"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." March 04 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Students Protest Over Their California Ejukashun - The One Thing That HAS NOT Worked When It Comes To Educating Californians Is Throwing More Money At It [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps CBR 10:08 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
In The News:
Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio.
In Iraq - This coming Sunday is national election day but the voting has already begun and there have already been two bombings. Last heard, a number of Sunni politicians are boycotting these elections and on the other side of that potential-for-mayhem-loaded religious equation there had been a reported renewal of a 2003 arrest warrant issued for Moktada al-Sadr... Leader of the Mahdi Army and spiritual leader to millions of Iraq's Muslims. His beneficence in calling a truce is THE ONLY REASON WHY the US has any control whatsoever of the infrastructure in a number of Iraqi cities. Associated Press discovered the warrant's renewal but the Iraqi authorities are claiming, even after thorough fact-checking by AP that the warrant was in 'error'.
More on that from Juan Cole at Informed Comment Here(initial report) and Here(denial).
The backlog of bills created by Republican Senator Jim Bunning's obstructionism over a temporary extension to unemployment benefits is beginning to ease as highways and road projects, senior centers, and the Small Business Administration among other agencies, offices, and projects are re-funded.
In the House of Representatives there is a Health Reform bill showdown with congressional anti-abortion activists.
California's students, especially, but not limited to university students, are on strike today over severe cuts to the state's educational budgets, programs and facilities even as student fees and tuition increase dramatically. Pretty soon only 'rich kids' will be able to get a 'higher' education in California. But it's NOT just California where the educational divide is growing. See this sitrep and national map of strike actions across the US. Listen to the commentary for more.
Now that congressman Charles Rangel has 'temporarily' stepped down from his post as chair of the influential House Ways & Means Committee... Where the bills passed by the House are funded, Pete Stark, one of the SF Bay Area Representative has been tapped as replacement while Rangel is busy explaining why he illegally parked his disabled Mercedes among other perhaps more pressing issues. Stark has been quite 'colorful', for want of a better word, in his voting record over the years.
In OTHER news:
America, A 'Classless Society? You've gotta be kidding!
Joe Bageant: Americans Are "Hope Fiends" Because Honestly Looking at the Present Situation Would Destroy Just About Everything We Hold As RealityAn awareness of class makes clear who is screwing whom.
That's why American capitalism's official line is that we are a "classless society.
March 1, 2010 - Near midnight and I am making tortillas on an iron skillet over a gas flame. Some three thousand miles to the north, my wife and dog nestle in sleep in the wake of a 34-inch snowstorm, while the dogs of Ajijic are barking at the witching hour and roosters crow all too early for the dawn. While my good Mexican neighbors along Zaragoza Street sleep.
Yet here I am awake and patting out tortillas, haunted by the empire that I have called home most of my life.
I like to think that, for the most part, I no longer live up there in the U.S., but southward of its ticking social, political and economic bombs. Because the US debt bomb has not yet gone off, Social Security still exists, and the occasional royalty check or book advance still comes in, allowing me to remain here. And so long as America's perverse commodities economy keeps stumbling along and making lifelike noises, so long as the American people accept permanent debt subjugation -- I can drink, think and burn tortillas. Believe me, I take no smugness in this irony.
There is a terrible science fiction-like awe in the autonomous American economic monolith, in the way that it provides for us, feeds on us and keeps us as its both its lavish pets and slaves. The commodity economy long ago enslaved Americans and other "developed" capitalist societies. But Americans in particular. The most profound slavery must be that in which the slaves can conceive of no other possible or better world than their bondage. Inescapable, global, all permeating, the commodities economy rules so thoroughly most cannot imagine any other possible kind of economy.
It comes down to owning stuff, and that the stuff we own also owns us (as anyone paying rent for a storage locker can attest). Transmogrified by industrial materialism, we have become what we own. More specifically, what we are observed by the rest of our society as owning. In the commodified society of industrial materialism, owning is being. So much so, that politicians bandy the term "ownership society" about, not only without causing the public to gag, but to cheers. Even liberals who claim to dislike the term don't want to be in a "We don't own shit society." [In Full]
Audio hosting courtesy of: [www.archive.org]
Travus T. Hipp's Commentary Archive Is [ Here]
Search the archive by topic [Here]
Cabale News RSS Feed Via Internet Archive
Creative Commons Copyright
Cabale New Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR radio.
Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR
Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
Da' Buffalo's Google Reader Shared Items Feed is [Here]
View what's current without a feed reader [Here]
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
Related @ IceRocket: Travus T. Hipp, Cabale News Service, KPIG, Politics, News, Alternative News, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Domestic Policy, Breaking Politics News, Realpolitik, Republican Family Values, Social Justice
Visitors To Razed By Wolves & Cabale News
Thanks For Stopping By
.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please be patient... Comments are moderated, and puhlease use your name. "Unsigned" posts are generally not welcome. If that is a problem, send your comments to Kill@bitbucket.null