http://thinkorbeeaten.blogspot.com/
June 28, 2008
Global Citizenship and You
Gee, I hate bursting anyone's bubble but I'm afraid I have to. It's kind of important. I'll start with what brought this on.
Late Wednesday night, well into the wee hours, I decided to catch up on the news buzz for the week. I wanted to see what kind of news induced national neurosis, comatosis, blow yer nosis we were being pushed and pulled into, divided by, lied to about and beaten senseless with at the current moment. They like to prepare our minds like hors d'oeuvres to be the tasty accompaniment to their champagne, lies and bullets game plans. Such things are carefully crafted after all to imprint a certain, how shall I say it, "ambiance" in the minds of the people.
Sometimes it's panic, like last year when they pumped the BS story about the guy who got on a plane with TB and flew off to Greece to get married "against doctors orders", possibly infecting hundreds of people.
The implication was that it should be illegal to not obey doctors orders. Wait for it, it's coming, mark my words.
The trouble with this story was that this guy a) was NOT infectious, b) did NOT have any such doctors orders, in fact he was told he could travel to get married, no problem, and c) not one single person was at any risk, nor did one single person on the whole planet get infected. It was cooked up hysteria mongering. I'll bet you didn't read about any of those late breaking facts in the news.
The head game pros whipped up a heck of a froth with that manipulative lie fest. People were clogging up doctors offices all over the country whining and wringing their hands to get their TB tests, just certain they were exposed to that young man because they lived less than three states away from the airport he flew out of and they were sure they were going to die.
The chatter was that guys like that should all be rounded up in the name of public safety, people were angry and quick to call for drastic, oppressive, illegal measures to be taken. There were serious discussions about requiring people to wear surgical masks in public if they were sick; and another real frenzy inducing piece made a straight-faced case for locking these people behind bars, even if it meant keeping them in there forever. People were outraged and wanted the government to "do something".
Like what? Lock up sick people? Yes, that's such a good idea. I couldn't agree more, but I think we should only focus on the sickest, most diseased ones in top level government positions. Their terminally gangrenous humanity is a far more prevalent and immediate threat to our health than a few guys with cooties walking the streets. We'd be better off getting TB than being infected by what they've got.
And the skunky little instigating twits behind all this just sat back and laughed at how easy it is to spook the herd into a stampede and drive them right into the desired corral. Or would that be slaughterhouse?
Will we never learn, my dear fellow citizens? My, my.
But it's not always a Panic week. Sometimes it's an Outrage week. You can take your pick in this category, we've got a million outrage stories. From last year there was the late leaked information about Pat Tillman's murder by not so friendly, friendly fire. It sure stuck in my craw. It was a good distraction from the heat of the Iraq "war".
War. I hate using their words, they are all such head-twisting lies. We're not at war, we don't even have an enemy we can name or describe or point to, or even attempt to go talk to and try that unspeakable thing called diplomacy. What would you call it? The official organized, synchronized and legalized mass killing of civilians with concurrent extensive destruction of homes, businesses and cities. That pretty much covers it.
The story of Pat Tillman's political murder was just the ticket to take our attention off the other nasty despicable things the oil-igarchs were up to and didn't want us to notice, like ending our rights to privacy and legitimizing this phony president's imaginary power to spy on every last one of us, in order to stave off more terror attacks. Which insulted the hell out of me since our own government was involved in every terror attack we've ever had on American soil, including 9/11.
Letting the facts of the assassination of Pat Tillman spill out into the public consciousness was standard distraction procedure. No one responsible for the murder had a snowball's chance in hell of being held accountable, neither those who ordered it nor those who committed it. The killers and thugs would stay safe and cozy while the disgusted public went into conniption fits over the testimony of first hand eye witnesses describing several shots to the head fired at close range, the destruction of evidence and Tillman's personal diary, and the military's indelicate measures to bury, hide, cover up and flat out lie about the whole thing. It got people talking and it got everyone distracted. It was a job well done by the propaganda and manipulation team who's healthy salaries and generous benefits packages we all get to pay for. Killers and thugs do real well in this country and I bet they don't pay taxes either.
Nothing came of that belated shocking first hand testimony. And nothing came of the charade Congressional investigation. They got away with it. They always do.
This Wednesday there was the Outrage story of Bushco's defiance of the third Supreme Court ruling last week, which stated that even the detainees... wait, they're doing it again. Those men aren't "detainees". They're illegally held civilian prisoners being denied rights to council, visitation, and due process; imprisoned without charges, denied media access, and tortured repeatedly until they confess to everything from shooting JFK to masterminding September 11th. 'Detainees' sounds so innocuous and down right comfy, like they're putting them up for the weekend at the Baghdad Holiday Inn. What they're doing breaks one of our most critically important laws, denying due process to not only citizens, but everyone in this country or in our 'care'. It's an outrage. See how they do us? I just hate that.
Anyway, the Supreme Court for the third time did rule against the pro-torture Christian President and said that even those men in Guantanamo were entitled to the very same rights we all used to have in America. They have to be treated as if Bush and Friends really believed in our values, believed in the right of the people to be free, to have due process, to be treated with dignity, to have a say over what their government does. All that stuff that the government clearly hates so much they spit every time the subject comes up.
There's no doubt left after bushco's three tries to get the Supreme Court to kiss fascist fanny, that they're not about to pucker up. The public heaved a huge sigh of relief too, because lets face it, torture is just way out there. It's no good coming or going, and it's just a slightly huge contradiction to everything we stand for. We Americans don't like torture and we really don't support it. Only the super stupid people think it's a good idea to demoralize, dehumanize and sexually violate other human beings, and there's not that many of them. They're only the ones in charge plus a small group of very obnoxious, loud people who think freedom means obedience to the government.
Not everyone is born with a full deck, but we have to tolerate them anyway, even if they are the number one twits of all time.
So what did Bushco do after this third ruling against him? Did he finally realize that torture is just too against the law to pretend it's not depraved and inexcusable and that he needs to give it a rest now? Don't be funny. They're already putting together a 4th set of twisted and sick trial strategies and lies to go for it again.
In the meantime they are going right on ahead with their military tribunals, blowing off the law the Supreme Court just triple verified is for sure the law and must be obeyed, claiming the ruling doesn't apply to them. "I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," US Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters during a visit to Tokyo.
In Thursday's news, they were kind enough to throw us a bone. We got some good news for a change. "345 arrested, kids rescued in prostitution busts". Now you're talking. "Hundreds of people have been arrested and 21 children rescued in what the FBI is calling a five-day roundup of networks of pimps who force children into prostitution."
Hundreds of adults but only 21 children were rescued? I think they missed a few children, I mean, do the math. What's wrong with that picture? Oh, and it turns out those people they arrested were allegedly adult prostitutes who the authorities say are the ones pimping these children.
I don't know what's worse, the fact that there are scum bags that sell children's bodies for capital gain, or the fact that there's enough scum bag customers to keep hundreds, no, let's get real, thousands of these scum bag pimps busy turning brisk profits selling children's bodies to world class perverts, and for use in Intelligence blackmail ops.
It honestly makes me want to hurl.
"Gee Wally, what about the scum bags who pay to molest those children? Why weren't they arrested too?"
"That's easy Beav. Congress was in session. They were too busy selling out America to get arrested. They had to approve legislation to retroactively let Bush and the big phone companies totally off the hook for all that illegal spying on Americans, and clear the path for them to spy on us all they want from now on. It was, stay here and vote this legislation through or get implicated in the most embarrassing, large scale child prostitution bust of all time. Besides, you know the rules. Punish the victim and let the perpetrators go free, remember?"
"Gosh Wally, that's right. I forgot."
Don't feel too bad Beaver, we all forget. Every single time it happens we get national amnesia. It must be some kind of kooky coincidence, huh? I mean, what are the odds of EVERYone forgetting EVERY time it happens? Those odds must be waaaaaaay up there.
I also tried reading some other "mainstream" news but after seeing the word 'McCain' 212 times and the word 'Obama' 176 times in one article, I decided big media "news" has to be the all time, number one method of self-instigated brain death. So I hopped over to Adbusters Magazine instead, figuring I'd get a detoxifying dose of counter culture there. Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out that way.
In fact I found something that made my hair stand up. It's still standing up too, I should get a picture of it and enter it in a Don King look alike contest. I doubt I'd win but I love a good contest, which is what led me to today's topic.
Adbusters is having a design contest. The idea of a politically agreeable, anti-corporate, pro-justice artwork design challenge appealed to me. It might be fun to try to come up with a new official anti-big business, pro-people design that would, ostensibly, be printed off in droves and spread like wildfire all across the country for freedom loving guys and gals to wear on T-shirts, have printed on book bags, and shimmy up flag poles everywhere. I decided to check it out.
There wasn't much there, only two short paragraphs which I read through quickly. My focus was on what they were looking for, what the theme was, what the actual product would be. As soon as I read it, a very definite concept came to mind. A number one. A world. It was all so cliché and obvious that it left a bad taste in my creative mouth. I sat back and thought to myself, "I feel like I was directly led to this wanker of an idea." Was I?
I read through those two paragraphs again, but slowly this time. It wasn't long before the words 'global citizenship' stuck out, and I wanted to know what exactly they thought that means. What is the ideology being promoted here? And what does it have to do with living natural, or with social and global justice, or with shrugging off mass produced cheap imported corporate goods and shopping small and local instead? Well it had nothing to do with those things.
What it has to do with is something else entirely. I think you should see this. Let's read through it together, shall we?
http://thinkorbeeaten.blogspot.com/
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