{"id":72127,"date":"2013-12-06T16:54:28","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T21:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=72127"},"modified":"2013-12-06T17:00:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T22:00:05","slug":"reset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-fe-bongolan\/reset\/","title":{"rendered":"Reset"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not everyday that you can say over the past 14 days the world has utterly changed. But since Thanksgiving, it has.<\/p>\n

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Washington has begun thawing its decades-long glacially icy relationship with Tehran, coming to terms with Iran over its potential nuclear capabilities with a “mutually defined (uranium) enrichment program,” ending nearly forty years of animosity following the U.S. hostage crisis in 1979.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis called global capitalism “tyranny,” exhorting his followers and his church<\/a> to commit more forcefully for economic justice for the poor, and saying no to the idolatry of money.<\/a><\/p>\n

And yesterday, the world mourned the passing of Nelson Mandela. Not just a man or a national leader, but a person who was and will be a powerful global symbol of resistance against oppression: the extreme racist system of South African apartheid.<\/p>\n

With these three events, we memorialize not only Nelson Mandela, but the world we knew in the late 1970s and 1980s. This era began when President Jimmy Carter left office after serving only one term, having been scorched at the polls for his handling of the economy and the Iran hostage crisis. Ronald Wilson Reagan became president with help from the subversion of an “October Surprise”<\/a> by Jimmy Carter to free the hostages held in Tehran prior to 1980 presidential election, summarized this way:<\/p>\n

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Allegations surfaced that William Casey, director of the Reagan campaign, and some CIA operatives, secretly met with Iranian officials in Europe to arrange for the hostages’ release, but not until after the election. If true, some observers aver, dealing with a hostile foreign government to achieve a domestic administration’s defeat would have been grounds for charges of treason. Reagan won the election, partly because of the failure of the Carter administration to bring the hostages home. Within minutes of Reagan’s inauguration, the hostages were released.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 1980s brought awareness of apartheid’s oppression and many of us joined in a mounting global chorus calling for economic sanctions against the South African government, pressuring them to free Nelson Mandela. It was also then that America accelerated its pursuit of unfettered capitalism and consumption started by Reagan’s “Morning in America.” The Ayatollah Khomeini and Tehran became America’s bete-noir<\/em>, part of the “Axis of Evil.”<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today: America’s tensions with Iran coming to a slowdown will inevitably re-draw the map of our relationships with the Middle East and especially Israel. The Pope’s anti-capitalism exhortation calls for a new spiritual awakening to help those less fortunate worldwide. This is the antithesis of Morning in America, and is already having ripple affects amongst hard-right politicians in the U.S., who would rather that we continue personifying and enriching corporations, allowing only a select few private individuals to hold on to most, if not all, of the world’s wealth.<\/p>\n

You might say that Nelson Mandela, at the time of his passing, saw not only how his country had changed for the better, but how the world he knew when released from prison thirty years ago is now moving. Forward.<\/p>\n

When writing for Planet Waves about art, history, culture and politics, I need first to absorb the world’s events in my heart. With these last few weeks, current events have left me both full and speechless. Yes, I know, there will be the changes in the old tired paradigms. Just like Nelson Mandela catalyzed with that recalcitrant South African government and horrible apartheid system a few short decades ago. We have gone through a very big passage thirty years later and in a span of only 14 days. The world we have known is indeed different. Changing. A pendulum has swung. Control-Alt-Delete. Reset.<\/p>\n

Nelson could let go, smiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not everyday that you can say over the past 14 days the world has utterly changed. But since Thanksgiving, it has. Washington has begun thawing its decades-long glacially icy relationship with Tehran, coming to terms with Iran over its potential nuclear capabilities with a “mutually defined (uranium) enrichment program,” ending nearly forty years of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[301],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}