Saturday 04 July 2009
by: Jim Hightower | Visit article original @ AlterNet
Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won't leave well enough alone, who's always questioning authority and trying to stir things up.
If so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds."
In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.
So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.
America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown. It was only getting started -- and the rebellion has moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.
Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.
The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along -- be quiet, they urge.
Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such -- but it's also a time to remember who we are: agitators!
It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to stand up is essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity for all.
And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.
------
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Zie: http://www.truthout.org/070409A
If so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds."
In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.
So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.
America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown. It was only getting started -- and the rebellion has moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.
Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.
The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along -- be quiet, they urge.
Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such -- but it's also a time to remember who we are: agitators!
It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to stand up is essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity for all.
And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.
------
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Zie: http://www.truthout.org/070409A
5 opmerkingen:
Wat betreft Honduras zit het met de officiële werkelijkheid nu wel snor. NRC/ANP:
"De secretaris-generaal van de OAS noemde de afzetting een militaire coup."
"Ondertussen betoogden ondanks een uitgaansverbod duizenden mensen tegen Zelaya, wiens populariteit de laatste maanden achteruit is gehold."
http://www.nrc.nl/buitenland/article2291336.ece/Honduras_stapt_uit_Organisatie_van_Amerikaanse_Staten
Het rode potlood van het ANP:
"Ondertussen betoogden ondanks een uitgaansverbod duizenden mensen tegen Zelaya..."
AP:
"The largest pro-Micheletti rally was in Choluteca, 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of the capital, where demonstrators wore the blue and white of the Honduran flag.
Those demonstrations received heavy coverage on Honduran television stations, which all but ignored the pro-Zelaya protests. Leftist broadcasters say they have been forced off the air or had signals interrupted by soldiers under orders of the new government."
"Outside the heavily guarded presidential palace, where Micheletti was working in the same office used by Zelaya, hundreds of student activists erected barricades of boulders, signposts and metal sheeting. They covered their faces with bandanas and carried bats, branches and gasoline-filled bottles.
Police moved toward them but backed off before making contact. The students later removed the barricades and joined the larger, peaceful march.
Many protesters said authorities were trying to prevent Zelaya supporters from converging on the capital for demonstrations. Natalie O'Hara said her caravan was stopped at five military checkpoints on its way into Tegucigalpa. She said they were let through only because they hid their signs and told soldiers they were for Micheletti."
"...wiens populariteit de laatste maanden achteruit is gehold."
AP: "[Micheletti] also made a bold claim, suggesting the entire Honduran population backs his interim government. Though Zelaya still enjoys strong support, especially among the poor majority, Micheletti warned that all "7.5 million Hondurans will be ready to defend our territory" against a foreign invasion."
"Zelaya's popularity has sagged in recent years, but his criticism of the wealthy and policies such as raising the minimum wage have earned him the loyalty of many poor Hondurans.
"The people are with him," said Santos, the farm hand. "The poor people — and in this country there are many poor people.""
The Independent
Johann Hari: The other 9/11 returns to haunt Latin America
It was inevitable that the people at the top would fight to preserve their privileges
The ghost of the other, deadlier 9/11 has returned to stalk Latin America. On Sunday morning, a battalion of soldiers rammed their way into the Presidential Palace in Honduras. They surrounded the bed where the democratically elected President, Manuel Zelaya, was sleeping, and jabbed their machine guns to his chest. They ordered him to get up and marched him on to a military plane. They dumped him in his pyjamas on a landing strip in Costa Rica and told him never to return to the country that freely chose him as their head of state.
Back home, the generals locked down the phone networks, the internet and international TV channels, and announced their people were in charge now. Only sweet, empty music plays on the radio. Government ministers have been arrested and beaten. If you leave your home after 9pm, the population have been told, you risk being shot. Tanks and tear gas are ranged against the protesters who have thronged on to the streets.
For the people of Latin America, this is a replay of their September 11. On that day in Chile in 1973, Salvador Allende – a peaceful democratic socialist who was steadily redistributing wealth to the poor majority – was bombed from office and forced to commit suicide. He was replaced by a self-described "fascist", General Augusto Pinochet, who went on to "disappear" tens of thousands of innocent people. The coup was plotted in Washington DC, by Henry Kissinger.
The official excuse for killing Chilean democracy was that Allende was a "communist". He was not. In fact, he was killed because he was threatening the interests of US and Chilean mega-corporations by shifting the country's wealth and land from them to its own people. When Salvador Allende's widow died last week, she seemed like a symbol from another age – and then, a few days later, the coup came back.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-other-911-returns-to-haunt-latin-america-1729429.html
Terzijde: ik denk dat dit de juiste 'taal' is voor een opinie artikel in een nieuwsmedium: je informeert mét context, je blijft zodoende geloofwaardig én je maakt het voor iedereen toegankelijk, zonder de lezer te debiliseren met Jip- en Janneketaal.
The usual propaganda:
NRC: 'Terugkeer Zelaya naar Honduras mislukt'
Niet mislukt maar verhinderd.
Volkskrant: 'Zelaya staakt terugkeer naar Honduras'
Niet gestaakt maar onmogelijk gemaakt.
NRC, correspondent Philip de Wit vanuit Tegucigalpa (mogen we hopen): "Bij onlusten rond het vliegveld, waarbij militairen traangas gebruikten, zou mogelijk een dode zijn gevallen."
BBC: zie video 'Deadly clash at Honduran airport'. Daarop kun je zien dat er meer wordt geschoten dan dat er traangas wordt gebruikt. En: "At least two people have been killed".
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