Category: ThinkableWords

Words that induce thought…

Obama’s First Year?

So with Barack Obama’s first anniversary of assuming the American Presidency, quickly approaching, today’s Democracy Now episode interviewed “award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn.” Together, Amy, Anjali, and Allan, looked “back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months.”

And while comparison between a could’ve been “Palin Administration” and the unfortunate reality of the Obama Administration was extremely interesting — to me at least — the words Mr. Nairn chose to conclude his “extended interview” with, accurately sums up the overall tone of the “talk;”

“Well, the biggest issue is there are more than a billion people hungry in the world. It recently increased by a hundred million or so because of the Wall Street-induced financial collapse, but it was at about 900 million during the days of top prosperity, as defined by our current economic system. That’s completely intolerable. Until everybody eats, no one should live in luxury. […] You know, in US politics, people face a bitter choice. You can’t vote for the—with a two-party system, you can’t vote against murder, you can’t vote for ending starvation. So they say, “My god, I guess I’ll go for the Democrats, because if I don’t, they’re going to move my Social Security to Wall Street, they’ll end gun control, they’ll end women’s choice.” So you end up backing these direct mass murders and the allowing of babies to have their brains deformed due to lack of food. That’s not tolerable. […] I’m talking about a revolution for change. Nothing radical, really. Just enforce the laws, those US laws, the murder laws, and shift a few dollars from people who merely want it, people like us who […] live in luxury; we have all the food we could possibly eat in many lifetimes—and shifting it to people who need it to keep from being stunted, who need it to keep breathing, people—we can do that. You know, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan […] horrible regimes. Today, they’re peaceful and productive. They were crushed by violence. That’s how they transformed their societies. I hope we don’t have to be crushed in that way. We can transform ourselves, but people have to stand up and do it. Surround Congress. Occupy the military bases. The US can become peaceful also, but only if we decide to do so. And we do have that choice. We have freedoms here…”

Plus, and more to the interview’s point, they discuss what Obama has, in fact, accomplished, and the consequences of his — reckless — rule. It’s really a very interesting segment, one, I think, you should check out…

Make the Effort

It was twenty  years ago today, December 6th, 1989, when “proven” misogynist and extraordinary needledick;

“… Marc Lépine, walked into École Polytechnique in Montréal, ‘armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen and injuring the other fourteen before killing himself.’ All the people that he managed to murder were women. And, here’s the kicker, those efforts were declared his attempts at ‘fighting feminism’…”

And as truly horrific and sadly tragic the events of that day really were, like that of last year, I’m still quite incapable of writing anything that would, even remotely, do the lessons of that day, 20 years ago,  justice. In fact, with the Canadian Government working so diligently to abolish the “federal long gun registry,” this years anniversary of the Montreal Massacre is ever more relevant. So much so, I am certain anything I would write would be nothing more than a bunch of much deserved douche bag references, directed at people who aren’t easily insulted, or, for that matter, care what people, namely me, think.

It’s an absolute exercize in futility, and I won’t be taking part in it, today…

Continue reading Make the Effort