RARWRITER.COM™ Presents the...

HOT THIS WEEK

• Iceberg Economy: How the Supply Siders are Sinking the Ship of State

• Bloomberg Illustrates Dodd-Frank Regulations for Investors

• DAVOS WEF Points Out Single Points of Failure in the New Global Economy

• Soulless Possession of Santo Niño

• What Keeps NBC's Chuck Todd Up at Night?

• "King of Bain" - Documentary on Mitt Romney's Private Equity Firm Bain Capital

• Robert Smigel's Lost Ode to the Evil of General Electric

• Riddle This: Do Our Governmental Systems Hinder Mitigation of Harmful Influences to Our System of Government?

• The Achievement Metric - Time for a New Way of Determining Public Policy and Positioning Revenue Spending

• Hide Your Brains! Matthews from the Left! Gingrich from the Right! Blowhard Attack! Or, more to the point...book reviews of "JFK Elusive Hero" and "Valley Forge"

• Art Sampler - An RCJ Review of Art in the Modern Period

• Benicia, California Case Study in Traffic Engineering and Growth Management

• Everyday Heroism - The Penn State Debacle

• How to Keep Things Lousy in the USA

• How Being a Socialist Became a Negative

FEATURES CURRENTLY AT RCJ

Is Belief In God a Sign of Weakness?

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal.

No, but it may be a signal for help, and not necessarily in a bad way.

God is a construction of peoples’ need to have an organizing influence in their lives, standards to live by, and some reason to carry on. In all of those ways, God and everything that comes with it – the afterlife, sense of well being and spiritual comfort, and purpose in all things – is truly helpful to people, as various studies have seemed to indicate. Belief is powerful, almost regardless of its details.

That God, and the belief therein, is a signal for help is endemic to the genesis of the subject, if you will pardon the pun.
Read Post - Comment

Letter to Conservatives: The Party of Wealth – Theirs
 

Sam Broussard - Writer, Songwriter, Musician, member of Steve Reilly and the Mamou Playboys

 www.sambroussard.com

Three of the front runners for the Republican nomination are now just memories, pundit fodder: Huckabee and Trump, and Palin recedes into political tinnitus. But the retiring of all three has one thing in common, and it’s money. Huckabee just bought a huge house in Florida and is enjoying his status and salary at Fox News. Trump is more at home on his reality show. And Palin is enjoying both Fox money and reality TV and will probably be the next Oprah Winfrey, although she’ll never get more than twenty percent of the viewers because only that percentage of Americans can identify with her spunky pride in her ignorance. And yes, she’s pretty.

Read Post - Comment

_______________

We Need A New Party!

Kenny Lee Lewis - Member of The Steve Miller Band, Guitarist/singer/songwriter, Novelist/screenwriter' www.kennyleelewis.com, www.stevemillerband.com

I am a rock star. Ok, ok, I am in a band with a rock star.  I am also a husband, father of three daughters, and a small business owner who pays his taxes like anyone else. I never got into politics until the last election and wrote and produced a non-partisan PSA video for Comcast called “Get Out and Vote” to help assuage voter apathy throughout this ailing nation. I didn’t vote for either one of the major candidates in 2008. I am all about trying to rally everyone to start voting again so we can possibly support a third political party that makes sense. If we can educate and get people out to the polls again, I believe that there could be a groundswell of voters who could turn the tides in future elections.
We need a party “by the people and for the people”. As corny as that sounds, it is a precept that our nation was founded upon and if we are to lift up and resuscitate this
suffocating political system, we are going to need a leader who actually leads rather than folds like a cheap stroller just to please his parties’ special interests.

(Use the link below to read Kenny's entire post (© Kenny Lee Lewis, 2011 - All Rights Reserved).

Read Post - Comment

____________

The RCJ Posts Issues Questionnaire on Obama - Obama 2012 – Where Do You Stand?

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

The Revolution Culture Journal (RCJ) invites you to participate in a little experiment to help us understand public perception of President Barack Obama, particularly as it relates to enthusiasm for his re-election in 2012.

We have identified 34 issues in U.S. foreign and domestic policy and devised a scale to determine how well respondents feel President Obama is doing with each. Use this link to go to the questionnaire.

Read Post - Comment

____________

Bechtel’s Long-Term Commitment to Nuclear Disaster

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

Somehow the idea of using nuclear fission, and eventually nuclear fusion, to boil water, produce steam, drive turbines and produce direct current electricity has found its way back into the list of acceptable alternatives as an environmentally friendly solution. This bit of Houdini depends entirely on comparison to power generation through the burning of coal, which produces carbon emissions and is a primary contributor to rising levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) in our choking environment.

Read Post - Comment

___________

Applying Grover Norquist to Corporation Intellectual Starvation

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

In my career as a consultant, I have all kinds of opportunities to interact with different personality types at different levels of organizations. Some of these are of the kind that might make others feel that life is not worth living, but the advantage of consultancy is that my involvements are focused, short, and generally sweet, and then I leave the office dramas behind for a quick dip into the next kiln of opportunity. I am like a merry mercenary in that way, unexposed to the daily grind of the organizations with which I work.

Staff people, on the other hand, are subject to hierarchical structures and personality profiles, and their critical path issue is: a) whether or not to stay in the roles they are in, given the odds of rising up to a more satisfying position within the organization; or b) to cast their fates to wind, which is the job market.

So much of life happens at the initial sell-in.

Read Post - Comment

___________

Appointment with Disaster - Republican Domestic Policy

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal.

While the rich are enjoying tax breaks they have no need for and U.S. corporations are holding on to record profits, padding their accounts to ensure that this is not their rainy day, but doing little to further the employment and domestic security needs of United States citizens, word comes that we are running out of money to provide help for a growing population of homeless (see the Huffington Post on this date).
Read Post - Comment

___________

Welcoming the Arab Street to U.S. Foreign Policy

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal.

I was all set to thank the progressive Arab world, or at least the 25 percent of it that is situated in Egypt, for taking charge of U.S. foreign policy and forcing it to make sense. Then those pro-Mubarak thugs showed up and shocked the global community back to reality.
Read Post - Comment

___________

Why Your College Student Can't Read, Write or Even Think

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher, Writer, A&E / IT Consultant

Back a hundred years ago, when I was in college, all the guys who were doing the best in the classes I took all seemed to be Viet Nam veterans going to school on government grants. They tended to stand out because they were older and far more experienced than their classmates. It seems unlikely that they were brighter, but they were fundamentally different in terms of focus and perspective in ways that seemed obviously helpful to them.
Read Post - Comment

___________

________________

PHOTO OF THE WEEK:

Seems like a good time for a burst on the banjo. A Libyan fighter and his weapon of choice, which may at least symbolically say what Woody Guthrie's said in spelled out words on his guitar's soundboard: "This Machine Kills Fascists"

______________

From March 2011▼

_______

Who Is Murdering Iran's Nuclear Scientists?

Four assassinated since 2007, along with an engineer - events that happen "unnaturally"

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that "'CIA, MI6 operations helped kill Iranian nuclear scientist", referencing the car bomb murder this week of 32-year old nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. That bit of diversionary reporting emphasized the known spy operations of the U.S. and British intelligence agencies, implying that those are the nations responsible.

The Daily Beast, on the other hand, is reporting that during the recent U.S.-Israeli “strategic dialogue” Israeli Mossad officers were quietly and obliquely bragging about the string of explosions in Iran. “They would say things like, ‘It’s not the best time to be working on Iranian missile design,’” one U.S. intelligence official at the December parley told The Daily Beast.

These kinds of actions even have their own Israeli euphemism, “events that happen unnaturally,” to quote the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, from his remarks before the Knesset on Tuesday. In his testimony, Gantz promised more such unnatural events in 2012 aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear program.

So the obvious nexus is the collaboration between the two western powers and Israel to slow the advance of nuclear weapons development in Iran.

Quoting further from The Daily Beast - A former Mossad officer now living in Canada who goes by the pseudonym Michael Ross said the attacks bore the hallmarks of an Israeli operation. “This tactic is not a new one for the Mossad, and worked very effectively against Egypt’s rocket program in the 1960s. During that period, the scientists involved in that project were assassinated and the program suffered immensely.”

The United States and Israel have cooperated on intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as, in some cases, sabotage operations such as the 2009 Stuxnet cyber attack that stymied the logic board that controlled the spinning centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility. Much of this kind of cooperation intensified in George W. Bush’s second term.

What are we setting up here, that's the question one asks? It has apparently been determined that Iran cannot be allowed the protection of assured mutual destruction that has checkmated aggression against every other nation that can claim this capability. Because of radical statements made by Islamic Fundamentalists, who have a hold on aspects of Iranian national affairs, Iran cannot be trusted to join this menacing club of mega-terrorists (nuclear powers). The irrational fear is that Iran would wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

The inability of the west to effectively dialogue with the Iranian government - only Switzerland maintains an embassy in Iran - has led western leaders to the illogical conclusion that Iran will act in irrational and ultimately suicidal ways.

To the opposite, it has been the western powers, particularly since the "9-11" bombing of the World Trade Center and since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that has been acting with weird panic. One senses it has warped thinking in U.S. government circles to the point that assassinations on foreign soil, a hallmark of the Obama Administration, has become acceptable practice.

The U.S. has met its contractual agreement with the Iraq government and pulled U.S. troops out of the country, effectively ending that war, but they didn't go far, only to Kuwait. Because we aren't leaving that part of the Arabian Gulf any time soon. Every bit of intuition on this writer's part suggests that the western powers are going to do the illogical thing and go to war against Iran, probably sooner than later, before the Iranians develop their weapons systems any further.

Irrational behavior could trigger some utterly logical reactions, including Iranian support from Russia, China and North Korea.

Irrational minds haven't reasoned out yet that our economics and manufacturing is dependent upon China, particularly, as is much of the manufacturing of parts that would be required for us to even maintain our military should we rapidly consume our assets and resources. Europe won't help, they're broke.

Again, one has to ask, what are we setting up here? - RAR                                                           (11412)

_________________

San Francisco's Obscura Digital's

Spectacular Mosque Light Show

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Projections from Obscura Digital on Vimeo.

_________________

Head Cannister:

ART HOUSE GALLERY

On November, 2011, the Art House Gallery, in solidarity with the opening of Tristan Anderson's trial holding the Israeli military responsible for shooting him in the head with a tear gas canister, held an event at the Art House in Berkeley, California.

The progressive gallery provided an update on legal challenges as well as music, featuring David Rovics, Andrea Pritchett, Ayr, Funky Nixons.

A panel discussion provided a live update from the first day of trial in Israel from Tristan's friend Gabby who was with him when he was shot, and a statement from Tristan. Other panelists included Ayr, Paul Larudee from the International Solidarity Movement, and others, speaking about current situations in Palestine. Also getting a shout out was Occupy Oakland and Iraq veteren Scott Olson, who was injured in a similar way via police action at Occupy Oakland and remains in recovery. (Revised 12/20/11)

UK Publication Celebrating 20 Years - Use this link to go to the online version

News, Jobs in Arabia, even Fatwa's - Use this link