Duty to Warn

The crazies in the United States House of Representatives would have you believe it were so. They say fix that budget before we'll raise the debt ceiling. If we don't get our fix, they announce, there's no deal. We'll just default until things get straightened out. (Image: George Romero) Let's see what would happen to you or me. We are unable to pay our bills, unless we tap a special line of credit that we've used in the past, one that has never failed us. We'll have to raise some money and cut some expenses too.

We're tired of paying bills and just want to stop for a while. We file for bankruptcy following all of the required procedures. The minute we file, we're granted an automatic stay on our debt. We are now protected, no bills to pay.

Then we get a few visits from creditors. They let us know that they know we can pay. Other people owed money show up also and ask, what is your problem? You owe us the money. You can pay and you will. The combination of angry creditors and recipients of our funds forces us to do what we could have done in the first place.

America's budget crisis has the world economy at the brink. Social Security, Medicare, aid for needy children, environmental protection and much more are being chopped.

Yet Congress and the White House may still want to use our money to fund atomic power.

Specifically, $36 billion in loan guarantees may still be on the table for building new nukes. Millions more are slated for "small modular reactors" and other atomic boondoggles.

A national campaign---including an August 7 "MUSE2" concert---is underway to help stop this. With your help, we can win.

The murder spree in Norway was apparently the work of a Norwegian, not a group of foreigners, and for various other reasons the comparison is not exact. Nonetheless, it's tempting to wonder how many people would still be alive today if George W. Bush or Rudy Giuliani had spoken after the 9-11 attacks as Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg just did.

You'll recall that Bush immediately spoke of a "war against terrorism," claimed to have been attacked for being a beacon of freedom, announced that we were all filled with anger, and decreed that we would make no distinction between terrorists and "those who harbored them." "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" he promised.

Now take a 60-second tour of an alternative universe by substituting "the United States" for "Norway" in Stoltenberg's remarks:

Condom Nation: The U. S. Government’s Sex Education Campaign From World War I to the Internet
By Alexandra M. Lord
Johns Hopkins University Press 2010
224 pages
Illustrations, Annotated Endnotes & Index

The 1950's pulp-fiction style cover is what caught my eye. It shows a voluptuous, provocatively dressed woman–she has an ample bosom shown to great advantage by a low cut top, a Barbie doll waist and slim hips–lounging on a tabletop between two servicemen. She has that come hither look that has both of the men all but smacking their lips. (Think Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys.) The subtitle of the book is in white letters placed in a red box, which instantly reminded me of the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarette packages.

Freedom is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama
By James T. Patterson
Basic Books 2010
216 Pages
Preface, Annotated Endnotes and Index

On May 22, 1964, the late President Lyndon Johnson challenged the graduating class at the University of Michigan to make not just a more rich and powerful society, but a Great Society “. . .where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.” In practice the Great Society came to be known as a set of domestic programs and legislative initiatives designed, in part, to lift Americans out of poverty and create a more just society. It was a giddy time in America. Finally the country appeared to be moving toward resolving its centuries old racial problems; indeed, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sent to Congress in June 1963 by the late president John F. Kennedy, was signed just two months after LBJ’s speech later. The Economic Opportunity Act, the cornerstone of Johnson’s War on Poverty, was also signed that summer, and the morass that was Vietnam was not on the radar for most of the American public.

The wealthiest nation on earth is not actually obliged to starve our senior citizens. We don't need a military 670% more expensive than the next largest one on earth. We don't need to fund health insurance corporations instead of healthcare. And we don't need tax breaks for billionaires. In fact, we don't need billionaires. That's the message RootsAction is taking to Congress.

Forbes magazine has been listing the 400 wealthiest Americans every year since 1982. Thirteen billionaires appeared on the original Forbes list. Now all 400 rate billionaire status. These 400, collectively, possess more wealth than the poorer half of America's population put together. Sam Pizzigati explains how we got here.

The United States now has a level of inequality that shocks much of the world. If Washington wants to balance its budget, it should do so on the backs of these 400 people, not the hundreds of millions of us who can't afford it. Tax these billionaires into non-billionaires, and Washington's financial worries -- and our economic worries -- will be gone for generations to come. The vast majority of us favor this approach.

The many stages of imperialism are often brought into debate about whether the current U.S. foreign policy, or any U.S. foreign policy, is an imperial project. Eric Walberg's clear and concise presentation of the "great games" centred on the ancient Silk Road from China through to Eastern Europe presents a definition of imperialism that spans all of humanities' empires. The "Foundations…of imperial hegemony are financial and military-political, to ensure control of world labour power and raw materials." This reflects my own interpretation of empire as being founded on the gathering in of wealth and power to the heartland from the hinterland, from a cultural geography perspective. Walberg uses the terms heartland and rimland, the same idea, focussing intentions on the heart of Eurasia and the surrounding countries' resources, wealth, and manpower.