Marlon Brando’s lost Oscar speech

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Eric Verlo

In 1973 Marlon Brando declined a best actor award for the Godfather in solidarity with the American Indian. Yada yada yada, only that much we remember. Something to do with Wounded Knee, but the average American might be excused for confusing the massacre of 300 Lakota in 1890, the contemporary deadly FBI-AIM confrontation, and Dee Brown’s bestseller. A new documentary Reel Injun, about Hollywood’s skewed portrayal of Native Americans, unearths Apache Sasheen Littlefeather’s incredibly poised delivery of Brando’s Oscar message.

Littlefeather was confined by time limits to present only this abbreviation, interrupted by audience booing and then simultaneous applause. Youtube has the clip, for which the transcript is below.

“Marlon Brando … has asked me to tell you, in a very long speech which I cannot share with you presently —because of time— but I will be glad to share with the press afterward, that he must… very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award.

And the reason for this being… are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry… excuse me… and on television in movie re-runs, and also the recent happenings at Wounded Knee.

I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will, in the future…our hearts and our understanding will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando.”

Brando’s formal statement was released to reporters after the ceremonies.

For 200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting for their land, their life, their families and their right to be free: ”Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you.”?

     When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.?

?     But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice??

?     It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one’s neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we’re not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements.?

?     Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don’t concern us, and that we don’t care about? Wasting our time and money and intruding in our homes.?

?     I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.?

?     Recently there have been a few faltering steps to correct this situation, but too faltering and too few, so I, as a member in this profession, do not feel that I can as a citizen of the United States accept an award here tonight. I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother’s keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.?

?     I would have been here tonight to speak to you directly, but I felt that perhaps I could be of better use if I went to Wounded Knee to help forestall in whatever way I can the establishment of a peace which would be dishonorable as long as the rivers shall run and the grass shall grow.?

?     I would hope that those who are listening would not look upon this as a rude intrusion, but as an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory.?

?     Thank you for your kindness and your courtesy to Miss Littlefeather. Thank you and good night.

American Nazis get fewer recruits

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Congratulations to Norway for booting the Israeli weapons program from Norwegian deep water testing facilities. Norway declared last week that German-manufactured submarines destined for Israel would not be permitted to use its submarine base on the southern coast, on account of the ongoing Israeli military aggressions against Palestine and Lebanon. No mention of restrictions against US weapons heading for American war zones.

Not only does Israel have a nuclear arsenal estimated to exceed 200 warheads, they have submarines to launch them from anywhere in the world. Israel is the single nuclear power in the Middle East, now the rogue preemptive warrior has a nuclear reach beyond the purported aspirations of terrorists, alleged.

So Norway has imposed a stumbling block on Israel’s international war plans, but the impediment is merely symbolic in the face of America’s unhindered state terror program. Where are the principled stands against aiding and abetting the US mechanized subjugation of its furthest flung imperial conquests?

Norway earns sizable profits from its weapons industry, and supplies its share of NATO troops in Afghanistan. Its small contingent of soldiers reflects no economic draft, but simply the natural statistical proportion of adventurous, mercenary males. When occupied by the Germans during WWII, over 10,000 Norwegians volunteered to fight for the Nazis. Many on the Russian Front reenlisted. Against that proportion, the few hundreds today willing to join the Americans make the over-worn Nazi comparison even less favorable.

Are FBI raids on activists focused on UNAC strategies?

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The UNAC is claiming that recent FBI raids on the offices of various antiwar organizations are linked to those which attended its July conference, an attempt to coordinate national antiwar activities.

Even the title of the conference was never pinned down. Here are the 28 action points decided for the upcoming year, which reads like a clearinghouse of ideas.

Action Program Adopted by the National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!

Albany, New York, July 25, 2010

1.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have invited peace organizations to endorse and participate in a campaign for Jobs, Justice, and Peace. We endorse this campaign and plan to be a part of it. On August 28, 2010, in Detroit, we will march on the anniversary of that day in 1963 when Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders joined with hundreds of thousands of Americans for the March on Washington. In Detroit, prior to the March on Washington, 125,000 marchers participated in the Freedom Walk led by Dr. King. At the march, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech for the first time before sharing it with the world in Washington. This year, a massive march has been called for October 2 in Washington. We will begin to build momentum again in Detroit on August 28th. We also endorse the August 28, 2010 Reclaim the Dream Rally and March called by Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to begin at 11 a.m. at Dunbar High School, 1301 New Jersey Avenue Northwest, Washington D.C. .

2.
Endorse, promote and mobilize for the Saturday, October 2nd “One Nation” march on Washington, DC initiated by 1199SEIU and the NAACP, now being promoted by a growing coalition, which includes the AFL-CIO and U.S. Labor Against the War, and civil rights, peace and other social justice forces in support of the demand for jobs, redirection of national resources from militarism and war to meeting human needs, fully funding vital social programs, and addressing the fiscal crisis of state and local governments. Organize and build an antiwar contingent to participate in the march. Launch a full-scale campaign to get endorsements for the October 2 march on Washington commencing with the final plenary session of this conference.

3.
Endorse the call issued by a range of student groups for Thursday, October 7, as a national day of action to defend education from the horrendous budget cuts that are laying off teachers, closing schools, raising tuition and limiting access to education, especially for working and low income people. Demand “Money for Education, not U.S. Occupations” and otherwise link the cuts in spending for education to the astronomical costs of U.S. wars and occupations.

4.
Devote October 7-16 to organizing local and regional protests to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan through demonstrations, marches, rallies, vigils, teach-ins, cultural events and other actions to demand an immediate end to the wars and occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan and complete withdrawal of all military forces and private security contractors and other mercenaries. The nature and scheduling of these events will reflect the needs of local sponsors and should be designed to attract broad co-sponsorship and diverse participation of antiwar forces with other social justice organizations and progressive constituencies.

5.
The U.S. military is the largest polluter in the world. Therefore, we endorse the “climate chaos” demonstration in Washington D.C. on October 11, coordinated by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance.

6.
Support and build Remember Fallujah Week November 15-19.

7.
Join the new and existing broad-based campaigns to fund human needs and cut the military budget. Join with organizations representing the fight against cutbacks (especially labor and community groups) to build coalitions at the city/town, state and national level. Draft resolutions for city councils, town and village meetings and voter referendum ballot questions linking astronomical war spending to denial of essential public services at home. (Model resolutions and ballot questions will be circulated for consideration of local groups.) Obtain endorsements of elected officials, town and city councils, state parties and legislatures, and labor bodies. Work the legislative process to make military spending an issue. Oppose specific military funding programs and bills, and couple them with human needs funding issues. Use lobbying and other forms of protest, including civil disobedience campaigns, to focus attention on the issue.

8.
Mid-March, 2011 nationally coordinated local teach-ins and protests to mark the eighth year of the Iraq War and to prepare for bi-coastal spring demonstrations the following month.

9.
Bi-Coastal mass spring mobilizations in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 9, 2011. These will be accompanied by distinct and separate non-violent direct actions on the same day. A prime component of these mobilizations will be major efforts to include broad new forces from youth to veterans to trade unionists to civil and human rights groups to the Arab, Muslim and other oppressed communities, to environmental organizations, social justice and faith-based groups. Veterans and military families will be key to these mobilizations with special efforts to organize this community to be the lead contingent. Launch a full-scale campaign to get endorsements for these actions commencing with the final plenary session of this conference.

10.
Select a week prior to or after the April actions for local lobbying of elected officials at a time when Congress is not in session. Lobbying to take multiple forms from meeting with local officials to protests at their offices and homes. We will attend the town hall meetings of our Congresspersons and confront them vigorously on their support for the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and sanctions on Iran. We also will press them on the unconstitutional diminution of the civil liberties of all Americans and targeted populations.

11.
Consistent with the call to include broad popular sectors of society in our efforts and to contend with the challenges of opposing U.S. wars and occupations while also rejecting attacks at home, National Peace Conference participants will join May Day actions on May 1, 2011, so as to unite all those standing against war and for rights. U.S. military and trade wars force millions of refugees and migrants to the U.S., where they face growing repression, including mass detentions and deportations. Many immigrants, including youth, are forced into the military, through the economic draft as well as under threat of deportation and using false promises of citizenship. By standing together as one on May Day, the antiwar and immigrant rights movements make clear their united stand against U.S. wars and for the rights of all at home and abroad.

12.
National tours: Organize, over a series of months, nationally-coordinated tours of prominent speakers and local activists that link the demands for immediate withdrawal to the demands for funding social programs, as outlined above. Encourage alternatives to military/lethal intervention, relying on research and experience of local and international peace team efforts.

13.
Pressure on Iran from the U.S., Israel and other quarters continues to rise and the threat of a catastrophic military attack on Iran, as well as the ratcheting up of punitive sanctions that primarily impact the people of that country, are of grave concern. In the event of an imminent U.S. government attack on Iran, or such an attack, or a U.S.-backed Israeli attack against Iran, or any other major international crisis triggered by U.S. military action, a continuations committee approved by the conference will mount rapid, broad and nationally coordinated protests by antiwar and social justice activists.

14.
In the event of U.S.-backed military action by Israel against Palestinians, aid activists attempting to end the blockade of Gaza, or attacks on other countries such as Lebanon, Syria, or Iran, a continuations committee approved by the conference will condemn such attacks and support widespread protest actions.

15.
In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!

16.
Support actions to end the Israeli occupation and repression of Palestinians and the blockade of Gaza.

17.
Support actions aimed at dismantling the Cold War nuclear, biological, radiological and chemical weapons and delivery systems. Support actions aimed at stopping the nuclear renaissance of this Administration, which has proposed to spend $80 billion over the next 10 years to build three new nuclear bomb making facilities and “well over” $100 billion over the same period to modernize nuclear weapons delivery systems. We must support actions aimed at dismantling nuclear, biological, radiological and chemical weapons and delivery systems. We must oppose the re-opening of the uranium mining industry, new nuclear power plants, and extraction of other fossil fuels that the military consumes.

18.
Work in solidarity with GIs, veterans, and military families to support their campaigns and calls for action. Demand support for the troops when they return home and support efforts to counter military recruitment.

19.
Take actions against war profiteers, including oil and energy companies, weapons manufacturers, and engineering firms, whose contractors are working to insure U.S. economic control of Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s resources.

20.
Support actions, educational efforts and lobbying campaigns to promote a transition to a sustainable peace economy.

21.
Develop and implement a multi-pronged national media campaign which includes the following: the honing of a message which will capture our message: “End the Wars and Occupations, Bring the Dollars Home;” a fundraising campaign which would enable the creation and national placement and broadcast of professionally developed print ads as public service radio and television spots which communicate this imperative to the public as a whole (which would involve coordinated outreach to some major funders); outreach to sympathetic media artists to enable the creation of these pieces; an intentional, aggressive, coordinated campaign to garner interviews on as many targeted national news venues as possible which would feature movement voices speaking our nationally coordinated message to the honed; a plan to place on message op-ed pieces in papers around the country on a nationally coordinated schedule.

22.
We demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq, and an end to drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries and call for self-determination for the people of all countries. In this demand is the necessity for full truth and transparency regarding all U.S./NATO actions and an expanded development of independent news sources for broad public knowledge of the state of the wars and occupations. We demand an end to censorship of news topics and full democratic access to freedom of information within the U.S. NATO Military Industrial Media Empire.

23.
We call for the equal participation of women in all aspects of the antiwar movement. We propose nonviolent direct actions either in Congressional offices or other appropriate and strategic locations, possibly defense contractors, Federal Buildings, or military bases in the U.S. These actions would be local and coordinated nationally, i.e., the same day for everyone (times may vary). The actions would probably result in arrests for sitting in after offices close. Entering certain facilities could also result in arrests. Participants would be prepared for that possible outcome before joining the action. Nonviolence training would be offered locally, with lists of trainers being made available. The message/demand would be a vote, a congressional action to end the wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Close U.S. bases. Costs of war and financial issues related to social needs neglected because of war spending would need to be studied and statements regarding same be prepared before the actions. Press release would encourage coverage because of the actions being local and nationally coordinated.

24.
We will convene one or more committees or conferences for the purpose of identifying and arranging boycotts, sit-ins, and other actions that directly interfere with the immoral aspects of the violence and wars that we protest.

25.
We call for the immediate release from Israeli prisons of Mordechai Vanunu and for ending restrictions on his right to speak. We also call upon the Israeli government to let him travel freely and to leave Israel permanently if he so desires.

26.
We oppose the prosecution for Bradley Manning for being the source of the Wikileaks leaks. Manning has done what all GIs should do when they see war crimes: expose them! Bradley Manning’s prosecution sends a message that if you expose illegal activity in the military, you will be prosecuted. We call for the unconditional release of Bradley Manning and an end to all war crimes.

27.
We call for building and expanding the movement for peace by consciously and continually linking it with the urgent necessity to create jobs and fund social needs. We call for support from the antiwar movement to tie the wars and the funding for the wars to the urgent domestic issues through leaflets, signs, banners and active participation in the growing number of mass actions demanding jobs, health care, housing, education and immigrant rights such as:

July 25 – March in Albany in Support of Muslims Targeted by Preemptive Prosecution called by the Muslim Solidarity Committee and Project SALAM.

July 29 & 30 – Boycott Arizona Actions across the country as racist Arizona law SB 1070 goes into effect, including the mass march July 30 in NYC as the Arizona Diamondbacks play the Mets.

All the other mass actions listed above leading up to the bi-coastal actions on April 9, 2011.

28.
The continuations committee elected at this conference shall reach out to other peace and social justice groups holding protests in the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011, where such groups’ demands and tactics are not inconsistent with those adopted at the UNAC conference, on behalf of exploring ways to maximize unity within the peace and social justice movements this fall and next spring.

John Travolta caught cheating uh, fans

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Eric Verlo

By all appearances, a traditional paparazzi scoop. Wanna bet Brand Travolta has calculated that being “unmasked as a cheating spouse” will be outweighed by positive inferences of the shifty Scientologist’s virility? The photo on the tabloid cover appears to have caught Travolta mid-tryst, half-toweled, before he could dress and flee. Except his hairpiece isn’t the least ruffled, and the headline implies that Travolta’s adulteress is a woman. Travolta being bald and gay must be taking a toll on the star’s billing. No doubt this product placement will play in Peoria where moviegoers haven’t read about Travolta’s refrigerated wig vault, or that Team Travolta has final approval over every photo shoot to certify that his fake hair passes muster, or his industry-celebrated status as alpha queen of the set. If Hollywood would stop behaving like there’s something wrong with that, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that.

NY Times pretends the Afghanistan War Logs is news that does not fit

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Is it surprising that the US newspaper of record, the NYT which prints all the news that’s fit, should declare of the Wikileaks Afghanistan War Logs: there’s nothing much new there? Oh REALLY? Point me to a NYT headline that read US Death Squads, or Civilian Casualties: We DO Body-Counts, or Insurgents Armed With Heat-Seeking Missiles, or War Crimes Being Committed Daily. Are we to accept that the NYT knew about these, but thought wisest not to report them? The only revelation which has been known, Pakistan Directs Taliban, is the leak they’re running with, because those reports are founded on intelligence, ie dubious conjecture, to discredit the others based on first hand accounts, and to rationalize more attacks on Pakistan.

I’m galled even that Wikileaks chose to let the NYT in on the advance team. Of course the NYT went right to the White House and Pentagon to warn them of what was about to be unleashed.

The files were given to three news organizations simultaneously to limit the spin each might try to apply. The move to involve the press in advance was for stories and their context could hit the ground running.

It’s curious that most columnists and news blogs are favoring the Guardian’s analysis the logs, over the NYT’s.

In spite of the peer review, the NYT is pushing back harder the the White House, which isn’t disputing the authenticity of the material, only their outrage that the facts are being made public. Small wonder.

Worse than denying them, the NYT is dismissive. No big deal. And it’s working. The rest of the MSM is characterizing the “alleged” logs as “accusations.” Despite the un-argued official admission that these are the unadulterated records.

Most of the discussion is about the leak itself, and Julian Assange’s motive as an activist. No mention he’s anactivist for “justice.” Not partisan, not pacifist, but moral. You’d think that shouldn’t differentiate him from a journalist.

The NYT has some nerve to pretend the logs aren’t going to bring on a sea change of despondency about the war, even in Iraq. In particular with the soldiers’ families starved for news, who will recognize from the reports the snippets of sensitive information they get from their individual soldier, with no idea it forms the character of the whole picture. We’re fucked. We can’t throw more at it, we can’t fire truer, wiser, safer. This is unwinnable.

And those are the reports our government has been seeing. Maybe that’s what the NYT means to say, we/they already know this material. Our leaders have been reading these reports daily and they don’t dispute that. Their glass-half-full projections for success in Afghanistan is half-full with blood. Now we know it.

That’s the sordid quality of these revelations. Soldiers lives FUBAR. These are more than the Pentagon Papers, these are American war-making unspun, undone.

NYT et al, will have us blame the messenger, condemn Private Bradley Manning for his breach of security. Our national security depends on keeping secrets is their unchallenged theme. Do you believe it’s the media pressing that point? These assholes are embedded so far into America’s military export industry, we need to look elsewhere for the news that’s fit.

The Lakota saw six grandfathers where Mt Rushmore fests expansionist four

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Eric Verlo

A recurring discussion at the base of Mount Rushmore is whose face next belongs alongside America’s fantastic four. There’s room for more obviously, as the mountain’s Lakota name was the Six Grandfathers. They saw resemblance enough in the rocks without the Denver Mint faces. Visitors can be excused not recognizing Theodore Roosevelt, the only cameo without a coin –he lacks a DC monument too, but Teddy most certainly belongs here. To determine who else might qualify, we have to wonder at what exactly Mt Rushmore means to memorialize.

Mount Rushmore immortalizes above all a New York lawyer who persevered for half a century to assure the not inobscure landmark was named after him. The government approved carve-up was intended to draw visitors to South Dakota. Concurrent tourist spot projects included the cement dinosaurs of Rapid City and Wall Drug. The icon-fashioned mountain became its own icon, casting a Cliff Notes summary of American History into stone. Whatever posterity would have to say about their legacy, these presidents would remain an unscalable height above reproach.

George Washington was father of our country, if not what today we hold as our ideals. Washington wanted to liberate colonial profits from the tiers owed its royal investors. He fought only for the independence of the American propertied class, and faced revolt from the common soldiery who bore the brunt of fighting off the British.

Thomas Jefferson pushed us west and invented the facade of democracy based on an illusory “all men created equal” utopian agrarian society. Jefferson would have known that no farms can operate without farmhands, and that peasant revolts have never sparked revolution. Above all, who was Jefferson to pretend that you can keep everyone down on the farm once they’d seen Paree? A farmer can imbibe education and culture only if he’s got slaves doing the work.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and held the union together. An America divided would have been vulnerable to resorption by the European powers. More important, the engine of our export economy was the South. Cotton and tobacco dwarfed fur.

Theodore Roosevelt championed conservation, like the national parks, but he’s on the mountain because he took America’s Manifest Destiny international. Roosevelt oversaw industry extend its empire-building offshore in search of cheap labor, resources and markets.

When conversation turns to whose face should adorn the pantheon of American expansionists, we are not lacking for capitalist do-gooders. I overheard “Obama”, “Henry Ford” or “Bill Gates,” perfectly in keeping with the theme.

In chronological order after the Rough Rider, to my mind, JP Morgan could be the beginning and the end, as father of the malevolent banking monopoly which has fated the world to Potterville.

Improving Rushmore would naturally be to efface it. How much longer really are the sculpted heads going to look like a “feat of engineering” and not simply a defilement of nature? Already what’s praised as a “work of art” looks more like a bad tattoo. Native American voices oppose the nearby Affirmative Action Crazy Horse Monument because no Indian they say would want his image superimposed on landscape.

If we can’t take it down, I have a suggestion for an additional face that neither perpetuates the enshrinement of our patronizing leadership, nor pretends to reflect a rehabilitated self-awareness. I propose we conduct an essay contest among American school children. From the dead-last, dumbest entry we select a child’s face to represent our nation’s failed intellectual promise, product of poor schooling, propaganda and poisoned spirit. That would be the face to commemorate America’s hard-headed, dumb as a brick, jackboot future.

Composer Jason Robert Brown wants to protect his unintellectual rights

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Eric Verlo

As a musician and fan of stage musicals, I must proffer this disclaimer about American theater composer Jason Robert Brown: he’s terrible. Brown is a poster child for the music industry’s common mediocrity, of commerce’s habitual triumph over art. Now Brown has appointed himself defender of intellectual property rights, holding that teens should not use the internet to pirate his sheet music. Of course, I can only wish him foolproof success.

American musical theater saw a golden age in the 1940s, with notable glimmers of resurgence since then, in ever infrequent cycles. I don’t think anyone would argue that in-between was constant dreck –to which “show tunes” owe their stigma. Defenders of Andrew Lloyd Webber will find themselves similarly unrestrained enthusiasts for popular music, popular fiction and television. To each his own slop.

I have particular antipathy for contemporary composers of awfulness because they drive the inartistic music publishing industry where it does irreparable harm. School bands and theater departments are influenced to pay royalties for the performance pieces whose rights are most profitably leveraged, at the expense of older works of renown. Instead of seeding young repertoires with melodies and lyrics to enrich their memories, teachers pollute their students with forgettable claptrap, courtesy of bards like Brown.

I have the same prejudice with regard to literature. Why aren’t today’s students reading Stevenson or Poe instead of Blume or Rowling? Of course, composer JR Brown is more on par with author RL Stine, he’s that horrible. But don’t take my word for it, have a listen.

That said, here’s Jason Robert Brown championing not just the exclusive right to sell online what his publishers hawk through their network of scholastic pushers, but he wants the same markup. If ever a commodity could change hands for its true worth, Brown’s entire catalog should be ventilated for free through file sharing. Instead he’s personally joining various trading websites and then emailing each and every member who appears to be trading in his goods.

To paraphrase: Hello, I’m Jason Robert Brown, yes, The Jason Robert Brown, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped illegally sharing my music, since it deprives me of my rightful royalties.

Brown has posted some of the ensuing email exchanges on his blog, without any mention of offering remuneration for their contributions. Most laughable, but consistent with the weakness of his music work, Brown has engaged chiefly teens in his discussion of intellectual rights. He lists one discussion in which he compares his stolen sheet music to a loaned screwdriver, a Xerox’d book, and a copied CD.

Mr. Brown, might I direct you to the innumerable organizations which argue that intellectual property rights are not inalienable. They are restraints to trade, impediments to idea sharing, and diametric to elevating community wealth.

You have every right to contrive a product and sell it by whatever connivance, but your monopoly ends there. Whoever were your customers should have the right to do with their purchases what they will. What right have you to tax the use of your thought fart as it passes from ear to ear? Home Depot can’t charge multiple times for a screwdriver it’s already sold; to use your example.

Consider also that your melody was plucked from the ether of shared cultural experience. Should a rights police attach royalty liens on every whiff of inspiration you borrowed? Better to admit we are all channels of a community expression.

Mr. Brown, please be satisfied to exploit the business advantages you’ve built. Your Tony Award is indication enough of that accomplishment. Insisting that you deserve more only invites scrutiny of your ouevre. Your arguments may find refuge with fans of the “Twilight” caliber, but I am not about to underestimate the sophistication of your own musical taste. If you love Broadway, you know the incredible deficiency of the songs you are peddling. Describing your “music sensibility [which] fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics” is faint self-praise enough.

Young stage enthusiasts. To you, JRB may appear a “genius” but what else would we expect of a generation raised on High School Musical. For superior fare, check out the pre maudlin days of Broadway, the shows which see regular revivals. If you want something further afield, look to lesser known works by those same composers. Even their obscure productions eclipse the best efforts of hacks today. Much of this material is freely available, but you’ll find that real showstoppers will have you showing no reluctance to part with your lunch money.

Jason Robert Brown, please stop your indecorous whine about the new leak in your traditional income monopoly. Leave your fans to trade them for their real worth.

De Gaulle urges resistance in occupied France, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Eric Verlo

June 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the Free-French General de Gaulle’s famous 1940 radio address when he urged occupied France to resist because victory over their invaders would be inevitable. Does the western media commemorate de Gaulle’s message without an inkling of irony?

Of course, today’s occupied peoples cannot be offered the same assurance, that help is on its way. Just as Europe was overwhelmed by Hitler’s superior force, de Gaulle knew that US industry would trump that. There will be no white knight to rescue Iraq and Afghanistan, but “L’Appel du 18 Juin,” celebrated in 2010, reaffirms every people’s right to resist foreign invaders. And not nonviolently.

General Petain, leader of France’s Vichy government, was forever condemned for surrendering France and collaborating with the Germans. But he too knew that US industrial might, and its unlimited resources, ensured an allied victory. Petain can be thanked for sparing French cities the excessive ravages of war. Most of France’s historical architecture survived WWII because Petain played along with the occupiers. But France is free today thanks to the resistance.

Now the US Coast Guard will know you know how oil cleanup is f-cking done

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Eric Verlo

As icky sneaky toxic crude permeates Louisiana marches, now experts tell us the eco-stain won’t ever come out. No really. The oil assault has been mounting steadily, BP poised dutifully with “booms” and it isn’t working. Exasperated oil spill cleanup professionals are not a bit surprised, one has even released a video throwing down expletives as much for humor as heartbreak. Accusations go beyond BP, calling the US Coast Guard head a “shameless piece of shit, and so’s President Obama if he can’t see that.” –But brightly, it’s all in the delivery.

About the looming oil invasion.

We can’t see the oil, but we can see the bright orange boom ringing our coastlines in apparent preparedness against the oil. When you watch the video you’ll learn that the boom is colored bright orange for you to see it, for the media cameras to allay our concerns that the prophylactic is in place. But from this video you’ll see that the boom is being deployed like a movie set facade, with little hope of effectiveness.

The key is in the “catch bassins.” Boom isn’t just Maxi-pad we stick into the water like a quicker-picker-upper. It’s meant to corral the oil into catch bassins. Absent those receptacles the oil is left for waves to push it up and over like trench warriors going over the top, wave after wave, to hit the beach, “all of it.”

You’ll note the major concern about oil spills is landfall, and it should be. Oil floats and thus isn’t as much a disaster on the surface until it hits populous surfaces. Of course, BP’s use of chemical dispersants breaks up the oil while it’s in the water, rendering the underwater a deadly war zone too.

The dispersant of choice has long been banned in the UK for its toxicity. COREXIT is named not after a chemical compound but as a phonetic abbreviation for what it does, Corexit “corrects-it” haha. It’s a cuncoxen applied to cover up the visible horror of a spill. HIDEZIT is apparently its nickname, acknowledging the darker humor.

Watch this video and you’ll know how boom technology works and you’ll understand what we need to ask of BP and government oversight.

The schoolroom-like lecture is delivered by an anonymous professional with straightforward simplicity and humor, but with palpable emotion. You hear the break in her voice especially as the oil industry is taken to task for its utter disregard for what’s happened.

There’s not enough boom, rope or anchor on this planet to properly boom the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There should be. It’s not that much of an expense. Really it’s not.

They said they were ready. Having enough materials to perform fucking proper fucking booming is part of being ready. They’re not ready, are they?”

This message could be subversive reassurance that oil spills can be contained, and thus, offshore drilling needn’t be restrained, but let’s burn that PR slick when we come to it.

I’m also a little wary when the preface mentions the misrepresentation of the magnitude of the blowout but pegs the flow at “up to 50,000 barrels.” Experts who’ve all along predicted it was 100,000 quantify that with “at minimum.”

OR, the video is a self-serving appeal from a booming-trainer for more funding to teach more boomers. Well that would be money better spent.

Here’s your chance to be trained in how to deploy oil spill booms without being sworn to silence by BP. If you’re anywhere near the coast, get out there.

This very funny piece is labeled Booming School 101. A better title might be “Fucking proper fucking booming” or subtitled, oil spill cleanup done fucking right.

Easy for Hume to say: Show me the oil

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Brit Hume can say that, can’t he? –confident that skeptical viewers can’t produce the evidence because it’s hogtied by dispersants at the bottom of the sea, for now, as effectively as a state witness in cement shoes. Actually, voluminous plumes of them, with countless victims suspended about them deprived of atmosphere. Anything incriminating that has reached the beach is kept from view by BP thugs, intimidating the gulf communities with the menace of Blackwater after Katrina.

Mercenary mall cops with the cinematic malevolence of the Terminator. What a mobster to stand behind armed thugs and taunt your accusers for evidence of your wrongdoings.

Get your dispersant out of the crime scene and I’ll show you oil. Keep your oil-industry-decides the law -enforcement officers’ hands off reporters trying to reach the beaches and I’ll show you oil. Unhand the submersible video footage from which any oil drilling professional can deduce the rate of flow of the oil and I’ll show you oil.

As one commenter put it, let’s drown those responsible in the oily uck, and those covering it up, with the same callous indifference which the culprits are condemning birds, mammals, fish and reptiles.

Obama wants his Katrina kept on QT

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Eric Verlo

President Obama rationalizes not prosecuting his Bush predecessors because he wants to look forward not back. Who knew that he meant “back” to the future as well? The Obama administration has get-out-of-jail-free cards for Goldman Sachs et al, and they’re already fouling the evidence that could be used against BP. It serves BP’s interest to pretend their Gulf spill is spewing only five thousand barrels a day. Now even the government is pretending everyone is too busy with the cleanup to measure exactly. It can’t be for want of a lesser-decimal soundbite, experts have the blowout pinned at a similar-syllable’d four million gallons per day.

The government and BP’s incuriosity ignores current estimates that the flow of crude oil escaping the well is between 76,000 and 104,000 barrels, 95,000 being the mean which yields a figure of 1/3 of the Exxon Valdez disaster PER DAY.

Of course as the spill grows to round Florida and reach Cuba and the Atlantic coast, the White House is prepared to forecast that the flow has gotten worse. So far chemical dispersants are diluting the muck that is the public’s only measure of the catastrophe.

The Miami Herald quotes Houston engineer and blogger Bob Cavnar who suggests that industry approximations which the media has been parroting are simply bullshit:

“I’m sitting here looking at it right now, and it ain’t 5,000 barrels a day, I’ll guarantee it … In Houston, there’s about 125,000, 150,000 engineers. And all the engineers can calculate what the flow is.”

Apartheid haunts Israel Innovation Wk

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Eric Verlo

BDS activists take heart. Anti-Apartheid Bostonites targeted their Museum of Science for hosting Israeli Innovation Weekend, a propaganda event to solicit investment in Zionist high tech industry. Protesters disrupted the speakers, provoking venomous outcry from the audience, all lovingly captured on video. Insults were so arrogant, I predict the pro-Israel ego will become the next too big to fail.

Gulf oil spill is SO Obama’s Katrina

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Which parallel is not analogous? Off New Orleans, massive devastation to environment and human health, predictable failure of flawed technology, inadequate official response which broadens tragedy. Leaving BP to shoulder cleanup is like tasking arsonists to extinguish their fire. BP is responsible, but needn’t be put in charge. Put every government resource into addressing this calamity, make oil industry write the checks. By any standards of a failed rescue, Obama’s watch is proving as laggard as Bush’s.

We can all express our awe at the scale of the spill, but who can believe the professionals couldn’t foresee it? The media ramped its estimates incrementally, but department first responders were theorizing 100,000 barrels a day right from the start.

I’m amused that conservative critics use “Katrina” in the pejorative, where they didn’t hold it against Bush. Katrina has come to mean colossal fail, but what did it mean for Bush? It wasn’t his Waterloo, it didn’t even stub his toe. Those who pretend Katrina was Dubya’s downfall are the same pundits who describe Iraq as a blunder. Lies. To tar President Obama with a tragedy of like magnitude of a predecessor is to remind the electorate how bad Bush was.

I’m pleased by the comparison because it pollutes your perception that voting matters. The choice of lesser of two evils means relative degrees of industrial strength toxicity.

Why aren’t Obama hopefuls confident enough to let their leader take this “Katrina” on? Let him own it and beat Bush’s legacy of indifferent passivity.

Are you provoked because “Katrina” presumes a callous failure, as yet in your opinion unmerited by Team Obama? I’d rather say it means disaster in the sense of a test which proved this nation’s horribly misplaced priorities. Has Obama’s administration brought better preparedness in the face of unforeseen peril coming in with the tide? In such a manner alone this oil spill will rival Katrina. If you are measuring only loss of human lives, look to the health impact which the crude infusion will bring.

Now if you’re asking if the oil spill is a “Katrina” land grab of coastal real estate, and excuse to gentrify New Orleans and remake gambling regulations to suit the casinos, perhaps not. But count the same relief contractors to make themselves spillionaires. Once again the residents will bear the burden of the labor and disruption, ultimately to lose their livelihoods and homes. This time instead of praising “Brownie” the president will praise BP for doing their best, as the media will assure us it was. The spill’s magnitude could never have been predicted, they’ll say, a mitigation of the damage beyond anyone’s capability.

Was “Katrina” a repudiation of our reliance on old levees? Not really. Will this Katrina mean a rekindled moratorium against new offshore drilling capers? I doubt it. Americans inland will probably write off the oceans. No longer pristine, what with mercury, hypoxia and now oil, why not Drill Baby Drill with what is there left to lose aplomb?

Whistleblower prosecuted, Palin not charged

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Hacker David Kernell blew the whistle on then-governor Sarah Palin’s illegal use of personal emails to evade the State of Alaska’s record-keeping requirements. For guessing her password and posting her emails in public, Kernell is found guilty of four felony counts, while Palin mocks the justice system from her pedestal on Fox News. From abuse of authority, influence peddling, to turning tricks for the oil industry, it’s not like obstructing justice didn’t fit her MO.

Oil spill photos free of offending oil rig

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The US Coast Guard has confirmed that an oil spill has indeed ensued after the Louisiana drilling platform explosion which claimed 11 lives. Suspicions now grow that Deepwater Horizon may have deliberately scuttled the damaged offshore rig yesterday lest images of the inevitable spill would depict the cause, reigniting the damning imagery that has long tarred oil industry efforts to pollute America’s coasts with the hazardous rigs. Instead of seeing a platform atop a massive oil slick, the public will see a despoiled patch of undefined size and origin; lacking a structure from which viewers could derive the disaster’s scale, or the felonious facility to damn for the deed.

Tesoro Anacortes fire not offshore spill

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Pfw- Oil industry spokesmen report that the deadly Tesoro refinery fire at Anacortes, Washington has been contained and no damage spilled outside their property, counting sky, earth and shoreline as their property. Does the same environmental indemnity apply to offshore oil rigs?

Healthcare reformist TR Reid visits COS to say universal coverage not possible

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS– [UPDATED]
My question to TR Reid, who speaks tonight at CC’s Palmer Hall, is how can voices for health care rights get past the corporate media editors?
As Washington Post Denver bureau chief and NPR reporter, Reid’s answer will reveal his earnestness, because most clearly his editors have kept the upper hand. The Independent, which is sponsoring tonight’s event, has invited two respondents to offer rebuttals, but both represent the health care status quo, there is no one advocating for socialized medicine, automatically framing Reid’s centrism as the people’s best hope.

I remember a TR Reid interview on NPR, which left me with the distinct impression of a hobbled argument. Look at the subtitle of his Frontline documentary: Sick Around the World: Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system? They don’t say “what can the US learn” but can it. That’s the same false question the corporate media use to approach Global Warming. Though the answer is a multiplicity of affirmatives, the headline posed as a question leaves the viewer with the impression the conclusion is his to decide. The moon: is it there?

A follow-up Sick Around America was famously, in alternative media circles at least, altered to endorse insurance mandates. Reid broke away from the final product when PBS refused to mention his conclusion that health insurance should not be for profit. Reid chalked it up to a disagreement, not specifically a motive.

The book Mr. Reid will be signing is titled The Healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care. His own disjointed title reflects why he returned empty-handed. Can you imagine if it had read simply: a global quest for health care?

Better, cheaper and fairer are redundant qualifiers and load the theme with false perspective. “Better” assumes American care can be ranked on a scale, this book is obviously only for those getting care. “Cheaper” assumes health care must have a price — Universal health care is free. “Fairer” again assumes that our current equilibrium is in some measurable aspect fair, besides which, the concept is a fallacy. There’s unfair and fair. Moving from one toward the other, fairness is unfair until it is fair. Besides which, every schoolchild knows “fairer” is expressed as “more fair.” If Reid had been honest, he would have phrased it “less unfair.”

TR Reid applauds the health care available in other developed countries, but notes the other systems are not without their flaws. Is this some sort of psychological inducement to feed the American ego, that US reform can aim higher than the health care as a right provided elsewhere? I think it’s a loophole with which to scuttle his proposal.

It seems TR Reid is ignoring the chief obstacle to health care. It’s not reason, it’s not taxes. The chief obstacle is capitalist greed, it’s class warfare, and the social systems of our like nations are under attack as well. The shortcomings which TR Reid sees in Europe are the result of legislative meddling with systems enacted by the people.

Americans aren’t going to get health care by waiting on their legislators, or the benevolence of the corporations. The audience tonight may be impressed by TR Reid’s findings, but he’s offering nothing but placebo. Talking about health care, visualizing it, salivating at its proximity, is as much taste as TR Reid, the Washington Post and its corporate health industry advertisers will have us get.

UPDATE: TR Reid spoke to a standing room only crowd and received a standing ovation. As per usual for journalists, he provided his own disclaimer for venturing from objectivity when he posited that providing health care for all could be a moral obligation. But on the matter of The Politics of Health Care Reform, the topic of his speech, he had nothing to say.

Really, he threw the question back at the audience. Why won’t the USA provide universal coverage to its people. I’ve thought about it a lot, he told us, and I don’t have the answer.

When it came why some countries pay for Viagra, while others do not, TR Reid was humorously inquisitive. His rundown of the various medical systems throughout the world was decidedly comprehensive. But on the question of the hour, Reid was the customary incurious newspaperman which might explain his success in major media.

Not once, even at someone’s prompting, did Reid mention the for-profit worm in America’s medical system’s rotten apple. We’re told that Reid walked away from the second Frontline documentary for its whitewash of his criticism of the for-profit incentive which prevents payment systems from serving the public good. He’s excised the subject from his own presentation too. Instead, Reid focused on the millions of uninsured Americans, without a mention of the bigger population of victims, those insured who are denied care nonetheless.

Reid was pessimistic about the chances for near-term reform, based on anecdotal evidence of comments he’s received on the Frontline website. A year ago his documentary got mostly supportive comments. This year they are predominantly critical. Thus, Reid concludes, Americans do not want health care reform.

His audience tonight applauded every punchline about health care as a human right, yet Reid held that we did not want it badly enough. I hate it when the best of our spokesmen blame the audience.

For every action there is an equal and opposite media distraction

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Instead of reading reports about how noted academic Gabriel Kuhn was prevented from joining his US book tour because he found himself on the NO FLY LIST for being a scholar of anarchism, you are hearing about 2-FAT-2-FLY cult director Kevin Smith and his weighty issues with Southwest Airlines. Instead of attending DC hearings about gross criminal malfeasance at Blackwater (currently masquerading as licensed-to-kill Xe), the media is giving us smoke-and-mirrors with the Toyota congressional hearing. Although no mere media distraction, the attack on Toyota is an economic-hit-piece if ever there was.

Had accounts escaped you of untold numbers of fatalities of runaway Toyotas? You’d think we were talking overturned Corvairs, or exploding Pintos, awful corporate secrets about the horrendous risks of driving Toyotas. Those pointing the finger at the Japanese car giant are saying the problem is bigger than floor mats and sticky pedals. They hint at electronic problems, without mentioning that like many automobile components, the accelerator mechanisms are manufactured by a third party supplier, whose assembly is not exclusively for Toyota. The same part is supplied to General Motors vehicles as well. No mention of that.

Is this PR attack against Toyota motivated by Japan’s lagging support for the US wars, or simply a grab at their market share by the current administration which finds itself managing the majority of the nation’s automobile industry?

Gabriel Kuhn has been declined permission to enter the US based entirely on the inflammatory nature of his writing. He’s visited American campuses many times before, even under the Bush administration. What’s happened that the US Department of Homeland Security has now determined Kuhn to be a threat to national security? Does this policy presage restrictions we could see applied to internet publishing? We know ideas can be dangerous weapons, are we prepared to be disarmed?

Our prejudice against tent-dwellers

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Eric Verlo

What do home-enabled Coloradans have against disadvantaged people forced to live in tents? The Great Depression saw migrant workers having to subsist under canvas, striking miners have been forced from their homes and into camps in Ludlow and before that Cripple Creek. And of course the first Colorado tent-dwellers to get everyone’s panties in a knot were the Native Americans who held original claim to the territory.

The above photograph is from Dorothea Lange’s historic series which documented the lives of migrant workers as they fled the Dust Bowl for the fertile agricultural plantations of California. The woman at right is the iconic “Migrant Mother” known for a more famous closeup. I chose this shot because it makes clear that she and her seven children were living in a tent.

Colorado was one of the states which the Okies had to cross in search of work in California. As depicted in Grapes of Wrath, Colorado and Arizona only begrudgingly tolerated the vagabonds, making sure they didn’t linger and kept on their way.

Do we fear the poor because they threaten our own sense of prosperity? There but for the grace of God, go ourselves? We shoo them along lest their itinerant ways tax our charity, or they take the righting of economic inequity into their own hands. The Europeans have always shunned the ever-homeless gypsies. Landless people can’t be trusted, they’re in the opposite position of what we look for in businesses, reliable to the extreme of being “bonded.” People unattached to assets don’t have capital to bond them with responsibility.

Before Coloradans were chasing off out-of-state migrant workers, yesterday’s illegal immigrants, they were offended by earlier indigent encampments. When miners struck in Colorado’s southern coal fields, the mine owners evicted them from the company-owned houses. The unions were left to build a tent city in Ludlow to put pressure on the industry to accept some labor demands. The standoff was spun as a standoff between the ungrateful miners, most of them recent immigrants, and a nation’s critical source of heating fuel. The Colorado population was roused to man a militia and beat the miners into submission. As much as consumers feared an interrupted coal supply in the record cold of the winter of 1914, imagine the miners enduring in their tents. In the end, we all know the result: the Ludlow Massacre and the unions were defeated.

The gold miners fared slightly better in their 1894 strike to preserve the eight hour day. When they closed down the mines and camped on site to keep them shut, the folks of Colorado Springs were rallied to form a near 2000-strong army to go attack the ingrates. Fortunately the miners escaped a battle, but the common population’s prejudice against the laborers in their tents was the same.

Could these have been related to the sentiments which inflamed Colorado Territory settlers in 1864, enough to go after the few remnants of Native Americans encamped along Sand Creek?

The Pikes Peak region plays an ignoble role in all of these examples. Men from Colorado Springs and Colorado City formed the population from which participants were drawn for Chivington’s raid against the Cheyenne, the private army which marched against the Cripple Creek gold strike, and the militia which Rockefeller mobilized to torment the tent city of Ludlow. Colorado Springs was a hotbed of Klu Klux Klan activity in the 1930s, epitomizing local xenophobia.

When Colorado Springs city councilman speak of fielding calls from constituents angry about the growing homeless encampments, I cannot help but think of our legacy of intolerance of people deemed lesser than us. Colorado Springs has always been ripe for bigotry and hatred.

Not so long ago our city was the crucible for Amendment Two which sought to deprive homosexuals of protection from discrimination. More recently fear-mongering about immigration from Mexico made Colorado Springs fertile for recruiting gunmen for the Minutemen, to make pilgrimages to the Mexican border with the promise of getting to shoot Mexicans pell-mell. Since the election of President Obama, we’ve seen a phenomenal growth of Tea Party enthusiasts, white bigots determined not to have their taxes spent by a nigger.

What a sorry racist lot we’ve been, anti-labor, anti-progressive and anti-poor. Somewhere in the past there must have been city leaders who defied the simple-minded xenophobia of our historic population, otherwise all our statues of municipal heroes would be wearing clan gowns. Hopefully with the current bloodlust to run off the victims of our current depression, city politicians will lead my setting a higher moral example.

US press protecting corporate identity of Melamine-poisoned milk recidivist

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Melamine is back in the Chinese food chain, coming from milk product supposed to have been destroyed after the food industry scandal which killed six Chinese infants and left the health of thousands permanently debilitated. International conglomerate Danone was named then among the villains, but at that time, many of those implicated could claim to have been unknowing accomplices. What excuse could there be today for the resurfacing of the tainted stock, sold to Ningxia Tiantian Dairy by “an unnamed company as a debt payment”? International readers have nothing to fear from Ningxia products, but what of the culprit in this transaction? Why is that identity being concealed?

Just as when the poisoned food products were discovered in 2008, Western consumers were not exposed to the baby formulas which hit Hong Kong, or the Oreos, M&Ms, or Snickers which reached Indonesia. The melamine infused large western conglomerates Kraft and Mars, but endangered only their “loyal customers” in the East. Which didn’t mean that US consumers couldn’t affect their buying habits to punish Danone, Kraft and Mars.

Self-defense: overdoing it

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Eric Verlo

COLO. SPRINGS- These past years have been a boon to our local defense industry. Despite the deployments and casualties, war pays the bills and builds corporate fortunes. For so many in Colorado Springs whose bread and butter comes from defending freedom, our little weekly peace vigil is a disquieting sight. There are always more smiles than frowns, but those displeased are pretty livid.

US health industry tells Vic to snuff it

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Vic Chesnutt took his own life on Christmas Day. By coincidence, he’d just given an upbeat interview to NPR’s Fresh Air in spite of an ongoing battle with his health care providers. The segment seemed to pierce the celebrity veil we imagine insulates our talent castes from the worries of everyman. When he died, I reflected on the interview. I was reluctant to mar a eulogy with the villainy of the US medical system — but then NPR re-aired the piece, en memoriam, minus the damning testimony. They added in its place a remembrance by three colleagues who concluded: “To say poor health care killed Vic Chesnutt would be very reductive.”

Reductive? These corporate musicians, at the behest of NPR, have to throw an artisan spin on Vic Chesnutt’s legacy because his art should transcend his mortality?! Vic’s art, real art, is about mortality. Vic’s death was real and the anxiety he expressed in his interview was real. He hadn’t chosen to keep his troubles to himself for the sake of the listeners’ seamless pleasurable enjoyment. Who are these commercial artists to mute Vic’s story? It made me sick.

Others wonder aloud why Vic’s rich musician friends couldn’t have offered to pay for the medical procedures he needed. Perhaps they did, who knows. And perhaps their concern not to be “reductive” was extracted from a much longer session where Vic Chesnutt’s struggles were discussed at length.

Vic’s talent may not have been lost on these would-be eulogists, but we can’t fault them for not being artist spirits enough themselves to know how to shepherd an honest narrative about Vic.

I point my finger at NPR for the rewrite, and I’ll take issue with one of the musicians. At a wake, there’s always someone who uses the opportunity for self-promotion, and at this one it was REM’s Michael Stipe. He discovered Vic Chesnutt, let’s get that out of the way. Michael’s remembrance of Vic was an anecdote about a lyric he thought he’d stolen from Vic. It was so good, he must have stolen it. Stipe was so honest, he called Vic to confess. Vic’s response was gracious, no it’s yours. Stipe insisted, and so did Vic. Such was Vic’s grace, and so elevated was Stipe’s regard for Vic, and evidently so great is Stipe’s humility and –in the end it turns out by Vic’s own lips– his genius. He transcended his master. Much of the draw of coattail opportunism at funerals is that dead men tell no tales.

NPR’s problem, and shall we imagine, the problem of its underwriters, the major health insurers, was that Vic Chesnutt killed himself right after telling an NPR audience he could succumb any day for lack of proper medical care. Chesnutt died from an overdose of pain killers, which raised the disquieting suggestion to listeners that he lived in a lot of pain. Sure Chesnutt had attempted suicide before. He’d written a love song to suicide. The trouble was, he declared in his interview that “Flirted with You All My Life” was a break-up song with death. “I don’t want to die” Chesnutt exclaimed most earnestly.

While our nation’s health insurers have been content to let the common sick extinguish themselves by attrition, their PR crews come to the rescue of high profile victims, usually the focus of mass protests, even if they come late. Vic Chesnutt had given them no time, between the airing of his interview, and his Christmas day demise.

To listeners who heard the first airing, especially ones who might never have heard of Vic, the tragedy of this internationally renown artists being unable to get health care was a climax. It was a moment when entertainment rang dissonant.

For the rewrite, Terry Gross removed the critical segment, leaving the focus on Chesnutt’s earlier suicide attempts. Gross sounded like an insurance interrogator the way she made Chesnutt clarify that his first attempted suicide was actually before his debilitating accident, before health issues would have been a motivation. I would like to see Gross dissect her guests’ responses with such scrutiny, I wonder why she began with Vic.

Thus the rewritten interview became an indictment of Vic Chesnutt’s propensity to self-destruct. Forget narrowing Vic to health care failure, Terry reduced him to habitual suicide. The character assassination continued by next highlighting his song “I’m a Coward.”

In place of the dramatic, redemptive climax, Gross interviewed Michael Stipe, Guy Picciotto and Jem Cohen. Just before wrapping up, Gross raised the issue of Vic’s health care. All agreed the system failed him, but their pre-discussion consensus was not to be “reductive.”

As if the songwriter’s legacy wasn’t going to speak for his whole. Here his colleagues were concerned that their characterization of his death would define him. If Vic had died mid-song, would there have been a need to say his life wasn’t just about that song?

Little did they suspect that NPR would “reduce” Chesnutt however they wanted. Once again where Vic Chesnutt’s sentiment connected with his audience, the industry hovered to intercept.

If you didn’t catch Chesnutt’s original interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, here’s how it ended:

GROSS: I read that you’re in debt like $50,000 because of health insurance issues.

Mr. CHESNUTT: That’s right.

GROSS: So – and this is because you had a series of surgeries and although you pay a lot for your health insurance, it didn’t cover all of it. Is that – do I have that right?

Mr. CHESNUTT: That’s exactly true, yeah.

GROSS: Uh-huh. So, what are your thoughts now as you watch the health care legislation controversy play out?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Well, I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for kidney stone operation is -that’s absurd.

GROSS: Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could – I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just – I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects – I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.

I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.

GROSS: Is it true you can’t get good health insurance?

Mr. CHESNUTT: I can’t get – I’m uninsurable. The only reason I have any insurance now is because I was on Capitol Records for a while. And I had excellent health insurance there. And then when I got dropped from Capitol, I Cobra’d my insurance for as long as it was legally possible. And then – and which was insanely expensive to cobra this very nice insurance. And then, when that ran out, the insurance company said they could offer me one last thing and that is hospitalization. It only covers hospital bills. That’s all it covers. And it’s still $500 a month. So, it doesn’t pay for my drugs, my doctors or anything like that. All it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still owe all this money on top of that.

GROSS: Wow. Well, I wish you the best with your health and your music. And I really want to thank you–

Mr. CHESNUTT: Thank you.

GROSS: –a lot for talking with us.

Mr. CHESNUTT: Oh, I’m honored, honored beyond belief.

Is it really illegal to boycott Israel?

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Eric Verlo

It is not illegal for US consumers to boycott anyone’s products. But the business decisions of companies affiliated with Israel do enjoy some curious protective constraints…

It’s ironic that as the US enforces rigid sanctions against international companies which violate its embargo against Cuba, the US has enacted laws simultaneously which prohibit its companies from complying with trade restrictions called by others.

As a further embarrassment, the antiboycotting measure specifies just one boycott, literally: the League of Arab Nations boycott of Israel.

So while American consumers are free to make the buying decisions they wish, it is illegal for an American business to adjust its business practices to boycott Israel.

In other words, as much as social justice activists might like to ask a department store not to carry Ahava beauty products taken from Occupied Territory shores, the store would be prohibited by US law to do so as an act of compliance. For another example, fashion labels such as DKNY and cK could decide to discontinue carrying undergarments manufactured by Delta Galil from settler farms in Palestine, but they couldn’t do it because of someone’s boycott.

(Delta Galil supplies clothing to the Gap, Banana Republic, Structure, J-Crew, JC Penny, Pryca, Lindex, DIM, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Playtex, Calvin Klein, and Hugo Boss.)

This law makes a commercial boycott impossible to resolve between customer and business, but ultimately results in more pressure being applied to the source cause, which are the policies of Israel.

According to the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Antiboycott Compliance, in the 1970s two laws were enacted “to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation’s economic boycotts or embargoes. These ‘antiboycott’ laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). While these laws share a common purpose, there are distinctions in their administration.”

Antiboycott Compliance

The Bureau is charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel sponsored by the Arab League, and certain Moslem countries, including complying with certain requests for information designed to verify compliance with the boycott. Compliance with such requests may be prohibited by the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and may be reportable to the Bureau.

The law specifies boycotts called by foreign nations, leaving the possibility that US citizens can declare themselves the originators of a boycott. However other language makes clear that no boycott is to contravene the US government’s declared trade policy with Israel. To elaborate on the EAR:

Objectives:
The antiboycott laws were adopted to encourage, and in specified cases, require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction. They have the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy.

Primary Impact:
The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal foreign economic boycott that U.S. companies must be concerned with today. The antiboycott laws, however, apply to all boycotts imposed by foreign countries that are unsanctioned by the United States.

Who Is Covered by the Laws?
The antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to the activities of U.S. persons in the interstate or foreign commerce of the United States. The term “U.S. person” includes all individuals, corporations and unincorporated associations resident in the United States, including the permanent domestic affiliates of foreign concerns. U.S. persons also include U.S. citizens abroad (except when they reside abroad and are employed by non-U.S. persons) and the controlled in fact affiliates of domestic concerns. The test for “controlled in fact” is the ability to establish the general policies or to control the day to day operations of the foreign affiliate.

The scope of the EAR, as defined by Section 8 of the EAA, is limited to actions taken with intent to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott.

These amendments are examples of Israel’s stranglehold on US legislation. Anti-Israel voices like to paint the picture that as a result, American citizens have been denied the freedom to vote with their pocketbooks where it comes to opposing the policies of Israel. Likewise, pro-Israel groups are content to leave the issue ambiguous. But clearly US individuals are free to make consumer choices and encourage others as they wish.

The function of the TRA further explains its business-limited scope:

What do the Laws Prohibit?

Conduct that may be penalized under the TRA and/or prohibited under the EAR includes:

• Agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to discriminate or actual discrimination against other persons based on race, religion, sex, national origin or nationality.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about the race, religion, sex, or national origin of another person.

Implementing letters of credit containing prohibited boycott terms or conditions.

The TRA does not “prohibit” conduct, but denies tax benefits (“penalizes”) for certain types of boycott-related agreements.

Tailgunner Joe: health care not for you

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Should a television cameraman get photo credit for a studio image? Can NBC copyright what represents a national address in a neo-public forum? I think not.

Joe Lieberman reminds me of dogged namesake un-American. What more proof do our fellow citizens need that their US House of Lords/Senators mocks a representative democracy?

Senator Lieberman wants the Dems to drop provisions to expand Medicare to Americans aged 55 and above? Would it be that easy? Then conversely, why not expand it to all Americans, all comers actually, and forgo the pages and pages to which the Republicans object? Are Americans guaranteed the pursuit of happiness, but in ill health?

Where’s the Hulk/Rock SNL Obama when a senator really needs throwing out the window?

The ENOUGH OF LIEBERMAN emails have become as ubiquitous as Viagra spam now. Finally, they beg, give us X dollars and we’ll make sure the Connecticut voters don’t reelect him. Sure.

When Lieberman faced a challenger in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary election, who stepped in to support him? A veritable who’s who of incumbents. Some even campaigned for Lieberman when he was forced to run as an independent.

Former President Bill Clinton, campaigned for Lieberman on July 24
CT Senator Chris Dodd
IL Senator Dick Durbin
IL Senator Barack Obama
NY Senator Hillary Clinton
NV Senator /Minority Leader Harry Reid
CA Senator Barbara Boxer, campaigned for Lieberman on July 24
CA Senator Diane Feinstein
CO Senator Ken Salazar, campaigned for Lieberman on July 31
DE Senator Joe Biden, campaigned for Lieberman on July 31
HA Senator Daniel Inouye, campaigned for Lieberman on July 31
IN Senator Evan Bayh
NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg
DE Senator Tom Carper
AR Senator Mark Pryor
OR Senator Ron Wyden
NE Senator Ben Nelson

When it’s a choice between you and Lieberman, they choose Lieberman. Between you and the health insurance industry? They let Lieberman decide.

Sen Udall oks metaphorical health care

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The only medicine our senators want their constituents to take is the hard-to-swallow metaphorical variety. Senator Mark Udall’s monthly email explains his part in the Senate health care holdup. Two things: Udall and ten fellow freshmen set a roadblock to improve the HCR bill with cost containment, approved, Udall adds proudly, by industry experts. Next, he’s crossed the aisle to join a bipartisan fiscal task force to limit congressional spending with an eye to reducing the federal deficit. That ol’ deficit doesn’t come up when the issues are war, tax cuts for the rich, or “bailouts” for banks and industry. Apparently health care is the last straw we cannot afford. That’s the: “It will be hard to swallow, but it is medicine we need to take.”

Udall’s amendment package to “improve” the health care bill is endorsed “by many of the nation’s leading business, consumer, policy, and health provider organizations, such as the Brookings Institution, AARP and Business Roundtable, a group of leading American CEOs.”

The 11 Democrat freshmen signing on are Sens. Mark Begich (AK), Michael Bennet (CO), Roland Burris (IL), Kay Hagan (NC), Ted Kaufman (DE), Paul Kirk (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Mark Udall (CO), Tom Udall (NM) and Mark Warner (VA).

The bipartisan task force will include eight Democrats and eight Republicans, which I’m inclined to believe will target privatization of whatever is left of the US treasury.

I didn’t mention the third subject of Senator Udall’s email: To combat the bark beetle infestation of Colorado forests, Udall has crossed the aisle again, this time to conservative Idaho Senator Jim Risch, to introduced the National Forest Insect and Disease Emergency Act of 2009 to give the US Forestry service “additional tools and resources.” By “resources” they probably mean roads into protected roadless areas, and “tools” is not even a metaphor for saws.

For the record, here’s the gobbledegook proffered as improvements to the current health care reform proposal:

A summary of the specific amendments follows.

Working More Closely with the Private Sector on Cost Containment

These amendments transform payment systems and improving quality to require the public and private sectors to move forward together on the shared goals of cost containment, improved quality, and delivery system reform.

CMS Innovation Center: We give the new Innovation Center explicit authority to work with private plans to align Medicare, Medicaid and private sector strategies for improving care.

Independent Medicare Advisory Board: We broaden the scope of the new Independent Medicare Advisory Board to look at total health system spending and make nonbinding, system-wide recommendations.

Quality and Value in Private Insurance: We require the Secretary to consult with relevant stakeholders to develop a methodology for measuring health plan value, which would include the cost, quality of care, efficiency, and actuarial value of plans. Developing the tools to assess health plan value will help consumers and employers make better apples-to-apples comparisons when they shop for health insurance and get the best value for their health care dollar.

Stepping-up the Commitment to Reduce Regulatory Barriers and Fight Fraud

These amendments require the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to aggressively pursue streamlined regulations and anti-fraud initiatives to ensure that all sectors of the health care system work together to improve value.

Administrative Simplification: We require HHS to develop standards that will allow efficient electronic exchange and streamlining of information among patients, providers and insurers.

Health Care Fraud Enforcement: We direct HHS to better utilize technology to prevent health care fraud.

Eliminating Legal Barriers to Care Improvement: In tandem with this package, the freshman Senators will be requesting that the U.S. Government Accountability Office study current laws and regulations to identify barriers to implementing innovative delivery system reforms. We also will request that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission work together to provide clearer guidance to providers who wish to enter into innovative collaborative arrangements that promote patient-centered, high quality care.

Aggressively Moving Toward Delivery System Reform

These amendments allow HHS to experiment with promising new models to further lower costs, increase quality and improve patient health.

Value-Based Purchasing: We require Medicare to implement pay-for-performance for more providers sooner, adding hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, psychiatric hospitals and others.

Broader Payment Innovation: We allow a broader, more flexible transition to new payment models for Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).

Medicare System Upgrades: We require HHS to modernize data systems so that valuable Medicare data can be shared in a reliable, complete, and timely manner.

Good Quality Everywhere: We promote greater access to tele-health services, strengthen the provider workforce and the availability of high-quality hospital services to bolster health care access for Americans in underserved and rural regions.

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