Just as pax is Latin for peace, a crow feeding worms to a hungry stray kitten is surely animal for love. This miraculous story from the cable channel Pax of an unlikely interspecies friendship warms our hearts. In the video (if player fails to load click HERE to view), the older gentleman, Wallace, who along with his wife, Ann, witnessed and recorded this pairing surmises that this cat and bird must have met when each was too young "to know better." We wonder whether they were too young to know worse. Indeed, one lesson of this endearing real-life fable may be that a childlike, innocent outlook leads one to spread caring and nurturance around more liberally.
We also can't help noticing that this isn't a story of just two animals but of four, at least. Yes, a kitten eventually named Cassie, and her crow buddy and caretaker are the stars of the story, but the open-eyed, animal-loving humans who also show love and deliver nourishment play a touching role as well.
May we all learn, despite apparent differences, to play with and care for one another just as this adorable feathered and furred duo do. After all, as Wallace and Ann's veterinarian says, "If you are able to have trust in someone or something then everything is possible." And as Wallace himself astutely observes, "If a crow can take care of a kitten, it shows that two strangers meeting can get along with each other."
Two thousand years ago, a Roman Senator suggested that all slaves wear white armbands to better identify them.
“No,” said a wiser Senator. “If they see how many of them there are, they may revolt.”
There’s an interesting video going around the internet calling for an international day of protest to coincide with tax day on April 15 (if player fails to load click HERE to view). In it, the filmmakers cite the IRS and the Federal Reserve System as being enemies of the people, in cahoots with corporate America to keep the masses enslaved.
Portfolio.com illustrates this point graphically (click HERE to view). In 1970, the average CEO earned 28 times more than the average worker. Twenty-five years on, despite much talk of “progress,” U.S. CEOs were paid 465 times more than the average worker. Workers such as the striking writers in Hollywood and the protesting tomato pickers in Florida are one the frontlines of this ideological battle (see story).
But where does the IRS and the Federal Reserve System fall into all this. Paying taxes per se, is not a bad thing. Indeed it should be encouraged. Taxes fund vital infrastructure for the betterment of all. Essentially paying taxes are a spiritual and moral duty. They’re a community tithe, and a mechanism for each individual in a society to essentially “love thy neighbor.” Hell, I’d even pay more, if it meant we could get Universal Healthcare to take care of all those in need. In the widest sense of the word, it’s the Christian thing to do.
Where our tax system breaks down, is that it’s part of a system that is so corrupt, that our money gets diverted from the places it should morally and ethically go. Instead our hard earned tax dollars pay for corporate welfare, which is mostly paid to companies who are the least in need. It pays for roads and bridges that go to nowhere. It goes to companies with insider connections who score no-bid government contracts. It gets lost by the billion, and by the palette load, in far off countries. And it pays for obscene amounts of interest paid to world bankers to fund our even more obscene and out of control national debt.
As for the Federal Reserve System, clearly it is a little strange that an institution that is so key to instigating, making and enforcing our government’s financial policy is only a quasi-public (a part private, part government) system. Though too secretive and complex for most, including me, to understand, clearly having private corporations at the heart of such a public institution opens our system up to further abuse, especially while we have a president who’s too busy planning his own clean escape, pushing through legislation via the back door to pardon himself of war crimes he’s yet to be officially accused of, to keep his eyes on the balls we appointed him to watch over on our behalf in the first place.
So while I’m not advocating a general strike, withdrawing money from banks (we don’t need a domestic Northern Rock-like credit crisis), or supporting tax dissent, as this video suggests, I do like the idea of wearing a white band on April 15th to express our displeasure to our leaders in a way I’m sure Ghandi or the Dalai Lama would approve. Now the election season is upon us, don’t get distracted by talk of another tax rebate; it’s just a $600-$800 bribe we’re being encouraged (read brainwashed) to use to “kick start” the economy with, by sending it right back to the very corporations that are dragging our country down.
Instead, as the housing and stock markets tank, not only putting our todays, but our tomorrows in jeopardy too, focus on the real issues. Support those who have your interests at heart. Support those who promise to support you. Support those who say no to institutionalized greed. And support those who are as passionate and angry about it as you should be, after all making sure our tax dollars go to the places and people who need it most is the spiritual thing to do.
How cool is Chelsea Clinton in this video, which shows her hitting the campaign trail on behalf of her mom with Ugly Betty pal America Ferrera (if player fails to load click HERE to view). Hillary and Bill should be so proud of their daughter. I'm not a fan of nepotism, but will make an exception in this case. We're starting our 'Chelsea for President in 2016' campaign immediately.
Mike Huckabee seems to be the personification of a wolf in sheep's clothing. His witty repartee on the chat show circuit has transformed him from a joke/underdog candidate to a serious contender. There's no doubt that he's very smart, which combined with his charm could make him a scarier proposition than Bush, easy going charm being a symptom of sociopaths (and serial killers). You may think that I'm going overboard, but though Bush may have weakened the constitution in many respects, not even he rewrote it as Huckabee wants to do -- all so he can stop the children of illegal immigrants from automatically being entitled to citizenship -- how psychopathic is that? Does Huckabee really think he's wiser than our Founding Fathers? He sure is far more petty if scuppering the future of innocent kids obsesses him so much that he'll scupper the document at the core of our nation's being in the process too.
Calling yourself a Christian then victimizing innocent kids seems like an oxymoron to me, but then it seems Huckabee is hiding a dark, murky, and dare I say unchristian past. In a recent Salon post, a reporter who cut his teeth on local politics at the start of the 90's at the Arkansas Gazette and watched Huckabee rise to the office of Arkansas Governor, and has therefore followed the Southern Baptist minister-cum-politician longer than most, lists a litany of financial misappropriation and misdeeds. How does that sit with the Christian "values" Huckabee purports to hold? It doesn't sit at all well with the Christian values I hold, but I have every confidence it's a comfortable fit with those of Bush, Cheney and Rove.
Hillary Clinton has been lambasted for the crime of showing "emotion" in recent days, like it's a bad thing. Has anyone thought that perhaps if we had a president capable of emotion (beyond greed) we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in now. Someone capable of true emotion might weigh up the loss of life against protecting our oil interests in Iraq and come up with a different strategy. They may look at those who have inadequate health care or live in poverty, and be upset enough to actually do something about it.
It seems the media have become hysterical about Hillary's "emotional breakdown" but if you watch the video (click HERE to view) the woman barely teared up. Britney had an "emotional breakdown," Hillary by contrast, for better or worse, just cared enough about the state of our country to show a little emotion (something anyone in their right mind should be rather "emotional" about right now). The only commentator who seems to have it in perspective is The Daily Show's John Stewart, who on last night's show quipped, "That's it? That's the emotional breakdown that blows the election for her? I'm glad no one here ever sees me get a flu shot."
Personally, I'd like to see a few more leaders that are upset about what's going on right now, and care enough about it to cry. As for me, I'm sobbing for my country inside.
Last night marked another milestone in the two-month long Writers' Guild strike as the late night talk shows inevitably went back on air. Though Leno made a good case in his monologue for returning without writers (for the job security of his non-writing staff), and Letterman didn't have to since his production company came to an interim agreement with The Guild, my bond with my TV has been forever weakened over these past few weeks. This is no bad thing for me, but doesn't bode well for the TV industry, since I'm sure I'm not the only one finding better things to do with my time.
Driven away from TV by the endless repeats, I'm finally moving on from this bad relationship that's already lasted a little too long. Over the holidays I invested in a Netflix subscription, so I can watch works of art rather than a stream of commercial fodder. I plan to pay for my new subscription by reducing the channels of repeat drivel that get beamed into my living room. I've also been reading more books, lots of them, and playing board games with my husband, who has logged in enough hours to finally beat me (big time, which is worrying). And I've been cooking dinner and enjoying the company of my friends, rather than being sucked back into the void that was TV.
Due to the sporadic and seasonal nature of their work, residuals are the only way the majority of writers can make ends meet. And what they're asking for is far less than they were already promised by the producers 20 years ago. Back then, they agreed to reduce their 2.5% residual rate by 80% to help the fledgling home video market take off, with the understanding that once it did, their rate would be restored. Two decades later, with the supposedly temporary VHS rate now being applied to DVDs, the writers have given up waiting for the producers to make good on their promise. Even worse, the writers have been paid nothing at all for streaming internet video, which it's estimated will earn the studios $4.6 billion in ad revenue over the next three years. Ultimately, streaming internet video is how virtually all TV will be consumed. The producers know this of course, and the end game for them is to hold out on this point so they can ultimately do away with writer residuals altogether. (Imagine asking a producer to give up his back end fees!)
To quote one of the many strike blogs, "In 2006 the WGA writers received $56.6 million in DVD and VHS residuals. The same year, Tom Freston received a $60 million severance package when he resigned as chief of Viacom. That means that a single individual was paid $3.4 million more for leaving his job than 10,000 writers earned for the sale of their work." That's the staggering level of greed at play here as we enter 2008 no closer to a resolution to the strike.
"I mean wouldn't faith itself be more valuable if it was arrived at through question and doubt? What's the use of blind faith? Seriously, it's not difficult saying you have faith if the alternative is being burned alive. But does that mean you really have faith?"
These are the musings of the protagonist in British satirist Ben Elton's latest novel Blind Faith. Though ostensibly a work of fiction set in the year 56 AFT (after the flood), the post-apocalyptic, dystopian society Elton's book portrays is but an extrapolation of what we're seeing in America today, and perhaps serves as a dire warning of the logical conclusion of our current course.
In Blind Faith the government plays second fiddle to an authoritarian Temple, which dictates that faith is mandatory. While in America today we have a political climate that's so mindful of the religious right, that politicians are considered unelectable, on all sides, unless they wear the required conservative-white-Christian religious beliefs on their sleeves.
I want our politicians to have faith because they choose to, not because it's a requirement of the job. I also think that a politician has a right to keep his faith (or lack thereof) private, something he has now in theory, but not in practice thanks to the way overbearing pressure from our fundamentalist religious-right "Temple" has warped our political landscape. Something else we also have in theory but not in practice is the separation of church and state, something America's very religious Founding Fathers worked into the Constitution and Bill of Rights for a reason.
I want our politicians to speak of morals, with the understanding that to be moral is innately right, and not because it's a vote winning concept that need never be drawn on in practice. And with such understanding comes reason, rather than the politically savvy, de rigueur, blind faith that mollifies all and truly satisfies none.
In Blind Faith, the Temple declared that the apocalyptic floods were a result of God's will rather than man's overuse of fossil fuels, and in America today many politicians still deny reason and evidence as they deny global warming, yet as long as they proudly proclaim their blind faith they are somehow considered qualified for the job and electable, even if that faith denounces both reason and progress.
I want our politicians to be chosen because of their ability to govern, unhindered by those of faith, as I'd want our men and women of the cloth to be chosen for their abilities in the faith department, unhindered by politics. I want our politicians, who govern over a multi-faith population and must serve all, to be free to make decisions based on facts, reason, and morals (which those of faith have no monopoly on).
Similarly, I want our science teachers to teach science, unhindered by religion, and our religious teachers to teach religion, unhindered, but ironically perhaps helped by, science. It is then up to the masses to make their own decisions and judgments having been empowered by unbiased information and insight. Only then will we have truly evolved, and found enlightenment as a society. For reason does not deny faith, nor faith reason, but some might say, God gave us brains to reason.
"For no society based on nothing more constructive than fear and brutish ignorance could survive forever. No people who raised the least inventive, the least challenging, the least interesting of their number while crushing individual curiosity and endeavor could prosper for long." Ben Elton, Blind Faith, 2007
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