Darfur Crisis: The Waters of Denial are Too Shallow to Hide the Nakedness of Either Special Envoy Gration or General Agwai, Let Alone Both of Them

Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast added, "The Obama administration is not leading a new peace process for Darfur; it is more energetically supporting a failed one. The United States must urgently lead a group of concerned nations, including Egypt and China, to offer sustained, high-level support for peace talks that focus on developing a draft peace proposal that addresses the core issues of the conflict and empowers the head mediator to reach a political settlement." . Enough Project, 8-27-09

Darfur Crisis: The Waters of Denial are Too Shallow to Hide the Nakedness of Either Special Envoy Gration or General Agwai, Let Alone Both of Them

By Richard Power

A.Q. Khan, who sold nuclear weapons secrets like poppies, has been freed from house arrest in Islamabad; meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose only "crime" is remaining truly human in her unyielding resistance to an inhuman regime, is still under house arrest in Rangoon. Don't look for justice in this world; you will rarely glimpse it. Look for justice in the depth of your own being, than find a way to bring it forth.

Unfortunately a Nigerian general named Martin Luther Agwai has chosen instead to look into the shallows of denial, and has brought forth a self-serving lie.

Leaving his post as commander of the U.N./African Union "peacekeeping force" in Darfur, after what was by informed accounts a woefully ineffectual tour of duty, Agwai says the area is "no longer in a state of war."

Tell me, are the women and young girls of Darfur now free from the threat of repeated rape when they go out and gather fire wood in the environs of the refugee camps? No.

Indeed, are the refugee camps emptying out as the people of Darfur return to their homes? No.

Have those whose homes were burned by the Janjaweed or bombed by the Sudanese military been given stipends or materials to rebuild? Of course not.

And perhaps most important of all has Bashir, the INDICTED head of the Sudanese thugocracy, been brought to the International Criminal Court to answer for crimes against humanity which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands?

No, quite the contrary, Agwai has received a medal from Bashir.

Agwai's remarks, like his performance, would be a joke -- if we were not discussing genocide.

Ah, but there's the rub. Wasn't it just a month or so ago I was telling you about U.S. Special Envoy Gration’s misleading and ill-chosen remarks about the crisis?

During a press briefing ... [Gration] told reporters there is no genocide in Darfur but the "remnants of genocide.” The envoy’s remarks drew widespread criticism by Darfur advocacy groups … Sudan Tribune, 7-3-09

(See From Darfur, West Virginia, Downtown Jakarta, California & the Congo -- a Collective Cry for Freedom on Independence Day 2009)

If, as in the case of General Agwai, a person has proven to be embarrassingly incompetent, it is understandable to seek some face-saving spin.

Just as if, in the case of Gration and the Obama administration, a government finds that actually doing something meaningful would be geopolitically (and militarily) inconvenient, it is understandable that it would simply want to declare victory and go home.

But you and I choose to live with our eyes open, don’t we? We choose to embrace reality however painful; because only if our pain is real can our joy also be real.

The people of Darfur are still waiting for a few helicopters to protect them.

They are still waiting for a genuine peacekeeping force to guarantee their safety as they gather firewood.

They are still waiting for the great nations of the world to lead.

So are we.

(See also Why Hasn't Bill Clinton Been Arrested Yet; OK, I Will Rephrase the Question, Why Hasn't Bill Clinton Had Himself Arrested Yet (Darfur Crisis Update)

In this week’s Saturday morning radio address, the President addressed the still open wound of New Orleans, which resulted from the criminal neglect of the Bush-Cheney administration (my choice of words, not his). Maybe next week, President Obama will address the ONGOING Crisis in Darfur.

Here are excerpts from two important statements, one from the Enough Project, refuting the ridiculous remarks of General Agwai, the other an Open Letter to President Barack Obama, issued as part of Enough’s new campaign, Sudan Now: Keep the Promise [www.SudanActionNow.com.], calling on him to fulfill his promise.

The Enough Project at the Center for American Progress released the following statements today concerning the remarks of departing UNAMID commander Martin Luther Agwai, who declared, "As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur." Enough Project Executive Director John Norris noted, "The outgoing commander is correct that there has been a lull in fighting in Darfur, but he entirely misses the big picture in doing so. What he and others conveniently fail to mention: the three million Darfuris stuck in refugee and displaced camps unable to return to their homes because of insecurity and violence. Instead of offering self-congratulatory remarks, the entire international community should be appalled that after more than six years they have failed to create the conditions on the ground that would allow displaced people to return home by disarming the janjaweed, holding perpetrators of earlier war crimes accountable, securing a viable peace deal, and putting a credible peacekeeping force in place."
Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast added, "The Obama administration is not leading a new peace process for Darfur; it is more energetically supporting a failed one. The United States must urgently lead a group of concerned nations, including Egypt and China, to offer sustained, high-level support for peace talks that focus on developing a draft peace proposal that addresses the core issues of the conflict and empowers the head mediator to reach a political settlement." . Enough Project, 8-27-09

As a Senator, presidential candidate, and now as President of the United States, you have spoken eloquently and firmly about America's responsibility and your personal devotion to help bring peace and stability to the people of Sudan. You've said that "silence, acquiescence and paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong;" advocated for "strong consequences" and "real pressures [to] be placed on the Sudanese government;" proclaimed that "Sudan is a priority for this administration;" and declared that "If we act, the world will follow." All that conviction, Mr. President, demands strong action.
The U.S. must: Lead a more effective and urgent peace process for Darfur; build an international coalition for strict implementation of the North-South peace deal; and implement a policy that creates real consequences for those who continue to attack civilians, block life-saving aid, undermine peace and obstruct justice ... Keep the Promise, Sudan Now

As always, I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.

For an archive of Words of Power posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Enough Project, Darfur, Sudan Genocide, Aung San Suu Kyi, A.G. Khan, Scott Gration Mia Farrow

The Second Coming of the Liberal Jesus: Yes to Universal Health Care & Green Power

Hildegard von Bingen, Bronzestatue von Karl-Heinz Oswald, 1998

"I flame above the beauty of the fields; I shine in the waters; in the sun, the moon and the stars, I burn. And by means of the airy wind, I stir everything into quickness with a certain invisible life which sustains all. For the air lives in its green power and its blossoming. . . ." Hildegard of Bingen: Mystical Writings

The notion that universal health care is anti-Christian (not to mention undemocratic) is, well, kind of crazy. It is impossible for me to imagine that someone who has read and grasped the meaning of Jesus' teachings on compassion and kindness could argue against the idea that a society (especially one with policymakers and citizens who claim to be guided by Christian principles) is supposed to take care of its people - all of its people ... Cynthia Boaz, Huffington Post, 8-1-09

The Second Coming of the Liberal Jesus: Yes to Universal Health Care & Green Power

By Richard Power

Recently, Cynthia Boaz, a gifted writer, teacher and activist, wrote a powerful piece in the Huffington Post, and it compels me to not only draw your attention to it but to share some of my own perspective on the nature of Christianity.

I was born into the Irish-Catholic tradition, and I raised myself on the mean streets of Manhattan and the Bronx. So Gangs of New York and Dubliners are a lot more reflective of my early life than the Roman Catechism. I am not a Christian. After decades of journeying into the planet's mystical traditions, I ended up a hybrid of Buddha Dharma, Shamanism and Kashmiri Shaivism; nevertheless I still instinctively call on Jesus in a jam and pray to the Virgin Mary when the dark wings of doom rustle. (At the height of the war in Kosovo, I found myself in Fatima, and had a profound experience as I burnt candles there.)

The Liberal Jesus rose up in the 1960s, and stirred the holy spirit behind the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. Unfortunately, since the Reagan era, he has been written out of the U.S. popular culture and replaced with the Aryan Jesus of the right-wing.

But Jesus was not a racist, or a misogynist, or a homophobe.

Jesus was a humanist.

From Hildegaard of Bingen's Green Gospel and Francis of Assisi's All-Species Altruism to Thomas Jefferson's Deist devotion to the moral philosophy of the historical Jesus and the heroic self-sacrifices of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King, the evidence of Christianity's progressive roots is compelling.

Indeed, it is time for the Second Coming of the Liberal Christ.

But Jesus was not a Revolutionary; and certainly not a Counter-Revolutionary; Jesus was an Evolutionary.

Here are some excerpts from that important piece by Cynthia Boaz. It is both timely and timeless. It calls all of us, whether atheists and mystics, to a higher octave of struggle, one in which we overcome our greatest enemy, i.e., our own ignorance and fear.

Please read these few excerpts, and then go on to the full text at Huffington Post; if you resonate with it, spread it far and wide, "from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam."

What if the Right was Right? A Reflection on the "Christian States of America."

For years now I have been debating with friends and family on the question of whether the United States can (and should) be called a "Christian nation," and for the record, I have always argued a vehement no. But maybe I'm missing the point ... What would it look like if we considered the nation's most pressing policy questions through the lens of "Christian" principles? ...

War and Guns
"If you cannot say on the basis of the New Testament that Jesus was nonviolent, you cannot say anything about Jesus." -John L. McKenzie, Jesuit scholar
Let's start with the most controversial of the themes, and since I'm not a fan of mincing words, here it is: the advocacy of war and violence as tools of expressing grievances violates the most fundamental messages of Christianity because Jesus himself was the most renowned voice of principled nonviolence that the world has known ...

Taxes and Taxation
... [Jesus]He also commanded his followers to pay their taxes, and not to confuse the demands made by the state with those made by God. In an encounter between Jesus and and a suspicious mob who showed him a Roman coin, the Gospel of Matthew recounts the following exchange:
He saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard these words, they marveled and left him.

Health Care and Socialism
... The notion that universal health care is anti-Christian (not to mention undemocratic) is, well, kind of crazy. It is impossible for me to imagine that someone who has read and grasped the meaning of Jesus' teachings on compassion and kindness could argue against the idea that a society (especially one with policymakers and citizens who claim to be guided by Christian principles) is supposed to take care of its people - all of its people ...
Which brings me to my final point: Jesus was a socialist. There, I said it. To read the Gospels and come away from them with a picture of Jesus as anything but an advocate of communally-shared resources requires a level of cognitive dissonance that I simply cannot fathom.

Again, for the full text at Huffington Post.

Go to Stand w/ Howard Dean for more information on how to participate in the struggle to bring meaningful healthcare reform to the USA.

If you have not already joined the Alliance for Climate Protection, Al Gore and I urge you to do so. Click here.

I also urge you to participate in some way in the International Day of Climate Action on 10-24-09. Go to 350.org for more information.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Cynthia Boaz, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Jefferson, Healthcare Crisis, Climate Crisis, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hard Rain Late Night: Shakira -- She Wolf

Hard Rain Late Night: Shakira -- She Wolf

Shakira - She Wolf HQ
by Dany_94

Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

Shakira, You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

You are Not a Voice in the Wilderness; You are a Multitude -- Don't Let Them Give You the Bum's Rush on Healthcare

The Broken Bridge & the Dream (Salvador Dali)


There are dangerous currents running through America's politics and the way we confront them is crucial ... From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names. Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future, 8-7-09

You are Not a Voice in the Wilderness; You are a Multitude -- Don't Let Them Give You the Bum's Rush on Healthcare

By Richard Power

A dozen or so armed men showed up at President Obama's townhall meeting in Arizona earlier this week; and they weren't Secret Service or local law enforcement, and worse yet, they weren't even temporarily detained. (See Former agent: Guns creating atmosphere of danger for Obama.) They would not have been there if a) the President of the U.S. wasn't African-American or b) he wasn't pushing for meaningful change (whether his strategy proves to be misguided or not). It is vital that you and I make our voices heard.

Imagine a White House in which the struggle for meaningful health care reform was run by Chief of Staff Howard Dean; he was, after all, the architect of the 50 state strategy. Imagine Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman as Secretary of the Treasury; he would be arguing convincingly to dismantle the structure of madness within which the lords of finance have imprisoned us all. Imagine Thom Hartmann serving as White House Press Secretary; yes, a brilliant progressive talk show host and prolific author counter-spinning the White House press corp every 24 hours. Imagine ...

Well, that's not going to happen.

But their three voices, along with those of Jane Hamsher, NYCeve, and many others, are prominent in this struggle, particularly at this critical juncture.

Yours must be heard as well.

Every one who is in bed with the health insurance industry, or is having a secret affair with the health insurance industry, is trying to break us. They want us to give up, and turn away, or worse yet turn on each other.

But the fight over this legislation is not over yet.

The last 72 hours have felt like those few seconds of a football game, in which one team's offense tries to draw the other team's defense off sides.

Don't get fooled by the count.

This is not over, not nearly.

I don't know if you saw Howard Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann Tuesday, 8-17-09. If you didn't, I have included a You Tube clip of the segment below. In it, the steel-eyed Dean tells K.O. that there will be a bill, that it will have a public option, and that it will pass and be signed by the President -- in December.

Now, get up off the asphalt, and press the attack.

Call your representatives in Beltwayistan AGAIN (including Obama-Biden), e-mail them AGAIN, show up at their offices AGAIN. Do not accept anything less than what was promised.

Here is everything you need to know about the current struggle to deliver meaningful healthcare reform; unfortunately, it is not coming from the White House -- yet.

Here is Hartmann demonstrating the mystical power of simplicity, here is Krugman illuminating what many among us are too furious to grasp, and here is Dean, standing in the breach, and seeking to turn the tide of battle, as if by the force of his own will.

Hopefully, one of the outcomes suggested here will win the day; because if not, as horrific as the healthcare crisis is, we will be overcome by even worse problems.

Dear President Obama,
I understand you're thinking of dumping your "public option" because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.
Instead, let's make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare ...
Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it So it's revenue neutral! ...
We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here's how. Not the "single payer Medicare for all" that many of us would prefer, but a simple, "Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in." Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams, 8-17-09

Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. There are, however, wide variations in the specifics, with three main approaches taken ...
If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less ... But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work.
So we can do this. At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies. Paul Krugman, New York Times, 8-16-09

[NOTE: If you are reading this in the Words of Power e-mail newsletter format, then click on the hyperlinks below to see the video of Dean w/ K.O.; if you are reading this post on the Words of Power site, then simply scroll down to the embedded video and press the play button.]

Howard Dean on the Public Option: It's Alive Because We're Right and They're Wrong



Go to Stand w/ Howard Dean for more information on how to participate in the struggle to bring meaningful healthcare reform to the USA.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, Thom Hartmann, Healthcare Crisis, Jane Hamsher, NYCeve

Healthcare, Climate Change & the Ugly Political Realities: This Boat is Sinking?

What would you do if you found yourself standing face to face with people bearing signs accusing you by name of killing babies and encouraging the shooting of American soldiers? Might you lose your cool? Might you get involved in an exchange that would ultimately lead to anger or descend into the shouting matches we've been seeing at so many Town Halls lately?
Not if you're Joan Baez, who, in the 50th year of her career, continues to live according to unshakeable ideals of non-violence and compassion in ways that should inspire us all. Daily Kos, 8-12-09

UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Tuesday of "incalculable" human suffering if the world fails to reach a deal at crucial climate change talks this December.
The United Nations is orchestrating the talks in the Danish capital in hopes of securing an agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
"As we move toward Copenhagen in December, we must seal a climate change deal that secures our common future," Ban told an environmental forum in Incheon city west of Seoul. Agence France Press, 8-11-09

[T]he Center for American Progress Action Fund hosted the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, a gathering attended by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, and many other experts. Unsurprisingly, right-wing protesters – many of whom are global warming deniers – also gathered at the venue. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson interviewed some of the protesters to get a better understanding of their views. One said President Obama is an “Anti-American Arab” who “is not a natural-born citizen.” Many others said that global warming is a hoax, that Obama is a man of divided loyalties and questionable associations, and that the country is headed toward socialist decline. Think Progress, 8-11-09

Dobbs on Howard Dean: "[H]e's a bloodsucking leftist -- I mean, you gotta put a stake through his heart to stop this guy" Media Matters, 8-10-09

Diplomats attending the hearing said Ms Suu Kyi, 64, stood straight and still as the judge in Rangoon's Insein jail found her guilty of breaching the terms of her detention ... "There were gasps in the court and you could feel a ripple of outrage," said one European diplomat. "But her reaction was remarkably stoical, she even turned to her lawyers and smiled." 'There were gasps in court, but all she did was smile', Independent, 8-12-09

Healthcare, Climate Change & the Ugly Political Realities: This Boat is Sinking

By Richard Power

You and I and Aung San Suu Kyi are all in the same boat, and it is sinking. The problem is we are not alone, and some of the others in the boat are weighted down with the ball and chain of a terrible ignorance.

I was reminded of this late last night, as I paced my hotel room, and I overheard Sanjay Gupta saying that the term "Death Panel" was "probably hyperbole." Sen. Charles Grassley is a problem, but Sanjay Gupta is a bigger problem. Grassley is just pandering to his whacked out base, and doing the bidding of his benefactors; but Gupta, in the role of a cable news medical expert, is willfully (how else could you explain it) confusing people who are looking for information. (It is disturbing to think that the incoming Obama administration had actually floated him for Surgeon General.)

A search and destroy mission has been launched against progressive efforts to come to grips with the potentially nation-breaking healthcare crisis and the potentially civilization-breaking climate crisis. As I sit here in this airport, amidst the psychic smoke and flame of this attack, several analogies are offer themselves as wet towels with which to survive the heat and suffocating blackness.

Analogy #1: Looking back at the Grant Park celebration, many of us were feeling like it was the liberation of a P.O.W. camp. But really we were just being allowed to elect our own prisoner representative. He has little power. The imperial presidency is only an imperial presidency if the imperial Senate, the military-industrial complex, and the energy, finance, insurance and pharma lobbies say it is; just listen to their spin machine (a.k.a. the US mainstream news media).

Our chosen prisoner representative has very few options. If he exercises the boldness I know he is capable of, the odds on holding on to the office diminish, because it will be poured on this firestorm of hate and paranoia to fuel it further; and alternately, if he does not exercise that boldness, the odds of holding on to power also diminish, albeit for a different reason, he will appear weak, and ineffectual, the base will be demoralized, and the center will no longer be intrigued. From my perspective he has to choose the former of these two options, but it is easy for me to say, I do not have two young daughters.

Analogy #2: Looking at the video clips of the townhall mayhem concocted by Swift-Boat style entities, utilizing pitchfork mobs of mostly obese and seriously deluded people, I am reminded of a 9-30-07 story in the U.K. Telegraph, Police to think twice about rescuing drowning: "Physical contact with a struggling casualty should be avoided," the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary rules state, "to prevent a rescuer becoming overwhelmed and pulled into the water and submerged." Well, that is where we are with some of our fellow citizens, we are all in the deep water, but they are drowning, and panicked, and as we try to save them, they are pulling us down with them.

The healthcare reforms the Obama administration and allies on this issue in Congress (Pelosi, Waxman, Harkin, Kennedy, etc.) have put forth are reasonable, so is the Climate crisis plan passed by the House of Representatives; neither are bold enough, neither are sweeping enough, but both would serve to jump-start the process of instituting bolder and more sweeping measures sooner than later. But they are being fought tooth and nail by the Chamber of Commerce, and the Cult formerly known as the Republican Party, and yes, the Petainists within the Democratic Party. They have two formidable weapons: 1) the complicity of the mainstream news media, which skews every national political debate to the benefit of its corporatist overlords and sponsors, and 2) an army of foot soldiers drawn from a populace informationally malnourished since Walter Cronkite left the air waves, and poisoned with hate since Rush Limbaugh took to the air waves.

Go to Stand w/ Howard Dean for more information on how to participate in the struggle to bring meaningful healthcare reform to the USA.

If you have not already joined the Alliance for Climate Protection, Al Gore and I urge you to do so. Click here.

I also urge you to participate in some way in the International Day of Climate Action on 10-24-09. Go to 350.org for more information.

Please send an appeal letter to the Burmese authorities calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi – and demand human rights for Burma. Amnesty International has made easy to do so. Just click on the link below, and follow the instruction.

Burma: Free Aung San Suu Kyi

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Here are four more videos for the time-capsule. (Just in case we don't make it, and whoever comes next wants to know what happened to us.)

Glenn Beck's Hate Speech Sponsored by ...



'Crap And Trade' -- Teabaggers Protest Clean Energy Summit




Sick For Profit (Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films)-- Stephen Helmsley



Jon Stewart on the Crazed Town Hall protesters

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Healther Skelter
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Howard Dean, Aung San Suu Kyi, Climate Change, Healthcare Crisis, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck

Hard Rain Late Night: Lucinda Williams -- World Without Tears

Hard Rain Late Night: Lucinda Williams -- World Without Tears



Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

Lucinda Williams, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

Remember Grant Park? It was Not a Mirage; it was a True Turning from Death to Life, That is Why We are Engulfed by Rising Madness & Deepening Menace

To talk about these town hall events as some organic outpouring of average American folks who have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind as to what is really going on-which is professional P.R. operatives generating exploitive, manufactured, strategically deployed outrage in order to line their own pockets. These P.R. spinmeisters get paid a lot of money for doing it. The corporations they work for get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. ...
This is professional, corporate-funded, Republican staffed P.R., and it should be reported as such. Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow Show, 8-5-09

I warn you all ... Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports health care reform, and the essential great leveling agent of a government-funded alternative to the unchecked duopoly of profiteering private insurance corporations. Cross us all at your peril.
Because, Rep. Ross, you are not the Representative from Blue Cross.
And Mr. Baucus, you are not the Senator from Schering-Plough Global Health Care even if they have already given you $76,000 towards your re-election. And Ms. Lincoln, you are not the Senator from DaVita Dialysis. Keith Olbermann, Special Comment, MSNBC Countdown, 8-4-09

We do not live in a functioning democracy - republican, direct, or otherwise ... Right now, we're watching six U.S. senators (from some of the most sparsely populated states) and seven Commerce Committee Blue Dog Democrats hijack the health care debate. Together, these 13 tyrants represent just 13 million people - or 4 percent of the total population. And they are obstructing a health care bill for the other 300 million of us. David Sirota, Health Care's 13 Tyrants, Huffington Post, 7-31-09

Remember Grant Park? It was Not a Mirage; it was a True Turning from Death to Life, That is Why We are Engulfed by Rising Madness & Deepening Menace

By Richard Power

Yes, six months into the journey, the election night celebration in Grant Park seems very far away, and sometimes it even seems as if it was a mirage. But it wasn't.

Like many of you, I am unhappy with some of what Barack Obama has done and much of what Barack Obama has not done. But I think I understand where he is and what he is doing. He is not playing chess, or basketball, he is playing poker. And he is a very good poker player. We shall see sooner than later if he is good enough to win while playing against a house that has marked the cards.

In the last few days there have been two events of profound existential meaning that bode well for the future, in spite of the fierce struggle ahead.

A "wise Latina" has ascended to SCOTUS.

And in the process, the tragedy of John McCain deepened; the man who chose Sarah Palin to run for Vice- President of the United States, voted against Sonia Sotomayor. Pathetic. A once intriguing politician who drank the kool-aid too late. Yes, Karl Rove did break him in South Carolina in 2000.

And within the same news cycle, we learned that unlike McCain's legend which has been swallowed up in the Jonestown of the Cult formerly known as the Republican Party, the legend of Bill Clinton has a lot of life left in it.

With his high-stakes humanitarian mission to the Hermit Kingdom to bring Laura Ling and Euna Lee home, Bill Clinton has reminded us that there is more to Achilles than his heel. (Do you remember the origin of the phrase, "Achilles' Heel"? It is, after all, not about weakness; it is about strength. Achilles' mother, the Goddess Thetis, dipped him into the River Styx to give him immortality, except that she held him by the heel of one foot, and so that one small area of his physical body was still vulnerable to attack; i.e., he was otherwise invincible in battle.)

Meanwhile, the toxic sludge that has been poured into the open fields and flowing rivers of our national psyche for thirty years has yielded a bitter fruit -- an ugly, roving mutant mob terrified of its own shadow; a shadow, which, of course, it is projecting wildly on all those it encounters.

Consider some headlines from just the last several days:

Video: As freed journalists return Dick Morris tells them they should have stayed in North Korea

Inspired By Glenn Beck, Protesters Overwhelm Town Hall Meeting With ‘Cat Calls’ And ‘Banging On Windows’

Beck Jokes About ‘Military Tribunals For All Those Currently Serving In Washington’

VIDEO: Right-Wing Rage Cultivated At McCain-Palin Rallies Being Harnessed To Oppose Obama’s Agenda Today

Cornyn: GOP ready to capitalize on Americans’ ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ in the 2010 elections.

Crowd laughs and applauds at Rep. Akin’s comment about lawmakers almost being ‘lynched’ at town halls.

Poll: Plurality of Republicans want more media coverage of President Obama’s birth certificate.

Rep. Perriello: Coal Fraudster Impersonated Women’s And Seniors’ Groups As Well

Grassley Uses Kennedy’s Brain Tumor To Spread Fear Of Rationing

Barack Obama faces 30 death threats a day, stretching US Secret Service

If Obama as President and Pelosi as House Speaker did not indeed embody meaningful change the resistance to their agenda would not be so vociferous or so desperate.

Keep moving forward. Keep your eyes open, especially the ones at the back of your head.

Here are three important video clips. View them if you have not already done so, and share them with those among your friends who need some perspective on where we are and what is going on here.

NOTE: If you are reading this post via the The Latest from Words of Power e-mail newsletter, click on the hot links, but if you are viewing this post on the blog itself, just click on the embedded videos.

Laura Ling speaks after being freed from North Korean prison



Rachel Maddow: Big Money Pulling the Strings of Protests



Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Health Care Reform



See Also

While the Economic Royalists, & Their Enforcers in Politics & Media, Live the High Life, Will "We, the People" Fade into Oblivion?

A Call for Unity -- Strong, Loud, Pushy, Relentless, Quarrelsome Unity; Make No Mistake -- They are Still "Hunting the President"

While the G-8 Stumbles, Weak & Conflicted, There is Clarity on the Streets of Tehran & in the Minds of James Hansen, Jane Hamsher & Joe Stiglitz

From Darfur, West Virginia, Downtown Jakarta, California & the Congo -- a Collective Cry for Freedom on Independence Day 2009

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Bill Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Laura Linn, Euna Lee, Sonia Sotomayor, Healthcare

Climate Crisis Update: New Studies Highlight Meat-Eating & the Life Styles of the Rich & Famous as Serious Issues

Celtic Triple Spiral/Triple Goddess Symbol


The higher one's income, the more CO2 one emits, and it is possible to establish a correlation between income level and emission level. Hervé Kempf, Le Monde, 7-16-09

Switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius Ezra Klein, Washington Post, 7-29-09

Climate Crisis Update: New Studies Highlight Meat-Eating & the Life Styles of the Rich & Famous as Serious Issues

By Richard Power

The political resistance to meaningful healthcare reform is national self-mutilation. But the political resistance to meaningful climate change legislation is even worse, it is national suicide.

Of course, what else should we expect from a country awash in sun and wind that chooses instead to blow-up its mountain tops to dig out the last dregs of coal, and then suck its tar sands dry of their last drops of oil.

This is madness.

Yes, it is time to become more confrontational. The sands in the hourglass are running out.

Here are two provocative pieces to ponder.

Recently, in Le Monde, Hervé Kempf offered a bold suggestion of taking on the carbon footprints on individuals rather than that of countries:

To prevent a full-scale climate crisis, we must limit greenhouse gas emissions so as not to exceed 30 billion tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in 2030. Rather than reasoning as usual in terms of each country's emissions, Chakravarty and his team tackle the question in terms of emissions per person. They study income distribution within the different countries and then at a global level. The higher one's income, the more CO2 one emits, and it is possible to establish a correlation between income level and emission level. Knowing that we are supposed to be 8.1 billion humans in 2030, calculations lead to settling on 10.8 tons per person as the maximum ceiling that would allow humanity to remain within the 30 billion ton limit. Below that ceiling a significant inequality of incomes/emissions subsists (from 1 to 10 tons per inhabitant), but that is evened out. "All emissions that exceed that level must be eliminated" an action that involves about a billion emitters. Herve Kemp, Le Monde, 7-16-09

And in the Washington Post, Ezra Klein took a courageous stand on meat-eating and its impact on the Climate Crisis:

Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian." Ezra Klein, Washington Post, 7-29-09

If you have not already joined the Alliance for Climate Protection, Al Gore and I urge you to do so. Click here.

I also urge you to participate in some way in the International Day of Climate Action on 10-24-09. Go to 350.org for more information.

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

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Traffic -- John Barleycorn Must Die (Santa Monica, 1972)

Hard Rain Late Night: Traffic -- John Barleycorn Must Die (Santa Monica, 1972)



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