Shut Up America!

The people of Libya are fighting for their freedom under a dictator of the last four decades, and just like Tunisia and Egypt they must fight this battle alone. In case the Obama administration (and specifically Hillary Clinton) is not aware of the simple fact that they have zero credibility among the people of the region, I'd like to instruct them now accordingly. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: Shut your big mouths, you're not helping! In fact, you can only do harm. Any harsh words you may think you have some authority to dole out to Gaddafi actually justifies his claims that the protests are being fomented by foreign powers. There are people who are being brutally murdered at this very moment because Gaddafi believes (or claims to believe) they are puppets under your influence.

There is nothing more disgusting than to see the parade of US diplomats marching through Egypt claiming to have supported the people against Mubarak. Perhaps the most shameful display comes not surprisingly from John McCain who described the protests sweeping northern Africa as a virus that must be stopped. When he said this people were dying under the corrupt regime of Mubarak and his words lent legitimacy to those who violently opposed the uprising. Of course as a seasoned politician he spoke with no real knowledge of the plight of the Egyptian people, instead he was reacting in a knee jerk fashion from his own views of American foreign policy in the region. And within a week after referring to them as a dangerous virus, he was there in person telling the people of Egypt that he supported their recent uprising.

John McCain saw this as just another platform to grind out the rhetoric that makes him look youthful, he took the opportunity to claim that the peoples' uprising in Egypt was a "repudiation of Al Queda." Whu!? Al Queda!? Was John McCain dozing off for the better part of the last decade? There is absolutely zero evidence of Al Queda presence or activity within the borders of Egypt, nor was there a single link between Bin Laden and Mubarak. In fact, Mubarak was our dictator, our terrorist, our puppet whose tyranny destroyed the lives of millions of Egyptians. If anything, the peoples uprising in Egypt was a repudiation of the US government and their manipulative policies in the region and around the world. I wonder why John McCain would fail to see this simple fact? Could it be because he is perhaps the most imperial republican in his party, whose intent of maintaining American hegemony is rooted in the cold war mentality that he was born into?

What is happening in Libya is notably different from the events that played out in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, and it may seem that America could play a positive role if they intervene on behalf of the protesters. But this is the fallacy of good war and it's time we take a good look at history and admit that the truth is always a selfish and petty ploy to extend and maintain Americas' influence and power. If the US cared about saving the lives of thousands of people they could instead save the lives of millions by doing nothing. Any and all military intervention in that region will unfold very much like the Iraq war did. Remember how easy it was going to be to remove Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to Iraq? Strange how it all turned out, who could have foreseen the peoples resentment of the massive US military occupation of their home land?

So once again I address Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: Shut the hell up and leave those people alone! You can take your wagging finger and chiding tone and go wag it in the mirror at yourselves. You are the shameless dictators of the world and you have no intention of returning power to the people. You work for the corporations and banks who needlessly horde the riches of the world while the people live in desperate poverty. If you want to help people against tyrants why don't you use your power against the big boys on Wall Street? Why don't you get all FDR on the corporate puppets in the republican party? Why not look at the sad and pathetic state of your affairs in your own backyard and do something about it, for a change. I voted for change I can believe in, and what I got was an escalated Class War waged by the rich and powerful, and you Mr. Obama are on the wrong side. But you will soon find that you're own people are uprising and there will be little you can do about it or any other uprising, because you will be down falling.

And good riddance!

I wrote the above post on 3/2/11 when it was still spring in the Arab world. I'm adding this video on 10/24/11 after the assassinations of both Osama BinLaden and most recently Muammar Gaddafi. We also have a little uprising going on here in the US and no surprise, very recent words from Obama and Clinton are drastically, overtly hypocritical. So please watch this video if you feel I was too harsh in my demand that they "Shut up!" and deal with their own affairs. Enjoy American hypocrisy at it's finest! 

Class War Criminals

The concept of a class war is somehow omnipresent and yet not there, a reference to nowhere. We hear about it once in a while usually when right wing conservatives are commenting on union activity in the news. On a rare occasion you may hear the opposing version when corporate friendly union busting politicians are attacking the hard won rights of the workers. But we are now entering a heightened stage of this mystical, metaphoric war in which both sides will be fighting for their very existence. Though we've never heard the term "class war" in most history classes, it's somehow more important, more prevalent, and more instructive in our current world of multinational corporate power than any military war in the history of the planet. In a way it's also the longest running war when you begin to see the consistent thread of aristocracy through the bloody legacy of empires from roman to american. Maybe it's time we include a history of class in history class, to teach about the class war on par with WWII.

Clearly the most notable difference between a military war and the class war is the role of nations, or the seeming insignificance of their roles. Wars are most often visited from one nation upon another, both with massive resources to draw from. When a nation wages a war it is overwhelmingly the poor to middle class (or bottom half) who put their actual bodies on the lines in the ultimate sacrifice. But this is not how class war works because the wealthy simply do not fight, and when they do join the military they are rarely if ever in harms way and historically enter the ranks at officer levels. Wealthy people have too much to live for, they cannot be expected to fight in infantry positions and therefore their numbers are severely low, especially when compared to the middle to lower classes who make up the bulk of fighting forces around the globe. Imagine if the class war were waged in the same military manner as WWI and II, the odds would be overwhelmingly in the favor of the poor. The rich and powerful upper 10% of the world population are not dumb enough to challenge the bottom 90% militarily. On the contrary, they're smart enough to get the bottom to do virtually all of the bidding for the top for a sliver of the reward.

In this very real war for the power and proprietary rights to the worlds resources, Fox news (or Faux news) is the pillar of propaganda for the rich and powerful, like the Koch brothers (pronounced "Coke") who have together bank rolled the entire tea party phenomena and all of it's puppet political candidates and campaigns. These billionaire cowboys have always been manipulating our so called democracy, but since the supreme courts handy work turned our corporations into "people" in a plot copy and pasted right from the script of Frankenstein, they can shop for the election results they want the same way they bid for fine art at Christie's in Rockefeller center. And wherever the Koch bros want them, there is Faux News repeating ad nauseum the talking points the wealthy corporate interests program them to say. Fox and all of the tea party candidates are little more than billion dollar Koch whores. There has never been a clearer demonstration of the corrosive effects of capitalism on democracy. The cohesion between Fox news and the republican party is seamless, and the claim of "fair and balanced" is designed to convince weak minded people that the far right is the center, effectively eliminating the left in a feat of overt Orwellian mind control.

There is no question that money makes a difference in elections, the only point that could be debated is exactly how much of a difference it makes in each individual election. And there is no doubt where the majority of money is coming from and where it goes thanks to many organizations tracking large campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals. The average american doesn't contribute financially to political campaigns, most don't even bother to vote in midterm elections. So it's simple to conclude that the difference that money makes is overwhelmingly in the favor of the wealthy corporations and individuals who pitch the most into the pot. The one real variable is the significant sector of the poor who vote republican, but those numbers have been historically lower than the poor to middle class who vote for democrats. So for the sake of argument, let's be conservative and say that without any campaign contributions the races would be close, within a 5-10% margin. The difference that money makes only needs to be from 11-15% to ensure a republican victory at the polls. The reason democrats still win however is that without the extra money much fewer people would vote republican and that 11-15% difference just isn't enough.

In the state of Wisconsin there is a powerful, peaceful, peoples' uprising going on (as of this writing) over the recently "elected" republican governor Scott walkers' overt union busting tactics reminiscent of pre-FDR america. Walker has taken the gloves off making it easy to rip the mask off of the class war that is usually so subtle in it's ferocious appetite for destruction. He came into the drivers seat of a state that was well within budget and on track to have a surplus and declaring the state "open for business" (or "for sale") he immediately gave away over one hundred million dollars in corporate tax breaks putting the state into deficit. In the same stroke and without batting an eyelash he demanded that public workers make the sacrifices to pay for the hole in the budget, AND that their unions give up collective bargaining rights, the backbone of union power. Asking unions to give up their collective bargaining rights is like asking corporations to give up their limited liability status. When a somewhat weak union response came back to say "We'll make the sacrifices of our hard earned rights, but we won't give up our right to collective bargaining." Walker was uncompromising, unions must go so corporations could feel safe to call Wisconsin home. Walker beat his democrat rival by a mere 5%, this governor was purchased almost exclusively by the Koch bros for the purpose of destroying the unions and now his work has begun.

This is Class warfare union busting at it's finest, or worst, but one thing is certain, It's on. In the words of Florance Reese's classic union song it's time for everyone in the world to ask themselves deep down "Which side are you on?" The Koch bros and their cabal of Koch head republicans are watching this battle for Madison very closely, if Scott (The Imperial) Walker can destroy unions in their long time stronghold of Wisconsin, they are going to do it everywhere until there is nothing left for working people in this world. It's not as if they say amongst themselves "Lets destroy most unions, but leave a few here and there." they want them all dead, much more than they care to seek and destroy any terrorist hiding in a cave somewhere. And they argue somewhat effectively that our unions are driving jobs out of the nation, as if union members voted to have the factories moved overseas. The only reason the factories go where people won't defend themselves is because their unscrupulous owners want to exploit labor for their own disproportionate gains. Madison may not be Tunisia, but america is not the middle east, I see in Madison, Wisconsin a spark that can begin to resolve thousands of years of inequities in a mass global uprising of the people, by the people, and for the people.

If the unions must be sacrificed so must the system that justifies their existence.