Solemn Sunrise
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Sunday morning, the third day of April, 2011, a cold one here on the east coast and the little hamlet of Osterville, where the foggy start to the day ends the tough storm we all rode out on Friday. With record temperatures in the west, Phoenix topping out at 100 degrees on Saturday, to a hail and rain delay at a Major League baseball opener in D.C., as the National players scrambled to get off the field, to the dumping of over a foot of snow in New Hampshire and Maine, the question of whether or not this is global warming, or the politically correct phrase, “climate change”, is probably too “out there” and highly inappropriate, right? Right. Mass cremations in hundreds of crematoriums were held in northern Japanese fishing villages where thousands of bodies, many of them unrecognizable, are being found in the rubble that now represents reality of these once thriving and beautiful communities. So many bodies have been recovered that those local crematoriums, the traditional method of Japanese funerals, have been overwhelmed, prompting many of the remains to be sent to Tokyo, where Japanese Buddhist monks offer prayers and sacred rituals for the safe passage to the afterlife, with thousands of strangers and family members arriving with flowers that they place on the symbols of the fallen. A solemn day to be sure, as that sentiment rings home with these graceful people, stoically saying goodbye to loved ones, with dignity and humility, an image that gives us all pause and stop just for a moment to not only count our own blessings, but also to remember our brothers and sisters in that part of our world, many of whom could use your prayers right about now. In the Middle East this past week, the unrest was not just limited to Libya, where rebel forces are struggling along the road of those southern Mediterranean border towns of Misratah, Sirte and the key oil port city of Brega. In Syria, a major crackdown on anti-government forces, many of which were caught on tape, have only served to reinforce the fact that the whole region is on a the verge of exploding. It seems that this wave of revolution has taken every step to ensure that no one ‘old school’ dictatorship is safe from the continued unrest. The trend seems to be moving towards a stalemate between the old guard and the newly energized, mostly poor majority of the population, who are unhappy with political oppression, the lack of good paying jobs, soaring food prices, and the ‘business-as-usual’ attitude of authoritarian regimes who many see as being blind to the WILL of the people. Taking Syria again as an example, Syrian authorities are gathering up, by the hundreds, protesters who have raised this discontent mostly through peaceful protests. In Yemen, the embattled President, or dictator, refuses to step down, and thus the water continues to boil, as five people were hurt in violent clashes in that very unstable country, clashes that continued on, as they have now for months. Yemen is a ‘country of interest’ for the United States, as intelligence has confirmed that al Qaida does have a presence in the region, the small, yet highly inaccessible country that borders Saudi Arabia. In Jordon, police work to separate pro and anti-pro government protesters in the capital city of Amman, trying to avoid a repeat of last week’s clash between those same two groups, who fought violently with rocks and sticks. Even Iraq has seen protests, in the northern Kurdish towns, and this unrest has spread, of course, to northern African nations such as Libya and Algeria, as well as other Middle Eastern countries such as the horrible violence in Bahrain, Djibouti, Oman, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and, again, Libya, where we learned yesterday that NATO mistakenly bombed rebel forces killing at least 16 people. This coming a day after the United States stopped it’s lead role and active military status as the point guard in what the allied forces named, “Odyssey Dawn”...staying in the region in a ’support role capacity’, offering possible CIA operatives, jamming devices and refueling air support, but always really there if something really bad went down. And finally today, the budget is the issue in our country and the prospect of a possible government shut down, if the extension of the current fiscal year budget for 2011’s continuing resolution does not become a reality by April 8th. The republican tea party freshman, stoked on by the vicious multinational corporate agenda of the “ruling class”, otherwise known as an Oligarchy or Plutocracy, are demanding 73 billion dollars in cuts to the federal budget, including oil assistance for the poor and the elderly, head start for kids, not to mention nutrition programs for poor children in desperate urban neighborhoods all across this country, all while corporate profits are at record levels, with companies like GE paying nothing in federal income taxes in 2009, while millions of Americans are hurting, where they can’t buy a job because all middle class good paying jobs, jobs that help make the middle class the “middle class”, have been shipped overseas because the multinationals don’t care about white picket fences for all, they only care about “keep your hands of my stack jack”, while they rape and pillage our environment, taking away what is rightfully the people’s, i.e. clean drinking water. I don’t believe that has been “privatized” yet. This proves what side the republican party, a fake republican party for it is certainly not the party of LINCOLN, nor Reagan even, no, this is a party of puppets such as Boehner, McConnell and Cantor, who, along with a chorus of nincompoops that make up the fake grass roots “koched up” corporate sponsored “tea party”, ironically named I must add, for it bows down to the very people who are exploiting them, THE RICH–all cry out in unison, “what the American People need, want, or wish for…ad nauseum”, pretending they, the wolves who are stealing their (the public’s) hens are the very ones to solve the problem of the “wolf situation”. “Lucy, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do!” (thank you Ricky Ricardo and “I Love Lucy”, and of course, Lucille Ball herself, GOD’S SPEED!) 99.9 percent of “The American People” do not fit into the category of which I speak. Nor are they welcome to the country clubs, the private jets, the stacks of money that keep pouring in, no, they should be content with the way “things are” and they should get used to the fact that corporate “America” is here to stay, as we stare into yet one more Walmart, one more McDonald’s and one more shopping mall that we don’t need, selling us stuff we can’t afford to buy. Have a nice day folks and don’t take any wooden nickles! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
