news "diet" shot to hell

once upon a time, pre-election 2000 to be exact, yours truly was in the 7th year of a news diet... having spent the better part of my life as a news junkie, i found my mental health and emotional serenity suffered in direct proportion to the amount of news i ingested... the news was, as they say, my "substance of choice..." so, in the best traditions of self-help, i "went on the wagon..."

enter the 2000 presidential election and all good intentions went right out the window... beginning with the debacle in florida, i watched event after event unfold in increasingly appalling fashion... i have always had a sensitive barometer for sea changes but the tsunami i thought i could feel taking shape was of a magnitude i was having difficulty comprehending... and that was pre-9/11...

after 9/11, at least in my perspective, all hell immediately broke loose... i watched in slack-jawed horror as action after action was taken from the patriot act to the beating of the drums over iraq, all breathlessly wrapped in patriotic fervor, larded with religious overtones, and stinking of bullshit...

for a period of time during the run-up to iraq and shortly thereafter, i began to question my own perceptions which, at the time, seemed extreme even to me - that the u.s. government had been seized in a coup d'etat and was being force-marched into a encampment of wage slaves overseen by corporate feifdoms with social mores dictated by a corporate-funded, fundamentalist christian government... i was actually fearful to share those thoughts with others, even those i saw as like-minded, feeling that perhaps my views were too over-the-top... now i see that i was just another canary in the coal mine...

i have had the privilege and opportunity to spend the past year and a half living and working in both southeast europe (the balkans) and in argentina... i have seen and learned an enormous amount... sadly, all of it has only validated what i see happening in the u.s...

the push by the u.s. for global economic domination in oil, consumer goods, and capital flow is strikingly obvious to anyone who bothers to look... the fact that the u.s. consumes more than 60% of world resources while encompassing a mere fraction of both global land mass and population gives the lie to any u.s. pronouncement encouraging "global" economic development... the u.s. wants it ALL and, by god, is going to make sure it gets it...

(for anyone wishing to gain terrific insight into just how the u.s. operates globally, be sure to read Joseph Stiglitz' book, Globalization and Its Discontents..." Stiglitz is the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and served on Clinton's panel of economic advisors... it's a must-read...)

we are in deep doo-doo, my friends...

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