October 2, 2008
They call it a “financial bailout”. I call it a promissory note to continue the economic enslavement of the American taxpayer for generations to come. It is paying homage to the slave masters, the plantation owners, the oil tycoons, the corrupt financiers, the multinational CEOs and all those who have ever exploited the poor and vulnerable for their labor and ingenuity. This time, our own government has finally exposed itself as the greatest purveyor of economic injustice on its own people.
The United States government has drug its feet in terms of justice since its inception. From slavery to native sovereignty, from women’s rights to voting rights, from civil rights to human rights, our government has fought against its populace tooth and nail. However, the people have always prevailed. We forced the lawmakers to see that wealthy white men are not gods. They are not the only people who deserve justice, prosperity and happiness. We have won every battle except for one; the battle for economic justice. The financial levers and means of production of the U.S. have always been in the hands of a few disgustingly wealthy individuals. And they will stop at nothing to maintain their wealth and power and to build up the system that ensures that the masses of citizens will continue to be subservient to the monetary needs of the wealthy few. The famous quote from banker Meyer Rothschild, “Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws,” is truer today than ever. Now it is evident that our Senate and Congress will also do whatever it takes to maintain the disparity in our economic system. They too are here to serve only the wealthy of this globe.
At the precise moment when the inherent flaws in the so called “free market” are being exposed and a legitimate dialogue about the structure of our nation’s economy should be at the forefront, our government has decided to continue with business as usual. Actually, it’s business that is much worse than usual. It’s a perverted scheme to rob the taxpayers of our money and put it in the hands of the very people who caused the near financial collapse in the first place. To make it even worse, they caused the crisis by preying upon innocent families who simply wanted to own a home. Is this what we voted for? Is this what we deserve from our elected officials? You can blame Bush and Cheney all you want for creating this mess, but now even our most trusted officials are selling the American people and our unborn children into financial slavery. We are already trillions of dollars in debt, how could they conceive of putting us further in the hole? I am still waiting for the national discourse on why the system failed. I don’t blame the predatory lenders, they were just doing their jobs. They are supposed to bring in as much capital as possible with no regard to the human condition. They played their part to perfection. We, the zombie consumers are to blame for allowing this atrocity of an economic system to stay in place. Unregulated capitalism will eventually end up as slavery; that is the goal of the system. Economic slavery is almost as dehumanizing as physical slavery and it lasts longer because our children will continue the cycle of debt and poverty.
I have more respect for the Republicans who voted against the bill because it did not hold true to the ideals of capitalism (a company that can’t survive in the free market should just fail), than I do for the cowardly Democrats who voted to pass the bill out of the fear for their own legacy or fear of a financial collapse. The system they are protecting is the very system that crushes their constituents under the weight of low wages, long hours, no healthcare, and over-priced commodities. Those Democrats (Obama included) then try to tell us that “there was no other solution, the consequences would have been much worse if we did nothing.” No one is asking them to do nothing. But why is it that there is only one solution to this catastrophe? To give a blank check (sorry, a $700,000,000,000.00 check) to the greedy, incompetent, blood-thirsty bandits who caused the problem to begin with; without any mandates or regulations to keep them from doing the exact same thing again for the next twenty years. We are a country full of gifted and talented people. Are we to believe that no one could come up with any other solution to this problem? There must be tens if not hundreds of ways to find a solution. I have an idea. Why don’t we give only ten billion to the hundreds of thousands of families whose houses have been foreclosed? We could reinstitute their mortgages and reinvigorate the banks and the housing market at the same time. That’s my humble contribution, but I guess that won’t happen, why would our elected officials ever look out for the people who elected them?
The truth is that this bill is a top-down adrenaline shot to the economy. Top-down is another name for “trickle-down economics”. It’s the oldest trick in the book. They tell us to give them our money and just wait. Eventually it will come back to us. We’ve been waiting for the trickle since the Reagan era. Meanwhile they sell us hope, faith-based programs, fear, and other intangible nothings. A strong economy is built from the bottom up, not the top down.
The fact that our society is based upon debt is backwards to begin with. If you are considered “middle class” in America, that means you are probably in debt for about $100,000.00 at least. It also means you are about 6-8 paychecks away from poverty. Just to enter into the mainstream of society by getting an education, you have to incur debt. We bombard college students with high-interest credit cards and socialize our children that it is natural to be in debt. Small businesses start out in debt and many never get out.
I say let the markets fail, wipe all debt clean, let’s start fresh with a massive redistribution of wealth so that everyone has a healthy productive life, not just the super-rich and those that aspire to be them.
Young people, we must refuse to pay for this ransacking of our tax dollars! We must stand up to the elected officials and let them know that if they vote to pass this bill then they have positioned themselves as our enemies. I for one, refuse to stand with any politician who supports this bill of enslavement!
-Brian Lozenski a.k.a. Brihanu
Friday, October 3, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
A Little Reality Check and an Update
So, just as I wrote the blog entry before this one in the morning, the "bailout" was on it's way to failure. It's an interesting turn of events, because the Democrats and the Republicans who voted against the bailout did so for very different reasons. This creates one hell of a chasm between the two parties, who after all are "two wings of the same vulture." Well, the bill went down in flames, thanks in part to a few Democrats with some balls and a conscience, and a few totally crazy right wing Republicans who are so against socializing anything other than stock market losses that they actually voted against it. I know, sad state of affairs.
Let's put things in perspective here for a moment: When the UK's Bradford & Bingley (huge national bank) went down today, there was not any debate about whether or not the tax payers should "bail out" the banks. Instead, the debate was on whether or not these banks should be "nationalized". In other words, taken over and owned by the tax payers. A tragedy tuned into an opportunity to change the circumstances of the markets to benefit the people instead of stick them with the bill. Here's the story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/29/bradfordbingley.banking5
As of now, the stock market has had the largest point fall ever, and the overall global capitalist market establishment is beginning to freak out. The real test will be in what the respective governments do in response. What will we do?
Let's put things in perspective here for a moment: When the UK's Bradford & Bingley (huge national bank) went down today, there was not any debate about whether or not the tax payers should "bail out" the banks. Instead, the debate was on whether or not these banks should be "nationalized". In other words, taken over and owned by the tax payers. A tragedy tuned into an opportunity to change the circumstances of the markets to benefit the people instead of stick them with the bill. Here's the story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/29/bradfordbingley.banking5
As of now, the stock market has had the largest point fall ever, and the overall global capitalist market establishment is beginning to freak out. The real test will be in what the respective governments do in response. What will we do?
Note to OBAMA: Your vote for the "bailout" is the loss of my vote for you
I am one of those people who has on many occasions, disagreed with others on whether or not they should make their voting decision based on only one major issue, whether it be the environment, abortion, religion, or any other issue. I've always touted the idea that one's decision should be based on a very broad spectrum of criteria, and only after analyzing all of them individually and then collectively, can you effectively decide whether a candidate is worthy of office.
Well, I am now prepared to throw all of that out the window. If Barack Obama votes yes on this bailout package, I will withdrawal my decision to vote for him. Why? This is the wholesale sellout of the American people being handed to the world on a golden platter. But don't take my word for it, read the proposal for yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/bailout-legislation-full_n_130063.html
In the words of Dennis Kucinich: "When a jeweler's eye is applied to this bill, this bill is about Wall Street." He went on to say that Goldmann Sachs has a hell of lot to gain in this bill too, since our man Henry Paulson - the Secretary of the Treasury - has massive holdings in his past employer. If this doesn't reek of a conflict of interest, you need to have your nose checked. Paulson is literally bailing himself out with this bill.
Even beyond the conflict of interest, and the general worry that we should all have about any massive bailout that does not include some kind of dividend check given to every American tax payer below a certain income (because those above a certain income barely pay taxes in this country anyway, and they have most likely benefited from the fleecing the people), the most frightening thing to me is the overuse of words like "may" and "shall", and "encourage to" in regard to helping homeowners. The word "mandate" or "shall" appear far too infrequently. "So there's no help for homeowners in this bill", according to Kucinich. Additionally, there is no requirement to revisit the bankruptcy laws that the Bush Administration has passed during the past 8 years. Even Obama himself has said that should not be in the bill. He's made a case for it, and it is somewhat sound, but the fact is, if the American people are footing the bill for these banks, who cares if it fits within the confines of legislative manners! Damn the rules and the past precedents on this one Obama!
Basically, this whole bill, and I read a good majority of it early this morning, is simply a bailout for the rabid, greedy bastards who got us into this mess in the first place, otherwise known as speculators. They are the reason home prices became criminally over-valued, making the banks do whatever they had to in order to get more loans out to more people, so that they could collect more interest rates. By inflating the value of these homes on the market, they were able to loan more money with increasingly ridiculous interest rates that were "flexible." In the end, what this meant was lower to middle-income people deciding to take a risk by getting a "sub-prime" mortgage. There are only two reasons why a person with an income of like $40,000 made the silly choice to buy a $200,000 house: One, the bank pretty much guaranteed them they would get the loan, even though the payment would be nearly half of their take home pay every month. And they probably didn't say a damn thing about the bubble which they all knew was about to burst. Two, they were consistently reassured that real estate is the safest investment one can make. Usually, it was a combination of the two things that made folks want to buy when they shouldn't. Hell, we have been told for a century that real estate is the most solid investment. If you are a poor or lower-middle income person, you want in on that, because you might actually see something for your investment, something you can't say about anything else you spend money on, right?
Anyway, point is, we got had on a multitude of fronts. And we are about to bend over and take it again, unless enough Democrats and Republicans for that matter, decide to vote against this thing. Obama is wrong when he says "the consequence of doing nothing is more dangerous than the bill we have on the table." To hell with that logic. The reality is, there is nothing in this bill that MANDATES that the American tax payer is truly going to gain from this package. The only thing that is mandated is that the bankers, speculators, and fraudulent real estate investors are going to get out of this one just fine. Meanwhile, the American tax payer is going to enjoy the worst economic situation since the Great Depression.
In conclusion: This bill IS important. It is something that we should be negotiating. However, we should be utilizing these negotiations for a much larger effort: To completely reform the entire banking system in the United States. And while we are at, instituting some real controls on the capitalist market. The fact that we are even debating a bill like this is evidence that nothing but fraud "trickles down" and the dream of "free market capitalism" became a nightmare a long time ago. We are only seeing the effects now.
If Obama votes for this bill, he is simply saying to the American people that the fatally flawed economic premise under which we all suffer is more important to save than the soul of the American people. There is no guarantee, and in fact far from a guarantee, that this bill will keep us from entering a full-blown "depression". Multiple Nobel Prize winning economists have already come out and said we are there, and there is no turning back. We ought to listen to them, and in the meantime, rethink and rebuild the socioeconomic foundation on which this country operates.
If Obama loses this election as a result of folks like me refusing to vote for ANYONE who is in support of this bill, let it be a lesson to us all.
- Christopher R. Cox
Well, I am now prepared to throw all of that out the window. If Barack Obama votes yes on this bailout package, I will withdrawal my decision to vote for him. Why? This is the wholesale sellout of the American people being handed to the world on a golden platter. But don't take my word for it, read the proposal for yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/bailout-legislation-full_n_130063.html
In the words of Dennis Kucinich: "When a jeweler's eye is applied to this bill, this bill is about Wall Street." He went on to say that Goldmann Sachs has a hell of lot to gain in this bill too, since our man Henry Paulson - the Secretary of the Treasury - has massive holdings in his past employer. If this doesn't reek of a conflict of interest, you need to have your nose checked. Paulson is literally bailing himself out with this bill.
Even beyond the conflict of interest, and the general worry that we should all have about any massive bailout that does not include some kind of dividend check given to every American tax payer below a certain income (because those above a certain income barely pay taxes in this country anyway, and they have most likely benefited from the fleecing the people), the most frightening thing to me is the overuse of words like "may" and "shall", and "encourage to" in regard to helping homeowners. The word "mandate" or "shall" appear far too infrequently. "So there's no help for homeowners in this bill", according to Kucinich. Additionally, there is no requirement to revisit the bankruptcy laws that the Bush Administration has passed during the past 8 years. Even Obama himself has said that should not be in the bill. He's made a case for it, and it is somewhat sound, but the fact is, if the American people are footing the bill for these banks, who cares if it fits within the confines of legislative manners! Damn the rules and the past precedents on this one Obama!
Basically, this whole bill, and I read a good majority of it early this morning, is simply a bailout for the rabid, greedy bastards who got us into this mess in the first place, otherwise known as speculators. They are the reason home prices became criminally over-valued, making the banks do whatever they had to in order to get more loans out to more people, so that they could collect more interest rates. By inflating the value of these homes on the market, they were able to loan more money with increasingly ridiculous interest rates that were "flexible." In the end, what this meant was lower to middle-income people deciding to take a risk by getting a "sub-prime" mortgage. There are only two reasons why a person with an income of like $40,000 made the silly choice to buy a $200,000 house: One, the bank pretty much guaranteed them they would get the loan, even though the payment would be nearly half of their take home pay every month. And they probably didn't say a damn thing about the bubble which they all knew was about to burst. Two, they were consistently reassured that real estate is the safest investment one can make. Usually, it was a combination of the two things that made folks want to buy when they shouldn't. Hell, we have been told for a century that real estate is the most solid investment. If you are a poor or lower-middle income person, you want in on that, because you might actually see something for your investment, something you can't say about anything else you spend money on, right?
Anyway, point is, we got had on a multitude of fronts. And we are about to bend over and take it again, unless enough Democrats and Republicans for that matter, decide to vote against this thing. Obama is wrong when he says "the consequence of doing nothing is more dangerous than the bill we have on the table." To hell with that logic. The reality is, there is nothing in this bill that MANDATES that the American tax payer is truly going to gain from this package. The only thing that is mandated is that the bankers, speculators, and fraudulent real estate investors are going to get out of this one just fine. Meanwhile, the American tax payer is going to enjoy the worst economic situation since the Great Depression.
In conclusion: This bill IS important. It is something that we should be negotiating. However, we should be utilizing these negotiations for a much larger effort: To completely reform the entire banking system in the United States. And while we are at, instituting some real controls on the capitalist market. The fact that we are even debating a bill like this is evidence that nothing but fraud "trickles down" and the dream of "free market capitalism" became a nightmare a long time ago. We are only seeing the effects now.
If Obama votes for this bill, he is simply saying to the American people that the fatally flawed economic premise under which we all suffer is more important to save than the soul of the American people. There is no guarantee, and in fact far from a guarantee, that this bill will keep us from entering a full-blown "depression". Multiple Nobel Prize winning economists have already come out and said we are there, and there is no turning back. We ought to listen to them, and in the meantime, rethink and rebuild the socioeconomic foundation on which this country operates.
If Obama loses this election as a result of folks like me refusing to vote for ANYONE who is in support of this bill, let it be a lesson to us all.
- Christopher R. Cox
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Art as Commodity versus Art as a product of Humanity
True art cannot be bought or sold. It can only be experienced.
In that sense, it's a lot like love, or what we humans are capable of understanding of love. It follows guidelines that do not fit the mathematical constructs of economics. It cannot be explained with any language fully, or by any theory entirely. It defines our humanity, and therefore solidifies our position in the cosmos while it humbles us to our proper and healthy level of ego.
The tricky part comes here: We live in a society that quantifies values with the numerical constructs of economics. Art has been comodified in order to fit into an equation that crosses all human boundaries by reaching out to the worst things about our humanity. Greed has a funny way of unifying humans on paper, but not unifying them in reality.
I'll spin it this way. When I was younger, me and my brother played with an inordinate amount of lego building blocks. I had lots of legos, and I loved it. It's either a natural or trained inclination that any kid has: You have toys, now, you want more toys. More numbers of legos equals more fun. I mean come on, you can build more stuff with more legos, and create bigger sprawling lego metropolises where less legos only creates tiny buildings barely big enough to hold a green army figurine.
It's funny though, whenever I was playing with the legos alone, I never really was able to make all that big of cities. I could make planes, tiny main-streets, and maybe the occasional parachuting pirate, but I never expanded fully to the sweeping urban landscape my inner lego id desired. I always got bored. Perhaps I ran out of ideas, or more likely I realized playing with legos alone as a little kid is (surprise) lonely, and invariably not that much fun. But playing alone isn't how I created the best lego design of my life.
My biggest accomplishment as a lego architect came not as a sole vision by my own self, but as a collective effort. My brother Nathan laid a lot of the groundwork, bounced ideas, and helped construct at least a few of our skyscrapers. My sister Kirstin, always blessed with more reason than our 8 year old punk asses gave her credit for, made stories about some of the people living in lego town, and that changed the way we designed the city. The lego city, in our imaginations, was now complete. It was stronger than it could have been if we all were separate, and had an imagined social architecture to boot. And man, if you ask any of us kids, that was one damn great lego city. We even took a picture of it.
My point is this. I wanted legos. Lots of legos. Through garage sales and kind friends, us kids were given lots of legos. But nowhere in my recollection did HAVING or OWNING lots of legos make them fun. It was playing with legos, which wasn't cool unless somebody else was there playing with you. This is why it was so much fun to get together with my friend Tyler and mix up all our legos, much to the chagrin of organization and personal lego retention. The true validation and the best art came when my desires weren't based on the acquisition of more legos, but rather playing with the legos I had with other human beings.
Art, or at least true art, isn't a kid having lots of legos. It isn't a self absorbed performance, a way to impress people, or a way to make money. These things are present in art, but they can in no way shape or form account for the creative process. Making lego things was the fun part. Fun wasn't buying lego things or having the most lego things. Greed didn't give better lego cities or a better time, it just gave me more legos.
What gave me fun was playing with the legos as a small group of humans. Little people interacting with other little people creating a tiny world that mirrors our own humanity. You could never buy that in a box or sell it next to a game of Mousetrap. It was and is invaluable and completely impossible to define. It was the process of creativity.
You can't buy that kind of time. It's forever lost in the past and therefore off the market. We can only remember the experience and hope for more of that experience in the future.
And when the experience of that art comes again, we will know it. It will be the only thing that is both impossible to understand or quantify, but also so simply human that even a child is drawn to it. It is virtue not by its perceived value. It is virtuous by bringing together people selflessly for the common good and teaching them things that cannot be explained or put into definable structures.
It is indeed, a lot like love.
In that sense, it's a lot like love, or what we humans are capable of understanding of love. It follows guidelines that do not fit the mathematical constructs of economics. It cannot be explained with any language fully, or by any theory entirely. It defines our humanity, and therefore solidifies our position in the cosmos while it humbles us to our proper and healthy level of ego.
The tricky part comes here: We live in a society that quantifies values with the numerical constructs of economics. Art has been comodified in order to fit into an equation that crosses all human boundaries by reaching out to the worst things about our humanity. Greed has a funny way of unifying humans on paper, but not unifying them in reality.
I'll spin it this way. When I was younger, me and my brother played with an inordinate amount of lego building blocks. I had lots of legos, and I loved it. It's either a natural or trained inclination that any kid has: You have toys, now, you want more toys. More numbers of legos equals more fun. I mean come on, you can build more stuff with more legos, and create bigger sprawling lego metropolises where less legos only creates tiny buildings barely big enough to hold a green army figurine.
It's funny though, whenever I was playing with the legos alone, I never really was able to make all that big of cities. I could make planes, tiny main-streets, and maybe the occasional parachuting pirate, but I never expanded fully to the sweeping urban landscape my inner lego id desired. I always got bored. Perhaps I ran out of ideas, or more likely I realized playing with legos alone as a little kid is (surprise) lonely, and invariably not that much fun. But playing alone isn't how I created the best lego design of my life.
My biggest accomplishment as a lego architect came not as a sole vision by my own self, but as a collective effort. My brother Nathan laid a lot of the groundwork, bounced ideas, and helped construct at least a few of our skyscrapers. My sister Kirstin, always blessed with more reason than our 8 year old punk asses gave her credit for, made stories about some of the people living in lego town, and that changed the way we designed the city. The lego city, in our imaginations, was now complete. It was stronger than it could have been if we all were separate, and had an imagined social architecture to boot. And man, if you ask any of us kids, that was one damn great lego city. We even took a picture of it.
My point is this. I wanted legos. Lots of legos. Through garage sales and kind friends, us kids were given lots of legos. But nowhere in my recollection did HAVING or OWNING lots of legos make them fun. It was playing with legos, which wasn't cool unless somebody else was there playing with you. This is why it was so much fun to get together with my friend Tyler and mix up all our legos, much to the chagrin of organization and personal lego retention. The true validation and the best art came when my desires weren't based on the acquisition of more legos, but rather playing with the legos I had with other human beings.
Art, or at least true art, isn't a kid having lots of legos. It isn't a self absorbed performance, a way to impress people, or a way to make money. These things are present in art, but they can in no way shape or form account for the creative process. Making lego things was the fun part. Fun wasn't buying lego things or having the most lego things. Greed didn't give better lego cities or a better time, it just gave me more legos.
What gave me fun was playing with the legos as a small group of humans. Little people interacting with other little people creating a tiny world that mirrors our own humanity. You could never buy that in a box or sell it next to a game of Mousetrap. It was and is invaluable and completely impossible to define. It was the process of creativity.
You can't buy that kind of time. It's forever lost in the past and therefore off the market. We can only remember the experience and hope for more of that experience in the future.
And when the experience of that art comes again, we will know it. It will be the only thing that is both impossible to understand or quantify, but also so simply human that even a child is drawn to it. It is virtue not by its perceived value. It is virtuous by bringing together people selflessly for the common good and teaching them things that cannot be explained or put into definable structures.
It is indeed, a lot like love.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Assessing the times through music and politics! Live @ the Black Dog
In the words of aesthetics guru and economics master Jacques Attali: "Music is the mysterious fortune teller of times to come." True? False? Nonsensical? Prescient? Let's talk about it.
Tomorrow night at the Black Dog Cafe and Wine Bar in Lowertown, Saint Paul @ 7pm, join MC Brihanu and myself (Christopher Robin Cox), along with Anthony Cox, Indigo, Jim Forrey (of Ripple Effect and Substance), Dean Magraw, and Jean Rochard of Nato Records for a critical debate and conversation about the role of music in today's society, its effect upon political discourse in America if any, and perhaps most importantly, the intersection between music and politics. The goal is to make an assessment of the times, through the lens of music and politics.
Needless to say, this is not only a very important conversation for us to have in times like these, but exceeding interesting as well! We hope the crowd is filled with people from numerous backgrounds, so please tell your friends. If you can't make it, please try to send someone else in your stead.
If music is allowed to be relegated only to concert halls and bars, as a result of the tyranny of the bottom line, society will surely suffer. It already has begun to suffer greatly, in my opinion, from a general ambivalence toward music as a live performance art. We have one of the last great live music scenes left in America, and we must stand up and fight to keep it. The way we do that is by showing how important music is to society at every level of discourse and activity.
Peace,
Christopher
Tomor
Needl
If music
Peace
Christopher
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Reflections on the RNC Protests COMING SOON!
Yes, we, as a band, will have some reflections on our amazing collective experiences during the RNC Protests last week in Saint Paul.
Let Rome Burn!
Yes, finally. It's about time that Americans begin to witness what has been happening right under their noses for the past 8 years or so. That is, the obvious falling apart of what was once the American empire. Arguably, it should have never existed in the first place, because if we were a country that actually learned from its historical mishaps, we would not even seek to become an empire in the first place. Alas, there are always a bunch of moneyed buffoons like Project for the New American Century and other adherents to silly philosophies like "free market" capitalism and global hegemony. In our case, those fascistic loons became the controllers of government, bolstered by the multinational corporations and mega-churches - which we might as well call propaganda machines - that benefited financially from the new economics of the American right.
We now have the largest separation of the rich and poor we have ever seen anywhere in the industrialized world, for sure, and possibly in the entire world. The two largest mortgage banks in the world just had to be taken over by the government. And that's a big one, because the new Republicans are absolutely allergic to any kind of regulation or public ownership of anything at all. The reality is that they have now silently admitted failure by allowing these banks to become government entities. And now, the government will still have control of them when the new government is sworn in next year. Perhaps we will make the smart decision and keep control of those banks and actually use them to put people into homes at affordable interest rates and all that communist mumbo-jumbo. I kind of doubt it, but we'll see.
Back to the list of evidences that Rome is burning.
Iraq, you know the country our military is occupying, just canceled six no-bid contracts. (1) This is the country that we have built what the American government refers to as an "embassy" that includes a shopping mall. The same country that we are spending over $200 million per day to occupy, for what we all know is oil, has just given the finger to George W. Bush and his military by saying, no thanks, we'll get someone else to do these contracts. Perhaps the Russians, or the Iranians, or the Brits, or whatever. After all, the other no-bid contracts that were supposed to be bringing Iraqis fresh water, working sewers, rebuilt pipelines, rebuilt schools (because we bombed many of them), new hospitals (because we bombed them too), new power lines, etc, have for the most part failed in providing the basic goods they were paid handsomely for. So, it should come as no surprise that the Iraqi government, and certainly the people, are not interested in making America richer by cutting them in on oil deals. In fact, I would argue it makes a lot more sense for Iraq to offer no-bid contracts to places like Venezuela, China, Japan, Cuba, Brazil, and maybe even Russia. I mean, after all, none of those countries illegally and bombastically attacked and occupied a sovereign nation in a very very long time. Well, Russia and Georgia is debatable. I'll save that one for another blog entry.
Anyway, point is, America's global influence is now dwindling, and it comes as a direct result of the same kind of careless policies that every empire in history has displayed just previous to its grand collapse, Rome being greatest example. In order for Rome to become the powerful empire it was, it had to rape and pillage its way to the top. Ring a bell America? Well, the American empire has now reached its pinnacle. There is no middle class to speak of. Education is at an all time low point. The separation of the rich and poor is a joke. Houses that were selling for $200,000 a few years ago are now selling for less than $100,000. And there are countries all over the world, even poor ones like Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela, are pointing at us and saying, "Karma is a bitch, ain't it?" You see, they all learned their lessons a long time ago: Don't waste your time trying to become an empire. Empires are the biggest targets in the world.
America is now the big target, and for good reason. We are hegemonic, exceptionalist, chauvinistic, and our foreign policy is structured in such as way as to - by its very design - leave out the humanistic concerns of the other countries we deal with. Will Obama matter? I don't know, maybe. Maybe people around the world will not equate the actions of the American government with the minds and hearts of the American people. But as an American, I am prepared to be tarred and feathered, for we all bear the responsibility for what our government has done in our name.
Let the burning begin, so that we can rebuild this nation in a way that makes the world a better place.
-Christopher Robin Cox
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
We now have the largest separation of the rich and poor we have ever seen anywhere in the industrialized world, for sure, and possibly in the entire world. The two largest mortgage banks in the world just had to be taken over by the government. And that's a big one, because the new Republicans are absolutely allergic to any kind of regulation or public ownership of anything at all. The reality is that they have now silently admitted failure by allowing these banks to become government entities. And now, the government will still have control of them when the new government is sworn in next year. Perhaps we will make the smart decision and keep control of those banks and actually use them to put people into homes at affordable interest rates and all that communist mumbo-jumbo. I kind of doubt it, but we'll see.
Back to the list of evidences that Rome is burning.
Iraq, you know the country our military is occupying, just canceled six no-bid contracts. (1) This is the country that we have built what the American government refers to as an "embassy" that includes a shopping mall. The same country that we are spending over $200 million per day to occupy, for what we all know is oil, has just given the finger to George W. Bush and his military by saying, no thanks, we'll get someone else to do these contracts. Perhaps the Russians, or the Iranians, or the Brits, or whatever. After all, the other no-bid contracts that were supposed to be bringing Iraqis fresh water, working sewers, rebuilt pipelines, rebuilt schools (because we bombed many of them), new hospitals (because we bombed them too), new power lines, etc, have for the most part failed in providing the basic goods they were paid handsomely for. So, it should come as no surprise that the Iraqi government, and certainly the people, are not interested in making America richer by cutting them in on oil deals. In fact, I would argue it makes a lot more sense for Iraq to offer no-bid contracts to places like Venezuela, China, Japan, Cuba, Brazil, and maybe even Russia. I mean, after all, none of those countries illegally and bombastically attacked and occupied a sovereign nation in a very very long time. Well, Russia and Georgia is debatable. I'll save that one for another blog entry.
Anyway, point is, America's global influence is now dwindling, and it comes as a direct result of the same kind of careless policies that every empire in history has displayed just previous to its grand collapse, Rome being greatest example. In order for Rome to become the powerful empire it was, it had to rape and pillage its way to the top. Ring a bell America? Well, the American empire has now reached its pinnacle. There is no middle class to speak of. Education is at an all time low point. The separation of the rich and poor is a joke. Houses that were selling for $200,000 a few years ago are now selling for less than $100,000. And there are countries all over the world, even poor ones like Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela, are pointing at us and saying, "Karma is a bitch, ain't it?" You see, they all learned their lessons a long time ago: Don't waste your time trying to become an empire. Empires are the biggest targets in the world.
America is now the big target, and for good reason. We are hegemonic, exceptionalist, chauvinistic, and our foreign policy is structured in such as way as to - by its very design - leave out the humanistic concerns of the other countries we deal with. Will Obama matter? I don't know, maybe. Maybe people around the world will not equate the actions of the American government with the minds and hearts of the American people. But as an American, I am prepared to be tarred and feathered, for we all bear the responsibility for what our government has done in our name.
Let the burning begin, so that we can rebuild this nation in a way that makes the world a better place.
-Christopher Robin Cox
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
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