As The New Year Begins, The Old Year Refuses To Die

The New Year may be here but
last year's problems and crimes have stuck to our shoes and we can't
seem to scrape them off. This was the least festive New Years
in memory, and for good reason.

In Gaza, an Israeli invasion
posing as an act of self-defense escalates with targeted assassinations
and an expected ground invasion. American political leaders are for
the most part silent, unwilling, perhaps even afraid to encourage the
UN's call for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid.

Chris Hedges, a journalist
with deep convictions and high conscience, and who spent seven years
covering wars and the Middle East for the New York Times, can now write
without the pretense of a forced detachment and feigned neutrality.
His anger is not just directed at Israel, writing:

Our self-righteous celebration
of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel.
We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage.
We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing.
We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection
of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography
have made the circumstances of our birth different.

We forget that we are all absurd
and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate
and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said,
entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens
more just."

... Israel uses sophisticated
attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps
and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense,
no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor,
no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war.
It is murder.

Such passionate voices are
rarely found in our media where calculated nuance can rationalize everything
and everyone.

Few in the media even recognize
how they are being manipulated and spun on this war by an organ of state
power, not a mere advocacy group.

The Guardian reveals: "Israel
believes its has won broad international support in the media for its
actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body
has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing
to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message
to the world's press.

....Israeli officials have
also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry
assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast
media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime
while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes. Speaking for the Israeli
military, Major Avital Leibovich said: "Quite a few outlets are
very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering ... I am
sure it is a result of the new co-ordination."

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post,
the former Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman said: "I
don't know how long it will last but at this moment Israel has no small
measure of understanding and support, and even approval, from many countries."

"No small measure of Understanding
and support!"

Translation: Their propaganda
has become our propaganda. smoothly infiltrated into our news. The Other
has been dehumanized and demonized as The Enemy. There are few reports
in our press like this one in the Times of London explaining:

"Gaza is a secular society
where people listen to pop music, watch TV and many women walk the streets
unveiled ...while the horrific scenes in Gaza and Israel play themselves
out on our television screens, a war of words is being fought that is
clouding our understanding of the realities on the ground."

Its not just foreign issues
that are sanitized this way. The economic crisis here at home gets the
same treatment.

We were told that Ponzi
King Bernie Madoff would reveal all by New Year's Day. And indeed
he submitted a disclosure form to the court but then had it marked confidential
so we the public and those who were defrauded still don't know how
much Bernie, under house arrest in his luxury apartment, lost or profited.

In fact, it was on only on
New Years Day that Reuters which specialized in financial coverage pointed
out that our whole economy may be a ponzi-scheme.

Quoting Tim Lee of the consultancy
pi Economics in Stamford, Connecticut, the news service reported:

"We too thought our retirement
funds and houses were growing miraculously, though ours was an illusion
fueled by debt rather than fraud, and we too made plans based on those
asset values that now stand in ruins."

"The financial system
as a whole has had the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme if we look
at it fundamentally," said Lee, who was very early in warning about
deflation.

"By this I mean that we
should think about the true value of assets as being derived from the
future flow of goods and services that the assets can lay claim to or
produce. If market prices of financial and real estate assets rise a
lot but there is no increase in the ability of the economy to provide
goods and services in the future, then the apparent increase in wealth
is illusory."

The key word in the paragraph
above is "think," something too many of us are often too rushed
to do. Think about the sources and spin of the news we read. Think about
the agendas and practices of the financial wizards who claim to know
so much even as they lose millions.

And think about what our next
President should do and can do about the crisis we are in. I was interviewing
Newsweek's Johnathan Alter who wrote a bestseller about FDR and the
New Deal about parallel's with the moment we are in. His response:

"Well, my book about Franklin
Roosevelt is called the defining moment and Obama's election night in
Chicago and in several other speeches he said we're in a new defining
moment where we are about to redraw again the American social contract
what we owe each other as a people. I think Obama has been very very
smart in what he is borrowing from FDR. He's not borrowing every particular
of every program even some particular ideology. The most important words
in that famous first inaugural were not 'the only thing we have to fear
is fear' itself, [but rather] 'its action and action now.'"

Action? What kind of Action?
To benefit whom? And how? All questions and issues we need to think
about, and then act on ourselves.