What’s been arriving in your mailbox lately? Have you recently noticed an increase in the amount of junk dumped on your property by the US mail person?
Here’s what the US mail delivered to my address today.
(Click image to enlarge)
Yes, that was just today’s mail. I laid it out on the floor of the spare room. It covered approximately ten square feet. In fairness to the postal service, we don’t get this much every day. Usually, the mass junk mail arrives once or twice a week, though at present the political junk is a daily occurrence.
That particular category of offensiveness has never arrived in such quantity before. Given the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling, with regard to corporate political funding, it’s not surprising. They can afford to cut down lots more trees now.
Take a good look at the image. Imagine, if you can, it all multiplied one hundred and twenty-nine million, nine hundred and twenty-five thousand, four hundred and twenty-one times. That’s the number of housing units in the United States, according to the 2009 census.[1]
I wonder if everyone who receives it, does the same as me…….
Those now in control in Iraq seem hellbent on exterminating all of their old enemies. The BBC reports today that Iraq’s deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, has been sentenced by an Iraqi court to hang, for indeterminate crimes primarily against the Islamic Dawa party of Nouri al-Maliki.
Few can fail to remember the somewhat bizarre bumblings of this man just prior to the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. He became almost a comic icon to many in the West, an Iraqi version of Captain Mainwaring from the BBC TV show, “Dad’s Army”.
At seventy-four, and after at least one stroke, he hardly deserves the punishment heaped on him by his vindictive enemies. Imprisoned in 2003, his family weren’t even allowed to visit for two years, and in 2005 the British newspaper, “The Observer” printed letters from him pleading for help.
It is imperative that there is intervention into our dire situation and treatment … We hope that you will help us. We have been in prison for a long time and we have been cut from our families. No contacts, no phones, no letters. Even the parcels sent to us by our families are not given to us. We need a fair treatment, a fair investigation and finally a fair trial. Please help us….[1]
According to Al-Jazeera today:
…..the charges against Aziz are related to a crackdown on an uprising led by Shia Muslim parties in the early 1990s. Among them was the party of Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, who at that time carried out an attempted coup against Saddam Hussein.”[2]
Aziz’s lawyer, Badee’ Aref, stated that “sources inside the court told him three of the judges did not approve the sentence but were forced to sign it.”
After seven years of bloodshed and innumerable lost lives – both Iraqi and Westerner – it seems little has changed in Iraq. Maliki is determined, apparently, to become the next Iraqi dictator. To suggest democracy exists in that country is a farce. Seven months after the last election there is still no stable government in power.
Back in March 2010, just days prior to the Iraq election, Michael Hastings wrote in “The Daily Beast”:
I suspect we could be seeing Iraq’s final gasp of democracy this weekend, a last purple-fingered salute before the country slips back into a more familiar authoritarianism.”[3]
He is about to be proven correct in his prediction.
Tariq Aziz will undoubtedly be executed. It’s almost a forgone conclusion. He has no influential friends left. Aziz was Saddam’s main man in the “Oil-for-Food” program. He knows the names of all the foreign diplomats and politicians involved in that corrupt scandal. He has never named them, even under interrogation.
There’s a war going on across the pond. It’s a war that should be waged all over the Western world. Sadly, every nation – bar one – chooses to sit on the sidelines and watch.
The US media spends little time on matters outside of its borders, unless Americans are directly involved in some foreign crisis, so coverage of this war is a bit scanty in this nation, though ABC and MSNBC do have the story on their websites.
The war is being waged by France. It’s fighting itself. It’s a civil war, but one in which the working people of all Europe, and the Americas, should be taking part.
Some months ago, wealthy French president Nicolas Sarkozy suggested he was going to raise the retirement pension age of French workers from 65 years to 67 years. It was, as can be imagined, a deeply unpopular notion with French workers. This week, that suggestion is on the point of becoming reality, and the French are determined to prevent it.
A near-national strike has crippled the country, canceled half the flights out of Charles de Gaulle airport, closed fuel depots and gas stations, schools and universities, and brought three and a half million people out onto the streets; half a million in Paris alone.
From Philippe Marliere, writing for the Guardian newspaper:
The French are deeply unhappy with the way they have been governed, but their main grievance is about pension reform, which is seen as a cynical ploy to make ordinary people work more for inferior entitlements, while bailed-out bankers and the rich get tax rebates and continue to enjoy the high life. Over the past month, five national demonstrations have gathered together an estimated average of 3.5 million people per action day. The latest, on Saturday, was a big success and another is scheduled for today.
The movement is popular: 69% of the nation back the strikes and demonstrations; 73% want the government to withdraw the reform. And high school pupils have now joined the fray. Over 1,000 high schools are on strike as the youngsters take to the streets to protest against mass unemployment and the raising of the retirement age. The government has patronisingly labelled them as “manipulated kids”, but these comments have backfired and served only to galvanise the young, who have hardened their resistance and taken further interest in the reform. When interviewed by the media, pupils come across as articulate and knowledgable. Parents worry about their children’s future, so they will not stop them from striking.”
Today is day six of the action, and the day France’s Senate will vote on the reform bill. It is expected to pass.
French workers have never been shy about defending their social rights. After all, like social rights everywhere, they were hard won. The rich and powerful never make concessions to their workers without a struggle.
Marliere again:
In France, strikes and demonstrations are seen as a civilised and effective way to enact one’s citizenship. Students are expected to join marches from an early age, receiving by the same token a “political education”. France’s youth have always scared governments because of their radical potential. Student demonstrations of late have been invariably popular because people know that the young have been badly hit by unemployment over the past 30 years.[1]
It’s a measure of the corporate hold on Western media, that all outlets, including the BBC, have grossly misled their viewers over this issue. We’ve all been told that in France the pension age is 60, and Sarkozy wants it raised to 62. That’s totally untrue. The legal age at which a French person can retire is 60, but a full state pension can only be claimed from age 65. Sarkozy wants this raised to 67. (NOTE: Only today has the BBC website finally quoted the correct figures.)
France is grinding to a standstill, while the rest of European workers look on. The British are too lazy, too comatose from a surfeit of beer, to do more than slump in their chairs, drag on their fags, and criticize the latest offering from the TV soap operas.
The Germans are too fat, bloated by sausage and pickled with sauerkraut, to care what the French are fighting for on their behalf. And why should they? After all, the German economy is the best in Europe, isn’t it? Why should they care?
The answer is simple. They should care, along with the Brits, the Italians, and every other worker in Europe, because if Sarkozy and his fat-bellied political pigs can get away with this in France, it sends a message to every politician in Europe.
French workers fight the hardest of all for their rights. If the French workers lose this battle with the rich and powerful, it will prove an easy matter for any other European government to impose similar legislation, or worse, on its own workers. David Cameron, leader of the British Tory government has already made plans to drastically cut benefits to the poor and unemployed. Why are the streets of Britain still empty of protesters?
What’s happening in France should also ignite warning sparks in the heads of US workers. It won’t, of course. Americans will turn out in force to hear speeches from the lunatic fringe, hang teabags from their hats, but when it comes to actually standing up and demanding their rights, Americans are at the very bottom of the list.
They’d rather stay home and watch it on the widescreen TV.
The corporate masters of America learned a long time ago that cheap, artery-clogging, fast-food and sugar-laden fizzy drinks were all the average US-Joe required to keep him from complaining.
There’s a war being waged across the pond. It’s outcome will effect us all.
Trash
Democracy achieved
With all thy might