A Burning Faith

Though we as a society and as a species are plagued by the effects of religion, not all of it is necessarily bad. Here in the U.S., the proto-fascists use Christian fundimentalism to build a strong base on ignorance, emotion, and intolerance. There is another side to Christianity however and the Poet/activist Mary McAnally seeks to claim it for progressives in her new book, "Cosmic Rainbow." Even though I am an athiest from a Jewish background, I find this book very moving and a powerful tool in moving others toward the sanity that can save us. There is far more to this collection than religious reference in that the author has been in the crux of the struggle for social justice from South Africa to Central America and on the frontlines of feminist, anti-racist and peace activism for many years. I was glad to be able to publish this collection and I think it is a vital weapon in the effort to deprogram the "faith based" folk and create instead, a progressive consciousness.

Unreasonable?

The news today is that Hamas has declared it's willingness to recognize and negotiate with Israel. It has set out conditions for this to happen which will no-doubt be attacked as extreme in the Zionist and U.S. corporate press. Those conditions, in accordance with UN resolutions and international law are the withdrawl of Israel from territories occupied illegally since 1967, the recognition of a Palestinian state, and the "right of return" of Palestinians pushed from their ancestral homes in Israel. The last right is something Israel grants Jews from anywhere in the world who want to move to Israel but not to the people who were native to the area prior to 1948.

As for honoring agreements of the past, the pressure is on Palestinians to do so while Israel regularly disregards any agreements it chooses to, including recognition of elected Palestinian leadership. All this while consistently undermining the possibility of a Palestinian state, expanding Israeli settlements into the West Bank and dividing it up with Apartheid style "Jewish only" roads and checkpoints that further imprison Palestians in a series of small seperate bantustans.

Why are Isreal's abuses of law and human rights presented as reasonable and Palestinian wishes presented as extreme? Because ultimately Zionism is a form of racism/nationalism that the US backs for its own purposes. Without that backing, it couldn't continue.

Keeping Perspective

As things in Iraq devolve predictabley into the bloody chaos of civil war, it important to keep some perspective on the reality of the sitiation and our role in it. Once again, Bush and Cheney have by their intrasigent actions created a much worse situation in another part of the world. From a disarmed secular nation which was not a threat, we have created a broiling hell of feuding nationalisms and fundimentalisms.

It's time for a house cleaning on the home front.

Allegory of Death by Capitalist Industrialism

The Biggest, and most ignored story in the history of our species continues to get more dramatic as scientists discover that nature's built-in feedback loops make projected scenarios for the results of global warming much worse than previously thought. There are efforts under way to use technology to reduce carbon levels in the atomsphere. Technology will not prevent the impending disaster but may shorten its duration -- if it can be sustained on a large enough level for several generations. It will take technology to save us but that isn't enough. A system based on private ownership for the accumulation of wealth cannot address this crisis and in fact, will collapse because of it. We need to build a system of international cooperation and public ownership if we are to make the needed adaptations as a society and as a species. As evolution demonstrates, adaptability is the key to survival. In the absence of that long shot, it seems we are witnessing the allegory of our foolish demise. It makes a fine moralistc tale but, one has to wonder, for whose eyes?

In the short term though, the Prole must live and your support is needed, so consider making a statement by buying this shirt.

Progress & Reaction

As our North American empire slips toward a fascist dictatorship, South America continues to move forward. The most notable recent event has been the election of Evo Morales with the overwhelming support of Bolivians.

Eduardo Galeano has this to say. "On the 22nd of January of the year 2002, Evo was expelled from Paradise. In other words: Deputy Morales was ejected from the Parliament. On the 22nd of January of the year 2006, in the same hall of pomposity, Evo Morales was consecrated President of Bolivia. In other words: Bolivia begins to discover that it is a country of an indigenous majority.

At the time of the expulsion, an Indian deputy was rarer than a green dog. Four years later, many are the legislators who chew coca, a millennial custom which was prohibited in the sacred parliamentary space.

Long before the expulsion of Evo, his people, the indigenous, had already been expelled from the official nation. They were not children of Bolivia: they were merely its hands. Until a little more than half a century ago, the Indians could not vote or walk on the sidewalks of its cities.

With good reason, Evo said, in his first presidential address, that the Indians were not invited, in 1825, to the founding of Bolivia. That is also the history of all America, including the United States. Our nations were born all false. The independence of the American countries was from the beginning usurped by a very minor minority. All the first constitutions, without exception, left out women, the indigenous, Blacks, and the poor in general.

The election of Evo Morales is, at least in this sense, equivalent to the election of Michelle Bachelet. Evo and Eva. For the first time an indigenous president in Bolivia, for the first time a woman president in Chile. And the same could be said of Brazil, where for the first time the Minister of Culture is Black. Doesn't the culture that has saved Brazil from sadness have African roots?

In these lands, sick with racism and machismo, there will be some who believe that all this is a scandal. What is scandalous is that it had not happened earlier. The mask falls, the face appears, and the tempest roars.

The only language worthy of faith is the language born of the necessity to speak. The gravest flaw of Evo is that people believe him, because he conveys authenticity even when, speaking Castellano [Spanish], which is not his mother tongue, he makes some minor error. The doctors who are masters of echoing others' voices accuse him of ignorance. The peddlers of promises accuse him of demagogy. Those who imposed a single God, a single king, and a single truth in America accuse him of caudillismo. And the assassins of Indians tremble in panic, fearful that their victims will be like them.

Bolivia seemed to be no more than the pseudonym of those who ruled Bolivia and squeezed it out even as they sang its national anthem. And the humiliation of the Indians, made customary, seemed a destiny. But in the most recent times, months, years, this country lived in a perpetual state of popular insurrection. This process of continuous uprisings, which left a trail of dead, culminated in the gas war, but the process had begun long ago. It had existed long before the recent uprisings and it continued after them, until the election of Evo against all odds.

An old history of treasures plundered for more than four centuries, since the middle of the sixteenth century, was being repeated in the case of Bolivian gas:

the silver of Potosí left a barren mountain,
the saltpeter of the Pacific coast left a map without a sea,
the tin of Oruro left a multitude of widows.

That, and only that, they left.

The people who rose up in the last several years got riddled with bullets, but they prevented the gas from evaporating into the hands of others,
unprivatized the water in Cochabamba and La Paz, overthrew governments governed from abroad, and said no to the income tax and other wise orders from the International Monetary Fund.

From the point of view of the civilized media of communication, these explosions of popular dignity were acts of barbarism. A thousand times I have seen, read, heard it: Bolivia is an incomprehensible country, ungovernable, intractable, unviable. The journalists who say it and repeat it are mistaken: they should confess that Bolivia is, for them, an invisible country.

That is not remarkable. That blindness is not only a bad custom of arrogant foreigners. Bolivia was born blind to itself, because racism spins a web that covers the eyes, and there is certainly no lack of Bolivians who prefer to see themselves through the eyes that despise them.

But there must be a reason why the indigenous flag of the Andes pays homage to the diversity of the world. According to tradition, it's a flag born of the mating of the female rainbow with the male rainbow. And this earthly rainbow, which in the native tongue is called the flaming cloth of blood, has more colors than the rainbow in the sky."

Support Internet Neutrality

What is Internet neutrality? It is what allows you to find this site or any other and go there with a twitch of your finger. The greatest things about the internet,though probably underused, are the vast amounts of information at our fingertips and the ability it give us all to communicate on a global basis.

Corporations want to change that and, given the trouble that access to all that information gives those in power who want to maintian control of information, the corporations could have their way. Internet providers are attempting to change the laws so that they may be able to charge fees for access to particular sites. The Senate has already had hearings on the issue but the fight is just beginning. Will the internet continue to be an accessible form of communication or will it become an expensive shopping mall where most of us can just afford to sit on the benches? We need to support an Internet Neutrality Bill.

President's Day for Truth

Looks like people are gathering to demand answers about September 11th, this upcoming Monday, February 20 in NYC. I doubt the corporate press will be allowed to cover this and the organizer, Greg Nixon, reports that the bigger left presses like The Nation and Democracy Now have a block on this information as well. It's up to the real alternative presses to get this out there where the public can know about it.

With His Bare Hands

That is,aside from assassination, and avoid going hunting with him too.

A Treason of Historical Magnitude

It seems that according to a Republican, Curt Weldon, US military intelligence had honed in on Mohammed Attah on 13 seperate occaissions in their investigation of al qaida by 2000 but that attempts to transfer that information ot the FBI were blocked by the Bush administration. Weldon said: "Thirteen times we have hits in the data that's still available, that we were told was destroyed." and that We have information that will be testified to under oath that there were attempts to transfer information to the FBI on at least three occasions, and on all three of those occasions in September of 2000, lawyers within the administration denied those meetings from taking place."

Why would this administration block information that would've prevented apparent attacks against us? It makes no sense if you buy the official story but once you accept the fuller evidence it appears obvious that bringing in Attah would have interfered in the vilest of schemes ever perpetrated against our nation. Without the assistance of al-qaeda's role in providing actors to blame, the entire agenda of this neocon cabal for never-ending war and ever-expanding power would have been derailed.

The neocon agenda being played out leaves us in greater danger than ever. As challenges build against this administration, al-qaeda, may conveniently unleash another attack (with or without neocon assistance) which will only consolidate our nascient dictatorship and finish us off as a democracy for the forseable future.

Choosing Who Leads

In our own country, the ability to choose a leader has become a sham but this does not stop our illigitmate leadership from trying to impose it's will on who leads other countries.

The latest example of this is that the Bush Administration in cahoots with Israel have decided to undermine the chosen leadership of the Palestinians. They of course have other ideas.

Aside from the irony of the situation and the illegality of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, history demonstrates the stategic wrongheadedness of this strategy. When you seek to undermine the will of another nation, it creates anger, resentment and a strengthening of that which you oppose. Rather than friendly overtures and diplomacy, we have sought to overthrow Cuba's leadership for 50 years. Our attempt to undermine the Chavez administration was equally successful and our attitude toward Iran undermined the moderate leadership of Mohammad Khatami and strengthened the more redical one it has now. For that matter, our overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh administration of Iran in 1953 and our imposition and support of the bloody dictatorship of the Shah led ultimately to the rise of the Ayatollahs.

Our intereference in the internal affairs of other nations has bolstered despotic regimes and death squad satrapies resulting in hatred and mistrust of our country, in fact, it has resulted in attacks against us by groups like al queda whose primary agenda is to get us to cease that intererance. Is "staying the course" really wise? Were we capable, much more can be achieved with diplomacy which starts out by finding what the legitimate will of a poeple is, that is, what do they want. Ususally it is justice and self-determination.

We need to wrest back the ability to choose our own leadership; one that responds to what we really want and is capable of acting within civilized norms.

Beyond the Tipping Point

Scientists agree, we have passed the environmental tipping point of global warming and have entered a new era. They are stressing the absolute necessessity of government actions to do what is needed to moderate the effects of global warming and to maintin civilization given the impending failure of agriculture and rising sea levels. There is little time to act but we of course have another problem. We have the idiocy of a neocon dictatorship.

Have we yet reached the tipping point needed to get rid of the creeps that have led our nation and the world to disaster? True, the consequences of their lies are adding up but it's not enough. They will surely lead us to a worse disaster than we and our children and their children, and thier children can live with. We have a responsibility not only to our selves and the world but to the future to get rid of this administration and all of its backers and soon.

This must be our mission -- failure is not an option.

A Hopefull Society?

Now that the rhetoric about the "hopefull society" of improved access to healthcare and a better economy is complete, the Edumacation President has unleashed his new budget. You guessed it; cuts in all vital services from education to medicare and tons of money for the military -- with money for his sinkhole adventurism in Iraq not even included!

The cuts Bush has requested would result in a bleak future and a shortened life expectancy for most of our citizens. His Medical plan refects his over-all outlook of the American philosopy: "you're on your own." If it wasn't for his increased funding and defense of domestic spying, this would be the dream budget of our uncivil libertarians but as it is, it's a nightmare of bad planning and arrogant ideological short-sightedness.

This is your country on dope . . .

That's Right

He's a what?

Say it again.


The cool thing about this link is that you can get to it by googling "asshole" and hitting the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

The Coup is Complete

That's right, we've had a coup de etat here and most of you in the Land of Denial haven't even noticed. The fraudulent leadership of a shadowy neo-con junta has solidified power by control of the courts, the electoral process, the media and the military. Even former Reaganites are saying it, the events of September 11th were a murderous fraud perpetrated by the same junta that now threatens to expand its aggression to Iran. The creation of the "Islamic enemy" as personified by Osama Bin Laden is a hoax as well. Osama bin Laden is part of the cabal and does it's bidding. He will never be "captured" alive becuase he knows enough to expose them all. Al-qaeda is no more a threat than the Michagan Militia and is a group exploited by this regime for the maintenance of power through manipulated fear. The so-called "war on terror" is a falsehood rich with irony. The falsehood is that there is no real enemy and that it is not a "war" but an illegal aggression by our govenment. The irony is that the terrorism we are told to fear is real but origniates not overseas but in Washington D.C.

Dictatorships like this have a history of collapsing under the weight of their own arrogant blunders and this one will be no exception. Unfortunately they also cause much destruction and death.

We, as Americans have our work cut out for us if we are to defeat a tyranny of frightening proportions and restore some semblance of democracy. It is much easier and, for most of us, safer in the short term to bury our heads in the sand and go shopping, but none of us are truly safe and denial is the cowards road to defeat. It will take amazing courage and creativity to prevail, how many of us are willing to make the sacrifices necessarry for Liberty? Who are the real "patriots" among you willing to speak out and demand justice?

What Gives?

Yesterday I posted a skeptical question concerning scientific hypothesis regading the events of September 11. Much information can be found here. This is the another address to the link I posted then with the point being that, while questions are still left unaswered, we needed to push for an independent counsel to find out the truth. I left it at that only to find today that the entire post dissappeared and the original link address came up with nothing.

This is scary and leads me to beleive that there is more to this than I thought and that there is an all pervasive cover-up going on. Hell, this is a small, relatively new blog and a post was deleted?!?! CHECK THIS OUT BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS AGAIN!

Sad But True

Internet privacy if it ever existed is a thing of the past, the sad part is that your privacy is more protected for porn and dating sites than it is for being here. I guess it's better to massage your genitals than it is to excersize your brain.

What Have We Come to?

In our Theater of the Inane Marx's dictum regarding history has proven true.

Capitalism or Survival?

Someone Gets it. The difficult to face reality is that only the defeat of the global market scam of capitalism will save this civilization and possibly our species. Under capitalism, wealth is power and the greatest power today are global corporations. Nations serve their needs and governments are tools for their enrichment. Corporations can only act in the interest of their own competitive survival. They are subject to the internal rules of the market.

The devastating climactic changes we are facing cannot be addressed within that framework. Some say we must move to local public ownership. That may be true in some areas but it is insufficient unless our only option is limited to feudal walled city-states. If this civilization is to contiue AT ALL, we need to move rapidly to large scale public ownership. Only on a large scale can adequate hydrogen, coal, or other energy sources be made available. Only on a large scale can we maintian the connections vital to our survival via rail and shipping. Only through public ownership can the interests of civilized humanity be served in the brave and hotter new world we have created. Capitalism has indeed buried itself, will we allow it to bury us with it? As Fidel Castro has said, "There is nothing this system has to offer humanity." It has served it's historical role but it's time to move on if we are not to become another layer in the fossil record.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

George Bush repeatedly used the term "hopefull society" to describe our nation in the most optimistic terms. It is all too evident that he is totally out of touch with reality. I have met no-one in the past few years, including "conservatives" who feel optimism. This has been the warmest year on record for the fourth year running and we are facing disasterous environmental changes that "weaning ourselves 70% off of oil by 2025" will not affect. Our economy is a house of cards based on debt. Jobs continue to be our main export and our wages buy less than ever. The gulf coast remains in a state of utter ruin. We are bogged down in a bloody and un-neccessary occupation in Iraq based on lies, as we witness the formation of a Machevellian dictatorship at home with stacked courts and an embedded press. We are 38th in healthcare world-wide and slipping. Our prison population is the largest in the world. We have torture gulags around the globe and can be arrested and disappeared without charges. We are living in a country that would have George Orwell sputtering -- our phones tapped, our meeting infiltrated, no privacy or right to privacy that ideologically stacked courts will recognize.

One of the major themes of Bushes well read arrogant diatribe (between smirks)was that our export of U.S. style Freedoms and Democracy will make the world a safer place. Don't you feel safer already? Iraqis certainly don't and as Cindy Sheehan points out in counting the loss of our freedoms, Bush's definition of Freedom (demonocracy?), like Janis Joplin's may be "nothin' left to lose.