Economic Enslavement

¡Hola Everybody...
Yesterday, I was on my way to the fireworks display and when I hit the City, I decided against it. I wanted to take some photos to upload, but I was tired from a full day running around at the beach.

I was reading this and I have to admit: sometimes I surprise even myself...

* * *

There are currently at least 30 wars and armed conflicts raging in the world… over 80% of the casualties of war are civilians… disproportionately women and children.

-=[ The Ties that Bind Us ]=-

... And whoever controls the debt, controls everything. This is the essence of the banking industry to make us all slaves to the debt.
-- The International

As we lurch toward the end of the first decade of the new millennium, I can’t help but reflect in amazement how we’ve been at it for all these thousands of years and we’re still here in spite of ourselves. Through the cruel elements, the countless plagues and wars, the madmen, and perhaps human nature itself, we are still here, defiant, striving, still trying to make sense of it all.

We’re still alive...

But we’re still suffering and killing and hating each other. Diplomacy has risen to an art form because we have become masters of the art of war. I wake up today with the realization that we have defeated the democratic process and in its place we have put an economic system that depraves our efforts in order to create riches based on a subculture of poverty and crime, a system any other creature would rightfully see as barbaric.

We believe ourselves to be the most advanced species but we demonstrate very little understanding or respect for our bodies or the world we inhabit.

For over a hundred years, the practice of slavery has been outlawed here in the Land of the Snow, but people still slave. Technology has taken us to outer space, but not before we managed to eradicate millions in search of genetic purity; not before one of our greatest technological projects, harnessing the power of the atom, incinerated tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children to shadows.

We wear the restraints of capitalism, the corruption of ideals, and our hatred, prejudice, and ignorance like shackles.

Our capacity for moral reasoning hasn’t caught up with our technological advances. On the richest nation on the planet, we have the power to end starvation, but children still go hungry. We celebrate our medical advances, but the medicines that slow the progress of AIDS are nowhere to e found as that very plague decimates the entire African continent. Our thinking gets the better of our actions. But before you begin to lay blame, please know that our actions are not truly ours to command. At least not any longer...

Today decisions are made by governments and the corporations that own them and are designed to increase profit, not to advance humanitarian ends. Children are starving because it has nothing to do with the bottom line. People are dying everywhere, but how can you try an international cartel for murder?

I awaken and I am appalled at the lack of moral responsibility and leadership. We all know something’s wrong, but we can’t seem to change because we’ve been hoodwinked -- we’ve all been chained and made into property.

Reality TV is our pacifier and money is our drug of choice -- the one habit we can’t kick without dying in the process. Money also forms the links that create our shackles. Our labor binds us to systems that see us only as units of value or expense.

And in this way we careen toward a future like a runaway train whose conductor and engineer have slain one another, its passengers blissfully unaware. Our lives are designed to maintain the values of our economy. A pound of coffee, an ounce of lead, a human life -- all these things express value in our world. Not human values but the values of the system that rules us. We drag along these values accepting their consequences: wars, the laws that maintain order (and their prisons), the weapons of mass destruction, and the perceived need for world dominance.

Through all this, we are told that there awaits a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But we know deep down inside that we’ll have to pay in sweat, blood, and sacrifice -- our sacrifice alone -- for such a future. Yes, boys and girls, the future may be bright, but we will be the beasts of burden hauling around the necessities to maintain that brilliance.

I wake up today and I am overcome by an overwhelming sense that nothing will save the masses from this tragic fate.

Unless we free ourselves from those old chains of ignorance of the past two-hundred years or more. In order to free ourselves we must stop fooling ourselves into continuing to believe that our chains are jewelry. We must begin to consider the nature of our chains. Understanding something about how we became enslaved (again) might allow us the ability break free of those chains. Once freed, we might bring on a new consciousness that will help us realize that the dreams we had for a bright future pale in comparison to the reality that lies quiescent within each and every one of us.

I can’t help but think that as the latest economic devastation forces white working-class Americans to stop heeding the demagoguery of right-wing talk show hosts, they will come to realize that they too are part of the insanity of mass oppression for mass production. This current economic mess, brought upon by decades of conservative ideology, will not just go away. This is not an economic hiccup.

Maybe this time it will make it harder to separate people of color from whites, as we all endure the hardships. Even if people do not want to see -- or admit -- the fact that we’re all in the same boat, reality has come knocking. Maybe, finally, as we all suffer from the economic shit storm, people will be less prone to heed the propaganda of racial superiority.

Poor or nonexistent medical care, job security, lack of education -- these issues affect every cultural group, creed, and race to differing degrees.

While the runaway juggernaut of capitalism may not extract its pound of flesh in an equal opportunity manner, it does extract it from all of us. It is the nature of capitalism to apply its value system to everything. Within this system, all values are interchangeable. Not only are these values interchangeable, but they also rise and fall according to market forces. Your whole sense of identity and belonging can come tumbling down the moment the cost of a barrel of crude oil, for example, skyrockets. Price competition could well affect the cost of production and one of the major production costs is labor -- your labor. In this way, the value of life itself rises and falls according to the cost of production.

Contrary to what the well-fed and groomed media lap dogs tell you, the economic system that rules so much of our lives cannot value human labor above any other commodity or resource. Under the crushing weight of this system, your humanity is no more valuable than its equivalent cost of a sack of potatoes. Capitalism has no humanity, something even the talking heads admit even while they tell you it’s the ultimate solution to all our social ills. All that exists in the capitalist bible is the margin of profit, the market share. We are all part of the machine, and those elements -- those idiosyncrasies of individualism -- must be dealt with in the same way any mechanic deals with a “faulty” part: removal or replacement.

We are all part of an economic machine. Some of us are cogs, others ghosts, but it is a machine, not our differences, that drive us.

Whites will experience what people of color have been experiencing for centuries and my hope is that, as they experience alienation and isolation from the full participation of the democratic process, they will begin to learn what it feels to be marginalized and in that way, we can all somehow create a coalition founded on our common experiences. As whites, you might feel identification with groups or power, but what does that identification mean on the unemployment line or when an HMO refuses you the luxury of life-saving technology?

In our current reality, we are all a unit of labor. Sure, each individual may use his or her labor as he or she wishes, but in most cases, this power is extremely limited. Make no mistake: the advantage of supply and demand is in the favor of the corporations, not ours. While this is indeed depressing, I take heart in knowing that the experience that can marshal a new era -- a new consciousness -- in our shared history.

The history of African Americans and other people of color is an integral and important part of the history of the United States. Rebellion, it is said, is the essential movement of understanding. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no appreciation of truth, and no tomorrow -- only a never-ending repetition of the daily act of humiliation that has become definition of our existence.

You may deem my words depressing, but I say that there can be no healing until recognition of the disease has evolved. With that, we are well on our way. I also realize that some of you despair that there aren’t enough of us, that the machine will chew us like so much grist for the mill. My first response is almost theoretical: allow me to point you to the power of karma as we discussed the other day. Your actions, no matter how seemingly insignificant, fan out, creating psychic ripples of consequences and actions. My second response is pragmatic. For those who would despair, I leave you with the following knowledge passed down to us by the great anthropologist Margaret Meade:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Love,

Eddie

Wealthfare

¡Hola! Everybody...
Today? Welfare Queens!

* * *

-=[ Corporate Welfare Queens ]=-

“She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.”

-- Ronald Reagan during his 1976 presidential campaign

And she was black... he should have added, since studies show that the perceived face of poverty is black and female. Reagan never named a particular woman because the woman never existed. contrary to the conservative spin, there never was an army of young, amoral, crack-addicted black mothers driving Cadillacs while giving birth to litters to super-predator cop killers.

Reagan specialized in the use of the outrageous anecdotes that were usually false. Yet the media so sensationalized his stories that these falsehoods were used to frame any public debate about poverty. Make no mistake: the new and improved racism is couched in the conservative language of individualism and boot-strapping. Because his “examples” of welfare queens relied on existing stereotypes of welfare cheats and resonated with news stories about welfare fraud, they did indeed gain real footing within the public discourse on poverty.

However, the real story should have been about a different kind of welfare queen. A Welfare Queen that actually existed, most likely drove higher end gas-guzzlers and wore three-piece suits: the Corporate Welfare Queen.

Even at its height, “welfare” as perceived by the public was probably about 1% of the federal budget. Corporate Welfare, government programs that provide special benefits to specific industries or corporations, have always been far more generous than anything ever given to the poor. Poverty, in case you haven’t received the memo, is a sin in these times of KKKorporate KKKristianity. If you’re poor, it’s because you lack morals, drive, intelligence, or any kind of civic responsibility. KKKorporate KKKristianity postulates you’re poor because you’re not a real KKKristian. After all, didn’t rich people pull themselves out of the muck?

Well, maybe we should rethink that last part. Many of the largest companies have been on the welfare dole, including Wal-Mart, General Motors, Boeing, Archer Daniels Midland, and the notorious Enron. And all this was before the latest capitalist collapse -- I mean! -- “economic downturn” that has resulted in $ trillions being given away to failed CEOs.

The ultra conservative Cato Institute estimated that the federal government spent a total of $96.6 billion on corporate welfare in the fiscal year 2002. State and local governments also hand out money to businesses. Here in New York City, for example, we have a stadium built with $100 of billions of taxpayer money in which the citizens cannot afford to buy a seat. While subsidies for stadiums are popular, studies show that they do little to promote local economic improvement and never pay for themselves. The primary beneficiaries are the wealthy team owners who then go on to sell their teams at a huge profit.

Large businesses often bargain with (or more correctly extort) communities, demanding major tax breaks, free or reduced-price land, or infrastructure assistance in return for the promise of creating jobs. One recent study showed that Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in subsidies. Yet Wal-Mart often destroys almost as many jobs as it creates, driving smaller, more community-based retailers out of business.

However, the bulk of the real welfare money is distributed through entities that usually have the word “complex” as a descriptor. By far, the largest welfare program for rich people is known as defense spending, or the military/ industrial complex. As a nation, we spend more on defense than the next ten nations combined. I can’t tell you know how much we give away, because much of this money isn’t reported; but if we take just one program as an example, The Star Wars program, we can get a sense of how easily we give away our hard-earned money. Initially an idea that sprouted out of Reagan’s diseased-damaged brain, The Star Wars program has spent $100 of billions for an anti-missile program that has yet to hit a target! Yes, you heard that right: decades and $100 of billions for a program that cannot hit a target.

Not once...

::blank stare::

In addition, let’s not forget the $100 hammers and screwdrivers or the fact that I haven’t even addressed the latest round of welfare for the rich, otherwise known as “bailout.”

Which brings me to the second half of my post: a particularly vicious welfare program known as the prison/ industrial complex. Note that our government finds it fit to help to rich people. However, when it comes to the middle class, poor, and working poor, you’re on your own.

In our Amerikkka, the rich get welfare and the poor get to go to prison. I would argue that the sources of crime are well known (e.g. poverty, prisons, guns, drugs) but, in contrast to our approach to the rich, little is done to reduce the causes. In fact, I would submit the criminal justice system has a stake in its own failures (The Pyrrhic Defeat Theory). The Incarceration Nation has replaced the vision of a Great society. Plus, it’s an extremely profitable business traded on the stock market.

In 1996, Rand published a study that highlighted what works to reduce crime: preventing child abuse/neglect, enhancing children’s intellectual and social development, providing support guidance to vulnerable adolescents, and working extensively with formerly incarcerated youths. As it stands, we incarcerate more people than any other nation in the world. South Africa's incarceration rates, at the height of apartheid, paled in comparison to ours today.

And yet, we lead the free world in addiction, crime, and violence. Furthermore, sociologists have confirmed that incarceration as a social policy reaches a threshold where it actually begins to increases crime and makes vulnerable communities less safe.

We need to ask some important questions: Who defines crime? How is the public image of crime created? How is crime not defined? What is the image we have of criminals? Why do white collar crooks get so little in comparison to the damage they do to society, and why is white collar crime rarely reported?

Blacks make up no more than 13% of all drug abusers but 74% of those in prison for drugs. There’s no way you can do the math and justify that number. Discrimination occurs at all phases of the criminal justice system from arrest to imprisonment. The race of the victim and the race of the defendant are significantly related to use of the death penalty.

I will state that people who cannot see a better way to curb crime, other than to lockup millions, lack more than imagination -- they lack intelligence. Crime and disorder, which flow from hopeless poverty, unloved children, and drug abuse, can’t be solved by building prisons, mandatory sentencing minimums, or hiring more police.

From an empirical standpoint, what will work has been known for decades. It’s not the knowledge that’s lacking, it’s the civic will. We know what works:

• End poverty
• Letting the punishment fit the criminal harm
• Legalize or decriminalize drugs
• Create correctional programs that promote responsibility and prepare human beings to reenter society
• Gun control
• Limit discretion of police, prosecutors, and judges
• Implement the right to equal counsel.
• Explore a vision of a society with a more just distribution of wealth.

We ignore this at our own risk. This affects you, whether you know it or not, because where do you think they get the money to build and maintain prisons? From your child’s school.

The issue here is equally simple: do we want to create a society based on teaching our children, or locking some of them up?

Paz,

Eddie

The Ties That Bind Us

¡Hola! Everybody...
Welcome to social networking sites where a woman who considers it moral to screw married men, another who pays for sex, and a man who talks publicly about his ex-wife’s foul-smelling genitalia have the audacity to pass moral judgment on others.

There’s some funny country-assed muthafuckas up in here. LOL!

Imma get all pedantic on yo asses today ...

* * *

-=[ The Ties that Bind Us ]=-

“... And whoever controls the debt, controls everything. This is the essence of the banking industry to make us all slaves to debt.”

-- from the film, The International

As we lurch toward the end of the first decade of the new millennium, I can’t help but reflect in amazement how we’ve been at it for all these thousands of years and we’re still here in spite of ourselves. Through the cruel elements, the countless plagues and wars, the madmen, and perhaps human nature itself, we are still here, defiant, striving, still trying to make sense of it all.

We’re still alive...

But we’re still suffering and killing and hating each other. Diplomacy has risen to an art form because we have become masters of the art of war. I wake up today with the realization that we have defeated the democratic process and in its place we have put an economic system that depraves our efforts in order to create riches based on a subculture of poverty and crime, a system any other creature would rightfully see as barbaric.

We believe ourselves to be the most advanced species but we demonstrate very little understanding or respect for our bodies or the world we inhabit.

For over a hundred years, the practice of slavery has been outlawed here in the Land of the Snow, but people still slave. Technology has taken us to outer space, but not before we managed to eradicate millions in search of genetic purity; not before one of our greatest technological projects, harnessing the power of the atom, incinerated tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children to shadows.

We wear the restraints of capitalism, the corruption of ideals, and our hatred, prejudice, and ignorance like shackles.

Our capacity for moral reasoning hasn’t caught up with our technological advances. On the richest nation on the planet, we have the power to end starvation, but children still go hungry. We celebrate our medical advances, but the medicines that slow the progress of AIDS are nowhere to e found as that very plague decimates the entire African continent. Our thinking gets the better of our actions. But before you begin to lay blame, please know that our actions are not truly ours to command. At least not any longer...

Today decisions are made by governments and the corporations that own them and are designed to increase profit, not to advance humanitarian ends. Children are starving because it has nothing to do with the bottom line. People are dying everywhere, but how can you try an international cartel for murder?

I awaken and I am appalled at the lack of moral responsibility and leadership. We all know something’s wrong, but we can’t seem to change because we’ve been hoodwinked -- we’ve all been chained and made into property.

Reality TV is our pacifier and money is our drug of choice -- the one habit we can’t kick without dying in the process. Money also forms the links that create our shackles. Our labor binds us to systems that see us only as units of value or expense.

And in this way we careen toward a future like a runaway train whose conductor and engineer have slain one another, its passengers blissfully unaware. Our lives are designed to maintain the values of our economy. A pound of coffee, an ounce of lead, a human life -- all these things express value in our world. Not human values but the values of the system that rules us. We drag along these values accepting their consequences: wars, the laws that maintain order (and their prisons), the weapons of mass destruction, and the perceived need for world dominance.

Through all this, we are told that there awaits a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But we know deep down inside that we’ll have to pay in sweat, blood, and sacrifice -- our sacrifice alone -- for such a future. Yes, boys and girls, the future may be bright, but we will be the beasts of burden hauling around the necessities to maintain that brilliance.

I wake up today and I am overcome by an overwhelming sense that nothing will save the masses from this tragic fate.

Unless we free ourselves from those old chains of ignorance of the past two-hundred years or more. In order to free ourselves we must stop fooling ourselves into continuing to believe that our chains are jewelry. We must begin to consider the nature of our chains. Understanding something about how we became enslaved (again) might allow us the ability break free of those chains. Once freed, we might bring on a new consciousness that will help us realize that the dreams we had for a bright future pale in comparison to the reality that lies quiescent within each and every one of us.

I can’t help but think that as the latest economic devastation forces white working-class Americans to stop heeding the demagoguery of right-wing talk show hosts, they will come to realize that they too are part of the insanity of mass oppression for mass production. This current economic mess, brought upon by decades of conservative ideology, will not just go away. This is not an economic hiccup.

Maybe this time it will make it harder to separate people of color from whites, as we all endure the hardships. Even if people do not want to see -- or admit -- the fact that we’re all in the same boat, reality has come knocking. Maybe, finally, as we all suffer from the economic shit storm, people will be less prone to heed the propaganda of racial superiority.

Poor or nonexistent medical care, job security, lack of education -- these issues affect every cultural group, creed, and race to differing degrees.

While the runaway juggernaut of capitalism may not extract its pound of flesh in an equal opportunity manner, it does extract it from all of us. It is the nature of capitalism to apply its value system to everything. Within this system, all values are interchangeable. Not only are these values interchangeable, but they also rise and fall according to market forces. Your whole sense of identity and belonging can come tumbling down the moment the cost of a barrel of crude oil, for example, skyrockets. Price competition could well affect the cost of production and one of the major production costs is labor -- your labor. In this way, the value of life itself rises and falls according to the cost of production.

Contrary to what the well-fed and groomed media lap dogs tell you, the economic system that rules so much of our lives cannot value human labor above any other commodity or resource. Under the crushing weight of this system, your humanity is no more valuable than its equivalent cost of a sack of potatoes. Capitalism has no humanity, something even the talking heads admit even while they tell you it’s the ultimate solution to all our social ills. All that exists in the capitalist bible is the margin of profit, the market share. We are all part of the machine, and those elements -- those idiosyncrasies of individualism -- must be dealt with in the same way any mechanic deals with a “faulty” part: removal or replacement.

We are all part of an economic machine. Some of us are cogs, others ghosts, but it is a machine, not our differences, that drive us.

Whites will experience what people of color have been experiencing for centuries and my hope is that, as they experience alienation and isolation from the full participation of the democratic process, they will begin to learn what it feels to be marginalized and in that way, we can all somehow create a coalition founded on our common experiences. As whites, you might feel identification with groups or power, but what does that identification mean on the unemployment line or when an HMO refuses you the luxury of life-saving technology?

In our current reality, we are all a unit of labor. Sure, each individual may use his or her labor as he or she wishes, but in most cases, this power is extremely limited. Make no mistake: the advantage of supply and demand is in the favor of the corporations, not ours. While this is indeed depressing, I take heart in knowing that the experience that can marshal a new era -- a new consciousness -- in our shared history.

The history of African Americans and other people of color is an integral and important part of the history of the United States. Rebellion, it is said, is the essential movement of understanding. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no appreciation of truth, and no tomorrow -- only a never-ending repetition of the daily act of humiliation that has become definition of our existence.

You may deem my words depressing, but I say that there can be no healing until recognition of the disease has evolved. With that, we are well on our way. I also realize that some of you despair that there aren’t enough of us, that the machine will chew us like so much grist for the mill. My first response is almost theoretical: allow me to point you to the power of karma as we discussed the other day. Your actions, no matter how seemingly insignificant, fan out, creating psychic ripples of consequences and actions. My second response is pragmatic. For those who would despair, I leave you with the following knowledge passed down to us by the great anthropologist Margaret Meade:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Love,

Eddie