Wednesday, September 21, 2011

In Every Age


by David Glenn Cox

Unto to those to whom nothing is granted are given fists of anger and to those from which much is taken rage will be recovered. Malcolm X said it like this, "I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

The day of rage has become the day of media silence and by now that should be expected. It is just one more reason, one another example, of why you must opt out of the corporate media cycle. If you swim in the fish bowl you will only follow the other fish.

The Palestinians will push for recognition of statehood at the UN. They face a possible US veto in the Security Council. American politicians bluster about cutting off aid to the Palestinians but lost in the domestic wrangle is a warning from Saudi Arabia that if the US vetoes the Palestinian statehood resolution the Saudi's will end their special relationship with the US.

WASHINGTON -- "The United States must back a Palestinian bid for UN recognition of statehood or risk becoming "toxic" in the Arab world and forcing a split with ally Saudi Arabia, a top Saudi diplomat warned Monday.

If Washington imposes its veto when the Palestinians seek to become the 194th member state of the United Nations then "Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has," former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote."

It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the policy; this story has been completely ignored by the US mainstream media. Recently the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, warned that New York could face riots in the streets if something were not done about the employment situation. This was a story with media legs, ABC glossed over it while the Wall Street Journal pooh poohed it. CNN took the story and turned it into a story about partisan politics.

The news is about sensationalism, death and carnage laced with preconceived ideas. Barack Obama proposes his jobs bill, which was filled with perks and play pretties for the Republican side of the aisle, only to meet resistance from his own side. Obama counters that criticism with a new set of proposals to tax the wealthy, but if Obama had been in any way serious he would have proposed these things three years ago. Obama is only stunting for the camera, emoting passionate sounds bites for public consumption.

Strange, isn't it that we have developed more and faster means of communication than at any other time in human history and yet we have less understanding of our nation's problems? Repeatedly we are misdirected and misinformed we are buried with frivolous fluff and meaningless chaff. Pop culture is the ultimate oxymoron, pop music; pop goes the weasel as the American media feeds the populous a steady diet of self serving nondescript junk food. It looks like the news and it sounds like the news but it is no more the news than a Cheeto is cheese.

Pat Boone still insists Barack Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim but what does it matter at this point? Tens of millions of Americans have lost their homes and their jobs and their futures but where are their stories told in the American media?

This is an unmitigated national disaster the likes of which makes Hurricane Katrina look like a thunderstorm and yet this story of national tragedy is ignored. The President ignores it, the Congress ignores it and the media ignore it until the sensational pops up. Then the media will cover the blood and the tears while ignoring the real reason why these things keep happening to our people in this so called free country of ours.

Murder-suicide suspected in brother-sister deaths

AP- "Investigators say a financially troubled Southern California man apparently shot and killed his ill sister and her dog before committing suicide in the Oceanside home they shared.

The names of the 56-year-old man and 52-year-old woman haven't been released because relatives are still being contacted.

The San Diego Union-Tribune says the siblings had financial troubles and sold the home. They were supposed to move out by Tuesday. The woman had a kidney disorder and was on dialysis.

Oceanside police Capt. Leonard Mata says officers went to the home because the man failed to show up for a medical appointment. The bodies of the man and woman, and the woman's black Labrador, had gunshot wounds."

This same story and similar stories are repeated every day and in every town in this country. We view them through the lens of partisanship and drained of their humanity. In Oakland an 83 year old woman was put out of her home after the city had sent warning letters to the wrong address. The city was more interested in collecting fines from the widow than in rectifying their own error.

These are our people, they are our parents and grandparents and even our own children and they are homeless, jobless and overwhelmed by poverty. Move On says I should support Barack Obama. The Republican's cry less taxes and regulation and the Tea Party shouts, but who cares what the Tea Party thinks!

People are dying needlessly; they are suffering needlessly living in the land of economic terrorism and living in a nation of political violence. In this nation you might be forced to murder your ailing sister one day because you have no money and no place to live. Recently protestors took bags of yard debris cleaned up by neighbors from a property foreclosed upon by the Bank of America. Their plan was to leave the bags in the lobby of the bank. Instead they were met by a branch manager with a policeman at her side. She told them no and the policeman just pointed. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people, I think not.

President Obama promises to veto any bill which cuts Medicare unless" tax increases for the wealthy are included. The President is willing to trade the lives of the needy for the coins of the wealthy.

"You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell yuh
That you ain't a-got no friend" -- Bob Dylan

Indeed, we have no friends in Washington. We have show business, we have student council. A show where actors pretend they care for the well being of the public.

"The history of this country is being written in the blood of the childhood the industrial lords have murdered." -- Eugene Debs 1918

Same as it ever was, another century and an another wave in an economic storm to swamp still more of the populous into poverty. Michael Bloomberg is more a student of history than soothsayer. New York has seen job riots and labor riots and food riots in the past. Most American cities have seen such outbursts public rage a generation or so ago and the Hearst Newspapers in that era called their leaders "Communist agitators" and perhaps this time around Fox News will call them "Domestic terrorists."

They are in fact refugees from their own homes fleeing from economic terror and from a callous unthinking government which hears but doesn't listen, sees but does not feel and a government which knows better but does not care. Now the Republicans have climbed upon their tired mount traversing the country side shouting out the absurdity of "Class Warfare."

These Republicans are so put upon by calls of higher taxes while their Democratic cohorts sit silently waiting to take their side when the roll is called. Yet is begs several questions, If this be class warfare why are we the victims? Why do banks receive bailouts and homeowners receive doubletalk from the banks left in charge? Why are the unemployment lines so full and why are our people killing themselves to escape from economic terror and financial treason?

A government must govern all of the land without occupying every inch of it. Class warfare is a dangerous idea for the prosperous to shout for it gives us, its victims, our own ideas. Ideas about just how unnecessary the wealthy are to our society. We don't need their television, their fast food or their politics and indeed the idea of class warfare commends itself to us.

William Tecumseh Sherman once said the following, "I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." Now substitute "wealthy" for "South" and understand this, I am not calling for violence, only an appropriate response to economic terrorism, and an appropriate response to a society that murders its citizens, bargains with the lives of the sick and elderly and then as it begins deficit reduction talks by calling for tax cuts.

"If you make peaceful revolution impossible you make violent revolution inevitable" -- John F. Kennedy


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