http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?display=home
This quote came from there, too:
“When Confucius was asked what would be the first thing he would do if he were to lead the state, he said, ‘rectify the language.’ Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Words must be so twisted as to justify an empire that has now ceased to exist, much less make sense. Is rectification of our system possible for us?”
– Gore Vidal
Their home-page added: “Rectification of the system,” in Gore Vidal’s prophetic words, has never seemed so urgent. The specters of global climate change, dwindling resources, and endless war now haunt the very future of the planet and human civilization. Our ability to transform these current realities will depend on whether we are willing and able to imagine other possible futures.
AND, the following excerpt from http://www.afsc.org - -the website of the American Friends Service Committee -- Quaker Values in Action:
In last night’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama proposed a three-year spending freeze on non-security discretionary spending beginning in 2011. Yet in just a week or two, when President Obama releases his FY11 budget, it is also expected that he will announce the need for a $33 billion war supplemental to pay for the troop escalation in Afghanistan.
Why is our president not only exempting military spending from the freeze, but also increasing the Pentagon’s budget? The military budget already roughly equals the rest of the world’s combined military spending, and our domestic programs and services are already vulnerable.
AND ASKING, WHY IS HE, INDEED?
The left-brain is master of language and 'logic'. Without more balance from the right -- brain that is -- (see Iain McGilchrist's The Master and the Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) the rationale behind its voice of authority perpetuates war -- a subject always brilliantly articulated by Howard Zinn -- while it lulls us into the numbing, dumbing, comfort that for many is the relative ease of the Western World.
Meantime, thanks for the work of Quaker Values in Action: http://www.afsc.org...
Over and out on this day of more snow and the comfort of many blessings: a sleeping Scottie on the sofa, good soup heating on the stove where the boots are drying and the birds busy at the feeder, A case in point! I can't get rid of this underline. Oh well.
Prayers for peace and more power to Greg Mortensen and others of that ilk
No comments:
Post a Comment