by David Burn | Mar 18, 2005 | Politics
“An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” –Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn grew up in a working-class family in Brooklyn where he became a shipyard laborer and later, in World War Two, an Air Force bombardier. After the war, he attended Columbia University under the GI Bill and earned his Ph.D in history. He has taught at Spelman College in Atlanta and later at Boston University. He has also been a history fellow at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bolgna. Professor Zinn has won numerous awards and honors including The Thomas Merton Award, The Eugene V. Debs Award, The Upton Sinclair Award and The Lannan Literary Award. In a career that has spanned over forty years, Howard Zinn, as a professor, radical historian, progressive political theorist, social activist, playwright and author, has brought a fresh, thoughtful, humane and common-sensical approach to the study and teaching of history. Among his twenty books and plays are La Guardia in Congress, Disobedience and Democracy, The Politics of History, The Pentagon Papers: Critical Essays, Declarations of Independence: Cross Examining American Ideology, You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train (his autobiography), The Zinn Reader, Marx in Soho and the seminal, highly celebrated A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to the Present.
For more on Howard Zinn, see this Robert Birnbaum interview.
by David Burn | Mar 17, 2005 | Politics
from The Guardian: In his annual letter to investors in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett painted a bleak picture of a future US in which ownership and wealth had continued to move overseas, leaving the economy in thrall to foreign interests and faced with financial turmoil and political unrest.
Mr. Buffett said in the last 10 years foreign powers and their citizens had accrued about $3 trillion worth of US debt and assets such as equities and real estate. At current rates, he predicted that in another 10 years’ time the net ownership of the US by outsiders would amount to $11 trillion.
“This annual royalty paid [to] the world would undoubtedly produce significant political unrest in the US. Americans … would chafe at the idea of perpetually paying tribute to their creditors and owners abroad. A country that is now aspiring to an ‘ownership society’ will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a ‘sharecropper’s society’.”
by David Burn | Mar 15, 2005 | Politics
One of the great political stories in generations is about to unfold, as Richard ‘Kinky’ Friedman, humorist, performer, mystery writer, animal activist, habitual cigar smoker and Texas Monthly columnist, has announced his run for the governorship of the state of Texas in 2006.
Friedman views the success of Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California as a sign he can prevail similarly in Texas.
After graduation from University of Texas, Friedman joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Borneo. He had some modest success on the entertainment circuit with his band, The Texas Jewboys, attracting the attention of Rolling Stone Magazine in 1972 and eventually touring with the famous all-star Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue in the mid 1970s.
A decade later, he traded music for a typewriter and wrote the first of 17 mystery novels. His readers include President Bush and former President Clinton and both had him as an overnight guest at the White House.
If elected, Friedman plans to appoint his friend, Willie Nelson, as Energy Czar and work with him to make bio-diesel a viable reality. He also plans to improve education, abolish politcal correctness and “beat back the wussification of Texas if we have to do it one wuss at a time.”
by David Burn | Mar 7, 2005 | Art, Film, Politics
“The Color of Paradise” is a fable of a child’s innocence and a complex look at faith and humanity. Visually magnificent and wrenchingly moving, the film tells the story of a boy whose inability to see the world only enhances his ability to feel its powerful forces.
As I watched this stunning film from Iran I had several thoughts. One, be grateful for what you have in life. A work like this really puts Western materialsm in its place. It also made me think how important art is to creating bridges between cultures. This film reveals what a beautiful country Iran is, and what amazing people some of its citizens are.
To make war on a people, they must first be dehumanized. That task becomes much harder to do as the world becomes smaller each day via the sharing of our cultures through art.
by David Burn | Jan 9, 2005 | Politics
from Salt Lake Tribune editorial pages: “Surprisingly, the controversy of Michael Moore speaking at Utah Valley State College did not die with the departure of Moore’s limousine to the airport or even with the re-election of George W. Bush.
Rather, the issue continues to flare up in different ways in different places and raises serious questions about the role of public institutions of higher education in homogenous communities.
That UVSC does not strictly model its educational program on the normative standards of the surrounding community evidently foments the ire of many local taxpayers who see UVSC’s proper identity as a sort of publicly accessible satellite of Brigham Young University.
Such a view fails to acknowledge the obvious fact that while BYU’s central mission, as a private ecclesiastical institution, is the exploration of reason within the framework of faith, UVSC’s central mission, as a public institution, is the exploration of faith within the framework of reason.
The importance of UVSC to Utah County is directly proportional to the homogeneity of the community it serves. Given the fact that Utah County is perhaps the reddest county in the reddest state of the union, that importance is beyond estimation.”
David R. Keller is director of the Center for the Study of Ethics and associate professor of philosophy at Utah Valley State College.
by David Burn | Dec 30, 2004 | Politics
from LA Times: A U.S. Army combat veteran on leave from a unit headed back to Iraq arranged for a friend to shoot him in the leg in an attempt to avoid returning to the war zone, Philadelphia police said Thursday.
Spc. Marquise Roberts, 23, told police he had been shot Tuesday afternoon as he walked past two men arguing on a North Philadelphia street. But police said their investigation found that Roberts actually was shot once in the leg by a friend as part of a scheme to avoid returning to Iraq.
Philadelphia Police Inspector William Colarulo said Roberts was shot by his wife’s cousin, Roland Fuller, 28, in North Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon. Hospital officials called police after Roberts sought medical treatment — standard policy for gunshot wounds, Colarulo said.
More than 5,000 soldiers have been charged with desertion from bases in the U.S. and overseas since the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, according to Pentagon statistics.
The military defines desertion as more than 30 consecutive days absent without leave.
by David Burn | Dec 11, 2004 | Digital culture, Politics
John Perry Barlow, former rancher, internet freedom fighter and renowned songwriter reveals quite a lot in his latest blog entry. For one, we now know he attends Burning Man in the black rock desert of northwest Nevada (and here I thought only the cool kids were doing that). He goes on to tell how he’s fighting the Constitutionality of drug charges brought against him. He was taken off a plane bound for New York last year, after authorities allegedly found pot, ‘shrooms and Vitamin K in his suitcase.
Here’s a passage from his entry: I was stripped, cavity-searched, and eventually tossed into a small cell with a marvelously odd collection of California’s less fortunate. There I spent most of the remaining day, while I attempted to raise the truly astonishing $25,000 bail upon which my liberty now depended. Finding rescue was tricky. The “phone” in my cell could only make local or collect calls. I didn’t know anyone in Redwood City and cell phones won’t accept collect calls. Furthermore, they’d taken my address book and my cell phone and calls to directory information were not permitted. I was left with the few land line numbers I still keep in my head. Lunch consisted of a slice of baloney between two unadorned slices of Wonder Bread, but I didn’t have much appetite. At some point in the recent past, someone had thrown up in our cell and no one had bothered to clean it up. I was getting what Rudy Giuliani liked to call, during his tenure as the Mean Mom of New York, “a taste of the system.”
by David Burn | Nov 19, 2004 | Politics
Berkeley is a wonderful place. It’s pretty. It smells good. There’s no better place for espresso anywhere in North America. I could go on.
Then there’s the down side. Due to the town’s progressive history and the locals’ tolerant attitudes (and perhaps the mild climate), an inordinate number of nut jobs call Berkeley home. Scratch that. They’re not crazy, they’re crazy about politics, particularly of the leftist variety. I know. For a short time I worked as a development officer for the Bay Area Green Party, and it was a scarring experience. Here’s but one example. I had written a letter to the local Whole Foods Market–arguably one of the most progressive companies in America–asking them for support. As it turns out, this outraged the head of the East Bay Greens, for the store was not unionized.
Tonight, I came across this wonderfully apt image from the “How Berkeley Can You Be?” parade and it brought back a flood of memories.
by David Burn | Nov 12, 2004 | Politics
by David Burn | Nov 11, 2004 | Politics
At times, I have had a soft spot for conspiracy theories. So, maybe it should come as no surprise that my liberal friends are sending me reports of alleged voter fraud. Although, I believe this trend has more to do with my friends’ collective disbelief at the outcome of last week’s election, than my penchant for the story beneath the story.
Thom Hartmann writing for Common Dreams points out that anyone that can hack into a personal computer can hack into a central tabulator (the machine that counts votes from hundreds of precincts), since central tabulators are, in fact, nothing more than PCs. Makes sense.
But the thing that really grabbed me is the news that Karen Hughes, one of Dubya’s closest advisors, told the President on election day that he was going to lose and lose big, since Kerry was ahead in all the battleground states. This revelation indicates to me that if a right wing geek squad did intervene on Bush’s behalf, chances are he and his inner circle knew nothing about it.
