An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

By Michael Moore

November 30, 2009 -- Information Clearing House --

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours, Michael Moore MMFlint@aol.com MichaelMoore.com

P.S. There's still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President. Michael Moore is an activist, author, and filmmaker. See more of his work at his website MichaelMoore.com

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief

A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he's living in another town
in the dream he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep

Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are

Rumi

Living on Earth

Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is the weekly environmental news and information program distributed by Public Radio International. Every week approximately 300 Public Radio stations broadcast Living on Earth's news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues. The show airs in 9 of the 10 top radio markets and reaches 80% of the US.

A very cool resource for environmental topics.
Interesting and entertaining. It also has free podcasts .

Living on Earth (link)

Three Models of Social Change

With COP15 soon to begin, I have been wondering whether we can change fast enough to implement the solutions that will save civilization, as I've described in Plan B 4.0.

When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, I find it useful to look at various models of change. Three stand out.

Pearl Harbor model of change.
One is the catastrophic event model, which I call the Pearl Harbor model, where a dramatic event fundamentally changes how we think and behave. The second model is one where a society reaches a tipping point on a particular issue often after an extended period of gradual change in thinking and attitudes. This I call the Berlin Wall model. The third is the sandwich model of social change, where there is a strong grassroots movement pushing for change on a particular issue that is fully supported by strong political leadership at the top.

The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was a dramatic wake-up call. It totally changed how Americans thought about the war. If the American people had been asked on December 6th whether the country should enter World War II, probably 95 percent would have said no. By Monday morning, December 8th, perhaps 95 percent would have said yes.

The weakness of the Pearl Harbor model is that if we have to wait for a catastrophic event to change our behavior, it might be too late. It could lead to stresses that would themselves lead to social collapse. When scientists are asked to identify a possible "Pearl Harbor" scenario on the climate front, they frequently point to the possible breakup of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Relatively small blocks of it have been breaking off for more than a decade now, but huge parts of the sheet could break off, sliding into the ocean.

It is conceivable that this breakup could raise sea level a frightening two or three feet within a matter of years. Unfortunately, if we reach this point it may be too late to cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the remainder of the West Antarctic ice sheet or the Greenland ice sheet, whose melting is also accelerating. This is not the model we want to follow for social change on climate.

Berlin Wall model of change.
The Berlin Wall model is of interest because the wall's dismantling 20 years ago, in November 1989, was a visual manifestation of a much more fundamental social change. At some point, the people living in Eastern Europe, buoyed by changes in Moscow, had rejected the great "socialist experiment" with its one-party political system and centrally planned economy.

Although it was not anticipated, Eastern Europe experienced a political revolution, an essentially bloodless revolution that changed the form of government in every country in the region. It had reached a tipping point, but it was not expected. You can search the political science journals of the 1980s in vain for an article warning that Eastern Europe was on the verge of a political revolution. In Washington the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "had no idea in January 1989 that a tidal wave of history was about to break upon us," reflected Robert Gates, formerly with the CIA and now U.S. Secretary of Defense, in a 1996 interview.

Tobacco tip example.
Many social changes occur when societies reach tipping points or cross key thresholds. Once that happens, change comes rapidly and often unpredictably. One of the best known U.S. tipping points is the growing opposition to smoking that took place during the last half of the twentieth century. This anti-smoking movement was fueled by a steady flow of information on the health-damaging effects of smoking, a process that began with the Surgeon General's first report in 1964 on smoking and health. The tipping point came when this information flow finally overcame the heavily funded disinformation campaign funded by the tobacco industry.

Published almost every year, the Surgeon General's report both drew attention to what was being learned about the effect of smoking on health and spawned countless new research projects on this relationship. There were times in the 1980s and 1990s when it seemed every few weeks another study was being released that had analyzed and documented one health effect or another associated with smoking. Eventually smoking was linked to more than 15 forms of cancer and to heart disease and strokes. As public awareness of the damaging effects of smoking on health accumulated, various measures were adopted that banned smoking on planes and in offices, restaurants, and other public places. As a result of these collective changes, cigarette smoking per person peaked around 1970 and began a long-term decline that continues today.

One of the defining events in this social shift came when the tobacco industry agreed to compensate state governments for past Medicare costs of treating smoking victims. More recently, in June 2009 Congress passed by an overwhelming margin and President Obama signed a bill that gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products, including advertising. It opened a new chapter in the effort to reduce the health toll from smoking.

Sandwich model of social change.
The sandwich model of social change is in many ways the most attractive one, partly because it brings a potential for rapid change. As of late 2009, the strong grassroots interest in cutting carbon emissions and developing renewable sources of energy is merging with the interests of President Obama and his administration. One result is a near de facto moratorium on building new coal plants.

There are many signs that the United States may be moving toward a tipping point on climate, much as it did on civil rights in the 1960s. Though some of the indicators also reflect the economic downturn, it now seems likely that carbon emissions in the United States peaked in 2007 and have begun what will be a long-term decline. The burning of coal and oil, the principal sources of carbon emissions, may be declining. And with the cars to be scrapped in 2009 likely to exceed sales, the U.S. automobile fleet size may have peaked and begun to shrink.

The shift to more fuel-efficient cars over the last two years, spurred in part by higher gasoline prices, was strongly reinforced by the new automobile fuel efficiency standards and by rescue package pressures on the automobile companies to improve fuel efficiency. The combination of much more demanding automobile efficiency standards, a dramatic restoration of funding for public transit, and an encouraging shift not only to more fuel-efficient gas-electric hybrid cars but also to both plug-in hybrids and electric cars could dramatically reduce gasoline sales. The U.S. Department of Energy in past years had projected substantial growth in U.S. oil consumption, but it has recently revised this downward. The question now is not will oil use decline, but how fast will it do so.

Shifts within the energy sector, with rapid growth in wind and solar energy while coal and oil are declining, also signal a basic shift in values, one that could eventually alter every sector of the economy. If so, this, combined with a national leadership that shares these emerging values, could lead to social and economic change on a scale and at a pace we cannot now easily imagine.

Of the three models of social change, relying on the Pearl Harbor model is by far the riskiest, because by the time a society-changing catastrophic event occurs, it may be too late. The Berlin Wall model works, despite the lack of government support, but it does take time. Some 40 years elapsed after the communist takeover of the governments of Eastern Europe before the spreading opposition became strong enough to overcome repressive regimes and switch to democratically elected governments. The ideal situation for rapid, historic progress occurs when mounting grassroots pressure for change merges with a national leadership committed to the same change. This may help explain why the world has such high hopes for the new U.S. leadership.

Lester Brown

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."

"Now, on the road to freedom, I was pausing for a moment near Temuco and could hear the voice of the water that had taught me to sing."

"The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

Pablo Neruda

I bought one of these taco
benders from a coworker
last night when she was going
home. I haven't tried it yet but
it looks like a good idea. Her husband
invented it. She said that it was on you tube.
So here it is.

Deluge

on its loom of gold, its latticework
of lightning, rain pours
from Heaven into your seeing

weeks, months, lifetimes since
last the sky released
such a fury of Truth

if you were the Buddha you could hear
in thunder a universe
of flowers blooming

might even don this wet
surrender as a robe -- gusts
of wind turning

Love to velvet . . . might walk right into
that holy fire -- lakes
of wisdom forming in

the craters left
by your
enormous

steps. . .

Elizabeth Reninger

Perfect Circle "Imagine"
Click to see video

A hundred years slip by when your free
ten thousand cares dissolve when you're still
a mountain image shimmers on sunlit water
snowflakes swirl above a glowing stove

Stone house
translated by Red Pine

Here at the world's end
the cold winds are beginning to blow.
What messages
have you for me, my master?
When will the poor wandering goose arrive?
The rivers and lakes are swollen with autumn's waters.
Art detests a too successful life;
and the hungry goblins await you with welcoming jaws.
You had better have
a word with the ghost of that other wronged poet.
Drop some verses into the
Mi-lo as an offering to him!

Thoughts of Li Po from the World's End by Tu Fu

The self forgets itself
as a frantic dog in a glass temple
barks himself to death;
as a lion, seeing a form in the well,
leaps on the image;
as a rutting elephant sticks his tusk
in a crystal boulder.
The monkey has his fistful of sweets
and won't let go. So
from house to house
he gibbers.
Kabir says, parrot-on-a-pole:
who has caught you?

Kabir

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I've been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That's a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we're in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.

Buckminister Fuller

One month from now is the due date for our second
daughter Dec. 22 ( oh, a Christmas baby!),
we are actually hoping for Winter Solstice,
which is the 21st of Dec.

We have decided to name her
Oriana Soleil Jaekle
in honor of the
Suns birth.

But, I will keep you posted
when she is
actually
born.

Endless time

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.
Thou knowest how to wait.

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

We have no time to lose,
and having no time we must scramble for a chance.
We are too poor to be late.

And thus it is that time goes by
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it,
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut;
but I find that yet there is time.

Rabindranath Tagore

Health advisory

The Surgeon General of the United States issued a warning to fans of The Bible, stating that "some side effects have been observed among avid readers." A common conspiracy theory is that the writers of the books intended them to act as hypnotic passages to trick readers into funding the New World Order. An example of this so-called 'hypnosis effect' is the following extract of Jesus' genealogy:

Bible Uncyclopdedia

"Encyclopedic information?
Factual accuracy?
A Jedi craves
not these things."

Yoda on' Wikipedia'

Wow well done. Nice editing.
Rock on Pearl Jam!

insignificance

All in all it`s no one`s fault. Excuses turn to carbon walls.
Blame it all on chemical intercourse.
The swallowed seeds of arrogance breeding in the thoughts of ten-thousand fools that fight irrelevance.

The full moon is dead skin. The one down here`s wearing thin.
So set up the ten pins as the human tide rolls in.
Like a ball that`s spinning.

Bombs dropping down overhead. On the ground.
It`s instilled to want to live.
Bombs dropping down. Please forgive our hometown in our insignificance.

`Turn the jukebox up,` he said. Dancing in irreverence.
Play C-3. Let the song protest.

The plates began to shift. Perfect lefts come rolling in.
I was alone and far away, hey. When I heard the band start playing.
On the lip they take off.

Bombs dropping down overhead. Underground.
It`s instilled to want to live.
Bombs dropping down. Please forgive our hometown in our insignificance.

Feel like resonance of distance. In the blood the iron lies.

It`s instilled to want to live.
Bombs dropping down. Please forgive our hometown in our insignificance.
Oh, in our insignificance, oh.

Pearl Jam

Having trouble with my computer! Please bear with me. Thanks, Pete.

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

Rumi

Astronaut Needed

Image from bachmont

Sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of solar energy, the Sahara could soon be home to dozens of huge solar farms under a new EU supergrid initiative to supply the continent's electricity needs with renewable energy. The Guardian's Alok Jha reports that the plan, which would cost around $71 billion (€45 billion) and take several decades to finish, would let all EU countries share electricity from wind, geothermal and solar energy.

Tree hugger

Birds again

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

Jim Harrison

“A child who does not play is not a child,
but the man who doesn't play
has lost forever the child who lived
in him and who he will miss terribly.”
Pablo Neruda

On crooked masts

The crowded sails’ belly is full,

Of hot winded traders at the

Free wheeling privateers

Drunken meetings.

Sharks circling, feeding on

The free trades chum of the slaves,

As they walk the thin plank

Of freedom to their doom.

Swimming toward the land that

Was once theirs. Now shadowed

By the dark flags of skulls and

Bones, corporate conquest

And thundering war drums echo

In the once verdant hills.