Newtopia - 05/2005 May
Musings on Mayab: Reflections on Culture and Race
Since history has been written by the victorious West, Meso-American peoples have been portrayed to us as social and religious barbarians, bloody cruel pagans who were lifted up by Europe and Christianity. Recent socially conscious attitudes have begun to remedy such erroneous and ethnocentric viewsbut only partially, old habits die ha
Wovoka: The False Paiute Messiah
by Phil Hall & Robert A. Toledo
The history of religion is littered with false messiahs that made great promises of spiritual enrichment but left their followers in ruin. Many brought about wreckage and ruin, such as was the case of the prophecies of a Paiute Indian named Wovoka.
The New C-word: Christian pariahs and the birth of a new American spirit
A new word has crept into American slang. Or more accurately, a new word has crept out of accepted usage and slipped into the ethers reserved for the most odious of terms. A new C-word has arisen that bears far greater social consequence than the old one.
The Passion of Michael Jackson
Get with the program, or get out of the way!
Neoconservative strategists have lauded the plan for what they refer to as Full Spectrum Dominancecomplete geostrategic control of land, air, water, and space to retain American primacy. For Americans to escape this runaway train to ruin, we must engage in Full Spectrum Accountability and hold accountable those guilty of crafting our war policies and fostering a culture of war and militarism. Regardless of political (or apolitical) affiliation, we must hold our all our elected officials and their corporate benefactors accountable.
The arrogance of ignorance, a profoundly dangerous and ill-informed presumption that ones own people are better (wiser, morally and spiritually ascendant, and more capable) than others, seems rather well entrenched within the American populace. It is such that seems to have created a social-political environment that continues to encourage the American effort to build a World Empire.
American Cities in the Global Economy: the Role of Broadband
According to the O.E.C.D., a Paris-based governmental research organization, the US now ranks 11th in the world in broadband communications behind Korea, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and Norway to name but a few. Yet broadbandor as some call it, broadband internettoday is as important as waterways, railroads and interstate highways of an earlier era.
NewPoetry Collective Editor's Issue
Instructions for Use (for Andy Hoffmann)
by Randy Roark
Mother's Day, Year Five of the Empire
by Ronnie Pontiac, Poet-in-Residence, Newtopia
And Loyalty Leads.......
by Tom Goforth, Senior Poetry Editor
Commercial
by Tamra Spivey
CANTILEVERED
by Kimberly Nichols
In what is perhaps the most detailed and accessible refutation of the "official" story of 9/11, author and theologian David Ray Griffin breaks new ground with this transcript of a lecture delivered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 18, 2005, and first broadcast on C-Span2 and BookTV, April 30, marking the first time any mainstream media source has consented to air any material challenging the "official" story. What resulted was a tour-de-force of logic and reason, and a clarion call to people of faith everywhere to build a mass-movement to end the American Empire.
To Waive Any Right of Review or Appeal
The world is not as stable as we think it is. Things slide and slip past one another, more like reflections on a pane of glass than truly independent objects. Creation is like a hastily-assembled table, perched precariously on unsteady legs touch it the wrong way and it can collapse in an instant. Matter is not solid at all, it consists merely of transient ripples across the black and silent pool of Being.
Sustainability and Community (part 2)
Cracks in Bipartisan Support for Iraq War Becoming Evident in Congress
by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
Some Republicans are meeting secretly about Bush's lies and an exit strategy for Iraq. The Democrats are demanding an explanation for Bush "fixing" intelligence. Occupation related violence is increasing with Syrian border offensive and over 500 people killed in "insurgent" bombings this month alone. Is it time for Impeachment
There is only one country in the world that has to take the US Dollar and that is the country of its birth, the United States. For the time being, most industrialized countries are forced to accumulate dollars in order to purchase oil. But there is a growing trend of divestment occurring where nations are diversifying their dollar reserves with Euros. Once this becomes widespread, it will have devastating effects on the US Economy.
Just as the Matrix offered a pleasant fiction to humans in exchange for their subordination to the machine world, American society offers such an "opiate to the masses". From a young age, American society bludgeons us with propaganda that diverts our attention from reality, and impedes us from aspiring to spiritual fulfillment.
Government corruption and incompetence are rapidly approaching critical mass. Traditional news media sources, that in the past have investigated and exposed corruption, do not exist today. We are being kept in the dark, drugged and fed a steady diet of corporate sponsored news/fertilizer/entertainment.
Human Experimentation In America: Foster Children Used As AIDS Guinea Pigs
by Gretchen Ross
Buried in priority underneath headlines on gay sperm donors, celebrity cancer advertisements and acupuncture sat a small, modest headline that simply read AIDS Drugs Tested On Foster Kids. If you clicked that link, you may have spit out your coffee while reading the opening paragraph.
United States of Schizophrenia
by Ronnie Pontiac, Poet-in-Residence, Newtopia
I don't know how an immigrant war survivor
and the most powerful nation on Earth
can so closely resemble one another
but I don't picture America as Uncle Sam
America is my schizophrenic mother.
Iran: Axis of Culture, History, and Geopolitics
The strong independent spirit of the Iranian people stems from a long history of imperial powers exerting their hegemony directly or using the nation as a pawn in a series of rivalries, namely the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the 19th century, the Cold War in the 20th, and the newly intensified petro-politics of the 21st. Americans would be well-advised to look into the Iranian past if they think that the Neocons will be able to succeed where other imperialists have failed.
A Tale of Two Deaths: What Two Recent Very Public Deaths Can Teach Us about Life
Theresa Schindler-Schiavo died ? if we can call it that ? in Florida on March 31. About 48 hours later, Karol Wojtyla died in Rome. Both were Catholic and received their Church?s Last Rites on their deathbeds. Both required feeding-tubes during their much scrutinized final hours. Both commanded a public focus so absorbing that all other ?news? of the world seemed to stop until their separate stories played out. But the similarities between the deaths of Terri Schiavo and Pope John Paul II ends there. The differences in the circumstances of their passing are vast ? and in those dissimilarities lie some lessons for us.