UN Experts Catalog Seemingly Endless List of Racial Discrimination in US by Andrea Germanos

 "The past is not dead. It isn't even past"-William Faulkner

From being victims of police killings to facing barriers to educational and health equity, African Americans are facing "systemic racial discrimination" and deserve reparatory justice, a United Nations working group said Friday.

Having just completed an 11-day mission with visits to Washington D.C., Baltimore, Jackson, Miss., Chicago and New York City, the five-member Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent say they are "extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African Americans."

The statement comes from their preliminary findings after hearing from state and federal officials, as well as individuals and civil society organizations.

"Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights of African Americans today," said human rights expert and working group head Mireille Fanon Mendes France.

"The persistent gap in almost all the human development indicators, such as life expectancy, income and wealth, level of education, housing, employment and labour, and even food security, among African Americans and the rest of the US population, reflects the level of structural discrimination that creates de facto barriers for people of African descent to fully exercise their human rights," Mendes France's statement continues.

Among the numerous problems noted in the findings is "the alarming levels of police brutality and excessive use of lethal force by law enforcement officials committed with impunity," citing the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Laquan McDonald, as well as others.

"Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror lynching of the past. Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency," their statement reads.

Beyond other policing/incarceration racial disparities, including zero tolerance policies in schools that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, the group slams "the criminalization of poverty which disproportionately affects African Americans," and calls out cities like Ferguson, Mo. where jails are often "debtors' prisons."

Their list goes on to note discriminatory voter ID laws; states' rejection of Medicaid expansion, which serves as just one way in which African Americans' realization of the right to health is thwarted; the existence of "food deserts" in many African American communities; schools' insufficient covering of the period of enslavement and the "root causes of racial inequality and injustice... [thereby] contribut[ing] to the structural invisibility of African-Americans"; the housing crisis, high rates of homelessness and gentrification; the high unemployment rate of African Americans; and the environmental justice denied African Americans by highly polluting industries often disproportionately being placed in their communities.

The statement did applaud some steps taken to reduce racial inequalities, like the recentbanning the use of solitary confinement for juveniles and low-level offenders in U.S. federal jails, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans aimed at "improving educational outcomes for African Americans of all ages," and the abolition by several states of the death penalty.

For its recommendations, the group reiterates their calls from 2010 after their last visit to the country, including the need to establish a national human rights commission, for Congress to swiftly pass pending criminal justice reform bills including the End Racial Profiling Act, and the need for a national ban on the death penalty. It also states:

There is a profound need to acknowledge that the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity and among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and that Africans and people of African descent were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences. Past injustices and crimes against African Americans need to be addressed with reparatory justice.

The group will deliver its final report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in September.

The Death of the American City

Chris Hedges and two Detroit activists, Darryl “Waistline” Mitchell and Roshaun Harris, trace Detroit’s socio-economic apocalypse, which has taken forms specific to that city but also mirrors other communities around the country.

These two activists — & Chris Hedges himself – are quite impressive in their observations & analysis of what is happening across the land with Detroit as a horrific example. They present a devastating critique of “the sacrifice zone that Detroit has become” and call the catastrophic changes there “a consequence of unfettered, unregulated capitalism.”

Mitchell traces the arc of Detroit’s fate along his own life line, remembering when it was possible to make a living wage in the auto industry there. He also points to the many ways in which the systemic racism corroding the city is connected to America’s economic history.

On that note, Harris points out how the social contract once held out to workers—still quaintly referred to as “the American Dream”—is no longer available. Like Mitchell, Harris breaks down the problems from a standpoint in which economic and racial influences are inextricably linked.

Of the new generation of young black activists and the forms and focus their protests are taking, Harris says: “People are starting to see that it’s not just about white cops killing young black men. Historically that paradigm or that problem has existed … but how that represents itself today is a connection between people starting to understand how the state operates.

Harris describes the presence of troops in cities like Detroit as “almost like a foreign occupying army occupying the territory that’s underserved, that has not been tended to in all of the other socially necessary ways to produce vitality within that community.”

Watch, weep and by all means, rise up against the evil confronting us…Otherwise, we’re done.

OneLove

FLINT WATER CRISIS ‘A RACIAL CRIME’

The Rev. Jesse Jackson penned a scathing article regarding this tragic incident. Yes, it is a racial crime as Michael Moore observed, but it is also a class issue. My God, what is this country becoming? –

Why did Flint suffer a water catastrophe that now requires that children be treated as if they had been poisoned?

It wasn’t because the people were negligent. From the moment Flint began taking its water from the polluted Flint River, residents warned about water that came out of the faucet brown, tasted foul and smelled worse. They began packing public meetings with jugs filled with water that looked like brown stain.

It wasn’t because the democracy failed, because in Flint democracy had been suspended. The city, devastated by the closing of its auto plants and industrial base, has been in constant fiscal crisis. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, one of the crop of proud conservative governors promising to cut taxes for the rich and get government out of the way, appointed an emergency manager to run the city. Elected officials had no say.

It wasn’t because the city manager and the state environmental agency and the governor weren’t warned. Warnings were issued from the beginning. General Motors even suspended using the water because it was too corrosive for the auto parts it was making. Nevertheless, city and state officials assured the worried residents of Flint that it was still safe to drink.

The result is that Flint’s children — particularly those in the older, poorer, disproportionately black neighborhoods — have been exposed to elevated levels of lead.

Lead poisoning isn’t like contracting a cold or getting the flu. Lead is an immediate and unrelenting threat to health. It causes miscarriages and births of low-weight babies. Children exposed to lead can have disabilities that afflict them for their entire lives. Lead stays in your bones. Yet even after a federal EPA official warned that the tests were being skewed to underreport levels of lead, even after heroes like LeeAnne Walters reported that her children’s hair was falling out and that they were developing rashes and constantly sick, even after the heroic pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, an Iraqi-American, reported elevated levels of lead in children’s blood, their concerns were dismissed, their alarms scorned, they were attacked for sowing hysteria and the poor residents of Flint were told the water was safe to drink.

Why were the people and the obvious signs and the experts ignored?

They would not have been ignored if these were wealthy suburban neighborhoods and the water suddenly turned brown. They would not have been ignored if the children of an all-white community were at risk.

State officials dismissed the complaints as exaggerated. The brown water was just rust. Officials thought people ought to be grateful for what they had. The laws, they wrote, ensure the water is “safe to drink.” It doesn’t regulate how it looks, its “aesthetic values.” The water looks bad because it’s from the “Flint River.” Flint is old and poor. The pipes are old and poor. The people are black and poor.

They just have to learn to put up with it. And if the lead seems to be at dangerous levels, flushing the system before the tests, skewing the sample to the most recently built systems can jigger the results to get by. Some might get hurt, but no one worth caring about.

This is the ugly reality of the right-wing assault on America’s working people and particularly on people of color. They want to get “government out of the way” — out of the way of their greed. The successful have earned special treatment — in taxes, in contracts, in interest rates, in public investment. The unsuccessful need to learn self-reliance. They need to accept what they get and be grateful for it.

Flint is not a bug in their perspective; it is a feature. They fought against African-Americans getting the right to vote. Now they use “emergency” to set up dictators — emergency managers — to occupy predominantly African-American communities. They worry that the poor get too much “free stuff” — food stamps (once a Republican program), health care through Medicaid (so they refuse to expand it), unemployment insurance when they lose their jobs (so they limit its coverage), minimum wages (which they fight against) and “costly regulations” that require safe water and clean air and safer workplaces.

The “establishment” Republican candidate Jeb Bush has called for a “regulatory spring cleaning” to strip away regulations that protect health and safety. The Republican Congress annually seeks to cut backs EPA’s budgets and authority. The Republican governors gleefully gut the budgets of their own state agencies. They don’t worry. The children of the rich will be protected. It is the poor — of all races but disproportionately people of color — who will be left at greater risk.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder should have the common decency to resign. The state and the federal government should step in and rebuild Flint’s water system immediately. A federal investigation should issue indictments where justified. But this isn’t simply about water and Flint. This is about an ideology that believes in this rich country, the privileges of the few must be protected, even if the necessities of the many are sacrificed. “Of course there is class warfare,” billionaire Warren Buffett once acknowledged, “and my class is winning.”

Musings

OneLove

Noam Chomsky Calls GOP a ‘Danger to Human Survival,’ Sizes Up Bernie Sanders by Donald Kaufman

   

Scholar, social critic, writer and political activist Noam Chomsky is making the rounds to give his views on the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Chomsky called out the GOP for becoming an “abject service to private wealth and power.” Chomsky advocates for strategic voting against the Republican party at all costs, even if that means voting for Hillary Clinton on election day. Although Chomsky has condemned Clinton repeatedly, he feels the consequences of a GOP victory would be disastrous, especially in light of the “looming environmental catastrophe.”

The Huffington Post reports:

“Today, the Republican Party has drifted off the rails,” Chomsky, a frequent critic of both parties, said in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post. “It’s become what the respected conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call ‘a radical insurgency’ that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics.”
Chomsky cited a 2013 article by Mann and Ornstein published in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, analyzing the polarization of the parties. The authors write that the GOP has become “ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Chomsky said the GOP and its presidential candidates are “literally a serious danger to decent human survival” and cited Republicans’ rejection of measures to deal with climate change, which he called a “looming environmental catastrophe.” All of the top Republican presidential candidates are either outright deniers, doubt its seriousness or insist no action should be taken—“dooming our grandchildren,” Chomsky said.
[…] Chomsky advised 2016 voters to cast their ballots strategically. He said the U.S. is essentially “one-party” system—a business party with factions called Republicans and Democrats. But, he said, there are small differences between the factions that can make a “huge difference in systems of enormous power”—like that afforded to the president.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Chomsky called Bernie Sanders a “New Dealer” who supports the best policies of the Democratic presidential candidates but said that Sanders could not win, as U.S. elections are “mainly bought”.

Dark Money: How Billionaires Are Buying Elections

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Billionaires have found a shady way to secretly finance candidates. They use nonprofits as vats of cash to funnel cash to candidates that will advance their interests. Many think that voting in elections is enough and that if one chooses not to vote means that he/she shouldn't complain about anything.....mmmmmkay.

The rich will have their voices heard no matter who you vote for as they play both the Democrats and Republicans like a fiddle. Your vote/voice means nothing in this monetized "democracy". The fuckers will feed you crumbs and expect you to be impressed. And should you vote for Bernie who seems leagues ahead of his competition in terms of policy & having a social conscience, understand that he can do but so much as the political system as it exists is corrupt to the core.

Think clearly & be the change....

OneLove

Musings

Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. Now he understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought him salvation.    

You Are Me

The cosmos is One interconnected and indivisible Whole. You Are the Cosmos, and All That Is. Therefore, You Are Me!   OneLove

Musings

Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. Now he understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought him salvation.  

A Taught Behavior

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 While the social construction of femininity has been widely examined, the dominant role of masculinity has until recently remained largely invisible. This clip is geared toward young men to systematically examine the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S ( and elsewhere given the US's cultural reach globally). In this innovative and wide-ranging analysis, the produser, Jackson Katz, argues that widespread violence in American society, including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere, needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity. The goal here is to enlighten and provoke young people (both males and females) to evaluate their own participation in the culture of contemporary masculinity & find ways to counter it.

 OneLove

We're Witnessing the Decline and Fall of White America as We Know It by Roberto Lovato

The body of Tamir Rice bears the wounds of U.S. history. Deep wounds. So do the bodies of Central American children like those I visited earlier this year in Karnes County, children whose bodies are scarred and violated because of U.S. history in their homelands, in Mexico, where most of their mother’s bodies are violated, as well as in the Texas immigrant prisons where prison officials hired by the Obama administration accuse mothers staging hunger strikes of “insurrection” while they’re “waiting for helicopters,” according to  government documents.

The bodies of black and brown children tell a story of a decadent civilization, a once “lone superpower” now finding itself forced to live in a multi-polar world where it no longer exerts its will as it used to (see rise of China, BRICS, climate change, U.S. debt and the destruction of the welfare state, to name a few) and a body politic in rapid decline. While most of us are all feeling, in unique ways, the effects of declining U.S. power in our bodies, the current increased sickness and mortality of the white working- and middle-class body—a body defined by its unique relationship to  power and privilege in the country—is very particular.

All bodies are created equal, but in the United States some bodies, namely white bodies, have historically been more equal than others. But times are changing. The politics of U.S. decline has started making white bodies (statistically) resemble non-white bodies, especially in terms of mortality rates.

The problems facing working- and middle-class whites were clear during several separate but related incidents that took place around the same time last November. Just days after the Paris attacks, a stunning report identified disturbing increases in the mortality rate of middle-aged, mostly poor whites in the United States. Days later, three white supremacists in Virginia sought to increase the mortality rate among local blacks, Jews and other groups by bombing and shooting them in what they hoped would become a race war. Since then, shootings like the one targeting the #BlackLivesMatter movement likely share the logic of escalation in times of decline. You can also see the workings of the politics of decadence in how the bluster and bravado of the Oregon standoff plays to the feelings of decline among whites.

The Oregon standoff and the other terrorist plots in San Bernardino or Virginia or Charleston or Sandy Hook or Minneapolis are clearly symptomatic of a violent culture. Less obvious, is how these actions are rooted in a rapid decline that has shred the middle class and deepened working-class misery while offering the white victims of that decline no explanations or solutions to what they are, literally, feeling in their bones; no explanations, that is, except those more radical solutions offered by Ammon Bundy, Donald Trump and others capitalizing on the decline of the white body.

Insights into physical and psychological effects of this body politic can be found in the conclusions of the report by Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and his fellow Princeton economist Anne Case. They point to an unspoken but critically important influence in U.S. and global politics: how the decline in the white body and health mirrors the decline of the U.S. body politic, and why the rest of us should care.

To date, nobody has the final word on what’s behind this major health trend. The search for answers continues. But while existing explanations point to important determinants of increased white mortality—suicide, opiate overdose, etc.—our science should consider another indicator that is no less determinant of white health and mortality. That would be something like a Racial Index of Declining U.S. Exceptionalism, the measure of how much the illness and mortality of a given group rises in proportion to the decline of both the United States and its defining ideal, American exceptionalism.

Were we to consider such an index, our understanding of the specific ways in which whites, the primary benefactors of the postwar rise in U.S. economic and political, military and “soft” cultural power, the primary perpetrators of mass killings—feel the effects of the decline of the middle class, U.S. politics will take a turn for the healthier.

Police reports and greater vigilance and activism offer a glimpse into the workings of policing—and beating and killing—of black, brown and poor bodies in times of decline. At the same time, the Princeton study offers clues to why whites are now the biggest losers in the rapid and irreversible decline of American exceptionalism, the racialized story of a chosen country, a chosen people—white people—designated by God to rule the earth. Put another way, whites and nonwhites are literally dying because of the violent cultural, economic, political and geopolitical shift of the U.S.

Since at least the 1980s, whites, the main heroes in the great stories and grand narratives that defined the United States, have watched the Industrial Age rug that comforted them globalized out from under them. Other, poorer non-white groups are also feeling the generalized decline of the U.S. (and at the same time also expressing more optimism than whites about the direction of the country). But the decline among non-whites has been and continues to be felt by whites in very particular ways, as expressed in the Princeton and other studies.

For example, only 45 percent of whites today say their families will have the opportunity to improve their economic position based on how things fare in the United States, according to the General Social Survey (GSS). This year’s survey has the lowest percentage in the more than four decades the survey has been taken. The rise in death rates among whites parallels the pessimism and economic decline measured in other surveys of unemployment, home ownership, living standards, faith in government and institutions and other measures. Other studies show less pessimism among non-whites, despite the effects of U.S. decline on their bodies.

While Crane and Deaton’s report stresses the importance of the suicide rate, drug overdose and "economic insecurity" in their explanations of their findings on white mortality, their report also hints at what I think are the psychic effects of the decline: no longer believing the the stories of U.S. exceptionalism, the American Dream and other economic and cultural shibboleths that are now fueling the psychology—and politics—of white decline. Middle-aged white Americans "have lost the narrative of their lives—meaning something like a loss of hope, a loss of expectations of progress," Deaton said in a recent interview.

In addition to the resurgent white supremacist terrorists and other violent groups, those most capitalizing on these physical, material pathologies—and the narratives of psychic and cultural decline that accompany them—are the Tea Party and Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others like them. Whether it’s Trump’s attacks on blacks, Latinos or Syrians, or Rubio’s decadent talk of a “clash of civilizations,” the Republican Party’s white insurgency lives off the same conditions that, ironically, bring about the accelerated decline and death of the white body and larger body politic.


For their part, Democrats have either coded and softened the right-wing message and politics of decline (i.e. Obama and the Dems standing up for Syrian refugee children while simultaneously jailing and deporting thousands of Central American refugee children) or simply not offered the kind of unifying narrative that appeals to the solidarity between working-class whites and other non-white working-class groups.

This leaves those left of the Democrats with the Dems' empty appeals (i.e. police or immigration reform) to non-whites and (still) searching for alternatives to the Walking Dead politics that is the far more disciplined (i.e. right-wing churches) and well-resourced (i.e. Koch brothers) among working whites.

In the face of the Walking Dead politics that informs and feeds off of both increased mass shooting and white terrorism and increased attacks on non-whites, the time has come to face the undeniable fact of U.S. decline and its effect on whites, on non-whites and on the larger body politic. Instead of giving into the zombified resignation that the post-American exceptionalist, apocalyptic moment promotes under the guise of the lesser of two evils, some of us must recognize the dead body as real and instead, consider the kind of radical resurrection of the body politic advocated by Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “America, you must be born again!”

Musings

Staying sane in a society gone mad is not easy. Millions of people believe themselves to be sane, but they have really just adapted to an insane society, so they appear sane within the warped paradigm of that insane society. The truly sane people appear to be insane in an insane society. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. The immense forces of normalcy bias and social inertia have led millions to refuse to understand the mathematical certainty of the coming collapse. The worldwide banking system is like a great white shark that needs to keep moving or it dies. Exponential growth and continuous credit expansion have been the essential ingredients to expanding the American empire, but the growth has stopped, while the debt keeps growing. Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. As natural resources deplete and become more expensive to obtain, while the planet’s population continues to grow, the fractional reserve banking system and the nation states who continue to pile up trillions in debt will suddenly suffer a catastrophic collapse. We are in the end stages of a confidence game. Your government will not give you warning. We need to come to our senses one by one, until there are enough sane people to tip the scales in our favor. I’ve concluded that I live in a dishonest, insane, intolerable world and consider it my duty to spread discontent among those I can reach. I’m a dangerous man in the eyes of our corporate fascist surveillance state. So be it. “The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

– H.L. Mencken

Ralph Nader & Abby Martin on Rigged Corporate Elections

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Abby Martin interviews American political figure Ralph Nader about the 2016 presidential race - from the "Brown Shirt" Trump movement to "corporate criminal" Hillary Clinton - and the reality of who has power in America. 

Known for his widely-popular presidential run in 2000, he also ran presidential campaigns against corporate power in 1996, 2004 and 2008. 

A consumer advocate since the 1950's, his work against auto industry giants forced the creation of mandated safety measures that saved millions of lives from for-profit auto production. His contributions span disability rights to exposing corporate pollution. 

Listen & learn

OneLove

Mauro Bergonzi: The Bottomless Pit Behind the Word Consciousness

Mauro Bergonzi is a Professor of Religions and Philosophies of India, University of Naples. Mauro Bergonzi has been teaching Religions and Philosophies of India at the Università degli Studi di Napoli since 1985. He is author of academic essays and articles on Oriental Philosophies, Comparative Religion, Psychology of Mysticism and Transpersonal Psychology. Since 1970, he has practiced meditation, always preserving a non-confessional and non-dogmatic approach. After a natural and spontaneous fading out of both seeking and the seeker, only a radical non dualism prevailed in him.

 Listen and learn.... 

 OneLove    

Why Public Intellectuals Are Endangered

With Chris Hedges and Cornel West unmasking the face of Empire, is it any wonder why the mainstream media marginalizes them? Truth is an offense in today's political climate. Or in the words of George Orwell, "During the times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

We are quietly being programmed to shut our mouths, stay tunnel-visioned & zombified when it comes to understanding and engaging with our socio-political realities. Any type of critical engagement is likely to get labeled as "terroristic", "un-American", "socialist/communist", "siding with the enemy". Just close your eyes, plug your ears, blindfold your eyes and sip the slow-poisoning Kool-aid like a true patriot! It's the American Way. As an illustration, look at how people are acting at Trump rallies and note the poisoning taking place across the land. Almost looks like some kind of cult-like demonic possession at some of these rallies.

 I encourage everyone to read the works of Chris Hedges and Cornel West to understand what is happening right before our very eyes.

 OneLove

War on Whistleblowers:Free Press and the National Security State

In the face of potentially life-threatening dangers, they dare to speak truth to power. They're the whistleblowers; the crusaders for truth who often stand as the lone link between corrupted corporate and governmental interests and the public's right to know. The stirring film War on Whistleblowers, directed by acclaimed documentarian Robert Greenwald, outlines the challenges and sacrifices faced by these tireless activists, and calls attention to their increasing importance in a society where the powerful are more omniscient and unregulated than ever before.

Thanks to the efforts of Edward Snowden, the role of the whistleblower has gained a level of prominence in our culture unlike anything we've witnessed since the Watergate era. The formation of sweeping national security structures in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks begat a new wave of permissiveness in how intelligence was collected. As illustrated in the top-secret materials released by Snowden, this intelligence gathering included unprecedented invasions of privacy and instances of highly questionable electronic surveillance practices.

The film spotlights the frightening storm which followed as a result of Snowden's actions in the form of a widespread government-sanctioned smear campaign. In the process, the public was urged to question whether Snowden was a patriot or a traitor.

"It's extremely dangerous in America right now to be right as a whistleblower when the government is so wrong," concedes Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the United States National Security Agency and one of the film's chief interview subjects. Drake is joined in the film by a panel of additional distinguished subjects who know the perils of whistleblowing all too well, including Daniel Ellsberg, a military advisor who leaked highly sensitive government documents related to the Vietnam War in 1971, and David Carr, the late New York Times journalist who built a career embodying the virtues of truth and transparency.

Whether working to silence the flow of information from a lone wolf or an entire news media, the increasingly inhospitable environment which works to subvert the efforts of our modern-day whistleblowers leaves us all vulnerable. With impassioned clarity, War on Whistleblowers shows us that our freedoms, our rights, and our very way of life may be at risk without the benefit of their brave acts of public advocacy.

                                                                    ****

OneLove

Poet's Nook: "Live Rich" by Gary Turk

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives,
and we all spend it spending.
We live to consume, we consume to live,
and our desire for more is unending.

Whenever I get paid, I just can’t wait to spend it,
it disappears so quickly and I’m left to mend it,
I pretend it will all be okay,
to give a week’s wages away in one day.

But we try our best, still money seems to go,
we’ve been told many times that money doesn’t grow on trees,
But it’s a disease, the elephant in the room,
it’s the big bad wolf that’s making us consume.

They get more money, if we’re regular buyers,
so they manipulate are needs, and twist our desires.
They are liars, a shady institution,
where they create a problem and sell us a solution.

They will use fear, so we buy things we don’t need,
say you’re dying, you’re ugly, it’s all out of greed.
They mislead, make you buy things that wont last,
planned obsolescence should be a thing of the past.

They’ll do anything to trick us, try and take our money captive.
Sell us happiness and sex appeal, and ways to be attractive,
so we go out and buy it, and fill our lives with clutter
only we still feel the same, but with money in the gutter.

It’s a cycle, of perpetual spending,
a disposable culture with no sign of ending.
We’re pretending like they’re our own choices
and ignoring the fact that we can hear voices in our heads.
It’s Consumerism, banging at our door.
Saying our lives should be better, that we should have more.

But we’re just as bad, we shouldn’t pass blame,
we’re all part of the same money game,
But they’re winning, and we always lose,
we’re giving them our money because we join the queues
of people, all keeping up with the Joneses,
buying the latest and the newest, but what no one shows is
it’s difficult to make ends meet,
when all these temptations are thrown at our feet.

But I have a solution, which you’re welcome to ditch,
it’s hard but it’s worth it, Spend Less – Live Rich.

As simple as that, just tune out the noise,
Take in what you have and appreciate the joys
of living, without being told what to buy,
or else you’ll always want more, until the day that you die.

It’s a struggle, living day to day,
trying to stay afloat when your worries weigh you down.
You’re in your overdraft, you have been for years,
Everything you owe is being paid in arrears.

And it’s tough, you don’t know what to do,
you cant control your money when money controls you.
You need help, but you have too much pride,
you’ve used up all your credit and your cards have been denied.

You could get a loan, but that’s not the way to wealth,
when you borrow money, you rob your future self.
Ask for help, think ahead, no one wants this stress,
you may need money now but later you’ll have less.

What you earn doesn’t matter, only what you save,
you can spend what you have, but don’t be a slave
to the system, they will find a new way,
to numb the pain that you feel when it comes time to pay.

We had cash and cheque, then onto chip and pin,
now you keep hold of your card when you buy anything.
You don’t feel it, when your funds go in a flash,
just try and go a week where you only pay cash.
Then you will notice, as your stash runs low,
the wage you work hard for, how you just let it go.

Think of those in the world without shirts on their back,
when you see clothes in your closet that are still in their pack.
Realise you have what you need, when your money runs low,
And the voices on the TV start telling you to throw,
Things away, to buy the new version.
They only want your cash; they don’t care about the person.

So take control of your money, and take control of your lives,
saving money isn’t boring when you start to realise
what it stands for, the choices and the freedom,
the security of those pennies in the times that you need them.

You see true wealth isn’t in the numbers to you name,
It’s in knowledge itself, and the experiences you gain,
It’s about the priceless, and the things you cant buy,
Like memories, and loved ones, and feeling that high
When you realise, that life’s full of free gifts,
When you live in the moment, and forget that money exists.

The Empire's Ship is Sinking

History has shown us that empires crumble when their thirst for power overtakes all other sensibilities. According to United States Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, America could stand on the precipice of such destruction. His insights form the foundation of the short documentary The Empire's Ship is Sinking, and it's a rarely-heard point of view from inside the heart of the beast.

Wilkerson knows of which he speaks. He flew over a thousand combat missions during the war in Vietnam. He later served as the National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and as Chief of Staff to General Colin Powell during the administration of President George W. Bush. He possesses intimate knowledge of the inner workings of war, and has witnessed first-hand how the propulsion of endless conflict continues to line the pockets of the very wealthy and decimate the existence of the lower classes worldwide.

Many key tenants of modern-day warfare are covered in the brief, yet wide-ranging interview that structures the film. From the more than 800 bases the United States military operates across the globe to the increased proliferation of weapons manufacturing, conflict means big business for the American elite. There seems to be no profitability in peace. The wealth created by these global skirmishes does not promote a more productive capitalistic society, because none of it falls downward in support of the lower classes. In some cases, as Colonel Wilkerson points out, foreign policy is based more on business considerations than humanitarian ones.

The issue is so complex and far-reaching that pinning the blame on a single culprit becomes muddied and elusive. In a way, we are all complicit. According to some reports, over 70% of retired military generals are recruited by the nation’s top weapons manufacturers as spokespeople and advisors. It falls on them to convincingly sell the need for continued conflict to the American people. In large part, the citizenry accepts these arguments without question or protest.

Wilkerson contends that such a path is unsustainable, and will surely spell doom for America's reputation, economic vitality and moral dominance in the world. The Empire's Ship is Sinkingforces us to consider the corporate complex that drives America’s violent incursions across the globe.

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OneLove

America’s Dying Democracy by Bill Moyers

In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.

Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation’s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.

What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for 15 years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn’t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.

They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE’s news divisions — NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way. They wanted to give coal producers more freedom to pollute, open the Alaskan wilderness to drilling, empower the president to keep trade favors for corporations a secret while enabling many of those same corporations to run roughshod over local communities trying the protect the environment and their citizens’ health.

It was a disgusting bipartisan spectacle. With words reminding us of Harry Truman’s description of the GOP as “guardians of privilege,” the Republican majority leader of the House dared to declare that “it wouldn’t be commensurate with the American spirit” to provide unemployment and other benefits to laid-off airline workers. As for post 9/11 Democrats, their national committee used the crisis to call for widening the soft-money loophole in our election laws.

America had just endured a sneak attack that killed thousands of our citizens, was about to go to war against terror, and would soon send an invading army to the Middle East. If ever there was a moment for shared sacrifice, for putting patriotism over profits, this was it. But that fall, operating deep within the shadows of Washington’s Beltway, American business and political mercenaries wrapped themselves in red, white and blue and went about ripping off a country in crisis.

H.L. Mencken got it right: “Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”

Fourteen years later, we can see more clearly the implications. After three decades of engineering a winner-take-all economy, and buying the political power to consummate their hold on the wealth created by the system they had rigged in their favor, they were taking the final and irrevocable step of separating themselves permanently from the common course of American life. They would occupy a gated stratosphere far above the madding crowd while their political hirelings below look after their earthly interests.

The $1.15 trillion spending bill passed by Congress last Friday and quickly signed by President Obama is just the latest triumph in the plutocratic management of politics that has accelerated since 9/11. As Michael Winship and I described here last Thursday, the bill is a bonanza for the donor class – that powerful combine of corporate executives and super-rich individuals whose money drives our electoral process.

Within minutes of its passage, congressional leaders of both parties and the President rushed to the television cameras to praise each other for a bipartisan bill that they claimed signaled the end of dysfunction; proof that Washington can work.

Mainstream media (including public television and radio), especially the networks and cable channels owned and operated by the conglomerates, didn’t stop to ask: “Yes, but work for whom?” Instead, the anchors acted as amplifiers for official spin — repeating the mantra-of-the-hour that while this is not “a perfect bill,” it does a lot of good things. “But for whom? At what price?” went unasked.

Now we’re learning. Like the drip-drip-drip of a faucet, over the weekend other provisions in the more than 2,000-page bill began to leak. Many of the bad ones we mentioned on Thursday are there — those extended tax breaks for big business, more gratuities to the fossil fuel industry, the provision to forbid the Securities & Exchange Commission from requiring corporations to disclose their political spending, even to their own shareholders.

That one’s a slap in the face even to Anthony Kennedy, the justice who wrote the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Citizens United. He said: “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions.”

Over our dead body, Congress declared last Friday, proclaiming instead: Secrecy today. Secrecy tomorrow. Secrecy forever. They are determined that we not know who owns them.

The horrors mount. As Eric Lipton and Liz Moyer reported for The New York Times on Sunday, in the last days before the bill’s passage “lobbyists swooped in” to save, at least for now, a loophole worth more than $1 billion to Wall Street investors and the hotel, restaurant and gambling industries. Lobbyists even helped draft crucial language that the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid furtively inserted into the bill.

Lipton and Moyer wrote that, “The small changes, and the enormous windfall they generated, show the power of connected corporate lobbyists to alter a huge bill that is being put together with little time for lawmakers to consider. Throughout the legislation, there were thousands of other add-ons and hard to decipher tax changes.”

No surprise to read that “some executives at companies with the most at stake are also big campaign donors.” The Times reports that “the family of David Bonderman, a co-founder of TPG Capital, has donated $1.2 million since 2014 to the Senate Majority PAC, a campaign fund with close ties to Mr. Reid and other Senate Democrats.” Senator Reid, lest we forget, is from Nevada. As he approaches retirement at the end of 2016, perhaps he’s hedging his bets at taxpayer expense.

Consider just two other provisions: One, insisted upon by Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, directs the Coast Guard to build a $640 million National Security Cutter in Cochran’s home state of Mississippi, a ship that the Coast Guard says it does not need. The other: A demand by Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins for an extra $1 billion for a Navy destroyer that probably will be built at her state’s Bath Iron Works – again, a vessel our military says is unnecessary.

So it goes: The selling off of the Republic, piece by piece. What was it Mark Twain said? There is “no distinctive native American criminal class except Congress.”

Can we at least face the truth? The plutocrats and oligarchs are winning. The vast inequality they are creating is a death sentence for government by consent of the people at large. Did any voter in any district or state in the last Congressional election vote to give that billion-dollar loophole to a handful of billionaires? To allow corporations to hide their political contributions? To add $1.4 trillion to the national debt? Of course not.

It is now the game: Candidates ask citizens for their votes, then go to Washington to do the bidding of their donors. And since one expectation is that they will cut the taxes of those donors, we now have a permanent class that is afforded representation without taxation.

A plutocracy, says my old friend, the historian Bernard Weisberger, “has a natural instinct to perpetuate and enlarge its own powers and by doing so slams the door of opportunity to challengers and reduces elections to theatrical duels between politicians who are marionettes worked by invisible strings.” Where does it end?

By coincidence, this past weekend I watched the final episode of the British television series Secret State, a 2012 remake of an earlier version based on the popular novel A Very British Coup. This is white-knuckle political drama. Gabriel Byrne plays an accidental prime minister – thrust into office by the death of the incumbent, only to discover himself facing something he never imagined: a shadowy coalition of forces, some within his own government, working against him.

With some of his own ministers secretly in the service of powerful corporations and bankers, his own party falling away from him, press lords daily maligning him, the opposition emboldened, and a public confused by misinformation, deceit, and vicious political rhetoric, the prime minister is told by Parliament to immediately invade Iran (on unproven, even false premises) or resign.

In the climactic scene, he defies the “Secret State” that is manipulating all this and confronts Parliament with this challenge: “Let’s forget party allegiance, forget vested interests, forget votes of confidence. Let each and every one of us think only of this: Is this war justified? Is it what the people of this country want? Is it going to achieve what we want it to achieve? And if not, then what next?

 “Well, I tell you what I think we should do. We should represent the people of this country. Not the lobby companies that wine and dine us. Or the banks and the big businesses that tell us how the world goes ‘round. Or the trade unions that try and call the shots. Not the civil servants nor the war-mongering generals or the security chiefs. Not the press magnates and multibillion dollar donors… [We must return] democracy to this House and the country it represents.”

Do they? The movie doesn’t tell us. We are left to imagine how the crisis — the struggle for democracy — will end.

As we are reminded by this season, there is more to life than politics. There are families, friends, music, worship, sports, the arts, reading, conversation, laughter, celebrations of love and fellowship and partridges in pear trees. But without healthy democratic politics serving a moral order, all these are imperiled by the ferocious appetites of private power and greed.

So enjoy the holidays, including Star Wars. Then come back after New Year’s and find a place for yourself, at whatever level, wherever you are, in the struggle for democracy. This is the fight of our lives and how it ends is up to us.

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