The Voice of the People
... or at least my own
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... or at least my own | | ||||
October 4, 2002
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Imagine a loose cabal of mutually competitive, self-serving individuals dispersed amongst the offices of our government and the national institutions of the news media. Imagine journalists mocking themselves as spokespersons for the interest of subterfuge, flocked to an fro by the chieftain editors who send the goodie goodie dogs out to their destinations like packs of eager blood-hounds. The days of the press station branch offices are over. Journalists and reporters are no longer independent of the large corporations who own the rights to the air waves. We have a health insurance system that passes on the costs of poor business decisions and stock market losses to the customers who paid their premiums in good faith. We have a retirement system that is being recklessly derided, manipulated, and easily tossed aside upon the whims of financial consultants even while the CEO's who made the bad decisions walkaway with multi-millions in parachute packages. We have a Presidential administration who did nothing during the California Energy crisis, denied heatedly that manipulation of market was occuring, and still has no intention of doing anything even while the facts pile higher than the lies of George W. Bush. This administration is currently ignoring the recent scheme of dockyard corporations to deny their workers their rights by law and the United States Constitution. Today's headline says he is being "Pushed." After 5 days of business losses by shippers and California farmers, Mr. George W. Bush is getting "pushed" to act. Someone needs to throw him ... out. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have a dossier deeper, wider, and more disgusting than any tag team combination in United States history. Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew are a close second, only because Mr. Agnew is not quite the match of Mr. Cheney. Mr. Bush has been a brat his whole life. He did not so much earn his money, as he took advantage of his political connections to make deals. His first oil company was financed by political connections of his father in the New York financial circles. When the bust of the 1980's crumpled the firm, George W. Bush got some friends to merge with his firm. He did this one more time with Harken, and even got to sit on the board with a thousand plus shares of company stock. Now we are expected to believe that Mr. George W. Bush knew nothing about the troubles of the firm when he sold all his stock in the company in the weeks before the stock plunged. The commissioner appointed to oversee the SEC investigation is also reputed to have no political motivations to seal the documents of the case. Mr. Cheney has been in and out of government more than employees entering office buildings on day to day business. Mr. Cheney is the epitome of the modern trend of revolving door politician-business executives. While in office he lands excellent contracts for the firms he used to and will later represent. While out of office he easily lands appointments as a CEO with salaries in the millions and stock-options worth more millions. What expertise is worth such money? Ah, but it is not expertise for which the high salary is paid .... In the mob, they call this a pay-off. Mr. Cheney has gotten contracts for government services and supplies for military contracts. In the mid 1990s, Mr. Cheney was heavily involved in the upgrading of oil facilities in Iraq. His company supplied and constructed oil facilities for Mr. Saddam, who would become evil incarnate 6 years later. The oil of Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea region North of Afghanistan is well known to Mr. Cheney. He has overseen many of the operations in the entire region as a consultant for the big three oil companies. What passes as news these days is a horrific propaganda. Our country is not looking at its problems. We are not trying to understand the economic situation. We are not working on the solvency of the national government. We are not dealing with health-care problems, with underfunded schools, with state fiscal crises. We ignore the huge multi-million dollar tax scams of corporations, and arrest citizens who defraud the government of $1,000. We get to hear the President actually say that he intends to fight forest fires by allowing timber companies to expense the government for the right to ambiguously "clear" the forests. Mr. Bush crows that "no child will be left behind" and then cuts money out of the budget for the Head Start program. No one mentions that the voucher program only subsidizes a small majority of the "brightest" students in the "bad" schools. The other children in the "bad" schools get nothing, and the schools are not helped when the bright students are siphoned off. This is government sponsored segregation that is entirely structured on leaving children behind. Even if all the children received waivers, who thinks that these children will be able to afford the schools that cost 2 or 3 or 10 times the waiver. When the children are enrolled in a public school they receive about $5,000 dollars. The waivers are only for $1,800. What lunatic in their right mind can say this is a better way to educate our children. The fact is we are under siege. The whole armada of big money propaganda is upon us with crafted syllogisms and jingos. We are offered a "Clear Skies Act" that opens new loopholes in the laws governing pollution upgrades and allows companies to continue pollution without recourse. We get a "Patriot Act" that sweeps away the firewall between justifiable investigation and political espionage. We get a "Economic Stimulus Bill" written by Cheney and Bushes Oil and Chemical Industry pals that wrote off millions of dollars to companies who were in no need of being "stimulated." The tax write-offs actually returned money collected in the past. Our government actually gave checks to these Administration favored corporations. Hmm, the government subsizes corporation friends to companies who are already making a profit? We are told to be concerned about the possibility Saddam's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" but are supposed to ignore the more viable threats of smuggled Russian warheads. Pakistan, China and India have had warheads for years without the daily pronounced concern of the government. And how hypocritical can the United States be when we have warheads in Turkey and also a world wide web of atomic submarines carrying Trident warheads. And the range of Iraq's potential weapons are limited to the middle East. Can I get through to your brainwashed mind : the world is more afraid of the United States. We are the country that has bases everywhere and posts troops all across the world. We send our navy into every ocean. We fly our airplanes into the national air space of other nations without regard for the consequences. What other nation acts the same way? Oh, but we are fighting for democracy, that's right. **Ask Chile(south america) why our government trained the troops and death squads of Augustin Pinochet after effusively supporting the assassination of the freely elected Salvadore Allende. **Ask the people of Zaire (africa) (the Congo) why the United States promoted and the Mobuto regime for 35 years, in exchange for preferred consideration of the country's vast mineral resources. **Ask the people of Iran why their elected president Mossadegg was deposed and replaced by a "Shah" when the President made such a radical move as deciding to put the oil under government control. **Ask the people of Guatemala why their 1956 presidential election was mared and dismantled by death squads and radio propaganda because certain US corporations wanted to have their immense cattle estates on the cheap. Americans do need their hamburgers, right? **Ask the Costa Ricans, or the people of El Salvadore if they appreciate the police squads trained at the school of the Americas in North Carolina. **Ask the Indonesian people or the people of New Guinea if they are content with the permitted collusion between the multi-national extraction corporations and the police forces who repress dissonant labor. **Ask the people in the swath of West Africa (in the nations of Cameroon, Nigeria, Equitorial Guinea, Benin, Guinea, and so on) how they like the persistent and historical manipulation of their politics by the money of "external" interests connected with our government and corporate allies. **Ask the people in all of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Uruguay, Bolivia, etc.) the same question . **Did anyone really think Panamas Manuel Noriega was anything but a hired thug? Or Samosa in Nicaragua, or the Cuban tyrant Batista, or the Phillipines Marcos .... **Our nation is about 600 miles from Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo : and yet these nations have a horrible history of dictatorship and corruption because they are small and easily manipulated by the interests of corporations and political operators, who want cheap labor and resources, period. As they say ... follow the money. This is not about democracy or national security. Those oil companies are down right spoiled and they want that oil. They figure they can just manipulate the civil war to their own advantage because that is what they have always done. The "danger" of Saddam is a ruse to conceal this greedy pursuit of power. The world knows it too. None of the Nations in the region agree with the Bush Administration. Most of the world and most of Europe disagree that Saddam is a danger,and these nations are more in range of potential death by Saddam than the United States. Why is there a news blackout on all but the "War with Iraq" .. ? The answer is simple. These dots are easy to connect. It is a shame to see my country so dishonored by liars and thieves who make their carnivorous ambition a litmus test for patriotism. Excuse me ... I love my country. I have not a problem dying for my country. What I have a problem with is those hypocrites who think they have the right to use the bodies and minds of the people to serve their own power struggles. Gino Napoli 490 31st Avenue # 204 San Francisco, California 94121 High School Math Teacher Terra Nova High School Pacifica, California jonsdarc@mindspring.com home: (415) 751 - 1499 |