The following lists are quick and dirty. I rated some but that is purely my view. This entry will also be available here or in the archives which I will link in a day or two. Send an email if you have a comment. If you would like a Word or Wordperfect document with the hot links I can send you one.


Dubya is not the Answer
Ride a Bicycle


Anti-war links

Truthout **

moveon.org

whole life times

Ashcroft-watch



inform America **

United for Peace

The Nation ***

Vote No War

Nonviolence

Training for Change

Portland Indymedia **

United for Peace

I did not know that ***

Meria Heller yahoo group ***

Not in our Name

International Answer

Veterans for Peace

Renaisance Alliance

Veterans for commonsense

Addicted to War


Alternative Media

The Guardian (UK) ****

Independent (UK) ****

Make them Accountable

Teletext News **

Democratic Talk Radio

Democracy Now ***

Web Active **

Emperors-Clothes

Hermes-Press ***

What Really Happened

World News Stand ***

Mad Kane

Legitgov **

Thom Hartman ****

Guns and Butter

Tom Flocco **

News making news

BBC radio

Corp watch


Working for Change

Online Journal

Rise4news

Mad Cow

True Majority ***

Tom Paine ****

Worldnet Daily

Rumormill News

The Nation ***

Tetrahedron

Corporate Traitors

Portland Indymedia

Radio indymedia

Consortium News"

Alternet.org ***


"<();>"

Another excellent voice Michael Moore remember Bowling for Columbine, read his Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War for a place to start on the local problem. Truth is such a revolutionary concept.

White is black. Black is white.

What if the whole Iraq war is a scripted set up? Given the past relationships of the Bush family with Saddam and Osama and the obvious puppet actions of Dubya, it could be just that.

If it is a setup and the war ends quickly, as one of the alternative scripts prescribes, the intense worldwide anti war movement ends up looking like a bunch of fools as the script writers intended.

Militarism goes on unaffected despite all the legitimate arguments that have been made about war. War per se is not the problem it is only a symptom of the disease which is militarism, a world phenomenon that extorts from the public by manipulation of governments, news and public psyche. Militarism legitimizes the diabolical enterprise of corporate leaders and deludes the average citizen into supporting them for the jobs and security they supply while they build colossal monetary wealth.

Nero fiddled. What are the music and fire symbolic of in this political drama?

While I support the actions of Alliance Humaniste to activate the imagination of common people world wide to display white for peace (well maybe it is the eschatology of peace as an alternative to militarism that I support), I must remind you that “the WAR (Iraq in this case)” is only a symptom not the disease. Take away the war and what do you have?

This is just one thinking person trying to take a look at himself being an antiwar activist and considering how I might be too close to the action to see clearly. I have learned over the years, when things seem obvious it is time to reconsider. If you have had a job in government or industry you already know how militarism works because the model has been adopted by most organizations and the universities toll the principles like a Greek tragedy chorus.

Okay say it:


Militarism is not the answer
Ride a Bicycle

People die because money and power does not honor life–human or any other part of the biosphere.


For another view get to the library and read the play in the March 24 edition of the Nation.

“<&;>”

I have just finished reading Terry Teachout’s book about HLM. All in all it was rather enjoyable much like I imagine reading Mencken in first person might have been.

The ignoble lesson of Mencken is that there is no loneliness approaching that of a man on his deathbed who has been his own sycophant. He was obliged to deny mortality so he could edit the details of his own dying, and as it happens, Amerika continues to grant him the last laugh.

I am sure, if he were alive today it would not take him long to fill another book given the preposterous policies of the current administration. The danger that our fellow soldiers have committed can not be excused; it is an abuse of power in my opinion.

It has been a busy week of peace work and not much time for thinking critically about things in the way of literary expression. Slogans are about as far as it has gone.


America’s Latest Cult Drug
SUV
Hooked on Oil

As a followup on my critique of slam as well as PaTwar, check out
."Poetry's Kinship with Violence & War" on Gabriel Guddin’s blog. It is an excellent critique on the war implications inherent in poetry events. It takes the sports lexicon to task for its homosexual repressions and the shame of art subjugation.

I am in the process of developing a more thoughtful critique of the mass psychology that is demonstrated by peer judges and crowds-with-apparent-power so obviously on display at a slam event. It can happen here.

I have added some new links. Thanks to Caterina.net and the work of Billy Mills at Native Voices.

“:~]”

Gioia talks about telling stories in poetry which exemplifies his belief in the auditory qualities of poetry. He likes to read his own work even though he talks about reading the works of others. He seems to have a thoroughly libertarian outlook. Let real artist starve until some cad in the news makes him a hero, or is it vice-versa. Hail to the chieflet.

I am interested in developing poetry as a commencement into an investigation of visual art, architecture, ....(keep thinking). Poetry as a tangible reference point for an open and undisciplined ramble across an independent learning-scape. Thus a community focus as well as an independent moment of reflection. Interactive and contemporary with 21st century media. It should not take a poetry teacher or expert to expose others to the author thought space and revealing the inpiration for allusion, symbolic references, etc., make it a hyper-experience.

The are folks out there experimenting with it a various level of sophistication.

If slams can make a no props rule? How about a no body rule–only voice? maybe only computer modified voice and black stripes across the eyes. We might get some validity from anonymity.

Time to ride.

“9<,”

Maybe it is time to give the other side a chance to have a say. We are not likely to find anything that is entertaining as well as good valid criticism of poetry and poets but this might be good background.


Playbill News: Poet-Librettist-Translator Dana Gioia Confirmed as ... - ... Poet-Librettist-Translator Dana Gioia Confirmed as NEA Chairman By Robert Simonson 30 Jan 2003. Dana Gioia, President George W. Bush's ...
www.playbill.com/news/article/77598.html

You may know about his essay, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, May 1991
“Can Poetry Matter?” from Gioia's own web site.


Listen to his comments about what has happen since then.
Interview with Dana Gioia by NPR on “the Connection,” WBUR, Boston

On my side of street I am spending some time on the influence of John Ruskin on contemporary social, artistic and political life. Try RUSKIN, TURNER AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITES for a preview of what I will talking and writing about for a while.

Has anyone been over to the Poetsagainstthewar.org lately? It seems to me this was a good idea but it got out of hand. The readers have endeavored to pick out ones they really like. It would probably be a good idea to shit-can the rest and ask for some poems of critique and intrigue using the top 50. Too much of anything is just another exercise in mass psychology that is of little impact except for numbers. Does anyone seriously think anyone is going to read a 100 let alone 12000? Why don’t we just count lines if quantity is the goal. Who the hell is the audience?

I am anti-war but I am sorry this is just a ploy that may have been useful if it had been used according to an effective plan. As it is, self delusion is about what it has accomplished thus far.

The collection might still be useful as a basis for teach-ins or community exhibitions. Maybe we should make a Bush II War Memorial with all the poems on it. It could be made portable like the Vietnam War Memorial Traveling–now something exists that exploits the visual impact of quantity and exposes the futility of war with the content. It would be the first time we make a preemptive-strike-against-war-memorial instead of waiting until all we have left is mourning the dead for another stupid, ineffective violet action for peace.

Exception to a Ruler

Beware the sound of unity
against the war
you patriot poets.

Examine the strategic design
of empire desire
systematically discharged.

Penetrating verse tactically applied
like red herring
impotently scores ineffective.

Offering assistance to the boys
of the Bones
who plan simply for war,

power and annihilation of freedom
in a world
starved for petrol.

Know the sinister intent of the Order.
See your role
as Hegelian dissenters
legitimate as an exception to the rule.

Wise counsel rejected with contempt
makes wise men of fools
and despots heroes.

"<,@>"

After thinking about it perhaps we need to talk about perspective. We might start with a question that is easy enough for a middle school classroom: Why do we use “put the cart before the horse” when a more contemporary and universal aphorism might be “put on shoes before underwear”

Two assignments:

1. Read A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber and then put the English speaking countries on a scale of likely to unlikely to adopt the change in the next 10 years. Write a 1 page essay to justify your choice.

2. Choose an episode of Jerry Seinfeld that relates to the issue and prepare a piece based on the program content to be presented at a slam.

Who am I?

In other words you have to define “light” before we can make sense of the experience.
Light is not bad it is like virtual travel. When you have been taken somewhere but it was only an illusion created without smoke and mirrors.


I added some poetry links to sites:
Here is a poem I like:
The Farmers of Good Dirt