<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><h1 class="title" id="view_title"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">The Real Issue to be Faced: King Day Reflections on the State of the Union and the World</span></font></h1>
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<div class="content_authors" style="">By <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/paulstreet">Paul Street</a></div>
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<div class="content_date" style="">Monday, January 17, 2011</div>
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<div class="body" id="view_body"><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Testament of Hope,” 1969</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Together We Thrive</span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">In
his speech commemorating the victims of the mass murderer Jared
Loughner in Tucson, Arizona, Barack Obama turned to the Bible. At a
memorial service titled “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America,” the
president told mourners how “Scripture tells us that there is evil in
the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human
understanding.” Quoting from the Book of Job, the president informed his
fellow Americans that “Bad things happen, and we have to guard against
simple explanations afterward. None of us can know what triggered the
attack or what could have been done to prevent it.” He repudiated
progressives who point to the role of right-wing ideology in inspiring
the Tucson massacre. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>He
called for “a good dose of humility, rather than pointing fingers and
assigning blame.” He counseled Americans to “sharpen our instincts for
empathy,” to show greater “kindness and compassion,” and to ask “whether
our priorities are in order.” </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">It doesn’t get much more vapid than that. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>There’s
nothing mysterious or particularly surprising about Loughner’s attack
on a Democratic congressperson and a federal judge. Loughner is an
unbalanced fascist who lives in a savagely unequal, amoral, and insecure
society that disseminates hateful and paranoid messages across its
right wing media empire. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>That society lacks a decent mental health policy and makes deadly weapons available to disturbed and dangerous people. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Loughner
was deemed too mentally unstable to attend community college or join
the U.S. Army, but he had no difficulty purchasing a Glock handgun and a
33-round magazine. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>He lives
in a country that is controlled by an amoral business elite that has
been ruining American lives and driving untold numbers of working and
middle class people out of their minds for decades. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
investor class has no use for masses of American citizens, 15 million
of whom are now officially unemployed (the real number of involuntarily
jobless is much higher) – the biggest number since the Great Depression.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">“Together we thrive.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Hello?
Arizona has the second highest official poverty rate among the nation’s
50 states, a stunning 21.2 percent (the state’s real or functional
poverty rate is certainly over 30 percent) and Tucson has the highest
poverty mark of any city in the state. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Less
than half (45 percent) of Arizona’s residents possess private health
insurance, and a fifth of the state’s population, more than 1.3 million,
lack health coverage of any kind. More than 70,000 homes were
foreclosed in Arizona in 2010, up from just 1,000 in 2005. If there’s
one thing Tucson and Arizona have not been doing recently it is
“thriving.” According to recent reports, Loughner had not received a
paycheck in six months. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>He’d been fired from at least five jobs and filled out employment applications at more than 60 low-wage retail outlets.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">When Everyone is Carrying a Firearm</span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Amidst
this crisis, hard right media and political personalities likes Glenn
Beck instruct shattered people with fragile psyches and damaged minds to
“act now” (before its too late) against “socialist tyranny” – the
right’s ludicrous take on Obama’s state-capitalist neoliberalism.
Deadly, state-of-the-art human-exterminating weapons run remarkably
free, like the madness and hatred on the airwaves and the Internet,
where the preposterous notion that centrist, corporate-friendly
Democrats are radical Marxist enemies of freedom and prosperity is
standard fare. America is something of an “Armed Madhouse,” to steal a
book title from Greg Palast, as is suggested in a chilling
post-slaughter comment from Tea Party state representative Jack Harper
(R-Arizona). “When everyone is carrying a firearm,” Harper proclaimed,
“nobody is going to be a victim.” Yes, let us all – women, men, boys,
and girls (one of Loughner’s murdered victims was a third grader named
Christina Taylor Green) strap on weapons and ammo before every trip to
the supermarket or coffee shop. Last year Harper submitted a bill to the
Arizona state legislature that would allow faculty members to carry
guns on university campuses. Welcome to the wild west. “Rally ‘round yo
family with a pocketful of shells” (Rage Against the Machine).</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Obama’s
speech was an attempt to cloak deepening social tensions and present a
sugar-coated picture of the United States’ toxic, paranoid, and hate-
and gun-addicted political culture. He made no reference to the real and
deep problems confronting the American people—mass structural
unemployment, extremes of great wealth and mass poverty in the
industrialized world’s most unequal nation ( a country where the top 1
percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent), worsening
ecological catastrophe, corporate control of media and politics, the
ongoing deterioration of social infrastructure, and a vastly expensive
military empire that continues to conduct criminal wars both overt and
covert, and more. The president naturally made no reference to recent
federal tax cuts for the wealthy, passed while the administration and
congress have refused urgently needed action to provide jobs for the
unemployed, alleviate poverty, and bail out state and local governments.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">I
am personally surprised there haven’t been more incidents like the
Tucson tragedy in the Armed Madhouse in the last couple of years. As
Patrick Martin noted on the World Socialist Web Site a few days ago:
“Under conditions of a capitalist social order that deals with the
unemployed—and the mentally ill—in cold and inhuman fashion, and a
ruling class that glorifies violence and practices it more widely and
brutally than any other on the planet, events such as those which took
place January 8 in Tucson are inevitable.”(See Patrick Martin, “Obama in
Tucson: Providing an Amnesty for the Right Wing,” World Socialist Web
Site [January 13, 2011]at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/obam-j13.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">http://wsws.org/articles/2011/<wbr>jan2011/obam-j13.shtml</span></a></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">).</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<wbr><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Golden Rules</span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Martin’s
line about violence reminds me of a line from Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow (I am writing on Sunday,
January 16, 2011). <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>On April
4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination or execution, King
earned the contempt of the American establishment by having the decency
to observe – at the height of the United States’ <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>“crucifixion
of South East Asia” (Noam Chomsky’s excellent term for the one sided
American-imperial assault that killed more than 3 million in that region
between 1962 and 1975) – that Uncle Sam was the “leading purveyor of
violence in the world.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
description still fits 44 years later in a time when the U.S. spends
more than a trillion dollars a year on “defense,” accounts for nearly
half the species’ military spending and maintains more than 1000
military bases spread across more than 120 nations. Meanwhile,
reflecting what in the late 1960s King called “the nation’s perverted
priorities,” a vast and rising mass of basic social needs go unmet in
the imperial “homeland” – the supposed global headquarters of freedom
and democracy, the “beacon to the world of the way life should be” (U.S.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson,R-TX).</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">The
president and a fair bit of the media and political elite are calling
for a “New Age of Civility.” They are using the Loughner atrocity to
quell citizen anger – to marginalize real and legitimate popular
discontent. I have nothing but uncivil contempt for those who posit
moral equivalence of “incivility” between an armed rightist who attacks a
federal official or structure and an unarmed antiwar marcher who
reasonably chants “Hey Obama, what do you say, how many kids did you
kill today?”</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">And
is it not a bit nauseating to get Gandhian lectures on nonviolence and
civility from a president who rains bombs and drone-launched missiles on
wedding parties, children, and villages in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Somalia? I am reminded of another Scripture-quoting president who the
standard hypocritical Superpower spin on the Golden Rule (“do unto
others as you would have them do unto you”). Bill Clinton waxed eloquent
and teary-eyed on the need for loving kindness and healing in the wake
of the Columbine school shootings (April 20, 1999). Meanwhile he was
criminally bombing Serbia (between March 24 and June 11, 1999) and
continuing the “economic sanctions” that killed more than a million
Iraqis during the 1990s.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">There’s
another golden rule: “those who have the gold rule.” During the Iowa
presidential Caucus campaign, the Democratic candidate John Edwards used
to say that big progressive change could never be accomplished without
“an epic fight with concentrated wealth and power” (it seems doubtful
that Edwards actually wished to undertake that fight). <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>He
openly and impolitely attacked Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as
“corporate Democrats” and mocked Obama’s “Kumbaya” notion that good
results could come from “sitting down at a big negotiating table with
corporations and Republicans.” Obama scored points with corporate
campaign financiers and the corporate media by rejecting Edwards’
common-sense populist rhetoric as uncivil, arguing in a Des Moines
debate that “we don’t need more heat, we need more light.” We have seen
who his bringers of “light” are – the very same Wall Street and Pentagon
overlords who ran the country into the ground under George W. Bush.
Lecturing the multitude on the need for civility while making policy on
behalf of the rich and powerful at “Government [Goldman] Sachs” is an
ugly elitist game. </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Perverted Priorities</span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Obama’s
line about getting “our priorities in order” raises unpleasant
questions about the direction of policy under his administration. A
recent report from the National Priorities Project (which takes its name
partly from Dr. King’s phrase) contains the following information</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">*</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">New
York state has 128,128 Head Start (federally subsidized
pre-school)-eligible children, yet only 48,013 Head Start places. For
New York's share of this year's Afghan War spending, the state could
fund Head Start places for all eligible children for 21 years.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">*</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Wisconsin
has 527,000 uninsured residents. For Wisconsin's cumulative Afghan War
spending, the state could provide insurance for all uninsured for 3
years.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">*</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">The
state of Washington consumes 1,168,531 Billion British thermal units
(BBtu) of non-renewable energy and only 881,676 (BBtu) renewable energy.
For Washington's share of cumulative Afghan and Iraq war spending, it
could pay 23% of the cost to convert all non-renewable energy to solar
energy or 79% to convert to wind energy.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">*</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">At
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the North Carolina share
of total war spending ($34 billion) would fund all in-state expenses of
a four-year education for each incoming freshman class for the next 135
years.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">*</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">To
date, $815 billion dollars has been allocated for the war in Iraq since
2003 and $445.1 billion dollars has been allocated for the war in
Afghanistan since 2001. With this latest update, total cost of war
funding is $1.26 trillion.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">I
am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s warning from New York City’s
Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. “A nation that spends more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift,” King warned, “is
approaching<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">spiritual death</span></em>.” </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Such a Thing as Being Too Late</span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">The
National Priorities Project’s inclusion of a bullet point on the
trade-off between military spending and spending on renewable energy
reminds me of something else Dr. King said on April 4, 1967. “We are now
faced with the fact that tomorrow is today,” King said. “We are
confronted with the fierce urgency of now. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>In
this unfolding conundrum of life there is such a thing as being too
late…Over the bleached bones and jumbled reside of numerous
civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Anyone
who doubts the relevance of that comment today ought to have a look at
the most important book published last year: Bill McKibben’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(New
York, 2010). The anthropogenic (human-generated) climate change
produced by modern petro-capitalism and the related growth ideology of
the wealthy Few does not merely pose grave difficulties for “our
grandchildren.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Massive
deleterious transformation in core planetary processes and phenomenon –
extreme weather, flooding, burning, deforestation, desertification,
drought, erosion, water and food availability, species survival,
bacteriology, and more – are no longer merely unavoidable. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>They
are already under way. The eco-apocalypse created by the profits system
is happening now. The need for human intervention was already urgent
when President Jimmy Carter (who hosted a White House gathering for the
anti-growth eco-economist E.F. Schumacher) tried in his own weak way to
warn Americans off the “spiritual emptiness” and peril of
“self-indulgence and consumption” – of “owning things” and “piling up
material goods” in pursuit of an endless more. Now, McKibben shows,
we’ve waited too long. “Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting,
drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever
seen. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We’ve created, in short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> We may as well call it Eaarth...This,” McKibben muses, “is the biggest thing that has ever happened in human history.” <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
recent and ongoing flooding in Australia and Brazil is only the latest
indication of the massive changes underway. It is long past time for a
dramatic shift to a post-carbon economy</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Forty
three years ago, in a posthumously published essay titled “A Testament
of Hope,” Dr. King reflected that America and the world were plagued by
“systemic rather than [merely] superficial flaws” showing that “radical
reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." Thanks
to global warming, we are already in historical overtime.</span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; ">
<b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">Paul Street (</span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><a href="http://www.paulstreet.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">www.paulstreet.org</span></a></span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'">)is the author of many articles, chapters, speeches, and books, including <i>Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (</i>Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008;<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis </i>(New York:Rowman & Littlefield, 2007; <i>Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era</i> (New York: Routledge, 2005); <i>Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics</i> (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008); and <i>The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power</i> (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2010). His next book<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(co-authored with Anthony Dimaggio) will be published next May. He can be reached at </span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt"><a href="mailto:paulstreet99@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: 'courier new'"><font color="#0000ff">paulstreet99@yahoo.com</font></span></a></span></b></div></div></body></html>