Potential 2012 U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Jewish settlers Monday that attempts to prevent them from building in east Jerusalem are as outrageous as housing discrimination in the United States.
“I cannot imagine, as an American, being told I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English,” he said.
Huckabee dismissed the notion that Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state are obstacles to peace. Instead, he backed the settlers’ view that they that they have the right to build anywhere in “the place that God gave them.”
We face wrenching budget cutting in the years ahead, but there’s one huge area of government spending that Democrats and Republicans alike have so far treated as sacrosanct.
It’s the military/security world, and it’s time to bust that taboo. A few facts:
• The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.
• The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?
• The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C
• The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.
This is the one area where elections scarcely matter. President Obama, a Democrat who symbolized new directions, requested about 6 percent more for the military this year than at the peak of the Bush administration.
(Source: arewepayingattention)
Have you heard about the David Wojnarowicz video that was yanked from a show
at the National Portrait Gallery this week? Please come to the organizing
meeting this Sunday Dec. 5, 3pm…details below.
STOP THE CENSORSHIP!
When he died in 1992, David Wojnarowicz, artist and writer with AIDS, left a
body of work about the disease that remains unrivaled for its power and
beauty. On December 1, 2010 the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC celebrated World AIDS Day by capitulating
to the demands of right-wing politicians and an anti-gay religions group
and removing David’s volcanic video rant, A Fire in My Belly, from an
important exhibition about art and sexual difference, Hide/Seek.
Join us on Sunday, December 5 at 3:00pm at the location below to plan a
response to the Smithsonian’s cowardly act of self-censorship, a kick in the
teeth to an important, eloquent artist.
ORGANIZING MEETING
Time: 3:00pm
Date: Sunday, December 5, 2010
Location: PARTICIPANT INC (ground floor art space)
253 East Houston St.
between Norfolk and Suffolk
By subway - F train to Second Ave. Exit at First Ave.,
continue east along Houston for one and a half blocks.
MORE INFORMATION, to join the mailing list
E-mail: hunterr5930@yahoo.com
Phone: (212) 966-1091
Here are links to Washington Post coverage:
National Portrait Gallery bows to censors, withdraws Wojnarowicz video on
gay love
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/11/30/VI201011300689
8.html?sid=ST2010110502641
Ant-covered Jesus video removed from Smithsonian after Catholic League
complains
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113004
647.html
Flamingos have many extraordinary qualities, but until now they have never been considered to be performance artists. Now, thanks to this amazing aerial photograph of a flock of Caribbean flamingos in the Mexican province of Yucatán, we may have to think again. Some believe that the birds’ ability to arrange themselves into the shape of a flamingo (albeit a rather inelegant one) is evidence of divine intervention. But like all flocking behaviour, it is simply the best way to avoid predators and to find the best place to feed. Still, a once-in-a-lifetime moment for photographer Bobby Haas, who managed to grab just one image before the birds dispersed.
I think [Marx] would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist - they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. And they understand. They’re instinctive Marxists; they don’t have to read it.
Since the early 1980s, the Democratic Party has largely abandoned its commitment to policies that serve the material interests of most Americans and has joined the Republican Party in a shameless competition for the patronage of large corporations and the superrich. Add to these complexities the proven power of campaign spending to influence election outcomes […], and it is easy to see that the average American has no hope of safeguarding his interests, whether they pertain to life, liberty, or happiness. We cast our empty ballots for one party; then, disgusted with the inevitable betrayals, pray for a redeemer from the opposing party to rescue us from politics and history, only to repeat the cycle once again. Meanwhile, most of our citizens are fully absorbed in their personal affairs, oblivious and largely ignorant of the details of politics and governance. We are so very far from the classical republican ideal of ruling and being ruled, of exercising political agency and participating in the life of our commonwealth, that, incapable of pursuing even narrow self-interest effectively, we instead offer ourselves up as impotent, obsequious subjects, the unresisting tools of interests we scarcely comprehend.
