How many of us could afford to have our mortgage payment triple overnight?  I couldn’t and I doubt there are many out there that could.  Now with unemployment rising rapidly more and more families will end up watching their possessions parade out of repossessed homes toward an uncertain future.  Billions, trillions have been pumped into the banks and yet no one stopped them from ripping the life out from under the very people who had provided that money.  They are toxic assets now, not people, not families. 

In recent days a housing project a bank seized from a developer that went under was torn down in California.  Bank officials determined demolition would be cheaper than repairing the houses and completing construction.  Twenty houses, homes, were torn down at this particular development and workers on site reported they had a similar demolition order for another development not far away.  Squatters had moved in and vandals had caused damage.   Much of the vandalism, beyond the usual obscene words spray painted on the walls, was theft of fixtures and infrastructure carefully removed by tools.  Sounds to me like someone was cutting a few costs on their home renovations.  Probably some of the very same sanctimonious individuals mentioned above.  The squatters on the other hand may well have included some of the very people this same bank had ripped from the comfort and security of their own living rooms and thrust onto the street.  Now they became squatters and vandals, the mainstream media purposely or ignorantly making them one and the same in the minds of a gullible public.  Sleeping tonight made easier thanks to a propaganda industry dehumanizing them. 

People ask me what I have against a capitalist system.  Well open your eyes.  This is capitalism at work.  The capitalist market is amoral (I would argue immoral).  The bank has no responsibility to care what happens to people.  Bank executives don’t have to answer for the consequences of their acts.  If people suffer it is not their problem and government should not stick its big nose in, that would just mess things up.  Government doesn’t know what they are doing;  the financial geniuses of Wall Street do.   Yeah right!  Try selling that argument to anybody today.  That is why the capitalist system doesn’t work.  It argues that society should be run without any moral oversight.  The law of the jungle; survival of the fitest; all the rest of that crap.  How hypocritical.  Capitalists want society to be dog eat dog until something starts nibbling on their flanks.  Then it is ‘call in our buddies the local, state or federal authorities to pound these nuisances back into the muck they are.’ 

Okay so who brought the vaseline?

The squatters at that development needed a home and they found one.  That is dog eat dog.  They should have been allowed to defend it.  After all a man’s home is his castle and as soon as they laid down amongst their meagre possessions those houses became their homes.   Nothing is more beautiful than when an inert mass of wood and metal begins to breathe with the soul of a home.  Our so-called government authorities are truly agents of the monied classes.  Rather than stand aside and do what the capitalists argue they want from government, let the private sector function, they stick their big noses in, not to tell the bankers that they need to be responsible citizens, but to make sure the vulnerable can’t stand up for themselves. 

This is what happens when you hand out money with little or no oversight.  I have a major insight for all of you out there in cyberland.  Corporate executives and business people in general are just that people, with all the foibles that go along with that designation.  In fact in our system it is virtually impossible to rise to the upper executive  level and have any ethical fibre to your character.  If you aren’t prepared to pimp your mother for a nickel you will inevitably run into the glass toilet bowl on your descent into upper management.  So these guys are just being true to form.  They need those million dollar bonuses so they and their families can enjoy this festive season.  Oh and the bonuses are down from last year they assure us.  But I bet they are still more than those who are being laid off from manufacturing plants in all sectors, not just auto.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the envelopes in which the bonuses were delivered are worth more than some American and Canadian families have to spend this Christmas.  As a matter of fact I know they are because I know many people who have $0.00 to spend this Christmas.  But these are the entitled, the movers and shakers.  These people would be lost if they couldn’t pay people to do everything for them.

Hegel in the Phenomenology talks about the master-slave relationship.  The slave is independent while the master is dependent.  Without the slave the master is nothing and cannot survive.  First without a slave how could he be a master and secondly he relies on the slave for the means of subsistence.  The slave, however, not only provides from him/herself but also for the master.  The slave has no need of the master to survive.  The only thing the master gives to the slave is his/her slavery.  Once the slave realizes this, he/she is no longer a slave.  It is time for us to realize that we the slaves of this planet are the ones that sustain the self-appointed masters.  It is time for us to walk away and let these parasites die if they cannot adapt. 

Others are starting to do this already.  There is move afoot in South America to create an alternative to the World Bank which has enslaved developing countries for decades.  Several South American nations have paid off their debt to the World Bank by helping one another.  It is their intention to found a new Bank without the neo-colonial strings exerted by the World Bank.  Voting would be equal; one member, one vote unlike the weighted voting at the World Bank which gives control to the industrialized West.  Micro-banking is growing around the world and needs to be introduced here as well.  And it is us that needs to introduce these ideas, you and me.  Let’s just take what we provide to those who have been our masters and use it for the benefit of ourselves, the decent people in this society that actually create and sustain its wealth.

I often remind my students of the ancient curse, may you be born in interesting times.  Well if any times can be considered interesting these can.  We, the great unwashed (mental note need a shower today), in each historic epoch look to the heralds, the troubadours,  the minstrels, of the time, the fourth estate, in short the media to guide and inform us.  Legends in my lifetime like Neil Sheehan, Tom Wolfe, Seymour Hirsch, Woodward and Bernstein, Edward R. Murrow and more too numerous to mention have illuminated the dark underbelly of our society in an effort to help us understand ourselves and our world.  Understanding precedes correcting.  We rely on these heralds to tell us what is happening.  If they are silent then we are ignorant.  If they are biased we are misinformed.  If they are stupid we are in deep do-do.  These three are not mutually exclusive.  The greatest crisis facing our society and our planet today is that most ‘journalists’ are all three.  They are often silent because to report would challenge the underlying  ’truths’ of the ideology they are sworn to uphold.  And they are often too stupid to see their own bias.  To see it they would have to examine themselves and ask some very difficult questions and we live in a world that discourages analysis and critical thinking as dangerous. 

Bias in the media is not necessarily, although it can be in a small number of individual cases, a conscious behaviour.  Most journalists believe they report in an objective and unbiased manner, always sure to verify their information with ‘official sources’ and ‘recognized experts’.  What they don’t see is that these ‘official’ and ‘recognized’ people are just that, official and recognized, but by whom.  The ideology of liberalism has been accepted in our society today as natural.  It is the ideology that is not ideological.  In some ways this is true of every society in every epoch.  We believe that the way we live is the correct, most natural, most rational form of living.  Our thoughts and understanding become the hard truths by which everything is measured.  But how is this conditioned reached?  In other words, who made up these norms and enforces them, to different degrees punishing any who might think or act a little differently.  In Western society in the early 21st century the truth is a liberal truth, having firmly grasped European and most particularly American society in the 17th and 18th centuries, rising though the 19th to cult status and vanquishing its greatest challenger in the industrialized world with the fall of communism and the discrediting of socialism in general.  What is has displaced, vanquished and rejected is not necessarily wrong because it has lost a battle.  If losing a battle were all that were necessary to discredit an adversary then we should reinstitute trial by combat for all disputes for clearly might makes right.  I wish that those who so fondly recall John Kennedy’s remarks in his inaugural speech, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what you can do for your country,would actually read the rest of the speech and see the suffering and pain Kennedy expected the American people to endure just to defeat, not the Soviet Union, but just the idea of communism/socialism.  This is the objectivity that journalists are trained to see.  Liberal perspective becomes truth.  Official sources are trusted and left unchallenged.  As John Pilger remarked, speaking at a conference about his new book, ‘Freedom Next Time’,  the bits of true investagative and reflective journalism that find their way into the pages of major papers or onto mainstream networks both radio and television, are honourable exceptions rather than the rule of modern journalism.  Can we blame the journalist for seeing the world as those around them see it?  Can we blame the journalism program at university and college for putting out people that will blindly follow those who preceded them in the industry?  The question is a little unfair, I admit.  What I am really asking is can ordinary people be blamed for being ordinary?  How can we expect journalists to all be great people?  People of high conscience, principle, and great courage.  For it takes great courage to go through life uncertain of every thought you hold.  For the great person knows she/he  may be proven wrong at any moment.  Even when forcefully and vigorously asserting a position or argument, a little voice, like the slave in the chariot during a Roman triumph, constantly whispers ‘remember, you are only human’.  That is a lot to ask of anyone, to go through life in uncertainty.  But that is the human condition.  It doesn’t mean that you must always relinquish the field to your opponent or preface every remark with ‘I could be wrong but’.  You still forcefully assert your arguments because you believe them to be provably correct.  And you believe this because you have questioned them in the first place.  Accepting that we all have an inculcated perspective based on our lifetime experience means digging deeper and challenging that perspective constantly so that when we opine we do so with the confidence that that opinion will stand up to scrutiny.   That is the mark of great character and that is what I demand of journalists.  To do otherwise would be to condemn myself and you to purgatory of totalitarianism.  Such character is not encouraged by our education system or our social institutions as a whole.  The password for smoothly sailing through life is acceptance.  Accept the world as presented.  Don’t rock the boat.  But while courage won’t make you popular, it will make you honourable.   The choice is always up to the individual  So I implore those who proceed into journalism, if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to ask the hard questions and examine your own failing then at least become a sports reporter where even basic intelligence is optional. 

In politics the first question that should always be asked is ‘In whose benefit?’   Who benefits from seeing things this way rather than that?  Who benefits when ideas are defined this way rather than that.  If the same people who are defining the events and ideas are the same people who benefit from those particular definitions, we need to be skeptical.  Maybe they are being honest and it is just coincidence that they also benefit but to accept that as the usual is to be stupid.  And that is the situation with the media today and for most of the past 100 years.  Accepting the views or their ‘official’ and ‘recognized’ sources is doing just that.  These sources benefit by the way they define the world and these are the only sources journalists must use. 

And how do journalists deal with their inability to really question the power brokers in our society?  Look at the questions they are asking.  Recently I was reminded of a question asked right after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.  I remember it being asked and at the time just shook my head in disbelief.  It has become part of the conspiracy theory industry that has grown up around that tragic day.  (The attacks have spawned several industries actually.  Only America could market tragedy like soap suds.)  The question was “Mr. President.  Where were you when you first saw pictures of the first plane hitting the towers?”  I have paraphrased as it was asked more than once directly to the president and to his media representatives.  The initial answer that he was at the school when he saw a picture of the first plane hitting which is incorrect as images of that plane hitting had not been uncovered at that point is why the conspiracy theorists are all over it.  Most likely it was the second plane hitting that he saw and the answer a result of miscommunication.  But for all the attention that the question has received because of its answer, no one has questioned the question itself.  Why would anyone, let alone someone who must by virtue of covering the White House be at an upper level of his/her profession, ask such a stupid question ?  Who the hell cares where he was when someone first showed him a picture.  What critical information is uncovered by this?  The question of when was also asked several times.  When did you know this?  When did you hear that?  When did that zit on your nose pop?  Maybe George was having a dump when his aids first showed him the pictures or told him about the collapse.  Maybe Laura wheeled a TV over to the hall and he kept the door open to watch the coverage.  If he is like me he probably got her to bring him a cup of coffee as well.  How much of this crap (pardon the pun) do we need or want to know.  Personally I have no interest in any of this.  I don’t care who told him what, when.  I would be interested in deeper questioning of his plans for dealing with the situation.  That is news! 

But news is what the heralds of these interesting times are trained to ignore.  We hear the lies repeated.  The auto industry is in trouble because it pays its workers too much.  Truth the average pay at assembly plants in the U.S. is $30 an hour.  Given the price of housing and feeding a family in America today that is not exorbitant.  But according to the heralds unless the workers stop being so greedy the Detroit 3 will collapse.  In whose interest?  The self proclaimed best political team on television asks whether President-elect Obama can move forward on health care reform in the midst of this financial crisis.  Read General Motors financial report.  You will discover that health care costs are hurting their competitiveness.  But no mention of this on CNN.  Oh! no! Wolf wouldn’t want to mention that.  In whose interest?  Victory in Iraq and in Afghanistan is necessary to secure the world (read the United States) from further terrorist attacks.  Most Americans still believe that Iraq was involved in the attacks and that the elimination of the Taliban will produce a free and democratic Afghanistan (read my earlier post Team Afghanistan for some insight into the reality).  Bringing death and destruction to those half way around the world will make them love us.  Instead every objective measure shows a more dangerous world today than before the War on Terror.  Even that phrase, war on terror is never questioned but it may tell us more than we want to know.  How can you have a war on an idea, a concept?  What would that look like?  You can’t kill an idea only the holder of the idea.  Then look at how we are proceeding in this so-called war.  In whose interest? 

In whose interest?  Over and over I ask myself that question as I watch events unfold before me.  If only journalists could find the courage to start asking those questions.  Not just of the powers that be but of themselves.  In whose interest is it that they reject information from every alternative source in favour of the ‘official’ and the ‘recognized’?  It is certainly not in mine or in the interest of society as a whole.  But it does seem to be in the interest of those who make the decision of what information the public receives.  The heralds of interesting times have much to answer for.

Last month Canadians were treated to a federal election a year before Prime Minister Harper had promised one would be held.  He had said that governments should not play with election timing to benefit partisan interests so he would set a date at the outset that would be election day unless the evil opposition parties defeated him on a vote of confidence and forced an election.  Did I miss that?   I don’t seem to remember a motion of confidence being brought forward and the government being defeated.  Prime Minister Harper rationalized that he needed a new mandate from the people of Canada for the urgent business which lay ahead for the government.  Translation:  He thought he could win a majority. 

Still, what was this urgent business, particularly?  You and I both know that when times get rough we all hunker down and blame the government.  Well the going is getting kind of rough.  U. S. banks are failing, unemployment rates are rising on both sides of the border, and the North American auto industry faces collapse.  Gee, you don’t think ol’ Stephen knew this was coming and figured he better get an election out of the way before the subprime hit the fan?

What could be a more cynical manipulation of the power of the prime minister than that?  But that fresh faced farm boy who led the opposition to Jean Chretien and Paul Martin would never have done that.  I really wonder what happened to him.

But, hey!  These are the guys who drive our economy right?  So we need to keep them in business, right?  Of course they are also the one’s that dug themselves into this hole.  But, okay, everyone makes mistakes.  I am sure these guys have learned their lesson and are putting all the public money to good use helping people renegotiate their mortgages and generally getting credit flowing again.  Well no.  Actually the first thing they did after the September package was through themselves a huge party to celebrate.  Since then they have been using the money to buy each out in an economic version of the game Risk seeing who can become the biggest empire and dominate the world.  The rest of the money they have just been hording.

Now we are going on to the auto industry.  It’s their turn to be massaged with our money.  General Motors, Ford and Chrysler can’t survive without help.  Those nasty Asians have deceptively undermined the U. S. automaker’s market by producing vehicles that work.  The fiends!  Of course the media emphasizes that the real problem is all those union contracts.  Those workers are just sucking the industry dry.  It couldn’t possibly be that the executives made some executive size mistakes in product development and marketing.  Or it couldn’t be their multi-million dollar salaries or all those bonuses.  And heaven forbid anyone bring up golden parachutes.  Executive jobs are the only ones I know of that reward you for screwing up.  If I screw up I am rewarded with a pink slip not a porsche and a condo in Hawaii. 

Every corporate executive that makes a decision that costs jobs should be forced to personally apologize to each laid-off employee and their families.  Maybe having to tell a seven year old why Santa won’t be visiting this year will instill some humanity into these spoiled brats. 

So where does it all end?  Maybe some of these corporate geniuses will come up with an answer at one of their company retreats but I doubt it.  Maybe it is time for all of us members of the great unwashed to pick up our pitchforks and torches and give them something to retreat from.  Capitalism doesn’t work.  Our current crisis is what happens whenever capitalism is left to its own devices, unregulated.  It happened 80 years ago and it is happening again.  We face the same choice they had in the 1930s.  Do we patch the old girl back together, put a new frock on her, some makeup and get her hair done?  Or do we move on to something new, something different?  In the Great Depression, after much tugging and pulling the powers that be chose the first solution.  Let’s be smarter this time.  Let’s learn from our mistakes.  I know, how about an economy that serves the people rather than forcing the people to serve the economy.  And those poor bankers and executives that would be left out in the cold by such a system, don’t worry, we can retrain them and make them work for a living instead.  It would do wonders for their self-esteem and bring a smile to these old lips to see them toiling in the salt mines.