It’s time for saying goodbye.

As I sit here—waiting for the floodgates to open, not knowing how to wrap up this column—I fault myself for not having a bombshell to drop on you, or some breakthrough headline that will change the course of American history in its tracks. I think we’re so conditioned that we expect all endings to mimic the cliffhanging drama of television season finales. But that’s not the world we live in. Sometimes, things just end… with as much or as little pomp and circumstance we choose to lend the situation.

The cruel nature of endings will often force us to examine the beginning, the prompt, the driver. When I’d made up my mind to write this column at the start of term, I knew I’d have a hard time changing peoples’ minds, never mind changing the world. But every week I sat down and shared my experience with you, in hopes that my perception would enlighten your own. That’s the writer’s drive: we think we see something that you cannot, we think we have something to say. Clearly, that’s not always the case; it also involves a healthy dose of ego.

Whatever the case, I wanted to share with you my plight—my inability to change the world around me. I wanted you to orient yourself to our situation, rather than have you levy judgement in passing. I felt then, as I feel now, as if I were alerting your attention to a baited trap whose existence I’d only discovered the hard way. Who knows whether I was successful in this endeavour.

Looking back, as the end draws ever nearer, I want to be clear that despite all the gargantuan obstacles and crippling shortcomings, I can honestly tell you that I’m hopeful. I have faith that we will weather the storm and come out cleaner on the other side. I have faith in humanity, for no other reason than, at the end of the day, I am humanity… as are you.
We are the product of our collective actions. We may destroy ourselves, our planet may wither away under our negligent stewardship. It’s only then when we’ll realise what’s important—when survival becomes the main objective. Sadly, we’re known for having to learn the hard way. But we’ll adapt, we’ll cling together, and we’ll make it through.
But till then… we continue.

And so I leave you. My deepest thanks and best wishes to you on your journey. I hope you’ve enjoyed this as much as I have.

Warm regards,

Andrew Mendes

Ever hear someone say they had to laugh to keep themselves from crying? Of course you have; it’s an adage. Well, the other evening, while watching The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, I found myself engaged in the American pastime of laughing at the corruption and vitriol plaguing American government and news.

That is what we’re doing when we watch those shows—like Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart or even David Letterman. We laugh at the largest problems facing our nation. Sometimes you cry a little whilst laughing—but that’s okay; it’s that other type of crying and not actual crying crying.

If you’ve stuck with me for this long, you know that we’re in no shortage of obstacles to overcome. But it seems to me, it’s getting to a point where it’s all coming undone. This is a good thing; eventually, we’ll realise it’s no laughing matter. That’s how change begins.

The beauty of the present situation is that the hypocrisy is now almost offensively apparent. I’ll direct your attention to our ongoing healthcare debate—which is long overdue. Nearly 65% of Americans are in favour of a public option—that’s code for a socialised health insurance scheme, but in America, anything with the word “social” attached to it is shunned and feared like a Nazi, commie, abortion-slinging, swine-flu harbouring, homosexual, serial rapist. That’s another thing we have to get over: fearing that government can solve problems.

Obviously, those on the right are droning away trying to instil as much fear as possible into the fragile minds of the American public. These little gems were reported by the Huffington Post.

“It’s gonna kill people.” -Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)

“Places like Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. People die when they’re in line.” -Rep. Steve King (R-Ia)

The language is getting stronger and stronger… the better to scare you with, my dear.

There’s footage available on C-SPAN, America’s version or Parliament TV. If you could have seen it, you’d notice that many of the Republicans were holding up pieces of paper, waving them about—the supposed alternative to the Democrats’ scary, anti-American, public option.

Now get this. A junior congressman from Florida, Alan Grayson, became curious as to what the Republican’s plan could possibly be, because thus far—despite their constant damning and fear-mongering—they’ve been rather secretive about how they would tackle our healthcare woes.

So plucky, young, Grayson walks over to the other side of the chamber to have a peek at what the Republicans were waving about. Guess what? Those sheets of paper—the great Republican alternative: blank. Their so-called proposal was nothing more than a blank piece of paper, leading a rather angry Grayson to make the following statement:

“If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly. That’s right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.”

Of course, now everyone on the right is up in arms, demanding he apologise. FOX News, in their eternally fair and balanced manner, offered a rebuttal in their aptly titled piece, “You Die!” If you have a read for yourself, you’ll notice a reoccurring theme: death, death panel, Grim Reaper, danse macabre, angel of death, inferno, tide of death.

No joke.

As I’ve written perviously, the American system of campaign financing guarantees that a good portion of our representatives (Democrats and Republicans alike) are bought and paid for by the health insurance companies—of which there are only seven in total.

Now here’s where it get really ugly. In slightly related news, Michael Moore, of recent docudrama fame, was on Hardball with Chris Matthews (an American version of John Campbell, but with roid-rage) to discuss his newest film “Capitalism: A Love Story.” It investigates what’s known as “peasant death insurance”.

Moore: They take out life insurance policies on the employees, big companies, Procter & Gamble, McDonnell Douglas, Hershey.

Matthews: Do they bet on unhealthy people dying?

Moore: Yes. They actually [do] and they name the company as the beneficiary. So, the sooner an employee dies, the more money, obviously, the company can make.
What’s best: the profits from these insurance policies are tax-free.

Apparently, this has gone on since the 1980s but the practice has been growing in popularity. Many Republicans have been jumping through fire hoops to keep this issue from coming up for a vote. Some, like former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) (“Foreclosure Phil”, who never met a corporate titian he wouldn’t shill for, who helped bring us the mortgage foreclosure crisis) even advocated for expanding this peasant insurance to teachers and school workers.

So the same folks who seem hell bent on keeping accessible healthcare from coming to America are the same people defending the corporation’s right to make windfall profits from our early demise.

“The Republican healthcare plan is this: die quickly.” Representative Grayson’s words ring through with eerie credence on the tails of this knowledge. Despite all the scare-tactics, people are finally starting to see these people for what they are: corporate sellouts.

America’s not laughing anymore. This may be the moment of clarity we’ve needed for the past decade.

Walter Cronkite was known as the most trusted man in America. He was anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years. He was that man in the living room lounge with you and your family every evening; he told American families about events like Vietnam, the death of President Kennedy, Watergate, Iran Contra, Presidential elections, Moon landings, The Beatles—the big ones.

Mr. Cronkite died last month. A black hole opened up in broadcast media. This man was a part of your life—via this medium we call “the news”—and there was a vacuum caused by his absence. I’m sure there’s a New Zealand equivalent.

So now, people are starting to ask themselves the question, “Well, now who’s the most trusted man in America?” Where is that guy I trust to give me the facts as he found? Where is that guy with integrity? This is CBS Evening News, after all; these are benchmarks of journalistic professionalism. In essence, who is the next Walter Cronkite?

“Tuffy.”

First look at what we’ve done with the news. We have the “conservative” media and the “liberal” media. Fox is right, CNN is left. As contestable as that statement is, that’s what we think. We know and acknowledge this. And it’s all pseudo-newsy. Glenn Beck says, I’m not a journalist, I’m an entertainer—while he entertains us with current events with a “FOX News” logo spinning around behind them. We have Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson.

Will Ferrel in Anchorman is more credible and likable.

Of course, these aren’t news broadcasts; it’s punditry. It can all be as groundless and fact devoid as they please.

So who’s the next Walter Cronkite?

The answer should be easy. Dan Rather anchored the CBS Evening News after Cronkite retired in ’81. Logically, he would be the next Walter Cronkite because he succeeded Walter Cronkite. Except Dan Rather was sacrificed at the alter by the network for daring to investigate President George W. Bush’s suspect military history.

Ironically, Dan Rather recently addressed a non-profit group called the Aspen Institute—begging for media reform.

“A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom. This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.

“I feel particularly strong about coverage of the wars. […] I just can’t stand to leave those guys out there, fighting, dying, bleeding, getting torn up and say, ‘Look, it’s page 14 news.’ Or ‘Sorry, not on tonight’s newscast.’ It’s an example of the problem, that and not having the watchdogs.”

The Aspen Daily News reported that Rather urged President Obama to establish a White House commission on public media. That’s right; he said public media. Our private, for-profit, news media hasn’t been serving us well. That’s why nobody trusts anything about the American news anymore.

Our media incites racism to sell a corporate agenda. Our media fails to report that the protestors who are shouting down healthcare debates at these town hall meetings are being bussed in from out-of-district by PR firms hired by lobbyists for the insurance industry.

They’re using under-informed Americans to lobby for the insurance companies who make a profit by denying them care when they have a medical emergency. These are ridiculous people who don’t know what they’re for or what they’re against. It’s guerilla marketing by a corporate lobby.

It all stems from the same problem: how we finance political campaigns—what representatives really represent. We need public campaign financing. We need a strong public media on the public airwaves—doing a public service, a la BBC News. We need a public health option because our system, as is, is driving us bankrupt and, because it’s for-profit, it’s totally counterintuitive. All these protests and fuzzy-news are a smokescreen for huge, well-moneyed, well-lobbied, special interests who would face competition from a public option.

I trust Dan Rather. Since my question remains unanswered, I agree with his call for reform—across the board. It’s time to start moving forward again.

Last month, a woman stood up in a town hall meeting in Delaware holding a zip-lock bagged copy of her birth certificate. She then demanded her congressman, Mike Castle (R), why President Obama hadn’t produced a certified copy of his birth certificate. She then rallied the room to their feet, where they all pronounced the Pledge of Allegiance, putting particular gusto on the phrase “one nation under God”. This began what is now called the “birther” movement.

Their claim—that Barack Obama is not really the President because he wasn’t born in the United States—has been investigated and debunked by multiple parties on multiple occasions. The Washington Independent recently had to report that these rumors were put to rest in 2008 during the run up to the election by John McCain’s (R-AZ) own presidential campaign.

In a White House Press Briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the rumors “made-up, fictional nonsense”. I daresay most Americans are of the same opinion. Still, the ‘birthers’ remain unsatisfied, incited by blatantly racist right-wing radio broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh—of “Barack the Magic Negro” fame—and Glenn Beck.

The major news broadcasters are just as guilty. Lou Dobbs, CNN news anchor and managing editor of the nightly Lou Dobbs Tonight show, gave the ‘birther’ story so much airtime the President of CNN had to intimate that he personally believed that the story was “dead” to discredit Dobbs’ reporting. (As managing editor, Dobbs would have total content control of his show.)

Lou has had problems with race before; He said Mexicans would bring horrible infectious diseases—like leprosy— to America. The silence of other networks makes them equally complacent in the rumor’s perpetuation.

Now, who are these ‘birthers’? More importantly, what does this mean? Republican congressmen have told Politico that they’re afraid of returning to their districts where they’ll come under pressure from “birthers”.

With only 23 percent of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans, Republican congressmen are finding it hard and harder not to alienate their lunatic fringe by confronting them with facts. The cream certainly rises to the top when you’re down to 23 percent, doesn’t it? These were the same people shouting “terrorist” and “kill him” at Sarah Palin rallies.

The ‘birthers’ are a product of the Republicans’ own political agenda, born from the campaigning strategies they used during the entire election cycle. He’s a muslim, a terrorist, a Kenyan, a Marxist; he’s always the other. Of course he’s not American.

Republicans need to realise who they are representing and, by proxy, what they represent. Our broadcast media—instead of balancing the news by giving each side equal credence along political lines—should deal with facts and champion their dissemination. There needs to be a dialogue about race in America. It is impossible to move forward if racism and bigotry remain a political platform.

When I started writing this column, the world was wrapped up in the American politics, Obama had just become the first African-American President, and we were all sinking in a military-industrian quagmire. These days it’s a bit more nebulous, as interest in American politics has waned. I operate on the (rather large) assumptions that you 1.) give a damn about American politics at all, and 2.) that you care to hear my two cents.

So to make this all the more painful, I ask you for your opinions. What are some things that you just don’t get about America and Americans (like how they feel entitled to spew their political ramblings in a foreign country’s university publication)? Did you ever wonder to yourself, “My God! How did they let that happen?” There’s always more to it than you’d think. We’re not actually that stupid… most of the time.

In short, I want to hear from you. Because I only see the world through my eyes, I don’t want to waffle on about issues that only I care about, while you sit, rolling your eyes at the sight of my words. I know this could open a flood gate that I’d rather not see open, but that’s the fun part. Let’s get a dialogue going; so much has been happening in American politics since we last met.

The torture debate has died out… along with my angst and doom-n-gloom outlook on the state of my country (and state). It was like a lightbulb going off or the last piece of the puzzle falling into place. I’ll tell you about that later. Don’t get me wrong—we have a mountain of problems—but for a while I was certain that there would be no saving us. Perhaps, in truth, there isn’t… but I’m feeling more optimistic these days.

Of course, anything non-Michael-Jackson-related isn’t worth mentioning, really. (Did you see how they rolled out that gold-plated coffin and had all the children dance around it? What’s wrong with us? What a creepy display.) Which brings us to our dearest and most ongoing problem: The news has been canceled… permanently. The boob-tube is perma-set to MJTV and on the front page of the New York Times this week there was a story about how porn makers are using smaller-length featurettes for web use. Clever.
But things are happening. America will finally get an accessible healthcare system. Of course, I’m meant to be afraid of healthcare. That’s what they’re telling us… that a public health system would usher in the end of days. Meanwhile we spend more than twice as much per person—than anywhere—on healthcare… and we don’t get better outcomes… and not everyone’s insured.

Thirty-one percent of every dollar spent on healthcare goes to things like marketing and adverts and CEO bonuses at private insurance companies. They preach to you that the competition is the basis of the free market, yet when their insurance companies stand to face competition from us—being able to buy in bulk and pool our money—all of a sudden, competition must be stopped and legislated out of existence.

Oh, do you remember that mess when Nancy Pelosi said the CIA had lied to her… and every right-wing politician and pundit demanded her resignation? Well, that’s turned out to be true. I don’t want to speak too soon but it looks like my cautious optimism was warranted. Good-ol’ Dick Cheney has been linked to the cover up and there’s still more to come. Believe me. The American justice system moves slowly, especially when the entire Justice Department is run by Bush underlings for 7 years. We’re only now starting to see the sweater unravel.

So, exciting times. We have the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor coming up, who may be the first Latina to sit on the US Supreme Court. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee is hard at work calling her a racist—because she’s said that she sees the world through the eyes of a Hispanic woman and hopes to bring those insights to work with her. Ironically, Jeff Sessions’ own 1986 nomination was killed in the same Senate Judiciary Committee, which was unanimously opposed to his “gross insensitivity” on racial issues. History’s funny like that. A known racist who obviously has a problem with non-white-folk will try to convince you that Sotomayor is racist because she’s not white.

And so I leave you with that to ponder. Wrack your brains, you Kiwis, you Americans out there, you big-brains, you… person who thinks he is smart and loves the sound of his own voice. What do you want to ask an American? Make it good; I’m very busy and important.

The real strategy of right-wing politicians

Newt Gingrich:

“Let me just say, I think people should be afraid. I think the lesson of 1993—the first time they bombed the World Trade Center—was: Fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of Khobar Towers—where American service men were killed in Saudi Arabia—was: Fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of the two embassy bombings in East Africa was: Fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of the Cole being bombed in Yemen was: Fear is probably appropriate.

“I’ll tell you, if you aren’t a little bit afraid after 9/11 and 3100 Americans killed inside the United States by an effort, if you aren’t worried about the second-wave attack that was designed to take out the biggest building in Los Angeles, I think that you are out of touch with reality.”

Host David Gregory:

“But, Speaker Gingrich, you make the point about how Vice President Cheney felt—personally, personal fear. And isn’t President Obama’s argument that fear as a basis of national security policy is not sustainable over time? How do you come up with a sustainable legal framework, a sustainable national security policy? Don’t we elect leaders to transcend fear for lasting policy?”

I was listening to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ over the radio (‘cause I’m one of those people, see). Newt Gingrich, Republican mouthpiece and former Speaker of the House, was debating Senator Dick Durban (D-IL) over the politics of national security. As you’ve just read above, Newt spilled the beans and admitted—in not so many words—we govern by fear.

Afraid. Fear. Kill. Attack. Bomb. 9/11. Fear works. Fear sells. We’ve used it repeatedly. We instill fear; we weave it into all our political issues and stances. We’re the Fear Party; we’ve been the Fear Party for a long time. Fear. Be afraid.
Fear has permeated American society. It influences our political decision making process. It dictates how and when we’ll surrender our rights. It justifies our bigotry. It’s our biggest crutch and our biggest detriment.

Who should we be afraid of?

You should be afraid of the other… of course. You should fear what you don’t know or understand. Be afraid of the vagina—it’s strange, she’s a witch, she’s a baby-killer. Be afraid of the black man—he’s big, he’ll take your women, he’s violent. Be afraid of the gays—they’re freaks, they’ll raise freak children, they’ll corrupt our moral society. Be afraid of terrorists—they have funny sounding names and that crazy religion, they attacked us, they constantly want to kill you, there’s one under every bed. Be afraid. They’ll all take your children to a satanic black mass—with real black people and drugs.

Why should we fear?
‘Cause we exploit your fear for political reasons to enrich ourselves. We had to make you afraid so you’d give up your liberties voluntarily. We waited for a time of utter chaos and utter tragedy. We told you to fear the terrorist. We told you to be patriotic and go shopping. Then we made you afraid of every common object that you could imagine. Remember model airplanes and pens, poison pen-guns, ferries, exploding cows? The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud. Unmanned aerial vehicles could come here and spray you. Shopping malls are scary dangerous places every year at Christmas. But go shopping; don’t mind the terrorists. Hell, we sure don’t.

We use fear to win multi-million-dollar defence contracts. We knew you’d never allow this new defence industry we own. We knew we’d need some catastrophic and catalysing event––like a new Pearl Harbor. We wrote about it in ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century’. We wanted a wartime President. We knew you’d be less uppity that way.

Should we keep being afraid?

Yes, do. Vote against equal protection under law for an entire class of people because you fear them, or don’t understand them, or don’t know them. Don’t forget to fear God. Fear not going to heaven. Fear the notion that if you can’t get them to believe like you, you’re not going to heaven. Remember how your whole life is organised around fear. We have to keep you divided, see.

In closing, people are afraid of somebody or something all the time now. It has to stop. It’s led us down a really bad road. We’ve had eight years of fear and division. Take a look at who’s telling you to be afraid—telling you that if you’re not afraid, something is wrong with you. They are the right wing of America politics. They’re the ‘traditional values’ people. They’re the ‘law and order’ people. They’re the people who just lost power.

Fear is not sustainable. We must transcend fear. We must stop dividing. We need to orient ourselves. We have a lot to fix.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has been busy trying to convince the American public of the merits of torture—euphemistically known as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs)—claiming that torture was a legal and effective way of preventing further terrorist attacks. However, not only has evidence come to light debunking the effectiveness of ‘the Cheney method of interrogation’, but several investigations have found that torture was used, almost exclusively, to elicit false testimony linking Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda, in order to build a case for the war with Iraq.

Last Wednesday, former FBI special agent Ali Soufan testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee charged with investigating torture. Soufan’s testimony debunked Cheney’s claims that the use of torture had led to information that prevented further attacks after 9/11, stating that the “techniques, from an operational perspective, were ineffective, slow and unreliable and harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaeda.”

Soufan interrogated CIA detainee Abu Zabaydah before CIA contractors took over, and was able to obtain actionable intelligence within one hour, using approved, non-torturous “Informed Interrogation Approaches”. This intelligence lead to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected planner of the 9/11 attacks.

Following Soufan’s interrogation, CIA contractors then waterboarded Zabaydah 85 times, after which he shut down—no further information was gained. When CIA interrogators declared that Abu Zabaydah had to be treated “like a dog in a cage”, FBI director Robert Mueller pulled Soufan, and the FBI presence, from the interrogation proceedings.

Recently, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph revealed that US military experts had warned the CIA that the use of torture was likely to produce “unreliable information”. The article, entitled ‘CIA ignored warnings from US soldiers that torture and extreme stress would not work’, cited a leaked memo from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an arm of the US government that trains military personnel to resist torture if captured.

“A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers to get the pain to stop. The application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably the potential to result in unreliable information.”

The CIA is reported to have “reverse-engineered” torture resistance techniques from the JPRA’s SERE programme (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) for use on suspected terrorists. The same techniques were used to break down US captives in the Korean War for propaganda purposes and were well known to produce false confessions and misinformation. The CIA ignored the warnings of the JPRA under pressure from the White House.

The White House intentionally used techniques that were known to produce false information because false information was needed to build a case for war with Iraq.

Last Thursday, a former State Department official told CNN that “finding a ‘smoking gun’ linking Iraq and al-Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002.”

Retired Army colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, published the findings of his investigation in The Washington Note, using information gained from current and former officials. Col. Wilkerson has been investigating the scandal around the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison since 2004, at the request of Colin Powell.

“Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the US but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda. So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.”

A similar report was published by former NBC investigative producer Robert Windrem on Tina Brown’s blog, The Daily Beast. Windrem—a Senior Research Fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security and recipient of over 40 national journalism awards for his work on issues of international security, strategic policy, intelligence and terrorism—has confirmed from two US intelligence officers that the suggestion to waterboard Iraqi prisoners, who were suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, came from Vice President Cheney’s office.

The Iraq War has claimed the lives of over 4000 US soldiers and over a million Iraqis. America chose war. We chose to invade an unarmed nation that had never attacked us. War was sold to the American public based on a trumped up relationship between Saddam and Bin Laden, playing on our fears of another 9/11. We know now this to be false, and as of last week we know that torture was used—not to keep us safe, as Cheney insists—but to justify preemptive war.

Torture was used to justify murder.

The atrocities committed by the Bush administration—in my name—have now compounded into a disgusting, festering mass of war and misery and death and naked bodies stacked into pyramids and mutilated human flesh. There is no avoiding it. Congress now has to acknowledge what’s happened to us and take steps to fix it.

I believe that Senator Laehy’s truth commission will finally be tabled and people will be held accountable. Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and the others have been exposed for what they are:

War criminals.

Let’s face it; these are some interesting times we’ve inherited. World markets crumbling, wars across the globe, food shortages, America on the brink of collapse, traditional values uprooted, corporate-owned armies, overpopulation, a dying planet—all these problems will be ours to shoulder in only a few short years. How will we weather the storm?

The predicament we find ourselves in today is the product of the actions (and inactions) of generations before our own. We can only play the cards we’ve been dealt and, in our case, the deck has been stacked against us from the start. Such is the way of history. Still, our world is changing, and it now becomes our responsibility to ensure that change is a positive one.

In 1997, Jane Kelsey, University of Auckland law professor, warned us, “In a market-driven system, student assumptions of what the market demands will increasingly dictate what courses and perspectives universities provide.” As students, our time at university will dictate the course of our futures and, in a greater sense, the future of our world. Kelsey’s warning came from knowledge of this fact. We choose our path of study either out of passion (in rare cases) or, more commonly, a desire for a financially secure future.

Success, in our world, is measured in terms of money and power. We assume, and correctly so, that our level of ‘success’ depends on our ability to navigate and manipulate the system into which we were born. This system demands knowledge of practical information and skills. For this reason, the prestige and popularity of Commerce degrees, Law degrees, and Science degrees have been on the rise; while Arts degrees are repeatedly dismissed as “bugger-all”.

While no one can argue that non-Arts degrees aren’t essential to the progression and improvement of society—we need lawyers to champion justice, we need economists to peruse prosperity, we need doctors to guard our health, and we need those able to understand the natural world around us—all of these degrees, generally speaking, centre around a set process and how best to execute said process. We are learning vocations; we’re learning how to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen, economists, analysts, managers, etc. It’s what the market demands. At no point do we ever question the market itself.

So why then all these problems? There’s been no shortage of lawyers, economists, or managers; yet injustice, disparity, and chaos are as equally plentiful, even among ‘developed’ societies.

The times in which we now live are a culmination of decades committed to the advancement of staunch professionalism, neo-liberalism, a corporate culture, infallible markets with invisible hands, and a ‘trickle-down’ hierarchy now permitting every form of societal organisation. As we are now constantly reminded, with every headline we read and every news-hour update, the fruits of these labours have now come home to roost, and in a very big way.

The corporate elite are now revealing just how much power they wield, as entire governments and economies—particularly the United States, our global superpower—are crumbling under the weight of their intricate financial instruments. The same restructuring programmes once exported by the United States to promote free trade and a globalised economy, intentionally undermining state sovereignty, now threaten to undermine the sovereignty of the Unites States itself. We’ve created a monster whose tentacles have a hold on every economy and government on Earth. What’s worse, we don’t even know who’s at the wheel.

The academic argument as to whether democracy leads to a developed market, or a developed market will lead to democracy—a lecture every first year POLS student has sat through, rolling their eyes—is hopefully now dead and settled. We know now, as I suspect we’ve always known, that freedom and democracy are contingent upon more than just the existence of a free market. We were lead to believe the opposite because enough people, with enough letters behind their names, kept telling us it was true.

It is these same people who are now holding the reigns of power. Their economic policies—globally dominant and largely unquestioned—are designed to keep themselves in control. They are the architects of the system in which we all must live and operate.

The storm is coming. The vacuum left by the United States will be filled not by a rival political power, but a globalised corporate entity—answerable to no one but their shareholders, valuing nothing but their bottom line. What else should we expect when we’re taught to see everything as a commodity, of no intrinsic value other than monetary, or to how much it can be exploited?

Chris Hedges reminds us, “The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered.”

It’s no longer acceptable to be contented with a degree that guarantees a comfortable niche in their corporate system. In the United States, now only 8% of university students graduate with a BA. The most popular degrees are now in business and business management. There, corporations write our laws, force us into wars, rape our natural resources, manipulate our media, and promote consumerism as success and happiness. All of this is achieved with the willing help of those who’ve never questioned the system.

In closing, to those of you pursuing other degrees—be wary. Keep things in perspective, get a conjoined degree or at the very least diversify your study as much as possible. To those studying the Arts, study hard. You’ll be needed the most in the days to come.

You learn what the icon represents. You’re taught about the Founding Fathers, who dared to venture the notion that the rule of the people, which was at the time merely the stuff of ancient Greek mythology, was possible. You’re told a story: early settlers, the fight for independence, the founding of a nation, the spanning of a continent, division, divisions mended, industrialisation, innovation, prosperity, the call to war, the saving of a distant continent, the hope of the world, the shining city on the hill, the beacon of democracy.

You learn your faults: peoples displaced, lands ill-gotten, human chattel, disunion, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, indifference. But even then you come to love your faults as virtues; in faults overcome lie dormant virtues. You learn that change for the better is always possible—in spite of everything—in spite of history’s forces, the times, justice or the lack of it, causes, religions, or kinds of government. Most importantly, you learn that this progression, this momentous drive for perfection, is the natural course of things; you learn that America will always correct itself. To quote President Clinton, “There is nothing wrong in America that can’t be fixed with what is right in America.”

I sat in school and learned these lessons well. I love my country. I love what I believe it represents. I see it as one of the greatest experiments in the history of the world. We’ve come so far in so little time. We’ve overcome so much. We have such possibility.

Then what am I doing here, you ask. I’m here because I never stopped learning. I’m here because you don’t see the world as it is, you see it as you are. I’m here to gain perspective. They say you should love her when she’s right, and right her when she’s wrong. Without perspective, wrongs remain un-righted.

In my history—being the history of the world since I humbly graced it with my presence—there have been too many disconnects between what I was taught about America, and what I see with my own lying eyes. Of course, I acknowledge that America had its fair share of wrongs before I arrived but that history has already been recorded. The history of our lifetime has yet to be written; it’s this history by which future schoolchildren will remember us.

This is the history of my journey; allow me my scrutiny.

The American scandal du jour circa my being delivered what Reagan’s Iran-Contra.

Iran: the covert sale of weapons to Iran.

Contra: those proceeds going to fund and arm anti-Communist contras in Nicaragua.

Iran-Contra was only one of the many times the United States government has lent its support and endorsement to a right-wing military dictatorship. This happened in Indonesia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and of course Chile. The loss of life that followed in each case was a direct result of American foreign policy. In each case, a freedom-loving constitutional democracy was in cahoots with a brutal military dictatorship. Communism is just a red herring; America was furthering its economic interests, the cost of which was human life.

The first Presidential election in which I voted was in 2000, Bush vs Gore, in Palm Beach county, home of the hanging-chad. There’s also a Supreme Court case entitled Bush vs Gore, where the highest court in the land inserted itself into the state of Florida’s electoral process and ordered us to stop counting the votes. The Supreme Court—handpicked by George Bush Sr.—had handpicked our new President, George Bush Jr. This was my first real-life lesson in democracy.

The next election brought a similar brand of democracy: caging lists, black-box voting, voter suppression, a suspicious lack of voting machines found only in districts that trend to vote Democrat, people waiting in line for eight hours to vote.

We didn’t ask for more; we never wanted it in the first place.

Now we invade openly: Shock n’ Awe, a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs. Now we torture. Now we spy on our own citizens. Now our access to facts and information is limited to those picked for us by corporate powers; now we have propaganda. Now, even after a change of government, we refuse to investigate what on Earth happened to us; we refuse to treat torture and treason as crimes. Now, we’re looking to Afghanistan, then Pakistan, then Iran. Where does it end?

I loved the America I learned about in school… but I hate the America I see today. I had hoped to help America, armed with the perspective I’ve gained outside of the fishbowl. But how can I fix all that? Where would I even start to right her when she’s so wrong? The sight of an American flag, which used to bring me hope and pride, now only brings me one thing:

Depression.

This information about members of Congress being aware of Bush torture techniques is nothing new. We’ve known since 9 December 2007 that Congress was briefed about torture. Now, you ask, why would I pick that date out of my behind? Because that’s the day that it was reported in the Washington Post. The article outlines how select members of Congress—including Pelosi—had been briefed, had taken virtual tours of the black-site prisons, and had been made aware of the harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA.

A recently declassified document, the Member Briefings on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) Torture schedule, shows that Nancy Pelosi and Proter Goss (R-FL), the two ranking members on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, were briefed on EITs torture, including the use of EITs torture on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs tortures that had been employed. The document goes into no further detail than that.

However, earlier this week, Pelosi claimed that the briefing had only outlined potential techniques that were at the CIA’s disposal—that they had not been currently or previously employed—and that the information had been presented to her merely as legal opinion, to which she disagreed.

Now, on its face, that defence seems as shaky as a dog shitting bones. However, the 2007 article, aptly entitled Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002, states that according to their sources, Pelosi had said that the techniques described in the briefing by the CIA were still in the planning stage. This would reinforce the stance she’s taking today.

It seems Pelosi’s finally had enough.

In a stunning press conference today, Pelosi said that the CIA had lied, that the CIA had told her that they were not using waterboarding and that the CIA was misleading Congress about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques torture.

“…They talked about interrogations that they had done and said, ‘We want to use enhanced techniques, and we have legal opinions that say that they are OK. We are not using waterboarding.’ That’s the only mention that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were. So, yes, I am saying that they are misleading—that the CIA was misleading the Congress.”

That’s a powerful thing to say.

Now, there were a number of other Congressmen who were briefed and who apparently did know, but they claim, as did Pelosi when she stated that because of the National Security Act of 1947, it was very hard to do oversight without violating secrecy oaths.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) had been briefed a year after Pelosi when she sat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003. After the briefing, she sent a classified letter to CIA general council, Scott Muller, raising objections about the EITs torture, which was the appropriate course of action to register a protest. Yet, again, she had been prohibited from discussing the matter publicly.

The same goes for Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI); he wrote a letter objecting as soon as he was briefed. The Bush administration was hellbent on using torture and no letter was going to change their policies. Dick Cheney is still making the rounds on TV saying that he has no regrets on the matter.

Now, here’s the part that nobody talks about. Democrats realised these letters weren’t doing any good and that what they would need to stop the torture was to gain control of the majority to introduce legislature to ban it. So they did just that. In 2007, when the Democratic party won the the majority in Congress, they introduced legislation banning torture and it passed. But the President of the United States, George Bush Jr., vetoed it.

Get that? President Bush vetoed a bill banning torture.

“An effort to overturn his veto failed because of the votes of Republican members. We needed to elect a new president. We did. And he has banned torture. Congress and the administration must review—I’ve always believed the Congress and the administration must review the National Security Act of 1947. Now, we have a chance to do that with a new president—to determine if a larger number of members of Congress should receive classified briefings so that the information can be utilized by proper oversight.

“I have long supported the creation of an independent truth commission to determine how intelligence was misused and how controversial and possibly illegal activities like torture were authorized within the executive branch. Until a truth commission comes into being, I encourage the appropriate committees of the House to conduct vigorous oversight of these issues.”

This Truth Commission is actually happening; this might be where Pelosi vindicates herself for taking impeachment “off the table.” We’ll see.

Do I believe her? I don’t know yet. If you mean, do I believe that the CIA would mislead Congress or manipulate intelligence? Yes, I do.

Pelosi’s loyal opposition, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), refutes her claim:

“It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress. […] I don’t know what motivation they would have to mislead anyone. And I don’t believe, and don’t feel, that in the briefings I’ve had that I’ve been misled at any one point in time.”

Boehner, like many Republican politicians, has selective amnesia. The CIA would never lie… slam dunk. Remember George Tenet, CIA director on the lead-up to the Iraq war? It was a ‘slam dunk’ that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

No, the CIA would never lie to Congress… especially on issues so important.

Boehner is obviously amiss to the fact that who’s in control matters—and who they work for. By the way, Porter Goss went on to briefly serve as director of the CIA. He’s been famously quoted as having said, “I couldn’t get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified.” Perfect, you could be the head of the CIA! You’ve already been briefed on torture and we need to keep this crime train moving somehow.

See how that works, Mr. Boehner?

I hope some good news comes from this. Apparently, Nancy had to wait for it to get personal; I guess I’ll take it.

A rticle 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

A rticle 20: Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Eleanor Roosevelt is rolling in her grave right now, so much so that if she weren’t already dead—God rest her soul—she’d be griping over a severe case of coffin-burn. Her beloved Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted and approved by a United Nations committee under her chairmanship, has been repeatedly gutted—rather, clubbed to death like a baby seal—while the world sat back and watched. In an ironic twist, Eleanor’s own homeland, the United States, is now among the worst offenders. But they’re not alone.

Human rights abusers have become rampant all over the globe There are the big headliners: US torture policies, oppressive Chinese state-censorship, the Israeli occupation, Sri Lanka, Darfur. Not to mention the all the others nobody talks about: The FARC in Columbia, Brazil’s prison population, the Carandiru massacre, hundreds of thousands of South Americans extrajudicially killed, disappeared, tortured, arbitrarily detained by various military governments over the years.

Energy shortages, food shortages, water shortages—the one thing we’re in no short supply of these days is human rights abuses. That and carbon emissions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although not a legally binding treaty, laid the foundations for a global society and was hailed as the first step in our long journey towards that lofty and ever distant ideal of world peace—a mantra now only uttered by beauty queens.

This ideal has been abandoned; the world we live in today is fraught with more international conflict and misery than we care to acknowledge.

In 1948, when the Declaration was adopted by the United Nations, the United States used its position to lead our war-shattered world in a direction of peace, prosperity and hope. The socialist systems of Scandinavia, now objects of international envy, stemmed from the spirit of cooperation and social security embodied in this document.

Today the United States is leading the world in a very different direction, one whose end we’ve been trying desperately to avoid at all costs. But the world is still playing follow-the-leader.

The countries of the G7 (or 9 or 12 or 20)—democracies, economically developed, stable, secure—can no longer actively or passively condone this behavior. International engagement has broken down to the point that delegates are walking out of UN speeches, or not showing up at all, at the example of the United States. Criminal behavior has been embraced. The Unites States and its allies are looking ever more like a global good ol’ boys club. And we wonder why religious fundamentalism, extremism and piracy is on the rise.

Given where we are today and how we got here, is this an example the world can afford to follow? Do we have to accept the notion that the United Nations can get nothing accomplished without United States backing? Are no other options available to those of us with the money, power, or even just the voice? What’s going on, world?

The United Nations is a joke. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is long dead; these days, it’s even laughable. Even time-honored international treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, have lost their credence. We’re devolving into violence, war, indifference, demonisation of the other. Our entire state system is breaking down, never mind diplomacy.

We are all passengers on the same plant. Since it’s become clear those driving this ship are hell-bent on steering us into the abyss, why do we still follow?

In the end, we did nothing.

It didn’t matter to us. Our economies were thriving, our democracies were functioning, we had social order and security. We had our Nike shoes, our Nestlé coffee, Google Maps, online trading, pharmaceuticals, diversion—movies, books, YouTube, roller-coasters. We were contented.

An idea had spread—an ideology, rather—that development was possible only through international engagement. But it had to be on our terms: unfettered capitalism with total market access. International institutions were created, trade was facilitated, “aid” was contingent upon submission to business interests. Structural readjustment policies—a loan condition for so-called economic development—molded the policies of countless countries to suit our corporate interest. We dangled a carrot to undermine their sovereignty. Money was given to some leader—a president, a dictator, a warlord—who quickly disappeared, leaving office with the cash and leaving the citizens with the bill. We watched this happen over and over again, wondering why they couldn’t just sort it out.

We needn’t wonder any longer.

The global recession proved how much we are all now connected. It also proves how dependent our governments have become on the wealth generated by corporations. America is a special case. This ideology, these policies, this move towards a globalised economy, has long been championed by the United States government, for the obvious reason that most of these corporations are American based. What’s good for American business has always been good for America.

A new dynamic—suppurative for many years now—is beginning to emerge: a dichotomy that will alter the course of history just as did the clash between despotism and democracy, or communism and capitalism. The battles waged are many, be it the struggle of a developing nation to maintain its sovereignty, or the fight to end the stranglehold of corporate special interest on American policy; they are the same.

We have only begun to witness the power wielded by the global corporate elite. In American, the birthplace of the corporation, they now write the laws driving both domestic and foreign policy. Drug companies write the laws regulating the pharmaceutical industry. Credit card companies have written laws outlawing bankruptcy (for individuals, not corporations). Corporate oil and arms dealers steered us into wars to enrich themselves. The lobbying of special interests has infected every sector of the United States government, the presidency, the Supreme Court, the legislator—dependent upon millions of dollars of contributions to run for office.

In short, the corporation has grown more powerful than the state.

What we see happening now in America is the next stage of this progression, an escalation of battle tactics on the part of the same multi-nationals corporations exploiting developing countries. The have successfully been able to undermine the sovereignty of the countries of the developing world, either by colluding with the corrupt or strong-arming the desperate. Now, they aim their sights on us, the developed nations of the world.

They have outgrown their base-camps. There is no longer a need for them to wield their power through government channels. They have seen, just as we, how easily the concepts of sovereignty, democracy, and liberty can be supplanted. It’s a matter of marketing, a skill they’ve honed to perfection. They’d done it before, with our condolence, under the guise of development. The crises we see around the world—corruption, wars of aggression, extreme poverty, torture—are all symptoms of the same problem: the state is eroding. Without a state—without a government—there can be no democracy.

The democracies of the world that haven’t already been taken under need to wake up. The danger is all too real. As we can see with every headline we read or broadcast we watch, human life is of no intrinsic value to the corporation. They’ve successfully conquered those at the very bottom. They are actively destroying the one at the top, emptying the US treasury.

The parasite is finally killing its host. The next victim will be you.

When the government of Unites States falls, the shockwave will be felt on every border of every nation. The mechanisms of the state will become obsolete, though not the way envisioned by Marx. In its place will be the multi-nationals: the corporation.

In the Canadian documentary, The Corporation, corporate behaviour towards society and the world at large was evaluated, the way a psychologist might evaluate an individual. The same behavior is found in clinically diagnosed psychopaths, possessing no conscience, a total lack of remorse, and an uncontrollable, often-violent drive. This is the new face of power; this is our new global elite.

This battle will be fought in our lifetime, and will claim just as many bloody victims as any fight over democracy or communism or any ‘ism’ we’ve seen in the past. The death toll has already begun, tallied in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, and the war-torn plains of the African content. The next battlefield will be much closer to home.

The poem “First They Came…” by Martin Niemöller, best describes our current situation. I paraphrase:

First they came for the communists, then the social democrats, then the unionists, then the Jews. Each time, I did not speak out, for I was none of these. Then they came for me. …by then, there was no one left to speak out.

Though the victims are different, the process is the same, as is the end result should we do nothing.

I hope this catches on like a house on fire. If this initiative is blocked, it will happen at the Executive level, in which case I’ll have all faith in “change.” Still, this is a step in the right direction. The email begins below.

— — — — — — — — — — —

Dear Friends,

Congressman Robert Wexler

“President Obama’s decision to spare CIA torturers from prosecution stands the Nuremberg principles on their head. ‘Good Germans who were only following orders’ are not exempt from the bar of justice. Individuals must be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Last week, United States President Barak Obama released four memos outlining the interrogation techniques authorised by the Bush Administration. Techniques included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, slapping, and covering a prisoner’s body in insects, Fear Factor style.

Just for some background information, waterboarding was among the torture methods used by the Japanese against American prisoners of war in World War II. I know people whose grandfathers were awoken in the night from nightmares of when they were prisoners of Japan.

Although President Obama has put a stop to the practices outlined in these memos, he said that he would not be prosecuting CIA agents who did the torturing. At Nuremberg, making sure that the Holocaust trains ran on time was found to be a crime. How flimsy the rule of law seems these days.

In his essay Education after Auschwitz, German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno posited that the fundamental conditions that allowed for the Holocaust to happen have remained “largely unchanged.” He warned that unless we examine the moral assumptions embedded in our society—whether it concerns our system of government, our economic ideology, our educational institutions, or other societal driving forces—we risk the danger of recommitting such atrocities. Whether or not I fully agree with his philosophy or methodology, I’ve yet to decide. But I cannot deny that the events of the past week have given his words a chilling significance.

The more important issue bouncing around Washington now becomes what to do with the authors of these memos and those who authorised them: Bush’s Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo and Jay Bybee, from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council; and Donald Rumsfeld, just to name a few.

President Obama has made it clear that America needs to look forward and not backward. However, by ignoring these crimes he sets a precedent—rather, he maintains the current precedent—that says that lawbreaking is excusable when the perpetrators are the elite. I’m reminded of Nixon’s “When the President does it, it means that it is not illegal” interview with David Frost.

But there have been prosecutions in the past.

Remember Abu Ghraib. Four low-ranking reservists went to Leavenworth Military Prison. Now we find out, years later, that the White House actually ordered the torture. They blamed our soldiers. They said it was just a few bad eggs. They made us hate that girl, Lynndie England. She was pregnant in Leavenworth and we hated her.

Soldiers went to jail for torturing individuals but CIA interrogators will not go? More importantly, what about the people who set up the entire secret torture program? Why the selective justice?

I fear that the reason Obama does not want to hold these people accountable is because responsibility flows upwards. If we hold that the act of torture is criminal—and we would—then we acknowledge that torture is a crime punishable by law. If we hold the subordinates responsible we implicate their superiors.

Lynndie England followed orders from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, written by Yoo and Bybee at the Justice Department, working under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, who answers to George W. Bush, then-President of the Unites States.

I see no justifiable reason why President Obama would want to keep these crimes under rug swept. Accountability isn’t about political grudges or partisan politics; it’s about upholding the rule of law. These acts were criminal and criminal changes need to be filed if we are ever again to call ourselves a nation of laws and not a nation of (powerful) men. I fear that the change I voted for was more rhetorical than anything.

There is some hope though. Once again, my old congressional heroes are bringing up all the right points. Representative John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee said:

“If our leaders are found to have violated the strict laws against torture, either by ordering these techniques without proper authority, or by knowingly crafting legal fictions to justify torture, they should be criminally prosecuted.”

Conyers was among the first to make the case for the impeachment of George W. Bush in 2006, though he had changed his position due to political pressure, no doubt related to our dangerously flawed campaign finance laws, though that’s only my speculation.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont has been calling for a “Truth Commission” into the crimes of the Bush administration. If he’s unable to muster enough bipartisan support, he has promised to investigate the matter through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which defies President Obama’s statement on Tuesday for investigations to be bipartisan.

Even Nancy Pelosi has called for more investigation and was quoted saying, “I myself do not believe that immunity should be granted to everyone in a blanket way.”

As reassuring as this should be, I have learned in the past eight years how little power Congress actually holds over the President when their interests do not align. If Obama does not investigate the crimes committed by our government during the Bush years, in light of such irrefutable evidence and such public outcry, then he is passively condoning it. The outcomes surrounding these issues will set the course for the future of the United States.

If these deeds go unpunished, it will become clear to Americans that we are no longer a nation of laws. Our government, without question, will be exposed as nothing more than a shill for well-moneyed, special interests. The question then becomes, how long will the rest of the world keep pretending that American is a democracy? How much longer will Americans keep pretending themselves?

I was raised in Southern Florida, an area blessed with vibrant cultural diversity. Black Americans, white Americans, Cubans, Haitians (sak pase zanmi mwen yo!), people from all over the Caribbean, Central and South America, Asia, proud Southerners, Yankees, French Canadians, a healthy Jewish population, a growing Muslim community—all call sunny South Florida their home.

I’m also mixed, which often led to some confusion. In kindergarden, I remember my mother asking me, after hanging up the telephone, “Why did you tell your teacher I was black?”

It made sense at the time. I knew Whitney Houston was black; I knew my mom was darker than Whitney: totally logical in my five year-old head. “It’s complicated,” being her answer to why she was, in fact, not black. “…I’m confused,” being my reply.

Photos of my sister and I at the beach with white-blond hair and near-black skin, my father’s green eyes, my aunt Roseni’s afro, the rainbow of children I went to school with… none of it made any sense.

I first encountered racism not directly, but through the struggle of my black friends. I was sickened when I witnessed first-hand that people actually were pulled over for “driving while black.” After that incident—livid and set for revolution—I asked my friend, who seemed saddened but not too fussed, how he could be alright with what just happened. “It’s okay, Andrew. That’s how these things are.”

Racism is still alive and well. You know who can attest to that? Black people. They know because they encounter it every day of their lives. It’s white people who think they’re doing everyone this big favour.

It was only when I came to New Zealand that I discovered just how “white” white people could be, and not only New Zealanders but other Americans. Foolishly, I’d always assumed that “my” American was the same as the rest of American; in many ways, it was more of a culture shock meeting students from Minnesota and Tennessee than it was meeting Kiwis. You always assume that your ways are the ways of the world…. or at least your own country. This is why we travel; it’s a big world… and a big country.

New Zealand has its own struggle with racism.

There’s a healthy dose of stereotyping on TV, especially the ads: Instant Finance commercials—predatory lenders—marketing directly to Maori and Pacific Islanders. “SPLAY AND WARK AWAY!” Melanesians talking American jive, trying to get their phones reconnected, “It’ my cousin’ fault. Mmm-hmm.” What’s the reasoning behind this? What does it serve?

This appalling ‘warrior gene’ theory—which says more about the motives of the ‘scientist’ than about any claim to science—was a basic human rights infringement. Did you ever ask yourself why someone would sit down and try to ‘prove’, scientifically, that Maori were more prone to violence than other races? Where do you even go from there? “Oh, just flag ‘em… they’re built wrong.”

It’s a convenient diagnosis which allows for no prognosis, to make that status quo appear more acceptable. The real solutions to these issues—for which there are no shortage of examples, the world over, whenever one group is marginalised by another—involves a questioning of our societal values, our moral framework, challenging our assumptions, and a genuine willingness to meet in the middle. Racism is more convenient.

There’s this nonsense about the ‘h’ in Wanganui, with morons saying they’ll fight the decision all the way. “It is an attack upon the integrity of my city. [...] an affront to democracy and every concept of equity.”

What? There’s no need to wrap yourself in the flag; just spell the word right.

It’s not as if Wanganui is some bastion of racial equality. Shall we shamelessly pander to people’s prejudice for political reasons? Do you know where that road leads?

Whether it’s those ‘white power’ boys or the Mongrel Mob, their racism and hatred all stem from the same place: ignorance, intolerance, and a demonisation of the Other. You really wanna keep fanning the flames?

“Oh, but the local dialect doesn’t even pronounce the ‘h!’” Good, you’ll have less to change; you can keep calling in ‘Wanganui’. But spell the damned word right!

This is meaningless conversation… absolutely meaningless.

It’s not as if we’re in an era of economic prosperity where you could actually afford to play the wedge issue, Mr. Laws—to which we’re now all grotesquely accustomed. That’s what this is, a wedge issue designed to keep you divided.

You stick the wedge to the wood, bang on it with a hammer and the wood comes apart. It’s breaking your house—trashing your house—and when the foundation’s gone you’ll have to lay a whole new slab. You all live in same house; do yourself a favour, stop it.

Mum was right; it is complicated. To be completely fair, New Zealand, you’re doing better than a lot of places. Of course, these things aren’t easily changed. But the change has to start somewhere. Let it start with you. We’ll get there eventually. Early days now… baby-steps.

That’s the beauty of this Obama presidency. A young, African-American family now lives in big White House built by slaves. I’d never thought I’d live to see a black President in my lifetime; I’ve never been prouder to call myself an American. We’ve finally started the 21st century. This is the natural progression of things.

After watching Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform-Domestic Policy Subcommittee, making the newsrounds about how money from the $700 Billion tax-payer funded bailout is being used for things like million dollar executive bonuses and billion dollar loans to Dubai and billion dollar investments in China and for outsourcing thousands of American jobs overseas to India. I wanted to flush myself down the toilet.

This bailout business has been driving me crazy since Hank Paulson first told us the sky was falling back in September ’08 (then took off with the money), and I couldn’t make heads or tails as to why these bailouts kept coming. I hate these bailouts; I thought only Dennis and I were on the same page, as even Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, has been more than happy to throw our money at these companies, because they’re “too big to fail.”

I sought refuge in news-trawling (as if my perception of events existed independently of their actual occurrence) and ran into some articles by Chris Hedges—journalist, author and all round big-brain on American and Mid East pols and stuff. “Finally,” I thought, “Someone making sense!” However, just like reality, Hedges’ perspective, which I will now share with you, is hard and a little scary at times.

Hedges, like myself, questions the logic of attempting to resurrect a financial system that was based on borrowing and assumption. Despite how much money we pump into it, it’s gone… and it’s not coming back. More importantly, do we really want it back anyway—a “false economy,” as Hedges puts it—an economy based on consumption rather than production?

This problem isn’t fixed by simply electing a new President; it’s part of a bigger system. Although Obama stands for change, he’s surrounded himself with people who continue to service the corporate state. Geithner, Larry Summers and Robert Ruben have all spent their careers empowering the engine that created the financial collapse of the system we live in today. All are systems managers of a system that’s failed.

America is suffering from a “culture of illusion,” and Hedges warns us of the dangers therein. Similar to the writings of Andrew Bacevich, Hedges asserts that Americans believe that they can get absolutely everything they want, despite the reality of the situation. He’s right; every driving force in American society—our consumer culture, celebrity culture, corporate culture, the Christian Right, even Oprah—reinforces this idea that if we just dig down deep enough, everything will be alright. Now this is all well and good if you’re writing an inspirational self-help book, but the implications of this attitude go far. I’m reminded of Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason, which basically is about how reason and logic no longer factor into the American decision making process.

The danger is that while you’re wishing in one hand, the walls close in on you. He likens the experience to that of a child’s; “If I can’t see you, you don’t exist. I’m not listening, la-la-la-la-la!”

Now for the scary part:

If we cling to this culture of illusion, then there eventually comes a point when our situation becomes too bad to ignore any longer. “When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.” His fear is that when the camel’s back finally breaks, America, reverting back to that state of childishness, will look for a savior—a demagogue. Couple this social unrest with our newly created corporate armies and defense firms, and you’ve the perfect recipe for an all-American police state.

Basically, everything is ready to go. With unemployment numbers growing, the threat of food shortages looming, and no social safety net to speak of, the implementation of totalitarian fascism could be easily legislated—especially given the recent news that Bush had literally suspended the 1st and 4th Amendments to counter “terrorism,” and Americans had effectively been living under a dictatorship for that past seven years (they’re only now starting to investigate that little gem).

Orwell wrote that the two fundamental tactics used by totalitarian systems are fraud and force. We’re seeing the fraud now, with each bailout emptying our treasury and the money promptly disappearing. Hedges begs the question, “when comes the force?”

The unfettered free market has become our surrogate religion, a force of nature that can’t be questioned. The response to this has been this bizarre form of socialism for the rich. Ironically, under Bush, we saw the largest transference of wealth (upwards) in American history. It’s not a question of socialism, but rather what kind: for the people or for the elite? It’s the same elite who are looting the treasury.

Hedges’ new book, Empire of Illusion, is coming out in July of this year. Sure’s on my reading list.

“Do we know the name of the person running Exxon Mobil or Raytheon? This is where real power is,” warns Hedges. This power is anonymous. Combine secret power with our corporate occupied pseudo-democracy bordering on a police state and—should America become restive, which is likely—the capacity for control will be extremely high.

Rove had ignored Congressional subpoenas and refused to testify, claiming executive immunity—a breach of Constitutional principles in and of itself. The US Attorney General at the time, Michael Mukasey, a Bush appointee, refused to enforce any subpoenas served to Rove or other top Bush officials, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. The wheels of justice had stopped turning as the Congressional branch and the Executive branch were locked in stalemate. In the end, the real losers were the Constitution and the American people.

Now, two years later, only after an entire change of government, Rove and Miers have ‘agreed’ to testify before the committee under a laundry-list of carefully negotiated conditions: hearings will be closed and all questions regarding presidential communications will be off-limits. Following the agreement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a statement declaring that justice had been done, and that no one was above the law.

Really? Where was this strong rhetoric two years ago, Nancy, when Karl Rove was spitting in the face our laws and wiping his ass with our Constitution? Was no one above the law when we discovered that White House officials had outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame—who was investigating nuclear proliferation—because her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had stated publicly that the intelligence Bush used to justify war was fiction? Is this Mickey Mouse, closed hearing really justice in action?

The United States has been going down a bad road: Watergate, Iran Contra, the entire presidency of George W. Bush. Each time, crimes committed against our country have gone unpunished. Look at the precedent it’s set.

America needs a civics lesson, meaning criminals must be prosecuted; the Constitution, dirty and shredded, must be protected and upheld. If these crimes go unpunished, we’re toast. America will never be destroyed from without; it can only be destroyed from within.

Sadly, the destroyers are winning.

Something that happens a lot in US media coverage (and you get Fox News here; you know it’s a circus) is the continued alleged bias of what’s called the ‘liberal media’. Now, I won’t beat a dead horse here and tell you that this is nothing more than a ploy designed by our corporate-run media apparatus to keep Americans divided and comfortably uninformed, but I do want you to appreciate the strength of this liberal media stigma and its affects on our news reporting.

Two associate professors from Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications have been studying this liberal bias phenomenon using visual analysis and statistical data from three broadcast news networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC. Their new book, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (OUP), reports their finding. Their findings: network TV election coverage favors Republicans, and has in every presidential election since 1992.

“We don’t think this is journalists conspiring to favour Republicans. We think they’re just so beat up and tired of being accused of a liberal bias that they unknowingly give Republicans the benefit in coverage,” said one of the authors, Maria Elizabeth Grabe, who is also a research associate in political science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. “It’s self-censorship that journalists might be imposing on themselves.”

There is no liberal media in America. There may be liberals in the media, but even they are forced to use Republican talking points to prove they’re not liberal. Democrats have to use the Republican playbook to prove themselves. They call it the Goldilocks Effect. In short, it makes the conservative speaker look the more credible, and it’s happening more often.

It’s why conservatives can get on the TV and say bat-crap crazy things like “There’s no such thing as global warming. There’s no such thing as evolution. Obama wasn’t born in the USA,” and they’re taken seriously. Then they put on somebody from the other side and say, “Well, you’ve heard both sides. We’ve done our job. Now you make your decision.” The job of a journalist is not to balance the news, it’s to discern what’s true and report the truth to the people. They think they’ve done their job if they look balanced… even if they’re lying.

It’s how we got to where we are today.

The current economic crisis isn’t just some freak-accident or fluke of history. It’s the result of over three decades of hard-lobbied, right-wing, neo-conservative economic policies. Expanding on the Reaganomics that crippled the US economy in the 1980s, Republicans have been hard at work advancing their policies of zero-regulation and disaster capitalism since, literally, the last day of the Clinton administration. These policies have sent the American economy belly-up and forced 9 million Americans into home foreclosure. Apparently, when there are no rules of the road, there’s nothing to stop the titans of finance from downing a litre of vodka and driving 150kph through a school zone.

Shocking! You mean the market didn’t regulate itself?

Many Republicans are simply in the grips of a failed ideology and I can almost feel sorry for them. Some really believe their theory. That’s fine, but it’s demonstrably failed them. President Bush—with a Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican White House—put Republican economics into play and gave us this new Bush depression.

It’s frustrating to believe in something all your life then see that it was wrong. At some point, Catholics had to accept that Galileo was right and the Pope was wrong. There were probably some hurt feelings, and it took several hundred years to get over it, but they had a failed theory. Pre-Galileo economics.

Republicans believe the whole world revolves around an elite class (à la Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay). If they target economic policy to a few elite investors, then everybody else can rest easy—because they’re so wise. Obviously, this premise is flawed.

Democrats trust people more. When they’ve targeted policy to the people the whole country does better. Even the rich do better; Bill Gates made his millions because middle-class people were able to buy computers. It lifts all boats.

So you’ve got your die-hard ideologues. Yet other Republicans are just playing raw, naked politics. Republican governors from across the country said they hated Obama’s proposal so much that they weren’t going to take the money. Ironically they’re from the states that’d benefit the most from these proposals. This is nothing but grandstand political play. It’s economics, not a moral crisis. If these Republicans believe that investing in their state’s schools, healthcare and smart-energy grid will hurt their state, then why force it on them?

What’s damning about governors like Jindal, Sanford, Haley Barbour (the usual suspects), is they know that even if a governor objects, state lawmakers can override him and accept the money anyway. And they’re still spewing this right-wing, crazy dogma. It’s the perfect world for them to stand up and beat on their chest; they want to run around and say they’re against spending but they also want the money for their states.

Obama needs to get tough with his Republican opponents, instead of inviting them to the White House for cocktails. I don’t see the need for consensus building right now; there’s too much to do. He sought bi-partisanship and only three Republicans out of all the Republicans in Washington thought it was important to save our economy. Do a simple cost-benefit analysis: the time he invested courting these Republicans—hors d’oeuvre and bridgebuilding. He changed the bill. Dropped out a bunch of investments he really believed in like family planning. Threw in a bunch of tax cuts the Republicans wanted, and 98.6% of them voted against him anyway. Mr. President, don’t give ‘em nothin’ until they give you something!

Are they out of touch or just angry?

In denial or disconnected?

A bit of both. The truth is, your everyday Republican—the voter, the person on the street—is just like Obama: pragmatic and endlessly reasonable. One in three support his recovery plan. But Washington’s different. When you have 32% of Republicans in America supporting Obama’s package and only 1.4% of Republicans in Washington voting for it, there’s a real disconnect.

It’s hard to see the light when your paycheck depends on you remaining in darkness. But the Bush years are over; ignorance is no longer rewarded. Should he continue this effort for bi-partisanship; does it mean anything? The American people are behind him. Why bother with the Washington Republicans? Most will be jobless next election anyhow.