Month: January 2010

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States of America hammered what is likely the final nail into the coffin lid of a long-ailing social system known colloquially as ‘Democracy’ in this country.

It’s been slowly, but systematically, poisoned over many years. Now, we can be sure it’s finally dead.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court – once the prime lawmaker, composed of wise men and women whose over-riding interest was that of the people of America, but now no more than a tool of corporate power on full public display – swept away decades of control over the political spending of corporate bodies, allowing the full financial power of corporate America to buy lackey politicians happy to do their bidding.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Tillman Act, which banned corporate political spending. He foresaw the damage likely to be done to American democracy if such powerful institutions weren’t prevented from buying their way into US politics. Forty years later, Congress extended that law to include unions, who also were becoming way too powerful for their, or anyone else’s, own good.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court displayed its degradation to the world. Once a proud symbol of American democracy, the only image it exhibits today is that of a corrupt servant slouching and fawning at the heels of a wealthy and powerful master who contemptuously throws forth the occasional crust of stale bread.

It took only minutes for five, so-called, ‘judges’ to undo the wise decisions and political actions of the many great presidents and politicians who fought to make this nation, not only great, but just.

Today, in America, justice is dead. No longer can the judiciary be relied on to judge fair and honestly. Tomorrow, they and the politicians who govern us will be mere servants of the corporations, and we, the people, will find our voices silenced and our opinion suppressed.

It is incredibly ironic that the Supreme Court ‘justices’ who voted in favor of this ruling used an extreme example of the right of free speech to justify their decision. They upheld an outdated ruling that a corporation was legally the equivalent of a single person.

But then, they needed some excuse, however flimsy and inept.

There are times I find the words of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann somewhat ‘over-the-top’. He can occasionally be a trifle overwhelming. Last night, he was neither of those things. His words on the subject were exact – precise, at worst, accurate.

Not only America, but the world needs to listen to Olbermann. What has started here will spread – is already spreading – around the globe, like a virulent canker with no known cure.

PART ONE: ^{(Do NOT click on any ‘redirection to Part Two’ message at the end of part one. Part Two is available below).}

PART TWO:

It was William Howard Taft who said:

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.”

He failed to add: ‘……… in one form, or another’.

Massachusetts’ Latest Senator.

It’s truly difficult to believe, and only serves to reinforce the general viewpoint held by the rest of the world, but the evidence is irrefutable: Americans are, by and large, selfish, self-centered, bigoted, and above all, totally stupid.

Now, it has to be said, such generalizations are open to criticism. There are exceptions, but from my experience the exceptions tend to hold similar views about their fellow countrymen, to the ones expressed above.

All his life Ted Kennedy worked for and supported the people of Massachusetts. For thirty years he battled to bring healthcare reform to the citizens of America. The recent election in that state, brought about by Kennedy’s death, should have resulted in a massive vote of support for his successor, and the Democratic party to which Ted Kennedy belonged.

Instead, with Kennedy still not cold in his grave, the people of Massachusetts sold out their longtime senator, voting into office a Republican, Scott Brown, (see photo above) who has denounced the Healthcare Reform Bill as ‘fiscally unsound’, and is determined to ensure it won’t become law. By voting him into office, the people of Massachusetts delivered him the means to achieve that, by tilting the balance of power in the Senate sufficient to prevent the necessary majority.

Why, one has to ask? The answer is one of self-centered interest. Massachusetts already has its own state healthcare legislation, so the subject is hardly the issue in Massachusetts it is in the rest of the nation. Like most working class Americans, the people of Massachusetts have suffered from the recession and wish to selfishly punish the present federal government for their hardships. Yet the recession was directly attributable to the policies of the previous Republican administration. In fact, the banking crisis occurred during the eighth year of George W Bush’s presidency, but the people of Massachusetts who voted Republican yesterday are too stupid to comprehend that, along with many other Americans suffering similar frontal lobe necrosis.

Scott Brown and his family have no worries over healthcare, even without the Massachusetts’ legislation. He and his wife own a 3,000-square-foot primary home, a 2,000-square foot summer home in Rye, New Hampshire, three condos in Boston, and a timeshare on the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Not that the present administration under Barack Obama’s presidency have achieved a great deal in their first year. All talk and no substance may well prove the epithet that describes the Obama presidency when we eventually look back and reflect on the matter.

The earthquake that flattened much of Haiti could soon become Obama’s ‘Hurricane Katrina’ if matters on that island don’t drastically and rapidly improve.

One week ago, he stepped up to a microphone and told the world that America would be ‘taking the lead’ in providing earthquake relief. So far, American leadership has resulted in red tape and confusion at the Port au Prince airport that senior aid workers have today described as, “…… a crippling lack of leadership and coordination”.

A representative of ‘Medicins sans Frontier’ told the BBC that local people were digging their loved ones out of the rubble only to have them die in hospital because drugs and medical equipment were not being released from the airport. Five major aid shipments had, for unfathomable reasons, been diverted to the Dominican Republic. Damaged roads and infrastructure meant it would take days to get it from there to where it was needed, back in Haiti

When British soldiers returned home at the end of WW2, it became something of a standing joke in the bars and pubs they frequented: when asked what they thought of the Americans, they invariably praised the ordinary GI’s, but if questioned about the US command structure, would spit thoughtfully on the ground, and say, “Couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, that lot.”

It seems, in the America of the 21st century, nothing has changed for the better.

Filed under: Still going downhill

It’s perplexed man almost since the dawn of Homo sapiens. The vexed question: is there a God, has, despite those who choose to believe by virtue of blind faith, always evaded a definitive answer.

Throughout our evolution as a species, the sheer inability to answer that question with any degree of certainty has led to bloody wars, persecutions, ethnic cleansings, and virtually every method capable of being devised to torture, maim, and eventually kill our fellow humans for daring to believe in a slightly different God from our own.

A host of religious networks have expanded around the globe, each choosing to believe it is the only one to have a hot-line to the Creator. That so many have been proved wrong over the years only serves to reinforce the beliefs of all the others, that theirs alone is the correct one.

Expressed diagrammatically, the relationship between man and his God can be viewed as an inverted tree. At the top (conveniently, in the ‘heavens’) are the tree’s roots, wherein dwells the Deity. Extending downward towards the ground is the trunk, up and down which the prayers of the supplicants and Holy Orders of the Deity pass, followed by the main branches, representing the various prophets and messiahs who communicate directly with the Divine One. They pass on messages and Holy Orders to the smaller branches and twigs that make up the multitude of mullahs, popes, archbishops, and various lesser clerics, responsible for translating these holy directives so that we simple folk below, waiting for such sacred bulletins to drop into our ears, can comprehend them.

Man’s God, whatever religious form ‘He’ may take, has always needed one vital attribute in order to satisfy His subjects. Man demands that his God is both aware of him, and cares about him. So vital are these two factors that the idea of a God existing, yet totally unaware of His creation and consequently not caring about it one iota, is seldom considered.

The word, ‘God’, even in early pagan history, has long been synonymous with a reciprocal relationship:

God –> man/man –> God.

However, science has now defined the Universe as a vast entity in which our planet is even less significant than one grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, so is it not likely that any Creator of the Universe would be about as aware of our existence as an elephant is cognizant of the protozoa hitching a living on its leathery hide?

The more relevant question, and one we should have been asking all along, is not, “Is there a God”, but, “Does mankind have a personal God all of its own?”

Or, maybe, the tree-trunk never existed at all. In which case, all the branches and twigs would continuously atrophy and eventually die, however hard we strived to keep them alive.

Perhaps the very history of religion goes some way towards advancing that theory?

A glance back through the time tunnel reveals lost, broken, obsolete deities littering the pathway; various ‘Gods’ found wanting, used and discarded in favor of other divine inventions that in turn wither away and die: Zeus, Apollo, Ra, Thoth, Brahma, Bacchus, Freya, Helios, Hermes, Isis, Krishna, Loki, Mithras, Ninto, Neptune, Nut, Odin, Pan, Quetzalcoatl, Sheva, Thor, Venus, Vishnu – to name just twenty-three of literally hundreds.^[1]

Modern day religious leaders – of Islam, Judaism, or Christianity – struggle to keep their twigs and branches alive by the use of various marketing techniques. When these fail, they resort to fear-inducing practices in a valiant effort to prevent their religious structures from collapsing. Hellfire and damnation, excommunication, the idea of ‘mortal sin’, and in extreme cases mutilation and execution, are all fear-inducing practices employed by the religions of modern Homo sapiens.

Earthquakes, wars, disease, famine, a remarkably deaf ear to supplication, are all reasons to suspect our personal God is no more than an invention of ego to counteract our human insecurities. We are the only creature on the planet with an ability to comprehend our own mortality, and anticipate future suffering. That makes us the only creature on the planet with a yearning for Divine parental comfort, even if we have to invent it.

Is there a God?

Unless there’s a tree-trunk, the question is surely irrelevant.

^{[1] “Mythology – Gods and Goddesses” About.com}

Filed under: Great inventions