Richard, a healthy dialectic is always welcome. I hadn't read anything on the Earth Summit prior to yesterday, so I thank you for another viewpoint. (I admit to having my cynicism momentarily lulled by such beguiling phrases as "Earth Summit" . . .) I, too, would like to offer a countering view to something posted here--in response to Post-Atomic's posting about samizdats: I think the purveyor of that opinion is either a pessimist or a propagandist for the status quo. Samizdats are just one arm/extension/tool of an education movement designed to impel one towards action, and many of these movements have seen success--in some cases quite extraordinary success as in the case of East Timor, whose celebration of statehood this past week we should all glean some rather empirical optimism from, yes? Long live Samizdats! Long live Education!
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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