Is it Time to Challenge the World Establishment?

Ten Percent Blog concludes today's post with an open request for how to help Iranian's challenge their establishment without becoming tools of our own imperialist establishment:

Now, I am sick of writing about it, I want to find concrete practical things we can do to help. Suggestions welcome.

My suggestion follows:

One way we can help Iranians challenge their establishment is to challenge our own western establishments… what a “farce.” The inertia remaining from the fairly recent Greek uprisings, which spread around the world, provide a useful asset upon which to build.

On an individual level, we should use our strengths. You are a clear thinker and good writer. You should continue to make use of that strength, while others use their particular strengths.

We need to organize, and can do so in a distributed way… We should keep this impulse alive. My brief blog entry today reflects this impulse. Briefly, it concludes:

“I’m starting to feel like withdrawing all support from Obama, because he’s become the figurehead of a crime syndicate. Does anyone else feel this way?”

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Devolution into a State of Organized Crime

I suppose it needs to be said... some of these cases of men killing their families, then themselves, have the look of organized crime cases.

The Scenario: A guy gets into deep financial trouble. He owes a lot of money to a number of people, who themselves may have debts. Some people are desperate to enforce debts because the financial failure of their business would exposure their illegal business operations. They enforce debts by threatening to go after the family, as in, "We know where you live, where your daughters go to school. We'll turn your daughters into sex slaves if you don't pay up."

Faced with this, and the belief that the corrupt system cannot protect them, they are led to the only logical conclusion.

Iraq for Sale and the US Powder Keg

I've owned Robert Greenwald's "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers"[1] for half a year. I finally watched it last night having resisted so long because I knew it would be a bummer. Actually, it was energizing in the sense that anger induces motivation.

The movie Sicko, by Michael Moore, thoroughly discredits the US health care system. It also exposes deep and wide corruption that is enriching an elite minority. That same establishment has cornered the US defense and security industries. US government officials are implicated and enriching themselves upon retirement from high office. The Democratic and Republican parties are corrupted by the wealth and power that has been consolidated via government largess.

Our hope lies in common people of all political persuasions who are harmed, even killed, by this corruption. There are more of us than the elite minority, and we live in a democracy where majority rules... at least the majority is supposed to rule.

The US political system that has enabled this corruption has lost nearly all legitimacy. You can be sure that the establishment knows this. In response, the power elite is establishing new laws that anticipate the need to clamp down on domestic dissent in the future. That impending need is summed up in the last segment of the film Iraq for Sale in which a relative of a former Blackwater employee says:

You know, I love my Country.I stand behind it. I'm concerned now in a way that I've probably never been concerned before, because I don't like what I'm seeing. America has become a powder keg I think, and it's just waiting for a match.

Michael Moore explains that the French people actually exercise democracy because they are well organized. He observes a difference in our countries; in the US, the people are afraid of their government. In France, the government is afraid of the people. [2]

The people who have the money, the people making the profit, have a lot of power and a lot of money, and a lot of influence. And, so I think it will really take something big, a big movement here in the United States

The myth of the US democracy is being exposed as a fraud.

How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free
How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

- Joan Baez

People now "see" and are grappling with what to do about the fact that American Revolution replaced the British aristocracy with an American aristocracy. The answer lies in one word, "organize."

Click Here for an "Action Guide" associated with Greenwald's film and links to organizations working for positive change. An "action" example of many is provided immediately below:

Take Action (Just one Example):

Army investigations implicated employees from Titan and CACI in the abuses of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. To date, only one civilian contractor has faced charges. Write to the U.S. Department of Justice to act immediately to investigate and prosecute all cases of human rights abuses by civilian and corporate actors operating with seeming impunity in the “war on terror”. You can also write to the companies, like Titan, to express your concern over their human rights policies and practices. For both actions, go to Amnesty USA Action.

Sources:

1. Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, by Robert Greenwald.

2. PBS "NOW" with David Brancaccio, Michael Moore, on French vs Americans, June 29, 2007.