Monday, April 8, 2013

Margaret Reagan-Thatcher goes to heaven

Wisdom Quarterly; Billy Bragg (DemocracyNow.org); Letters & Politics
Pres. Obama comments on jobs report: "She's no Kamala Harris" (ocregister.com).
Iron Lady Baroness Thatcher, England's longest-running PM, dead at 87 (watdoday.com.au).

Influential British rocker and activist Billy Bragg (beginning with the punk rock band Riff Raff) made the song "It Says Here," a critique of politics and tabloid newspapers that still rings true. Bragg composed music for lyrics written by Woody Guthrie and performed many of the songs alongside the album’s other main contributor, Wilco. His passion for speaking out against injustice and fighting for many social causes. In the 1980s, he called for support for the 1984 strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history. It was ultimately defeated under the watch of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Bragg went on to organize for the defeat of Thatcher and her Conservative government. His long history of activism  continues with "Never Buy The Sun," about the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire.

The Iron Lady's leaden policies
Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)
Iron Lady in tank and with Reagan (NYDN)
What ruined the American economy? According to progressive talk radio host Thom Hartmann, if the answer were boiled down to one thing, it is Reagonomics. The parallel economic path for England was the destructive policies enacted by Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who passed away today of a stroke. To the extent that Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the USSR to overt capitalist influences, he completed the trifecta of three great superpowers brought down by the same policies we are taught were their ideas. It was, in fact, the bankers, military, and industrialists telling them what policies to enact, what regulations  to subvert, and what wars to pursue. Where we are today has more to do with these three infamous politicians than even the Bushs' (all three of them G.H.W., G.W., and B.S.O.) White House.

Comical Grrrl Power? (BW)
Christian heaven in space is a great place. On one's death bed one need only utter Milli regretti and poof! There one is, forever and ever. Of course, this may just be a fundamentalist misunderstanding or Catholic (universalist) fabrication. It may not be what Jesus told anyone, but his words are in others' hands. And those others want to communicate a different message, one wholly devoted to this world: Make us right, do what should not be done, but there's forgiveness at the end of the day, so don't worry. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." This disgruntled-Christian sentiment has become the de facto Christian message. It's not enough to say milli regretti; more hocus pocus is involved. One has to mean it, and pray/beg for forgiveness from the space-father, and go through the son (although the Eastern Orthodox tradition says one can only go through the father with no proxies not even the son). Fortunately, Thatcher was Anglican, the English church not bound to Rome (the Holy Roman Empire's religious arm) and its dictates.

Who was she? The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher
Letters and Politics, April 8, 2013 (Berkeley, KPFA FM, 10:00 am)
The [Robber] Baroness (couriermail.com.au)
Mitch Jeserich spends an hour on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and those who opposed her with British-based historian and activist Iain Boal and alternative American economist Richard Wolff.
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