Recessionary Currents: 4. Chaos as Diversion and a Wealth-Building Tool.

Giant Tortoise
The National Zoo,
Washington, DC,
2000.








The movement of the tortoise on a hot summer day at The National Zoo is slow. The US general public too may be slow to catch on to the role of chaos as a diversion and as a wealth-building tool.

Disasters and emergencies may be one of the last obvious 'profit-centers' in chronically distressed national and international economies. The pursuit of profit rises like the price of bottled water during a flood. Disasters produce money flow through products, services, and philanthropic donations.

The wave of Democracy Protests from Northern Africa through the Middle East is perceived as a money-making opportunity by oil and gasoline traders there, in the US, and internationally. In early February, 2011 Yahoo News ran a story on the probability of increased oil and other product prices due to the January/February, 2011 Democracy Protests. The Suez Canal returned to the news as in the days of the 1970s oil embargo and the rise of the power and influence of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

USA Today projects a spike in US gasoline prices to $5.00 per gallon with disruption of oil supplies due to the African and Middle Eastern protests.

In Libya, a major African oil-producing state, Moammar Gadhafi reportedly has called for his pro-socialist government supporters to destroy oil supplies and production facilities. If Gadhafi cannot control it, pro-socialist government supporters can deny it to the Democracy Protesters, and their European and US supporters. The result? Less supply, continued demand, and a likely increase in price for remaining Libyan oil products.

The numerous spellings of the name Gadhafi reveals something about the chaos of the Middle East. Since the beginning of the Libyan Protest, US news media has used at least 4 different spellings for the name: Gadhafi, Gaddhafi, Khaddhafy, Qaddhafy, Qaddhafi. A flamboyant figure in a brown tunic and hat, the same man seems to appear in news reports. But the various spellings of his name reflect the ambiguities of the issues in Libya, North Africa, and the Arab Middle East.

Different spellings, different sects, a more modern use of political 'spin' to describe the wave of uprisings complicates the issues in an area with a large number of less literate and illiterate tribal populations. Dictatorships, like the Egyptian government inherited by Egyptian 'President' Hosni Mubarak, began as socialist uprisings used by the Egyptian Army during a 'coup' to take control of Egypt.

Recently, the old socialist term 'communique' was used by the Egyptian military when dictating its terms for resolution to the street protesters in Cairo, Alexandria, and other Egyptian cities. Ironically, Egyptian protesters got what they most did not want: martial law is now official under current military control of the Egyptian government. Mubarak may have stepped aside but the Army-based government he arose from, and appointed, remains.

Moammar Gadhafi, now a notorious African leader known for human rights violations, is supported by old socialist friends like the Cuban Castro brothers. Other South American socialist 'rulers' using the more democratic government term 'President' may become more outspoken in their support for Gadhafi's Libyan government.

Truly natural disasters of course cannot be controlled. But political disasters like the violent wave of purportedly democratic revolutionary activity in Northern Africa and the Arab Middle East perhaps could have been moderated to prevent the creation of yet another international financial crisis. Oil and gasoline traders and investors in these countries, the US, Europe, and around the world anticipate strong financial gains. But such gains come only at considerable human and financial cost to their compatriots.

The sound of enormously important financial deals also can be damped by the constant news noise of politically unstable countries. During the Egypt Protests, a deal was made to sell the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to foreign investors, Deutsche Broses. This piece of news briefly appeared, without discussion, as the Democracy Protests subsided after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped aside and the Egyptian military stepped forward.


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Graphic: An Original Photographic of the Giant Tortoise at The National Zoo, Washington, DC, 2000, by mkrause54@yahoo.com or mkrause381@gmail.com.

Recessionary Currents: 3. Violence in the US: Women as Targets

Camel sitting,
The National Zoo,
Washington, DC,
2000.








Recessionary pressures erupt in reactionary violence as in the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Rally Massacre.

Many factors, especially taxation through governmentalist revenue-producing programs, like the Obamacare health care, are causing hardships for many Americans. Hardships create societal stress. Extreme societal stress sometimes is vented through violence.

Fortunately, "right-wing" conservatives perceived the increased tax hidden behind the humanitarian smokescreen of health care 'reform' proponents. Unfortunately, 'right wing' conservatives were not quick to stop the health care reform legislation before more prssure valves blew. Liberals, heavily leaning toward governmentalist force on healthcare and other issues, hopefully will wake-up before finding the IRS healthcare tax penalty and fee notice in their own mailboxes.

Rep. Giffords, a bright, vivacious, engaged young politician, became a focus for anger. A product of the 'liberal agenda', the women's rights and liberation movements, Giffords and many other women are succeeding in American politics, government, and business. Many other women are not progressing as rapidly. Most are not 'stopped' as dramatically as Rep. Giffords.

Curiously, another woman, who superficially resembles Rep. Giffords, the articulate, attractive, blonde/brunette CBS News chief foreign news correspondent Lara Logan, too has been detoured from her career progress. Logan, despite also being a wife and mother of 2 children, was viciously assaulted on location in Cairo, Egypt during the January/February, 2011 Democracy Protest.

To radical Islamists, an exteme conservative network, the news reporter represents women, unveiled and taking a full part in national and interntional events. The CBS foreign news reporter also represents foreign, particularly US, involvement and influence in a chaotically changing Middle East. Moammar Gadafi's son Seif al-Islam in a February 20, 2011 video broadcast, openly expressed this Middle Eastern fear of Islamics killing each other off before Europeans 'took over' in Libya and throughout the Middle East.

Ironically, historically, Europeans, then citizens of the Holy Roman Empire, once fought off the Moslem (now Muslim) invasion and conquest of Spain and Southern Europe from Northern Africa. Currently, the enormous influx of Muslims and Muslim violence into Europe and transoceanically into the US across the northern and southern borders from Canada and Mexico have instilled the same fear in US citizens, more so since the 911, 2001 Al-Qaida plane bombing of the the NYC, NY World Trade Center.

To many American conservatives, and polite but not actually egalitarian Ameican men, and unfortunately, women Rep. Giffords represents a fear many Americans have of being 'taken over', 'told what to do', or replaced by women. When women were almost routinely excluded from politics, and the higher eschelons of government and business, there appeared to be more jobs available for men. As the number of jobs contract, and as women fill some of those jobs, men and women no one would suspect of harboring hostility to a woman's success may have fueled the anger which somehow became focused on Rep. Giffords.


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Graphic: An Original Photographic of Camel Sitting at The National Zoo, Washington, DC, 2000, by mkrause54@yahoo.com or mkrause381@gmail.com.

Recessionary Currents: 2. Violence in the US--The Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Rally Massacre

(This non-edifying graphic from early American history recalls the intense hatred the American colonists had for Tax Collectors. "No Taxation Without Representation" was the rallying call during the American Revolution for Independence from Great Britain and the Crown's tax collectors.
This graphic also gives a more historically accurate explanation for the "tarring and feathering" and "hangings" in early American history. It was tax collectors who were the focus of the anger of the American colonists, not the members of any particular ethnic or racial group.)

The United States of America emerged from the violence of the Revolutionary War of Independence from Great Britain in 1776. The new nation, almost 100 years later, was forcibly preserved by the violence of the Civil War, including the assassination of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

American Presidents have been assassinated. US 'Babyboomers, now near 60 years old, and their lives were forever changed by the 1963 assassination of the 35th President of the US, the youngest and only Catholic to have been elected President of the US, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Tears still come to baby-boomers eyes, knowing that the safety of our nation had been so breached. This began a series of assassinations, the young President's brother and his Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. Then came the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

American Presidents have survived assassination attempts. Most recently in 1981, Ronald Reagan was wounded by John W. Hinckley, Jr. a young Virginian believed to have been motivated by the delusion of thereby attracting the romantic interest of Hollywood beauty Jodie Foster.

John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, has been ridiculed as an unsuccessful actor, perhaps as a member of an opposing political group, perhaps acting out a need for notoriety.

His assassination cry, "As is always to tyrants", however, voiced the frustration of many Americans, Union and Confederate, that Lincoln's imposition of martial law during the Civil War to preserve the Union was denying many Americans their basic constitutional rights as American citizens.

What may be common to assassins is that each is an unstable personality, influenced by the currents of controversy at a particular time in human and US history. Yet each assassin has a well-developed plan, has chosen a method of assassination likely to be successful, and each commits to the completion of that plan.

None is so unstable as to be truly 'insane', to not know the difference between right and wrong. The assassin has chosen to act to end the life of the politician or
well-known person, and attempts, at times succeeding, to do so. The assassination is for the assassin the best, quickest, or only way to end the influence of the person the assassin has decided 'to stop'.

The assassin, while acting as an individual, somehow is not separate from the volatile opinions and outrageous frustrations of the day. And yet the assassin cannot be excused because there is a war on, there is crime and violence in the streets, there is a serious prolonged finanical, economic recession or depression, or there is social disorder due to changing patterns in immigration, business, governmental policies or political ideologies.

But what must be understood is that the assassin, in times of social and political change or upheaval, also is not really a lone, deranged murderer. The assassin may have some type of psychiatric history. Most people who are frustrated, angered, or enraged do not take up a gun or ammunition to become an assassin. Only the assassin acts.

In psychiatry, there are unusual phenomena, the 'folie a deux', or in such times as ours, the "folie a multitude". These are times when people join or even conjoin, share an unusual or very aberrant way of thinking, explicitly or implicitly, allowing or encouraging an assassin to act.

Many current US politicians do not want to accept that huge numbers of the American public are upset by financial and economic disasters and a fundamental change in US political ideology. Such lucky "employed" politicans, bureaucrats, governmental contractors, and members of now politically and financially enfranchised ethnic and racial groups do not want to accept that many Americans see them as aggressors against the mainstream taxpayer for their own tax-derived salary and benefits.

These politicians want to label accused attempted assassin, accused murderer and shooter of innocent bystanders at the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Rally Massacre, Tuscon, Arizona, Januay 8, 2011, like Jared Lee Loughner, as psychiatrically-disturbed, a mental health system failure. This of course makes this young man a "poster boy for mental illness", a "cause celebre" for more demands for more taxes and monies for governmental programs in mental health. Loughner is an individual who now must face the courts and accept his personal responsibility in a very violent episode in a very tumultuous era in American political and financial history.

Loughner too raises some bigger issues in his newsmedia televised videotape at Pima Community College. Psychologists and commentators termed his tape confusing, evidence of his psychological instability. What he did televise was a shared concern among students, that he "would be homeless, for going to Pima Community College".

There was trouble at school, he was cast as an outcast. There was trouble at home, a nice home, a son who was not getting along well with a mother who worked for the local Parks & Recreation Department and a father who was an avid gardener.

It may be time for the whole society to explore the "perceived need" to indebt young people trying to succeed in an overcrowded labor force by sending them to school for courses which are not likely to lead to a full-time job, threaten their family incomes or home, and relationships with family and friends.

It may be time for the whole society to explore the "perceived need" to fund more police work and courts, putting more pressure on people to "be bad", become customers, statistical data to support funding for their local social welfare, police, and court industry.

About a century ago, a writer named Shirley Jackson, wrote a horrifying story called "The Lottery". Rural New England villagers gathered in tense progression to a "straw-pulling" event. In the terrifying ending of the story, each villager took a rock. Together the village stoned the "winner" of the lottery, a formerly beloved neighbor or friend.

It may be time for the whole society to explore why such murderous rituals are preserved in modern American society, in the political masacre in Tuscon, Arizona, why any individual must lose as victim or perpetrator of crime in the modern US.

There is 'no greater good' in a culture of violence. Bloodlust perpetuates bloodlust. There is not enough life insurance death benefit money, governmental or mental health funding in the universe to right the wrongs done.

(Read more on this or other topics in "Recessionay Currents" on http://monthlynotesten.blogspot.com, http://monthlynotes.blogspot.com on www.google.com.)

Graphic: Thought to be a newspaper or journal graphic expressing the outrage of early American colonists against tax collectors and taxation.

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Recessionary Currents: 1. Social Order and Disorder

Stark Image of Arkansas in Spring, 2002. An Original Photograph by mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.

Few situations are more difficult, than the feeling one's life has been put "on hold". Or that there are people, some known, many unknown, connected by forces, whether greed, resentment, anonymous mean amusement, who have conjoined to circumscribe one's life. How do meaner people connected in meaner acts sometimes overwhelm the neutral or usually kinder people?

The forces which connect them become so repetitive as to be almost predictable. Whether these forces are psychic, telepathic, or exist among ethnic or other groups who seem to connect physico-chemically.

The connected also use known technology, surveillance by "wiretaps" on cellular and land telephones, cameras in stores or store parking lots, Internet and website or other device tracking.

Like elements in a humanoid electronic chain, the connected report on certain people or automobiles from store to store or parking lost to parking lot, street to street, highway to highway, interstate to interstate.

All of this may be done to track the innocent for store sales, automotive repair, other expenditures. Yet the Osama bin-Ladens, terrorists, dangerous criminals, and thieves are not so easily found.

Newser's Rob Quinn reported on a related phenomena in March 2010. A chilling French documentary recreated a famous 1960s psychology experiment about punishment. In "Zone Extreme", a TV game show host instructed players to deliver a painful electric shock to punish a victim for a wrong answer. The victims were actors in the documentary.

Only 19% of players stopped the game before delivering the maximum 420 volt, despite the victim's howls of pain. The aim of the documentary was to highlight the power of TV.

The documentary producer referred to Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram's study in which 62% of participants obeyed researchers orders to shock people, noting the number was higher, 81%, in the TV game show players.

Producer Christopher Nick concluded "It's more about the notion of power than about the individual. When a person is alone, face to face with someone abusing their power, then he or she becomes completely malleable and obedient".

Similar behaviors can be observed in severe bullying, more common now that in recent decades. People with no personal grudge against an innocent person, obey someone with no real power or authority who instructs them to bully that innocent person.

Graphic: Stark Image of Arkansas in Spring, April, 2002. An Original Photograph by mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.

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