Entries Tagged 'Corruption' ↓

Does anyone remember Mr. Obama? The man who ran on a program of “change?” Who abhorred torture and Gitmo? Who kinda, sorta, hinted that he would end the endless wars in the Middle East? Does anybody know what happened to him? Where he went?

How did we wind up with another Cheney/Bush clone in the White House? Since his election, still more billions have been given to the banksters, the Wall Street speculators who caused the current melt-down, and above all to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Pentagon. Every piece of “Gone with the Wind” sized legislation is held up until every special interest, every bankster and insurance group is completely protected, at the expense of We the People. Continue reading →

It is baffling that the American public has been so effectively stampeded into near-total dependence on a shoddy, crude and ineffective system of health care, paying an extremely high price for drug and surgical interventions.

Did you know that our health care system is the third leading cause of death in the United States?  In a year 2000 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Barbara Starfield, M.D., wrote that physician error, medication error, and adverse events from drugs or surgery cause 225,400 deaths per year, making this the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer.  Why would anyone let themselves be put at the mercy of a hospital, when most chronic illnesses are preventable?  (Answer: Because they don’t know any better.) Continue reading →

There is always some reason that they will try to convince you not to believe what you feel in your gut. They will try to bamboozle you
– Barack Obama

I admit I was swept up in the national euphoria of President Obama’s election. I really believed that something would be done about the economic crisis, our unjust “War on Terror”, and the creeping fascism these wars have engendered. But by now it should be clear that President Obama has no plans to change anything. Continue reading →

Dear President Obama,

I just received the letter below, so obviously you have not been reading my letters to you.
—————————————
Stephen –

Last year, millions of Americans came together for a great purpose.

Folks like you assembled a grassroots movement that shocked the political establishment and changed the course of our nation. When Washington insiders counted us out, we put it all on the line and changed our democracy from the bottom up. But that’s not why we did it.

The pundits told us it was impossible — that the donations working people could afford and the hours volunteers could give would never loosen the vise grip of big money and powerful special interests. We proved them wrong. But as important as that was, that’s not why we did it. Continue reading →

When Obma said he would close Gitmo, I was overjoyed! Perhaps now this particular blot on our badly stained escutcheon could be erased. No such luck. I wrote the poem below in memory of the three who did escape in June of 2004. I offer it again in memory of, Yemeni Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, 31, who is the first prisoner to die since the White House changed hands four months ago. Continue reading →

Anyone who studies even elementary psychology knows that many times the bully had been bullied as a child. The sexual abuser had been sexually abused as a child. Remember the sordid tales of all those Catholic Priests ( read Jimmy Breslin’s fine book The Church That Forgot Christ ) who sexually abused young boys?

One wonders how many of those innocent victims later on became sexual abusers themselves. Trauma is a terrible thing to experience. As individuals have to deal with trauma, so do societies i.e.: cultures and even nations. Continue reading →

Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead. FULL ARTICLE

Little Johnny lifted his neighbor’s motorized tricycle. Pushed it home while no one was looking. He was caught before he could get any joy out of it. When confronted about the theft by his father, the boy declared that it didn’t work anyway. “You see”, dad says, “that’s why you shouldn’t steal!”

The wisdom encompassed in this fatherly advice is currently on display in the debate over torture. Many critics of torture are pointing to its “efficacy problem”. It doesn’t work. Presumably, then, if it did work its use might possibly be justified, or at least something worth arguing.

Then what are we against? Torture itself, or torture in that it demonstrates a lack of efficacy? I’ll leave it to the legal scholars but my guess is that, in all the domestic and international laws and conventions against torture, the prohibition is based on the act itself without regard to its consequences. Continue reading →

Featured Post for 05-/22-05/28:

“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

I recalled this statement while I was reading a very powerful look at the My Lai massacre that took place during the Vietnam War. The depravity of humanity gone mad is revealed in this account and one would think that we would never again commit such atrocities. But the powers that be convinced us that we should put it behind us and move on. And now it seems we have repeated the depravity again in Iraq.

Is it true that our future is shaped by what and how we react to events and realities of the present? Have we gone even deeper into depravity since My Lai? And if that is true, what did we not do that would have kept us from drifting into an open acceptance of torture and unjustified bloodletting today? If the future we get IS up to us, what failures of our past determine what we leave for our children today? Continue reading →

Here are excerpts (with added annotation) from a Reuters article appearing in the online version of the New York Times on May 7 under the title, “Holder Cautious on U.S. Interrogations Probes”. Continue reading →