15 December 2024

A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies — by Michael Moore

[Photo: Sicko poster via wikipedia]

By Michael Moore
Source:  Newsletter

Editor's Note
As I used to tell my students, the answer to a problem lies in how you frame the problem. Michel Moore demonstrates this beautifully in this discussion of the healthcare system and the recent assassination of the CEO of United Health. We are programmed and reprogrammed to blame certain people for problems and/or certain people as problems. This programming is reinforced with each tragedy, and anyone in the mainstream media (or their pundits) rarely breaks from the approved script. This is true again with trying to figure out why Mangione (an unlikely terrorist by all accounts) committed this horrendous act.

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5 October 2023

The Truth May Hurt, But We Still Have To Face It

[Graphic: Book Banning, Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com.]

By Robert C. Koehler
Source:  CommonWonders

Editor's Note
If the attempts to silence “problematic” people and truth were really based in concern about (white, christian, assumedly “binary” and heterosexual) children, then we might have a point from which to begin a civil discussion. However, the selectivity of concern about the psychic sensitivity of certain children, while engaging in the callus disregard of other children, speaks volumes about what is truly happening. Namely, the (literal) carving out of a narrative that normalizes, rejoices and weaponizes the intersection of whiteness, christianity, heterosexuality, and binary gender system. And yes, I am deliberately NOT capitalizing christianity because what is being put forward is an affront to those in who profess to that religion outside of a White Nationalist ideology.

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Category: Bear Witness, Climate Chaos, Futurescape, Hegemony, History and Patterns, Ideology, Mechanisms of Contrrol, Robert C. Koehler, Silencing & Repression, Social (In)Justice | Comments Off on The Truth May Hurt, But We Still Have To Face It
13 June 2023

Indictment of Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta – 38 Counts

[Photo: Special Counsel Jack Smith announcing Trump indictment in Florida. CNN screen capture.]

By Rowan Wolf

This is the first time in U.S. history that a President of the United States has faced criminal indictments for crimes against the United States. I strongly recommend that everyone who can read should carefully read this 45-page indictment or listen to an audio version of it. I have included both options in this post. If Donald Trump is found guilty of all charges, he faces up to 100 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1,750,000. Waltine Nauta who helped Trump move the documents, and conspired with him to keep the documents, faces up to 90 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1,500,000.

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15 May 2022

The Face of Hate

By Rowan Wolf

Author's Note
I write this the day after yet another hate-driven attack in Buffalo, NY that killed ten people and wounded three others. The attacker, an 18-year-old white male with “legally acquired” guns and ammunition, drove several hours to a predominantly black neighborhood and started shooting people at a grocery store. Eleven of the people shot were black. There was no doubt that racial hatred was the basis for this attack. The young many reportedly found white supremacy online when he became bored from the pandemic. He apparently followed a well-worn path of radicalization, and wrote a hate-filled screed that is being analyzed by authorities.

As I note in the essay that follows, hatred is being encouraged at the highest levels, and deliberate radicalization into white nationalism is being embraced by the GOP. In fact, the party has been actively involved in seeding every branch of government with people who embrace an ideology of power and white nationalism, including the Supreme Court and the appointment of federal justices across the country. We must speak directly to what is happening. It is not politicizing, or politics, to state explicitly what the GOP is doing – in Washington and at every level and branch of government. It is tearing our nation apart, and it is literally deadly to millions of our people – not to mention to others around the world.

We must not look away. We must not remain silent. We must not be passive. Lives are at risk. Our future is at risk.

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28 February 2022

Capturing the Lived Reality of the Brutality of Racism.

Taylor Fagin

[Photo: Taylor Fagins, American Idol 2/27/2022]

By Taylor Fagins
Source:  American Idol

Editor's Note
Art can touch us when little else does. For me, this is particularly true of music. There are intricate stories to be told in the interweaving of music and lyrics. In watching the auditions for the 2022 season of American Idol, a singer-songwriter named Taylor Fagins sang an original piece that had me weeping.

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