within their politically manufactured world, they were doing
something of social significance – they were "change agents,"
just like the man they hoped to elect in 2008, Barack Obama.
It really didn't matter what he said or how he voted while in senate.
His support of things like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), and expanding America's imperialist war in Afghanistan was
not even an afterthought.
They conveniently forgot the fact that they opposed those
types of draconian and anti-democratic policies during the
criminal Bush/Cheney reign of terror.
And now that Barack Obama is president, a war-mongering
president, these faithful Democratic Party cheerleaders have
decided to make excuses for their president's reprehensible
policies and actions.
Obama starts a war with a North African nation (Libya)
under false pretenses, and they say, "he had to do it."
He orchestrates more drone attacks than George Bush could have
ever wished for and Obama's supporters defend his monstrous
actions without pause.
Obama supporters have even found ways to create excuses for
his deceptive signing of the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA), something that makes the Patriot Act pale in comparison.
Obama signs anti-worker Free Trade Agreements and deports
more than one million people – once again – "he had to do it!"
In a virtual world created by white liberals and conservatives,
alike, "leaders" like Barack Obama are seen as "progressive."
Their actions, no matter how despicable and destructive, are
not only tolerated, they are embraced.
And within this same world black political snake-oil
salesmen/women like Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry
and Al Sharpton are anointed "black leaders" and "progressives."
However, those who reject the status quo are labeled as
"radical" or "anti-American."
If opposing imperialist wars, white supremacy, capitalism,
institutional racism, and all forms of injustice, make one
"anti-American", you may include this author within that
rubric.
If America were a more humane society, truly centered on equality,
justice, and peace, these actions would never be seen as "radical"
they would be the norm.
Those who truly want to make this world a better place have their
work cut out for them.
Nevertheless, the work must be done – humanity depends on it.
America may be a country with an abundance of social potential;
however, it continues to fail miserably at achieving that potential,
if it is even trying at all.
Many Americans, due to government-sponsored social engineering,
only see the world they are allowed to see.
They don't see the brilliant lessons to be learned outside of
America's manufactured borders and they certainly don't see
the beautiful society (and world) they, and future generations,
could dwell in.
It is imperative that those of us who see these things continue
to speak out as loudly as we possibly can.
We need to continue to organize as hard and diligently as we can.
We must never accept injustice in any form, no matter what the
person looks like that is delivering it.
Reject the "boxes" the corporate political parties try to place us
within. Create open spaces free of walls and inhumane restrictions.
We need to reorganize and create a new and more just society –
one where the term "radical" is applied to those who support wars,
imperialism, institutional racism, sexism, white supremacy, plunder
and injustice (in general).
Those are the social regressive radicals.
We all need to do work that is meaningful and conducive to being
labeled (not by ourselves but by others) as socially progressive "radicals."
Hopefully, one day actions deemed "socially progressive" and
"radical" will be considered the norm.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author,
and the host of the Your World News media collective
(www.yourworldnews.org).
http://blackagendareport.com/content/when-will-radical-become-
norm
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul
A Crucible of Political Disenchantment
By Phil Rockstroh
Dissident Voice
September 26, 2012
Weltschmerz (from German; from Welt (world) + Schmerz (pain)
delineates the type of sadness experienced when the world
revealed does not reflect the image of the world that one
believes, or has been led to believe, should exist.
The corporate/consumer state (as well as, its scion, the present
day presidential election cycle) has brought us, as a people, into
a wilderness of Weltschmerz.
Confronting the stark contrast between life imagined and life
revealed can prove to be a daunting task.
It is an endeavor that has proven particularly difficult for
political partisans, both professional and rank and file,
who seem unwilling or unable to grasp the sense of futility
experienced by significant numbers of their fellow citizens
regarding political participation, on any level, including the
act of voting under the corrupted to the core structure of
the current system.
Such reactions are understandable. Exercises in futility
prove enervating.
Disenchanted, sizable and increasing numbers of voters
have tuned out and walked away from the process, due
to the abject refusal of the political class to be responsive
to the needs of the populace beyond the elitist-ridden
New York/DC nexus of privilege and power.
Yet, rank and file political partisans, all too often, resist
gaining awareness of the extent of their powerlessness.
This is understandable as well. Feelings of powerlessness can
engender despair.
To avoid despair, one feels as though one must remain active in
order to avoid sinking into the muck and mire borne of chronic
hopelessness. True enough. But activity towards what end?
Does the activity, such as voting along partisan lines, reinforce
states of powerlessness by serving the forces of one’s oppression?
Despite all the cultural cues that we have internalized, one cannot
consume, medicate, buy on credit, receive a promotion, vacation,
vote, hope, affect a pose of hipster irony, tithe to the church of
your choice, receive a hundred FaceBook friendship requests,
hit the winning lottery number, support the troops, nor be the recipient of a VIP swag bag in order to stumble your way back to
possessing a sense of control and power.
All too often, we incarcerate ourselves in a prison of expectation —
expectation forged and constructed by the material of past events,
both traumatic and triumphant.
We mistake this prison for the whole of ourselves and for the sweep
and detail of the world. We go through life convinced our agendas
are our own, rarely pondering what circumstances and experiences
formed our perceptions.
Are my goals and convictions my own, or have those notions been
foisted on me by forces of dehumanizing power?
Daily, power kicks us in the gut, and demands our gratitude for
having done so, even terms us deviant when we cry out in pain
or we rage from within the confines of our powerlessness.
There exist billions of us who feel this way. Multitudes feeling
alone among lonely multitudes.
What keeps us from grasping our common plight?
Often, the obsession for gaining and possessing happiness itself, as
marketed to us by the propagandist of the consumer state, leads us
away from the realm of common communion.
Paradoxically, most unhappy people are simply striving to be happy.
Their days are comprised of wrongheaded, self-perpetuating actions
in the desperate pursuit of chimerical goals towards that end.
They lie, self-medicate, exploit, steamroll over others. They merely
hold notions of what life should be — as opposed to having a life.
Rarely, do our agendas reflect our true nature. Yet, such pursuits
devour our days. The same phenomenon comes into play between
the monstrous acts of an empire and its people in the homeland.
After a time, tragically, the two forces merge. One cannot honestly
claim one’s life as being one’s own. Where does my complicity with
the actions of the state end and where do I begin? How do I sort
things out?
Making a start of it is imperative, for devoid of the inclination, I
have lost my soul.
No one can maintain a lie over an extended length of time — not
even empires are that powerful.
Empires are maintained by illusions; the noxious fiction that the
greater good is served by codes of dominance and plunder.
Towards empire’s end the populace suffers escalating levels of
unease, as the fabric of the collaboratively woven lie begins to
unravel.
Embrace, hold close, and dance to the exquisite music of grief that
arrives at the end of things. This is an honest, piercing sound. The
pain that grief brings to the heart can serve as a compass, set to
aid in navigating a wasteland of weltschmerz.
Because we mourn the loss of those things we love, we should never
stop grieving over the follies of humankind and the sorrows of the
earth.
To cease grieving is too give up on love.
By a refusal to grieve, by lapsing into a host of manic evasions, one
risks becoming a monster — a being devoid of empathy that, in an
attempt to avoid experiencing suffering, will wound, demean, and
exploit the things of the world.
In collective terms, we know this state as the agendas of empire.
Conversely, to embrace one’s humanity, one must accept being
shattered by grief, yet restored by love, simultaneously.
Being in unashamed possession of a heart, both broken and
whole, serves to mitigate the compulsion to act in the manner
of a monster.
The price of self-deception (e.g., political partisanship,
monomaniacal careerist striving, compulsive consumerist
distractions) is not worth the palliative relief provided.
To endure the undoing of illusion, one is tempted to retreat
from life into a bubble of isolation or partisan group-think.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, one can become convinced
the life that, as imagined in one’s entitlement-addicted mind not
the byproduct of an ongoing, humility-shepherding dialog with the
world, must be made manifest by relentless deed and actions, no
matter how dishonest and ruthless.
In this way, an individual is prone to becoming an exploitation
maintained empire of one, a walking analog of the state that
sired, weaned, and socialized him.
How could it not be so?
Of course, by his callous disregard of the humanity of others,
he makes miserable all that he touches.
By his hollow ambitions, he demeans himself, and the happiness
that he seeks becomes ever more elusive, and, caught in a self-
resonating circuitry of self-defeating actions, he will eventually
bring to ruin all near him.
This is how empires fall, and this is the means, on an individual
basis, how its citizens move it along towards the precipice.
Conversely, it proves propitious to face the twilight of treasured
convictions, to survive the collapse of the empire within, a decision
that can provide practice in surviving the collapse of its collectively
constructed, outward analog.
Often, events in life can play out badly. Painful as it is, we must
not flee from reality.
When one becomes prone to acts of habitual evasion, there is little
chance to exist with one’s dignity intact; it becomes impossible to
live with a sense of grace.
Rationalizations are by nature ugly:
They are the disingenuous face of desperate souls who have come
to fear others and hold a contemptuous dread of life itself.
In this way, you can mistake your defense mechanisms deployed
against grief and dread as comprising a large portion of your
personality.
Take a moment to contemplate what an awful circumstance it is
to incessantly pass by your true self, sans recognition, in a similar
fashion to the manner one regards an anonymous stranger passed
on a teeming boulevard.
The dilemma involves, to paraphrase Rilke, how will you spend
the days of this finite life?
Will you give into the compulsion to build a construction of
ghostly artifice — life lived as a self-perpetuating lie that you
are in control, that the caprice you conjure to ward off feelings
of despair, regarding your powerlessness over the coursing
flow of events, is an accurate description of your true nature?
Will you create a bristling fortification of convenient cynicism,
allowing you to remain ensconced within a dead womb of bile
and ashes?
Or will you risk being the midwife of your own tale, grasping
that there exist forces within you, when in dialog with the soul
of existence, that are greater than the sum of your assumptions,
that exist deeper and beyond life-negating banalities, such as
winner and loser, shame and pride, and grief and happiness?
“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you
larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all
you do.
You must think that something is happening within you, and
remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its
hand and will not let you fall.
Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness,
any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they
are accomplishing within you?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
Slightly more than eleven years ago, on September 11, 2001, my
wife and I awoke to the blaring of sirens, one following the next.
Our air conditioning unit was broken and our windows were open.
The air carried an acrid odor.
I checked my email and stacked in my inbox was an avalanche of
messages, all inquiries bearing a unifying theme: “Are you alright?”
I called out to my wife to plug in an old black and white television
set, because something terrible, it seems, was happening here in
New York.
The television roused itself to life just at the moment of the
collapse of the North Tower.
This was before the image was fetishized in the American
imagination, was exploited by two U.S. presidential administrations
to justify thousands of acts of military aggression on people of
distant lands who only share one trait in common — they were born
of the Islamic faith.
This was before George W. Bush played dress-up in military
costumes and pranced about at military bases and the decks
of naval vessels.
This was before President Obama’s brandishing of kill lists, his
normalization and codification into law of Bush era war crimes
and constitutional and human rights violations.
This was when the archetypal image of a collapsing tower seized
the mind, engendering an analogous collapse of one’s mooring and
verities. The quotidian touchstones of daily life had vanished, as
did alienation.
We needed each other.
Empathy and generosity replaced self-absorption and the illusionary
urgency of urban life… vanished were, monomaniacal commercial
agendas and compulsive distractions.
The streets were gauzy with veils of smoke; the veils had been
removed from our hearts.
A feeling akin to love allowed us to face horror and take
ambulatory refuge in compassion and beauty.
Cell phones and bottled water were proffered to strangers.
As night fell, candles flickered in public squares; there was the
sound of sobbing and impromptu singing. The scene seemed like
a cross between the London Blitz and Woodstock.
One was fully alive in the realm of death.
It would have been lovely if that had been the lesson we carried
forth from that day, a decade and a year ago. Alas, the political
agendas of militarist imperium carried the day.
Tribalism trumped the universal exigencies of our common
humanity.
Our leaders behaved despicably, and continue to, and we allow
it to happen e.g., Democrats boast of Obama “getting Bin Laden”
in a reprehensible attempt to gain political leverage from the
tragedy, actions that Democratic partisans would have, rightly,
shamed a Republican president for attempting to exploit.
Yet the sublime of that day is available to us still.
Providentially, there is no need for actual towers to fall…only
one forlorn, interior tower to which we have exiled our humanity.
No one needs to die…other than the entity within who induces
us into habitual denial and exclusively self-serving pursuit.
“[R]eexamine all you have been told in school or church or in
any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your
very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency […]”
— Walt Whitman, from the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in
New York City. He may be contacted at phil@philrockstroh.com
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/dismiss-whatever-insults-your-
own-soul/#more-45930
By Phil Rockstroh
Dissident Voice
September 26, 2012
Weltschmerz (from German; from Welt (world) + Schmerz (pain)
delineates the type of sadness experienced when the world
revealed does not reflect the image of the world that one
believes, or has been led to believe, should exist.
The corporate/consumer state (as well as, its scion, the present
day presidential election cycle) has brought us, as a people, into
a wilderness of Weltschmerz.
Confronting the stark contrast between life imagined and life
revealed can prove to be a daunting task.
It is an endeavor that has proven particularly difficult for
political partisans, both professional and rank and file,
who seem unwilling or unable to grasp the sense of futility
experienced by significant numbers of their fellow citizens
regarding political participation, on any level, including the
act of voting under the corrupted to the core structure of
the current system.
Such reactions are understandable. Exercises in futility
prove enervating.
Disenchanted, sizable and increasing numbers of voters
have tuned out and walked away from the process, due
to the abject refusal of the political class to be responsive
to the needs of the populace beyond the elitist-ridden
New York/DC nexus of privilege and power.
Yet, rank and file political partisans, all too often, resist
gaining awareness of the extent of their powerlessness.
This is understandable as well. Feelings of powerlessness can
engender despair.
To avoid despair, one feels as though one must remain active in
order to avoid sinking into the muck and mire borne of chronic
hopelessness. True enough. But activity towards what end?
Does the activity, such as voting along partisan lines, reinforce
states of powerlessness by serving the forces of one’s oppression?
Despite all the cultural cues that we have internalized, one cannot
consume, medicate, buy on credit, receive a promotion, vacation,
vote, hope, affect a pose of hipster irony, tithe to the church of
your choice, receive a hundred FaceBook friendship requests,
hit the winning lottery number, support the troops, nor be the recipient of a VIP swag bag in order to stumble your way back to
possessing a sense of control and power.
All too often, we incarcerate ourselves in a prison of expectation —
expectation forged and constructed by the material of past events,
both traumatic and triumphant.
We mistake this prison for the whole of ourselves and for the sweep
and detail of the world. We go through life convinced our agendas
are our own, rarely pondering what circumstances and experiences
formed our perceptions.
Are my goals and convictions my own, or have those notions been
foisted on me by forces of dehumanizing power?
Daily, power kicks us in the gut, and demands our gratitude for
having done so, even terms us deviant when we cry out in pain
or we rage from within the confines of our powerlessness.
There exist billions of us who feel this way. Multitudes feeling
alone among lonely multitudes.
What keeps us from grasping our common plight?
Often, the obsession for gaining and possessing happiness itself, as
marketed to us by the propagandist of the consumer state, leads us
away from the realm of common communion.
Paradoxically, most unhappy people are simply striving to be happy.
Their days are comprised of wrongheaded, self-perpetuating actions
in the desperate pursuit of chimerical goals towards that end.
They lie, self-medicate, exploit, steamroll over others. They merely
hold notions of what life should be — as opposed to having a life.
Rarely, do our agendas reflect our true nature. Yet, such pursuits
devour our days. The same phenomenon comes into play between
the monstrous acts of an empire and its people in the homeland.
After a time, tragically, the two forces merge. One cannot honestly
claim one’s life as being one’s own. Where does my complicity with
the actions of the state end and where do I begin? How do I sort
things out?
Making a start of it is imperative, for devoid of the inclination, I
have lost my soul.
No one can maintain a lie over an extended length of time — not
even empires are that powerful.
Empires are maintained by illusions; the noxious fiction that the
greater good is served by codes of dominance and plunder.
Towards empire’s end the populace suffers escalating levels of
unease, as the fabric of the collaboratively woven lie begins to
unravel.
Embrace, hold close, and dance to the exquisite music of grief that
arrives at the end of things. This is an honest, piercing sound. The
pain that grief brings to the heart can serve as a compass, set to
aid in navigating a wasteland of weltschmerz.
Because we mourn the loss of those things we love, we should never
stop grieving over the follies of humankind and the sorrows of the
earth.
To cease grieving is too give up on love.
By a refusal to grieve, by lapsing into a host of manic evasions, one
risks becoming a monster — a being devoid of empathy that, in an
attempt to avoid experiencing suffering, will wound, demean, and
exploit the things of the world.
In collective terms, we know this state as the agendas of empire.
Conversely, to embrace one’s humanity, one must accept being
shattered by grief, yet restored by love, simultaneously.
Being in unashamed possession of a heart, both broken and
whole, serves to mitigate the compulsion to act in the manner
of a monster.
The price of self-deception (e.g., political partisanship,
monomaniacal careerist striving, compulsive consumerist
distractions) is not worth the palliative relief provided.
To endure the undoing of illusion, one is tempted to retreat
from life into a bubble of isolation or partisan group-think.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, one can become convinced
the life that, as imagined in one’s entitlement-addicted mind not
the byproduct of an ongoing, humility-shepherding dialog with the
world, must be made manifest by relentless deed and actions, no
matter how dishonest and ruthless.
In this way, an individual is prone to becoming an exploitation
maintained empire of one, a walking analog of the state that
sired, weaned, and socialized him.
How could it not be so?
Of course, by his callous disregard of the humanity of others,
he makes miserable all that he touches.
By his hollow ambitions, he demeans himself, and the happiness
that he seeks becomes ever more elusive, and, caught in a self-
resonating circuitry of self-defeating actions, he will eventually
bring to ruin all near him.
This is how empires fall, and this is the means, on an individual
basis, how its citizens move it along towards the precipice.
Conversely, it proves propitious to face the twilight of treasured
convictions, to survive the collapse of the empire within, a decision
that can provide practice in surviving the collapse of its collectively
constructed, outward analog.
Often, events in life can play out badly. Painful as it is, we must
not flee from reality.
When one becomes prone to acts of habitual evasion, there is little
chance to exist with one’s dignity intact; it becomes impossible to
live with a sense of grace.
Rationalizations are by nature ugly:
They are the disingenuous face of desperate souls who have come
to fear others and hold a contemptuous dread of life itself.
In this way, you can mistake your defense mechanisms deployed
against grief and dread as comprising a large portion of your
personality.
Take a moment to contemplate what an awful circumstance it is
to incessantly pass by your true self, sans recognition, in a similar
fashion to the manner one regards an anonymous stranger passed
on a teeming boulevard.
The dilemma involves, to paraphrase Rilke, how will you spend
the days of this finite life?
Will you give into the compulsion to build a construction of
ghostly artifice — life lived as a self-perpetuating lie that you
are in control, that the caprice you conjure to ward off feelings
of despair, regarding your powerlessness over the coursing
flow of events, is an accurate description of your true nature?
Will you create a bristling fortification of convenient cynicism,
allowing you to remain ensconced within a dead womb of bile
and ashes?
Or will you risk being the midwife of your own tale, grasping
that there exist forces within you, when in dialog with the soul
of existence, that are greater than the sum of your assumptions,
that exist deeper and beyond life-negating banalities, such as
winner and loser, shame and pride, and grief and happiness?
“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you
larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all
you do.
You must think that something is happening within you, and
remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its
hand and will not let you fall.
Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness,
any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they
are accomplishing within you?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
Slightly more than eleven years ago, on September 11, 2001, my
wife and I awoke to the blaring of sirens, one following the next.
Our air conditioning unit was broken and our windows were open.
The air carried an acrid odor.
I checked my email and stacked in my inbox was an avalanche of
messages, all inquiries bearing a unifying theme: “Are you alright?”
I called out to my wife to plug in an old black and white television
set, because something terrible, it seems, was happening here in
New York.
The television roused itself to life just at the moment of the
collapse of the North Tower.
This was before the image was fetishized in the American
imagination, was exploited by two U.S. presidential administrations
to justify thousands of acts of military aggression on people of
distant lands who only share one trait in common — they were born
of the Islamic faith.
This was before George W. Bush played dress-up in military
costumes and pranced about at military bases and the decks
of naval vessels.
This was before President Obama’s brandishing of kill lists, his
normalization and codification into law of Bush era war crimes
and constitutional and human rights violations.
This was when the archetypal image of a collapsing tower seized
the mind, engendering an analogous collapse of one’s mooring and
verities. The quotidian touchstones of daily life had vanished, as
did alienation.
We needed each other.
Empathy and generosity replaced self-absorption and the illusionary
urgency of urban life… vanished were, monomaniacal commercial
agendas and compulsive distractions.
The streets were gauzy with veils of smoke; the veils had been
removed from our hearts.
A feeling akin to love allowed us to face horror and take
ambulatory refuge in compassion and beauty.
Cell phones and bottled water were proffered to strangers.
As night fell, candles flickered in public squares; there was the
sound of sobbing and impromptu singing. The scene seemed like
a cross between the London Blitz and Woodstock.
One was fully alive in the realm of death.
It would have been lovely if that had been the lesson we carried
forth from that day, a decade and a year ago. Alas, the political
agendas of militarist imperium carried the day.
Tribalism trumped the universal exigencies of our common
humanity.
Our leaders behaved despicably, and continue to, and we allow
it to happen e.g., Democrats boast of Obama “getting Bin Laden”
in a reprehensible attempt to gain political leverage from the
tragedy, actions that Democratic partisans would have, rightly,
shamed a Republican president for attempting to exploit.
Yet the sublime of that day is available to us still.
Providentially, there is no need for actual towers to fall…only
one forlorn, interior tower to which we have exiled our humanity.
No one needs to die…other than the entity within who induces
us into habitual denial and exclusively self-serving pursuit.
“[R]eexamine all you have been told in school or church or in
any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your
very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency […]”
— Walt Whitman, from the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in
New York City. He may be contacted at phil@philrockstroh.com
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/dismiss-whatever-insults-your-
own-soul/#more-45930
Monday, September 24, 2012
How Do You Take Your Poison?
How Do You Take Your Poison?
By Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
September 24, 2012
We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison.
We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine
and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who
will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but
one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down
our throats.
The choice before us is how it will be administered.
Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after
January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage
assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention
the Earth’s ecosystem.
And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner,
has any intention or ability to stop it.
If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a
two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you
are doing.
You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or
Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy
to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment
and disempowerment.
All the things that stand between us and utter destitution
—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security,
public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and
cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC),
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered
meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate
state.
Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as
much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent.
We will be assaulted this January when automatic spending
reductions, referred to as “the fiscal cliff,” begin to dismantle
and defund some of our most important government programs.
Mitt Romney will not stop it. Barack Obama will not stop it.
And while Romney has been, courtesy of the magazine Mother
Jones, exposed as a shallow hypocrite, Obama is in a class by
himself.
There is hardly a campaign promise from 2008 that Obama has
not broken.
This list includes his pledges to support the public option in health
care, close Guantanamo, raise the minimum wage, regulate Wall
Street, support labor unions in their struggles with employers,
reform the Patriot Act, negotiate an equitable peace between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, curb our imperial expansion
in the Middle East, stop torture, protect reproductive rights,
carry out a comprehensive immigration reform, cut the deficit by
half, create 5 million new energy jobs and halt home foreclosures.
Obama, campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, said that as
president he would fight for the right of collective bargaining.
“I’d put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll … walk on that
picket line with you as president of the United States of America,”
he said.
But when he got his chance to put on those “comfortable pair
of shoes” during labor disputes in Madison, Wis., and Chicago
he turned his back on working men and women.
Obama, while promising to defend Social Security, also says he
stands behind the planned cuts outlined by his deficit commission,
headed by Morgan Stanley board member Erskine Bowles and
former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican.
The Bowles-Simpson plan calls for cutting 0.3 percentage points
from the annual cost-of-living adjustment in the Social Security program.
The annual reduction would slowly accumulate. After a decade it
would mean a 3 percent cut. After two decades it would mean a
6 percent cut.
The retirement age would be raised to 69. And those on Social
Security who continued to work and made more than $40,000
a year would be penalized with further reductions.
Obama’s payroll tax cuts have, at the same time, served to
undermine the solvency of Social Security, making it an easier
target for the finance corporations that seek to destroy the
program and privatize the funds.
But that is just the start.
Cities and states are frantically staving off collapse. They cannot
pay for most pension plans and are borrowing at higher and higher
interest rates to keep themselves afloat.
The country’s 19,000 municipalities face steadily declining or
stagnant property tax revenues, along with spiraling costs.
Annual pension payments for state and local plans more than
doubled to 15.7 percent of payrolls in 2011 from 6.4 percent a
decade ago, according to a study by the Center for Retirement
Research at Boston College.
And local governments, which made some $50 billion in pension
contributions in 2010, face unfunded pension liabilities of
$3 trillion and unfunded health benefit liabilities of more than
$1 trillion, according to The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of
Government.
State and local government spending fell at a rate of 2.1 percent
in the second quarter of this year, according to the Commerce
Department. It was the 11th consecutive quarterly reduction in
expenditures.
And in the past year alone local governments cut 66,000 jobs,
mostly those of teachers and other school employees, reported The
Wall Street Journal, which accumulated this list of grim statistics.
The costs of our most basic needs, from food to education to health
care, are at the same time being pushed upward with no control or regulation.
Tuition and fees at four-year colleges climbed 300 percent
between 1990 and 2011, fueling the college loan crisis that has
left graduates, most of them underemployed or unemployed,
with more than $1 trillion in debt.
Health care costs over the same period have risen 150 percent.
Food prices have climbed 10 percent since June, according to the
World Bank. There are now 46.7 million U.S. citizens, and one in
three children, who depend on food stamps.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under
Obama has, meanwhile, expelled 1.5 million immigrants, a number
that dwarfs deportations carried out by his Republican predecessor.
And while we are being fleeced, the Treasury Department and
Federal Reserve Bank has since 2008 doled out $16 trillion to
national and global financial institutions and corporations.
Fiscal implosion is only a matter of time. And the corporate state
is preparing.
Obama’s assault on civil liberties has outpaced that of George W.
Bush.
The refusal to restore habeas corpus, the use of the Authorization
to Use Military Force Act to justify the assassination of U.S.
citizens, the passing of the FISA Amendments Act to monitor and
eavesdrop on tens of millions of citizens without a warrant, the
employment of the Espionage Act six times to threaten whistle-
blowers inside the government with prison time, and the
administration’s recent emergency appeal of U.S. District Judge
Katherine Forrest’s permanent injunction of Section 1021(b)(2)
of the National Defense Authorization Act give you a hint of the
shackles the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, intend to
place on all those who contemplate dissent.
But perhaps the most egregious assault will be carried out by
the fossil fuel industry.
Obama, who presided over the repudiation of the Kyoto Accords
and has done nothing to halt the emission of greenhouse gases,
reversed 20 years of federal policy when he permitted the
expansion of fracking and offshore drilling.
And this acquiescence to big oil and big coal, no doubt useful
in bringing in campaign funds, spells disaster for the planet.
He has authorized drilling in federally protected lands, along the
East Coast, Alaska and four miles off Florida’s Atlantic beaches.
Candidate Obama in 2008 stood on the Florida coastline and
vowed never to permit drilling there.
You get the point.
Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge.
Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are
corporate employees.
Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and
their idiosyncrasies are meaningless.
And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential
campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion.
The corporate state does not produce a product that is
different. It produces brands that are different.
And brands cost a lot of money to sell.
You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-
party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil
disobedience.
You can pride yourself on being practical.
You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils.
But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the
real sucker is.
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent
in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He
has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The
Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning
News and The New York Times.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_do_you_take_your_
poison_20120924/?ln
By Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
September 24, 2012
We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison.
We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine
and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who
will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but
one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down
our throats.
The choice before us is how it will be administered.
Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after
January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage
assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention
the Earth’s ecosystem.
And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner,
has any intention or ability to stop it.
If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a
two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you
are doing.
You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or
Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy
to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment
and disempowerment.
All the things that stand between us and utter destitution
—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security,
public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and
cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC),
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered
meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate
state.
Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as
much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent.
We will be assaulted this January when automatic spending
reductions, referred to as “the fiscal cliff,” begin to dismantle
and defund some of our most important government programs.
Mitt Romney will not stop it. Barack Obama will not stop it.
And while Romney has been, courtesy of the magazine Mother
Jones, exposed as a shallow hypocrite, Obama is in a class by
himself.
There is hardly a campaign promise from 2008 that Obama has
not broken.
This list includes his pledges to support the public option in health
care, close Guantanamo, raise the minimum wage, regulate Wall
Street, support labor unions in their struggles with employers,
reform the Patriot Act, negotiate an equitable peace between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, curb our imperial expansion
in the Middle East, stop torture, protect reproductive rights,
carry out a comprehensive immigration reform, cut the deficit by
half, create 5 million new energy jobs and halt home foreclosures.
Obama, campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, said that as
president he would fight for the right of collective bargaining.
“I’d put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll … walk on that
picket line with you as president of the United States of America,”
he said.
But when he got his chance to put on those “comfortable pair
of shoes” during labor disputes in Madison, Wis., and Chicago
he turned his back on working men and women.
Obama, while promising to defend Social Security, also says he
stands behind the planned cuts outlined by his deficit commission,
headed by Morgan Stanley board member Erskine Bowles and
former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican.
The Bowles-Simpson plan calls for cutting 0.3 percentage points
from the annual cost-of-living adjustment in the Social Security program.
The annual reduction would slowly accumulate. After a decade it
would mean a 3 percent cut. After two decades it would mean a
6 percent cut.
The retirement age would be raised to 69. And those on Social
Security who continued to work and made more than $40,000
a year would be penalized with further reductions.
Obama’s payroll tax cuts have, at the same time, served to
undermine the solvency of Social Security, making it an easier
target for the finance corporations that seek to destroy the
program and privatize the funds.
But that is just the start.
Cities and states are frantically staving off collapse. They cannot
pay for most pension plans and are borrowing at higher and higher
interest rates to keep themselves afloat.
The country’s 19,000 municipalities face steadily declining or
stagnant property tax revenues, along with spiraling costs.
Annual pension payments for state and local plans more than
doubled to 15.7 percent of payrolls in 2011 from 6.4 percent a
decade ago, according to a study by the Center for Retirement
Research at Boston College.
And local governments, which made some $50 billion in pension
contributions in 2010, face unfunded pension liabilities of
$3 trillion and unfunded health benefit liabilities of more than
$1 trillion, according to The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of
Government.
State and local government spending fell at a rate of 2.1 percent
in the second quarter of this year, according to the Commerce
Department. It was the 11th consecutive quarterly reduction in
expenditures.
And in the past year alone local governments cut 66,000 jobs,
mostly those of teachers and other school employees, reported The
Wall Street Journal, which accumulated this list of grim statistics.
The costs of our most basic needs, from food to education to health
care, are at the same time being pushed upward with no control or regulation.
Tuition and fees at four-year colleges climbed 300 percent
between 1990 and 2011, fueling the college loan crisis that has
left graduates, most of them underemployed or unemployed,
with more than $1 trillion in debt.
Health care costs over the same period have risen 150 percent.
Food prices have climbed 10 percent since June, according to the
World Bank. There are now 46.7 million U.S. citizens, and one in
three children, who depend on food stamps.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under
Obama has, meanwhile, expelled 1.5 million immigrants, a number
that dwarfs deportations carried out by his Republican predecessor.
And while we are being fleeced, the Treasury Department and
Federal Reserve Bank has since 2008 doled out $16 trillion to
national and global financial institutions and corporations.
Fiscal implosion is only a matter of time. And the corporate state
is preparing.
Obama’s assault on civil liberties has outpaced that of George W.
Bush.
The refusal to restore habeas corpus, the use of the Authorization
to Use Military Force Act to justify the assassination of U.S.
citizens, the passing of the FISA Amendments Act to monitor and
eavesdrop on tens of millions of citizens without a warrant, the
employment of the Espionage Act six times to threaten whistle-
blowers inside the government with prison time, and the
administration’s recent emergency appeal of U.S. District Judge
Katherine Forrest’s permanent injunction of Section 1021(b)(2)
of the National Defense Authorization Act give you a hint of the
shackles the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, intend to
place on all those who contemplate dissent.
But perhaps the most egregious assault will be carried out by
the fossil fuel industry.
Obama, who presided over the repudiation of the Kyoto Accords
and has done nothing to halt the emission of greenhouse gases,
reversed 20 years of federal policy when he permitted the
expansion of fracking and offshore drilling.
And this acquiescence to big oil and big coal, no doubt useful
in bringing in campaign funds, spells disaster for the planet.
He has authorized drilling in federally protected lands, along the
East Coast, Alaska and four miles off Florida’s Atlantic beaches.
Candidate Obama in 2008 stood on the Florida coastline and
vowed never to permit drilling there.
You get the point.
Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge.
Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are
corporate employees.
Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and
their idiosyncrasies are meaningless.
And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential
campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion.
The corporate state does not produce a product that is
different. It produces brands that are different.
And brands cost a lot of money to sell.
You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-
party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil
disobedience.
You can pride yourself on being practical.
You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils.
But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the
real sucker is.
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent
in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He
has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The
Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning
News and The New York Times.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_do_you_take_your_
poison_20120924/?ln
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Mitt Tells the Truth
Mitt Tells the Truth
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Common Dreams
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Like everyone else, we watched the movie of the week – that clandestine video from Mitt Romney’s fundraiser in Florida.
Thanks to that anonymous cameraperson, we now have a record of what our modern day, wealthy gentry really thinks about the rest of
us -- and it’s not pretty.
On the other hand, it’s also not news.
If you had reported as long as some of us have on winner-take-all politics and the unenlightened assumptions of the moneyed class, you wouldn’t find the remarks of Romney and his pals all that exceptional.
The resentment, disdain, and contempt with which they privately view those beneath them are an old story.
In fact, the video’s reminiscent of our first Gilded Age, back in the late 19th century.
The celebrated New York dandy Frederick Townsend Martin summed it up when he declared, “We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.”
And so they do, as that glitzy gathering in Florida reminds us. You could see and hear one of the guests ask Mitt Romney what they
could do to help.
The governor answers, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars, because the president’s going to have about
$800 to $900 million. And that’s – that’s by far the most important
thing you could do."
He’s being truthful there, because money rules these campaigns.
And if there were more secret videos from other candidates, we would see them in equally compromised positions, bowing and scraping in their infernal pursuit of campaign cash, bending over backwards to suffer the advice that the privileged think their
money entitles them to give.
And we mean both parties.
Not far from us the other night, at a Manhattan fundraiser hosted
by Jay-Z and Beyoncé, President Obama joked, “If somebody here
has a $10 million check -- I can’t solicit it from you, but feel free
to use it wisely.”
At least we think he was joking -- Obama and Romney alike now shape their schedules as much around moneymaking events as rallies and town halls.
Even though a state may be a lost cause when it comes to votes, if there’s money to be made they’ll change the campaign jet’s flight plan and make a special landing, just for the cold hard cash.
This is a racket, plain and simple.
A new report from Moody’s Investor Service says that all that
spending by the parties, corporations, Super PACs and other
outside groups will push political ad spending up this year by
half a billion dollars -- 25 percent higher than 2010 – the biggest
increase in history.
That prompted the CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, to lick his chops
and tell an investors conference last December,“There’s going
to be a lot of money spent. I’m not saying that’s the best thing
for America, but it’s not a bad thing for the CBS Corporation.”
Yes, the media giants and the TV stations they own are in on
the racket.
So are all those highly paid political consultants who as part of
their fees skim a percentage of the cost of local TV airtime,
usually around ten percent.
The pickings are better than ever, thanks to all the dark money being thrown around since the Citizens United decision.
One Democratic consultant has called it “the greatest windfall
that ever happened for political operatives in American history.”
You bet it is: By the time the primaries were over this year, the
top 150 political and media consultants already had raked in an
estimated $465 million – or more.
When Election Day finally rolls around, chances are that number will have at least doubled.
So we can’t stop reporting on this, even though we’re often told:
“Please change the subject. Everyone’s tired of this one.”
Don’t be so sure.
There’s a groundswell for rooting the money out of politics, as Americans come to see that this is the one reform that enables
all other reforms.
Two polls released in the last few days report large majorities
as many as eight in ten – are in favor of clamping down on the
amount of money that corporations, the super-rich, and those shadowy outside groups are pouring into the campaigns.
It’s up to all of us to put a sign on every lawn and stoop in the land:
“Democracy is not for sale.”
Journalist Bill Moyers is the host of the new show Moyers & Company, a weekly series of smart talk and new ideas aimed at helping viewers make sense of our tumultuous times through the insight of America’s strongest thinkers.
Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of
the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/22
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Common Dreams
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Like everyone else, we watched the movie of the week – that clandestine video from Mitt Romney’s fundraiser in Florida.
Thanks to that anonymous cameraperson, we now have a record of what our modern day, wealthy gentry really thinks about the rest of
us -- and it’s not pretty.
On the other hand, it’s also not news.
If you had reported as long as some of us have on winner-take-all politics and the unenlightened assumptions of the moneyed class, you wouldn’t find the remarks of Romney and his pals all that exceptional.
The resentment, disdain, and contempt with which they privately view those beneath them are an old story.
In fact, the video’s reminiscent of our first Gilded Age, back in the late 19th century.
The celebrated New York dandy Frederick Townsend Martin summed it up when he declared, “We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.”
And so they do, as that glitzy gathering in Florida reminds us. You could see and hear one of the guests ask Mitt Romney what they
could do to help.
The governor answers, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars, because the president’s going to have about
$800 to $900 million. And that’s – that’s by far the most important
thing you could do."
He’s being truthful there, because money rules these campaigns.
And if there were more secret videos from other candidates, we would see them in equally compromised positions, bowing and scraping in their infernal pursuit of campaign cash, bending over backwards to suffer the advice that the privileged think their
money entitles them to give.
And we mean both parties.
Not far from us the other night, at a Manhattan fundraiser hosted
by Jay-Z and Beyoncé, President Obama joked, “If somebody here
has a $10 million check -- I can’t solicit it from you, but feel free
to use it wisely.”
At least we think he was joking -- Obama and Romney alike now shape their schedules as much around moneymaking events as rallies and town halls.
Even though a state may be a lost cause when it comes to votes, if there’s money to be made they’ll change the campaign jet’s flight plan and make a special landing, just for the cold hard cash.
This is a racket, plain and simple.
A new report from Moody’s Investor Service says that all that
spending by the parties, corporations, Super PACs and other
outside groups will push political ad spending up this year by
half a billion dollars -- 25 percent higher than 2010 – the biggest
increase in history.
That prompted the CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, to lick his chops
and tell an investors conference last December,“There’s going
to be a lot of money spent. I’m not saying that’s the best thing
for America, but it’s not a bad thing for the CBS Corporation.”
Yes, the media giants and the TV stations they own are in on
the racket.
So are all those highly paid political consultants who as part of
their fees skim a percentage of the cost of local TV airtime,
usually around ten percent.
The pickings are better than ever, thanks to all the dark money being thrown around since the Citizens United decision.
One Democratic consultant has called it “the greatest windfall
that ever happened for political operatives in American history.”
You bet it is: By the time the primaries were over this year, the
top 150 political and media consultants already had raked in an
estimated $465 million – or more.
When Election Day finally rolls around, chances are that number will have at least doubled.
So we can’t stop reporting on this, even though we’re often told:
“Please change the subject. Everyone’s tired of this one.”
Don’t be so sure.
There’s a groundswell for rooting the money out of politics, as Americans come to see that this is the one reform that enables
all other reforms.
Two polls released in the last few days report large majorities
as many as eight in ten – are in favor of clamping down on the
amount of money that corporations, the super-rich, and those shadowy outside groups are pouring into the campaigns.
It’s up to all of us to put a sign on every lawn and stoop in the land:
“Democracy is not for sale.”
Journalist Bill Moyers is the host of the new show Moyers & Company, a weekly series of smart talk and new ideas aimed at helping viewers make sense of our tumultuous times through the insight of America’s strongest thinkers.
Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of
the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series Moyers & Company, premiering in January 2012.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/22
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
America Come Home
It Is Time For All People of Conscience To Call America
To Come Home
By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jesse's Crossroads Cafe
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question
the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan
on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must
be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.
It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists
of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa,
and South America, only to take the profits out with no
concern for the social betterment of the countries, and
say, "This is not just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America
and say, "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach
others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and
say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our
nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous
drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending
men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped
and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom,
justice, and love...
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death.
We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to
national disaster.
America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.
The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured
idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of
our Judeo-Christian heritage.
All men are made in the image of God.
All men are brothers.
All men are created equal.
Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.
Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived
from the State--they are God-given.
Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of
the earth.
What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious
and healthy place to inhabit.
But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has
brought only confusion and bewilderment.
It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with
irrationality.
It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America
to come back home.
Come home, America.
Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ
moves on."
I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good
will all over America today.
I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today
to take a stand on this issue.
Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close.
And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as
his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole
world.
God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it
seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant!
And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the
backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation
that doesn't even know my name.
Be still and know that I'm God.
Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it
means being frustrated.
When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that
you will walk the streets with a burdened heart.
Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned.
It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy,
"Why do you have to go to jail so much?"
And I've long since learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ
means taking up the cross.
And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter.
Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear.
Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it
for peace.
Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have
not lost faith.
I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order.
I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.
I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right:
"No lie can live forever."
We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right:
"Truth pressed to earth will rise again."
We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right:
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."
Yet, that scaffold sways the future.
We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap
what you sow."
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of
despair a stone of hope.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church,
April 30, 1967
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/03/martin-luther-
king-it-is-time-for-all.html
To Come Home
By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jesse's Crossroads Cafe
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question
the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan
on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must
be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.
It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists
of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa,
and South America, only to take the profits out with no
concern for the social betterment of the countries, and
say, "This is not just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America
and say, "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach
others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and
say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our
nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous
drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending
men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped
and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom,
justice, and love...
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death.
We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to
national disaster.
America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.
The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured
idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of
our Judeo-Christian heritage.
All men are made in the image of God.
All men are brothers.
All men are created equal.
Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.
Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived
from the State--they are God-given.
Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of
the earth.
What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious
and healthy place to inhabit.
But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has
brought only confusion and bewilderment.
It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with
irrationality.
It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America
to come back home.
Come home, America.
Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ
moves on."
I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good
will all over America today.
I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today
to take a stand on this issue.
Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close.
And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as
his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole
world.
God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it
seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant!
And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the
backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation
that doesn't even know my name.
Be still and know that I'm God.
Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it
means being frustrated.
When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that
you will walk the streets with a burdened heart.
Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned.
It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy,
"Why do you have to go to jail so much?"
And I've long since learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ
means taking up the cross.
And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter.
Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear.
Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it
for peace.
Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have
not lost faith.
I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order.
I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.
I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right:
"No lie can live forever."
We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right:
"Truth pressed to earth will rise again."
We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right:
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."
Yet, that scaffold sways the future.
We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap
what you sow."
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of
despair a stone of hope.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church,
April 30, 1967
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/03/martin-luther-
king-it-is-time-for-all.html
Monday, September 17, 2012
I Will Occupy
I Will Occupy
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
September 17, 2012
When the history of this age is written - if there are people left to
write it, and if there is technology left to hold it - it will speak of a
generation on the brink.
Financial calamity combined with economic collapse combined with
endless warfare and bottomless greed united to create a beast with
hot breath and blood-red eyes that stares us dead in the face.
It is an age on the edge of doom, and yet we persist in the suicidal
madness of deliberate ignorance.
If that history is written, the first line will be, "They were fools."
That history will remember Occupy, and a year when a chance was
held forth to seize on the idea that this looming collective calamity
can be sidestepped.
History will remember Occupy as having offered one last, best
chance to be more than we are, to see the beast for what it is,
and to slay it once and for all.
But Occupy is over, right?
That is what they would like you to believe in the board rooms,
and in the newsrooms that do their bidding.
The camps are gone, there was no message, there were no leaders,
and now there is nothing left.
Why cling to an idea that went nowhere?
Because an idea never dies, because this idea is not dead, because
Occupy lives on all across America and all across the world.
Occupy lives in every American city and in every national capitol
on the planet.
Occupy continues to fight against the greed and violence of the
powerful.
Occupy continues to fight against those who are murdering our
world with pollution and the profit motive.
Occupy continues to fight unfair foreclosures and evictions, to
stand with Labor and the rights of workers, to push back against the
perpetual wars that suck the life out of everything and everyone.
Occupy continues to stand in England, in Canada, in Mexico, in
Chile, in Greece, in Spain, in Russia, in India, and in so many
other places besides; in every place where there are people,
there is Occupy.
Occupy continues.
Occupy has given us the concept of the 99% vs. the 1%, and
that has stuck.
Now, in America, the entire political discussion holds as its
center of gravity this simple, undeniable description of
staggering inequality and unfairness.
In America, the Republican Party has selected Mitt Romney
as its presidential nominee, and in doing so has given us
the perfect avatar for who and what the 1% truly represents.
But Occupy is not about parties, or politics, or leaders. Occupy
is about people, and their individual power to create change.
The camps were a means to an end, a way to grab the
news media by the throat and demand attention.
Most of the camps are gone now, but the people remain,
and within them lives the knowledge that they do not
need to follow parties or leaders, but can act on their
own to collectively drag this old, dying, deceitful way
of things back from the precipice to create a better world.
One year ago, Occupy began. One year from now, I will be
a father for the first time.
My child will be six months old, and living in a world fraught
with peril.
It does not have to be how it has been, and for my child, I will
Occupy.
I will Occupy for an end to greed, for an end to war, for an end
to savage inequality, for clean air and water, for safe food and
fair work, for the new day that awaits my child if we all, right
here, right now, come together and put an end to this madness
before it puts an end to us.
Our history is not yet written.
Write it.
Occupy.
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also
a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three
books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know,"
"The Greatest Sedition Is Silence" and "House of Ill Repute:
Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11573-i-will-occupy
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
September 17, 2012
When the history of this age is written - if there are people left to
write it, and if there is technology left to hold it - it will speak of a
generation on the brink.
Financial calamity combined with economic collapse combined with
endless warfare and bottomless greed united to create a beast with
hot breath and blood-red eyes that stares us dead in the face.
It is an age on the edge of doom, and yet we persist in the suicidal
madness of deliberate ignorance.
If that history is written, the first line will be, "They were fools."
That history will remember Occupy, and a year when a chance was
held forth to seize on the idea that this looming collective calamity
can be sidestepped.
History will remember Occupy as having offered one last, best
chance to be more than we are, to see the beast for what it is,
and to slay it once and for all.
But Occupy is over, right?
That is what they would like you to believe in the board rooms,
and in the newsrooms that do their bidding.
The camps are gone, there was no message, there were no leaders,
and now there is nothing left.
Why cling to an idea that went nowhere?
Because an idea never dies, because this idea is not dead, because
Occupy lives on all across America and all across the world.
Occupy lives in every American city and in every national capitol
on the planet.
Occupy continues to fight against the greed and violence of the
powerful.
Occupy continues to fight against those who are murdering our
world with pollution and the profit motive.
Occupy continues to fight unfair foreclosures and evictions, to
stand with Labor and the rights of workers, to push back against the
perpetual wars that suck the life out of everything and everyone.
Occupy continues to stand in England, in Canada, in Mexico, in
Chile, in Greece, in Spain, in Russia, in India, and in so many
other places besides; in every place where there are people,
there is Occupy.
Occupy continues.
Occupy has given us the concept of the 99% vs. the 1%, and
that has stuck.
Now, in America, the entire political discussion holds as its
center of gravity this simple, undeniable description of
staggering inequality and unfairness.
In America, the Republican Party has selected Mitt Romney
as its presidential nominee, and in doing so has given us
the perfect avatar for who and what the 1% truly represents.
But Occupy is not about parties, or politics, or leaders. Occupy
is about people, and their individual power to create change.
The camps were a means to an end, a way to grab the
news media by the throat and demand attention.
Most of the camps are gone now, but the people remain,
and within them lives the knowledge that they do not
need to follow parties or leaders, but can act on their
own to collectively drag this old, dying, deceitful way
of things back from the precipice to create a better world.
One year ago, Occupy began. One year from now, I will be
a father for the first time.
My child will be six months old, and living in a world fraught
with peril.
It does not have to be how it has been, and for my child, I will
Occupy.
I will Occupy for an end to greed, for an end to war, for an end
to savage inequality, for clean air and water, for safe food and
fair work, for the new day that awaits my child if we all, right
here, right now, come together and put an end to this madness
before it puts an end to us.
Our history is not yet written.
Write it.
Occupy.
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also
a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three
books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know,"
"The Greatest Sedition Is Silence" and "House of Ill Repute:
Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11573-i-will-occupy
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
10 Signs That You're Fully Awake
10 Signs That You're Fully Awake
By Activist Post
September 12, 2012
Isn't it obvious that there is a significant global awakening
happening?
Just as the Mayans predicted so many years ago, the apocalypse
would become apparent in 2012.
But many misinterpret the apocalypse to be the end of the world,
when in fact it actually means an "un-covering, a revelation of
something hidden."
As many continue to argue the accuracy of the Mayan calendar,
it can no longer be argued that a great many people are finally
becoming aware of what has been hidden from them for so long.
Of course this awakening is not an overnight process. It takes
time to peel away the many layers of lies to get to the core of
the ultimate truths.
It would be beyond pretentious for us to claim to know all of the
secrets of the universe. We don't. Everyday we are humbled by
what we don't yet know.
However, it is becoming clearer by the day what isn't true. And by
that measure alone, it is possible to determine if you're one of the
people beginning to wake up.
Here are ten signs you may be fully awake:
1. You know there's no meaningful difference between major
political parties (Democrats and Republicans):
It's so easy to get caught up the left-right debate and believe
there's a difference between the two major political parties.
However, debate is one thing, while actions are another.
By their deeds you shall know them, and it is indisputable that
there is no significant difference between political parties when
it comes to action on the most important issues.
2. You understand that the Federal Reserve, or international
central banking more broadly, is the engine of our economic
problems:
Debt slavery is the totalitarian force that threatens all of
humanity, not some temporary political puppet or some
greedy Wall Street trader.
When a small group of people have the ability to create wealth
out of nothing and charge interest on it, they have the ability
to enslave the planet to their ownership despite what type of
government a country claims to have.
3. You know that preemptive war is never necessary:
When we realize that self-defense is the only acceptable form
of violence, then we become awakened human beings.
To suggest war because someone is different from you, or they
may pose a threat in the future is simply ludicrous.
And when did the idea of bombing civilians become humanitarian?
No one wants war except for the immoral creeps that benefit from
it.
4. You know that you're being systematically poisoned, how, by
whom, and why:
Admittedly, there's a lot to learn in terms of how we are secretly
being poisoned.
But the fact remains that we are being systematically poisoned,
and it is likely for the deliberate purpose of dumbing us down
and, ultimately, culling the population.
Who could believe anyone is so evil to do that to innocent people,
you may ask.
Well, once you begin to seek the answer to that question, you're
one step closer to enlightenment.
5. You understand that government can never legislate morality,
nor should they:
When you realize the role of government is only to protect
your liberty and work for the well being of the citizens,
you're awakened.
There should be one simple law regulating morality: Do no harm.
Thus, it's impossible for the government to enforce morality with
guns, cages, and taxes because those clearly cause severe harm to
your liberty and our well-being.
6. You know that the mainstream media is wholly owned and
manipulated by the ruling elite:
A dwindling number of people still actually believe what they hear
coming from the establishment media as if it's gospel, even when
they already accept that they are bought and paid for by the elite
controllers.
Yet, recognizing that they are nothing more than a propaganda
machine and a form of mind control are the first steps in being
able to critically think beyond the scientific messaging they
broadcast.
7. You know that your neighbors are not your enemy even if
you have fierce ideological disagreements:
This is perhaps the most difficult thing to overcome in the
awakening process.
But it's vital to understand that your neighbors have been
indoctrinated and hypnotized like the rest of the us, until
someone helps shine a light on inconsistencies in our
thoughts and beliefs.
Most of their ideas are not their own. They are suffering just
like the rest of us.
It's okay to condemn their actions if they're harmful, but those
who are awake will not give up on spreading information that
can enlighten those who might still be in the dark.
None of us were born "awake" and all of us can learn even more.
8. You know that the endgame is one-world control of planet Earth:
Once you understand that the endgame for the ruling elite is
to have complete control of all vital facets of society through
a global government, one-world currency, international armed
forces, and so on, it is simple to see through the lies and
propaganda surrounding even the most confusing world events.
You will never go back to sleep when you fully accept this reality.
9. You recognize that there are esoteric powers manipulating our
physical world:
Whether you're a religious or spiritual person, scientific or just plain
curious, there are many theories about an invisible force at play in
all of this.
Obviously it's impossible to prove exactly what it is. You may
not want to believe it, but the ruling elite takes their occult
rituals deadly serious. And they likely know something we don't.
Just by keeping an open mind about this possibility, you'll forever
keep an open mind about the things we can actually see, hear,
taste and touch.
Current science has shown that we can only "see" what the visible
light spectrum reveals, which amounts to the tiniest fraction of all
that can theoretically be seen within the full spectrum of energy.
Part of any awakening is realizing that there is much more that is
possible than impossible.
10. The power to change the world rests with you and you alone:
For too long people have believed themselves to be weak, or relied
on others to change the world for them.
You'll know that you're fully awake when you realize that you have
infinite power to change the world by simply living the change you
want to see.
First, you have to identify the principles that you believe in and
then go out and live by them.
If just a small minority took steps to do this, it would shake the
establishment to its core.
What kind of world do you want to live in?
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/10-signs-that-youre-fully-
awake.html
By Activist Post
September 12, 2012
Isn't it obvious that there is a significant global awakening
happening?
Just as the Mayans predicted so many years ago, the apocalypse
would become apparent in 2012.
But many misinterpret the apocalypse to be the end of the world,
when in fact it actually means an "un-covering, a revelation of
something hidden."
As many continue to argue the accuracy of the Mayan calendar,
it can no longer be argued that a great many people are finally
becoming aware of what has been hidden from them for so long.
Of course this awakening is not an overnight process. It takes
time to peel away the many layers of lies to get to the core of
the ultimate truths.
It would be beyond pretentious for us to claim to know all of the
secrets of the universe. We don't. Everyday we are humbled by
what we don't yet know.
However, it is becoming clearer by the day what isn't true. And by
that measure alone, it is possible to determine if you're one of the
people beginning to wake up.
Here are ten signs you may be fully awake:
1. You know there's no meaningful difference between major
political parties (Democrats and Republicans):
It's so easy to get caught up the left-right debate and believe
there's a difference between the two major political parties.
However, debate is one thing, while actions are another.
By their deeds you shall know them, and it is indisputable that
there is no significant difference between political parties when
it comes to action on the most important issues.
2. You understand that the Federal Reserve, or international
central banking more broadly, is the engine of our economic
problems:
Debt slavery is the totalitarian force that threatens all of
humanity, not some temporary political puppet or some
greedy Wall Street trader.
When a small group of people have the ability to create wealth
out of nothing and charge interest on it, they have the ability
to enslave the planet to their ownership despite what type of
government a country claims to have.
3. You know that preemptive war is never necessary:
When we realize that self-defense is the only acceptable form
of violence, then we become awakened human beings.
To suggest war because someone is different from you, or they
may pose a threat in the future is simply ludicrous.
And when did the idea of bombing civilians become humanitarian?
No one wants war except for the immoral creeps that benefit from
it.
4. You know that you're being systematically poisoned, how, by
whom, and why:
Admittedly, there's a lot to learn in terms of how we are secretly
being poisoned.
But the fact remains that we are being systematically poisoned,
and it is likely for the deliberate purpose of dumbing us down
and, ultimately, culling the population.
Who could believe anyone is so evil to do that to innocent people,
you may ask.
Well, once you begin to seek the answer to that question, you're
one step closer to enlightenment.
5. You understand that government can never legislate morality,
nor should they:
When you realize the role of government is only to protect
your liberty and work for the well being of the citizens,
you're awakened.
There should be one simple law regulating morality: Do no harm.
Thus, it's impossible for the government to enforce morality with
guns, cages, and taxes because those clearly cause severe harm to
your liberty and our well-being.
6. You know that the mainstream media is wholly owned and
manipulated by the ruling elite:
A dwindling number of people still actually believe what they hear
coming from the establishment media as if it's gospel, even when
they already accept that they are bought and paid for by the elite
controllers.
Yet, recognizing that they are nothing more than a propaganda
machine and a form of mind control are the first steps in being
able to critically think beyond the scientific messaging they
broadcast.
7. You know that your neighbors are not your enemy even if
you have fierce ideological disagreements:
This is perhaps the most difficult thing to overcome in the
awakening process.
But it's vital to understand that your neighbors have been
indoctrinated and hypnotized like the rest of the us, until
someone helps shine a light on inconsistencies in our
thoughts and beliefs.
Most of their ideas are not their own. They are suffering just
like the rest of us.
It's okay to condemn their actions if they're harmful, but those
who are awake will not give up on spreading information that
can enlighten those who might still be in the dark.
None of us were born "awake" and all of us can learn even more.
8. You know that the endgame is one-world control of planet Earth:
Once you understand that the endgame for the ruling elite is
to have complete control of all vital facets of society through
a global government, one-world currency, international armed
forces, and so on, it is simple to see through the lies and
propaganda surrounding even the most confusing world events.
You will never go back to sleep when you fully accept this reality.
9. You recognize that there are esoteric powers manipulating our
physical world:
Whether you're a religious or spiritual person, scientific or just plain
curious, there are many theories about an invisible force at play in
all of this.
Obviously it's impossible to prove exactly what it is. You may
not want to believe it, but the ruling elite takes their occult
rituals deadly serious. And they likely know something we don't.
Just by keeping an open mind about this possibility, you'll forever
keep an open mind about the things we can actually see, hear,
taste and touch.
Current science has shown that we can only "see" what the visible
light spectrum reveals, which amounts to the tiniest fraction of all
that can theoretically be seen within the full spectrum of energy.
Part of any awakening is realizing that there is much more that is
possible than impossible.
10. The power to change the world rests with you and you alone:
For too long people have believed themselves to be weak, or relied
on others to change the world for them.
You'll know that you're fully awake when you realize that you have
infinite power to change the world by simply living the change you
want to see.
First, you have to identify the principles that you believe in and
then go out and live by them.
If just a small minority took steps to do this, it would shake the
establishment to its core.
What kind of world do you want to live in?
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/10-signs-that-youre-fully-
awake.html
Sunday, September 9, 2012
What Obama Has Wrought
What Obama Has Wrought
By Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
September 09, 2012
Most people don’t want to be a perceived as party-poopers –
which is why the principled folks that have protested the evil
antics of the corporate, imperial parties, in Tampa and Charlotte,
are so much to be admired.
Frankly, who wants to be the one to point out, in the middle
of the festivities, that Michelle Obama was just a Chicago Daley
machine hack lawyer who was rewarded with a quarter million
dollar a year job of neutralizing community complaints against
the omnivorous University of Chicago Hospitals?
She resigned from her $50,000 seat on the board of directors
of Tree-House Foods, a major Wal-Mart supplier, early in her
husband’s presidential campaign.
But, once in the White House, the First Lady quickly returned
to flaking for Wal-Mart, praising the anti-union “death star”
behemoth’s inner city groceries offensive as part of her White
House healthy foods booster duties.
She also serves on the board of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, the corporate foreign policy outfit to which her husband
dutifully reported, each year, in his pucker-up to the presidency.
The Obamas are a global capital-loving couple, two cynical
lawyers on hire to the wealthiest and the ghastliest.
They are no nicer or nastier than the Romneys and the Ryans,
although the man of the house bombs babies and keeps a kill list.
Yet, former “green jobs” czar Van Jones, a convention night
chatterer on CNN who was fired by Obama for no good reason,
chokes up when he speaks of the Black family that fronts for
America – a huge act of national camouflage.
It is as useless to anchor a serious political discussion to this
year’s Democratic and Republican convention speeches, as to
plan the liberation of humanity during Mardi Gras.
Truth is no more welcome at the former than sobriety is at the
latter. So, forget the conventions and their multi-layered lies.
Here are a few highlights of what Barack Obama has inflicted on
the nation and the world:
Preventive Detention
George Bush could not have pulled off such an evisceration of the
Bill of Rights, if only because the Democrats and an aroused street
would not have allowed it.
Bush knew better than to mount a full-court legislative assault
on habeas corpus, and instead simply asserted that preventive
detention is inherent in the powers of the presidency during
times of war.
It was left to Obama to pass actual legislation nullifying
domestic rule of law – with no serious Democratic opposition.
Redefining War
Obama “led from behind” a 7-month Euro-American air and proxy
ground war against the sovereign nation of Libya, culminating in
the murder, after many attempts, of the nation’s leader.
The president informed Congress that the military operation was
not subject to the War Powers Act, because it had not been a
“war” at all, since no Americans were known to have been killed.
The doctrine was thus established – again, with little Democratic
opposition – that wars are defined by the extent of U.S. casualties,
no matter how many thousands of foreigners are slaughtered.
War Without Borders
Obama’s drone war policies, greatly expanded from that
inherited from Bush, have vastly undermined accepted
standards of international law.
This president reserves the right to strike against non-state
targets anywhere in the world, with whatever technical
means at his disposal, without regard to the imminence of
threat to the United States.
The doctrine constitutes an ongoing war against peace – the
highest of all crimes, now an everyday practice of the U.S.
The Merger of Banks and State
The Obama administration, with the Federal Reserve functioning
as a component of the executive branch, has funneled at least
$16 trillion to domestic and international banking institutions,
much of it through a virtually “free money” policy that could
well become permanent.
This ongoing “rescue” of finance capital is unprecedented in
sheer scope and in the blurring of lines between Wall Street
and the State.
The routine transfer of multi-billions in securities and debts and
assets of all kinds between the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve
and corporate accounts, has created de facto structures of
governance that may be described as institutional forms of fascism.
These are world-shaking works of Obama-ism.
Even Obama’s “lesser” crimes are astounding: his early calls
for austerity and entitlement-axing (two weeks before his
inauguration) and determined pursuit of a Grand Accommodation
with the GOP (a $4 trillion deal that the Republicans rejected, in
the summer of 2011) reveal a politician intent on ushering in a
smoother, more rational corporate hegemony over a thoroughly
pacified civil society.
Part and parcel of that pacification is the de-professionalization
of teaching – an ambition far beyond de-unionization.
Of course, Obama begins with the delegitimization of Black
struggle, as in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech
(”…there is no Black America…only the United States of America.”)
To the extent that the nation’s most progressive, anti-war
constituency can be neutralized, all of Obama’s corporate
and military goals become more doable.
The key to understanding America has always been race.
With Obama, the corporate rulers have found the key that
fits their needs at a time of (terminal) crisis.
He is the more effective evil.
The meticulously scripted spectacles of the two corporate party
conventions are very poor backdrops for clear thinking – but luckily,
the ordeals are over.
What remains after the tents are folded, are the crimes of this
administration and its predecessor: both horrifically evil in their
own ways.
History will mark Obama as the more effective evil, mainly because
of the lack of opposition.
Mr. Glen Ford is the Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/what-obama-has-wrought
By Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
September 09, 2012
Most people don’t want to be a perceived as party-poopers –
which is why the principled folks that have protested the evil
antics of the corporate, imperial parties, in Tampa and Charlotte,
are so much to be admired.
Frankly, who wants to be the one to point out, in the middle
of the festivities, that Michelle Obama was just a Chicago Daley
machine hack lawyer who was rewarded with a quarter million
dollar a year job of neutralizing community complaints against
the omnivorous University of Chicago Hospitals?
She resigned from her $50,000 seat on the board of directors
of Tree-House Foods, a major Wal-Mart supplier, early in her
husband’s presidential campaign.
But, once in the White House, the First Lady quickly returned
to flaking for Wal-Mart, praising the anti-union “death star”
behemoth’s inner city groceries offensive as part of her White
House healthy foods booster duties.
She also serves on the board of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, the corporate foreign policy outfit to which her husband
dutifully reported, each year, in his pucker-up to the presidency.
The Obamas are a global capital-loving couple, two cynical
lawyers on hire to the wealthiest and the ghastliest.
They are no nicer or nastier than the Romneys and the Ryans,
although the man of the house bombs babies and keeps a kill list.
Yet, former “green jobs” czar Van Jones, a convention night
chatterer on CNN who was fired by Obama for no good reason,
chokes up when he speaks of the Black family that fronts for
America – a huge act of national camouflage.
It is as useless to anchor a serious political discussion to this
year’s Democratic and Republican convention speeches, as to
plan the liberation of humanity during Mardi Gras.
Truth is no more welcome at the former than sobriety is at the
latter. So, forget the conventions and their multi-layered lies.
Here are a few highlights of what Barack Obama has inflicted on
the nation and the world:
Preventive Detention
George Bush could not have pulled off such an evisceration of the
Bill of Rights, if only because the Democrats and an aroused street
would not have allowed it.
Bush knew better than to mount a full-court legislative assault
on habeas corpus, and instead simply asserted that preventive
detention is inherent in the powers of the presidency during
times of war.
It was left to Obama to pass actual legislation nullifying
domestic rule of law – with no serious Democratic opposition.
Redefining War
Obama “led from behind” a 7-month Euro-American air and proxy
ground war against the sovereign nation of Libya, culminating in
the murder, after many attempts, of the nation’s leader.
The president informed Congress that the military operation was
not subject to the War Powers Act, because it had not been a
“war” at all, since no Americans were known to have been killed.
The doctrine was thus established – again, with little Democratic
opposition – that wars are defined by the extent of U.S. casualties,
no matter how many thousands of foreigners are slaughtered.
War Without Borders
Obama’s drone war policies, greatly expanded from that
inherited from Bush, have vastly undermined accepted
standards of international law.
This president reserves the right to strike against non-state
targets anywhere in the world, with whatever technical
means at his disposal, without regard to the imminence of
threat to the United States.
The doctrine constitutes an ongoing war against peace – the
highest of all crimes, now an everyday practice of the U.S.
The Merger of Banks and State
The Obama administration, with the Federal Reserve functioning
as a component of the executive branch, has funneled at least
$16 trillion to domestic and international banking institutions,
much of it through a virtually “free money” policy that could
well become permanent.
This ongoing “rescue” of finance capital is unprecedented in
sheer scope and in the blurring of lines between Wall Street
and the State.
The routine transfer of multi-billions in securities and debts and
assets of all kinds between the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve
and corporate accounts, has created de facto structures of
governance that may be described as institutional forms of fascism.
These are world-shaking works of Obama-ism.
Even Obama’s “lesser” crimes are astounding: his early calls
for austerity and entitlement-axing (two weeks before his
inauguration) and determined pursuit of a Grand Accommodation
with the GOP (a $4 trillion deal that the Republicans rejected, in
the summer of 2011) reveal a politician intent on ushering in a
smoother, more rational corporate hegemony over a thoroughly
pacified civil society.
Part and parcel of that pacification is the de-professionalization
of teaching – an ambition far beyond de-unionization.
Of course, Obama begins with the delegitimization of Black
struggle, as in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech
(”…there is no Black America…only the United States of America.”)
To the extent that the nation’s most progressive, anti-war
constituency can be neutralized, all of Obama’s corporate
and military goals become more doable.
The key to understanding America has always been race.
With Obama, the corporate rulers have found the key that
fits their needs at a time of (terminal) crisis.
He is the more effective evil.
The meticulously scripted spectacles of the two corporate party
conventions are very poor backdrops for clear thinking – but luckily,
the ordeals are over.
What remains after the tents are folded, are the crimes of this
administration and its predecessor: both horrifically evil in their
own ways.
History will mark Obama as the more effective evil, mainly because
of the lack of opposition.
Mr. Glen Ford is the Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/what-obama-has-wrought
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Did you vote for George McGovern?
Did you vote for George McGovern?
By Peter Breschard
Dissident Voice
September 05, 2012
Did you vote for George McGovern?
Would you have voted for George McGovern instead of
Richard Nixon if you had the chance?
If you had the opportunity would you pull the lever for
someone you were fairly certain would lose rather than
voting for a criminal like Nixon?
After all, everyone knew Richard Nixon was going to win.
After all, Nixon was evil.
Wouldn’t that be throwing away your vote if you voted
for George McGovern?
How could anyone vote for someone they knew was evil?
Millions of people voted for George McGovern in 1972
even though they were fairly certain he was going to lose.
Those millions of Americans knew that casting a vote for
someone they knew was evil was the wrong thing to do.
Politically. Morally. Anyway you want to think about it.
Those Americans didn’t stay at home on election day.
They went out and cast their vote against evil even
though they were fairly certain they wouldn’t win.
They knew they had to fight the evil.
They knew you always fight evil.
Once again Americans are faced with a choice.
The Democratic/Republican Party claims it is choice
between the lesser of two evils.
The Democratic/Republican Party is lying.
What do the Democrats and the Republicans have in common?
Let’s take a quick look.
Both parties agree the United State should continue waging
war against lots of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Both parties agree that thieving scum corporations should be bailed
out of their financial difficulties while private citizens are hung out
to dry.
Both parties agree that the for-profit medical insurance industry
should be propped up by legislation which supports the vampire
private medical insurance industry.
Both parties agree that trade agreements, like NAFTA, are a good
thing even though the end result is massive job loss in the U.S.
Both parties think new oil pipelines running across the heartland
of America are just swell.
Both parties agree that the President of the United States should
be given legal authority of life and death over every individual in
the world.
Both parties agree that self-confessed orderers of torture should
not be prosecuted, and they should be allowed to conduct national
book tours where they brag about their war crimes against
defenseless prisoners.
The list is quite possibly endless.
When you vote for the Republican/Democratic Party you are
endorsing all of the above.
You have a choice the Democratic/Republican Party doesn't want
you to consider.
You do not have to vote for evil.
Remember George McGovern.
Vote Green.
Peter Breschard is the author of "Circus Rider" and other lesser
works of fiction and history.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/did-you-vote-for-george-
mcgovern/#more-45749
By Peter Breschard
Dissident Voice
September 05, 2012
Did you vote for George McGovern?
Would you have voted for George McGovern instead of
Richard Nixon if you had the chance?
If you had the opportunity would you pull the lever for
someone you were fairly certain would lose rather than
voting for a criminal like Nixon?
After all, everyone knew Richard Nixon was going to win.
After all, Nixon was evil.
Wouldn’t that be throwing away your vote if you voted
for George McGovern?
How could anyone vote for someone they knew was evil?
Millions of people voted for George McGovern in 1972
even though they were fairly certain he was going to lose.
Those millions of Americans knew that casting a vote for
someone they knew was evil was the wrong thing to do.
Politically. Morally. Anyway you want to think about it.
Those Americans didn’t stay at home on election day.
They went out and cast their vote against evil even
though they were fairly certain they wouldn’t win.
They knew they had to fight the evil.
They knew you always fight evil.
Once again Americans are faced with a choice.
The Democratic/Republican Party claims it is choice
between the lesser of two evils.
The Democratic/Republican Party is lying.
What do the Democrats and the Republicans have in common?
Let’s take a quick look.
Both parties agree the United State should continue waging
war against lots of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Both parties agree that thieving scum corporations should be bailed
out of their financial difficulties while private citizens are hung out
to dry.
Both parties agree that the for-profit medical insurance industry
should be propped up by legislation which supports the vampire
private medical insurance industry.
Both parties agree that trade agreements, like NAFTA, are a good
thing even though the end result is massive job loss in the U.S.
Both parties think new oil pipelines running across the heartland
of America are just swell.
Both parties agree that the President of the United States should
be given legal authority of life and death over every individual in
the world.
Both parties agree that self-confessed orderers of torture should
not be prosecuted, and they should be allowed to conduct national
book tours where they brag about their war crimes against
defenseless prisoners.
The list is quite possibly endless.
When you vote for the Republican/Democratic Party you are
endorsing all of the above.
You have a choice the Democratic/Republican Party doesn't want
you to consider.
You do not have to vote for evil.
Remember George McGovern.
Vote Green.
Peter Breschard is the author of "Circus Rider" and other lesser
works of fiction and history.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/did-you-vote-for-george-
mcgovern/#more-45749