Spark

Hello. Sorry about last night. Not really. Good thing about this blog is it gives me a deadline. I can't work without one.

If you don’t give any thought to global politics, you really should. The middle east is pissed. CNN is showing the Bahraini military just killed people protesting. Guardian reports at least a dozen on the body count. Caught on tape.

Now, contrast that coverage happening right now on MSNBC. They've been covering this impressive union protest in Wisconsin. I call it impressive only because I haven't seen a labor movement covered with such a positive light in the corporate media in any recent memory. MSNBC has no doubt tried to infer what I'm about suggest, in that there is a connection between this side of planet and the other.

It's a huge stretch I admit, but in reality there are similarities in atmosphere. Not nearly the conditions in the middle east, by a lot, which is why people are dying right now for the "offense" to do what the people in Wisconsin are doing now. I by no means wish to demean what the middle eastern people and countless other are dying for what I believe a noble cause; I only bring it up to honor them. That while the talk among the people in Wisconsin freezing right now is probably how far are we going to take this, all they have to do is flip the channel and see what real dedication means. And they can rest easy knowing that the only opposition they'll face tomorrow is only the corporate Tea Party and another channel's news studio stage.

But poor people every where are pissed. And it's time that we be honest of that connection. That the problem of class and labor is global and has been for a long time. So far the only solution we've had in this country is: as long as it ain't commie.

But I wanted to share caused me to jump on this thought. Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now yesterday and here's what he had to say when someone asked about the connection. Here's a transcript:

"Well, that was very interesting. In fact, I urge people to take a look at the February 12th issue of the New York Times, the big front-page headline, you know, banner headline, "Mubarak Leaves," its kind of subheadings say, "Army Takes Over." They’re about 60 years late on that; it took over in 1952, but—and it has held power ever since.

But then if you go to an inside page—I don’t know what page it is—there’s an article on the Governor of Wisconsin. And he’s pretty clear about what he wants to do. I mean, certainly he is aware of and senses this attack on public workers, on unions and so on, and he wants to be upfront, so he announced a sharp attack on public service workers and unions, as the questioner said, to ban collective bargaining, take away their pensions. And he also said that he’d call out the National Guard if there was any disruption about this. Now, that’s happening now to Wisconsin. In Egypt, public protests have driven out the president. There’s a lot of problems about what will happen next, but an overwhelming reaction there.

And I was—it was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day, in fact. I mean, that’s the beginning, maybe, of what we really need here: a democracy uprising. Democracy has almost been eviscerated. Take a look at the front-page headlines today, this morning, Financial Times at least. They predict—the big headline, the big story—that the next election is going to break all campaign spending records, and they predict $2 billion of campaign spending. Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the Obama administration selected somebody to be in charge of what they call "jobs." "Jobs" is a funny word in the English language. It’s the way of pronouncing an unpronounceable word. I’ll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. You’re not allowed to say that word, so the way you pronounce that is "jobs." The person he selected to be in charge of creating jobs is Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, which has more than half their workforce overseas. And, you know, I’m sure he’s deeply interested in jobs in the United States. But what he has is deep pockets, and also, not just him, but connections to the tiny sector of the ultra-rich corporate elite, which is going to provide that billion or billion-and-a-half dollars for the campaign. Well, that’s what’s going on"

He is a smart guy. And it's one of the few times I've seen him be optimistic about ANYTHING! So I'll take that for a spark of hope.

I'll leave you with a song from my high school days:


Command Image: Global conquest command