Surfing has its benefits. So much to discover and learn. First, a few quotes recently discovered:
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
“Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
-George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
“Of all the enemies to liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. (Delegating) such powers (to the president) would have struck, not only at the fabric of the Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.”
-James Madison
Next,
- While looking (again) for Busted, which I recommended last year, (it was created by flexyourrights and the ACLU–I discovered it had been withdrawn from youtube), I found this great video archive, jonhs.net, which has a treasure trove of videos including:
- Full-length feature films from all eras of the 20th century (e.g., M, Buster Keaton, Chaplan, etc.)
- Documentaries (Oil, Smoke & Mirrors, Hitler’s Private World, Gangs in El Salvador, 911 Truth, Big Brother, Big Business)
- Animation, Music vids and performace docs,TV shows
- Thanks to the latest issue of Rolling Stone, I downloaded and watched the 10-minute Justin Timberlake video for What Goes Around Comes Around (available in .torrent form–check google for download links). Written and directed by Nick Cassevetes, it stars super-sensual Scarlett Johansson in dark club & mansion settings with a cast of 20-somethings. The car-crash at the end in a pre-dawn downtown L.A., is so great. Timberlake has chops!
- Again thanks to RS, I looked through the top press photos of 2006 on the World Press Photo web site, where you can view everything from portraits of Clint Eastwood to shots of war zones all over the world.
Then, there was the usual plethora of blog articles on the usual plethora of subjects of immediate importance:
- Rose Ann Demoro writes in Public Health Alert: Stage Red:
In the past 30 years, the number of public hospitals in America has fallen by 30%. Public hospitals and clinics could soon be as extinct as the woolly mammoth.
In that same period the combined debt of state and local governments has exploded, climbing by 852% to nearly $200 billion. The devastating consequences become more apparent every day.
While our public facilities are starved for resources, hospital profits the past 20 years totaled $310 billion. The 13 largest drug companies recorded $62 billion in profits in 2004. The 20 largest HMOs made $10.8 billion in 2005.
David Roberts writes in 24 Sucks about Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan’s meeting with the creators of 24 to tell them to cut it out: torture doesn’t work and the show’s continual use of it is nothing more than bullshit propaganda. He also details the rise of torture in movies and television and what it might mean:
There’s been an unsettling change in not only what heroes do, but what makes a hero at all. Any comic book reader knows that what separates heroes from evildoers is their unwillingness to kill, torture, or even personally punish the guilty. Restraint, in and of itself, is a heroic attribute. … You can’t transgress ever, or you blur that line separating you from your enemies (another treasured trope is the defeated villain taunting the hero to give in and kill him, the subtext being that if the evildoer can make the hero act the villain, he will have won even as he died).
[24’s Jack] Bauer, of course, is the antithesis of that attitude. His heroism stems from his brutality, his willingness to dissolve every ethical boundary in pursuit of higher ends. His is a heroism for a weak and scared nation, one that’s decided the old ways of restraint and ethical exceptionalism are insufficiently effective and is trying to convince itself that a loosening of those bonds could restore order and security. That’s a scary shift in the culture.
Finally, Amy Goodman of democracynow interviewed General Wesley Clark (our next Democratic President, for my money) last Tuesday, then podcast the entire interview on Friday. General Clark is honest, decisive and active, in a way completely unlike Obama, Hillary and even Gore, and he is someone to watch in the coming months and year ahead.
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