There is a great outcry now from the 'people' globally that governments have been letting them down on oh so many ways. Naturally, this outcry of dissatisfaction focuses its hostility on our elected leaders - I suppose the logic of this is that if we replace our leaders, things will change. Wrong! Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Those who are controlling and creating so many of the injustices that 'people' are so infuriated about are not in government - they are in business, BIG business. Big business (define this anyway you like but most certainly include all those corporations involved in globalisation, outsourcing and trans national operations) runs the world. And it is unregulated by 'we the people', whichever people you happen to identify with.
As long as people identify government as the source of the problem and create headlines and chaos towit, the real masters of the universe can operate without transparency and with impunity carrying on the ethic of 'it's just good business' alliances with the more horrid human rights abusers and war-mongering countries of earth. The distraction of our misdirected anger blinds us to what is going on in every continent of the globe, which if brought to center stage, would indeed cause a revolution.
Case in point Eircom of Ireland, biggest communication provider on the island: now has struck a multimillion deal with Israel: Isreal, the country our entire Island protested as it bombed women and children in Gaza like it was shooting fish in a barrel. Yet all of Eircom's customers are Irish. 'Good business', in big business, has no morality, only profit.
You might think this is a bad thing which we can do nothing about. Not so. It is precisely the leverage the 'people' (of Ireland in this case) need to change their government's policies (read multi-national legally pleasant climate established to encouragement foreign investments.) Profits are derived from one source ultimately: consumers. And we the people are the consumers. This gives us control, if we can only join together and use it.
If even 25% of a corporation's comsumers would boycott its products and services because of practices contrary to the 'will of the people', (such as polluting our environment, or violating human rights standards, or doing business with rogue nations guilty of international war crimes), if 25% would simply keep their money in their pockets, people would rule corporations.
Sounds too simple, doesn't it? And yet the most effective tools are often the simplest. Corporations cannot exist without profits...if they sustain losses, their stock price drops, then the corporation loses. Study business theory for years and you will find no more critical principle for 'good business' practices that this one, used to guide today's corporate strategy. When profits decrease, corporations scramble to find out why. If the why is a boycott, the offending practice will soon be eliminated from their business strategies.
So while the Irish people are busy protesting the government, Eircom quietly signs a contract with Israel. Perhaps this argument for boycott activism is not sufficiently convincing yet.
Here is another dimension. Eircom is now required to hold every text and email (and various other electronic communications) for at least a year, but up to 4 years for every person using its service in Ireland. Any idea how much data storage that is? Will Eircom be building new data retention facilities in Ireland which would provide jobs and stimulus to our economy; Irish people do afterall provide all of Eircoms profits!? Or will it be outsourcing this function to places which cost less?
Outsourced functions employ low wage employees in whichever country they are located. Are lower wage foreign workers likely to treat your electronic personal data with the care and duty you would expect from your government? Who will be able to access all our data and what assurances do we have our information is kept private and safe?
Eircom has an abiding interest in its shareholders only; unfortunately the Irish people are not a priority.
This is but one example of how the corporatocracy dictates how the world runs. If 'we the people' disagree, we will have to demonstrate that if self-regulation does not give business practices some ethic for the good of common consumers, then perhaps some profit shock-therapy will be more persuasive.
If people feel that 'good business' should actually have some 'good' meaning to the benefit of of a civilised world, then people must redefine this term for corporations. This can be accomplished by a boycott of at at least 25% of a company's clients. It is this simple.
Getting a boycott going is actually not all that difficult; only two things are required:
Keep your money in your pocket for products from offending corporations.
Talk about why you are doing this, to neighbours, market owners and write a letter to the corporation itself. Email anyone you can think of.
Yep. That's it. Demonstrations and protests are absolutely necessary; together with a boycott they can be much more effective. For those of you who are Eircom customers and cannot disrupt your service, I recommend withholding payment (25% of clients will do the job) until all questions on data security and Israeli contracts are fully and satisfactorily answered.
If only 1/4 of consumers would implement this simple protest which requires no marching, sign-painting, driving to Dublin and parking, we could change not only the policies of Eircom, but the policies of all multinational corporations.
And it is the corporations controlling our laws, whether that is obvious or not. The movie Network was released in 1976.
I was quite relieved when Australia citizens managed to quash their government's proposal to make all Internet Service Providers spies for the government, ISPs Give Rudd Government Two Finger Salute. It appears that Europeans and Americans have not managed to live up to the Aussies in political fervor to protect citizen privacy rights on the internet.
So I guess we shall get what we deserve.Yes it now is legal for your ISP to keep every stroke of yourkeyboard for a year or longer. And, thanks to Mr. Sarkozy, the new team cheerleader for team USA, all data electronically held on EU citizens can be shared with the National Security Agency of the US, even if you are not a criminal, even if you are not a suspected terrorist, even if you are the re-incarnation of Mother Theresa. EU Privacy Rights to be Taken Away
OK? Well it even gets better. This effectively means that private commercial companies hold all sorts of personal data about every email, SMS or electronic communication make by every EU citizen. And in this day of grand outsourcing, who knows even in which country our data could be held.
We are not yet sure about the security arrangements on this data to prevent its misuse, but what do we have to worry about if we have nothing to hide?I have blogged on this subject until I am sick inside of the complacency of the general population on the issue. Getting the word out is half the battle: getting people to pay attention to the seriousness of these incremental controls on every aspect of our private lives is the other half of the battle.
We must use word of mouth and tell each other about directives such as the one below if we are to be a democratically responsible citizenry.This goes for all countries...the Aussies did it. So can we. But we must start talking about it and keep on until this issue is addressed to our satisfaction.The writing is on the wall.
EU Data Retention Directive provokes widespread condemnation
Critics speak out against law forcing ISPs to record every email and SMS from 15 March
Ian Williams
computing.co.uk Fri, 13 Mar 2009 Source UK internet service providers will have to all store communication information from customers for a full year starting on 15 March, as part of the controversial EU Data Retention Directive (PDF).
Under the directive, details of every email, phone call and text message sent or received, including information such as IP address and time of use, will have to be recorded.Police and security experts will be able to request access to the information to help combat terrorism and cyber crime, but only with a court order.
Nonetheless, the move has sparked serious concerns from privacy groups, IT security firms and legal experts.Susan Hall, an ICT and media partner at law firm Cobbetts LLP, maintained that such a database is "the antithesis of what the whole internet is about"."There have been regular and well known cases when the police criminals' record database has illegally been accessed by 'insiders', using it to vet employees and do favours for friends," she said.
The directive has provoked criticism from EU member states over the cost of the operation, which is estimated at £46m over an eight-year period, as well as fears of privacy violation."Given the numerous data breaches of late, it is hardly surprising that concern has been raised over these proposals," said Jamie Cowper, director of EMEA marketing at security firm PGP Corporation."With public confidence about data security at an all time low, it is absolutely essential that ISPs take their obligations seriously.
If privacy violation is to be avoided, and the huge cost of this operation is to be justified, the security of the public's data must be watertight."If the EU plans to roll out similar legislation to other sectors, they are going to have to demonstrate to the public that every step is being taken to defend their data.
If not, it is fair to say that we are just one data breach away from a major public backlash."Hall went on to ask: "The government is trying to impose liabilities on service providers, and for what? The theoretical possibility that it will stop terrorists?
"People applying for access to the database will, on the basis of what we've already seen happen with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, use a slippery slope argument: first arguing for using the information for sex offenders and other serious criminals, but ultimately using it to worry about parking tickets or whether children are entitled to be enrolled in the school they've applied to, as in the recent Poole Council case."
Hall also believes that these measures will have little discernable impact on the fight against terrorism, as the criminals involved will just find ways of bypassing the checks by using other people's unsecured Wi-Fi connections, hotspots or pay-as-you-go 3G modems."It is also very interesting to note that the European Court of Human Rights ruled in January that a similarly sweeping DNA database, which contained genetic samples from thousands of citizens who had not been convicted of any crime, violated privacy rights," she said.
"Looking at the comments made in this recent case, the ISP database will run the UK government foul of the European Convention on Human Rights, and on this basis alone should be reconsidered. "Thus far, ISPs that have attempted to stop these laws being implemented, such as in Ireland and Slovakia, have been unsuccessful.With the deadline looming, a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers' Association claimed that most firms are prepared for the directive's implementation.
"We have made our members aware of what is required and, as far as we know, they will all be compliant," he said.
The fabric of American consciousness is an enigma to most Americans: they have been trained to see the Emperor's new clothes and questions concerning how they came to be sure of who and what they are, are taboo in mainstream media. Yet the culture which suckles them has been deliberate in isolating their lives from those of their neighbours and from the rest of the world. It is impossible for them to see another way of being, for the most part.
That is why conversations with Americans usually focus on one of three topics, me, me or me. I feel a certain amount of pity for this zombie like mentality while simultaneously loathing it. Yet they have not gotten to be denizens of the US Twilight Zone without the help of many professionals who have given them a sense of reality which serves the system entirely. An excellent exploration of the American psychosis that serves its masters below.
Our authorized sanities are so many Nembutals. "Normal" citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other like cotton-packed capsules in a bottle. Perpetual mental out-patients. Maddeningly sterile jobs for strait-jackets, love scrubbed into an insipid "functional personal relationship" and Art as a fantasy pacifier... And we all know this… Slowly, very slowly we are led nowhere.
---San Francisco Digger Papers, 1965
HOPKINS VILLAGE, BELIZE.
Sitting down here in Central America happily abusing my health, occasionally, between the hangovers and the bouts with sand fleas and mosquitoes comes an insight or two, or at least what passes for insight in my lowbrow take on life. One of these is just how damned lucky the Third World is that it cannot afford a sophisticated mental health system. By that I mean the kind in the “developed countries,” where murder and suicide rates are quintuple what they are here in this village. Not that we are without own village resources. My Garifuna buddy Eljay, was in what we would call a depressed state a few months ago, and went to a local “spirit doctor.” The wizened old spirit mojo man cured Eljay with a single utterance: “Quit smokin’ da ganja for one month.” It worked. Total cost: About $2.50 and a pound of red beans. They say the old spirit doctor also treats such things as sexual dysfunction, though I sure as hell cannot detect much evidence of dysfunction, judging from the noises in the village cabanas and under beachside palms at night.
In any case, it causes me to wonder why is there enough pain and alienation to sustain America’s umpteen billion dollar mental health business and its 400-plus specialties, not to mention the inner self-help industry and Deepak Chopra’s royal court. Why is it that during the months I spend in America I meet so many obviously sick fuckers, some successfully practicing law or politics, others homeless and schizophrenic?
You need not be Marcus or R.D. Lang to feel the stress, depression, boredom and loneliness permeating everyday life up there in Gringolia. But to get an overview it does help to be a couple thousand miles outside the place. Kind of like being high in the stands at the racetrack with binoculars rather than down at the rail next to the paddock. Matters seem especially acute of late, with the entire American anthill in turmoil as its common god, the almighty economy, waves bye-bye while being noisily sucked down the global gurgler. Hell, twenty years ago mental health problems were already being described as “epidemic,” despite the joys of Facebook, iPod, and the consumption of some 25 million pounds of hot wings on Superbowl Sunday. A place where “normal” life includes Viagra, all the fried chicken you can stuff, round the clock televised crotch shots and HDTV as national mandate.
I used to think it was just some melancholic germ of my own that made me see a slowly increasing American alienation, anxiety and inner sadness over the span of my 62 years. Now however, I’m pretty convinced there is a national pathology at work, one which author Arthur Barsky called the “pathology of American normalcy.” Sounds accurate to me. In fact, this psychic poverty has been around so long it has become something of a norm. Despite that we have not resorted to cannibalism, single payer health care, or god forbid, socialism, we long ago passed into the realm of what we like to call an “unhealthy society.” Might not America’s psychological malaise be the result of knowing deep inside that life can hold more meaning --- be more joyful? More emotionally rewarding and fulfilling? In a word, healthier?
Americans who can afford to be, are obsessed with health of any kind. The rest of us chain smoke in despair. All of which makes tosses fresh red meat to the politicians, who offer “plans,” all of which come down to the same thing --- we pay for corporate expansion of both the insurance and “medical industry,” but through insignificantly different methods. Interestingly, despite our pursuit of constant medical attention and the construction of the planet’s largest, and most profitable health machinery, treatment factories for every real and imagined or industry manufactured ailment, surveys show, Americans do not trust doctors. They feel physicians are primarily businessmen or businesswomen who happen to practice medicine because that’s where the real grease, the big bucks are. This may or may not be true, but we see little evidence to counter their suspicions. Even the closest physician friend I have in the States insists on a $125 office visit --- cash at the front desk on the way out, please --- before he will refill a blood pressure prescription I’ve been taking for 15 years. He knows I do not have health insurance, but hey, what’s a bill and a quarter between friends? Well, it’s a month’s grub for some of us, or dinner and drinks for two at the country club for others.
By comparison, my doctor in Jalisco, Mexico, Jim Jaramillo, who practiced in Albuquerque for 30 years, invites me to ride into the surrounding ranch country and have a dawn drink with the Mexican cowboys, simply because he regards all his patients as friends. And “Nurse Judy,” who runs the main clinic here in Hopkins, whoops it up with the rest of her patients on Friday oldies night down by the beach. The village’s Dr. Anya, a Mayan-mestizo lady trained in Mister Castro’s famous Cuban institution, dropped by my cabana to examine the local kids on my front porch. For free. Then we played guitar together. I asked her if she could teach me any local folk songs. “No,” she said, “I’m into Iris Dementh.” Go figure. Anyway, none of these doctors require appointments.
But we started out talking about the psychic pathology of Americaness, didn’t we? So without going too far over ground well enough covered by better and more authoritative writers than I, the pathology of Americaness is entirely about human consciousness, a taboo subject in our declining industrial super state. The subject has been officially smothered, or even demonized by authority since it was first openly broached in the Sixties. However, those running the industrial government complex learned a few things too in the process. Particularly about the efficacy of dope. Being authoritarian and capitalist, they of course preferred downers over the mind expanding drugs. And ever since then corporately produced biochemicals, tranqs, mind numbing anti-depressants and the like, have been successfully used privately on individuals to squelch the psychic anguish produced in the Darwinian workhouse America has become. Not that I’m entirely opposed. As I’ve said before, if this officially sanctioned dope were a bit more ecstatic and colorful, I’d be right there in line for my share. Hell, I’m an American --- instant gratification works for me too. But an anesthetic to workhouse burnout just ain’t enough incentive. Beyond that, the street drugs are crap these days. So to our King Kong pharmaceutical industry, I say: “Work with me here guys!”
Seriously though, back in the Sixties, along with LSD, nature and Buddhism, I looked to psychology for answers. Sure, psychology was very much a bourgeois affectation and fad at the time. But it looked damned promising to many of us, including a redneck hippie with tons of cultural and family baggage to unload and an allergy to mindless toil --- especially those aspects of psychology that dealt with social realization.
But who’d have guessed it would become a massive and officially sanctioned ideological control arm of the state? A form of social control and containment of the citizenry through a governmental and corporately sponsored “mental heath system? And the way it does so is this: It refuses to acknowledge that our aggregate society holds any responsibility for the conditions it produces in our fellow individual members. Now collective societal responsibility is common sense for, say, a Dane or a Frenchman. Most of them anyway.
For Americans though, it’s an explosive issue. Because if we acknowledged collective responsibilities to the individual members of our society, then we would have to deal with the issue of class in this country. Some gestures are now being made in that direction, thanks to Obama, but it’s still America’s longest standing hot tater I doubt even he will hold very long. Every successful, well-off American, or even so called middle class Americans --- we seem to be unable to truly define them; even uninsured households earning under $25,000 most often define themselves as middle class, thanks to our national denial of our class system --- succeeds at the expense of some other American. Or more accurately at the expense of an entire unacknowledged underclass of them. Consequently, we get the “self-determination” and “individual initiative” stuff as an excuse and cover-up. An attractive one too, given that it implies some sort of superiority of effort or talent. And there’s no denying that life requires some of both from everyone. But that does not reconcile our larger than ever class discrepancies, much less the alienation one feels when he or she cannot trust that his or her society is operating on their behalf.
Whatever else can be said of capitalism, it is miraculous stuff, pure alchemy. It can privatize and corporatize any damned thing under the sun, turn a profit on it, and then make it a bulwark of corporate state control to boot. Even human misery and oppression of soul and mind. Psychological practice and its institutions benefit greatly from this. After all, they are in the alienation business. It is entirely in the profession’s best interests that it treat us as if our lives are lived in a vacuum, our loneliness and despair are entirely our own, as if there were no such thing as context, much less American society’s corrosive and toxic environment in which so many of us live out our lives. Put another way, it acknowledges our misery, then privatizes it, then administers lonely alienated “treatment” for our emptiness in a private void, one among tens of millions of like emptinesses in similar voids that are in no way supposed to be societal. No matter that there are enough sufferers to constitute an entire society in themselves. The result, whether or not by design, is to perpetuate the most venerable of American myths, that of the completely autonomous self. Which denies us the power and beauty, not to mention the healing and efficacy, of human unity. In the big picture, much of the U.S. mental health industry, and its associated systems, perpetuate and even propagate mental sickness perhaps as much as it alleviates, through its paradigms. In any case, for the most part, psychology as an institution has hardened into part of the national ideology, thanks to the catalyst of gobs of dough from the state. The American Psychological Association’s initial refusal to condemn member participation in the Bush regime’s torture told me all I needed to know about U.S. psych-officialdom.
This somehow reminds me of the old Soviet Union’s psychiatric handling of dissidents. If you did not display state defined norms, then you were deemed nuts, and needed medication, behavior modification or institutionalization. It was deemed impossible that those very norms may have been driving your condition. The similarities are there, particularly when you consider the massive growth of the U.S. prison industry and its reliance on pharmaceutical and behavior modification control. The entire machinery of education, social work, psychology, and medicine are meshed (though the practitioners would stoutly deny it) and help hold firm the class line in this country. Many of them do so unknowingly, of course, and are dedicated to helping fellow beings through the methods they have been taught --- and and are accredited through state sanctioned institutions of course. But the overwhelming majority seem to draw their paychecks and health insurance happily enough, Ever spend much time with the average mid-American social services psychologist? The kind who make recommendations in our juvenile courts, etc? On the whole they’re a sorry assed bunch if ever there was one, bureaucrats wrapped in the smug piety of social work. Others are far more aware, but fearful of calling bullshit on the system that pays the mortgage and sends the kids to college.
Given the economic and societal breakdown now underway and accelerating toward completion, Obama or no Obama (What is this thing of ours, this national obsession with saviors, elected or otherwise?), it’s bound to be interesting to see if they can indoctrinate, dope, counsel, and lock up or medicate the dissidence, and perhaps outright resistance that will occur. Whether the final American collapse takes four years or forty years is anybody’s guess. But it’s gonna take a passel of behavioral management experts, whether in psychological institutions, university research centers, or on Madison Avenue, to keep the lid on this puppy when she blows. However, I’m not ruling out the possibility that they just might help do that --- keep the lid on --- because they are state authorized and accredited to do so. The infrastructure of industrial strength administration of psychology is there. And has been ever since sheepskins were issued to “industrial psychologists.” Nobody in the Western World seems to see the irony and conflict in that term. But the fact is that even if 50 million Americans exploded tomorrow, they would have “snapped” alone, particulated and atomized in a very large and spread out country, and ultimately be administered treatment or institutionalized as “individuals.” Of course if they if they were more concentrated, which would put them in a situation to act in unison, then god help ‘em because they would then be a national security problem, the last thing you want to be in a security state.
Obviously, I’m no psychiatrist, and am sure to get plenty of email offering certain proof of that, plus proof that I am a paranoid nutcase with authority problems (I’ll gladly admit to the latter), though in more polite professional jargon. To which I say less politely, “Fuck ‘em all!” I see what I see.
And what I see, based upon my own experience and watching that of others, is that alienation and the pain of utter aloneness, is in the rootstock of nearly all psychic malady, excepting the clearly organic. If when we look around us in the world, we do not see ourselves in society, nor does society see itself in us, we eventually come to feel the sustained, unutterable pain of aloneness. This would seem the appropriate response for a member of our highly social species of flesh, and does not necessarily deem us ill, but often rather more human.
Unfortunately, Americans get laughed off the map for being overly human these days, dubbed emotional pussies, part of the Kumbaya crowd, unrealistic utopians …and if you are sincerely human enough, get your ass kicked by the system. To be so makes us the bane of the super rational, technological production driven society we have come to be. We got there partly through our weakness, shallow greed and mindless consent, but more so by the orchestrated world machinery benefiting powerful elites, both corporate, governmental and financial (is there a difference?) which have always been among us, though never in such strength.
Many years ago as a much younger man, I went through a couple of major depressions, the second of which brought me to the brink of suicide. In the first instance I was somewhat helped, through medication and “talk therapy,” by a psychologist who eventually killed himself. They found him in a tree in his back yard with his beeper going off. This is not to disparage the man in any way. Dr. John Farley was a man of good will, good intent and great compassion.
The second time though, I walked out of the abyss by myself. And along the way I encountered, sought out really, others on the same path. And I saw that together, in open sharing of our personal truths, most of not all of us were nowhere near mentally ill. Just sick. Sick even to the point of death in some cases, of our spiritual imprisonment within the Great Machine, but strong enough to refuse under any circumstances to dwell under its spiritual humiliation.
Contrary to what one might think, in the many years since I’ve not much thought about those experiences. Just moved on. But in this new and strange era in which we find ourselves, they’ve returned as subjects of contemplation. And --- judge me as you will --- like many others these days, I smell the breath of Thanos in that machinery of the system unto which we supplicate in our fear, denial or intentional obliviousness.
Still, it is only a system. Systems can be changed. In any case they inevitably crash entirely of their own entropies. Doubtlessly, ours will take down with it the hardening privatization and institutional control of the human spirit. I won’t be around to see it.
But I would be damned pleased to see such a once noble attempt at elimination of suffering as the American psychological profession rise to the choices before us --- liberation from our collective societal darkness, and psychic death within the machine.
Meanwhile, here in Hopkins Village, darkness has come and brought with it good old Eljay, ready to split a bottle of the local bitters on my porch. The night winds are rising and with them comforting assurance that The Machine is not everything ... indeed, not anything by the light of these indifferent stars.
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website here.
by Sheilanagig Watching George Bush on television is an experience somewhere between revulsion and hysterical laughter. Yesterday, with a straight face, he told the world that indeed, he is a free market man; but, well, er, um, after consulting with the experts, he decided he better go along with them. The US taxpayer is now on the hook for billions, even trillions, to bail out the experts who created the sub prime crisis in the first place. Of course, not one homeowner facing foreclosure will be saved; but the elites mansions will be safe and sound now, as will be their failed financial empire.
Americans are paralyzed like deer in headlights and continue with their blather on the upcoming election, perhaps hoping that a hero will come along and save them from going down the vortex of the bankruptcy drain. Their faith in the maxim 'what you don't know can't hurt you' has been taken to the height of absurdity even as the 'American Dream' becomes a nightmare from which they cannot awaken.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the EU assure it's unbelieving citizens that the best option for the future is to give more power to the experts in Brussels. The EU president Nicholas Sarkozy plays a game with NATO and Russia, embracing the tainted rhetoric of the American version of the 'Georgian invasion' which could put Europe smack dab in the middle of WW3. If the so-called diplomacy of Sarkozy fails, no doubt the blame will fall on the Irish who refused to give a blank mandate of power to the Brussels elite. Of course, the citizens of three member states have now rejected the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution; but in spite of his over-sized ears, Sarkozy does not seem to be able to hear the people he claims to represent. How dare people challenge the competency of their political/economic experts!
In South America and Africa, quite a different mood has emerged among the peoples of many countries: they are willing to take their leaders to account, with machetes and rocks if necessary. Westerners look upon the news of some new rebellion in Bolivia or South Africa with horror and pity from their comfortable consumer rapture, shaking their heads and returning to the pleasures of capitalism they have enjoyed up until now, while their own freedoms and control of their lives ebb into the sea of experts in Brussels and Washington DC.
If the political will of people were gold, third world countries would be rich and Western civilization would be bankrupt. The difference between the two is quite obvious and understandable: when people have nothing to lose anymore (and are hungry), they are dangerous (to the elites). In the West, capitalism has given people just enough to make them complacent and willing to surrender their power to the experts for the sake of 'business as usual'.
In the current meltdown of global finance, 'business as usual' may not go on for long, even with all the experts collaborating in a solution to prop up the defective internal structure of capitalism. This crisis did not come about as a result of average people doing anything different then they have always done. It is the elite financiers and gamblers of the stock markets and banks who now are afraid that their profits are in jeopardy. In their expert opinion, common people paying taxes should bail them out and make the world safe again for imperial finance ventures.
This fact is conveniently obscured to Western people as Western media is owned by another group of experts who decide what is good for masses to hear, and what is not. What the experts fear more than anything is people with real political will who demand that government operate for the benefit of people, instead of the reverse.
However, they overlook one critical factor; people do not need the media to tell them whether they are hungry, homeless or jobless and in despair. Such is the case in the third world countries. Imagine a starving family in South Africa reading in the daily rag that it should not worry because experts are now fixing everything. By the time the promised solution arrives, the problem people may be dead. It is after all, a solution of a type.
Perhaps scarcity is not such a bad thing in relaying the true character of political experts to the people they supposedly represent. When Western citizens have nothing more to lose, they will not heed the media spin, but will know the truth. Then, the dreaded 'R' (revolution) word may once again create a government for the people and by the people; but not before the soil of earth is soaked with the blood of the previously smug and complacent supporters of the experts. The political will of the West has a long way to catch up with that of the citizens in the third world.
All blogs are really just small snapshots of a person's mind, heart and soul as they evolve together through life....
Small bits of the thread of life we weave together into the fabric of ourselves, in the hope we will make sense of our existence, individual and collective.
On this page, is the cloak I have fashioned from my fabric to warm myself in a universe which often makes little sense.
Inside my cloak, it is warm enough to face the blistering cold winds of the insane world in which I find myself.
If you find some a bit of 'the good stuff' here, it has been my pleasure.
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