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Where’s Rev. Wright When You Need Him?
Israel and the United States, which could be charged under international law with crimes against humanity for actions in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, will together boycott the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Geneva. Racism, an endemic feature of Israeli and American society, is not, we have decided, open for international inspection. Barack Obama may be president, but the United States has no intention of accepting responsibility or atoning for past crimes, including the use of torture, its illegal wars of aggression, slavery and the genocide on which the country was founded. We, like Israel, prefer to confuse lies we tell about ourselves with fact.
The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured. The decision not to confront slavery and the continued discrimination against African-Americans is easy to accept if your ancestors were not kidnapped, crammed into slave ships, denied their religion and culture, deprived of their language, stripped of their names, severed from their families and forced into generations of economic misery. The decision not to discuss the genocide of Native Americans is easy if your lands were not stolen and your people driven into encampments and slaughtered. The doctrine of pre-emptive war and illegal foreign occupation is easy to accept if you are not a Palestinian, an Iraqi or an Afghan.
"The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured." |
To victims of oppression, the past is never over. It is not even past. Trauma, suffering and discrimination do not afford them that luxury. Generations bear the scars of whips and chains. They carry heavy physical and psychological burdens. And these burdens do not disappear when someone glibly decides to look to the future.
The conference in Geneva will discuss racism and continued segregation around the world, including in America, where African-Americans remain the nation's underclass. In addressing slavery, it will raise the issue of reparations, something we deem appropriate for Jewish victims of the Holocaust but not for African-Americans. And it will seek to force all nations to confront injustices they would rather keep hidden. But we are not ready to look.
The Obama administration at first refused to participate in the preliminary negotiations for the conference, chaired by Russia, Iran and Libya. It then agreed to attend for one week. It demanded the removal of references to Israel in the document outlining the goals of the conference. The references were removed. It also demanded other insidious changes, as Vernellia R. Randall, a University of Dayton Ohio law professor, pointed out. The Obama administration asked that the call for reparations for African-Americans be expunged. It insisted that the description of the transatlantic slave trade as "a crime against humanity" be cut. And it demanded the elimination of a call to strengthen the U.N. "Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent," which deals with the African diaspora.
The document, however, ratified "Durban I," which was the concluding document of the first World Conference Against Racism, held in South Africa in 2001. The 2001 document included a harsh condemnation of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. And this, finally, proved too much for Washington.
"Barack Obama knows full well that he risks nothing by disrespecting African Americans at will," wrote Glen Ford, the executive editor of The Black Agenda Report. "Across the Black political spectrum, so-called leadership seems incapable of shame or of taking manly or womanly offense at even the most blatant insults to Black people when the source of the affront is Barack Hussein Obama."
The United States, which has a museum to the Jewish Holocaust in Washington but has never found the moral courage to officially atone for its role in slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, perpetuates a disturbing historical amnesia. Our national myth and deification of the Founding Fathers studiously preclude an examination of the bloody conquest, open racism, misogyny, elitism and brutality that led to the country's establishment and that fester like an open wound.
We failed to fully participate in every world conference on racism, including those held in 1978, 1983 and 2001. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his delegation during the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, walked out because of what the Americans termed "Israel-bashing."
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on April 13, 2003, gave a 40-minute sermon called "Confusing God and Government." Only a clip from the sermon-the phrase "God Damn America"-made it onto the airwaves. It was repeated in endless loops on cable news channels and used to turn Wright into a pariah. Obama denounced his former pastor. The rest of the sermon, and especially the context in which the phrase was used, was ignored. Obama would be a better president if he listened to voices like Wright's and listened less to his pollsters and advisers.
The sermon was a cry from those who cannot forget what white and privileged Americans-as well as, now, the Obama administration-want us to ignore. It was a reminder that there are two narratives of America. And until these narratives converge, until we all accept the truth of our past, justice will never be done. We will continue until then to speak in two irreconcilable languages, one that acknowledges the pain of the past and seeks atonement and one that does not. We will continue to be two Americas.
"This government lied about their belief that all men were created equal," Wright told his congregation. "The truth is they believed that all white men were created equal. The truth is they did not even believe that white women were created equal, in creation nor civilization. The government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get white women the vote. Then the government had to pass an equal rights amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence [Thomas], who sexually harassed Anita Hill, and a closeted Klan court that is a throwback to the 19th century, handpicked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, between Clarence and that stacked court, they are about to undo Roe vs. Wade, just like they are about to undo affirmative action. The government lied in its founding documents and the government is still lying today. Governments lie."
" ... When it came to treating the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed," he said. "She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lowest-paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.' Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That's in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme."
There will be no delegation from the United States at the U.N. conference on racism. Not this year. Maybe not for several years. But the day will come, I hope, when justice will finally conquer hate, when the truth will allow us to speak as one nation. We can, on that day, send a delegation led by the Rev. Wright as part of reconciliation.
95 Comments so far
Show AllObama's reaction to and rejection of his Reverend is when I new in the pit of my stomach that he was just a slicker continuation of the past eight years.
Sioux Rose
ANGRY: You mean you knew in the pit of your stomach... new = novel, a first of its kind.
My most humble apology for the missed key stroke, although I somehow believe you new what I meant.
; - ) To err is human; to pass on correcting typos, punctuation or little mistakes of others is divine.
peace, /cm
I am SO blessed!
Aha! The new gnu knew
Forgive Sioux Rose, she was a school teacher, once.
I was an English teacher who instructed my students to write from their hearts, and later, if necessary, spelling, sentence structure, syntax, and punctuation could be corrected to make their essays/compositions stronger. Unorthodox for the time, perhaps, but oh, boy, did they write passionate, powerful stuff, especially the kids who were in the special classes with fancy names, but which meant they were assessed as intellectually not quite up to par. I still have some of the poetry that came out of those classes. Tempered by the pain of not ever being perceived as good enough, their renderings of the unfettered, heartful, written word were wise, insightful ... and often brilliant.
peace, cm
I would like to add my thanks to the author of this article for reminding me of the rev. Wright episode. Yes I too partially based my, low level of expectation for Obama on hos seperating himself from those comments of the Rev.
I thought the distancing of himself from the sermon was more instructive than the subsequent, albeit eloquent race speech of Obama's.
Bingo.
When you turn your back on a longtime mentor for political expediency you've exposed the true depth of your loyalty and convictions.
This did not bode well for "Change(tm)" and any vague consideration I had to support him vanished.
Hi angryoldman, An article in Politico.com last March, 2008, was called,
"GOP See Reverand Wright As Path To Victory." It detailed how this Twisted
Attack on Obama's Patriotism would cost him the presidency should he run.
So he quit so he could win. To avoid a crucifixion of Fox.
The morality of this is wrong,
HOWEVER, had he not quit Wright, the planet would be enduring
NeoCon John. War w/Iran, Iraq again, Somalia, maybe Russia, countless more deaths, no cuba, no chavez, gays sad, EPA run by EXXON, crying sierra club, greenpeace ship sunk, tax-cuts over and over for the wealthy to stimulate da mockets.
I would have fallen on my sword,
1 Corinthians chap 13 verses 4-7.
>>>would the dead neocon john was exhorting killing w/ kristol 2 weeks ago care?
Juan Cole says degrees exist, not absolutes sadly, I wish our world was just and fair, hope life is good.
Simply a wonderful and important article that I am sure will not be seen on the front pages [or any place else] of my newspapers. Barack Obama and his administration, as well as srael, have absolutely no excuse at all for not attending the UN's Conference Against Racism in Geneva unless it is because they do not wish to have the spotlight focused, either directly or indirectly, upon their loathsome behavior. Yet this decision from the United States emanates from a president who is half black. It would seem that there are no limits or boundaries to his shameful actions.
Sioux Rose
ERROLL: True, but it's pretty funny, bordering on eerily ironic that Russia and Iran are two sponsors, as if their civil rights' records are any better? Utlimately these conferences remind me of "12 Step Programs" inasmuch as each participant has a lot of baggage to reconcile. Plausibly in the company of other "offenders" they can wash each other's laundry. In that respect such meetings can prove cathartic. You're correct that the U.S., reflecting the personality of an addict, cannot come clean with respect to recognizing the gap between its stated position against actual actions. It seems to me that Nature will prove the great teacher as a child's first teacher tends to be his/her Mother.
http://www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com
This article has good information in it and makes a lot of valid points but what is so frustrating about the liberal viewpoint is that the piece is totally devoid of class content. What we are fed is white history; yes, but white capitalist history. With the whites he talks about "we" as if there is no distinction between the slaveowner and the rest of the white population. English children started working in coal mines at the age of five, worked 18 hour days in cotton mills. We could have monuments to all those exploited and murdered by this rotten system we know as capitalism.
And because of this complete lack of an understanding of how the world works, the author has this utopian view about justice and that it will conquer hate leading to the US (or any other group of people for that matter) becoming "one nation". We are not "one" nation and cannot be "one" nation except in purely geographical terms because the economic system in which we live is one based on exploitation---the relationship between a pimp and a prostitute can never be a harmonious relationship.
The ruling class makes the laws and writes history, in short, the dominant ideology of society is the ideology of the class that rules, and we live in a capitalist nation and a capitalist world--someone did say that they would settle every where, nestle everywhere and create a world after their own image.
The article leaves us empty. So what if they paid the entire working class reparations? It's like the old utopian socialist view that we convince them to be nice fellows, they do good and realize the errors of their ways and we all live happily ever after. The ownership and control of productive life stays the same, the odious machine remains intact.
If you like history and haven't read The Many Headed Hydra, check it out.
I would also recommend "Toward an American Revolution"...Fresia...
Just looked that up on Amazon. Looks very interesting. Thank you for the idea - it has now been added to my incredibly long list of books I want to read!
The review there says Fresia's book draws heavily on the writings of Charles Beard. Have you read his "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States"? Another great book if you haven't.
Thanks...that's another one I'll have to get my very conservatively bent library to order.
good comments, and, not to gloss over the points you make about hedges' article, i think he'd agree w/you.
Re Richard Mellor April 20th, 2009 10:30 am, who decries the author's "complete lack of an understanding of how the world works...":
Easy there, big fella. The article's subject was the UN Conference on Racism, not the UN Conference on Capitalism.
It was a report on a conference, Jethro. But Mr. Hedges has an opinion, he has a point of view about why this happens and what the solution might be, Justice over hate, was that it? No one writes something that doesn't have some point of view.
Anyway, even if he wasn't expressing any thoughts about the why's and how's of the subject he is reporting on, what's the point in that? I remember a treasurer in my local once telling me during a heated and important discussion and vote on an issue that "I only write the checks". Mr. Hedges is obviously concerned and critical in much of the right areas but my points still stand.
Also, the comment to the writer about his writing "new" instead of "knew". What's the point of that? Anyone new what he meant. The reason I point this out is that the "educated" sometimes tend to use this to bully the working class with regards to language and grammar, therefore focusing on the lack of English language skills rather than the content of a statement which would be a waste of time. Not that the person meant to do this, it can often be a habit that people in academia, especially English teachers find hard to be rid of. But it often means content is abandoned in favor of form. I can't even remember who wrote it.
Note who is always bringing up divisionist protocol like "covert racism" and other unnecessary or unwarranted criticisms and you'll find the hidden hand of the secret services, either that or some country bumpkin who doesn't understand the nuances.
Sioux Rose
RICHARD: Excellent points & analysis. Your visceral reaction to lumping all "White men" into a uniform whole reminds me of my response when people in the forum use the pronoun WE to represent the policy of our criminally delinquent governing officials. True, their actions are done in our names, but hardly with our consent! The population is now held hostage to a program of covert and overt media programming devices along with elections based on pre-selected candidates. This puts the concept of representation into serious question. Thus WE becomes mostly a fabrication of a uniform consensus that hardly exists.
When Dick Gregory received the NAACP's highest award four or five years ago, he said that after the September attacks, a journalist asked him "Mr. Gregory, what are we going to do about this?"
"How come," he said, "whenever THEY get jammed up, suddenly it's 'WE'"?
The capitalist system is, at base, a crime syndicate and it can never be everywhere, therefore it must die. The capitalist system depends for it's survival on each country producing more than it's population can consume, so if every country were capitalist then there would be no market for the surplus production and the system would implode. Those evil capitalists know full well that half or more of the world must be maintained as non-producing consumers and that is the foundation for the foreign policy of the U.S, the U.K. and other such moribund nations. Since it is impossible for the capitalist system to work in every nation, which makes it a failed ideology, it is therefore impossible that it can survive as a viable system. It's only a matter of time before the masses of people realize that fact and throw the capitalist system to the ground and kick it to death.
"It's like the old utopian socialist view that we convince them to be nice fellows, they do good and realize the errors of their ways and we all live happily ever after"
Richard Mellor,
good points - and what happens to people who make the connection and are willing to organize the oppressed masses. do they live happily ever after ?
of course there is always resistance in the context of class fused w/ race and the government has always been conscious of this - making a concerted effort to assassinate black leaders who articulately understood those relationships (class and race) malcolm x, MLK, fred hampton...
a short film that discusses our governments response to surging black consciousness in the 60's/70's...
http://www.freedocumentaries.org/
COINTELPRO: THE F.B.I'S WAR ON BLACK AMERICA
{Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), there was a concerted effort to subvert the will of the people to avoid the rise "of a black Messiah" that would mobilize the African-American community into a meaningful political force.
This documentary establishes historical perspective on the measures initiated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI which aimed to discredit black political figures and forces of the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Combining declassified documents, interviews, rare footage and exhaustive research, this film investigates the government's role in the assassinations of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King Jr. Were the murders the result of this concerted effort to avoid "a black Messiah"?}
-------------------
american attitudes towards 'others' were both the grafted root and the fertilizer for fascist governments across the globe. unfortunately there is little indication that our imperial government is going to cease violating human dignity/rights of our own population or other peoples around the earth in the near future -- or cease supporting governments that commit the atrocities in our (US imperial govt) interests. do children in public high schools spend much time pondering the conditions of the black panthers in US history classes ? or are resisters grouped in the collective mind as terrorists
...peace...
When the Soviet Union came apart, so did our human rights champion charade. The gloves came off for all sorts of minorities except for the elite, of course.
coincidences are funny things.
yesterday about 20 minutes after i posted my comment i was visited by a friend - a coworker who i've seen twice since my job ended 6 weeks ago. my friend is 10 years older than me and currently lives in chicago. issah is 52 and like many of the cd readers is bright. naturally we talked about the hedges article.
issah told me in 1986 on new years eve, he convinced his 'lady friend' (as he calls his partner of 20 years) to go and listen to a sermon by reverend wright at trinity united Church of Christ on the south side.
his partner thought he was joking but obliged. that night both of them went to a church instead of a nightclub and listened to rev wright. he described the feeling - effect upon him - of the sermon in a positive way (a young man - 30 at the time - who grew up african american in a small white town in rural iowa).
it helped him feel connected w/ his community (other thoughtful african american people living in chicago). my friend is a christian and like the people in latin america who were impacted by the teachings of liberation theology, issah innately saw the relationship b/w oppressor and oppressed in rev wright's teachings.
issah is involved in at least 2 class action lawsuits in chicagoland for being subjected to a strip search for a routine traffic stop w/out any rationale or probable cause for the search. his offence - driving black in a subarb (this is recent history).
it's impossible to have the discussion if people wear blinders pretending racism doesn't exist. i prefer a purely marxist approach - but if black christian/muslim consciousness brings people to that understanding - that's fine.
MLK was murdered b/c (like malcolm before him) he could see the economic inequities at the root of the problem. black liberation is tolerated to a point - as long as it can be co opted into consumerist america. MLK was crossing a line.
issah and i at work often discussed which illinois politician should replace obama in the senate. i was a big advocate of bobby rush - issah favored jessie jackson jr but he wasn't surprised by the corruption that insued. however, he adamantly believed that congressman rush (interviewed on the cointelpro video above) would never be considered for the seat b/c of his association w/ the black panthers (who are taboo in politics, like folks who associate w/ that other undesirable - william ayers).
ironic, b/c i supported obama purely on tactical grounds during the general election - while my friend has a very 'symbiotic' at times irrational/emotional connection w/ obama (which i understand). but when the discussion turned to the senate seat - my friend dismissed the more progressive candidate for tactical purposes. of course the people of illinois ended up w/ soppy milk toast - roland burris - instead.
yet hillary clinton/barak can speak of saul alinsky's influences upon her political ideals/tactics and surface relatively unscathed. (see quote below)
the difference b/w clinton/obama and bobby rush is one of privilege and participation. rush was a radical (hence can't be promoted) - clinton and obama participated on the fringes of the left as a means for furthering their personal wealth/status, therefore they're ideal politicians in the status quo.
i'll look for the chicago 10 video - thanks for the link...
...peace...
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314
SAUL ALINSKY
{"Liberals fear power or its application.… They talk glibly of people lifting themselves by their own bootstraps but fail to realize that nothing can be lifted except through power…. Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action -- by using power…. Liberals protest; radicals rebel. Liberals become indignant; radicals become fighting mad and go into action. Liberals do not modify their personal lives[,] and what they give to a cause is a small part of their lives; radicals give themselves to the cause. Liberals give and take oral arguments; radicals give and take the hard, dirty, bitter way of life."[13] -- saul alinsky}
{In the Alinsky model, "organizing" is a euphemism for "revolution" -- a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America's social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted -- a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation. Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo's complete collapse -- to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal "changes" are needed.}
...peace...
luminious,
i do pay attention. i want to thank you for drawing my attention to the rampant censoring of thought that occurs in america. you bring up an excellent point. how can we as progressives be an honest force for social change if among our own ranks and institutions people are unwilling to 'confront' one another.
i'm reminded of earnest callenbach's prescription for psychological stress in the novel ECOTOPIA, where people let it all out in the hallway as the neighbors watch and make sure the disagreement doesn't become physical (like the group therapy sessions from the 1960's) and deal w/ it - helping the participants come to terms w/ their feelings - no hard feelings. to me - more honest then finding clever ways to scrub the discontent away (usually w/ clorox, or ink stain remover).
it's so important that we recognize everyone's uniqueness even if (especially if) we're offended by the presentation (maybe alinsky's wisdom here). i don't believe i am allowed to discuss specific examples - so..
i want thank you - you remind me of the character 'socrates' in dan millman's book, the way of the peaceful warrior.
also ... i appreciate your appreciation for dialectics and your tit for tat approach to expression/education. go is one of my favorite games.
blessings and
...peace...
ps - i watched chicago10 last week, it was an excellent film - the live footage was amazing.
Excellent post Richard. I archived this gem for future reference.
People can only handle their head getting blasted so much in one article.
Maybe you should do a follow up.
I would read it.
Great article. I was always annoyed (but not surprised) by the firestorm of hate that flew at Rev. Wright for his sermon, and I lost a lot of respect for Obama for his response to this incident alone. Rev. Wright spoke truths Americans hate to hear, and he needs to be praised for it rather than vilified.
It was just a little bit after this incident that Rev. Hagee (spawn of Satan if there ever was one) publicly called for war with Iran, and not ruling out nuclear weapons if necessary. The media coverage of that wasn't nearly what it was with Wright, and when it was, most Americans didn't notice . . . or care.
Joe Biden, whose feet are no strangers to his mouth, offered this praise for Obama at the beginning of the last presidential campaign, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Ah, yes: "clean".
IMO, Obama was elected in an election season reminiscent of 1976, when We the People thirsted for a "clean" candidate to wash the taste of Nixon and Ford out of our collective mouth.
Clean: honest, open, direct, forthcoming, virtuous, and incorruptible.
I didn't support Obama because I wasn't convinced that he was any of the above; I was certainly convinced that he could project these qualities, and had attracted a nucleus of fanatic supporters during his artfully-crafted faux-populist campaign. But I wasn't buying it.
Obama may yet evolve into a less outrageous and appalling Unitary Executive before his term ends, but I'm not sanguine about the prospect. In any case, he's certainly not the Clean Reformer advertised in campaign hype and spin, including the corporate media coverage.
Shunning the UN World Conference Against Racism is a play right out of the Reagan/Bush playbook-- including the protective and defensive "love me, love my dog" inclusion of Israel as likewise aggrieved by the prospect of being confronted over its genocidal institutional racism. The Obama administration ought to be the Prodigal Son returning to the table; instead, Obama demonstrates the same exceptionalist petulance and self-righteous bluster favored by his neocon predecessors.
The conference might include NEGATIVE, which is to say MEAN and UNKIND, comments about Amerika's sorry and tragic history vis-à-vis racism. And we can't have THAT, now, can we? So we'll just take our ball and go home if Amerika isn't totally accommodated and assured that it won't be criticized or embarrassed by ANY hint that it's not the Greatest Nation in the World, with a shining history that is free from blemish or wrongdoing.
When the UN is ready to have a FAIR and FAVORABLE conference that implicity recognizes the US and Israel's incorruptible moral superiority, THEN the US MIGHT just consider attending. It all comes down to common courtesy, dontcha know!
· Yr Obd't Servant
I am with you, Obedient. All excellent points!
It never ceases to amaze me just servile Obama and his cabinet really are, how well-oiled the process of ideological indoctrination is in Washington, how "set into line with" Empire's demands (a condition the Nazis used to describe as "gleichgeschaltet" and "Gleichschaltung"), how streamlined these folks are.
Sioux Rose
ABENDLAND: Considering your observation, along with those of Obedient Servant, don't you think Chris Hedges acts a bit cavalier about Obama's essentially "dissing" his Black supporters/vote? His own disinclination to improve the lot of his own race must be in glaring evidence to them? Some have seen past skin tone to the greater likelihood that like Colin Powell, Condi Rice, & Uncle (Clarence) Thom(as), they serve their "masters," and are quite willing to turn away from the facts of racial inequality; or acting affirmatively to improve the lot of those "left behind."
ShaowDancer, you mirror my innermost feelings.
Amazing. You must have a magic de-coder ring, the mate of the one ShadowDancer is transmitting on. I couldn't understand what any of it meant. And what's with all those question marks? They seem to be a purely decorative distraction.
Rainborowe
Sioux Rose
SHADOW DANCER: Due to the innate flaws of human nature added to the fact that ALL our mystical/spiritual/religious sources go back MANY centuries (and the so-called Holy books have been rewritten often to serve the prevailing kings or power elites) I do not think we can afford to take their messages TOO literally. What I find useful is seeking after those truths that exist as common denominators, teachings that are found in the legacies left behind by ALL true spiritual teachers/Masters.
The Bible is only ONE such source. It is hardly infallible! As one who reads a number of oracles and has studied prophecy and prediction for nearly four decades, I can say with a certain authority, all prophecy is open to interpretation. Free will and fate operate like dance partners, they enact their own version of a cosmic cha cha cha. Certain things ARE fated, like we die, like water freezes at 32 degrees, like a year on earth = 365 days, etc. HOW persons react to the fixed conditions opens the way to permutation and change. It is NOT all written. Many prophecies pointed towards destruction, for instance, there was supposed to have been a 3rd earthquake after 2 big ones hit California. However, since so much GOOD WILL was generated by persons truly setting self-interest aside to help others, among prophetic sources, it was determined that the 3rd earthquake was off-set.
America, like every nation, struggles between its better angels and a political form of demonic possession (these days). Technology has proven a double-edge sword for the surveillance opportunities it offers, these being a direct usurpation of a free society. And of course, technology applied to warfare is a tragedy in slow motion consisting of apparent recurrent acts.
Many prophecies agree that mankind has come to a turning point. Whether due to the waste on war when so many go hungry, climate changes, or the collapse of global finance based on capitalism and the dollar's hegemony... or perhaps the three taken together provide for a potent trifecta that takes down the Beast. It has always been in plain sight. We were told the LOVE of $ is the root of ALL evil. We were taught the ways to get along and shown that violence was NEVER the path, and yet violence has grown to impact almost every portion of the globe. When nations focus on fear, they build their own figments of terror in their collective imaginations, and then arming against these formidable Don Quixote nightmares, arm to the teeth and court the very thing their efforts purport to be protecting against. Just as the teaching that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies to the holistic medical field; prevention of conflict through diplomatic encounters is worth Goddess knows how many pounds of "cure," taking shape as toxic tonnage ever exploding.
It's not just the US. Canada was the first to boycott Durban II, followed by Australia, Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, and UK sending a low level delegation, all ostensibly in solidarity with Israel. The irony of course, is that these are all former imperial or derivative colonial settler/lebensraum states with legacies of racism and genocide against colonized populations.
Moreover, the hullabaloo right now over Ahmedinejad's speech could have been easily given rise to a dialogue if any other world leader accepted the standing invitation to address the conference. Indeed, the lack of high level participation demonstrates a profound disinterest in addressing the issues raised in the conference. Moreover, it is also telling that it is Western countries who walked out in solidarity with Israel. Sadly, and dangerously, Israel has become their standard bearer for historical revisionism that aims to whitewash their brutal record in the colonies. They raise objections to holocaust denial when they themselves deny their brutal conquest and genocide of Third World peoples and societies.
it is a reflection of the never ending naivetee of the american working class that there is this sense that - a few tweaks here and there - and things will be made right
like, for example, the first black president
a milestone perhaps but only in the sense that the controllers (corporations and wall street) would put there faith/trust in a darky
that's about it
obama is finance by wall street and he has certainly brought home the booty for them hasn't he
americans are simply too poorly educated to comrehend society at large
they don't see the bank "bail out" for what it is - a constructed rip off of the treasury - they don't see obama for what he is - nwo shill
americans don't even begin to understand what is meant by the term empire or how it relates to the unending interventions, murders and assassinations that have been committed in their names over the years
americans are simply too poorly educated to comrehend the relationship of domination the corporations have established over the planet
americans are simply too poorly educated to comrehend their voting system is a meaningless joke - open to candidates of the wall street bankers and no one else
americans are simply too poorly educated to comrehend much at all
"if americans only knew" is a phrase i have heard so many times.........
americans are by and large happy in their ignorance and simple one dimension view of the world
they are content to sit at home stuffing burgers down their obese throats and groaning over the latest loser on idol or survivor
even that crap challenges their intellects
americans love killing - not fair fight killing - we always get our asses whipped in fair fights - but slaughter of innocents is prime time in their minds
americans loved the war in iraq - never cared that it was built on lies - but grew tired of it as the incompetence of the military was demomstrated over and over
soon the united states will be a latino country - spanish speaking and we will all be the better for it
the european white guys have fucked up everything they have touched and need to be put to pasture as soon as possible
Sioux Rose
MA G: If Americans were happy as you say, we would not have a population that is 30% obese, given to high levels of violence & domestic abuse, with 30 million on anti-depressant drugs, 10 million (I think it's under-reported) alcoholics, and whatever the numbers are on habitual use of "street" drugs. UNHAPPY people let out their steam in violence. That is NOT the behavior of happy or well-adjusted persons.
You may mean complacent; but in my view most feel trapped by lives of not necessarily quiet desperation. Part is the economics, so many work jobs they hate, and the product (war) reflects it.
sioux: i was trying to be funny - obviously not very but there you go
more seriously i agree with you - the misery of the republic is beyond comprehension
but what do you expect from a population who have ceded control of the society to corporations
beggars cannot be - by definition - choosers
you get what you get - which is nothing
voting for the nwo shill - though charming - obama is a weak stab at reclaiminmg the country - and it has - as we have seen - fallen far short of the mark
so i repeat - the country is finished - and no one is happy
The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured.
Obama can face the same judgment as George Wanker Bush. They'll be surprised to see each other in the nether reaches. They will become "friends". Bush will call Obama as a character witness. Obama will praise Bush as he once praised Reagan. But when Obama calls Bush, Bush won't show. That'll learn ya. Obama, the boy scout, the square apple, will realize too late that he needed a touch of H.L. Mencken or Ambrose Bierce in his character.
it ain't pretty but, like hedwig (of the angry inch) might say, it's what we've got to work with, dagnabbit---our interconnectedness as members of this human race. for years i wrote letters for amnesty int'l until i crashed and burned on the realization that my own gov't was complicit in too many dirty deals to give me and my earnest, urgent missives any credibility whatsoever, given the nastiness of torture, economic and military violence and power-drunk rampages of impunity. you cannot appeal to a person (a teenager most especially i will mention, this being the 10th anniv. of the columbine shootings) or (even harder) a system's humanity from a place of hypocrisy ----a person...a system canNOT serve two masters (mammon/violence & moral fortitude/kindness) simultaneously. but how do we go about co-sponsoring a massive SOBRIETY MOVEMENT in this regard?......
Hedges opens with this paragraph:
"The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured. The decision not to confront slavery and the continued discrimination against African-Americans is easy to accept if your ancestors were not kidnapped, crammed into slave ships, denied their religion and culture, deprived of their language, stripped of their names, severed from their families and forced into generations of economic misery. The decision not to discuss the genocide of Native Americans is easy if your lands were not stolen and your people driven into encampments and slaughtered. The doctrine of pre-emptive war and illegal foreign occupation is easy to accept if you are not a Palestinian, an Iraqi or an Afghan. "
which makes me think of none other than jk rowling's harvard commencement address awhile back, which i would challenge any AIPAC supporters (or any of us, myself included) to ponder, if they might:
"...many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy."
i doubt we could have collectively experienced a more willfully unimaginative time period than the 8 tortuous bush years just past. but then i wasn't alive during nazi germany. for me personally, it did not bode well when i saw obama do his about face and cave to the uproar over that oft-repeated soundbite of rev. wright's.... i won't say it was unforgiveable so much as disappointing, but i will say it might re-earn, or deserve my own genuine respect & rekindle some kinda hope were obama to give some indication that he hasn't irretrievably crossed over like some darth vader to the mercenary side of things. (sorry for all the pop culture references, but i can't help it, livin in the usa)
Sioux Rose
MATANGICITA: Excellent post, and I like the "pop" reference. Rowlings offers children what today's American public education rails against: imagination. Every inventor had to imagine something that didn't even exist, and so imagination is a key asset to science and technology. Our standard-tests driven curricula sees imagination as a dangerous 3rd rail and will avoid it at all costs. And there WILL be a cost in the form of this neglect to such a sizable portion of the minds of the young. EZEFLYER would see this as another damning legacy of conservatives, and I'd largely agree.
Rowling's speech can be found here:
http://harvardmagazine.com/
commencement/
the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination
Some other excerpts:
"I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness."
"One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing. "
Sioux Rose: Seeing as how you are exchanging some pleasantries on this thread with angryoldman, who was the first to sign on to a project to construct a system of direct e-mail contact of people who want to work together toward extricating ourselves from the malaise of the abysmal Age of Obama...
and Considering that your posts are nearly always gems of wisdom in a pool of usually brilliant other comments...
I'm appealing to you (AND OTHER LIKE-MINDED SOULS) to use my e-mail address as a "first move" toward establishing such a system (there are 5 of us so far). It's jerrydrose11@yahoo.com (that 11 is an eleven) and just type it into the TO: at your compose mail and send me a note and we'll get started. Once we have one another's e-mail addresses we can conspire to our heart's content on this project.
Jerry
Well, we could certainly stand to do a fearless self-inventory and to make amends to those we have harmed. That's 2 steps. First thing though is to admit that we are addicted. Weirdly, George W. Bush actually did that (partially at least), when he stated in his 2006 State of the Union speech that we were addicted to oil. No major Democrat has had the stones to say that since Carter's time. Of course, addiction to oil is only part of addiction to empire and that, of course, neither Bush nor the Dems could ever admit.
Progressive recovering addicts I know seem to get this whole thing better than just about anybody else. They don't fall for the self-protective denial of many mainstream Obama supporters and Dem rank and filers.
America is ready for an intervention right now. The economy is in collapse, the empire is over-extended, the black hole of debt is bottomless and the planet is heating up. The bill for our violence and recklessness has come due, but our "leaders" don't seem to care, as if they were too inebriated to notice. Barack Obama may be able to dazzle us with pixie dust for now, maybe even for 4 years...after that who knows? In the end you have to pay the piper.
More than anything this article helps to confrim for me that obama is the selected choice for president of this country because the power that gets who they want elected knew a black man would be easier to get elected and this particular one would still carry on the traditional bull sh*t corporate government the people are forced to live with even though it has nothing to do with a government for,of and by the people, that it is just grarnish dressing for the facade of 'equality' which does not exist. Why else would obama be making the choices and decisions that he has made?
I know it is only 3 months into his presidency but the hope that the 'changes' he campaigned on are just not materializing, the biggest to me being the break up of the conservative corporate media. And now with this overt rejection of not attending this conference, it is amazing there isn't a whole heap of people that got him elected, that are not questioning this decision which as I have stated makes it clearer that he will decide for the corporations and izrael, both of which he guaranteed would have his unwavering support via the US government, the taxpayer/voter.
And congress, they are far too busy setting up those earmarks which again obama was going to put a stop to or control them. And Senator Murtha of Pennsylvania is still master in giving our tax money to his supporters, along the lines of a Randall 'Duke' Cunningham which shows that the difference in a republican and a democrat is negligible. Voting for the president may not be the most important vote when it is evident that congress is as capable or more so in destroying this republic's democracy.
All of this is the patching and shoring up of a dying system. Rot has overcome it and it's demise is eminent. No amount of funding, public relations, or prayer can resurrect that which is rot and corruption. Enfeebled and fearful the old system attempts to deny it's death by attempting a display of power that is reflected in irrational actions suggesting atrophy. No rebirth can emerge before a death. The circle of life is natural and expected. No house can stand when built on a foundation of genocide and slavery. Attempting to build great ideals upon death and human misery is a fools path, a dead end. The mirage has faded and the hardship of reality is overtaking us. If you do not yet feel the pain, you soon will. Your fears are justified and your tears will become rivers of broken treaties, as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers flow.
Our present generation is not responsible for the debts of previous ones. Nor are present generations entitled to the debts owed to previous generations. Best we treat each other with respect and assure that all of us receive the benefits as citizens. What the past can tell us, by acknowledging it honestly, is how to behave now and in the future. Learning from the past is essential, dwelling on its imperfections can be an albatross around our necks. This is an oversimplification, I know, because some debts such as those incurred by land and other property theft, should be paid. Still, such things as reparations for slavery, when the slaves are long gone, and someone who is not a slave collects is wrong.
Herman Schmidt