There is no economic crisis, but there is a political one. The lie obscures the cancer.
The headlines continue daily to astound, bewilder, and distract us.
* "U.S. unemployment rate at 7.6%; jobs disappearing at faster pace" [LA Times]
* "The labor market is in free fall and has been since November," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm in Lexington, Mass. [LA Times]
* There has been a huge rise in the number of firms going bust in England and Wales because of the recession. [BBC]
* German industrial output has seen a record fall after a sharp contraction in manufacturing activity. [BBC]
* France's trade deficit hit 55.7bn euros ($71.4bn; £48.6bn) in 2008, due to high oil prices and the slowing economy, the customs office said. [BBC]
* Economic slump pushes 19,100 people into bankruptcy, while there was a 52% increase in company insolvencies in the last three months of 2008. [UK Guardian]
* Britain has officially entered recession for the first time since 1991, after the economy shrank at the fastest pace for nearly 30 years in the fourth quarter. [UK Guardian].
Et cetera.
Our economy suffers new implosions and thousands upon thousands of workers lose their jobs, which in the US means the lose the ground beneath their feet - rent or mortgage must be paid; health care sought [probably not]; food.
So, we watch the stock market, our bank accounts, pray that our jobs will be there tomorrow. My coworkers ponder often whether and how we might be laid off.
The Dollar is a curtain shielding a political system that must be revolted. It is a curtain behind which stands the Wizard, but a wizard with a deadly agenda. Our state of anxieties keeps us from interrogating our governors, examining the political class, which we think is there to dole our rights and entitlements, seat belt laws, safe food and water, minimum wages, WIC, etc., etc. Sure, there is some anger when we here that from billions in bailout money, top executives get bonuses, but this structural problem is only the tip of an iceberg. We still fundamentally believe government is good and has been the source of our rights, beyond suspicion.
The problem is a vicious political system that is drying up the funds to working class people - for meager jobs, for student loans, for social services. These things are disappearing by the hour, and thanks to Welfare Reform there is no safety net to catch ... the Irish peasant thrown off the land.
I am throwing in an historical fact to make a point. The Irish Famine was not a natural phenomenon. Queen Victoria threw Irish peasants off lands they had historically occupied in bare subsistence, denying them access to food. Their lives on that land cannot be romanticiized, but the political famine created by the Queen and her government was an historical evil. Today, our subsistence is being pulled from under us, too, and just as deliberately.
In a politically orchestrated act, Queen Victoria threw those peasants off the land in the 1840's when large landowners found raising sheep and livestock more profitable than employing illiterate workers. They chose to deliberately starve to death thousands of Irish for profit, then to send the survivors abroad.
If you think morality dawned upon the Queen's Death in 1901, the 20th century was equally full of Christian Crimes by Christian Governments.
So here we are, The Dispossessed!
Economic Crisis, you insist? I am a stupid Conspiracy Theorist/Paranoid, you think?
If you live near the majority of Indian Reservations* you might be aware that the reality of high unemployment far surpasses South Central LA [10% in California, 18% in the Black community] or East Oakland, East St. Louis, etc. Is this crisis from the heavens, like Katrina? No, it is by politically orchestrated conspiracies to deprive resources to that area, locate them amid economicallly abandoned lands, locate few services, and build little infrastucture.
Conversely, consider that in the US military and US prison system there is near FULL EMPLOYMENT [there is also food, shelter, health care].
When was the last time you heard of any "threat" of a rise in unemployment in a federal prison? It just doesn't exist. But maybe you don't even know about prison labor. Prison and military jobs are created with different motives, including the self-esteem of the prisoner or soldier. Safety. Idel hands and all that. Certainly there is a market beyond the prison for its labors.
I am not suggesting we emulate a prison state, but rather highlighting the powers of our political class to solve those problems they want to solve, if they even become problems at all.
I am suggesting a political revolution. I am suggesting we get in the way, not be silent [silence=death] and make the rascals serve humanity.
Former Labour Party MP, Tony Benn, says "If the poor turned out and voted their interests it would be a real, democratic revolution. So they don't want that to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic is ... See, there are two ways in which to control people: first of all frighten people; second of all demoralise them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. There is an element in the thinking among some who don't want the nation to be educated, healthy confident because they would get out of control."
