"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."
- Woody Guthrie.
"In the years leading into a dark age, societies often exhibit an inability to perceive or act upon a looming threat, such as a declining resource. Twilight cultures begin to show a preference for veneer and form, not depth and content; a stubborn blindness to the consequences of actions, from the leadership on down. In other words, an epidemic erosion of attention is a sure sign of an impending dark age." -- Distracted: The erosion of attention in the coming dark age, Maggie Jackson,
"The
men who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not
fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To
courageous self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless
reasoning applied through the process of popular government, no danger flowing
from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of evil apprehended
is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion."
-- Louis Brandeis in the Whitney v. California dissent, 1927 .
"The
new (media) technologies give proof of the human being's intellectual capacity.
Can we really believe that we are incapable of applying that same intellectual
power to solving the great problems the world faces: overpopulation, pollution
and poverty chief among them? Can we believe that the beleaguered people of
the world will long be tolerant of those who possess the tools but who can't
make them work for the good of humankind everywhere? ... The revolutionary
forces are already at work today, and they have humankind's dreams on their
side. We don't want to be on the other side. It is up to us to assume leadership
of that revolution, to channel it in a direction that will ensure freedom's
future." -- Walter Cronkite A Reporters Life New York Alfred A. Knopf,
1997
"Liberalism has always been associated with
a passionate interest in freedom of thought and freedom of speech, with scientific
research, with experiment, with the liberty of teaching, with the ideal of
an independent and unbiased press, with the right of men to differ in their
opinions and be different in their conduct. That is why it is associated with
resistance to tyranny, with criticism of dogma and authority, with hatred
of intolerance." —Walter Lippmann, “The Press and Public
Opinion,” Political Science Quarterly 46 (June 1931) p. 161.
"Only
after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been
poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find
that money cannot be eaten." -- RU Green Team quoting a Cree Indian
prophesy, Earth Day 2002.
"If you want to be a serious student and analyst of the world, if you want to do really good journalism and journalism that tells the truth as you see it, then broadcast journalism is not the place to go today. There are still good newspapers." -- Bill Moyers, Santa Barbara Independent, Feb. 24, 2005.
"I just think that everybody (in themedia] is playing to the lower common demoninator ... All this is driven by what certain executives in boardrooms think people in your age group want. How insulting is that? They have decided that your generation is a bunch of ... idiots. That all you want is stuff you can completely absorb in 30 seconds, max. That you have no attention span, that you much more interested in form than content. That you are multi-tasking right and left so that you are never absorbing information from one source at a time, you're always focusing your brain on your iPod and TV at the same time, and so forth. Do you accept that description of your generation?" -- Laurie Garrett interview with Columbia Journalism Review
"One class of
philosophers calls every extraordinary appearance a judgement or a sign; another
class views everything as the working of matter
and motion. These two sets are at war with each other. The one denounces the
other as superstitious or atheistical." -- Hezekiah Niles, 1818
"I have a foreboding
of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time, when the United States
is a service and information economy ... when awesome technological powers
are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest
can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their
own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching
our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical facilities
in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true,
we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The
dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content
in the enormously influential media ..". -- Carl Sagan, The Demon
Haunted World, Random House, 1995
"Once
the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box." - Italian
proverb
"History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil. ~Joseph Heller, Good as Gold
"Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted." ~Mary McCarthy, On the Contrary
"He holds
the seas in the hollow of His hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down.
Our comfort, then, for ourselves and one another, is to have done our duty.
" -- Charles Dickens, A Message from the Sea (Christmas Stories, 1894).
"The reforming
of education, [is] one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought
on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes... John Milton, Of
Education, 1644
"The way that most
men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive
them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever."
-- THUCYDIDES, 431 BC.
"History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils". ~Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors
"History is never above the melee. It is not allowed to be neutral, but forced to enlist in every army". ~Allan Nevins, The Gateway to History
"History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?" ~Washington Irving, The Sketch Book: Westminster Abbey
"Take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes." ~Jean Jaures
"Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians" ~Franklin P. Jones
"What, but education,
has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbors? And what
chains them to their present state of barbarism and wretchedness, but a bigotted
veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom of their fathers, and the preposterous
idea that they are to look backward for better things, and not forward, longing,
as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots, rather
than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization? And how much more encouraging
to the achievements of science and improvement is this, than the desponding
view that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must
ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are, we must tread with awful
reverence in the footsteps of our fathers. This doctrine is the genuine fruit
of the alliance between Church and State; the tenants of which, finding
themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which
might unmask their usurpations, and monopolies of honors, wealth, and power,
and fear every change, as endangering the comforts they now hold". --
Thomas Jefferson, Report
of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia
"I thank God there
are no free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not have these hundred
years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the
world, and printing has divulged them...God keep us from both." -- Sir
William Berkeley, royal governor of Virginia, 1671, expressing sentiments
not unknown to recent Virginia governors.
"There simply
is nothing to which we can attach ourselves, no matter how hard we try. In
time, things will change and the conditions that produced our current desires
will be gone. Why then cling to them now?" - Hsing Yun, "The
Indescribable."
"Life shrinks
or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin (1903 - 1977)
"Those
who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want
crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people
will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong
which will be imposed upon them. These will continue until they are resisted
with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed
by the endurance of those whom they oppress. -- Frederick Douglass, 1857
"I know no safe
depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves;
and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with
a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform
their discretion....-- Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Charles
Jarvis (Sept. 28, 1820), in THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 278 (Andrew A.
Lipscomb et al. eds., 1903).
"Opposition to
environmentalism, of course, is as old as the movement itself. Those who used
public resources to create wealth for themselves -- the timber and cattle
barons, the mine operators, the oil companies, big agriculture, and industries
that regarded the air and water as free commodities... reacted to efforts
to control their activities with the tolerance of a nest of angry rattlesnakes."
-- Phil Shabecoff, 1993
"Knowledge among a people makes them free, enterprising and dauntless; but Ignorance enslaves, emasculates and depresses them. When Men know their Rights, they will at all Hazards defend them, as well against the insidious Designs of domestic Politicians, as the undisguised attacks of a foreign Enemy; But while the Mind remains involved in its native Obscurity, it becomes pliable, abject, dastardly, and tame; it swallows the grossest Absurdities, submits to the vilest Impositions and follows wherever it is led... " William Livingston, Independent Reflector, Nov. 8, 1753. (From David A. Copeland's Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers (Greenwood Press, 2000).
"War is a racket. It
always has been A racket is best described as something that is not what
it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what
it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense
of the very many. - General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1935
Its the End of the World (as we know
it) -- REM
... Team by team
reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped. Look at that low playing! Fine,
then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it'll do. Save yourself,
serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy
with the rapture and the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic, patriotic,
slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know
it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as
we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught
in foreign towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Locking
in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive
incinerate. Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down. Watch
your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer
clear! A tournament, tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know
it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as
we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I dreamt of knives,
continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein. Leonid
Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly
bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know
it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as
we know it and I feel fine...fine... (It's time I had some time alone) ==
From the World
Trade Organization Hoax Site announcing a long overdue mea
culpa.
"... Current trade liberalization rules and policies
have led to increased poverty and inequality, and have eroded democratic principles,
with a disporportionately large negative effect on the poorest countries...
Poverty: The
numbers of people living on less than $2 per day has risen by almost 50%
since 1980, to 2.8 billion -- almost half the world's
population. And this is precisely the period that has been most heavily
liberalized. (World Bank, Global Economic Outlook 2000) Recent evidence
suggests that the numbers of people living on less than $1 per day is growing
in most regions of the world (with the notable exception of China). (World
Bank, Global Economic Outlook 2000)
The world's poorest countries' share of world trade has
declined by more than 40 per cent since 1980 to a mere 0.4 per cent. (UNCTAD,
Conference on Least Developed Countries 1999) The poorest 49 countries make
up 10% of the world's population, but account for only 0.4% of world trade.
This disparity has been growing. (UNCTAD, Conference
on Least Developed Countries 2001) 51 of the 100 largest economies in the
world are corporations. The Top 500 multinational corporations account for
nearly 70 percent of the worldwide trade; this percentage has steadily increased
over the past twenty years. (CorpWatch) The U.N. estimates that poor countries
lose about US$2 billion per day because of unjust trade rules, many instituted
by our organization -- 14 times the amount they receive in aid. (UNCTAD,
Conference on Least Developed Countries 2001)
In 59 countries, average income is lower today than 20
years ago. (United Nations Human Development Report, 1999) In 1980-1996
only 33 of 130 developing countries increased growth by more than 3% per
capita, while the GNP per capita of 59 countries declined. Around 1.6 billion
people are economically worse off today than 15 years ago. (United Nations
Human Development Report, 1999, p. 31.)
Poor are getting poorer in
both relative and absolute terms, as one UNICEF study has commented: 'A
new face of apartheid is spreading across the globe. as millions of people
live in wretched conditions side-by-side with those who enjoy unprecedented
prosperity.' (UNICEF figures based on World Bank "World Development
Indicators 1997") UNCTAD estimates that LDCs will lose between $163 and
$265 million in export earnings as a result of implementation of Uruguay
Round agreements, while paying $146 Ð 292 million more for their imports.
(UNCTAD)In 1999, outstanding external debt of LDCs was 89% of their aggregate
GDP. This has been increasing steadily. (UNCTAD)
Inequality: The
richest fifth have 80% of the world's income and the poorest fifth have
1%. This gap has doubled between 1960 and 2000. (United Nations Human
Development Report, 1999) In almost all countries that have undertaken rapid
trade liberalisation, wage inequality has increased. (There was a) 20-30%
fall in wages in some Latin American countries. (UNCTAD 1997) Even in the
First World, the gap between upper executive and worker salaries has never
bigger -- it is in fact many times bigger than it was twenty years ago.
(UNCTAD 1997) Wages of unskilled labour declined by about 25% between 1984
and 1995. Unskilled wages in the US have fallen by 20% (in real terms) since
the 1970s. (UNCTAD 1997)
Trade liberalization
is negatively correlated with income growth among
the poorest 40 per cent of the population, but positively correlated with
income growth among higher income groups. In other words, it helps
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. (Lundbeg and Squire
World Bank 1999, Chapter 3.) At the start of the 19th Century, the ratio
of real incomes per head between the worldÕs richest and poorest countries
was three to one. By 1900, it was 10 to one. By 2000, it has risen to 60
to one ($29,000 to $500). "The Assessment: The Twentieth Century Ð
Achievements, Failures, Lessons," Angus Maddison, Oxford Review of
Economic Policy, winter 1999, cited in Martin Wolf FT 26/1/2000)
Ah,
Virginia
This
throne of billionaires, this perpetual pose,
This lucid lethargy, this seat of somnolence,
This other Purgatory, this demitasse of reason,
This fortress built by Pentagons
Against reflection and the hand of peace,
And the envy of lands made less happy
Or levelled for burning fluids or rocks,
This happy breed of servants, this grand and groveling plantation ...
This blessed battlefield, this not so common-wealth, this Virginia
(with apologies to Henry II)
"The idea that science
and technology would save humanity can be said to have colored the thinking
of the 20th century. One of history's great ironies is that this grandiose
notion has been reversed, in that we now depend on social and political methods
to resolve so many of the intricate complexes of scientific and technological
issues. For this task we were, and remain, totally unprepared."
-- from the Ethyl Controversy.
It has
always seemed to me that production of renewable liquid fuel from biomass
or surplus crops (like Brazilian sugar) would spark an enormous amount of
glocal development. Imagine the underemployed and unemployed masses of the
developing world finds dignified, productive and useful work creating renewable
fuels from marine and marginal land biomass farms, and in return the industrialized
world, using this renewable fuel, helps everyone build a sustainable future
and a decent economy. Replacing oil with such a system is potentially a key
to averting global disaster.
From Doc Oaxaca
John Conner remembered that moment for the rest of his life. There seemed an ageless silence, and a distant smell of camphine and coffee, of magnolias and mildew, behind the still grandfather clock. She looked down on him from an enormous distance and quietly said one word:
"Decide."
He gulped. “You're saying sin is relative? Situational? You think that's what Father Stephen would have said?”
"Decide."
"I need to think. I need to know more about this. I need to understand your world."
“Easy enough. I live in an upside down world, an antipode, a place where people who look righteous are the sinners; a place where the victims are the real saints.
He looked confused.
“You've just wandered through the looking glass, young friend, and now you see people for the first time. The ones they call sinners – the girls looking for an abortion, the draft dodgers on their way to Canada, the old people and the crazy people who need illegal drugs to control their pain – these are the people whose souls are cauterized by harsh life. Maybe they are walking on stumps, but at least they are clean.”
"And the dragons and dutchesses in their church lairs – and all their phony righteousness -- what does it protect? Lies. Bigotry. Laws that trap young women; wars that murder young men; institutions that exploit every possible form of suffering…"
Her jaw stuck out defiantly. "The howling Bible-pounders of Hell run this land, John, and that is – the way – things – are."
She sat and poured another shot of bourbon into her tea, taking a sip, calming herself.
"Father Stephen and I did everything we could to undermine it, John, and if it meant saving one soul, we were willing to risk losing our lives, or even our own souls, in the process.”
John chewed on that for a moment. “I’ve heard of giving your life,” he said. “But not that.”
"Yes," she said flatly, staring deeply into his eyes. "That."
"Willie Stark, you know, the hero in Robert Penn Warren's novel, said good can come from bad, but I think Warren really believed it was the other way around. The "good" people push back everything that's not like them. They create a wild area on the edges of life where all kinds of bad things happen."
"And so, do you believe in evil?” she asked. “Is there a devil? Can you lose your soul to its wily purposes? Because that’s what they tell you in church. That's what they want you to fear. "
John stared out the kitchen window a long time. "Yes, I suppose you can lose your soul," he said. "But I don’t believe there is evil trying with every wrong turn to steal it from you. There is only the one light world and the shadows are just the places it doesn’t reach. The light will always overpower the shadows, because only the light has intelligence. "
"That's not what your religion says, John," she said.
"That's what I know is true," he said.
"Then you are one of us, and not part of the world of illusion, and you have already decided," she sighed. "And you had better find a way to serve the cause and protect yourself."
