British officer held over Afghan casualties leak …And where is that Iraqi shoe thrower, Barack? You still have him in jail for throwing shoes at Bush while you are busy reappointing collegues of Bush into positions under your new Adminsttration? Free him now and hands off this British whistle blower, too!
(Judge) Leon declared… “Simply stated, faithfully serving in an al-Qaeda-affiliated fighting unit that is directly supporting the Taliban by helping prepare the meals of its entire fighting force is more than sufficient to meet this Court’s definition of ‘support.’” He added, “After all, as Napoleon was fond of pointing out, ‘An army marches on its stomach.”
Thus, Judge Lion declared in his Wonderland ruling that the cook was a terrorist cook! Blame the Chef- How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo By ANDY WORTHINGTON
Humpty Dumpty has fallen and cannot be put together ever again, Barack, at least not with you as Head of State. You cannot restore accreditation for The US Establishment to the US Legal System now after 7 years of US torture and illegal jailing there of POWs. Sleight of hand just won’t do it and the whole world is watching.
Instead of doing away with the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) nonsense of calling POWs ‘enemy combatants, you are seemingly continuing the entire illegality of the fallen US Legal Establishment. How about a new classification for the POW cook? You can now call him an ‘enemy non-combatant’, and there are many others jailed and tortured by the government you head up now who fall into just this category.
And further, since you are supporting Israel’s terrorist definition of ‘terrorism’, why not just go ahead and classify the children of Hamas as ‘enemy combatants’ and enemy ‘non-combatants’ as well? No need to change American Law to do that since the American Legal System is already totally on board with the Wonderland approach.
I bet you a lot of those murdered IDF Palestinian children in Gaza were cooks, too? Cooking for Hamas would certainly be ruled on by American Judge Leon as terrorist participation and grounds for torture and elimination. Yeah, that’s right! And Israel was right to legally use White Phosphorus to light up the situation in a legal manner so that these tiny terrorists might be stopped in their shoes (though some might have well been bare foot). Terrorists should be seen for just what they are, even if they are tiny cooks, too!
Obama, I know that you can’t turn America around just like that. I’m willing to give you time to show how sweet and good you are. Will 4 years be enough time now for you? Or will you need 8?
Guantanamo highlights the colossal collapse of all but pretense of legality in the American Legal System. There is no real reality now, since America is without real law in the land, as nothing but money and might now rule. Barack Obama’s bought Presidency is part of all that. It is part of the cooking.
The whining and hang-wringing about the “credit crunch” is getting on my nerves. It was this supposed crisis that led to the $700 billion bailout and we’re told every day that it must be solved quickly, no matter the cost, or we’re toast. But why? How many of us are actively seeking credit right now? Surely the developers and retailers want us to have lots and lots of it so we can keep hyper-consuming their goods; the bankers want us to have it so they can collect their interest and fees but, seriously, is free-flowing credit what the American public needs right now? Living beyond our means is what caused the credit meltdown in the first place!
Here’s a meaty statistic: the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the demand for global shipping capacity, dropped from 11,793 last May to, get this, an inconceivable zero. The complexity of the BDI is beyond the scope of this post but, suffice it to say, there are lots of cargo ships sitting at anchor today. The collapse of the BDI augurs a rapidly evaporating demand for foreign goods. Combine this with the massive deterioration in domestic consumption during the fourth quarter of 2008, and wager a guess as to the meaning of it all. We’re not buying anything and the world is following suit! So tell me, Wall Street wizards, why the continued hyperbole about a credit crunch?
How could our purchasing habits change so dramatically overnight? Currently, Americans own an estimated 250 million personal computers and 175 million iPods. There are 9 million mobile homes within our borders, approximately 102-130 million single-family homes, and countless million apartments. One could safely assert that there’s a home, an mp3 player and a personal computer for every man, woman and child in the United States. I’ll go on. Everyone has a television, a cell phone. Nearly everyone owns a car. Most have closets full of clothes they never wear, and we all have too many shoes. So when Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke or anyone else talks about freeing up the flow of credit, we should ask ourselves why.
Recently, through the dense economic fog came a thin ray of revelation: I may actually have enough stuff. Perhaps, just maybe, I can stop buying new stuff for awhile. I can keep my slightly dented iPod for yet another year. My Toyota with 90,000 miles is probably good for another road trip or two. I won’t move to a bigger house just yet, or buy the 52″ flatscreen Santa forgot to leave under the tree. I may have to forego the spring sales and make do with last summer’s tank tops, wrong color though they may be.
I don’t mean to minimize the hardship of doing without, but we are a nation of excess inventory. Somewhere in our stuffed dressers and overfull garages, there is room to accommodate a changed perspective.
Wall Street is telling us that all will soon be well. If we just give them hundreds of billions, they’ll take their cut and loan the rest to us so we can get back to “business as usual”. But what if we don’t cooperate with their economic “recovery” plan? What if we collectively turn our backs on Wall Street and Madison Avenue and live simply, buying what we need and paying as we go, stopping to share with others along the way?
Remember, our banks and investment companies built themselves toward inevitable failure during the economic boom. Don’t expect them to act nobly in the coming recession because they won’t. You can bank on that. So stop worrying about their silly market indices and their credit machinations. Let the Federal government give them another trillion pieces of worthless paper. Help them plaster their walls with negotiable instruments. Make them eat derivatives for breakfast, sell them short against the box and leverage them to outerspace. Leave them with their excess shipping capacity and their phantom dollar bills.
It’s time for the rest of us to disembark this sinking stinking ship for good.
Everyone’s clamoring for the shoe heard around the world. The several
manufacturers who claim to have cobbled the offending black oxfords are deluged in orders. A Saudi man has offered ten million dollars for Muntadhar al-Zaidi’s original pair. But the NYT reports: “Explosives tests by investigators destroyed the offending footwear.” Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!
I don’t believe that shit for a minute. If airport security can verify footwear inertness in a few seconds…
Not that a pair of worn leather shoes matters a whit. But there is more than shoe fetish at foot here. And I find something about the fate of this pair of shoes that’s awfully unlike a Skull and Bones man.
Idolatry
The Saudi who offered the king’s ransom for the “Medal of Freedom” shoes, may have been enraptured by idolatry, but he knows the magical allure which those shoes will always possess. How can any of us deny the mystical energy we attribute to baseballs marked by having been hit to home runs? All Americans take, or aspire to take, a pilgrimage to the Smithsonian to see the actual, for real, objects of their common heritage.
Museums of art and natural history, glean an idolatry all their own, but historical collections like the Smithsonian and the British Imperial War Museum, peddle in pure talisman mysticism.
The crown jewels come to mind, or any ordinary person’s diamond. Stones, crystals, runes, coins, fetishes, heirlooms, antiques, personal designer accessories, safety blankets. We swim in stuff which have meaning greater than their utility. Even poor Diogenes had his lantern.
Who are we kidding that mere objects don’t have enormous power over us? I myself keep everything. I frequently feel I’m drowning in remembrances and chanced-upon objects for which I aspire sentiment. Would that I could focus on strength-building empowering articles.
I’m reminded of last year’s sale of a copy of the Magna Carta, was it, to a modern Wall Street robber baron. I was not alone to surmise that he paid 21 million for the now-transgressed compact, probably to wipe his ass with it. As the great white hunters paid their safari guides in hope of being the last to personally vanquish whatever late species was next to be rendered extinct.
The al-Zaidi Shoes
This famous pair of shoes were thrown by Muntadhar al-Zaidi at President Bush, al-Zaidi being the first man to dare show defiance to the US Nero. Although, certain intellectuals do come to mind, for having voiced their discontent with his policies. I remember too, a certain brave Indonesian witch doctor who cast a magic curse on the universally despised Bush. Ki Gendeng Pamungkas placed a jinx to shorten Bush’s stay in Indonesia, it wasn’t a fatal voodoo spell, for that would have been just as illegal as making threats is in the US. I will always believe there must have been countless more who’ve cursed Bush to his face, if prudently under their breath.
But journalist al-Zaidi did the one act above all others. He showed open, physical defiance. At the bottom line, against an imperial oligarchy which dominates the world by military force, it’s the only defiance that really matters. And George Bush knows it.
Once subdued, was it necessary to bludgeon al-Zaidi? He had disarmed himself, and was now completely out of ammo. Was the rough apprehension in any manner appropriate? Everyone in the room had already been checked by security. What was the purpose of beating al-Zaidi in the next room? Or of the torture later?
Regicide
Would-be assassins of kings, in the times of kings, were drawn and quartered, made to suffer excruciating deaths, but their body parts desecrated as well. It wasn’t to insure their mortality.
From a historical perspective, I believe al-Zaidi’s projectile footwear represent an enormously momentous act, even more by being common objects. We all have shoes. And see, shoes have provide a ready aeronautic diversion from the path most taken. A significant number of common citizens can get close enough to our leader to lambast him with their shoes.
Do we approve of him or not? Does he listen to our protestations, or does he laugh them off as our America-given freedoms to disagree?
Is it a mere disagreement we have with Bush over his regime’s genocide, high crimes and theft from the American People?
I’m convinced that al-Zaidi’s shoes had to be drawn and quartered, lest they inspire further acts of bravery from the ranks of Bush’s subjects.
Is it time to throw our shoes? In this divide and conquer feudal age, by design an anti-social world which celebrates the individual lest a community spirit trounce the narcissism imperative to thwart organizing into collectives, a next shoe-thrower would be mocked for being a copy-cat. I can hope that we recognize the humility of extremely diminutive stature. We want to be voracious proponents of social justice, but have tragically impoverished resources, . The struggle against capitalist imperialism will require many foot soldiers. We can’t all be Che and al-Zaidi. We didn’t think to throw our shoes, we won’t be improvisers of the next gesture. For the better part of us, the most effective we can be is follow their lead.
Let’s imagine, for the populist courage they might ignite, that the al-Zaidi shoes were effaced from man’s heritage. Bush has done worse, he’s razed Iraq, cradle of civilization, the untold undiscovered archeological sites, the historic library, I can’t even go on, the losses were unthinkable.
Occult Talisman
Except, this is a man who like his father, and strangely like an odd many in his cabal, came out of the secret “Skull and Bones” club at Yale. The exclusive order was originated by a forefather, who amassed the Bush fortune with help from Hitler by the way, named for the club’s alleged possession of the remains of Sitting Bull. What, was Sitting Bull a famous Yalie? A forefather of modern empire building? Was he a banking/usury supremacist?
Sitting Bull was but one of the fiercest American indian leader to have defied the white man’s global conquest. Of course, it’s not uncommon for warring cannibals to feel that they gather strength from their opponents, even as they’ve defeated them.
The Bushes and their cadre of global elites are also members of Bohemian Grove. As occultist as blue-blood better-than-thous can get. I’ll not assert they celebrate witchcraft, but it’s more pagan than average churchgoers could comfortably countenance. Traditional religions hold it as false idolatry, academia dismisses it as mysticism.
Which brings me to the Lance of Longinus, allegedly the weapon which pierced Jesus’s side to deal the Coup de Grace. Though scholars have traced its existence to only 900 AD, the “Spear of Destiny” retains a tremendous occult allure, in particular the Nazi Third Reich. Other such talisman weapons have been sought by warrior leaders throughout history, as bestowing upon whoever possessed them, divine powers over challengers to their throne.
Let’s face it, since the success of the American industrial and banking driven democracy, in rising to dominate over all its WWII adversaries and allies, our elected leader has become absolute ruler of the known world. It wasn’t our intent, but it’s human nature.
Absolute Power Corrupts
We live again in a world of kings. Of moats, of food tasters, of royal jesters, of showing not just deference but fealty. We live in a world of a leisured class, where right to wealth and privilege is considered hereditary. A birthright to nobility is reinforced even by what we understand of genetics. Men are not created equal. Man at his highest is preordained. It’s no great leap to expect these men will search the firmament for signs to affirm that their supremacy is granted by divinity.
I expect earthly objects which defy a monarch’s impregnability have irresistible personal allure to kings for whom nothing remains but to divine their life’s purpose.
It’s not uncharted territory, there have been global empires before, except the world known to earlier supreme leaders had horizons closer in. Alexander ruled his whole known world. The Roman Emperors did, with the unconquered bits being just so much backwoods. Such leaders had no rivals in trade, power, or wealth. Charlemagne, Ghengis Khan, Shaka Zulu, ruled their entire known realms. While these leaders were empire builders, the related personages less lauded, were their progeny who succumbed to proving Lord Acton’s Dictum that “absolute power corrupts–” Each it seems resolved to challenge the last part “–absolutely.”
Now John Dalberg-Acton’s Essays on Freedom and Power is a scrap of paper I’d be surprised to find enshrined in a megalomaniac’s personal collection of power-emitting talisman keepsake chatchkes.
Most people can easily conjure the cinematic image of Gestapo officers blocking train passengers, demanding “Your papers please.” That such a scene could ever develop in America, haunts citizens opposed to national identity cards or embedded microchips. But with modern surveillance methods as pervasive as cellphones, perhaps today’s state security services have less need to verify who we are. I’ll assert the US Department of Homeland Security is charged more with making Americans feel the heavy boot print of authoritarianism.
I think that in the wake of 9/11, this nation has indeed mobilized a “papers please” law enforcement policy.
The proof is there in black and white in the Patriot Act; you can see it in the Civil Liberties-free zone which immigration officers have been empowered to enforce to 100 miles inland from our borders; and you can see it at our airports. Last night’s 60-Minutes questioned the punitive aspects of the TSA measures to which today’s airline passengers are subjected. Less surprisingly, CBS also suggested their probable ineffectiveness.
Having just paid a holiday visit to DIA, I was inclined to see more. Yes, this is another holiday post.
Credit where credit is due? It’s no coincidence this is about shoes.
Papieren Bitte
First, I’d like to deconstruct the film mythology, which originated in wartime, from Hollywood Home Front propaganda meant to demonize the Hun. Certainly the trench-coated SS officer, or leather-jacketed Gestapo detective, asking for your documents, cut a villainous figure. But they were, in reality, as out of the ordinary as today’s FBI or CIA agents. Have you ever happened upon a one of those?
More often by far, during WWII, the job of asking for a traveler’s “Legitimacion” was assigned to the gendarmes of the occupied countries, or to the collaborators who’d been deputized. These were ordinary constables and men who otherwise were unfit to serve in combat. Old frumps, maligned and bitter. If you can picture the run-of-the-mill TSA troll, you see where I’m going.
Public Transportation
Where travelers a half-century ago were taking trains, today the public city-to-city lattice is airborne. Today we queue for planes, not trains. And instead of producing our “papers” –I should say, IN ADDITION to producing our papers– we are required to remove our shoes, all sorts of articles, submit to searches, and refrain from carrying certain items, in order to thread the needle that allows us access to public travel. I’m not sure if today’s security screening isn’t the equivalent of the depiction of the 40s silver-screen.
Before you argue that I’m being alarmist, please consider that most Germans during the war, indeed the overwhelming majority of citizens of occupied Europe, had little to fear by being asked for their documents. You or I are not insurgents on the lam, nor aspiring bomb-throwers. We do not fear being sent to Guantanamo.
Indeed, you might remember, the movie heroes who sweated the Nazi checkpoints were always resistance fighters, saboteurs, or escaped Allied prisoners. Today, ask yourself how an enemy of the USA would fare trying to use an airport. If you have become aware now that our US Homeland does not show reticence to torture, or disappear, persons of interest, would modern airport security be any less a terrifying prospect for people who may not be in lockstep with the ever rogue-ideology of the current global administrators?
And so, what was the main purpose of policemen monitoring the trains of occupied Europe? To prevent illegal travel, or to deter the thought of sedition? Both. But those were the days of imperfect intelligence.
Today, we know that even the 9/11 hijackers were tracked well in advance of their boarding at Boston Airport. Since then, we know that intelligence agency Fusion Centers also parse the surveillance data of persons of mere tangential interest. We know that the NSA records all phone calls. We know the telecoms are doing something for which they are very insistent about receiving preemptory immunity.
Potential terrorists/hijackers have everybody on their tail.
The TSA fat bastards are for the rest of us.
Airport Fear-mongering
Do you remember the days when you could linger as you dropped off your loved ones at the airport? You could wait with them, or you could meet them as they walked off the plane. Now you are greeted by concrete barriers at the curb, you can’t help anyone with their bags. America’s airports have become high security zones, unwelcoming to all.
Permit me to interject the observation that there has not been a single domestic airport attack to justify the draconian measures which have impacted American tranquility. We abide being yelled at, for absolutely no reason except the scare-phrase “Remember 9/11.” Remember the Maine? Remember Pearl Harbor? Japanese Internment Camps anyone?
If you are the traveler, you have to strip yourself of dignity before a thick-necked tin-pot. Now airports are even replacing the metal detectors with X-ray gateways. You are required to raise your arms for a virtual strip search, where digital images of your nakedness are reviewed by the airport security. Official TSA statements explain that these digital records go no further than their desks.
You can choose to believe that, or believe that all our faces are being blurred, or that our corresponding identities are not matched with the images.
(A digression on the subject of intelligence files:
Meanwhile, consider that the NSA is recording ALL satellite borne phone calls. International and domestic. They get around the “wire-tapping” restrictions by addressing it as “packet collecting.” To their devices, it’s an altogether new technology, thereby unencumbered by civil right legislation protection.
Our imaginations cannot fathom how spooks can listen to all the world’s satellite calls, but their imaginations know that someday the software will be developed to accomplish that task. Won’t they be kicking themselves later if they hadn’t stored as much as they could of our conversations BEFORE anyone suspected all telephones were eavesdropped upon?
-By the way, did you miss the memo that every cellphone is capable of being an eavesdropping device, even when it’s not engaged in a phone call? Would it be beyond the pale to imagine that if a near infinite number of calls are recorded, another near infinite amount of off-line talk is being aggregated in addition? If you can store more on your iPod than you can read in 100 lifetimes, supercomputer storage can probably lap your imagination by 100 to the 100th, I’m just thinking.)
Respect Authority
Well look at me, I’m only underlining where the DHS is happy to have us all place emphasis. FEAR. The security at today’s airports won’t keep box cutters off of airplanes, but it will keep a citizenry from daydreams of dissent.
So much ado,
And not enough DO? You already know what to do. Respect authority? Disrespect false authority! Take a lead from Comrade al-Zairi, you too can make it about the shoes.
We’ve all of us, you know it, mouthed to ourselves the defiant retort, rehearsed for if and when that imaginary Nazi hits us up for our papers: “Papers? I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”
From LA, I remember a variant which Hispanics directed at La Migra. They wished.
Anyone WITH papers can defy authority with the full confidence that comes from “I am an American” impunity. But can undocumented immigrants say it? Can Middle-Eastern-looking gentlemen say it? Not hardly.
YOU CAN.
My brave little fantasy insurgent, why not offer that rebel yell to the TSA? Tell them you don’t need to remove your stinkin’ shoes! (Double- entendre unintended.) They won’t let you on the plane, but that’s where beloved Capitalism provides your audience.
Put your courage where your mouth is
Let the airlines hear your rebel yell. “We don’t need your stinkin’ airplane!” If they don’t remove the Beirut decor concrete barriers, if they don’t send the TSA mini tyrants packing, if they don’t let you travel with toiletries of your damn choosing, you’re not going to take their stinkin’ flights.
If they’re not going to let you park up close to the terminal, where you used to be able to park but now those spaces are let out to valet parking outfits, you’re not going to visit their airport. Period.
Is there anywhere that you need to go in a hurry, besides out of the country for a long, long spell?
Drive, it’s still free
If you’re going to stick around, boycott the airlines. Use your car.
As has been demonstrated at Arizona checkpoints –as seen on YouTube– a car and a video camera can get you anywhere unmolested. If you are stopped at an DHS “immigration” checkpoint, you hold the upper hand. You can persist in being let to pass without answering a single question. If they detain you, you have a lawsuit. In your car, you can say with impunity still “I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”
A highlight of the Christmas season every year is gathering my big family together under one roof — my children, my parents, five siblings and their spouses, and twelve (thirteen by year’s end!) nieces and nephews. Everyone is married now, save me and the kids, but I can recall many holidays when new boy- or girlfriends were part of the celebration.
Tales of our past houseguests poke edgewise into at least one family conversation every year. Each of these dear departed-from-us souls has left behind fond memories, and I imagine that we’ve provided them with a few stories as well. Like how my sisters and I share a secret language of syllables and partial thoughts that no one can follow, not even our mother. Or how all three of my brothers-in-law swill too much grog every year and end up running naked through whatever neighborhood we’re in, losing wallets and shoes and sustaining minor injuries in the imponderable annual ritual.
It’s no wonder that the poor dears rarely returned the following year. It isn’t that we didn’t want to bring them into the fold; we did, and we tried. “Once when Joey was in first grade and I was in fifth, she went to a different school than the rest of us because we’d just moved back here from Topeka and there wasn’t room at DR so I walked her to school and one of our friends, whose parents were Irish. . .” But with stories flying and a lifetime of shared experiences providing the framework, the new loves found themselves smack in the middle of what must’ve seemed to be a verbal maelstrom.
Occasionally my younger brother Andy would attempt interaction through the use of punnery. I know this was a friendly overture to our visitors because the entire family, so far as I can tell, despises puns, mostly because of him. When I was in high school, 11-year-old Andy — redheaded, bespectacled, buck-toothed Andy — would hang about ten feet away from my friends and interject punny witticisms whenever he could. My friends laughed (laughed!) at his horrid intrusions which would incense me. “Mom! Andy is bugging us! He’s telling stupid jokes again!” My mom would admonish him, much too kindly to satisfy me, “Andy, sweetie, leave the big girls alone, and stop making puns. People hate puns.”
Punnitry, for those who’ve been spared the exposure, is largely the trick of compacting two or more ideas within a single word or expression. It’s wordplay at its most punitive. To wit: Punnery is a rewording experience, especially around Christmas time. That’s when people exchange hellos and good buys with each other, the time of year when every girl wants her past forgotten and her presents remembered, the time of year when mothers have to separate the men from the toys.
Yes, that kind of punnishment.
Studies have shown a correlation between punderstanding and sound intellect, so the dumb jokes aren’t really so dumb. Puns are found in many of Shakespeare’s plays and in the Bible, more proof that they appeal to the lofty among us. Still, I loathe puns, which must be evidence that I’m not particularly clever, or so the punnits would have me believe.
We won’t have any Christmas visitors this year so there will surely be a shortage of dumb jokes around the table. To take the heat off poor punmeister Andy (who, by the way, outgrew his youthful awkwardness and is not annoying in the slightest), I’m going to surprise my family with a few holiday puns of my own. I won’t trouble you with the three pages I’ve amassed so far but, trust me, much pun will be had this year. Enough to satisfy everyone for years and years to come, I can only hope.
So, Meretricious to all! And don’t forget that There’s No Plate Like Chrome for the Hollandaise!
Muntadha al-Zaidi’s shoe may have missed George Bush, but it left a figurative black eye on the warrior emperor,
and, a literal shiner on White House spokes- gidget Dana Perino. She was hit by a microphone as secret service agents rushed to protect the president. Which could not have worked out better for the US media.
If the injured staffer had been a man, do you imagine the news photos of facial bruises would be so intimate? While the world media is focused on demonstrations to urge the release of al-Zaidi, the US media is zooming in close on Perino’s black eye. I’m thinking, you don’t have to be a wife-beater to admit to the provocative element in these pictures of a battered blond, about as tall as a child, female.
You need quite a distraction from the embarrassing imagery of world citizenry eager to kick Bush in the ass as he leaves office.
Perino was already familiar with USO Playboy Bunny cheesecake.
“THIS IS A FAREWELL KISS, YOU DOG!” –yelled al-Baghdadia news journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, as he hurled his first shoe.
Finally someone brave enough to have at our obscene Reprobate-in-Chief! What does this say about reporters, officials and celebrities who have access to President Bush but take their shoes off only to show fealty? Homeland Security has all of us removing our shoes, but it took an Iraqi to know what to do with them. If the world needed a sign of hope, that someone would at last stand up to America’s miserable criminality, new-detainee al-Zaidi is the one.
Bush makes a last visit to a nation he destroyed, and gets: “THIS IS A FAREWELL KISS, YOU DOG!” Our news outlets initially censored the “you dog” bit. Al-Zaidi’s threw his second shoe yelling “THIS IS FROM THE WIDOWS, THE ORPHANS AND THOSE WHO WERE KILLED IN IRAQ.” Prompting a local Iraqi to write:
“Yes, you dirty motherfuckers, NO VICTORY for you in IRAQ. No victory as long as people like Muntather exist…
A legacy institution of the Gilded Age is the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. Most of us only know it from the nutty salad, the mysterious Red Velvet Cake recipe, Thousand Island Dressing and Veal Oscar named for the famous maitre d’ hotel. I encountered the book of recipes collected by “Oscar of the Waldorf” and its cover illustration caught my eye. The coachman and carriage don’t look so opulent to us today, but do you recognize a timeless trapping of affluence? There’s nothing else in the picture but the policeman and his nightstick.
We almost dismiss the incongruity of the attendant police officer. That’s because he’s Officer Friendly to us, circa the 1950s egalitarian economic boom, earned post New Deal and post WWII, when law enforcement began to serve and protect the middle class share of the pie. Before those times, whose order did the police enforce?
Could the Waldorf diorama have featured some other occupation at the curb? A newsboy, a shoeshine, or a traffic director? If the cabbie is picking up late night revelers, why not depict a doorman or lamplighter?
If this scene did not include the policeman, he’d be missing.
The Gilded Age of the soaring wealth of bankers and industrialists, of the steel, coal, and rail robber barons, came at the expense of poverty wages for all the rest. The homeless of America’s eastern cities died in the streets, if they crossed the paths of the leisure class at all. As in London, where the bobbies were celebrated for carrying no guns, cops on the beat didn’t need more than a nightstick to beat back beggars and riffraff.
Just as in the Waldorf illustration, the policeman’s nightstick isn’t holstered, it is fingered idly like a baton. We’ve seen it in countless Chaplin, Keaton, and Keystone reels. The policeman’s baton might be carried idly, and animated mindlessly as a clerk might twirl a pencil, but the gyrations telegraphed a swinging function meant to be understood.
Today, a modern financial crisis has finally hit the post industrial era, and unemployment is taking a precipitous plunge. The repercussions for the American middle class are yet unclear to most, their comforts still too tangible to fathom gone. But our modern times have already seen the resurgence of the Rich And Famous, (to even beyond the lunge of our Super-Lotto winners, who always chose the sub-six-figure annuity). Exclusive cars, toy submarines and tickets into space cost multi-millions, but the rich have that money to burn. Common Americans have also watched the armoring of their police, using weapons which offend us, but which protect the security of institutional wealth. Para-military police forces are the natural escalation of the right-to-bear-arms arms-race, the equivalent of nightsticks to quell our social disquiet.
Already aren’t we seeing the police block the public’s way, lest we soil the red carpet of the well-heeled? Aren’t police blocking free speech in public spaces, when the monied media has decided it wants the backdrop to serve their message? Wait until we are gazing covetously upon the gilded extravagances, from the alley side of the gilded wrought iron gate.
Wiki notes:
Thousand Island Dressing came to the Waldorf from the so-named Lake Ontario waterway where New York’s super rich had their summer homes. The $100 recipe for Red Velvet Cake was the urban myth which resurfaced as the $250 Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie.
The original Waldorf Hotel was built by an Astor whose middle name was Waldorf, next door to an aunt with whom he was feuding. Later another Astor convinced her to move uptown and replaced her home with a taller hotel named the Astoria. The two luxurious hotels hyphened via the Peacock Alley, inspiring the popular song “Meet me at the hyphen.” In 1931 the landmark was moved to accommodate the Empire State Building, and was purchased in 1949 by Conrad Hilton who added the double-hyphen flourish, completely in the spirit of gilded ornamentation.
Someone forgot to tell Cindy McCain that the fashion word on Sarah’s big night was “populist.” Cin’s half-peeled banana outfit was examined by the couture analysts at Vanity Fair and the numbers look like this:
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown, I’m thinking Manolos: $600
Total: about $300,000!
How long until Sarah Plain stops playing moose hunter/hockey mom/sexy librarian and starts sportin’ some real duds? That would make the election season almost bearable.
info via Liza at culturekitchen
DENVER- DNC day 0, Undercover observers.
Could this NOT BE A COP? My goodness the cops had undercover uniforms too! White shirt, tan cargo shorts, white socks, running shoes, camera and backpack. This bicyclist was helping to track Unconventional Denver as they veered from the permitted parade route along 16th Street Mall.
Another barrel bellied gentleman was recording the Sunday antiwar rally. There were hundreds of police video cameras out there, not held at the ready for something to happen, like the other videographers, but constantly pointed. Wouldn’t that be recording a bunch of nothing, unless you’re simply trying to document faces?
I have another theory, which comes of imagining dozens of surveillance cameramen each shift, clocking out and depositing multitudes of digital videotape cassettes, marked by location, time, and perhaps incident. Would that seem to be a nightmare to organize? I’m thinking these cameras were up to something else.
These two square pegs were videotaping the Sunday UA Lincoln Boulevard standoff. The person in the foreground is an example of what real participants look like. His camera is waiting for something to capture. The rear two have cameras aloft, whether they’re paying attention our not.
The yellow shirted boy scout gestured to this third duffer behind them. I’m not sure the signal except that he stepped back as I photographed.
I wonder if these cameras held aloft haven’t been retrofitted to give live video feeds, instead of recording unto individual DATs. I bet they’re transmitting wireless signals to a communications truck nearby, where not only are the images being recorded into a data bank, likely they are being monitored for a real-time sense of what’s happening in the crowd. That might explain why the cameramen were seldom seen panning or changing their angle. It might also be possible that they were receiving their instructions through the camera viewfinders.
Now this guy isn’t wearing the day uniform. What’s he doing? I include him just for contrast. He’s wearing the black colors of a provocateur or plant and sure enough when the antiwar march came its closest to the Pepsi Center, suddenly he broke his silence. Where before he’s stood back, observing the morning rally. Now he was moving through the marchers offering instructions. Many of the organizers were trying to create something of a circle in front of the Pepsi Center entrance. This “marcher” who held no banner, and wore no political message, was now helpfully urging everyone to continue past.
Can we start a series called I’M BEING FOLLOWED? Why not! As we feed our paranoia, what with all the increasing surveillance, isn’t it likely we ARE being watched? Here are bound to be found some interesting tales.
I had just come from a conversation about potential protest detractors whose chief strategy is to try to provoke violence. They do it by saying such repugnant things that you want to hit them. They’re not violent themselves, but their intent is exactly that. They don’t have to call you a freak, but they could insult something you care about so much, your cause for example, that you feel compelled to stand up for it. In fact if they are insulting a third party, it’s all the easier to feel self righteous and magnanimous to escalate the vehemence of upholding their honor. The Defenders of Jerusalem is such a group, for example. In Denver they delight in goading the Native American rights groups. Go figure. The Minutemen are another, picking on defenseless immigrants.
Later in the day I was at the supermarket checkout and a woman behind me initiated a conversation. She was complimenting me on my shoes. I thought this was an odd opening line, as I knew my shoes were not particularly distinguishable, they were certainly not attractive. “I love your shoes” she must have repeated. I turned to see a plump frizzy-dark-haired woman looking down at the Tevas on my feet. I never saw her face. She explained, still not looking up, that they were made in the country where she was born, Israel. “Oh, I replied, they’re comfortable” I mumbled, even as it occurred to me that by coincidence I’ve been complaining to myself about them. Teva. I’ll have to go look them up.
…and felt like an idiot. Why? I think polka dots are adorable. They are playful and happy and youthful which are traits I value. And the outfit I had on was classy and cute. So why did I feel anxious that someone might pop over unexpectedly and see my polka dots? I’m not sure, but I changed rather than further contemplate the issue.
I think that maybe polka dots aren’t me. Whatever that means. Like all women, I have a closet full of clothes that I never wear. Truthfully, my closet is a schizophrenic mixed bag pining for psychiatric intervention. I must’ve worn these styles at one time, but I guess I’ve changed. Or, more likely, they were never me. I just didn’t know it, because I was adept at changing me to be a part of the crowd du jour.
I don’t think men are this way. A couple years ago, a friend and I took a getaway to Mexico for a few days. We hung out under a big beach umbrella, two pale obviously-American chubbies in a sea of gorgeous foreigners. The women were thin, tanned, and beautiful, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the men. Unbelievably fit, glistening brown skin, boy shorts. At once holding a cigarette and a partner’s perky breast, we couldn’t stop staring at the men.
When the couples eventually got up and dressed, the guys wore capri pants, silky dark shirts, and closed-toe leather sandals. But even through my drool I knew that, were I given the chance, I probably wouldn’t date any one of them. Seriously! They were not my type.
As pretty as the beach boys were, my type of guy doesn’t spend much time thinking about his hair and wardrobe. A makeover is buying his favorite shirt in another color. I’ve never succeeded in slipping Bruni Maglis over his tennis shoes, nor a man purse over his shoulder. Even the plain front/pleated front battle can rage for days, so sartorial transformation has never been in the cards. Men know what they are comfortable wearing, and are usually unwilling to indulge our female fantasies. Truly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
If men can stay true to form, why do women’s closets suffer from bipolar disorder? Are we multifaceted and complex, or are we being unduly influenced the expectations of our mates, the opinions of our friends, and the daily media mind fuck?
Though my closet doesn’t reflect it yet, my chameleon days are over. I am newly unapologetic about my hairstyle, my yoga pants, and my Doc Martens. When I dress up I usually wear black from head to toe. I don’t show a lot of skin, and hide my few curves. I wear simple earrings, no other jewelry. I no longer worry about fashion trends, because I refuse to be trendy.
My manner of dress is merely an outward manifestation of the natural, unadorned, athletic, private girl that I am. I cover my body in such a way that I’m not constantly mindful of the fact that I’m wearing something. Something that feels foreign and awkward. Like polka dots.
Here is current the schedule of ARN events:
———————————-
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23All Day City Park
Set up at City ParkAfternoon (TBD) City Park
Resurrection City Free University
Non-Violence Training5:00 – 10:00 PM Gates Crescent Park
Welcoming BBQ & Drinks for the Delegates——————————-
SUNDAY, AUGUST 24All Day Platte River & Cherry Creak Trails
AFSC Banners
AFSC is planning on displaying banners for about 100 yards in each direction from REI.All Day City Park
Art Installations
A variety of art pieces representing progressive ideals.(9:00 AM
Begin at the WEST STEPS OF THE CAPITOL.
End on Speer Blvd in front of the Pepsi Center.
End the Occupations March and Rally
March to end all illegal imperialist occupations in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Hawaii, North America, and others.)1:00 PM Various Denver Locations
Funk the War: Dance for Peace
A creative action with an emphasis on music and visuals. Smaller feeder marches lead to a central location with a concert.Immediately Following Funk the War/Dance Party for Peace City Park
Concert featuring: Son of Nun, Jello, Brian Harvey, David Rovics7:00 PM Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater
Evening of Conscience: No Attack on Iran
Feature performances on opposing any moves towards a U.S. attack on Iran.(Evening Central Presbyterian Church, 1660 Sherman St.
Progressive Welcome to Denver)——————————-
MONDAY, AUGUST 2510:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory5:00 PM City Park
Nomination of Partyless Youth Ticket
A chance for the youth to nominate a candidate that speaks to them.Evening (TBD) TBD
Cynthia McKinney Speech
Speech by presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney.6:30 PM City Park
CODEPINK Concert
A concert highlighting many powerful and talented women.——————————–
TUESDAY, AUGUST 2610:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.11:00 AM Skyline Park
A Walk in their Shoes
Thousands of shoes will represent the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory3:00 PM City Park
Concert featuring Blue Scholars, David Rovics, and others.Afternoon (TBD) City Park
Partyless Youth Platform
The youth will be given an opportunity to create their platform.Afternoon/ Evening (TBD) Downtown
Operation First Casualty
Street theater that demonstrates the reality of war.(6:30 PM City Park
Democratic Party “Watching Party”
Local Democrats will host a big-screen TV for non-seated Democrats to watch the Convention.)
————————————-
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2710:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory12:00 Noon City Park
Concert featuring: Flobots, State Radio, The Coup, Wayne Kramer, Son of Nun, Jello, and others.Afternoon (TBD) City Park
Partyless Youth Acceptance Speech
The Partyless Youth nominee will give an acceptance speech.3:30 PM TBD
IVAW March to End the War
Iraq Veterans Against the War will march in opposition to the war in Iraq.(Evening Buelle Theater
Cultural Events: Cornel West and the Flobots)———————————–
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2810:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.TBD TBD
Immigrant Rights March and Rally
The march, with a national scope, will provide a venue for immigrants and their allies to demonstrate their decree for just and fair reform for our country’s broken immigration system.12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory(TBD INVESCO Field
Obama’s Acceptance Speech
Obama will give his acceptance speech to 75,000 people at INVESCO Field. ARD hopes to have a presence outside.)—————————–
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29All Day City Park
Tear Down and Clean Up
All of ARD will be needed to help clean and clear City ParkAll Day TBD
Buses to St. Paul
ARD would like to help coordinate buses and carpooling to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention.
I’ve been revisiting old episodes of Sex and the City a lot lately. It’s a fun show for a girl to watch. New York City neighborhoods, ultra-chic fashions, Manolo Blahnik shoes, ever-changing hairstyles. And an endless stream of nameless but memorable lovers.
The show becomes decidedly less fun when any of the girls ends up in a serious relationship. Can a long-term partnership ever compare favorably to a brand new sex-soaked love fest? Surely not. I can handle Carrie and Mr. Big because Christopher Noth is incredibly dashing and always just a hair out of reach. And Charlotte can have Harry because she’s the show’s I-believe-in-love ingenue and she needs monogamy. But the relationship between Miranda, the successful attorney, and Steve, the soft-spoken bartender, is a huge drag to watch.
Miranda is the least attractive of the girlfriends and her personality is off-putting. Brooklyn boy Steve-with-a-heart-of-gold is able to overlook her coarse communication style and soften her with his sympathetic ear and tender loving ways. Okay, fine. I could take that for a few weeks.
But for some godforsaken reason the writers let this stupid relationship go on until Miranda winds up preggers, wants to abort, can’t because Steve’s so adorably earnest, has the baby, decides to keep Steve, blah blah blah. The writers should’ve killed them both off right then. There should be no happily ever after on Sex and the City. The whole point of the show is the friendship between the women. Men are unreliable, thus expendable. But girlfriends are forever.
The thing I really hate about the Miranda-Steve relationship is the whole rich girl/poor boy thing. Charming initially but odious when morphed into powerful-manly-girl/emasculated-but-fighting-nobly boy. Financially secure Miranda is portrayed as shallow, greedy, hardened and immoral, while affable loser Steve is the white knight come to love her into domestic simplicity.
Forget independence, ignore achievement, never mind separate identity. The message is that what we really want, in the deep recesses of our scarred hearts, is to give it all up to a good guy like Steve.
Now on the epitome of hubris, the Republicans are setting up a Trust Fund, and asking Americans to contribute.
Steely Dan, Jethro Tull and the Doobie Brothers are planning a benefit concert.
all contributions tax deductible of course. Meaning, we the people are going to be paying for it.
And, Tony Snow didn’t die in poverty. Had plenty of insurance. Got paid well for selling American Soldiers and Iraqis to their deaths based on what anybody who had any sort of sources of information, and the pure courage to use those sources, would know to be a LIE.
A whole series of lies.
Acting as GWs mouthpiece he deliberately joined him in Murder and Theft. That makes him an accomplice under any legal system on earth.
A lot of the people in the Springs don’t give a damn about any Iraqi people being killed, but they pretend to care about American casualties.
So I’ll focus on that. Tony Snow, like everybody associated with Bush, was heavily invested in the Oil and “defense” industries.
He, like the Bush family still do, made money every time an American soldier became a casualty.
I can easily picture him doing a little jig and saying “Cha-ching! yeah, baby, c’mon and die, daddy needs a new pair of dancin’ shoes! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!”
I strongly suspect the same thing about ALL supporters of this war. They no likey, me no givey damn they no likey.
Ali Burton, the Thief of Baghdad, makes enough money in One DAY to put the Poor, Impoverished Rich Widow on easy street for the rest of her unnatural life.
This is the widow of one of Bush’s accomplices, who made excuses for Mr Bush when Mr Bush refused to increase and tried to decrease VA benefits and other Veterans, their dependents or Widows and Orphans programs.
The widows and orphans of the soldiers Mr Bush and Mr Snow had Murdered for their fun and profit (mostly profit) are given the collective cold shoulder here, but one of the Murderers is being honored for his crimes,
and we, the people, are without our consent directly subsidizing the payments of a trust fund for the Murderer’s wife and children… because it’s a tax deduction…
The death of Utah Phillips reminded me of a favorite story he would tell about the Haymarket widow Lucy Parsons. Shoot or Stab Them was advice that got the anarchist agitator arrested whenever she tried to speak in public. Lucy’s husband was among those anarchists framed and executed for the infamous 1886 Haymarket bombing. Lucy continued to advocate for labor rights and social change. Here’s how Utah told the rest of the story:
Lucy lived well up into this century,
well into this century, died in 1940.
One time, she was speaking at a big May Day rally
back in the Haymarket in the middle 1930s, she was incredibly old.
She was led carefully up to the rostrum, a multitude of people there.
She had her hair tied back in a tight white bun, her face
a mass of deeply incised lines, deep-set beady black eyes.
She was the image of everybody’s great-grandmother.
She hunched over that podium, hawk-like,
and fixed that multitude with those beady black eyes,
and said: “What I want
is for every greasy grimy tramp
to arm himself with a knife or a gun
and stationing himself at the doorways of the rich
shoot or stab them as they come out.”
Lest her zeal need a little explaining, Lucy Parsons made this declaration at the founding convention of the IWW in 1905:
“Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth.”
Very little remains of the pamphlets which Parsons published over the course of her life. The authorities considered her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” They blocked her entrance to public halls and arrested her whenever she addressed a crowd. When Parsons died, the police confiscated and destroyed her library and papers.
A number of websites have emerged to celebrate Lucy Parson’s legacy. Would it be racist of me to suggest that a book entitled FIFTY BLACK WOMEN WHO CHANGED AMERICA should have mentioned Lucy Parsons at least in the index? The list complied by author Amy Alexander included Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Florence Griffith Joyner.
A short biography of Lucy Parsons is reprinted at Red Robin’s Red Channels, Left Links, and Proletarian Places. There’s also the Lucy Parsons Project. Her essay on “The Principles of Anarchism” is archived at LucyParsons.org. An oratory class at the University of Washington includes Parsons’ infamous call to arms:
Lucy E. Parsons, “To Tramps,” Alarm, October 4, 1884.
(Also printed and distributed as a leaflet by the International Working People’s Association.)TO TRAMPS,
The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.
Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in?
Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality?
If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were?
And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back? Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up.
Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “God bless you” and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp and a vagrant” by that very class who had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours.
Then can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?
Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that “the poor ye have always”; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot.” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken not to them, but list!
Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last determine by your own hand to take your life, – for you would rather go out into utter nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden – so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your simple existence.
Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here!
Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast “one long lingering look behind” you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword.
You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.
Learn the use of explosives!
Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.
Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008
Brothers and Sisters in the Movement
I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.
I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.
Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.That’s why I left the Democratic Party.
I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:Hands off Haiti!
Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!
No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!
And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.Que vivan los pueblos de america!
Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008
First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!
Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.
Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions
Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.
Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.
In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.
Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.
What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?
First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.
All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)
The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.
Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.
I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.
Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.
We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.
In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.
I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.
How do you like your bullshit? That’s the defining element of the US presidential elections, isn’t it? Do you want your bullshit over easy, over medium, or over hard? How ’bout some poached bullshit instead? And YES, most seem to like their bullshit stale. And at the center of it all is the bullshit war of perpetuity, the war to create perpetual Homeland Bullshit Security. Take off your shoes for them to be x-rayed… for bullshit! The biggest issue for voters, is bullshit! At least that’s what America’ most important press organ thinks. And they’re right!
The 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show aired this week, much to my excitement and sheer delight. Broadcast from Madison Square Garden, the competition is the height of absurdity, but plenty of hilarious fun. In case you’ve never watched, dozens of dogs, broken into categories such as sporting, terrier, herding, or toy are placed, one by one, on a table draped with fine linens and examined by a stern-looking woman wearing a full-length silk dupioni skirt and fitted cropped jacket, pearls and heels. She dramatically pulls back the lips of each show dog to inspect the teeth and gums, checks the body position, runs her hands up and down the pooch’s torso to assess bone structure, lifts the tail for reasons unknown, and then grunts her assent.
The handler then puts the dog to the ground and somberly run-walks it in front of the bedecked judging panel. This is the best part of the circus. The women handlers are middle-aged, wearing knee-length skirts and sensible shoes and are usually rather frumpy. The male handlers, in great contrast, are young cute men wearing Armani suits. The spectacle never fails to make me laugh hysterically, even to the point of falling from my chair.
One of the more interesting things in the show is the commentary about the history of the various purebred dogs: where they originated and what their use was in bygone days. Dogs were domesticated generally not as pets, but as herders, hunters, workers, or for the amusement of the royal and wealthy.
There are 400 million domesticated dogs around the globe. Scientists looking into canine DNA have postulated that all dogs descended from gray wolves in East Asia about 15,000 years ago, and came to the New World across the Bering Straight with human nomads. Analysis of ancient canine skeletons from Alaska to Peru shows a genetic link to the Old World gray wolf. However, the DNA of modern New World dogs shows no evidence of Old World wolf genes, likely because European colonists brought their own hybrid dogs and systematically discouraged breeding of Native American dogs. Even the Mexican hairless dog, thought to have developed in the Americas nearly 2,000 years ago, possesses mostly European DNA.
Hybridization to develop new breeds began merely 500 years ago, and has resulted in the widely-divergent pure breeds we see today. This targeted breeding continues and each year another specimen or two is added to the American Kennel Club’s canine A-list. This year it is the French Beauceron and the Swedish Vallhund. As in human inbreeding, notably the royal families of Europe who have close blood ties which are strengthened by noble intermarriage, incestually-bred organisms are more likely to manifest genetic imperfections and problematic temperaments. Still, the lure of genetic purity remains.
A recent study reported in Science magazine found that dogs are perhaps the most perceptive species when it comes to recognizing and interpreting human behavior. A 15,000-year friendship between man and animal has engendered this symbiotic bond. Watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, with its products of purposeful breeding, had me wondering about man’s relationship with dogs in other parts of the world. Do they pamper, exercise, feed and water their dogs like we do? Are dogs beloved family members or communal property tended by all? What types of dogs have arisen when natural selection and breeding are allowed to reign?
On your travels, take note of the dogs. Are they skinny and neglected or, as in Peru, seemingly well-tended but running free? I was recently in Playa del Carmen walking along Fifth Avenue and noticed dogs of every shape and size, well-behaved and non-threatening, but seemingly never attached to an owner, let alone a leash. Try also to find out the dogs’ names. Rover, Spot, and Fido? Or are they named like the show pups: Roundtown Mercedes Of Maryscot, Cookieland Seasyde Hollyberry, or Jangio’s Ringo Starr Kurlkrek?
Below is a picture of a dog that was sitting at my feet in a cafe in Aguas Calientas, near Machu Picchu. If you are so inclined, take pictures of street dogs in your travels, or even dogs with owners, and send them to me. I will do the same on my upcoming trips to Argentina and Chile. I’d love to amass a collection of pictures and stories of dogs around the globe. There will be no trophies or prize money awarded. This will be purely for fun.
My son, David, had a band concert last night. There is a performance at least once a week which I don’t mention, so please indulge me here. This one was notable for several reasons. First, it was held at Roy J. Wasson High School, my alma mater. The last time I was in the auditorium, more than 25 years ago, it was for a pep rally.
Second, this was an all-city event, both the jazz and concert bands, and David played first chair (trumpet) in both.
Third, the concert had enough significance that both sets of grandparents attended.
After the show, my parents and Dave’s parents chatted amiably, sharing grandchildren in common, though no longer marital ties. This is when I noticed that I, at 5-foot-7 with shoes on, seemed taller than all four of them. While neither family is blessed with the genes of giants, I don’t recall ever being the family’s Amazon. Thus, I can only assume that they are shrinking. All of them.
Certainly gravity compresses the spine and wreaks general havoc on the body over time. But questionable posture is not only for the aging. We’ve all seen children, and especially teenagers, with stooped shoulders, drooping heads, swayed backs, jutting stomachs that have nothing to do with body fat.
My unsolicited practical advice–begin to work on posture. Remember that bones are just bones. The muscles and our efforts largely determine how the body looks and functions.
Women, because we are the childbearers, are configured differently than men in the lower spine. We’re more easily able to sway our backs and jut out our butts so that we don’t fall over carrying the pregnancy load. But unless pregnant, a swayed back is not good posture. The ideal position of the lower spine is found when the hips are slightly tucked under.
Try this: With your usual stance, stand at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Take one foot and place it on the first step with your weight equally distributed between both feet. Pull your abdominal muscles inward. This is the ideal position for the lower spine. Try to mindfully maintain this slightly tucked position throughout the day.
Now the upper back. Usually when told to sit up straight we pull our shoulders back and push our chests out using our upper back muscles. This isn’t very effective, is impossible to maintain, and doesn’t address the underlying physiology. A better way to correct posture is to straighten and lengthen the spine.
Try this: Stand with your hips tucked under as above and slowly push the top of your head up toward the ceiling as far as you comfortably can. To do it correctly I pull the hair at the back of the part, where cowlicks are often found, straight up. You should be able to feel your head aligning and your spine elongating. If you are doing it properly you’ll feel your core, the band of muscles around the body’s center, engage. Now gently push your shoulders down. You’ll feel the rhomboids in the middle of the back engage. Notice that your shoulders are no longer hunched forward.
This is proper posture and should be consciously maintained. Difficult at first, but easier as the muscles lengthen and strengthen, and you become more accustomed to paying attention to your body position.
You can often tell a dancer by the way she looks. It’s not the size of the body, nor the manner of dress that tells us her avocation. It’s her posture. It’s the way she mindfully inhabits her body. She radiates a certain presence, and is able to show her dancer’s heart in her physical being.
We need to remember that we, too, are the masters of our physical domains. We have much control over our appearance and our health. Consciously inhabit your body. Make it a reflection of the inner person, the essential you. Confident, strong, aware, well-tended, loved.
Do you remember several years ago, when Ugly Dolls crawled out of the Cabbage Patch like that season’s Troll Doll? We have an obsession with fugly. Except they were trendy, hand sewn in someone’s attic and sold at exclusive boutiques, but had the aesthetic sophistication of sock monkeys, sharing 98% of their DNA.
Uglydolls were the must-have gift for those whose taste was thread-bare chic. These eclectic one-of-a-kind one-offs were, it appeared, sewn by a single hand, or at most by several one-handed cottage industrialists. The design called for single flat panels stitched together without too much care, with scraps fastened cockeye to form the features. Of course the price you paid for such deliberate off-the-wall on-the-mark anti-production-value plush toys reflected where you could get them. Melrose Avenue haute-suture or Ebay.
I found an Uglydoll display at a local boutique and saw the burgeoning cast of character-actors and side-kicks the collection has become. Plus now, to spare the mythical not-so-nimble seamstresses behind the first batch, these new generation Uglies herald from China. There is no good reason I suppose to deny the mass market access to the fruit of playful creative ninnies. But lo, the price tags are still show-off high! Is there no consumer benefit to derive from 55¢/hr wages?
Running shoes which are priced $150 at retail cost less than $2 to make. But we know Nike has to recoup an incredible amount for R&D. They’ve got us running on air for goodness sake, that technological leap had to be expensive. Plus someone’s got to pony up for the clever ads. Nike CEO Phil Knight doesn’t advertise just for the sake of his vanity.
The only engineering required with ugly plush toys is how to inject into the factory process the “slight variations which enhances [sic] their appearance of uniqueness.” Can you picture Chinese overseers enforcing deliberately sloppy -but fastidious- handiwork?
So why would the prices be kept so high? Even if sold only through specialty stores which require a 100% Keystone markup, there would still be leeway.
Can you do the math? Probably the labor expended to make one plush toy would remain constant over the varying production scenarios. Let’s compare the options: Manufacturing wages in the US have declined sharply, but at $12/hour, for how much did they have to sell the original Ugly? If we were considering a sweatshop in Los Angeles, the wage would be $4-$6/hour. So now we’ve half-ed it. Contracting a factory in Saipan or Guam, among the US possessions, would mean half again as much, $2-$3/hour and we’d still get to say MADE IN AMERICA. Moving the production to Mainland China means a prison wage of $0.55/hour. That’s less than 1/20th of the original cost.
Unless we hear news reports of Chinese laborers landing dream jobs sewing Ugly Dolls from straw to gold, somebody is making quite a grotesque, not even fugly, mark-up.
Ralph Routon’s recent diatribe in the Indy about the impending departure of Michael DeMarsche was lame. But you have to understand. Having Ralph write about the arts is akin to having John Waters write about the Superbowl. You can only imagine how funny that would be. To us. But not to sports fans. You might as well call Jesus a homo or spit on an Indian before you sully such sacred land.
People. Look at the picture of Ralph. Then consider that no one chooses their worst picture to present to the world. This is likely as good as it gets. Which means that he is a beer-swilling bratwurst-gobbling sports-worshiping manly man. He spits. He scratches. He has issues with dingleberries. But he LOVES sports. And by sports, I don’t mean fencing or horse racing or curling. Sport involves a BALL of some sort. And a distinctively American connection (which rules out rugby and soccer, although rugby is the ultimate masculine sport…even basketball doesn’t totally qualify for reasons I can’t quite figure out, but I think it’s because there are so few good white players).
One of the most memorable arguments that Dave and I ever had involved music. We were in our late twenties; we lived in downtown Denver and we were cool. He was a surgical resident at the U and I was a financial guru for a hip software company. As such, we were invited to many events. When these invitations came in through medical channels everything was great. Orthopedic surgeons are always jocks who were inspired to become surgeons while recovering from their own sports-related injuries. But when the invitations came from my side of the channel, things were unpredictable.
We were invited to Josephina’s on Larimer, to drink wine and listen to some groovy jazz with fellow yuppies, a term Dave hated. We got there. We drank Coors Light while they drank "whine." They listened to the "music." In a very unfortunate turn of events, the girl that Dave took to junior prom, Alison, the fantastic skier, the one that paid only friendly attention to him due to family connections, walked in with her new husband, Clark. Clark was an attorney who was, tragically, wearing a knee-length fur coat. Dave was wearing Levis, tennis shoes and a yellow t-shirt (with red letters, like a hot dog) that said "NO LIGHTS AT WRIGLEY FIELD!" (which is now framed in the basement, I kid you not). Things went rapidly downhill from there. ‘When’s the music gonna start? I could probably fix that pinkie for a fee. Let’s go to the sym-PHONY next week."
Dave is the guy who slept through the birth of most of his children. Our 10-year-old had the lead role in Oliver! at the FAC and I had to beg Dave to watch a single performance. Brendan was in Colorado Christmas at the Broadmoor, performing for 1,000 people every night and Dave came to watch only once and rolled his eyes at all the "religious" bullshit (he doesn’t know any Christmas carols). Brendan was hand-picked by Debbie Allen to be in Pepito’s Story at the Pikes Peak Center and Dave was sort of embarrassed and wondered if Brendan might be gay.
This same guy sobbed like an 8-year-old girl when Brent Musburger retired from sportscasting. I’ve been to two Broncos Superbowls, Northwestern’s first Rose Bowl in 80 years, several Olympic games, the Citrus Bowl when Peyton Manning was senior quarterback and headed for greatness. Weeping and gnashing of teeth all around. My children paint, and play music, and sing, and dance. None of it matters. But Dave is elated for days if 6-year-old Devon, the only girl on the team, makes a double play to win the game. Booyah! Fuck yeah!
My point in all this is that Ralph Routon DOES NOT and CAN NOT care about the arts. We will have to leave it to the psychiatrists to figure out why. Ralph Routon does not care who or what is playing at the Black Sheep, Theaterworks, the BAC. He won’t attend Pridefest, nor the Diversity Fair. Not even Springspree. But he will agonize over the legal troubles of Michael Vick and any injury sustained by LaDanian Tomlinson. He did, after all, draft them to his fantasy football team and he’s got 50 bucks hanging in the balance.
John Weiss, not exactly a manly man and therefore less than qualified to diagnose the problem, better figure it out soon and bring in some new blood. Or the Indy will become the Indy 500 and he’ll have to find a whole new group of advertisers and readers. Of course I’m kidding. Car racing is most definitely not a SPORT. Duh.
I like this picture of my grandfather. He passed away this summer and my sister and I looked through old family albums to choose a few photographs that might tell of his life.
Neither of us knew much about Grandpa’s youth, even about his character as my mom’s father. We’d only ever seen him as granddad to endless bursts of grandkids. He made his famous pancakes on sundays. His voice seemed always intoned with a cautionary chiding. “Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that.”
I remember riding with Grandpa in his old Nash Rambler with carpet samples in the back, running errands about town. He might have talked about the furniture store he once had, I don’t remember. His kindness was unwavering. It never occurred to me that a grandparent could be otherwise.
So in preparation for the funeral my sister and I were let to fashion a remembrance of our grandfather from photographic whole cloth. My sister is an art director who is very adept at manipulating a mood. We’d be enlarging originals, many of our relatives had never seen, or seen clearly, into prints which could recreate fiction. From hundreds of pictures we could mold an arresting romantic figure which we hoped they’d recognize.
Indeed we found a shot of Grandpa and his young fiancée posed on the front fender of a touring car, pointed toward the barren hills of Bonnie and Clyde, a sunny day, the two smiling, perhaps self-consciously at each other.
There’s another of Grandpa alone, wearing an apron, standing over the kitchen sink. Doing the dishes we presumed, but the dark shadows and soft sunlight coming through the lace lent the scene the suggestion that Grandpa could turn around any second with an engagement ring.
There’s a picture of the two of them sitting in a modest living room, he on the armrest actually, leaning back and against his wife, both of them glowing with happiness. Above them hangs a picture of an angel, which a cousin noted, had always hung above one of the later bedrooms.
These were the standouts to me, in thinking about which might be my favorite, but I chose another. I have no idea whether it catches an authentic side of Grandpa or not.
Someone mentioned that Grandpa and Grandma were once featured in a magazine article about a typical young family or some such sort. Grandpa worked for Montgomery Wards and they moved each year, Grandma giving birth at each relocation. It was thought that this picture might have come from that photo shoot. The composition is unusual I think, a kitchen chair on the sidewalk in front of your home. But this picture reflects something I can imagine having been in Grandpa’s character. He was a dandy.
There’s his wife, looking uncomfortably like a sidekick, and Grandpa seated in her presence; not merely unchivalrous, but self-satisfied and unguarded. I accidentally cropped his shoes when I scanned the pictures in the hasty late hours before the showing, but I assure you the body language was consistent, a nattily dressed first fiddle, head of household, master of the manor. I think it’s very evident in his pose, and I wonder if he knew it wasn’t true.
My grandfather on my father’s side, a fiery nordic who died when I was younger, cut a formidable figure around the house. You had to be quiet when you got too near Gudfar, unless he was laughing, and it seemed that activities were scheduled around his nap schedule. In any case, I didn’t find out until much later in life that he didn’t wear the pants in that family.
Oh, he was the oppressive dominant male, certainly the decider, but the guidance was Gudmor. She brought wisdom to the table, and certainly the emotional wisdom. Gudmor was always quick to cry when family visits ran short, something I could not conceive my stern grandfather would ever do. Gudmor was also the person to whom everything mattered, and so the not-uncommon better half. This was nothing that I saw in my youth, it had to be told to me later. Sure enough I see my own personailty reflect that heritage.
So I wonder, about Grandpa Hough, if I mightn’t have gotten something of a similar predisposition from him? It would make sense, wouldn’t it, that my parent’s attraction might be based on the similarity of their expectations for each other?
I’m sure that my grandfather, the snappy dresser, was also the beneficiary of having a very strong wife. And suddenly I can see that in all the pictures. My memories of my grandparents, even their eulogies, recount the two as inseparable, indistinguishable after so many years, from one another, but it seems to me that Grandma was the action-taker. She made the rules and prompted the activity. I have plenty of memories of Grandma. I think what Grandma wanted mattered most. I’m not sure Grandpa had an opinion most of the time. I think it was his wife, the more engaging, more communicative, clear-headed, stronger half.
So here’s a picture of my grandfather, fingering his hat like it’s a nobleman’s cane, like it’s lighter than air in the hands of someone made to feel at the top of his game. Let to feel, most certainly.
Both my grandfathers survived their spouses. But by only a couple years. Grandpa Hough moved in with his son, regained his health for a short time, but never did come into his own. I wonder if he ever had.
What is the price of militarism on the militarists themselves? In the case of Pat Tillman it was death instead of wealth, yet others live and still pay a price. In ‘Torturers Toll‘, another Tony other than myself tells the story of how his torturing of innocent people in Iraq, has essentially destroyed his entire self respect for the duration of his life. How can he ever forgive himself for the cruelty he dealt others, all dictated by picking a ‘career’ inside the US military? He can’t, and many other Americans are also in his shoes, too.
These dehumanized participants in mayhem and abuse of their fellow humans reside throughout our super militarized society now. Take the most interesting case of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former cohort of our peanut farmer pastor President, Jimmy Carter. For years now, Brzenzinski used to brag about how he brought down the Soviet Union by starting the Muslim insurgency in Afghanistan that bogged the Soviet Union into ‘their own Vietnam’. The US threw $2 billion PLUS dollars into a covert war waged by puppet troops of the US led by people like Osama bin Laden. Today, Brzenzinski is singing a different tune though, and he is inow nto warning us about militarism, instead of bragging about promoting it.
The Washington Post carries his thoughts in a commentary titled, Terrorized by the ‘War on Terror’. How bizarre to see a terrorist like Jimmy’s former buddy now taking a stance against the likes of Bush and Cheney. Poor Zbigniew! Tears drop from my eyes even, in sympathy for this Donald Rumsfield of an earlier more..uh….innocent time. The man feels terrorized now by the thought that Bush’s gangsterism is undermining the economic system and imperialism that he did so much to prop up. Yes, there is a price to militarism that the militarists themselves will have to pay. Zbigniew worries about that.
For the overwhelming majority of us though, it will be the economic collapse that we will soon most suffer from. And for Brzezinski and his friends, the price to be paid will come from our anger at what unbidled capitalist corruption does to us all. Ultimately, the rich will become isolated as criminals that must be removed from the power they currently hold over us. The total price we will all pay for Iraq will be in many forms and will be seen differently by all of us American citizens. The returning troops are a first Tsunami wave that is hitting our society today. What will society look like afterwards though? Time will tell the now hidden price for turning away from solving our real problems by creating yet worse ones? The price is enormous.