Demeter
Society's sky watchers expect The Moon to occult
Jupiter unusually often in this working period from
November '04 through August '05. Gardeners might
relieve themselves of hands wrung sore over the
coming agricultural doom if the conjuncts are reflecting
more of what's happening on our ground rather than
what's happening to it. Could the cosmic "devour
and disgorge out the backside" scenes be the
celestial's political lampoons?
Take
a sky high view of the absurd November series of
phone calls from George W. Bush, Jr., to Gerard
Adams, Jr., in which Gerry Adams barely managed
a cheek-flushing second preference to foe Ian Paisley,
Sr., who like Bush is another Jonesian-anointed
Antiprophet preaching lies. Incredibly, Paisley
claims to have reminded Bush, of all people, that
Bush "would not have terrorists in his
government." Bush, Paisley, Adams: so different
yet so much the same. Contorted faces in their wake
attest to it. More contemptible, the triad goads
others into terrorizing both their own people and
the enemy's people. All their victims are our people.
But these three obstacles to peace are 'important'
men as the news reminds us daily. Obviously, the
attention of being newsworthy lures and only a boycott
of their celebrity will be enough to dry them up.
On
behalf of the Provisional Sinn Fein Party and what
remains of a ragged Oglaigh na hEireann, the head
of what was once touted the premiere revolutionary
grassroots national liberation struggle and champion
of the oppressed ASKED the premiere impeachable
nation-invader and head
of the most corruption-ridden Administration in
US memory for "help at the White House
to deliver" under the guise of adding more
fertilizer to the purposely growth-stunted 'peace'
process. Help? What kind of help? More lawyers,
more guns, more money??? No, more executive golf!
Saying
"Americans don't begrudge his time spent on
the golf course because they know he works hard
at his job" (Golf Today UK), the impeached
former president and Arkansian
roué found time between swings to answer
the White House Hotline. Wasn't it just yesterday
that Adams and Bush-rival Clinton were also doing
phone deals for 'help' accompanied by the usual
threats of "an historic something" that
never happens in N. Ireland? It was just yesterday.
Cardinal rule: "It doesn't matter who calls,
just so the phone rings in from 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue." That's the way business is done, until
it's done, after which celebrities like Adams, Paisley,
Clinton, and Bush are deftly devoured by the next
ones and disgorged out the backside.
Far
too many Suits regard Ireland -- all of it, one
end to the other, all the people in it -- as market
and don't bother to hide the callous appraisal.
Their dangling reward for squelching unrest and
dissent threatening to disrupt the market will be
the peace of foreign economic investment. Community
centers, trusts and educational endowments funnel
people into the program of getting used to thinking
that this is a pretty good idea. Not too much bridging
of divides is encouraged since a portion of simmering
hate is helpful to prevent most Orange and Green
from realizing the gains they might achieve with
collusion.
The
key words to 'help' are "foreign", "investment",
and "executives". Capital produced by
the Irish market venture will be controlled by a
few mostly foreign investors and politicians who
are out to profit, offshore if at all possible.
The bottom line in this investment is top profit.
Their balance sheets neglect humanity and environment
out of budgetary necessity. Of course there will
be compensation for helpful politicians. And fame.
The
argument that an elite-benefited economic system
will ensure a prosperous peace is quite valid as
long as it is understood that this is an authoritarian,
managerial, top-to-bottom, non-participative, militarily-enforced
executive economy substituting for the classist-model
state; the socialness of irresponsible accumulating
corresponds to peace; and object-richness supercedes
other values. There is no separation of business
and state: corporations and political partners are
the state.
Certainly,
a sort of peace (read distracted submission) will
flourish because there will be jobs, maybe not all
very good jobs, but some excellent jobs and many
more paying jobs nonetheless. The employed will
be attached to the jobs because they will need the
jobs to get the wage to buy the goods that will
be more plentiful. After that is achieved, there
will be still more desirable goods requiring greater
purchasing power by way of more working hours or
higher paying jobs. "Trinkets for the natives."
Beyond that, there's the 'upward' climb to where
there is, of course, private club golf and politicking.
Dissent
will cool because people will be busy living in
the accumulating state and they'll be comfortably
numbed with more television soap operas, more sports
rivalries, more shopping. They might work for QinetiQ,
a joint venture between the British Ministry of
Defense and Bush's Carlyle Group, or Raytheon, or
a major polluter but they will think more than twice
about speaking out because they will need to keep
the job, especially when the suit fits so well.
After awhile, they'll find ways to defend the jobs
that aid in fouling and warring.
There
will be a fair number of others who can't work,
or won't work, or will work only long enough to
buy their drug of choice and a state bureaucracy
of programs and prisons will manage them. This misery
economy will have to be supported up front with
tax dollars from individual workers, or corporations,
or both. Behind the front, corporations will buffer
their social losses by charging higher costs, lowering
workers' wages and benefits, or cheating. Ordinary
taxed workers will have no buffer.
Part
of the solution is sustainable business: it's green,
ethical, worker-friendly, profit-sharing and in
some companies, worker-owned. There are healthy,
politicking-free businesses* homegrown in Ireland
and from America, Scandinavia, Europe, and elsewhere.
Do the politicians have them first in line to invest
in all Ireland?
Other
corporations, especially in America but not limited
to America, are in a rush to escape citizen watchdogging
and increase their volume of political favors. Bathed
in greenwash1 or bluewash2
-- and specifically for Ireland perhaps a MacBridewash
or hues of Flaxwash and Emeraldwash
-- these businesses and their political partners
are in stiff competition for the market. With nearly
all of them claiming "transparency" and
intending full well the double meaning, it will
take a vigilant public to differentiate between
the sincere and the fake. Deals plotted in the golf
carts, behind the club doors and off-limits to public
scrutiny and participation are 'investments' that
should not qualify for entry.
Their
immediately accessible media pounds us minute-by-minute
with no shortage of words that 'prove' the important
leaders are hard at 'work' conferring with other
important heads of state and business for our 'forthcoming'
relief. Sure. And on the morning of January 31st
and at every Moon-Jupiter occultation this year,
we can reach for binoculars and watch as our "wee"
Moon consumes the great mass of Jupiter. If we see
it happen often enough, maybe we'll be convinced
that it's real. Seeing often is believing, right?
Lawyers,
Guns, and Money
"Well,
I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know
She was with the Russians, too
I
was gambling in Havana
I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get me out of this
I'm
the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck
Now
I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan
Send
lawyers, guns and money…"
- Song lyrics by the late artist, Warren Zevon
* For more information on this topic, search words
such as: hawken, lovins, socially responsible investing,
corporate social responsibility, corporate welfare,
corporations favors overseas, raging anti-corporate
sentiment, corporation watch...
[1]
Green*wash: (gren-wash) ?washers, ?washing,
-washed 1) The phenomenon of socially and environmentally
destructive corporations attempting to preserve
and expand their markets by posing as friends of
the environment and leaders in the struggle to eradicate
poverty. 2) Environmental whitewash. 3) Hogwash.
[2] Blue*wash (n):
1. Allowing some of the largest and richest corporations
to wrap themselves in the United Nations? blue flag
without requiring them to do anything new (New York
Times). 2. Efforts by corporations to be perceived
as part of the world humanitarian community through
voluntary association with the United Nations, without
provisions for accountability.
(Definitions from the Greenwash
Academy's Annual Awards page)
