Monday, January 18, 2021

Fwd from John: My thoughts on MLK day and beyond

--- Forwarded message ---------
From: John H. 
Date: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 10:38 PM
Subject: My thoughts on MLK day and beyond


Martin Luther King was Angry and So Am I

 

As I sit here in the prelude to Martin Luther King Day I am angry, frustrated and depressed.  This morning I tuned into our church service only to be advised that while we, as a predominately  white church, were singing some black spirituals this was not to be seen as an appropriation of 'blackness' and that we shouldn't be ashamed to do so.  But why should we ever have to be reminded of such a thing.  Singing another culture's songs should always be seen as a celebration of that culture's traditions and a spreading of understanding.  It made me upset insofar as it was just one more example of the current trend being imposed on us to apologize for the accident of being born 'white'.  I refuse to be ashamed of who I am.  I am, however, ashamed and deeply saddened by what many whites have done both historically and currently to people of color both in this nation and around the world.

 

Yes, "Black Lives Matter", but so do Palestinian and Afghani and Syrian and Iraqi and Yemeni and Iranian and Indonesian and Congolese and Sudanese and Libyans and Venezuelans and Hondurans and Cubans and all of the other people of the world which we Americans have been directly and indirectly complicitly involved in murdering – and not just historically, but at this very moment in the support of corporate greed and the expansion of empire.  And, yes, this is an equal opportunity killing by Americans of all races and creeds, regularly celebrated in our corporate media as some perverted form of the defense of freedom.  But freedom for whom?

 

What we call freedom in this nation is not freedom in any real sense of the word.  It is an illusory meme draped over the our corporate killing ground to give us comfort while living in violent kleptocracy run by oligarchs and plutocrats whose only concern is grabbing everything possible regardless of the cost in human and environmental destruction.  They succeed by controlling what we are allowed to know and how we are allowed to know it.  They own the media which controls the propaganda which we are daily fed and they knowingly feed it to us in a manner to insure that we mere 'consumers' will always have reasons to hate one another – but never 'our betters'.  Thus, our media minders insure that class issues are never allowed to rise to the surface of the discussion.  We are always forced instead into issues of culture, race, gender or religious differences that are intended to separate rather than unite us.

 

One of the ways of doing this was devised by the CIA propaganda apparatus.  That was to promote the idea that anyone suggesting that a conspiracy might exist from within the government was a "conspiracy theorist" and then equating such a person with being nothing more than a fringe loony.  The problem is that there have been many actual historical conspiracies engaged in by high governmental officials of the United States – many by operatives of the CIA – which have been well documented – and they continue to this day.  The reasoning, of course, is that by creating the 'brand' conspiracy theory as a loony tune concept would eliminate any possibility of actual high-level conspiracies from being exposed.  And, for the most part, this has worked exactly as planned.

 

This is not to suggest that every conspiracy proposed is real or that some persons proposing them are not crazy as loons.  This is what gives the whole scheme credibility.  We know, for instance, that Bush's Iraq War started as the result of an actual conspiracy on the part of the Bush administration, planned well before 9/11, to 'cook the books' so to speak by creating fictitious evidence and by funneling false information to Judith Miller of the New York Times to gin up popular support for a devious and terrible undertaking.  But even before that, 9/11 was also used as an excuse for attacking Afghanistan in another attack planned long before 9/11 in an effort to drive out the Taliban because they had refused to agree to a proposed pipeline through their nation which would have benefitted Halliburton then chaired by Richard Cheney.  This too was a conspiracy, though never touted as such by the media.  Thus, 9/11 was an extraordinarily useful tool for the start and continuation to two never-ending illegal wars of choice which have resulted in the deaths and injuries to literally millions of people in multiple nations since 2001.

 

The CIA has been involved in literally hundreds of conspiracies of various natures since its founding at the end of World War II including the smuggling of heroin and cocaine from Southeast Asia and South and Central America into the U.S.  But these are never discussed in polite company nor, heaven forbid, on mainstream media.  There is the current conspiracy, operating in the open, to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Venezuela and the one just defeated where Honduras took back its legitimate government following an overthrow by the CIA assisted by Hillary Clinton's State Department.  There was the conspiracy following World War II to save many high-level Nazi officers and scientists by moving them to South American, the U.S. and parts of Europe where they would be secure and available for our use.  But we don't like to discuss this too much.

 

I could go on and on, the list is almost endless.  There is the fabricated case against Julius Assange and Wikileaks for which Assange is still being tortured in Britain for the crime of publishing material he was handed – something the New York Times regularly gets away with as they and he should.  But because Assange released information which was embarrassing to the United States he must be severely punished if not murdered.  And on, and on, and on . . .

 

And now, as a result of the assault on the Capitol, Joe Biden is proposing a new Domestic Terrorism law to supplement the already terrible Patriot Act which gave widely broad surveillance powers to the national security state.  This is an awful idea which was, as with the Patriot Act, already in the official pipeline prior to the Capitol assault.  The official excuse is the need to go after right wing vigilante militarism.  But what the powers that be really fear is not the right, they are entirely comfortable with fascism in its various forms.  What they fear is the progressive left because it is the progressive left that is willing to call out the Democratic Party establishment for the neoliberal corporate posers that they are.

 

The Democratic Party establishment as well as the 'liberal' mainstream media have firmly and thoroughly aligned themselves with the national security state.  At this juncture there is essentially no separation between the two.  It now appears that at least half of the commentators on CNN and MSNBC are former or current members of the FBI, CIA, NSA, Justice Department, Defense Department or other military or security agencies.  The primary bastion of liberal news, the New York Times has long been a semi-official conduit of propaganda from the CIA as is NPR.  Sadly the right wing media and the Republican Party are no better.  They just spew a different brand of similar prowar pro-surveillance propaganda aimed to keep their particular audience angry and inflamed against the left.

 

So where does this all leave us?  It does, I believe, leave us in a form of Orwellian hellscape where nothing is true and everything subject to distorted propaganda.  If one dares question the prevailing dogma he or she is charged with being a "conspiracy theorist" and thus a "nut case" unworthy of consideration.  And now that private monopolies such a Google, Facebook and Amazon are being permitted to disappear any and everyone they chose from the Internet dissenting voices of whatever stripe are at great risk.  The probability of a new Domestic Terrorism Law threatens to clamp down and dampen dissident views even more.  These certainly make it appear that the United States is on the cusp of becoming a purely fascist society in the most horrendous Orwellian way imaginable – not by soldiers stationed on the street corners, but by very effective thought control managed by corporate overlords and their political heiring's with a hard-right Christian fundamentalist military standing guard in the background.

 

I don't know about you but the prospect of this makes me very, very sad and very glad to be old.  Perhaps you noticed that I made no mention of the imminent global climate catastrophe in this piece.  That was no accident.  I did so because in this scenario there is simply no possibility that the powers that be will take any meaningful action – even if such action is possible – to ameliorate the coming destruction of life on planet Earth, at least life so far as we know it. 

 

So as I write this, now in my late seventies, I realize that I have now lived through the highlight period post-capitalist wonder in the world.  Coming out of the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s and following the horror of World War II there was an optimism that humankind had embarked on a new and more enlightened course in the world – that prosperity for all could be at hand.  And yet here we are now, a scant 70 or so years later looking at an Orwellian present and desolate future if there will be a future for humanity at all.  How could it be that we have allowed our so-called civilization to collapse in on itself so catastrophically so quickly?  How can it be that we imposed on ourselves a system of greed and self-interest to the detriment of all life to take control of our very existence?  In the end it is nothing less than a form of self-immolation.  It is the Icarus myth writ to a civilizational level.  Who now will be left to write the obituary for humanity?

 

  John

 

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism

that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong,

no matter who does it or says it." 

- Malcolm X

 

 

--

--
Ta.
 
 
Mark Rauterkus       Mark@Rauterkus.com 
Webmaster, International Swim Coaches Association, SwimISCA.org
Executive Director of SKWIM USA, a 501(c)(3), SKWIM.us
The Pittsburgh Project - swim coach and head lifeguard
Coach at The Ellis School for Swimming, T&F and Triathlon
Pittsburgh Combined Water Polo Team & Renegades (Masters) 

CLOH.org & Rauterkus.com & 4Rs.org

412 298 3432 = cell

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Fwd: Mark, see you in London this year?

--- Forwarded message ----

View this email in your browser

2021 has arrived and I hope this message finds you well and in good spirits.

The Uxbridge Folk Club in Hillingdon (West London), England has invited me to perform for their online concert series!  The very first solo show I did in the UK was at this club, so it holds a special place in my heart.  I will probably focus on some of my songs that have a connection to the British Isles in one way or another, and the show time should be convenient for my British and European friends (8pm London time, and 9pm on the Continent).  As usual, the concert is free to watch on YouTube Live, but donations are very welcome!  If you sign in to YouTube you can participate in the chat.

 
Hope to "see" you there,
Dave

LIVE FROM NACHVILLE - LONDON EDITION

Thursday, January 28, 2021
8 PM UK time (3 PM US Eastern, 12 PM Pacific)


Presented by the Uxbridge Folk Club

Watch on YouTube Live

Donate Here


 

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Website


Thursday, December 31, 2020

Fwd: Economic Impact Payments Are Underway

From: Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr.

Senator Bob Casey's   e-newsletter
Dear Mark, 

You likely have heard that a second round of Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) has been approved. I understand that many constituents have a number of questions.

The IRS started to distribute the second EIPs on December 29. Direct deposit payments should be deposited within the next two weeks. Distribution of paper checks began on Wednesday, December 30, and should continue through the end of January. If you received an initial EIP, no additional action is required to receive this second payment.

The income criteria for the second round of payments is the same as the first. If you are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident making under $75,000 a year (single) or $150,000 a year (married filing jointly) and are not claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax returns, you likely will qualify for the full $600 payment ($1,200 married couples). Families with qualifying children will also receive $600 for each dependent under age 17. Eligible individuals do not need to take any action to receive the EIP.

In addition to checks and direct deposits, Treasury will also be sending a limited number of payments out by debit card. The Economic Impact Payment debit card will be sent in a white envelope that prominently displays the U.S. Department of the Treasury seal. It has the Visa name on the front of the card and the issuing bank, MetaBank®, N.A.

If you did not receive one or both EIPs, but believe you are eligible, you will be able to claim the equivalent "Recovery Rebate Credit" when you file your 2020 federal income tax return.

You can learn more about the second round of EIPs on the IRS website. My staff is also happy to help answer questions or provide assistance, and can be reached through my website or at 866-461-9159.

While I am glad that some measure of relief is finally reaching Pennsylvanians, it is nowhere near enough. Please know that I will continue to fight in the new Congress to ensure that those who are struggling receive the additional economic support they need and deserve.


Sincerely,


Bob Casey

Facebook
 


Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Fwd: Reminder: Important news about SUUSI 2021





Dear beloved SUUSI community,

The Board and Core Staff would like to express our profound gratitude for all who are part of our SUUSI community, whether you have attended once or fifty times. You are the heart and soul of SUUSI. 

The Board and Core Staff are charged with making decisions that are in the best interests of public health, the safety of our community members, SUUSI's financial stability, and the strength of our bonds with each other. Given the lengthy timeline needed to put together all the elements of SUUSI, we have found ourselves with the dilemma of needing to make decisions now based on incomplete information about next July.

It is impossible to know at this time whether it will be safe to hold an in-person gathering in July of 2021. We cannot predict how widespread Covid-19 will be next summer, how broad the availability and acceptance of a vaccine will be, or how many people would be willing to attend a SUUSI that might require strict social distancing. Our host location, Western Carolina University, doubts whether they will be able to host on-campus gatherings next summer, and they will not have a definite answer in time to allow us to plan.

Under these circumstances, we have come to the difficult decision that we cannot plan for an in-person SUUSI 2021. The SUUSI Board has voted that SUUSI 2021 will be an entirely virtual event.

Many will be disappointed to hear this news. Many will be relieved to know that we are prioritizing safety. Many will feel a complicated mix of these emotions and others. This was a painful decision for SUUSI leadership to make. All of us value the traditionally immersive in-person SUUSI experience. We will miss playing together at Community Time or in a song circle, dancing together, sharing a table in the dining hall, and joining hands in worship.

Yet we are confident that "Love Brings Us Together," as our 2021 theme reminds us. We know that, whatever the format, love will bring us together in the summer of 2021. The Core Staff are already making plans to improve and build on the virtual format we developed for SUUSI 2020, and we hope that, once this news has had some time to settle, you will be ready to join us in making our shared virtual experience the best that it can be.
Find the latest information about SUUSI at suusi.org
SUUSI | Western Carolina University, July 18-24, 2021, Cullowhee, NC 28723

                         


Friday, November 13, 2020

History teaches prudent lesson on Pitt stadium. Hey Brian O'Neill

PG, April 4, 1999
Brian O'Neill Column

History teaches prudent lesson on Pitt stadium

"Pitt stadium will be razed..."

Sorry to see you feeding into the "done deal mentality." And, its nine-time national champions, not six.

Some of the mentions in the opinion article include:

  • money corrupting games
  • venerable structure
  • tradition
  • there was no innocent days of yore!
  • obscure novel, Stadium, 1931

Listen:

  1. Pitt Stadium was built with bonds. Big deal. Lots of businesses and buildings are built with bonds.

  2. "The students, fervid old grads and townspeople who had nothing else to do, came to the stadium on Saturday afternoons, but seldom with enthusiasm."

    Yea. Yawn. So what is the point. The fans are not going to get excited when the home team losses all national significance. This is a timeless understanding. People would rather win than not.

Productive people don't spectate, they live

Pittsburgh should cater to the busy people in our communities, and not spectators anway. We, the citizens, want among other things, more spaces to engage with one another. These are high-level playgrounds. We like the idea of sports performance complexes, but they need to server citizens with much better cost/benefits.

One can live while in the role of a spectator too. In the stands one can build releationships. One can also appreciate a struggle of time, space and releationship in others, and learn for themselves.

Desirable for Bettering Releationships

Pitt needs students, old grads and idle townspeople to come to its campus on Saturdays. Pitt does not need empty seats on the North Side on Saturdays.

The Game and the Process of Games

The NCAA handbook has swelled in size from the times of Sutherland. Pay to players was not formalized in scholarships as it is today. Pay to players is nothing new. Scholarships of this era are under the table too, as they are not out in the open. Ask a coach or the athletic department to publish their scholarship levels telling who is funded and to what level. Ask a baseball coach, or a sports coach with another cap on scholarships if those numbers are public knowledge, and they are not. There are privacy reasons, sure. But todays ills are the same as those of the past. Scholarships are given and taken in an under-the-table maner as they are not out in the open. These scholarships are formalized and legal documents, but are not out in the open on the top of the table for sure.

Purity

Who said anyting about being pure? Why not argue and refute virginity as a reason to raze Pitt Stadium. The Brian goes on to write, "Better players engorged the stadium." Snicker. Seems you do have a dirty thought -- engorged!

Beano Cook

Beano is a pigskin prognosticator of national stature, and that makes him a gambling advocate, in turn less pure, in turn of under-the-table transactions. To say what Beano says is anything but a "gambling" perspective is unwise. If Beano says Pitt should move to the new Steelers stadium, I'm of a heart to say that the move should not happen all the stronger. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Just above you had a purity thread, and then below you switch to a source of the worst kind for purity.

Beano = Gambling
Gambling = Not Pure
Beano = Raze Pitt Stadium

I say do the inverse of what Beano says. For example: The CHOKE folks worked withing the system with the County Health Department to prohibit the opening of a new coke plant in Hazelwood. The Health Department uses consultants who are engineers who get paid by the polluters. Its the corporations that spend to keep their operations alive. Beano Cook is one of the polluters in sports today. His opinion has an inverse effect on what is right. He is biased won't say anything otherwise to go counter to the "done-deal mentality."

Same to with the PG. Thanks for helping in the arguements to keep Pitt Stadium.

Case in point: I've talked to a number of journalists and reporters in Pittsburgh in the past months. More and a couple have told me that they think that the closing of Pitt Stadium is a terrible idea. They are dead-set against it. However, they don't want to loose their jobs. They don't want to loose press-passes once the new stadium opens. They do not want to buck up against these vindictive leaders who are on the other side of the arguement.

Sad for them. Sad for us. Sad for my neighbors too.


Gambling Stinks

Think of it in a perspective of the definition of sports as advocated here. Sports are games of time, space and releationship. Gambling is not a releationship builder. Gambling is not a space sensative activity, as it happens around the world. And, gambling is not much of a time game either. Gambling is anti-sport as it sets out to lessen all values of the game, time, space and releationships. Gamblers can't even bet upon who is going to win -- there are "favorites" and they change the rules of the games themselves as a team can win by 2 points -- and not cover the spread. How defeating.

Gambling is not sports and it greatly hurts sports.

Tainted but Valid Somewhere

Beano is a Pitt grad. Beano is a friend of Pitt and Pittsburgh. Beano has many releationships that might have some roots due to sports. There is much to build upon there, to make a sports person's opinion ring true, but the tainting is going to take great amounts of drilling to get to the sports person within Beano.

Dad's funeral















Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Wear your shoes as there is glass everywhere. Message from the leader at The Ellis School!

Friday note from Macon - November 13, 2020

by Macon Finley

 

US Community Homeroom 11/11/20

Good morning students. I want to take a moment to
acknowledge and celebrate a remarkable moment in our
nation’s history - the naming of Kamala Harris this past
weekend as our country’s Vice President-elect.
Regardless of our political affiliations, I hope we can all
pause to recognize the significance of this moment for
women in our country, and especially for women of color.
We are witnessing some firsts that will go down in the
history books, as Kamala Harris is the first woman to be
elected to this office, the first Black person, and the first
South Asian person.

The sense of possibility Vice President-elect Harris’s
election represents is enormous. I want to be sure each of
you feels that same sense of possibility for yourselves - I
hope you hear it from your families, from your teachers,
from your friends and classmates. And I especially want
to be sure you hear it from me. Each of you is a gift to this
school community and to the world. Each of you is going
to make a real difference in your life, each in your own
unique way. Some of those will be highly visible, publicly
recognized contributions, like serving in public office or
leading a startup or doing groundbreaking research.
Others will be quieter, more locally impactful contributions,
like healing patients in a hospital, or creating exhibits in a

museum, or managing a team in an organization, or
writing for a local newspaper. You don’t need to know yet
how you will make your mark. But I want you to know that
you can, and you should, and that our goal at Ellis is to be
a community where each of you knows and feels that
about yourself and your future, in which we lift each other
up and work together to create only more possibilities for
all girls and women. My favorite social media quote this
weekend referenced the glass ceiling that has been
shattered by Kamala Harris, and goes like this: “For all the
girls coming behind us. Be sure to wear shoes...there's
glass everywhere.” You all are those girls. I want you to
hear me say “Go for it. When it’s your time, I hope you’ll
get out there and shake the world!" 

Dancing in the streets for Biden now, but what about in 1 or 2 years?

 John H posted:

Now that Joe Biden has been declared the victor by the media and people have been euphorically dancing in the streets in eager anticipation of the wonders of a return to normalcy in America, perhaps it is time to take a good look at just what a Biden/Harris administration will actually look like.  It may well be that all of the dancing and celebrating may not be as happily remembered a year or two down the road – only time will tell.  It may be that the new normal Biden is promising to bring to the nation and the world will be much too much like the old normal which gave us Donald Trump to begin with – and that could bring him back in 2024, or even something much worse.

John


“Organized Greed Always Defeats Organized Democracy."  --  Matt Taibbi


Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Sunday, November 08, 2020

Fwd: Grab a friend and see who gets more matches!



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: pirates.com <info@mail.mlblists.com>
Date: Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 9:11 AM
Subject: Grab a friend and see who gets more matches!
To: <mark.rauterkus@gmail.com>


Don't forget: new activities each week.
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--

--
Ta.
 
 
Mark Rauterkus       Mark@Rauterkus.com 
Webmaster, International Swim Coaches Association, SwimISCA.org
Executive Director of SKWIM USA, a 501(c)(3)
The Pittsburgh Project - swim coach and head lifeguard
Coach at The Ellis School for Swimming, T&F and Triathlon
Pittsburgh Combined Water Polo Team & Renegades (Masters) 

http://CLOH.org

412 298 3432 = cell

Saturday, November 07, 2020

Fwd: The election is over . . . well almost over



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John H
Date: Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 9:46 PM
Subject: The election is over . . . well almost over


Now that the election is (almost) over it may be a good time to evaluate just what the American public has bought into this time around.  If, as it appears at the moment, Joe Biden prevails and the Republicans hold onto control of the Senate we can probably expect essentially nothing but more corporate and financial profiteering and more wars and interventions around the world for the next four years.  There will be almost no likelihood for any positive legislation benefitting Americans not so fortunate to reside within the lofty confines of the top 1%.  At the same time, due to the pandemic and the utter failure of the powers that be to adequately address the economic and medical consequences we are very likely to see even more deaths and a prolonged economic depression for the majority of the nation – if not the world.  Fortunately, for the corporate and financial elites, the Federal Reserve has already stated that it is prepared to use its full panoply of options to insure that the "economy" does not crash.  This, of course, does not translate into jobs and income for most Americans only protection for financial institutions, Wall Street and mega-corporations.  So be prepared, these will indeed be interesting times ahead – not that they aren't already. 

 

I don't believe that there was ever going to be a beneficial outcome from this election regardless of the outcome, though I do concede that Biden is marginally better than Trump, but this almost guarantees that Biden will be nothing but an ineffectual placeholder and that economic conditions in the next two to four years will almost certainly lead to a Republican sweep of both the House and the Senate in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024.  If the Democrats has simply bothered to put up a candidate and some policies addressing the very real needs of the American people in this election – jobs, healthcare, student debt, climate catastrophe, etc. I believe that they would have won in a landslide.  As it turned out Trump almost won by appealing to people on the economy and, had the pandemic not occurred and had he not botched it so badly, he almost certainly would have won handily.  Identity politics may make people feel good, but its not a winning appeal when people are struggling economically and unable to access healthcare reasonably.

 

I strongly urge you to read the attached articles.  The first contains two excellent short pieces, the first by Chris Hedges and the second by Jonathan Cook.  The second is a longer piece from Naked Capitalism which is also quite good.

 

  John

 

"Organized Greed Always Defeats

       Organized Democracy

Matt Taibbi

 

 

--

--
Ta.
 
 
Mark Rauterkus       Mark@Rauterkus.com 
Webmaster, International Swim Coaches Association, SwimISCA.org
Executive Director of SKWIM USA, a 501(c)(3)
The Pittsburgh Project - swim coach and head lifeguard
Coach at The Ellis School for Swimming, T&F and Triathlon
Pittsburgh Combined Water Polo Team & Renegades (Masters) 

http://CLOH.org

412 298 3432 = cell