02
Jan
Will Caroline Get The Nod in New York? In Memoriam. Your Letters
CAROLINE KENNEDY INCHING CLOSE
After a flurry of speculation that Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo may be appointed to the Senate as stopgaps, allowing the furor over Caroline Kennedy’s shoo-in to be settled by an election for the seat in 2010, the heir to Camelot has won the support of New York’s second most powerful Democrat, Sheldon Silver. The New York Post reports that the previously skeptical Assembly speaker thinks Governor David Paterson is on the brink of naming Caroline to Hillary
Clinton’s old seat and will go along with the choice. “I have determined there’s a good possibility she will be the appointee of the governor,” Silver told the paper. “If she is the appointee of the governor, I will certainly be supportive of her. I will work for her and will work strenuously for her election.”
IN MEMORIAM Fearless anti-apartheid campaigner, Dame Helen Suzman dies
Tributes were paid yesterday to the South African anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel peace prize nominee Helen Suzman, who has died at the age of 91.
An outspoken critic in the South African parliament of the old apartheid regime, and honoured by Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison, Suzman died peacefully at her Johannesburg home.
“She really was indomitable,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu yesterday. “She used to visit Robben Island at the time when Nelson Mandela and others were held there.” He said that “just by being stroppy” she was able to effect change. He added: “We owe her an enormous, enormous debt … She was a powerhouse against apartheid.”
From the Helen Suzman Foundation web site: A poem on Dame Suzman’s 90th birthday — For Helen Suzman By Lebogang Mashile
In a country made of blinded mouths Its not how fast time moves — It’s the distance Mrs. Suzman tell us what tomorrow looks like
Do you crave the quiet of the valleys
Or the thrills of peaks
Is time your friend
A record of treasured possessions
Which ones do you throw away
Which ones do you keep
Do people know the depths mined
To reach the heights of your accolades
Do they know the heart of the night
Where the stories of the silent remain.
What does it take to speak?
To speak while others are shouting
To speak while others are dying
To speak while others are silenced
To speak while others are hiding
To speak while the world listens
To speak while the future watches
It’s not the answers — It’s the questions
It’s not the sorrow — It’s the lessons
It’s not what is taken — It’s what has been given
It’s not how we die — It’s this life we are living
It’s not how we survive — It’s how we alter the space we live in
It’s not how long we deny — But the moment we give in
It’s not the realm of the wise — But the domain of the children
Which can be seen by the eye
That knows tomorrow before it is lived in.
Can you see it in the darkness of prisons
Is it in the look in the eye of a peaceful man
Who is killed in front of his two children
Is it somewhere beyond our own plane and time
Is it inside the walls that we live in
Is it the property of the privileged few
Or is it understanding that humanity is a privilege?
MAIL & GUARDIAN (SOUTH AFRICA): NATION CELEBRATES, HONORS SUZMAN
TROUBLE THE WATER
Check out the trailer for “Trouble the Water.
It is a Sundance-winning film, which made the 2008 critics top ten lists at Time magazine, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and the New Yorker.
MUSIC VIDEO OF THE DAY - When - Skip Martin — Garmmy Award winner
YOUR LETTERS
June Hurst contributes:
I thought I would send you this article about “Hamas and Israel” that just appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, as the perspective is so different than the one you present.
From frequent reader/contributor, Shebar Windstone, sends this article from the Guardian:
Special spin body gets media on message, says Israel. Shebar also comments on a MUST read in the Jerusalem Post about the 50 Israeli jets that executed the attack, during which 50 Hamas targets were hit, took exactly three minutes and 40 seconds: Swarms of locusts over Gaza
“Wow, isn’t modern technology wonderful? In just three minutes and 40 seconds, one can destroy the life of a person — a family — a community — forever! How many more plagues do the Americans & Israelis have in store?”
Jayne Lyn Stahl sends a link to a video from an eye witness, Fida Qishta of Rafah, that is broadcast on theREALnewsnetwork.com. Many thanks, Jayne!
Jackie sends a link to a stunning video for book readers everywhere! Thanks. Here is the link to view: City of Books Papercraft Animation
Mary Ann Martorana writes to me via Facebook on my book, ‘Plunder:’
“THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for writing this book. I am now reading it for the second time. Happy New Year, Danny.”
Gail Decaire writes from Michigan:
Happy New Year. As I read your words on “media channel” I hear you. I truly believe that “my story is your story,” and implore you to expose the GM/Delphi debacle. Sadly, our leaders betray us all, though I have documentation to prove gross breach in laws that transcend all levels of our legal system, no one anywhere will even investigate my concerns. All I wanted to do is be a nurse. When GM outsourced the medical & insurance depts. in 1996 my duty as a RN, and obligation to the oath I took, left me no choice but to “report” the breach in the nursing mandates/standards of the OHN (Occupational Health Nurse.) There is not even a valid GM/Delphi/UAW contract, because the RN is the “legal record keeper” , outsourced and not trained in the specific expertise needed to do the job. That means that the companines GM has “outsourced” the pension, (Fidelity), disability(Sedwick & Cigna), Insurance(BCBS) and more are not doing their jobs either.
Never did I expect to uncover the corruption and abuse of power, when I began to investigate the demise of my profession at GM. The FBI says “report fraud,” but when I do, they hang up on me. Our IRS has a whistle-blower office to “report fraud,” but when I complete the “211 form,” and send it to them with documentation to prove Delphi is not bankrupt, they can give me “No Specifics.” The GM/Delphi debacle is bigger than Enron….”
Richard Trevors
I want to share with you the beginning of a “writing” I started on December 29. That already seems like a long time ago. To be able to see and understand to much and hunger after the truth and honesty is so important yet today is so magrinalized. I really appreciate reading the wisdom you have shared during this year which is scheduled to end in less than 10 hours. I believe I share with you a common desire for morality which was so absent in the sub prime mortgage pyramid predatory feast. I wrote the following but have not completed it. I am unsure now what I will say. I want to wish you a greater year than ever in 2009. A lot of the ideas I integrated into the following writing I learned from reading your descriptions of the financial crises. You have chronicled in your writings how depraved has become so much of the culture of the United States and of other wealthy nations. There is a need for morality but you are seeing the moral degeneration to an unprecedented degree in economic matters.
CRASH HISTORY
Janet Gohres and Robert Hahl write:
Prof. Walter McDougall, in a lecture on his book “Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877” asserts that the Civil War was caused by the financial panic of 1857, (when 1/2 million ounces of gold sank in a hurricane) which caused many indebted NY banks to fail, making the Union superfluous to the Confederacy. I am seeing many references to the old idea that capitalism based on fiat currencies must suffer recurring cycles of financial panic, rebulding, spending the savings, then borrow to live large, followed by another crash. I think this cycle makes a good story now, and might even be true.
Gregory Foote:
Danny: You’re a jem or a gem, however it’s spelt. My toast: ‘Be honest, be kind - For the rest, never mind.’
Via Jayne Stahl: Happy New Year from Alan Ginsberg
Here we go careening into 2009. Keep your letters and comments coming. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
