Category Archives: United States

Thought on America’s Independence Day: “A country coming apart at the seams”

05 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by in United States

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On America’s 244th year of independence, I offer these “rants” from Tom Engelhardt, an American editor, publisher, and author who belongs to the same generation as our 45th president.

That my generation, whether in the form of Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell, would be responsible for turning imperial America into an autocratic-leaning, collapsing semi-democracy, and a first-class world annihilator, I would have found hard to imagine. [In the early 1970s], if you had told me that, half a century into the future, the world’s fate would rest on a presidential election between a genuine madman and something close to a dead man (that, for all we know, may not prove to be an election at all), I would have dismissed you out of hand. And yet that, it seems, is the pandemic legacy of my generation for which we should all be ashamed, even as we watch the young, driven by the insanity and inanity of it all, turning out in our diseased streets to protest a country coming apart at the seams.

Excerpt from “The Age of Disappointment? Or How the American Century Ends” by Tom Engelhardt, published in TomDispatch.com on June 18, 2020.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.

A Happy Fourth of July to all my American blogging friends! For the sake of our country and planet, may saner minds prevail.

Thought for Today: A Recipe for Murder

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Social Injustice, United States

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The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another—or others—always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not to attempt to destroy it root and branch.


James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time, published by Vintage Books Edition, New York, USA, 1993 (pp 82-83). Originally published by The Dial Press, New York, USA, 1963.

James Baldwin (1924-1987) is an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986.

Reflections on Memorial Day 2020

24 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Human Behavior, United States

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On this Memorial Day 2020, I reflect on the lives cut short in America’s never-ending wars of terror across the Middle East, following our invasion of Iraq in 2003. I share with you an insightful realization, born of lived experience of war, from the opening chapter of the novel, The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers (USA, 2012).

SEPTEMBER 2004
Al Tafar, Nineveh Province, Iraq

The war tried to kill us in the spring….
Then, in summer, the war tried to kill us as the heat blanched all color from the plains…. The war would take what it could get. It was patient. It didn’t care about objectives, or boundaries, whether you were loved by many or not at all. While I slept that summer, the war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on. And I knew the war would have its way.

Narrative voice of twenty-one-year-old Private John Bartle of the USA Army from the novel, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, published by Little, Brown and Company, USA, 2012, pp 3-4.

Described in these terms, humanity’s wars operate much like the deadly COVID-19 let loose among Earth’s populations. What will it take to end the spread of viral human warfare? When will we stop losing our loved ones on the frontlines? When will we stop killing vulnerable civilians—women, children, and the elderly—exposed to the virulence of our wars?

KEVIN POWERS was born and raised in Richmond Virginia, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the U.S. Army in 2004 and 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. The Yellow Birds is his first novel.

The Writer’s Life Under the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in The Writer's Life, United States

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Today marks the fifty-third day of my home isolation under our statewide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19. Though I’m used to working at home, the fallout of this global pandemic has unsettled my creative writing process. I can no longer focus. Our federal government’s chaotic mishandling of this health disaster has scrambled my brain cells. Each day brings new shocks that demand processing.

Attempts to write the fourteenth chapter of my third book have proved futile. Instead, I focus on completing the essential research required to add legitimacy and depth to the profiles of women I plan to feature in this book. More than ever, men and women must work together as equal partners to find solutions for the existential crises the human species now face. No more name calling. No more putting down. No more cries to lock her up.

After my initial consideration to postpone the 2020 release of my second novel, The Twisted Circle, I’ve decided to go ahead with its publication. I’m now ticking off each step completed of the process for submission of my complete manuscript from cover to cover. More about the cover art at a future date. Continue reading →

Thought for Today: We Must Imagine a Different World

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Human Behavior, United States

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The [COVID-19] pandemic should awaken us to the realization that in a just world, social fetters should be replaced by social bonds, ideals that trace back to the Enlightenment and classical liberalism. Ideals that we see realized in many ways. The remarkable courage and selflessness of health workers is an inspiring tribute to the resources of the human spirit. In many places, communities of mutual aid are being formed to provide food for the needy and help and support for the elderly and disabled.

There is indeed “an uplift in solidarity among common people in many parts of the world, and perhaps even the realization that we are all global citizens.” The challenges are clear. They can be met. At this grim moment of human history, they must be met, or history will come to an inglorious end.

~ Noam Chomsky in excerpt from a discussion with Robert Pollin from the article “Chomsky and Pollin: To Heal From COVID-19, We Must Imagine a Different World” by C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout, published April 10, 2020.

NOAM CHOMSKY (born 1928) is an American linguist, cognitive scientist, philosopher, historian, social critic, and political commentator. Considered the father of modern linguistics, he holds a joint appointment as Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. He is the author of more than a hundred books, covering such topics as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media.

Earth Day 2020: Climate Action

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Nature and the Environment, United States

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Earth Day 2020 – 50 Years
Photo Credit: Earth Day Official Website

 

April 22, 2020 is Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. The theme this year is Climate Action with the aim of mobilizing all citizens of Earth “to call for greater global ambition to tackle our climate crisis. Unless every country in the world steps up with urgency and ambition, we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.”

Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, twenty million Americans took to the streets, college campuses, and hundreds of cities to protest environmental degradation and demand a new way forward for our planet. With the launch of the environmental movement that year came two important developments: passing of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Act; and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Continue reading →

“Advice for Countries, Advanced, Developing and Falling: A Call and Response” – Poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo

05 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Poetry, United States

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2019 United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
Photo Credit: Joy Harjo Official Website (Photo by Shawn Miller)

 

My Poetry Corner April 2020 features the poem “Advice for Countries, Advanced, Developing and Falling: A Call and Response” from the poetry collection An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. (Note: The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.)

Born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first of four siblings, Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, playwright, and author of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Her father was Muscogee (Creek) Nation and her mother of mixed ancestry of Cherokee, French, and Irish. Her mother exposed her to poetry at an early age, but painting was her first love.

My mother was a songwriter and singer, Harjo relates in her poem “Washing My Mother’s Body.” My mother’s gifts were trampled by economic necessity and emotional imprisonment. // My father was a dancer, a rhythm keeper. His ancestors were orators, painters, tribal chiefs, stomp dancers, preachers, and speakers… All his relatively short life he looked for a vision or song to counter the heartache of history. Her father’s drinking and abuse ended their marriage.

At sixteen years of age, Harjo’s abusive and violent stepfather kicked her out of their home. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts. After graduation, she returned to Oklahoma, gave birth to a son, and returned to New Mexico to pursue a life as an artist. In 1973, as a second-year undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, she discovered poetry. After earning her BA in 1976, she moved to Iowa to obtain an MFA at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“After all the abuse I had been through, I saw [poetry] as a way to transform what is harsh into something nourishing,” Harjo said, during an interview with Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar in January 2020. “I had found something in poetry not found in painting that was so compelling. I could write about Native women, fighting for our rights in over 500 tribal nations.” Continue reading →

The Choices We Make

09 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in United States

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Pen Scratch Verse 182 by American Artist Michael Caimbeul

 

February 5, 2020. This is the day that the United States Senate chose to acquit Republican President Donald Trump of the impeachment charges brought against him by the Democratic controlled House of Representatives. I found the evidence of his guilt compelling. Except for just one of its members, the majority Republican senators chose to stand firm behind their leader. The loyalty to their party is admirable. It’s a valuable commodity in our times of divisive politics. On the other hand, party loyalty doesn’t always align with the best interests of we the people. Ever since corporations gained personhood and began financing politicians, corporate interests have gained paramountcy.

Today, we live in a New Republic. The balance of power has shifted beneath our feet. All that remains for the President and his Executive Branch of loyalists to consolidate their power is to seize control over the Supreme Court of the United States. All they need is a little more time.

Meanwhile, after centuries of human remodeling, Earth’s web of life is over-stressed and in meltdown. Our planet is overheated. Wildfires across drought-stricken grasslands and forests rage with unusual ferocity. The polar ice caps are melting faster than predicted. Mountain glaciers are retreating. Sea levels are rising, redefining coastlines worldwide. Storms powered by overheated oceanic waters batter our coastal cities and island nations, inundating our lives. Continue reading →

Thought for Today: Dismantling the Doomsday Machine

02 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in United States

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Here is what we know now: the United States and Russia each have an actual Doomsday Machine… These two systems still risk doomsday: both are still on hair-trigger alert that makes their joint existence unstable. They are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch, or a desperate decision to escalate. They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth.

[…]

Does any nation on earth have a right to possess such a capability? A right to threaten—by its simple possession of that capability—the continued existence of all other nations and their populations, their cities, and civilization as a whole?

Excerpt from The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, USA, 2017.

In 1961, Daniel Ellsberg, a consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, drafted Secretary Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Only Oil Matters to the Empire

12 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in United States

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Oil drives our global economies. Oil is power. Oil fuels the Empire. Iraq and Iran together produce 8.3 million billion barrels a day of the liquid gold (figures from Offshore-Technology). Their joint oil reserves amount to 300,903 million barrels (figures from World Atlas). While the world’s largest oil producer with 12 mbbl barrels/day, the United States has only 39,230 million barrels of oil reserves. Venezuela tops the list with 300,878 million barrels. It’s no accident that the Empire is embedded in the Middle East. Controlling access to all that oil is vital to its continued survival.

Guyana will soon be part of that blessed-accursed herd of oil producing nations. With six billion barrels, and climbing, of oil reserves, Guyana now overtakes Venezuela in the overheated top seat. As a small country with racial divisive politics, the developing CARICOM member nation is easy prey for the Empire. It’s also corrupted at its core—the scourge of former colonial territories rich in natural resources. Trapped under the claws of the Eagle since its conception, the country is now secure in its nest.

In his letter to the editor of Guyana’s Kaieteur News on January 7, 2020, Dr. Gary Girdhari expresses misgivings about the legacy of oil giants in oil producing countries, even within their own home countries.

Guyana’s leaders, he writes, “ignore elemental facts, namely, in Africa, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere where oil wealth is secured in the pockets of Big Oil and a select few government officials and their cronies; and where inequality and extreme poverty spiral downwards.” 

Dr. Girdhari shares my concern about the impact of the fossil fuel industry on Earth’s environment and climate. He reminds the Guyanese people: “The International Press is replete with information regarding fossil fuel and its ruination to the environment – regarding carbon emission, depletion of the ozone layer, and extreme climate change. Already the world is witnessing the effects of permafrost melting in the Arctic and deforestation in Brazil and Africa. The tipping point is approaching sooner than we think.” 

I don’t share his hope “for total disbandment of oil in Guyana…and that good environmentally-friendly judgement triumphs.” I believe that it’s too late in the game. Guyana is already in the pockets of ExxonMobil and other players in the fossil fuel industry. 

To the Empire, only oil matters. It is prepared to use severe economic sanctions and military force to secure and control Earth’s oil reserves. Our lives—we the people of Earth—don’t matter. Let the trees burn. Let the ice caps melt. Let the wildlife die.

The Empire began 2020 with an act of war against Iran and Iraq. Warfare is Big Business. Warfare is barbaric. Warfare is self-destructive: It turns our young men into killers of innocent women, children, and babies. Heroes for the Empire.

I say NO to war with Iran. I say NO to the never-ending wars of the Empire. I say NO to more failed sovereign states. I say NO to ‘rubblized’ cities and uprooted broken families. I say NO to ecocide.

I say YES to ending our dependency on fossil fuels. I say YES to the Green New Deal.