"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."
-Che Guevara
WC Turck
The Ballad of Don and Dean
"The late afternoon air smells of yellow hay, the warm musk of manure, peppery fresh-cut grass, and chicken frying up nicely somewhere. A breeze is moving laundry hung from a tired line across the yard, and washing in waves over feathery tassels on tall August corn. Corn surrounds the shady yard on three sides, obscuring fields running endless beneath the perfect Iowa sky. The corn wraps around the farm like loving arms, like a lover’s intimate embrace. Fat red apples are ripe in the tree beside the house. They are falling to the soft, grassy earth in ever increasing numbers, as if understanding that only a select few will be chosen to fatten a pie, or a fresh-baked strudel."21 Days in May: An Occupy Novella
Revolution and Beer, May 19, 2012
"The NATO summits had only revealed fully what many feared was emerging in America. No longer was this the stuff of fiction, or the Hollywood fantasy of Gestapo agents and Nazi stormtroopers exacting justice on a whim, as if judges and courts and laws were their individual domain, and a sacred language only they understood."WC Turck is an author, artist, playwright and talk radio host in Chicago. He has been called the most dangerous voice on the Left.
National
People Die Because of This Man- Wayne LaPierre and the NRA-
Salon, Oct. 6th, 2015
"LaPierre, who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws, including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the Oregon killings, just as he’s been silent after the murders of other innocent victims of America’s epidemic of gun violence."
The NRA Once Supported Gun Control: So How Did We Get Here?
Al Jazeera Plus, July, 29, 2015
"Gun-related tragedies continue to dominate the headlines, accompanied by age-old debates about gun control versus the Second Amendment. But this is not how it’s always been. And it is not how it has to be.For most of our nation’s history an individual’s right to bear arms was not protected by the Constitution. The Second Amendment was about the right to have militias that could bear arms. And guess what — the National Rifle Association (NRA) used to support gun control.So how’d we get here? Let’s take a look at the NRA and how it helped shape the U.S. into the country with the most gun-related violence worldwide."
Everybody Blames mental Illness for Mass Shootings. But What If That's Wrong?
Vox, Oct. 2, 2015
"Jonathan Metzl a professor of psychiatry, sociology, and medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University, argues that mental illness is often a scapegoat that lets policymakers and the public ignore bigger, more complicated contributors to gun violence. Metzl, who reviewed the research on mass shootings and mental illness in a paper for the American Journal of Public Health, points to studies that show people with mental illness are more likely to be victims — not perpetrators — of violence, and that very few violent acts — about 3% - 5%— are carried out by the mentally ill. And while mental illness can be a contributor to some violent behaviors, other factors— such as substance abuse, poverty, history of violence, and access to guns— are much stronger predictors of violence and shootings."
There's Scientific Consensus On Guns: And the NRA Won't Like It.-
LA Times, Oct. 7, 2015
"Most of the scientists who were publishing relevant articles were from the fields of criminology, economics, public policy, political science and public health. Since there are typically many more authors on public health articles than on criminology articles, to have a balanced list I decided to include only the first author on the byline. Graduate students working for me identified more than 300 distinct first authors, and found more than 280 email addresses.
Last May we began sending out short, monthly surveys. The first question on each survey asks how much the respondent agrees with a particular claim related to firearms, and the second and third questions ask the respondent to rate the quality of the scientific literature, as well as their own level of familiarity with the scientific literature on that particular topic. "
How to Slow Firearm Deaths Without Banning All Guns-
Scientific American, Feb. 19, 2013
"Like the firearms industry today, the automobile industry at midcentury was central to American culture and identity. Cars were big and beautiful, throbbing with power. Yet with that power came danger. By the 1960s motor vehicle accidents killed more than 50,000 people a year. The common wisdom, promulgated by carmakers since the 1920s, held that traffic fatalities were exclusively the fault of individual drivers (or, to put it another way: cars don't kill people; drivers kill people). This assertion, of course, was false, but at the time we had no way of knowing for certain, because we lacked data on the proximate causes of accident deaths.
We now find ourselves in a similar state of ignorance regarding gun fatalities. What factors shape the risk that a gun will be used for violence? What technologies (such as trigger locks) and policies (such as waiting periods) work best to reduce injuries and deaths? What is the relation—if any—between violent entertainment and actual violence? Guns, unlike cars, of course, are meant to kill, but why do they kill so many?"
Gun Free State
WC Turck, Revolution and Beer, Oct. 5, 2015
"Most of the scientists who were publishing relevant articles were from the fields of criminology, economics, public policy, political science and public health. Since there are typically many more authors on public health articles than on criminology articles, to have a balanced list I decided to include only the first author on the byline. Graduate students working for me identified more than 300 distinct first authors, and found more than 280 email addresses.
Last May we began sending out short, monthly surveys. The first question on each survey asks how much the respondent agrees with a particular claim related to firearms, and the second and third questions ask the respondent to rate the quality of the scientific literature, as well as their own level of familiarity with the scientific literature on that particular topic. "
How to Slow Firearm Deaths Without Banning All Guns-
Scientific American, Feb. 19, 2013
"Like the firearms industry today, the automobile industry at midcentury was central to American culture and identity. Cars were big and beautiful, throbbing with power. Yet with that power came danger. By the 1960s motor vehicle accidents killed more than 50,000 people a year. The common wisdom, promulgated by carmakers since the 1920s, held that traffic fatalities were exclusively the fault of individual drivers (or, to put it another way: cars don't kill people; drivers kill people). This assertion, of course, was false, but at the time we had no way of knowing for certain, because we lacked data on the proximate causes of accident deaths.
We now find ourselves in a similar state of ignorance regarding gun fatalities. What factors shape the risk that a gun will be used for violence? What technologies (such as trigger locks) and policies (such as waiting periods) work best to reduce injuries and deaths? What is the relation—if any—between violent entertainment and actual violence? Guns, unlike cars, of course, are meant to kill, but why do they kill so many?"
Gun Free State
WC Turck, Revolution and Beer, Oct. 5, 2015
NewYorker, Oct. 12, 2015
"A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that, among voters under the age of thirty, forty-nine per cent had a positive view of socialism. (Only forty-six per cent had a positive view of capitalism.) Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, who has written about Sanders, says that younger voters “may not be willing to entertain a whole new system, but they are open to a pretty profound critique of the current one. They’re not as naïve as Americans used to be during the Cold War—they know that there are varieties of capitalism, that there is social democracy in Scandinavia and Canada, where the government plays a bigger role in regulating corporations and in expanding the safety net.”
The Reign of Recycling-
New York Times, Oct. 3, 2015
"I you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?"
Alabama, Birthplace of the Voting Rights Act, is Once Again Gutting Voting Rights-
The Nation, Oct. 1, 2015
"It was Alabama that brought the country the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because of its brutality against black citizens in places like Selma. “The Voting Rights Act is Alabama’s gift to our country,” the civil-rights lawyer Debo Adegbile once said.
NY Times Calls for an End to the Benghazi Hearings
New York Times, Oct. 7, 2015
"On September 29, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is running to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as the Speaker of the House, told Sean Hannity that one of the biggest accomplishments of the Republican House majority was creating the Benghazi Committee, which he credited with hurting Clinton's poll numbers. Hannity initially praised McCarthy and the committee for its "political" strategy, but has since walked back the complements amid backlash. Fox News largely ignored McCarthy's damning comments, falling in line with the network's years-long campaign to create and promote now-pervasive lies, smears, and conspiracy theories about Benghazi."
International
“Even war has rules,” declared Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctor’s Without Borders (MSF), who announced Wednesday that the aid organization will take unprecedented action against the U.S. military by formally launching an international fact-finding inquiry into the bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan."
Airstrike Kills 13 At Doctors Without Borders Site in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6, 2015
"A U.S. airstrike in the Afghan city of Kunduz killed at least 19 people at a hospital run by international medical-aid organization Doctors Without Borders early Saturday, prompting condemnation from humanitarian groups and the United Nations.
The organization said 12 Afghan staff members and at least seven patients, among them three children, were killed when its trauma center was hit several times during what it described as a sustained bombing that began shortly after 2 a.m. An additional 37 people, including patients and medical staff, were wounded. All international staff members are alive and uninjured, it said."
Group of Aldermen Call for McCarthy to Step Down-
WGN, Oct.5, 2015
"A group of alderman, led by the aldemanic Black Caucus are asking police superintendent Garry McCarthy to step down.
The group is calling on McCarthy to step down or the mayor to outright fire the superintendent after five years on the job. They say a lack of respect for them combined with the continued gun violence in their communities are the reasons."
McCarthy Promotes Cop Under Investigation in Daley Nephew Case-
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 5, 2015
"Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has a new chief of detectives — a veteran cop under investigation for his role in creating a fictitious witness statement that helped prevent former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew from being charged with killing David Koschman."
Thought
Interview- Local Resistance Can Overthrow Our Political Masters-
Interview with Chris Hedges and Jill Stein
"All resistance will be local. We will have to dismantle the corporate state, piece by piece, from the ground up. No leader or politician is going to do it for us. Every community that bans fracking, every university and institution that embraces the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement, every individual who becomes vegan to thwart the animal agriculture industry’s devastation of the planet and holocaust of animals, every effort to build self-sustaining food supplies, every protest to halt the use of lethal force by police against our citizens, especially poor people of color, every act of civil disobedience against corporate power and imperialism will slowly transform our society."
Film- War, Propaganda, and the Enemy Within-
Interview with Abbey Martin and Chris Hedges
Activists Launch Campaign for Resistance Mobil Response Unit-
Freeanons, Oct. 6, 2015
"In order to promote sustainable agriculture, energy and community building, activists, including Fifth Column journalist Alex Freeman, are initializing a campaign to raise $7,500 to go towards the purchase of a mobile command center dubbed the Resistance Mobile Response Unit."
Shroud of Turin Still a Fake-
Center for Inquiry, Oct. 2, 2015
"In 2005, Turin Shroud proponent Ray Rogers claimed that earlier carbon-14 tests of the shroud linen—showing it to date from between 1260 and 1390 and to thus be a fake—were invalid because, he hypothesized, the samples must have been taken from a “medieval patch.” Rogers and I had an exchange of arguments in the Skeptical Inquirer. But a new paper by three Italian chemists, in the same journal in which Rogers published, shows who was right."
The Reign of Recycling-
New York Times, Oct. 3, 2015
"I you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?"
Alabama, Birthplace of the Voting Rights Act, is Once Again Gutting Voting Rights-
The Nation, Oct. 1, 2015
"It was Alabama that brought the country the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because of its brutality against black citizens in places like Selma. “The Voting Rights Act is Alabama’s gift to our country,” the civil-rights lawyer Debo Adegbile once said.
NY Times Calls for an End to the Benghazi Hearings
New York Times, Oct. 7, 2015
"On September 29, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is running to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as the Speaker of the House, told Sean Hannity that one of the biggest accomplishments of the Republican House majority was creating the Benghazi Committee, which he credited with hurting Clinton's poll numbers. Hannity initially praised McCarthy and the committee for its "political" strategy, but has since walked back the complements amid backlash. Fox News largely ignored McCarthy's damning comments, falling in line with the network's years-long campaign to create and promote now-pervasive lies, smears, and conspiracy theories about Benghazi."
International
Mint Press News, Oct.8, 2015
Airstrike Kills 13 At Doctors Without Borders Site in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6, 2015
"A U.S. airstrike in the Afghan city of Kunduz killed at least 19 people at a hospital run by international medical-aid organization Doctors Without Borders early Saturday, prompting condemnation from humanitarian groups and the United Nations.
The organization said 12 Afghan staff members and at least seven patients, among them three children, were killed when its trauma center was hit several times during what it described as a sustained bombing that began shortly after 2 a.m. An additional 37 people, including patients and medical staff, were wounded. All international staff members are alive and uninjured, it said."
Sputnik, March 10, 2015
"In the past, the Kingdom was filthy rich, making a killing from high oil prices and the abundance of oil the Mother Earth gifted the Saudi princes. But now the oil-producing giant is getting squeezed by the slump in crude oil prices, Oleg Obukhov wrote for RIA Novosti. The low oil prices forced the Saudi Kingdom to burn through their foreign reserves at an unprecedented pace. In addition to a Saudi-led airstrike campaign in Yemen, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was pretty generous toward government workers, putting a further strain on public finances that were already damaged by the slump in oil prices."
Local
Local
Group of Aldermen Call for McCarthy to Step Down-
WGN, Oct.5, 2015
"A group of alderman, led by the aldemanic Black Caucus are asking police superintendent Garry McCarthy to step down.
The group is calling on McCarthy to step down or the mayor to outright fire the superintendent after five years on the job. They say a lack of respect for them combined with the continued gun violence in their communities are the reasons."
McCarthy Promotes Cop Under Investigation in Daley Nephew Case-
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 5, 2015
"Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has a new chief of detectives — a veteran cop under investigation for his role in creating a fictitious witness statement that helped prevent former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew from being charged with killing David Koschman."
Thought
This week: Chris Hedges
"Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books, including "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (2009), "I Don't Believe in Atheists" (2008) and the best-selling "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" (2008). His book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction."
Interview- Local Resistance Can Overthrow Our Political Masters-
Interview with Chris Hedges and Jill Stein
"All resistance will be local. We will have to dismantle the corporate state, piece by piece, from the ground up. No leader or politician is going to do it for us. Every community that bans fracking, every university and institution that embraces the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement, every individual who becomes vegan to thwart the animal agriculture industry’s devastation of the planet and holocaust of animals, every effort to build self-sustaining food supplies, every protest to halt the use of lethal force by police against our citizens, especially poor people of color, every act of civil disobedience against corporate power and imperialism will slowly transform our society."
Film- War, Propaganda, and the Enemy Within-
Interview with Abbey Martin and Chris Hedges
Activists Launch Campaign for Resistance Mobil Response Unit-
Freeanons, Oct. 6, 2015
"In order to promote sustainable agriculture, energy and community building, activists, including Fifth Column journalist Alex Freeman, are initializing a campaign to raise $7,500 to go towards the purchase of a mobile command center dubbed the Resistance Mobile Response Unit."
Shroud of Turin Still a Fake-
Center for Inquiry, Oct. 2, 2015
"In 2005, Turin Shroud proponent Ray Rogers claimed that earlier carbon-14 tests of the shroud linen—showing it to date from between 1260 and 1390 and to thus be a fake—were invalid because, he hypothesized, the samples must have been taken from a “medieval patch.” Rogers and I had an exchange of arguments in the Skeptical Inquirer. But a new paper by three Italian chemists, in the same journal in which Rogers published, shows who was right."
Correspondence
Coffee for Consciousness
Held Anger is caused by dissatisfaction, unmet expectations, and trauma. That goes into repression, waiting to be expressed, as all energy does. There are many reasons to have anger. If we do not process it, the well of Held Anger gets larger. Anger Transference is when that anger needs to be expressed and we find a way to relieve ourselves of the burden. This can be totally inappropriate with friends and family for no reason, or it can just be an overreaction of pent up frustration, either way, it is inappropriate "response" for the reaction.In cases of large scale sweeping violence, we are dealing with Anger Transference onto people, for whatever reason, because they are simply the targets the mind found to express that dissatisfaction onto. A righteous foe. An enemy that we may defend ourselves against ... it is a lie told by the ego and our inability to process that allows us to do unspeakable things. If there is a moment of doubt, remember that Hitler got rejected for Art school. If he had gotten in, how would the world be different?
Dr. Conrad Chao
One of the things I keep seeing in the apologies for the paranoid delusional positions of some people regarding gun control, among other things, is that some people have a genuine fear that the government is going to rise up and suspend civil rights and take away their guns. It's a variation on the Jade Helm exercises being a ruse for Obama to take away their guns and their civil liberties, and "mess with Texas". We're beyond the point of rational fact-based discussion. We are no longer using the same deck of cards. There is a constituency that believes that the America they know and love and want to maintain is being taken away by brown people who speak with funny accents when they even bother to speak English and black people who do not know their place. Oathkeeper Jon Ritzheimer has vowed to travel to Michigan to take the law in his own vigilante hands and arrest Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow for supporting the Iran nuclear treaty. (I'm still trying to figure out what multistate sheriff deputized this wingnut.) What is most disturbing is that mainstream participants in the political process actively pander to their paranoia and delusions. We are beyond reason. We are beyond any interest in an objective fact-based reality. We are beyond any interest in the process or principles of government itself. These factions reject the notion of a Federal Government and its pandering to that cursed and hated species, liberals.Screen Shot
No comments:
Post a Comment