Monthly Archives: May 2016

Climate Action is Needed Whether Exxon Likes it or Not.

26 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

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Last week, we were among a handful of organizations who received a letter signed by 13 members of Congress claiming that we may be violating Exxon’s right to free speech. They’re requesting that we divulge any communication we may have had with state officials and many private organizations with regard to looking into what Exxon knew about climate change and when. At face value this request is a threat to constitutional rights.

Source: Climate Action is Needed Whether Exxon Likes it or Not.

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Reflections on Guyana’s 50th Independence Anniversary

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Guyana

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Guyana Golden Jubilee Logo 1966-2016

Guyana Golden Jubilee Logo 1966-2016
Photo Credit: Guyanese Online Blog

 

May 26, 2016, marks fifty years since my native land of Guyana gained its independence from Great Britain. I was privileged to have witnessed the birth of our nation and to have shared the euphoria of a battle fought and won. As a teenager at the time, I also cherished the aspirations for our future, as expressed in the chorus of one of our patriotic songs of the sixties: “Guyana the Free” by Valerie Rodway.

All hail to Guyana, our country now free,
One people, one nation, one destiny,
We pledge every effort, we’ll cherish this earth
And make here a paradise – Land of our birth.

Guyana’s birth as a nation was fraught with racial enmity and violence between the two major ethnic groups: descendants of African slaves and East Indian indentured laborers. Members of the minority groups—Chinese, Portuguese, Amerindian, and people of mixed ethnicity (like my family)—were caught in the crossfire. Supporting one side made you an enemy of the other. Over the past fifty years, that racial enmity has continued to retard the realization of our national motto to become one people, one nation, one destiny.

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Ralph Nader’s Democracy Crusade | Ruth Conniff

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

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For more information about this conference, go to BreakingThroughPower.org
https://www.breakingthroughpower.org/

Progressive Graffiti

Ruth Conniff reports on Ralph Nader’s “Breaking Through Power” conference, which begins this Monday, May 23rd, in Washington D.C. The conference will address breaking through the media, war, and Congress. Nader says it only takes a small percent of citizens, “the other one percent,” to break through…

SOURCE: Common Dreams…

“Fifty years ago, Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, the book that exposed General Motors, changed the government’s approach to auto safety, and launched a thousand public-interest crusades. […] Persuading people that they can face down power, grab the levers of democracy, and make change is still Nader’s cause. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his groundbreaking book, Nader has organized a four-day Breaking Through Power conference of public interest advocates, experts, and citizens at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in the hopes of kick-starting a movement to revitalize civic life. The event runs May 23 through 26, and…

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Interim President Michel Temer’s cabinet: A government of white men

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in Brazil

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News from the “Black Women of Brazil” blog about the new all white male interim government.

Black Women Of Brazil

Posse, ministros, Michel Temer 0102 (6)-5783 Interim President Michel Temer speaks at inauguration of his cabinet’s ministers

Note from BW of Brazil: It’s been nearly a week since President Dilma Rousseff was suspended for a period that could last up to 180 days while it is decided if she should be removed permanently. Rousseff’s suspension was approved after the Federal Government’s Lower House voted in support of impeachment procedures and then, last week, 55 of 81 senators also voted in favor of the process. But in a true example of Brazil’s history having been and continuing to be based on corruption, 12 of the 13 ministers nominated for interim President Michel Temer’s cabinet have been found to have accepted donations from companies involved in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the nation’s history, the so-called Lava Jato case. This besides the fact that yesterday, the STF (Supreme Court) initiated a process that…

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Welcome to 1984

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in United States

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Are we ready to join our youth “to embrace a new vision and a new direction” for our nation and the world?

Desultory Heroics

1984

By Chris Hedges

Source: truthdig

The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.

“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”

This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers…

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Lula Calls for ‘Broad Front’ to Combat Coup in Brazil

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Brazil

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Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva

Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva
Photo Credit: Reuters

For some time now, as the political crisis in Brazil escalated, I have found it difficult to write about the shenanigans of Brazil’s corrupt political class and their Big Business collaborators to oust the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores).

Today, I mourn the death of democracy in Brazil and the triumph of Big Business. For those readers who only follow news reports from the West, I share with you an update of the situation from the leftist Latin American news media, TeleSUR.

Readers fluent in Portuguese can follow developments on the official website of the Workers’ Party at http://www.pt.org.br/

Social mobilization could be now the last resort to save Brazil’s democracy.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spent Friday speaking with leaders from Brazil’s social movement and trade union organizations in an effort to create a new “broad front” to resist the parliamentary coup that saw democratically-elected President Dilma Rouseff ousted from power. 

Read complete article at TeleSUR.

“Eden Hades” by Brazilian Poet Olga Savary

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

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House of Eleven Windows - Historic Center - Belem - State of Para - Brazil

“House of Eleven Windows” – Historic Center – 18th Century Architecture
Former residence of a sugar plantation owner
Belém – State of Pará – Brazil
Photo Credit: Brazil Ministry of Tourism

 

My Poetry Corner May 2016 features the poem “Eden Hades” by Brazilian poet Olga Savary. Born in May 1933 in Belém, capital of the State of Pará in North Brazil, she was the only child of a Russian father and a Brazilian mother. After her parents separated in 1942, she moved with her mother to Rio de Janeiro.

With the publication of twelve books of her poetry, more than fifty translations of renowned foreign poets, and anthologies of North and Northeast Brazilian poets, Savary has an impressive body of literary work.

“Eden Hades” is the final poem in Savary’s collection of the same name, published in 1994. Like the Biblical Garden of Eden, her Eden is a garden providing three essential ingredients for life: water, sunlight, and fruit.

Water gardens satisfy our thirst
sunshine swollen in veins
hanging like mango

Our human nature sets us up for failure. With our needs fulfilled, we feel deserving and in control of our destiny. Then, forgetful of the reason for our existence and the natural laws governing our lives, we unleash insecurity and chaos.

and I was like the owner of a ship
arrogant, deserving. Just like
an open vowel, I opened doors for the sand
in sudden loss of memory.
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