Re: Russell Brand's Article on Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death

 

 

Russell Brand wrote an article for The Guardian in which he addresses the tragic, pointless and untimely end to Philip Seymour Hoffman's life. You can read it here: Another Victim Of Extremely Stupid Drug Laws by Russell Brand

Russell's open letter is a passionate and unapologetic indictment of current drug laws and is buoyed by his own personal struggle with addiction and recovery.


And I agree with much of what he has to say.



Firstly, that Philip’s death was indeed, tragic and avoidable.

Secondly, that we need to de-criminalize drugs and address the ways in which addicts are perceived and treated. History has painfully illustrated the pitfalls of prohibition and common sense dictates that we are very much in need of regulations for safe access, education for proper care and compassion for understanding.

But, in tandem, I feel we should also address the condition of what Russell describes as “…the unrelenting echo of an unfulfillable void”…beyond the cause and effect of addiction.

I believe addiction isn’t just a physical/biological condition. I believe it starts when intelligent, sensitive observers seek refuge from unrelenting, meaninglessness and injustice.

Isn’t it time for an acknowledgement of the crisis of culture?

Isn't it time to recognize and reject the endless forwarding of the cult of personality, spectacle and crisis to divert human consciousness away from awareness and justice - toward complacency, inequality and resignation?

It’s time to identify the real enemy. The Masters of Diversion and Misdirection - the owners, the oppressors and the geopolitical planners.

It’s time to call these entities out. It's time to call them what they are...the architects of power, the engineers of economic inequality and the perpetrators of social injustice. 

If not now...when?


***About***

it’s not about the bulge in his pants
or, the rose beneath her lace
it’s not about the property lines
or, lovers losing face
it’s not about who’s right or wrong
or, who will win the case
it’s about the roles we play
and the lies we’re told
that keep us in our place
those who print the money
rule by phones without a trace…
while poets
vainly soliloquize
on the lack of human grace


©2005shareeannegorman


At least, that's the way it seems to me,

annienomad-cyberpoet
http://annienomad.com

An Open Letter to Chris Hedges...by annienomad-cyberpoet

This is a slightly revised letter that I sent to Chris Hedges, via Common Dreams:

 

Dear Chris,

 

Thank you for your many informative and uncompromising articles. You are a one-man, de-programming machine:)
 

I am writing to you because I have noticed recently that the Occupy Movement is calling for a global citizens' movement and I have an idea that I think will bring the 99% of the world (first world and third world citizens) together in Solidarity...not because I'm a genius or anything. I just think maybe people have been concentrating on the symptoms of the global crisis rather than the cause and might, therefore, have missed the root of the problem.
 

As you know, one of the many strategies the rich rely upon in gaining and maintaining their wealth is to apply downward pressure on labor. And, of course, the benefit to oppressing workers lies not only in increased profits via slave-wages, but in keeping the 99% in constant survival/panic-mode so that the 1% have less opposition from a frightened, and therefore, more easily-controlled populace.

I would just like to remind everyone that LABOR crosses all demographics - race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and all other cultural and social markers. Which makes it the perfect binder for social and economic change.

 

Labor has, in fact, been the basis of the most lasting changes in some of the largest social movements in history. 

 

Sometime ago, I started a petition for a Global Labor Treaty for Living Wages. I am not under the impression that, on its own, a petition will solve anything. 

 

Clearly, a Global Labor Treaty for Living Wages *movement* will require the collaboration of lawyers, journalists, social leaders and political strategists for said movement to come to full fruition...but a petition creates a good starting point for the right conversation.

A sort of Genesis point.
 

I believe a Global Labor Treaty for Living Wages is a good idea, but I am only an unknown poet.

There is simply no reason to listen to me....I have no "branding".

My one claim to *non-fame* is that Noam Chomsky once called my poem "Vigil - A Poem of American Crisis"..."Moving and evocative. And so true".

 

I have posted my Global Labor Treaty for Living Wages petition on many sites (AlterNet, Truthdig, Truthout, Common Dreams, Facebook, Twitter) trying to build support for what seems, to me, to be a viable approach for stopping runaway corporate worker and third world exploitation but no organization or group has stepped up to lend their numbers...so, I figured, maybe, bringing the idea to the attention of someone who has been writing extensively about the dangers of growing corporate feudalism might possibly help move the cause forward.

 

Probably not...but I thought I'd try.

 

 

Here is the link for the petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/sign-now-to-enact-a-global-labor-treaty-for-living-wages

 

Here is the link to the website:

http://globallabortreaty.org/

 

Here is the link to my poem:
Vigil - A Poem of American Crisis
 

Or, here is the link to the animated, multi-media version of "Vigil":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53fHIfd6vtw
 

I have no idea whether you will find this idea to be worthy of endorsing or viable enough to consider forwarding...but, in any case, thank you so much for your enlightening journalistic work.

 

At least, that's the way it seems to me,

 

Sharee Anne Gorman

annienomad-cyberpoet

http://annienomad.com/

Nominate Noam Chomsky for a Nobel Peace Prize

Without Truth, Peace Will Never Be Possible

I'm no one important...just an online cyberpoet. 

But I am also an increasingly-concerned, world-citizen. 

On a daily basis, I watch the way public information is deliberately molded to serve power. I see the global conversation hijacked by corporate and private interests. I observe the way, little by little, language is losing all meaning and context as self-censored, media talking-heads, judiciously avoid actual information in favor reading canned, press release statements of "vetted" sources for fear of losing access to high-profile, seats of power.

The mainstream world is becoming more disoriented, more divorced from reality and less authentic with each passing day.

Critical Thinking is on the decline, while media-manufactured, scandal distraction and group think is on the rise.   

REAL CHANGE will not be possible until citizens around the globe make a conscious decision to celebrate the brave individuals who speak truth to power, who stand steadfastly by their truth and who share their hard-earned wisdom so that others my see the actual path that we are traveling - instead of the illusion that propaganda and misinformation has fashioned over our instruments of perception to keep our hearts and minds from functioning properly. 
 

Professor Noam Chomsky is one of those brave individuals. He regularly shares reality-shifting perspectives, that shatter the official stories of corporate-funded, think tank justifications, designed to keep ordinary citizens complacent in times of great injustice. 

Professor Chomsky speaks the kind of truths that make the powerful, the privileged and the corrupt take a good hard look in the national and global mirror...only to find themselves scrambling to answer his straight-forward challenge of their carefully-constructed, but demonstrably false, agendas. 

 

So, with that in mind, I have started a petition to the International Court of Justice and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to consider nominating Prof. Noam Chomsky (international icon for justice among students and peace-minded individuals everywhere) for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Not just because I feel this nomination is well-deserved and long over-due, but because I believe the nomination will bring much-needed, international attention to the causes of Peace, Nuclear Disarmament and Climate Change – all of which Professor Chomsky (and anyone with a conscience) is passionate about.

 

For over half a century, Professor Chomsky has had to look the most horrific world events in the face then, calmly and intelligently, draw a map of the policies that allowed those events to come to pass so that others could understand the connectivity (or externalities, as he calls them) of neo-liberal, geopolitical strategies.

Professor Chomsky speaks truth to power. He spreads knowledge and understanding of how totalitarianism impacts the world. His tireless commitment to justice creates a dialog of truth which makes CHANGE POSSIBLE...which, in turn, makes PEACE POSSIBLE.

If you agree: Please SIGN & SHARE with your followers and contacts!  Thank you!

https://www.change.org/petitions/nominate-noam-chomsky-for-a-nobel-peace-prize

 

At least, that's the way it seems to me,

Sharee Anne Gorman

annienomad-cyberpoet
http://annienomad.com

Morpheus (The Matrix) Wakes Us Up About Wall Street

 

 

 

The Matrix Has You...

 

 

Take The Red Pill (Click Here)

 

 

 

 

 

The Evolutionary Need for Whistleblowers...by annienomad-cyberpoet

Why we need to consider very carefully the cases of Bradley Manning (Wiki-Leaks), Edward Snowden (NSA) and Bradley Birkenfeld (UBS) before we apply the label of “Traitor”.

The debate over the morality and destructive impact of any Empire’s geopolitical footprint is nothing new. But today, in the age of information, unprecedented surveillance and tech-fueled financial fraud, the debate has risen to international, trans-global proportions. It has, in fact, reached a fever-pitch.

With a camera in every corner of the globe we can no longer ignore the suffering that expansionism creates. We as, a nation, can no longer escape the stunned question upon waking – no, not the familiar question of “Where are we?” But the infinitely more telling question of “Who are we?” 

Whether it be North invading South, East expanding West, or the non-geographical new frontier of cyber-dominance…the question remains. Are we humans genetically programmed to invade, conquer, sabotage and wage endless war in a desperate attempt to stay on top for as long as possible?

This is now America’s burning question. And truth be told, it always has been even from the beginning, in that we were conceived (as George Washington himself described America) as an “Infant Empire”. A deliberate and expanding Empire, that Thomas Jefferson characterized as a “nest” that would spread out and colonize the entire continent - doing away with the red man, eliminating the Latinos and sending the slaves back to Africa when they were no longer needed.

 

Since the inception of our nation the United States has been struggling to bridge the disconnect between the stated ideals of our Founding Fathers and their strategic policies to expand the empire…first here at home, and then abroad.

And in that struggle, some of our best minds have put forth the kind of work that questioned America’s “exceptionalism”.

Artist As Whistleblower

Most people know of George Orwell's cautionary tale "1984" about just how far down the rabbit-hole we can get if surveillance and mind-control go unchecked and unchallenged.

But few remember that during the invasion of the Philippines, Mark Twain wrote an imagined history of a twentieth-century America.  In it, he predicted that a “lust for conquest” had already destroyed “the Great [American] Republic,” because  “trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.”

Thoughtful, creative types have always felt it was their duty to question the wisdom of those blinded by the quest for power and the satiation of greed. That it is our human imperative to keep ourselves, as a species, evolving rather than devolving.

Keeping our elected leaders on track, serving the will of the people instead of kowtowing to power, is an exercise that, by definition, requires Critical Thinking - the kind of thinking that can identify and illustrate the incongruity of words in a speech or document, verses actions taken on the ground, in our name...with our children.

The inherent hypocrisy of a seeming all-embracing statement such as, “All Men Are Created Equal”…unless, of course, you were born outside the author’s esteemed circle of landed-gentry, a woman, a person of a different color who happen to be a convenient source of free labor, or to a tribe that has been living for centuries on lands rich in natural resources that, rightfully or wrongfully, will be claimed by a superior force…becomes obvious when exposed to the merest hint of a well-formed question.  

Thankfully, as in the parable of “The Emperor Has No Clothes”, even a child can provide a simple reality-check. The absence of which contributes to a myriad of human abuses that continue unchecked and unabated when people of conscience refuse to take a stand. 

In a world where no one will question the rationales of their leaders for fear there won’t be enough for themselves – the end result will always be that the "lower classes" and the unprotected native populations of the world will have to endure the fickle “benevolence” of their land-grabbing, money-hoarding oppressors…in perpetuity. 

Well, maybe not "in perpetuity"- just right up to that terrible moment when the strategic political planners of the invaders decide they have built a strong enough case against their “burden” and no longer see the need for keeping up appearances.  

It then becomes a foregone conclusion that our “enemy” will die, en masse, at the hands of a military (domestic or foreign) saddled with whatever label our leaders have leveled against them to justify their extinction.

Their only crime being...they were living in the path of Empire.  

Whistleblowers are necessary when institutions and governments no longer serve the greater good. They are, if ethically motivated, agents of evolution because the goal of a whistleblower is to demand that those in positions of authority live up to the ideals and mission statements contained within their company charter or government constitution. 

So, I ask you to consider carefully before vilifying the revealers of harsh truths, because the only thing standing between truth and lies…is transparency. 

At least, that’s the way is seems to me,

Annie

annienomad-cyberpoet

http://annienomad.com