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As The New Year Begins, The Old Year Refuses To Die
We Can’t Rely On Superficial Mainstream Media Reporting At A Time of Deep Crisis
The New Year may be here but last year's problems and crimes have stuck to our shoes and we can't seem to scrape them off. This was the least festive New Years in memory, and for good reason.
In Gaza, an Israeli invasion posing as an act of self-defense escalates with targeted assassinations and an expected ground invasion. American political leaders are for the most part silent, unwilling, perhaps even afraid to encourage the UN's call for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid.
Chris Hedges, a journalist with deep convictions and high conscience, and who spent seven years covering wars and the Middle East for the New York Times, can now write without the pretense of a forced detachment and feigned neutrality. His anger is not just directed at Israel, writing:
Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different.
We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens more just."
... Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.
Such passionate voices are rarely found in our media where calculated nuance can rationalize everything and everyone.
Few in the media even recognize how they are being manipulated and spun on this war by an organ of state power, not a mere advocacy group.
The Guardian reveals: "Israel believes its has won broad international support in the media for its actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message to the world's press.
....Israeli officials have also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes. Speaking for the Israeli military, Major Avital Leibovich said: "Quite a few outlets are very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering ... I am sure it is a result of the new co-ordination."
Speaking to the Jerusalem Post, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman said: "I don't know how long it will last but at this moment Israel has no small measure of understanding and support, and even approval, from many countries."
"No small measure of Understanding and support!"
Translation: Their propaganda has become our propaganda. smoothly infiltrated into our news. The Other has been dehumanized and demonized as The Enemy. There are few reports in our press like this one in the Times of London explaining:
"Gaza is a secular society where people listen to pop music, watch TV and many women walk the streets unveiled ...while the horrific scenes in Gaza and Israel play themselves out on our television screens, a war of words is being fought that is clouding our understanding of the realities on the ground."
Its not just foreign issues that are sanitized this way. The economic crisis here at home gets the same treatment.
We were told that Ponzi King Bernie Madoff would reveal all by New Year's Day. And indeed he submitted a disclosure form to the court but then had it marked confidential so we the public and those who were defrauded still don't know how much Bernie, under house arrest in his luxury apartment, lost or profited.
In fact, it was on only on New Years Day that Reuters which specialized in financial coverage pointed out that our whole economy may be a ponzi-scheme.
Quoting Tim Lee of the consultancy pi Economics in Stamford, Connecticut, the news service reported:
"We too thought our retirement funds and houses were growing miraculously, though ours was an illusion fueled by debt rather than fraud, and we too made plans based on those asset values that now stand in ruins."
"The financial system as a whole has had the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme if we look at it fundamentally," said Lee, who was very early in warning about deflation.
"By this I mean that we should think about the true value of assets as being derived from the future flow of goods and services that the assets can lay claim to or produce. If market prices of financial and real estate assets rise a lot but there is no increase in the ability of the economy to provide goods and services in the future, then the apparent increase in wealth is illusory."
The key word in the paragraph above is "think," something too many of us are often too rushed to do. Think about the sources and spin of the news we read. Think about the agendas and practices of the financial wizards who claim to know so much even as they lose millions.
And think about what our next President should do and can do about the crisis we are in. I was interviewing Newsweek's Johnathan Alter who wrote a bestseller about FDR and the New Deal about parallel's with the moment we are in. His response:
"Well, my book about Franklin Roosevelt is called the defining moment and Obama's election night in Chicago and in several other speeches he said we're in a new defining moment where we are about to redraw again the American social contract what we owe each other as a people. I think Obama has been very very smart in what he is borrowing from FDR. He's not borrowing every particular of every program even some particular ideology. The most important words in that famous first inaugural were not 'the only thing we have to fear is fear' itself, [but rather] 'its action and action now.'"
Action? What kind of Action? To benefit whom? And how? All questions and issues we need to think about, and then act on ourselves.
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10 Comments so far
Show All'"The financial system as a whole has had the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme if we look at it fundamentally," said Lee...'
Welcome to the party, pal - the party where some of us have been pointing out the Uncle Sam Ponzi for years now.
Actually, it's a Pyramid Scheme. The top tier rakes in the dough, pays themselves and their fellow top tier-ers, who then help find new rubes who then toss in their dough which the top tier again uses to pay itself, and maybe tiers 2 and 3, which encourages T2+3 to find new rubes, etc.
Eventually, the voluntary rube pool is dried up - so "our" government dips into the involuntary rube pool - AKA, the taxpayers - and hands over new rube money in exchange for worthless pieces of paper called "non-voting stock" or "troubled assets" or a variation of such. The first thing the top tier does is... pay themselves and T2, maybe even T3 (dividends), and starts to draw in new voluntary rubes now that the Pyramid has been temporarily shored up.
Here's the non-Pyramid economic model: a guy designs a widget, some investors see potential and invest, the widget sells, investors are paid... or, the widget fails, and the money is lost. Imagine if the guy then asked the government for taxpayer money in order to continue selling the widget that nobody wants...
The pyramid splits when each one on the bottom tier finds two new suckers to replace themselves. Then they get their investment back, and the top gets the big payoff, and it all begans again.
I think I'm going to stop reading CD and any other political sites. I find I'm beginning to feel the way I have for the past eight years. Seems like everything and everyone is so negative, it's hard to keep my little spark of hope alive. I don't want to go back into that dark and hopeless place I was in for so many years until Nov 4.
The truth is only dark because our identified self-interest. Let what needs to collapse, collapse then, like the "Ashes of The Phoenix," we can begin to rebuild. Let's not prolong the agony (which is what we're doing now). It's always 'hopeless' for the 'darkness,' and especially painful when we call it the light. Also, it has been said that it's always darkest before the dawn.
What keeps me positive is knowing that I do not have to participate in the madness of the world, but only see it for what it is. Any meaningful and truly beneficial change must proceed from the inside-out, but we always try (or seemingly try) to reform what can not be reformed, to change darkness into light. That is impossible.
"Let what needs to collapse, collapse then, like the "Ashes of The Phoenix," we can begin to rebuild. Let's not prolong the agony..."
I agree 100%.
"There's no universal formula. What matters is what works for you."
Timothy Garton Ash
"What kind of Action? To benefit whom? And how? All questions and issues we need to think about, and then act on ourselves." Danny Schecter
I'm glad there are these two articles I quote above, but it's sort of sad there isn't some kind of agreement out there. I agree with Schecter on the "act" part.
Interesting comments too. I know what you mean, Wilmoor [but even though I'm registered at "My Bo" or whatever is and have never yet found it...I'd still like to know a link for forums where Obama supporters DEBATE priorities].
If I had more time I'd read more at bailoutmainstreet dot com or more of the Kuttner book I bought.
But I'm very disappointed there isn't more journalism devoted to how 2008 continues seriously whapping the disadvantaged in this country upside the head over in the middle column of the Common Dreams' home page.
Nukes in Pakistan...it's a worry, but if all 50 ended up over here it wouldn't be as bad as 10 nuke power stations getting blown up here. People in Gaza getting obliterated...it's a worry and a crime. We can focus on the horrific yonder, and, sure, that points to opportunists doing their thing in DC. What bugs me is that many writers comment on what's happening at a distance, but seem to have a denial thing about treatment the maimed are getting right here in America. [note: "Losing Moses on the Freeway" does acknowledge the general mindset that ignores]
In all this economic talk few writers return to the health insurance employers cannot pay (and then lay off). There are too many shows like ER I guess while too few people have to work hour after hour in emergency rooms and find out what the places are really like. Upshot...there is some kind of unconscious reverence for the field as is as crazy as that is. What do I say to all this? This...http://www.hr676.org/
Along with the H.R. 676 link which I placed in the post below...if I could put an entire article up at Common Dreams it might go something like this...
Title: "Yep, the old year and "Democrat" Tim Kaine Still Beating the Disadvantaged With Shovels"
[this rare-glimpse-at-reality-link would go at the top of text]
"FACING DEFICITS, MOST STATES ARE IMPOSING CUTS THAT HURT VULNERABLE
RESIDENTS" by By Nicholas Johnson, Elizabeth Hudgins and Jeremy
Koulish, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 12/23/08
http://www.cbpp.org/3-13-08sfp.htm
Hey all you hopeful people, it's looks as though our politicians do
not get Obama's message one iota. This whole Obama thing must have
sprung out of utter desperation and terror (alas, the 2008 upshot of
8 years of supply-side buffoonary without the benefit of a shred of
regulation), but perhaps too late.
I don't care about governor Tim Kaine's missionary work. Abolishing
Southeastern Virginia Training Center for the developmentally disabled is an
ill-thought-out move. It's a cavalier move. It's a hasty, down and dirty, slapdash move that would make Grover Norquist green with envy. And why is this measure even on the table? I've thought about it, and so far this is the only answer I can come up with: it's still under consideration because no one in media has the conviction to defend the home of people about whom they really don't want to know much, really don't want to write or talk about much, and really don't want to visit. Oh, we've come such a long way. Word is that the property on which the center sits will bring in $500 million. Yes, governor Tim Kaine's team surely chanced upon a fine little device when they hit on the neat idea to shut down Southeastern...they're gonna squeeze 16% of the entire Virginia budget deficit out of a home for 200 intellectually challenged individuals! [and the jobs of 400 employees including doctors, nurses, and physical therapists on campus] Well, what can the parents or the caregivers say...they're all daunted six ways from Sunday just from the shock of thinking how they'll make it without an employer cushioned PPO...or the shock of wondering how the state can move their family member and his 199 other friends right on down the pike (at greater distance from them). Oh yes...shock doctrine. How right on target is Naomi Klein. The absurdity of the thing...Governor Patterson's soda tax is pure genius in comparison.
BTW, in the past year the whole place was re-roofed. There were at
least five guys on each roof, and they all had safety anchors. State
of the art.
I sat here Googling for some outrage in regard to what I assumed
might be a pernicious, pervasive, and hypocritical trend (if unreported, uneditorialized). And it's a total disgrace to "progressives" in this land how long I sat here without finding didley. Finally, however, one good article that said a lot [at top of this post]. Bail out Main Street? Doubt it'll happen unless we bring reform to Mean Street first. Til then I guess an evil wind and clampdown bellwethers.
gonzolives
Don't buy a new car, don't pay Amex or Visa, Don't pay the mortgage, don't pay for medical expenses at Hospitals and don't pay your taxes. Hold on to any liquid assets you may have. You'll need them for bribes when the Homeland SS starts to gather up specimens for the detention centers that have replaced the suburbs.
Fear & Loathing in the 21st century, Mr Jones. Listen carefully and you can hear "The Generation of Swine" singing the "Songs of the Doomed".
Be informed to be prepared,
we are about to experience civil violence that will make civil war seem tame.
Perhaps we can avert that if more folks go to...
http://bailoutmainstreet.com/
I put the following up on the 3rd, but it was based on something I heard that was incorrect.
"Word is that the property on which the center sits will bring in $500 million. Yes, governor Tim Kaine's team surely chanced upon a fine little device when they hit on the neat idea to shut down Southeastern...they're gonna squeeze 16% of the entire Virginia budget deficit out of a home for 200 intellectually challenged individuals!"
Change that 16% to a bit less than 3%.
Nevertheless, the closing of SEVTC is the kind of thing that should cause the politicians themselves to cry out for rescinding the permanent cuts (balanced budget amendments in the state constitutions). Let's see, individuals can borrow. Banks can borrow. The nation itself (all states together) will be $1.2 trillion in the red for "09, right? And the nation itself in cumulative debt over the years ("national debt")...8-10 trillion right?