BEYOND EARTH DAY: LIVING IN THE MODERN CONDITION

On the day after Earth Day, Stephen Pizzo, in today's Chimp: "A billion Chinese and another billion Indians are now in the same line as the US and Europe demanding their share of the earth's finite resources; oil, copper, tin, rare earth minerals, food and clean drinking water. The earth simply cannot support 7 billion humans demanding even the most modest modern lifestyle."

Tell that to the US Chamber of Commerce, which doesn't speak for us. For Lockheed Martin - US Chamber member and partner with the city of Burlington to combat climate change - sustainability means profits for its own benefit and not the earth's and future generations' of the planet's inhabitants (e.g. profits before people).

Marta Eggerth: "Never retire."

I would not have known about Marta Eggerth's birthday had I not listened to a tribute to her on our local public radio station's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. The host played a number of Merry Widow songs sung by her (in at least 4 languages!). He quoted Marta Eggerth's advice for a long life: "Never retire." She and her son have their own YouTube channel.

Marta Eggerth - 99 years old today - is one of the last of the great European operetta stars. Max Reinhardt directed her in Die Fledermaus.
In 1927. Franz Lehar wrote shows for her.

In 2004 when Queen Juliana died, a Dutch television history program called Andere Tijden (in English, Other Times) featured a segment about Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard's 1937 wedding and marriage. Part of it was spent at the Hotel Patria in the Polish ski resort of Krynica (on the Czech border). The hotel was owned by Jan Kiepura, the singer, who had recently married Marta Eggerth. There is a fascinating clip featuring Marta Eggerth - starting at 11:58 to about 25:00 - reminiscing about meeting and spending time with the royal couple at the hotel. She also sings in the clip - definitely she has not lost her theatrical and operatic allure. The program is in Dutch and Polish but Ms Eggerth speaks in English. I cannot embed it, so click here for the clip.

Last year when she was 98, one of her films was shown at MoMA in NYC.

OF COURSE THEY KNOW IT'S A CRIME, SO THEY DENY, DENY, DENY

Russia Today: NATO denies depleted uranium bombs blasted Libya.

HOW FUKUSHIMA'S FUEL RODS MELTED & SHATTERED

Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds Associates in Burlington does a demonstration.

"THE YOUTH OF BENGHAZI"

Broadcast on Sunday, April 10. It's a Dutch program, but a lot of it's in English. Click "bekijk video" to view.

Today is song composer Yip Harburg's birthday (1896).

He died in 1981. In 1988, Kay Ballard and Arthur Siegel performed a tribute to Harburg at Michael's Pub. Part 2 includes a Groucho Marx impression of the song, "Lydia," Mabel Mercer's "April in Paris," and a medley of songs from "The Wizard of Oz," featuring Kaye playing "Over the Rainbow" on flute:

HOW TO TELL NPR ISN'T TOO LIBERAL

A post today at the Undernews blog:

How to tell NPR isn't too liberal

This afternoon, discussing the budget negotiations and the possibility of a federal government shutdown, Mara Liasson said it would remain to be seen what the reaction would be on the part of "the voters, and, more importantly, the financial markets." - Pablo Davis

Your EPA at work for YOU!

Group warns EPA ready to increase radioactive release guidelines

The EPA is preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after “radiological incidents,” according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

"Remembering MLK and the rights of labor"

Leonard Pitts, writing in the Miami Herald, reminds us that, while Martin Luther King, Jr. is a giant of the struggles for civil right, in a sanitized MLK his fierce call for for the rights of labor is often forgotten (on purpose?). In fact, on the night before he was assassinated, Dr. King gave a speech in support of striking workers.

"...he warned that if America did not use its vast wealth to ensure its people “the basic necessities of life,” America was going to hell.

The Baptist preacher in him reared up then, and his voice sang thunder. For all the nation’s achievements, he roared, for all its mighty airplanes, submarines and bridges, ‘‘It seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, ‘Even though you have done all that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and you clothed me not. The children of my sons and daughters were in need of economic security and you didn’t provide it for them.’ ”

"It will come as a surprise to some that the civil rights leader was also a labor leader, but he was. He had this in common with Asa Philip Randolph, who suffered long years of privation to establish the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. And with Walter Reuther, brutally beaten when he organized sitdown strikes that helped solidify the United Automobile Workers. And with Crystal Lee Sutton, inspiration for the movie Norma Rae, who lost her job for trying to unionize a textile plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

"These people and many others fought to win the rights now being taken away.

"Granted, those rights have sometimes been abused — used to shelter the incompetent or reward the greedy.

"But to whatever degree our workplaces are not filled with children working adult hours, to whatever degree an employer is required to provide a clean and safe workplace, break time, sick time or fair wages, that also reflects organized labor’s legacy."

Max Blumenthal interview: 'GOP conducts Islamophobia campaign'

It's with Press TV's Autograph. An excerpt:

There was a shift in the Republican Party in 1964 under Barry Goldwater when Southern Democrats who had opposed civil rights moved into the Republican Party when then President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil rights Act allowing African Americans to have voting rights etc.

There is really no leadership in the country right now that is capable of putting this hatred back in the box; instead what you have are a bunch of Republican presidential hopefuls who really have no chance of defeating Obama competing with one another for who can be the most extreme - because the far right controls the party.

Today, Newt Gingrich who is the former House majority leader; who has had three wives and who cheated on his second wife with a congressional staffer and then left his second wife while she was recovering from cancer, he's going to the church of Pastor John Hagee, the foremost leader of Christian Zionism in the US.
Hagee believes the end of the world could come any day and that Islam is the religion of Satan and that if Jews fail to convert to Christianity they will burn in an everlasting lake of fire. Yet he is also a great supporter of Israel and hailed by Netanyahu as a friend to the Jewish people. Now, Newt Gingrich is making a pilgrimage to his church.

So this just shows how extreme the party has become; how it's gone from the big tent of Eisenhower to a one-ringed circus of Palin and Gingrich.

Max Blumenthal is one of my favourite journalists. You can read more of his writing on his website.

Remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

March 25, 2011 is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York.

Many of the Triangle factory workers were women, some as young as 14 years old. They were, for the most part, recent Italian and European Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States with their families to seek a better life. Instead, they faced lives of grinding poverty and horrifying working conditions. As recent immigrants struggling with a new language and culture, the working poor were ready victims for the factory owners. For these workers, speaking out could end with the loss of desperately needed jobs, a prospect that forced them to endure personal indignities and severe exploitation. Some turned to labor unions to speak for them; many more struggled alone. The Triangle Factory was a non-union shop, although some of its workers had joined the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

Doug Blanchard of Counterlight's Peculiars has a thoughtful post up with a series of photos. He writes,

As the right to bargain collectively is being effectively repealed in the United States, the memory of the Triangle Fire takes on a new dimension of meaning and pathos. Frances Perkins, the first Secretary of Labor, and a witness to the fire, always said that the New Deal began in the Triangle Fire. This catastrophe propelled the organization of wage earners for their safety as well as for better wages. Political leadership in New York City and state began taking a serious look at the issue of worker safety in the workplace for the first time.

All that was fought for in the fire's wake is now under threat of repeal. We forget that so many things that we take for granted in our jobs, like our safety in the workplace and workman's comp, were not the free gift of benevolent corporate autocrats, but had to be fought for over decades, and sometimes after terrible disasters like the Triangle Fire.

Democracy Now! has devoted today's broadcast to the fire and its impact on labor relations today.

R. I. P. Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (1932-2011)

Such a tumultuous life: one of the greatest icons of the Golden Era of Hollywood has died. The Guardian has a thoughtful obituary with other links. I liked her in Giant, Butterfield 8, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And in Taming of the Shrew, she did Shakespeare proud. (Time to check the local library's movie collection.)

UPDATED - The Japanese Earthquake & Tsunami

UPDATE @ 10:59 a.m.:

Maggie Gunderson on Green Mountain Daily: The Fukushima nuclear plant lost containment integrity and is leaking radiation.

ORIGINAL POST:

Richard Estes/American Leftist yesterday had commentary and news links on the quake and aftermath, but also added a rather telling (ironic) comment at the bottom of his post,

On a more mundane note, the New York Times can't resist exploiting the situation as an opportunity to cast the US military presence in Japan, disliked by many people there, in a favorable light. The US military is, after all, first and foremost, a humanitarian institution.

"Stop, stop, stop went my heartstrings..."

Hugh Martin, who wrote the music for the 1944 film "Meet Me in St Louis," has died at aged 96. In the movie were such classics as "The Trolley Song," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Boy Next Door." Here's his Playbill obituary.

A RESPONSE TO TODAY'S DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE IN JAPAN

Tonight we heard Marketplace's litany, "Let's do the numbers": "The earthquake didn't rattle the investors." That's a relief for NPR/VPR's listeners.

This is not satire from The Onion.

This is for real from Reuters

"Members of a new Texas association are starting a college scholarship program for a group of students they say do not have as many scholarship options as others -- white men. Colby Bohannan, a student at Texas State University in San Marcos, and some friends have formed the non-profit Former Majority Association for Equality, which will provide the scholarships."

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

WORKER SOLIDARITY IN WISCONSIN & OHIO

"... tens of thousands of workers and their supporters have flooded the Wisconsin and Ohio state capitols, pushing back on their newly-elected Republican Governors' attempts to revoke collective bargaining rights for public workers.



Other than the flashes of anger Ohio crowds showed when they were curiously shut out of their statehouse, the protests have been entirely peaceful, even jovial, with the Wisconsin capitol having an atmosphere similar to a pep rally..."

From New Left Media, the video below shows the struggle to be optimistic, even in reactionary times.



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PETER GOMES, R.I.P.

I know people have first learned about Peter Gomes from his writings, particularly The Good Book. I first heard him preach at St Stephen's, Houston many years ago. His life was proof positive that we can become the people we were meant to be. There have been struggles, but aren't we fortunate to have had Mr Gomes to help us carry on?

Photo of the Rev. Peter J. Gomes in 2007, Erik Jacobs for The New York Times.

Prominently Displayed

So today in South Burlington I saw a man talking on his mobile while making a "right on red" without even stopping. Not unusual in this fast-paced society, really, but prominently displayed on the rear bumper of his car was a sticker, "HANG UP & DRIVE."