Foto by tgw, Coney Island, 2010------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fear: Friend or Foe?
When I have Fears That Cease To Be
by J.Keats
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high - piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink
We've all faced fear at some time in our lives. That's a stupid statement isn't it? Of course, we've all faced fears--from Day 1 until who knows? Every day we all do something that puts our lives at risk. Every day millions upon millions of us are in automobiles traveling from some point to another point. Statistically speaking, anyone riding in an automobile at any time at any moment is vulnerable to a sudden intrusion of DEATH! We should be scared to death every time we get in a car but we aren't. Death doesn't even cross our minds as we automatically get in our cars and go about our business.
There are millions of us who purposely look for fears to face every day. Handling fears is a professional task for some of us.
On the other hand, the universal hand, millions upon millions of us go through life facing only petty fears. Yes, some of us face deadly fears every day and night, but even those fears are petty to fears like being suddenly grabbed on the street and blindfolded and put on a plane and sent to you-do-not-know-where. You do not know who has kidnapped you. You asked questions and you get smashed in the jaw with a rifle butt and told to shut up--you have no rights anymore. Then when you get to where they're taking you, you are kept blindfolded and are handed over from one group of kidnappers to another group of men you can hear speaking a very foreign language to you, and when they take the blindfold off you, you find you are in a Syrian or Egyptian or Jordanian or Iraqi or Afghanistan jail and a seriously deadly looking army officer is coming into your cell carrying a battery device with wire leads with clamp attachments on the end and then in a rough-approximation to your language, he says, "Drop your pants, I'm here to check your testicles for pain." Now that's facing fear, baby. Any of you dear readers ever faced that kind of fear?
Or how about the fear of being hacked to pieces by perhaps even one of your neighbors and his kids wielding machetes?
Or how about the fear of the sound of a US Army drone headed over your house--the fear of what if this man-driven device looses its destruction and death on your house or on your kids at school or on your family members working the fields. And following that, say you survive that drone attack, will a sudden insurgency of US-UN-NATO forces going from house to house blasting away with their attack rifles suddenly appear in your home's doorway with a threat of torture, rape, DEATH.
Living in Fear in New York City
Our Mall-Mad Mayor and our ex-Crooked-Customs official Police Commissioner, Officer Ray Kelly, appear suddenly in a blast of news-interruption special reports on all the channels telling we poor ass New Yorkers that our crack NYPD had once again foiled a "terrorist" attack--NO--they were quick to say this was not a "terrorist" attack as we were expecting. You know, Arab-looking dudes wearing military garb and black hoods. NO. The only clue as to who did this latest bomb threat on NYC was a tourist's video of a WHITE man running up Shubert Alley taking off his dark top and looking as though he were fleeing getting caught at something--though the little-man police commish was quick to tell us this gentleman might have been totally innocent. (Arrest him anyway, Kelly, since you are now guilty whether you are innocent or not in this War on Terror world given us by the Bush Family Empire.
This latest bomb-scare, the Arab who was carrying plans for blowing up the subway system--and we are having bomb scares more and more these days--and this guy was definitely Arab and his plot involved his Arab pals--yes indeed they were not only Arab looking but Islamic-looking, too, and definitely al-Queda-looking, or at least, smarmy and oily looking enough to look suspiciously closely in appearance to a diehard member of the Taliban or a certified al-Queda insurgent--militant combatant. Suddenly the police commish was telling us not to panic, these were not Taliban insurgents. Al-Queda wasn't mentioned at all.
The cops really didn't foil this one. A tee-shirt salesman told a horse cop the SUV looked suspicious, then a kid, a 14-year-old took a video of the SUV smoking and called the NYFD who came and found a weirdly made bomb in the back of the SUV. A bunch of M-180 firecrackers--they're legal, especially in Mafia neighborhoods--a 5-gallon can of gasoline--and a tank or two of propane gas and several bags of what looked to the NYPD as fertilizer though the cops further said whatever this was it had been purchased at a grocery store all hooked up to a couple of yellow alarm clocks and a wall clock.
Turns out, the foilin' NYPD had no clue as to who had driven this SUV full of potential explosive materials easy-as-you-please into the heart of Mall-Mad Mayor Bloomberg's new Times Square mall where autos can now park on one stretch of Times Square--where when it was two big wide streets crossing each other in the traditional Times-Square way you couldn't park your car on either Seventh or Broadway. Of course if this bomb had gone off it would have only killed 40 or so people lining up to go see Disney's Lion King--tourists. This should drive tourists away from NYC, but of course it won't. Mall-Mad Mayor Bloomberg and Shanty Ray Kelly will come out braggin' about how safe we are here in NYC. How many attacks the NYPD working with the FBI have foiled so far this year.
Still, all New York Citians are supposed to remain scared shitless. Don't trust those Arab-looking people. Smarmy bastards.
FEAR. AFRAID. OOOOOOOOOOH I'M'A SCARED.
But New York Citians, especially Manhattanites don't scare that easily. We were here when 9/11 went down. That didn't scare us--yes, it was frightening to see this sort of thing happening just down the street from where 8 million of us were starting to work, scraping and scrapping for our dollar bills so we can pay the high salaries of our city officials to protect us from such attacks, which of course they can't. The cops put up 2,000 cameras all around Manhattan; yet, not one camera caught this action. And Times Square has to be full of cameras of all sorts.
I mean come on, pilgrims, anybody could walk on any subway today packed with explosives and you wouldn't get caught. Fucking A the subways are dangerous to ride--but what choice do 3 million of us a day have but to ride them. The subways are the only ways we have of getting to work. The police commissioner is whisked to and from work in his own super bullet-proof window limousine fronted and reared by screaming lights-flashing patrol cars as they break the speed limit.... I'm fed up with being afraid.
And yet we here in the USA know nothing about being afraid. We're more afraid of our own shadows than we are of something very tragic happening to us. The Haitian earthquake killed more in 5 minutes than all the terrorists in the world have killed since terrorism began. I tell you the truth, I'm more afraid of an earthquake hitting Manhattan than I am a Taliban or al-Queda shoe bomber or backpack bomber. An earthquake in Times Square would reek more havoc than an SUV filled with firecrackers, gasoline, propane tanks, and stuff that looks like fertilizer.
The Latest: wouldn't you know the Taliban in Pakistan is taking credit for the Times Square foiled car bomb. Yeah, sure. NYPD is saying there's no proof it's Taliban. Still no mention of al-Queda. The fertilizer turned out to be not the ammonia kind that McVeigh used in Oklahoma City--in fact, this fertilizer wasn't even an inflammable kind. The device is very child-like in its construction. Surely trained Taliban infiltrators and car-bomb experts know better how to make a car bomb--like the van bomb that the Blind Sheik's boys (supposedly) set off under the World Trade Center the first time.
Who knows what this car bomb was. The Citizens of New York City certainly are beginning to not feel safe at all especially now since it's been proven by this that an SUV loaded with explosives can easily get into downtown Manhattan without being detected. Of course, too, cynically approaching the incident, this could have been the cops pulling one on us in order to gain more power over us--searches of our cars and trucks now--checkpoints all around the city. Our Mall-Mad and pompous ass Plutocratic Mayor may use this to close down Midtown Manhattan to everything except limos and taxis and delivery trucks with the proper papers--drivers that don't fit Muslim-looking profiles.
New York City will become the first Fascist City State in this country. I fully expect this asshole Mayor to anyday proclaim himself Mayor-for-Life.
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Top Dog Plutocrat Rascal Warren Buffett Shows His True Hand
Warren Buffett came out yesterday and said Goldman-Sachs committed no wrongdoing in their derivative hustling. Now why now is Good Ole Boy Warren Buffett defending Goldman-Sachs (big-time pirates) ? Why, it was revealed just last week that Warren, that old son of a gun, was heavily into derivative trading himself--aha!
Here's what we need to do. Handcuff old Warren and haul him off to the slammer with all the employees of Goldman-Sachs--put them in Guantanamo--waterboard their old crooked asses--these are the terrorists in our midst.
We the People of the USA, like Bill Moyers said as he signed off on his last PBS "Bill Moyer's Journal" Friday eve, are now living in a Plutocracy. Plutocracy means we are now ruled by the wealthy. The money gang now owns us lock, stock, and barrel. Literally. The banks now own our foreclosed-on houses and property; hedge funds own all our buildings and developments; companies like Goldman-Sachs control the stock market and global finance schemes--they're all having a freakin' ball with OUR money.
And, yes, Old Bill Moyers finally threw in the towel. He had no effect against these birds--they control our media, too, don't you know. The only way to beat these crooks is through revolution--and you ain't gonna see no revolution out of We the People of the US any time soon. We're too afraid to revolt. I mean, look, we endured the worst president in American history, the rascal who along with his father and his Unka Dick put us into the financial and superstructure mess we're currently in. We had to power to impeach these crooked bastards, but no, we tolerated them--in fact we defended them by voting G.W. Bush in for a second term. We deserve to be reduced to peasants.
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The Big Oil Spill
Hey, President Obama, see, the drill, drill, drill thing really works. Look at the thousands of gallons of oil pouring out of that wildcattin' drilled hole in the ocean floor! Yahoo! Think of how much more oil must be under those offshore shelves that surround our Gulf of Mexico shores and along our Eastern Seaboard. We are desperate for oil! Fuck the fishing industry down there. Fuck the shrimp industry. OIL rules. OIL fuels our Plutocrats's fattening billfolds. This oil spill--worse than the Exxon Valdez spill--and by the way Exxon never paid their share of that clean up which is still going on this many years later. Suck up, buddies, we are desperate for OIL and energy--even to the point of killing ourselves over it--polluting our water supplies in order to retrieve little pockets of natural gas; now we're polluted our shorelines--all for OIL. We either find oil or we're gonna NUKE ourselves to DEATH.
Isn't it funny, we're not AFRAID of these sort of disasters waiting to happen. Of course, British Petroleum (how did they get control of not only our Gulf of Mexico drilling but also our Alaskan oil fields, too?), will not suffer one fucking bit from this spill.
Guess who they say may be responsible for the well's blowing up? Because the concrete cap that is laid down over the drill hole to stop this sort of explosion was laid down by, WOW, our old Dubai buddies, Halliburton! Unka Dick, by the way, is still reaping big bucks from his Halliburton holdings.
Life goes on. Fear's just one of us now. Especially here in New York City.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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