Third World America

Parts 2 through 5 of this series are attached below.

Vignettes of Poverty in Mississippi

A couple of days ago we posted a short documentary on poverty in the Mississippi Delta. If hearing that the most fertile planes in the United States have been reduced to abject levels of poverty which compete with Haiti and Cambodia isn't dramatic enough, this series of shorts showing individual cases of poverty in Mississippi certainly is. These videos were uploaded to Youtube.com by yourstory08 for the poverty initiative Gathering of Hearts.

Micah Chapter 3

By Gene Ogorodov

The Boston Pine Flag is not a religious blog. However, Upton Sinclair wasn't the only person in the world that thought that human exploitation is a poor way to run a society. In the last twenty years or more public policy has been bedecked with religious overtone, and we have decided to throw our hats into the religious ring, as well, under the hopes that the Bible takes a slightly different opinion on exploitation than the Fox News. 

Both the Religious Right and the Left have presented their pet issues as being anointed with the favor of the Hebrew and Christian God. If one were to only listen to media pundits and politicians, one might get the impression that Crony Capitalism, rather than Cleanliness, is next to Godliness. 

Mississippi Delta Poverty

Some Thoughts on Evangelicalism

By Gene Ogorodov

Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism are hardly monolithic blocs. In conversing with passionate Fundamentalists or Evangelicals the first thing that they will convey is that they are "born again"; the second is that they are not "that" type of Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist. 

These are two terms that are poorly defined and amorphous in usage. Both a badges of honor and marks of shame, these terms are thrown about in American religious circles with little care for consistency. In a practical sense these terms mean little more than "us" and "them."

Jeff Sharlet "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy." (EI Speaker Series)

Democracy Now! -- Owner of Snowden's Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov't

The Finer Arts of Diplomacy in the Post-9/11 World

 By Gene Ogorodov

In the years since 9/11 the United States has trapped itself in the endless cycle of fighting the chimera of Terrorism. Fueled by rabid anti-Semitism against Arabs and Muslims and horror of popular self-determination the American Empire has replaced the worthy adversary of Communism with an enemy so clearly imaginary that the Republic must send its armies to the antipodes to illegally violate the sovereignty foreign nations openly trampling over international law just to find partisans willing to engage in half-hearted attempts to attack it.

High-handedness, dishonesty, and ball-faced treachery now characterized every single political action undertaken by the United States. It has become unthinkable for the US to honor its treaty obligations and behave in a manner that attempted to achieve its will without coercion. The finer arts of diplomacy have been surrendered in favor of drones and cluster-bombs.

Michael Chossudovsky "The Toronto Hearings on 9/11: Uncovering Ten Years of Deception."

In spite of the title this is NOT a 9/11 conspiracy theory flick. (So, if our reader is looking for planned demolition, nano-thermite, cruse missiles, etc. I apologize. However, I comforted by the fact that there are many blogs out there that will satisfy that desire.) Michael Chossudovsky is renowned economist and political theorist. His speech at the Toronto Hearing on 9/11 conference is a synthesis of conclusions drawn from demonstrable facts. It goes without saying I do not agree with everything he says, but his analysis of geopolitics puts an interesting interpretation on the Global War on Terror that is, at least, worth hearing. Enjoy.

Georgian Lessons for NATO

By Gene Ogorodov

Several years ago shortly after the South Ossetian War I read a monograph from the Strategic Studies Institute on this conflict focusing on the Lessons Learned for the Russian Military. Although it was a short war that didn't settle much more than forcing Georgia to remain a clandestine partner of NATO rather than opening joining the Western Powers, it was quite telling about the balance of military power in the world.

The troubles the Russian Military faced were predictable given the chaos of the 1990s but, nonetheless, forced a re-evaluation of Russia's military strength. There were a significant number of units the Russian High Command deemed incapable of engaging in combat after Putin's reforms and years of COIN in Chechnya which forced Moscow to hobble together a strike force from all over the country. Furthermore, the Russian Air Force lost fighters to a country that had no air force. "The question," said the Russian Defense Minister, "is not whether Russia can penetrate the NATO air defense system, but an air defense system [sic]."

RT: Act of War: 5 Years After the South Ossetian Conflict

Laurie Santos "How Monkeys Mirror Human Irrationality." (TED)

Frans de Waal and Jeff Schloss "Morals Without God?"

Randall Balmer "True Origins of the Religious Right."

Freeman Dyson "Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society."

Quotation

"Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation."

V.I. Lenin  
The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism, 1913.

Ben Ginsberg "The Fall of the Faculty: Governing Universities in the 21st Century"

Ben Ginsberg is a Professor at John's Hopkins whose book The Fall of the Faculty (published in 2011 by OUP) details the corporatization of the American University system and the subsequent disenfranchisement of professional scholars. In the not to distant past the faculty of a College was the College. That era is over. Now professors are paid employees that provide students with a feel good service that gives the "right image" that administrators want. No longer is education about teaching; it has become an overpriced overly bureaucratic playground that manufactures credentials and perpetuates a culture of administration for administration. He shows how skyrocketing costs, fewer tenure positions, and even the fiscal irresponsibility of current paradigms on education can trace their roots to the growth of a paradisaical administrative class that is threatening to  consume the whole system. This is a must read for anyone interested in education. This  book can be found at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

An Open Letter to Sec. of State John Kerry

Dear Sec. Kerry:

American warmongering is becoming quite tiresome. Between the illegal wars, covert wars, rumors of wars, acts of war, and penchant for provoking the rest of the world your credibility is somewhat tarnished. This is not to say that your justification for going to war is a ball-faced lie; it is just a little bit strange that you can justify going to war with a different country every six months. Should the people of the world really feel sorry for the Obama Administration in not being allowed to enjoy the blessings of peace by malevolent parties, or should we just assume that certain paranoid psychopathy that hijacked US foreign policy during the Bush years has continued unabated. 

Nonetheless, American bombardment of Syria is possibly the worst imaginable response to the recent chemical attack in Damascus. To be frank, I don't believe you that your intelligence has confirmed that the Assad regime was responsible. However, logically there are only three possible culprits--you (through your common friends with Al-Qaeda, the Syrian Rebles), Assad, or none of the above. I will ignore "none of the above" because the potential wider ramifications of that are literally infinite.

Noam Chomsky (July, 2013) "The Corporatization of the University"