by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
April 16, 2006 Visited by an Angel Because we understand the nature of the collective madness that has captured our country, we write each other these letters of resistance, poems filled with unabashed cynicism and love, songs that articulate radical new strategies for drawing our fellows back from the hair line trigger of apocalyptic destruction fingered by an idiot king. This might be my last letter. I don’t say this to inflate my already petulant grandiosity, but to remind myself of the degree of current difficulty and the determination of those in power to destroy wide swathes of the Earth and Her people in order to accommodate their greed and lust for power. Investigating the heart of their darkness is to risk one’s sanity. Who can believe that a people with a rich land and proud tradition would spread nuclear waste over entire landscapes and condemn the DNA of those peoples to the horror of cellular degradation? Perhaps I’ve already said too much. My own hands have been seared while handling the manuscripts of this quintescent evil. However, we must persevere. We must dream the unimaginable as we stand on our 21st century Golgotha watching the crucifixion of whatever stands in the way of these menacing and mendacious forces. Awash in this vision I was visited by the angel Dezmond. He is seven earth years old and a wild Irish rover if ever there was one. He paused in consuming his macaroni and cheese, gesturing with a bacon slice as if the scepter of a sovereign: “Grandpa, I saw a television show that said algae were destroying the ocean. Did you know that?” “No dear.” “Well, what I think we can do is invent a potion that we’d spray on the algae and make it shrink up into a dust ball and blow away.” He stopped and looked at me earnestly, “I’m imagining this.” “Oh really” I said, and we both cracked up. Then he continued. He went on to describe how the potion would work opposite on ‘good things’ and bring them all back to life, the difficulties divers might face in placing the potion, how the potion needed to be just the right mixture, and how since the ocean really wanted to live it would love the potion and accept it. I just sat there delighting in his imagination, his virtue, his brilliant optimism, happy to be confirming the creative genius that won’t be dismissed or put aside by the tin gods of power-over and materialism. War and violence are nothing if not the failure of imagination and despite the bankrupt condition of those who now pretend to lead, new seeds remain alive and well within the inner folds of the heart, enveloped by the protection of faith, awaiting the awakening celebration of Spring. “Grandpa, do you think my idea will work?” “Yes dear.” Peace Our childhood is killed in Iraq. It is killed by Joan Chittister, OSB Environment & Energy Glaciers Disappear in Before & After Photos Antarctic air is warming faster than rest of world Hugo Chavez Tells BBC “We have more oil than Saudi Arabia” Washington Scandals The Slander That Launched Donald Rumsfeld's Career Iraq Applying lipstick to a pig on the third anniversary of Iraq invasion Depleted Uranium destroying the gene pool in the Middle East Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems. In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war. Militias Kill More Iraqis than "Terrorists": US Envoy Khalilzad The Roots of the Iraqi Civil War Sistani Blows off Bush President Bush sent Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani a letter asking him to intervene to help end the gridlock in the formation of a new Iraqi government. Asked about his response, an aide said that Sistani had not opened the letter and had put it aside in his office. Why Iraq Was a Mistake By Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold (Ret.) Learning to Count: The Dead in Iraq Fighting displaces tens of thousands of Iraqis Photographs From Iraq: March 22 - April 12, 2006 Iran The Iran Plans by Sy Hersh Josh Marshall on Hersh Iran Story The war on Iran by Pepe Escobar International How George Bush Unified a Latin America Saudia Arabia working on secret nuclear program with Pakistan Darfur faces "perfect storm" of human destruction US living on borrowed time - and money National 60 Minutes joins the propaganda war Few senators show for Feingold bid against Bush Pentagon War on the Internet The End of M3 - Hiding the Truth of Inflation Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship - Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign (April 14) Indiana signs lease for toll road In the biggest highway privatization deal in U.S. history, state officials Wednesday signed an agreement Wednesday to turn the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road over to a foreign consortium that will operate it for a profit for the next 75 years. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said the upfront payment would help pay for other transportation projects and create jobs. 9/11 System Breakdown - 9/11 Workers Clearing Debris After 9/11 Die of Cancer World Trade Center Environmental Organization Essays BIODIVERSITY: A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth Affect, care, cooperation and responsibility are the four central principles of a new ethics that humanity urgently needs to adopt, in order to avoid becoming extinct as "a victim of itself," Leonardo Boff, one of the founders of liberation theology, said Thursday. Emotions and sensitivity are "the essence, the core dimension of the human being," said the Brazilian theologian at a panel on "ethics, biodiversity and sustainability". History Ambushes the Bush Administration by Tom Engelhardt America's Reign of Terror in Iraq by Justin Raimondo I've been in combat too long - interview with former Senator Max Cleland Slum Ecology by Mike Davis Suffering under a series of crushing pressures, most recently a quarter-century-old regime of Draconian international economic policies, cities are systematically polluting, urbanizing, and destroying their crucial environmental support systems. Democracy in the Muslim World and the White House by Anwar Ibrahim Vision Quest (The real Iraq Strategy) by Chris Floyd The system is irretrievably corrupt by Jeffrey St. Clair *** |
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