On Long Island, it has been in the eighties, very humid, and either raining or
partly cloudy, for many days. In this house, there are 3 large air conditioners
on the first floor. The one in the all purpose room where I usually sit, is
noisier and older, and since I become cold very easily, it isn't on. The one in
my tiny bedroom and the one in the living room are newer and silent, and they
keep the entire first floor cool enough for me. It would have been nice if
there were a lot of trees and bushes on the property, and if I had easy access
to them. But there aren't. I have easy access to what is called a screened in
porch off the kitchen. But it isn't a screened in porch. It is a room made out
of plastic with a metal roof that has transparent strips of plastic in it and
screened windows. The plastic catches and holds the heat like a steam bath. So
I used it only when the temperature was in the low 70's and there was not much
humidity. I could enjoy sitting in the sun then, next to a window, and hear the
sounds of birds calling. This is a far cry from any house I've previously lived
in, but it's better than a nursing home, although, given my deteriorating
physical capacities, I may not be here all that long. My daughter and
son-in-law were not thinking about wheelchair accessibility within the house
when they chose this house. They were not thinking about home health aides
transferring me to the toilet or the shower.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2018 11:21 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession With Russia
and the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era
Just like the Energizer, not only does Noam Chomsky keep on going, he sounds
about the same as when I first heard him. Which is to say that he sounded like
he would not make it to the end of his talk.
Today will be another cloudless, hot day. Anything over 90 degrees is a heat
wave, here on the Olympic Peninsula. For several days now...maybe two
weeks...we've had more days over 90 than not. Cathy and I headed into Sequim
yesterday to deliver a refurbished Braille Writer to a client who is doing some
serious writing. He is turning
70 later this Fall, and over the years had been a very active organizer in the
NFB. His wife just retired as an O&M instructor.
Last weekend Sequim held their annual Lavender Festival. The town has just
over 8,000 residents, but during the weekend the numbers of visitors rise up
over 30,000. We stay far, far away. The road into Sequim, part of highway
101, is jammed clear back to the Hood Canal bridge, and beyond. The town
streets are littered with sidewalk booths selling everything from Lavender
Ice-Cream, Lavender Soap, Dried Lavender, to Lavender Paintings(using lavender
fragrance in the paints). When the Lavender is growing in the Lavender Fields,
Cathy has no problem. But once cut and dried she is highly allergic to it.
So is her sister. Too bad for me. I love the sweet smell
Well, finally it appears the paperwork is in order and Cathy's mom is covered
by Medicaid. We thought she needed to be put on SSI, too, but the Senior
Advisor at the Belmont Terrace tells us that we should wait until we know
Dorothy's long term situation. As long as she's in the nursing home, she is
fully covered under Medicaid. It's a clean, cheery facility, with a staff that
seems to take pride in their work.
Peaceful gardens and a large pool with a fountain are scattered around the
grounds and there is an attitude of positiveness in the air. But not too much
in Dorothy's room at this time. We usually find her crying, loudly. She does
cheer up while we are there, but the staff tell us that crying is her normal
activity. Meanwhile the woman in the other half of the room is constantly
calling out, "Can someone please help me? Help!" The staff bustle in and out,
but tell us that the woman is not really aware of calling out. Still, they try
to comfort her rather than ignore her.
It's still cool, not yet 65 degrees outside, and I'm enjoying it while it
lasts. Naturally we have no air conditioning. But with all doors and windows
open and the large fan blowing a cool breeze down the hall from the bedrooms to
the living room, we keep the house between 80 and
85 degrees in the late afternoon and evening. But the coolest room is our
office. It has a floor to ceiling window that cranks out, and faces the hill
and the forest beyond. With a small fan on the work table, Cathy and I spend
the heat of the day sitting in our comfortable office chairs listening to
talking books and sipping ice water. Yesterday we drove into Quilcene on our
way home from seeing Dorothy, and I bought a huge chocolate, peanut butter
ice-cream cone.
90 degrees outside, and even with the truck's air conditioner going full blast,
I now have ice-cream splotches all over my shirt.
Cathy and Marlene and Shylo just finished their morning coffee(I'm the coffee
maker), and headed over to feed and water their horses...and put on the fly
masks. We have a bumper crop of bugs this year, but fortunately not so many
around the house.
I hope that all is well for you today.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/28/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
He also has a new job, at the University of Arizona. Amazing?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2018 11:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession
With Russia and the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era
On December 27, Noam Chomsky turns 90 years old. Not only is he still
active, but continues to have one of America's greatest minds. Those
wishing a more Progressive view of the news can listen to Democracy Now, at:
www.democracynow.org
Carl Jarvis
On 7/27/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession With Russia and the Stories Not
Being Covered in the Trump Era By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Published July 27, 2018
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with Noam Chomsky,
world-renowned dissident, linguist and author, now in Tucson at the
University of Arizona.
I asked him about a recent mix-up on Fox & Friends, in which the
hosts thought they were interviewing former Democratic congressional
candidate, a current one, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who supports
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, but, in
fact, they were actually speaking to a Massachusetts Democratic
congressional candidate, Barbara L'Italien, who opposes ICE. Here is
how the interview started.
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: Good morning. I'm actually here to speak
directly to Donald Trump. I feel that what's happening at the border
is wrong. I'm a mother of four. And I believe that separating kids
from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I'm actually Barbara
L'Italien. I'm a state senator representing a large immigrant
community. I'm running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking
about what we're putting parents through, imagining how terrifying
that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not
knowing if I'd ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting
children and ripping them from their parents' arms -
ROB SCHMITT: OK -
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: - stop putting kids in cages -
ROB SCHMITT: You want to -
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: - and stop making 3-year-olds defend
themselves in court.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L'Italien said a lot there, but she was
then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning
that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this
kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the
media, Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state
media, with
- you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes,
Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House.
That's gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece
for Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and
the other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain
issues, CNNand MSNBC. But your thoughts?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that - I must say I don't pay
much attention to television, so I don't know a great deal about it.
But, in general, I think the media - first of all, Fox News is, by
now, basically a joke. It's, as you said, state media. The other
media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal.
There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side.
So, the worst of - even on the case of immigration, once again, I
think the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our
responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And
that's almost never discussed. But I think that's the crucial issue.
And I think we find the same across the board.
So, of all Trump's policies, the one that is the most dangerous and
destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on
climate change, on global warming. That's really destructive. And
we're facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage.
The effects are already visible but nothing like what's going to come.
A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive.
It will make today's immigration issues look like trivialities. And
it's not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald
Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in
the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he
applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall
to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex
Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was
thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to
climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the
reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were
on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating
phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language - I can't find one
- that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice
the literal - the existence of organized human life, not in the
distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly
overstuffed pockets. The word "evil"
doesn't begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that
should be under discussion. Instead, what's being - there is a focus
on what I believe are marginalia.
So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections.
Did
the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming
concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a
joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in
our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or
weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does,
openly, brazenly and with enormous support.
Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the
Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime
minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without
even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with
overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies -
what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to
give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling
on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president?
And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you
happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on
elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.
I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning
democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to
those who elected them.
There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that
that is simply not the case in the United States. There's ample
literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing
voters' attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives,
and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're
basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention
to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent -
the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections - Tom
Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for
a long period, way back, US elections have been pretty much bought.
You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional
election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign
spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write
legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the
concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth,
intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent
that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now,
of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you
something about the way the society functions. So, if you're
concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate
to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at
Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see
occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very
minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.
And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on
which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So,
he's perfectly right when he says we should have better relations
with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish,
makes - Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States
because the US carried out the worst crime of the century in the
invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they
shouldn't refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't
refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have
carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to
move towards better - right at the Russian border, there are very
extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would
in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life
on Earth. We're very close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of
all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask
why. Well, it's because NATO expanded after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev,
mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded
right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama.
The US has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a
heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there's tensions
at the Russian border - and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well,
those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of -
the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the
species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things
as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I
think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author
and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50
years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Tune in next week when we continue our conversation
with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel's new nationality law, the
recent Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and
more. In December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.
Oh, and happy birthday to Rob Young here at Democracy Now! And
Democracy Now! has a job opening for a broadcast engineer in our New
York studio.
Find
out more at democracynow.org.
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