Doing a Simple Thing, Finding a Joy Too Fine

"Joy's soul lies in the doing," Cressida says in Shakespeare's play.  The doing of even so simple a thing as taking a walk.

I walked in the desert with Saxon today.  Not far, but far enough to experience a "joy too fine, too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers."  The joy of a favorite thing, shared with a devoted companion of 14 years, four months and 12 days. 

A day made precious, a joy enhanced by the fact that just a few days ago, it appeared that Saxon was about to die.

Mark Epstein explains it in "Thoughts Without a Thinker" (as shared with me by a dear friend, Leslie Fuller):

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Saxon The Rottweagle made his compact with us when he was barely eight weeks old: in return for food, shelter and basic canine care, he would reward us with a lifetime of unmitigated love, devotion, companionship, empathy and joy.  A better bargain no man ever made.

Now he has a tumor that threatens his life.  We dare not risk surgery because of his age, his anemia, his weakened condition.  But by the grace of a skilled and compassionate veterinarian, certain medications and dietary practices, and his own fierce will, he remains with us for more precious moments.  How many, we know not, but each one reflects the sun in beautiful patterns.  Each one is precious.

The vocabulary of dog-human relationships is inadequate: "Pet." "Master."  "Adopt."  Inadequate and wrong.

I am not Saxon's "master."  He is not my "pet."

Another good friend understands this.  "That all-important, all-feeling little being," he writes of his dog, Lily.  George Gordon Lord Byron got it, too.  His tribute to "One who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without Insolence, courage without ferocity" would have been petty flattery, he acknowledged, if written about a human, but was a "just tribute" to his dog, Boatswain.  Rudyard Kipling got it, writing about the bittersweet joy of "giving our hearts to a dog to tear."

Someone referred to Saxon as "The Happy Puppy" a long time ago, and he has remained such -- inventor of games, bestower of smiles, lavisher of kisses, giver of glad greetings, sharer of favorite toys.

Teacher of life's lessons.  "Joy's soul lies in the doing."  Listening closely with him today in the desert, I heard, clear as a bell, the glorious music Beethoven wrote to a friend's poem.  The Ode to Joy.

We Ask and Ask

How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see? -- (Bob Dylan, 1963)

*   *   *   *

The way it's supposed to work in a democracy is that the people raise the questions and their elected government provides the answers.

Our democracy is broken.  Government turns its head, just doesn't see.  The questions go on.  The questions go back in time.  The questions persist.  Where are the answers?

*   *   *   *

Do we have to wait until a disaster overwhelms us before we make the radical changes necessary to protect our world for future generations? - John Gummer (2005)

*   *   *   *

For 100 days and counting a disaster has overwhelmed us.  It is destroying life in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is destroying livelihoods on the Gulf of Mexico.  It is destroying a way of life on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

And still they want to drill.

Michigan's worst oil spill.  Lethal natural gas "fracking" explosions in Pennsylvania and Texas.  Disasters waiting to happen in Alaska.

And still they want to drill.

*   *   *   *

(If) we cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups . . .each seeking to satisfy private wants. . . If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good? -- (Barbara Jordan, 1976)

*   *   *   *

Not since the Civil War era has our nation been so divided.  Rather than the dawn of a new, better, post-racial era, the election of our first black president has only stoked the embers of latent racism back to flames.  Tea Party toters of hateful racist placards.  State laws mandating racial profiling.  Prattling heads on television and voices on radio preaching hatred of "them" in easily-recognized code, and getting rich doing so.

Rich. In 2007, the share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent of Americans reached its highest level (17.1 percent) since 1979, while the share going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level during this period (14.1 percent). Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth). If all groups’ after-tax incomes had grown at the same percentage rate over the 1979-2007 period, middle-income households would have received an additional $13,042 in 2007 and families in the bottom fifth would have received an additional $6,010. In 2007, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.3 million, up $88,800 just from the prior year; this $88,800 gain is well above the total 2007 income of the average middle-income household ($55,300). Meanwhile, the percentage of their  profits that U.S. corporations pay in taxes continues to shrink.

*   *   *   *

May there not be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty? -- (Emma Goldman, 1917).

*   *   *   *

We have a so-called PATRIOT Act that protects our liberty by emasculating the Bill of Rights.  Some "Patriots" brandish guns, wave flags, shout "Support Our Troops" and revile the Commander-in-Chief as a foreign-born fascist socialist.  Other Patriots support our troops by demanding that they be called back home before any more are killed in an unwinnable, unwanted war that was launched on a sea of lies.

*   *   *   *

Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? ? What about the children?  When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? -- (Elie Wiesel, 1999).

Afghan civilians killed  8,669. Iraqi civilians killed  392,979.

*   *   *   *

What good is a house, if you haven't got a decent planet to put it on? - (Henry David Thoreau, 1852)

*   *   *   *

"Mankind's home," Rolf Edberg wrote, "is the narrow borderland between the deathly heat beneath our feet and the coldness of space above us." This is the very borderland whose cordiality to life is being dramatically changed by carbon emissions and other human activity.  Less than a week ago, Republicans elected to Congress blocked the passage of legislation which, although too watered-down to be  a solution, represented at least a palliative.

*   *   *   *

How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?  -- (Dylan).

*   *   *   *

We ask and ask.

The American Way of Death

We are a nation of killers.  "Killer" is often a term of approval in our culture: "That's a killer app!" "Ooooh, he's a lady killer!" Etc.

We are the only nation to have used atomic power to annihilate fellow humans. 

We have malamorphosed from euphemistically "patriotic" wars like the one we ended with the A-bomb, to endless wars of invasion at the whim of our elected leader.

We have interpreted our Constitution to guarantee every citizen the right to possess the means to kill. 

We kill with greed.  One of the richest fossil fuel companies in the world, for months now, has been killing every form of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. The perpetrators of the lethal oil gush have not been penalized in any significant way.  Tacit approval.

We kill with arrogant glee.  See the pictures of the former governor of Alaska giddily displaying the bodies of wolves killed by machine-gunners in helicopters.

We kill with hate.  "Pro-life" fanatics slay abortion providers on orders from whatever hideous god-voices they hear.

We kill without compunction or compassion.  Our missiles, bombs and drones routinely miss their targets, slaying batches of innocent civilian men, women and children.  We say "oops" and call the victims "collateral damage," refusing to be bothered counting numbers.

We kill out of fear.  Here in the southwest, everything from javelinas and rattlesnakes to dark-skinned humans who might  be "illegal aliens" are fair game.

Blessed by the Second Amendment, sanctified by Patriotism and inspired by the movies of the great John Wayne, we shoot first and ask questions later. If we ask questions at all.

With all of the humans on the face of the earth, and all other living things on the planet, we share an infinitesimal sliver of universe capable of sustaining life as we know it.  Within the cosmos, our tiny planet is a mere pebble; the portion of it that sustains life is like the veneer of varnish on a desktop globe of Earth.  The interdependency of the millions upon millions of life forms is complex beyond our complete understanding, at least for the present.  But we know it's there.

Years ago, here in New Mexico, an avid hunter, roaming what is now the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, shot a wolf.  When he reached it, the animal had not yet expired.  He watched "a fierce green fire" die in the wolf's eyes.  Aldo Leopold -- for he was the hunter --  introduced the land ethic to American public discourse and pioneered the concept of setting aside natural areas, and all of their wildlife, as protected oases for the benefit of all.

Others, however, continued to hunt the Mexican gray wolf almost to extinction. Finally,  using wolves bred in captivity, land management officials began a program to re-introduce the wolves to the wild.  Today, poachers are busy killing them off -- especially the alpha males, whose deaths virtually assure the ultimate destruction of entire packs. Even on the state regulatory boards, there are those who quietly approve the actions of the poachers.

Killers.

Last June a female sea otter was frolicking just offshore in Morro Bay, CA.  A Second Amendment Patriot killed her with a single bullet to the head. Like the Mexican gray wolf, the sea otter had been hunted nearly to extinction.  Even with protected status, it has returned to but a fraction of its former numbers.

Killers.

Law? Philosophy? Consilience of life? Endangered species? 

Liberal elitist nonsense.

Fire when ready, boys! It's the American Way.

Guest Post: 'Trust Us' Is Getting Old

By BARBARA O'BRIEN

When British Petroleum applied for a permit to build the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and begin drilling, it claimed to have the technology and know-how to handle any oil spill.

But in the face of an actual spill, BP is much less confident. “This scares everybody: the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far,” BP CEO Doug Suttles said. “Many of the things we’re trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 ft.”

They’ve never been tried at 5,000 feet. Drilling for oil this deeply under the ocean is a relatively new enterprise for our species. Oil has been drilled offshore in shallow water for more than a century. But deepwater drilling is much more expensive than shallow-water drilling. For a long time drilling in deep water wasn’t tried, because it would have cost more to extract a barrel of oil than a barrel of oil was worth on world markets. It took the spikes in oil prices in recent years to make deepwater drilling profitable.

Politicians and oil executives assured us that offshore oil drilling was safe. Those tree huggers who worry about environmental disasters are nuts, they said. Yes, there have been oil rig disasters in the past, but (big wink) we know what we’re doing now. Trust us.

The laws of physics work differently nearly a mile underwater than they do on land, or shallow water, however. By now, it is obvious BP is still trying to invent a procedure that might stop the oil leak, maybe, if we’re lucky. No one appears to have been ready for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Really, this “trust us” business is getting old. How many times have we been told to “trust” some new thing, and then when the dangers surface we find out the “trusted” ones hadn’t told us the whole truth?

In the mid-Twentieth century we humans went into overdrive digging asbestos out of the earth to use in countless structures and products. There is asbestos in navy ships, in shipyards such as Bath Iron Works, asbestos in our homes and schools, asbestos in old car parts, and asbestos in landfills. And eventually, years after medical science www.maacenter.org/mesothelioma/doctors/ had determined asbestos exposure causes terrible disease, industry executives and politicians reluctantly agreed to shut down asbestos production, or at least most of it. And now the cost of asbestos abatement and mesothelioma treatment www.maacenter.org/mesothelioma/treatment/ is an ongoing problem for individuals, taxpayers, and businesses.

And do we want to talk about Vioxx? Tanning beds? And now there are questions being asked about Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in just about every plastic bottle you’ve ever touched. It may be dangerous, it may not. Opinions vary. Just note that the same political and business leaders who deny BPA could be dangerous are the same ones who like to yell “drill, baby, drill.”

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Barbara O’ Brien blogs on The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and other websites for intelligent Americans.

The 'Them-Ain't-Facts' Gang Slogs On

A half-century ago, in a small midwestern city, opposition to fluoridation of the water supply coalesced around a tall, loud, prosperous building contractor who invoked all the standard bogeymen of that time.  Communism.  Especially communism. This was a commie plot to brainwash our youth with dangerous chemicals.

At a succession of community meetings, local health officials produced scientists, doctors and dental authorities to testify to the benefits and safety of fluoridation.  The contractor's lackeys, posted in the four corners of the meeting hall, tried to shout them down.  When that didn't work the contractor -- citing his own "scientific training" (two years studying civil engineering) -- would stand up and thunder, over and over, "Them ain't facts.  Give us facts!"

And the local paper, for which the contractor was an important source of ad revenue, would report the next day that "the so-called science of the pro-fluoridation movement faced another strong challenge last night at . . . ."

Even so, the fluoridation referendum passed.

Not much has changed since those days.

Social initiatives to improve the lives of all the people -- which inevitably mean spending tax dollars --  meet the same kind of uninformed, loud, bullying opposition.

The belligerents at the town hall meetings on health care -- some of them toting guns --  were clones of the midwestern contractor shouting, "Them ain't facts.  Give us facts!"

So, too, are the climate change deniers, who have recruited their own science prostitutes, pseudo-scientists and skeptics-for-hire to bolster their cause.  Their qualifications and credentials are about as substantial as that contractor's two years studying civil engineering. But these people are persistent. 

With Ruport Murdoch's fiction-factory leading the charge, and the rest of the media sheep falling in step, hundreds of purloined e-mails exchanged among climate scientists became the "climategate scandal."  Never mind that, considered in their entirety and in context,  they were utterly innocuous,  Never mind that hacking them was a criminal invasion of privacy.  "Climategate" filled the air waves and newspaper columns and made jazzy magazine covers.

Three separate independent panels of expert scientists examined the stolen e-mails.  One by one they absolved the climate scientists of wrongdoing.  Most of the media that trumpeted "climategate" ignored the exoneration of the accused.

But now, the Murdoch disinformation empire has responded in classic "them ain't facts" style.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today asserts that a climate science report about a potential 40% decline in the Amazon rainforest has "no scientific basis."  Its expert witness?  Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, long ago discredited as a skeptic-for-hire  "all of whose writings have built nothing more than a house of cards …"

Again:

"A widely cited claim that Himalayan glaciers would all but disappear by 2035 was debunked," the same Journal editorial asserted.

In fact, new photographic evidence demonstrates that glaciers on Mount Everest are rapidly shrinking.

The glaciers were photographed in 1921 by George Mallory, the British mountaineer who died trying to be the first man to summit Everest.  Under commission of the Asia Society, the mountaineer David Brashears, who has summited Everest several times, retraced the steps of Mallory and a professional photographer, Maj. Edward Wheeler, 80 years ago, photographing the glaciers from exactly the same perspective as the British explorers.

A scientist who studied the pictures said, "“They reveal a startling truth: the ice of the Himalayas is disappearing. There has been an alarming loss in ice mass.”

The pictures are on display in New York, just a few blocks from the headquarters of Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

Top 20 Reasons for Utter Despair

Twenty reasons why this country has gone to hell and will not recover:

1. Ignorance.  Voters re-elected George W. Bush, the worst president in  history, in 2004.  Texas teaches a myth as "science."  Millions still think there were WMDs in Iraq.  Most Americans don't know what's in the health care act but they know they don't like whatever it is.  And so forth.

2. Barack Obama.  He sure can talk. 

3. Tim Geithner.  Simon Johnson, the respected MIT economist, says Geithner survived eight blunders that should have got him fired.  His opposition to Elizabeth Warren as head of the new consumer protection agency is Nos. 9, 10, 11 and 12.  I say he never should have been appointed in the first place. (See Reason No. 2).

4. Lawrence Summers.  What Tim Geithner hasn't screwed up in economic policy, Larry Summers has.

5. The too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks, which succeeded in neutering congressional attempts at regulation, assuring that they can do even more of the kinds of things that ruined the economy in 2008-09.

6.  Mortgage bankers, who will have foreclosed on more than a million homes by the end of this year. Before Bush II the national average was about 100,000 a year.

7. The fiction peddler that calls itself Fox News.  There are people who actually believe the Murdoch-Ailes version of the world is real.

8. Congress.  Most members are owned by corporations.  It has the reverse Midas touch:  All the gold it touches turns to straw.

9. Tim Geithner.  So bad he counts twice.

10. Greed.  Exxon Mobil, BP, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, Enron, Shell, Chevron, Bernie Maddoff, Donald Trump, CitiCorp,  Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana, Congress, politicians, Comcast, AT&;T, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc ad infinitum.


11. Wall Street.  See Reason No. 10.

12. Joe Lieberman.  How sharper than a child's tooth to have a thankless serpent.

13. Sarah Palin.  See Reason No. 1.

14. (Tie) Steve Malloy, Cato Institute, Christopher Monckton, Sen. James Inhofe, Daniel Flynn, Feeman Dyson, Ian Plimer and 113 others.  Their maps still have blank areas marked "Here Be Dragons."

15. The Republican Party.  Will peddle any lie, no matter how outlandish, to get Republicans elected to office or defeat Democratic legislation.

16. The Democratic Party.  Spineless, rudderless, gutless; running around in circles seeking a "center" that keeps shifting to the right.

17. The Media.  Once the government watchdogs, champions of the people, purveyors of truth.  Now the pet poodle of the powerful, propagandist to the people and purveyors  of fluff and nonsense.

18.  The Punditry.  You could fit its collective integrity in a flea's navel and still have room for Dick Cheney's heart.

19. The Tea Party.  What's IN those bags besides tea?

20.  Christofascists. The do as I say, not as I do crowd. Includes televangelists, politicians who get messages from God and perverters of the Constitution.

21.  Jingos.  Includes the flag-wavers who insist you have to "love America or leave it." Also those who refuse to believe that other governments and cultures could be superior to ours at anything.

I know.  I said 20. If bakers can toss in an extra, so can I.

Too Many Monsters to Slay

When will the American voter grow up?  Children believe in bogeymen, but adults grow out of it.  They realize there really isn't a monster in the closet; there are no snakes under the bed; the ghosts in the cemetery are imaginary and harmless.

Ah, but the typical American voter?  He or she still believes some whoppers, which leads them to vote out of fear and  against their own interests.

In the recent past these non-existent monsters have determined elections, laws and policies:

The Grandma Killer Monster.  Not only kills grandmas, but determines by bureaucratic whim who gets health care and who doesn't, forces bleeding accident victims to wait hours for treatment while papers are filled out,  and gives the hives to citizens of Canada, France, Great Britain, Sweden and other countries with single-payer -- oops! sorry! -- socialized medicine.  Belief in this monster is why we still have the worst, most expensive health care system in the advanced world.

The Raghead Demons. Not only planned and executed 9/11 attacks because we're free and they're not, but also want to destroy all Christian nations (like the U.S.), and control Barrack Obama who is a secret Muslim and wasn't born in this country anyway. They need to be rounded up, put into black prisons and tortured until they agree to take Bible instruction under Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin.

The Wall Street Colossi.  We dare not spend tax dollars to put millions of jobless back to work because these monsters are Too Big to Fail.  Also, if we put jobless Americans to work for the government they'll just get lazier and lazier and pretty soon will demand a straight-out dole. Better to assure that $500-million bonuses continue for corporate CEOs, so that they'll have the wherewithal to demand the further tax cuts to which they are entitled.

The Terrorist.  If we don't fight him "there," we'll have to fight him here.  Right here.  In our very neighborhood streets.

The Get-Up-and-Go-Killing Scalawag.  Encourages lesser Americans -- those without jobs -- to drink beer, watch TV and fart loudly, by extending their unemployment benefits.  One of Glenn Beck's favorite bogeymen.

The Liberal.  Wants to give away my tax money to lesser Americans.

The Illegal Alien Animal.  Feeds at my trough.  Takes away real Americans' jobs.  Talks funny. Smells bad.  Has lots of brats who use up my tax money getting free health care.   Can only be controlled by (1) adopting laws like Arizona's and (2) building the Great Wall of America between us and Them.

And now comes:

The Deficit Devil.  In the guise of a Democrat, it caused us to suffer deficits of trillions of dollars.  That's why we can't give jobs to the jobless, or extend their benefits; why we can't afford single-payer health care; why we can't afford amnesty for all them wetbacks we let in; why our Socialist administration has to be ousted.  But mainly, the Deficit Devil is why we have to privatize Social Security, cut Medicare benefits, eliminate Medicaid entirely  and establish debtors' prisons.  (A Republican Senator told us that only "lesser Americans" depend on Social Security in their old age.) If we don't cut Social Security, China will call in all our debt and force Americans to take low-paying jobs building computers to sell to Japan.

(Er, Mr. Devil, Sir, wouldn't it be better for people if we quit pissing money away on illegal, unwinnable wars?  We could use that money at home to. . . .)

The Tea Potty Tyrant: "Off with his head!"

Let Us Now Praise "Good" CEOs

In today's economic climate, a corporate CEO can be a good CEO only by using his enormous personal power and the unlimited power of his corporation to work against the best interests of the nation and its people.

And now that the Supreme Court has removed the last vestiges of control on corporate spending to influence government, the end of participatory democracy in the United States is inevitable.

Endless war is not in the best interests of a nation and its people.  It kills our sons and daughters, drains our treasury and profits only the defense industry corporations and their allies in the military industrial complex. And yet Congress, soon to be entirely owned by corporations, mindlessly continues to vote funding for unwinnable wars that were illegal in the first place.  The few members of Congress who led opposition to the funding will almost certainly lose their offices in November.

An overpriced and under-achieving health care system is not in the best interests of the nation or its people.  And yet even a feeble attempt at reform met such vigorous and effective corporate resistance that even many of the people who needed it most wound up buying into the propaganda slogans like socialized medicine, killing grandma and forfeiting personal medical decisions to government bureaucrats.

American unemployment is at its worst depths since the Great Depression, but Wall Street is hiring and its salaries are rising.   The very same Wall Street that brought on the the economic collapse of 2008-2009 and received trillions in tax funds to save it from  itself.  The same Wall Street that rewarded its CEOs and top executives with bonus dollars to match the number of jobless Americans walking the streets in poverty. Corporate America succeeded in taking virtually all of the teeth out of the financial reform bill, just as it succeeded in emasculating the clean energy legislation.

Polluted air, waters befouled by mountaintop removal mining, unrestricted drilling for gas and oil are not in the best interests of the nation or its people.  And yet when a drunken captain ran the Exxon  Valdes aground in a pristine bay in Alaska, the corporation eventually escaped with less than a slap on the wrist.  A federal court ordered the company to pay $287 million in actual damages and $5 billion in punitive damages.  Successful appeals by Exxon-Mobil halved the punitive damages and a successful appeal to the Supreme Court knocked off another 80 per cent: judicial corporate welfare for a company that posted the highest profits in United States history and today earns more than $1,300 per second  in profits. Last year Exxon Mobil paid not one thin dime to the IRS in United States income taxes.

Much has been made -- by corporate-owned politicians --  of the $20 billion compensation fund President Obama persuaded BP to post for the oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that replaced Exxon Valdes as the most heinous man-inflicted environmental disaster in history.  "Extortion," one called it.  The $20 billion itself is a pittance against the likely final cost of the disaster, just as the original $5 billion has proved to be in the case of Prince William Sound.  But the corporate-owned courts and politicians have already begun pecking away at government's cautious response to the BP crimes.  A federal judge who owns huge shares of oil stocks overturned the government's temporary ban on new drilling.  When BP's legal team has had time to study and employ the Exxon-Mobil strategy, the $20 billion will go "poof."

Cancer  is not in the best interests of a nation and its people.  When science provided overwhelming evidence that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, Phillip-Morris and other big tobacco corporations decided to attack the science.  They hired pseudo-science frauds and trained science whores to produce "studies" that challenged the real science. 

When real science demonstrated that human activity, principally the discharge of carbons into the atmosphere, has been changing the climate of the planet in a way that threatens its living things, Exxon Mobil and other giants in  the extraction of fossil energy took a page from the tobacco playbook.  Thery hired whores and frauds -- even, in fact, some of the same ones who were employed by Big Tobacco -- to contest the real science.  Thus has it taken the teeth out of any legislative efforts to solve the climate problem.

As in the case of health care and tobacco, among the citizenry the same poor fools who bought the corporate propaganda have taken up the anti-climate science crusade.  They'll be the first to blame the government when living things that are important to them begin to die.

As will all those "good" CEOs whose companies, like Exxon Mobil and the great banks, are too big to fail.

Another Nail in Journalism's Coffin

Most of the best journalism I've seen committed took place before there was Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or, for that matter, an Internet.  I guess the closest thing we had to Twitter was the after-edition banter in press clubs and "newspaper bars" like Bleeck's and Gough's in New York or the Anchor in Detroit. We were pretty much apolitical back then, but not without opinions -- fiercely-held opinions --  which flew loud and profane as the nectar flowed.  Nobody to my knowledge was ever fired for anything they said on those occasions.

Not so today.  A senior editor at CNN has just been fired for a Twitter.  Honest.

This is the tweet that ended the 20-year CNN career of Octavia Nasr, the network's senior Middle East news editor:

"Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah  . . . . One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

This sent the usual right-wing crazies into a typical frenzy, because they regard all of Hezbollah, but especially prominent leaders like Fadlallah as demonically evil terrorists who hate America because its people have freedom.  CNN responded in the usual way, by immediately dismissing Nasr because her "credibility" was "compromised."

Never mind that the Associated Press reported that Fadlallah was "one of Shiite Islam's highest and most revered religious authorities with a following that stretched beyond Lebanon's borders to Iraq, the Gulf and as far away as central Asia."

Never mind that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a strong ally of the U.S., praised Fadlallah as "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity,"

Nasr is not the first journalist to be fired for privately expressing views contrary to her corporate bosses' Groupthink Rules of Political Correctness, nor will she be the last.  With each dismissal, a new cold chill runs down the spines of working journalists, making them more likely to toe the corporate line in everything they do, say or write.

The result is that most "journalism" today is stenography.  The government said this, the corporation said that and the "analysts" -- ex-generals on the Pentagon payroll, ex-lobbyists on corporate payrolls, ex-pols like Karl Rove, ex-high school point guards like Sarah Palin -- say this is what it all means. 

Until her ill-fated Tweet, Octavia Nasr played by the Groupthink Rules, tight-rope-walking across the corporate Niagara of spin, shout and spout without a misstep. 

But in today's corporate America, as covered by  today's corporate media, one misstep is all it takes.

A friend who covered environmental issues with great distinction for many years was fired because his private e-mails -- some of which were intercepted and sent to corporate honchos -- were "too pro-environment."  Think about it.  He should be more pro-pollution?

Opinions lacking the corporate imprimatur -- even if they're fundamentally true -- are not welcome.  Truth is dangerous in the hands of a mob.

Truth and Turtles Die in the Gulf

 Kurt Luedtke, who was a helluva newspaperman before he became a helluva screenwriter (Out of Africa, Absence of Malice), invented "Commander Whitehead" to penetrate boundaries of official secrecy during disasters. When he was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press,  "Whitehead" got him past National Guard sentries during the Detroit riot and into a hospital room full of survivors of a Great Lakes ship sinking.

But that was then and the Great BP Oil Catastrophe is now.  There's no "Whitehead" to enable journalists to get at the truth of  what's happening on the Gulf Coast.  The entire operation  is a lesson in corporate power to control government and information.

Even before the Coast Guard adopted its infamous new 65-feet-from-the-boom rule to prevent journalists from seeing actual damage, coverage of oil company crimes was thwarted by badged thuggery.  Turns out BP long ago bought the local police and sheriffs in Gulf Coast  counties whose jobs and economies are dependent on oil drilling or refining. One Louisiana parish has initiated 57 extra police shifts per week devoted exclusively to BP security detail -- and paid for by BP directly to the sheriff's office. These vigilantes detain journalists attempting to photograph BP activities, turn them over to BP's own security thugs for questioning, and censor in the camera photographs that BP doesn't like.

As early as last May, Newsweek reported that local and federal lawmen in cahoots with BP were blocking access to sites where damage resulting from the spill was most visible. Two weeks later the New York Times reported that "journalists struggling to document the impact (of the catastrophe) found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials."

And now comes the tale of Rachel Polish, as disclosed by a blog-journalist named Georgianne Nienaber "with considerable input from residents of the Louisiana Delta."

When Ms. Nienaber posted criticism of the new Coast Guard secrecy rules as a violation of the First Amendment, Rachel Polish put on one of her official hats and, as Petty Officer Rachel Polish of the Deepwater Horizon Response team,  posted a rebuttal.

PO Polish is indeed a Coast Guard reservist, on duty as press liaison for the government agency spearheading the federal role in dealing with the disaster.

But she wears other hats, as well.  A year ago, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide (Ogilvy PR) announced Rachel Polish as Vice President of Digital Strategy of the 360 Digital Influence Group on the West Coast.

And who is Ogilvy's biggest client?  BP Oil.

Get the picture?  The Coast Guard enacts new rules prohibiting journalists from seeing first-hand what's going on.  In effect, it forces journalists "covering" the catastrophe to get their information solely from the Coast Guard press liaison -- who happens to be a well-paid flack for BP's public relations firm.

Don't you just love the way the United States of Corporate America works?

Commander Whtehead, wherever you are, it's time to return to duty. They're hiding biocide behind a badge.

The Gadsden Purchase

Every now and then Gadsden and I get together at The Bean for coffee  and conversation about the declining condition of the country.

"Priests," he declared the other day, "are the answer."

"Priests?," I said.  "You're not Catholic."

"Don't have to be to see what needs to be done.  And that's  to require that all candidates for public office have to be priests."

"What a dumb idea."

"Not al all.  What's the biggest problem with government today?  Graft. Call it what you will -- campaign donations, free speech by corporate persons -- it's still graft.  And priests take vows of poverty.  Et voila!  No more graft.

"The second biggest problem in government is sex.  You got your zipper problems, your foot in the bathroom problems, your page boy problems, your hooker problems, sex for favors problems.  Priests take vows of chastity.  Et voila!  No more sex problems.

"Finally, you got elected officials ignoring the will of the people because of either problem No. 1 or Problem No. 2.  Priests take vows of obedience.  Presto!  No more ignoring the will of the people."

I Said, "Something tells me it wouldn't work, Gadsden."

"Show me a single flaw," he said defensively.

"First of all, take the vow of poverty.  If members of Congress, for example, couldn't accept salaries, how would they live in Washington?  It's a very expensive city?"

"Faith-based initiatives," Gadsden said.

Exasperated, I turned to the sex thing.  "Everyone knows that pedophilia has been rampant in the priesthood for years.  Even the Pope finally admitted it.  So much for the vow of chastity."

"Think Abu Ghraib," Gadsden said.  "A few rotten apples . . ."

"Well then," I said, "consider the obedience vow.  Couldn't that just as well mean that rather than having lobbyists call all the shots, we'd have bishops and cardinals calling them?  Talk about theocracy! "

"Picky, picky, picky," Gadsden said.  "The Supreme Court will handle that."

"A bunch of Catholics," I exclaimed.  "What makes you think they'd control bishops any more than they control lobbyists?"

Now Gadsden was downright annoyed.  "So then, smart guy, what should we do?  Simply abolish government entirely?"

A customer at an adjoining table who had overheard our conversation tapped him on the shoulder with her Barretta 9 mm.  "'Scuse me, sir," she said.  "Care to attend a Tea Party meeting tonight?"

The morning wasn't a total loss.  Gadsden paid for coffee.