What we are witnessing in our lifetimes, a great revolution of 2011 in the Middle East, has little if anything to do about religion, but has in fact everything to do about the deep oppression of the poor of the world at large.
No one knows what the outcome will be, but the time has passed for the Mubarak's of this world, who had ample opportunity and time to act as true leaders and stewards of their nations. As a matter of fact, throughout Europe and the world, when millions have lost their jobs, pensions and homes, without any relief whatsoever, and instead, a double down to the new so called 'austerity movement,' that is nothing more than a jaded veil to payoff those same Oligarchy Bankers, Wall Street Plutocrats, who knowingly and willingly crashed the protective systems that held nations (somewhat) together, and now what we are seeing is there is no turning back, from this point forward. They had their chance, and they were too arrogant and greedy to understand how fragile the delicate balance of governments and the people must, above all be respected, and held in place for the good of all humankind.
All of my life I have been a student of the great MLK, Jr., and I believe in his beliefs, thanks to my dad and Uncle Jack:
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Another one of my favorites:
You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression ... If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until "justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
And my favorite of all from a great courageous leaders, MLK, Jr.:
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.
No, I learned the hard way, I don't study war no more. I don't watch war movies, I will not glorify wars, I will not support oil for blood wars, I will not support the Military Industrial Complex. I will not support what may indeed happen, whether you realize it or not, in the situation we find ourselves in now:
A new DRAFT, TO SEND OUR CHILDREN INTO TOTAL WAR AND MORE KILLING. If you do not think this may happen, then you are not listening to what is really going on in the world.
It is the last thing that I want to happen, but I sure can hear the drums of wars when I hear them. You may think I am overreaching now, and perhaps I am, but after all the build up against Iran, Afganistan, Iraq and Pakistan, over the past few years, and now what has come to be, I'm just saying. I already lived through all of that, and over half of they guys I went to high schools with (a small high school on Cape Cod) were killed in Vietnam, including three of my own brothers.
When does this madness stop? The USA has been selling arms (the number one arms dealers in the entire world to all sides of enemies for too many years to remember.) We've been holding up puppet governments (most of all our puppet government) for so long, we can't even remember who we are anymore, or who is right or wrong or what we stand for. How did this come to me? Money, power and corruption. It really is that simple.
I never believed in American exceptionalism, nor will I ever. I never believed in the false notion of what some in World War II called, 'containment,' because it was a false premise to begin with. Even my own Dad, a lifetime Full Bird Col, in the SAC, in the USAF, thought the idea of 'containment' was bullshit.
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to expand communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. It represented a middle-ground position between détente and rollback. The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan. As a description of U.S. foreign policy, the word originated in a report Kennan submitted to Defense Secretary James Forrestal in January 1947, a report that was later published as a magazine article. It is a translation of the French cordon sanitaire, used to describe Western policy toward the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
The word containment is associated most strongly with the policies of U.S. President Harry Truman (1945–53), including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or more formally known as NATO, a mutual defense pact. Although President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–61) toyed with the rival doctrine of rollback, he refused to intervene in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. President Lyndon Johnson (1963–69) was firmly committed to containment, forcing him to fight a war he did not want in Vietnam. President Richard Nixon (1969–74), working with his top advisor Henry Kissinger, rejected containment in favor of friendly relations with the Soviet Union and China; this détente, or relaxation of tensions, involved expanded trade and cultural contacts. President Jimmy Carter (1976–81) emphasized human rights rather than anti-communism, but dropped détente and returned to containment when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Ronald Reagan (1981–89), denouncing the Soviet state as an "evil empire", escalated the Cold War and promoted rollback in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Central programs begun under containment, including NATO and nuclear deterrence, remained in effect even after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
This false premise of 'containment' might work under certain basic guidelines where human rights, dignity, equality, and the fundamental respect of allowing the poor working people, not to be starved to death at the hands of a completely out of control Banking System, but that is not what has occurred, is it?
To even pretend at this point in time, how our own national key markets/Wall St. and Banking Systems did not fully infiltrate our own government that spread internationally is a delusion of the worst kind.
Millions have suffered, lost their homes, their jobs and their pensions and savings. Now we find the so called 'Davos' leaders of the world, talking about how to cut the final thin tread between the those that paid the greatest price, so they came simply 'pay off the toxic debts' they created in this own miscreant, egregious, morally corrupted greed, has led to this great international backlash and revolution, puts you, the 'voter' in the driver's seat. We got what we got, because we allowed the once, greatest power of this world, the USA, to sell us all down the river, with complete abandon, and 'those so called leaders' all 'cashed out on what they could in the Cayman Islands.'
Hey, I'm just the messenger, the piano player, so don't tell me I'm the 'bad girl here, ok?'
The loud, peaceful march was almost startling, because you hardly see street protests in America these days, even in liberal Massachusetts. The Boston Globe quoted one Egyptian-American woman saying that middle class anger in Egypt has swelled with unemployment and inflation. "You can't live a fairly decent life without being rich," she said. In 2011, you might say the same about downwardly mobile America. But where are the protests in our country? Where is the leadership connecting the dots... between the financial meltdown, the record profits and bonuses on Wall Street, the continuing collapse of home equity, the joblessness, and the assault on public services in the name of budgetary prudence? The protesters shaking the foundations of despotic regimes in the Middle East are a blend of people who want radical Islam in temporary coalition with those who want western-style tolerance, democracy, and a semblance of honest and competent government. They are united only by their disgust with the corrupt status quo. But you have to admire them for acting on their frustrations. This wave of citizen protest is a reminder that insurgent moments can break out and spread with little warning. But you never know whether a genuine revolution from below leads to a Jefferson, a Mandela, a Havel, a Roosevelt -- or a Hitler, Mussolini, or in current circumstances radical Islamists who reject everything secular, tolerant, and democratic about the Enlightenment.
The United States may possess more than half of the world's arms, but it is powerless to control this kind of popular uprising. As protest spreads and regimes that America propped up are toppled, we don't know whether the successor governments will be pluralist Muslim democracies like Turkey and Indonesia, radical fundamentalist states like Iran, or military dictatorships. But half a century of American investment in strongmen like Mubarak to contain popular unrest is collapsing along with his regime, and US influence in the Middle East is very likely to decline.
President Obama took office with more good will in the Middle East than any recent president, just as he kindled a new generation of hope at home. It remains to be seen whether his administration can credibly identify the United States with the aspirations of hundreds of millions of ordinary Arabs, and thereby nudge a turbulent region in the direction of tolerant democracy rather than fundamentalist rage. It also remains to be seen whether Obama can finally be the ally of drastic reform at home. If not, the domestic rage about the economy will continue to belong to the far right. It's great to see Americans demonstrating in solidarity with ordinary Egyptians. But the next time I cross paths with a robust protest march, I'd like to see citizens protesting the wreckage of American prosperity by Wall Street and the too feeble response by our government.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
All I am really trying to say in this diary, is to listen to the 'drums of wars' that have been enveloping our nation for the past 20 years, or more....listen to the facts of how many are being killed, listen to the facts that the MIC is the number one way that our youth can make a living these days. Listen to the part of how America is the number one arms selling dealer in the world on both sides of our enemies. Listen to the fact that we spend more on What part of that don't you get?
SIPRI has commented in the past on the increasing concentration of military expenditure, i.e. that a small number of countries spend the largest sums. This trend carries on into 2009 spending. For example,
* The 15 countries with the highest spending account for over 82% of the total;
* The USA is responsible for 46.5 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by the China (6.6% of world share), France (4.2%), UK (3.8%), and Russia (3.5%):
http://www.globalissues.org/...
Here we go folks: hear it clearly:
The USA is responsible for 46.5 percent of the world totally of for selling Arms to both or so called, 'friends and enemies' and what? We are surprised to find our nation in complete and total corruption and our citizens in deep poverty, when you add to that, the greatest Bank Heist of 2008, that destroyed out nation that spread to the rest of the world?
Connect the dots....
Yes, there is something very, very desperately wrong with our nation, and we all know it, and we all know it deeply in our souls and hearts, and I think that most of us, are in solidarity with the people in Egypt tonight.
It started in Algeria and Tunisia with food riots, and now and before that it was already spreading from Iceland, to Greece, to Portugal, Spain, and other nations.
People have no jobs, they have lost their homes, and now those same nations are stealing their pensions, and throwing them into the streets. In the United States, for the first time, that which was never considered, allowing our States to call for Bankruptcy will be allowed, so that then the same States can deny the Pension funds to City and State Workers. The same shit is coming down for the bullshit MERS White Wash, which will and may, allow the feckless cowards of the 50 US State Attorney's to turn their backs on those Banks that have illegally foreclosed on millions of Americans.
This is what happens when the laws and civilizations are allowed to crumbled before our eyes, when there is not one fucking decent government official 'who has not been paid off' to as what MLK stated:
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.
Now we find ourselves right back at the precipice of the difference between Cowardice and Leadership, and so I know where I'm coming from. I lived it already.
One of my favorite singers of all time was a woman that died to early, Laura Nyro...during a similar time of deep upheaval. I just adored her, and she was a very early influence for me as a musician and vocalist, so I leave you with an uplifting message in this diary.
Don't study war no more.
Thanks for your grace and kindness.
Ms. B.