"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb disputing the outcome."
--(Attributed to) Benjamin Franklin
It's not true what they say...I DO remember...still bear a few momentos.
Cops are the enforcers of the Owners, the gunsels of the State.
A lot of 'em are former military. They love this shit.
They no longer 'serve & protect." Now it's "search & destroy. "
ops don't get into it for the money.
They LOVE what they do.
Mebbe not ALL are sadistic sociopaths, but enough are that tie mkes little difference.
I have said for the last 40 years that ALL citizens should have the experience of being rousted by cops who rezlly think you're a "perp," to see what 'rights' they give themselves to deal with you: a good cop (such as they are) on a bad day; or a bad cop (most of 'em) any day.
ARE YOU READY for the GINORMOUS "Veterans' Day" Appliance, Winter Clothing, Carpet and Flooring, Used AND NEW car SALE! happening THIS weekend at a Mall near you?
Whilst you're out there shopping to save the economy, I'd like to say little something about "peace." And the celebration of National--hell, why stop there--INTERNATIONAL "Peace Day!" Eleven Eleven, from now on...
Remember that November 11, 1918 (the "11/11" we now recognize) was the date on which the Armistice ending the "Great War" was signed, officially ending the carnage that had lain waste to the best parts of France, Belgium, Holland, a lot of Italy, the Balkans, and a good chunk Russia and of the Middle East.
Literally, millions of people--soldiers and civilians--perished.
But on Nov. 11, 1918, the guns--which could be heard in England, though they were fired in France--fell silent for the first time in more than four, long, brutal, bloody, ruinous years--and that kind of dying stopped, if only for a while...
It was a MOMENTOUS day. People were WILD with joy, in capitals and villages across the continent. NOBODY in all of Europe escaped the consequences. Everyone knew or was related to SOMEONE who'd lost a limb, or a lung, or had been carried off in some bizarre charge into the teeth of the first machine guns across some blood-drenched, decay-filled, shit-soaked trench. During those years, more people had died than in any comparable period of time since the Black Plague. It was, they fervently hoped, the end of all that.
From our perspective, almost a century on, it's probably well to recall, in all honesty, that the last veterans who actually did give their all for 'freedom, liberty, apple pie and Chevrolet, have mostly already left us. All the WW I vets are gone, long since; a majority of the so-called "Greatest Generation" have already signed out, too.
Since then, we vets have largely been participants in America's "wars of choice" in Asia--Southeast AND Southwest--as well as those military efforts to prop up friendly regimes in this Hemisphere. We've done what we were told. But such honor as there is in that is somewhat vitiated in my mind by the costs inflicted upon the murdered and mutilaterd victims we left--and still are leaving--in our neo-colonialist/Imperialist wake.
So I think, if 11/11 were going to be a date for commemorating and memorializing, then it should be celebrated as International PEACE Day, since it was the day the "Great War" ended and "peace" returned (to Western Europe, anyway).
And NOW is a good time to start. None Better!
We've got ALL kinds of holidays honoring and celebrating the glorious military past of our Nation and the sacrifices of its military: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and now, perversely, also "9-11," too is draped in military regalia. If we were going to remember "veterans," these should be enough.
But there is NO day in our national calendar on which we actually celebrate the sceuclar phenomenon of "peace."
And I, for one, think Veteran's day, with its echoes of those silenced guns, should be it.
It's the time of the year when the "poppies" appear on the lapels of folks of the (former) British empire, in commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of lives which were spent in so ghastly a fashion in Flanders' fields. It should be a day on which we pledge NOT to repeat those awful lessons.
That's what seems to me to be forgotten amid all the patriotic/jingoistic folderol, to say NOTHING of the commercial hype attending the "official" holiday.
* * * * * * * * * * Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Morning, hippies. Happy Weekend. Remember, if you HAVE a weekend, thank a Union!
As the desperation among the average citizens of the USofA becomes more palplable, cries for reform grow louder and more varied. Decisions by the SCROTUS such as Citizens United, which effectively turned Corporations into 'citizens,' and other set-backs limiting the range of legal redress through class actions, have l;ed people to propose a variety of theoretically possible but practicably impossible remedies, the latest being a Contstitutional Convention.
Y'r Ob'd't S'v't will vehemently oppose any proposal for remedying our current social ills and dilemmas which includes a Constitutional Convention.
I sympathize deeply with the sentiment, but, man, think about it!
Unless you want--or are at least prepared-- to see the ENTIRE Constitution scrapped, a ConCon is a really, terribly, terrifically, horrifically, horribly BAD fucking idea.
I understand the impetus to "do" something.
But in this hyper-mediated, public environment, direct democracy isn't a practicable alternative.
Why? Or rather, "Why not?"
Think "Prop 8." In California, a couple of years ago, amending the CA Constitution by initiative--direct democracy--to exclude gays from the rights accorded BY THE STATE to 'straight' couples. It passed, due in most part--most people rightly believe--to massive, focussed expenditures of disinformation cash by political interests OUTSIDE California. It was enough to sway the results, which are STILL being adjudicated, and the big outside money is still bankrolling the obstructionists, who may ultimately fail, but in doing so will have STILL have collected MILLIONS in donations.
Now multiply the influence of outside money in CA on Prop 8 expo-fuuking-NENTIALLY!
Then remember that, as influential as that interference has been, it is still WITHOUT the HUGE tidal-waves of cash the CorpoRats will be able to unleash through their wholly-owned, lap-dog CorpoRat/SCUM "press" to sway any such deliberations in the context of a Constitutional Convention or any other venue in the future.
And you cannot limit what may be discussed, reformed, or eliminated. You can't have a ConCon and say, well, we're only gonna talk about corporate citizenship. Everything's on the table. Every year, some Poli Sci class at Dear Ol' Siwash U conducts 'man-on-the-street interviews in which they translate the 18th Century diction of the COnstitution and rewrite it in more contemporary vernacular, and ask people if they'd accept it, or the Bill of Rights, and routinely about half of them are rejected by citizens today.
It's what the Greeks usta call an "apoeria," an irresolvable contradiction: The people cannot order their representatives to over-ride the power that placed their representatives in office in the first place. The CorpoRats, as "persons," have the "right" to expend ANY resources in ANY amount to secure the end they desire. And their resources are essentially endless and boundless.
The CorpoRats would/WILL have a fuuking FIELD DAY with direct democracy. They own ALL the media through which it would necessarily be conducted.
You do NOT think the CorpoRats wouldn't use the ALL power that CU gives them to defeat any effort to revoke or repeal it, by WHATEVER means?
And there would be no way to prohibit it.
Or do you really, truly, truly BELEEVE! there REALLY IS a difference between Miller and Bud?
See the problem?
We'll talk when I see ya at the beach!!!
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Here's the vid in which Cenk Uygir leads the appeal for donations:
To keep industries from forsaking frigid Illinois for wamer--and less unionized--climates, the State of Illinois has given certain big employers the authority to withhold "state income taxes" from workers' checks, but then to pocket those taxes themselves.
Anosognosia is the condition of being unaware/in complete denial about a given disability.
No, really.
"THE CONDITION IN WHICH A PERSON WHO SUFFERS ILLNESS OR DISABILITY SEEMS UNAWARE OF OR DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF HIS OR HER ILLNESS/DISABILITY; MAY INCLUDE UNAWARENESS OF QUITE DRAMATIC IMPAIRMENTS, SUCH AS BLINDNESS OR PARALYSIS."
Which perfectly describes the Rightard/Wackloon/Cristo-fasciszt contingent as WELL as a majority of the remaining O'bots
The nay-sayers have a vested interest in denying the corrosive role of mediated 'reality' on the capacity of people to interpret properly the phenomena behind the mediated "present" in which the omnipresent 'media' immerse them. Women are particular targets of media objectification, both as consumers and as shills for the corpoRat insecurity machines. It's the same motivation that's behind the climate-change deniers' rejection of science.
WAIT, WAIT. STILL? REALLY? Woody's confused! What about Obamacare? I thought St. Barry had FIXED all that? You mean there are STILL people dying for wont of care? How could that be? I thought St. Barry had set that aright. You mean he didn't? O, fiddlesticks...I just don't know WHAT to believe anymore.
It's becoming a kind of tragicomic ritual to compare what St. Barry, the Pale, PROMISED in his campaign to become president and what he has delivered AS president.
While on the campaign trail in 2007, Barack Obama promised to label GMO foods if elected. Now's the time! Today, an estimated 80% of processed foods contain GMOs. Tell President Obama you agree that the U.S. needs GMO labeling "because Americans should know what they're buying".
For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied the right to know what's in their food. Help make this the Change We Can Believe In: Label GMOs!
