“I heard this jury say, ‘guilty’ 288 times–24 questions, 12 jurors. That’s the multiplication. I haven’t heard you apologize once,” Berman said before sentencing Dahrun Ravi to 30 days in jail. The sentence also includes three years probation, 300 hours of community service and over $11,000 in fines, 10K of which will be donated to an anti-bias organization.

The defense, led by the bumbling Steven Altman, who said he knew he was “climbing a mountain” seeking a leniency, asked for a stay of the sweetheart sentence. Come on, guy! I know you were hoping for no time behind bars for your client, but with 15 felony convictions, that had to seem unlikely. For their part prosecutors, led by Julia McClure also asked for a stay on behalf of the state. The state, blind-sided by the short jail sentence, is seeking a prison term, the maximum of which could be ten years. The judge denied the stays. Barring action from an appellate court, Ravi will report to jail on May 31.

The sentence tossed a shocking lid on an emotional morning, filled with victim impact statements from Tyler Clementi’s father, mother and brother as well as a letter from “M.B.,” Clementi’s fellow victim of the notorious spy-camming. Both Ravi’s parents also spoke passionately on behalf of leniency for their son. But Ravi, who was expected to address the court,remained mum.

Had Ravi, who was only 18 and, like his roommate Tyler Clementi, in the first few weeks of his freshman year at Rutgers, when the notorious web cam spying incidents (described by his defense team repeatedly as juvenile pranks) occurred, publicly apologized such a sentence might sit better with the Clementi family as well as gay rights advocates, and the community at large.

Quick trigger Twitter fingers display a mixed bag of reactions. Some suggest Ravi got away with murder. Others call the sentencing “compassionate.”

My reaction is somewhere down the middle. It’s strange because before viewing the sentencing I was hoping for compassion, playing it out in my dramatist’s mind as coming from the Clementis. But that’s not how it unfolded. The Clementis, while not vengeful, certainly asked for accountability and justice. Without offering a term, I’m sure they didn’t have a meager 30 day jail stint in mind, when the spoke of “consequences.”

Listening to all the pre-sentencing arguments and letters, as well as the judge’s early harsh words, I believed a prison sentence was, in fact, warranted; hoped it would be on the short end, say 1-3 years. I don’t believe incarceration is the answer to every offense or offender, and I believe, despite the prosecution’s protestations to the contrary, had Tyler Clementi not committed suicide ( Ravi was not implicated or charged with his death) this case would never have come before the court. It would have been handled internally at Rutgers. Still, Ravi refused a plea deal that would have avoided any incarceration. He turned it down and put the Clementi family ( as well as his own) through an excruciating ordeal. In his self-serving newspaper and “20/20″ interviews, Ravi said he couldn’t take the deal because he couldn’t admit to any bias. Such an admission, he maintained, would be lying.

I’m not so sure Ravi understands the insidious ways cultural prejudices can seep in and take up residence in one’s heart and mind.

If Ravi truly learns any hard lessons those insights will most likely be uncovered as he completes the mandated anti-bias counseling program that his probation sentence includes. He is a young man, and surely does not need to be locked away–or deported ( both “M.B.” in his letter and later Judge Berman, indicated influence, on his behalf, with immigration.) And he doesn’t deserve to be the poster boy for anti-gay bullying.

I wish some measure of closure for the Clementis, though as Judge Berman said, that will be hard to ever achieve. I know they’ve started the Tyler Clementi Foundation and hope the work they do there will grant them some solace as it helps countless people fight bias, find refuge and lead healthy and joyous lives. And I hope Dahrun Ravi cultivates the empathy that eluded him as a teenager and grows into a generous and productive adult. Thanks to Judge Berman’s generosity, he’ll have an early jump-start on his second chance.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

Desiring, dionysiac, obsessive, the hyperconsumption society is kept in delirium of precarious sustainability by a desperate market economy, as its civilizational ex libris imperative: it is necessary to produce in excess, it is necessary to consume in excess, making the excess itself, by alienation of responsibility, the causal referent invested of the valorative power of engine that makes the capitalist system work: the excess is the reproducer of exclusions, of the inequalities that guarantee the active maintenance of the capitalist system’s capability to generate and reproduce the constitutive “surplus-values” vital to its survival.

The excess, murdering the middle class danger, guarantees the geometric growth of unemployment, poverty, hunger, exclusion, making available the slaves that feed the totemic capitalist machine. It is necessary that the poor become miserable for the rich to become opulent, the accumulation of wealth depends upon it. The system needs to accumulate, in order to relaunch itself.

Hyperconsumption is the autopoietic pathos of sustainability of the capitalist system’s (re)production mode, deliberately invested of the role of system’s engine. Unemployment, increasing suicides and hunger are consequences of a capitalist kairos, as collateral damage, thus it is considered by the dominant elites, with the justification that sacrifices must be made for the “greater good”: the survival of the “capitalist mode of production”, supported by the neoliberal dynamics, characterized by a Darwinian competition of egotistic somatization, responsible for the current systemic crisis.

The current systemic crisis is a crisis of the system and a crisis of existence in the system, and because we are the system, if the system collapses, so will we, we all, including the Laplacian elites, because we are all in the same raft, rich or poor.

Capitalism, with its large consuming belly managed by a small brain, has attained its Imperium phase. If the miserables resist, then, the Imperium offers a misery-imposed suicide as solution.

Stuckler, Basu, Suhrcke, Coutts and Mckee, in a study published in “The Lancet, Vol. 378, Issue 9786, pages 124 to 125, 9 July 2011”, confirmed how unemployment growth seems to be associated with increase in suicides among people younger than 65 years.

The authors’ study addresses, in particular, the 2008 recession. The study shows that, as the unemployment rose, the decreasing trend in suicide rates reversed in both new EU Member States and old EU Member States, with a larger percentual increase in the old States: less than 1% increase, in 2008, for the new members, while the increase for the old members was close to 7%. In 2009, the suicides “increased further”, in both old and new EU members, accompanying the increase in unemployment.

The study also concludes that road traffic fatalities fell considerably, in particular in the new EU members, which usually registered high road traffic fatalities. Suicides and road traffic fatalities registered as the two main drivers of short-term mortality.

Suicides, in Europe, rose mainly in countries facing the current Government debt crisis. Greece had a rise of about 17% in suicides, while Ireland had about a 13% rise. In Portugal, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), in 2010, there took place 1101 deaths by suicide which surpassed by 86 the deaths registered in road traffic accidents during the same period.

In an interview to the Diário Económico (Friday, May 4, 2012, page 48), Fernando Santos, the current coach of Greece by the Hellenic Football Federation, stated that a general apathy state is lived today in Greece: “Greece was one of the countries with the greatest growth, and all of a sudden”,…, “people thought: where is the money?”,…, Fernando Santos recalls this as a phase of indignation, which gave way to hope, with a possible solution of the problem by the “Troika”, but nothing of the sort came, instead, the worst of the scenarios took place,…, to a conflict phase, a “general apathy” and resentment followed, especially towards Germany and Angela Merkel.

Unemployment is not the only rising trend, the food crisis accompanies the current economic crisis.

Looking at FAO’s SOCO 2009 report, in the first half of 2008, food prices reached the highest levels, in over 30 years.

This trend, still according to FAO’s report, began in the second half of 2006, with the rising of the world prices of most food commodities, and, during the first half of 2008, the international US dollar prices of cereals also attained the highest levels in over 30 years.

In 2009, FAO predicted that this trend would continue, such that the world was placed before a “global food insecurity crisis”.

FAO’s predictions survived the test of falsifiability: the monthly real food price index, per data from FAO, has shown an increasing exponential growth trend, which seems to begin in 2001.

Source: FAO data trend estimated using Excel

The exponential growth in trend of food prices is accompanied by an also growth in volatility, which only adds to the crisis. From month to month. the variations in the food prices have become increasingly larger, in particular, in the last few years.

Source: Variation calculated for FAO's monthly real food price index data, in the period of 1990 to 2012

Food price volatility affects, by impact, the excluded majority: the ones that most suffer with this crisis, since not only are the food prices exponentially increasing in trend, they are doing so with greater uncertainty: from one month to the next, people may suffer a sudden hike in food prices.

The food crisis makes even more precarious the excluded majority’s survival. The food crisis is a crisis of existence is a crisis of survival is a crisis of life is a crisis of dignity.

It is interesting to look, in this instance, at the capitalist system’s mechanisms of classification. FAO addresses the food crisis as “a food insecurity crisis”…, “food insecurity”?! This is a pious capitalist term for “very hungry” and for “starving”, an exercise of exclusion by euphemism, very aesthetic, indeed.

One may see high levels of structural unemployment, suicides and hunger in countries with governments, in cognitive simulacrum, imposing increasing austerity measures, stimulating further inequalities and more unemployment, suicides and hunger, shortening the time between crises and shortening the lifetime of its populations, the macabre solution for the cost of aging populations.

Perhaps it is worth remembering some inspiring fragments of Roger Romero’s “Land of the Dead” plot: Fiddler’s Green, the place where the rich and powerful live in luxury, while the rest of the population struggles in desperation of survival; Fiddler’s Green, the land of the rich, protected by an electric fence and rivers. The zombies, then, come to Fiddler’s Green for reductive eating, breaking down Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”)…, after Romero’s zombies, in the land of the dead, all are equal…

Maria Odete Madeira is a private sector researcher of science philosophy and systems science. She is particularly interested in ontology, cognition and neurocognition. You may find Maria Odete at her website, Twitter, Google+ and FaceBook.

Just how peaceful the protest was, of course, was controversial at the time. In the days following the shootings, some people–including President Nixon–sided with the Guardsmen’s actions. “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy,” he said, referring to students running around with bricks and (possibly) torching the R.O.T.C. building.

Yet scrutiny by the media, the F.B.I. and Nixon’s Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest –along with multiple civil lawsuits–made it apparent that the students’ actions did not warrant 61 shots ringing into a crowded and chaotic campus quad. “Kent State was a national tragedy, ” the Scranton Commission concluded. “We must learn from the particular horror of Kent State and ensure it is never repeated.”

The military and police have, in fact, learned important lessons on crowd control and riot prevention from the massacre. No doubt countless lives have been saved as a result of more deliberate planning and careful handling of potentially volatile situations.

Still the legacy of that dark day, captured in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s classic anthem “Ohio,” is a loss of innocence and a deeply embedded cynicism that pervades our national psyche and percolates particularly during tumultuous times. Something for protesters of all political persuasions to keep in mind.

Never forget.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

The latest act of our most recent high profile American tragedy played out in real time courtroom theatrics on Friday. George Zimmerman, the reviled Trayvon Martin shooter, now charged with second-degree murder, was granted $150, 000 bond. But the real drama, igniting audible gasps in the packed courtroom, came when Zimmerman took the stand and briefly testified.

“I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son,” Zimmerman, 28, said in a soft voice as he took the stand with shackles at his feet and waist. “I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not.” His lawyer, Mark O’Mara, later explained in a presser that his client was directly answering the Martin family’s public questions regarding Trayvon’s age and whether he had been carrying a gun.

Trayvon’s parents sat silently through the comments; his father Tracy Martin visibly shaken and weeping. They scurried out of the crowded courtroom after Judge Lester set bail. Their attorney, Benjamin Crump, labeled Zimmerman’s apology “self-serving” and described the family’s reaction to bond as “devastated.” It’s unclear if they were expecting a higher bail ( the prosecution had asked for a minimum of $ 1 million) or for a denial of bond altogether. In either event, it seems the prosecutor’s office hadn’t prepared them for the inevitable, Bail is a part of our system; granted frequently even in first degree murder cases.

Buckle up, folks. We’re in for another high-profile controversial case, and the full tilt media circus that surrounds it. In the bond hearing, alone, we gained insights into Zimmerman, O’Mara’s courtroom prowess and the strengths and weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. Zimmerman’s past criminal record came under some scrutiny, including a violent altercation with police, described by O’Mara as his client “coming to defense of a friend.”

At the press conference, O’Mara, who is the anti-Jose Baez, exuding, in equal measure, both the savvy and humility of a truly seasoned defense attorney, made one possible slip-up. While discussing the incident with cops, he said Zimmerman acted because “in his head” they were doing something to his friend. If this comes before a jury, it may be evidence of Zimmerman’s propensity toward a paranoid mindset.

On the other hand, Zimmerman’s appearance and demeanor–both far more fragile than earlier photos–belie his media portrait as a quick-trigger racist vigilante. He may well be his own best witness.

Photographs just released showing bloody gashes on his head and what appears, at this point, anyway, to be a rather flimsy prosecution case may also serve to set him free.

Of course, we don’t know what will come; how all the evidence will play out in court (or exactly what that evidence is). “The special prosecutors don’t want to show their full hand,” Crump told reporters, indicating there is enough to warrant the second degree murder charge.

Let’s hope that’s true. Otherwise, if this prosecutor has over-charged what seems like a manslaughter case, the country, and most importantly the Martin family, may face another round of reckless Florida injustice deja vu. Such an outcome will surely bring them another brutal brush with devastation.

For now, at least the legal process, however imperfect it may prove to be, has finally started in earnest. That’s all the Martins had asked for. Now that they’ve gotten it, hopefully they’ll find some measure of justice in that.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

IF I WAS GOD

After a lifetime of studying and practicing religion, I decided I just couldn’t take it anymore. If anyone just stopped and applied any kind of logic to how religion operates, they would have to come to the conclusion that no god would be as petty, cruel and/or illogical as the ones religions across the world depict.

Still, just because I have come to despise religion and the limits it places on mankind, does not mean I have dismissed god from my life. On the contrary…, I still very much believe in a just and sensible god. But to imagine what this god is like, I would have to do the most unspeakable thing imaginable. I would actually have to pretend I was god. I would put myself in his shoes and evaluate everything he has to put with. It didn’t take long to realize how religion has taken everything good about god, and made it bad.

So let me present to you my version of:

“IF I WAS GOD…,”

• I would want you to look to me for what you can do…, not for what you can’t.
• I would want you to think for yourself and stop bothering me about every little damn thing.
• I’d tell you enough with the Hail Marys already! Enough is enough!
• I wouldn’t want poor people pressured into giving what little money they have to build crystal cathedrals.
• I would not want you killing in my name.
• I wouldn’t give a damn about the words you spoke. I’d only care about the hate behind those words.
• I wouldn’t want you worrying about what your neighbor is doing as long as he/she isn’t hurting anyone.
• I don’t want you telling people I’m going to send them to hell.
• I’d want you to stop depending on the manual. (Bible) When it comes time to deciding what is right or wrong…, use your brain. You know damn well what is right & wrong.
• I’d tell you to stop hiding behind the Bible. Stop using it to justify what you want to be right or wrong.
• Actually…, I’d tell you to throw the Bible away. It’s been twisted so much through the years that even I don’t recognize it anymore.
• I’d tell you the same thing Jesus said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That explains everything and anything.
• I wouldn’t want you getting pregnant and having a baby if you are not prepared or willing to take responsibility for him/her.
• I would say the best way to stop abortion is not get pregnant in the first place. Use birth control.
• I would ask you to have more faith in yourself.
• I would be glad that you believed in me, but we’d have to have a talk about this religion crap. It’s totally missing the point.
• I’d ask you WTF is a Pope?
• I wouldn’t want your belief in me, to limit you.
• I wouldn’t want guilt to be your guide.
• I’d want you to stop worrying about pleasing me all the time.
• I’d want you to be what you are. Be good…, but be what you are.
• I would tell you I don’t give a damn about the robes and special clothing.
• I wouldn’t care what foods you did or didn’t eat…, especially on Fridays.
• I wouldn’t care about these locations you feel a need to travel to because you think you will get closer to me.
• I wouldn’t care if you danced
• I wouldn’t care if you played cards
• I wouldn’t care if you went to the movies
• I wouldn’t care if you drank. Excess is what is harmful. Not the substance
• I’d laugh at those burka things. Like WTF are you even thinking?
• I wouldn’t want you punishing people for breaking these frivolous rules you keep making up
• I’d demand that you stop using me as an excuse for your wars, your bigotry and your obsessions.
• I’d be pissed that you use me to control people.
• I’d tell you to quit your silly rituals and superstitions. I mean what a joke!
• I’d want you to do things because they’re right. Not because you fear being sent to hell.
• I wouldn’t care less if you masturbated. In fact I’d recommend it.
• I would tell you arranged and forced marriages are ludicrous.
• I would say that you are in no position to judge others. How dare you?
• I would not care if you wanted to mangle your penis. But don’t do it for me.
• I’d tell you the only person you need to confess your sins to is yourself.
• I’d tell you stop repeating and chanting the same damn prayers over and over.
• I’d tell you stop sending your money to those idiots on TV who say I talk to them. If I talked to anyone, it wouldn’t be the. And I wouldn’t tell them to send have you send money.
• I’d tell a lot of you to just mellow out!
• I’d tell you to stop worrying what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.
• I’d tell you very loudly; “STOP USING ME AS YOUR CRUTCH!!! Stand up for goodness sake!”

Ordinary Americans will pickup the tab by getting critical social programs standing between them and dire poverty drastically cut. The US social safety net is already one of the worst in the industrial world and what could be left of it will put the United States on par with developing countries and banana republics.

If America is quickly rising again as the main global financial liability, the rot at the core of this  is a lot more a moral issue than an economic one. What the United States ruling class is telling the huge majority of the population louder and clearer is a simple message: “If you are poor, sick or old-unless you are rich- you are on your own”. It is the old and simplistic American “philosophy” of “picking yourself up by your own bootstraps”. But how can you do this when you don’t have any shoes? How can you do this in a system where incarceration costs outspend public education budget by 6 to 1? How can you do this in a society which spend more than a third of its taxpayers money in funding the military and still do not have universal health care?

The continuing US financial crisis is just a mere reflection of a deep moral and ethic crisis decades in the making. When a society become so corrupt and amoral that it stops caring and protecting the weak, the sick, and the poor it should and will eventually collapse. Lasting social structures are based on very few key principles. The main one is that any progress  and benefits must be shared by the majority of the people as opposed to just a few. Otherwise, if a system is build primarily on inequality it will eventually implode. The United States of America is almost at this systemic breaking point where the exploited and oppressed are finally seeing the myth of the “American Dream” as the ultimate charade to keep them slaving away for the sole benefit of about 1 percent of the population.

Of course Washington’s political class belongs to and does the bidding for this 1 percent of Americans for whom the concept of the American Dream is real. But from time to time some politicians strike a populist tone, and pretend to be on the side of  the “little guy”.

These platitudes to the masses, masked as revolutionary calls for social and economic justice, are disingenuous. If they were honest, these servants of the oligarchs and plutocrats would say: “You get the sacrifice, we get the wealth”.

We might be at a boiling point when a real American revolution, the first real American Revolution, will just explode to change, by force if necessary, a system that is morally bankrupt and doesn’t have the intelligence or the ability to reform itself.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Gilbert Mercier.

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Gilbert Mercier Medical Recovery Fund Raiser

On February 21, 2012, Gilbert Mercier, News Junkie Post Editor in Chief, suffered an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm.. a myocardial infarction… a massive heart attack.  Gilbert was given only a 10% chance of surviving the surgery that required he be put in a comatose state in order to both repair the damage and perform a bypass.  Fortunately, due to his physical strength, as well as the indefatigable spirit and tenacious character that he brings to every challenge he faces, Gilbert has survived both that initial surgery and a subsequent surgery in early March.

Gilbert’s recovery and rehabilitation will be a long process.  He is surrounded by loving family and friends but his intense medical needs and the astronomical costs for them will continue for quite some time.  The all-too-familiar story of how the American health care system can eviscerate a person’s personal financial security, regardless of insurance, is playing itself out with a cherished member of our family.

We will be regularly featuring some of Gilbert’s thought provoking and challenging pieces over the next few months.  A donation account for Gilbert has been set up at WePay.  Donations can be made HERE. It is our hope that all of you who have been affected, educated, and challenged by Gilbert’s work will assist him in his time of need and help provide the necessary support so that he can return to his former level of activity and resume his mission of informing, agitating and engaging.

Sincere gratitude from the News Junie Post family for your donation.

bannkrupcy

A few years ago, the much maligned prune hired a PR firm and emerged with a flashy new advertising campaign and new name: the dried plum. The other day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney shined up the controversial health insurance mandate by calling it “the personal responsibility provision.”

A prune by another name? Call it what you will, but that crucial heart of the Affordable Health Care Act, now the center of debate at the Supreme Court, could put a kibosh on the whole deal. While Court watchers say it could go either way, most lean toward a conservative 5-4 toss out, The question, then, becomes, can any of the health care overhaul be salvaged? Justice Scalia signaled all would be trashed, while Justice Ginsburg asked “why must it be a wrecking ball and not a salvage job?”

Some commentators suggest only the very fringe provisions, the overstuffed pork that swelled the Act to 2,700 pages ( the size inspired Justice Scalia to invoke a sardonic reference to the 8th Amendment and the Justices facing “cruel and unusual punishment” reading the darn thing). So while provisions for black lung and Native Americans may remain main intact, pre-existing conditions and the spiraling premium pricing blitz will be back in play. In other words, the insurance companies will be back in the driver’s seat without the “mandated” influx of new customers.

Politically, some on the left think a loss will really be a win. James Carville, who was around for the Clinton health care debacle offered his curious take on CNN’s “Situation Room” on Tuesday.

“I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party. You know, what the Democrats are going to say, and it is completely justified, ‘We tried, we did something, go see a 5-4 Supreme Court majority.’”

Okay, but how exactly is that good news for the Dems?

“Then the Republican Party will own the health care system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that. That is not spin,” Carville said.

Well, there may be some truth there, and certainly the Repubs have absolutely no alternative to what they’ve dubbed ‘ObamaCare.’ The Party of No has been all about shouting down anything that has the President’s fingerprints on it and doing their best to make Obama a one-termer ( something which, despite the economy and perhaps this defeat, is so far from good enough Sarah Palin could never see it from her back porch). And Romney, the likely GOP nominee, has his own problems as the “godfather” of Obamacare.

Still, politics aside, who will suffer? Millions of Americans, denied care do to pre-existing conditions and prohibitive costs. I know I’ve heard the leftist chants to re-energize and re-organize the Single Payer efforts, But how many years, realistically, will that take? The Affordable Health Care Act, as messy as the legislative sausage making was, holds so many vital provisions that would help so many Americans. Steps in the right direction now threatened by a perilous obstacle course.

If we continue the status quo, the skyrocketing costs will soar to levels that will surely toss many more out of the insurance market. And the burden will be passed on to those of us fortunate enough to cling to coverage.

Spin it any way you want, left, right or center, but regardless of your political affiliation, if The Supremes strike down the mandate and, with it, likely the whole shebang, it will be a lose-lose for all Americans.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

Gilbert’s recovery and rehabilitation will be a long process.  He is surrounded by loving family and friends but his intense medical needs and the astronomical costs for them will continue for quite some time.  The all-too-familiar story of how the American health care system can eviscerate a person’s personal financial security, regardless of insurance, is playing itself out with a cherished member of our family.

We will be regularly featuring some of Gilbert’s thought provoking and challenging pieces over the next few months.  A donation account for Gilbert has been set up at WePay.  Donations can be made HERE. It is our hope that all of you who have been affected, educated, and challenged by Gilbert’s work will assist him in his time of need and help provide the necessary support so that he can return to his former level of activity and resume his mission of informing, agitating and engaging.

Sincere gratitude from the News Junie Post family for your donation.

Our Broken World: The Toxic Nexus of Power and Money

By Gilbert Mercier

A Crisis of Ontology

The deadly disease of our global capitalist system is rather easy to understand from a philosophical standpoint. The crisis is ontological, a profound existential turmoil. Human beings are currently defined and valued  by what they have, not by what they are. The quantitative aspect of  our lives is in the forefront of all human interactions-either between groups or individuals within a group-while the qualitative aspect has been pushed aside, not even on the back burner of our collective consciousness, but literally into the trash of our social interactions. Usually, people are gauged by their assets, incomes, and cars they drive not by evaluating what contributions they make to the common good. We live in a world where a person is defined by quantity not quality, and it is probably our biggest systemic problem.

This is reflected by countless examples in the popular culture with expressions such as “show me the money”, “money talks” or the famous line in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface”: “First you get the money, than you get the power”. Poor kids, dreaming of a better future, are constantly bombarded by the spectacle of the “bling, the cool cribs, the fancy rides and the sexy babes” which are the trademarks of most Hip Hop music videos. Money is always center stage in this out of reach universe of  “players” which regardless of any tangible cultural meaning serve as heroes  and role models for the disenfranchised. It is the deadly equation of money= success + happiness + self respect =power. The same toxic component motivates some of the brightest and best educated young people in the United States to opt for a career on Wall Street instead of becoming doctors, engineers or scientists.

In our global society, only money gives a few people access to power which in return allows the very same people the possibility to accumulate even more wealth. A typical example of this vicious cycle is the constant revolving door between investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs and the highest jobs at the US Treasury Department. Top finance executives  with a taste for power- such as Hank Paulson or Larry Summers- under the premises of an interest in “public service”, work for governmental branches for a few years, then go back to their extremely lucrative jobs in finance, and so on.

Anxiety Rising: Occupy Versus Fear and Paradigm Paralysis

Some people are still living under the pretense that “things” in our broken global system will eventually fix themselves up spontaneously by some kind of miracle. Of course it will not happen, and this model  is, by essence, the definition of magical thinking. Recently, a Haitian woman, interviewed for the occasion of the second anniversary of  the earthquake, said that she was “putting her trust in god not in people” to rebuild Haiti from the horrific disaster. With a rising uncertainty and global anxiety building up like a pressure cooker, most people are scared and either try to escape reality by putting their heads in the sand or are convinced that the global system can be salvaged by making changes from within.

But, what they refuse to see is that following this model of a “business as usual” mentality impair their judgments and lock them into the box of paradigm paralysis. Even so most people feel that we have already entered an extraordinary period of global paradigm shift, the fear of the unknown makes them want to hang on to a system in advance state of decay. More people worldwide are getting aware of the fact that it is not a question of if the system will collapse but rather when.

The global Occupy movement has two functions in this process: firstly, to be the main catalyst for systemic change, secondly, as one of the architects setting up the foundations for a new global system where quality not quantity shall finally  prevail in human relationships. Turning what seems to be Utopian into a reality is the challenge, and it  is what this brave new world is all about. It is only a question of reaching a certain critical mass, and of  developing  the psychological ability to welcome the unknown, without fear, and to enter into uncharted territories.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Magalie L’Abbe.

It’s not the first time our national albatross, racism, has collided with the mighty lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, but the Trayvon Martin tragedy has sparked an outrage, so loud and so visceral, it has re-opened wounds and re-ignited debates that simply cannot be quashed.

In a brief presser Friday (to announce the changing of the guard at the World bank), President Obama fielded one question about the Martin case. His response was measured and thoughtful. He called on all of us to do some “soul searching.” But it was his pointed and rather poignant acknowledgement, “if I had a son he would look like Trayvon,” that brings it home for so many. Black parents, especially those of teenage boys and young men, are angered and, frankly, petrified for their sons’ safety.

Just imagine what that feels like. For both the parents and the children.

Trayvon’s mother talked openly and bravely about her anguish on “Politics Nation” with Al Sharpton on MSNBC earlier this week. And Jonathan Capehart, a columnist for The Washington Post, talked first hand about the anxieties young African American males grapple with on a daily basis. Watch the excerpts from Thursday’s “Morning Joe.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The soul searching needs to start in Sanford, Florida. Police Chief Bill Lee’s “temporary” leave of absence needs to become a resignation or termination. George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch commando needs to, at the very least, surrender his gun before the Grand Jury convenes in April. Remember: when police officers are involved in a shooting, even one deemed a “righteous shoot,” they must surrender their weapons and go on desk duty.

Florida Governor Mike Scott has, after extensive pressure, finally, announced a task force to examine the case, and as we reported earlier in the week, the Department of Justice has already launched its own independent investigation.A local Grand Jury won’t meet until April 10. In the meantime, Zimmerman remains free. And, as far as we know, that means he’s still free to carry that same gun he used to kill Trayvon.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Senate President Mike Haridopolos rejected calls to re-examine the controversial Stand Your Ground law that emboldened Zimmerman to gun down Martin, and has, so far, kept him out of jail.

In an e-mail to Think Progress a spokesperson wrote:

“The Senate President feels that Governor Scott is currently taking all of the appropriate steps to address the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin. Additionally, the Senate President is confident that the circumstances surrounding this shooting will be closely examined by lawmakers, and if the Senate concludes that laws need to be revised they will be addressed in the future.”

The future is now, Senator. Since Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law took effect in 2005 the cases of justifiable homicide have jumped from an average of 13 a year to 36. Senator Chris Brown, a Democrat from Broward County, is penning a law that would prevent a shooter from invoking the controversial statute if he/she was at anytime during the altercation, the “aggressor or provocateur.”

Let our soul searching begin.

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By now the latest deaths of war correspondents covering the crisis in Syria is old news.  It does not take much to know there will be more deaths in the future. These latest followed the equally unfortunate death of Anthony Shadid as he was leaving Syria during an unauthorized trip to cover the story. Review what takes place in the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and in other repressive and autocratic regimes. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, including the aforementioned three, 14 journalists in the world have already died in 2012. By the time I post this column, that number could well increase. Forty-seven journalists were killed in 2011. Since 1992, 909 journalists died doing their job.

Unfortunately, foreign correspondents, and even those journalists working in their home countries, are targets of anyone who opposes the truth and tried to keep it from surfacing. Reporters are now the enemy. Sadly, they die unnecessarily. They die more frequently than in the past. If they do not die, it is worth repeating that they remain targets of those they hope to expose for doing wrong.

The nature of the burgeoning civil war in Syria give me the chance to reflect on my days as NBC’s bureau chief in Saigon, during the Vietnam War, from early 1966 through late 1968.

It was a different war, a different time. I usually had five TV correspondents and one full-time radio reporter. I had at minimum five full TV crews composed of a cameraman, a soundman, and a correspondent. With the freelance cameramen at my call, I might, on any day, have as many as nine or ten cameras in the field covering the war.  It means that I could have fifteen or twenty people covering the war, not including staff drivers who got the crews to the ever changing front, where the troops were fighting, or to the airport for helicopter and fixed wing flights to cover the action.

We covered combat about 90 percent of the time.  I sent the crews into the field every day. Their lives were almost always in danger, especially when the fire zone they were in was hot with incoming enemy fire. But journalists were not targets.

With as many as 500,000 troops in Vietnam and usually upwards to 100,000 Americans in the field doing battle with the Viet Cong or main force North Vietnamese troops, it was not difficult to find the action that the producers in New York wanted for their news shows.

My staff knew the risks of being in combat. We often discussed what I called “ a considered risk.” In other words, know where you were, act accordingly, and do not do anything foolish that would endanger you or any member of your team. Especially be careful never to endanger the unit you were covering by doing anything irrational, always possible in combat. More importantly, always try your best to get out safely.

Though 63 journalists died in the Vietnam War, they did not die because they were targets of “enemy” troops. When in the field, unless one did something stupid or outrageous, you soon learned what you could or could not do in combat or under fire. That helped keep you alive and did not give the other side an opportunity to shoot your way. Terror was a frequent tactic of the Viet Cong, but that terror was usually directed against the South Vietnamese, and usually confined to the villages. Yes, terror made its way into the cities, but the Vietnamese troops and their allies – mainly American, Korean, and Australian troops – were the enemy of the Viet Cong, not the journalists who covered them.

Except for Iraq, when in full bloom, and in Afghanistan where troops still regularly patrol the country and frequently engage the enemy, most other conflicts around the world are of a different scale and type. Unfortunately, journalists will keep on dying. Unarmed, they are easy to kill. The true stories that journalists tell are necessary for freedom to flourish, and freedom is the one thing that terrorist groups and oppressive governments fear most.