Pull Out Yours
I used to read the newspaper every morning, religiously, before anything else. Got the Cleveland Plain Dealer for a while, still get the local Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, and I receive the New York Times every day by e-mail.... Strange, though: the last month or so, for the first time in years, I haven't been quite so diligent about reading them. Got a pile of unread Newsweek and Time magazines, too.... I know we need to keep ourselves informed - but I wonder if that has anything to do with my revived attention to poetry....
Yesterday I went through my regular e-mail inbox and found over forty unread New York Timeses from July and August there. I mean, I guess I've been keeping up on news somewhat through other avenues, but....
Anyway, I knew Russia has been "engaging" Georgia lately - but this headline from yesterday's New York Times was news to me: Rice, in Georgia, Calls on Russia to Pull Out Now. Hmm... Here we have one pre-emptive warmonger who used bullshit as a pretense to slide it into Iraq (or at least swallowed her boss George/Dick's pretense and then spit the gist of it in our direction) telling another warmonger that he's wrong to slide his pretense into another country's orifice.
Instead of preaching hypocrisy to our competition, perhaps we should strike a bargain... say "you pull out yours and we'll put out ours." What do you think? Give peace a chance....
Yesterday I went through my regular e-mail inbox and found over forty unread New York Timeses from July and August there. I mean, I guess I've been keeping up on news somewhat through other avenues, but....
Bush Has Rice, Rice Has Bush
Anyway, I knew Russia has been "engaging" Georgia lately - but this headline from yesterday's New York Times was news to me: Rice, in Georgia, Calls on Russia to Pull Out Now. Hmm... Here we have one pre-emptive warmonger who used bullshit as a pretense to slide it into Iraq (or at least swallowed her boss George/Dick's pretense and then spit the gist of it in our direction) telling another warmonger that he's wrong to slide his pretense into another country's orifice.
Instead of preaching hypocrisy to our competition, perhaps we should strike a bargain... say "you pull out yours and we'll put out ours." What do you think? Give peace a chance....
I'm always astonished how quickly the US sticks its nose into other countries politics but bristles at people criticizing US foreign policy which is blatently bullying other countries most times.
And I'm sure your resurgence of time available to not reading the news is directly related to doing more poetry... but you used to get good material to rant and write about when you followed the news more carefully.. so it's probably a bit of a trade off I suppose.
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I agree, Chris! I'm working on balancing the two.
Even poetry can benefit from keeping informed.
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Ah, sweets!!! Is NATO NUT O? How about N W O? YES...It's just another bunch of the shitzgeist, I mean zeitgeist!
~HU
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Hahaha!
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We thought the exact same thing about Rice & Georgia - what hypocrisy...
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Have you seen the Keith Olbermann video about McCain and Georgia? I posted it in response to Ninure's comment below.
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I can't listen to her anymore. She's gets me. She had such a chance as an African American women with an amazing education to make change...then she went to the dark side...
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I feel you, Puggz. As bummed as I was when Bush was elected, I was happy he chose Powell and Rice for the positions he did. Unfortunately, neither were able to temper the beast, and Rice seems to committed herself to being an integral part of the beast.
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georgia on my mind
the shifts return
like they ever left?
but in our minds
it seems so,
tilted trays with
leveraged weights
slamming
into fragil barriers, as
accusations fly
in the face of
armed defiance, as
ideological entrenchments
dig
deeper into
encroaching glaciers,
frigid places
cold places…
cold war places
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I dig this, man! Smart.... Thank you so much for sharing it!
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no problem... a momentary spontaneous combustion inspired by reading the news... which usually pisses me off and funny how being pissed off can be inspiring, though i wish it necessarily wasn't... one the reason of many i have a belly full of peasant wine tonight... and am probably rambling...
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I listen to NPR on my way to and from my day-job, and check out the headlines on Google news on my phone whenever I have a moment of down-time. What you've said up there is exactly what I've been thinking the last week-and-a-half since the whole mess started. What right does the Bush administration have to criticize any other country's invasion? The invasion was launched by the new Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin. The SAME Vladmir Putin who, when stepping down as President of Russia, Bush spoke highly of: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward
and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a
sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best
interests of his country."
As much as I dislike the idea of John McCain getting elected, he does appear to have a better grasp of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. "When I looked into Putin's eyes, I saw three letters; a K, a G, and a B." I often wonder if his fucking lunatic support for the Iraq invasion and for keeping troops there is more a matter of saying what the Republican base wants to hear. I'm glad that if we do get stuck with another damn Republican for the next four years, that it is him. He'll screw up far less than the other red choices would.
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Good points about Putin. He was almost as successful at pulling the wool over Bush's eyes as folks like Cheney and Rumsfeld have been. Just shows how clueless Bush is - how flawed his intuition and his sense of good/bad are.
I'd like to believe you're right about McCain just spewing what he thinks will get him elected. In some ways all candidates do that. Four or eight years ago I would have preferred him to Bush. Now I'm not so sure. I find myself trusting him less and less with every passing week. And part of me thinks McCain is not nearly as sharp or smart as he once was. I'm curious what you (and the other commenters) think of the video I posted in response to Ninure's comment below.
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mccain is a vietnam prisoner of war who voted to allow bush to torture other prisoners. there is no honor in him. what he once stood for, he has since sold out on. the man is a whore for power. slime is as slime does, and he's a bottom feeder.
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I agree with this.. I used to have a lot of respect for McCain until he wimped out on pulling out of Iraq... I thought before that he had a lot of integrity...and now that and his campaign stance has shown him for what he truly is a mere politician... not necessarily a man of conscience or courage... as you say a true "bottom feeder".
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What struck me about the entire situation was how little saber rattling there really has been about this--from anybody. I mean, in other times, things like this have started world wars!
Maybe a little hissing and spitting by condi the cat was all we could muster because Georgie and Dick knew there could be a lot of bloody fingers pointed back at them for their dirty deeds.
And Putin was very media savvy to recognize that all the major networks would have their eye (and cameras)on Beijing--who would notice one little invasion of one little breakaway ex province in the middle of nowhere Asia? (I also find it pathetically funny that American news reporters have to explain WHERE this other Georgia is--are we all so geographically challenged that we think the Russians are landing in Savannah? Dropping bombs in Atlanta?)
Anyway, it'd be nice to have everyone pull out of everywhere but I think it's too late for coitus interruptus and we're all screwed...
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Very good points and well put.... If it was anyone other than Russia or China, I think we'd be acting even tougher. Then again, I wonder how much Georgia's geographical proximity to Iran plays in both Russia's and the United States' tactics.
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You should really do a MyTube search of McCain's comments on this. They would be funny if human lives weren't involved.
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Thank you, Ninure! Wow...
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Does anyone have the answer to what should be done about this? Is this the heating up of the cold war? That wouldn't be cool. What's the difference between Russians and the Iraqis? Who should pull out from what and when? Don't forget the oil pipeline in Georgia or the oil in Iraq. LOL on OIL
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Soil and oil and strife - oh my!
We often prefer these to life
And die
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The rabbit hole is fractal in its complexity.
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You're absolutely right.
And so many of the involved parties make the mistake of believing they're taking the pill that makes them larger... Bush, for example... and yet he's become a smaller man than he already was.
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LOL... I said McCain would fuck up LESS than the other Republican candidates. Not that he wouldn't still fuck up left and right.
Meesa glad meesa's gots Obama addy on meesa meespace.
I'm still wishing the Obama campaign would release some banner ads in sizes I can use on Poet's Haven...
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Oh-bama!
He's probably the least likely to fuck up - but I guess no one's immune to fucking up at least a little - even the "Almighty" JFK.
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oh you are deliciously wickedly nasty.
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I've been called worse.
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An excellent and accurate observation. It is startling how much "America" thinks that it is "the decider" for the whole world. This administration has proven itself to have absolutely no world view. I think that we are all ethnocentric to varying extents, but this administration has run amok with it's theory that we are always right, the rest of the world is always wrong, and it is our right and obligation to insert ourselves into the business of the rest of the world. In the same vein, it is largely ignored that we profit from our "freedom fighting" and our willingness to better other nations by toppling their governments and leaving their nations in ruins. Yet, were the roles reversed we would feel deeply and irrevocably wronged.
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Thanks, Tara! And as you might imagine, your comment makes me want to shout "Amen!"
Have you ever heard the song "America is Not the World" by Morrissey? You can read the lyrics here: http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/morrissey/3299001/lyric.jhtml.
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Thanks John for the affirmaton and the link. The song talks about exactly the thought I was trying to express. It's quite dysfunctional how we are so ready to go to war to right what we perceive to be wrongs and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to do so. Yet when there is a national disaster somewhere in the world or even in our own country, our government cries poor. I seem to recall right after the Tsunami we made a "generous" offer of 250,000 in aid. Another missed opportunity to do some real good in the world, and earn back some of the respect that we hve lost in the world community without going to war.
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