60 Years Ago: The System Is Still the Crisis
by Brother Bede Vincent
When you expand the civil rights
struggle to the level of human rights you can then take the case of the black
man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the
General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only
level you can do that on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you
under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his
pocket. Civil rights means you're asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human
rights are something you are born with. Human rights are your god-given rights.
Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth
and anytime anyone violates your human rights you can take them to the world
court. Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of
the black man in this country. He's the earth's number one hypocrite. He has
the audacity-yes he has-yes, imagine him posing as leader of the free world!
and you over here singing "We shall overcome." Expand the civil rights struggle
to the level of human rights, take it into the United Nations, where our
African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin American
brothers can throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million Chinamen can
throw their weight on our side..." Malcolm
X, 1964.
So many people talk about the
impending crisis in the system. I take this to be a rhetorical strategy. There
is no crisis in the system. The system is the crisis. But just as one
has enormous difficulty detecting the magnitude of opposition or the channels
available to it, the media is full of fear mongering, misleading in my mind.
Every day there are new "panic stories" about the stock markets and
the indices and what all that volatility is supposed to mean.
There is no "volatility" index for people in
"townships" whether in South Africa or Haiti who fear for their
lives, not to mention their next meal or the survival of their children or homes.
By that I mean the Press communicates to everyone who pretends literacy magic
numbers about the "fear" of investors, lenders, or even the top 24%
who may still be considered as "consumers" and we are all expected to
understand that when these people "panic" there is something to worry
about for the rest of us. That something remains diffuse but the message is
that if those folks, tossing in their beds at night with a Bloomberg monitor
standing where the old bedroom phone used to be, are sleeping badly then we
need to do something so that they sleep soundly and we will all be spared their
tempers in the morning.
"The
media is full of fear mongering."
I started school in a rural county
and therefore had few neighbors and few children with whom to play outside of
school. As I discovered years later, a neighborhood dispute between my parents
and the parents of the only other children with whom I could play outside of
school led to a kind of "war" against me. This "war" was
characterized by hazing, theft, calumny and outright intimidation. The effect
of this spread from the road on which we lived to the schools I attended. Four
years long I had to endure the bullying started by my ex-playmate and
propagated through the school - unaware that it had a certain "cause."
But it is not the cause that is relevant here. This bullying frequently
resulted in scenes which disturbed the peace and order of the teachers and
other authorities at school. Such scenes sometimes resulted in disciplinary
measures, e.g. all the parties were summoned to the headmaster's office and
lectured about peace and order and usually whipped. The principle being that
all parties involved deserved punishment for breach of order.
Already at this point one could see
the psychology of power being reproduced. The first power the bully learned to
enjoy was provocation and unpunished violence. The second was the ability to
use the regulatory forces to punish his victim since in the ostensibly
"fair" practice of punishing all parties, the bully could choose
whether to endure a bit of unpleasantness knowing that his victim could not
choose. Parents who themselves lack any understanding of parental authority let
alone in loco parentis, reveal themselves here too. The parents of bullies were
often able to prevent their children from getting punished even under the
"all party" judgment. Victims' parents, because they generally
supported the order in the school, tended to accept whatever the headmaster or
principal saw fit. The admonition to the victims was generally: look, this
child is less restrained or is problematic etc., etc. Just do not provoke him
and we will all be fine (teacher shifts the burden of maintaining the peace
onto the person who is attacked rather than applying authority to restrain the bully.)
Sometimes this was an expression of the fear of disruption on the part of the
teacher (often an overworked person) and sometimes this reflected the teacher's
recognition that the bully had "influence"-- e.g. parents with power
etc.
What I am getting at is that the
people whose "fear" is being measured are not properly speaking
"afraid" nor are they even threatened. The "fear index" and
other indexes like the DAX, FTSE, Dow are really "threat indexes"
designed to communicate - like the headmaster or school principal - that the
bullies are in a good or bad mood, and their propensity to wreak havoc on the
rest of us. We are told to infer that the propensity to wreak havoc when
formulated as a stock exchange or other market index is a measure of wealth and
economic health. In fact it is better termed a "bully index" or a
"Geiger counter of greed." There is just no amount of lead shielding
that will protect us from this radioactivity. To put it in a kind of comic book
form - an extension of the "childhood metaphor" here - many people in
the US and here too see someone like Obama as Superman, soon faster than a
speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to leap over buildings in a
single bound... But they have not read the chapter on green kryptonite. The
resemblance of Paulson to Lex Luthor is purely accidental.
"The ‘fear index' and other indexes like the DAX, FTSE,
Dow are really ‘threat indexes' designed to communicate that the bullies are in
a good or bad mood, and their propensity to wreak havoc on the rest of us."
Maybe it is necessary to communicate
to the rest of the world-- the non-bullies and those who vainly or even
mistakenly wait for Superman-- the measurements of real fear, like the
"township" and slum fears that come from Lex Luthor and his gangs.
After the tsunamis there was talk of placing underwater sensors on the seabed
to allow coastal inhabitants to react in time to catastrophic waves. Of course
it does no good to know a wave is coming if there is nowhere to go and no civil
defense to protect lives and homes. But it might create the needed sense of
urgency and inspire creative defense if people had more than the reactive
"bully index".
If ordinary people are to survive
the so-called "meltdown" (actually a mother lode of green kryptonite
exposed by Lex Luthor and his allies to cover their theft), then it is the
bullies that have to be afraid not us. Until that happens the only lead shield
we will have is the kind that pollutes our lungs from paint and exhaust or
takes the lives of innocents in the "townships" of the world.
For decades Americans have been
called upon to see the civil rights struggle as won or even obsolete. They have
been taught that human rights are something other countries may claim and that
Uncle Sam may deliver with depleted uranium munitions. They have been taught
and learned to share in the spoils of global plunder and beg vainly for their
jobs or homes. Now that the plunderers are stealing even the reused paper
plates und plastic cutlery before Thanksgiving, an enormous sigh can be heard
around the world. Is it Horton or is it the Grinch? More than Christmas is
being stolen and the thieves are not just in the USA.
More than 40 years ago Malcolm X
said that human rights had to be defended by the whole world. In 1948 the
United Nations adopted the Declaration
of Universal Human Rights (not corporation rights). Since it was a long
time ago perhaps some could bear repeating:
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life,
liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or
servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture
or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to
recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are
entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are
entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this
Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an
effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the
fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to
arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full
equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal,
in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge
against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal
offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to
law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his
defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of
any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a
penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was
committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was
applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to
arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to
attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the
protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to
freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave
any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek
and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in
the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from
acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a
nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily
deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age,
without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to
marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage,
during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into
only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and
fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and
the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own
property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily
deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his
religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and
in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice,
worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any
media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to
freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong
to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take
part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen
representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal
access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be
the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in
periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage
and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society,
has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through
national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the
organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural
rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his
personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work,
to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to
protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any
discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right
to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an
existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other
means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form
and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and
leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays
with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his
family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social
services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances
beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are
entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out
of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to
education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental
stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional
education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be
equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to
the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of
respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote
understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious
groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the
maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to
choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to
participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to
share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the
protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific,
literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and
international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the
community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is
possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights
and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are
determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and
respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just
requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic
society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in
no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United
Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be
interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in
any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the
rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Today it is hard to find one of
these universal rights which Uncle Sam has not violated inside his own
borders-never mind what he has done elsewhere. If however, Americans follow the
"bully index," they will continue to plea "to be treated right" instead of
demanding their human rights, the ones they share with the rest of us on this
planet.
Brother
Bede Vincent writes from Europe. He can be contacted at [email protected].