U.S. National

The Uncultured Wars – Arabs, Muslims, and the Poverty of Liberal Thought.
Steven Salaita.
Zed Books, New York, 2008.

“The Uncultured Wars” comprises an excellent series of thought provoking essays, the excellence deriving from their ability to provoke thought that should be one of the hallmarks of academic works. As such Steven Salaita writes as an advocate of a position rather than pretending dispassionate objectivity, or “myth of disinterest” in Salaita’s own words. I will return to that idea later as for my own personal interests it is contained in one of his more interesting essays. Generally, these essays are well constructed, leading the reader to consider how subtle and yet how obvious racism is in the U.S., Arab/Muslim racism in particular.

Any hope of prosecuting the perpetrators of the stolen 2004 presidential election ended when Mike Connell died Dec 19 in a plane crash. As reported in Raw Story “Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates.”

Even the most ardent reactionaries, deluded ‘patriots,’ and apathetic cynics, whose myopic, Panglossian perspectives ensure that they continue to reflexively genuflect to the deeply criminal enterprise of American Capitalism and rationalize the savage imperialism of US foreign policy, are beginning to concede that we are in the midst of a crisis of epic proportions.

So lack of awareness, which is usually the first obstacle to solving a problem, isn’t the real enemy here. Our chief foe is a swarm of greed-driven, self-absorbed, mean-spirited locust-like human beings who are dedicated to “reforming” and perpetuating capitalism, the very system that has led us to this woeful state of environmental, economic, social, and political affairs.

Capitalism, the systemization of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation camouflaged by the narcotic of consumerism, the irresistible illusion of equal opportunity for all, and its ostensible compatibility with liberal democracy, has seduced hundreds of millions of people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices, and malevolence.

Monday December 22, a tragedy 40 times bigger than the Valdez Oil spill occurred outside of Kingston, TN. Residences living near the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston coal plant were flooded with approximately 500 million gallons of nasty black coal waste. It covered 400 acres of land and flooded into tributaries of the Tennessee River which is the water supply for Chattanooga TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

The coal ash, slurry or sludge is a byproduct left over after TVA burns their coal and it contains mercury and dangerous heavy metals like lead and arsenic, among many other potentially toxic and radioactive contaminates. Materials found naturally in coal are concentrated in the ash and more toxic than they start.

TVA says that the area is not toxic and that preliminary water test show that the drinking water at the nearby water treatment facility meets standards. The problem is that many of the families in the impacted area do not have access to this safe drinking water because their water is being pumped from a spring located in the flooded area or they depend on well water.

A Review of THE SUPERFERRY CHRONICLES: Hawaii's Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth
by Koohan Paik & Jerry Mander.
[Available from: http://www.koabooks.com/ ISBN13:978-0-9773338-9-9 ]

The sleek, aluminum mega-catamaran streaksacross the sea swells at forty miles an hour. Powered by jet engines, it rides high, skimming the surface on twin hulls that slice sharply through the water...and also, incidentally, accidentally through any dolphins, whale pups, sea turtles or, for that matter, human protesters that happen to get in the way.

Five stories high and a football field-and-a-half long, the superferry can carry 866 civilian or military personnel, 282 civilian cars and trucks...or an unknown quantity of Stryker Depleted Uranium-firing military tanks across the high seas and into shallow water on any island chain or continent. China, and other potential US rivals, please take note.

Lurking within the numbers that recorded Barack Obama’s election victory are some numbers that cannot be true. And while the errors are of nowhere near the magnitude to call Obama’s victory into question, they are substantial enough to continue to challenge the accuracy of optical scanners and electronic tabulators. We need a fair, accurate, and verifiable count, especially because, in every election, there are some contests that are very close, and even relatively small discrepancies, whether accidental or intentional, could reverse the outcomes of those elections.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (PDF)

“Just because we can’t sell shares in nature doesn’t mean it has no value.” Thomas Friedman

“Big Oil and King Coal may have armies of lobbyists, lawyers, foreign diplomats and even military advisors, but Americans know that we can do better for ourselves, our country, and our fellow humans. As the writer Arundhati Roy says, ‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’” Michael Brune

“Reversing global warming will require a World War II level of mobilization. It is the work of tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands. Such a shift will require massive support at the social, cultural, and political levels. And in an increasingly nonwhite nation, that means enlisting the passionate involvement of millions of so-called minorities—as consumers, inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, buzz marketers, voters, and workers.” Van Jones

Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: the Rape of Palestine
by William A. Cook
EXPATHOS, Groningen, Netherlands, 2008

The cover of Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: the Rape of Palestine tells a significant story on its own: from a Palestine of green dotted with a few Jewish settlements, mainly in the north, transiting through the UN partition plan designation and the 1967 war to what is now the reverse - a small strip of green on the coast at Gaza, and a small sprinkling of isolated green bantustan communities huddled in the middle of Israel. The Jewish community in Israel has been very successful in their ongoing purpose to achieve dominion over all the lands of Palestine. They have achieved this by abrogating and denying almost every international law that has been established to govern how one group of people should interact with another in times of peace and war, but mostly war.

"No Innocent Bystanders," by Mickey Z
Published by CWG Press, Sept. 2008

Well, I told my wife the other day, a book has to be perfect, or I won't read it.

Ruth looked at me and her eyes said, I knew you were a piece of garbage the day I met you, you, you arrogant neo-Nebraska a-hole ... the last twenty-six, seven, eight years have been wasted.

She said, "What?"

I said, you know, I have to like it. So do you. That's what everybody does.

Well, Mickey Z's book is not perfect, but I like it.

I think you will too.

It is organized sort of like a Michael Moore book.

Part of the organization are lists of species we have lost, along with chapters on various musings, like Mickey has dumped his pockets of all the notes he made while spending the day on the subway, walking around the city sitting in the park with pigeons on his knees, watching, making notes.

Mickey Zezima harbors deep observations of Americans and America. It is our luck that he chooses to share them.

They go to the root, perhaps like Ted Rall, maybe Dorothy Day.

In 2002, arch-conservative Matthew Scully wrote a book called, Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy, that was universally and uncritically acclaimed by the animal advocacy movement. Because this movement is overwhelmingly single-issue in its focus, and in most cases doesn’t care about a person’s views or politics except how they relate to animals, no one had a problem with the fact that Scully was a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He wrote some of the key fear-peddling diatribes that got Bush elected and he was recently re-enlisted to help Bush sell the Iraq war “surge” to the American people.