Swans Commentary
http://www.swans.com/
October 5, 2009
FUNDRAISING TIME: Gentle-hearted readers, do you remember what Swans is
about? "In a time of revisionism, faux-semblant, spinning news, and skewed
information, Swans is about thinking, questioning, observing, and providing
ideas that are lacking in the mainstream media." (It's also about Arts &
Culture.) An insightful observer once noted, "In sum, Swans is an ad-free
rational island in an ocean of commercial make-believe." Please help us reach
our $3,000 goal for 2009. Donate now! --
http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html
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Note from the Editors: When Edmund Burke wrote in 1756 that "No passion so
effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear,"
he could not have imagined that over 250 years later, vitriolic fear-
mongering would be so successfully waged against the notion of providing for
people's health and well being. While the War on Health may appear unreasoned
and reactionary on the surface, behind the scenes is a well coordinated,
financed, strategic attack. Gilles d'Aymery continues his analysis of this
debate, uncovering the influence-meddlers, pundits, and demagogues hard at
work to preserve, not reform, the US for-profit sick care system. We cannot
be mere spectators on this important debate; nor can we sit passively while
the case for an attack on Iran is manufactured. Aymery hits hard against
perpetual war and the ignorant masses that swallow the propaganda, from Iraq
to Iran and beyond.
It's not only the *legal* drug trade for which the mainstream media
manufactures consent for capitalist prerogatives -- Michael Barker delves
beyond a book on the CIA, the Australian drug trade, and the Mackay murder
that has been all but banned by the media. Nigerian corruption is also far
from the news, so Femi Akomolafe takes task with the government officials who
fill their coffers and bury their heads in the sand with no accountability
while the nation suffers from lack of electricity, environmental devastation,
and assaults by militant youth. Activist Martin Murie considers how our very
minds and bodies succumb to acquiescence, relating to rock climbers and
laborers who transcend physical demands and care for the other. Yet from
Nigeria to New Orleans, recalling Hurricane Katrina and the lack of care for
the other, we learn from Garry Potter just how dystopian realities already
found in much of the Third World have begun to visit the First.
Moving on to counter-cultural matters, Steve Shay tells of stuffing his
hundred-pound dog in the Volkswagen and making a cross-country move from
suburban Chicago to life on a boat in Washington State; Peter Byrne considers
the profound collection of the exiled national poet of Palestine, Mahmoud
Darwish; and Charles Marowitz reviews a book on the complexity of poet and
mystic-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Jeffery Klaehn presents a love
poem in seven chapters, from the promise of love to the ultimate decision,
and circling back to health care and the impact of obesity in America, Raju
Peddada would like to impose a punitive approach on the obese to cut the fat
from both the population and the Medicare budget, though having read *Fast
Food Nation,* the editors would rather punish the food industry for its
fattening and addicting products. As always we close with your letters,
demonstrating the diversity that Swans provides, from cartoons to music,
culture, and international politics.
# # # # #
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/desk091.html
Blips #91 - From the Martian Desk - Gilles d'Aymery
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/ga273.html
Iran: War Madness - Gilles d'Aymery
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker32.html
The CIA, Drugs, And An Australian Killer Cop - Michael Barker
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/potter01.html
New Orleans And Katrina: Past Prediction, Future Dystopia - Garry Potter
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/murie80.html
Climbing, Work, Activism - Martin Murie
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/femia20.html
Yar'adua Fiddles While Nigeria Burns - Femi Akomolafe
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/sshay01.html
Old Macho And The Sea - Short Story by Steve Shay
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/pbyrne110.html
The Poet Who Would Not Be Expelled From History - Book Review by Peter Byrne
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/cmarow148.html
Coleridge: Journey Through Heaven And Hell - Book Review by Charles Marowitz
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/klaehn04.html
Red, Red Roses - Poetry by Jeffery Klaehn
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/rajup21.html
We Are A Fat Country! - Raju Peddada
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/letter175.html
Letters to the Editor
# # # # #
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Swans
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