Written and read by W. S. Merwin
Source: Moyers & company
POETRY: “Yesterday” / W. S. Merwin
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Category Archives: Persons
HISTORICAL REVISIONISM: Chris Hedges / “White Power to the Rescue”
[…]
Memphis, on the eve of the Civil War, was one of the biggest slave markets in the South. After the war the city was an epicenter for Ku Klux Klan terror that included lynching, the nighttime burning of black churches and schools and the killing of black leaders and their white supporters, atrocities that continued into the 20th century. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.
[…]
[Black journalist Ida B. Wells] investigations revealed that lynching was fundamentally a mechanism to rid white businessmen of black competitors. . . . [T]he lynching[s], she wrote, was “[a]n excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and ‘keep the nigger down.’”
[…]
The steady rise of ethnic nationalism over the past decade, the replacing of history with mendacious and sanitized versions of lost glory, is part of the moral decay that infects a dying culture. It is a frightening attempt, by those who are desperate and trapped, to escape through invented history their despair, impoverishment and hopelessness. It breeds intolerance and eventually violence. Violence becomes in this perverted belief system a cleansing agent, a way to restore a lost world. There are ample historical records that disprove the myths espoused by the neo-Confederates, who insist the Civil War was not about slavery but states’ rights and the protection of traditional Christianity.
ECONOMICS: “Extortionists Versus Con Men” / Paul Krugman
One faction basically wants to use the party’s power of obstruction: threaten to provoke a crisis over the debt ceiling — in fact, do this again and again — and thereby force Obama to implement the GOP agenda.
The other faction wants to achieve the same goals by stealth. Pretend that what you’re really concerned about is debt and the fate of our children; cultivate the Very Serious People and the deficit scolds; impersonate a budget wonk; and smuggle the agenda in by dressing it in fiscal responsibility camouflage.
OP-ED: Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks / “The Founding Fathers Versus The Gun Nuts”
Sorry, gun nuts, you’re on the wrong side of our Founding Fathers.
For example, in a tirade against CNN’s Piers Morgan, Alex Jones argued, “The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting. It’s there to protect us from tyrannical government.”
It’s an argument that’s often echoed by gun nuts – as though their fully-loaded AR-15 with 100-bullet drum will keep them safe from Predator drones and cruise missiles. If indeed this is the true intent of the 2nd Amendment, protection from the government, then here’s the newsflash: you guys are woefully outgunned. And the 2nd Amendment would have allowed you to own a cannon and a warship, so America today would look more like Somalia today with well-armed warlords running their own little fiefdoms in defiance of the federal government.
But luckily, this was never the intent of the 2nd Amendment. Our Founding Fathers never imagined a well-armed citizenry to keep the American government itself in check. It was all about protecting the American government from both foreign and domestic threats.
Poring over the first-hand documents from 1789 that detailed the Fist Congress’ debate on arms and militia, you’ll see a constant theme: the 2nd Amendment was created to protect the American government.
CHRISTIAN MISOGYNY: Matt Dillahunty and Tracie Harris / “Atheist TV host boots ‘piece of shit’ Christian for calling raped girl ‘evil’”
If I were in a situation where I could stop a child rapist, I would, that’s the difference between me and your God.
~ Tracie Harris
Read article and watch video here . . .
h/t: Kenny in Pacific Grove, CA
h/t: AlterNet.org
ATHEISM: “In Good Company”
NDAA: Chris Hedges / “The Final Battle [Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)]”
Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.
[…]
[T]he NDAA is not about protecting us. It is about protecting the state from us.
Related articles
- Supreme Court asked to strike down NDAA’s indefinite detention clause (rt.com)
- NDAA 2013: Drones, Permanent War And Indefinite Detention Without Charge Or Trial For American Citizens On American Soil (corporatecriminalsexposed.com)
- Feinstein Amendment Doubles Down on NDAA (readersupportednews.org)
- Breaking: Congress Passes 2013 NDAA, President Obama Must Veto (amnestyusa.org)
QUOTATION: Daniel Dennett / “Life of Folly”
h/t: CHRISTIAN SATIRE: Mr Fish / “Good Grief”
h/t: truthdig.com
Always Question Authority 