September 23, 2014

"After each war there is a little less democracy left to save." ......

....... -- Brooks Atkinson


"Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed." -- Bruce Springsteen


"The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment." -- Chris Hedges


"How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower


"All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished." -- Eleanor Roosevelt


"History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse." -- Eric Alterman


"No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people." -- Eugene Debs


"War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else." -- Smedley Butler


"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." -- George Orwell


"War is a bankruptcy of policy." -- Hans Van Seeckt


"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H.L. Mencken


"How can you make a war on terror if war itself is terrorism?" -- Howard Zinn


"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." -- John F. Kennedy


"You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!" -- Leo Tolstoy


"We have guided missiles and misguided men." -- Martin Luther King Jr.


"It's very common for the victims to understand a system better than the people who are holding the stick." -- Noam Chomsky


"All warfare is based on deception." -- Sun Tzu


"He that is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death." -- Thomas Paine


http://antiwar.com/quotes.php

September 23, 2014

Chris Hedges: The Coming Climate Revolt

Chris Hedges made these remarks Saturday at a panel discussion in New York City titled “The Climate Crisis: Which Way Out?” The other panelists were Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Kshama Sawant and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The event, moderated by Brian Lehrer, occurred on the eve of the People’s Climate March in New York City.

We have undergone a transformation during the last few decades—what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état in slow motion. We are no longer a capitalist democracy endowed with a functioning liberal class that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. Liberals in the old Democratic Party such as the senators Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh and George McGovern—who worked with Ralph Nader to make the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Mine Safety and Health Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the OSHA law, who made common cause with labor unions to protect workers, who stood up to the arms industry and a bloated military—no longer exist within the Democratic Party, as Nader has been lamenting for several years. They were pushed out as corporate donors began to transform the political landscape with the election of Ronald Reagan. And this is why the Democrats have not, as Bill Curry points out, enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s.

We are governed, rather, by a species of corporate totalitarianism, or what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin describes as “inverted totalitarianism.” By this Wolin means a system where corporate power, while it purports to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the three branches of government and a free press, along with the iconography and language of American patriotism, has in fact seized all the important levers of power to render the citizen impotent.

The old liberal class, the safety valve that addressed grievances and injustices in times of economic or political distress, has been neutered. There are self-identified liberals, including Barack Obama, who continue to speak in the old language of liberalism but serve corporate power. This has been true since the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton found that by doing corporate bidding he could get corporate money—thus NAFTA, the destruction of our welfare system, the explosion of mass incarceration under the [1994] omnibus bill, the deregulation of the FCC, turning the airwaves over to a half dozen corporations, and the revoking of FDR’s 1933 Glass-Steagall reform that had protected our banking system from speculators. Clinton, in exchange for corporate money, transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. This was diabolically brilliant. It forced the Republican Party to shift so far to the right it became insane.

.....snip.....

If Wolin is right, and I believe he is, then when we begin to build mass movements that carry out repeated acts of civil disobedience, as I think everyone on this panel believes we must do, the corporate state, including the Democratic Party, will react the way all calcified states react. It will use the security and surveillance apparatus, militarized police forces—and, under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, the military itself—to shut down all dissent with force. The legal and organizational mechanisms are now in place to, with the flip of a switch, put the nation effectively under martial law. When acts of mass civil disobedience begin on Monday morning with Flood Wall Street and later with Occupy the U.N., the face of the corporate state will, as it did during the Occupy movement, reveal itself. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_coming_climate_revolt_20140921

September 22, 2014

Robert Reich: Why Ordinary People Bear Economic Risks and Donald Trump Doesn’t

Why Ordinary People Bear Economic Risks and Donald Trump Doesn’t
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2014


Thirty years ago, on its opening day in 1984, Donald Trump stood in a dark topcoat on the casino floor at Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza, celebrating his new investment as the finest building in Atlantic City and possibly the nation.

Last week, the Trump Plaza folded and the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy, leaving some 1,000 employees without jobs.

Trump, meanwhile, was on twitter claiming he had “nothing to do with Atlantic City,” and praising himself for his “great timing” in getting out of the investment.

In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.

The laws protect them through limited liability and bankruptcy. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://robertreich.org/post/98079430765

September 22, 2014

Chris Hedges: The Coming Climate Revolt

Chris Hedges made these remarks Saturday at a panel discussion in New York City titled “The Climate Crisis: Which Way Out?” The other panelists were Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Kshama Sawant and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The event, moderated by Brian Lehrer, occurred on the eve of the People’s Climate March in New York City.

We have undergone a transformation during the last few decades—what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état in slow motion. We are no longer a capitalist democracy endowed with a functioning liberal class that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. Liberals in the old Democratic Party such as the senators Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh and George McGovern—who worked with Ralph Nader to make the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Mine Safety and Health Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the OSHA law, who made common cause with labor unions to protect workers, who stood up to the arms industry and a bloated military—no longer exist within the Democratic Party, as Nader has been lamenting for several years. They were pushed out as corporate donors began to transform the political landscape with the election of Ronald Reagan. And this is why the Democrats have not, as Bill Curry points out, enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s.

We are governed, rather, by a species of corporate totalitarianism, or what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin describes as “inverted totalitarianism.” By this Wolin means a system where corporate power, while it purports to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the three branches of government and a free press, along with the iconography and language of American patriotism, has in fact seized all the important levers of power to render the citizen impotent.

The old liberal class, the safety valve that addressed grievances and injustices in times of economic or political distress, has been neutered. There are self-identified liberals, including Barack Obama, who continue to speak in the old language of liberalism but serve corporate power. This has been true since the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton found that by doing corporate bidding he could get corporate money—thus NAFTA, the destruction of our welfare system, the explosion of mass incarceration under the [1994] omnibus bill, the deregulation of the FCC, turning the airwaves over to a half dozen corporations, and the revoking of FDR’s 1933 Glass-Steagall reform that had protected our banking system from speculators. Clinton, in exchange for corporate money, transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. This was diabolically brilliant. It forced the Republican Party to shift so far to the right it became insane.

.....snip.....

If Wolin is right, and I believe he is, then when we begin to build mass movements that carry out repeated acts of civil disobedience, as I think everyone on this panel believes we must do, the corporate state, including the Democratic Party, will react the way all calcified states react. It will use the security and surveillance apparatus, militarized police forces—and, under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, the military itself—to shut down all dissent with force. The legal and organizational mechanisms are now in place to, with the flip of a switch, put the nation effectively under martial law. When acts of mass civil disobedience begin on Monday morning with Flood Wall Street and later with Occupy the U.N., the face of the corporate state will, as it did during the Occupy movement, reveal itself. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_coming_climate_revolt_20140921

September 22, 2014

The narrator in Terry Lynn Land's latest commercial pronounces Michigan .....

..... "Michi-can". One of my pet peeves. Drives me nuts.

She can't do anything right.

September 21, 2014

100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop's Greatest Year

from Rolling Stone:


100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop's Greatest Year
Let's go crazy: The standout songs from radio's 'Thriller' season




From Prince to Madonna to Michael Jackson to Bruce Springsteen to Cyndi Lauper, 1984 was the year that pop stood tallest. New Wave, R&B, hip-hop, mascara'd hard rock and "Weird Al" Yankovic all crossed paths on the charts while a post-"Billie Jean" MTV brought them into your living room. In the spirit of this landmark year, here are the 100 best singles from the year pop popped. To be considered, the song had to be released in 1984 or have significant chart impact in 1984, and charted somewhere on the Billboard Hot 100. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-singles-of-1984-pops-greatest-year-20140917#ixzz3DywF0hqI

September 21, 2014

Watching coverage of the climate march on Democracy Now! and thinking ..............

......... that we are really fortunate to have an independent left news source such as Democracy Now! ..... Amy Goodman interviewed people such as Kshama Sawant, and from groups such as domestic workers fighting exposure to chemicals in the workplace -- interviews that you'll never see on corporate media.
So Thank You Amy, thank you Juan Gonzales ...... and Bill Moyers and Thom Hartmann and your ilk. You're indispensable.

And I've seen CSPAN cover Tea Party rallies. But 200,000 people marching about the most important issue facing all of us? Not so much.

September 21, 2014

Scotland: Why One Londoner Is Relieved

from In These Times:


Scotland: Why One Londoner Is Relieved
It’s lucky for U.K. progressives that the Scots didn’t secede.

BY JANE MILLER


Scotland will not become an independent country, and I am relieved. It felt like an imminent amputation, though it was always easy enough to see why so many Scots would want to be shot of us English. With a recent history of grievances going back to the Thatcher years, when Scotland was used as a laboratory to test the hated Poll Tax and the selling off of council homes, the “Yes to Independence” campaign clearly made a lot of sense to many people. And as P.G. Wodehouse wonderfully put it, “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

Eighty-four percent of eligible Scots voted—the largest percentage in any election anywhere in the UK since 1951, when I voted for the first time—and among them, for the first time, were 16 and 17-year-olds: surely an important and welcome innovation. Yet until a month ago, most of England and the Westminster parliament complacently left Scotland to its own debate—in the belief, I suppose, that Alex Salmond, the former First Minister of Scotland and the long time leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party’s movement for independence were unlikely to tempt many Scots to abandon the shelter of the UK, the royal family, and our place in Europe, NATO and at the Security Council.

Suddenly and belatedly, on September 7, the Sunday Times reported the results of its opinion poll: the “Yes” campaign at 51 percent and the “No,” at 49 percent. The “No” campaign was galvanised into activity. The three main UK political parties joined forces to promise all kinds of future powers to Scotland if it turned its back on independence. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, declared that he would be “heartbroken” if Scotland seceded. Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown roared back into a form we hadn’t seen since Tony Blair beat him to the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994. It was suddenly possible to feel that Alex Salmond would have had a much harder time of it had Labour been in power in London. Of the 59 MPs Scotland sends to Westminister, 40 are Labour, 11 Liberal Democrats, 6 Scottish Nationalists, one Conservative and one Independent. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17188/scotland_why_one_londoner_is_relieved

September 21, 2014

Flood Wall Street

(HuffPost) This is a critical week for the planet. A United Nations conference on the climate will be followed on Saturday by the People's Climate March, which is expected to be the largest environmental march in history. But it would be a grave mistake, for the planet and for ourselves, to overlook another event that is to take place on Sunday. That's when the Flood Wall Street rally will target the role of global capitalism in our environmental crisis.

The profit economy is a root cause -- make that the root cause -- of climate change.

Wall Street is, in a very real sense, the epicenter of our environmental crisis. To ignore that fact is to risk dooming our other climate efforts to failure, or to use them merely as palliatives for troubled consciences. There's no other way to say this: Capitalism, as practiced on Wall Street today, is an existential threat to humanity.

To make that statement is not necessarily to issue a jeremiad against capitalism in all its forms. The danger comes not from commerce itself, but from the extraordinary concentration of wealth and power that has accrued in recent decades to corporations and their Wall Street investors. This has led in turn to an ideological shift that has entirely captured the GOP and has seized large portions of the Democratic Party as well. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/want-to-save-the-planet-f_b_5842594.html

September 21, 2014

Naomi Klein is right: Unchecked capitalism will destroy civilization

via Grist:


Naomi Klein is right: Unchecked capitalism will destroy civilization
By Joseph Romm

Cross-posted from Climate Progress
19 Sep 2014 10:44 AM


Best-selling progressive journalist Naomi Klein has an important new book out, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine now “tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth,” as the book jacket aptly puts it.

In diagnosing the unprecedented existential threat humanity faces thanks to our myopia and unbridled greed, Klein has three essential points to make:

1. Because we have ignored the increasingly urgent warnings and pleas for action from climate scientists for a quarter century (!) now, the incremental or evolutionary paths to avert catastrophic global warming that we might have been able to take in the past are closed to us.

2. Humanity faces a stark choice as a result: the end of civilization as we know it or the end of capitalism as we know it.

3. Choosing “unregulated capitalism” over human civilization would be a “morally monstrous” choice — and so the winning message for the climate movement is a moral one.

As an aside, readers may remember that I don’t always agree with Klein on either substance or messaging. And obviously I have quibbles with her book — in particular I am skeptical of some elements of her proposed “cure” (and how she frames them) as I’ll discuss in a later post. But in fairness to Klein, our 25-year dawdling has made the diagnosis (and prognosis) unimaginably graver and thus made all cures look politically implausible, as the pessimistic, do-little “eco-modernists” keep pointing out far too gleefully.

To anyone who thinks attacking unchecked capitalism is not a winning message (when done correctly), I’d urge you to read the advice of Frank Luntz, the GOP’s top messaging guru, on the subject: “don’t say capitalism” because Americans “think capitalism is immoral.”

The great value in the book lies in Klein’s understanding and elaboration of the three essential points above. Indeed I’m not certain any other book has so clearly spelled out these points. And yet these three points are, arguably, the most important ones for climate hawks, for the (misnamed) “intelligentsia,” and, indeed, for all homo sapiens to understand at a deep level, since they clarify the choices we now must make. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/climate-energy/naomi-klein-is-right-unchecked-capitalism-will-destroy-civilization/