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POPSThe Decade From HELL
Mark Morford’s New Year's column speaks for many of us. I would even say it speaks for ¾’s of us... but too many, don’t vote. That’s why we had to endure the Reagan Years, Daddy Bush Years and Dubya’s years of HELL. I believe most Americans are Liberal and if they voted America would be in a different position, one of tolerance and peace. If all Liberals voted, incomes would be categorized as LIVING WAGES. Our health care system wouldn’t be gouging, excluding and bankrupting us while those in charge of who gets what, when it come to medical care, get richer. Reckless wars would not happen. 911 wouldn’t have occurred. There’d be no executions because Capital Punishment would be null. No homelessness, no hunger, and best of all no Beck or Limbaugh because their agenda of hate would not be tolerated. But alas, that America does not prevail. Let’s hope the next decade will bring the kind of world, we long for, we who EMPATHIZE and THINK. It can happen, IF YOU WOULD ONLY VOTE!
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POPSA remarkably bitter take on the "top ten stories of the last decade" -- in short, we're hosed The last paragraph is worth quoting in full: "The meaninglessness of elections: This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power " in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance " Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it."
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POPSGloBull WARming Professor Michael Klare noted in 2007: Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. And in 2008, Oil Change International released a report showing that: * The war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year. article continues...
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POPSDangerous Opinions Are nearly half of Americans out of touch with the civilized world? Read this and judge for yourself.
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POPSGlobalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia
This report reveals the truth about what is going on and should be required reading for American church leaders," said Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the international public policy and social justice agency of The United Methodist Church. Full report and Executive Summary (PDF) @ clip source. Although written primarily for a U.S. audience, Globalizing the Culture Wars is certain to cause a stir in English-speaking Africa, where conservative U.S. evangelicals have for too long escaped the close scrutiny of African social justice activists and movements. Project Director Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. A doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Theology, he has studied in evangelical schools in Zambia and the United Kingdom. ... An active campaigner for women’s reproductive rights, Kaoma is a passionate activist for social witness in the world.
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POPSA Left-Handed Commencement Address: Ursula K. LeGuin at Mills College, 1983 More: I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
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POPSThe "just war" that was illegal and immoral Over the last few days I've been watching, on Sky News, reports on the British inquiry into British involvement in the Iraqi-American War. What I've heard and seen so far has confirmed my impression at the time, back in 2002-2003 -- that there was no real reason for the war other than that the leaders of Britain and the US wanted one. It was George Bush's second, and Tony Blair's third, since he was also one of the foremost proponents of the Nato war against Yugoslavia in 1999 (see earlier post). The inquiry evidence is all couched in careful diplomatic terms, presenting the evidence. But for evaluation of the issues at stake, this piece from The Telegraph, of all places, tells it like it is.
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POPSStacking The Deck Against Kids "We still have a hideously dysfunctional public education system, one that has mastered the art of manufacturing dropouts and functional illiterates. We have not even begun to turn that around. We still keep fighting tragic, futile, stupid wars, squandering lives and resources and creative energies that could be put to use right here at home, where the need for nation-building is beyond critical. The U.S. should be a paradise for young people. We need big changes in this country, approaches that are constructive, creative and fundamentally new, if we’re going to give those smiling kids I saw on Thanksgiving Day the kind of society they deserve. " And those are what I call Family Values.
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POPSFort Hood gunman paralysed.... No matter what I say I will sound politically incorrect. His victims are dead. The families of many at Fort Hood are traumatized and angry. That he has *lived* and will face a trial is very sad to me. How much will this trial cost the taxpayer when we already know that he is guilty? Will there be sympathy when it comes to executing a paralyzed murderer? Will he have a jury of "his peers"? Just another convolution of the American justice system. Take what is meant for good and use it for distortion and evil.
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POPSWhy War is Inevitable – John Kaminski
But the media, owned by the same people who were making the weapons, convinced us, apparently, by suddenly and savagely telling hair-raising false stories about the Germans. This is the great fact Americans continue to ignore. Instead of understanding that bankers create the wars, we prefer to believe the prejudicial hate speak that emanates from American media that our enemies are “krauts,” “gooks,” and “ragheads,” without remembering, as the great suppressed writers have told us, that the folks who control the money also control everything else. Slowly, we are learning that our real enemies are really the misanthropes making those statements, the bigwigs who control the flow of real wealth with imaginary rules that are nothing but blatant crime schemes. We are learning that these anti-human billionaires — whose income is derived entirely from legalized crime — are the true enemies of all civilized people. And worse, we are learning that our leaders are owned by these people,
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POPSCall Evil by it's rightful name It's why we forbid soldiers on a military base from carrying weapons. It's why the Las Vegas police run background checks on casino workers, but then can't sort the work cards by countries of origin like, say, countries on the terrorist watch list. Maj. Hasan is simply the latest sad case in point. Maj. Hasan spoke openly (and ignorantly) about how his Muslim faith demanded the severed heads of infidels. He argued against Muslim soldiers killing other Muslims in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He kept counsel with radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who had previous contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers. Investigators speaking on the condition of anonymity told reporters they wanted to investigate Maj. Hasan thoroughly but feared they would be "crucified" if they launched a probe into a Muslim officer communicating with his imam.
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POPSIndian Removal Act: "Trail of Tears." Hollywood has left the impression that the great Indian wars came in the Old West during the late 1800's, a period that many think of simplistically as the "cowboy and Indian" days. But in fact that was a "mopping up" effort. By that time the Indians were nearly finished, their subjugation complete, their numbers decimated. The killing, enslavement, and land theft had begun with the arrival of the Europeans. But it may have reached its nadir when it became federal policy under President (Andrew) Jackson.
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POPSDanger--America Becoming Statist: First Bush, Now Obama Note: First the Security or Police State then the Nanny State. This is a must-read article, and hopefully an eye-opener to those still stuck in the "left" or "right" paradigm of thinking of partisan politics, both of which pick and chose which parts of the Constitution they want to dismantle for desired ends. Put the Bush and Obama policies together, sprinkle in a couple more terrorist attacks, and one or two more state-caused financial calamities, and you have a recipe for . . . * The destruction of American liberty * The blossoming of a Leviathan State
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POPSInvested In War n 2004, the first full year after the current Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers-both hawks and doves invested between $74.9 million and 161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. No wonder the Democratic congress kept approving the enormous spending bills on the war, since a significant portion of it happens to end up in their deep pockets. Interestingly, the report also mentioned that members of the senate foreign relations and armed services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts. The burning questions for many people are the following: Are there any ethics left in politics? Could the universe ever exist without wars? The answer is no, because wars have been a major part of our social make up, in addition they force geostrategic changes, make profits for the elite, and reduce population.
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POPS Waiting For Godot “The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.” Last week the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., gave voice to the concerns of those in the military when he issued a terse statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s review of Afghan war strategy. “The extremists are sensing weakness and indecision within the U.S. government, which plays into their hands,” said Mr. Tradewell’s statement on behalf of his group, which represents 1.5 million former soldiers. Last August, in a speech to the V.F.W., Mr. Obama defended . . .
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POPS Historic Suckupness, Poor Judgment That Nick the Turk is one astute observer. I got whacked with something and spent yesterday on the couch, nose in Robert Harvey’s The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France: 1789-1815* when not dozing. Fascinating reading with not a few lessons regarding war and politics in general. Now, Obama’s no Bonaparte. They are no matched historical set. But as you examine the totality of Obama’s career to date, there are some curious parallels. Not so much the part about being an outsider shouldering his way in … Napoleon of course was a Corsican with an Italian accent, which made him a foreigner and a provincial bumpkin though integrated into French society through political connections and education. Obama, of Kenyan and white American descent, raised in part overseas, after all was welcomed and acclaimed exactly for reasons of his minority status, due to the nation’s and his political party’s interest in recognizing and elevating
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POPS Photos of Military Deaths in Afghanistan Banned The NATO-controlled International Security Assistance Force, which handles embeds elsewhere in Afghanistan, allows press photos of casualties as long as some conditions are met. For example, photos that identify a dead service member cannot be released before the service member’s next of kin have been notified of the death.
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