Howard Zinn On Memorial Day: The Memory of the Dead Deserves a Different Dedication

Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

- Howard Zinn

 

Howard Zinn: Our Problem Is Civil Obedience

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

...But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.

- Howard Zinn

Hillary Clinton: The Neocon in Democrat's Clothing

By Pierre Guerlain, Truthout | Op-Ed

Hillary Clinton speaks at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 30, 2008. (Photo: Brett Weinstein)

The next president of the United States will almost certainly be a Republican. No, not the one everyone in the media rejects, the buffoon named Donald Trump who stands no chance of shaking the hands of world leaders. Chances are, the next Republican president will be a woman, and yes, her name will be Hillary Clinton.

No kidding, if this comes to pass, history will be made: the first woman president and among the first Republican neocons in Democratic garb. Everyone knows the expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Now, it seems the United States will invent the macho Republican in feminist, Democratic clothing.

Many authors have quoted a sentence by Bill Clinton:

We're all Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?

Eisenhower Republicans were, by today's standards, quite moderate. The quote refers to the 1990s, and already Bill Clinton had triangulated his presidency to Republican-hood. He had demolished Aid to Families With Dependent Children and bought into the bash-the-poor rhetoric of the right wing. He had passed a crime bill that targeted people of color; he had destroyed FDR's legacy, notably by abolishing the Glass-Steagall Act. And he was so "tough on crime" that during the 1992 presidential campaign season, he had gone back to his home state of Arkansas to witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who was "mentally deficient." Bill Clinton might not have inhaled marijuana, but he certainly had inhaled the poison of right-wing ideas.

As we all know, Hillary Clinton openly supported many of Bill Clinton's political measures. She used the terrible expression "superpredators," supported the crime bill and made a hash of health insurance reform. Liza Featherstone talks about Hillary Clinton's faux feminism, and she links her critique to class themes, which is as it should be. Feminists cannot be elite feminists or 1% feminists if they want to defend the rights of all women.

For more original Truthout election coverage, check out our election section, "Beyond the Sound Bites: Election 2016."

Hillary Clinton's track record on issues of poverty, racial justice and justice for women is appalling. As a former member of the board of Walmart, she sided with the rich and powerful, which she also does when she gives speeches for Wall Street. The really important question is how someone who has constantly sided with the rich can campaign as a progressive, as a friend of people of color and even as a feminist? Michelle Alexander exposed the hypocrisy of the situation in arguing that "Hillary Clinton doesn't deserve the black vote."

On foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton is not even an Eisenhower Republican, but a war hawk whose philosophy and shortsightedness is evidenced by the flippant way in which she advocated for war in Libya and the way in which she celebrated. "We came, we saw, he died," she said and laughed loudly. This cruel statement does not take into account the mess and mayhem left behind after the intervention, something President Obama calls a "shit show" and his worst mistake. But it is the companion piece to her major fellow elite "feminist" Madeleine Albright declaring that killing half a million Iraqis is worth it.

Hillary Clinton, like true neoliberals in the GOP, supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so as Bill had said she supported the bond market and free trade. Now, she claims she did not, but, of course, she is lying. Her lies also have to do with Wall Street (she has not released the text of her speeches), support for people of color and her feminism.

Please continue this article here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36201-hillary-clinton-the-neocon-in-democrat-s-clothing

Noam Chomsky: When a Society Is Dominated By Corporations

It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.

- Noam Chomsky

Vandana Shiva: It Is Not an Investment If It Is Destroying the Planet

I think the American people should see that the corporations abandoned them long ago. That people will have to build their own economies and rebuild democracy as a living democracy. The corporations belong to no land, no country, no people. They have no loyalty to anything apart from their profits. And the profits today are on an unimaginable scale; it has become illegitimate, criminal profit — profits extracted at the cost of life.

- Vandana Shiva

Longstanding Hillary Clinton Ties to Monsanto

by Stephen Lendman

Her presidency would be nightmarish for world peace, popular interests and what remains of fundamental freedoms, a disaster risking full-blown tyranny and global war - vital to go all-out to oppose.

Her biotech/agribusiness ties began during the 1980s as a Rose Law firm lawyer. Monsanto and Tyson Foods were clients.

During her years as first lady in the 1990s, she supported harmful to health genetically modified foods and ingredients - while banning them from White House menus.

The Clinton and Bush II families ate organic foods, free from genetic manipulation and toxic pesticides.

As Obama’s secretary of state, she heavily pressured other countries to use and import GMOs. US taxpayer money continues promoting them worldwide, ignoring food safety.

Monsanto gave the Clinton Foundation up to a million dollars - dirty money buying influence. Last year, she hired former Monsanto lobbyist Jerry Crawford to run her campaign.

Environmentalists justifiably call her the “Bride of Frankenfood.” Throughout her legal and political careers, she consistently supported corporate interests at the expense of popular ones.

It’s unsurprising she and husband Bill are multi-millionaires. As of late 2015, their estimated net worth exceeds $110 million.

During her unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, Monsanto’s Washington law firm sponsored a fundraiser, titled “Rural Americans for Hillary.”

It emblazoned a large “Welcome Hillary” sign on a toxic Monsanto Roundup sprayer. The company is involved in raising millions of dollars from donors to elect her president.

In late June 2014, she keynoted the BIO International Convention, attended by 15,667 industry leaders, including nearly 2,500 CEOs from all 50 states and 70 foreign countries - endorsing GMO foods and ingredients, saying:

“I stand in favor of using (GMO) seed and products that have a proven track record. There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.”

She charges around $200,000 per speech. Wall Street paid her millions. The major banks are her largest campaign contributors.

Disturbing facts belie her GMO support, wanting ordinary people worldwide consuming what she and husband Bill shun.

Food Democracy Now! (FDN) calls her “another Monsanto-loving president in the White House” if elected. Her longstanding ties to “the most hated corporation on the planet” give millions of Americans cause for concern.

FDN calls for “end(ing) Monsanto’s hold on the White House and American policy once and for all.”

Hillary’s toxic pro-war, pro-corporate, anti-democratic, anti-populist agenda is polar opposite what’s vitally needed.

Please go here for the original article: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2016/02/26/longstanding-hillary-clinton-ties-to

Monsanto to Be Put on Trial for ‘Crimes Against Nature and Humanity’

The Organic Consumers Association, IFOAM International Organics, Navdanya, Regeneration International (RI) and Millions Against Monsanto, joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice groups announced last week that they will put Monsanto, a U.S.-based transnational corporation, on trial for crimes against nature and humanity and ecocide, in The Hague, Netherlands, next year on World Food Day, Oct. 16, 2016.

@Regrann from "@gmofreeusa_official – Monsanto Put on Trial for Crimes against Humanity in The Hague Ronnie Cummi… pic.twitter.com/ifzBgSAxss

— Sea Val Organics (@SeaValOrganics) December 4, 2015

The announcement was made at a press conference held in conjunction with the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris.

“The time is long overdue for a global citizens’ tribunal to put Monsanto on trial for crimes against humanity and the environment,” Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association and Via Organica, said. “We are in Paris this month to address the most serious threat that humans have ever faced in our 100-200,000 year evolution—global warming and climate disruption. Why is there so much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere and not enough carbon organic matter in the soil? Corporate agribusiness, industrial forestry, the garbage and sewage industry and agricultural biotechnology have literally killed the climate-stabilizing, carbon-sink capacity of the Earth’s living soil.”

Vandana Shiva, physicist, author, activist and founder of Navdanya agrees. “Monsanto has pushed GMOs in order to collect royalties from poor farmers, trapping them in unpayable debt and pushing them to suicide,” she said. “Monsanto promotes an agro-industrial model that contributes at least 50 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Monsanto is also largely responsible for the depletion of soil and water resources, species extinction and declining biodiversity and the displacement of millions of small farmers worldwide.”

Please continue this article here: http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/07/monsanto-put-on-trial/

Hāfez: I Know the Way You Can Get

I KNOW THE WAY YOU CAN GET

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!” 

 
― Hāfez

 

Wiliam Stafford - Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron

Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron

 

Out of their loneliness for each other
two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch
forward and become suddenly a life
lifted from dawn or the rain.  It is
the wilderness come back again, a lagoon
with our city reflected in its eye.
We live by faith in such presences.

 

It is a test for us, that thin
but real, undulating figure that promises,
"If you keep faith I will exist
at the edge, where your vision joins
the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,
feet that go down in the mud where the truth is."

 

- William Stafford

 

 

Michael Meade: The Greater Self Within

Nature loves a mystery and each soul born is a mystery waiting to be revealed, a meaningful story waiting to unfold. No one can prove it, nor can it be simply disproven. But all the old stories depict it and our dreams hint at it and life at critical times requires that we act as if it were true. The awakened individual has always been an agent of change and an assistant to creation ongoing. Human beings are both a genius production of nature and the genius producers of culture. The awakening of our genius self allows us to deliver the gifts we have been given and contribute meaning as well as beauty too the world. An old idea found in many traditions holds that each person comes to this world of change at a time when they have something meaningful to offer. Meaningful solutions to the overwhelming problems of the world would be closer at hand if it was better understood that each person born bears within them a gift that the world might need.

Great crisis and impossible tasks can uncover hidden resources and reveal veins of genius that can alter the course of history. The threat of collapse and utter loss can also serve to awaken genius qualities and radical solutions. Each soul desires to be part of something greater, something "larger than life," for we each harbor within ourselves a larger life and a greater self waiting to become known. Everyone intuits the possibility of a greater life; yet this greatness now tends to be imagined as something outside ourselves. Most campaigns that promise liberation - be they political or spiritual, base advertising, or high-energy motivational programs - direct us toward outer goals. Meanwhile, there is a greater self within that tries to surface at each turning point in our lives.

The genius of human nature involves innate capacities for creation and invention that are important in the life of each individual and essential to the balance of the world. The true individual who, by virtue of being himself or herself, enters a state of partnership with the ongoing acts of creation and thereby adds something to life that was not there before. When the troubles are all around us, everyone can find some place where they are needed, where they can help all that is wounded and help protect all that is threatened.

To borrow from the genius of Emerson again: "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." Yet, knowing what to do with the conditions of the world may depend more than ever on knowing how each of us is naturally threaded to the world.

- Michael Meade

Excerpted from The Genius Myth