The Larger Ninety-Nine Percent

Supporters of the Occupy movement in the United States are fond of pointing out their federal government’s hypocrisy for supporting the citizens’ peaceful uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, and then coördinating a police effort to literally beat down the uprisings in the United States.

But these Occupy supporters are themselves often guilty of the same kind of hypocrisy.

Even though those who started the United States version on Wall Street, New York City, drew their inspiration from Egypt and Tunisia, and even though the Egyptian movement has sent advisors to Wall Street, some of the U.S. Occupy people have become culturocentric: they claim, erroneously, that the movement was born on Wall Street, and that it spread worldwide from that beginning. No, it began in Egypt and Tunisia, and spread worldwide, including the United States, from there.

I've had it put to me that the Occupy movement is against the ultra-rich on Wall Street, and not against the government, but the signs and voices I hear in the United States and in the entire world are saying the same thing: that complacent, bribed governments of puppets to the rich are enabling the plutocrats to get ever wealthier at the expense of the 99%.

It’s all very nice being loyal to your own country. But it’s not so nice when it not only ignores the facts, but becomes an implicit racism. So let us accept the truth that the U.S. Occupy movement did not begin in the United States, and to say otherwise denigrates the wisdom and efforts of the peaceful citizen uprisings that preceded it - and continue to this day.

I say this because there’s another way in which American Occupy supporters hurt their own movement outside their country:

They forget the global perspective, in which the entire United States (and Western Europe and Japan) are the ultra-rich 1%.

They forget that other countries don't have strong environmental controls, and are being polluted with carcinogens and particulates that kill. They forget that other countries don't have strong labor laws, and children are forced to work to survive, that people work incredibly long hours under inhuman conditions - and count themselves lucky to have a job at all!

They forget that the 99% in the United States – even when they’ve lost their jobs and their pensions – are far better off than most people in the world. Yes, there’s a gulf between the 1% and the 99% in the United States – but that gulf is far wider between the billionaires and the world’s poor.

They forget that the poorest American, the American with the least access to health care and decent food, is still considerably better off than most people in the world. In the United States there are social services, food stamps, and other support systems. In much of the world, there are no support systems.

They forget that many countries don't have the constitutional freedom to assemble and speak in order to seek redress from the government - and, even if the Republican Party apparatchiks are seeking to take away this right, for now Americans still have it where many other peoples do not, and that therefore it is the responsibility of all Americans to speak out in behalf of those who cannot!

When the U.S. Occupy movement ignores the desperate plight of the poor in most of the world it is actually helping the evil plutocrats, the ultra-rich monster billionaires to continue their rape of our planet for the sake of profit. Shame on those who ignore and overlook this overwhelming global horror!

Here in Panama, some folks I know count themselves fortunate to earn $6-$8 a day. In parts of Africa, people earn that amount in a month. Others here, and in Africa, do not have any employment, any source of income, and are reduced to relying on family or friends, or, if they have none, the desperation of begging or petty thieving.

Strangers in my little mountain village stop me to ask, simply because I'm a gringo, if I can hire them. When I explain that I'm very poor, they ask if I know of any other gringos who are hiring. They are polite, but they are clearly desperate.

I live in a land where many people would be thrilled to earn a U.S. minimum wage – that rate would earn them in about 45 minutes what it takes them a day or more to earn, if they have a job.

We who support the Occupy movement must of course be concerned for the poor in our own countries, but we must never lose sight of the fact that the abyss between rich and poor is a global issue.

The same ultra-rich who are responsible for these problems in the United States have so raped the world that there are even greater problems elsewhere. There could never be a Bhopal in the United States, thanks to labor laws. There could never be maquiladoras, or child slavery. There are at least some resources available for those who are unemployed.

Here in Panama, for instance, if you’re unemployed, there is nothing, and you're desperate to find a way to feed your family, along with many other equally desperate poor people.

A family of Native Americans in my community with whom I am friends live in a shack made of corrugated tin and castoff boards. The floor is dirt. The stove is a wood fire. Their water comes in buckets from the river. Their shower is one of those buckets. They have no electricity.

The conditions in which they live would not be allowed in the United States.

These friends don't even know what a television is. They've never seen one in their lives. They are amazed by my little three-dollar camera, when I take pictures of them. One of the children found a broken camera in the road, no doubt tossed away by a wealthy expatriate American, and – even though it doesn’t work – she loves to aim it at me and pretend to take my picture. The children play outdoors, rain or shine, in the same threadbare (but always clean!) clothes and bare feet. I have watched them turn a stray plastic grocery bag into a kite and a tree branch into a swing, and remembered my own children whining, despite all their electronic toys, that there was “nothing to do!” This family of a hardworking mother and father and six children are desperately poor – yet they are happier than a lot of whining Americans.

Several studies have shown the world is capable of supporting its human population - the problem is one of distribution, not availability. Yes, birth control is needed worldwide. But it’s not for the United States, which consumes about 60% of the world’s nonrenewable resources, to preach to the rest of the world about conserving resources.

We need to think triage – help most immediately where the worst problems are – and that would be large regions of Africa and Asia, and even Central and South America, and the Native American reservations of North America.

We need to think long-term strategies for getting the overabundance in countries like the United States, where farmers are paid not to grow crops, to countries like Eritrea and Sudan.

We need to help U.S. citizens overcome the propaganda that has them believing that the Occupy people should take a bath and get a job. That, moreover, nobody should be helping those dark-skinned people who worship cows or whatever Faux Noise says, and realize that, as Jesus said, we are ALL G-d's Children!

We need also to insist that the United States government stop its campaigns against the world’s poor: sending its own poor children to kill the poor children in foreign lands. Sending low-flying military planes in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply to keep the local populations in a state of anxiety, so they will lose the ability to act decisively.

It is written in the Acts of the Apostles (in the Christian Scriptures):

“The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’

“Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey G-d rather than human beings!’”

This tells me that we are required by Scripture to obey one Law only, and that is the Law of G-d, and obey human laws only to the degree that they conform to that Law – and, when they do not conform, and when the forces that decree these human laws don't obey the Sacred Law – it is our sacred responsibility to SPEAK OUT!

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IN MEMORIAM Eleanor May Vock Audlin, 10 September 1926 - 25 November 2011, who was the author's mother and his first teacher of spirituality and honor and goodness.

Dear President Obama:

Dear President Obama:

Nobody was happier than I when you were elected president. I wept tears of joy in the moment when you had secured the election, and once again watching your inauguration. I couldn’t help but think of all the tragic history in the United States that was brightened by the glorious light of your election.

And I thought about how the federal government – the same government that now you head – did a great deal to make your election possible. Your predecessor Abraham Lincoln fought a war to make possible the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves stolen from the Africa of which you are a proud son. Your predecessors John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson strove hard to break down the horrible walls of racial segregation. I took part in the Civil Rights movement, and it was the preaching of Dr. Martin Luther King that spurred me to enter the ordained pastoral ministry.

Remember, Mr. President, that it was the federal government that intervened in a “municipal decision” in Alabama, forcing local authorities to admit Black students to their schools. If it hadn’t been for that action, your excellent education, including a degree from Harvard University, might never have been possible.

So why, Mr. President, do you say as regards the horrible brutality of local police forces toward peaceful citizens engaged in the Occupy movement in New York City, Oakland, Atlanta, on the campus of the University of California at Davis, among other places, that “every municipality has to make its own decision about how to handle” these situations?

Why are you passively avoiding taking responsibility for the fact that your Department of Homeland Security, your Federal Bureau of Investigation, and others of your federal agencies coordinated these vicious crackdowns on your nonviolent citizens?

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” if their decision is to ignore the United States Constitution, which you, sir, are sworn to uphold and protect!

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when police forget their pledge to serve and protect the people, and attack your citizens.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when police officers wearing more protective equipment than your soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq attack your defenseless citizens with truncheon, tear gas, and sound cannon.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when an honorable retired captain of the Philadelphia Police Department, in uniform, is arrested and handcuffed.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when elderly women in their 80s, your citizens, sir, are tear-gassed.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when honorable veterans of your armed forces, the armed forces of which you are commander-in-chief, volunteer to serve and protect your citizens from those police officers who have forgotten their pledge.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when those honorable veterans of your Marines and Army - veterans of the wars you sent them to fight in - are so brutally attacked by thugs in uniform that they must be taken to the emergency room in danger of losing their lives!

When the municipalities fail in their responsibility to protect the rights of your citizens, it is your job to do so, sir!

You, sir, by failing to do the right thing, are guilty by omission or commission of allowing – indeed, approving and supporting – these outrages!

There are statesmen and stateswomen, who do the right thing, no matter what the cost to their political careers. And there are politicians, who dance away from the issues, who mouth platitudes like “it is up to the municipalities to make their own decisions”, in order to protect their political backsides.

Remember the Emancipation Proclamation. Remember the Atlanta Schools intervention. Some of your predecessors in office had the spine to do the right thing. Some of your predecessors in office were statesmen.

And bear in mind that your loyal citizens are calling on you – not the municipalities, but you and your government – to heed their voices!

They are begging you, sir, to establish a single-payer universal health care citizens for all of your citizens!

They are begging you, sir, to do a complete overhaul of the election system to get rid of the electoral college, to put a serious cap on lobbyists and PACs and gerrymandering!

They are begging you, sir, to end these endless oil wars, in which the children of our poor families are sent to kill the children of poor families in Iraq and Afghanistan - and, so it seems, soon Iran.

They are begging you, sir, to negotiate a serious peace deal between Israel and Palestine, and to tell the Chinese to get their genocidal hands off Tibet!

They are begging you, sir, to restructure the tax code so the ultra-wealthy 1% pays its appropriate share of taxes!

They are begging you, sir, to declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech!

I speak with some emotion, because I am one of your citizens, moreover one of those who joyfully voted for you – and yet I cannot afford to live any longer in the United States. I was working six jobs and still could not keep up with my financial obligations. My health was being ruined. I had to make the choice to live in a Third World country, where I can still afford – barely – to eat and put a roof over my head. My small, unassuming house in the United States I have had to abandon. My family, including my precious children and my very elderly parents, I will probably never see again.

And my story is nowhere near as tragic as some I have heard as a (now retired) pastor.

Mr. President, do you remember saying this, on 28 January of this year?

"I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere."

This is your word, Mr. President. But apparently the United States will stand up for these universal rights everywhere except in the United States.

You, sir, are failing your people, the people who put their trust in you by electing you, in two ways – you are ignoring their desperate pleas to correct the horrible wrongs in your federal government, and their desperate pleas to stop these police forces from using brutal force to deny the rights of assembly and free speech enshrined in the very Constitution that you are sworn to uphold and protect.

Do so, Mr. President. Do so quickly, because I fear there will soon be a bloodbath from coast to coast as these thugs in uniform beat down on a peaceful movement striving to get your attention - or, I fear, a revolution aimed at bringing about these changes by less peaceful means. I shudder at both of these horrifying possibilities, but they grow more possible every day, sir.

It can be done peacefully and lawfully – or not. It is your choice.

For the love of God, Mr. President, be a statesman, not a politician.

Respectfully submitted,

The Rev. JAMES DAVID AUDLIN

Iran? No, the Next Dictatorship to Topple is...

If you believe the pundits, soon the United States will be invading Iran, or, minimally, conducting air strikes aimed at destroying alleged nuclear facilities.

Would another Middle East war be advisable? I think not.

First, the United States military is already spread thin in the world. Despite the vast amount of money poured into the Pentagon, soldiers are often fighting with less than adequate equipment as it is. The larger view is that an entire generation of young people is being devastated by these several wars; if they’re not coming home dead, they’re coming home with not just physical injuries but serious emotional disturbances as well. And yet medical support for the injuries is being cut by a Congress bent on relieving anything that resembles social responsibility on the part of its ultra-rich friends. And yet there is virtually nothing by way of psychological support for emotionally disturbed veterans, and few seem even aware of the growing rate of veteran suicides.

Second, if history is any teacher, then invading Iran will solve nothing – indeed, it’s far more likely to create problems down the road. Any credibility the United States once had as a force of integrity standing in defense of goodness is shot. Its European allies have largely abandoned it. In the Middle East it is hated. In much of the world it is despised as a bastion of hypocrisy. If the United States invades Iran, it is likely to learn that the allegations of nuclear capacity were at best exaggerated by intelligence experts, or utterly unfounded (as with Iraq and its nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” that were the pretext for invading). Further, the United States will be bound to suffer greater damage to what little credibility it has left in the world.

If history is any teacher, the lies will soon be unmasked. Too many recent U.S.-led wars have pretended to be in defense of “liberty and justice”, but are too clearly about economics and political power (especially oil), and very likely a large dose of anti-Muslim bigotry. Certainly, if history is any teacher, the United States government pays no attention to the lessons of history and is doomed, as the wise man said, to repeat them. Having ignored the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ devastating experience in Afghanistan, the United States is now deeply bemired in that muck. A war in Iran would be another such mistake.

Third, the United States military is already a hugely bloated part of the federal budget. The lunatics in Congress are massively shifting taxes off the pampered shoulders of the ultra-rich and their corporations and ever more heavily onto the backs of the middle and lower classes. Further military expenses will drag the latter even more deeply into economic slavery and economic devastation. What is ironic is that the colossal Pentagon budget does not benefit the ordinary men and women in uniform – who come from those same ravaged middle and lower classes; you never see a rich man’s kid doing military service on the front lines – but rather the fat cat top brass and their ultra-rich buddies. Private contractors make a great deal of money from war; Halliburton, which is blithely escaping its responsibility for torturing and killing civilians in the Middle East and providing tainted water to soldiers, has made handsome profits for its principals, like former Vice President Dick Cheney. A war in Iraq would exacerbate this issue, with an inevitable further round of cuts in social services, education, and infrastructure, continuing to destroy those middle and lower classes.

Fourth, I am an absolute pacifist. I don’t believe war is ever a wise option, except possibly extremely rarely as a very last resort, as an emergency measure. I believe instead in earnest negotiation. However here is the United States hinting at war with Iran when there has never been any serious negotiation with Iran on the part of the United States. Until such negotiation is sincerely undertaken, war should not be a serious option.

Fifth, I believe in consistency. If the United States declares it has the right to force its opinions, its culture, its mercantile economics, its religious views, its political views down the throats of another sovereign country – then other sovereign countries have the same right to do the same to the United States. The government of the United States is sorely misguided if it thinks that it is “special” somehow. Might does not make right; being the strongest military power in the world does not provide the inevitable result that whatever is done with that power is a good thing.

Moreover, violence begets violence. As Jesus put it, “Those who take up the sword die by the sword.” I abhor war, but, if the United States continues to invade other sovereign countries, then it is only creating a world in which sovereignty means nothing – and any country with a mind to do so will invade any other country, including the United States.

Consistency is ignored in another way. The United States has often claimed it must invade this or that country in order to topple a malevolent dictator. But, if dictator-toppling is the goal, then citing this pretext leaves the United States bound to topple every dictator in the world. Yet there is no talk of the United States invading (for instance) North Korea or China. Likewise, the United States has often claimed that it must attack this or that country that is in the process of forcefully annexing a smaller neighbor; for instance, Iraq invading Kuwait or Argentina invading the Falkland Islands. But, again, if protecting smaller neighbors is the goal, then the law of consistency requires the United States to protect every such compromised little country in the world: yet there is no talk of the United States taking on Russia for its brutalities in Chechnya, or China for its devastating genocidal activities in Tibet.

Oh, but no, say the experts, we cannot possibly take on Russia or China! They’re our friends! They’re our economic partners! They have “Most Favored Nation” status with us! – So the truth is that the United States only attacks the little bullies and plays nice with the big bullies? In my view, that makes the United States itself a big bully! The truth is that the ultra-wealthy plutocrats who are the real powers in the United States hope to reap ever bigger profits in the economic orchard of China and Russia. And those plutocrats fear China, which could destroy the U.S. economy overnight if ever China cashed in all at once on its vast holdings of U.S. capital and government-issued bonds.

Besides, if it is truly the responsibility of the United States to invade the bully countries, the countries that invade other countries, the countries that have strong malevolent leaders – then the United States should invade itself! It is the preëminent example of a bully country invading other countries, while crushing its own people under a powerful plutocracy that has turned the country’s government into a sham, into a marionette show dancing on strings controlled by the ultra-wealthy plutocrats.

Hence the Occupy movement. Born in Tunisia and Egypt, it has spread across the United States and much of the world. The people realize the truth of what I am saying: that they are no longer governed by a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but malevolent oligarchs unseen behind the puppets in Washington.

And military veterans realize the truth, that they were sent into war on false pretexts and made to kill innocent civilians, all for the sake of the plutocrats’ mad desire for more profit - that's why veterans, in increasing numbers especially after two of their brothers were extremely seriously injured by police brutality in Oakland, California, are joining the Occupy movement. They are sworn to serve and protect the people, not the ultra-wealthy plutocrats. They don't want to invade Iran; they widely recognize the insanity of such a notion.

So let the taking down of evil dictators continue – but not in Iran. In the United States.