Marvin X Speaks
Obama Drama, A One Act Play
Unless our first black president makes a radical policy shift in his State of the Union speech, we expect he shall retire or be retired after his first four year term. We understand Hillary Clinton has informed Tavis Smiley she will not serve a second term as Secretary of State, probably so she can resume her run for president since she was so rudely interrupted by Obama.
What is clear is that our president doesn't seem to get it, especially with respect to the least of those, the poor, homeless, imprisoned and those forced into acts of violence and other criminality due to economic circumstances.
His focus has been to aid the rich and middle class, neglecting the working poor, the under and unemployed, temporary and contract workers. Yet he has allocated billions to employ poor insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Logically, if the poor and violent persons in the hood would aim their guns at the White House, there would be an immediate policy shift toward the home front.
Even mass protest by the poor, homeless, unemployed and mentally ill might force his administration to shift its focus. Imagine, nearly one million children go to school homeless in America! And addiction to crass materialism is the major reason 2.4 million people are imprisoned in this nation. Of course, many of the imprisoned are dual diagnosed, suffering drug addiction and mental illness. We must help the least of these, the captives, the broken hearted, the rejected and despised.
Obama's focus on saving the financial system may work in the short term, but there is no future for capitalism with its free market exploitation of poor nations and their resources. As we enter the Age of Consciousness, the free market system of cheap labor and resources, will not stand.
What is the real cost of exploiting poor nations of their wealth so the West can grow fat with conspicuous consumption, devouring 25% of the world's energy while only 4% of the population?
This is white supremacy pure and simple, and all those who enjoy the spoils of free market capitalism shall endure the wrath of those who rise up to claim their labor and natural resources.
Free market exploitation is the breeding ground of so called terrorism and revolution. Many so called terrorists are simple freedom fighters reclaiming their land from foreign occupiers and neo-colonial running dogs.
The insurgents are fighters who are fed up with poverty, disease and ignorance. Some are poor farmers, others educated urban dwellers who are unemployed, too poor to get married. Of course they are sitting ducks for radical ideology, whether Islamic or Marxist, nationalist or socialist.
And so our President will need to get on the right path. He, his administration and the Democratic party, had a wake up call in Massachusetts with the Republication senate victory. This was clearly the result of Democratic arrogance and myopia, a tragic flaw in classic drama.
This same blindness caused him to focus on health care while millions are unemployed and homeless, victims of the sub-prime loan scam, the pyramid scheme of global finance. How will they pay for health insurance while unemployed and homeless?
How in the hell did he earn the Nobel Peace Prize in the midst of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia? Yet violence in American cities outnumber American deaths in all those nations--we don't count the innocent thousands killed by Americans.
While he is putting out the fires of war abroad, American cities burn in a low intensity war of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Unless it is a high profile case, most deaths in the hood go unmentioned, with traumatized families suffering in silence.
The ghettos of America are little Haiti's, full of ignorance, disease, poverty and drug abuse. How else can one live in hell except under medication? Unless one chooses revolution, the only therapy for the oppressed.
Youth in the Bay Area have the highest rates of STDs and HIV/AIDS in the State of California. And yet denial is the order of the day, with no national concern from the White House, after all, Washington DC is the capital of HIV/AIDS in America. The President need only look in his backyard to see the suffering that is nationwide, coast to coast. But his focus is on so called terrorists in Afghanistan. And after the war there is concluded, we shall discover a nation of people addicted to opium, and Pakistan is suffering same fate as we speak.
Is our first black president suffering the Hamlet syndrome, to be or not to be--to be for the people or for the bankers and wall street robber barons who are global and transnational, who don't give a damn about American workers, white or black, if they don't fit into the free market economy of global exploitation and domination. Have you heard the President mention the word poor or the word Black? Why is he terrified of the poor and Black?
Let's see what this Negro does in the second year of his first term, but the die is set, especially with the ever expanding wars abroad to the neglect of the home front. Why does it take thirty thousand US troops to hunt down 100-500 Al Qaeda said to be in Afghanistan? And the cost is staggering: 30,000 men/women at one million dollars each per year. Why not pay the 100-500 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan a million dollars each to leave or at least stop their violence, especially since the US did so in Iraq and is preparing to pay the Taliban to lay down their arms.
What is the need for an additional surge of 30,000 troops, unless there is an ulterior motive.
We see the US slowly edging its way into Pakistan with the use of drones and more recently with the mercenary Black Water army of professional killers. Supposedly it bombed a market in Pakistan and blamed it on the Taliban who refused to take credit as it usually does for its actions.
Blackwater, part of the US hidden hand government, no doubt seeks to destabilize Pakistan so the US can seize their nuclear weapons before Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who probably have access to such weapons since they both originated from Pakistani intelligence services and, ironically, the CIA, when Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were aided by the US in the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
While we hoped for peace, all we have is war and more war to come. And the political Left is as effete as the Right is hawkish, with their usual agenda of militarism is good for capitalism. But the Left is pitiful, with hardly a peep from the anti-war movement, yet thousands of people are dying at the hands of the US war machine, just as the Left, including those same sex marriage people so addicted to their sexuality that it is the their sole focus for existence--consequently their racism is so pronounced the black same gender loving people say the gay flag does not represent them--just as thousands of young black men and women are maimed and killed in the concrete jungles of American cities due to their underclass status as collateral damage of technological advance.
Yet these children and youth are ingenious at packaging and marketing drugs, accounting and security, but America can find no use for them except as birds in the cages of prisons and jails to the benefit of correctional officer unions where the birds are a valuable commodity, not only of the officers, but the wider community since manufacturing and other jobs have been outsourced. The jailing of blacks and other minorities is big business, for some communities the only business.
The economic forecast is that things are not getting worse, but not getting better--12.4% official unemployment in California. In the hood, 20-50% unemployment. Yes, while the hood is in the emergency room and the middle class in intensive care, the bankers and transnational global bandits of Wall Street are in recovery and back to business as usual, multi-million dollars bonuses included.
When Hamlet made his equivocal speech to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt (I come in the name of As-Salaam Alaikum), he proceeded to expand the US occupation of Muslim land: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia (a proxy war using Christian Ethiopia). Hamlet talks peace, but makes war with his Crusader army.
If and when America ceases her global and domestic terrorism, only then can she have time to ponder a new economic order that is truly equitable and just to all concerned. Latin American nations have configured a free market system devoid of the naked robbery of the poor. Can America envision the same. We thought Obama had the vision with his talk of change, but maybe it was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
With all his progressive pronouncements, President Obama yet seems mired in the world of bourgeoisie, right wing duplicity. He promised openness, yet practices secrecy. He promised to close Gitmo, yet it remains open. He has not ruled out the torture of the Bush era, and of course he has made no mention of closing the torture chambers of American jails, prisons and juvenile facilities. Why not a general amnesty--at least this was the last act of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Nowadays, my friends chide me for my unabashed support of Obama early on, but these days they mock me for being an emotional old fool, for not understanding all politicians are liars and schemers with the next election high on their agenda.
But if he can make a radical shift in policy, he can restore my faith and trust, and perhaps the world will acknowledge him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
--Marvin X
1/27/10