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Silver Oaks and the Power of Predatory Capitalism
Last month eviction notices to residents of Silver Oaks Place on the east side of Kent destroyed, in one swift blow, a 30-year old community of 250 senior citizens in their late 50s to early 90s. Though residents were given two months to get out, and offered some limited help with relocating, the evictions have wiped out trust, hope and peace of mind for the residents, their families, their neighbors and the community at large.
The apartment complex is being acquired by Capstone Development, a corporation headquartered in Birmingham AL, who plan to convert it into student housing. Capstone is gambling that they will prevail in a market already glutted with student housing after Kent State University, under president Lester Lefton (paid $520,000 a year, plus bonus, benefits, housing, automobile, deferred annuity) adopted a policy of phasing out on-campus dormitories for junior & senior students, and opened the door to private sector off-campus housing.
Some residents think a legal challenge may persuade the developer to back off, and have hired a civil rights attorney from Cleveland to explore age discrimination issues. After the management locked residents out of their large, accessible community room evenings and weekends, residents have started filing complaints of retaliation with the Ohio Attorney General. Either action might work to delay the evictions, but the damage is already done -- some residents are already moving out, most are seeking individual resolutions to their problems, and the community and its conviviality is severely damaged.
Kent – and all of Portage County – is facing new challenges. In the past year farmers have been tempted – or threatened – by gas drillers hoping to harvest natural gas by "fracking" the Marcellus shale deep below their property. Many feel there are inadequate safeguards for water supplies, soil, and livestock, and against fires and explosions.
This summer the Portage County Solid Waste District has announced plans to save money by ending its sorting operation and make the recycling center into a transfer station, terminating a dozen jobs. This week the officials of our county hospital, Robinson Memorial (the second largest employer in the county) have asked to become a private not-for-profit hospital to avoid cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and to save on employee costs: i.e. jobs and benefits.
* * *
I'm feeling hopeless at the failure of the structures of our society and polity of our democracy – particularly the extent to which money, celebrity and media now drive public opinion and policy-making at every level. The rich and powerful demand cruelties to those who are old, sick, poor, jobless, homeless, students, indebted, unstable or unconnected in the name of "fiscal responsibility". Our ability to help others is constantly circumscribed as, one by one, our tools for agency are being taken away from us.
We see efforts to disenfranchise voters with voter ID, to disempower public servants by taking away their ability to form organizations around shared interests and their right to bargain collectively for common goals. We see local communities stripped of the power to regulate land use, water pollution and mineral rights. We see attempts to hand Social Security and Medicare over to private insurers, pressure to privatize schools, highways, and prisons, and court decisions preprogrammed by campaign contributions.
Republicans and the MSM continuously maneuver people into feeling powerless and hopeless, teaching them to trust no party, no public servant, no neighbor. They constantly work to discredit the weak and blame the poor, whenever possible throwing them off the bus to fend for themselves.
Poor blacks were driven out of New Orleans after Katrina so developers could have their land. People poisoned by BP's oil spill don’t get medical care. Large corporations paid off politicians to deny health coverage to NYC's 911 responders dying of cancers.
This week Obama agreed that it is more important to cut Medicare than cut spending for foreign wars. We are targeting poor peasants in Afghanistan with drones purchased with our tax dollars and operated by professional killers. We provide arms to Israel to keep 1.6 million Palestinians imprisoned in 140 sq.mi. of the Gaza Strip.
We are betrayed by Obama, who has handed economic, environmental and educational policy over to Big Money and is contributing to the disempowerment of people and communities all over our nation.
"Fiscal responsibility" should be called by its real name: terrorism. It’s not terrorism by foreigners or madmen – it’s terrorism by our own President and Congress and their national "reality show" over saving money (the money of the rich and powerful) as they make profits from every natural resource, from every transaction, from every human need.
What chance have we to build the trusting and compassionate communities when people lose their homes to speculations of developers, or manipulations of loans by bankers?
What chance have we to build sustainable local economies when Big Energy/Agribusiness can sell our gas, oil, coal, corn, timber, water or other resources on global markets? What chance have we for good health for all when Big Insurance creams 30 cents off every dollar spent for medical care and lets 123 humans die each day for lack of medical care? What chance do young people have, whose parents can’t afford private schools and who have to borrow to buy their own educations ?
Over the past 20 years the Kent community has successfully fought off efforts by several outsider corporations to "develop" for commercial use a site adjacent to the Kent Bog. Foolishly, I assumed that even if big money and corporations took over our national politics, we in Kent and Portage County could at least maintain the kind of community we cherish and need.
I was wrong. Now it seems that predatory capitalism can reach in and take anything they want and sell it to the highest bidder.
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Show AllOhio is my native soil, and from the strip mining in southeastern Ohio, to burning rivers in the north, it represents the very worst aspects of the American capitalist system and American culture. It has the distinction of being the only state to murder its own protesting students. It is extraordinarily corrupt. It reelected GW Bush in '04 by destroying the integrity of its own electoral system under Sec of State Blackwell. Dennis Kucinich will soon lose his seat due to redistricting and he's the finest voice to come out of Ohio, perhaps ever. Some old Greek (Heraclitus?) said: "The Ephesians would do well to go hang themselves and leave their cities to beardless lads, for they have cast out Hermodorus who was best among them, saying: we want none who is best among us. If there be such let him be so elsewhere, among others."
My home also cruxpupy, the State whose license plate embossed motto is "Ohio - the heart of it all." Well then the patient has a diseased heart. I worked for a time in strip mine reclamation in the tri-state area - Oh, WVa, Pa. The Ohio DEP was the most corrupt of the bunch: Know somebody, grease their palm, they look the other way. And all those abandoned mine lands are owned now by Exxon, Mobile, BP, and other giant energy interests. Big energy is not yet finished laying waste to this ancient paradise.
I love Caroline; we used to talk via e-mail during the Bush nightmare. The only fault here is that Marcellus is unimportant in Ohio, it is the pursuit of the gas in the Utica that will belch filth and poison on once beautiful Ohio.
gents: your state was the birthplace of the mother of all evil - standard oil
"Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world[3] and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations until it was broken up by the United States Supreme Court in 1911.
John D. Rockefeller was a founder, chairman and major shareholder. As it grew exponentially and engaged in business strategies, tactics and practices that were lawful (not unlike the practices in this article) but drove many smaller businesses under, Standard Oil became widely criticized in the public eye, even as it made Rockefeller the richest man in modern history. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
read about rockefeller here:
http://www.reformation.org/john-d-rockefeller.html
these psychos in business just keep at it don''t they
Oh gawd! Did you have to bring up that diabolical old skinflint? So we might as well mention Warren G Harding and Ulysses S Grant while we're at it. And are you a native son of Ohio, medmedude?
So - what's that got to do with the points in the article? are people supposed to be stuck in some time-aspic forever - from 100 years ago?
Actually, Ohio doesn't hold the distinction of "being the only state to murder its own protesting students" as you claim. A similar incident known as the Orangeburg Massacre took the lives of three African American college students in 1968. No real mystery as to why the murders of three black students took a back seat to the four white students killed at Kent State, is there?
This is an excellent article. When I looked at the picture of the elderly author I reflected that her generation of public spirited liberals may be the last who can both clearly remember and intelligently articulate a fast fading America that once had a vibrant, competent and effective public sphere, public institutions, public spaces and strong civically engaged middle-class communities.
Some say we are moving into neo-feudalism. But feudalism depends on a vast peasantry tied to agriculture. America has been an economy primarily of industrial workers since WWII. Predatory neo-liberal think-tanks like the Council on Economic Development (CED) pushed policies taken up by Republicans and corporatist Democrats in the late 1970s & 1980s to corporately collectivize what were previously family-owned, small & medium-sized farms into gigantic industrial farms--driving millions of citizens who were family farmers or local citizen agricultural workers into urban and suburban areas looking for manufacturing (and often settling for service wage) jobs.
The rapid transition to a Super Banana Republic being thrust on this country is, in fact, much worse than neo-feudalism. This is because there is insufficient non-corporate farmland for tens of millions of disenfranchised post-industrial & even post-service wage workers to flee back to become agricultural subsistence peasants or share-croppers.
They are being rendered entirely economically "un-viable" even as unemployment insurance benefits, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and other social welfare safety net programs are being slashed at the State and Federal levels. Republicans plan to cut $127 Billion dollars from the food stamp program over the next decade even as more and more Americans are becoming dependent on food stamps (soon 1 in 6).
This isn't just terrorism. This, for a monstrously large number of these people, will be MASS MURDER of them and many of their family members. Many of the younger ones who survive will end up as prison labor working for corporations for even less than Mexican or Chinese factory workers make an hour. Many others will be poverty drafted into our proliferating endless “wars of choice.”
Who can say what will happen to the others? They will endlessly wander looking for odd jobs and/or starve in the streets like the vast wandering unemployed do in China—to be preyed upon by corrupt local officials, police, vigilantes, gangs, drug dealers, pimps and every form of confidence trickster vermin.
Conditions for spontaneous chaotic regional rebellions will be ripe, and the ruling disaster capitalists are salivating at the prospect for more privatized prisons and prison labor. Local police forces will buy into becoming more militarized and brutal to gradually herd millions more into jails, prisons and open-air tent “detention facilities” like those in Arizona. Every instance of poor people trying to organize in any numbers to resist will be branded terrorism while the true terrorists—plutocrats and their top drawer political and media wolves--will relax in their gated communities and compounds and bask in a golden shower of sublime globalized wealth.
Even Orwell in 1984 did not render vast portions of the lumpen proletariat completely economically un-viable. It is not a sane thing to create a system that imposes conditions so harsh for so many tens of millions of people that they are in a state of perpetual near or actual justifiable insurrection. The social, political and economic dis-ease across the U.S. that plays out in such broad support for this assault on the most vulnerable by predominantly middle-aged to some elderly whites bears all the hallmarks of propaganda-induced mass psychosis.
This is not surprising since the post-CNN 24/7/365 corporatist, militarist "news" cycle is the greatest propaganda machine ever assembled and concentrated into just five (5) gigantic globalized infotainment conglomerates that control over 96% of all television, radio, magazine, newspaper and online news and book publishing. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman hastened mass media over-concentration with their push for the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Now not only does the corporate media all turn on an unquestioning dime around every issue like a murder of crows wheeling and turning together in flight, but so does the vast majority of middle-aged (and much of elderly) white America.
The result? Increasingly ravenous and cannibalistic plutocratic fascism that is determined to create massive Third World type slums in the First World that will feature poverty levels and a complete absence of upward class mobility alien to American history outside slave quarters and "indian reservations."
Barrack Obama is very much on board with this fascism. If you don't believe me then parse the soullessness of the White House “economic policy debate” in this piece:
White House Debates Fight on Economy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/us/politics/14econ.html?pagewanted=print
Great post, metal. I particularly appreciated this sentence: “Even Orwell in 1984 did not render vast portions of the lumpen proletariat completely economically un-viable.” Excuse me while I go find a rope to hang myself with.
But seriously. I read the NYTimes article you provided the link for—I don’t usually read such crap, but it is astonishing how the entire substance of the article is Obama deciding which bullshit he’s going to tell the Amerikan people for the express purpose of getting reelected. Now that’s transparency!
Everything you say about this idea of a neo-feudal society is unfortunately correct. I get irritated with people talking about jobs creation. They haven’t faced up to the fact that the jobs have been moving away, will continue to move away, and what’s left to do has been increasingly computerized, and will continue to be, and that those jobs left will entail more and more hours, demand greater and greater productivity. And as you say, why pay workers when you can imprison people and have them do the work for nada? Why pay all those teachers when some “expert” can provide lessons for ALL of our children on the computer? When they accomplish this little feat, as they will, millions more jobs will be wiped out. This is why Luddites are on Homeland Security’s list of people to watch.
There will be rioting in the streets, which is, I suspect, exactly what this Corporatocracy is after. Then people will cry out for martial law.
"The social, political and economic dis-ease across the U.S. that plays out in such broad support for this assault on the most vulnerable by predominantly middle-aged to some elderly whites bears all the hallmarks of propaganda-induced mass psychosis."
And not for the first time in history. A similar mass-psychosis gripped Germany in the 1930's, altho' even they didn't try to reduce the laboring class to utter destitution. Of course, a large number of the "whites" you mention are to be targeted themselves.
One cannot see a path out of this that doesn't involve a catastrophe ...
That's what makes the present US/EU neo-liberal globalized fascism so historically aberrant among all great industrial and post-industrial age nations and economic systems.
Neither totalitarian Soviet State communism, nor totalitarian Nazi State fascism nor even George Orwell's Oceania in 1984 (that was a mixture of elements of both plus a highly predictive form of government electronic media surveillance) deliberately created or posited future conditions to make many tens of millions of the Soviet and Nazi masses who were sympathetic to their respective systems completely economically un-viable.
Soviet communism (which abandoned doctrinal communism under Stalin) still at least half-heartedly pretended that one day there would be a withering away of the centralized State and its replacement by a glorious rule of committees of the proletariat working-class who would share the benefits of their own agricultural and industrial production equally among themselves with no other class or class hierarchy needed.
Nazi fascism convinced the German masses (and many sympathetic white supremacist populations in certain countries that they annexed or conquered) that after a period of bloody conquest to purge Europe and the Soviet Union of "inferior" races and communism by means of war, slavery and prison labor, there would be a glorious Thousand Year Reich of peace and plenty for "the master race" and its obedient vassal States where every man, woman and child would know their proper place in the scheme of things and be thus totally secure under a racially and politically "purified" and rigid capitalist class hierarchy. But even Nazi fascists did not economically exclude poor Germans and other pro-Nazi white support populations simply because they were poor.
In Orwell's Oceania every aspect of society was rigid, capitalist and minimally socialist, hierarchical and utterly lacking in upward class mobility. But the poorest of the poor STILL were allowed enough of what we would describe as service wage or menial work to scrape out a basic meager living.
The U.S. fascist tri-partisan neo-liberal/neo-conservative regime is surpassing all the above in terms of cruelty to ALL of its most vulnerable citizens regardless of their race and regardless of their sympathy towards the traditional idea of capitalism: Indeed they are being even more swiftly sacrificed on the altar of Mammon BECAUSE of their commonly shared sympathy towards a historical form of pre-neo-liberal capitalism that no longer exists.
Because they do not understand that capitalism as they understood it growing up made a profound transition after 1980 into a much more vicious, immoral and historically aberrant form of capitalism called economic neo-liberalism, and because they do not understand what the pillars of that ideology are--especially the true nature & purpose of absolute advantage "free trade"--in the aftermath of a certain "Pearl Harbor-like event" and a deliberately formed & exploded Housing Bubble, they are being deliberately confused by a series of related manufactured traumas (the spurious "debt ceiling debate" being the latest) and herded en masse off the neo-liberal capitalist gangplank into shark infested waters with their legs tied and a "Patriot Act" gag in their mouths.
There was a gradual rolling out of neo-liberal economic policies that began in 1970 and accelerated beginning with Reagan. They have been extended and added to by every president and Congress since. Neo-conservative foreign policies (basically aggressively militarized globalized neo-liberal economics) were implemented under Bush II and continued and expanded by Obama, both of whom relied on corrupt Congresses and a corrupt Supreme Court to help merge "national security policy" related to "wars of choice" with domestic full frontal assaults on fundamental liberties, the Geneva Conventions and international war crimes statutes.
These policies include: (1) Corporate collectivization of small and medium-sized family farms into gigantic industrial farms; (2) legalization of various forms of usury; (3) the secretive, sovereignty negating "absolute advantage free trade" treaty regime; (4) deregulation of corporations (including big banks); (5) deregulation of mass media cross-platform ownership; (6) weakening or elimination of government oversight with respect to federal cabinet level regulatory agencies and State level EPDs; (7) proliferation of privatized prisons that lack oversight from the Federal Bureau of Prisons; (8) conduct of the Federal Reserve completely beyond its charter and any substantive Congressional or Executive regulatory oversight; (9) massive federal level political crony bailouts and subsidies for criminal speculatory banks, hedge funds, other shadow banks and large insurance firms who insure derivatives; (10) similar bailouts for politically connected crony corporations, and (11) militarized & privatized neo-liberal foreign policies that corporately incentivize illegal preemptive wars triggered by "suspicion of a threat to national security" [the Bush Doctrine] instead of "evidence of clear and present danger to national security" [the Constitutional war trigger for 226 years of American history until 2002], (12) the related war crimes masking, un-Constitutional obliteration of habeas corpus, the Constitution & Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment--so far), the Geneva Conventions and international war crimes statutes that the U.S. itself was instrumental in creating as a body of international law resulting from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals.
Preceding, underlying and helping to enable all these adverse developments was (1) the gradual legalistic consolidation of the legal fiction that corporations have "legal personhood" with rights and liberties equivalent to those of flesh and blood individual citizens of the United States (begun by the dubious scribbling of a court clerk on a ruling in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886 and culminating in the extremist Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010), and the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 that overly limited how labor unions could organize or engage in several types of labor strikes.
That's an incomplete list but it's a good basic list of the biggies.
As far as a "top 3" list of issues to push against for the purposes you describe I would say that first and foremost should be a demand that the Constitution and Bill of Rights be restored and enforced. The best way to do that at this point, in my opinion, is massive and sustained public protests heavily participated in by organized labor--probably using the prolonged tent encampment tactics seen in Tahrir Square in Cairo, in Barcelona and elsewhere--only on a much larger scale with preferably well over a million people in the street in D.C. and NYC.
My second choice would be a demand to immediately repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and re-negotiate all "free trade" treaties to include globally enforceable and enforced labor and environmental protections--and if the powers-that-be refuse, then the subsequent demand that those treaties' provisions be slowly phased out on an industrial and agricultural sector-by-sector basis over a 15 year period, which is about how long it took us to get into this minimal job creation mess thanks in large part to those treaties, which are a form of corporate treason that directly undermines what our founding fathers called "the general Welfare" when our federal government has an obligation to "promote the general Welfare"-- not constantly, recklessly participate in severely undermining it.
My third demand would be strict re-regulation of, and transactional tax imposition on Wall Street to include (1) the temporary nationalization of at least four of the five biggest banks and (2) the conversion of Goldman Sachs into a toxic dump bank to take ALL the bad paper still on and off the other "too big" banks' balance sheets to be written down with those other banks given a haircut with plenty of scalp in it. Then I would (3) dismantle Sachs as an example to future big banks and (4) simultaneously prosecute all bankers who participated in selling bundled mortgages and then betting put options on them to fail and (5) turn one of the others into a permanently nationalized federal infrastructure bank with annual dedicated lines of credit to finance federal infrastructure repairs & modernization and green manufacturing start-ups (and to help do so at the State level as well. Lastly I would demand that every State in the union create a State owned bank like the one in North Dakota and that they all issue their own bond series to deficit finance annual lines of credit dedicated to infrastructure repairs & modernization and green manufacturing start-ups. The federal infrastructure bank would help finance these endeavors at the State level.
That would be a start.
Brilliant analyis, thank you.
I'm glad you liked it :)
METAL: Definitely an excellent post. I related a similar stream (not as nuanced as your own) of a parallel set of outcomes on another thread today.
By the way, how about Caroline's courage! Calling this net theft of the nation's collective money, to be used only by and for "elite" purposes, terrorism! Few go that far, and yet, of course, it's true. Given the extent to which Wall Street has manufactured weapons of FINANCIAL mass destruction, and spread these 'round the world to dastardly ends, spells terrorism of the covert sort: that which erodes the quality of life, and perhaps the basis of its sustenance, for far too many.
I never expected riches or wealth, but I thought that maybe I'd have a simple old age. How many in this forum now believe they can fall back on any sense of security for their later years? How many believe that the medical field will be in place to serve them, that one way or another they'll be able to meet those costs (given the current efforts to alter Medicare, added to insurance companies' ruthless records for cutting cases, rather than providing care)? How many will be able to shut their doors, if they own their own homes, knowing the hungry multitudes are just outside?
My sister and I were discussing this... she (an Aries, i.e. ruled by Mars) wants to purchase a gun. I stated that were I to use a gun to protect property and harm another human being, the karmic loss would be too great. It would probably be better to hand over any goods. What then, does the argument become, if another wishes to take possession of your very life? (I don't have an answer.)
These are questions a civil society should never have been put in a position to answer. I've often explained that the unnecessary wars abroad are causing karmic blowback at home. And while the particulars rest above my "spiritual station," and are therefore hardly mine to answer, it would appear that many innocents are already suffering for what is being done in their names, often without their consent.
There is a reason why every spirtual Master/Avatar has largely taught the same precepts. It's because they are true. No society that lives by the sword to the extent it impoverishes its own people, can other than die (or come apart) by it.
Drosera said he believed in cause and effect, but wished to decouple that premise from karma. Ultimately, the two cannot BE decoupled... the Law holds, as does gravity. Belief is not required. US karma is tainted by the spilt blood of innocents. Nor has the addict (to violence) stopped, to alter his behavior. No nation stands exempt from, or above the Law of Karma.
I think that transmigration of the spirit and a long series of spiritual rebirths into many material/spiritual forms on the karmic wheel of life with the ultimate goal of enlightenment are interesting things to think about, not leastwise because they provide a comforting reason for the shortness and brutality of so many human beings' and other creatures lives as we conventionally understand them.
But even as someone who places hope in Jesus Christ and the resurrection to the degree to which I understand scriptures about him and the resurrection, I cannot say that I absolutely believe in them beyond a shadow of doubt.
I find the Te Tao Ching presents a better understanding of the energy dynamics of nature, the fluid tensions within natural processes and many basic human behaviors on a more wholistic and naturalistic level than anything I've read in Western science. But it is more evocative of the paradox of constant change within the eternal that best describes nature, its various life support components and evolution BECAUSE it is such a deliberately paradoxical, non-egoistic, amorphous, infinitely potential-loaded attempt to describe that about nature which is so inexplicable.
All our Western science can do is DESCRIBE every separated out thing--but it can EXPLAIN none of it. It has barely begun to study complex systems, let alone entire complex living habitats loaded with millions of complex systems and anciently evolved, bio-physical, chemical and microbial processes like rainforest habitats and their animal and plant species interdependency links (to use just one example).
Much of our perception of nature and each other must thus remain intuitive and will never be completely empirical. The question then becomes how to improve our intuition and what moral and ethical yardsticks to use in trying to improve it--and how then to take what we have learned to try to improve society. The Chinese in ancient times very practically answered this question by compiling long histories of examples of technocratic good governance and creating the first system of bureaucratic civil service exams to test aspiring bureaucrats on their knowledge of these examples. The emphasis was on the morality of the examples even more than the specific decisions those earlier technocrats and bureaucrats made.
The closest thing to karma as you use the term in your post in Western psychology is the empirically measurable individual and group response to varying levels of moral guilt, anxiety, reactions to rewards and punishment, fight or flight, and the ways in which individuals and groups act out in response to these pressures--both positively and negatively. There are very many good and clear answers to questions about the psychological blow-back (individually and collectively) of actively or passively participating in so many unnecessary wars, for example. But the powers-that-be who control the funding of studies on that scale will not allow them.
Science in the U.S. has been stripped of its Renaissance and Enlightenment spirit of inquiry and commoditized into two types: What is profitable to globalized corporations in the civilian economy and what is profitable to globalized corporations in the military economy. This is a return to a medieval circumscription of the potential of science wherein the ruling theocracy is not the Catholic Church but the Neo-liberal Oligarchy of Mammon.
Just as there is now an urgent need for guerilla journalists to contribute to a truly independent new mass media that circumvents corporate mass media to potentially reach the same audience market penetrations in medium and large cities, there is a growing need for guerilla scientific groups to engage in studies to expose the lies and widespread public harm caused by the present militarized globalized neo-liberal oligarchy--especially here and in the UK and parts of the EU.
There's nothing you said I would counter, and you certainly said it all well. You've mentioned (in the past) using a portion of the radio dial to get a Progressive Program (or station) into operation. If you are out of work, can you look into that? Perhaps we could develop a revenue stream to get that ball rolling with YOU as a core speaker.
You have such a ready grasp of historical facts, such a deft mind, and equal capacity to tie so much together, at the least you should be lecturing. Could you tutor students in history or related courses? I know you said you were having financial troubles.
Just in case you can't hear it, I am clapping... for this post.
By the way, the I Ching, is not just a predictive oracle. There's PLENTY of ageless wisdom inside its text that's relevant to political corruption, and how cycles in general operate. What amazes me is the fact that the basic insights (from 2000+ years ago) remain contemporary.
Thank you for your HIGHLY intelligent analysis.
I emailed your earlier post to someone who used to post here more often, and he said he thought it was your finest.
Neither he, nor I, have any "ins" with publishing that we can extend your way, in spite of your deserving as much.
Dear Siouxrose,
I appreciate your nice comments but be careful you don't give me a swelled head. It's better to be a rich writer with a swelled head than a poor one. Mine used to be a lot more swelled seven years ago ;-)
I'm not really in a position to do much besides look for a menial job right now. A severe shoulder injury prevents me from going back to work in my old field. My transportation situation is extremely limited since my vehicle died a few years back. That's the biggest hurdle to finding work for me and most single long-term unemployed people right now and nobody is doing anything about it.
The few churches that used to help jobless people with bus and rail fare to search for work stopped doing it because demand soared so fast after 2008. Now they only help people who have just started a job so they can get to and from work until their first paycheck and I only know of two churches in a metro area of several million people who are doing that.
I used to have a friend who worked for DFACs back in the mid-1990s and he told me back then they used to give out FREE monthly bus & rail cards to folks on food stamps who merely requested them. They cut that out shortly after Bush was appointed to office in 2000.
98% of the time I'm limited to where I can get on foot or on my bicycle. One of my church friends lets me do an odd job or some yard work for her about once every two or three months to get a little bus/rail money, but it never lasts long. Five two-way trips or less. A monthly bus/rail card is now more than my car insurance payment used to be in 2005.
Low power FM radio stations are micro-local stations with very limited broadcast ranges. If enough of them could blanket a large city with contiguous broadcast ranges they could mimic the audience market penetration of a single larger commercial FM radio station. To be politically effective they would also need to be able to afford to do simultaneous online streaming of their program which could get more of it out to people in geographical areas outside their limited low power FM broadcast range.
The problem with this model like everything in the public interest now is funding. These set-ups are cheap compared to the Big Stations but they ain't cheap for working-class folks to set up and operate, and there would have to be regular periodic community fund raising to keep them going. This is the sort of thing that locally established non-profit progressive groups with a few affluent donor contacts need to look into. I think it would be more difficult for a loose association of widely geographically scattered posters on CD to maintain over time.
Siouxrose, if you are a member of some non-profit progressive group in your area maybe you could persuade them to look into operating a low power FM radio station. Then I could email them a regular weekly pod-cast and other folks whose posts you like on CD could do so also. Radio is a very fun medium to work in--especially if you don't have to kowtow to a corporatist business model and can actually talk about creative and progressive ideas. You might be very good at it yourself...
Change must come through the barrel of a gun.
And when those with guns have brought about change, those with guns will be in charge.
It's a conundrum.
When civilised people are confronted with evil what can they do. Polite requests to stop putting Jews in ovens doesn't work.
What I'm saying is that using force to stop evil is not the same as violence to perpetuate evil.
Swelled head, or otherwise, when I encounter a FINE mind like yours not rewarded by the society around you, it's like seeing the seeds of a gorgeous plant fall onto asphalt.
I am NOT very computer savvy, but isn't there something you could do on-line? Could others come to you to avoid the transportation problem? Could you tutor college students or high school students? It would seem that the injury was life's way (or I would say destiny's way) of re-routing you into something else.
Years ago when I taught school, one of my teenage students sustained a baseball injury bad enough to leave one leg slightly shorter than the other. This bothered him tremendously as his goal in life was to become a professional ball player.
I drew a picture of a tree on the blackboard, and asked the students what happened if its lower branches got cut? I explained that this form of pruning forced the tree to grow taller. And then I explained to that student (David), that perhaps life had cut off the lower branches (baseball) so that he'd be forced to grow "taller," into something else,something that demanded more of him, perhaps intellectually.
Because I live in the Bible belt, I can't see that a hip FM station would catch on here at all! A few years ago Michael Moore gave a talk at the University of Florida (near me), and the college newspaper, "The Alligator" had 3 editorials about Moore's talk. Not one was in any way, shape, or form positive. That's how the right wing Christians of this area define "free" speech. THEY control the dialog!
I taught at the community college where the pay scale was so bad, it was almost wiser for me to stay home. And while I miss classroom teaching (somewhat), for me to drive 45 miles to and fro, apart from burning the atmosphere unnecessarily, would probably earn me what I spent on gas.
I have done radio--as a guest, and television. I can tell you that my experience in Florida is evidence that the right wing came in and began to seriously control content starting back in l994-l995. That's when all my venues got cut off. Now, apart from an occasional Internet (unpaid) gig, I don't do either.
Because what you envisioned (radio) would need to be done on a local level, I don't see the possibility where I reside. As the safety net crumbles, I suspect more people will room together, adult children move "home," and so forth. I'm glad I heard my grandparents' stories of The Great Depression; this way I have at least some mental preparation for what may come.
Good luck, Metal. You have such a fine mind and give a good deal to this forum. I hope you are rewarded for that. Opportunities sometimes arrive in unexpected ways. Stay open to the prospect, that way "it" may find you.
I'm not surprised you've had previous experience as a teacher and guest on radio and television. I live in the bible belt, too but in a black majority area that within the black community has a basically middle 1980s retro-liberal flavor to it. A lot of them cling to a nostalgic image of a Democratic Party that ceased to exist after 1986.
We have a lot of Hispanics and many undocumented workers here but they tend to keep their politics to themselves within their own communities, insulated by the language barrier. I sense within their community that there is rising distrust of both major Parties (and with good cause). Most of them have not been in the U.S. long enough to remember the pre-1980 Democratic Party.
I have a certification to teach English overseas. I could just never earn enough after 2008 to relocate. I've thought about tutoring English, history or media studies but to me that seems like very sporadic work and I need regular work that pays at least enough to cover rent and all basic expenses.
I'm not the most computer savvy person, either. Graduated university a few years before all that came in. I learned how to build them and troubleshoot basic hardware in the late '90s and did help desk work until all those jobs in my area went to India a few years later. Never did learn how to program them or create websites.
Thanks for your suggestions and wishing me luck. I've got many blessings to count compared to many who have things much worse than I do. I try to be philosophical about things. I've had many blessings in my life and wonderful memories, too. I have some very wonderful close friends.
I don't know what your neighborhood is like with respect to your concerns about possibly buying a gun to defend yourself. Since you personally dislike guns you might consider buying a couple of tasers. They allow you to keep a safer distance than a hand stunner (which is basically a little electric cattle prod that you have to touch your assailant with). Tasers fire a little dart on a thin wire connected to the handset's power source and can deliver a much more powerful shock than a stunner. Their current can also penetrate clothing better because of the physical barb.
In the Depression when wandering unemployed or hungry people came to the door folks often asked them to go around to the back door so right-wing neighbors wouldn't see and then gave them some food. These days if you do that sort of thing it would be better if someone who lives with you was there with you as a witness when you do it so they don't try anything on you because you are alone. If you are alone and they knock and ask for food, I'd tell them, "Just a minute!" and go leave some food outside the door on the opposite side of the house--and then go back to the door they knocked on and tell them to go around to the other door and pick it up outside.
You look at it from the point of view of staying safe in your house. I look at it from the point of view of what I'll have to do to survive in my tent if I get evicted. I saw a news report the other day where they said Las Vegas is on track to see 40,000 police evictions from apartments and houses this year. These are final evictions where the occupants typically have fifteen minutes or so to grab what they can and get out. They showed a young family with a toddler being evicted. This country has become deeply sick.
Dear Siouxrose and metal,
Thank you both for posting your thoughts so eloquently. If I may join in the discussion, ...
"My sister and I were discussing this... she (an Aries, i.e. ruled by Mars) wants to purchase a gun. I stated that were I to use a gun to protect property and harm another human being, the karmic loss would be too great. It would probably be better to hand over any goods. What then, does the argument become, if another wishes to take possession of your very life? (I don't have an answer.)"
Dedicated philosophers haven't found consensus of what is surely an ancient question of our nature and of right and wrong. Killing to protect property, or killing to protect life, and the karmic implications... You must be speaking of karmic loss for the soul, which would extend beyond this life of a time on the earth. I have faith, after searching mind and heart and resulting personal experiences, and after many others' anecdotal experiences which cannot be explained away by mere physical laws, that we are more than shortlived beings. The question is tied to the big question of who and what and why we are. Big questions, no easy answers, so we can only answer with our own mind and heart.
"These are questions a civil society should never have been put in a position to answer." Or, how can we avoid forever the questions? Maybe we must eventually face the questions to learn the answers. Maybe time runs out eventually for life on this planet. Maybe that's all there is, maybe not.
"I've often explained that the unnecessary wars abroad are causing karmic blowback at home. And while the particulars rest above my 'spiritual station,' and are therefore hardly mine to answer, it would appear that many innocents are already suffering for what is being done in their names, often without their consent." I think if we follow our mind and heart we do find the answers.
"There is a reason why every spirtual Master/Avatar has largely taught the same precepts. It's because they are true. No society that lives by the sword to the extent it impoverishes its own people, can other than die (or come apart) by it. Drosera said he believed in cause and effect, but wished to decouple that premise from karma. Ultimately, the two cannot BE decoupled... the Law holds, as does gravity. Belief is not required." Calling it the law of karma or the law of cause and effect, I would think the effects we have are the results of important choices we make, and that if we want different results we have to make new choices. I agree with you that the two can't be decoupled and are one. I also think that choices can be made out of desire, or fear of punishment. I know what I desire and it is not hell on earth, which is often caused by unloving acts. I also agree with you that the truth remains no matter belief.
"US karma is tainted by the spilt blood of innocents. Nor has the addict (to violence) stopped, to alter his behavior. No nation stands exempt from, or above the Law of Karma." SR Actions do have consequences. The US may merely be assuring that some day when the tide turns it will be on the receiving end of fury and violence. And then how long can the revenge be sustained? Is all there is to existence really merely about how long violence and power can sustain one? If so, there would be no point to living, IMHO. Do some people think there can be an eventual winner in Us vs. Them? I believe it's never too late to make new choices for a different kind of life on earth.
The suggestion of local people banding together to make local radio broadcasts, to counter MSM, is excellent! What if we all explored the possibilities and reported to each other what we find.
Hi Donnalou,
I'm going to look into both low power FM and getting time for my own volunteer show on an established independent listener sponsored station. I think they have their own online streaming but I'll have to confirm it. If I see your name again after I look into these things I'll add what I find to a comment replying to one of your comments. Thanks for your positive response to the idea of low power FM radio.
>>Low power FM radio stations are micro-local stations with very limited broadcast ranges. If enough of them could blanket a large city with contiguous broadcast ranges they could mimic the audience market penetration of a single larger commercial FM radio station.
Internet radio can reach anyone with a computer. I know a person who runs an Internet radio station out of the Southern USA. They basically just play various forms of music along with dialogue but anyone with a computer can participate as a DJ or broadcaster.
The Cost is the price of your computer in essence and your monthly internet fees. You can also subscribe to a Hosting service that will carry the Station for you for less then 10 dollars a month.
Example
http://voscast.com/
You do not need to be tech savvy at all. 6.95 a month and you can run your own station from the internet.
The etymological root of the word "evil" includes "overstepping proper limits; exceeding due measure"- look it up.
"Economy" in the root meaning is the care, balance and maintenance of the home and land. Predatory capitalism conflates meanings into numbers for measurement. Politicians who practice the support and are supported by predatory capitalism are foisting a 'bubble' of 'evil' conflation in calling their 'measurements' "the economy".
Virtually everything human, which would nurture economic health, in every positive originary meaning of the concept is being negated in the public sphere, while at the same time demanding that that this guillotine of 'evil' be CHOSEN by the very human beings from whom the health of life is being extracted.
This struggle for the very language and meaning of life is the fighting of an idea and the capacity to just plain live as social human beings. The economic measurement IS NOT THE ECONOMY!! It is an interpretation of reality that by virtue of strong arming of the social contract in which we pool resources for societal good, something fundamental to every form of healthy life, is taken in a sleight-of-hand and ...poof... turned into an abstract spread-sheet image to which the perpetrators (finance mavens) point and claim it is the be all and end all, when in fact it is hot air - another manufactured bubble.
Hang tough, be loving, non-violent, firm, and stand together - awakening Tea Party, left/right/ red, black, yellow, white, young old, all of us!! together we stand, divided we fall.
Sophistry - the presentation of an idea with the intent to mislead characterizes the phase we are experiencing.
Excellent comment, except you lost me at "awakening Tea Party." What does that mean to you?
For my own emotional and psychological wellbeing I hold eternal hope that folks so ravaged by the deceit that they gather as Koch funded Tea Party will wake up. When they do (not if), it will be due to awakening to their real democratic power to negotiate. Thats why documentation of Koch et al is so important. Keep adding to it, keep speaking truth to power. Am I naive? I don't think so.
It looked very promising in the late 1960's also - it looked like great enlightenment was imminent among all the people. Then apparently the power structure took over the media and manipulated enough of the people away from those views that we have swung to the opposite extreme. This took place during the 1970's. It was hard then; it will be MUCH harder this time around, and even with a good result, it will be temporary. It is ALWAYS temporary. The forces of corporate greed are so very powerful, and so very persistent.
Several studies have shown that the bulk of the Tea Parties is comprised by white, male, over 50 small and medium-sized business owners (the petite bourgeoisie). My personal experience attending and protesting their rallies in my State is that most of the ones I've seen or traded arguments with are proud bigots who eagerly take up bitter condemnation of any group of scapegoats served up to them by right-wing rant radio and FOX "News."
In most countries the petite bourgeoisie is always envious of the more economically and politically powerful upper-middle/professional class bourgeoisie who most directly serve the interests and wishes of the upper-class. That is because the upper-middle/professional class bourgeoisie is much more resilient to full-blown economic Depressions than the petite-bourgeoisie and always have been.
Even during the French Revolution, the guillotine was first turned on the aristocracy and later exerted its final fury against the more affluent members of the petite bourgeoisie. The physicians, lawyers, bankers, business managers and accountants (professional bourgeoisie) who most directly served the aristocracy got away comparatively unscathed.
Prior to the "free trade" regime gutting our domestic middle-class manufacturing base like a sturgeon, the American petite bourgeoisie was both more dependent on domestic middle-class labor to manufacture products and components of products that it sold, and as a consumer market to purchase its goods and services.
Over the last 16 years since NAFTA, our petite bourgeoisie have developed the ignorant conceit that they can, as a class, thrive by serving only the upper-middle/professional class and upper-class, and rely on foreign labor to manufacture most of their products or product components and rely on online sales to consumer markets outside the U.S. to replace diminishing numbers of domestic middle-class purchasers of their products and product components.
I personally don't believe this business model is economically sustainable for more than ten to fifteen years at the most. I think the more the middle-class vanishes the more disposable consumer spending and members of the petite bourgeoisie it will take with it.
I think many many white conservative small and medium-sized business owners who have bought into Tea Party propaganda and scapegoating are now being fattened for the slaughter by their plutocratic puppeteers just like the middle-class was during the 1980s and early 1990s. A thriving manufacturing middle-class was the goose that laid the golden eggs that the petite bourgeoisie sucked on for the last 65 years.
I don't see a significant number of Tea Partiers waking up until enough of them have been been kicked out of the petite bourgeoisie and into the lower-class because of the velocity of middle-class shrinkage. It is going to take six to ten years for the public sector portion of the middle-class (the last, strongest, working age demographic in the remnant middle-class) to be eviscerated and another 35 years for retiring Baby Boomers to slowly pass from the scene.
But retirees tend to engage in much less "impulse spending" of the type that buoys many small and medium-sized businesses and many foreign markets for their wares are prone to the same collapses as the rest of the neo-liberal cannibal cassino globalized mafia market economy. This is why it is particularly stupid for Tea Partiers to buy into the Wall Street/corporate & far-right media myth that "regulation is risky" with respect to Wall Street.
Wait a little and you'll see more tough acting bigoted Tea Party baboons than you care to count suddenly turn into the biggest bunch of temper tantrum throwing crybaby screamers DEMANDING social services AFTER they've fallen out of their neo-liberal small business (oxymoron) tree and have to face the real world with the rest of the have-nots.
That isn't a Marxist analysis and I'm not a Marxist. Nouriel Roubini echoed a Marxist analysis of a certain aspect of the present economy today:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/14-4
An 18th century French revolutionary might have made the same analysis that I made, or a 1950s era left libertarian (had they been able to grasp the concept of online product sales). It is basically a common sense analysis based on thinking about aspects of the American class system over the last four decades. When the American middle-class was large and healthy most members of it seldom thought about the notion of class. This was a bad habit that has lingered and also afflicts the lower-class who still semi-consciously believe there is such a thing as upward class mobility in this country--which is all most of the lower-class care to think about the concept of class at all.
Under present increasingly dire top-down class warfare, this lack of critical thought by the middle- and lower-classes about the very idea of class itself is helping the plutocracy to dis-inform many present and past members of the middle-class and even some members of the lower-class in order to deliver scapegoats to them to blame for things that are not due to the activities of these various scapegoat groups, but are, in fact, the result of vicious capitalist class struggle that has included all the major tenets of economic neo-liberalism as applied over the last forty years by the upper-class and upper-middle/professional classes involved in politics and mass media to the middle- and lower-class.
These include: Corporate collectivization of family farmland into gigantic industrial farms; several forms of usury; absolute advantage "free trade"; deregulation of corporations (including big banks); deregulation of mass media cross-platform ownership; weakening or elimination of government oversight with respect to the federal cabinet level regulatory apparatus and State level EPDs; conduct of the Federal Reserve completely beyond its charter and any substantive oversight; massive federal government bailouts and subsidies for criminal speculatory banks, hedge funds, other shadow banks and large insurance firms who insure derivatives; similar bailouts for politically connected crony corporations, and militarized neo-liberal (read: illegal neo-conservative) foreign policies reliant on the obliteration of habeas corpus, the Constitution and Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment so far), the Geneva Conventions and international war crimes statutes that the U.S. itself was instrumental in creating as a body of international law.
I believe the Marxist critique of capitalism is correct, but that his proposed solutions to the problems of capitalism always failed on the scale necessary to govern large States because Marx lacked clear stepping stones between major (and incredibly difficult) social, political and economic transitions--such as the withering away of the State with its inherent hierarchy of ruling, managerial, propaganda and secret police elites that were crucial to the initial revolution but which Marx intended to be gradually rendered obsolete once the revolution was accomplished, and to be replaced by rule by proletariat committees all belonging to one class.
I don't believe doctrinal communism ever worked except on very small scales in cooperative religious communities that all pre-date communism except for the more modern socialist Israeli kibbutz--but even kibbutzim had religion as their primary social glue and, for all its faults, religion seems to help the resiliency of these types of communities over time. I think they are better suited to the adverse environmental future now beginning to unfold upon us than contemporary neo-liberal capitalist concepts of "community" or the common good which are unsustainably threadbare to the point of tragi-comedy.
Capitalism is predatory by nature. So why the shock?
Because it has finally hit middle class white mid-westerners?
Yes, you're right. But middle-class white people have long believed that as indifferent our country has always been to the lives of others, TPTB hold a special place in their hearts for them. My, aren't they in for a shock, if they've yet to wake up to it.
The MSM and Fox News in particular will try to keep them asleep, or at least try to put the blame on the "others".
This is what all good people should fear. That is the blaming of the others. We tend to be a bit isolated here in that those that read these articles and post their thoughts of them tend to be of the same mind set. They see the problems and the real source of the same.
Even with that there are those that come here to point fingers at the poor or the immigrant suggesting them as the root cause.
If one leaves these boards the voice claiming it the fault of those "Mexicans" or "Blacks" or of China gets even stronger. Indeed in other forums there groups that claim the real estate bubble was caused by the poor people borrowing money for homes they could not afford.
Or that raising taxes on the rich is simply theft .
I know some here believe there an "awakening" going on among the people. I do not see it yet. I see it here but most are already awake.
Thousands of people will line up for a few dozen jobs offered at some firm, or in some line waiting for subsidized houses. They will wait hours and hours in the blazing sun for a job or home they will never get. The Police forces will not arrest them for impeding traffic or gathering without a permit.
Should these same thousands carry signs protesting the lack of Jobs they are dismissed as troublemakers and the Police will start rounding them up and charging them with crimes.
Something is very wrong.
All true.
GW NORTH: There are many ominous parallels with l930's Germany. When the elites leave nothing in the pie but crumbs, the people are directed to fight brutally over those crumbs. Today the persona non grata (or taught-to-be-hated scapegoat) is the other Semite, the Muslim or Arab. And as you added, the illegal alien, impoverished Black ghetto boy, uppity feminist, or openly gay official also function as default "blame" candidates to be used where necessary by "The Controllers."
Had the deregulation of media not allotted the lion's share to the likes of Rupert Murdoch, or to hate radio jocks who love to pump their mostly white male audiences up on everything and everyone (except those responsible!) as targets for their anger, your post might be laughed off.
A population reduction is likely. When nature sends earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, and famines, she's making a statement, too. Meanwhile beyond the wars ravaging, are the toxic chemicals left behind. We have not yet seen the full genetic impact of these awful substances.
I relate these horrific items to suggest that all this ugliness is part of a cleansing, and the awakening may be ushered in by it; or it may well up from the ashes once the beast comes down. Most of us know when it falls, there will be victims.
This is why the belief in multiple lifetimes is helpful at such an interval. I have a very naive friend who insists that EVERY life has the same amount of joy and sorrow. When I bring to her attention the starving, impoverished children in Africa, she insists that I have not walked in those children's shorn shoes. Perhaps. I think rather that in the full sum of existences, we might all have the same amount of laughter and tears, misfortune and luck... but then how many are positioned to see that long arc of time to understand how it makes metaphysical sense of the calamitous inequality that screams all around us right now?
This is why some are atheists. From the standpoint of human logic, it would seem no God could be cruel enough to cast mortals into so dire a mix.
And it's why the Buddhists teach the way off the wheel of karma... apart from good, unselfish works (to burn past karma), they teach that the way out is through anesthetizing one's self to any and all desires of the earth plane. Note how that very axiom represents a 180 degree departure from the very heart and thrust of advertising... which is intent on creating desires where there are none.
Earth School 101... not for the faint-hearted!
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
--Last stanzas of William Blake’s sublime “Auguries of Innocence”
Sublime indeed. Thanks.
Coercing your conformity and soliciting submission:
There are those, of course, who do not want us to speak about the now revealed government secrets. Why? Because while the truncheon (gun and Taser) may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.
Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, to the enunciation of truth, and the truth is that there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?
Cruelty and indifference, intolerance and oppression--and where one you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting submission.
How did this happen?
Who's to blame?
Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others--and they will be held accountable--but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.
I know why you did it.
I know you were afraid.
Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense.
Fear got the best of you.
And in your panic, you turned to the President.
He promised you order.
He promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
What WikiLeaks did was to remind this country of what it has forgotten.
Mr. Assange's hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words. They are perspectives.
So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow Julian Assange's arrest to pass unmarked.
But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand in support of WikiLeaks.--V
It is easy to see this story as it can relate to privatization. Some formerly federal housing has been bought by private corporations, who cut corners for profit, and who could shut down just as quickly as in this story.
By this time of year, the high meadows of Mr. Rainier (Tahoma) are usually filled with wild flowers. None this year: the snow has not yet melted. Global warming-driven climate change is the powder keg in all of this. Those really crazy rich people who are living in a bubble of their own making cannot, cannot see science let alone reality. They are going to be kicked on their asses by the problems associated with global warming.
The rest of us? We'll come together, as we always do in bad times. We'll make do, share, change ourselves to the new situation.
You can't eat stock certificates.
"Republicans and the MSM continuously maneuver people into feeling powerless and hopeless, teaching them to trust no party, no public servant, no neighbor. They constantly work to discredit the weak and blame the poor, whenever possible throwing them off the bus to fend for themselves."
"Republicans and the MSM..." Its the CONSERVATIVES stupid! Why is it so hard to name them? Cons don't have any trouble constantly blaming libs for all their crimes and failures. Otherwise, fine article.
Kinda like the right calling the MSM the "liberal media"
Caroline: Thank you for another truth-revealing article. I am sorry that for your years of dedicated efforts, you have to witness much unraveling before your stunned eyes. When I think of Ralph Nader or the Cousteau family or David Suzuki, those who dedicated their lives to the makings of a more civil society and healthier earth, only to face the same rapacious encroachments of corporations without conscience... it strengthens me. That's because if THEY haven't given up, how can we?
No one can say whether the comment posted here, the thoughts exchanged, the protest attended, the letter written to an editor, the book published, the spontaneous action (Tim De Christopher comes to mind) taken... is not The Item that poses as the straw that breaks the beast's back. We must act where we are compelled to act, and continue in our courage, to speak Truth... not only to power, but to one another, and any with ears open enough to listen.
The revolution next to come is organic. It does not require a leader, it will be more like a groundswell. We see its intimations in so many nations already. The people of this world, whether through Internet, TV, or everyday conversations, have had a taste of freedom, have known too much to allow the old Pharaohic (* poetic license, if you will) model to oppress them again.
Not only the earth is changing... there is a quickening among The People. The world is shaking loose of its shackles.
Hey Caroline! Being a liberal from waaay back, I agree with 99% of what you have to say. But please, leave out the gratuitious swipes at Israel. When you say "We provide arms to Israel to keep 1.6 million Palestinians imprisoned in 140 sq.mi. of the Gaza Strip." you simply betray your ignorance of a problem which is a whole lot more complicated than that.
jltympanum sez: "When you say "We provide arms to Israel to keep 1.6 million Palestinians imprisoned in 140 sq.mi. of the Gaza Strip." you simply betray your ignorance of a problem which is a whole lot more complicated than that."
Actually, her missive showed a distinct lack of ignorance.
"We are targeting poor peasants in Afghanistan with drones purchased with our tax dollars and operated by professional killers." I was at the airport going through TSA this morning, and the guy behind me, with fresh buzz cut, had a camoflaged backpack (Desert Storm camo design). And on its back was a sticker that read: "We kill for peace". I just googled this and found that it's serious, and the website that sell's it says 'show your support for our military' by buying their patch. This country is going to the dogs... the dogs of war.
Bravo Caroline Arnold!
Caroline Arnold is almost there.
The problem is that she specifically criticizes corporations, the republicans, the MSM, and Obama, BUT
where is the appropriate and deserved criticism of the fraudulence we call "the democrats"?
This line, "Republicans and the MSM continuously maneuver people into feeling powerless and hopeless, teaching them to trust no party, no public servant, no neighbor", is also a form of "maneuver"ing.
While the above statement is true of republicans, what the democrats do is to deceive people into hoping with a deliberately false notion of "power" when the fact is that the democrats are also the tools of corporate domination.
The republicans depend upon the democrats to shove the agenda (which they both share) down our throats.
There are two abusers, but you want me to excuse one of them.
Why?