Rise

'All the news in the UK about China is negative', a friend said to me last year. She was from Beijing and silly enough, it hadn't occured to me before that. It will be about the young girl who is training too hard for the Olympics, about the amount of pollution the factories are creating in the drive for economic divinity or about media censorship. These things, are both true, noted and published. This selective 'news' coverage is not reserved for China. What we hear of Iraq and Pakistan, of Lebonon and the West Bank. We hear about the flooding in India. You rarely hear about the flooding in China which is both annual and severe. We don't hear about the NGO's working in the refugee camps in Lebonon, we just hear about the army crackdown. We hear about the West Bank when the IDF shoot and kill some Palestinians. We don't here about the ex IDF personnel who are against their government's military/political stance on Palestine.

Iraq (Mesopotamia) was the country that invented writing, was once the cradle of civilization. How does one think of it now? It's people with a decade of war (with Iran), then a decade of sanctions under UN authority (driving the country to virtual malnutrition and killing over 500,000 children- then Secretary of State Madeline Albright when asked of this cost she famously replied, 'I think the price is worth it') and now an invasion. The people live in a chaotic, lawless state. The young people have grown into a world where they know only of war, sanctions and invasion. If this was your country, how would you feel?

China is also an fairly old civilization. It's been around a long long time and probably only sniff at what other countries may think of the government of it's people, and just continue to strive forth. I once picked up a small travel book from the airport called, 'The Xenophobes guide to the Chinese' (part of a series including other countries). It said that 'people from other cultures who try to make fun of Chinese people, well, it's like a child trying to make fun of an adult. Chinese people know that their civilization is far older, the fact that the name CHINA, means 'Central State'. We hear about the relocation of villagers to build the Three Gorges Dam and the disappearing landscape of Beijing. Do we ever hear of the avant garde art scene at galleries 798? Or the kindness or ordinary people in te street? Or the impromptu free cinema screening in the middle of the road in a small factory town?

I am not saying that many of these countries have major issues. But that's all we hear about in the mainstream media. We never hear of the small and wonderful things that happen every single day in these countries. We can be blind to the strength and spirit of it's people and see it as an entity full of bad news. Just as one can see England as either full of twead wearing toffs and cockney geezers dealing with flooding and mad cows.

I liken to the fact that the US has the gall to suggest and lecture any country regarding human rights issues considering that slavery and aparthied existed legally for over 200 years and torture exists at a military facilities (Abu Graib, Guantanamo) and where the Death Penalty is still practiced. Yet there are wonderful people and things that happen everyday there.

I would like to end with a poem by Maya Angelou which partly governs my thoughts regarding the corporate media, manufacturing consent and the spirit and strength of people everywhere of which Maya Angelou is no doubt, such a person.


Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.


- J