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| America must care for its own not only its won USA to Afghanistan |
Commentary, editing by
Carolyn Bennett
On January 22, 2014, the New York Yankees bought Japanese
baseball player Masahiro Tanaka with a seven-year 155-million-dollar contract containing “an opt-out clause after the fourth year and
a full no-trade clause.” The 2014 Major League Baseball season began March 22,
the North American part of the season started on March 30 (ends September 28,
2014). Four months after the season began, on July 9, 2014, the
155-million-dollar-Masahiro Tanaka went on “the disabled list with right elbow
inflammation” and has not played in a game since.
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| New York's Yankee Baseball Stadium |
Among baseball’s highest-paid players, according to Forbes
and Wikipedia are New York Yankees’ players Derek Jeter (#35) $24.3 million (including
salary and winnings $15.3 million, endorsements $9 million); and Alex Rodriguez
(#48) $22.9 million (including $22.6 million in salary and winnings, endorsements $0.3
million).
Among Americans of the highest paid (top 15) sports players
in the world are: boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., #1 at $135 million; basketball
player LeBron James, 3# at $72.3 million; basketball player Kobe Bryant, #5 at $61.5
million; golfer Tiger Woods, #6 at $61.2 million; golfer Phil Mickelson,
#8, at $53.2 million; football (American football) player Matt Ryan, #10 at $43.8 million; and basketball player Derrick Rose, #13 at $36.6 million
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| America's homeless Human beings are still human though down on luck |
A
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mericans on the idiot box (I don’t watch but I hear tell and often listening to radio I hear repeats) are often heard saying, “We are a ‘Christian’
people” or a “‘Christian’ nation.” Well, if the actions and values of these people are Christian then I want no part
of Christianity -- EVER!
In its August 28, 2014, edition (online audio archived), Press
TV's “Inside Out” program reports that the United States of America’s “problem
with homelessness is one of the worst among [the world’s] developed nations.”
In my mind, this is carelessness, failure to care. Time and again, in so many
ways, Americans have failed to care for their own. Their “values” are turned around, upside down, or inside out.
Years ago without providing essential healthcare
infrastructure and staffing, Americans turned out mentally ill people from care
centers and threw them on to the streets.  |
| Homeless Human beings in USA |
Year after year these same makers of laws have taken America’s
young to one after another war – and prolonged wars. The wounded in mind, body
and spirit return to a privatized and otherwise daunting health careless system, to a depressed and
cruel capitalist job market, no jobs or grossly inadequate jobs. These wounded,
having been used and abused, are discarded onto the streets.
For many years reports have come through that the “good”
people of California have been dumping sick people from hospitals onto the
streets because these people couldn’t pay the capitalist-king’s price to have a
chance of getting well.
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| U.S. ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt 1948 Legacy Universal Declaration of Human Rights |
Cities fail to do what I suggested in a column years ago
when I saw homelessness in the shadow of the nation’s capitol, among all those
rich and entrenched lifers in the U.S. House and Senate and their lackeys,
handlers and lobbyists. I suggested not that we return to a medieval era of life
sentencing to dark wards of mental institutions but that we build centers of
care that heal, actively engage, help people transition to full independence,
ensure training and meaningful work. Build places like libraries (instead of restaurants
and gas stations) on every corner if need be. Uplift our people so that they
might contribute to our country. Let this define our ethos as a country that truly
cares for its own, for the benefit of our country.
But this hasn’t happened. America uses force – the very
opposite of “care” -- in every sector of its policy and practice, at every
level of government, at home and abroad.
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| Homeless Syrians |
In some U.S. cities today not only is being homeless a crime
punishable on the spot by imprisonment, which leads to more problems – even as buildings
are boarded up and left vacant and thousands of people are jobless and can’t
afford shelter, which is a human right under the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights – being the giver of food to homeless people is also a crime. In some
U.S. “Christian” cities, Inside Out reports, there are “officially instituted
laws that ban the practice of sharing food with homeless people.”
T
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hink force. Think hostility. Think of U.S. officials’ orders
of an interminably hostile presence cross the world: against Iraq, Iran,
Russia, Ukraine, China, Japan, the Koreas, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia,
Nigeria, Sudan, Congo, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Pakistan,
Afghanistan – to name only a few of the 150 countries where the United States
is deployed.
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| Homeless Afghans |
The world is brutally aware of American “values.”
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| Bangladeshi workers What about these women worker rights? |
The United Nations comprised of 193 member states in its
human rights report has noted what any sane person knows without an official
report-- that the U.S. criminalization of homelessness “‘raises concerns of
discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.’” In its usual manner toward the United States, the UN minces its words. The truth is, what the U.S. is doing is both criminal and immoral and should be stopped; would be stopped if the country had not religious leadership, but competent, courageous, moral and ethical leadership.
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| Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire 2012 111 workers died |
The portrait, the presentation and performance of our
officials, their partisan or tribal followers, and a fair number of the masses
show us, Americans, to be a violent people, an insensible, acutely selfish,
immoral people -- who undermine even their own best interest.
T
|
oday on the calendar is "Labor Day" in the United
States. This does not mean we celebrate labor or support laborers. As a matter
of fact, it means just the opposite. . We celebrate war and waste.
We like to shop, play the
lottery, celebrity watch. We want cheap stuff and slave labor making and
marketing cheap stuff. We want somebody else to suffer so we can photograph ourselves handing out “humanitarian”
aid. We want “other” human beings to die so we can publicly thank gods we have created in our own image that we are not “those” people.
We can and we must do better – not only because of how the
world’s peoples see and experience us but also because of the prior imperative,
indeed our duty to build for ourselves and our posterity a better and stronger
nation.
My latest on U.S. foreign relations NOW Available
UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us
World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations
Author Name: Carolyn LaDelle Bennett (edit profile)
Pen Name: Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Genre: POL040000
Author: Bennett
Published 2014 by Xlibris
9781499043136 E-Book $3.99 Title Live
9781499043143 6x9 Dust Jacket Hardcover $29.99 Title Live
9781499043150 6x9 Perfect Bound Softcover $19.99 Title Live
Sources and notes
The World's Highest-Paid Athletes, http://www.forbes.com/athletes/list/2/#tab:overall
“Forbes’ list of world's highest-paid athletes” From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_world%27s_highest-paid_athletes
http://www.forbes.com/athletes/
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mli45eimdj/1-floyd-mayweather-8/
“Criminalizing homelessness in America: Many US cities
officially instituted laws that ban the practice of sharing food with homeless
people, August 28, 2014, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/28/376866/criminalizing-homelessness-in-america/
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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