| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
18 May 2004 04:19:40 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Children of Bush's America |
Children of Bush's America
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1218981,00.html
The torturers of Abu Ghraib were McWorkers who ended up in Iraq
because they could no longer find decent jobs at home
Naomi Klein
Tuesday May 18, 2004
The Guardian
In 1968, the legendary US labour organiser Cesar Chavez went on a
25-day hunger strike. While depriving himself of food, he condemned
abusive conditions suffered by farm workers. The slogan of his
historic union drive was: " Si se puede! " Yes, we can!
Last week, George Bush went on a four-day bus ride. While stopping for
multiple pancake breakfasts, he praised tax cuts and condemned
everyone who says American workers need protection in the global
economy. His battle cry for laissez-faire economics? "Yes, America
can."
Naomi Klein
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0310130208.2e6e3ce6%40posting.google.com
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Children of Bush's America |
18 May 2004 09:37:50 PM |
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On 18 May 2004 02:19:40 -0700, (maff), Message ID:
<18510aff.0405180119.64c67321@posting.google.com> wrote in alt.atheism;
Children of Bush's America
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1218981,00.html
CommentChildren of Bush's America
The torturers of Abu Ghraib were McWorkers who ended up in Iraq because
they could no longer find decent jobs at home
Naomi Klein
Tuesday May 18, 2004
The Guardian
In 1968, the legendary US labour organiser Cesar Chavez went on a 25-day
hunger strike. While depriving himself of food, he condemned abusive
conditions suffered by farm workers. The slogan of his historic union
drive was: " Si se puede! " Yes, we can!
Last week, George Bush went on a four-day bus ride. While stopping for
multiple pancake breakfasts, he praised tax cuts and condemned everyone
who says American workers need protection in the global economy. His
battle cry for laissez-faire economics? "Yes, America can."
The echo was probably intentional. Bush is so desperate for the Hispanic
vote that he has taken to shouting " Vamos a ganar! We're going to win!"
during stump speeches in Ohio.
But the main purpose of the "Yes, American can" bus tour, of course, was
to shift the attention of US voters away from the Iraq prison scandal
towards the recovering job market. According to a US labour department
report, 288,000 jobs were created in April. Bush's campaign has seized
on these numbers to further cast John Kerry as the dour New England
pessimist, always droning on with bad news. Bush, on the other hand, is
the bouncy Texan optimist, always flashing an easy smile and a
thumbs-up. "The president has to make sure that we're optimistic and
confident in order for jobs to be created," he told a crowd in Dubuque,
Iowa.
Some jobs, however, are more responsive than others to the power of
positive presidential thinking. More than 82% of the jobs created in
April were in service industries, including restaurants and retail. The
biggest new employers were temp agencies. Over the past year, 272,000
manufacturing jobs have been lost. No wonder the president's economic
report in February floated the idea of reclassifying fast-food
restaurants as factories. "When a fast-food restaurant sells a
hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining
inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.
But not all of the job growth in the US has come from burger-flipping
and temping. With more than 2 million Americans behind bars, the number
of prison guards has exploded - from 270,317 in 2000 to 476,000 in 2002.
Watching Bush give the thumbs up in the face of so much economic misery
put me in mind of a certain widely circulated photograph taken in Iraq.
There are Specialist Charles Graner and Private Lynndie England, the
happy couple, standing above a pile of tortured Iraqi inmates, grinning
and giving the double thumbs up. Everything is fine, their eyes seem to
be saying, just don't look down.
There's something else connecting the sorry state of the US job market
and the images coming out of Abu Ghraib. The young soldiers taking the
fall for the prison abuse scandal are the McWorkers, prison guards and
laid-off factory workers of Bush's so-called economic recovery. The
resumés of the soldiers facing abuse charges come straight out of the
April US labour department report.
There's spc Sabrina Harman, of Lorton, Virginia, assistant manager of
her local Papa John's Pizza. There's spc Graner, a prison guard back
home in Pennsylvania. There's Sergeant Ivan Frederick, another prison
guard, this time from rural Virginia.
Before he joined what Van Jones, a prisoners' rights lawyer, calls
"America's gulag economy", Frederick had a decent job at the Bausch and
Lomb factory in Mountain Lake, Maryland. But according to the New York
Times, that factory shut down and moved to Mexico - one of the nearly
900,000 jobs that the Economic Policy Institute estimates have been lost
since the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force in 1994,
the vast majority in manufacturing.
Free trade has turned the US labour market into an hourglass: plenty of
jobs at the bottom, a fair bit at the top, but very little in the
middle. At the same time, getting from the bottom to the top has become
increasingly difficult, with tuition fees at state colleges up by more
than 50% since 1990.
And that's where the US military comes in: the army has positioned
itself as the bridge across America's growing class chasm: money for
tuition in exchange for military service. Call it the Nafta draft.
It worked for Lynndie England, the most infamous of the Abu Ghraib
accused. She joined the military police to pay for college. Her
colleague Sabrina Harman joined up for the same reason.
Of course, the poverty of the soldiers involved in prison torture makes
them neither more guilty, nor less. But the more we learn about them,
the clearer it becomes that the lack of good jobs and social equality in
the US is precisely what brought them to Iraq in the first place.
Despite his attempts to use the economy to distract attention from Iraq,
and his efforts to isolate the soldiers as un-American deviants, these
are the children George Bush left behind, fleeing dead-end McJobs,
abusive prisons, unaffordable education and closed factories.
And they are his children in another way too: it's in the ubiquitous
thumbs-up sign that they flash, seemingly oblivious to the disaster at
their feet. This is the quintessential George Bush pose. Convinced that
US voters want a positive president, the Bush team has learned to use
optimism as an offensive weapon: no matter how devastating the crisis,
no matter how many lives have been destroyed, they have insistently
given the world the thumbs up.
Donald Rumsfeld? "Doing a superb job," according to the
optimist-in-chief. The mission in Iraq? "We're making progress, you
bet," Bush told reporters one year after his disastrous "mission
accomplished" speech. And the US job market, which has driven so many
into poverty? "Yes, America can!"
We don't yet know who taught these young soldiers how to torture their
prisoners. But we do know who taught them how to stay happy-go-lucky in
the face of tremendous suffering. That lesson came straight from the
top.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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