The American news media ends its evening bulletins with the inevitable ‘do-gooder’ report, designed to assist US citizens in believing how wonderfully selfless they all are. The BBC chose a slightly different slant on America this Christmas. One that more aptly describes what this country is truly like, particularly if you’re black and living in poverty.

Imagine living in a nation where a woman can spend nine years in prison just for attempting to snatch a handbag, and her daughter gets a similar sentence simply for aiding her escape from the crime-scene. No violence was involved; it was no more than a brief, attempted, bag snatch from a customer in a supermarket.

If you live in America, you live in that nation.

A court in Baltimore, Maryland, deprived a six year old child of her mother and grandmother for nine years, for an offense that, in most civilized countries, would have resulted in probation.^[1]

Latasha Shelton is twenty-seven years old and black. Her mother, who shares a cell with Latasha, was a crack addict in need of money to fund her habit. Quite (pronounced ‘Cutie’) Shelton is Latasha’s daughter. Her father was a drug dealer, imprisoned, then murdered. She’s six years old and has to be looked after by her great-great grandfather, who’s seventy-six.

Occasionally, thanks to the generosity of the nation that banged them up, she’s allowed to visit her mother and grandmother for a few short hours.

This story isn’t unique. According to the BBC:

Despite the fact that African Americans make up only 30% of the population of Maryland, the overwhelming majority of women at Jessup [prison] are black – and so, as is the case nationally, it is black children that suffer most from America’s incarceration rate.

One in nine African-American children now has a parent behind bars.

One in nine children has a parent in prison. Now that’s a statistic to make any nation ashamed. Except, it fails to shame most Americans. Ask almost any white person how it makes them feel and the response will be something like, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”

There’s a pitiless, heartless, element among American citizenry, particularly with regard to those living in poverty. Being poor is to have failed to live the American Dream. White, middle-class, America would rather not accept that their American Dream created the poverty in the first place.

CBS, NBC, FOX, and other news media do their best to maintain that attitude. Analysis of their ‘do-gooder’ slots reveals the constricted nature of such philanthropy. Usually, they are local community projects, or ‘one-man-bands’, that may assist a few middle-class citizens fallen on hard times.

Nowhere is there any continuous, concerted, attempt to truly help the poor in society – except around Christmas time when the Salvation Army dutifully requires destitute examples of their stilted benevolence to shiver for hours outside Wal-Mart stores, ringing a bell and begging for money.

This Christmas, middle class Americans – at least, those who still have a job – will be sitting down to dinner after exchanging gifts with all their family. No doubt the majority will pause to say grace. They’ll thank their god for the bounty before them, and for sending the baby Jesus on this day to save their immortal souls and guarantee them a place in Heaven.

At no point will Latasha Shelton and others of her ilk invade thoughts or prayers. Should ever it do so, a hasty, private, postscript to the grace will simply hope the likes of her don’t end up in our Heaven.

Merry Christmas.

One of every three black males born today can expect to go to prison if current trends continue.^[2]

^{[1] “US children cope with parents behind bars” BBC, December 21st 2010}

^{[2] “Sentencingproject.org” Research and Advocacy for Reform.}

Filed under: A caring nation

In these days of economic gloom and dark political intrigue, Sparrow Chat would like to take this opportunity to wish Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, a very happy Christmas.

The White House

Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C.

Sir,

On behalf of me and mine, I would like to wish you and yours a very happy Christmas. I will refrain from including the part about ‘a prosperous New Year’ as, in your case, that is already a forgone conclusion.

Unfortunately, for many of the citizens you represent it will not be the case. Millions have no work, many have lost their homes to foreclosures, those who are sick and cannot afford health insurance are unable to seek treatment.

No doubt, this Christmastide you’ll raise a glass and laud your victory in extending unemployment benefit, but at what cost? You signed your Healthcare Bill into law, but at what cost? You brought out measures to help families resist foreclosures, but at what cost?

I will remind you of the cost: you continued the policy of George W Bush and further bailed out the banks and finance houses, with our money, to the tune of billions of dollars. In return, those same establishments ran a ‘robosigning scandal’ that evicted thousands of home-owners who never deserved to lose their homes. The measures you implemented have had little effect on the foreclosure figures – they were down a mere 4.00% in October, and in no part due to your measures. Those measures may have had better teeth had you not caved to the demands of the ultra-right.^[1]

The healthcare bill you appear so proud of is little more than a Christmas gift to the insurance industry. The ‘public option’ – its glorious centerpiece – slid unceremoniously into a deep muddy hole in the cemetery of Republican indifference, even before those who might mourn it were aware of its passing.

Still, you did achieve a thirteen month extension of unemployment benefit, so those you are supposed to oppose don’t have to hold freshly picked posies to their noses and walk passed emaciated carcasses of the long-term unemployed, as they wend their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to their posh clubs and Washington dining establishments.

It really wasn’t such a great deal, was it? In return for thirteen months of unemployment benefit you bartered sixty-eight billion dollars in tax relief for the wealthy. Surely, more than sufficient to purchase a plethora of freshly-picked posies, even at Washington prices.

Sir, I have supported you throughout your presidency. For me, like most sane individuals in this nation, it was a breath of fresh air when George W Bush and his entourage of demonic psychopaths vacated the White House, and you moved in.

Let me be fair, you have had some successes, but frankly, those minor victories count for nothing against your latest, and perhaps greatest, political capitulation over the Bush tax breaks. Even your own party has turned against you.

This country needs that the rich and powerful pay their rightful share. In the manner of a true quisling, you denied your nation’s need. Neville Chamberlain, himself, would have been ashamed to know you. The fresh air you brought to the presidency has turned fetid and stagnant.

How easy would it have been to allow the Bush tax breaks to expire at the end of the year, then introduce a bill reinstating tax cuts for the middle class and extending unemployment benefit? Of course, the ultra-right could vote it down, but doing so would show their true colors to the American people.

Sometimes, Mister President, it’s necessary to fight, even when the end result may not be to your liking. It’s called adherence to principle. You, sir, have betrayed the very principles you were elected to uphold.

On behalf of all the homeless, the untreated sick, and the poverty-stricken of this country, I wish you and yours a very happy Christmas.

As you, and Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner, raise your rare cut glasses of fine Cognac and toast each other over the White House turkey, I trust you’ll spare a moment’s thought for those poor, underprivileged, folk who trusted you with their livelihoods. The ones you have betrayed.

Happy Christmas, Mister President.

^{[1] “Foreclosure Activity Falls ‘Artificially’ Due to Moratorium” CNBC, November 11th 2010}

Filed under: Goodwill to all men

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

I support the whistleblower website, Wikileaks, and I believe Abraham Lincoln would have done so, too.

In any democratic process, the government is elected by the people. Its purpose is to serve the people, to work for the people. All of the people. As soon as government fails to truthfully inform the people, when it begins to lie and hoodwink the people, it is no longer a democratic government. It devolves into a police state, dictatorship, oligarchy, or, as is the case with the government of the USA, a corporate plutocracy controlled by, and for, big business.^[1]

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell describes a totalitarian state constantly creating perpetual war^[2] as an excuse to subject people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches, under the guise of ‘protecting the citizen’.^[3]

It sounds horribly familiar in America 2010. And it’s nothing new. In his 2004 interview with the writer, political commentator, and former strategist for the Republican Party, Kevin Phillips, Bill Moyers laments the passing of the word, ‘equality’ from politics^[1]:

BILL MOYERS: What has happened to the word equality? When you and I were young men in politics it was a common reference in our political discourse. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, a lot of others too, but you don’t hear it in the political lexicon anymore.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: You hear it in twisted ways. There is a view in some conservative circles that it doesn’t matter much what concentrations of wealth you have or disparities of income. It’s equality of consumption. It’s the right to have Nike shoes, to listen to a boom box, to take a plane ride. And …

BILL MOYERS: Nothing wrong with that.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, no, but on the other hand, that didn’t solve problems in a depression when you had the right to watch a plane fly over Kansas. Or turn on the radio. So you’ve got these different ledgers that are kept. And people that try to say “consumption is the yardstick” usually have it in mind that democracy is not … that income differentials are not, they stand for a different philosophy.”

No more is democracy, or income differential, the yardstick for many of those holding the reins of power in modern-day America.

When those in control of a nation’s media also control its government, any ability to truthfully inform the people of events is lost. The people are fed disinformation designed to control, and suppress dissent. The use of ’embedded journalists’ in Iraq and Afghanistan were, and still are, good examples of media control. The journalist reports what he’s told to report, usually a watered-down, or completely biased, version of events happening on the ground.

To comprehend this, one had only to read the copy of independent journalists in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, and compare them to the Disney-like fantasies of CNN, FOX, and other corporate-controlled media outlets.

Abraham Lincoln had faith in the American people, but he realized they could only act coherently if told the truth, not palmed off with lies and half-truths. In this modern age, mass communication is via television, newspaper, and the internet. Both the former are owned and controlled by corporate plutocracy.

Bill Moyers again:

BILL MOYERS: So what do we do?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Keep fighting. I think there are signs that it’s turning now. To me one of the most important milestones will be if people, and I include the media here, have the courage to document and put on the front page what they won’t really touch now, which is …

BILL MOYERS: Which is?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: All the examples of the Bush family’s role in the rise of Enron. Here, we’re running around, we’re blaming these accountants, these tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron’s influence and power in this country. But you … you don’t see that. People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road.

BILL MOYERS: Well, when you’ve got anchors making eight, nine, ten million dollars a year, when you’ve got a handful of huge media corporations owning over half of the outlets in this country, do you expect much populism from those people?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: No. And that’s the fundamental problem. How do you get dynasties to talk about other dynasties? I think it’s a real difficulty. Unfortunately, that means that some of us have to start talking about stuff we’d rather not do all the time because if you don’t make a lot of friends by doing it … it’s tough, but a dynasty is a dynasty is a dynasty and these problems are there, and this incredible amount of money is … is just staring this country’s historical role in the face.”

When Wikileaks began publishing secret US government documents, the outcry from the powerful was to brand it ‘traitorous’. American lives would be put at risk, people would die because of the revelations.

To date, no one has died. Wikileaks deletes the names of any individual likely to be harmed by information in the cables.

The internet is the only medium where truth cannot yet be suppressed. If it ever can, those in control will ensure it is. Wikileaks serves as a front page, an uncensored TV screen, where whistleblowers with information the people have a right to know about, but which is deliberately suppressed by governments, can publish it.

Because of Wikileaks, we now know the American atrocities believed to be committed during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars occurred. Before, many were only rumors. The video of a US Apache helicopter gunship slaughtering two Reuters journalists is available for all to see.^[4]

As Kevin Phillips said to Bill Moyers, “To me one of the most important milestones will be if people……have the courage to document and put on the front page what they (the media) won’t really touch now…”.

Some of the people are prepared to do that. Wikileaks gives them the opportunity.

That’s why I support the whistleblower website, Wikileaks, and why I believe Abraham Lincoln would have done so, too.

^{[1] “Transcript: Bill Moyers Interviews Kevin Phillips” NOW, PBS, April 9th 2004}

^{[2] “Locked in an Orwellian eternal war” The Independent (Robert Fisk), February 18th 2001}

^{[3] “Hands-on Airport Searches” Boston Herald, October 26th 2010}

^{[4] “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks}

Filed under: Wikileaks