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And by ‘they’, of course, I mean the Masters of the Universe, the Oligarchs, the Plutocrats…name them as you will. And by ‘forced to look’, I mean…after having been given just a little bit of lysergic acid diethylamide in their fucking lattes or apéritifs. You probaly know that LSD changes the quality and nature of the little chemical packets that send neural electrical impulses across the spaces between neural dendrites, and causes a shift in perception, often enabling a person to see the life forms on the planet as linked, interdependent…as part of an organic whole.
See? It’s just a little pharmacology we’d be practicing; ya know, a little bit like the stuff Big Pharma serves us with over the air everyday; and this stuff’s a lot healthier for ya than lots of their fast-tracked-for-approval psychoactive (and other) crap usually turns out to be.
No matter how long it takes until they break apart, break down in their sudden Gestalts like latter-day Ebenezer Scrooges…finally realizing the Dark and Evil of what they have so cavalierly wrought around the world simply because their insane lust for money and power overtook any vestiges of their humanity. So let them weep…let them howl…let them call out to their Gods for deliverance… I will still reserve the right not to help put them back together again. I’ll leave it to the saints who can…at least until the time I might possibly be able to find my humanity again and accord some of it to them; it’s so buried now in rage that I am tripping with images of the Architects of the Planetary Oligarchs receiving some serious education concerning the results of their collective deeds.
The photo came in with Liberty Underground’s newsletter this morning linking to Noam Chomsky’s new piece called ‘Recognizing the Unpeople’.
I’d been prepared to tell you a bit about it here, especially about some the unknown, unheard messages sent to the UN Security Council by the African Union and Arab League after three months of bombing in Libya, and some other hard to hear bits. He hints at the plans for the new NATO Africom base there that Pepe Escobar has reported on, but that’s no big surprise, either, is it?
But I can’t. It’s all so much of a piece by now that this morning it seems almost redundant, added to which I recently lived through a lot of the same empathy and pain in a diary that was an echo of Noam’s title.
The photo kicked me in the gut turned me inside-out, and of course I just couldn’t stop staring at it and weepingweepingweeping…and weeping some more. I hate that I’m tempted to apologize to you for any of this, but the truth is that I want everyone to feel this as acutely as I do, fair or not, possible…or not. I want everyone to hate these fuckers for what they are doing to our planetary human community as hard as they can.
For a time while I watched that mama burying her dear, starved infant in that tiny sandy hole…did she place its tiny thumb in the baby’ mouth, maybe as some measure of comfort in the afterlife?…aahhhhgaaad… all I could hear in my head was this song, and the truth of how depleted and weak it made me feel. And goddam it; there’s so much stuff to write. I just had to find The Rage, and pour a portion of it out into the world.
Whatever it takes to speed up this non-violent revolution…is good with me. They must be stopped at all cost.
Love, strength, and peace to you all.
wd
(cross-posted at kgblogz.com)
37 Comments
Thanks, Wendy, and recommended. At minimum, none of us can afford not to feel….
Thanks also to all the thinkers and occupiers and others working to end such a perversion of what it means to be human, and to all those, undoubtedly like that mother, for whom simply enduring takes every bit of everything they have.
This picture is from the Horn of Africa famine. 29,000 children had died as of November. A full death count does not exist.
“On death
In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation (1988)”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/21/quotes-by-prince-philip
Starving mothers and babies are not their concern. Oil and minerals are what are the most important thing on earth to THEM.
I agree they should be forced to look. Gerard had the audacity to threaten our President with huge political pain if he did not approve the Keystone Pipeline. Do you think he cares if America looks the same as that picture in 10 years?
Would another country allow their leaders to be threatened in such a way? Okay, I’m not standing up for Obama. He lost that a long time ago, but I still have loyalty to my country and it’s peoples.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B413NljCwI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2IbNe4x6hg
We’ve got to figure it out before it’s too late.
Thanks, Wendy
Hey wendydavis,
From the epitaph illustration in SlaughterHouse Five a bit of his irony :
“Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt.”
~Vonnegut~
recommended Thanks Wendy. Situations like the horrible one shown above are not all due to overpopulation. They often result from decisions made on the trading floor of the NYSE on Wall Street.
In 2008 the Goldman Sachs commodity index traders bought and bought wheat without selling–thus creating an artificial shortage on the wheat market in a year of the largest wheat production in 100 years and driving up the cost of wheat and wheat products such as bread. Here in the USA we saw the price of bread rise in our grocery stores.
This market manipulation on Wall Street affected people in the real world by driving the price of their daily bread needed for survival completely out of reach for millions of people all over the world. Thus in 2008, millions more starved to death than usual.
At the end of the year, the surplus US wheat was sold to corporate livestock farms as animal feed. Goldman Sachs and its investors made millions. Are they responsible for the deaths of millions of people? I say that they are and so are the people who invest in their commodities. Investors are responsible for their investments–even if is their pension fund. Even if it is a mutual fund. Saying that they can’t be responsible is is a cop out.
But at the very least, the Goldman Sachs commodity index traders and Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs committed crimes against humanity. Not knowing the result of one’s behavior is hardly a legal defense. “Gee I didn’t know that I would run over that little boy if I got drunk and drove my car. I didn’t mean to.”
Will the ICC come after Goldman Sachs and those who profited on the wheat market in 2008? Will the people who died needlessly in 2008 have their Nuremberg? Not likely.
“Every man’s death diminishes me” and the bell is beginning to toll. The picture is the saddest I’ve every seen and needs to be copied and plastered across the front of operations like Goldman-Sachs for starters. It makes me feel helpless and ashamed because there are too many degrees of separation for me to actually help a young mother in Africa. My heart breaks for her. Thank you, Wendy.
The Kenyan army is reporting that it believes that al Shabab will collapse within weeks. This famine did not need to happen. And your ranting against Goldman Sachs won’t help. But if it makes you feel better, by all means rant. And then perhaps contribute to a few places, like UNICEF, UNWFP, Save the Children, ICRC, IFRC, UNHCR, MSF, CARE, IRC, all of whom are trying to keep people alive there.
The climate is moving us through another La Niña year. So there is more famine coming. Already there are threatened populations in the Western Sahel. South of there, the DRC is experiencing a cholera epidemic in North and South Kivu. Meanwhile, the cyclone season has come very early to the Indian Ocean. And they are predicting cyclones will start to form in the Arabian Sea due to the Asian Brown Cloud. Things are getting really fucked up, so be glad that there is a portion of the USG that essentially defies our wonderful Congressional libertarians and participates in global climate initiatives like FEWSNET.
If you want to rant against MOTU here in the U.S. be more specific: The biggest thing you can do to do the most good is to get the U.S. to repeal the laws that force USAID and the rest of the State Department to make all U.S. humanitarian aid contributions in-kind. There are a lot of times, like right now in the Horn, when they need to be in-cash. That would mean targeting agribusiness, not Goldman Sachs on this one.
Recommended.
“Whatever it takes to speed up this non-violent revolution…is good with me. They must be stopped at all cost.”
Word. This photo is so awful that your brain tries to just get past it as fast as it can. So you have to keep looking and let the feelings resurface, as bad as they are. On the one hand, it reminds me how rich and spoiled we are here in America – and on the other hand, how we still allow children to starve and mothers to try to cope with such a state of affairs.
Anyone who isn’t raging isn’t paying attention.
“We are all born of the Sacred Mother
and she weeps to see what has
befallen her children.”
Rumi,
Feb. 29, 2012: Shut down the corporations.
At 60mph the average car uses 20-25% less fuel than going the same distance at 75mph. A small thing, but something anyone can do.
Thank you, Wendy. I just started listening to the New World Order podcasts over at Sibel Edmond’s boilingfrogspost.com. #66 Andrew Gavin Marshall is the first in the series. I think you’d like the discussion.
We are all collectively responsible for that baby’s death. knowingly or unknowingly we have collectively submitted to our planet working this way. to blame TPTB without accepting we gave them our power is to only cause more hate , more division.
We all have the power to stop this. And it is time we all stood up and said no more, not in my name. every day we have choices to say no more. may we all find the courage to start doing it
So it goes….
Thank you for that; it ensures that my tears don’t stop. Maybe tomorrow. RIP, Kurt.
For all of you who you allowed yourselves to feel this photo so completely: I’m grateful. And since it has left me virtually speechless, beyond one respond, I may just need to leave this thread a free-fire zone, lest I feel compelled to offer any counter-arguments to any comments.
Love to you all; we are beginning to feel our long-dormant power stir again, and hope delayed will not again be deferred. It *will* become the Tree of Life, because there is no other choice.
Even if you force them to look, it will not matter.
The problem is that sociopaths don’t empathize or sympathize. They rationalize.
It’s a sad state of affairs that we seem to have reached a point where a good portion of them have control over our country.
I made the choice to not drive at all. I walk. I like to think I’m healthier and the planet is healthier because of it. My husband does drive so we aren’t a car free household but I do like to think my choice makes a small difference.
Biking is another good option. I realize that these choices aren’t realistic for everyone but if enough of us who can make these choices,do, there is a small chance we can dilute the power of those that exploit the Earth and it’s inhabitants.
Interesting take. However, I would be completely taken aback if Goldman Sachs didn’t have an active interest in agribusiness. Investment companies have a HUGE interest in how corporate entities behave.
And many will starve that were on a shadow safety net. Rather than contemplate hypothetical consequences of Material Support for Terrorism laws or Holder v. HLP, you can feel them.
Here’s a real shadow safety net. They’ve shut it down, and now mothers will bury children for no reason at all.
It’s a matter of whether or not you want to fix the problem. The agribusinesses and even just the family farms lobby, and together with the farm state votes, prevent foreign aid from being other than in-kind: We ship food to famines, we buy it from our own. That isn’t what’s needed at some places and some stages, and since we are generally the largest donor in total outlay, we’re inhibiting the most rapid and permanent resolutions of some of these crises by this behavior.
No amount of blows against the empire or logic without empirical data will resolve to something else. We need to be providing cash to many of these disasters, and the way out of this is to loosen the restrictions. They are held in place by the agricultural lobby and the farm states. You can try very hard to parlay your usual villains into that if you like, but that’s the solution that the humanitarian community is asking for, and the U.S. is refusing to deliver.
There are those who would go so far as to say the picture above would not have happened if this issue had been resolved in a timely fashion to when the issue was known. I don’t know either way, but I would not be surprised if they were correct. Ethiopia, where cash outlays for relief have been liberally used in recent years, largely avoided the full brunt of this famine by building local infrastructure.
The solution isn’t always torches and pitchforks, and just because I’m talking like this doesn’t mean I haven’t stared down this picture and many more like it before and since I wrote this.
The hole is so small….
“The problem is that sociopaths don’t empathize or sympathize. ”
So very true.
Wendy, thanks for posting. I don’t know what else to say.
Hence, the LSD.
I don’t know Wendy.
LSD might turn their brains to mush for a while but I don’t think the image(s) of the death and destruction they cause would bother them any more than anything else would on a bad trip.
Do not project your own feelings and emotions on them. They are not like you and never will be.
Some pictures are worth more than a thousand words.
Okay, dad; more good advice. ;o)
Even though I was an erstwhile student of John Lily and T. Leary, and have faith in the restorative potential of lye, it wasn’t a Serious Proposal. Sacraments should never be thrust upon unwilling psyches, as in: First, do no harm. Even to sociopaths.
I might have added a smiley face to my comment above so that you could have known I am being sick, but not serious with the imagery. And this morning I am hearing a tangential, but related voice in my head. Would that I had more of the poet, and way more of the musician in me.
Same authors of the global destruction of humanity, different day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMz8pgua_0
My.Stars.What.Fuckery.
And of course, now there is Monsanto, cornering the global market on seed. Raising the prices, causing the crops to be soooo weed resistent that the weeds are now are beginning to grow like Kudzu vine, and providing only sterile seed, so seed saving is a thing of the past. The poor nations/countries will no longer be able to raise crops, save seeds and continue to grow the same food stuff the following year.
All with the help and compliance of our government. Including the assistance of Obama.
So we must work to raise the consciousness of all the others, like myself, who,
thinking I was sensitive and aware and caring, clicked Wendy’s site this AM, and have been left gobsmacked.
Wendy, it will be a long time, if ever, before I make a conscious decision that harms this planet, denies food to another, uses natural resources in a thoughtless and selfish way, or forgets to thank the Great Spirit for the blessing of the day, after seeing that picture.
As a mother it is heart breaking, yes, but as a fellow human being, also walking on this earth, this tragic picture makes me want to scream at the powers that be, “How can you stand by and allow this to happen?”!
I say vote them all out, (except for a handfull, and we all know who they are) they are not worth our support. And keep voting them out until we finally get in representatives who actually speak for the people, everywhere.
Bless you, gallogarden, for feeling mama’s pain so thoroughly.
I’d thought I might be able to answer more of the comments today, but no.
Ya got me weeping all over again.
Sorry to any and all of you I haven’t responded to.
I’ve been sort of avoiding the thread, and writing up something heartening and (hopefully) a bit inspirational.
Thank you all for reading and commenting.
We’re in the process of learning how to build a more humane and just world as we reclaim our power in the defense of our democracy.
Occupy Everything!
love,
wd
WoW.
Nice.
This picture reminds me of a black and white one I clipped from The Economist in 1994. I carry it with me. It is a picture of a small child, no more than 4 years old, squatting next to a fresh grave that probably contains his mother. The boy is crying and holding his head with both hands.
I’m sure his grief was for the mother he had lost but in the picture I saw the enormity of grief and misery that this child’s life was going to become and we were doing absolutely nothing to stop it. As the 90s roared on and Americans lost themselves in day-trading and sinking into debt, Africa was allowed to continue its degeneration while the dictators and thieves running the countries the West needed for resources banked the foreign aid dollars we sent them.
Yes, they should all be forced to sit in front of a screen like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, with their eyes taped open so the sights never abate.
Amen, mattcarmody.
Dunno how this diary came back to life today, but thanks for feeling it all so strongly.
We have to do better.