From Occupy Bob/San Franciso
Food for thought:
We’ve all seen the recent series of photos of Syrians, mostly children, lying dead or dying, limbs contorting from the neurological effects of nerve gas. Alongside these videos we hear that the US has determined that the Assad government is responsible.
Cut. End of story. Superman to the rescue_the US government, international policeman of the world taking its orders from that basketball strategist-tactician, Barak Obama, moves the US Mediterranean fleet closer to the shores of Syria so as to deliver precision (??????) missiles to take out…well, to take out just what?
Picture of Iaq War
Now to address my choice of words ‘basketball strategist-tactician’.
To a carpenter with a hammer every problem looks like a nail. To every basketball player-coach every problem looks like a “game” of basketball where court control, dominance, feinting and deception, slam dunking are the means to achieve one thing_victory.
A little context: Michelle Obama’s brother is a basketball coach at a university in Oregon. After being chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Michelle’s brother stepped forward, obviously to polish the image of his brother-in-law, and stated that he had played basketball one on one with Barak often and that though it was a well known fact that Barak was an excellent player, he knew that his brother-in-law was an even better strategist-tactician. His words, not mine. I merely repeat them.
Let me ask you a question. Where in the game of basketball is there any avenue for diplomacy? Not part of the game, right?
The mindset for basketball precludes diplomacy just as the carpenter with his hammer narrows his vision.
Now for those of you who still choose to exclude what was just explained objectively, have any of you heard Cornel West’s, a black professor at the Union Theological Seminary, formerly head of African American studies at Princeton, recent characterization of Barak Obama as the Washington Plantation Owner, and his excoriation of black professionals, the Uncle Toms (his words, not mine) who refuse to question and rebuke Barak Obama because his is a black man; despite the fact that this black president is responsible for the deaths of innocent people and their children of color through his Tuesday morning reviews of who, what, and where constitutes a show of American ubiquitous dominance through drone strikes.
For those of us who constitute the “Human Race With Conscience” as opposed to the “Human Race Without Conscience” including all the races, black, brown, Asian, and white, many among us recall Martin’s (MLK) exposing of American imperialism and his insistence that he couldn’t just stop at the Civil Rights movement of the time and be faithful to his conscience if he didn’t speak out against the killing of innocent lives of third world peoples and their children in his country’s pursuit of hegemony.
Picture of My Lai
Which brings us to this day, the fiftieth anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, a memorial at which Barak Obama is going to address the nation. If ever there was an example of the utter hypocrisy and blindness of this country of ours, it will be today when Barak Obama steps up on that platform and makes a mockery of everything Martin stood for as he prepares to give the command to send yet again another horrific show of “Shock and Awe”, American insistence on its superiority which will, without doubt, cause exponentially more deaths than the hundreds to a thousand deaths caused by the nerve gas agent dropped on innocent Syrian people a week ago.
And if we buy it by not speaking out against this travesty that exploits a moral man’s legacy to serve only the short sighted political interests of this one president, then we are complicit.
And all those photos and videos that sickened us, blindly compelling some among us to not even question our Authoritarian Leaders, will our Corporate Enabling Media be there afterwards to show the ugly consequences of American Dominance in displaying the ten of thousands , hundreds of thousands (exponentially above and beyond what they showed us recently to serve their own corporate masters) of deaths and permanently injured lives of innocent people, some blinded, some without their limbs, their families mutilated and decimated by America’s technological superiority, many emotionally and psychological scarred forever from Obama’s American War on ??????. You will see NO Photos, NO Videos of our American war crimes. Why?
Where is the leadership through peaceful dialogue…diplomacy?
For the carpenter with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
For the strategist-tactician of a game, every problem gets solved as a GAME dictates.
Many are afraid to walk into the cauldron of controversy and engage on the issues these days. We circle wagons, we crawl into our “comfort cocoons”, we go into denial, but least of all, we don’t talk to one another as crimes against humanity are being committed in our name and this president uses the legacy of Martin to cover up his complicity in those crimes.
Let’s stop the unconscionable charade and call him out as Cornel West has been doing for some time.
Let’s honor our brother Martin, who if he were here today, would speak out against the killing of innocents of people of color, perpetual war, the new Jim Crow realities, the criminality of banksters who continue to rob the People unchallenged and yet to be indicted, the imperialistic resource grabbing of American imperialism throughout the world (almost 1000 US Military bases on all continents), the privatization of the means to educate our People to know, understand, and intelligently fight back against the forces that would enslave generations, and the failure of our elected representatives to step up to the plate and defend their oath of office to the Constitution of the US and its People.
Brother Martin, we miss your leadership in the challenge you gave to each and every one of us, to our Higher Selves, of personal responsibility in confronting the failures of a Just Nation.
But better yet, if we have learned anything by your life and your death, let it be that each one of us step up and try to fill your shoes in caring about OTHERS who cannot defend themselves from the EVIL AND UGLINESS we as a nation are unleashing on the Peoples of this World.
And confront this Evil no matter how the politicians and media try to gilt the turd of our hegemonic imperialism, something our Fathers and Grandfathers fought against when they did so against Fascism in WWII.
Wake up, America.
 
__Bob of Occupy

 

August 28, 2013  
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