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Signs
of a Gathering Storm
December
4, 2001
by tom_paine
Two very ominous things happened last weekend which gave
me pause to consider the future. The first was a weather event.
Two days ago, in the end of November, we had a moderate line
of thunderstorms come crashing through eastern Pennsylvania
and other places.
I have been in and out of the beautiful state of Pennsylvania
very much during the course of my life. I grew up there, and
it is my home now. But, never, never in all my life do I ever
remember a thunderstorm in October, let alone two days before
December. To make sure, I asked several friends who had stayed
in the area when I had left. They all agreed that they add
never experienced such a thing in all their years, dating
back to the late 50s.
When I was a child, the months of October to December used
to be largely cold, with an occasional day or week of warm.
For the last decade, those months are now mostly warm with
an occasional day or week of cold. I recognize that these
observations do not constitute scientific data on the reality
of global warming. Of course, there is plenty of that lying
about in all the scientific journals of the past 20 years,
and I think it speaks for itself nicely.
The second event happened today, an event occurred which
was thunderous in its silence. That is, the storming out of
the White House of Ariel Sharon without having the obligatory
ass-kiss-fest with the Corporate Media. They had set the microphones
out and were hyping the big King George is In Charge press
conference. We've all seen them. King George smiles broadly
and reads his obfuscatory script lines, which address no questions,
saying nothing really. Even when questions are asked, now,
the King's answer seems to be canned and read off a card usually.
I imagine the King gets to see all the questions before they're
asked. Royal Privilege, you know. Then the legion of sycophants
spreads out on the Cable TV and Radio airwaves to lavish praise
for the gravitas of the boy-King's Churchillian utterances.
Never mind those $100 billion dollar budget deficits until
2005. Nothing to see here. Move along.
At any rate, after all this buildup, the camera showed what
appeared to be a pissed-off Sharon storming out and into his
limousine. No questions and none likely. No King George and
none likely.
No explanations and none likely.
I noticed it instantly. The Corporate Media ignored it all
and transitioned nicely...after we'd waited all morning with
them hyping that they were going to bring the press conferences
very very soon, comrade. In the now-customary-doublespeak
which passes for news these days it was as if the Bush-Sharon
press conference had never been scheduled and then canceled...no
words were spoken, none were needed to be. It was an [i]unevent[/i].
And so the TV "press" (if you can call that toadying bunch
of sycophants that anymore) swept onward, oblivious I suppose
to the newsworthiness of not having a previously scheduled
press conference. On the Corporate Media went, with their
human-interest stories from 9/11(which are still going on),
interspersed with breathless up-close-and-personal footage
and interviews with the highlighted morning's atrocity...in
the case the multiple bombs in Jerusalem and Haifa. With a
little bit of anthrax thrown in for good measure.
If we still had a Free Press it would have looked something
like this:
TV JOURNALIST: Today's big story... Ariel Sharon departs
abruptly after convening emergency meeting at the White House.
Sharon hurriedly got in his limo, after the White House had
placed microphones out in anticipation of a typical post-summit
press-conference. Why did Sharon leave in such obvious anger?
Hard questions for Ari Fleischer and the Bush White House
tonight at 11...
These events, both natural and man-made, have meaning and
portent for the future of our world, if we listen among all
the noise. The hogs are in the tunnel. They must be fed. pResident
Damien stands ready to unleash the fury on his own Royal Subjects.
The 1890s are coming back in a big way. "The Great Game",
played out against the Risk Board of finite resources and
surly, oppressed, poor, dark-skinned people, is back in a
big way.
And standing in the background, oblivious to everybody because
of the immediate danger of fascism in the air, is the environment,
the Earth. She won't take much more of this, and thunderstorms
in November should tell us that quite succinctly.
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