Food, Inc., the movie: Food for thought; fuel for debate

In his Sunday column, and today's blog at the NYT, Nicholas Kristoff discusses the new movie Food, Inc., which aims to enlighten our increasingly unhealthy populace about the madness that is the nation's current and predominant food-production system (also known industrialized corporate agriculture or simply, Big Ag).

I’ve often criticized America’s health care system, and I fervently hope that we’re going to see a public insurance option this year. But one reason for our health problems is our industrialized agriculture system, and that should be under scrutiny as well.

A terrific new documentary, “Food, Inc.,” playing in cinemas nationwide, offers a powerful and largely persuasive diagnosis of American agriculture. Go see it, but be warned that you may not want to eat for a week afterward.

Full disclosure: my husband Robert's new venture--a solar-and-wind-powered organic and hydroponic vegetable farm with enclosed greenhouses--will be harvesting its first round of crops this fall. So as you'd imagine, Robert and I will definitely be going to see Food, Inc.; hopefully our state's various agribusiness barons didn't order armed guards to confiscate all the reel copies of it at the Georgia-Florida border (I kid, I kid...).

Have any readers seen it, and if so, what are your thoughts about the movie in particular and the effort to educate the public about Big Ag--and the health woes caused by processed, hormone-laden, genetically-manipulated, overly-fatty, corn-syrup-saturated rubbish that America has been conditioned to accept as food--in general?

Happy Fathers' Day, Dear Robert

With big hugs and kisses from your very own gang of Mini-Me's. (And me.)

3 Boys Rocks!

XXXXX
Deborah

@ President Obama: Please stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act

We Floridians are having one of those classic sticky-toffee summers, you know, the body-baking, inertia-promoting kind that predispose you to being in a bad mood, often before the day has even got off the ground.

It's not that. The normally all-affecting weather is irrelevant.

Nor is it the fault of Messrs. Worry and Fear; although I know them well (and who wouldn't, given how incessantly, how intrusively, they've been hanging around these days). Nor is boredom to blame, although that too, especially when I see someone engage in the same reprehensible behavior over and over, and especially, especially when that someone is not a child, but rather, an adult whom I'd previously admired; a leader, shall we say. At such times, as now, what I tend to feel is an oddly combustible combination of boredom and frustration, the results of which might best be described as fury, if that makes sense.

Right now, I am furious that in 2009, there are still some Americans who do not have equal rights, neither in reality nor even scrawled somewhere within the laundry list of moral abstractions that is the law. And I'm furious that the very presidential candidate who in February 2008 said this:

"Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday," he said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers.

"I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian," he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

...and who went on to become the first African-American to be elected president, igniting a breathtaking cosmic lightshow of a win for civil rights in America, has now, for reasons I cannot fathom, defended the loathsome Defense of Marriage Act in a brief filed by the DOJ, the logic of which was flawed; the language, utterly offensive.

From Credo, who will present a petition (goal: 30,000 singers, and they're already 70% of the way there) to the White House:

President Obama and Attorney General Holder cannot stand behind a brief which, per the New York Times, "cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece."

Sign this petition today to ask President Obama and Attorney General Holder to withdraw this brief and apologize for its contents. We expect better from this administration than to compare same-sex marriage to incest.

Please do sign it, dear readers. It's but one thing, but it's something.

Also at Cogitamus.

litbrit joins the twitter olympics...

Well, the heavy-handed censorship that Iran imposed on its citizens during the recent election couldn't contain the ongoing uprising and the thousands of twitter messages that made it out to the world; this, above all else, has convinced me that I ought to get with the program, join the kewl kids, and give the, er, newfangled whizzo technology twit-thingie a try, so here goes (eventually, I'll get the feed thing going in the right margin). You can now follow this writer/mother/dreamer's quips and quotidian mumblings on twitter, should you be so inclined:

http://twitter.com/litbrit

Also, it gives me a great excuse to post another Python video (as if I needed an excuse, right?)

Feminism vs. the faint of heart: Help, help...I'm being repressed!

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!

Posted as a little thank-you to talented feminist blogger The Apostate, who found herself hosting an impromptu (and ever-growing) discussion group for the departing readers and ex-contributors (like Yours Truly) of The Feminist Blog Formerly Known as Shakespeare's Sister. In a June 4th post, Apostate wrote:

There’s more drama going on at Shakesville. It doesn’t seem like that blog is going to survive long in its current format. That format would be the “community we cherish” format. That format is doomed to failure because online communities are by definition dysfunctional.

If you read the threads linked in the comment I linked to, and if you have been following many of the ridiculous McEwan flounces over not getting enough money from blog-readers, and other conniption fits and the ensuing apologies, and the slams on regular commenters over minor infractions and the constant language policing, and the self-shaming and the worship at the altar of McEwan, and blah blah blah, you know what I’m talking about – it’s a madhouse.

Shortly thereafter, the 'Ville went dark, sending its current readers into a tailspin over the weekend. Then, early this week, a magisterial magnum opus appeared, one which chided "the community" for all its transgressions against their leader--to whose head, it must be noted, no gun was held (and that metaphor right there would've led to me being drawn and quartered, as would that metaphor), since blogging, as we know, is neither mandate nor sentence, but rather, a voluntary exercise in expression--and laid out an eight-point commenting guide (!) from which condescension dripped and splattered like so much spilled syrup.

As Apostate noted:

I’m not sure why online “communities” are so fragile. I think the problem really is the medium. You can’t do community except in person, face to face. Any time you start writing shit down, congregating around a cause, or are removed from the physical presence of your fellows, there’s that much more information to manage and agree to without the civilizing influence of looking another person in the eye.

Yes. The concept of a "safe space" is, ironically, far easier to uphold in a physical environment for that very reason: humans are much less likely to insult or threaten a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being who's right in front of them.

If you haven't read the naughty konagod's take on safe, er chafe spaces, I commend to you, with my heartiest cheers, kona's lengthy, hilarious, Carlin-esque parody of the aforementioned Magnum Hopeless:

While konagod considers konagod a progressive blog, or at least considers himself progressive in a lazy hippie kind of way, this is also a chafe space. Visitors need not check their privilege at the door (we have no bouncers and somebody without privilege might make off with it) so best you keep it close at hand and just be aware of it. No one is expected to be perfect; everyone is expected to be willing to self-examine and if you want to touch yourself in strange places while here, far be it from konagod to interfere. Focus on the fun. It's a blog. He can't see you.

And if all this strikes you as an awful lot of insider baseball because you've never wandered over to that blog and aren't especially interested in watching a trainwreck-in-progress, well, at least you've now got two compelling, new-to-you voices to check out--The Apostate and konagod--and a terrific political Python clip to watch. What are you waiting for?!

Also at Cogitamus.

Friday Frank: Watermelon in Easter Hay; Barcelona, 1988

I know, I've posted this beautiful instrumental before (it was a while ago, though). Call me selfish, but I feel a strong need for some inspiring artistry today, and since it's Friday, this FZ piece makes sense. If I recall, it was one of Frank's favorites.

As one YouTube commenter notes: One of my very favorite pieces of FZ music. Beautifully melodic, yet it still contains Frank's trademark, quirky phrasing. A brilliant piece of guitarwork for those not as familiar with Frank's own style as they are with those of some of his famous hired guns.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

Boycott Anti-American Psychotalkers! Sing it, Ed.

Via Firedoglake.

Propagandize this: Health care for all. Now.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

-- the late Australian social scientist Alex Carey

This article was published last year, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (then a candidate for the presidency) was proposing a system of allowing the private, for-profit health insurance companies to work together to cover everyone (?) rather than scrap it all and build us, from the ground up, a powerful, comprehensive, nationalized system like the ones they have in other developed (and even some undeveloped) countries. Jake at Whiskeyfire writes:

The truth is that large government run programs such as social security are models of efficiency. We have the data and proof. At any rate they couldn't be less efficient than the private health insurance industry. Many estimates of the waste inherent in the private healthcare industry run in excess of 1 trillion dollars annually. There is the answer to that question about where we might find a trillion dollars a year to finance this venture.

We should not forget as we wind our way through this debate about dollars, medical records, reimbursement rates, economies of scale and the like that real people are suffering every day at the hands of people who are willing to sacrifice the health of their fellow men and women for a bit more money. Let me just say that this is what evil looks like and if there is a hell this would consign one to the lower levels in my estimation. If your work causes people to suffer that is evil and your soul is corroding as quickly as your wallet is growing.

Under President Obama, the current reform plan under review is, let's face it, a diluted, hybridized, private-public version; it's far from the socialized medicine model many of us lefties believe is the fairest, most efficient, most cost-effective, and most humane way to care for the health and well-being of our citizens. Even so, the currently-discussed "plan" has obviously got Big Insurance, along with its PR firms and personal handmaids supporters in Congress--Ben Nelson, cough cough--in a tizzy. Big Insurance doesn't want us to have any public option at all. Because then, they will have to compete with an entity that actually provides access to health care. (What, you thought health care insurers were in it for the rewarding, patriotic, humanitarian aspects of providing access to health care for Americans?)

And for some reason, what Big Insurance wants is getting plenty of traction, when in fact there are, what, a couple of hundred million of us and a relatively small number of them?

Democracy? Now?

The statistics laid out herein, alone, demonstrate that the bullshit we're already being bombarded with courtesy of Big Insurance--Oh, but Americans will lose their ability to make choices! Americans don't want to have health care rationed! Americans don't want to be on waiting lists!--is exactly that: bullshit.

Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists. Those of us who've sat through even a single semester of PR or advertising will immediately recognize these as negative transfer words, sledgehammers in any propaganda-writer's arsenal. They're words (oftentimes they're images) with widely-recognized positive--or, as in this case, negative--associations. And you plaster them all over the thing onto which you want to transfer the previously-established positive or negative reaction. Hence, if you want to make a politician look good, you place lots of flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills in his television spot, since people already react positively to flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills--in pretty much any context.

Correspondingly, if you want to make a policy proposal look bad, you recycle the same negative associations with worst-case-scenario tales from abroad--disingenuous, out-of-context, and even outright false though they may be--that were instrumental in deep-sixing said policy the last time around. Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists.

I'm just amazed they haven't resurrected Harry and Louise. (Or dug them up, since I don't remember them ever getting the coverage or the health care they talked about needing, so perhaps their stories ended as tragically as have the stories of so many Americans.)

Make no mistake: the companies fling that bullshit at us because they do not want Americans to think about the long wait-times and restriction of choices they already endure, even with top-drawer PPO health coverage: three or four weeks for a simple appointment at the pediatrician's; six months to see a psychologist or gastroenterologist (and if you don't have private insurance, forget about seeing those specialists altogether, because the first question the receptionist will ask, when you call, is not "What's wrong?" or "How may we help you?" but rather, "Who is your insurer?"); the "choice" of paying for vital but non-formulary (and thus exorbitantly expensive) prescription medicine instead of taking care of car-repairs or, heaven forbid, buying something to eat other than lentils and rice that month. They do not want Americans to consider the fact that "elective" surgery--i.e. having cataracts removed so that one can, you know, see properly, which is considered elective or optional surgery by many policies including Medicare--can cost an American tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.

Or just bankrupt him completely: as reported everywhere this week, there are serious financial meltdowns going on within families around the country when someone falls ill or has a serious accident, which are things that can and do happen to us all, every single day. More than 60% of bankruptcies in the United States are caused by a health care crisis. Not frivolous spending or mismanagement of income or living above one's means. A health care crisis.

In other words, whereas some citizens of the world have free*, fully-accessible medical care, well-care, prescription medicine, and emergency care--plus the security of being able to live their lives, do their work, and engage in sports and exercise without the crushing worry that an illness or accident will strip them and their families of everything they own and have worked for--AND whereas those citizens might sometimes have to wait for non-emergent surgery like cataract removal (although that, too, will still be paid for by the state when it comes time for the surgery)--something not unlike the wait period that even the best-insured American, save perhaps the odd sports celebrity or movie star, endures to have any sort of non-emergent treatment, depending on the number of specialists in any given field and geographic location, and the demand for their services...

...whereas some citizens of the world get to have all that, America gets to have meaningless, semantically-dependent non-benefits like "choice" and "no wait times".

Well, no, of course there aren't any wait times for the woman who needs cataract surgery if she can't afford it. You don't get on wait-lists for something you can't have in the first place.

Of course there is no wait time for the millions of children whose parents can't afford insurance and who thus don't get their shots or visit the pediatrician; whose prenatal care was spotty (if it existed at all); and whose nascent medical problems, presenting now, could be addressed--but aren't--instead of being ignored and permitted to worsen and develop into chronic, full-blown, infinitely costlier problems as adults.

I don't get it. I really don't. How can the richest, most powerful nation on Earth fall for this? How can we stand for this? (Emphasis, as usual, is mine.)

Cuban life expectancy in 2006 was 77.6 years, while the life expectancy of the United States for that same year was slightly less, 77.5 years (United Nations Development Program, 2006). It is interesting that poor Cuba with a history of poverty before their 1959 socialist revolution, and a devastating U.S. imposed economic blockade since, is able to provide good healthcare for everyone through socialized medicine. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment, turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance, or allow insurance companies to decide, based on profit motive, whether the insured actually receive the care they paid for and need. The Cubans have done this by taking the profit out of illness and injury and providing healthcare as a basic human right.

Canada, like Cuba, has a higher life expectancy than the United States. In 2004 the life expectancy of Canada hit 80.2 years (Statistics Canada, 2004). With Canada’s socialized health insurance system, like Cuba’s socialized medical system, every single person is covered. In the United States 45.8 million Americans do not have health insurance (U.S. Department of Health and human Services, 2005).

On another key indicator of health, infant mortality, the United States is also nearly the worst in the developed world, only worse than the recently turned capitalist country of Latvia (Green, 2006). The infant mortality rate in the United States in 2002 was 7.0 deaths before the age of one per every 1,000 live births (Center for Disease Control, 2005). In comparison, other advanced countries with forms of socialized medicine and socialized health insurance have lower infant mortality. This includes rates per thousand births in Japan of 3.2, Germany with 4.4, Italy with 4.5, France with 4.6, and the United Kingdom with 5.6 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

Cuba, with their system of socialized medicine has an infant mortality rate of 6.2 per thousand live births, a rate much lower the United States rate of 7.0 per every thousand live births (BBC News, 2002). This is also lower than every other Latin American country (BBC News, 2002).

The only other country in the Americas with an infant mortality lower than Cuba is Canada with their system of socialized health insurance. The Canadian infant mortality rate in the year 2000 was 5.3 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

In addition, a United Nations report on the status of Native Americans in Canada has credited Canada’s relatively recently established socialized health insurance system with drastically reducing an extremely high infant mortality among Native Americans (United Nations, 1993). In 1979, that death rate for Canadian Native Americans was 27.6 per thousand live births, but by 1999 it had dropped to 8.0 deaths per thousand live births (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003). These improvements coincide with Canada’s passage of the Canada Health Act in 1984 that brought their socialized insurance system to the entire country at that time (Health Canada, 2002).

For Blacks in the United States between 1995 and 2002, the infant mortality rate was 13.9, more than double the rate of 5.9 for whites in the same time period (Center for Disease Control, 2005). Canadian statistics are a strong indication that a socialized insurance system in the United States could both decrease the infant mortality rate of the general population and dramatically decrease the infant mortality of oppressed and impoverished minorities such as Blacks, as it did for Canadian Native Americans.

The statistics show that socialized medicine is cheaper, saves lives, and helps alleviate class and racial inequalities in healthcare.

Give America health care, Congress, or you'll in effect be giving us death.

[*Free, in this context, means that instead of lavishing most of our tax dollars on the madcap, quaintly inefficient, legendarily-bloated, deathmongering shadow government known as the Defense Industry, we instead direct some of that cash toward buying America a chance at redeeming ourselves as thinking, feeling, moral human beings.]

Also at Cogitamus.

Friday Frank: Ravel's Bolero; Barcelona, 1988; with bonus Jeff Beck playing Bolero

I never tire of hearing Frank Zappa's version of Bolero. And while hunting for this clip, I came across the brilliant Jeff Beck's version, performed live at the Fuji Speedway in 2006, and thought I'd share it with readers, too.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

Keith Olbermann: O'Reilly and FOX created the climate for Dr. Tiller's Murder

Keith Olbermann says it so well: O'Reilly in particular, and FOX in general, were instrumental in whipping up the frenzy--with oft-repeated buzzwords and catchphrases that rhyme with the murdered doctor's name, for example--that grew and swelled, the way frenzies tend to do, and inevitably led to an act of extremism. In this case, a deadly, criminal, and irreversible act of extremism.

Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley appeared on Rachel Maddow's program and stated that First Amendment rights, particularly freedom of speech, meant it would be very difficult to successfully prosecute O'Reilly or any other talking head for incitement. Indeed, he said protected speech was a very broad category that even included what he referred to as "hate speech".

And he's right. O'Reilly can always just state that he is entitled to his opinion, and that's really all he was doing here: expressing his opinion, based on the facts, and the facts do include the number of abortions that Dr. Tiller performed and where he performed them.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech, in its typically polarizing way, conveniently left out the compelling and heartbreaking stories behind those late-term abortions themselves: women whose pregnancies had gone terribly, tragically wrong and who had to choose between a third-trimester termination and leaving their other children motherless; child rape victims; babies without vital organs; conjoined twins whose brief, pain-wracked lives--in the unlikely event they survived birth--would be spent hooked up to wires, tubes, and ventilators.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech was presented in the form of glib, soundbite-ish rhyming slogans and repeated over and over. Never mind that his campaign against OB/GYN Dr. Tiller--and ultimately, against a woman's right to bodily autonomy, period--was a classic case of propaganda that employed standard techniques: ad nauseam reinforcement, black-and-white fallacy, demonizing the enemy, half-truths, name-calling, oversimplification, repetition, scapegoating, and of course, the use of slogans and virtue words.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech enjoyed a multiplier factor, unimaginable to the Constitution's framers, in that it was electronically broadcast to millions of American ears and eyes, simultaneously. And then, repetitively.

I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool First Amendment supporter: Words have consequences, and so do viruses, often to a deadly degree. In protecting the former--as we surely must--let us not enable the proliferation of the latter.

Also at Cogitamus.

Waterboard Operation Rescue

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

-- the FBI's definition of terrorism, per the Federal Code of Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85)

From McClatchy, emphasis mine:

The suspect in custody for the slaying of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., a Kansas City suburb, was arrested on Interstate 35 near Gardner in suburban Johnson County, Kan., about three hours after the shooting. Tiller was shot to death around 10 a.m. inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. [...]

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.[...]

Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, "but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.'' [...]

In recent years, someone using the name Scott Roeder has posted anti-Tiller comments on various Internet sites. One post, dated Sept. 3, 2007 and placed on a site sponsored by Operation Rescue called chargetiller.com, said that Tiller needed to be "stopped."

"It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the 'lawlessness' which is spoken of in the Bible," it said. "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."

On May 19, 2007, a Scott Roeder commented on an invitation by Operation Rescue to join an event being held May 17-20 in Wichita, "the 'Nation's Abortion Capital,' to pray for an end to George R. Tiller's late-term abortion business and for all pre-born babies everywhere to once again come under the protection of law."

Let us review: an armed and dangerous man kills a doctor in broad daylight as he sat with his wife in church. Said armed and dangerous man has a record of committing acts designed to intimidate via fear: trespassing as well as verbal threats to doctors that he had "seen you now". Said armed and dangerous man is a known member of an anti-government group. Said armed and dangerous man has a police record that includes convictions for the criminal use of explosives. Someone posting under the name of said armed and dangerous man has repeatedly, on sites owned and/or sponsored by Operation Rescue, called for Dr. Tiller to be "stopped".

Like Andrew Sullivan, who posts the ghastly piece of Operation Rescue "Tiller the Killer" agitprop here (warning: it's as awful as you'd expect) in order to spotlight the deranged violence-inciting lengths to which OR goes, I abhor torture and do not support it.

But...as I understand it, I live in a country where enhanced interrogation techniques are believed to be extremely useful when it comes to finding out what terrorists are plotting next. Whom are they targeting? What are their plans? Here we have an actual, real-live terrorist in captivity--not just an alleged enemy combatant or whatever it is they're calling teenagers who got swept up in the Great Guantánamo Grabs these days. No, this guy wasn't on his way to a family wedding in rural Afghanistan--he'd already been caught, tried, and convicted on explosives charges, and now, in front of witnesses, he's shot dead a law-abiding American citizen while he was in church.

So. What does he know? Whom else are OR targeting? What are their plans? Ticking time bomb, ladies and gentlemen. Domestic terrorism is with us today, operating and "rescuing" right here on our own soil. Consistency, consistency, consistency.

I agree with Lisa: let's Waterboard Operation Rescue.

[Updated to include the FBI definition of terrorism at the top.]

Le Roi est mort; vive Le Rail!

One of Japan's famous shinkansen bullet trains,
capable of traveling 186 mph.
How many of these do we currently have running in the States?
Zero.

The letter below is fresh from the In box and reprinted in its entirety, along with my enthusiastic Hear, hear to Michael Moore's urging of President Obama to fast-track (couldn't resist) the building and installation of those much-needed bullet trains and light rail systems in America.

Trains, everyone! Trains are wonderful.

Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Government isn't the solution--Government is the problem!

Via the wonderful Roy Edroso, who has also posted an actual (I think) Libertarian's long and droningly deranged rebuttal (not recommended for narcoleptics or the easily-bored, at least, not unless your desktop is down-filled.)

Friday Saturday Frank: Bucse Festival, Budapest; 1991

In one of his last on-stage performances, Frank Zappa leaves us a beautiful and extended solo for the memory banks: his guitar gently weeps; his cigarette smolders away. It's hard to listen to this and not feel a familiar lump-in-the-throat. Before I came across this clip, my boys and I watched a segment of FZ's appearance before Congress during which he argued that words were simply words; that anything and everything--from a hairdo to a phrase to a certain-colored chair--could potentially set off the antisocial behavior of an insane person; and that, at the end of the day, censorship was wrong.

And that's the main reason for the familiar lump-in-the-throat, really: we need Frank's voice now more than ever, but upon hearing his beautiful music, we're reminded, all over again, that he's gone.

And that we're alone (but not really), so we're going to have to keep fighting the same fights without him (but not really).

Bon Weekend, everyone.

Swine Flu Update: A NY fatality; a higher alert; a lawsuit

One could be forgiven--if one relied on mainstream media for all one's information--for thinking that the swine flu (AH1N1 virus) has lost its momentum and somehow grown weaker and less threatening since the initial and frightening coverage we saw a few weeks ago. But one would be horribly wrong in so assuming. Indeed, the virus remains deadly and has brought about (ongoing) school-closings in New York, as well as other affected states (all emphasis mine):

The assistant principal of a Queens school who had been hospitalized with swine flu died on Sunday evening. It was the first death in New York State from the outbreak and came as city officials announced that five more Queens schools had been closed.

The assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, 55, had been “overwhelmed” by the illness despite treatment with an experimental drug, according to Ole Pedersen, a spokesman for Flushing Hospital Medical Center, where Mr. Wiener had been a patient since last Wednesday.

The World Health Organization is poised to raise the Pandemic Alert Level to 6--its highest--and Japan, with 93 confirmed cases, is rapidly closing schools and screening citizens:

In Japan, authorities ordered more than 1,000 schools and kindergartens in and near the cities of Kobe and Osaka to shut down. There were no confirmed cases in Tokyo.

Until Friday, Japan thought it had contained the virus after finding four infected people who had visited North America and flown home. It quarantined them and 50 other passengers, began sending medical workers to meet each flight arriving from North America to take temperatures of those on board and told visitors they would need to have their temperatures recorded daily.

But on Saturday, the authorities confirmed that a 17-year-old student in Kobe who had not been overseas was infected; as of Sunday evening, the number of recorded cases rose to 93 throughout Japan.

Kobe residents rushed to hospitals, where doctors in biohazard suits checked people for fever in tents set up in parking lots, Agence France-Presse reported. Transit workers and supermarket employees began wearing masks.

And Stateside, the widower of the first American casualty, 33-year-old special education teacher Judy Dominguez Trunnell, has taken the first steps toward filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Smithfield Foods:

Trunnell's petition seeks to investigate claims that the H1N1 outbreak began in Smithfield's massive pork operation in La Gloria and that the virus may have been caused in part by the conditions under which the farm operates, which the petition terms "horrifically unsanitary."

"This affected my family," says Trunnell, a paramedic who will now be raising two children on his own. "I need someone to be held accountable for this."

If Trunnell ends up following through with a wrongful-death suit against Smithfield Foods, it will most likely make legal history. No one has ever tried to hold a corporation responsible for the inadvertent creation of an infectious disease. Trunnell and his lawyer, Marc Rosenthal, do not claim that Smithfield purposely bred the virus, but rather that its Perote operation, which raises some 1 million pigs annually in close quarters, established the necessary conditions for the virus to arise. If Smithfield had taken better care of its farm, the petition claims, H1N1 might never have been introduced to the world.

"We think that the conditions down there are a recipe for disaster," says Rosenthal. "This type of virus is more likely to evolve and mutate in this much filth and putrescence. It's more than a mere coincidence that the first cases emerged right there in La Gloria."

Tonight, the families of Judy Dominguez Trunnell and Mitchell Wiener, who coincidentally had both devoted their lives to educating children, are in my thoughts--as of course are the many families worldwide who've been affected by this virus.

Okay, maybe the future doesn't suck...

...if we'll get to enjoy the talents of musicians like this little guy. Watch 9-year-old guitar whiz Yuto Miyazawa play Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train on the May 11th episode of Ellen. And be sure to stick around for the finale, ahem.



(H/T Sons Two and Three)

The future sucks!

Bruce Dern, playing a beleaguered fortysomething guy in the very funny movie Middle Age Crazy (1980), addresses the graduating class and tells it like it is.

(The previous post sparked my memory and sent me searching for this clip; lo and behold, there it was--thank you, O Beauteous Internets.)

Happy F*cking Graduation Day, Young People

Since Sir Charles kickstarted the whole bitterness theme last night, I thought I'd keep the bile going by sharing this wonderful rant, by Drew Magary of Deadspin, with all of you, my lovely readers.

(Has it really been, uh, twenty-eight years since I stayed up all night party-hopping across Gainesville, crawled home to my apartment at dawn, downed a quart of sludge-thick coffee, plunked the same silly tasseled hat on my head--just as they're doing this month at campuses around the nation--and wrapped my already-overheated body in the same heavy robe?

Yes...yes, I suppose it has.

And from what I'm seeing in the news, grads today will have just as much futile fun trying to parlay said degrees into paying careers: thanks to the flaccid economic conditions that characterized the early 1980's, we fresh-faced, newly-degreed journalismers considered ourselves lucky to land the odd bar-tending or cocktailing job, supplementing as we could with hilariously cheesy modeling stints for used car lots or cafeteria chains while waiting to hear back from one of the fourteen airlines to which we'd sent in applications for a flight attendant position. Good times!)

But Drew says it all so much better:

That's the reason there are celebrity graduation speakers: to boost the already healthy egos of the graduating class. It's strictly for name-dropping value. Oooh, you guys are so special, Fed Chairman Ben Barnanke wanted to give you a pep talk! This is bullshit. College grads don't deserve to be feted by celebrities, or honored, or lifted up with inspiring words. They deserve to be BROUGHT THE FUCK DOWN BY THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF REAL LIFE'S BITTER DISAPPOINTMENTS. They deserve a stern lecture from someone like me, who is NOT famous, NOT inspiring, and NOT attractive to look at.

I bet you grads had one hell of a spring, didn't you? Oh, I bet you spent your whole spring taking a miniscule courseload, lounging on blankets outside on the quad, fucking each other, drinking your gay little Twisted Teas... I bet you even smoked pot on Wednesday morning, just for the hell of it. I bet you just had the time of your fucking lives the past four years, didn't you?

YOU MAKE ME SICK.

Guess what, fuckos? Party's over. You're out of college now, and your parents are now too poor to nurse you through grad school. No more fantasy life for you. No more ice luges. No more intellectual discourse. [...]

At some point, you will not be able to sleep in past 8 or 9AM, and this will piss you off. I used to be cool. I used to be able to sleep until noon no problem. I SPAT RIGHT IN MORNING'S FUCKING EYE. No waking up at dawn for me. Waking up early is crazy gay. Am I right?

Except then I got a job, so I had to wake up early every day. Then, my body got used to waking up early every day, so it just woke the fuck right up at the same time on weekends, too. "But Body," I said to my big fat body, "There's nothing to fucking do, and I wanna sleep more." But my body wouldn't have it. Then I got married. Then I had kids. And holy shit, do kids wake up early. Not only does my kid come storming into the room at 6AM, but she screams WAKE UP at the top of her lungs every damn time. Having a kid is just like having a really mean spinning instructor. They give no fucking quarter. They're like tiny little Hitlers.

Now, even if there are no kids around, I wake up at 7AM at the latest. This should be good for me, I suppose. I get to run out and experience the full day, or something. But I don't feel that way. I feel like a complete asshat for getting up that early. I feel lamer than shit. Which is completely irrational. Then again, most anything I think or do now is beyond explanation. So rest up, kids. Because soon you'll be chewing Ambien like they're fucking Bubbalicious.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

(H/T Cajun Boy in the City)

Jesse Ventura on Bush II, torture, legalization of drugs, surfing, and more

If you enjoy hearing straight-up language delivered by someone who's certainly been there (and there, and there, too), and you happened to miss Larry King's May 11th show, it is my pleasure to post for you herein the unique and thought-provoking words of Jesse Ventura, Minnesota's former governor (party: Independent), as well as a retired Navy SEAL, professional wrestler, author, actor, passionate surfer, and--as of this interview's airing--the first American politician I've heard pitch President Obama for the position of Ambassador to Cuba at some undetermined point in the future.

Well.

As you're aware, I'm a Florida-residing Brit, and I don't claim to know a great deal about Minnesota politics; based on this appearance, however, I can certainly say I'm impressed with Ventura's take on a number of hot-button topics. For example, Ventura, who was subjected to waterboarding during SERE training, states unequivocally that the "technique" IS, without question, torture. Point final.

In fact, Ventura says that if you were to give him Dick Cheney and a waterboard, in one hour he'd have Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.

Just watch the interview--parts one and two (the whole effort is not that long)--and you'll see what I mean. And perhaps, like me, you'll be wishing (again) that we could have an honest-to-goodness, full-throttle-powerful third party in this country. Because with respect to the very serious subject of war crimes, the cowardice, lies, diversionary tactics, and flat-out bullshit we've seen both Republicans AND Democrats serve up to the public these past several weeks--and that they've expected us to swallow whole so they can move on, country be damned, Constitution be damned--have turned my stomach and chilled my blood. Watch:

Cogitamus ergo ridemus: Michael Steele writes to us

Oh dear.

I was sorting through a pile of Monday mail a little while ago, and right in the middle of it, wedged sideways between the bills and an office supply catalog, was a chunky envelope from the Republican National Committee.

That Robert, he's such a kidder. My Republican husband had thoughtfully opened it for me, too, knowing how susceptible my tender fingers are to paper cuts (more likely, he didn't want to let me have all the laughs first).

Inside, I found a pre-paid envelope, a long letter, and a questionnaire entitled Obama Agenda Survey, with the words *DO NOT DESTROY*--printed just like that, with asterisks--repeated no fewer than five times in a row across the top of the page. Before the first question was even asked. Oh dear.

Okay, okay, I thought. You do seem inordinately troubled, Mr. Steele, so I'll give you a couple of minutes of my time.

I set the plea for mercy plea for money single-page questionnaire aside for a moment and turned my attention to the four-page (!) cover letter that addressed us by our surname followed by the word "household" (hmmm...could the Republicans be warming to the idea that numerous households might not contain both a Mr. and a Mrs.? Nah.)

As Chairman of the Republican National Committee, I am sending out this questionnaire to gauge where you and other grassroots Republicans stand on the critical issues facing our nation--I need to hear back from you right away.

You know that the liberal media elites and the Obama-Democrats are hoping you will put this letter down right now and do nothing...

...they want you to give up, desert your Party and walk away from your conservative principles.

I'm asking you to please not turn your back on us now.

I want you to know that the Republican Party is not dead and we are not going away.

Oh DEAR.

"Robert! The Undead are closing in on us!" I shouted, wiping the tears from my eyes. "Quick, darling--turn off the brain-shaped beacon before it's too late."

The pleas went on for four--count 'em, four--pages.

[Please, please, please, etc.]...you and every one of the many who didn't vote for Barack Obama (WRONG)...Democrat allies in Congress...please, no matter what, do not discard or destroy your Survey. (Aside: will someone please explain capitalization rules to Michael Steele?)

Turn the page over, please.

Okay.

...be as exact as possible, you must return your survey--Even if you leave some of the questions blank.

We're still a big tent! Even illiterates are welcome! It's the il-LEGALS we don't like!

There is so much about the Obama Agenda that most Americans do not know about...

Because most Americans have no electricity and can't read?

...thanks to the non-stop, swooning coverage of the ultra-biased media.

But with your help, we are going to expose the Obama Agenda for all Americans to see so that we create a groundswell of opposition.

"Robert! After you turn off the brain-shaped beacon, get ready for some more teabagging, darling."

Well, that got his attention. Sort of.

"For fuck's sake, do they really think small business owners have time for this kind of bullshit, especially right now?" Robert said, kicking off his work-boots and squeezing honey into his tea while simultaneously turning on The Ed Show. "Oh good, I like this guy."

"No, seriously, darling--listen. They keep saying please: please fill in the survey; please don't destroy it, whatever you do; please send us money, oh, and don't forget, please be aware that the Democrat party wants to force everyone to pay higher taxes so they can make our kids go to re-education camps or something. We really ought to send this in."

(I paused and considered anointing the questionnaire with a selection of truly dreadful, truly naughty, truly litbritish sentences--really long, compound ones, too, so as to confuse them thoroughly and cause unrest--but decided I'd rather spend the time folding laundry.)

Instead, I read some of Steele's finer servings of, er, bullshit, aloud:

...we are asking where you stand on Barack Obama's promise to raise taxes...

...On his plans to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, which could lead to billions of dollars of government handouts and possibly bankrupt Social Security...

...And how do you feel about Obama's efforts to nationalize health care and have it run by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?

"As opposed to unregulated bureaucrats in Big Insurance who refuse coverage, deny sick people's legitimate claims, and cancel policies altogether--in the name of profit?" I fumed. If, instead of being the ladylike person who is me, I was a guy--make that an excitable, ah, forceful kind of guy like, say, Tony Soprano--this is the point at which I'd have stood up and spat on the ground. But while I am (perhaps) a little on the excitable side, I am neither Tony Soprano nor Michelle Malkin and am thus not usually given to spitting. Besides, we were sitting at the kitchen table enjoying the perfectly nice pot of tea with which--mirabile dictu--I'd actually managed to not scald myself.

I skipped over the countless appeals to resist destroying the survey--and the even greater number of pleas for money, helpfully repeated (with suggested dollar amounts!) yet again in the postscript--and read the closing paragraph:

The future of the Republican Party is in your hands. Act now.

...Said Mark Foley to the congressional page. (Thank you, I'll be here all week, etc.)

Now, all this would be funnier by orders of magnitude if there weren't plenty of people out there--some of whom Robert and I know personally, alas--who are stupid bigoted naïve enough to believe Michael Steele's weaselly distortions and baldfaced lies about President Obama raising taxes, scheming to bankrupt Social Security--which in reality was something George W. Bush seemed hell-bent on doing; how quickly they forget!--and the Evil Librul Media being so, you know, Evil and Librul and all. I mean, never mind the interviews, breathless and multitudinous, with Dick "How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People" Cheney to which we've been treated on a regular basis since Obama's inauguration; never mind the countless affronts-to-journalistic-ethics-made-flesh like Bill Kristol or even Morning Joe stooge Willie Geist, who is routinely allowed to get away with making utterly fact-free, uncorroborated (and by design, unverifiable) comments like this morning's gem: "I was talking to someone this weekend, and he said he thinks Dick Cheney is sincere and really worries about the nation getting attacked under Obama". Mmm-hmm. "Someone" said it, so hey, it must be true, and while we're at it, let's just get that statement out there again about the nation possibly getting attacked. How disgusting. Shame on your sorry ass, Willie.

Anyway, since Michael Steele did ask nicely, and often, I won't destroy the survey, which, after the four pages of begging excerpted herein, seemed kind of sad and anticlimactic, really--just a sheet of paper stamped with poorly-written lies, damned lies, and hilariously biased framing. But I'm open to suggestions as to what to do with it.

Thoughts?

Also at Cogitamus.

Mothers' Day

To my Mum Christine and Mother-in-law Rita on Mothers' Day,
with much love from the firstborns and their thrice-born.

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

-- Sylvia Plath

Friday Saturday Frank: I am the Slime; SNL, 1976

As ever, Maestro Zappa was ahead of just about everyone, calling attention to the mind-control aspects of the dread Teevee. (However, the irony of FZ decrying television while appearing on television is not completely lost on your caffeine-deficient hostess, thankyouverymuch.)

Bon Weekend, everyone!

I am gross and perverted;
I’m obsessed and deranged.
I've existed for years,
But very little has changed.
I'm the tool of the government
And industry too--
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you.

I may be vile and pernicious,
But you can’t look away;
I make you think I’m delicious
With the stuff that I say.
I am the best you can get;
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin’ out
From your tv set!

You will obey me while I lead you,
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you;
Don’t go for help...no one will heed you.
Your mind is totally controlled--
It has been stuffed into my mold,
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold.

That’s right, folks..
Don’t touch that dial!

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your living room floor.

I am the slime from your video;
Can’t stop the slime, people, look at me go.

Also at Cogitamus.

Today in exquisite metaphors: In libertatem vindicavit

The Statue of Liberty was a generous gift to America from France in 1886, and she honors the friendship and alliance the two countries forged during the American Revolution. She has long represented freedom and democracy; indeed, her features and dress were inspired by the Roman goddess Libertas.

After the attacks on September 11th, 2001, however, the Statue of Liberty was closed completely, and the world-famous icon was off-limits to visitors until August, 2004; even then, her enormous walk-in crown--a feat of engineering and sculpture that offered, arguably, one of the nation's most beautiful and inspiring views from a man-made structure--remained closed.

But on July 4th, 2009, the crown of the Statue of Liberty will be at last be re-opened to the public, as U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today.

I was never fortunate enough to climb that narrow staircase leading to the crown and experience that famous view myself, but I have certainly admired and photographed the beautiful statue from many vantage points during countless visits to New York City. The most heartbreakingly lovely of these visual memories--and also my first sight of the Statue of Liberty--dates back to the summer of 1980, when my friend Effie and I treated ourselves to Champagne and coconut shrimp with orange sauce in the surreal and elegant Windows on the World restaurant, located on the 106th and 107th floors of the World Trade Center's North Tower. It wasn't a busy day, and we'd been given a table right at the edge of the room, affording us a gorgeous view of the city and harbor below. While we waited for our lunch, we gazed through the great oblongs of plate glass, noting how far below us the wispy clouds and buzzing helicopters were. The sun came out, and then, to our delight, we saw her: Lady Liberty.

Even then, even at that distance, Lady Liberty evoked an emotional response from Effie (daughter of Greek immigrants) and Yours Truly, a British immigrant celebrating her seventh American summer. And the two UF co-eds who'd been trying very hard to remain cool and aloof while walking around the city were now drying their tears on massive white linen napkins and laughing at themselves for getting so mushy.

Little did we know.

In early October, 2001, I was among a handful of people on a nearly-empty plane flying into New York; I was to attend a photo-editing meeting, scheduled months beforehand, for a vintage fashion book I'd co-written with my friend Linda. As we approached southern Manhattan, the pilot announced that visibility was really good, in case any of us wanted to look at the still-smoldering remains of the World Trade Center. Of course I looked--how could I not?--and of course I cried (again). But not too far away, there she was, still, torch aloft in defiance of all that dark smoke and drifting poison: Lady Liberty.

And carved in bronze beneath her, though obviously not visible from the air, her sonnet, by Emma Lazarus, gave proof through the night that her promise was still there:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Also at Cogitamus.

Dear Mike Galanos: Kindly walk a nine-month mile in our stilettos

"We're enabling teenagers to act carelessly with an easy way out. [...] That is not what is best for our daughters."

-- Mike Galanos, host of CNN's Prime News, on the FDA's long-awaited approval for over-the-counter sales, to sixteenseventeen-year-old young women, of the effective and laboriously researched and tested "morning-after pill", Plan B.

If Mike Galanos is to maintain his credibility as a journalist, professional and human ethics demand that he properly research his subject matter.

Accordingly, Mike Galanos should begin with an injection of time-released chemicals designed to make him vomit day and night for at least four months. Then, he must have all his clothes taken in radically so that absolutely nothing fits, necessitating the spending of not-small fortunes on poorly-made (if not flat-out throwaway) specialty clothes in order to avoid showing up at work naked.

At this point, a large bag containing a remote-control Rock-'em-Sock-'em Robot, one that has a 9-month battery life, along with several handfuls of marbles, will be inserted into the abdominal cavity of Mike Galanos, and the surgeon will create a portal for adding more marbles every week; the bag will thus press ever more firmly on his bladder, reminding him of its presence even as he tries to ignore it and go about his day. Eventually, it will routinely push the small amounts of food he is able to swallow back into his esophagus on a wave of stomach acid. Then, the bag will partially obstruct his intestines.

Further, Mike Galanos must have his blood supply increased by half and his appetite chemically adjusted so that it takes strange turns at even stranger times. He must also have his nose turned into a hair-trigger solenoid switch that activates his gag reflex at inopportune moments.

Mike Galanos must then attempt to commute, work, go to school, grocery-shop, house-keep, socialize, and/or otherwise try to live his life while every single human being with whom he comes in contact passes comment on his increasing girth and speculates on the number of aliens he's "got hiding in there, yuk, yuk, yuk." He will crave sex more than ever, but the swollen, wildly undulating stomach thing won't do much in the way of turning his partner on, so he'll have to be content with racy dreams. If he can even sleep, that is.

After forty weeks--at which point, if his "pregnancy" style is anything like mine, he will have gained more than 50% of his non-"pregnant" body weight, all of it in the stomach--Mike Galanos must be placed on a crackly vinyl-sheeted hospital bed with a single rubber pillow and have his precious parts subjected to the probing forearms of at least twenty different nurses and other healthcare sorts (did the cafeteria manager get a turn? I can't remember...). Meanwhile, a large vice will be placed around his pelvis and extreme constriction applied thereto for about thirty seconds, over and over, at steadily decreasing intervals.

As the day wears on and his energy dwindles, Mike Galanos will probably ask for food. When it appears no-one is listening, he'll scale back his demands and ask for some crackers, a sip of water, anything. He must be denied, of course, though if someone is feeling charitable, he or she could always offer him a Dixie-cup containing cubes of imitation orange-flavored Jell-O product, along with an ice cube to suck.

Mike Galanos will undoubtedly then beg for drugs; or, as I did, he will ask to be killed. (I think I might have said Please, since it's all part of growing up and being British--plus my Mum was in the room--but again, agony like that can make one's memory a bit fuzzy.)

Mike Galanos should then be patted on the hand and told, Sorry, sweetie, but the anesthesiologist is busy helping another Mom right now; he'll be here soon.

Mike Galanos must then undergo a high-tech pain-simulating technique whereby the experience of being drawn-and-quartered Wild-West-style--old school!--is recreated via the magic of electrodes connected to his brain's pain receptors. This won't take long. It doesn't have to.

Then, Mike Galanos will feel his precious parts strain and tear asunder as the enormous bag containing the Rock-'em-Sock-'em Robot and marbles is pulled from his lower unit. He will leap from the restraints and try to jump up and down for joy, so happy is he that it's finally, finally over. It will take four nurses to pin him back onto his bed, all the while screaming at him that he'd better listen and he'd better lie back down if he doesn't want to hemorrhage to death right then and there.

Mike Galanos will then be stitched back together, and this actually will take some time. (Even so, it will be more than a month before he'll be able to sit in a chair or drive a car without feeling that ripping-stabbing sensation.)

When Mike Galanos has completed this research exercise, then--and only then--will he have any right whatsoever to opine on pregnancy and the choices of those who really do face the undertaking thereof.

Thanks to Sir C. for the heads-up.

Also at Cogitamus.

Swine Flu: Smithfield Foods' statement vs. the ugly truth (with photos)

American multinational CAFO Smithfield Foods this Sunday denied responsibility for the outbreak in Veracruz, Mexico, of swine flu, now an international public health emergency and currently classified as a Level 4 Pandemic ( sustained human-to-human transmission). Smithfield also states it is cooperating with government officials in the investigation:

Based on available recent information, Smithfield has no reason to believe that the virus is in any way connected to its operations in Mexico. The company also noted that its joint ventures in Mexico routinely administer influenza virus vaccination to their swine herds and conduct monthly tests for the presence of swine influenza.

The National Pork Producers Council reported today that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "people cannot get the hybrid influenza from eating pork or pork products" and "preliminary investigations have determined that none of the people infected with the hybrid flu had contact with hogs."

However, Smithfield's statement fails to mention that countless residents of La Gloria were routinely and relentlessly exposed to airborne droplets of pig feces and decayed tissue for an undetermined number of years, thanks to toxic and sick-making clouds blowing outward from Granja Carrol's so-called "oxidation ponds"--or pig sewage lagoons. And that they have long complained of respiratory illnesses, well before their children started dying in March.

Nor does the company's statement explain that contracting the H1N1 influenza virus does NOT necessarily require that one "have contact with hogs"; in fact, the flu virus is spread via tiny droplets of infected matter--feces, body fluids--that reach the mucous membranes and lungs when someone touches a contaminated surface before rubbing his eyes, for example, or when he unwittingly inhales the airborne, virus-containing waste droplets floating around his town courtesy of a nearby pig or poultry CAFO.

And there's something else--several things, actually--that Smithfield Foods left off its website: photographs of the Granjas Carrol plant itself. The photos are published on the news website Enlace Veracruz 212 (Veracruz Connection) - Analytical and Investigative Journalism. It must be said, these writer(s) and photographer(s) are very brave journalists indeed--for reasons both obvious and not-so-obvious: according to the accompanying article, speaking out against the Granjas Carrol operation has, disturbingly but not unsurprisingly, led to various residents being intimidated, threatened, and arrested by certain officials tasked with protecting the company's financial interests. (These images are, in a word, grisly. You've been warned.)

The infamous oxidation ponds, or pig-waste lagoons, filled with concentrated excrement, blood, and the rotting bodies of dead pigs; note the broken pipe.

Rotting pig carcass floating in the oxidation pond/pig-waste lagoon

Dead pigs, stacked on a wheeled cart and left out in the heat. It is not clear if these animals' bodies were destined for processing or disposal.

More dead pigs left out to rot; scavenger animals got hold of these carcasses. As the Enlace Veracruz writer notes, "This is the how Granjas Carrol cares for its dead."

So, readers, are you horrified yet? And are you, too, wondering where on Earth the American mainstream media are?

Also at Cogitamus.