| Saturday, April 12, 2003 |  |
| A Lyric: Sister Mary | 0 comments |
| 12 Apr 2003 @ 11:39 Sister Mary Sister Mary with your torn and tattered gown, Could it be that all you've done has slowed you down. With your broken heart, you've given everything you've got, and it's worn you. Come let's sit and rest beneath the lilac trees, And we'll pretend that for a moment we are free. Free from all the pain, the hunger and from those who live to gain. Something's stirring off the coast of turtle island, Quietly warned us this would happen all along, I don't have time to waste on idle conversation, Sister Mary, can you tell where we went wrong? Sister Mary it is time to live as one. God's blessed you my love, You have silenced all your fears and fed the dove, And those eyes of yours have soothed our souls, Sister Mary. Sister Mary, have your children left their home ? And does it seem that all your seeds have all been sown ? It doesn't matter much, there are others who receive your touch. They love you. Something's stirring off the coast of turtle island, Quietly warned us it would happen all along. I don't have time to waste on idle conversation, Sister Mary, can you tell where we went wrong. Sister Mary, it is time to live as one. God's blessed you my love, You have silenced all your fears and fed the dove. And those eyes of yours have soothed our souls, Sister Mary, Sister Mary now your gone. © 1991 |
| Interest Exceeds Income Tax Paid | 1 comment |
 12 Apr 2003 @ 11:30 ..."Now, to be honest, the surplus during the Clinton years is the obvious anomaly and was created by grabbing Social Security funds, specifically the cash set-aside for the impending baby-boomer retirements, and spending it as if it were general funds. But this chart does show the "death spiral" of the government's debt crisis. The interest alone on all this debt now exceeds the income tax paid by every US citizen." More > |
| 137 More Oil Wells Liberated For Democracy | 1 comment |
 12 Apr 2003 @ 11:21From The Onion A tongue in cheek (i.e. humorous) article. RUMAILAH OIL FIELDS, IRAQ—The U.S. continued to make progress in its fight against totalitarianism Tuesday, when 137 more oil wells were liberated for democracy. "For decades, these oil wells have suffered untold misery under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule," said U.S. Commander General Tommy Franks, speaking from southern Iraq's Rumailah oil fields, the site of the liberation. "With this victory, these long-oppressed wells will soon pump their first barrels of crude as free and equal wells in the global petroleum marketplace. They will join the ranks of the world's liberated oil wells, enjoying the same rights as their democratic brethren around the globe." The Rumailah wells are the latest of nearly 900 to be freed from the yoke of oppression by coalition forces. As U.S. troops continue to advance deeper into Iraq—armed with constant standing orders to "Secure the oil wells; repeat, secure the oil wells"—an estimated 1,500 more wells are expected to be liberated in the coming weeks. For months, U.S. officials have gone to great lengths to assure the public, both in America and abroad, that the Iraq invasion is not motivated by oil interests—a sentiment echoed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a press conference Monday. "This war is not about oil," Rumsfeld said. "Our decision to intercede against this dictator and not against the dozens of other ruthless dictators in the world is not about oil. France and Russia's opposition to this war is not about the purely coincidental fact that both countries have lucrative, pre-existing oil contracts with Iraq. Furthermore, the interest of many U.S. corporations in the war has nothing to do with oil, either. This war is about liberty. Oil wells deserve liberty, too." Continued Rumsfeld: "These oppressed Iraqi oil wells deserve the right to pump oil as freely as any other oil well on God's Earth—be it in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, or an Alaskan wildlife refuge. It is crass and cynical to view this operation as being motivated by greed, profit, or the second-largest oil reserves in the Middle East. This war is motivated by one thing: democracy. Our military action is meant to provide all of Iraq's oil wells—be they big or small, staggeringly lucrative or merely very lucrative—with their God-given right to pump under a democratic system of self-governance." In the weeks leading up to the war, the U.S. sought to make its intentions clear by air-dropping hundreds of thousands of pamphlets over Iraq assuring its people that the U.S. was not launching a war against them, but against Saddam Hussein. The pamphlets also gave Iraqi soldiers instructions on how to surrender properly, as well as a promise that they would be treated well if they did so. Most importantly, though, they included a stern admonition to all Iraqis not to burn any oil wells, warning that they would be hunted down and prosecuted as war criminals if they did. U.S. officials hope that the pamphlets' message, especially the part about the oil wells, gets through. "These valuable natural resources belong to the Iraqi people, who rely on their output for desperately needed food and medicine under the U.N.'s Oil-For-Food Program," Franks said. "But ultimately, we need to remember that these oil wells do not really belong to anybody. They, like any other free oil well, have the basic, inalienable right to independent representational government and self-determination under their own rule. Every oil well deserves to choose how and when it wishes to produce oil, and for whose economic benefit." Aiding the wells in their transition to democracy will be Texaco, Mobil, and other U.S. businesses, each of which bring years of expertise in dealing with the problems and challenges that oil wells face in a free society. These private companies will be well-equipped to help manage the oil wells as they make the difficult adjustment to producing oil in freedom. Despite the apparent inevitability of victory in Iraq, White House sources stress that the battle for oil-well liberty is far from over. "We must remember that there are many, many oil wells living under oppression all across the world, not just in Iraq," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "Until every oil well enjoys the fruits of democracy, no oil well is truly free." More > |
| Viacom / CBS Merge | 1 comment |
 12 Apr 2003 @ 11:02So what are the implications? ."..........Already the largest operator of cable TV broadcasting, with MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, VH-1 and Comedy Central, Viacom will add such CBS-owned networks as TNN. The combined firm will also be the largest US owner of outdoor billboards, as well as controlling Blockbuster Video, the largest video-rental company, book publisher Simon & Schuster, and five amusement parks.Viacom owns 50 percent of the embryonic sixth US television network, UPN, but will likely be forced to sell all or most of its stake as a condition of the merger. The other half-owner is Chris Craft Industries.Both Viacom and CBS are themselves products of a complex series of mergers and acquisitions over the past 20 years, during which the US media and publishing industry has seen ownership concentrated in the hands of a half dozen giant conglomerates...." Full Story Here More > |
| The Risks of Activism | 0 comments |
 12 Apr 2003 @ 10:51More Blood in Rafah by Starhawk In Rafah another activist from the International Solidarity Movement was shot. Tom Hundall was shot in the head by a sniper from an Israeli guard tower on the Egyptian border of the Gaza strip. The guard towers surround Gaza, which has become a kind of open-air prison overlaid on an idyllic land of sun and sea and orange groves. Here and there a few olive groves remain, or a flock of sheep and goats graze an empty lot. Farmers bring produce to market in donkey carts, and old women bake bread in clay ovens. An ancient order survives under an overlay of concrete, dust and rubble, menaced by bulldozers, sniper towers, tanks that shoot at night, acres of razor wire and no-man¹s land now being further extended to border a thirty-foot high concrete wall which marches across the landscape, cutting Rafah irrevocably off from Egypt. The wall is presumably for Œsecurity¹‹to prevent suicide bombers and weapons from entering Israel. But in reality, the wall is the next move in the Israeli policy of confiscation and control. In the West Bank, the route of the wall strolls out from the Green Line that marks the pre-1967 boundary, rambles all over the countryside and steals more than half of the remaining land from the Palestinians. Cities such as Nablus and Jenin will be encircled and enclosed in isolated Bantustans.. In the Qualquilya area, the first phase of wall construction took fifty per cent of the villagers¹ farmland and nineteen wells that provided a third of the area¹s water. Mas¹Ha stands to lose over ninety per cent of its farmland. A nation of gardeners and farmers will become a nation of prisoners‹the wall the visible, irrevocable finalization of a policy that already restricts movement with hundreds of checkpoints, splits families, makes daily life an almost impossible gauntlet of delays and humiliations. The wall will put an end to any hope of a two-state solution. Once it is complete, no viable Palestinian state can exist. Palestinians and their supporters have feared that the Israelis will forceably remove or Œtransfer¹ the Palestinians out of the West Bank. Instead, the policy now seems to be to surround, isolate and enclose the Palestinian population into a giant prison colony of a greater Israel. In the Gaza strip, this policy is already well advanced. Sniper towers and guard stations are everywhere. Tanks patrol the border areas at night, and soldiers shoot, sometimes randomly and sometimes deliberately, down city streets, into houses, at crowds of children. To build the wall, in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Israelis bulldoze olive trees and homes that stand in the way. Three weeks ago, twenty-three year old Rachel Corrie was deliberately run over by a bulldozer while trying to prevent home demolitions. The Israelis have not seriously investigated her death, nor held the soldiers responsible accountable. As far as we know, they have not been disciplined or punished in any way. Instead, deliberate murder of internationals seems to have become policy. I am well aware that thousands, most likely hundreds of thousands of young men and some women the age of Brian and Rachel and Tom have died in the last week. That hundreds of Palestinians have died, unnoticed by the world¹s media. In numbers, the dead become faceless. It¹s heard to fathom the weight of this pain multiplied hundreds of thousands of times. Tom and Rachel have faces to me, because they were part of our group, doing the same work here of using nonviolent tactics to open some space for change. Tom and Rachel have faces. I spent Thursday visiting Brian Avery, who a week ago was shot in the face by the heavy mounted gun from an Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier. Brian and I had done checkpoint watch together in Nablus. He is a gardener, an organic farmer, a musician, presently facing a year of major operations to restore a shattered nose and jaw and cheeks and a split tongue. Brian¹s face is currently a grotesque and painful mask, but he has one. He is the lucky one, he will survive, brain intact, eyes and senses functional. He will even be able to speak. Tom was twenty three years old, from Manchester, England. He was shot trying to protect children, to snatch them out of the range of sniper fire coming from an Israeli guard tower, where soldiers stand hidden and safe, taking aim from at Palestinians for sport. The soldiers were shooting at a group of children gathering at a road block. Tom had grabbed a young boy out of the zone of fire and brought him to safety. He went back to try and rescue two young girls who were afraid to move. The Israeli soldiers shot him in the head. Tom had gone to Iraq, as a nonviolent peace witness to do humanitarian aid, but heand his friends had been forced to leave and had headed across Jordan to Palestine to join the International Solidarity Movement. Now he lies on a ventilator, unconscious and unlikely ever to recover. Tom was in the training I helped to give last week, and all of us are feeling the weight of responsibility. Did we teach them the right things, the right way to assess danger and make choices? Did we give them the information they need to survive? And yet I can¹t quite imagine what else we might or might not have said to Tom, or to the activists who were with him, who were also with Rachel when she died and have not given up or gone home or abandoned Rafah. Could I say to a young man courageous enough to brave gunfire to rescue children that he should have stood aside and let them be shot? That he should have saved his life over theirs? "Why?" the Palestinians ask me over and over again, when I admit to being an American. They never say, "I hate America," just, "Why? Why bomb Iraq? Why kill children?" I¹m left in the same blank state of incomprehension. Why kill children? Why spill more blood in Rafah? Why order soldiers to shoot unarmed peace activists in the head? Call your local Israeli embassy, and ask them these questions. If you are British, ask your embassy to pressure for an investigation into Tom¹s shooting. If you are an American citizen, ask your congressional representatives to pressure the Israeli¹s to investigate Rachel¹s death and Brian¹s shooting. Contact your Member of Congress and ask for support of H. Con. Res. 111 to express sympathy for the death of Rachel Corrie and demand an investigation into her death. Or contact Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton and ask for her support. Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising and eight other books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality. She works with the RANT trainer¹s collective |