By Ted Becker
The Gulf of Mexico is “Open for Business.” Why it’s a miracle. It’s like there never was anything that BP ever did to harm it. The water is sooooo clear and blue and the jellyfish, sharks, snappers and tasty little shrimps are as healthy and happy as can be. Here’s one of their “C’mon Down and Enjoy” ads. It’s short, but very good public relations.
By Ted Becker
Think the 2012 elections in the USA will be all about Obama and Republicans? Think again. You’re in for some BIG surprises.
American presidential elections have harbored within them virulent viruses that have caused severe mutations within the presidential election process from its infancy and throughout its life cycle. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
I’ll bet you didn’t know that President Obama has dispatched troops to Uganda in October and that their number will grow into a compact force to be deployed there, and in The Congo, South Sudan and “The Central African Republic”—wherever THAT is. Right? Well, here’s the isolated story from ABC News.
“Obama Sends 100 US Troops to Uganda to Help Combat Lord’s Resistance Army”
Why are they there? Can you spell C-H-I-N-A? Sad, but true. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
In addition to “The Citizens Veto” and “Citizens Initiative to Amend the Constitution,” another democratic right that is enshrined in about 18 state constitutions in America is that citizens can petition to “recall” an elected official. In other words, if a state governor or senator really ticks off a large number of voters–particularly regarding some specific law or set of laws–they can gather a certain number of other voters to remove that person from that position in a Special Election. Arizona and Wisconsin are two of those states—and Recall is alive and kicking in both of them in 2011.
What Should Happen to a State Senate Majority Leader Responsible for an Unconstitutional Law That Causes Great Harm to a State’s Economy and Reputation? Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
Amid all the gloomy news around the world — political, economic, ecological — there is a strong ray of hope. It’s called “democracy,” a natural wonder not often seen to flourish in recent times. There are places, like Switzerland, in which it seems to thrive all the time, but that is in rarified air. Normally, there are patches and bursts of it here and there. But late 2011 saw a quite unexpected explosion of it in one country, with the promise of much more to come in the near future. That country, surprise of surprises, was the Good Old USA…sire and false prophet of “The Elected Oligarchy” as being “democracy.” But that’s at the national level. At the state level, it’s a different story.
So, let me capture this precious moment in the blogosphere, in new series hereinafter dubbed:
As in all of their causes, the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, tends towards excess in its moral views as well as its economic ones. Both are in play somewhere all the time. In the moral sphere, the “Right to Life” faction came up with a ploy to abort abortion once and for all at the earliest possible nanosecond. hey have been preparing to foist this upon America all at once, but decided to test it out first in the single state that they were sure to win: Mississippi. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
Do you know Bob Dylan’s real name? It’s Robert Zimmerman. You do know that when Bob Dylan wrote and sang his vision “The Times, They Are a-Changing” that his song and voice became the anthem of a generation which changed America forever. It was—despite what Dylan himself desired—an anthem that was at the heart of The Anti-Vietnam War Movement, The Environmental Movement, The Feminist Movement…the whole counterculture of the mid-1960s-mid 1970s. Because of its prescience and widespread impact, that song has become an all time classic.
And now comes Matt Slawlinkavich, a/k/a Makana, the Zen Master of Hawaiian slack key guitar playing. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
I have been predicting for decades that the time would come in America when the total failure of its anti-democratic Constitution would result in such widespread pain and suffering among the masses of people, that a new democratic storm surge would wash over that document’s broken promise. I knew that this wave would not leave ruins. I knew it would, instead, nourish a desert littered with the wreckage of wars and the greed of oligarchs. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Becker
You’ve got to hand it to George W. Obama. He did what millions of Americans begged Lyndon Johnson to do in Vietnam: declared “SUCCESS” and got out of the quagmire while the getting was good. LBJ didn’t listen and ended up abandoning the presidency. Obama got the message after a couple of years in office. The U.S. Government morons and swindlers who misled America into this disastrous military adventure lost everything that they planned to take and hold strategically…but took and held all the money they could lay their hands on.
So Obama abandoned the bad ship U.S.S. Iraqi Freedom, a vessel without either a rudder or safe, that Dubya and the Neo-Cons sank… Read the rest of this entry »
The model of consensus building used in this video borrows from general mediation and conciliation theory and practice: A) It aims to hear every point of view; B) It allows people to not buy into a majoritarian sentiment – a thin majority creates almost as many losers as winners; C) It finds ways to include all as stakeholders in the policies.
The hand signals were devised because of limitations arbitrarily imposed by the police in the hope of crippling #OWS, but the #OWS core found ways to cope – much to their credit and via their spirit of democracy and innovation.
This YouTube is a great tool that should inspire many functional mutations, given new circumstances that will arise.
By Ted Becker
Congressman John Lewis during his impromptu visit to Occupy Atlanta
I don’t know about you, but I get a huge kick out of watching and hearing the cluelessness of politicians, media pundits, self-styled “objective TV correspondents,” bankers, and assorted stuffed suits and dresses scoff at Occupation of Wall Street, or #OWS. Why, they’re “leaderless!” They don’t know what they want! They are all “against” something and are for nothing. Fools. A ragtag bunch. Nostalgia for the sixties. Hippie wannabes. Weirdos. Do nothings! Read the rest of this entry »
Planning for Survival by Ismail Rifaat
