Taj Mahal

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

The Battle Between The Rich And The Poor

Historians and politicians have said we will always have the rich and the poor with us. The centuries have proven this because wealth and poverty have lasted a long time. But time is getting to be at warp speed. A very rich man by the name of Shah Jahan who ruled part of the Indian subcontinent of India in the 17th century built the Taj Mahal in 1631, certainly one of the most famous buildings in the world, as a beautiful tribute to his wife known as “The Chosen One Of The Palace.” She died at the age of 38 after giving birth to their 14th child.

The Taj Mahal was designed to represent the Islamic vision of Paradise. The site was carefully selected so that the image of the building would be reflected in the water of the nearby Yumana River. The entire shrine covers 42 acres and has numerous gardens with many buildings containing inlays of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, coral from Arabia, turquoise from Tibet, and jade from China. The buildings themselves are constructed of marble and sandstone. The entire complex must be considered to be the most expensive tomb and monument to love ever built in the world.

But the Yumana River doesn’t reflect much anymore. Cities upstream dump raw sewage into the river while storm drains from the nearby city of Agra carry human and animal excrement, litter, and garbage. The white marble of the Taj Mahal has been turning yellow from the methane gas generated by the refuse in the river and on its banks. The Yumana is also an ad hoc cemetery for animals and the dead children of the poor who cannot afford funerals and burial places.

Shah Jan had employed the finest architects and builders of the times—who led thousands of other workers who were not paid “living” wages. Such practices created greater gaps between the rich and the poor. The environmental conditions that are damaging the Taj Mahal continue to exist in “modern” India. The best symbol of the Indian rich-poor gap is the 27-story skyscraper private home built by an Indian electronics billionaire in the middle of one of the poorest sections of Mumbai. There’s a message in here someplace.

The Signs Of Future Trouble In The World

Perhaps the tipping point in the battle between the rich and poor is about to be reached. I have said in a previous column that World War III has started. New signs are being added daily. Mexico is such a mess from the battle between drug cartels that the Mexican rich no longer drive cars near their homes for fear of being hijacked, kidnapped, held for ransom, or killed. Beheading is a popular form of message in Mexico. New “airlines” are being established near the borders of the U.S. and Mexico to carry the rich across the border in safety. GID Express based in McAllen, Texas flies rich passengers from Monterrey, Tampico, and Ciudad Victoria to border cities in the United States for shopping excursions. GID flies 12-passenger planes to Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport. The airline carried 10,500 passengers across the border to McAllen and over 8,300 flew on to Brownsville in 2010. Charter flights run as high as $1,300 an hour. AeroMexico with 50-seat aircraft now flies regular routes between Brownsville and close Mexican cities. Planes are often filled to capacity. Wealthy Mexicans still like to shop and vacation in the U.S. but do not want to be added to the list of 35,000 to 40,000 Mexicans killed in the drug wars in the last five years. Flights are not cheap. A flight from Monterrey to Brownsville of 120 miles runs $377. The two-hour wait at the airport because it is an “international flight” is actually about 1.5 hours longer than the flight.

Wealthy Mexicans now own about 50,000 homes in San Antonio’s gated communities. A wealthy San Antonio resident says, “I’ve never seen so many Maseratis and Porsches in my neighborhood.” And Mercedes, too. Juarez, the most violent Mexican drug city, is directly across the border from El Paso. It has a “temporary” population of two million and had 230,000 residents move North or South in 2010. This movement of people is called the “Mexodus.” Another indication of Mexican flight: private jet flights between Mexico and San Antonio have doubled in three years to 3,997 in 2010. Some Mexican CEOs commute to their offices in Mexico by plane.

Rival drug cartels attack each other’s casinos now in order to “get even.” The Mexican Army is presently raiding these casinos because of the 52 innocent bingo and blackjack players killed in a Monterrey casino fire set by nine members of a drug cartel. No gamblers were beheaded this time.

We May Have A New Battle Of Britain

The recent economic riots in Britain have caused Brits to do some self-searching. Unemployed and poorly educated inner-city youth plundered exclusive shops and burned them, resulting in five deaths and thousands of arrests in what has been called the worst riots in Britain in a generation. But London authorities are slowly realizing, as an article in an Aug. 26 issue of the LA Times put it: “Greed and contempt for the rules (of society) aren’t just the preserve of the thugs who smashed store windows and helped themselves to plasma TVs and designer clothes. The same disregard for social responsibility drove the bankers who rewarded themselves big bonuses while peddling dubious financial products, the members of Parliament who bought stereos or made lavish home improvements at taxpayer expenses (in numerous recent scandals), and the police officers who took bribes from Rupert Murdoch’s London journalists.”

One of the most conservative newspapers in Britain, the Daily Telegraph, put it bluntly about the class it normally supports: “Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing….stretches up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet…It is not just its damaged youths but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.” The LA Times writers added: “This is now a country [Britain] where top businessmen are celebrated, not criticized, for their cleverness at avoiding corporate taxes, which help pay for the infrastructure that smooths their success and the school system that educates their workforce.” Isn’t the same thing happening in the United States?

The Prophetic Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens certainly qualifies as the most dedicated writer of the rich-poor gap in “Oliver Twist,” “David Copperfield,” “Bleak House,” and a dozen other serialized novels about the poor and wealthy classes. Dickens traveled throughout the U.S. in 1842, and at the conclusion of his travels, interviews, and observations, he wrote a letter to his best friend William Macready after watching a Congressional debate on the U.S. budget: “This is not the Republic I came to see. This is not the Republic of my imagination. Look at the exhausted Treasury; the paralyzed government; the unworthy representatives of a free people; the desperate contests between the North and the South; the iron curb and brazen muzzle fastened upon every man who spoke his mind, even in that Republican hall, to which Republican men are sent by a Republican people to speak Republican Truths—the stabbings, and shootings, and coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators under the very Senate’s roof—the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling sneaking party spirit into all transactions of life.”  After reading his summation, one wonders whether we have made any advancement in the 170 years since he wrote about our politicians. This letter could be written about Congress by any intelligent observer in 2011.

Several times in our past, particularly in the 1870s and 1920s, the American people have thought seriously of dumping capitalism when corporations and wealthy individuals gained too much power. Deals have been made to protect the poor and the middle classes from the predators on Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, and 17th St. in Washington. Programs such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, various banking regulations such as Glass-Steagall, Medicare, Medicaid, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the National Labor Relations Act all helped to contain the little Rockefellers, Morgans, and Vanderbilts hovering around the edges of society waiting to strike with dollars and guile. But now the U.S. Republican Supreme Court, the Congress, and big business represented by the National Chamber of Commerce have conjoined to turn the country back to the corporatocracies of the past. The last poll about approval of Congressional actions sank to 13 percent. But that doesn’t matter to Congress in the least. As long as they have the support of the one percent that owns the majority of the assets in the country, they will stay bought and continue to wage World War III against the working class.

Of Hedge Funds, Personal Tracking Devices, And Flash Mobs

The poor in the Middle East are finally joining forces to continue WW III against the wealthy in their countries. Tunisians got tired of paying baksheesh to tyrants. Egyptians finally rose up against police torture and Mubarak’s Swiss bank accounts. Libyans finally entered Gadafi’s tunnels and discovered his gold-plated AK-47s. (How sick do you have to be to appreciate a gold-plated assault rifle?) Unemployed young Germans discovered that “their” government might pay some attention to them if they burned several expensive Mercedes automobiles every night on the streets of Berlin.

Whether older Germans like it or not, there is a young community at work burning cars. A group known as the “Invisible Committee” put it this way: “People can burn cars because they are pissed off, but to keep the riots going for a month, while keeping the police in check—to do that you have to organize, you have to establish complicities, you have to know the terrain perfectly and share a common language and a common enemy. Capitalism is broken. It needs to be replaced with something.”

Flash mobs operating on our East Coast is another sure sign of an economic WW III. How does a store owner or employee stop a mob of 50 to 100 young people, mostly unemployed, from entering a store and cleaning out the shelves in a few seconds? The Supreme Court or the Chambers of Commerce will not be able to stop flash mobs unless policies and attitudes change.

Wealthy Mexicans are now spending thousands of dollars implanting GPS locator devices under their skin so the police and relatives can track them if they are kidnapped.  Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a rich Mexican power broker and investor, had such an implant. The police discovered the device when “Boss Diego” turned up missing. His kidnappers had used a pair of scissors to dig it out of his arm. They left the chip and streaks of blood behind in his home. He was freed seven months later under “mysterious circumstances.”  I suppose we could assume the family finally paid a hefty ransom.
Warren Buffett: “There’s Class Warfare, All Right, But It’s My Class, The Rich Class, That’s Making War, And We’re Winning.”
Currently in the United States the 400 richest people have as much as the bottom 154 million. Wages are declining for 90 percent of the population. About 70 million Americans don’t have enough food to eat. U.S. millionaire households now possess $38.6 trillion in wealth–and are hiding another $6.3 trillion in overseas tax havens. Seventy-four Americans make $50 million or more. The average income of the 74 was $91.2 million in 2008; in 2009 ballooned to $518.8 million each. These 74 people in this category made more money than 19 million workers. In 2010 GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Fed Ex and other major companies paid no corporate income taxes.  The rest of us paid $65 billion to feed 40 million Americans on food stamps.

The “American Dream” is rapidly becoming a fantasy created by the one percent who have achieved it. Like the Taj Mahal, the reflection of the dream has dissolved in the muck, excrement, and children’s bodies of the rich-poor gap.

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