“A writer’s notebook is not a diary. Writers react. Writers need a place to record these reactions. That’s what a writer’s notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don’t want to forget. A writer’s notebook gives you a place to live like a writer.” - Ralph Fletcher
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
“Any space traveling species of peaceful, compassionate healers would be terrified to land on this planet.”
~Charles Bivona
http://njpoet.com/
If every adult U.S. citizen would participate in the system, perhaps we would then also take the time to inform ourselves of the issues (not always easy in this day and age) and in addition, put ourselves in the shoes of others to try to understand where they are coming from (another thing that is not easy). We would all be better off for it.
Sharon Salzberg
(Source: The Huffington Post)
2003 found me on a bus to Washington DC—en route to a march to protest the coming Iraq War. To pass the drive, the organizers screened anti-war docs—rough amateur films—on the mini-TVs that were hanging above every third seat. Nervous experts flashed across the screens, openly, publicly defying the policies of the United States government. It was less than two years after 9/11, and these crazy/brave people were calling the President a liar. They were saying Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. And they were saying Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11—an absurd suggestion, of course.
These were the dangerous and unpatriotic opinions of the radical left before the Iraq invasion was launched in 2003, and these were the same opinions that would echo across the Mainstream Media—several years later—when everyone else finally realized that the Bush wars were manufactured by liars, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that, of course, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Charles Bivona
(Source: charlesbivona.com)
It is imperative that, no matter how dispirited we may become, we resist being lured into the dead game of electoral politics.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
Whether it’s farmers and public service union workers standing side by side in the Wisconsin snow, or social justice clergy and anarchists arrested face down on the streets of New York with a police knee on their necks; whether it’s soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan tossing their war on terror medals back at the NATO conference in Chicago, or economic justice activists swarming Bank of America’s headquarter in North Carolina–the old tried cliche of America as a nation of universally detached, self-centered, consumption-fixated beings has at long last been proven to be at least partially untrue.
Manny Jalonschi
(Source: politicususa.com)
The people who do best at basic survival tasks (we know this experimentally, as well as intuitively) are cooperative, good at teamwork, often altruistic, mindful of the common good. In drastic emergencies like hurricanes or earthquakes, people surprise us by their sacrifices — of food, of shelter, even sometimes of life itself. Those who survive social or economic collapse, or wars, or pandemics, or starvation, will be those who manage scarce resources fairly; hoarders and dominators win only in the short run, and end up dead, exiled, or friendless. So, in every way we can we need to help each other, and our children, learn to be cooperative rather than competitive; to be helpful rather than hurtful; to look out for the communities of which we are a part, and on which we ultimately depend.
The longer the liberal class does not vigorously denounce expanded oil drilling, our corporate health insurance bill and the National Defense Authorization Act, simply because these initiatives have been pushed through by the Democrats, the more marginal the left becomes. If Bush had carried these policies, “liberal” pundits would have thundered with feigned outrage.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
The extremists, of course, are already in power. They have been in power for several years. They write our legislation. They pick the candidates and fund their campaigns. They dominate the courts. They effectively gut regulations and environmental controls. They suck down billions in government subsidies. They pay no taxes. They determine our energy policy. They loot the U.S. treasury. They rigidly control public debate and information. They wage useless and costly imperial wars for profit. They are behind the stripping away of our most cherished civil liberties. They are implementing government programs to gouge out any money left in the carcass of America. And they know that Romney or Barack Obama, along with the Democratic and the Republican parties, will not stop them.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
The world bank and the IMF have created a system of modern day colonialism that makes the people of the developing world poorer and the multi-national corperations richer and take the power away from all of us. It’s time to take back control of our lives and tear apart these monuments to greed and build our new world from the broken peices.
Here’s to Another Stupid Tuesday Gone…finally.
