Category Archives: United States

“Male and female He created them”

14 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in Human Behavior, Social Injustice, United States

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Brett Kavanaugh sworn in to the US Supreme Court - 6 October 2018

Brett Kavanaugh sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court – October 6, 2018
Photo Credit: The Press Democrat

 

Despite sexual assault allegations, on October 6, 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court. His contentious nomination process before the male-dominated Senate Committee hammered home the gnawing reality: Women have yet to achieve equal footing with men under our legal system.

To achieve what may have been a lifelong ambition, Kavanaugh exposed his “two spirited daughters” to the public bashing of his integrity. Has he used the sexual allegations – which he has denied with tears and anger – as a teaching moment for his ten- and thirteen-year old daughters? Has he considered the possibility that his daughters could one day suffer the same trauma as his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford?

Ford did not tell her parents what had happened that summer day while she was out with trusted friends. Like so many of us born female, she kept the sexual assault a secret. Continue reading →

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Why should I care about rising sea levels?

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

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Price Reduced Waterfront Property

Price Reduced Waterfront Property – East Coast USA
Photo Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) June 2018 Report

 

On September 14th, Hurricane Florence hit the North Carolina coast. With warmer oceans driven by climate change, the massive, slow-moving storm dumped more than 20 inches of rain on its arrival. The storm surge reached levels of 9 to 13 feet. Hundreds of inundated home owners may never recover from the damages.

Ten years ago, on September 15, 2008, another kind of disaster struck our nation with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the insurance giant AIG. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression sent rogue waves across our nation and worldwide. The fallout—foreclosures, shrinking home values, and millions of job losses—battered Americans.

With rising sea levels—the result of ongoing heating of our oceans and atmosphere—another massive, slow-moving crisis is brewing. Hundreds of thousands of coastal properties will increasingly face chronic high-tide flooding. Their falling property values will threaten local and regional real estate markets that could cascade nationwide into a coastal real estate bust. Continue reading →

A Nation Unmade by War by Tom Engelhardt

22 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in Recommended Reading, United States

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United States Counterterror War Locations 2015-2017

United States Counterterror War Locations 2015-2017
Photo Credit: TomDispatch

 

Embarrassing spectacle. Treasonous. National security crisis. These are some of the reactions to the Helsinki Summit between Presidents Trump and Putin on July 16, 2018. Some among us believe that Trump is responsible for all that’s wrong with America. Not so, Tom Engelhardt reminds us in his latest book, A Nation Unmade by War (Haymarket Books, May 2018).

In A Nation Unmade by War, Engelhardt focuses on “a nation increasingly unsettled and transformed by spreading wars to which most of its citizens were, at best, only half paying attention.” He views Trump’s election as “part of the costs of those wars come home” and envisages that America’s 45th president “might preside over the most precipitous decline of a truly dominant power in history, one only recently considered at the height of its glory.”

When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the United States became the sole superpower. Dreams of creating a planetary Pax Americana led to the build-up of this country’s military might. The realization of that dream came on September 11, 2001, with al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center, and the subsequent launch of America’s Global War on Terror. This never-ending war has now consumed an estimated $5.6 trillion from September 2001 through fiscal year 2018 (Costs of War Project, Brown University, November 2017). Continue reading →

America escalates trade war with China

08 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in Economy and Finance, United States

≈ 24 Comments

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China Shipping Line at the Port of Los Angeles - California

China Shipping Line at the Port of Los Angeles – California – USA
Photo Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

 

America’s trade war with China is now official. On July 6th, the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced that an additional 818 Chinese goods, amounting to approximately $34 billion, now face a 25 percent import tax on arrival at US ports. Goods affected include Chinese-made vehicles, aircraft, boats, engines, and heavy equipment. Check the USTR website for the complete list.

“We must take strong defensive actions to protect America’s leadership in technology and innovation against the unprecedented threat posed by China’s theft of our intellectual property, the forced transfer of American technology, and its cyber-attacks on our computer networks,” said US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on June 15th.  “China’s government is aggressively working to undermine America’s high-tech industries and our economic leadership through unfair trade practices and industrial policies…”

In retaliation, China has imposed a 25 percent tariff on 545 American products of equivalent value. American soybeans, corn, wine, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, pork, and poultry are among the targeted items.

“[Beijing was] forced to strike back to defend the core interests of the nation and its people,” declared China’s Commerce Ministry on July 6th. China will also file a complaint against the USA with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In a PBS presentation with Amna Nawaz on July 6th, Yasheng Huang of MIT’s Sloan School of Management said that negotiations between American and Chinese commerce officials failed to reach an agreement because “the strategy pursued by the Trump administration is kind of a take it or leave it. That doesn’t really leave the Chinese with much room to maneuver.”

More tariffs are yet to come. President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “And then you have another 16 [billion dollars] in two weeks, and then, as you know, we have $200 billion in abeyance and then after the $200 billion, we have $300 billion in abeyance. OK? So we have 50 plus 200 plus almost 300.”

I doubt that our president’s bully tactics will curb China’s trade abuses. Meanwhile, import tariffs put in place earlier this year on washing machines, solar panels, steel, and aluminum are already impacting American jobs. In his July 6th article in The Week, Jeff Spross concludes that our president is recklessly rushing into a trade war without any clear objectives or endgame.

“It’s worth remembering that the president was a reality TV star,” Spross writes. “And in that profession, the point is ratings. There’s little differentiation between putting on a show and getting results; the show is the result. And it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this trade war is just another show Trump’s putting on.”

Unlike America’s endless wars in the Middle East, upon which our military-industrial complex gorges itself, America’s trade war with China has an expiry date. As the global market adjusts, more American manufacturers will relocate their factories overseas to remain competitive and secure their markets.

Daddy: Reflections of Father-Daughter Relationships Edited by Dr. K E Garland

24 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Recommended Reading, United States

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Book Cover - Daddy Reflections of Father-Daughter Relationships Edited by Dr K E Garland

 

So much noise scrambling my thoughts as I read Daddy: Reflections of Father-Daughter Relationships edited by Dr. K E Garland. On arrival at our southern border with Mexico, refugee children – referred to as illegal migrants – are separated from their parents. A two-year-old girl screams while a U.S. Border Patrol agent questions her mother. Where is her father, I wonder?

Back to my reading of Daddy.

In her account, “Abandoned at Breakfast,” BB – a writer, wife, and mother whose parents had divorced when she was a kid – recalls her emptiness when her father didn’t show up for her baby shower.

“Behind the makeup and flashing cameras, I was still the little girl who longed for her father’s embrace,” BB recalls. “I wanted [my father] to accept me and tell me that I was beautiful, even fifty pounds heavier.” Continue reading →

“american child” – Poem by normal

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Poetry, United States

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Four-year-old American child learns to us a machine gun

Four-year-old American child – in the age of the National Rifle Association – learns to use a machine gun
Photo Credit: ABC News Video (January 2014)

 

My Poetry Corner June 2018 features an excerpt from the poem “american child” by normal. Raised in Passaic, New Jersey, normal is a poet and registered nurse now retired and living in Saugerties, New York.

As a young poet in the early 1960s, he began reading his work at the Rafio Café in Greenwich Village, frequented by Beat poets and writers. Among the poets who influenced normal’s sensibilities is the American poet, e.e. cummings (1894-1962), whose use of low-case letters and minimal punctuation he emulates.

The following excerpts come from normal’s chapbooks, Blood on the Floor (1999) and American Child (2001).

His poem “blood on the floor” brings to mind America’s powerlessness to end mass shootings, stealing the future of our children.

don’t slip
there is blood on the floor.

blood of apathy
blood of the dispassionate
the ignoring
blood of those numbed by dumb
life
blood of those who pretend it
never happens / the cheerfully
humbled who go about it all
smiling.

Meanwhile, the raindrops are loaded / with the eyes of children.

The featured poem, “american child,” portrays Americans in all our glory and shame. Penned on Labor Day 2000, the poem begins with the plight of the American worker.

i am the child of america
the sierra madres are bleeding
i am america
the mad & the magnate marry
the factory wolf howls
i am america
the mantra rumbles with the kinds & the cripples.

Trappings of American life ring through the verses: dinty moore stew, soup kitchens, porno talkshows, paparazzi, honkytonk queen, sams club, home depot, tickertape parade, flophouse, and more.

Four stanzas speak of “death to” individuals, special groups, historical events, and man-made systems. Among the targets are lewis & clark, manifest destiny, trail of tears & of schemes, and the american dream. The poet also boots the capitalist, communist, anarchist, antichrist, and atheist. (I would like to add racist and misogynist.)

Apart from lewis & clark, normal mentions several other personalities that make up the American character: joe dimaggio, thomas jefferson, geronimo, benedict arnold, einstein, and chief joseph. (No shout out to Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King?)   

In the following stanza, the poet captures the schizoid character of the American child and his impact on the world:

i am beauty
i am invention
i am wonder
i am the united fruit company
i am promontory point pikes peak & mai lie
i am the glory
i am the savior
i am the black tide of the acid sky

(mai lie instead of My Lai reframes the massacre in Vietnam.)

[…]

fool / genius // the kind of heaven & hell // the arithmetic eyes of the bureaucrat robot

Yet, for all his flaws, the American child is a fighter and survivor in a crazy world, as normal concludes in his final verses.

i am the feral infant dancing on the freakstage / of the final sunset // i am the child of america.

Much has changed over the past seventeen plus years since normal’s portrayal of the American child. How could he have foreseen Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump? I live in hope that an American child – rising from a bloody school floor; less feral and more inclusive – has now embarked on the path to the presidency.

To read the excerpt from the featured poem and learn more about the work of normal, go to my Poetry Corner June 2018.

 

Extreme Weather and the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

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US 2017 Billion-Dollar Disaster Map - NOAA

U.S. 2017 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
Photo Credit: NOAA

 

Earlier this month, while the Trump administration quietly cancelled NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), concentrations of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory averaged above 410 parts per million (ppm) throughout April. With such irresponsible action, we-the-people must prepare ourselves for more extreme weather.

Extreme Weather & the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know, published by the Climate Reality Project (March 2018), helps us to understand the challenges we now face. As the captioned NOAA chart shows, climate-related and other natural disasters are costly. Total damages in 2017 left the U.S. with a bill of $306 billion. Families who were hit are still recovering from their loss. Families in poor communities may never recover.

Here’s what we need to know about our extreme weather and the climate crisis. Bear in mind that weather refers to short-term atmospheric changes in temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, and visibility. Climate is the average of weather patterns over a longer period of 30 or more years.

Hurricanes – With average global sea surface temperatures becoming warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful. A warmer ocean also means an increase in evaporation, thereby feeding hurricanes with much more water to dump on those of us who live in their path. It gets worse. As melting ice caps and glaciers raise sea levels, storm surges caused by hurricanes will be stronger and carry water farther and farther inland.

Flooding – As air temperatures increase, more water evaporates into the atmosphere. Because warmer air holds more water vapor, some places get more rain and snow than their average annual amounts; other places may experience intense rainstorms. At the same time, rising sea levels are worsening coastal flooding worldwide.

Drought – Soils dry out when evaporation increases over land. When the rain comes, the hard, cracked ground absorbs little water. The run-off carries pollutants in the dry soil into our streams, rivers, and lakes. Drought also worsens forest fires.

Wildfires – Droughts kill plant life. Dried out, dead vegetation can ignite with a spark. Once started, these fires are harder to contain. With warm weather arriving earlier and extending further into the fall, we now face longer fire seasons. To make matters worse, pests like the mountain pine beetle thrive in the warm, dry weather. The dead trees dry out, adding to the fury of our forest fires.

Extreme Heat – Of the 18 hottest years on record, 17 have occurred this century. If we don’t reduce the greenhouse gases heating up our atmosphere, more and more of us will face the deadly threshold of extreme heat on our fragile human bodies.

Extreme Cold – As global temperatures rise and the Arctic continues to warm, the jet stream is slowing and becoming more wavy. This causes bone-chilling Arctic air to linger longer in northern regions and spread much farther south than usual.

While we cannot prevent climate-related natural disasters from occurring, it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent the worst of it. And it certainly could get much worse.

Motherhood: Where is the joy?

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Family Life, Human Behavior, United States

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Today on Mother’s Day in America, families are celebrating the day with their mothers and grandmothers. While my sons will mark the day by joining me in activities I enjoy, I see no cause to celebrate motherhood.

Where is the joy of motherhood, I ask myself, when you live in fear of ICE agents separating you from your American-born children? Where is the joy in motherhood when your hours of labor value little to provide food and shelter for your children? Where is the joy in motherhood when intolerance, bullying, and hate put your children’s lives at risk? Where is the joy in motherhood when you watch your child suffer for lack of medical treatment?

Why, I ask myself, do we bring children into a hostile world that no longer fights for their right to life once they leave our womb? Why do we bring children into a world facing ecological collapse, climate disruption, and threat of nuclear war?

Speak to me not of love. Love protects and defends our young. Love nurtures.

I speak not to parents and grandparents who are doing their best, going beyond the possible. Rather, I speak to those among us who support laws and policies that favor corporations and billionaires and punish the families of our nation.

In an overpopulated world, motherhood has lost its meaning. Our uterus is for “baby-hosting.” Just ask Katy Talento on the White House team.

 

Earth Day 2018: End Plastic Pollution

22 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 64 Comments

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Great Pacific Garbage Patch - NOAA

Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Photo Credit: Marine Debris NOAA

 

Today is Earth Day 2018. The theme this year is End Plastic Pollution in response to the exponential growth of plastic waste that now poses a threat to human survival owing to its un-biodegradable nature. When exposed to water, sun, or other elements, our plastic waste breaks down into tiny particles invisible to the naked eye. These particles – called microplastics – now contaminate our drinking water, seafood, or even the salt we add to our meals.

Earth Day Network (EDN) sums up the scope of this threat with the following 10 facts of plastic in our oceans.

Plastic waste floating in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Honduras

Plastic waste floating in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Honduras
Photo Credit: U.K. Daily Mail

 

Fact #1 – About 8 million metric tons of plastic enter our oceans every year.

Fact #2 – Five massive patches of plastics are growing in the oceans worldwide. The one between California and Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas.

Fact #3 – Every minute, one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our oceans.

Fact #4 – The amount of plastic in the ocean is set to increase tenfold by 2020.

Fact #5 – By 2050 plastic in the oceans will outweigh the fish.

Fact #6 – Plastic is contaminating remote depths of the ocean.

Fact #7 – Marine organisms and animals are starving to death with undigested plastic in their stomachs.

Fact #8 – Contact with marine plastic increases disease in coral reefs, home to more than 25 percent of marine life.

Fact #9 – The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains more plastic than natural prey upon which fish feed.

Fact #10 – Many fish humans consume have ingested plastic microfibers. Continue reading →

The Souls of Poor Folk: A National Call for Moral Revival

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Social Injustice, United States

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Poor Peoples Campaign - A National Call for Moral Revival 2018
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
Photo Credit: Poor People’s Campaign

 

I’m finding it hard to stay abreast of all the upheaval triggered by our Twitter-in-Chief. His tweets and threats boggle my mind, create instability across our nation, and embolden our rivals and enemies overseas.

While our bombs turn the Middle East into rubble, people at the bottom rungs in America face their own hell. This month, the Institute for Policy Studies has published its empirical study, The Souls of Poor Folk, highlighting the complex issues that entangle our lives: systemic racism, persistent poverty, the war economy and militarism, and ecological devastation. Here are some of their key findings. Continue reading →