"Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.
And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.
No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.
Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.
What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.
You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.
And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.
It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price."
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
AN INTRODUCTION Ruth Weiss, Chicago, March 2002
Ruth Weiss's family fled Nazi Germany
for Austria in 1933, but was forced out of the country within five years. In "Single Out," weiss describes her family's 1939 escape from Austria -- on the last train permitted to cross the border -- in words that evoke the terror of their flight, but that also reflect her lifelong interest in the music of words:
one woman slips in the mud . . .
shotssinging above our heads
not really meant to hit us (the swiss sharpshooters) --
the warning realenough --
go back we can't take any more.
we couldn't either.
the three of us penniless in the innsbruck trainstation --
obvious unaryan.
The "shotssinging" of "swiss sharpshooters" evokes a terrifying rhythm laid down by bullets, and broken only by the "one woman," like weiss an "obvious unaryan," who "slips in the mud." The grammar is deliberately erratic, and matches the "realenough" disorientation of the family's flight. weiss and her family arrived in Holland, where they embarked by ship to the United States; most of her family remaining in Europe died in the concentration camps. In 1946, after seven years in New York and Chicago, weiss's family returned to Germany, and she attended school in Switzerland. She eventually moved back to Chicago in 1948. According to Beat biographer Brenda Knight, weiss "gave her first reading to jazz" in Chicago in 1949, and she spent the next year hitchhiking around the country -- from Chicago to New York, to New Orleans, to Chicago again. She eventually made it to San Francisco, living briefly in 1952 at 1010 Montgomery Street, which would be Allen Ginsberg's home three years later, in the summer of 1955, when he composed the first draft of "Howl."
These nomadic experiences help shape a sensitivity in weiss's work to border crossings of all kinds. weiss's poetry blurs boundaries between text and jazz, autobiography and history, page-poetry and performance-poetry.
Much more at link: http://voices.e-poets.net/weissr/intro.shtml
for Austria in 1933, but was forced out of the country within five years. In "Single Out," weiss describes her family's 1939 escape from Austria -- on the last train permitted to cross the border -- in words that evoke the terror of their flight, but that also reflect her lifelong interest in the music of words:
one woman slips in the mud . . .
shotssinging above our heads
not really meant to hit us (the swiss sharpshooters) --
the warning realenough --
go back we can't take any more.
we couldn't either.
the three of us penniless in the innsbruck trainstation --
obvious unaryan.
The "shotssinging" of "swiss sharpshooters" evokes a terrifying rhythm laid down by bullets, and broken only by the "one woman," like weiss an "obvious unaryan," who "slips in the mud." The grammar is deliberately erratic, and matches the "realenough" disorientation of the family's flight. weiss and her family arrived in Holland, where they embarked by ship to the United States; most of her family remaining in Europe died in the concentration camps. In 1946, after seven years in New York and Chicago, weiss's family returned to Germany, and she attended school in Switzerland. She eventually moved back to Chicago in 1948. According to Beat biographer Brenda Knight, weiss "gave her first reading to jazz" in Chicago in 1949, and she spent the next year hitchhiking around the country -- from Chicago to New York, to New Orleans, to Chicago again. She eventually made it to San Francisco, living briefly in 1952 at 1010 Montgomery Street, which would be Allen Ginsberg's home three years later, in the summer of 1955, when he composed the first draft of "Howl."
These nomadic experiences help shape a sensitivity in weiss's work to border crossings of all kinds. weiss's poetry blurs boundaries between text and jazz, autobiography and history, page-poetry and performance-poetry.
Much more at link: http://voices.e-poets.net/weissr/intro.shtml
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Kucinich Plan for Economic Reform and Recovery
OpEdNews: Richard Clark
Dennis Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt. He says the US must also gradually increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby gradually ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest. Prize-winning documentary film maker Bill Still agrees and has produced several very persuasive films, web sites, books and articles that explain and support this idea of nationalizing the Fed, ending fractional reserve banking, and distributing a new, non-debt-based currency.
Congressman Kucinich's proposal is laid out here ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-... )in its entirety.
In this bill, HR 6550 IH, Kucinich proposes a means by which we can:
-create a full employment economy;
-provide for public investment in capital infrastructure;
-provide for a reduction in the cost of public investment;
-retire public debt;
-stabilize the Social Security retirement system;
-restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money, modernize and provide stability
for the monetary system of the United States, retire public debt, and achieve the goals just
listed
This is a plan that prize-winning documentary film maker and author of No More National Debt believes has the potential of actually achieving all the goals just listed. However, it is a very long bill, and is written in legalese. What follows here, then, is my simplified and clarified version of attorney Pat Carmack's plan for monetary reform, which lays out all the essential principals in Congressman Kucinich's plan, and briefly provides the key arguments that Kucinich makes in his bill. (Carmack's version of the idea was written at the special request of Bill Still, for presentation in one of his prize-winning documentary films, The Secret of Oz.)
Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Kucinich-Plan-for-...
Dennis Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt. He says the US must also gradually increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby gradually ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest. Prize-winning documentary film maker Bill Still agrees and has produced several very persuasive films, web sites, books and articles that explain and support this idea of nationalizing the Fed, ending fractional reserve banking, and distributing a new, non-debt-based currency.
Congressman Kucinich's proposal is laid out here ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-... )in its entirety.
In this bill, HR 6550 IH, Kucinich proposes a means by which we can:
-create a full employment economy;
-provide for public investment in capital infrastructure;
-provide for a reduction in the cost of public investment;
-retire public debt;
-stabilize the Social Security retirement system;
-restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money, modernize and provide stability
for the monetary system of the United States, retire public debt, and achieve the goals just
listed
This is a plan that prize-winning documentary film maker and author of No More National Debt believes has the potential of actually achieving all the goals just listed. However, it is a very long bill, and is written in legalese. What follows here, then, is my simplified and clarified version of attorney Pat Carmack's plan for monetary reform, which lays out all the essential principals in Congressman Kucinich's plan, and briefly provides the key arguments that Kucinich makes in his bill. (Carmack's version of the idea was written at the special request of Bill Still, for presentation in one of his prize-winning documentary films, The Secret of Oz.)
Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Kucinich-Plan-for-...
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Make Way for the Radical Center
Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. I know it sounds gimmicky — an Internet convention — but an impressive group of frustrated Democrats, Republicans and independents, called Americans Elect, is really serious, and they have thought out this process well. In a few days, Americans Elect will formally submit the 1.6 million signatures it has gathered to get on the presidential ballot in California as part of its unfolding national effort to get on the ballots of all 50 states for 2012.
The goal of Americans Elect is to take a presidential nominating process now monopolized by the Republican and Democratic parties, which are beholden to their special interests, and blow it wide open — guaranteeing that a credible third choice, nominated independently, will not only be on the ballot in every state but be able to take part in every presidential debate and challenge both parties from the middle with the best ideas on how deal with the debt, education and jobs.
see above link for more info!
The goal of Americans Elect is to take a presidential nominating process now monopolized by the Republican and Democratic parties, which are beholden to their special interests, and blow it wide open — guaranteeing that a credible third choice, nominated independently, will not only be on the ballot in every state but be able to take part in every presidential debate and challenge both parties from the middle with the best ideas on how deal with the debt, education and jobs.
see above link for more info!
Friday, July 1, 2011
WikiLeaks prepares to sue Visa and MasterCard
WikiLeaks announced on Friday evening that it and service provider Datacell intend to sue Visa and MasterCard in Europe "for engaging in an unlawful, U.S. influenced, financial blockade."
The two credit card services blocked all payments to WikiLeaks last December, claiming that their “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” They have maintained this claim, even though it is has never been determined that WikiLeaks is guilty of any crime.
According to the WikiLeaks press release, the credit card companies were told on June 9 that if their blockade against payments to WikiLeaks is not removed, suit will be filed against them with the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court and a request for prosecution will also be filed with the European Union.
"It was pointed out to these companies that their coordinated action on December 7th last year to block all credit card transactions to WikiLeaks and DataCell constituted a serious violation of the Competition Rules of the EU (Article 101(1) and 102)," the release states. "Furthermore, that the actions of these companies have violated Danish merchant laws when they terminated the payment services and by refused [sic] to reinstate them."
"Visa and Master Card (which have 70 and 25 percent market share in Europe respectively) have not answered the demands or shown willingness to negotiate a settlement," the release concludes. "In light of this outcome DataCell and WikiLeaks will instruct their international legal team to take actions against these companies in the coming days as outlined above. Further actions in other jurisdictions will follow."
The two credit card services blocked all payments to WikiLeaks last December, claiming that their “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” They have maintained this claim, even though it is has never been determined that WikiLeaks is guilty of any crime.
According to the WikiLeaks press release, the credit card companies were told on June 9 that if their blockade against payments to WikiLeaks is not removed, suit will be filed against them with the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court and a request for prosecution will also be filed with the European Union.
"It was pointed out to these companies that their coordinated action on December 7th last year to block all credit card transactions to WikiLeaks and DataCell constituted a serious violation of the Competition Rules of the EU (Article 101(1) and 102)," the release states. "Furthermore, that the actions of these companies have violated Danish merchant laws when they terminated the payment services and by refused [sic] to reinstate them."
"Visa and Master Card (which have 70 and 25 percent market share in Europe respectively) have not answered the demands or shown willingness to negotiate a settlement," the release concludes. "In light of this outcome DataCell and WikiLeaks will instruct their international legal team to take actions against these companies in the coming days as outlined above. Further actions in other jurisdictions will follow."
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Moving to the U.S. will increase your cancer risk by 400%.
Found on Elephant Journal blog:
more here.
My friend Keith Martin-Smith, having seen this video, asks:
“Moving to the U.S. will increase your cancer risk by 400%. She links the increase risk to the fact we’re the only nation that allows engineered corn, milk, and soy onto its shelves. Wow.
A stunning look at the U.S. food market, competitiveness overseas, consumer lack of knowledge, and the healthcare industry. Really amazing. Thoughts?"
more here.
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