|
A
New Earth:
Once
in a while, something tells me to turn on the TV or change the channel and watch Oprah so I did
on Monday, March 31, 2008 and there was Oprah and Suze Orman and the show
directed me to the online class based on Tolle's book, A
New
Earth. I
started watching online and I'm glad I did! Click here to watch the
shows:
http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webcast/archive/archive_watchnow.jsp
___________________________
Patriotic News:
On Wednesday, March 26,
2008, The Newshour With Jim Lehrer on PBS had a segment on the Iraq War
and reported on the financial and social costs of the war. This was supported by a breakdown of running and long-term costs
that includes equipment, soldiers’ compensation, more troops, bases
being built, recruitment packages, because no one is volunteering for the
war, and many other expenses.
There are also the
emotional and psychological costs. In
VA hospitals soldiers are shown recuperating with lost limbs, lifetime
physical pain, and many, similar situations. Costs included with this are family compensations for injured
soldiers and life insurance for the soldiers who died. The soldiers and families thankfully are at least being compensated
for their suffering. Imagine
if a country got so cynical and calloused that the injured soldiers are
left on their own upon their return. That is, if the leader of a country is asked, “What do you think
about the American People’s disgust of government leadership not helping
out the soldiers when they return home?” And the leader answers, “So?”
Other costs of the war
include the deaths and injuries of the people in Iraq as well as the
continued instability.
Finally, the segment on
Iraq asks the question about all this money being spent over there and how
that same money could have been spent here for the benefit of American
citizens.
So a slogan comes to
mind:
“Spend the Money Over
There So We Don’t Have to Spend the Money Over Here.”
“There” means
no-bid contracts and such.
The Newshour also
reported on the U.S. economy.
Remember the phrase,
“The Economy, Stupid?”
It seems a similar
phrase applies to today also: “The
Economy, Part II, Stupid?”
_________________________
AFTER 911
Cut
and Run
from
Bin Laden
Cut
and Bleed
in
Iraq
__________________________
A Talk-Show Folk Tale
Once upon a time, a man
named Demander Chief called-in to the Kelly Noyes Show, during the “Can
I Afford It” segment and asked, “Kelly, I want to start a war. Can I afford it?”
Kelly answers, “A
war? Why? For what? I wouldn’t
if I were you, but as you know this segment is to let you know if you can
afford it or not. Show me the
money.”
Demander Chief replies,
“I don’t want to use my own money.”
Kelly asks, “How will
you pay for this war?”
“Money from working citizens,” Demander Chief answers.
Kelly’s intuition
forces her to ask more questions. “Is
there more to this war you’re not telling me? Since you don’t have the money and must use the paychecks of
regular citizens?”
“I’ll also have to
pay with soldiers’ blood and the lives of the innocent,” Demander
Chief adds.
“DENIED! DENIED! You cannot
afford it!” Kelly immediately tells Demander Chief.
_____________________________
GLADIATOR’S REPORT
The
General speaks
in
chains
Because
the Emperor
is
always right.
_____________________________
It seems some news
networks are in the same chains as broadcast journalists repeat the same things as displayed on The
Daily Show.
_____________________________
A man and a woman are
talking. The woman says, “I don’t watch those news networks
anymore.”
The man replies, “You
mean the Communist News Network?”
The woman laughs.
_______________________________
It’s good to see
shows like The Daily Show, Real
Time With Bill Maher and The
Newshour With Jim Lehrer. They
are some of the voices that continue dialogue about the government.
For example, on Friday,
March 28, 2008, Bill
Maher had John
Cusack as guest via satellite and Cusack impressively expressed his
views about the current administration.
This ties-in with one
of the panelists, Tavis
Smiley, who quoted Frederick
Douglass: “A true patriot is a lover of his country who
rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”
_____________________________
Bill Maher interview
with John
Cusack on Real
Time With Bill Maher on Friday, March 28, 2008 on HBO.
Maher begins by asking
Cusack about making a movie and adds how Iraq movies have not done well.
Cusack: “Grace is Gone – more somber drama about the cost and grief of
this whole fiasco.”
“War,
Inc. – much more absurdist take on it. Some things are so vicious that if you didn’t look at them
through a different lense you couldn’t get out of bed. Certainly the war profiteering and immorality and illegality of
this disastrous free market utopian enterprise out there is certainly well
documented.”
Maher: “Shock Doctrine—more a plan about making money. Is that not right?”
Cusack: “Yeah I think so. When
we were writing it. I’ve
always greatly admired Naomi and she wrote I think a wonderful piece
called Baghdad Year Zero that I think she later expanded into that
groundbreaking book that you mentioned The
Shock Doctrine. It
talks about what all this privatization means and I think the film tries
to address that in an interesting way, too. But what that sort of means is that the very core things that you
think make-up a government like wars, or interrogation, border patrol,
jailing, any of those types of things, you’d think would be sacred
things that would happen with the state are now being turned into
for-profit enterprises. And
if you want all these things, corporate ethics to be our national
interest, I think then you have a situation we’re in now. But right now when you really think we’ve outsourced everything
into interrogation which means torture is a cost plus enterprise I think
you can see the complete spiritual bankruptcy of this whole neocon movement. It’s a nightmare
beyond you can really imagine.”
Maher – “Play
devil’s advocate. Is it really just the Bush Administration or is there a rot
in America? The rot is a
little deeper than just the Bush Administration.”
Cusack: “What’s better than a hollowed out guy like Bush to lead a
movement that would hollow out the core functions of government and reduce
governing to basically giving an ATM machine to its favorite corporations. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But I think that the issue goes a lot deeper. I don’t think people really know for example that there are as
many contractors as there are soldiers in Iraq. I don’t think people know for example or maybe they do based on
the brilliant work of investigative journalists and even people like Jeremy
Scahill on your show that Blackwater was granted immunity of state,
federal, and international law. Who
gave these mercenary, roving, corporate armies a license to kill, on our
dime?
Maher: “When you say people don’t know isn’t that indicting the
country at large?”
Cusack: “On the larger point, yeah.”
Maher: “If people really cared, they would care to find out.”
Cusack: “But I think they’re getting more and more information about it
and I think that some of these truths are so horrible that you really
don’t want to think about that. The
gig’s up. If guys who are
statesmen on CNN are also sitting on the boards and are shareholders in
some of the most profitable defense contractors in the world and they
publicly make a case to go to war. And
then they go to war, right? And
they create a new market with the war. They bar the competitors from the aftermath. Then they come back and speak evangelically about free markets that
aren’t even free when it’s a vast protectionist racket. These aren’t particularly subtle facts. Stock prices jumped 145% where their companies are awarded 2.3
billion dollar contracts. I
mean, after a while, you have to just expose and shame and indict and
hopefully convict the participants in this illegal, immoral ideology. So yeah, are Americans complacent? Yeah, but I’m not ready to give up or see the Constitution of the
United State to these bunch of hoodlums.”
Maher: “I’m guessing that’s who you’re for?” (Obama)
Cusack: “I’m for literally anybody who talks about this new economy. I’ll vote for either one of the candidates if they say they
are going to take out all the private contractors of Iraq and close down
an embassy that’s probably the size of Atlanta.”
Maher: “But neither one of them is saying that.”
Cusack: “I know. But this is
beyond the military industrial complex. This is an economy that’s got the dot com size money going around
and there’s a feeding frenzy from these corporations. Not all corporations are bad. I own a Frigidaire but it’s not subsidized by the government and
it doesn’t get anybody killed unless there’s stuff I don’t know
about refrigerators. So
it’s not anti-corporate in any way. Naomi Klein says in
her book, it’s impossible to know where Lockheed Martin stops and the
government begins.”
Maher: “Right. I’m not
sure if Barack Obama gets elected that’s gonna change.”
Cusack: “I think all the politicians are gonna be incrementalists and
they’re going to say I have to do what I have to do to get elected but
it’s up to the public to put pressure on them to make that an issue in
the Democratic race. I have a certain amount of sympathy for them both.”
|
