We're under the illusion that the lives, loves, mores and money of the rich and famous are more interesting, important and worthy of attention than our own. It's just another symptom of how messed up every aspect of our media-driven culture is. Marty Kaplan
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Features And Most Popular Articles From The Archives
Guernica
Commemorating Sixty Nine Years Of Terror Bombings
By Bob Higgins April 27, 2006
Today or yesterday is an anniversary of sorts, a day of commemoration, a day to reflect on what it is in man that dooms him to endless repetition of his mistakes.
Maybe it's just a day to spit on the sidewalk, hitch up your pants and say, "same shit, different day" and let man worry about himself.
Sixty nine years ago Hitler and Mussolini decided that propping up their soul mate Francisco Franco would offer them a great opportunity to test out all the new high tech military hardware they had amassed.
This was bad news for a Basque city called Guernica and 1500 or 6000 or 16,000 of it's inhabitants. The number is uncertain, record keeping tends to go out the window when the entire universe is a collage of blood and body parts.
For in a Republic, who is 'the country'? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant, merely a temporary servant,it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature, which those imposters and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood.
Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity.
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way-things I had no words for."
"I hate flowers...I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move."
"I've been terrified every day of my life but that's never stopped me from doing everything I wanted to do."
"The days you work are the best days."
Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.
If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. ...
Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.
"...Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison, Federalist 47,1788
When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time.
"I don't like bipartisans. Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know that he's going to vote against me."
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix."
The Republicans believe that the power of government should be used first of all to help the rich and the privileged in the country. With them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats believe that the power of government should be used to give the common man more protection and a chance to make a living. With us the people come first.
There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions.
Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell.
Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.
(And now for something really disgusting - promoted by Bob Higgins)
Gonga Petro perches on a rock in the Yaeda Valley, where the Hadzabe still hunt with hand-hewn arrows.
Ed note: I wrote a short piece a few days ago briefly covering the plight of a people in Zambia
People of the River, "If Fields Could Be Carried" I read the WaPo story below this morning and found that I have not yet run out of outrage. That people could and would erase from the earth cultures that have existed since the earliest ages of man, arouses in me an anger that I thought was long dead. The act of obliterating an ancient and proud tribe of human beings, erasing them from the slate of human existence, because they are backward, inconvenient and happen to occupy the land where some oil bloated petroleum princes now wish to have their private safari and ride their horseys makes my blood boil.
Read the article and if you feel as I do send an email to the following:
Tanzanian Embassy Email: ubalozi@tanzaniaembassy-us.org
UAE Embassy Email: media@uaeembassy-usa.org Bob Higgins
Tanzania Safari Deal Lets Arab Royalty Use Lands
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 10, 2007; Page A01
YAEDA VALLEY, Tanzania -- One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world.
The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab Emirates royal family, which plans to use the tribal hunting land as a personal safari playground.
The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris Ltd. leases nearly 2,500 square miles of this sprawling, yellow-green valley near the storied Serengeti Plain to members of the royal family, who chose it after a helicopter tour.
A Tanzanian official said that a nearby hunting area the family shared with relatives had become "too crowded" and that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family "indicated that it was inconvenient" and requested his own parcel.
The official, Philip Marmo, called the Hadzabe "backwards" and said they would benefit from the school, roads and other projects the UAE company has offered as compensation.
But dozens of Hadzabe interviewed deep in the scruffy hills surrounding this valley said that while they are ready to modernize, slowly, they were not consulted on the deal, which is a direct threat to their way of life because it involves hunting.
While they have through 50,000 years survived the coming of agriculture, metal, guns, diseases, missionaries, poachers, anthropologists, students, gawking journalists, corrugated steel houses and encroaching pastoral tribes who often impersonate them for tourist money, the resilient Hadzabe, who still make fire with sticks, fear that the safari deal will be their undoing.
"If they are going to come here, we definitely will all perish," said Kaunda, a Hadzabe man who prefers khakis but still hunts with hand-hewn poison arrows. "Our history will die, and the Hadzabe will be swept off the face of the world. We are very much afraid."
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Portrait of the Artist as a Geezer
Lifelong liberal of the Tom Paine wing.
Marine Vietnam vet
Have worked as a photographer,
cab driver, bartender, carpenter
and cabinetmaker
I've seen it all.
I'm getting old.
Somebody get me a glass of water.
They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong, ... it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A. Carl Hiaasen
Today In History
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Buy This Book If We Can't Impeach Him Maybe We Can Laugh Him Out Of Office
Ben Franklin
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have
for lunch.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force.
"Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
Resume"
"And I'll stay away from Verlaine, too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound ??? if I can remember any of the damn things.
I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
The two most beautiful words in the English language are ???cheque enclosed.???
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book. And were you to call it a little peach, you would not be so much as scratching its surface. It is the story of her life, and it is called In the Service of the King, which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel. It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.
"Self Portrait Without Beard" By Vincent Van Gogh is number 7 on the list of all time most expensive paintings at a cool 71.5 million. A steal huh?
Click on the image to see the rest, by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, etal Hey Kids
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