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Journal of a Futurist - 4 July 2005
The America I Love
The America I Love
is rubbing the sleep from its eyes
and counting its dead,
and the dead of its enemies
who were not its enemies
until Bushwhacked.
Pic from: mykeru.com
The America I love
is looking aghast in the mirror and asking,
what have we become?
As the mutilated children multiply.
The America I love
is aware that freedom isn’t served by torture,
whether outsourced or inhouse.
The America I love
is sinking in the quagmire of Iraq
as it ascends from a quagmire of the soul.
For every PSY-OPS plot
there’s a 100 bloggers to expose it.
The families of teenagers targeted
by military recruiters say … NO!
The America I love
curses its President.
The America I love
is awash with poetry, flash art, graffiti, satire, docos
and all manner of dissent, including country music.
When the Pentagon claimed
“we never used napalm”
the cyber scribblers revealed
the time, date and place of the crime.
The America I love
is driving Donald Rumsfeld crazy.
The America I love
is aware that the tragedy of 9/11,
because of its savage misdirected vengeance,
is an escalating tragedy for everyone on Earth,
except arms dealers.
The America I love
- which long ago sparked a youth revolution
to kick out the jams, have fun, stop wars -
is waking from its dark sleep of unreason
and mindless acquisition, to ask
Who wrote the script for the liars?
Who fabricated the evidence?
Who pushed us to the brink of madness?
Big Oil … Big Media …Big Military?
Maybe all three.
On the board of the Washington Post sits Lockheed Martin,
hotly marketing a warhead
“that successfully demonstrates lethality
against urban structures”.
Boeing & Halliburton are on the board of Disney (ABC TV),
Bechtel & Chevron/Texaco are linked to NBC,
The New York Times is embedded with
notorious war profiteers with blood on their hands
and intimate ties to BushWorld - the Carlyle Group.
.
And so it goes.
The richest 10% of Americans receive an income equivalent
to nearly half the total population of the world.
How long is this morally sustainable?
Oil fields are now the killing fields,
of both people and planet,
and the ice caps are melting,
so the America I love
is wondering aloud who reaps the rewards
of mindless extraction,
endless distraction,
compulsive consumption, and
never ending destruction?
The answers, my friend, or at least some of the answers,
are blowing in the blogs.
Journal of a Futurist - 21 June 2005
DOWNFALL! The dream of violence that sank a nation.
It’s taken the Germans sixty years to unlock the horrors of Hitler’s bunker, and boy, what a stench. People on the extreme right should be given free tickets to Downfall and super-glued to the front stalls. Adolph Hitler is all too human, all too contemporary. His Project for the New German Century ended up costing 50 million lives, but he still clung to his delusions until the Soviet tanks closed in. As re-created by Bruno Ganz, the Fuhrer was a ball of menace wrapped in charm, fuelled by a vision of world domination. During the shelling of Berlin, Hitler stood resolute and ill informed, as he barked orders to imaginary battalions. The last Nazi luminary by his side was Joseph Goebbels, still blathering about crushing the insurgents, like a puppet Murdoch pundit.
To watch this amazing movie is to witness a web of lies unravel in front of its weavers. How could one fail to be fascinated? It is so NOW. “We are making good progress in Iraq. Global Warming is a myth”. The refusal to recognise the obvious is a sickness of our age. It is also a threat to democracy. When you see these symptoms at a Government near you, hit the streets … or your keyboard:
- A flourishing culture of deceit, emanating from the top.
- The broadcasting of misinformation justified on the grounds of security.
- Excessive surveillance. State access to records and property of any citizen, including medical, travel, financial, library, internet-account, and telephone data.
- A cultivated mood of simmering patriotism.
Sign on public display in U.S.
- The furtive authorisation of outrageous acts of State cruelty.
- Denial of the above.
- The rapid promotion of those underlings who execute unpleasant policies with relish.
- Ridicule of those who protest the receding tide of civil liberties.
- Ignoring international treaties and obligations.
- Denial of the above.
- A thriving prison industry.
- Holding extravagant “enquiries” into flagrant injustices and ignoring the outcome.
- Politicians repeatedly flatter the national character (we are freedom loving, generous, compassionate, fair-minded, loyal…)
- Hidden Goals, (the clue to which are illogical explanations: to stop Saddam Hussein killing his own people, we will kill his own people. After Saddam is gone, we will keep on killing his people).
- Public indifference to crimes committed by the Government.
- Public indifference to crimes committed by allies of the Government.
- Government indifference to crimes committed by the Government, as well as by allies of the Government. (Don’t mention that Uzbekistan dictator who boils his critics in oil – we need that oil).
A freeway blog.
- Independent commentary is compromised by letting the major media players amalgamate.
- Contraction of funds to public broadcasters.
- The central role of media becomes propaganda (keep consuming) and light entertainment: sport, show-biz gossip, stock shifts, celebrity trials, soft porn TV and big ticket “must see” events, like Royal weddings, State funerals, Academy Awards.
- The whole enterprise is powered by a grand over-riding myth.
Or several interlocking myths.
Myth 1: The God of the Old Testament is alive and on our side. We’re just following orders! Example: “The people shall hear and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestine”. (Exodus15:14).
Myth 2: The USA (and it closest allies) shall take hold of the 21st Century… and outer space.
Myth 3: Our weapons of mass destruction will set us free.
Myth 4: Fossil fuels will keep the show going until fail safe nuclear energy.
Myth 5: Material growth forever.
BANGLADESH
These myths are embedded in an over riding macro myth, as stated by the first President Bush: “The American way of life is not negotiable”. This myth still drives the current US administration, as well as that of its Canberra dogsbody. As a national credo, it is belligerent, deluded and lacking in empathy. Right now, villages in Bangladesh are disappearing into the sea. The warming of the Indian ocean intensifies drought in southern Africa. Low lying Pacific islands are starting to sink. Everyone knows this, because the ice caps are melting on the evening news.
Heads of state who reject collective solutions, such as the flawed Kyoto protocol, and the quest for a sustainability, may one day be charged with crimes against humanity. A one meter sea rise could drown half of Bangladesh. And all because some nations refuse to reduce emissions. Who will answer for such a holocaust? How can anyone be a prison guard for an unsustainable way of life, while the rest of the world burns, sinks or dies of thirst? There is no such a thing as a non negotiable lifestyle.
LAURA BUSH
Oil, water, war and weather – it all seems to come together. Will you choose to be in the real world fighting for global social justice, or will you hunker in the bunker with the butchers and the billionaires? As long suspected and now confirmed, the Bush rebuttal of Kyoto was influenced by pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company.
In the year 2030, could a third President Bush (Jeb jnr?) end up trying to stave off the clamouring masses with ballistic missiles – ones no less imaginary than the fanciful battalions of a failing Hitler. Perhaps a Laura-like Mrs Bush will be singing Stand By Your Man in the shower, as the water runs dry.
One thing we can count on – that the ever faithful ally, a bio-tech age-reversed Rupert Murdoch is still telling the inner circle that the green insurgents will soon be crushed, and oil prices will slip back to a mere $2000 a barrel any minute. But no-one is listening. Most of the White House neo-cons have already fled to their tax shelters, taking the silver. The rest are drinking the last of the wine.
Bush in Bunker
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
This year, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth celebrated her birthday is a way that made me jump for joy. An old friend of mine, who once stood beside me in the dock of a Sydney court charged with satirical excesses, was given an Order of Australia. Richly deserved, though unexpected. Martin Sharp stood out from the other recipients, as did his citation: “for services to pop art”. (The head of the immigration department got an award for locking up the children of refugees.) When I phoned to congratulate Sir Martin, he was vaguely apologetic, but this recognition by the establishment of his creative flair is beyond politics. It is the homage vice pays to genius. Martin cannot be boxed, he is not a plaything of the market, he is a spiritual adventurer with a paintbrush, a wry original with a legendary portfolio, and as eccentric as Miss Haversham, as dedicated as Vang Gogh, as lonely as the moon. Arise Sir Martin. You can now pay me back that £50 for bailing you out of a London jail in ‘68, you old pothead. Er, I mean former pothead, as I said to the magistrate at the time.
Anyway, the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, is featuring some of Sharp’s work in its current exhibition, Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era. Supporting artists include Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Jimi Hendrix (a watercolour of a wild thing). I doubt if the works on display will be a match for the image below, take from an early issue of London Oz, dashed off in three seconds between exotic cheroots.
The Sharp.
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Update 21 March 2005
Richard's writings
(image from The Guardian, 22 September 04)
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