Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution
By DYLAN LOVAN
March 6, 2010, © Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn't taken a friend's advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old's biology lessons. . . .

Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game
Mark Tran
Friday 5 March 2010, © The Guardian
South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl. . . .

selection from Artists in a Time of War

Society classifies me. I am a historian. That scares me. I don’t want to be just a historian, but
society puts us into a discipline. Yes, disciplines us. You’re a historian, you’re a businessman,
you’re an engineer. You’re this or you’re that. The first thing someone asks you at a party is,
“What do you do?” That means, “How are you categorized?”  

The problem is that people begin to think that’s all they are. They’re professionals in something.
You hear the word “professionalism” being used often. People say, “You have to be
professional.” Whenever I hear the word, I get a little scared, because that limits human beings to
working within the confines set by their profession.  

I faced this as a historian. During the Vietnam War, there were meetings of historians. The war
was raging in Southeast Asia. The question was, “Should historians take a stand on the war?”
There was a big debate about this. Some of us introduced a resolution saying, “we historians
think the United States should get out of Vietnam.” There were others who objected. They said,
“It’s not that we don’t think the United States should get out, but we are just historians. It’s not
our business.”

But whose business is it? The historian says it’s not my business. The lawyer says it’s not my
business. The businessman says it’s not my business. And the artist says it’s not my business.
Then whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the business of the most
important issues in the world to the people who run the country? How stupid can we be? Haven’t
we had enough experience historically with leaving the important decisions to the people in the
White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, and those who dominate the economy?  

One of the things we learned about during the Vietnam War was experts. When the war started,
people would ask, “Why are we there?” These experts would come on television and tell us why.
The British actor Peter Ustinov spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Then somebody said,
Ustinov? He’s an actor. He’s not an expert. Ustinov made an important point. He said that there
are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and
that fact but there are no moral experts. It’s important to remember that. All of us, no matter
what we do, have the right to make moral decisions about the world. We must be undeterred by
the cries of people who say, “You don’t know. You’re not an expert. These people up there, they
know.” It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the
people who run the country know what they are doing.
I am asking all of us to think carefully and clearly. For if we are all being herded into actions that
will make the world even more dangerous than it is now, we will later regret that we went along
silently and did not raise our voices as citizens to ask, “How can we get at the roots of this
problem? Is it right to meet violence with violence?” All of us can do something, can ask
questions, can speak up.

—Howard Zinn
____________

The Timber
Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass'd o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
While the low violet thrives at their root.

But thou beneath the sad and heavy line
Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.

And yet—as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive—thou dost great storms resent
Before they come, and know'st how near they be.

Else all at rest thou liest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means only those who broke—in life—thy peace.
—Henry Vaughan

Divorced Before Puberty
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
March 3, 2010, © The New York Times
It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali.
Nujood is a Yemeni girl, and it’s no coincidence that Yemen abounds both in child brides and in terrorists (and now, thanks to Nujood, children who have been divorced). Societies that repress women tend to be prone to violence. . . .

Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
March 3, 2010, © The New York Times
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools. . . .

Semites and 'Anti-Semites'
By Eric Alterman
February 25, 2010, © The Nation
As I've noted in this space before, the racist anti-Arab rants by New Republic editor in chief/owner Martin Peretz have undermined not only his magazine's reputation for liberalism but also the term "pro-Israel" itself. What I have not addressed, however, is the manner in which the magazine, no less cynically and purposefully, confuses the issue of anti-Semitism by deploying it for political purposes to try to silence those with opposing views about Israel and the Palestinians. Recent targets have included Jimmy Carter, Wes Clark, Juan Cole and the political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. This tendency has finally spilled into polite discussion now that the magazine has turned on one of its own: former editor, and now Atlantic Monthly blogger, Andrew Sullivan. . . .

Demokratierne er ofte langsomme til at træffe de rigtige beslutninger, diktaturerne er anderledes hurtige til at træffe de forkerte.
(Democracies are often slow to arrive at the right decisions; dictatorships, on the other hand, are quick to arrive at the wrong ones.)
—Peder Tabor

____________

Dale la pelota a Higuaín, ¡no seas tan celoso y amarrete Cristiano!
____________

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
—Sigmund Freud

The Attack on Climate-Change Science: Why It's the O.J. Moment of the Twenty-First Century
By Bill McKibben
February 25, 2010, © The Nation
Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal. It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. "The subject," the reviewer said, "is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly." And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first President Bush announced that he planned to "fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.". . .

I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
____________

The Hand That Signed The Paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

—Dylan Thomas

Karzai has taken personal control of the electoral process
The Afghan president has subverted the intended legacy of the 2001 invasion by seizing control of the electoral watchdog
Gerard Russell
Monday 22 February 2010, © The Guardian
Hamid Karzai's decision to take control of Afghanistan's electoral watchdog by presidential decree is a terrible blow to the intended legacy of the 2001 invasion – fair elections, democratic institutions and a constitutional government. . . .

Zinn-ophobia at NPR
By Eric Alterman
February 11, 2010, © The Nation
When the historian and political activist Howard Zinn died recently of a heart attack at 87, NPR's All Things Considered ran a short obituary consisting of snippets of interviews from three people: the linguist Noam Chomsky, the civil rights leader Julian Bond and the radical right-wing provocateur David Horowitz. . . .

Everyone is naked under his clothes and everyone is a foreigner outside his native lands.
—Gisli Palsson

Political Awakenings: An Unpublished Howard Zinn Interview
By Harry Kreisler
February 8, 2010, © The Nation
In the forthcoming book, Political Awakenings: Conversations with Twenty of the World's Most Influential Writers, Politicians, and Activists, author Harry Kreisler sits down with the late historian Howard Zinn. In this excerpted interview from 2001, which will be published later this month, Zinn reveals much about his coming-of-age as a radical thinker--specifically his experience as a soldier and its influence on his politics--and his quest to not only study democracy, but to experience it. . . .

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

—Wislawa Szymborska

A Horrendous Decision on Habeas Corpus
By Matthew Rothschild
January 9, 2010, © The Progressive
The rule of law just took a beating the D.C. Circuit Court on Jan. 5, when three conservative judges limited the ability of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention. . . .

WINTER TREES
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
—William Carlos Williams

The Dangers of Sarah Palin
By Matthew Rothschild
February 8, 2010, © The Progressive
I’m not writing her off. No matter how many gaffes she makes, no matter what she writes on her palm, she is not going away.
In fact, she may very well be the Republican nominee in 2012, and if the economy hasn’t recovered by then, there’s an outside chance she could win the White House. . . .

¡Quedate Cholo!
____________

Seek not the favour of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; number not the voices, but weigh them.
—Immanuel Kant
____________

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
—Lillian Hellman
____________

No somos disparados a la existencia como una bala de fusil cuya
trayectoria está absolutamente determinada. Es falso decir que lo que
nos determina son las circunstancias. Al contrario, las circunstancias
son el dilema ante el cual tenemos que decidirnos. Pero el que decide
es nuestro carácter.
—José Ortega y Gasset

En Las Buenas Y En Las Malas,
Siempre Estamos con vos -
¡Adelante San Lorenzo!

El Kily da la cara
© SanLorenzo.com.ar
El Kily no ocultó su bronca.
Temperamental como siempre, no dudó en decir que el equipo entró "medio boludo" a la cancha, que el esquema de juego que tenían planeado "hablando mal, se nos fue al carajo a los dos minutos de juego. Pero bueno, hay que empezar a corregir eso. A darnos cuenta de que ya nos pasó en varios partidos", afirmó.
Y agregó: "la pagamos muy caro contra un equipo que juega bien y se conoce". . . .

from "The Talk Of Flowers"

I do not know, whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

I listened to the rustling
of spring rain,
washing the reddish buds
of chestnut-trees, –
and a tiny spring ran down
into the valley from the hill –
and I was missing
the whiteness
and the snow.

And in the yards, and on the slopes
red-cheeked
village maidens
hung up the washings
blown over by the wind
and, leaning,
stared a long while
at the yellow tufts of sallow:

For love is like the wind,
And love is like the water –
it warms up with the spring,
and freezes over – in the autumn.
But to me, I don't know why,
whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

I know – the wind
will blow and blow the washings,
and the rain
will wash and wash the chestnut-trees, –
but love, which melted with
the snow –
will not return.

Deep below the snow sleep
words and feelings:
for today, watching
the dance of rain between the door –
the rain of spring! –
I saw another:

she walked by in the rain,
and beautiful she was,
and smiled:

For love is like the wind,
and love is like the water –
it warms up with the spring
and freezes over – in the autumn,
though to me, I don't know why,
whether the sun
accomplished it,
the rain or wind –
but I was missing so
the whiteness and the snow.

—Jonas Mekas
(Translated by Clark Mills)

The lessons of Iraq have been ignored. The target is now Iran
The US military buildup in the Gulf and Blair's promotion of war against Tehran are a warning of yet another catastrophe
Seumas Milne
Wednesday 3 February 2010, © The Guardian
We were ­supposed to have learned the lessons of the Iraq war. That's what Britain's ­Chilcot inquiry is meant to be all about. But the signs from the Middle East are that it could be happening all over again. The US is ­escalating the military build-up in the Gulf, officials revealed this week, boosting its naval presence and supplying tens of billions of dollars' worth of new weapons systems to allied Arab states. . . .

Six O'clock In Princes Street

In twos and threes, they have not far to roam,
Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;
Those seek no further than their quiet home,
Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.

Neither should I go fooling over clouds,
Following gleams unsafe, untrue,
And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,
Dared I go side by side with you;

Or be you in the gutter where you stand,
Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,
With news of all the nations in your hand,
And all their sorrows in your face.

—Wilfred Owen

A Radical Treasure
By BOB HERBERT
January 29, 2010, © The New York Times
I had lunch with Howard Zinn just a few weeks ago, and I’ve seldom had more fun while talking about so many matters that were unreservedly unpleasant: the sorry state of government and politics in the U.S., the tragic futility of our escalation in Afghanistan, the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful. . . .

Las cavidades ausentes
No hay hueco en este espejo
El humo supura sudor
y empaña
Este es el tiempo ácido
Esta la palabra y su género
Aquí está el plomo
robándole peso a la mirada.
*   *   *
Trepo a una punta rodeada de viento y ver:
Aquí los deseos negros llaman la lluvia
todos los días
y escapan derretidos y sedientos
como perseguidos por caracoles
-cargo con un techo blanco como mil conejos-
Llegar al punto donde el mar calla:
Se abrirá una ventana
allí donde la sal es agua
y soñarán los peces su deseo de ser otros.
*   *   *
Mucho antes del comienzo
había algo
El dedo de los que ignoran
señalaba el fuego
Y lo demás era sólo arena
Después vinieron los días quietos
y el reparo
para llenarnos como a recipientes
Luego
cargaremos con todas las palabras
Mantendremos en secreto su peso
Lo sé, mis ojos tardarán en partir.
—Lía Colombino

Washington's Refusal to Talk about Drone Strikes in Pakistan Meets Growing Opposition
by Sebastian Abbot
February 2, 2010, © CommonDreams.org
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Criticism is mounting over Washington's refusal to say anything about missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan's northwest, prompting even supporters to argue the U.S. needs to be more open to counter militant allegations that only innocent civilians are dying. . . .

Interior

It sheds a shy solemnity,
This lamp in our poor room.
O grey and gold amenity, --
Silence and gentle gloom!

Wide from the world, a stolen hour
We claim, and none may know
How love blooms like a tardy flower
Here in the day's after-glow.

And even should the world break in
With jealous threat and guile,
The world, at last, must bow and win
Our pity and a smile.

—Hart Crane
____________

MIGLIORE

¡No sean boludos intolerantes! Los cuervos somos más grandes que eso de castigarle a un jugador por ir a ver un partido de fútbol. Y Migliore no tiene que dar ninguna explicación. Es un juego lindísimo que nos gusta a todos, ¿no? Si Migliore ha ido a verlos jugar a los bosteros en cualquier cancha, no tiene importancia. Y si no ha ido, tampoco tiene importancia. ¡A enfocarnos en lo que nos importa como hinchas, carajo!: El fútbol y San Lorenzo de Almagro. Migliore está jugando muy bien y con coraje para nuestro equipo. Ya está.
-Guido

____________

The Wounded Hare

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted by thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor never pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field,
The bitter little of life that remains!
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.

Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now of dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom Crest.

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.

—Robert Burns

America's Secret Afghan Prisons
By Anand Gopal
January 28, 2010, © The Nation
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town's bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost's dusty streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaargoers for ransom. . . .

America's Sorry History with Haiti
By Lisa Pease
January 30, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
With all the talk of America taking charge of Haiti for a while, it would be prudent for us to take a step back and review the history of our various interventions in Haiti, and the outcomes of those efforts. 
For there is another kind of aid that the people of Haiti need that isn’t being talked about. They need us to understand their real history, their culture and their potential. . . .

America's Sad History with Haiti, Part 2
By Lisa Pease
February 1, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
The Haitians have a saying in their native créole language: Piti, piti, wazo fe nich li. “Little by little, the bird builds its nest.”
Freed of the powerful grip of the Duvaliers in 1986, and despite a dysfunctional system, little by little, the Haitians undertook the difficult work of rebuilding their nation into a more democratic place from within. . . .

Italian Music In Dakota

Through the soft evening air enwrinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent artificial,
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera
house,
Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)
Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,
Music, Italian music in Dakota.

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,
Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,
(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
Listens well pleas'd.

—Walt Whitman
____________

Bon match contre les Sénateurs. Merci.
____________

Pour Toi
Estoy de ti florecido
como los tiestos de rosas,
estoy de ti floreciendo
de tus cosas...
Menudo limo de amores
abona mis noches tuyas
y me florecen de sueños
como los cielos de luna...
Como tú mido los pasos
y la distancia es más corta,
hablo en tu idioma de amor
y me comprenden las rosas...
Es que ya estoy florecido.
Es que ya estoy floreciendo
de tus cosas.
—Pedro Mir
____________

Hay Un País En El Mundo

Hay un país en el mundo
colocado
en el mismo trayecto del sol.
Oriundo de la noche.
Colocado
en un inverosímil archipiélago
de azúcar y de alcohol.

Sencillamente
liviano,
como un ala de murciélago
apoyado en la brisa.

Sencillamente
claro,
como el rastro del beso en las solteronas antiguas
o el día en los tejados.

Sencillamente
frutal. Fluvial. Y material. Y sin embargo
sencillamente tórrido y pateado
como una adolescente en las caderas.

Sencillamente triste y oprimido.

Sencillamente agreste y despoblado

En verdad.
Con tres millones
suma de la vida
y entre tanto
cuatro cordilleras cardinales
y una inmensa bahía y otra inmensa bahía,
tres penínsulas con islas adyacentes
y un asombro de ríos verticales
y tierra bajo los árboles y tierra
bajo los ríos y en la falda del monte
y al pie de la colina y detrás del horizonte
y tierra desde el canto de los gallos
y tierra bajo el galope de los caballos
y tierra sobre el día, bajo el mapa, alrededor
y debajo de todas las huellas y en medio del amor.

Entonces
es lo que he declarado.

Hay
un país en el mundo
sencillamente agreste y despoblado.

Algún amor creerá
que en este fluvial país en que la tierra brota,
y se derrama y cruje como una vena rota,
donde el día tiene su triunfo verdadero,
irán los campesinos con asombro y apero
a cultivar
cantando
su franja propietaria.

Este amor
quebrará su inocencia solitaria.
Pero no.

Y creerá
que en medio de esta tierra recrecida,
donde quiera, donde ruedan montañas por los valles
como frescas monedas azules, donde duerme
un bosque en cada flor y en cada flor la vida,
irán los campesinos por la loma dormida
a gozar
forcejeando
con su propia cosecha.

Este amor
doblará su luminosa flecha.
Pero no.
Y creerá
de donde el viento asalta el íntimo terrón
y lo convierte en tropas de cumbres y praderas,
donde cada colina parece un corazón,
en cada campesino irán las primaveras cantando
entre los surcos
su propiedad.

Este amor
alcanzará su floreciente edad.
Pero no.

Hay
un país en el mundo
donde un campesino breve,
seco y agrio
muere y muerde
descalzo
su polvo derruido,
y la tierra no alcanza para su bronca muerte.

¡Oídlo bien! No alcanza para quedar dormido.
Es un país pequeño y agredido. Sencillamente triste,
triste y torvo, triste y acre. Ya lo dije:
sencillamente triste y oprimido.

Procedente del fondo de la noche
vengo a hablar de un país.
Precisamente
pobre de población.
Pero
no es eso solamente.
Natural de la noche soy producto de un viaje.
Dadme tiempo
coraje
para hacer la canción.

Plumón de nido nivel de luna
salud del oro guitarra abierta
final de viaje donde una isla
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

Decid al viento los apellidos
de los ladrones y las cavernas
y abrid los ojos donde un desastre
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

El aire brusco de un breve puño
que se detiene junto a una piedra
abre una herida donde unos ojos
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

Los que la roban no tienen ángeles
no tienen órbita entre las piernas
no tienen sexo donde una patria
los campesinos no tienen tierra.

No tienen paz entre las pestañas
no tienen tierra no tienen tierra.

.......

Miro un brusco tropel de raíles
son del ingenio
sus soportes de verde aborigen
son del ingenio
y las mansas montañas de origen
son del ingenio
y la caña y la yerba y el mimbre
son del ingenio
y los muelles y el agua y el liquen
son del ingenio
y el camino y sus dos cicatrices
son del ingenio
y los pueblos pequeños y vírgenes
son del ingenio.

Es verdad que en el tránsito del río,
cordilleras de miel, desfiladeros
de azúcar y cristales marineros
disfrutan de un metálico albedrío,
y que al pie del esfuerzo solidario
aparece el instinto proletario.

Pero ebrio de orégano y de anís,
y mártir de los tórridos paisajes
hay un hombre de pie en los engranajes.
Desterrado en su tierra. y un país,
en el mundo,
fragrante,
colocado
en el mismo trayecto de la guerra.
Traficante de tierras y sin tierra.
Material. Matinal. Y desterrado.

.......

Quiero ver su amargura necesaria
donde el hombre y la res y el surco duermen
y adelgazan los sueños en el germen
de quietud que eterniza la plegaria.

Donde un ángel respira.
donde arde
una súplica pálida y secreta
y siguiendo el carril de la carrera
un boyero se extingue con la tarde.

Después
no quiero más que paz.
Un nido
de constructiva paz en cada palma.
Y quizás a propósito del alma
el enjambre de besos
y el olvido.

—Pedro Mir
____________

¡VAMOS SAN LORENZO!

____________

Have you no shame, Tony Blair?
____________

Thank you, Howard. It is an honour to have read you, heard you, learned from you, known you at least a little. You will always be missed, always be celebrated. Your history is our history, irreplaceable, unforgettable, as contagious as your smile, a blessing, a warning, a measuring stick, an example to us all.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates”

“Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.”

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children”

“In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.”

“If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands”

“One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.”

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

“I don't think there's any question that the United States is going to have to get out of Iraq. The only questions are: How long will it take? How many more people will die? And how will it be done?”

“War itself is the enemy of the human race.”

“People like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Jack London and Upton Sinclair were wonderful writers who joined the movement against war and injustice, against capitalism and corporate power. That was a very exciting period in American history.”

“The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country.”

“Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.”

“When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.”

“I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -that history is a protective armor against being misled.”

—Howard Zinn

Dunkin Donuts, Boston, 8 January, 2008

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87
By Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard
January 27, 2010, © The Boston Globe
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87. . . .

VIOLINBYGGERNES BY
Hver gang du kommer tilbage
kunne jeg dræbe dig for det
– af misundelse over den udsigt
jeg ikke fik set, floden
der slyngede sig gennem byen og ud
i et blomstrende landskab
medmindre det var en strøm af blå heste
bjergenes sne og de indfødtes
sprog, de indforståede vittigheder
de fortalte om deres konge.
‘Violinbyggernes by’ har jeg ofte
døbt det sted, hvor jeg leder
efter din sjæIs foretrukne tilholdssted
din melankolis skovbund, og den særlige
tone i lyset over din kind
den som gør mig gal sidst på vinteren
eller med andre ord: Om døden ved jeg intet
men en sådan afmagt tillægger jeg de døde
en sådan genstandsløs længsel
at intet billede kan gøres
på trods af rammen, som altid er der:
Hele natten ned ad floden
lå vi ikke desto mindre vågne på dækket
og lyttede til strygermusikken
der blev båret ud mod os fra usynlige bredder.
—Henrik Nordbrandt

THE CITY OF VIOLINMAKERS
Every time that you return
I could kill you for it –
out of envy at the view
I never gained a glimpse of, the river
that wound its way through the city and out
into lush countryside
unless it was a stream of blue horses
the snow of the mountains and the local
language, the inside jokes
they made about their kings.
‘The city of violin makers’ I have often
christened the place where I search
for your soul’s preferred haunt
your melancholy’s woodland floor, and the special
tint in the light across your cheek
the one that drives me mad in late-winter
or in other words: I know nothing of death
but I ascribe such powerlessness to the dead
such an undirected yearning
that no picture can be made
despite the frame that is always present:
Throughout the night downriver
we nevertheless lay awake on deck
listening to the string music
borne out to us from invisible banks.
—Henrik Nordbrandt
(translation: John Irons)
____________

Serena I
without the grand old British Museum
Thales and the Aretino
on the bosom of the Regent’s Park the phlox
crackles under the thunder
scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift
all things full of gods
pressed down and bleeding
a weaver-bird is tangerine the harpy is past caring
the condor likewise in his mangy boa
they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants
Ireland
the light creeps down their old home canyon
sucks me aloof to that old reliable
the burning btm of George the drill
ah across the way a adder
broaches her rat
white as snow
in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
limae labor

ah father father that art in heaven

I find me taking the Crystal Palace
for the Blessed Isles from Primrose Hill
alas I must be that kind of person
hence in Ken Wood who shall find me
my breath held in the midst of thickets
none but the most quarried lovers

I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged
for the obeisance to Tower Bridge
the viper’s curtsy to and from the City
till in the dusk a lighter
blind with pride
tosses aside the scarf of the bascules
then in the grey hold of the ambulance
throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs
then I hug me below among the canaille
until a guttersnipe blast his cernèd eyes
demanding ’ave I done with the Mirror
I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men’s Quarters
Bloody Tower
and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren’s giant bully
and curse the day caged panting on the platform
under the flaring urn
I was not born Defoe

but in Ken Wood
who shall find me

my brother the fly
the common housefly
sidling out of darkness into light
fastens on his place in the sun
whets his six legs
revels in his planes his poisers
it is the autumn of his life
he could not serve typhoid and mammon

—SAMUEL BECKETT
____________

Thank you, Brett Favre. You are a brave man.
____________

...But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you...
Matthew 5:44
(King James Bible)
____________

Cholesterol
My father disappeared because too much cholesterol fell in love
with the bitter skin he built a fort in.
Tragedy yodels in the accumulated trash pile
that passes for urban renewal.
Rain left its resume on our bareheaded
vacations, we tried to conquer countries that only
existed in our heads; come and drink from
the trough of hope with me
I will stand alongside you no matter how many
people claim you were the guilty one
as the desperate weather makes it hard to get the party
invitations to the right people.
My intentions got arrested for vagrancy
and I wait for my lawyer to call
except whenever the phone rings
the clowns make so much noise I can't hear a thing.
Love, I promise you
Love will still find us in the smoke
when the war is over and the actors have turned in their scripts
Love will still find a way to ask us out on a date
The cholesterol rises to the drunk sailor moon
the seas try to sing to us but forget our words
Love will still need us
if it hopes to make it home
in time for the christening
—Scott Wannberg

First, Fire All the Financial Failures
By Mark Ames
January 24, 2010, © Consortiumnews.com
If President Obama wants to really understand why he got his ass handed to him in the Massachusetts Senate race — a defeat as shocking and strange as if Joe Lieberman was elected president of Iran — he might want to read one of the thousands of economic horror stories happening around the country every day, stories that have put most Americans in a very foul, desperate mood. . . .

Poems of departure

1
The idea of separation
affords us the greatest intimacy
‘I am going away’ means
you can open your arms
with the greatest of ease
the risks are minimal from
now on
and because there is nothing to lose,
only miles to cover,
the honesty can be
enormous
we go out to each other
in a new way
with a sense of loss
already.

2
I am speechless with
the distance of it.
Words stretched out across the
plains don’t
thread together
easily
it is too far to go between
the hedges to get
sense.
Really, the act of leaving defies
all reasoning.
The subtlety of it is contained in
each step taken towards
the doorway
in the packing and sealing of boxes
in the suitcases
the empty walls.
 
—Jenny Bornholdt, from This Big Face (VUP, 1988)

Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Jean-Jacques Dessalines (Haitian Creole: Janjak Desalin) (20 September 1758 – 17 October 1806) was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution. He was autocratic in his rule and crowned himself Emperor of Haïti in 1805. He also was a great-grandfather of Cincinnatus Leconte, who served as President of Haiti from 1911 to 1912. . . .

The most unfairly overlooked movie and performance from the United States of America in 2009 were THAT EVENING SUN, directed by Scott Teems, and the work of his lead actor, Mr. Hal Holbrook, playing 'Abner Meecham'. Ray McKinnon, as 'Lonzo Choat', also did a very fine job in that story. This movie, so cleanly directed and shot, cannot be recommended too highly. It is hard to think of performance more subtly nuanced and committed than Mr. Holbrook's in a North-American movie this past year. See if you can find this gem on DVD, and enjoy viewing it as soon as possible!
____________

Etiqueta y prelaciones
Siempre me ha parecido que el rasgo distintivo de nuestra familia es el recato. Llevamos el pudor a extremos increíbles, tanto en nuestra manera de vestirnos y de comer como en la forma de expresarnos y de subir a los tranvías. Los sobrenombres, por ejemplo, que se adjudican tan desaprensivamente en el barrio de Pacífico, son para nosotros motivo de cuidado, de reflexión y hasta de inquietud. Nos parece que no se puede atribuir un apodo cualquiera a alguien que deberá absorberlo y sufrirlo como un atributo durante toda su vida. Las señoras de la calle Humboldt llaman Toto, Coco o Cacho a sus hijos, y Negra o Beba a las chicas, pero en nuestra familia ese tipo corriente de sobrenombre no existe, y mucho menos otros rebuscados y espamentosos como Chirola, Cachuzo o Matagatos, que abundan por el lado de Paraguay y Godoy Cruz. Como ejemplo del cuidado que tenemos en estas cosas bastará citar el caso de mi tía segunda. Visiblemente dotada de un trasero de imponentes dimensiones, jamás nos hubiéramos permitido ceder a la fácil tentación de los sobrenombres habituales; así, en vez de darle el apodo brutal de Anfora Etrusca, estuvimos de acuerdo en el más decente y familiar de la Culona. Siempre procedemos con el mismo tacto, aunque nos ocurre tener que luchar con los vecinos y amigos que insisten en los motes tradicionales. A mi primo segundo el menor, marcadamente cabezón, le rehusamos siempre el sobrenombre de Atlas que le habían puesto en la parrilla de la esquina, y preferimos el infinitamente más delicado de Cucuzza. Y así siempre. Quisiera aclarar que estas cosas no las hacemos por diferenciarnos del resto del barrio. Tan sólo desearíamos modificar, gradualmente y sin vejar los sentimientos de nadie, las rutinas y las tradiciones. No nos gusta la vulgaridad en ninguna de sus formas, y basta que alguno de nosotros oiga en la cantina frases como «Fue un partido de trámite violento», o: «Los remates de Faggiolli se caracterizaron por un notable trabajo de infiltración preliminar del eje medio», para que inmediatamente dejemos constancia de las formas más castizas y aconsejables en la emergencia, es decir: «Hubo una de patadas que te la debo», o: «Primero los arrollamos y después fue la goleada». La gente nos mira con sorpresa, pero nunca falta alguno que recoja la lección escondida en estas frases delicadas. Mi tío el mayor, que lee a los escritores argentinos, dice que con muchos de ellos se podría hacer algo parecido, pero nunca nos ha explicado en detalle. Una lástima.
—Julio Cortázar
____________

Please help the people of Haiti if you can. Here are 2 places to start:
Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam America
____________

Terapias

Un cronopio se recibe de médico y abre un consultorio en la calle Santiago del Estero. En seguida viene un enfermo y le cuenta cómo hay cosas que le duelen y cómo de noche no duerme y de día no come.

—Compre un gran ramo de rosas- dice el cronopio.

El enfermo se retira sorprendido, pero compra el ramo y se cura instantáneamente. Lleno de gratitud acude al cronopio, y además de pagarle le obsequia, fino testimonio, un hermoso ramo de rosas. Apenas se ha ido el cronopio cae enfermo, le duele por todos lados, de noche no duerme y de día no come.

—Julio Cortázar
____________

Siempre les hace falta una mano a los hijitos, ¿no?...   
Bueno, que disfruten el empate, pero los regalitos se acabarán cuando empiece el torneo.

"Si festejaron tanto, son un equipo chico"
Jueves 14, Enero 2010, © Olé
El Negro Leiva, como todo San Lorenzo, terminó caliente con el arbitraje de Furchi y disparó contra el juez: "La síntesis fue tratar de que Boca no perdiera porque si no se terminaba el torneo. En estos campeonatos es muy importante el tema de la recaudación y, si San Lorenzo ganaba, se terminaba todo". El sábado cierran el triangular Boca y Estudiantes. . . .

I am Envy. I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.
—Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus)

El paso de Tinelli se pareció a una jodita para “ShowMatch”
Por Nicolás Castrovillari 
10 de Enero de 2010, © perfil.com
Luego de su llegada al club en 2006, como presidente de la Comisión del Centenario se convirtió en el hombre fuerte del Consejo de Fútbol. Además, sumó al grupo inversor, que acercó figuras de primer nivel para cumplir el gran sueño de ganar la Libertadores. Sin embargo, sólo ganó un Clausura, al mismo tiempo que duplicó el pasivo y descapitalizó al plantel, a punto tal que sólo Bernardo Romeo y Diego Rivero son en un 100 por ciento de la institución. . . .

La Foto de 12/2008, resucitada en Diarioshow

Informando a los cuervos de ley:
Me puse la remera de Tigre cuando ese equipo estaba por jugar contra los Bosteros el último partido del infame triangular de 2008.
Como todos los hinchas de San Lorenzo, quise darle fuerza ese día a los de Victoria contra los de Grondona. Y punto.

Oriente y Occidente como espacios mentales
Los reformistas existen en las muy variadas tierras del Islam. Son a la vez demócratas y musulmanes, niegan con su ejemplo el choque de civilizaciones y reivindican los derechos humanos y la igualdad de la mujer.
JUAN GOYTISOLO
08/01/2010, © El País
"Everyone who writes about the oriente must locates himself vis á vis the orient", Edward Said
Hace algunos años, mientras tomaba tranquilamente un café en la Plaza de Marraquech, una turista francesa se acercó a saludarme y me expresó su calurosa emoción de sentirse en Oriente. . . .

El tiempo revela todas las cosas: es un charlatán y habla hasta cuando no se le pregunta.
—Eurípides

Higuaín: "En 2010 espero ganar todo"
7 de enero de 2010, © espndeportes.com
MADRID -- Gonzalo Higuaín, delantero internacional argentino del Real Madrid, se mostró ambicioso en sus retos para el 2010 y aseguró que espera "ganar Champions y Liga" con su club y "jugar el Mundial y ganarlo" con Argentina. . . .

I Go Back To The House For A Book
I turn around on the gravel and go back to the house for a book, something to read at the doctor's office, and while I am inside, running the finger of inquisition along a shelf, another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book heads out on his own, rolls down the driveway, and swings left toward town, a ghost in his ghost car, another knot in the string of time, a good three minutes ahead of me — a spacing that will now continue for the rest of my life.
—Billy Collins

The Melting of America
By Orville Schell
January 7, 2010, © The Nation
Lately, I've been studying the climate-change-induced melting of glaciers in the Greater Himalaya. Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet's most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited. Spending time considering the deleterious downstream effects on the 2 billion people (from the North China Plain to Afghanistan) who depend on the river systems--the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Amu Darya and Tarim--that arise in these mountains isn't much of an antidote to malaise either. . . .

LAS PALABRAS

No me gaste las palabras
no cambie el significado
mire que lo que yo quiero
lo tengo bastante claro

si usted habla de progreso
nada más que por hablar
mire que todos sabemos
que adelante no es atrás

si está contra la violencia
pero nos apunta bien
si la violencia va y vuelve
no se me queje después

si usted pide garantías
sólo para su corral
mire que el pueblo conoce
lo que hay que garantizar

no me gaste las palabras
no cambie el significado
mire que lo que yo quiero
lo tengo bastante claro

si habla de paz pero tiene
costumbre de torturar
mire que hay para ese vicio
una cura radical

si escribe reforma agraria
pero sólo en el papel
mire que si el pueblo avanza
la tierra viene con él

si está entregando el país
y habla de soberanía
quién va a dudar que usted es
soberana porquería

no me gaste las palabras
no cambie el significado
mire que lo que yo quiero
lo tengo bastante claro

no me ensucie las palabras
no les quite su sabor
y límpiese bien la boca
si dice revolución.

-Mario Benedetti
____________

hello, how are you?

this fear of being what they are:
dead.

at least they are not out on the street, they
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets,
their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter.

their ideal neighborhood
of parked cars
of little green lawns
of little homes
the little doors that open and close
as their relatives visit
throughout the holidays
the doors closing
behind the dying who die so slowly
behind the dead who are still alive
in your quiet average neighborhood
of winding streets
of agony
of confusion
of horror
of fear
of ignorance.

a dog standing behind a fence.

a man silent at the window.

—Charles Bukowski

83 months and counting…
Rich countries have no choice but to lead by example in setting a different, less destructive model for economic success
Andrew Simms
Friday 1 January 2010 12.00, © The Guardian
The mother of all hangovers on 1 January 2010 has nothing to do with alcohol. From London to Washington DC it's the result of waking up to find that the world's most populated country, in whose economy we are inextricably entwined, doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks. From deciding the fate of civilisation's climate, to the judicial killing of mentally ill people, China, bluntly, is going its own way. But world leaders or newspaper columnists pompously taking the moral high ground against such a disdainful dictatorship is quite futile. The shape of the current global economic realignment has a momentum and trajectory shaped by centuries of geopolitics. It also has a direction that we, having created and gloried in the consumerist model, are actively still encouraging. Only last August Tony Blair defended a tripling of traffic in China over the next decade. . . .

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

—Mary Oliver

The Danger of Defeatism
By David Swanson
December 31, 2009, © Consortiumnews.com
In 2004 I began speaking at rallies and forums around the country on issues of peace and justice, something I've done off-and-on ever since. 
Up through 2008, it was extremely unusual for questions from the audience to consist of pure defeatism.  In 2009, it was rare to get through a Q&A session without being asked what the point was of trying. . . .

The First Dream

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

-Billy Collins

Federal Judge Dismisses All Charges in Iraq Massacre
By Jeremy Scahill
December 31, 2009, © The Nation
A federal judge in Washington, DC, has given Erik Prince's Blackwater mercenaries a huge New Year's gift. Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed all charges against the five Blackwater operatives accused of gunning down fourteen innocent Iraqis in Baghdad's Nisour Square in September 2007. Judge Urbina's order, issued late in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, is a stunning blow for the Iraqi victims' families and sends a clear message that US-funded mercenaries are above all systems of law--US and international. . . .

Here's wishing one and all a peaceful end to 2009,
and a strong start to 2010!

Kucinich to Investigate Fannie/Freddie Bailout
By: Jane Hamsher
Wednesday December 30, 2009, © Firedoglake.com
If the White House thought they could slip the bailout of Fannie and Freddie through by announcing it in a Christmas Eve news dump, think again. Dennis Kucinich just released this statement:
"As Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I'm announcing that the Subcommittee will launch an investigation into the Treasury Department's recent decision to lift the current $400-billion cap on combined federal assistance to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, opening the way for additional, unlimited funds through the end of 2012. This investigation will include the role played by Fannie Mae chief executive Michael J. Williams and Freddie Mac chief executive Charles E. Haldeman in the decision, if any, and will seek to ensure that the additional assistance is used for homeowners and not Wall Street." . . .

MVPs of 2009
By John Nichols
December 22, 2009, © The Nation
For a number of years now I have, with wise counsel from Nation colleagues, Washington watchdogs and grassroots activists around the country, worked up a year-end list of Most Valuable Progressives for TheNation.com. Begun during the Bush/Cheney era, the project initially highlighted dissenters against unnecessary wars, unfair economic policies and assaults on civil liberties. As the popularity of the online project grew, it expanded to recognize social and cultural interventions, especially those by activists and artists whose work was not as well-known as it should be. . . .

2 fine movie performances from 2009:
-Jamie Foxx in "The Soloist"
-Shohreh Aghdashloo in "The Stoning of Soraya M."

The Copenhagen That Matters
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
December 22, 2009
As I listened to Denmark’s minister of economic and business affairs describe how her country used higher energy taxes to stimulate innovation in green power and then recycled the tax revenues back to Danish industry and consumers to make it easier for them to make and buy the new clean technologies, it all sounded so, well, intelligent. It sounded as if the Danes looked at themselves after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, found that they were totally dependent on Middle East oil and put in place a long-term strategy to make Denmark energy-secure and start a new industry at the same time. . . .

¡Les deseo felices fiestas y un buen comienzo al 2010 a todos los cuervos del mundo! Estoy ansioso por ver el lindo equipo que vamos a tener para el próximo torneo, y también por ver la capilla terminada en la ciudad deportiva. A pesar de los falsos rumores sobre supuestas demoras en la construcción de la capilla, les puedo contar que la obra va perfectamente bien y que será un orgullo presentar este edificio tan especial en el nuevo año. Como cualquiera de ustedes, siempro vivo a la expectativa de nuevas hazañas del Ciclón, y creo que arrancaremos en 2010 como terminamos el 2009 - ¡ganando!.
Un fuerte abrazo-
"Guido" Mortensen.

Values of Health Care Stocks Increase Fearlessly as Public Option Is Dead
Tuesday, 22 December 2009, © Kucinich.us
Wall Street Celebrates Senate's "Significantly Watered Down" Health Care Bill Dear Friends, Wall Street is celebrating "Health Care Reform." According to an industry insider report yesterday by MarketWatch (Gibson and Britt) health care stocks rallied as the bill moved through the Senate, particularly since there is no public option in the bill to compete or compare with insurance company rate-making. . . .

Libres según
JAVIER MARÍAS
20/12/2009, © El País
Una de las actitudes que parece haber pasado a mejor vida en el mundo occidental, y desde luego en nuestro país, es la que engloba una serie de antiguas virtudes que, por lo visto, ya nadie considera tales. Llámenlas sobriedad, discreción, elegancia, austeridad, aversión a la histeria, al exceso y al pataleo, deseo de no importunar y de no crear más complicaciones de las existentes, de no dar la lata ni entorpecer las tareas de los demás. Llámenlas aguante, entereza, capacidad de encaje ante los reveses y los contratiempos, ganas de no desorbitar las cosas ni sacarlas de quicio, y por supuesto asunción de la propia responsabilidad. . . .

Pequeños detalles de Szymborska
JAVIER RODRÍGUEZ MARCOS
05/12/2009, © El País
Wislawa Szymborska está en su casa, pero pide permiso para fumar. "Una vez", cuenta, "recibí una carta de varias páginas en la que una mujer me pedía que dejara de fumar. Me hubiera gustado responderle: he ido a tantos entierros de gente que nunca había fumado y que era más joven que yo... Me limité a decirle que le agradecía que se preocupara por mí". Szymborska nació hace 86 años en Kórnik, cerca de Poznan, al oeste de Polonia. Ahora vive en un bloque descolorido sin ascensor -una especie de vivienda de protección oficial- en un suburbio de Cracovia, la ciudad de la que no se ha movido desde que su familia emigró allí cuando ella tenía ocho años, en 1931. . . .

It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
—Mark Twain
____________

Before long the end
Of the beginning
Begins to bend
To the beginning
Of the end you live
With some misgivings
About what you did
—Samuel Menashe

THE PEOPLE SPEAK
Sunday, December 13
8 PM Eastern and Pacific / 7 PM Central, History Channel
To find trailers and additional info, visit:
http://www.history.com/peoplespeak

Oye, new Spanish grammar guidelines unveiled
DANIEL WOOLLS
December 12, 2009, © Associated Press
MADRID (AP) - Can a Barcelona truck driver be expected to speak like a Buenos Aires banker? Can rules be imposed on a language spoken by 400 million people stretching from Madrid to Manila? . . .

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where is post-apocalyptic movie "The Road" showing? Not in Maine.
By TheReelGuy
11/29/09, © The Bangor Daily News
Surviving Black Friday, um, I mean the end of the world
"The Road," distributed by The Weinstein Company, was supposed to be one of the potential stand-out films this holiday season. Based on the award-winning Cormac McCarthy novel (he also wrote "No Country for Old Men"), the film was to be wide released Thanksgiving weekend, according to information on reliable internet sources including ticket seller Fandango.  The problem? The information was incorrect.  As many people throughout the U.S. are learning this weekend, "The Road" starring Viggo Mortensen is not to be found practically anywhere.  It is not showing in Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont.  The closest theater where the movie can be seen in most of New England is Boston. . . .

Viejo inolvidable
Noelia Sotelo
Miércoles 02, Diciembre 2009, © Olé
Se cumplen 30 años del último partido en el Gasómetro de Avenida La Plata, el Wembley porteño, un estadio que vive en la memoria de los Cuervos. Hoy hacen un abrazo simbólico. Y los protagonistas de ese día lo recuerdan. . . .

Chaplinesque

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

—Hart Crane

Amy Goodman And Canada's Olympic Paranoia
Dave Zirin
November 27, 2009, © The Huffington Post
When it comes to independent, agitational journalism, the standard is Amy Goodman and her radio/television institution, Democracy Now! Goodman and her staff often find themselves accosted by officials, foreign and domestic. This happened again on Thursday. But it didn't happen in East Timor or Burma. Goodman was detained by our neighbors to the north. . . .

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

—Margaret Atwood

____________

Daffy Duck In Hollywood
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?"
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight
micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times"
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
"It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?"
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: "If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others,
What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally,
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us." The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don't mind
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us,
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.
—John Ashbery

Why Afghans Dig Empire Graveyards
By Nicolas J S Davies
November 23, 2009, © Consortiumnews.com
In ancient lands like Iraq and Afghanistan, this American myopia has become very dangerous, by ignoring how and why these countries have resisted past instances of foreign imperialism, as Nicolas J S Davies notes in this guest article:
Afghanistan is known as the "graveyard of empires." But just why do empires keep sending thousands of their young people to die in Afghanistan? . . .

Who Is Now Reading This?

May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past
life,
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with
derision,
Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.

As if I were not puzzled at myself!
Or as if I never deride myself! (O conscience-struck! O self-
convicted!)
Or as if I do not secretly love strangers! (O tenderly, a long time,
and never avow it;)
Or as if I did not see, perfectly well, interior in myself, the stuff
of wrong-doing,
Or as if it could cease transpiring from me until it must cease.

—Walt Whitman

The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won't)
By Tom Engelhardt
November 25, 2009, © The Nation
Next Tuesday, President Obama is slated to address the American people in prime time about the war in Afghanistan from West Point. "It is my intention," he said in a press conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, "to finish the job." Every sign indicates that he will be sending 30,000 or more new American troops into that country. . . .

Paternidad milenaria
La columna del Hermano Cuervo      
Por Eduardo Bejuk
29 de noviembre de 2009, © La Revista del Ciclón
Como detesto el racismo, detesto los cánticos racistas contra el club Atlético Boca Juniors y sus particulares seguidores. Por el contrario, me encantan los hinchas de Boca. Me hacen feliz. Verlos crecer, lentamente, a la sombra de su padre, siempre me conmovió. A veces reflexiono: presionar a un hijo, querer que sea como uno, querer transmitirle sentimientos (olé, olé, olé, olá te la vamos a enseñar) y lecciones de vida (nos fuimos al descenso, nos vendieron la cancha) no siempre da el resultado deseado. Pero hay que seguir intentándolo, con cariño, sin violencia, de tribuna a tribuna, en esta misión educadora que todo progenitor le debe a su niño. La paternidad. Qué tema. Qué trauma. Junior pierde con San Lorenzo y no me come. Junior pierde con San Lorenzo y no se va a la cama, melancólico, buscando una explicación que su ego inflamado no puede concebir. Esta noche, después del partido, si la historia mantiene su curso y el nene -dolido en su recogimiento- puede dormirse, todo Hermano Cuervo debe leerle un cuento.
Boca nació de la bandera sueca. Los suecos son nórdicos. Los nórdicos, mil años atrás, observaban su propia mitología. Vikingos batalladores, creían que Odín era el Dios máximo, el que cabalgaba sobre un corcel de ocho patas, el que dominaba la guerra, la poesía la sabiduría, la muerte. Le temían. Lo adoraban. Y a veces, cuenta la leyenda, el mismísimo Odín se aparecía en el campo de batalla, para llevar la victoria a su pueblo. En cada hombro, Odín siempre llevaba lo mismo: a Huginn y Muninn. Sus dos cuervos. “Pensamiento y memoria”.
Pensá  por qué les ganamos siempre.
La memoria -y quizás una historia milenaria- te dará la respuesta.

Amores cuervos
HURACAN 0 - SAN LORENZO 2
Diego Santonovich
Domingo 22, Noviembre 2009, © Olé
San Lorenzo puede jactarse de ser el club con más vértigo del fútbol local. Boedo vive en montaña rusa sin fin, alcanzando altísimos picos, para caer en picada a la vuelta de la esquina. Eso, adentro y afuera de la cancha. Así, los mismos jugadores que mandaban en el Apertura y pisaban fuerte en la Sudamericana, pasaron, en una semana, del cielo al infierno, tras la eliminación con River y las derrotas con Banfield e Independiente. Y, ya en el fondo del mar, el Papu Gómez bailó con la más fea, recibiendo las puteadas que se les dedican a los enemigos y hasta bancándose que un hincha lo increpara cara a cara a la salida del vestuario. Eso hace una semana. Pero la rueda sigue girando y sólo seis días después, la magia de una victoria en un clásico, vuelve a sitiar en un pedestal al plantel, máxime tras el festejo: jugadores cantando al ritmo de la gente, imitando la coreografía con aplausos, durante casi diez minutos, porque "¿qué te pasa Quemero...?" . . .

Para leer en forma interrogativa
Has visto,
verdaderamente has visto
la nieve, los astros, los pasos afelpados de la brisa...
Has tocado,
de verdad has tocado
el plato, el pan, la cara de esa mujer que tanto amás...
Has vivido
como un golpe en la frente,
el instante, el jadeo, la caída, la fuga...
Has sabido
con cada poro de la piel, sabido
que tus ojos, tus manos, tu sexo, tu blando corazón,
había que tirarlos
había que llorarlos
había que inventarlos otra vez.
—Julio Cortázar

Elephants don’t belong in zoos: Central Zoo Authority
KOLLAM, November 17, 2009, © The Hindu
As per an order from the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) of India, “elephants have been banned from zoo collection throughout the country with immediate effect”. The order stipulates that all elephants kept at zoos should be immediately relocated to elephant camps and rehabilitation centres of the Forest Department or inside forest areas. . . .

Apologies to the audience member at the question-and-answer session held after the 18 november screening of "The Road" at the Sunshine theatre on Houston Street, N.Y.C., who actually did correctly answer that the music played in the movie's concert flash-back was from Bach's Sonata for violin and harpsichord number 3 in E major. Although she was mistakenly told that she did not quite get the  sonata number right, she did fortunately receive the pop-quiz prize anyway - the Noam Chomsky DVD "Rebel Without A Pause".

Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer
By Robert Scheer
November 18, 2009, © TruthDig
What's up with Barack Obama? The candidate for change once promised to take on the powerful banking interests but is now doing their bidding. Finally, a leading Democrat, in this case Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, has a good idea for monitoring the Wall Street fat cats who all but destroyed the American economy, and the Obama administration condemns it. . . .

Agua

Hay países que yo recuerdo
como recuerdo mis infancias.
Son países de mar o río,
de pastales, de vegas y aguas.
Aldea mía sobre el Ródano,
rendida en río y en cigarras;
Antilla en palmas verdi-negras
que a medio mar está y me llama;
¡roca lígure de Portofino,
mar italiana, mar italiana!

Me han traído a país sin río,
tierras-Agar, tierras sin agua;
Saras blancas y Saras rojas,
donde pecaron otras razas,
de pecado rojo de atridas
que cuentan gredas tajeadas;
que no nacieron como un niño
con unas carnazones grasas,
cuando las oigo, sin un silbo,
cuando las cruzo, sin mirada.

Quiero volver a tierras niñas;
llévenme a un blando país de aguas.
En grandes pastos envejezca
y haga al río fábula y fábula.
Tenga una fuente por mi madre
y en la siesta salga a buscarla,
y en jarras baje de una peña
un agua dulce, aguda y áspera.

Me venza y pare los alientos
el agua acérrima y helada.
¡Rompa mi vaso y al beberla
me vuelva niñas las entrañas!

—Gabriela Mistral

Afghan Lessons from the Iraq War
By Ray McGovern
November 17, 2009, © Consortiumnews.com
You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?” . . .

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adiós, Tingui
13/11/2009, © MundoAzulgrana
Falleció Héctor Osvaldo Facundo. Para muchos de sus amigos, el “Tingui”. La noticia se confirmó en horas del mediodía cuando precisamente en la jornada de hoy, junto a sus compañeros campeones de 1959, iba a ser distinguido por parte del club, en la esquina Homero Manzi, a cincuenta años de aquel título. Un paro cardíaco acabó con su vida a los 71 años. . . .

Flying Inside Your Own Body  
Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
down on the think pink rind of your skull.
It’s always the moment just before gunshot.
You try & try to rise but you cannot.
— Margaret Atwood

Turn Back the Assault on Women's Rights
By Peter Rothberg
November 10, 2009, © The Nation
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to pass its health care reform bill (HR 3962) only after approving an amendment introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak that would prohibit any plan purchased with any federal subsidy from covering abortion services--even with private funds. . . .

The Planet On The Table

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

—Wallace Stevens

Congressman Kucinich addresses vote on H.R. 3962
November 7, 2009
Congressman Dennis Kucinich after voting against H.R. 3962 addresses why he voted NO, stating:
"We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system." . . .

¡VAMOS SAN LORENZO! ¡EL AGUANTE NO NOS LO QUITA NADIE!
¡ADELANTE CICLÓN! ¡FUERZA, CAMPEÓN!

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of the ‘Primitive’
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
November 4, 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist whose revolutionary studies of what was once called “primitive man” transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization, has died at 100. . . .

Kucinich Addresses UN Goldstone Gaza Resolution
November 3, 2009, Congressman Dennis Kucinich addresses H.RES. 867 on the House Floor. H.RES. 867 condemns the UN Goldstone Gaza Fact Finding Mission Report.
Congressman Kucinich stated:
"Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist." . . .

To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man.
—Euripides

1929 and 2009: A public job program is the answer
By Julianne Malveaux
October 27, 2009, © The Progressive
Eighty years ago this week, the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. We need to apply the lessons from that era to our own to relieve the needless suffering of the Great Recession. . . .

Poetas en la mitad de la vida
Mapa de una generación que nació alrededor de los años 60 y se afianzó en la década del noventa. El fenómeno de los recitales masivos de poesía, un género noble que resiste a la lógica del mercado.
Por Jorge Monteleone
Sábado 24 de octubre de 2009, © LA NACION
La escena parece un sueño barrial algo absurdo e inmediato, como esas pequeñas epifanías que el poeta Fabián Casas suele escribir. El poeta es hincha de San Lorenzo de Almagro, asiste a un partido en el nuevo Gasómetro y allí divisa a un personaje de El señor de los anillos , el montaraz Aragorn, con las facciones de Viggo Mortensen, pero luciendo la camiseta azulgrana y alentando al local como un hincha más. . . .

Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War
By Ray McGovern
October 30, 2009, © Consortiumnews.com
The White Man’s Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.
The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly “inside the box” — so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who also recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world: . . .

Art review: Dan Mills at Sherry Frumkin
Leah Ollman
October 30, 2009, © Los Angeles Times
Why stop at 50? As Dan Mills points out in the mock manifesto accompanying his terrific show at Sherry Frumkin , these United States of ours cohered over time — starting with 16 territories in the 18th century, adding 29 in the 19th, and five more in the 20th. “As we consider U.S. history,” he writes, “a pattern of expanding by at least five states every fifty years exists, with the exception of the last fifty or so. We clearly have some catching up to do.” . . .

The heart of India is under attack
To justify enforcing a corporate land grab, the state needs an enemy – and it has chosen the Maoists
Arundhati Roy
Friday 30 October 2009, © The Guardian
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain. For the Kondh it's as though god had been sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ. . . .

Dissident lance corporal who refused to fight in Afghanistan claims support of soldiers
Robert Booth
Friday 30 October 2009, © The Guardian
A lance corporal who faces jail for refusing to return to fight in Afghanistan has claimed fellow soldiers are rallying to his cause. . . .

Congressman Kucinich on The Ed Shultz Show
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
On MSNBC, The Ed Shultz Show (October 28) Congressman Kucinich stated: It's time to re-double our efforts to insist on a robust public option, that is the least we can do since the single-payer option has been taken out of the bill, leaving negotiated rates, a trigger - capitulating to insurance companies. . . .

A Patriot Asks About Afghan War: "Why and to What End?"
by John Nichols
10/28/2009, © The Nation
About the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan -- not merely the proposal to surge more troops into the quagmire but the occupation itself -- he says: "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.'" . . .

La Patria

Patria de lejos, mapa,
mapa de nunca.
Porque el ayer es nunca
y el mañana mañana.

Guardo un olor de trébol,
una calle con árboles,
un recuerdo de manos,
una luz sobre el río.

Patria, cartas que llegan
y otras que vuelven,
pájaros de papel
sobre el mapa volando.

Porque el ayer es nunca
y el mañana mañana.

—Julio Cortázar

Beirut's history can't be reduced to a mere 'heritage trail'
Robert Fisk
Saturday, 24 October 2009, © The Independent
They've just discovered a bit of Beirut's Crusader castle. Most of the other great coastal cities of Lebanon – Tripoli, Batroun, Jbeil (for which read Byblos) and Sidon – have their castles in various states of perfect preservation or decay, but the Ottomans and then the Lebanese commercial elite managed to destroy the great keep that guarded the port of Beirut, the first to use as a quarry for their own walls, the latter out of greed. . . .

The Holocaust, Ku Klux Klan, and other claims put to the test
By Cahal Milmo
Saturday, 24 October 2009, © The Independent
"I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial"
The BNP leader does not have a conviction for Holocaust denial because there is no such offence in English law. What he does have is a conviction in 1998 for inciting racial hatred by writing articles in The Rune magazine in which he denied the Holocaust and praised the Waffen SS. . . .

SI UNA TARDA ... (versió revisada)
Si de tard plou la tristesai relluu enmig del fabla pintura dels vehicles,els semàfors creuant follsla llordesa, el fang i el fàsticdels carrers humitejats;si de tard un surt de feina,atuït, malmès, i plou,i plou tant que els cecs s'arrufenals portals darrera els ulls,com pot un l'aguait permetred'una nina boja, hostil,o el mirar de nines lletges!Letargia, fosca, error,calfred, pluja, defallença,general esfondrament,tant amaren que un s'aferraal fremir d'una cançóque se senti de passada.
— Miquel Bauçà

BANNED
Noam Chomsky, widely known as one of the foremost critics of U.S. foreign policy, has had his work banned from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where a detainee requested his book INTERVENTIONS. As Chomsky dryly pointed out, "Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for the New York Times syndicate, and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep."
Read the full story, "Anti-war activist's works banned at prison camps" at the Miami Herald, and most importantly the banned book itself, published by City Lights, and as INTERVENCIONES, in Spanish, by Haymarket.
Chomsky will release the much-anticipated HOPES AND PROSPECTS with Haymarket January 2010.

Dieu (s'il y a un Dieu) est dans ma conscience (si j'ai une conscience).
—Gustave Flaubert
____________

¡Gracias a MUNDOAZULGRANA y a los cuervos por los lindos mensajes!

Les Bienfaits de la Chocophile
Le chocolat, qui tient son 15e salon à Paris ce week-end, reste la faiblesse préférée des Français. Désormais beau, bon et bien sous tous rapports, il fait fondre sans honte.
par Florence Hernandez
Paru le 16.10.2009 , © Madame Figaro
L’époque a besoin de douceur et revendique son droit à la gourmandise. Du coup, le chocolat nous prend par les sentiments : allure régressive, parfums d’enfance, emballages aguicheurs... Tout est fait pour séduire, mais aussi pour rassurer l’amateur. Les nouvelles tendances 2009 ? Nous en avons relevé trois sur nos tablettes. . . .

Desafueros de la libido
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
18/10/2009, © El País
El cineasta Roman Polanski fue detenido en Zúrich, durante un Festival de Cine que le rendía un homenaje, por la policía suiza, a pedido de la justicia de Estados Unidos, debido a una violación cometida en 1977 (hace 32 años) en Hollywood, delito que el propio Polanski reconoció, antes de fugarse de California en pleno proceso cuando el tribunal que lo juzgaba aún no había pronunciado sentencia. Ahora, mientras espera que Suiza decida si acepta el pedido de extradición, se multiplican las protestas de cineastas, actores, actrices, intelectuales y escritores de Europa y América por el "atropello", exigiendo su liberación. . . .

¡Gracias a Roberto Carlos por las lindas palabras de elogio a San Lorenzo - y gracias al Cholo por defender la pasión, el aguante, y el talento del equipo invicto que ya tenemos!

____________

Balada Del Ausente
Entonces no me des un motivo por favor
No le des conciencia a la nostalgia,
La desesperación y el juego.
Pensarte y no verte
Sufrir en ti y no alzar mi grito
Rumiar a solas, gracias a ti, por mi culpa,
En lo único que puede ser
Enteramente pensado
Llamar sin voz porque Dios dispuso
Que si Él tiene compromisos
Si Dios mismo le impide contestar
Con dos dedos el saludo
Cotidiano, nocturno, inevitable
Es necesario aceptar la soledad,
Confortarse hermanado
Con el olor a perro, en esos días húmedos del sur,
En cualquier regreso
En cualquier hora cambiable del crepúsculo
Tu silencio
Y el paso indiferente de Dios que no ve ni saluda
Que no responde al sombrero enlutado
Golpeando las rodillas
Que teme a Dios y se preocupa
Por lo que opine, condene, rezongue, imponga.
No me des conciencia, grito, necesidad ni orden.
Estoy desnudo y lejos, lo que me dejaron
Giro hacia el mundo y su secreto de musgo,
Hacia la claridad dolorosa del mundo,
Desnudo, sólo, desarmado
bamboleo mi cuerpo enmagrecido
Tropiezo y avanzo
Me acerco tal vez a una frontera
A un odio inútil, a su creciente miseria
Y tampoco es consuelo
Esa dulce ilusión de paz y de combate
Porque la lejanía
No es ya, se disuelve en la espera
Graciosa, incomprensible, de ayudarme
A vivir y esperar.
Ningún otro país y para siempre.
Mi pie izquierdo en la barra de bronce
Fundido con ella.
El mozo que comprende, ayuda a esperar, cree lo que ignora.
Se aceptan todas las apuestas:
Eternidad, infierno, aventura, estupidez
Pero soy mayor
Ya ni siquiera creo,
En romper espejos
En la noche
Y lamerme la sangre de los dedos
Como si la hubiera traído desde allí
Como si la salobre mentira se espesara
Como si la sangre, pequeño dolor filoso,
Me aproximara a lo que resta vivo, blando y ágil.
Muerto por la distancia y el tiempo
Y yo la, lo pierdo, doy mi vida,
A cambio de vejeces y ambiciones ajenas
Cada día más antiguas, suciamente deseosas y extrañas.
Volver y no lo haré, dejar y no puedo.
Apoyar el zapato en el barrote de bronce
Y esperar sin prisa su vejez, su ajenidad, su diminuto no ser.
La paz y después, dichosamente, en seguida, nada.
Ahí estaré. El tiempo no tocará mi pelo, no inventará arrugas, no me inflará las mejillas
Ahí estaré esperando una cita imposible, un encuentro que no se cumplirá.
—Juan Carlos Onetti

Obama isn't helping. At least the world argued with Bush
Naomi Klein
Friday 16 October 2009, © The Guardian
Of all the explanations for Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize, the one that rang truest came from Nicolas Sarkozy. "It sets the seal on America's return to the heart of all the world's peoples." In other words, this was Europe's way of saying to America, "We love you again", like those weird renewal-of-vows ceremonies couples have after a rough patch. . . .

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Running away
Julian Barnes
Saturday 17 October 2009, © The Guardian
When a writer you admire dies, rereading seems a normal courtesy and tribute. Occasionally, it may be prudent to resist going back: when Lawrence Durrell died, I preferred to remain with 40-year-old memories of The Alexandria Quartet rather than risk such lushness again. And sometimes the nature of the writer's oeuvre creates a problem of choice. This was the case with John Updike . I have only ever met one person – a distinguished arts journalist – who has read all Updike's 60-plus books; most of us, even long-term fans, probably score between 30 and 40. . . .

Gracias al "quemero" por la suerte que trajo, y a sus compañeros por el aguante.

____________

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a war for democracy, why worry about public opinion?
Escalation in Afghanistan is aimed at rescuing the credibility of western power, whatever Afghans or westerners might want
Seumas Milne
14 October 2009, © The Guardian
Whoever is in charge, it seems, the war on terror has truly become a war without end. Eight years after George Bush and Tony Blair launched it, with an attack on Afghanistan under the preposterous title of "operation enduring freedom" and without any explicit UN mandate, Gordon Brown has agreed to send yet more British troops to die for a cause neither they nor the public any longer believe in. . . .

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace isn't what Obama is achieving
Rarely has a President bent on change been met with such adverse cirumstances
Adrian Hamilton
Thursday, 15 October 2009, © The Independent
President Obama should never have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (as he himself acknowledges) not because it's too early but because it's precisely the wrong moment to do it. . . .

L’EXILIADA
(Al British Museum)

N’he restat somniós. Dins una caixa
virolada d’ocells de blanc i blau,
ben cenyida amb cent tombs d’estreta faixa,
una egípcia princesa hi dorm sa pau.

Lotus ardents que vora el Nil floreixen,
i els ibis llargs de bec i pesat vol,
direu que fins i morta li gorneixen
els nadius paisatges plens de sol.

Mes ai!... Al jorn de l’estrident trompeta,
que amb màgic surt esverarà després
els verms humans, ja em veig la princeseta
guaitant arreu amb sos grans ulls oberts.

I en veure el Thames i el Nil no, els ulls clou,
i a Phta li diu que es vol morir de nou.

—Magí Morera i Galícia

U.S. To Face Fellow FIFA World Cup Qualifiers Denmark On November 18 In Aarhus
Oct. 13, 2009, © ussoccer.com
CHICAGO (Oct. 13, 2009) – The United States Men’s National Team will face fellow 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifiers Denmark on Wednesday, Nov. 18, in Aarhus, Denmark. Kickoff at NRGi Park is set for 8:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. ET), and television details will be announced in the near future. Fans can also follow the match live via ussoccer.com’s MatchTracker. . . .

Taaaaaaak!
____________

¡Gracias, hijos bosteros!

____________

Bra spel, Sverige. Det blir bättre nästa gång...

Kom så!!!
____________

T’HE DONAT EL NOM MÉS BELL...

T’he donat el nom més bell
i un llac on el temps s’endinsa
t’he vestit de dubtes
i una certesa profunda

amor que amb la nit
desgranes la llum
del collar dels dies

t’he donat el nom més bell
i un camí obert d’escuma

amor sense nom
on el temps s’endinsa i nia

—Anna Montero

A War of Absurdity
By Robert Scheer
Oct 6, 2009
Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president’s national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:
“The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” . . .

NOIA RUSSA AL MONTSENY

Vestit florit, cara bruna i salvatge:
el teu perfum feréstec de l’estepa i del vent
omple aquestes garrigues i el caminet rellent
i el núvol que viatja.

Vestit de margarides i d’estrelles de mar:
entremig de les flors ta brunesa traspua.
Clavellets de pastor tremolen a l’atzar,
vora la teva cama nua.

I et fonies, suau, en la pau del paisatge,
els ulls grisos de somnis i del gust de morir;
o fugies, rient, pel camí —
rossinyol trist i tórtora salvatge.

—Marià Manent

____________

in my barbaric tongue
flowers are called flowers
and about air I say air
and stepping on the pavement bricks
with my heels I tap in
brick brick brick
and I say stone so softly
as if stone were velvet
and I bury my face in your neck
as if a cat's warm fur grew there
and I love
my barbaric tongue
and say: I love
—Halina Poswiatowska

Truthout to Congress: Stop Funding Endless War
Wednesday 07 October 2009, © truthout
On the war's eighth anniversary, we urge our president, our Congress and our country to cut the military purse strings and reject an escalation of violence in Afghanistan.
Yesterday, the Senate passed $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This appropriation could fuel a "surge" in deployment of US troops to Afghanistan; Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommends an increase of up to 40,000 soldiers. . . .

one more memory
I have just written a word
I am older by a word
by two
by three
by a poem

older - what does it mean older

within the abstraction called history
I have been assigned a narrow segment
from here - to there

I'm growing

within the abstraction called economy I was
ordered to live

within the abstraction called time -

I'm drifting
straying
and drifting

at the Egyptian wing
of the Metropolitan Museum
stone smiles with woman's lips
—Halina Poswiatowska

Keeping up with Exene Cervenka
The songwriter, artist and X frontwoman is back in L.A. after a four-year sojourn in Missouri, with a new solo album out Tuesday.
By Randy Lewis
October 6, 2009, © The Los Angeles Times
If people were paintings, Exene Cervenka might be a Picasso line drawing. In conversation, as in her considerable body of work, a founding member of X expresses herself concisely, every thought contributing to a larger picture that could come only from her. . . .

The constitutionality of healthcare
There's nothing illegal about requiring Americans to buy medical insurance.
By Erwin Chemerinsky
October 6, 2009, © The Los Angeles Times
Are the healthcare bills pending in the House and Senate unconstitutional?
That's what some of the bills' critics have alleged. Their argument focuses on the fact that most of the major proposals would require all Americans to obtain healthcare coverage or pay a tax if they don't. Those too poor to afford insurance would have their health coverage provided by the state. . . .

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain
1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating
In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's synchronicity for you:

Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you

I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds

8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...

No matter that you felt betrayed by her

That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion

Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse
—Jim Carroll

¡Adiós Negra!

Argentine Folk Singer Mercedes Sosa Dies
by The Associated Press
October 4, 2009
Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, the "voice of Latin America" whose music inspired opponents of South America's brutal military regimes and led to her forced exile in Europe, died Sunday, her family said. She was 74. . . .
____________

¡Sos un grande Pipo!
____________

____________

Making the Illegal Legal
Israel’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy colonizes the occupied West Bank one settlement at a time.
By Slavoj Zizek
September 14, 2009, © In These Times
On August 2, 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families—more than 50 people—from their homes. Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court to justify the evictions, the Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event attracted the attention of the global media, but it is part of a larger and mostly ignored process. . . .

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.
—Noam Chomsky

Interview: Palestinian cinema
By Sousan Hammad
September 28, 2009, © Aljazeera.net
Scandar Copti is a Palestinian filmmaker born and raised in Jaffa. After leaving his profession as a mechanical engineer to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker, his first full-length feature film, Ajami, which he co-directed with Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jewish filmmaker, has won innumerable awards. . . .

____________

A cannibal was walking through the jungle and came upon a restaurant pirated by a fellow cannibal. Feeling somewhat hungry, he sat down and looked over the menu...
-Tourist:        $5.00
-Broiled Missionary:    $10.00
-Fried Explorer:      $15.00
-Baked Democrat or Grilled Republican:    $100.00
The cannibal called the waiter over and asked, "Why such a price difference for the Politicians?"  
The cook replied, "Have you ever tried to clean one?  They're so full of shit, it takes all morning."
____________

Bona nit i bon viatge, Alicia de Larrocha!
____________

Neocon Judge's History of Cover-ups
By Robert Parry
September 23, 2009
On Sept. 11, the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Silberman issued a 2-to-1 opinion dismissing a lawsuit against the private security firm, CACI International, brought by Iraqi victims of torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. . . .

Congratulations to photojournalist Lynsey Addario for being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
____________

Statement of Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich
H. Res. 688:  Expressing support for the goals and ideals of the first annual National Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Day taking place on September 26, 2009.
September 22, 2009

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of our nation’s wild horses and burros.  These graceful and social wild animals have captured the hearts and minds of many Americans.  They are stunning to watch as they roam free on public lands and remain an historical national treasure.  It is imperative that we protect and ensure a viable future for them.  

Ensuring a strong adoption program for wild horses and burros is one important step toward addressing the current ineffective, inhumane and expensive practices the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has employed to manage the population.  As such, I support this bill and will continue to work to ensure the success of the adoption program.  

However, adoption alone will not offset the damage caused by the failed herd management practices of the BLM.  Despite efforts to adopt out horses and burros, BLM has more than 30,000 wild horses in holding areas.  In October 2008, the GAO released a report entitled “Effective Long-Term Options Needed to Manage Unadoptable Wild Horses.”  This report affirms that BLM will continue to face budget shortfalls if long-term corrections to current management practices are not put in place.  The bulk of these shortfalls are anticipated to result from the current management methods that round up wild horses and burros from Herd Management Areas (HMA) to long and short-term holding areas.  

The BLM maintains that removal of the horses from the BLM lands is necessary to “maintain a thriving ecological balance.” However, the BLM has a history of using this statutory goal as justification for failed herd management practices.

When Congress enacted The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, 54 million acres were dedicated for use by wild horses and burros.  Currently, they roam on 29 million BLM acres and 2.5 million Forest Service acres. Additional state, tribal, and private lands bring the total acreage to 34.3 million, a reduction of 19.2 million acres.  Approximately 13 million of the 19.2 million closed acres were under BLM ownership and closed to wild horses and burros because of new laws and regulations as well as BLM’s own land use planning decisions.  This clearly defies congressional intent and shows a pattern of behavior on the part of BLM that reduces the land on which wild horses and burros roam.  

BLM’s decision to reduce land available to the wild horses and burros is called into question by the facts.  A 1990 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluded that removals had not been demonstrated to improve range conditions, in part because livestock cause greater degradation to riparian areas and consume higher levels of forage.  Furthermore, the Congressional Research Service states that the extent of damage by wild horses and burros as compared to livestock suffers from a “lack of definitive data on forage consumed and range degradation.”  Yet there are approximately 33,000 wild horses and burros on 34 million acres of land, while there are at least 6.4 million cattle, sheep and other livestock that graze on 160 million acres of BLM land.  The density of the livestock population far exceeds that of the population of wild horses and burros.  But BLM continues to argue that the horses and burros threaten BLM’s ability to maintain ecological balance.       

Recently, the BLM justified a roundup of wild mustangs on the Pryor Mountain Range of Montana and Wyoming with the “thriving ecological balance” argument.  The Pryor Mountain Range wild mustangs are reported to have a genetic link to the Spanish horses of the Conquistadors brought to America in 1500.  Their DNA makes them a unique wild horse that is a distinct part of America’s history.  

According to equine geneticist, Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University, who has been studying the wild horse population of the Pryor Mountains for many years, the single most important factor “in maintaining genetic variation in a managed population is effective population size.”  Genetic diversity is vital to the long term survival of any herd.  BLM’s decision to roundup the Pryor Mountain Range horses threatens the effective population size which compromises the genetic diversity of the herd.  

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.Res. 688 and pledge to continue to work to correct the failed management practices of the BLM.  

Photo courtesy of M. Tosca

TAIGA
Homes peeled from the riverbank
are swept away just like that.
It’s not a movie, my dear,
but the terrors of weather.

Whoever is born now
may live to witness
an age of wonders:
bird flu, driving rain,
worlds coming to an end.

Whoever survives us
may one day see the poles free of snow,
iceless glaciers,
an island turned into an abyss
on the bottom of the ocean,
the mountain at the top of the range
a remote and forgotten shoal,
without any sign of my desire
for Elijah’s cake
and his jar of water.

To me, in any case,
your face is
the most beautiful thing
when together we watch
the news of this world.

When the homes peel away from the riverbank
their inhabitants can’t even drag
an aging grandmother on their backs
or carry a beloved dog in their arms.

And I’m not at all surprised
when I look at your face, my darling, my dog,
one touch of your tongue is worth more
than a thousand academics.
—Rami Saari
____________

RED BREAD
I look for sweets in his pockets
and find nails.
My mother bandages the wounds in his palms
(cuts of the soul),
when hammer blows
land on my heart
and crumbs of red bread
lead me to the scaffoldings of buildings

The father rises
every day
to raise houses (from master plans)
the daughter rises
hungry for sweet days
and the Holy Spirit rises
to scatter the bitter herbs
on the way to the Paradise
of bread.

Fear of transparent blue skies builds my father
blue rituals destroy me
in the fifth dimension
my father secrets himself with the Holy Spirit,
and I chew the glass in the windows of our house
and prepare the days
for wanderings that will crack me in two
to an ocean of belief
and a lake of suspicion.

Wave after wave
cut a channel between us
through which I hatch though the opacity of my heart
and go towards his heart
and he abandons his wooden beams
and finds my heart
My father teaches me building rituals
I teach him rituals of destruction.

—Nawal Naffaa'

‘Rachel’ screening in San Francisco shows a growing movement tired of being censored about Israel
by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
July 27, 2009, © Mondoweiss
The flap around the film about Rachel Corrie shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on Saturday, July 25 is simply another incident in the cycle of controversies that accrue to individuals and organizations who advocate for Palestinian human rights. . . .

Female Chimps Keep Sex Lives Secret
AFP
June 18, 2008, © Discovery News
Female chimpanzees are hungry for sex with as many males as possible, and keep their mouths shut about it to boost their chances of luring the top chimps, a British university said Wednesday. . . .

The Holy Grail of the Unconscious
By SARA CORBETT
September 16, 2009, © The New York Times
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome. . . .

The People Speak Story
By Dr. Libby H. O'Connell for HISTORY Magazine
Author, historian, teacher, activist, and now television producer Dr. Howard Zinn is a man on a mission. He wants Americans to recognize the power of protest in shaping their country's history. Along with executive producers Matt Damon, Chris Moore, Josh Brolin, and Anthony Arnove, he is moving his message from high schools and college campuses to film and, later this year, to HISTORY. . . .

Medicare for all
Expanding the program to include everyone would be a simple, popular way to reform healthcare.
By Theodore Roszak
September 21, 2009, © Los Angeles Times
At last count, the bills I racked up for two years of heavy-duty medical care (hospitalization, surgery, nursing, drugs) came to $2 million. If it weren't for Medicare, my life would only have been saved at the cost of bankrupting my family. As it turned out, Medicare, with a reasonably priced supplementary insurance policy, has paid all the costs except for a modest co-pay for pharmaceuticals. . . .

Trees appeared in groups and singly, revolving coolly and blandly, displaying the latest fashions. The blue dampness of a ravine. A memory of love, disguised as a meadow. Wispy clouds—the greyhounds of heaven.
—Vladimir Nabokov

The New American Century
This film goes in detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present. This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it. This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War. This film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan. . . .

Paired Things
Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?
And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?
So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?
—Kay Ryan

Roy Rogers' Horse Saves Health Care
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
The Senate cannot pass a health care bill with a public option. The House cannot pass a bill without one. The public wants a public option. The insurance industry wants a private mandate. The White House is in trouble on this and is calling upon the Senate to find a way out of this dark passage. 
So, Boys and Girls, return with us now as the Senators will take a page from out of the old West. They are going to do what cowboy hero Roy Rogers did when he got in a jam: Call for Trigger, the Golden Palomino. Trigger, the trusty steed who rode to glory against those phantom cattle rustlers who sold insurance against physical harm, provided however that the small town marks bought the stolen beef. 
In this scene Trigger will come off his mount of glory at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri and gallop to the mount of glory on Capitol Hill, rear up a dazzling 24ft, and by his sheer electrifying presence rescue the US Senate and the Administration from today's rustlers. 
It is Washington, DC, so they promptly slap on a confused Trigger a corporate blanket with corporate logos from insurance companies: Pre-Existing Trigger. Lower Cost Trigger. Patient Access Trigger. The Senators will jump on this horse and ride straight for the sunset. Giddy-up Trigger, past that broken down Public Option dray horse. Gallop into the conference committee with full force. Charge! 
I am carried away by prospect of rescue by the one horse I can believe in. Sadly, Trigger will never save us from the rustlers. He'll just stand there, mounted, in all of his spectacular equine power ever poised to spring into action, ever ready to hustle out the rustlers, or something like that.
Thank you. 
Dennis Kucinich
____________

Congratulations to Juan M. Del Potro for winning the U.S. Open Tennis Championship. It was a shame and an embarrassment for sportscaster Dick Enberg and the United States that he so rudely denied the winner the chance to speak a few words of thanks in his native Spanish to those Argentines present in the stands, which included his mother and the only other winner from South America in the history of this prestigious championship, Guillermo Vilas. Fortunately, Mr. Del potro showed the same perseverance as he did in beating Roger Federer by gently insisting on saying his moving words of thanks in good Castellano. Enberg still had the temerity to insist that the newly-crowned champion keep it short. An amazing show of bad manners by the veteran commentator very nearly eclipsed the importance of the 20 year-old's remarkable and gutsy sporting triumph - but not quite. Sos un grande, y mereciste ganar. Noy hay que hacerle caso al pelotudo Enberg. Lo que vos hiciste es para siempre.
____________

40
speaking of a thirst that grows stronger
until I can't imagine
it anymore except

as the real thing which can't
be other than itself.

Beyond the kitchen wall, over there, in the world
things happen that are

the strong material reality woven of wild
lines, which are a sort of
urgency, of happenstance.

The music like a bright hand scatters slips of paper:
welcome
to the sun!

There is a parking space next to the gaze, we'll set out
from one material reality
to another
—Israel Eliraz
____________

35
at the edge there is nothing but
music (we don't

know whether it’s a local
fly or an infinite
fly).

In order to reveal itself to us
the music must talk
with itself alone.

It hovers and crosses over
the continent of the table over

the mounds of bread, orchards of parsley, furrows of celery
wine valley and cascades of honey.

And if the measure is filled with joy, we know
there is nothing greater than this
—Israel Eliraz
____________

SHOUT OF A BEDOUIN WOMAN

A shout of a Bedouin woman from a Bedouin tribe
Which the state uprooted from their land
And replaced with camels made of iron
(I wrote her monologue from memory
After watching the news
Of Friday, 29 January '94)
---
"This is my land and this is my home
This is my land and this is my home
If only we could live and die on this land
We love our land so much
If only we could live and die on this land
If only, if only, if only

How can one live like this?
From all sides, closed
On one side the border guard
On one side the nature warden
On one side there is nowhere to go
On one side ---

I am a widow woman and have no saviour
I am a widow woman and have no saviour
I have no one but Allah

I have no one but Allah
Allah is my saviour
Allah is my only saviour
I cry and shout: people, do help me
But I have no one but Allah
Allah is my only saviour
Here is my land and here is my home
Here is my land and here is my home
Here was my fire
Here I used to cook, to make bread
Here is my fire
If only I could die on my land, if only
I shout and cry: people, do help me

But no one hears me"

—Ella Bat-Tsion
© Translation: Ella Bat-Tsion
____________

For the record;

After working today at the Toronto International Film Festival doing interviews on behalf of John Hillcoat's "The Road", which is being shown at the festival, I went to the Scotiabank cinema to see the 9:30 p.m. 12 september screening of "Ajami", an Israeli/German production co-directed by the Israeli-born Palestinian Scandar Copti and the Israeli Jew Yaron Shani. I found this movie, which takes place in the Jaffa neighbourhood that gives the movie its title, to be a moving and thought-provoking portrait of an area shared by Arabs, Jews, and Muslims. The nearest thing to the quality of this searingly honest and heart-breaking depiction of intercultural strife that I have recently seen in a movie was the Danish production "Gå Med Fred Jamil" (2008), directed by Omar Shargawi, which concerns itself with Sunni and Shia feuding in Copenhagen. I am glad I saw "Ajami", and strongly recommend it.

The last question allowed from the audience after the screening, made to director Yaron Shani by a gentleman sitting close to the front of the theatre, was in regard to the perception that this movie (which the gentleman praised for its complexity and considerable merits) was basically being boycotted by those who had released a statement objecting to the festival singling out Tel Aviv (which was merged with Jaffa to form a single municipality in 1950) for special recognition when the government of Israel continues to flout international law, essentially acting unilaterally as a rogue state in very much the same manner that the U.S. government did under George W. Bush. The director declined to offer an answer because it would lead to a discussion too long and complicated at that time. He was probably wise to end the question-and-answer period there, allowing the audience to focus on the merits of the movie. I chose, as an audience member, to respectfully do the same, in spite of having strong feelings about the gentleman's query.

I signed the statement in question, along with people like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and many other thoughtful citizens from various countries (including a number of Israelis) some of whom have suffered from very real censorship and blacklisting. The statement does not promote the boycotting or censorship of any artist or movie from Israel or anywhere else. Those who have attacked the statement with that accusation are simply spreading misinformation and, unfortunately, continuing the ongoing successful distraction from the issue at hand: the Israeli government's whitewashing of their illegal and inhumane actions inside and outside their legal national borders. There was nobody outside the cinema objecting to anyone going to see "Ajami". In fact, there was nobody doing anything other than going to see this and other movies being shown at the Scotiabank complex, or just walking on down Toronto's Richmond Street

—Viggo Mortensen, 13 September, 2009.
p.s.:  For those interested in the issues and misinformation surrounding the above-named statement, I offer the following:

Jewish Voice for Peace  www.jvp.org

FACT SHEET
This fact sheet is a response to the campaign of disinformation being waged against the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) protest letter, "The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation,”(1)  signed by 1,000 people including Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, Eve Ensler, along with many Israelis and Palestinians. This year, TIFF decided to put a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv at the festival, in line with the goals of the Israeli Consulate’s “Brand Israel” program. In its own words, the “Brand Israel” program aims to publicize Israeli culture in order to distract public attention from its human rights record. The letter of protest objects to this politicization of the film festival, saying it is inappropriate given Israel’s nearly 42-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, the recent assault and continuing siege on Gaza, and the history of and ongoing dispossession of Palestinians in Tel Aviv-Jaffa itself.

This fact sheet refutes three key false charges:
1) That the protest letter unfairly singles out Israel.
2) That the letter calls for a boycott of the Film Festival and Israeli films.
3) That the letter in any way delegitimizes Tel Aviv.
 These charges are all false, as we explain below. . . .

____________

LANGUAGE SAYS
Language says: Before Language 
there stands a language. Language is tainted traces
from over there.
Language says: Listen, now.
You listen: There has been
    an echo.
Take silence and try to be silent.
Take words and try to speak.
Beyond language, Language is a wound
from which the world flows and flows.
Language says: Is, Is not, Is,
Is not. Language says: I.
Language says: Let’s speak you,
let’s feel you, come say
you have said.
—Amir Or

THE BARBARIANS (ROUND TWO)
It was not in vain that we awaited the barbarians,
it was not in vain that we gathered in the city square.
It was not in vain that our great ones donned their official robes
and rehearsed their speeches for the event.
It was not in vain that we smashed our temples
and erected new ones to their gods;
as proper we burnt our books
that have nothing in them for people like that.
As the prophesy foretold the barbarians came,
and took the keys to the city from the king’s hand.
But when they came they donned the garments of the land,
and their customs were the customs of the state;
and when they commanded us in our own tongue
we no longer knew when
the barbarians had come to us.
—Amir Or

We don't feel like celebrating with Israel this year
Naomi Klein
Tuesday, Sep. 08, 2009, © Toronto Globe and Mail
When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival was holding a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv I felt ashamed of my city. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women's-rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza. “We had more hope during the attacks,” she told me, “at least then we believed things would change.” . . .

El Silencio
Oye, hijo mío, el silencio.
Es un silencio ondulado,
un silencio,
donde resbalan valles y ecos
y que inclina las frentes
hacia el suelo.
—Federico García Lorca

Italian Women Rise Up
By CHIARA VOLPATO
August 27, 2009, © The New York Times
MANY outside Italy seem to assume that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gets away with his sexist behavior because Italian men condone it and the women at least tolerate it. But this is no longer true. Today there are two Italys: one Italy has soaked up Mr. Berlusconi’s ideology either out of self-interest or an inability to resist his enormous powers of persuasion; the other is fighting back. . . .

Remembering Senator Ted Kennedy

Dear Friends,
"I first met Senator Kennedy on May 4, 1971, when he visited me at St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland. I was then a Cleveland City Councilman recovering from an injury and, somehow, he discovered I was in the hospital and paid a surprise visit to my room. He was visiting hospitals as part of his national effort to raise awareness of the need for reform of our health care system. I was elated to meet him. The visit began a friendship which has spanned four decades, during which time I had the privilege of serving with Senator Kennedy in the United States Congress.

His compassion and caring was always personal and always real. When my brother Perry died unexpectedly in December of 2007, Ted Kennedy was one of the first to call with condolences, sharing his sympathetic understanding of what it means to lose a sibling.

He had a powerful sensitivity to human emotion and his life writ large the range of human experience: great triumphs and sudden reversals. His tenacity often came against the heavy burden of deep personal tragedy, which enlarged the quality of his spirit, and made his frequent expressions of humor poignant and profound. Yes, he made himself into one of the greatest Senators, with his advocacy for human rights for health care, education and worker protections.

But Ted Kennedy was more than a great Senator. He was a great friend."
Sincerely.
Dennis Kucinich
___________

Dear Customers,
We are offering all books, including our newest publications, at the price of 10 dollars each, plus shipping cost, from 1 september until 30 september, 2009. All CDs will be offered at the price of 5 dollars each, plus shipping cost. To those north of the Equator, welcome back from summer holidays. To those south of the equator, spring is on its way!
Thank You,
Perceval Press

___________

Goodbye for now Sonny Richards. Pilamaya, He Sapa Hoksila!

Clement "Sonny" Richards
RAPID CITY - Clement "Sonny" Larvie Richards, "He Sapa Hoksila," left this world Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009, at Rapid City Regional Hospital. Sonny was born April 23, 1942, in Kadoka, S.D., to Edison and Gertie (Larvie) Richards. He grew up in Rapid City and was raised by his grandparents, Charles and Angeline Larvie. Sonny was the first world champion men's fancy dancer and constantly dominated men's powwow dancing in the 1960s and 1970s. He was well known for doing trick roping dancing. His unique style of dance and dress changed and influenced the way people viewed powwow dancing and can still be seen today. In 1963 Sonny met his wife, Mary Ann Brown, a Navajo from Ganado, Ariz., when she came to Rapid City to enroll in a nursing program. They married Jan. 25, 1964, and from this union they had five children: Vivian (Mike Quick Bear) of Rapid City, Chuck (Bridgit) of Fort Belvoir, Va., Clement Jr. (Gerri) of Box Elder, and Rosalyn Minor (Lance) of Box Elder. Sonny also has an adopted son, Jason James of Edmonton, Canada. In 1963, Sonny met the famous Lakota Iyeska Frank Fools Crow, who took Sonny as his apprentice and taught him how to help people of all walks of life. Since 1975 to the moment he passed, Sonny walked the best he could in balance and humility. He extended his hand, his soul, his sense of humor and his home to help others unconditionally regardless of their race, creed or social status. Sonny loved the Lakota way of life and served as an ambassador for Lakota spiritual ways, especially helping young people stay sober and achieve in this way of life. He worked passionately to preserve the Lakota language and rituals. He was elected to serve as a Bear Butte board member after the fire in 1995. In 1969 Sonny became the first Native American officer in the Rapid City Police Department. Working in community relations, he was minority people's liaison with the justice system. He worked with the police department until 1980 when he took an early retirement due to health problems. In the 1980s he was employed as the Title VII Bilingual Education Program home liaison officer with the Rapid City Area Schools. He served as a cultural adviser and linguist. During this time he also was an adviser to the Wicokini Dance Troupe. In the early 1990s, Sonny met screenwriter John Fusco and they became good friends. He assisted John in making three major films by serving as the Lakota cultural adviser for Thunder Heart, Dream Keeper and Hidalgo. Sonny is also survived by three siblings: Gerald (PZ) Larvie, Shirley Larvie and Lester Larvie, all of Rapid City. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Charles and Angeline Larvie; his father and mother, Edison and Gertie (Larvie) Richards, and his wife, Mary Ann (Brown) Richards. He will be deeply missed by his 16 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and numerous extended family members from around the U.S., Canada and Europe. Sonny was loved and respected by many; his legacy and example will be carried on in the hearts of those who knew him best. Sonny's family appreciates all the support and prayers that have been offered during this time of change.  (from Rapid City Journal)

Los pájaros aprendieron a volar para escapar de nosotros
—José María Zonta

Viejitos campeones
20.08.2009, © Mundo Azulgrana
BUENOS AIRES- San Lorenzo se ha consagrado campeón. Cuando el fútbol profesional no da alegrías, otra disciplina se las arregla para sacarnos una sonrisa. Esta vez fue el turno del equipo de fútbol senior, campeón del torneo Súper 8, tras derrotar a Argentinos Juniors en la final. . . .

Domingo 12 de septiembre, 1937

Domingo 12 de septiembre, 1937
a las dos de la mañana: nací.
De ahí mis hábitos nocturnos
y el amor a los fines de semana.
Me clasificaron: nena? rosadito.
Boté el rosa hace mucho tiempo
y escogí el color que más me gusta,
que son todos.
Me acompañan tres hijas y dos perros:
lo que me queda de dos matrimonios.
Estudié porque no había remedio
afortunadamente lo he olvidado casi todo.

Tengo hígado, estómago, dos ovarios,
una matriz, corazón y cerebro, más accesorios
Todo funciona en orden, por lo tanto,
río, grito, insulto, lloro y hago el amor.

Y después lo cuento.

—Ana María Rodas

Kucinich on MSNBC
Flash! Kucinich on MSNBC - health care status: Dennis will join Ed Schultz on "The Ed Show," MSNBC, today August 19th at 6:30 pm EDT, to discuss the status of the health care reform proposals. . . .

Health Care Wanted: Dead or Alive
Tuesday, 18 August 2009, © Dennis Kucinich
The masquerade is over! The "public option" is ... dead.
Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles. . . .

Latinoamérica: la desconfianza como sistema
RAFAEL GUMUCIO
15/08/2009, © El País
Honduras y su golpe militar nos obligan a plantearnos viejas preguntas que hubiésemos querido olvidar: ¿Es posible la democracia en países que aún no salen del feudalismo? ¿Puede haber democracia burguesa y Estado de derecho en países donde sólo unas cuantas familias ganan cien veces más que la gran mayoría de la población? . . .

Peronismo. Filosofía política de una obstinación argentina.
JOSE PABLO FEINMANN
Domingo, 10 de agosto de 2008, © Página 12
A pedido de los lectores de Página/12 web publicamos las primeras 30 entregas de las clases de José Pablo Feinmann sobre el Peronismo, con ilustraciones de Miguel Rep. . . .

Glenn Gould, virtuoso dentro y fuera del escenario
Por Edward Said
Sábado 15 de agosto de 2009, © La Nacion
No pretendo recapitular demasiados análisis y estudios interesantes sobre la técnica interpretativa de Glenn Gould: tenemos una versión actualizada del estudio pionero de Geoffrey Payzant, por ejemplo; tenemos el análisis sensible desde el punto de vista psiquiátrico del componente sadomasoquista en las actuaciones de Gould, así como en su vida afectiva; y tenemos un estudio filosófico y cultural con todas las de la ley realizado por Kevin Bazzana, Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work . Todas estas obras, además de la excelente biografía escrita por Otto Friedrich, son interpretaciones sobremanera inteligentes y fieles de la práctica de Gould como algo más que un virtuoso de la interpretación. . . .

El dilema del Monumento
La desnudez y el vacío simbólico caracterizan la obra que Peter Eisenman consagró a los judíos asesinados de Europa. Esa ola de piedra muestra una vez más las contradicciones de cualquier representación vinculada con aquella tragedia
Por Beatriz Sarlo
Sábado 15 de agosto de 2009, © La Nacion
Peter Eisenman, uno de los soles de la galaxia arquitectónica internacional, diseñó el Monumento de los judíos asesinados de Europa , que ocupa la tierra más cara de Berlín, a orillas del Tiergarten y cerca de la Puerta de Brandeburgo. Desde el punto de vista inmobiliario es lo máximo que el Estado alemán podía ofrecer como emplazamiento. . . .

Tachero Cuervo:
¿Donde te fuiste, hermano? ¡Zafaste! Te dije que iba a salir
enseguida... Bueno, nos buscamos y cuando te vea te pago el viaje
desde Boedo como es debido...

Monsanto GM Soy: Killing biodiversity in Argentina
July 16, 2009, © current.com
Since Argentina's soybean boom in the late 90s, clinical studies have been conducted in communities reporting suspiciously high rates of cancer, birth defects, and neonatal mortality. However, industry leaders also refute these clinical studies, saying they are anecdotal and have little scientific basis. Among a corporate controlled scientific community it is notoriously difficult for clinical studies to "prove" the link between environmental contamination and health results, since life is not a "controlled environment." . . .

Monsanto Soy Herbicide Could Pose Health Risks
Study Released in Argentina Puts Glyphosate Under Fire
Marie Trigona
July 13, 2009, © Americas Program
Argentina has seen an explosion in genetically modified (GM) soy bean production with soy exports topping $16.5 billion in 2008. The fertile South American nation is now the world's third largest producer of soy, trailing behind the United States and Brazil. However, this lucrative industrial form of farming has come under fire with environmental groups, local residents, and traditional farmers reporting that GM soy threatens biodiversity, the nation's ability to feed itself, and health in rural communities. . . .

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
May 2008, © Vanity Fair
Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City. . . .

Monsanto: An evil company?
April 7, 2008, © Seventh Generation
I have often wondered whether a company can truly be evil. Not a company run by evil people, but a place where decades of evil have seeped right into the corporate fabric. . . .

Cuántos corazones he podado

los lanzo al río

si quiero que me encuentren

Los echo contra el piso

si quiero que me perdonen

Les doy de comer

si quiero que me amen

—Patricia Guzmán
___________

El cielo tiene un lado sordo

Mi esposo me ha dicho que no le siga hablando

Que si yo quiero él va y le pregunta qué le pasa

Mi esposo prefiere que yo mire para abajo

Aquí los vínculos son más fecundos

Aquí si tengo que orar me perfumo

(Los perfumes se ofrecen como oraciones)

Aquí tengo un libro lleno de lamentaciones, gemidos y ayes

(Yo no he querido comerme el libro que me ofrece el ángel)

Aliméntate, me pide mi esposo

Aliméntate

Aliméntate

El cielo tiene un lado sordo

Aquí si tengo que orar me perfumo

—Patricia Guzmán
___________

A Small Window

the size of a cigarette paper
lets him look through.
His feet hold hard to the cold floor.
The light beyond
presses along three small hills
and a thread-thin glint of river.
He must keep still to see anything at all.

Off to the west
he hears stone being continually broken
and driven away. If wind rises
it smells of diesel and dust.
Sometimes a child's voice catches at the sill
and a bird
quivers at the corner of his eye.

—Pamela Stewart

Centenario, Bicentenario
Edgardo Krebs
Viernes 7 de agosto de 2009, © La Nacion
El antropólogo francés Claude Lévi-Strauss, que acaba de cumplir cien años, nació apenas un par de décadas después de lo que los historiadores llaman the scramble for Africa , la estampida europea para apropiarse de la geografía y los recursos de ese continente y someter a sus habitantes a un dominio colonial. . . .

Prueban que una fábula de Esopo sobre el cuervo es real
Domingo 09, Agosto 2009, © Clarín.com
Desde la gallina de los huevos de oro hasta la carrera entre la liebre y la tortuga, las fábulas de Esopo son famosas por enseñar lecciones morales con alegorías. Pero un nuevo estudio dice que por lo menos una de ellas puede haber tenido sustento en la realidad. . . .

Making War to Bring ‘Peace’
By Noam Chomsky
August 3, 2009, © In These Times
A debate is under way at the United Nations over a policy that may seem uncontroversial: an international framework to prevent severe crimes against humanity. . . .

Deconstructing the Right Wing Lies on the Health Insurance Bill
July 28, 2009, © pleasecutthecrap.com
The right's lies about the current health insurance proposals before Congress have rarely been compiled in such concise form before. . . .

"There is a hardly a nation on earth today that is not to some extent committed to a philosophy or to a mystique of violence. One way or other, whether on the left or on the right, whether in defense of a bloated establishment or of an impoverished guerrilla government in the jungle, whether in terms of a police state or in terms of a ghetto revolution, the human race is polarizing itself into camps armed with everything from Molotov cocktails to the most sophisticated technological instruments of death. At such a time, the doctrine that "war is the will of God" can be disastrous if it is not handled with extreme care. For everyone seems in practice to be thinking along some such lines with the exception of a few sensitive and well-meaning souls."
—Thomas Merton (The Asian Journals, 1968)
___________

In the U.S.A., at this time when at least an incremental step is being considered by Congress toward legally guaranteeing that all citizens have some form of health-care coverage, the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are spending record sums to advertise the benefits of the status-quo. This would be the same status-quo that has enriched insurance companies for many years while leaving millions of citizens young and old uninsured or cheated out out of the often unreliable and over-priced coverage that they might barely afford. The same status-quo that has allowed pharmaceutical companies, with the collusion of our government representatives (most of whom are heavily-lobbied and campaign-funded by these very companies), to make huge, unjustified profits. What does this massive surge in public relations spending by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, to the tune of millions of dollars a day on all media advertising, tell you? Does it perhaps beg the question of why so many members of Congress are dragging their feet, trying to dilute and delay legislation until it amounts to a practically meaningless change in the national health care system? Does it explain the resistance from mainstream television and radio spokespeople to real change in the system, or the voice given to disreputable hack doctors and scientists that have suddenly been enlisted to resist this change? Does it throw some light on the motivations of extreme right-wing corporate shills like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Medved (and too many of their clones to mention) in their efforts to vilify President Obama or anyone wanting to at least try to set up a slightly more equitable and efficient health care system in this country so that we might take another step toward becoming a civilised nation? V.M.

Reptile becomes a father, at 111
Monday, 26 January 2009, © The BBC News
A rare New Zealand reptile has become a father, possibly for the first time, at the age of 111.
The keepers of Henry, a tuatara, had thought he was past his prime - especially after showing no interest in females during 40 years in captivity. . . .

Un Angel se le fue a San Lorenzo
Spadafore falleció a sus 100 años. Fue jugador amateur y después siguió ligado al club toda su vida. Lo recordamos con una nota publicada en El Gráfico por el centenario del club de Boedo.
Por Aquiles Furlone
Marzo de 2008, © El Gráfico
En la madrugada falleció Ángel Spadafore. Una leyenda de San Lorenzo no sólo por haber pasado su vida en el club, primero como jugador en la época del amateurismo y después como colaborador y masajista de muchos planteles de Primera, sino que también por su calidez como persona. . . .

The Afternoon Sun

This room, how well I know it. Now
they’re renting it, it and the one next door,
as offices. The whole house has been taken
over by agents, businessmen, concerns.
 
Ah but this one room, how familiar.
 
Here by the door was the couch. In front of that,
a Turkish carpet on the floor.
The shelf then, with two yellow vases. On the rightó
no, oppositeóa wardrobe with a mirror.
At the center the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
There by the window stood the bed
where we made love so many times.
 
Poor things, they must be somewhere to this day.
 
There by the window stood the bed: across it
the afternoon sun used to reach halfway.
 
...We’d said goodbye one afternoon at four,
for a week only. But alas,
that week was to go on forevermore.

C. P. Cavafy
(Translated by James Merrill)

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L'une des clés d'une relation amoureuse est de respecter la maladie que l'autre porte en lui.

Wild Horse Preservation:
The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable free-roaming herds for generations to come.