“Just Noticing”: Observations Of A Blogger
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 14th, 2011
Hello.
I am “just noticing” this morning that as I peruse the net and read stories, “life is not considered precious anymore”. Was it ever? We have people fighting for the lives of the unborn, and killing those that stand in their way, and yet there is very little care for people that are actually alive and living. Between the video that Doug posted the other day of the young white men who beat up a black man and eventually killed him by intentionally running over him with their truck, to this story of a young injured Malaysian man who while caught in the middle of the riots in London, is robbed…to everything else I read in between, I have to say to myself, “There is something seriously wrong with our society.”
The London riot image: Malaysian student recovers
LONDON — The video has become synonymous with London’s riots: A young man, bleeding and dazed, is helped from the ground by a group of youths — who promptly unzip his backpack and callously make off with its contents.
But who is he? And what happened next?
The young man is 20-year-old Malaysian accounting student Mohammad Asyraf Haziq, who was cycling with a friend in east London on Monday to a gathering to break his fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to a friend, Dzuhair Hanafiah.
The details of his trip are as chilling as the video.
First, a group of about 20 teens and preteens surrounded him. Then they grabbed his bike, took his cell phone and broke his jaw, Hanafiah told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
“The next thing he remembered, his mouth was full of blood,” said Hanafiah, a member of the London Umno club, a society for Malaysian students. “He was just left there.”
The video of the attack on Haziq went viral Tuesday and has become one of the most memorable scenes from four days of unrest. So shocking was the robbing of an injured man that Prime Minister David Cameron felt moved to describe it as a sign of a deeper societal malaise in Britain.
“There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick,” Cameron told reporters in somber statement Wednesday. “When we see children as young as 12 and 13 looting and laughing, when we see the disgusting sight of an injured young man with people pretending to help him while they are robbing him, it is clear that there are things that are badly wrong with our society.”
Hanafiah said Haziq was helped by a local woman who brought him into her home. Using Facebook, she was able to help him contact a friend and helped him until he could get to the hospital.
“His face is swollen, but he’s all right,” Hanafiah said. “He’s in good spirits.”
Although he has a broken jaw and is unable to talk, Haziq has made it clear he wants to remain in Britain and continue his studies here, Hanafiah said. Not only that, he insists he wants to remain in Barking, the same area where the attack occurred, ignoring offers to move to parts of London less affected by the rioting.
“He says, ‘No, I still love Barking … what happened has happened,’” Hanafiah said.
*********
Readers: You can pretty much drop the second definition for the word “humanity”. Yes, we are humans, and collectively we are “humanity”. But where is the compassion, brotherly love, fraternity, fellow feeling, philanthropy, humaneness, kindness, consideration, understanding, sympathy, tolerance; leniency, mercy, mercifulness, clemency, pity, tenderness; benevolence, charity, goodness, magnanimity, generosity? It is not to say that there are not people in this world that embody these qualities, but the ones that could care less, seem to be the ones in control, and getting away with murder.
Are there so few people left that truly care, that would step in and help a person lying and bleeding in the streets? Or are the only bold ones to come forward, cowardly people, that while you are injured, steal from you behind your back, literally…while other people just stand around and watch? Did you notice who helped the injured man and who stole from him? As much as I hate violence, there are times that when I read about individuals such as this young Malaysian man, that I wish I had been there to help him. I know, I would not have stood around and watched.
To me, our society is getting close to the point where life doesn’t matter…Are we so used to sitting and watching television and movies that promote violence that when it happens in front of us we still sit and watch as if it is just another film? Oops, there goes another life. We are so used to the violence that death and killing doesn’t shock us anymore. Forget getting our country back, under any definition…Unless, we get our “humanity” back, we are seriously headed for much worse than we can imagine.
PEACE OUT
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 14th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Michelle:
What you wrote is so sad and true.
I was deeply moved by its content.
Toni
August 14th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Sad, true, and nicely stated, Michelle. Our society has lost its courage for truth, compassion, brotherly love, fraternity, fellow feeling, philanthropy, humaneness, kindness, consideration, understanding, sympathy, tolerance; leniency, mercy, mercifulness, clemency, pity, tenderness; benevolence, charity, goodness, magnanimity, generosity. I should say that it exists, however, as with a tipping point of good there is a tipping point of bad, and we are on the back side of the tipping point of bad and falling further into the abyss.
People spend most of their time looking to someone else for the answer when it is actually themselves who hold the answer. It seems like quip of Ghandi to say “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But, that is more than true. People must step up to their local, state, and Federal politicians, and begin to hold them accountable. Go to their office and hold a sit in…
It is the mid and lower economic classes that are being affected around the world that are suffering. I look around today and wonder where the frustration lies with the younger generation. When I was in my early twenties I protested, I took to the streets, and tried to make waves for change. I just don’t see the younger people of today in America doing anything. The people of Wisconsin seemed to be middle aged folks, from what I saw on TV, that were screaming about their working rights, etc. It seemed to me to be orchestrated by the middle age bracket. I thought it was empowering and exciting to take part in protests when I was younger, and it help shape my interest in politics and help hold my confidence to keep at it and be a thorn in the side of the white, elite, idiots that tend to run things. I don’t think I did those things for “lack of direction”, but because I wanted to help change the direction of things.
Today, the young people have no sense of community because they haven’t been given one. If we don’t want our young people to tear apart our communities then don’t let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together. If we want people to feel included, we must include them. If we want people to feel represented, we need to represent them. And if we want people to feel love and compassion for their communities then the members of that community, must give love and compassion for them.
Rather than looking for Obama, or anyone else for that matter to change the world, we must all take our own steps forward and act further than what is in our normal comfort zone. We must knock on the doors and ask our neighbors if there is anything they might need that we could help them with.
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
August 14th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Then I see this…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-schneider/why-arent-americans-in-th_b_926037.html
It’s an eerie feeling when you know something should be happening, and it isn’t — yet. In The Washington Post, sociologist David Meyer has an incisive essay asking why, if Americans are so angry about their political system, are they not protesting? He notes the low approval ratings of President Obama and the Congress, as well as the economic dire straits we’re in, with no end in sight. He mentions the riots in England — to say nothing of those camping out in Israel, or the patient, courageous people being beaten down in the streets of Syrian cities. Or Spain. Or Bahrain. Or China. 2011 seems primed to join 1789, 1848, and 1968 as a year of historic, bottom-up transformation. But, aside from a few weeks in Madison, the United States seems to have mostly been sitting it out.
Meyer provides part of an answer: organizing — or lack thereof. The labor movement is nearly crippled. Clicktivism only sort of translates into true collectivism. The best we seem capable of is a rally for apathy.
He’s the rare refreshing voice in a mainstream paper to recognize that civil resistance movements are not simply spontaneous eruptions of popular feeling, or the covert doings of shadowy CIA operations. They take planning, and years of preparation.
What gets people out into the streets to demonstrate? It’s not general unhappiness about policy, be it on immigration or the national debt. Social movements are products of focused organization. Even the icons of activism in American history wielded influence through larger groups. Rosa Parks wasn’t just a tired seamstress in 1955, when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. She was a longtime organizer who served as chapter secretary of the local NAACP, which organized a bus boycott and a lawsuit in response to her action. Earlier that year, she had attended a workshop on nonviolent action at a labor center, the Highlander Institute, where she read about Gandhi and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down segregation in public schools. All of the specific actions weren’t choreographed, but activists had spent years building the infrastructure and cultivating the ideas that made the bus boycott possible.
Without such organizational support, individual actions might be dramatic and heroic, but effective movement politics is a test of endurance. Organization gives individual efforts meaning and staying power.
Without organization, furthermore, you get something like what we’re seeing across England, and in Libya — you get spontaneous eruptions of popular feeling, and it’s not likely to be pretty.
But organization is also exactly what Meyer is failing to see. Americans may not be out on the streets yet, but they’re planning on it. Just wait — or get involved. People are organizing. The more they prepare, the more likely they are to carry out actions worthy of their goals.
Something is happening. Even Al Gore said, earlier this month, that we need an “American Spring.” How about an American Autumn?
For the past few weeks, we at Waging Nonviolence have been talking with individuals and groups that are involved in one way or another in a variety of powerful new protest efforts. Here are a few of them:
In just a few days, environmental activists — including Bill McKibben, James Hansen, and Wendell Berry — will be undertaking sustained civil resistance to fight the proposed pipeline taking oil from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in Texas. They consider this a crucial battleground in the fight to ameliorate climate change.
After Adbusters called for a takeover of Wall Street on September 17th, a number of websites and organizations have joined in to support the cause — just look at this, this, this, this, and more. An ongoing, open discussion has been taking place about what the movement’s demands will be — including proposals from taxing the rich to ending corporate contributions to political candidates.
On October 6th, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, a broad coalition of old- and new-guard activists are planning to begin a sustained occupation of Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington DC, hoping to foster new momentum for a movement that will end American militarism abroad and put resources to use for people at home.
Between September 11th and October 7th, a group called 10 Years and Counting will be using art and performance to galvanize people into action against the ongoing wars.
A global day of action is being planned for October 15, a World Revolution for Real Democracy. In anticipation, Spanish Indignados are marching from Madrid to Brussels, with solidarity actions for September 17th and October 6th along the way.
In most of these cases, as I’ve learned from interviewing organizers, the ideas for these actions have come about spontaneously, and simultaneously, among a range of different groups. Something is in the air. But which way is it blowing?
or the essay from the Wash Post:
Americans are angry. Why aren’t they protesting?
By David S. Meyer, Published: August 12
There’s something exciting, sometimes terrifying, about people taking to the streets to get what they want. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, they gathered to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. In Athens, demonstrators set up a gallows in front of Parliament, threatening the socialist government, which was imposing austerity measures in the face of 15 percent unemployment. Most recently, in London and across England, young people have assembled at night, looting stores and burning cars to demand — well, that’s not clear yet.
Whether you’re inspired or appalled depends on your politics. Demonstrators who play to our hopes are heroes; those who challenge our beliefs are at best misguided and at worst terrorists. Regardless, those in the streets carrying petrol or placards project their anger and aspirations to an audience as broad as possible. When they’re successful, we talk about their concerns as well as their tactics.
What about here in the United States? Polls consistently show that fewer than half of Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing, and those ratings are far higher than Congress or either political party receives. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent. There is plenty of anger in America today: anger about joblessness across the nation, about cutbacks in services in the states, about increased tuition at our universities, about economic and political inequality that seems to be increasing, and at a government that seems unable to do anything about any of this. Where are the people taking to the streets?
The closest thing to a strong social movement in the United States in recent years has been the tea party, and it demands that government do less. Lately, we hear about the tea party largely from members of Congress and candidates for office, who have drowned out and replaced the activists at the grass roots.
This is largely because although movements carry anger, anger doesn’t make a movement — organizers do. Anger helps, of course; it’s a resource that organizers can stoke, channel and exploit.
Although saints and psychopaths will take great risks in the service of their beliefs, most people are a little more calculating. People protest when they believe that something is wrong, that it could be otherwise, and that their efforts are both necessary and potentially effective.
They rarely make these calculations by themselves. Rather, they respond to those around them. Ostensibly spontaneous eruptions of political protest reflect the hard work and investment of organizers who cultivate grass-roots activism. Organizers point to a government’s provocations, focusing on the issues that they believe will spur action. They nurse both moral righteousness and a sense that it’s actually possible to get something done — both essential for sustained action. And, perhaps most important, they point to others who are already active, telling the newly recruited that they are not alone and that, together, they can matter.
There’s a long and proud history of Americans standing up for what they want, dating back, at least, to the original tea party in Boston in 1773. That tea party grew into a revolution and ultimately produced a government that would not be so easy to topple. The American political system is structured to channel anger and discontent into political institutions. James Madison, the genius behind the Constitution, envisioned a system of government that would embrace dissent and offer malcontents the hope, however distant, that they can get what they want by working through it. Protesters who start in the streets envision themselves, or at least their causes, entering the halls of power.
We recently saw how this system works in a city that bears that founding father’s name — Madison, Wis. When newly elected Gov. Scott Walker (R) began his term last fall with a budget bill that stripped public-sector unions of most of their collective-bargaining rights — and their workers of a lot of money — citizens responded. Teachers, firefighters, police officers and those who depend upon them streamed into the Capitol, staging marches, demonstrations and sleep-ins. Aided by Democratic state senators who left the state to deny the majority a quorum, they stalled the governor’s agenda and commanded national attention. Liberal activists saw Wisconsin as both the greatest threat to their interests and the best opportunity they had to build a national movement to counter the tea party.
When the Wisconsin activists lost, they turned their efforts to institutional politics, moving the battle front to a half-dozen recall elections. Rather than marching, they raised and spent money on campaigns challenging Republican incumbents, producing leaflets and television commercials, and calling on their supporters to bring their protest to the polls. Their opponents responded in kind. More than $30 million from conservative advocacy groups and organized labor flowed into Wisconsin, a kind of stimulus program for political consultants.
The Democrats won two of the six seats they contested this past week, meaning that some of the people who voted for Walker did not support his broad agenda — though not enough to flip the balance of power. Almost immediately, both sides turned to the next elections on the horizon, claiming victories, moral and otherwise, and trying to keep people engaged in their political aims. The protest in the streets has flowed into more conventional, if not more civil, politics.
What gets people out into the streets to demonstrate? It’s not general unhappiness about policy, be it on immigration or the national debt. Social movements are products of focused organization. Even the icons of activism in American history wielded influence through larger groups. Rosa Parks wasn’t just a tired seamstress in 1955, when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. She was a longtime organizer who served as chapter secretary of the local NAACP, which organized a bus boycott and a lawsuit in response to her action. Earlier that year, she had attended a workshop on nonviolent action at a labor center, the Highlander Institute, where she read about Gandhi and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down segregation in public schools. All of the specific actions weren’t choreographed, but activists had spent years building the infrastructure and cultivating the ideas that made the bus boycott possible.
Without such organizational support, individual actions might be dramatic and heroic, but effective movement politics is a test of endurance. Organization gives individual efforts meaning and staying power.
Today, most of the organized protest in the United States has been from the right side of the political spectrum, grouped loosely under the mantle of the tea party. Conservative activists, funded by large corporate interests, have been building a movement for more than a decade. Americans for Prosperity, founded and funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, has invested in conservative ideas and activism. FreedomWorks, led by former House majority leader Dick Armey, has worked to seed conservatism at the ground level. Groups such as these have produced reports, trained and employed organizers, funded electoral campaigns, and worked the media. When public anger at the Bush-Obama Wall Street bailout bubbled up, followed by public anxiety about Obama’s health-care reforms, professional activists were ready to support and channel it. It’s not that there wasn’t conservative anger and concern at the grass roots, but it took resources to funnel it into a national movement.
There were large national demonstrations and numerous local actions in 2009 through the fall of 2010, but — encouraged by Madison’s design — efforts increasingly focused on the elections. After large Republican gains in the 2010 midterms, the grass roots became harder and harder to find, as organizers and fundraisers turned to the Republican presidential primaries.
The Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives was extremely engaged in the budget and debt-ceiling negotiations, though at the grass roots, that issue wasn’t as much of a concern. Local groups are dividing among issues, with some, such as immigration, not so urgent to the tea party’s business sponsors, who value cheap labor. They are also dividing among candidates, with some, perhaps such as Michele Bachmann, not so attractive to corporate interests that care about winning the general election.
And for the tea partyers and others across the political spectrum, there’s anger about unemployment. The situation feels much worse than the official jobless rate. Most of us know middle-aged men and women who have lost their jobs and fear they will never work again. As a professor, I routinely encounter earnest and intelligent college graduates who are increasingly desperate to find work that will allow them to begin paying off their student loans or even move out of their childhood homes. But without anything resembling a social movement, they work on formatting résumés and updating networks so they won’t stay among the millions of unemployed. Something more ambitious than that, however, takes organization.
Sometimes, as during the Great Depression, organized labor has spoken for the unemployed as well as those with jobs. In contemporary America, however, most unions have been focused on protecting their members, including funding the Democratic recall efforts in Wisconsin. As the 2012 elections approach, expect to see unions working to protect Obama, putting their differences and disappointments with him on the back burner.
And any Republican candidate with a chance to beat Obama is bound to be a disappointment to tea party ideologues. Expect to see the larger groups working to get voters to the polls, rather than people to the streets.
Frustration and disappointment are butting up against political pragmatism. Just like James Madison planned.
August 14th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Doug, I don’t think it is as complicated as David Meyer wants to make it. It is very simple when it is analysised from a none white view.
The reason we have no mass display of unrest is because 85% of the country is white. And as long as those in power convey to the whites that no matter how bad it gets they will still be on top. The whites will not upset the apple cart.
They may end up poor white trash, but as long as they are on top of the OTWs of the country, that’s fine with them.
Why? Well mostly because the implication is that they have a chance to join the rich white class. Something they believe is not within the grasp of any OTW.
That is why it is so disconcerting that a black man has made it to the White House. It too was once one of the paragons that only a white male could aspire to.
The majority of whites in this country will endure any hardship as along as they are assured that they will remain America’s Affirmative Action Beneficiaries.
Witness how they will even except the republicans forcing the country’s credit rating to be down graded to embarrass and taint the Black man in the White House’s tenure.
Notice how they will vote in the guys who destroyed the country’s economy to prevent the OTW from getting the same access to health care that has been traditionally reserved for the white race.
There is no need for deep introspection. The answer to why America is not protesting in mass is because the mass is content because the thieves that are robbing the country blind are white and they are telling the whites that their privileged position will be untouched if they are not regulated.
It is that simple.
Robert
August 14th, 2011 at 8:48 pm
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August 14th, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Tal once commented to a group who were under rating the value emotions bring to the worth of a being.
Knowing that his species is considered among the highest on the evolutionary scale in the Known Universe, he knew that his statement would be forever debated and cited in debates.
He said if a being never cared about anyone or anything what would that being be using to motivate itself to contribute to life around it. And without that motivation is that being living as a true intellectual?
Urte
August 14th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Hafa adai:
___________________
It’s inevitable: sooner or later, you are going to borrow money. Whether it’s a loan for a car, a house, or the simple convenience of a credit card, you are going to send in an application.
This will prompt a second inevitability: a lender will pull up a copy of your credit report and credit score.
If you have stellar credit, this is a very good thing. A lender will see that you’ve always paid your bills on time, that your existing credit balances are low, and that you have no negative marks on the accounts you’ve held for years.
You’ll be noted as having prime credit, and if the other information you’ve submitted on your application is favorable, you will likely be approved for your loan at a low interest rate.
But if your credit has a number of scratches and dents, it could be a different story. With substandard credit, you could end up paying your loan back at a higher interest rate, or worse, you could be denied — which may not suit your life plans.
Here’s the thing to remember: if your credit is bad, it doesn’t have to stay bad. Your credit score and your credit report are always changing.
With every new month, creditors report new information, and the oldest marks drop off of your report. Given enough time, you’ll have the chance to influence your score in the direction that suits you best: up.
Let’s start with some fundamentals, as we set out to improve your score. For instance, why do lenders look at your credit report and credit score?
Lenders take on some risk when they extend credit, and they’re more willing to lend if they know the risk is low. If you’ve paid all your bills on time in the past, you’ll probably do so in the future.
So lenders check on your history by ordering your credit report, which lists all of the loans and lines of credit that you’ve opened or maintained in the past seven years. The report also lists your payment activity, balances, limits, collection items, public records, and other information that gives the lender a clear picture of your credit behavior.
For a quick snapshot of your creditworthiness, lenders look at your credit score. Your credit score is calculated from a mix of information in your credit report, with certain factors weighted more heavily than others.
In your FICO score (the most common credit score), your history of payments counts for 35 percent of your score. Another 30 percent of your score is based on your credit use, i.e. the amounts and proportions of credit you’ve used.
The length of time your accounts have been open determines 15 percent of your score, while another 10 percent depends on your mix of different kinds of credit accounts.
The last 10 percent depends on the number of new account openings and inquiries you have on file. Timing is also important: recent behavior has more significance than activity that occurred several years ago.
Your FICO score will fall somewhere in the range between 300 and 850, with 850 as the highest score. The higher your score, the more access you’ll have to credit from lenders.
Next week, we’ll make sure you’re getting all of your credit score points with a close look at your credit report.
Michael Camacho is the president and chief executive officer of Personal Finance Center. He has more than 18 years experience in retail banking and with financial institutions in Guam and Hawaii.
_______________________________
So be careful out there
Peter
August 14th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Urte:
Earthlings say, “If you never really cared about anyone or anything, were you ever really alive?
I think that what Tal is saying is that all intellect is motivated by caring.
Whether one wishes to debate the meaning of that “caring” in or out of an emotional context is another matter.
Luc