[AGL] Clark's pointed to this:

[Gerry]

Frances,
I am alive and well and enjoying the incredible beauty of early autumn in the valley of the Gila where the long-legged water birds gather and the deer are fat from the marvelous growth of all green things, spurred by the floods of February.

Perhaps even more provocative than Al Gore.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205D.shtml
G

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Frances Morey 
  To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 11:51 AM
  Subject: Re: [AGL] Clark's pointed to this:


  EBR (everybody but Roger) For him it's ABD&Rs

  Have any news from Gerry Storm?

  Frances

  Michael Eisenstadt <michaele at hotpop.com> wrote:
    Clark,

    Very provocative. Makes one think that Americans
    might wake up some time soon and vote Democrat
    again.

    Mike

    ----------------------------------------------

    Al Gore: When there is No Vision, the People Perish
    by Bob Burnett
    CommonDreams.org
    Sunday, September 11, 2005

    Friday morning, when they arrived at the opening plenary session of the 
    first-ever Sierra Club convention held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, 
    several thousand activists got a surprise. Instead of an address by 
    Executive Director, Carl Pope, they heard a rousing speech from former Vice 
    President, Al Gore

    Gore's theme was based upon the quote from Proverbs, "When there is no 
    vision, the people perish." He dwelt at length on the catastrophe of 
    Hurricane Katrina observing, "It is important that we learn the right 
    lessons from what happened, or else we will repeat the mistakes that were 
    made."

    Gore identified three basic lessons that the American people must grasp: the 
    first is deceptively simple - Presidents should be expected to pay 
    attention. The former Vice President recalled that on August 6, 2001, 
    President Bush received an intelligence briefing, "Bin Laden determined to 
    strike in U.S.," but took no action as, "it was vacation time."

    Four years later, the Bush Administration received dire warnings of the 
    damage that would be done to New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast, if Hurricane 
    Katrina kept to its projected course; nothing was done, "It was, once again, 
    vacation time."

    The second lesson, according to Gore, involves presidential accountability. 
    "There has been no accountability for horrible misjudgment and outright 
    falsehood - leading to the tragedy of Iraq." The former VP argued that this 
    has produced an atmosphere, in the White Hou se, where "there is no fear of 
    accountability" for the Federal missteps surrounding Hurricane Katrina.

    Gore opined that the management philosophy of the Bush Administration has 
    been dictated by conservative lobbyist, Grover Nordquist, who famously 
    boasted, "my goal is to get government down to the size where we can drown 
    it in a bathtub." Gore indicated that, as a result, the President 
    deliberately shrunk the size of FEMA, rendering it "weak and helpless."

    The former Vice President's third lesson is that Presidents ought to heed 
    warnings. The Bush Administration ignored distress signals about Al Qaeda 
    and the frailty of the New Orleans' levees, and continues to disregard 
    warnings about global warming.

    "The average hurricane will get stronger because of global warming, he said, 
    noting a scientific study, recently reported in "Nature" magazine, that 
    concluded, "Since 1970, the average hurricane has been 50 percent strong er," 
    specifically because the oceans have grown warmer.

    Gore passionately compared present-day America to Great Britain on the eve 
    of World War II. He recalled the words that Winston Churchill spoke after 
    Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's infamous 1938 appeasement of Hitler,

    "They are decided to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for 
    drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent -

    This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the 
    first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year 
    unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise 
    again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."

    Noting the chilling similarities between the crisis-management style of Bush 
    and Chamberlain, the former VP declared that it is time that Americans, 
    "recover our moral health and demand accountability."

    Gore concluded his speec h by observing that the US is at "a moral moment - 
    This is not about scientific debate or political dialogue, but about who we 
    are.

    The former Vice President remembered that, after the end of the civil war, 
    Abraham Lincoln remarked, "As the problems are new, we must disenthrall 
    ourselves from the past."

    Gore implored his audience to help America be similarly disenthralled, "to 
    shed our illusions that have led us to ignore the consequences of the global 
    warming that has already begun."

    And the crowd went wild.

    I don't know why the geographic state of the United States

    was mysteriously steered away from its lawfully elected leader.

    If there is purpose here,

    It is a mysterious purpose indeed.

    Perhaps that purpose is beginning to reveal itself. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/austin-ghetto-list/attachments/20050913/db5d00ed/attachment-0001.html