PPJPC exits stage left, lily-livered left

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- Oh How Sad! After a long and storied legacy, the Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission is closing its doors. Why now –a time of rising injustice and vanishing peace on every continent?! Technically they’ve only announced divestment of their goods in order to move into a tiny office, but the PPJPC is also postponing all activity until after the election. The next event planned is a victory celebration of “regime change” even though the presumptive new regime has promised escalations of war in Asia, Africa and South America, and continued economic class war at home. And it gets worse.

The bastards, literally bastards not by coincidence I’m sure, have gutted the famed peace organization of its activities, of its participants, of its reputation, legacy and potential and now they’re selling off its possessions.

These include the group’s “memorabilia,” as if PPJPC’s aims weren’t still outgoing. Wouldn’t you think the causes still cry out for those materials? All the tools and equipment gathered over the years are now being demobilized. The posters, banners, puppets, flags, props, costumes, made by activists, for the good fight. Are you kidding me?!

And the PPJPC library, an extensive collection of books about social justice and nonviolence are being scattered to the wind of the same garage sale. These books, painstakingly assembled for the cause and donated by so many members so that the PPJPC office would have a permanent reference library are now being sold to defray the costs of moving. And keeping the staff.

For what? Administrating the liquidation? Have PPJPC members been asked to contribute more and more, chiefly so that the organization can be dismantled and slipped into a coma? To keep the staff paid? When the PPJPC membership at large figure out that they’ve been subsidizing their own deliberately paralyzing iv-drip, they are going to invent their own choice words for these soft-spoken traitors.

I’D SUGGEST someone attending the going-out-of-the-peace-making-business-sale if only to rescue the materials we’ll need to keep up the fight. If it didn’t mean giving more money to the usurpers! That’s extortion, taking our money to reclaim what we donated already! What unmitigated passive aggressive violence.

These paid staff manipulated the tendency of all small groups to take the road most traveled. Specifically, to hush up in the perceived interest of self-preservation. This manifests itself among a minority in the PPJPC who follow a cultish spiritual belief that the only way to stop a wayward wagon is to throw yourself under the wheel. Eventually it’s hoped the driver will stop out of pangs of conscience. Other concerned passengers, who might want to gesticulate or address the driver, are scolded for not giving the sacrificial sheep the opportunity to incubate their guilt bomb in peace.

These self-appointed arbiters of “pacifism” take the “peace” in J&P to mean a quiet, undisturbed, reverential, leave-me-in-peace, peace. It’s the “nonviolent” dogma that has been used to defuse slave uprisings for millennia. It’s the traditional disservice which religion deals in its role to make the oppressed accept their mistreatment at the hands of their oppressors. While we might concentrate on religion’s role in starting wars, we overlook their constant undermining of justice.

Do I have something personal at stake in this unraveling development? I most certainly do! Over the past years, I joined a number of energetic activists in raising the visibility of the local peace movement. We gave it a public signature and a heretofore elusive acclaim, which was bringing in much more public participation. What became of the green peace campaign? Jettisoned. Abandoned. Cast off by the staff and select members who didn’t want an expanded interest in their activities. What are we left to conclude about people who espouse a concern to invite community, but shun populist appeal? Hypocrites is the most polite I can muster.

I’m so sorry to have left the organization to such vultures. I owe my fellow members quite an apology.

100 days until end of Bush Error

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Thomas Mc

Imagine that. The Conservatives refused to provide health care for all, claiming the $50B price tag would bankrupt America. Yet, in the last month or so, the Treasury and the Fed have forked over more than $5T — over 100 times as much — to cover the gambling losses of the filthy-rich. It is clearly way past time for a Second American Revolution!

The entire planet has been scammed by the filthy rich. There is nothing on earth that can stop this slow motion economic trainwreck. The derivatives meltdown will cost more than 10 times the entire world’s output. On the up-side, I hear the filthy-rich taste just like chicken!

Paul Krugman wins Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This is the guy Obama should make Secretary of the Treasury.

16 newspapers endorsed Obama on Sunday, only 2 for McCain.

Stephanopoulos: No candidate has ever lost with Obama’s lead over McCain. (53-43)

Top GOP strategist Ed Rollins compares McCain’s spectacular campaign failure to Hillary’s.

McCain expected to “hit the panic button” today, since it now looks like he will have a hard time even carrying many of the “red states.”

GOP is just a pseudonym for LIE. “Curveball,” they guy the administration blames all their false Iraq intel on, says he never told them Saddam had WMDs, they made all that crap up themselves. In fact, he never even spoke to the CIA!

The red flag should have been his “faith and family values” campaign. Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL) paid his mistress $121,000 to keep her mouth shut about the affair.

There are cannibals in the land. Even ArchNeocon Bill Kristol admits McCain campaign is a joke, and then rabid McCain campaign turns on him. Didn’t someone once say something about “a house divided cannot stand?”

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Oct 13 notes, thomasmc.com.

A Sustainable No Growth Society needed immediately

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Tony Logan

We are told that the only way out of economic collapse is to restart ‘the economy’, and without that we face a grave crisis. But isn’t that just plain wrong? To restart ‘the economy’ is to restart the destructiveness to Nature, or rather to just renew it. Actually, what is needed to prevent economic collapse and the Death of Life on Planet Earth is to begin a Sustainable No Growth Society immediately.

I think that all of us instinctively know that this is absolutely true, but we have no leading societal institution advocating such so we think that it is nothing more than a Utopian dream of sorts to want the Return of Nature. We then pinch ourselves and fall back asleep once again.

How sad to have such little self confidence, is it not? Our capitalists hate Nature and only want to use it to make personal profits., and they simply do not care about the costs to all of us. They consider themselves the great pragmatists, and so seemingly do the great mass of the followers of The Rich.

Capitalism needs constant growth of Nature’s destruction to survive. People need Nature to survive. Nature needs people against Capitalistic growth to have a chance. What’s your response to Nature’s needs?

Does this presidential race look close?

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Tuesday’s presidential debate left me feeling nothing but awkward. Barack Obama sat half leaning in his chair, while his opponent shuffled toward whoever held the microphone like Neko the mouse-chasing screen saver kitten, except McCain flapped his arms like a penguin, and had about that much to say.

Actually, did either candidate say much? McCain repeated his incoherent assurances, and Obama’s tack seemed deliberately to be not to outshine McCain. Spectators would probably delight in watching a best man win, but it seems Obama’s strategy is not to clobber the Bush poster boy, because Americans can’t help themselves from feeling for the underdog. Especially if he’s the Last White Hope.

John McCain could fly a Navy jet through the IQ gap between the two candidates. But McCain’s flight record shows he couldn’t even navigate that without clipping a power line and leaving all of us in the dark. McCain is that unsuited for the job, any job except influence peddling and whoring in Rio. That’s not an exaggeration. He is that vacuous, that soulless, that traitorous, that cowardly, and that lacking in judgment. It does trouble me immensely that cohorts like Biden can’t help but temper their public criticism of McCain with reminders of how much they like him. It reminds me of Bush as drinking buddy.

With his record of failure in his every endeavor, school, flying, captivity, corruption, infidelity, war-mongering, belonging to the GOP, being tainted by Bush, where does John McCain find traction with the American populace?

How the hell is this contest anticipated to be close, except the issue of Americans resisting the idea of a black president?

Here’s an explanation getting passed around the web:

HOW RACISM WORKS:

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said ‘I do’ to?

What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard and Princeton?

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?

What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

Shlomo Sand and shattering a national mythology

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Tony Logan

Shattering a ‘national mythology’ Shlomo Sand’s book is titled “When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?” and you probably will not find it stacked up on tables for sale in Barnes and Noble or Borders. I don’t expect it to be readily available for Colorado Springs librarian patrons either. Ask for it though.

The Haaretz interview:

Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.

Sand: “My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the ‘figment’ of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors’ references in the ancient period – what they wrote about conversion.”

Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can’t read in the original.

“It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can’t stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory.”

Inventing the Diaspora

“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom” – thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand’s book, entitled “The Invention of the Diaspora.” Sand argues that the Jewish people’s exile from its land never happened.

“The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of ‘the people of the Bible’ that preceded it,” Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'”

And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?

“The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba’s rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions – pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?

“I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.”

Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria – a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.

Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

“At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe – three million Jews in Poland alone,” he says. “The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward.”

If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?

“The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as ‘the mother of the diasporas’ in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck.”

Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?

“It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: ‘We came, we won and now we are here’ the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist.”

Is there no justification for this fear?

“No. I don’t think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don’t mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens.”

In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

“I don’t recognize an international people. I recognize ‘the Yiddish people’ that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this ‘Yiddish people.’ I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.

“From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation.”

What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?

“In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation – I will have done my bit.

“We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it.”

The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.

“I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done.”

If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?

“To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the “catastrophe” – the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day.”

The Panic of 1873 and the panic today

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Tony Logan

panic-of-1873 Many are looking back at the 1930s to the Great Depression of that Era and comparing today’s capitalist downturn to that one, but others see little similarities between that Economic Crash of what appears to many as the mere distant yesterday and today’s. Yet there is still another great financial crash to compare our current one to, the one historically called The Panic of 1873.

That one, too, had many differences to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and YES also to the one we are living now. But all three of the mentioned capitalist economic worldwide crashes share some remarkable similarities, too. Here are a few similarities between now and 1873.

In 1873, the US had just finished an incredibly costly Civil War, where huger amounts of money went into funding the military. Today, we see huge amounts of deficit spending on the military that have ballooned the national debt into the multiple trillions of dollars. Piggybacked onto that is the same credit crunch that the people of 1873 saw and experienced. Further, both these 2 economic crashes were worldwide, and not just American affairs.

One other aspect of all these Crashes is the lack of concern with most human suffering that the crashes cause to the working class. “Panic, as a health officer, sweeping the garbage out of Wall Street.” See what I mean? And another thread to all these horrible downturns is the utter confusion of people living on the dogmas of their times. Today, as in the past, people can’t seem to figure out just who to blame, and have a tendency to blame innocents instead of perpetrators of the crises.

The Palinator

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Marie Walden

Do you remember the Grossinator? It was a handheld device designed to hurl childish insults at bystanders. Part of the fun was creating the vulgar statements using four buttons, each of which had several sentence fragments associated with it.

Button #1
You’re like/It’s time for/Let’s all make/How about/I just love/
I’m gonna make/There’s nothing like

Button #2
a big/a long/a revolting/a disgusting/a slimy/a foul/a horrible

Button #3
gross/oozing/awful/wretched/stinky/putrid/smelly

Button #4
fart/burp/scab/m’booger/snot/barf/puke

After you’d chosen the words that would comprise your insult, a final button caused the Grossinator’s growly voice to broadcast your lowbrow wit to all within earshot. If you didn’t have an insult preference, the Grossinator combined the fragments on its own. Hearing the familiar words and phrases cobbled together in unexpected, sometimes nonsensical, fashion was most hilarious.

Sarah Palin’s recent encounters with the media have been disastrous. So disastrous, in fact, that Saturday Night Live was able to parody her interview with Katie Couric using parts of the transcript verbatim! McCain’s campaign handlers are holed up in Sedona with Palin this very minute trying to coach her for Thursday’s debate. There is no chance that they can make her look well-informed. At best they can hope she doesn’t say anything egregiously erroneous, or downright dangerous.

I think the safest plan would be to limit Palin’s leeway in the debate. To keep her from wandering into parts unknown (to her), campaign strategists should carefully select words and phrases for her to memorize and combine as she saw fit. Even better, they could enlist Mattel to create the Palinator.

Button #1
Senator McCain and I/Our administration/It’s got to be about/
My experience as

Button #2
economy/healthcare reform/terrorism/taxes/executive/maverick

Button #3
certainly does/ultimately/I dunno/you know/yeah

Button #4
gotcha journalism/liberal elite/spending/Alaska/
the United States of America

Notice that there are no words associated with abortion, birth control, evolution, war, religion, state troopers, lipstick, pigs, Russia, Wall Street, Bush Doctrine, United Nations, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or special needs children.

I didn’t actually put together any of the above fragments to make sure they made coherent sentences. But then the Palinator wouldn’t, would it? It would simply say whatever it’s been programmed to say.

No blank-check bailout for Wall Street

Posted on September 25, 2008 by NMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – Organizations in Southern Colorado will participate in a National Day of Action in opposition to the no-strings attached, $700 billion corporate bailout plan advanced by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson. A press conference will take place 2PM on Thursday, Sept. 25 in front of the Department of Human Services Sand Creek Office at 1635 South Murray Blvd., Colorado Springs.

From the LOCAL PRESS RELEASE:

“We believe the bailout is wrong headed – it’s low-wage working families struggling to make ends meet, who will most suffer the consequences of this kind of bad economic policy,” said Dennis Apuan, community leader and Democratic candidate for Statehouse, District 17. “We must press on our elected officials to ensure that families do not have to make impossible choices between feeding their children, heating their homes and filling their prescriptions. We need leaders who know how to respond to the growing need in our communities – lost jobs, threatened homes, and surging food and energy prices,” Apuan added.

The National Day of Action will feature more than 75 press conferences, demonstrations and other public events throughout the United States. Some of the events are being held by local and national organizations; others will be citizen-organized, involving taxpayers angered by the proposed corporate bailout, as introduced in Congress. The local event will include a voter registration drive and sign-up opportunities to volunteer in community civic engagement.

“With so many of the citizens and residents of House District 17 suffering from the downturn in the economy, it is important that they have a voice in these ill-advised corporate bailouts,” said Rosemary Harris, President of the Colorado Springs Branch NAACP. “This is a diverse community, with people from all racial, social and economic backgrounds. Our lives matter. Our voices matter. And our vote is our true voice. Registering voters who will determine the future policies and future leaders of this House District, this state, and this country is perhaps the best way to respond to the actions of those in Washington,” Harris added.

Among the leaders of the national organizing effort are TrueMajority.org, US Action Education Fund, ACORN, Campaign For America’s Future, Coalition on Human Needs, Military Spouses For Change, National Priorities Project and many others.

From the INDYPENDENT’s Arun Gupta, the ORIGINAL EMAIL CALL-OUT:

NO BAILOUT FOR WALL STREET
Protest on Wall Street this Thursday at 4pm!
Call to Self-Organize

This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate to bail out the Wall Street bastards who created this economic apocalypse in the first place.

This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the “therapy,” and we’ll just roll over!

Think about it: They said providing healthcare for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs. If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate. Let’s demonstrate this Thursday at 4pm in Wall Street (see below).

We know the congressional Democrats will peep meekly before caving in like they have on everything else, from FISA to the Iraq War.

With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top.

This whole mess gives lie to the free market. The Feds are propping up stock prices, directing buyouts, subsidizing crooks and swindlers who already made a killing off the mortgage bubble.

Worst of all, even before any details have been hashed out, The New York Times admits that “Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it,” and its chief financial correspondent writes that the Bush administration wants “Congress to give them a blank check to do whatever they want, whatever the cost, with no one able to watch them closely.”

It’s socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us.

Let’s take it to the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.

By having it later in the day we can show these thieves, as they leave work, we’re not their suckers. Plus, anyone who can’t get off work can still join us downtown as soon as they are able.

There is no agenda, no leaders, no organizing group, nothing to endorse other than we’re not going to pay! Let the bondholders pay, let the banks pay, let those who brought the “toxic” mortgage-backed securities pay!

On this list are many key organizers and activists. We have a huge amount of connections – we all know many other organizations, activists and community groups. We know P.R. folk who can quickly write up and distribute press releases, those who can contact legal observers, media activists who can spread the word, the videographers who can film the event, etc.

Do whatever you can – make and distribute your own flyers, contact all your groups and friends. This crime is without precedence and we can’t be silent! What’s the point of waiting for someone else to organize a protest two months from now, long after the crime has been perpetrated?

We have everything we need to create a large, peaceful, loud demonstration. Millions of others must feel the same way; they just don’t know what to do. Let’s take the lead and make this the start!

AGAIN:
When: 4pm – ? Thursday, September 25.
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout
Who: Everyone!

PETITION LETTER from 200 ECONOMISTS:

To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT)

Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Adler Michael (Columbia University)
Admati Anat R. (Stanford University)
Alexis Marcus (Northwestern University)
Alvarez Fernando (University of Chicago)
Andersen Torben (Northwestern University)
Baliga Sandeep (Northwestern University)
Banerjee Abhijit V. (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Barankay Iwan (University of Pennsylvania)
Barry Brian (University of Chicago)
Bartkus James R. (Xavier University of Louisiana)
Becker Charles M. (Duke University)
Becker Robert A. (Indiana University)
Beim David (Columbia University)
Berk Jonathan (Stanford University)
Bisin Alberto (New York University)
Bittlingmayer George (University of Kansas)
Boldrin Michele (Washington University)
Brooks Taggert J. (University of Wisconsin)
Brynjolfsson Erik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Buera Francisco J. (UCLA)
Camp Mary Elizabeth (Indiana University)
Carmel Jonathan (University of Michigan)
Carroll Christopher (Johns Hopkins University)
Cassar Gavin (University of Pennsylvania)
Chaney Thomas (University of Chicago)
Chari Varadarajan V. (University of Minnesota)
Chauvin Keith W. (University of Kansas)
Chintagunta Pradeep K. (University of Chicago)
Christiano Lawrence J. (Northwestern University)
Cochrane John (University of Chicago)
Coleman John (Duke University)
Constantinides George M. (University of Chicago)
Crain Robert (UC Berkeley)
Culp Christopher (University of Chicago)
Da Zhi (University of Notre Dame)
Davis Morris (University of Wisconsin)
De Marzo Peter (Stanford University)
Dubé Jean-Pierre H. (University of Chicago)
Edlin Aaron (UC Berkeley)
Eichenbaum Martin (Northwestern University)
Ely Jeffrey (Northwestern University)
Eraslan Hülya K. K.(Johns Hopkins University)
Faulhaber Gerald (University of Pennsylvania)
Feldmann Sven (University of Melbourne)
Fernandez-Villaverde Jesus (University of Pennsylvania)
Fohlin Caroline (Johns Hopkins University)
Fox Jeremy T. (University of Chicago)
Frank Murray Z.(University of Minnesota)
Frenzen Jonathan (University of Chicago)
Fuchs William (University of Chicago)
Fudenberg Drew (Harvard University)
Gabaix Xavier (New York University)
Gao Paul (Notre Dame University)
Garicano Luis (University of Chicago)
Gerakos Joseph J. (University of Chicago)
Gibbs Michael (University of Chicago)
Glomm Gerhard (Indiana University)
Goettler Ron (University of Chicago)
Goldin Claudia (Harvard University)
Gordon Robert J. (Northwestern University)
Greenstone Michael (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Guadalupe Maria (Columbia University)
Guerrieri Veronica (University of Chicago)
Hagerty Kathleen (Northwestern University)
Hamada Robert S. (University of Chicago)
Hansen Lars (University of Chicago)
Harris Milton (University of Chicago)
Hart Oliver (Harvard University)
Hazlett Thomas W. (George Mason University)
Heaton John (University of Chicago)
Heckman James (University of Chicago – Nobel Laureate)
Henderson David R. (Hoover Institution)
Henisz, Witold (University of Pennsylvania)
Hertzberg Andrew (Columbia University)
Hite Gailen (Columbia University)
Hitsch Günter J. (University of Chicago)
Hodrick Robert J. (Columbia University)
Hopenhayn Hugo (UCLA)
Hurst Erik (University of Chicago)
Imrohoroglu Ayse (University of Southern California)
Isakson Hans (University of Northern Iowa)
Israel Ronen (London Business School)
Jaffee Dwight M. (UC Berkeley)
Jagannathan Ravi (Northwestern University)
Jenter Dirk (Stanford University)
Jones Charles M. (Columbia Business School)
Kaboski Joseph P. (Ohio State University)
Kahn Matthew (UCLA)
Kaplan Ethan (Stockholm University)
Karolyi, Andrew (Ohio State University)
Kashyap Anil (University of Chicago)
Keim Donald B (University of Pennsylvania)
Ketkar Suhas L (Vanderbilt University)
Kiesling Lynne (Northwestern University)
Klenow Pete (Stanford University)
Koch Paul (University of Kansas)
Kocherlakota Narayana (University of Minnesota)
Koijen Ralph S.J. (University of Chicago)
Kondo Jiro (Northwestern University)
Korteweg Arthur (Stanford University)
Kortum Samuel (University of Chicago)
Krueger Dirk (University of Pennsylvania)
Ledesma Patricia (Northwestern University)
Lee Lung-fei (Ohio State University)
Leeper Eric M. (Indiana University)
Leuz Christian (University of Chicago)
Levine David I.(UC Berkeley)
Levine David K.(Washington University)
Levy David M. (George Mason University)
Linnainmaa Juhani (University of Chicago)
Lott John R. Jr. (University of Maryland)
Lucas Robert (University of Chicago – Nobel Laureate)
Luttmer Erzo G.J. (University of Minnesota)
Manski Charles F. (Northwestern University)
Martin Ian (Stanford University)
Mayer Christopher (Columbia University)
Mazzeo Michael (Northwestern University)
McDonald Robert (Northwestern University)
Meadow Scott F. (University of Chicago)
Mehra Rajnish (UC Santa Barbara)
Mian Atif (University of Chicago)
Middlebrook Art (University of Chicago)
Miguel Edward (UC Berkeley)
Miravete Eugenio J. (University of Texas at Austin)
Miron Jeffrey (Harvard University)
Moretti Enrico (UC Berkeley)
Moriguchi Chiaki (Northwestern University)
Moro Andrea (Vanderbilt University)
Morse Adair (University of Chicago)
Mortensen Dale T. (Northwestern University)
Mortimer Julie Holland (Harvard University)
Muralidharan Karthik (UC San Diego)
Nanda Dhananjay (University of Miami)
Nevo Aviv (Northwestern University)
Ohanian Lee (UCLA)
Pagliari Joseph (University of Chicago)
Papanikolaou Dimitris (Northwestern University)
Parker Jonathan (Northwestern University)
Paul Evans (Ohio State University)
Pejovich Svetozar (Steve) (Texas A&M University)
Peltzman Sam (University of Chicago)
Perri Fabrizio (University of Minnesota)
Phelan Christopher (University of Minnesota)
Piazzesi Monika (Stanford University)
Piskorski Tomasz (Columbia University)
Rampini Adriano (Duke University)
Reagan Patricia (Ohio State University)
Reich Michael (UC Berkeley)
Reuben Ernesto (Northwestern University)
Roberts Michael (University of Pennsylvania)
Robinson David (Duke University)
Rogers Michele (Northwestern University)
Rotella Elyce (Indiana University)
Ruud Paul (Vassar College)
Safford Sean (University of Chicago)
Sandbu Martin E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Sapienza Paola (Northwestern University)
Savor Pavel (University of Pennsylvania)
Scharfstein David (Harvard University)
Seim Katja (University of Pennsylvania)
Seru Amit (University of Chicago)
Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University)
Shimer Robert (University of Chicago)
Shore Stephen H. (Johns Hopkins University)
Siegel Ron (Northwestern University)
Smith David C. (University of Virginia)
Smith Vernon L.(Chapman University- Nobel Laureate)
Sorensen Morten (Columbia University)
Spiegel Matthew (Yale University)
Stevenson Betsey (University of Pennsylvania)
Stokey Nancy (University of Chicago)
Strahan Philip (Boston College)
Strebulaev Ilya (Stanford University)
Sufi Amir (University of Chicago)
Tabarrok Alex (George Mason University)
Taylor Alan M. (UC Davis)
Thompson Tim (Northwestern University)
Tschoegl Adrian E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Uhlig Harald (University of Chicago)
Ulrich, Maxim (Columbia University)
Van Buskirk Andrew (University of Chicago)
Veronesi Pietro (University of Chicago)
Vissing-Jorgensen Annette (Northwestern University)
Wacziarg Romain (UCLA)
Weill Pierre-Olivier (UCLA)
Williamson Samuel H. (Miami University)
Witte Mark (Northwestern University)
Wolfers Justin (University of Pennsylvania)
Woutersen Tiemen (Johns Hopkins University)
Zingales Luigi (University of Chicago)
Zitzewitz Eric (Dartmouth College)

Wikileaks can archive the Palin emails so she doesn’t have to, by law

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Wikileaks is off-line again. (But try 88.80.13.160) The whistle-blower safe box had just posted fragments of communications hacked from Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. GOP campaign reps denounced the act as “a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of the law” Come again? Eavesdropping is illegal?

Hackers working under the venerable pseudonym “Anonymous” posted email from the Alaska Governor which appeared to violate government safeguards about official communications. Emails regarding state business are supposed to go through government mail systems and be archived accordingly. Personal email accounts are not to be used to circumvent government oversight. The hackers invite the public to decide for themselves whether communications at the addresses sarah.palin@yahoo.com and gov.sarah@yahoo.com violated these restrictions.

Wikileaks is a repository of leaked information to which government or corporate whistle-blowers can post who want to bring evidence of wrong-doing to the public’s attention. Wired has an excellent profile of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The site has been targeted by the courts and corporate hackers to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information. For example, Wikileaks leaked instruction manuals from the DoD’s secret prison system.

Why Wikileaks has become inaccessible this time is hopefully due simply to too much traffic. You can check Wikileak for access updates, if lame commentary. When Wikileaks published offshore banking records showing how US corporations are evading federal taxes, the Swiss bank Julius Baer prevailed upon a US court to revoke the wikileaks.org domain name.

Apparently the Secret Service has vowed to investigate who hacked into Sarah Palin’s account. This should be a revealing test of Wikileaks’ stealth measures. Wikileaks contributors use a FIREFOX pluggin called TOR to spread their online tracks over a distribution of participating TOR users. In addition communications are encrypted with PGP -Pretty Good Privacy. Unavoidably however, a not insignificant number of machines on the network are recognized to be intelligence agents.

(Scrubbing Bubbles said “We work hard so you don’t have to.”)

C.E.L.L. house of horror indoctrination

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO-
The visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

PHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Next a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Of course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

(See previous NMT article about THE CELL.)

DHS and AIPAC implant fear cancer CELL, a house of horrors in Denver museum circuit (Photos) (Spoiler)

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Just in time for this year’s 9/11 commemoration, and in the spirit of deepening America’s public commitment to the self- described endless Global War On Terror, comes THE CELL, a permanent museum exhibit to keep US citizens vigilant to the treat of terrorism. The DHS has provided funds to AIPAC and erstwhile Jewish lobbyists to build this display at the Mizel Museum next to the Denver Art Museum. You might well ask, WHAT are Israeli/Jewish interests doing fanning the flames of the so-called GWOT?

From ML:

collaborators are Rand, MIPT, Lawson Terrorism Information Center, AIC, Melanie Pearlman, regional director of AIPAC, Toby Dershowitz, Courtney Green (Mizel’s daughter) Mark Dubowitz, David Grey, Michael Inlander, Jonathan Schanzer, David Heyman, Brian Michael Jenkins, spook, mercenary, and false flag agent with Kroll Associates, who was in charge of WTC security and hired John O’Neill, who fingered the US ambassador to Yemen in the USS Cole bombing, and who was killed on 9/11, and Clifford May, of the RMN, NY Times, Committee on the Present Danger, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, ngo CIA fronts.

The CELL is an acronym for Center for Empowered Living and Learning, but in a political world where a reference to “lipstick” is automatically taken to refer to the Ugly American fundamentalist/ bigot/ corrupt/ simpleton/ sow running for GOP VP, the word “cell” is incredibly unsubtle. It’s the dreaded “sleeper cell” of dormant terrorists, meant to allude to the malignant cancer cell poised to spread until its host is dead. Fighting cancer of course means excising every single trace of an inclination of a tumor. While “cell” also describes a small organization, it has another definition certainly inconvenient to our would-be DHS fear-mongering jailers.

It’s a prison cell to which we confine ourselves for the sake of “security.” This hysterical fear spreads like a cancer throughout our nation, seeded by 9/11 and apparently folks who think we need regular inoculations of fear cells.

The display at the CELL is called ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE: UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM. It teaches people to join Neighborhood Watch programs, etc, and to keep in touch with the Department of Homeland Security.

When FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was encouraging Americans to overcome their fear. Like a parent’s bedside advice: there’s no bogeyman in the closet, it’s all in your head. How far have we fallen when our own leaders pervert FDR’s axiom to mean the only thing you have to fear is terror (fear itself). Never mind what you have to fear, just fear.

What then do AIPAC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have to do with scaring Americans into serving the GWOT? Does Israel think that unless Americans are reminded to fear Islam, they might begin to question white man’s incursion into the Middle East? Are Israel’s atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon likely to come into question unless the American public is kept mesmerized by Muslim Terror?

To refer to terrorism as an ideology is already an adolescent fallacy. The term is even inappropriate to isolate a particular means of warfare. Terrorism may be a tactic, but you cannot differentiate between suicide bombers and aerial bombing, between beheadings and extra-judicial preemptive assassination, between kidnappings and extraordinary rendition and torture.

We’re making a visit to THE CELL today, by coincidence on 9/11.
I can’t wait to see how an entire exhibit is going to riff on the never forget always remember TO FEAR illogic. A little knowledge can plant the seed of fear, sufficient knowledge can weed it out.

UPDATE:
The good news is that THE CELL looks like a low-rent Sharper Image meets espionage store. What is the graphic on the front door, a sniper’s crosshairs? All the windows are mirrored except where neon text is scrolling cautionary warnings. In other windows silhouettes of crowds huddle together beneath illuminated shards of falling structures. Another window glamorizes rack after rack of data processing electronics.

The main logo (photo at top of article) features a map of the world overlaid on a fingerprint. I had to laugh at the forced acronym. Center for Empowered Living and Learning. Isn’t to “Live and Learn” an expression for wisdom gained by experience, basically at the expense of mistakes made?

Most distressing however was to see this sign, an indication that the C.E.L.L. is not a temporary exhibit but an integral component of the Denver museum-scape. Does fear-mongering propaganda belong in the CULTURAL COMPLEX? Between Art, History and Library, a House of Horrors?

WE GO INSIDE!
The visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Of course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

Will a daughter’s second pregnancy obfuscate Governor Palin’s coverup?

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Eric Verlo

This story is not about the Palin daughter, it’s about VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Who was it that dragged young Bristol Palin’s private life into the political fray? The GOP would like to say it was Leftist bloggers. But who decided these not-ready-for- prime-time family foibles should face the scrutiny of an election podium?

A further preface: has a US public yet showed an interest in the real culpability of a politician?

Really, I’m not in the least prepared to allow the “left” to tell us what arguments should or shouldn’t be raised against Palin and the family members she drags into her schemes.

The Palin/McCain handlers think they’d averted a media firestorm by recasting the scandal as a simple teenage pregnancy. To counter accusations that VP candidate Sarah Palin lied about who mothered Baby Trig, they’ve announced that Bristol is NOW five-months pregnant. We’re supposed to do the math and conclude she couldn’t have birthed Baby Trig, when of course, there’s no corroborating testimony about Bristol’s condition, and there won’t be because inquests into the candidate’s children are off the table.

Redefining the Baby Trig news byte as a self-effacing confession about a pre-marital teenage pregnancy has so far shamed the critics. Even Obama is put in the position to be indignant for Bristol’s privacy. I’m amazed that the discourse has been about John McCain’s vetting process, instead of his good judgment of Sarah Palin’s character. Does a candidate pick a running mate based on their being impervious to scandal, or based on their capabilities as a partner?

A teenage pregnancy or two, a mother covering for her daughter, even pulling out all stops to help your sister in a custody battle with her ex, these are not uncommon predicaments for families anywhere. These things show Sarah Palin to be simply all too human. Being tempted to conceal your frailty is no great vanity either. But is succumbing to the common an indication of the strength of character required of a leader?

Going from junior college to council-person of a pop 7,000 person town to governor to potential President of the United States is a Heratio Alger story that feeds our American Dream. We all want to think we’re just one Lotto win away from riches. Of course, scratching a winning lottery number would qualify us for a life of leisure until the money’s gone. But some doddering Senator lifting us up from obscurity based on photogenic and possibly oratory skill can’t possibly qualify a person for a position of great responsibility and tact. In light of (just four days worth so far) of evidence to the contrary.

Just say no, Sarah Palin

Posted on August 31, 2008 by Marie Walden

Exactly who is John McCain pandering to by adding Sarah Palin to the ticket? Talk is that he’s hoping to hook the evangelical crowd, but he’s obviously missing a few key bits of information.

Conservative Christians do not put their women in positions of authority over men. Ever. In my former church, women were not allowed to preach to the general congregation because this was seen as unbiblical, and a condescension to their male counterparts. Believe it or not, they aren’t even permitted to lead the “praise and worship” musical segment of the Sunday service for the same reason. Jezebel can forget about the support of evangelical males.

As for females, they present an even peskier problem. Christian women have strong opinions about the roles of wife and mother. In my experience, few evangelical wives are employed full-time outside the home. Their lives are about rearing godly children and glorifying their husbands. Many consider themselves helpmates, subordinate to their husbands and the church. They are not going to view Sarah Palin as a sister in Christ. She resembles a Biblical harlot, not a Proverbs 31 role model.

There is a nonreligious unbridgeable gap here as well. In case you hadn’t heard, there is an ongoing feud between stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs) and women employed outside the home. The SAHMs claim the moral high ground in the area of child-raising and husband-tending, while the working women, especially those in traditionally male-dominated professions, cling to feminist values of independence, equality, and self-actualization. Ms. Palin — the working woman who calls herself a soccer mom — may strike both camps as an imposter. And many women, regardless of work status, will wonder why Sarah would leave five children, including a special-needs infant, to be used as a pawn in a good-ol’-boys ploy.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She’s being used as hastily begotten arm candy to pretty up an ugly ticket. Things won’t go well for her this election season. In my opinion, she should have refused McCain’s offer. She should have thanked him for the honor of being asked, and then used the national spotlight to showcase who she really is. Not the life preserver he’d like her to be.

NMT coverage of DNC 2008 protests

Posted on August 31, 2008 by NMT

R68 STORM iN THE QUEEN CITY At right is R68’s CMYK guide to DNC protests, STORM IN THE CITY, colored mischievously enough to read STORM’N.

Below is a guide to the NotMyTribe posts on the Denver DNC. We covered preparations, betrayals, security, the Saturday training, Sunday rallies, Monday actions, Tuesday marches, Wednesday escalation, Thursday Invesco, and Friday exit.

We’ve linked the posts so they can be perused in chronological order, as well as by specific focus.

PREPARATIONS:
Public debate
R68 planning
ACLU court case
Arguments
Judgment
Blogger role

TROUBLE MAKING
Unconventional Action
Publicity
Looting
Planning meetings

DOUBLE-CROSS
UFPJ
ARD
Tent State
Green Party
McKinney rebuttal
People Call For Change
Nonviolence
Dividing movement
Disrupting R68

SECURITY ANTICIPATION
Tent State no go
Detention plans
Recent DPD undercover brutality
Police Liaisons

DNC -2, SATURDAY: TRAINING
Training
Family day trip
fodor guide
videotaping
Instructions
Call out

DNC -1, SUNDAY
Rally
Fox disruption
Antiwar march
UA downtown action
Plain-clothed surveillance
UA park disruption
Plain-clothed surveillance
Provocateurs
Recap
Photos

MONDAY: DNC DAY 1
Freedom cage
March to courthouse
Levitating Denver mint
UA tries to leave park
Arbitrary arrest
Containment downtown
Standoff
Provocateurs
Recap
Photos

TUESDAY: DNC DAY 2
Early arrests
Anarchists
Puppet parade
Evening unrest

WEDNESDAY: DNC DAY 3
Lost park
Hassling street kids
IVAW march
Self-policing the protest
Pepsi Center
Marie
Photos

THURSDAY: DNC DAY 4
Immigrant rights march
March to Invesco Field

FRIDAY
Aftermath
RNC plans

In the good judgment of the cops

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Tony Logan

‘Sign here on this ticket for speeding and failure to wear a seat belt (of course!). The bad news is that you have to go to court on this one.’ Thus spoke the cop as the woman sped toward her escape from being raped! In the good judgment of the cops one cannot depend, this case in point.

From our favorite paper, The Gagzette… Woman says traffic cop ignored her claim of rape This story has the ring of truth to it, as anybody stopped by the ticket-writing happy CS PD before surely can sense.

Peterson Air Force Base has a riot squad

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- There is a postscript to the Sisters Witness Against War arrests at Peterson AFB last Friday. Where we left off, three women stepped across the line to protest our nation’s ongoing militancy, and the base commander’s refusal to hear the consciences of pacifists. Barbara, Mary Ann and Esther were led away to be processed, handed to the police, then released. Esther told me the sight that awaited her as she was taken out of our view.

Taking this step, this year, by the way, was in honor of Elizabeth. As the three women were being escorted around the security/reception building, out of view from the protest, they encountered a line of soldiers, dressed in riot gear, being put through various drills. Asking about the apparent extremity of such measures, the women were told that this happens every time there are protests on the other side of the gate. The preparations are standard procedure.

If you can imagine what it’s like from our side, fifty or more quiet nuns usually, once or twice a year, holding home-sewn banners or small signs, facing a security booth being manned by a dozen soldiers, some with binoculars, some in plain clothes. It’s quiet and uneventful. You’d never guess there are people in riot gear being put through their paces behind the scenes.

I laugh because it’s always a nearly-spoken hope that one day we will walk toward the gate, and all of us supplicate ourselves in a compassionate plea to end the war-making. While probably every participant certainly has the courage to be arrested, decorum and a sense of pragmatism hold us back. We await a better opportunity, an impassioned leader to follow, probably. And so through the years, the sisters have only ever mounted a limited nonviolent assault on that yellow line.

This year as the arrests were wrapping up, a soldier noticed that someone’s feet had unknowingly strayed over the line. He pointed sternly and the wouldn’t-be offender hopped giddily back like a new gambler who hadn’t intended a bet.

Even this time, we murmured to ourselves, if only all of us would simply cross that line, they wouldn’t know what to do with us.

Well, as Esther’s report clarifies, they would know what to do with us. And they ready themselves every year to do it. Which has me thinking that they have a higher respect for our potential than we do ourselves. They know what’s at stake, even as we yet do not.

I struggle questioning whether we can reach across to the military mindset with our pacifist ideology. Especially as their militarism extends to dealing peace-petitioners physical blows. Will there be human consciences to reach, or just gung-ho soldier appetites to satisfy? That question holds me back.

Ossetia South doesn’t want to be West

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Eric Verlo

SOUTH OSSETIA? You might very well ask, where’s NORTH Ossetia? The Republic of North Ossetia-Alania is in the Russian Federation. So the minority enclave of South Ossetia wants to break from Georgia? They’ve watched developments in the increasingly US-controlled Georgian leadership and they don’t want to be pawns of the West. South Vietnam? South Korea anyone?

Bruce Gagnon sent more this morning:

Some old sage once said we learn world geography by tracking American wars – or in this case American proxy wars. I am as certain as I can be that this is a proxy war. The U.S. and Israel have been arming Georgia heavily in recent years. The U.S. and Israel have been sending military advisers to Georgia. There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. has been, at the very least, “encouraging” Georgia to make a grab for the independent territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia knowing that by doing so they would very well provoke Russia to respond. I am convinced the U.S. wants to confront Russia militarily and if they can get someone else to do it then why not. It’s the cold war strategy come back to life.

The corporate media in the U.S. is having a field day promoting Russian aggression against Goergia. One very interesting CNN-TV story detailed Russian destruction of the Georgian city of Gori but then the camera man who took the footage said the film he took was actually of Georgian destruction of Russian peacekeeper forces in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. You can see why the American people are so often confused and misinformed. We are being led with rings in our noses into a new protracted war.

A distant cousin of mine who lives in Massachusetts wrote me saying that when she went to work yesterday the folks there were convinced that Russia had bombed the American state of Georgia. “Why do we bother?” she asked.

Bruce also suggested this article:

Marching through Georgia
By Patrick Schoenfelder

Maybe everyone is already up to speed on this, but if you are depending on the usual drumbeat of warlike bluster from the mainstream media (in the words of Paul Krugman, “real mean don’t think things through”) you are missing most of the news.

Therefore, a brief memo:

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are small areas on the border between Georgia and Russia where the majority of residents belong to ethnic groups other than Georgian. During the Soviet era, both of them were semi-autonomous areas under Soviet control.

In 1990, after Georgia became independent, Georgia claimed both areas as part of Georgia.

Russia opposed this claim as did residents of the areas, and Russia forced Georgia at gunpoint to allow autonomy to both regions in 1992, and both regions have been acting as de facto independent countries since then.

Peacekeepers from Russia commissioned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been stationed in both countries since then.

After the so-called Rose Revolution and the overthrow of Edward Shevardnadze in 2003 it became a policy of the Georgian government to repudiate the independence of both regions and to work for re-establishment of Georgian control.

In 2006, a referendum was held under OSCE supervision with 34 observers from Poland, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. The referendum drew a 95% turnout and voted 99% in favor of full independence.

Georgia rejected the results, claiming that ethnic Georgians were intimidated out of voting, and arguing that the Russian peacekeepers actually were supporting the Ossetians.

Meanwhile, Georgia developed a close relationship with the Bush administration and cultivated a relationship with the EU, beginning application for membership in both the EU and in NATO. Georgia has the third largest number of troops in Iraq, after the US and Britain. The US has supplied the Georgian army with a large amount of war material.

In mid-July of this year, the US military held a joint war games training exercise in Georgia with the Georgian military.

The US left a number of “military advisers” in Georgia after the exercise.

On August 7, the Georgian army invaded South Ossetia in force, advancing rapidly across the area and killing both Ossetian soldiers and Russian peacekeepers.

On August 8, the Russians moved a large force into South Ossetia, including use of airpower for bombing and support. The Georgian army was rapidly crushed and began to retreat into Georgia. The Russians continued to pursue them into Georgia and used artillery and planes to bombard both military and civilian targets in Georgia as they advanced. They also declared that Georgian troops stationed in Abkhazia must leave or surrender, and sent troops into Abkhazia as well.

The Russians at this point seem to be determined to remove the Georgian leadership and establish independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The extent to which they will occupy or establish control in Georgia proper, and for how long, is not clear.

The Georgians, after starting the war, probably partly at the urging of the US, are now screaming for peace.

The US and the Europeans, while expressing dismay (“I am shocked, shocked I say!”) have exactly zero ability to do anything about the situation, since the area is well within Russian sphere of influence and away from any means of support (think of a US military action in Mexico.) They are hanging the Georgians out to dry (think of the Kurds under Reagan and Bush the elder.)

The Russians have been pointing out the similarity with Kosovo and US activity there. They have also pointed out that the US is in no position to complain about superpower military intervention or occupation of any place, given their record over the last eight years.

The possibility of any meaningful economic or other sanctions against the Russians is slight, since Russia is the number one supplier of oil and natural gas to Europe and an important trading partner, and the Russian bloc has the second largest oil reserve in the world (perhaps even the first, depending on the results of exploration in the Caspian region) and is a huge supplier of mineral resources from metals to diamonds.

IMPORTANT BLOOD FOR OIL FOOTNOTE: The largest pipeline between the Black Sea and Caspian oil fields and Europe and the only one not completely under Russian control is the 1 million barrel a day capacity BP line that passes through Georgia and parts of Abkhazia. Both the Russians and the Georgians would benefit hugely from ability to control this pipeline. Some observers suggest that war efforts on both sides are related partly to the issue of this pipeline.

Crossing the line at Peterson AFB

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Eric Verlo

North gate of Peterson AFB
COLORADO SPRINGS- The annual Sisters Witness Against War took an interesting step forward Friday when three sisters decided to step across the line. Ostensibly to deliver a letter which had gone thus far unanswered by the Peterson AFB commander. Event founder Barbara Huber decided she would commit herself to this act of Civil Disobedience and was joined by two others. A press release declared this intention, the Gazette was on hand to record it, and a local patrol car stood by as well.

Barbara explained her plan to the reporter. That she’d sent the letter several times but had not received a response. The only recourse she felt she had was to deliver the letter in person, to know it had reached him. Barbara also admitted knowing that the base commander was away, and so the best she could hope for was to deliver the letter into the hands of his secretary. PAFB confers with Gazette Plain-clothed security had been circulating through our demonstration, asking for specifics about our intentions. When I saw them conferring with the Gazette team, I immediately worried for Barbara’s plan. If the Air Force officers learned that Barbara need only be introduced to their commander’s secretary, that person could be waiting to meet us at the gate and the whole hoopla could be averted.

Fortunately, the Peterson machos seemed all too eager to create a confrontation. As the demonstrators neared the gate, a soldier with the gait of a Carabinieri grabbed a megaphone and cautioned us away. But the sisters continued. Several soldiers donned riot helmets.
Riot gear

Fed intervenes The man in pink wore a badge on his folder. He couldn’t persuade Barbara to turn back.

Barbara deliberates

(More pictures at csaction.org)

EPILOGUE: PETERSON AFB HAS A RIOT SQUAD

Even this time, we murmured to ourselves, if only all of us would simply cross that line, they wouldn’t know what to do with us.

Military fiction, publishing as product takes us further downhill to total cultural illiteracy

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Tony Logan

When Americans step inside the big chain publishers’ bookstores, Barnes and Noble and Borders, they are almost always under the delusion that they are inside real bookstores containing real books. Nothing could be farther from the truth though. We instead have merely entered into the realm of publishing as product.

What do I mean by ‘publishing as product’? The answer simply put is that publishing historically was an act of putting an art form in front of the art appreciating public. That art form was called literature and you had to read to get it. Publishing was never a pure process without politics, but far from it as politics was essential to what often got published, and what did not. But todays publishing world is far different than that of the past. What does the American literature reading public run into today?

Today’s publishing world has as much to do with art (literature) as McDonald’s has to do with cooking (culinary arts). Content inside the big publishing firms today is handled like a product, not an art that has high impact on politics and national culture. Conservative businessmen still limit what gets published and what does not, but the censorship involves not censuring and disallowing individual radical authors, but censoring and disallowing entire product lines. To cover up this censorship, a whole new group of alternative products have been developed to better hide the fact that real literature is no longer a product to be carried on the shelves.

As an avid book reader since I was a kid, I have been going into America’s bookstores for 1/2 a century which has allowed me to see this devolution in process on a continual basis. So let me name a few of the new publishing product lines that have displaced the old book shelves that once were partially inhabited, at least some, by novels in translation from other parts of the world.

Americans have always been an ethnocentric society and that has been always encouraged by conservative publishers who published mainly American authors. But where once stood Steinbeck and Zola, now stands shelves after shelves of books under other categories of products instead of just Fiction , all now directed to a population segmented by market research science laboratories. We now have Gay Literature, Christian Literature, and the latest grouping something called Military Literature. Further, one finds literature now very much separated into gender categories (Thanks, Oprah! See what you helped do?). Of course, as a remnant of the ’60s we have tiny sections of Black Fiction, Chicano Fiction, Native American Fiction, though not Black Fiction from elsewhere than the US, Latin American fiction from elsewhere than the US, or Native American fiction from say Guatemala or Peru.

We also have oodles of shelves with product lines directed to UFO believers, New Age dabblers, fascist talk show lovers, ‘self help’ addicts, and this new grouping identified for product line identity sales, the US military grunt fan club of all that is weaponry and war. Hence comes ‘Military Fiction’.

There is nothing really modern about this since Hollywood keyed in on this crowd since way back even before John Wayne. (Kids, if you don’t know who John Wayne is, then text message some Dude who might know and ask him?) What is new is to see this product line as marked out, pushed, and delineated as it is today. We shall all be corporately sliced and diced down to our very genes, it seems…

So who are the ‘writers’ for this new product line called Military Fiction? Here they are in Barnes and Nobles, War and Military Fiction division. Notice all those B&N sub-divisions of this hither before non-existent category of Fiction. Notice how they tossed in Vonnegut and Hemingway to make the new product line look less superficial than it really is?

Can you imagine this sort of thing in French, Italian, or German bookstores? They don’t have half their countries’ populations working for the military-security-industrial complex though. Personally, I can see a future reduction int he Christian Fiction and Christian Non-Fiction product lines, and and even larger spread of product items in the War and Military Fiction and Non-Fiction departments. Maybe even an ICE Fiction product line, too? And Private Military Contractor Fiction area?

Meanwhile, culturally, the US heads toward being a total illiterate wasteland in the publishing of real literature in the English language, especially in the translation of foreign authors of note. The worst of all this, is that almost all those entering into these warehouses of bookfood products think that they are part of the educated just by being there among the shelves of what??? … shelves of trash. All the books have been replaced by artificial-alterficial-superficial bookfood, or spam of lit. This delusion of education being sold at the bookfood warehouses is the phoniest product line of them all.

Oh, and that photo that led off this commentary? That is a promotion from a category of bookfood called ‘Women’s Military Fiction’, which is a combo of Romance, pseudo Feminism, and Pentagon Pro-war propaganda? Here is Lindsay McKinna’s website promo comments about her bookfood.

‘Lindsay McKenna (A.K.A. Eileen Nauman) is the best-selling author of Valkyrie and 75 fiction books in the last 20 years. Known as the “Top Gun of Women’s Military Fiction,” she created the sub-genre of military adventure/romance and covers a mainstream women’s market having sold over 10 million books worldwide.’

Who needs international literature in American bookstores when there is this sort of crap to sell? That’s why literature by authors from other countries just really is not there anymore. It has been replaced by bookfood spam.

Osama driver guilty of top war crimes

Posted on August 6, 2008 by Eric Verlo

We’ve convicted a war criminal. A military tribunal in Guantanamo has found Osama Ben Laden’s driver guilty of war crimes. At the expense of Salim Ahmed Hamdan’s fate, I’m thrilled at this development. Look at the reach of what we consider war crime! This was Osama’s driver. Did the Nuremberg prosecutors go after the Nazi drivers? Were Göring’s or Goebbels’ drivers put on trial? The implications are going to be broad. For one, both Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal wars. Will anyone who’s carted a weapon for those engagements be considered guilty of killing over a million civilians?

Second, putting a Hamdan before a military tribunal is itself a war crime. Those conducting the trial are guilty. And what’s come up as evidence in the trial, is proof of further US crimes: rendition, illegal detention, torture. Fantastically, by asking the judge to consider confessions made under torture, the military prosecutors concede that they used torture. Documented. Admitted. This trial provides the discovery for the next.

You might feel sympathy for our soldiers who may decry they are only following orders. That defense may have gotten Commandant Klink and Sergeant Shultz off the hook, I can’t remember. But it didn’t cut amnesty for the Nuremberg defendants. In fact it defined the degree to which human beings are personally responsible for carrying out the immoral instructions of their leaders.

The split decision by the jury of military officers may reflect that they can see the same judgment might apply to their service, but their partial consideration is not going to save them.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq back in Afghanistan!

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Do you chose to believe this yarn? It’s not long, it’s circular. US casualties in Afghanistan have surpassed casualties in Iraq, and to explain it maybe, US military spokesman have revealed they believe the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq is now back in Afghanistan!

Let’s see. We attacked Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to rein in its terrorist arm, purportedly named al-Qaeda. Which may or may not be a figment of US military intelligence imagination. We know about al-Qaeda only through our military interrogator, plus the 19-known hijackers who were dead before there was public mention of al-Qaeda, and no al-Qaeda charges have stuck to any Guantanamo inmate so far.

We can’t find it, do we know “it” exists?

So we attack Iraq which had no known al-Qaeda, until, our same dubious military intelligence people inform us there is an “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” actually, in Mesopotamia, actually, in the Land of the Two Rivers. Depending on the translation.

Was the original logo IN ENGLISH? Actually Osama’s gang was a CIA creation, so the origial al-Qaeda tattoo may have been designed in Langly, then put back and forth through Babblefish to obscure the non-Arabic speaking origins. Or not.

Fair enough, but we still only have our propaganda team to vouch for it, and have we ever known them to tell us anything truthful? Every time insurgents are engaged we hear our forces have killed an al-Qaeda leader. It’s usually the first we’ve heard of the person, and the last. Except the guy they’ve now killed twice.

So every act of violence in Iraq is blamed on AQII until we want to talk about the “surge” working. If we want to declare the “surge” a success, AQII has to goway. And where better than to where it came from (maybe?) Afghanistan!

If we surge into Afghanistan, which Barack Obama has declared we should do, and if THAT’S a hit, soon enough we’ll have it cornered to be al-Qaida in a Cave, and then al-Qaeda in Osama’s Teevee Room!

If we applied the same logic to the Weapons of Mass Destruction supposed to be in Iraq, we could look for them where they came from. The WMD in American chemical weapons companies!

Free Speech relief unlikely from US Court

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Federal District Judge Marcia Krieger heard closing arguments today in the case challenging Denver’s DNC free speech restrictions, and what she didn’t hear, she augmented with her own leading questions. “Would you request that the court reserve its ruling until Invesco security arrangements are announced?” (Is she laying ground for a delayed decision?) Other questions painted the plaintiffs’ Free Speech concerns as requests that protest photo-ops feature the Pepsi Center as a backdrop. Judge Krieger asked: “Does the public have the [Constitutional] RIGHT to frame the picture that they like?”

Judge Krieger adjourned at 4PM to work on her written decision. Her earlier plan to visit the disputed isolation zones in question was called off due to a technicality.

There was also a surprise suggestion of a little playground north of the Pepsi Center where the city attorney asserts the public can catch an unimpeded view of the convention center. The plaintiff countered that the park wasn’t among those offered for permits. The judge answered cheerfully that we wouldn’t need a permit for it, to which the plaintiff clarified groups can’t legally hold demonstrations there, beside the fact that it’s a playground, dotted with playground furnishings… Meanwhile the novel location buttressed the city’s claim that protesters would have visual access to the DNC “from all points of the compass.” A fellow activist murmured “like Long’s Peak.”

The plaintiff’s final arguments today were peppered with questions from the judge, to suggest that demonstrators are looking to make a constitutional issue of a photo backdrop. Tent State’s stated desire to be seen marching away from the convention center was ridiculed as if the idea defied geometry. To walk away from the DNC, you’d have to walk toward it, and vice versa, etc.

The defense attorneys seemed to have displeased the judge more, because she had to restate their case for them in stronger terms perhaps so that she’ll have more room to find in their favor. It looked that way to me.

Toons stencil history of iconic film stills

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Spica Stolfus

Can you identify the iconic images collected on these stencils? Larger views of each section are reproduced below. Answers at the bottom.

A clue, the stills are in chronological order, going across starting at the lower left.

Lune, Vampyres, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney, Chaplin, Valentino, Lugosi, King Kong, Frankenstein, WC Fields, Oz, Dietrich, ?, Shirley Temple,

M, Mae West, Gone With the Wind, Groucho, ?, Astaire & Rogers, Garbo, Errol Flynn, Laurel & Hardy, Betty Grable, Maurice Chevalier, ?, Jane Russel, Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford,

Gary Cooper, Ten Commandments, Singing in the Rain, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, ?, Katherine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn, ?, Some Like it Hot, Yul Brynner, James Dean, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf,

Cool Hand Luke, Psycho, Clockwork Orange, 2001, Berman, Strangelove, ?, Bonnie & Clyde, Nutty Professor, On the Waterfront, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Lawrence of Arabia, Bergman, Shaft, Josey Wales, Mrs. Robinson,

Harold & Maude, Bruce Lee, Cabaret, ?, Eraserhead, Aguirre Wrath of God, Woddy Allen, Jaws, Bowie, Pacino, Mad Max, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, Rocky, Rocky Horror, ?,

Yoda, ET, ?, Blade Runner, The Shining, ?, Bruce Willis, Good Morning Vietnam, Divine, ?, Blue Velvet, River Pheonix, Color Purple, ?, Terminator, Tommy,

Hanks, Hannibal, Thelma & Louise, Edward Scissorhands, Run Lola Run, Gary Oldman, Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, Witness, Morgan Freeman, Color of Money, Kwaidan, ?, ?, O Brother Where Art Thou, ?,

Long distance winner

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Marie Walden

Running the Pikes Peak Ascent
I remember when running came to Colorado Springs. Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running was published in the late seventies and preached running as the path to good health. The book spent 11 weeks at number one on the the bestsellers list and is credited for starting America’s fitness revolution.

I was part of that revolution. Not as a runner, but as a close observer. You see, I’m the sister of a running fanatic.

My brother’s friends opened a store called Runners Roost shortly after Fixx’s book hit the big time. Between his daily 15-mile runs, Jim worked there for years, while I worked for a bigger, more general sporting goods store at the Citadel. The two jobs hardly resembled each other.

I spent my days shoe-horning Air Jordans onto the feet of just-paid GIs, while Jim watched people run up and down Bijou so he could check their gaits, look for pronation or supination, and make sound footwear recommendations. I pulled Russell Athletic sweat shirts over the bellies of armchair quarterbacks, while Jim sold silky singlets and impossibly short running shorts to fat-free lunatics. Even when I was allowed to fit football helmets on 10-year-old pinheads, and wax the K2s of handsome ruddy-cheeked skiers, I still envied my brother’s life. To me, there was something enigmatic and appealing about a long-distance runner. I feel the same even now.

Today my 14-year-old son got up at 4 a.m. and ran to the top of Pikes Peak — a solitary 13-mile trek. I imagine he wouldn’t have mentioned his plan to anyone if he didn’t need a ride to the trailhead. Later he told me his finish time, and not much else.

After all these years, it looks like I may have another chance to unravel the mysterious runner’s mind.

Product Obama

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Tony Logan

“At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, [Barack Obama] is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.”

Counterpoint columnist Joe Bageant was given the following essay by an unnamed political consultant:
Life in the Post-political Age.

Much has been written by political pundits in their attempt to explain the unexpected victory of Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton in this year’s Democratic Presidential Primary. When looking at the results of this race, none of the conventional political math that would help one handicap the outcome would make one conclude that Senator Obama would win this contest.

Inside a Democratic Party primary there is no demographic or political reason that a male first term African American senator from Illinois with an unorthodox name should come any where close to beating a white female senator, who happens to be the wife of the last Democratic President whose approval ratings are still above 70% with Democratic voters and who also happened to earn the endorsements of the substantial parts of the Democratic Party establishment.

The conventional analysis focused on the poor quality of the campaign run by Senator Clinton, her vote in support of the Iraq war and her advocacy of the cynical center-right triangulation policies of her husband, which soured her campaign to many primary voters and especially to Democratic Party activists. Senator Obama’s on the other hand was credited with running an innovative and inspiring campaign that excited primary voters and brought many new and especially younger voters into the electoral process.

There is some truth to this analysis, but as a whole it misses the underlying social change in society that had already laid the groundwork for a possible Obama victory. To get a clearer understanding of the results, we must better understand what this social change is and how its impact is far more significant than the dynamics of the two respective campaigns.

The underlying social change that led to the Obama victory is the unprecedented extent to which the narrative of popular consumer culture, and the media that drives it, has become the dominant influence on how Americans think, formulate their ideas and understand the world around them.

The most important result of this process has been the steady and consistent depoliticization of American society, to an extent that we can make the case that we are living at the dawn of the post political age.

The two primary features of the post political age are a politics completely drained of all its contents and ability or willingness to be used as an agent of change in social or economic policy, and its full integrations into the world of American popular, consumer and entertainment culture. To such an extent that there exists today a seamless web between our political, economic, media and consumer cultures wherein the modes and values of one are completely integrated and compatible with the others.

It should not come as a surprise that the dominant ideas and mores of popular culture have become the dominant ideas of our society. Popular culture is the breaker of customs, prejudice, tradition and relevant historical knowledge.

It is a result of this dynamic that the two consistent winners in American politics over the last 30 years have been the cultural left and the economic right. Despite the massive organizing drive of the religious right over the past three decades, they are further away from reversing the cultural liberalization of American society than when they started. On others side of the ledger, organized labor outside of a few urban pockets and industries is no longer a relevant force in American life. The ever greater electoral activism of both of these groups is generally misunderstood as a show of strength; in fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the desperate fight of the losing side of the American economic, cultural and political scene.

In essence the same forces that make it possible for the rapid acceptance of ideas such as gay marriage are the same force which can create a society that will accept massive social inequalities.

In the post political world and the candidates who can best thrive in it have tremendous appeal to the economic elites, a system that does not dwell on issues and will never ask the question, “who has power and why”, but simultaneously creates a social and media environment of stupefying distractions while destroying traditional social mores (under-credited as a source of much social solidarity). This can only benefit their continued rule of that society.

In such a setting our political choices like our consumer choices, regardless of the product, are primarily about what makes us more fulfilled and feel better about ourselves.

Senator Obama’s campaign understood much better the impact of these changes on our electoral system than any of his opponents’ campaigns. In the post political world, the campaign that is less political and less issue-based but is savvier in using new modes of communication technology will be the campaign to win the greatest market share of the electorate. The candidate in this case, Obama, was not a political entity but, in essence a product, an ornament that made his supporters feel better about themselves.

One of the most telling facts about the Obama’s constituency outside of African Americans (whose support needs no explanation) is that it is a coalition of people who need or demand the least amount of social benefit from our government. They are the under politicized younger voters and upper middle class whites. The two groups, coincidently, are the ones most influenced by trends in consumer popular culture and have the greatest of ease using the latest technologies.

In commercial advertising it is the poor commercial that lists the seventeen functions of the product being marketed. The best commercials are based on image associations entirely unrelated to the functions of the actual product. In the post political world, when the same principle is applied to the political realm, it makes complete sense how Barack Obama no longer is a black man with a strange name but the iPod to Hillary Clinton’s cell phone. In the world of toys it is the one that stands out the most is the most marketable.

The reality of the post political period is best highlighted in the failed themes and ideas of Barack Obama’s two primary opponents. The Clinton campaign was based on pushing two concurrent ideas: the inevitability factor of her candidacy and the other was her supposed experience. The only thing inevitable in the post political period is ceaseless change, which she could hardly offer while running against the candidate of “Change”. How valuable of an asset can experience be in a culture where knowledge, wisdom and history are frowned upon?

John Edwards campaign on the other hand was dead on arrival. His theme and emphasis was America’s ever widening class differences, a platform as truthful as it was irrelevant. The use of the word “class” will end any political career in America. That truth violates the primary narrative that our elite use to justify their legitimacy, which is the supposed meritocratic nature of America society. While the post political constituencies have absolutely no interest in class, whose very acknowledgment are the bases of all real politics and whose acknowledgement would only lead to an existential crisis in its ranks. In the post political period the only differences allowed can be in style and modes of consumption.

Given all this as the background, what are we to make of the campaign of the candidate of hope, audacity and change? The answer lies in understanding Senator Obama’s appeal to the brighter sections of the economic and political elite, and more importantly in the lack of any organized opposition against him, of the kind that within a matter of days destroyed Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004.

At the precise moment that the intellectual underpinnings of conservative free market ideas that have dominated politics for the past 30 years are crumbling across the globe. Obama calls for a post ideological and partisan world.

At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, he is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.

His very presence, the color of his skin, the very strangeness of his name is the best guarantee of his betrayal of the expectations of the constituencies that will vote to elect him. Barack Obama is in short order a far more reassuring prospect for the continued dominance of the financial elite than another four years of neo-conservative rule which in an almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.

Audacity yes, change hardly.

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