rebelpleb

RIP, Dr. Zinn. You are one of our greatest idols. Losing you is a dear loss for humanity... Democracy Now Common Dreams Boston Globe

My friend would have turned 42 yesterday. Instead, she passed away before her 39th birthday. It was not inevitable . I am supposed to turn this situation into  something positive . I am supposed to be happy for the joy she brought to so many people's lives, to believe she is looking down upon all of us and smiling, to know she is in a better place and at peace. What I know is that her life was taken too soon. Not because of some inherited genetic deficiency , but because of cultural negligence and complacency . I am befuddled at a society that refuses to ackowledge and address the obvious causes of such an epidemic while so many of our friends and family members perish. (Though here, I speak of cancer ...  you can substitute what you will, and it will still likely fit... ) We are the architects of our own doom . Will we ever learn? How many others will be lost prematurely?

Tens of thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of people -"a cross section” of America, said NBC - protested against their best interests and for the interests of the multi-trillion dollar “health” insurance, medical, and pharmaceutical industries today. Besides the fact that this event speaks to the profound infiltration of the inaccurate and fallacious mainstream corporate media messages into the highly impressionable psyche of Americans, it speaks to the fact that many (perhaps most?) white Americans are simply racist. People are and have been losing their homes, going bankrupt, and dying because of inadequate health insurance and rejected claims for service for which they paid for decades, while industry insiders (including insurance employees, pharmaceutical employees, and even doctors) have raked in the dough. We just rid ourselves of a President and Vice-President who lied about erroneous links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, who lied about torture, who committed war crimes...

As Bill Maher so accurately noted, the Democrats have moved to the right and the Right has moved into a mental hospital. As it stands, Democrats now simply affirm all of the ideologies that Republicans used to. Need proof? Look into history. Look into the policies and bills that have passed through Congress and the White House over the past couple of decades. Hell, Richard Nixon passed more progressive legislation than almost any federal Democratic official in the past twenty years. Barack Obama’s administration has continued nearly in lock-step with the previous George W. Bush administration, with few exceptions. So, then, these facts beg the question: Why do Republicans disapprove of Obama, considering that he is promulgating their own agenda? Their answers are that he is a: Socialist Communist Liberal Progressive Terrorist Fascist Illegal Alien Racist The fact that these characterizations are contradictory notwithstanding, they are also completely inaccurate. W...

With all the revelations about U.S. government-sanctioned torture, of how Cheney claims torture brought important information to light, and of how those claims are refuted by actual facts, it is easy for us to fall into some common traps. For one, Cheney’s claims might lead us to believe that there is merit in talking about whether or not torture is useful. This canard plays into the fiction spun by the torturers. We can argue and prove that torture does not produce good intelligence, but what if it did? Would that excuse it? The entire subject is moot since torture has but one purpose: to force prisoners to say what torturers want them to say. It does not extend beyond that and never has throughout history. In the Medieval period, the Church or the secular state could confiscate land of all who were hanged/burned/drowned after confession under torture. This was quite profitable for the powerful. To increase profits, they not only obtained a confession of guilt for witchcraft...

Much of the American public used Barack Obama as their mirror throughout the 2008 election cycle. They wanted an end to war, equality for minorities, universal “socialist” health care, tougher environmental regulations, corporate accountability. They looked at Obama and saw what they wanted, even though he never professed to espouse these values and never committed to any promises in these veins. Just like Bill Clinton in 1992, the disgruntled masses projected their hopes, fears, and aspirations onto the candidate for change, and he happily obliged by appealing to their needs with all rhetoric and little substance. Here was a bright, intelligent, attractive, somewhat self-deprecating and enormously charming man from a difficult background who no-doubt faced tremendous challenges on his path to power. Here was a man who could understand all of us who did not fit into that infamous “base” of George W. Bush’s. Here was the antithesis to the last eight years. How could we possibly elect th...

Ten weeks ago, I had colon resection surgery for a malignant polyp. At 36 years old, I had cancer. I have been a vegetarian for nearly 15 years, have not eaten red meat in nearly 20 years, and have been physically fit my entire life - I was even a college athlete. I possessed exactly zero risk factors (as defined by the ever knowledgeable medical industry) for such a malady. In fact, I had numerous “anti-” risk factors that should have placed me at negative odds of acquiring cancer at all. My reality belies these erroneous beliefs about health and cancer. A great number of our common health problems and syndromes (I refuse to term them diseases, because “disease” connotes known specific causes) can be attributed to our atrociously unhealthy lifestyles and western diets that lack nutrition. Cancer is not one of them. The notion that good nutrition, fitness, health and well-being prevent cancer is fallacious . And the unwavering hope that we will find a cure to this epidemic is just as f...

I wanted to say a few words about my grandmother - Nanny, as we grandchildren called her - because she was one of my favorite people on the planet. Being with Nanny and speaking with her always brought me great joy, just as it brought her joy to be with her grandchildren. Though it never felt like it at the time, our conversations were always a learning experience. From her I learned not only how to cook, but how to give, how to sacrifice, how to be strong, how to deal with life’s difficulties, and most of all, how to give and receive unconditional love.   From a young age, I delighted in visiting my grandparents. Those weekly visits to their Yonkers home, and then to their home in Bethel, enabled me to learn to cook from the master. I’ll never forget all the years of “caving” the cavatelli macaroni and leaving pounds of it to dry on the dining room table. We could never get to eating it soon enough. Every time I came over to my Nanny’s home, she had the most delectable leftovers in h...

My life partner and I sometimes take out DVDs from our local library here in Grand Forks , North Dakota . These disks are in appalling condition, full of scratches, gouges, congealed gunk, and a wide sampling of malodorous particles. It is true that these materials get used a lot, but certainly no more than the rentals from local video stores, which rarely suffer from the same kind of calamities. As we try to repair the carnage visited upon these disks so they will play in my computer, we try to visualize what people must be doing to ruin the materials. We envision Frisbee-type tossing that degenerates into even less advised drunken household stunts; we even imagine folks using the disks as mini plates from which fork-worthy victuals are carelessly tined. Why all the respect for rentals and not for the library loans? The first thing that pops to mind is that we might be held accountable for rentals but that library stuff is free. Pushing it slightly further...

In the May 12, 2008, UK paper The Guardian , David Adam reported that “carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high…[and] climate change could begin to slide out of control.” He went on to write that scientific models assumed half of our future CO2 emissions would be reabsorbed by forests and oceans, but that these assumptions “may be too optimistic.” Of course, CO2 isn’t the only crisis in our world, but let’s set the shortcomings of scientific reductionism aside for the moment. The fact that CO2 emissions are increasing is no surprise. Look locally. Is there a decrease of driving in your town or city ? Besides the handful of folks that are walking or biking, not even high gas prices diminish driving. Couple that with the abundance of vehicles that get eight to twelve miles per gallon, and it might appear to the casual observer that there is no climate crisis or even a fuel shortage. Do we need to drive every time we go out? Are we really too busy to walk? Is...

Let’s start off traditionally with this tiny iceberg tip of a discussion on growth with a selection from a definition (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition): growth 3. An increase, as in size, number, value, or strength; extension or expansion. To our civilization, growth in this sense of the word is something to strive for. Certainly, in terms of our stock portfolios, growth is always looked upon as a fine thing. Our money must grow. Our worth must grow. Our status must grow. Our possessions must grow. Our economy must grow. These are absolute musts in our society. No one wants the economy to stagnate. Share holders of a corporation expect capital growth, and CEOs are hired to make this happen. It is their legal responsibility to do so. Is it right, though, to expect growth to be something that should last forever? Currently, no corporation in the world would ever be content with zero growth. Negative growth would be a cause for great concern. Perh...

( photo courtesy Garrett Oie ) Two months ago my friend Kelli Auletta died of cancer. She was 38. She was a caring, effusive, warm, and welcoming woman who befriended nearly everyone she met. She had hundreds, even thousands of friends and acquaintances, yet she made you feel like you were the only one. She liked to live life to the fullest and fortunately, she had the ability and opportunity to do so. For the fifteen years I knew her, she was always present with care and support for me through all circumstances. I can only hope she felt the same from me. She fought her condition to the end and left with the same stubbornness, tenacity, and sense of humor with which she lived. Many referred to her as “The Social Director.” As she brought endless numbers of people together in life, so she did in her death. She will be terribly missed, having gone far too soon. Though the circumstances surrounding the loss of someone so young to a “disease” so epidemic are rife for comment, I find no com...