Civil War Sketch 1

Civil War Sketch 1

Reading on March 20th

5th Big CLWN WR Event

Thursday, March 20, 2008
7:00 - 10:00 pm

SAFE-T-GALLERY
Gallery 214
111 Front Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn

FREE ADMISSION!!!


featuring

Carol Novack
Liza Wolsky


with special guests

R. Nemo Hill
Sheila Lanham
Richard Loranger
Mindy Levokove
Jane Ormerod
Adriana Scopino
Moira T. Smith
Joanne Pagano Weber
Nathan Whiting
Francine Witte


hosted by Bob Heman
editor of CLWN WR since 1971



Take the F train to York Street, walk downhill to Front and turn left under the Manhattan Bridge. For more information, maps, and directions from other subway lines please check the Gallery website at http://www.safetgallery.com

Ok. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton: I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

After listening to/watching PBS Channel 13 - Tom's hour, with commentaries by a few male journalists, I've decided this is it. One guy, Shield, who thinks it's appropriate that Congress hear evidence re that baseball player's alleged crimes - referred to H. Clinton as: "her claim to fame is her husband." (or substantially similar words). Well, hey, I realize that all of my so-called "progressive" friends are going for Obama, with his empty rhetoric, his messianic messages and little if anything to show substance and record. Who cares that neither he nor Hillary voted on water torture? Who cares that Lieberman's his mentor? Who cares that he voted for the Patriot Act? Who cares that he's pro death penalty and anti same sex marriage? Who cares that his pals are telecommunications bigwigs? Who cares that he's wigwagged on many issues? Who cares that he's got more money than H Clinton ... poured into wooing the super delegates? (hey, where's he getting the dough?) Who cares he's a corporate tool without a cogent healthcare plan? I do. If I have to choose between being a p.c. so-called progressive to back some inexperienced yet charismatic half-black guy, whose ancestors weren't slaves but who's playing the race card big time and duping progressives into thinking he's going to be more effective as a change agent than Hillary, who's been maligned by the big press cause she's an assertive woman, guess whom I'm going to support? This entire campaign makes me ill. We're going to end up with McCain, who knows how to dupe people into thinking he's a liberal. Ha. Good match with Obama, who's duped progressives into thinking he's a progressive. He knows little, yet speaks eloquently. Style without substance. The kiddies love him. MoveOn loves him.

So as much as it makes me not quite ecstatic to support a moderate Democrat who should send her ridiculous husband to an island for the duration of the campaign, I'm resigning myself to doing so, for many reasons, including those already enumerated on this blog --- principally, I don't buy the rhetoric and like a good lawyer, I scrutinize the evidence. This is not a choice between progressives. Face it. Be wary. I've been wary of the Obama PC Cult hype since the getgo. You should be too.

Everyone's Progressive Hero Obama didn't bother to vote against waterboarding

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government
14 Feb 2008

http://www.legitgov.org/

Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It 14 Feb 2008 The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods tortures that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President [sic] Bush, who has threatened to veto it. Democratic supporters of the measure hailed its passage and immediately challenged Mr. Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, did not vote. Republican opponents of the bill were joined by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Bush, the Connecticut independent, and Ben Nelson (D-NE).

Writing/publication News

With all the nauseating Obama whoopha & the Clinton misogyny, I think I forgot to post news of a personal nature:

1) My first prosey chapbook, "The Architect's Play," will be published by Poets Wear Prada Press by the end of March or beginning of April.

2) My revamped collaborative CD with more music & audio affects by the exquisitely talented Ben Miller and Don C. Meyer (hear a few tracks at myspace) is available for sale via Mad Hatters' Review
.

3) I'll be featured at a CLWN WR reading in Dumbo on MARCH 20TH (details to be posted).

4) I'll be featured in Buffalo, NY on APRIL 3rd (details to be posted).

5) I'll also be reading at the &NOW Festival (andnow.com) at Chapman University, CA (a bastion of rightwing mentality -- an absolutely appropriate venue for a festival of "innovative" writing), APRIL 15th through 17th (details to be posted).

6) I'll be featured in the gifted writer Patricia Eakins's Sunday afternoon series in Riverdale on APRIL 20TH (details forthcoming).

7) The MHR multi-media BENEFIT on MAY 4TH, 4 - 8pm, at The Bowery Poetry Club will be AMAZING. A list of participants will be posted shortly.

8) The delightful, multi-gifted multi-media writer, Sheila E. Murphy, and I completed our first collaborative project, a streamy, fusionary thang called ROOM. We'll begin our next one soon.

9) I'm not busy waiting for my first rejection of "Violet's Dream."

10) Several writings will most likely appear in Romanian translation in a Romanian print and online journal. Details will be provided sooner or later.

11) I am still having fun with "Gated Communities."

12) I LOVE the latest issue of MAD HATTERS' REVIEW!

Another Obama Expose + The Urgency of Media Reform

There are plenty of critiques of Hillary R Clinton. I'm more interested in the exposes of Obama, due to his attraction to voters who think he's progressive and are drawn to his youth, vitality, and vapid rhetoric (his speech writers are damn good and he speaks with silver tongue!). Americans and many others have a tendency to go for style over substance - Arnie and Ronnie are good examples of that. Frankly, I don't care for either candidate, as I've said before. There are no choices; either "Democrat," if elected, might prove to be somewhat of an alleviation from Cheney-Bush & co., but unhappily slight - certainly insufficient to undo the damage. The uber capitalistic paradigm of American democracy has failed to provide the constitutional safeguards and benefits we all need. Many of us progressives know that. Yet so many so-called liberals and progressives (eg, moveon) are in denial, wanting desperately to wave a flag and believe in a political messiah. What's the solution when our population doesn't get the truth from the mainstream media? (See, eg, "Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning." The Brad Blog.) The only possible way out of the seemingly irreversible mess must begin with the transformational takeover of media -- a daunting task, but at least some fearless Internet reporters and investigators are devoting their lives to it. If the people are not educated, the paradigm will remain the same. -- CN

_____________________


from counterpunch.org


Declaration of Independence Day Edition
July 4, 2007
Another Automaton of the Atomic Lobby
Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK

It is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Oil prices are expected to rise to even higher levels as the United States dependence on foreign crude is becoming increasingly unstable. And the perceived threat of global warming is making even the most skeptical of politicians nervous. The future of planet Earth, they claim, is more perilous than ever. Al Gore has made an impact.

But the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache no buzz. The purported solution to the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.

The Clinton years indeed saw an all-out expansion of nuclear power, not only in the US, but all over the globe. First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors" -- that is, Westinghouse.

A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.

In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."

The atom lobby during the 1990s had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around the neck of the brightest star in the Democratic field today: Barack Obama.

Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.

The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."

"Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,'' says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon's Commonwealth Edison utility.

These gracious accolades come from one of Exelon's top executives, despite the fact that Obama proposed legislation in 2006 that would require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks. While introducing the legislation Obama noted the failure of Exelon to report a leak of radioactive tritium into groundwater near one of their Illinois plants. But the senator's criticism of nuclear power goes only so far.

During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions "on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable -- and realistic -- for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration." Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry's top trade publication, praised the senator. "Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of 'common sense solutions.' And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind."

Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of their more eye-grabbing numbers don't check out. For example, as noted in a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuke industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total CO2 emissions, hardly a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather than renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, atomic power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."

Clearly Senator Obama recognizes the inherent dangers of nuclear technology and knows of the disastrous failures that plagued Chernobyl, Mayak and Three Mile Island. Yet, despite his attempts to alert the public of future toxic nuclear leaks, Obama still considers atomic power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must certainly be pleased.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. St. Clair's new book on the environment, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published in December.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.

They can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net

How would Obama choose judges? - By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine

How would Obama choose judges? - By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine

Print Story: Romance blooms in NYC cupid cab on Yahoo! News

Print Story: Romance blooms in NYC cupid cab on Yahoo! News

Hate Springs Eternal - New York Times

Hate Springs Eternal - New York Times