9/11

At the end of this day, all I can say is that I am tired of being told to remember that which has not been forgotten whilst forgetting what should have been remembered.

Every year, on the 11th, I feel like I should write something that would make people stop and think and then I don't. All day long all I can think about is Allende and his last moments and how next to no one on this side of the globe even knows who he was. Or more importantly what he symbolized.

I guess I have let this day pass by so many times because my thoughts about this day, and what it has come to represent, have not changed. I wrote this years ago;

It was a beautiful spring morning in Chile. I was on my way to a meeting when I first heard the news. The lady was really excited and I had a tough time understanding exactly what she said. From what I gathered, two twins had been killed in the United States. The picture was intensified upon arrival. One of my American colleagues was a reservist and was about to lose it. The two twins being killed were clarified to be the Twin Towers. I was also told the Pentagon, the White House, and everything living within the U.S. had been bombed as well. The reservist was almost in tears.
Being 8,000 miles away from the United States gave me a slightly different view of what transpired on Sept. 11, 2001. I was in South America, in a country that annually celebrates a U.S. backed coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973. I fondly referred to Sept. 11 as riot day, because riot they do. Living in Chile opened my mind to a different side of American politics that I hadn’t been taught in school. As the day progressed the events of that day became clearer to me. My “patria” had been attacked.
After watching the towers fall time after time, I began to wonder what was to be done. I have always been a bit of a catastrophist and things of this nature have been permanent residents in the emptiness of my head. I knew what was going to be done, but I also knew what should be done.
I knew the President of the United States would stand in front of the press and give a speech. I knew vengeance would be called for and would be promised to the American people. I considered it a given that the U.S. would soon be invading foreign shores in search of those responsible. The speech would be what most wanted and what was expected, for we are the United States of America.
The “should be done” list reads a bit differently. The president should have stood in front of journalists and announce to the world the country’s resolve to withstand terrorism and defeat it on every continent. He should have proceeded to declare to the world our intention to outstretch our hands to those who hate, in hopes that they would learn. “Our strength,” he should have argued, “lies not in weapons or armies, but within our ability to peacefully maintain our way of life.” The American people should have applauded when he said, “We will not kill to prove killing is wrong. We, the people of this great democracy, will stand up to terrorism by spreading peace and knowledge to every inch of the globe, until it has penetrated every country and made the terrorists afraid to preach their hatred.” He could then declare, “We are the United States of America.”
My compatriots we as a nation failed that day. We resolved not to spread peace but to continue to wage war, to fight terror with terror. We decided to kill to prove killing is wrong. We are no different than those who made the plans, and stated the orders. We chose to kill.

Yup, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on what happened.

Today I awoke and listened to the ringing tones of Utah Phillips' words as I scanned social media looking for the next thing to occupy my mind. Again and again I was bombarded with the message not to forget. How contradicting to listen to Utah and read that message. The juxtaposition was a hard contrast. I have quoted Utah many times, "The long memory is the most revolutionary idea in America."

Have I forgotten? Sure, but not what happened on this day.

I haven't forgotten about the thousands of people who were slaughtered by the Pinochet regime or the democratically elected government that fail that day. I haven't forgotten whose name was signed at the bottom of that coup.

I haven't forgotten about the thousands of people who died in the towers, the heroes who gave their lives trying to save their friends. I also haven't forgotten the hundred of thousands of people who were killed so vengeance could be ours. Nor the freedoms that we, as a people, so easily handed over without so much as a peep.

Nor have I forgotten the people who were killed in this state, on this day, so many years ago.

I have forgotten a lot of things but this day I will not forget. I cannot forget that the one thing that continues to happen, regardless of what has transpired on this day, is that we continue to kill.

This just in from the AFL-CIO

We need your help. CEO pay is out-of-control, but we have a chance to rein it in. CEOs of the largest companies now make 380 times the pay of the average worker in the United States. Yes, that’s right. 380 times!

This growing income inequality is hurting our nation’s economy and working families. 

Luckily, some small steps have been taken to bring CEO pay out into the open but, as The New York Times editorialized recently,¹corporate lobbyists are pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to drag its feet about making this information public.

Click here now to tell the SEC to take a step in the right direction and disclose CEO-to-worker pay ratios. 

Runaway CEO pay is bad for our economy and it’s bad for the morale of working families. Employees at every level, from the executive suite to the mailroom, contribute to making a company successful. 

But companies act as if CEOs alone are responsible for the success of their organizations. That’s why the average CEO of an S&P 500 company received a 13.9 percent raise in 2011 compensation—to an astounding $12.94 million.

Tell the SEC: Make CEO pay more transparent by disclosing CEO-to-worker pay ratios.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires public companies to disclose CEO-to-worker pay ratios. Disclosing these pay ratios will shame companies into stopping runaway CEO pay. 

But corporate executives are lobbying hard to keep this pay information secret. We need to let the SEC know that a few corporate lobbyists advocating for the interests of the 1% does not outweigh the views of working families who feel CEO pay has run amok.

Click here now to send a quick e-mail to the SEC and demand that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio disclosure rule be issued ASAP. 

War on Sex

The Utah State Senate passed a bill that would effectively limit sex education to abstinence only teaching. Also making it possible for districts to completely drop sex education from their curriculum and if they choose not to, the class is an opt-in for parents. Meaning that the parents have to ask the school to teach sex education.

"To replace the parent in the school setting, among people who we have no idea what their morals are, we have no ideas what their values are, yet we turn our children over to them to instruct them in the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives, I think is wrongheaded," said Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden.

OK. Senator Stuart Reid when was the last time you actually saw what was taught in sex ed classes. It's been a little over a decade for me but there was nothing sensitive about what was taught. A person's anatomy and how to keep oneself from becoming pregnant or infected with STD's is not a moral question. It is about information. What you have just voted to pass into law is telling parents throughout the state that you don't care what their wishes are for their children, you are deciding for them that their kids will only be taught that sex is bad and if they have it they will die (obvious exaggeration added to break down the subject to the senator's level of thinking). You sir are wrongheaded.

Kony 2012, the film says it all

Equality

One of my favorite MASH episodes is L.I.P.'s. It's in the second season and consists of Hawkeye accomplishing two missions. First, he hooks up with the girl he wants and second, he helps a soldier marry an L.I.P. or Local Indigenous Person. The part that sets this one as a favorite starts at 22 minutes. When Hawkeye rejects the girl because of some unsavory ideas. Go ahead and watch, I'll wait.



Pretty awesome, huh?

The real point of this opening is one of the main reasons I like to watch MASH. Hawkeye sees everyone pretty much as equals (except women which he learns in later episodes). There is no reason that Kim in the above episode should not be allowed to marry an American or why Klinger shouldn't be allowed to walk around in dresses or the gay guy in another episode be allowed to continue to fight after he is outed to his unit and they beat the shit out of him.

Didn't We?

Portugal, A Shining Example?

As a continuation of my post Other Options, I offer  you this.

The NYTimes offers up an example of what could be in store for Greece who is currently playing obedient child to the IMF, it gives us Portugal. According to the article, Portugal has done everything it has been asked, chopping social welfare and raising taxes. Yet, its debt ration keeps getting worse due to the fact that its economy continues to shrink partly caused by the austerity cuts imposed by the IMF to help pay back its debtors.

Without growth, reducing debt levels becomes nearly impossible. It is akin to trying to pay down a large credit card balance after taking a pay cut. You can slash expenses, but with lower earnings it is hard to set aside money to pay off debt.

This kind of goes without saying, but yea. If all your measures are focused on cutting the debt and not worried about bringing back some growth and occupying the millions out of work, there won't be any money to actually pay those debts down.

The Times this time shows a precedent, and though it is not offered as an alternative, that is historical and shows how things are most likely to be played out. These situations have been confronted before. There have been countries that simply could not pay back their debt. There were those who tried the austerity cuts and those who wouldn't. The example is there to follow, if we will.

If Portugal and other European debtors find it increasingly difficult to pay off their creditors because of slow or no growth, some experts predict they, too, might eventually need to negotiate debt write-downs. That was how things played out in Latin America in the 1980s, once it became clear that the I.M.F.’s relentless austerity push was impeding the growth that countries needed to pay down debt.

Of course, the IMF would never bring these ideas or happening up its too busy worrying about its own self interest. The austerity cuts are not meant to help the country in debt, rather they are meant to get as much money out as possible before they are cut off.

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