Tag Archives: talking blues about the news

July 8, 2011 · 7:13 pm

Movement is essential

An animal needs more than just healthy food, clean water, and pure air. It needs to move, to oscillate naturally and gracefully and musically with the waveforms of life. If we repress the song and dance of life, we will die of loneliness and misery and frustration even before the radiation and toxic waste and global warming can kill us! Our society is trying to destroy the spirit as well as the body of life; both must be saved or none of us will survive.

via The Essential Teachings, Part One « Talkin’ Blues About The News.

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July 1, 2011 · 2:42 am

Talking blues about predator drones

Brilliant critique of the predator drones.  Bring it funky uncle.

America launched Predator drones against a sixth country recently — Somalia. The pilotless killer aircraft have now been used in Pakistan (by Bush something like 40 times in eight years, by Obama several hundred times in two and a half years!) as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and now Somalia. (Funny — I don’t recall a declaration of war in any of those conflicts.) The Predator has to be the most cowardly, disgusting, and counterproductive (because of the additional enemies it makes for America) weapon in the history of warfare. I predicted many years ago that violent video games were just training and not-so-subtle indoctrination for the real thing, and now we have it — operators sit in comfort somewhere in the continental USA, fondle their obscene joy sticks, and people (innocent? guilty? terrorists? civilians?) die thousands of miles away. Predator operators are not heroes — they are cowardly ignorant nauseating scum, and Obama has proven himself to be a rabid war criminal. The American people will suffer the payback for these crimes for generations. We are not at war with Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. No one in this country really knows who is being killed. This is just old-fashioned murder, not war, except that it is the most cowardly method of murder ever devised. Obama will retire into well-protected comfort, while you and I and other relatively innocent Americans have been made into legitimate targets wherever we go in the world.

via What A Wonderful World It Could Be « Talkin’ Blues About The News.

 

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June 5, 2011 · 3:28 pm

Arab spring in context: Talking blues about the news

Thanks to Reuters and the Atlantic for the photo of protesters in Yemen

My kin has laid out some good old fashioned cynicism about the Arab spring uprisings.

People everywhere hoped that the Arabs would overthrow their dictators and enjoy democracy, political freedom, and economic opportunity.

That would have been nice. But instead what has happened is slaughter. The rulers of Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain decided that the revolutions could be defeated by mass murder and indiscriminate torture, and, so far, that tactic has been 100% successful. Nothing good has come of it. The Mideast is more unstable, Israel is more paranoid and aggressive than ever, Arab demonstrators have been shot down by the thousands, and no one in the entire region is yet enjoying any increase in democracy, political freedom, or economic opportunity.

via Sad But True: The “Arab Spring” Is A Pipe Dream « Talkin’ Blues About The News.

Zing!  Can’t disagree with any of that!  It’s a good argument, and important to make in this time, where our impulse to action (read helicopter gunships in Libya) obscures reflection.

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