tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51470804856058203152024-03-04T23:50:40.427-08:00Thomasina Painean online pamphlet, where dissent, opinion, truth, irreverence and humor are cherished and welcomedUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-13025407820807179652011-01-30T09:25:00.000-08:002011-01-30T09:25:11.735-08:00The Murder of the Inner Child: Ted Rall Tells It Like It IsIncludes partial list of Obama's broken promises. Check it out:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1248413290">http://www.rall.com/rallblog/2011/01/28/syndicated-column-how-obama-helps-murder-our-inner-child </a><br />
<a href="http://www.rall.com/rallblog/2011/01/28/syndicated-column-how-obama-helps-murder-our-inner-child"><br />
Ted Rall column</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-28472247516775906902010-04-29T04:38:00.000-07:002010-04-29T04:45:08.630-07:00Obama's Record: Change or Betrayal?I couldn't have said it better:<br /><br />The Center for Constitutional Rights: CCR's Assessment of the Obama Administration's Record. <a href="http://www.ccrjustice.org/obama-record">http://www.ccrjustice.org/obama-record</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-21665826783659900252009-10-28T09:47:00.000-07:002009-11-05T13:18:25.971-08:00Book Note of the Day<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America</span></span>,<br />by Barbara Ehrenreich<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJ7rptx1pwpRI-TkImiDKdrO0i9jbY67kKywNe7NtFzi_PUIdT4yUhIvFgFc6EDQmVi0ZUlYLo8UMgRiVPkkHhnwHBW4ICh4muzNZcT_aBO8SnbKVGm3yRYofY-XlS_0b5MUsnV62QrqX/s1600-h/Bright-sided.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 78px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJ7rptx1pwpRI-TkImiDKdrO0i9jbY67kKywNe7NtFzi_PUIdT4yUhIvFgFc6EDQmVi0ZUlYLo8UMgRiVPkkHhnwHBW4ICh4muzNZcT_aBO8SnbKVGm3yRYofY-XlS_0b5MUsnV62QrqX/s400/Bright-sided.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400729641253362338" /></a>So far this one gets my attention more than the others in my reading queue—Nader's <span style="font-style:italic;">Only the Rich Can Save Us</span>, Derrick Jensen's <span style="font-style:italic;">Walking on Water</span>, Michael H. Stone's <span style="font-style:italic;">Anatomy of Evil</span>. This may be because she speaks to a phenomenon I have noticed myself, and so in reading <span style="font-style:italic;">Bright-sided</span> I experience a happy recognition, as when a stand-up comedian says what we've all noticed but haven't articulated yet—"Oh, that's so true!" I'm thinking.<br /><br />I must beg to differ with her on one point, however. On page 25 she writes: "No one among the bloggers and book writers seemed to share my sense of outrage over the disease and the available treatments." Well, while I realize I am a mere whiff among the great winds of the blogosphere, I have been here, kvetching my head off, nevertheless: "Losing body parts to breast cancer was pretty much the opposite of fun." <a href="http://thomasinapaine.blogspot.com/2008/08/trekking-through-disease-capitalism.html">http://thomasinapaine.blogspot.com/2008/08/trekking-through-disease-capitalism.html</a><br /><br />UPDATE, November 5, 2009:<br /><br />On one website I find this, in response to the book:<br /><br />"I am truly happiest when I am thinking positive.<br />This book will be in the dollar bin by christmas.<br />Who would read such crud?<br />Is there an audience?"<br /><br />The response:<br /><br />"Being 'happy' is not necessarily the highest of high values. Being real, being truthful, being in touch with reality, is sometimes the healthiest place to be. Before you can effect change, you must face reality; otherwise, you may be nothing but a happy idiot, while the world falls apart around you.<br /><br />Ehrenreich has truly faced an important reality with this book, and in doing so, she has offered us an insight which has the power to heal and bring a healthy new understanding to the culture. You should read it before you ignorantly dismiss it.<br /><br />Don’t forget: As St. Augustine said, 'Hope has two beautiful daughters—Anger and Courage; anger over what’s wrong and the courage to change it.'"<br /><br />I am particularly grateful to Ehrenreich her fascinating discussion of the "New Thought" movement, its Calvinist origins and its various cultish dogmas promoting self-alienation, ultimately—I would call it <span style="font-style:italic;">phoniness</span>. "All is God, or Mind, or Goodness, or Whatever—except for that asshole who just slammed into my bumper—but oh well, after I've let him know what a loser he is, I'll <span style="font-style:italic;">choose</span> to be happy for the experience." Lah-tee-dah.<br /><br />I myself have been to enough sales meetings to have experienced first hand the anxiously aggressive, tyranny of positivity training; while you are being pummeled with the likes of, "EACH PERSON ON PLANET EARTH IS ABUNDANTLY AND INNATELY CAPABLE OF ATTAINING BREATH-TAKING HEIGHTS OF HAPPINESS AND FULFILLMENT," you are simultaneously subjected to negative supervisory habits and judgments. Your boss wanders about with a button that has a red slash across the word NEGATIVITY, while she simultaneously complains about "the numbers." Sheesh!<br /><br />Also, it occurs to me that Obama's oft-repeated excuse for letting Bush, Cheney, et al, off the hook for torture and war crimes, that is, "We're looking forward, not backward," must have arisen out of the positivity movement. I'm thinking, he talked to Oprah! So now the Justice Department is making rule-of-law decisions based on Oprah-Think, but only where powerful elites are concerned. Everybody else gets prosecuted and held to account.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-59225454821571719102009-10-22T18:01:00.000-07:002010-10-04T10:08:22.092-07:00Health Care Letter to Mr. Obama<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0XjUNAPR9wyJ6acSkx0RYcxP3cDG5hNsaP6TQwqYzPcwDPm4Uc30UIUoTFcgytywITII4MybmGdvsk01fgMK6s6bmgBkeCoZ2uA2U1NQYl-wXMJ9DyJOOc9sSS59kTdlCSzoDOHgxg2t/s1600/corporatePersonhood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0XjUNAPR9wyJ6acSkx0RYcxP3cDG5hNsaP6TQwqYzPcwDPm4Uc30UIUoTFcgytywITII4MybmGdvsk01fgMK6s6bmgBkeCoZ2uA2U1NQYl-wXMJ9DyJOOc9sSS59kTdlCSzoDOHgxg2t/s400/corporatePersonhood.jpg" width="336" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">"If the corporation is a 'person,' what kind of person is it?" Sketch by Laurie Menard</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<br />
Dear President Obama,<br />
<br />
In your speech to Congress on September 9, you said, “Insurance executives don't do this because they are bad people. They do it because it’s profitable.”<br />
<br />
Question: With respect, how did we come to this place, where those who injure others in a for-profit scheme, or system, remain in our good graces, to escape a designation as “bad people?” And when did making a profit become a justification for policies that injure American citizens?<br />
<br />
Mr. President, what would America look like today had Lincoln said, “Well, the slave masters don’t do it because they are bad people. They do it because it’s profitable.”? What if he had said, “If you’re starting from scratch, then liberation from slavery would probably make sense. But managing the transition would be difficult. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive.”? How would that work for you, Mr. President, had the federal government not recognized the essential immorality of slavery, that is, bad people doing bad things to innocent people? We’d be in pretty sad shape, it seems to me.<br />
<br />
And we are in sad shape now, with regard to health care. While 44,000 Americans die each year for lack of access to health care, the CEO of United Healthcare hustles off with a compensation of $3,241,042 million, and he remains in our good graces. If 44,000 Americans died by terrorist attacks in one year, would we be so blind to the true character of the terrorists? No. But deaths for lack of access to health care hugely outnumber deaths by terrorist attacks. I ask you: who are the bad guys, Mr. President? Who are the worst of the worst terrorists?<br />
<br />
It seems to me it is time to act on a vision for an ethical and moral America, and that means recognizing the character of an industry for what it is, before we decide how to deal with it.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
Perhaps we have a very different hierarchy of values. In mine, profit, wealth and power are not above the moral, human values of care, respect, equality and justice. To my mind, any person, CEO, corporation, or politician that places private wealth above those more human values, and injures others in the process of conducting business, is a bad person. Sure, nobody’s perfect, but unless we are willing to shame the underlying mentality and character of people who do bad things on a grand scale, how can we ever eliminate their power to injure and control us?<br />
<br />
Perhaps it is time for us to examine the notions that permit the suffering caused to others by the quest for profit: the notion of “greed is good,” for example; the notion of entitlement to wealth, undeterred by conscience, that is, “it’s not personal, it’s only business;” the notion that wealth connotes virtue, no matter the corrupt, inhumane practices that might have produced it.<br />
<br />
I understand that you have met insurance executives and perhaps found them to be charming and intelligent. But please consider what the Canadian psychologist Robert Hare has brought to our understanding of human psychology, a check list of personality and behavior traits common to psychopaths. I do believe these traits are not only common to criminal psychopaths, but also to professional sociopaths in business and politics:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">superficial charm<br />
grandiose ego<br />
conning or manipulativeness<br />
pathological lying<br />
lack of remorse or guilt<br />
lack of empathy<br />
failure to accept responsibility for one’s actions.</span><br />
<br />
These are traits fostered and nurtured in the business world, on Wall Street, and even in politics, are they not? Isn’t it time we question “values” that promote sociopaths into successful careers, where they feel free to injure the rest of society for their own selfish ends?<br />
<br />
Mr. President, you also said you want to be the last president to work for health care reform. You want to fix the system. I believe you, but it saddens me to see your being undermined by your own good, practical nature, your desire to work with the system we’ve got and the people who profit from it. I am sorry to say, this path will not make you the last to work for health care reform; that can only happen when we see a REAL alternative to the current system, in order to eliminate the corrupt power of insurance companies. Without an option that would provide health care for minimum wage workers, the homeless, and the jobless, that is, all human persons, America will remain a cruel place to live for millions of people. Only a national healthcare system, like that of Canada, or France, or even England, will do the job.<br />
<br />
You say you don’t want to eliminate the insurance companies. But you must know that’s a spurious concern, one that ignores the fact that in countries with national health care systems, insurance companies still exist.<br />
<br />
Please stop making nice with the bad guys, Mr. President.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-64593656790682303232009-05-19T13:12:00.000-07:002009-10-22T17:57:52.196-07:00Obama's Gitmo Scandal: Torture Unabated<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fSdj4Lu_oo8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fSdj4Lu_oo8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-28761989713214842472009-05-15T13:59:00.000-07:002009-10-22T14:31:48.011-07:00This Government Subsidy: The Answer?<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The City of Escondido in California ponders the question</span></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /> <br />At a recent Escondido City Council meeting, a former city council member stood up and reiterated the advice often offered by right-wing conservatives to the poor, the unemployed, the uninsured and the powerless, which is, “Government is not the answer.” If only someone had shouted, “Tell it to the corporations, Sir!” Or, with reference to the specific case now most foolishly under consideration by the city council, the Marriott Hotel deal, “Tell it to C.W. Clark!”<br /> <br />Clearly, to private entities such as C.W. Clark’s La Jolla based real estate development company, government is very much the answer. Should the city approve the deal, the city will fork over a $19 million subsidy out of a budget already in deficit, while also leasing the land tax free for ten years, by assuming, dubiously, the franchiser will stick around once it becomes clear there’s no market for the beast in downtown Escondido.<br /> <br />Given the recession, revenues and hotel occupancy rates for local hotels are already suffering. Best Western’s occupancy, for example, currently wavers at approximately 25%. The other hotels are not hugely better off.<br /> <br />To complicate the questions begged here, it has to be noted that the city has not revealed an inclination to require the franchise Marriott to hire local residents, nor to provide living-wage jobs, nor any other benefits to employees such as pensions and health insurance; and since the Marriott, corporate or franchise (2/3rds of all Marriotts are franchises), is not unionized, this government will satisfy yet another gift-wish of the corporate mind—profits made of poverty wages.<br /> <br />This is what is known as, I do believe, a “sweetheart deal.” But why ask the question, “Unless visitors are having trouble booking rooms, why put up another hotel?” Why ask the question, “In a democracy, shouldn’t the taxpayers have the right to say No to boondoggles that do nothing to improve the community or represent sane economic development?” The answers are irrelevant— where politicians are allied with business—both in spirit and personally—there will be subsidies to business, especially if the benefits are going to a company and its stockholders, at the expense of taxpayers, with no loss of skin off the corporate nose (Clark’s).<br /> <br />Notice that apparently the corporate Marriott is not interested in Escondido—perhaps because Mr. Marriott knows it would not be a prudent choice, given the market?<br /><br /> <br /><a href="http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:FNHF0F8l8YAJ:www.ppgbuffalo.org/resources/Missing%2Bthe%2BTarget%2B2009%2B02%2B06.pdf+%22david+cay+johnston%22+%2B%22hotel+subsidies%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a">Item</a>: “Hotels do not draw tourists to a region; they simply compete with each other for the tourists’ trade. Furthermore, hospitality industry jobs tend to be among the worst paying jobs in the economy: chambermaids, desk clerks, food service workers, etc...They do more harm than good for the residents of a city.”<br /><br /> <a href="http://develop.wikispaces.com/page/code/hotel+subsidies">Item</a>: “ If the market is really there, you don't need public assistance. And if it's not there, don't build. All you do is hurt the hotels already in the market, and that's what's been happening for 20 years."<br /><br /> Still, why? What has possessed Escondido’s City Council? Whether the city council members who support this deal sincerely think a franchise Marriott hotel will provide revenue to the city and help balance the budget; or whether they are handicapped by a habit of mind, unable to think outside a free-market, cool-aid box toward enlightened, green economic options and new ideas for a rich, sustainable future; whether they might be getting kick-backs or <a href="http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/09/11/news/06seventhmarket091108.txt%20">gifts</a> (not an unheard-of possibility)—well, who knows? The agreement will be negotiated “in closed session,” i.e., behind closed doors, as usual—no vote by citizens, no citizen oversight, no citizen voice present and holding sway over corporate and pro-business mind-sets. No transparency. We are left to wonder, and wonder we do, with letters, emails, blog posts, polls, and speeches by pro-community entities—pro-police union, pro-firefighters, parks, recreation areas, library, etc.—hoping common sense prevails.<br /> <br />We are left to wonder, to trust our elected officials to do the right thing. If they don’t, what will the city say to under-staffed and under-equipped police and firefighters; to kids unable to find safe and attractive parks and recreation areas to play in; to parents of kids without any place to play but on streets occupied by gangs; to residents who can’t find living-wage jobs; to students who find the library is closed just when they need it most? What will the city say— “So, how is that Marriott working out for you?”<br /> <br />In truth, good government can be the answer; bad government—engaging in double standards, socialism for wealthy developers but a cruel-world ideology for taxpayers and ordinary citizens—must not be the answer. Good government is not socialism; instead, it is a mixed economy, where a balance of private and public interests prevail.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-73168497882006191092009-02-23T18:08:00.000-08:002009-02-23T18:09:25.492-08:00The Chimp Cartoon: Stop, Look Both Ways...<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">...before you and free speech get flattened by that run-away bus. </span><br /></span><br /> I am thinking of the cover of the June 1978 <span style="font-style:italic;">Hustler Magazine</span>, where a female was being cutely processed through a manual meat grinder (go find it yourself), legs and bottom balanced above at the funnel, with the ground-up product accumulating below on a plate. I remember being outraged by the illustration. I remember feeling the collective humiliation of my gender, understanding that the hatred and fear informing such a cartoon <span style="font-style:italic;">was our world</span>, where disgust, loathing and shame have their way with us every day —rape, battering, lower wages— where, on the cover of a national men’s magazine, Woman is rendered into meat.<br /> Ten years later, the Supreme <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell">Court</a> would defend Hustler and Larry Flint. You can read all about it yourself, but for the purpose of today’s post I give you this from the majority opinion: “The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events – an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal. This was certainly true of the cartoons of Thomas Nast, who skewered Boss Tweed in the pages of Harper's Weekly. From a historical perspective, political discourse would have been considerably poorer without such cartoons.” <br /> Since then, it became a comfort for me to place the value of free speech and political discussion above the values of civility, equality, and even dignity. It was a matter of growing up.<br /> And the world has seen many such challenges to our faith in freedom of speech. For example, in 2005 the Danish <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy">newspaper</a> Jyllands-Posten Jyllands-Posten published twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, leading to a cultural clash between the Western tradition of free speech and Islamic tradition prohibiting pictorial representations of Muhammad. The outrage of believers was everywhere—protest, death and terrorist threats, murder. I cheered the newspaper and condemned the protesters—hooray for free speech, down with religious idiocy!<br /><br /> Now we have a national newspaper publishing an invidious cartoon, where —and this is my interpretation— the authors of the “Stim” are likened to a chimpanzee. I say “authors,” because to my knowledge the Stim was not authored by one person, President Obama, but by Democrats in Congress. This may be too literal for some and seeming to avoid an obvious implication, still, here we go again—the wild rumpus has begun, with wounded outrage spilling onto the streets: “We are not monkeys, we are not monkeys!”<br /> One has to honor the wound expressed there, however. The horrors of white racism are so egregious, it is simply beyond reasonable to expect blacks to accept racist speech, even if unintended, without a protest; it is just too sensitive. Certainly, within the metaphor of America as family, we cannot ignore the injury of profound humiliation found in simian depictions of blacks, comparisons which continue to compound the collective, undermining shame blacks must resist on a daily basis. So, of course, there had to be a response.<br /> Still, it might be important to step back and consider a few realities. First, even if the intent of the cartoon was an insult to Obama himself, we have to remember that he is the President of the United States, not a second-class member of a dysfunctional family. He is no powerless, helpless, oppressed child of the realm. He, as a public figure, must now accept the verbal and visual attacks natural to his position. Certainly, I doubt we will witness President Obama’s personal outrage over this incident. He knows better than to honor such insults with a response. He knows the First Amendment to the Constitution; he will not tell the newspaper what it can publish and what it cannot publish—he’s not George W. Bush, after all. (Who, by the way, was likened to a chimp on a daily basis.)<br /> I sense here a headiness of new-found power in some of the protests. It is the will and spirit that oppressed people sometimes discover, once their oppressions fall away, and they find themselves in power. It is that which transforms them into those they previously despised in another life, to turn around and do to their oppressors what their oppressors had done to them. Where their rights were abused, they will abuse rights in turn.<br /> I sense the creation of a sacred cow too —speaking of animal metaphors— a people who consider their sufferings so far above any other in this world that they must never be subject to the same rule of law as other ordinary citizens. Israel comes to mind. They should be forever above criticism, too sensitive for normal democratic relationships and ordinary respect for the rights of others. <br /> Let's be careful of that, lest censorship be granted a right, by virtue of special-case sensitivity. Ask the Palestinians if this has worked for them.<br /> Finally, I have to admit I cringed, not at the cartoon, but at the protestors’ knee-jerk identification of chimpanzee as self, as if they had internalized the message so powerfully as to own it. Perhaps this is wrong-headed and insensitive of me, a white woman, but, I have to ask: if you recognize yourself in a representation, aren’t you projecting your own self-definition onto it? For example, if a public figure reads a novel and complains to the press that the villain in the book is there to insult him, hasn’t he admitted his own culpability? While I realize blacks are recognizing <span style="font-style:italic;">someone else’s</span> racist definition of blacks, the risk is still there—by recognizing themselves in the visual metaphor they validate and empower the insult, and complaining about it makes it true, in the most ironically unfair way. When Richard Nixon protested, “I am not a crook!” didn’t we smile —not unfairly in that case— but we smiled just the same.<br /> I think it might be better to claim the insult as a compliment—hey, we <span style="font-style:italic;">all</span> share DNA with chimps. 98%. We <span style="font-style:italic;">are</span> primates, so how about we celebrate our primatehood?<br /> As for me, I think chimps are superior creatures...and, by the way, the chimpanzee in question had been medicated by his idiot owner with Xanax, an anti-depressant. What chimp oppressions he’d had to endure before he attacked is unknown. But that’s another story, and right now I would rather think the 2% difference between chimps and us is perhaps what makes them superior—at least they don’t go around turning <span style="font-style:italic;">us</span> into pets!<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-48398710183974176062009-01-11T13:20:00.000-08:002009-01-11T13:38:55.303-08:00Democrats Soft on Bush Crimes: No Looking Back, Please <br />Apparently, the Democrats are content to allow Bush and Cheney's crimes to go unpunished. They have generously decided to forgive all, in a spirit of "looking forward, not backward." (<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/21/biden-prosecuting-torture/">Biden</a>) <br /><br />Maybe Patrick Fitzgerald should drop the Blagojevich investigation in the same spirit, so that he can focus on the future, not the past. Maybe all criminals should get off scot-free, since focusing on past crimes is such a waste of time and resources.<br /><br />No? Oh, I get it: The crimes of the Big Guys must remain invisible, must be ignored. It's an entitlement of power. The bigger the crime, and the greater the status of the perpetrator, the more we have to pretend nothing happened. Ordinary criminals—now that's a different story. Without them, how could we pretend to honor the rule of law?<br /><br />What an insane culture this is.<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-40785207084837453562008-12-10T20:32:00.000-08:002008-12-10T20:39:04.537-08:00Obama’s PNAC: B.A.R.F.F.<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">“When you wake, you will remember nothing of this...”</span></span><br /><br /><br /> Sparrow, in the December issue of the Sun Magazine, suggests changing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the Federal Bureau of <span style="font-style:italic;">Introspection</span>. He writes, “Imagine if, instead of collaring suspects, lingering in pizza parlors, and muttering into walkie-talkies, our agents simply sat in dark rooms with eyes closed, searching within?”<br /> I sense a kindred spirit there. But how lovely such a change would be. Not only would Americans be safer from the violations of their constitutional rights by government agents, those made all the more egregious during the Bush Administration —the Patriot Act, etc.— American citizens would be in a position reminiscent of Mother: “Go to your room right now and think about what you’ve done!” <br /> Instead of FBI agents —the not-so civil-libertarian kind— projecting their dastardly tendencies toward tyranny onto hapless, innocent citizens, they’d have to sit there and look inward. What a radical, new idea for them!<br /><br /> As one of those lonely, still-disappointed-in-Obama progressives, I would like to suggest a foundation which will do for the Obama Administratin (BOA) what the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) did for the Bush Administration, that is, expose the philosophy and spirit behind the madness. This would be the “Barack Amnesiac Reflexive Forgetting Foundation, or, BARFF. After all, it is going to be important for all Obamniacs to pretend everything is changing for the better, that President Obama is fulfilling his promises, that there’s reason for hope, that they can maintain their perky positivity, without fear of being disturbed by us party-pooper, reality mongers who keep jumping up and down, waving our hands in their faces and trying to ruin their moods with facts and reminders about what Barack promised. <br /> With BARFF, the whole idea will be to forget and forgive all, no matter how difficult it becomes, no matter how the stomach churns.<br /> But it won’t be all that difficult, to wit: I noticed recently, in an NPR news report, how the “reporter” allowed Bush to get away with saying they’d had “bad intelligence” on Saddam’s supposed WMD’s, and that the war in Iraq, therefore, wasn’t his fault. No correction was made, no mention of the <a href="http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:ceXnql410s4J:downingstreetmemo.com/docs/memotext.pdf+memo+%2B%22intelligence+fixed%22+%2BDowning&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a">Downing</a> Street Memo, which reported that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” or how contradictory intelligence from the CIA was suppressed and ignored, or about the outing of Valerie Plame, that whole scandal. This cooperation by the media, with reflexive forgetting and willful amnesia will make the job all the easier.<br /> It will be up to Obamniacs to continue to forget in this way, as they learned to do back when Barack appeared (“appeared,” because this reality is quickly dimming from consciousness) to betray his promise to filibuster any attempts to give the telecoms immunity from prosecution, when he flip-flopped, voted Yes on the FISA bill anyway, without even the mere peep of a filibuster, granting the telecoms immunity, in service to the notion of hopeful forgetting, I suppose—and change. After all, Obama promised <span style="font-style:italic;">change</span>, so.... <span style="font-style:italic;">he</span> changed! What’s the problem?<br /> BARFF will give excellent cover for Obama’s failures to fix Bush-era legislative atrocities. It will further the cause of ignoring the death of civil liberty in the United States.<br /> Take, for example, AETA, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, passed by Congress and signed by Bush in 2006 in a staggering moment of collective, ethical forgetting and feeble-mindedness. The Center for Constitutional Rights has this to say about the law: “The Act is part of a trend known as the ‘Green Scare,’ which refers to the recent crackdown on environmental and animal rights activists under the guise of the current administration’s so-called ‘war on terror.’ Passed at the behest of corporate interests [including the American Psychological Association] that profit from animal torture during the research process, but encompassing any business that uses animals or is related to such a business, the AETA penalizes and drastically criminalizes any activity that affects the physical or economic operation of an animal enterprise, even without any loss to the business.” <br /> This means that if you discover your kitten ended up at a research lab and is being...whatever horrible torture!....and you decide to hold up a sign outside the lab, you can be prosecuted as a “terrorist.” Disregard that “there have been no documented incidences of injury or death caused by and environmental or animal action in the U.S.” (CCR) <br /> See, in case you didn’t know it, humans —that is, humans making a profit— come before animals and their little feelings. End of story. Of course, WE FORGET that animal feelings are not less than, nor unlike, our own, and may be felt all the more intensely, given animal confusion, helplessness, and vulnerability (added suffering)— and it is basically immoral and unethical to cause the suffering of an other in order to further one’s own life, for whatever reason; but forgetting and unknowing is our business, and we do it well.<br /> What does this have to do with the Obama Administration? Well, surely the “change” we were hoping for was the end of such injustice, those Bush-era injustices where profits always come before people, animals, and the environment, where the real criminals, corporate and otherwise, triumph at the expense of decent people and decent values. The hope of such a restoration of justice, in support of ethical values, was implicit in the Obama victory. It was part of what we longed for. But, we have yet to see if Obama truly shares our values and will eliminate the excesses of the Bush Administration, excesses such as AETA. The impression we’re beginning to get from Obama track record so far is that he is big on PR, but small on delivery. We suspect two faces there, one that looks good to us, the other that looks good to the right-wing and corporate America, and it’s the latter that is the real Obama.<br /> I can see it now...<br /> BOA will, in the face of pressure by environmental activists and animal rights activists to overthrow AETA, suggest hearings, invite letters, and Obama himself will speak movingly about the need to protect animals from needless suffering. However, behind the scenes, BARFF will effectively render the protests impotent, through propaganda —ads, for example, showing clever cartoons of happy cats and dogs on their way to the research lab, a soft landscape of gentle brooks and meadows peopled by scientists dressed in cozy, PJ-like outfits— and by stigmatizing any and all stirrings of conscience with regard to animal suffering, by the infusion into the media of negative stereotyping and labeling: “Violent Old Ladies with Cats (VOLC);” “Animal Coddler-Terrorists;” “Anti-science Cult Killers,” etc., which would be the stick, aside from the prosecutions. The carrot would be the blessed sleep of forgetting and unknowing— “President Obama’s in charge...everything’s going to be okay....”<br /> <br /> Sweet dreams...enjoy your Obasms.<br /><br /><br />L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-44483072301243200512008-12-02T12:39:00.000-08:002008-12-10T19:34:12.472-08:00Don't Worry, Progressives: Obama Will Lead the Way (wink, wink...)By Joel Mittlemann<br />San Diego, California<br /><br /> Responding to criticism that he has failed so far to appoint even one progressive from the “Democratic wing” of the Democratic Party to his team, President-elect Obama insisted during his press conference yesterday that the change he envisions will come from his leadership, not from his staff or cabinet.<br /> “Don’t look at the people I surround myself with. Look to me. Ultimately, policy decisions will emanate from me, by the spirit of change I have promised and intend to honor.” <br /> He then repeated much of what he had said in ads and campaign speeches, with some important differences: “Instead of prosperity trickling down, pain has trickled up. Working family incomes have fallen by two thousand dollars a year. We're losing jobs. Deficits are exploding. Our economy's in turmoil. Simply put, laissez-faire capitalism is a failure. Let’s face it—it isn’t working. We cannot possibly drive down the very same path. Instead of giving hundreds of billions in new tax breaks to big corporations, the wealthy elite and oil companies, I plan on restoring a mixed economy, with serious regulations on big business. Then we need a repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, to restore workers’ right to form unions. Instead of more tax breaks for corporations that outsource American jobs, I'll give them to companies who create jobs here. Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest -- I'll focus on the middle class and the poor. We’re going to end NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, the IMF, HMO’s, as well as create a single-payer health care system. <br /> It doesn’t matter that the people I’ve got on my team have been hard-core, right-wingers and central players in the economic and moral crisis that faces America—they’ve seen the light, and it is held by me. I will lead the way, don’t you worry about that.”<br /> Asked why, if he intended on ending Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans immediately upon his inauguration, he appeared to be abandoning that idea to say he might simply allow them to expire in 2011, President-elect Obama said that given the economic crisis, he needed to focus on “more pressing issues.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UPDATE:</span><br /><br /> President-elect Obama has reportedly charged his economic team to develop a plan for the future implementation of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Greater Regional Advantage Free Trade Agreement</span>, or, GRAFTA. He assured reporters the plan would include safeguards for American jobs, the environment, and the human rights of the poor all over the world. This reporter thought President-elect Obama winked when he said that, but others thought it was just a twitch.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHbeewzxg-ilgksK6bc7Z7lklwnmlg8RQGerA_t_A_fkUndtz2Jp8_n1D_otanW4xOCaXLzw0dWbjcrCaAqwWVHpCDeosOPW7tISG3IQfitL2DYR2kIqA7iq9lQvKc4AT5nw-vcmigWK5/s1600-h/smileyWink.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 72px; height: 72px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHbeewzxg-ilgksK6bc7Z7lklwnmlg8RQGerA_t_A_fkUndtz2Jp8_n1D_otanW4xOCaXLzw0dWbjcrCaAqwWVHpCDeosOPW7tISG3IQfitL2DYR2kIqA7iq9lQvKc4AT5nw-vcmigWK5/s200/smileyWink.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275296856778658178" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-36866658737025043772008-11-19T17:29:00.000-08:002008-11-25T09:22:58.001-08:00Eric “Chiquita Banana” Holder as Attorney General?<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Excuse me—it’s been lovely, but I have to scream now...</span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPUr5zXWtST6ZoMi1NmrYW1F8VX_sS-y6ypeQpF9liN-jSRNAdndAm7Ein2FEtakkFfnMzuEbNqc0u6wtoIzjrfy4r1rEXfKWWWYvVRjOAHjDloRl8lZc9LvjnYEKvTvf6Z4_HJMAiEsc/s1600-h/screamEricHolder.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPUr5zXWtST6ZoMi1NmrYW1F8VX_sS-y6ypeQpF9liN-jSRNAdndAm7Ein2FEtakkFfnMzuEbNqc0u6wtoIzjrfy4r1rEXfKWWWYvVRjOAHjDloRl8lZc9LvjnYEKvTvf6Z4_HJMAiEsc/s400/screamEricHolder.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270549317250779202" /></a> This morning I woke with a headache felt mostly in my left eye—a symbolic gesture, I suppose, referring to the pain of disillusionment I’m feeling, after my surrender to Obamaphoria in the moments just before and after the election. But don’t get me wrong—I’m not blaming Obama. I knew perfectly well his promise wasn’t real, and I chose to ignore my instincts.<br /><br /> Let me exaggerate —after all, it’s so much more fun than tempering my reactions— to wit: the experience of waking to the realization that I’d compromised my integrity with my vote for Obama is the hyperbolic equivalent to the cultural joke where a guy wakes beside an ugly girl and realizes he was too drunk the night before to discern her true qualities; but in this case the characters have to be reversed, where it would be the girl who had too many margaritas and, seeing the guy though a tequila-induced blur, swooned, fell into his arms, then awoke to see the mistake she’d made—a snoring beast beside her in his beer-soaked, wife-beater T and reeking like a camel in rut. (“To court females and intimidate rivals, <a href="http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/1999/5/camelservicesurvival.cfm">rutting</a> males [camels] drool and spit and urinate like leaky fountains. They reek of an oily secretion that flows copiously from scent glands on their napes.”)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVtffllZrnh6jhbF663sv65KX9yLl8mC9VrO6M6W8O9PI4d1uRgbrGNp0PKQmquPv05TE2dnaSu9jQuoEsZeeWMKVR-2_lLog1oMccuJ5gPjIlLUKwxM1vJwNVsMEi5HraoSZXwXxIZba4/s1600-h/camelLove.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 197px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVtffllZrnh6jhbF663sv65KX9yLl8mC9VrO6M6W8O9PI4d1uRgbrGNp0PKQmquPv05TE2dnaSu9jQuoEsZeeWMKVR-2_lLog1oMccuJ5gPjIlLUKwxM1vJwNVsMEi5HraoSZXwXxIZba4/s200/camelLove.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270551108592032434" /></a><br /><br /> I mean, I realize a mere two weeks after the election is not enough to make an absolute judgment; but the trend in Obama’s pre-presidency is not smelling right so far —in fact, it’s smelling a whole lot like the oily secretion off the nape of some sort of hairy beast’s neck—perhaps the hairy beast of betrayal comes to mind?<br /> <br /> First, <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/6/president_elect_obama_and_the_future">Rahm</a> Emanuel</span> as his Chief of Staff—this stinks pretty bad; certainly it’s no change on U.S. support for Israel’s crimes of occupation and siege, for starters. Plus, he has close ties to the conservative, corporate-leaning DLC (Democratic Leadership Council), meaning no change on “free” trade and every other sort of corporate and hawkish policy, and representing no threat whatsoever to America’s right-wing powers-that-be.<br /><br /> But this one really reeks: <span style="font-weight:bold;">Eric Holder</span> as Attorney General, who has represented Merck (Vioxx/Fosamax) and <span style="font-weight:bold;">Chiquita Brands</span> at the D.C. law firm, Covington & Burling.<br /> No exaggeration: Obama's choice of Eric Holder for attorney general is deeply disappointing, even <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/murillo11192008.html">disturbing</a>, given that Holder was directly involved in negotiating for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/lawyer-for-chiquita-in-co_b_141919.html">Chiquita</a> Brands the slap-on-the-wrist it received for funding <span style="font-weight:bold;">death squads</span> in Columbia. <br /> Alberto Gonzalez was bad enough, but did he represent corporations that funded murderous terrorist organizations? (Not a rhetorical question.)<br /><br /> More evidence of foul odors rising from team Obama can be found if you go to <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/17/obama_taps_ex_cia_officials_tied">Democracy</a> Now! online, where you can find this, first the heading, “E<span style="font-weight:bold;">x-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team</span>;” then, “John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials under George Tenet, are leading Barack Obama’s review of intelligence agencies and helping make recommendations to the new administration. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and Miscik was involved with the politicized intelligence alleging weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war on Iraq</span>.”<br /> <br /> Not to mention how Obama sent <span style="font-weight:bold;">Madeline Albright</span> to the G20 summit, the same Madeline Albright who said the price —death— of half a million children in Iraq due to Clinton sanctions was worth it. <br /> Furthermore, when <span style="font-weight:bold;">Henry Kissinger</span> is happy about the prospect of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Hillary Clinton</span> as secretary of state, no kidding, I smell a rat.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO94WRKiuyFKyMUZFWXqwj0aZz4baSWC7Nyr2FKzCkBvORBHq2rfmOTyC1nMkjCwf22AgQZd6piyBRqSZYDQCqhjrWqikcO5uQ89qqIxgDqLN5hbrnB6O-gUPooR-m50H22siGzGsf_a4d/s1600-h/rat.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 185px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO94WRKiuyFKyMUZFWXqwj0aZz4baSWC7Nyr2FKzCkBvORBHq2rfmOTyC1nMkjCwf22AgQZd6piyBRqSZYDQCqhjrWqikcO5uQ89qqIxgDqLN5hbrnB6O-gUPooR-m50H22siGzGsf_a4d/s200/rat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270552348826462530" /></a><br /> And here comes <span style="font-weight:bold;">Tom Daschle</span> who, in 2006, endorsed the <span style="font-weight:bold;">warrantless domestic surveillance</span> program conducted by George W. Bush and the National Security Agency. Hello? You call this <span style="font-style:italic;">change</span>?<br /><br /> I am so tired of watching progressives swoon over Obama. How many times does he have to prove he is immune to pressure from the "grass roots," before progressives stop saying, "Well, we just have to organize and put pressure on him to do the right thing." It's clear: no matter his election mandate, no matter how big the marches get, and no matter how many times he responds by sweet-talking us about bringing change to America, change is not what we're going to see. Sure, he'll make a few good moves, but fundamentally, it's going to be the same ol' same ol' corporate empire, the same ol’ same ol’ military industrial complex, or, “America, the United States of Amnesia,” as Gore Vidal describes it.<br /><br /> As for me, from now on, I refuse to go amnesiac for Barack, ever again. I want to see a few true progressives in his cabinet. When that happens, I might temper my disgust. Until then, I won’t be sipping the kool-aid, whether it’s laced with poison or the mere stuff of boozy dreams.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UPDATE:</span><br /><br />The great journalist, Jeremy Scahill, has posted an excellent piece on Obama's foreign policy probables, with the title, <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House</span></span>. (At <a href="http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/107666/this_is_change_20_hawks,_clintonites_and_neocons_to_watch_for_in_obama's_white_house/">Alternet</a> )<br /><br />However, Glenn Greenwald defends the notion of Eric Holder as Attorney General, saying at Salon, “Anybody who believes in core liberties should want even the most culpable parties to have zealous representation before the Government can impose punishments or other sanctions. Lawyers who defend even the worst parties are performing a vital service for our justice system.” (At Salon's <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/19/holder/index.html">blog</a> )<br /><br />I normally agree with everything Greenwald says, but in this case, no. It’s one thing to defend a client; it’s another to negotiate a sweetheart deal that basically lets corporate criminals off the hook. You cannot tell me Holder’s heart wasn’t on the side of Chiquita Brands. Also, you cannot compare the defense of a powerless or poor defendant with that of a mega-powerful defendant, as Greenwald tries to do. Eric Holder was not forced to work for a corporate law firm that would require him to defend the likes of Merck and Chiquita Brands. That was his choice, a choice that represents his values and core allegiances.<br /><br />Ralph Nader would agree with Greenwald’s point that all defendants deserve a vigorous defense, but would he put himself in a position where he had to be the one to defend corporate criminals? Impossible to imagine. It would never happen. And that’s the difference: Holder’s allegiance, revealed by his choice to represent corporations against the interests of victims of corporate crime, is with private, corporate power; Nader’s allegiance is with public —ordinary citizens, workers, victims of corporate crime— power, that is, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. <br /><br />Judging by Obama’s choices so far, and regardless of the sweet-talk, it’s clear Obama will ignore the notion of people-power. Too bad he didn’t consider the likes of Ralph Nader (but there's nobody <span style="font-style:italic;">quite like</span> Ralph) for Attorney General. But he didn’t. And that tells us a great deal.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UPDATE II</span><br /><br />Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secy...worked for Kissinger & Associates, the IMF...need I say more? I rest my case. (For an enlightening discussion, one you'll never hear in mainstream news, of Obama's economic team, see Democracy Now! <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/naomi_klein_robert_kuttner_and_michael">11/25/08</a>.)<br /><br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-25249131152514179212008-11-11T14:19:00.000-08:002008-11-13T22:17:00.752-08:00Dove Tale for Veteran's Day <br /> Yesterday, I spotted a dove resting in the middle of my garden. I nearly missed her, for she was perfectly still and camouflaged against the dry soil and grayed oak planter behind her. I thought, “What a smart dove you are to choose that spot to rest in—what predator would see you there, so quietly blending with your surroundings?” But why she was there at all, I couldn’t tell.<br /> It was such a rare event. Doves visit my place regularly, to eat from the feeder on the balcony, or to sit in the pine tree, but never do they stay ground-level for more than a minute or two. Cats are always present; coyotes, occasionally. The orange, polydactyl feral cat, my adoptee, was there yesterday too, napping on the patio bench, then later moving to her look-out tree to groom herself—without once noticing the dove.<br /> I kept an eye on her for two hours, while I read my book, until about 5:30 p.m. During that time, I worried over her, using my binoculars to get an up-close view. She hardly moved, except for blinking her perfect round eye and rotating her head this way and that; I could not see if she was wounded, or stunned, or just plain frozen with fear. I was tempted to approach her to get the answer, and rescue her if need be. But something held me back— “Let’s trust in nature’s wisdom and just wait and see...” I would go out, but only if a predator approached.<br /> Then, as day’s end and darkness approached, she began to relax, to test herself, moving to another position, extending her wings, flapping them briefly, tentatively; and that’s when, with a long stretch of her neck toward the near-by pine, she took off, up into the branches, where she disappeared.<br /> I don’t know exactly why this event made me as happy as it did. Most people wouldn’t be attached to a mere bird’s success, so very happy about a dove’s flight to safety, after a long, fearful wait. It’s one thing to be relieved and glad for the bird. But such dancing for joy...I don’t know.<br /> Perhaps the event reminded me of something. Perhaps it just felt right, coming after last week’s political revelations. After all, wasn’t it so true— spirit long suppressed; spirit finally released? <br /><br /> Eighteen American veterans per day die by suicide. Let me not, in my happiness, forget them.<br /> <br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-82151341445906239102008-11-10T11:10:00.000-08:002008-11-13T19:25:58.205-08:00Leaks Unplugged on Obama Appointees<span style="font-weight:bold;">Picks for poetic justice, though improbable, are <span style="font-style:italic;">Nice Dreams</span> for progressive Obama supporters</span><br /><br />By Mistee Laurie, C.P.I<br /><br />Despite all efforts to plug leaks as to who is to do what and where in the Obama Administration, a few surprising names have trickled out, to the astonishment of all.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But, why not?</span><br /><br />Just as Bush had set off alarm bells for progressives with his appointments —for everything from the U.N. ambassador and the top state department post for Latin American affairs, to his appointment of a convicted Reagan administration official to head a National Security Council office, to Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzalez, “Heckuva-job Brownie” Michael Brown, Monica Goodling, Swift Boat Veterans donor Sam Fox, <span style="font-weight:bold;">where competence, experience and qualifications for the job were less important than crony status, donor status, or ideological conformity—</span> Obama is setting off alarm bells for the far right.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1of2YDny4fKfBb_guCqRdYEuEGnJjqnIkWvnUohLmuqs5eH6fkTxFl3CRVeI_Kc79Jn31J00g-2Svmfi2S6AE81XQtQMC8eIHe-Iv1DD8QpRDHHBh4KB3CVmNiNnJKl1CjlIADasByhyphenhyphen/s1600-h/swatTeamChong.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 386px; height: 376px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1of2YDny4fKfBb_guCqRdYEuEGnJjqnIkWvnUohLmuqs5eH6fkTxFl3CRVeI_Kc79Jn31J00g-2Svmfi2S6AE81XQtQMC8eIHe-Iv1DD8QpRDHHBh4KB3CVmNiNnJKl1CjlIADasByhyphenhyphen/s400/swatTeamChong.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267109141887982802" /></a>Progressives still remember the wacky world of life during the G.W. Bush Administration—the surreal zealotry of Justice Department prosecutions, best exemplified by the conviction of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Tommy Chong</span> for the sale of <span style="font-style:italic;">bongs</span>, Bushite contempt for accountability, felt most acutely by <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cindy Sheehan</span> when her request to meet with Bush was denied, and her question, <span style="font-weight:bold;">“What was the noble cause my son died for?</span>,” went unanswered; remember the frenzy of kitschy outrage over Natalie Marin’s mere exercise of her First Amendment rights, and the banning by Clear Channel of the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Dixie Chicks</span> from country western stations all across the nation; remember the faith-based initiative, how tax dollars were funneled to religious —read, Christian— organizations, where proselytizing to poor folks was the norm; remember the freak-out during the election campaign over Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers?<br /><br />Well, if the leaks are true, perhaps Obama has decided to embrace the precedence Bush set with his appointments, to make a few not-so qualified —but well deserved— picks of his own:<br /><br />Tommy Chong, Administrator of the D.E.A. <br /><br />Dixie Chick Natalie Maines to head the F.C.C.<br /><br />Michael Moore, Secretary of Health and Human Services <br /><br />Cindy Sheehan, Secretary of Defense<br /><br /><br />Whether the leaks prove true is yet to be revealed. We can only hope.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-28207279370814433732008-11-05T09:48:00.000-08:002008-11-05T09:56:09.516-08:00My Values Vote for...<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">...and why I'm so happy to have been wrong</span></span>.<br /><br />What could make a person, a Democrat who had been critical of Barack Obama, be so happy over his election, and so happy to be wrong about my fears the Republicans would steal the election again, and get away with it, again? <br /><br />First, what happened in my polling booth... it was a rainy morning. I still hadn’t decided whether I would vote for Ralph or Barack. But, somehow, in that booth it occurred to me that I didn’t want to come to the end of my life and realize I hadn’t voted for the first Democratic African-American President of the United States. And so I found myself filling in the oval next to the name, Barack Obama. Was it racist, a kind of reverse Bradley effect, to vote for someone because of his race? Maybe. All I know is that the long-suffering of Blacks in America —and healing it— seemed more important to me in that booth than the recent suffering of the American people via Bush’s spy program, that Barack approved with his vote on FISA. (Which had been the last straw for me, where Obama was concerned, and what sent me running to Ralph.)<br /><br />So, as to the fears: I am always happy when my fears turn out to be unfounded. In this case, because Republicans managed to cheat their way into the White House in the past two presidential elections, I had reason to believe they’d do it again. I wasn’t about to set myself up for another disappointment, where I believed the polls and simply went on faith.<br /><br />Obama’s victory, while not restoring my faith in the Democratic Party, or in his intentions to make the right choices and policies —not quite yet— does restore my faith in election integrity. At least the thing works when so many people come out to vote that Rovian crimes fail. That’s something to cheer about— the restoration of democracy...at least in so far as a two-party system can restore it.<br /><br />Best of all, though, was the beautiful, beautiful sight of tears on faces —Jesse Jackson, Oprah, and everyday African Americans— and knowing what this moment in history means for them. Imagine the children, how being Black and being proud has come to life in a whole new way. For them, I am very, very happy, indeed.<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-20650392079359706052008-11-04T21:49:00.000-08:002008-11-04T21:51:40.539-08:00YAY!!! I WAS WRONG!!!More to come...<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-2384721764848750192008-11-03T20:34:00.000-08:002008-11-03T20:43:10.355-08:00Election Eve Fear and Loathing<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Republican election fraud—practice makes perfect:<br />Will this one be stolen too?</span></span><br /><br />Watching Countdown tonight, it was so frustrating to listen to Keith and What’s-his-name talking about how McCain’s campaign offices are all lonesome and bleak, lacking the bustle and enthusiasm of Obama’s campaign offices. So I’m thinking, What does McCain and his staff care? They know they're going to "win"... by CHEATING!<br /><br />I hope I'm wrong, but what has changed since 2000 and 2004 to prevent the Republicans from stealing yet another election? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except that they're practice-perfect now. Get ready for a big, stinking upset. How do I know? Check this out, today’s interview with Mark Crispin Miller: <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/3/on_eve_of_election_day_is">DemocracyNow!</a><br /><br />Tonight I received an email from John McCain. But when I went to unsubscribe from the mailing list, the unsubscribe feature was set up so that you couldn’t unsubscribe without checking a reason —that is, four or five choices offered. Every choice of reason began with, “I am a John McCain supporter, but...” Naturally, I wasn’t going to choose any of those, so I just hit “unsubscribe.” It wouldn’t go. I had to go back to the email and send a reply, requesting they remove my email address from their list. Bastards! A Republican prank?<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-41462305032014391842008-10-20T13:38:00.000-07:002008-11-03T11:02:31.688-08:00Little Lies and Big Lies<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Derrick Jensen is right:<br />our way of life requires a taboo against telling the truth.</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyUj6OgOK8mMkkzu_CZmPwftRdvB0-WB6M7y756Be6IOsS-m5obTzObIkXJIWHRu70mjXYeF2exyTNgW-huJM08ZlcYU_3dGIOkIFyQMIuHqhbKLMJl_jqvgAjPPZJMPIt9ok8n6OkWWbP/s1600-h/languageBetter.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyUj6OgOK8mMkkzu_CZmPwftRdvB0-WB6M7y756Be6IOsS-m5obTzObIkXJIWHRu70mjXYeF2exyTNgW-huJM08ZlcYU_3dGIOkIFyQMIuHqhbKLMJl_jqvgAjPPZJMPIt9ok8n6OkWWbP/s400/languageBetter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259345613055300658" /></a><br /> Let me tell you a little story, to start. It was during the weeks after the attacks of 9-11, when it seemed my entire city was waving the U.S. flag and wanting to bomb the hell out of somebody, anybody.<br /> I was skeptical about it all, from the start. I hated the flag-waving and the lack of any sort of historical self-awareness that would temper the blood-thirsty patriotism all around me. (I live near Camp Pendleton, after all.) <br /> A huge American flag was pinned to the wall in the lobby where I worked; tiny flags went up at our stations, and patriotic posters were put up on the walls. One poster in particular caught my eye. It was a photo of a Marine, saying good-bye to his little daughter. While I appreciated the sadness of the reality depicted there, I also recognized the poster as propaganda: left out of the picture, but present in my mind, was the horror about to be inflicted by that soldier and his army on innocent Iraqi children, mothers, and sons; left out of the picture was the uselessness of trying to fight cult criminals with an army.<br /> But my main problem was with the company’s response to 9-11, what I felt was the imposition of right-wing politics and jingoism on our environment, as if all the employees had to be gung-ho for the war or just shut up.<br /> My mistake was that I let slip my disapproval to a temporary supervisor. I didn’t say much, only that the picture was sad, but it was propaganda, and I thought such propaganda had no business being up on the walls in a work place.<br /> A week later, I happened to drop in to talk to our manager for a separate reason. I walked in rather meekly, as I remember, for this woman had demonstrated a capacity for ruthlessness on many occasions, and I didn’t want to rile the beast. She looked up when I spoke and gave me an amazing stern look. I remember she said, “That’s interesting...I’ve been mad at you for an entire week!” Cindy had told her what I’d said about the poster.<br /> So, still recovering from treatment for breast cancer and not wanting to lose my health insurance, <span style="font-weight:bold;">I lied</span>: “Oh no...not at all...” I said, and she took that to mean I was as gung-ho for the military as she, and the whole thing was a misunderstanding.<br /> Needless to say, Cindy got the cold shoulder from me for awhile. “But they told me I had to report <span style="font-style:italic;">everything</span>!” she said.<br /> <br /> In <span style="font-style:italic;">A Language Older than Words</span>, Derrick Jensen writes, “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.” <br /> There ya go, Cindy... <br /> While I was maintaining <span style="font-style:italic;">my</span> way of life, that is, working, and telling my little lies to management, I noticed the lies told by management as well, and the internalization of those lies by employees, all of which then became a blueprint for conflict—gossip, cliques, power struggles, shouting matches, cold shoulders, reprimands, and various degrees of verbal and psychological abuse.<br /> The first big unspoken lie that seemed implicit in corporate life, among the many, is that profit-making is the highest virtue. Within that lie is another: “we are an aggressive, predatory, ruthless and competitive species.”<br /> Another lie is that people are motivated by “self-interest,” that such interest is without of concern for others, entirely selfish and focused on the base values of the first big lie.<br /> Then there’s the hierarchy lie—that we are pack animals and must, in service to our basic natures, organize according to our sacred texts: upper/middle/lower; top/bottom; winners/losers; leaders/followers; victors/the vanquished, stars/average Joes/flunkies. (It's not that I think the notion that some people are better endowed than others is a lie; it's that such "superiority" entitles those with higher rank to humiliate others and deprive them of human dignity—that's the lie.)<br /> The most obvious lie behind management rules is that employees are stupid, lazy and wicked, and management’s job is to manage them—control, teach, discipline, exploit.<br /> None of these are new insights. I realize that.<br /> But I think even those of us who claim to have better values, at work or at home, behave in ways that honor those lies. It is nearly impossible to be free of them. Thus a relationship that could have provided human comfort and peace in an otherwise nurturant culture not bent on “success,” or productivity, or victory over others, instead goes cold, or hostile, or violent, or hateful, or, at the very least, passive-aggressive. <br /> Prof. George Lakoff claims that 95% of thought and emotion is subconscious. If true, this would explain why it is impossible to confront indirect hostility, because people who do it are hardly ever aware they’re doing it; thus you might hear your friend say to you, “But they said I had to report everything!” but you don’t want to lecture her on what should have been her loyalty to her peers, rather than to management—after all, that would be patronizing.<br /> You felt the stab in your back, but you would not convince her it was a stab in the back; she didn’t mean it that way, not consciously. And, anyway, could you possibly expose the lie that she supported by betraying my confidential remark, the lie that tells her that thinking for herself is a no-no and will get her fired? You cannot. You must instead protect the taboo against recognizing cooperation with power as a lie, as a detriment to well-being. <br /> Derrick Jensen concludes the same paragraph by saying, “And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destruction.”<br /> This means to me that all the little lies are like cells in the body of the big lies of our monster system, all serving to support the life of denial, our way of life.<br /> The myth of self-responsibility serves such denial too, it seems to me, on behalf of the system at large. Take, for example, my attempt to include the competitiveness feature of our culture as blameworthy in family conflicts as well. In a conversation with a family member, this notion had to be immediately recognized as “not taking personal responsibility” for one’s choices, behavior, personality flaws and so forth. This to my mind is the lie of personal power and responsibility that we all buy into, while ignoring all the factors in life that have the power to crush personal power and personal will—the fear of getting fired, for example, or poverty, inequality of education, opportunity, encouragement; cruelty, unfairness, injustice, competition, and hierarchy itself—all creating low self-esteem, discouragement, depression, helplessness and hopelessness. In such a system, somebody always has to be the loser. This lie of self-responsibility is among the lies that block consciousness, collective or not, of the truth about a way of life that is destructive of authentic happiness.<br /> Thus, the system functions freely, without exposure of its lies, and at our expense. Then happiness becomes something you have to drug yourself to achieve, especially if you’re not “happy,” according to the definition of happiness in our culture: rich, successful, famous—but, it was your choice not to be “happy,” anyway. Which reminds me: that definition of happiness? Another lie. (a reminder not to take blogging too seriously as a means to happiness)<br /> What it comes down to is this: we simply must not think certain thoughts, among them the primacy and possibility of <span style="font-style:italic;">nurture</span>—in families, between friends, in business and in government—as fundamental to our character and values; nurture, not as from parent to child, but between co-equals, with interest in the well-being of both ourselves and the other, with respect for each other’s human rights, and each other’s psychological, emotional, and physical needs.<br /> We must not have this thought: that above all else we are nurturant, altruistic, and equal by virtue of our basic humanity. To have it, to express it out loud, is to invite accusations of being “soft” on...whatever—communism, drugs, crime, and blah blah blah. Essentially, to have it is to threaten the god of masculinist capitalism, for want of better words, and all the lies that occupy that territory.<br /> Consider, more specifically, on the microcosm level, the wife-beater, how his definition of masculinity includes the lie that to be a man is to control and dominate —be above— a woman, or women. Nowhere listed in the sad, furious wife-beater’s definition of manhood will be the word <span style="font-style:italic;">nurture</span>. This is why, to my mind, he is more pitiable than vile—think of the curse he has taken from his culture, a curse that condemns him to relentless evidence to the contrary of his “masculinity,” and perpetual slavery to having to disprove such evidence.<br /> It is no less true of our way of life, it seems to me. Corporations are not in the business of nurturing employees, or customers; policy-makers are not in the business of nurturing indigenous peoples in other countries, or sentient creatures, or the living world; war-makers are not in the business of nurturing the enemy—it’s kill, kill, kill, then drill, drill drill. <br /> Have you noticed McCain’s rapid and continual blinking? That’s beacuse he’s lying, constantly.<br /> I’m thinking it might be a good idea to start nurturing corporate CEO’s, to find a way to combat the lies embedded in our way of life. After all, they have grandchildren too. I have to believe it is not too late to raise the consciousness of even the most blind among us. It’s a bit patronizing, but can it be helped? Better to be patronized than bombed, right?<br /><br />That’s all folks, for today...<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-83310752887338503202008-10-16T09:51:00.000-07:002008-10-20T13:10:25.995-07:00That Was the Final Debate? Were they Joking?<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Here’s Ninja Granny’s WhoopAss Report</span>:</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3smDNCbvh43KGLKdpeFD4Eo19_GoNmgEFvCy5gQp7nJcZqfm1QJXpHfK8WWJ5Wkj6d8I5MAPriaUEMRPf_FJkZZhPa-8bP48MxTEfXJpYjAECtjC3untWBG5Os8YHEyTEw7ixL9pRg7bH/s1600-h/NGwhoopass-colaSM.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3smDNCbvh43KGLKdpeFD4Eo19_GoNmgEFvCy5gQp7nJcZqfm1QJXpHfK8WWJ5Wkj6d8I5MAPriaUEMRPf_FJkZZhPa-8bP48MxTEfXJpYjAECtjC3untWBG5Os8YHEyTEw7ixL9pRg7bH/s200/NGwhoopass-colaSM.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257798106315850450" /></a><br /><br /> John McCain, eyelids a-flutter, lurched into a spry attack from the start. “Why would you want to put tacks on anybody right now?” he asked. “We need to encourage entrepreneurship, so that people can start reproducing by machine as soon as possible.” <br /> McCain also bore in on Obama’s support for the right to privacy and Roe v Wade, saying, “What a joke that is... or maybe it’s a comedy...no, a tragedy...no, it’s a hysterectomy, and we know you’d be speaking in Islamic pentameter too! <br /> “Worse that that, nobody’s talking about how you voted for the Emasculation Proclamation,” McCain insisted, while continually slapping the tireless hamster in his cheek. <br /> Both Obama and McCain addressed their remarks directly to “Joe the Golfer,” who had lost his balls in gopher holes on his favorite golf course, all because of “those extremist, environmentalist gopher-lovers.”<br /> “It’s pretty surreal, man, losing my balls down gopher holes,” Joe had told both Obama and McCain. And each candidate commiserated with great and profound sympathy, acknowledging the horror of it all.<br /> But the candidate’s shared-compassion was short-lived. McCain, barely able to restrain his eye-roll reflex, responded to Obama’s reference to Nicaraguan deaths of labor organizers, by saying, “Damn, don’t you know anything? The Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility, both here and abroad!”<br /> Obama couldn’t resist: “Why John, you’re sounding more and more like George W. Bush every day!”<br /> “Hey you,” McCain retorted, “I am NOT President Bush—well, I do come from a long line of rapists and pillagers, proud servants of the Empire, but how dare you question my character—my mother died in infancy! Not too many people know that. And not too many people know I was born in a log cabin which I built with my own two hands!” <br /><br /> That’s about it, Folks, except for that damn echo— “Where’s Ralph...where’s Cynthia...where’s Ralph...where’s Cynthia...?" the ghostly vibes of democracy long gone. Heck, can you imagine the difference, if Ralph Nader had been there? Can you imagine the joy of watching McCain’s face as Ralph exercised his unfailing ability to cut the crap and focus on the essential truths of the day, as he did today on Democracy Now? Can you imagine how he would shine next to Obama’s tongue-biting, pale congeniality? Can you imagine the bright moment, when he told the world who the real terrorists are —George W. Bush and Dick Cheney— and what they deserve, with a call for accountability for corporate and state terror?<br /><br />—N.G.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-54682265108384319212008-10-10T10:19:00.000-07:002008-11-03T11:17:06.108-08:00The Progressive's Rorschach Test<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do you see in this picture,<br />and what does it make you<br />think about?</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dG05BcFwdfhyphenhyphenCq9pPti4z-BAiQoM9zu93WDxh-YPKGZotg4W7HRFTNNpUAxO3lFJzdP6VxhCHl5as4sB9Xvt5LLKDdtfgdSNSq2sd5SFMmxkWwJUs_ZzjXxl26WFYM_dnOjgpBbJEnTB/s1600-h/Cover1008.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dG05BcFwdfhyphenhyphenCq9pPti4z-BAiQoM9zu93WDxh-YPKGZotg4W7HRFTNNpUAxO3lFJzdP6VxhCHl5as4sB9Xvt5LLKDdtfgdSNSq2sd5SFMmxkWwJUs_ZzjXxl26WFYM_dnOjgpBbJEnTB/s400/Cover1008.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255578027745849746" border="0" /></a><br /> In her most recent post at <a href="http://toddlerspit.blog.com/">Toddlerspit</a> (well worth reading), Jen wrote about an interview she heard on NPR: “...He was talking about how the new books were inspired by a drawing his five-year-old made on a restaurant napkin, of an elephant dropping flowers on the head of a pig. ‘Why is he dropping those flowers on the pig?’ Breathed asked. ‘Because the pig is sad, and doesn't know it,’ answered his daughter.”<br /> I mention this because, as most of us know, lacking an explanation from the artist, it is impossible to make sense of art, without projecting ourselves —our wishes, dreams, fears and personal meanings— onto it.<br /> So here comes my copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Progressive</span> this month—McCain and Obama kissing. “Yay!” I said to myself. They got it so right! Perfect. Brilliant. And McCain is clearly enjoying it the most. I thought, “That’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Progressive’s</span> best, all-time cover,” and I could hardly wait to read the cover story.<br /> But, I couldn’t find a cover story. I looked and looked, searching for that one article to fulfill my expectations—about how McCain and Obama have merged in a big wet one over increasing the military budget, nuclear power, bailouts for Wall Street, war, increasing troops, continued occupation, tolerance of Blackwater, FISA/immunity, Israel, corporate allegiances, offshore drilling, “clean” coal, the Patriot Act, closed debates, industry-centered healthcare plans, the ignoring of police-state repressions during both conventions, and making various populist noises which always turn out to be lies.<br /> Other than a few mentions here and there of Obama’s move to the right, that one article wasn’t there.<br /> I searched for my other possibility— about the Obama-McCain clique, where all the other candidates are excluded from the debates, from the <span style="font-style: italic;">circle of love</span>—media attention, how the election system itself is exclusive and anti-democratic.<br /> But no. Nothing focused on that, either. (though the article about the Cynthia McKinney campaign does touch on this issue and Obama as a “status quo” candidate.)<br /><br />Later in the week, I got opinions on the cover from Jen and Nancy, both great people, both Phd.s.<br /><span style="line-height:1.4"><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">Jen</span>, who adores Obama: “Is that real? Or did you make that? Yeah, it looks like Obama’s sort of forcing himself to do it. McCain looks like he’s been waiting for it. For a long time.”</blockquote></span> <span style="line-height:1.4"><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nancy:</span> “1. It’s hard for me to believe it doesn’t plan on a kind of homophobia-induced shock for effect, and I find that problematic. I’m sure it merits more reflection. 2. A lovers’ embrace seems like a pretty heavy handed overstatement of their similarities, especially right now. The image is not good especially if there is no clear cover story. 3. I nevertheless agree with the two things you would have liked to have seen.”</blockquote></span><br /> See, we didn't know if there was an elephant in the room, or flowers, or if the pig was sad or happy. And we couldn't find out. All we could do was project, as I did, our wishes, our biases, our fears, and wonder.<br /> But, the beauty of it all, of putting the illustration out there without a cover story, was to discover just how many literal-minded liberals, Democrats, and progressives would be disturbed about the notion of a black man and a white man kissing. Perhaps —mixing my metaphors a bit here— it was a good time to shake that thing loose and see what fell out, that thing being the unconscious, or unspoken and denied, racism that surely will play a part in the election ....or?<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-18207906122406420522008-10-04T07:16:00.000-07:002008-10-04T07:52:37.454-07:00There’s Plenty of Good Reading Along the Way to Our Final Kaput<span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">lkfgjlsdkfjalkgj</span><br /> I am in the middle of Derrick Jensen’s, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Culture of Make Believe</span>. This is preliminary reading for me, before I get to <span style="font-style: italic;">Endgame</span>, his most recent book.<br /><br /> I love this guy.<br /><br /> In his chapter Giving Back the Land, he writes of a conversation he had with television critic George Gerbner. He quotes Gerbner as saying, “Because most scripts are written by and for men, they project a world in which men rule, and in which men play most of the roles. Television and movies project the power structure of our society, and by projecting it, perpetuate it, make it seem normal...<br /> Let’s say you try to countercast, or change the typical casting in a typical story. A woman, now, is going to wield power. She is going to use violence. Suddenly, you can’t tell any story other than the one that describes why this is so. The story has to revolve around why a woman is doing things that seem scandalous for her, yet seem normal for a man.”<br /> This is so true. And it is true whether violence is a factor in the story or not. Take the fact, for example, that the majority of scripts where an older man is sexually involved with a younger woman: the story is never required to be about the discrepancy in their ages; their age difference is often not an issue, may not even be mentioned, and the story —some other issue— functions, regardless. That is because, as Jensen might explain, the predominant “power structure of the society” is not threatened there. In contrast, just try to find a script where the woman is in a sexual relationship with a younger man, but the story is NOT about their age discrepancy.<br /> Consider two movies, say, <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Tango in Paris</span> (perhaps a loaded choice) and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Graduate</span>. Consider the controversy surrounding <span style="font-style: italic;">Tango</span>: butter. Not rape, not age difference. No. We all sat there, watched the movie, and absorbed —gave tacit agreement with— rape, brutality, and the reduction of a human psyche —the young woman— to that of an irrelevancy, but got upset over the mention of butter. It is clear: Brando’s character had entitlement, except where butter is concerned; his victim was serving in her proper role, and, if I remember correctly, complicit and not terribly damaged by it all.<br /> Consider, by contrast, Mrs. Robinson’s place in culture, her fate; how she was reviled— remember Simon and Garfunkle’s taunting melody, “Hey, hey, hey...every way you look at it you lose...” and poor graduate, seduced and manipulated by the vile bitch? The thing is, we cannot have this, a woman upsetting the “natural order of things;” how men may use their wiley ways —beguile, tempt, seduce— or mind rape, or even rape, as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tango</span>; but a woman must remain passive and receptive, or, if she is over the age of, say, thirty-five (and that’s being generous), she must simply fade away.<br /> There have been exceptions. <span style="font-style: italic;">Harold and Maude</span> comes to mind. But...wait a minute: the issue of their age difference was central to the story! Yes, it was presented delightfully, and Maude is one of my favorite, all-time characters, but, just the same, there you are—how a young man recovers his equilibrium, in love with an old lady. And she had to die in the end. Suicide, no less. Of course!<br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">Harold and Maude</span> was no exception to the rule; it proved the rule— you cannot tell a story about an older woman and a younger man, without explaining how this heretical thing happened and what the consequences of it must be.<br /> Further along in the same chapter, Derrick Jensen quotes Gerbner again: “Violence...is a demonstration of power, and the real issue, once again, is who is doing what to whom. If time and again you hear and see stories in which people like you—white males in the prime of life—are more likely to prevail in a conflict situation, you become more aggressive, and if you are in the same culture, and a member of a group or gender that is more likely to be victimized, you grow up more insecure, more dependent, more afraid of getting into conflict, because you feel your calculus of risk is higher.<br /> That...is how we train minorities. People aren’t born a minority, they are trained to act like a minority through that kind of cultural conditioning. And women, who are a numerical majority of humankind, still are trained to act like a minority. The sense of potential victimization and vulnerability is the key.”<br /> I watched part of a movie today that illustrated this very point. I say “part,” because, after I got the gist of the horrible thing, I fast-forwarded through the rest of it, stopping now and then to pick up the plot, just in case it got interesting. It didn’t. The movie was <span style="font-style: italic;">Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels</span>, with Sting and a pack of actors whose unintelligible British accents required subtitles.<br /> Here’s what I noticed though: all the characters were men, save two— a pole dancer in the background of one scene and a woman who occupied a couch in a semi-conscious state throughout several scenes, also mostly just as background to the main action; that is, until, in one promising scene, she roused herself to consciousness, having heard a ruckus in the room, seized her opportunity to save the day by grabbing an AK-47, then stood up and battered the room with three or four minutes of automatic gun fire, shredding the room and sending the bad guys diving for cover. While this was happening, I was thinking, “Hey, you go girl...” but when it was all over, and she stood there in rapt silence over the destruction she had wrought, or, hath wrought, the main bad guy stood up, said something like, “Where’d SHE come from?” then knocked her out with one punch. In short, the message was, When women are violent, it’s all so ineffectual, so ineffective; women simply cannot do what men do; in the end, they fail.<br /> Yuk, yuk, yuk...and the guys watching this movie get to have a lovely moment of male bonding over the reinforcement of their mutual agreement about what it is to be male—which requires, first and foremost, that they are superior to females; and that they are leads, not only in the movie, but in life as well. (Think of that— “the lead” in a play or movie; it’s going to be a man, right?)<br /><br /> I used to be able to predict the fate of female characters who dared to be freely sexual —death— or at least some other equally damning or degrading end. That’s social conditioning too.<br /> Or, think of women who dare to fight back or try to defend themselves, after years of humiliation, abuse, and rape: they must suffer similar ends, the ultimate punishment of death. I’m thinking in particular of Aileen Wuornos, the subject of the movie, <span style="font-style: italic;">Monster</span>. The title says it all, doesn’t it? Those of us who felt sympathy for the woman —after learning how most of the men she killed had threatened to kill her first, had raped her, or tortured her— understood the irony of that title. However, it seems to me a more just title would have been, "Monsters," to make reference to the men she killed and the society that rendered those men devoid of conscience, or devoid of a consciousness of women —even prostitutes— as people. Certainly, without conscience, or consciousness, one must be a monster and ultimately do monstrous things.<br /> And Wuornos? A monster? I don’t think so. Her crimes were crimes of self-defense. <span style="font-style:italic;">But how dare she? So we killed her. Let that be a lesson to all you uppity bitches! Just sit there and take it, and then, shut up about it.</span><br /> Jensen offers insight to this injustice to say, in effect, you are not allowed to hit back, UP the hierarchy. The crimes against you by those above you in the hierarchy are sanctioned by society; yours against them are to be condemned.<br /> Even the sympathetic duo, Thelma and Louise, had to die. Imagine the outrage had they managed to survive, face justice and win, to live out their lives in dignity and respect. No, no, no...we can’t have that!<br /> The only place we find this paradigm consistently upended is on Lifetime TV, where the victims of abuse, usually women, do manage to have some measure of revenge. But, hey, these are “chick flicks.” The guys know better not to watch those, and they’re usually pretty bad movies with awful acting, anyway; so the powers-that-be are not likely to be threatened, especially since such movies, where women are victorious, are inferior in quality, to <span style="font-style: italic;">match the audience</span>. Still, that’s where women learn a different lesson, behind the backs of their “superiors.”<br /><br /> I am reminded of Susan Griffin’s, <span style="font-style: italic;">Pornography and Silence</span>. She says, “Yet in order to see our lives more clearly within this culture, we must question the meaning we give to certain words and phrases, and to the images we accept as part of the life of our minds. We must, for example, look again at the idea of "human" liberation. For when we do, we will see two histories of the meaning of this word, one which includes the lives of women, and even embodies itself in a struggle for female emancipation, and another, which opposes itself to women, and to "the other" (men and women of other "races," "the Jew"), and imagines that liberation means the mastery of these others.”<br /> Sometimes I read this stuff for corroboration of guesses I’ve made as to the why of certain things, not that I don’t also read for the special insights of those authors. For example, I myself had thought about rape as a hate crime, but not as hatred directed at the victim, but as hatred the rapist feels for himself. That is, the femininity he sees in the “other” which he cannot obliterate in himself, which he cannot control or govern, is wished to be obliterated and mastered through rape—a case of projection. Given that no man exists who does not have vulnerabilities, who does not have weaknesses, cares, loves, and all those other human aspects we designate as “feminine;” and given that no man exists in this culture who has not been taught to disdain those qualities, it is no wonder that some men must split off from themselves to become ignorant of the truth about themselves, and, in the process, become less than whole beings; and, when confronted by a being who represents their own denied, humiliating aspects, some men cannot deal with it and become enraged.<br /> Perhaps as I read more, I will come to understand how we got to this point, how the yin and yang of things, the balance of male and female, got way out of whack in favor of the male side of things. How this happened, and how to correct it, is unknown to me; but I do think if we keep this up, nature, which always strives for the perfect balance, will one day just up and spit us out and be done with us. It’s going to be a huge hacking sound, a rumble in Earth’s chest, then it’ll be, “Spitt-oo-ee!!!” and we’ll all be goners.<br /><br /> Derrick Jensen is the role model for the required change of mind and heart, it seems to me, the direction all men and women must go, if we are going to live in harmony with a healthy planet. I do love this book, except for one comment there, which I cannot find at the moment, where he quotes Thomas Paine to show him as an advocate of slavery. I would disagree, as one essay of Paine’s shows, where he says, “But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage against humanity and justice, that seems left by heathen nations to be practiced by pretended Christian. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it! As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”<br /> Still, I am looking forward to <span style="font-style: italic;">Endgame</span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-8043836541847380682008-09-26T11:28:00.000-07:002008-09-26T13:31:43.287-07:00Democratic Capitalism as an Oxymoron<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Detecting a neocon crapshoot with our futures</span></span><br /><br /> I am not an economist. I have never taken even one course in economics. I do, however, have a highly sensitive, built-in crap detector, and, after having lived through 40 years of laissez-fair, “free” market, trickle-down Reaganomics, and spending a great deal of my free time reading about politics, the antenna on my detector is quivering like mad.<br /> I wrote an email to the real deal recently, the Chair of the Economics department at a local university. His response was reassuring. He said, “I expect that the financial meltdown will be prevented from getting worse.”<br /> Okay...that sounded good. But then McCain bailed out of the debates; then the Republicans bailed out of the bailout...then Paul Krugman said, this morning on DemocracyNow!, it’s looking “scary.” So, I am beginning to wonder what’s next. <br /> This question arises: would a complete meltdown of our entire economy really be a bad thing in the screwy mind of the neo-con? Think about 9-11. Didn’t that disaster lead to the fulfillment of many of their wildest dreams?<br /> Consider how this historic tidbit, from Greg Palast about Chile, economic collapse, and Pinochet, rings familiar: <a href="http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2/#more-1551">Palast</a><br /><br /> It was fascinating to hear G.W. Bush refer to “democratic capitalism,” as the “best system ever devised.” I mean, considering the reality of American life today, where union membership has reached an all-time low; where Congress, increasingly indebted to corporate support and influenced by lobbyists pushing corporate interests, chooses again and again to ignore the interests of ordinary citizens in favor of corporate America; where the will of the people —expressed on the streets during the Democratic and Republican conventions, with calls for impeachment, an end to torture and the war in Iraq and Afganistan, healthcare, a living wage and all manner of progressive changes— was ignored by the corporate media and denied constitutional rights —of speech, peaceable assembly to petition the “government for a redress of grievances”— by unidentified riot police who looked and acted like police-state goons; where, if you’re “the people,” ordinary citizens trying not to go bankrupt, well, you’re on your own, as Obama says about Bush’s “ownership” society; but, if you’re Wall Street —corporate America— well, hey, here’s 750 billion dollars for you! You know what I mean. So, isn’t the notion of “democratic” capitalism an oxymoron? Just how much influence do we <span style="font-style:italic;">demos</span> have, anyway?<br /> No. Better terms would be <span style="font-style:italic;">totalitarian</span> capitalism, given that our previous mixed economy is moving closer and closer to a condition of absolute intolerance of regulation and democratic controls on industry (thus, you have the Republicans bailing out of the bailout because they want more(!) de-regulation); or <span style="font-style:italic;">fascistic</span> capitalism, given that corporations and government are nearly completely merged, i.e. gone fascist.<br /><br /> Here’s what I wrote to the chairman of the economics department: “I don't share your confidence that the ‘financial meltdown won't get any worse,’ however. For a long time now I've been watching the de-regulation trend —laissez-faire, "trickle-down" Reaganomics— and those who have been doing their best to destroy the New Deal and everything good about it; and this current crisis seems totally consistent with their anti-democratic desires. The next thing, after they add this next hundreds of billions to the government's already huge debt, will be to say, Oh so sorry, we're going to have to privatize Social Security now, i.e., destroy it— the funds are gone...oops!" I mean, it's all so obvious. So, that's what I mean by ‘worse;’ and, it would be unbearably worse for me, since I am living off my Social Security benefits now.”<br /><br /> I hope I am wrong and he is right. Let’s see if McCain suspends his campaign entirely, when the bailout completely fails. It wouldn’t surprise me, given his weird threat not to attend the debate tonight, if that’s not a hint of things to come. Will Bush’s sudden fear-mongering over the economy morph into an excuse to delay the election, when he can make a case that the economy is in collapse?<br /> Just connecting the dots...but remaining hopeful that these are merely the natural, though unfounded, fears that trickle down during times like these.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-58516645550383643482008-09-24T16:29:00.000-07:002008-09-24T16:54:29.315-07:00The One True Maverick<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">...which cannot be said of McCain or Palin</span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWxkDr2eMKugd-0ZP4r6rx5GogkOAar98rnF5uLXMYPtYOxDdKlc6re4Em-ocUAdkiJgZrEinhcXeba5d1Cucv7ibEnbvx28aReSSAkct-bcyu_LSpZcExqv_wANyO7Gn-mbG5GcCQhlO/s1600-h/ralph_nader.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWxkDr2eMKugd-0ZP4r6rx5GogkOAar98rnF5uLXMYPtYOxDdKlc6re4Em-ocUAdkiJgZrEinhcXeba5d1Cucv7ibEnbvx28aReSSAkct-bcyu_LSpZcExqv_wANyO7Gn-mbG5GcCQhlO/s400/ralph_nader.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249735861860796786" /></a><br /> Let’s get one thing straight: The only true maverick running for president this year is Ralph Nader.<br /> How do we know Nader is the maverick and not just another opportunistic politician (McCain and Palin) trying to con the American people and corrupting the language in the process, or some nut-case, waving his arms from the sidelines? Well, aside from his life-long record of system-bucking battles against entrenched wrongs on behalf of you and me, consider his exclusion from the debates; consider how he is reviled not only by conservatives —his natural enemies— but by Democrats as well, those who, in a better world, would cherish him as kin and as the most steadfast advocate and hero of their ideals, you know, <span style="font-style:italic;">democratic</span> ideals and principles, those little things the Dems left behind, like wussies in accordance with power, corruption and corporate allegiance?<br /> See, that’s the thing about mavericks—they’re outside the mainstream. McCain and Palin? Hello, there’s nothing outside about them: McCain has voted to support Bush policy 90% of the time; has been a constant nurturer of the conservative “nanny state,” of “free” market, laissez-faire, totalitarian capitalism, i.e., those good ol’ powers that be; Palin fulfills both the <a href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/">authoritarian</a> leader and follower mold, which, by definition makes her a blue blood of conformity and allowed her to fit in quite easily at her former church, the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, where they talk in “tongues,” that is, babble in bull doo-doo. No. To describe either McCain or Palin as a maverick is not only to put lipstick on that metaphorical pig; it is to give it a complete make-over and a nose job to boot.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-68928774856959389562008-09-20T13:11:00.000-07:002008-09-20T13:28:03.939-07:00Why Voters Should Not Trust John McCain’s Word on Anything“Well, it’s quite simple,” said Condi Rice today in her testimony before the Senate Ethics Committee. “You see, he was forever telling us that this...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihY4g8ktwWIVC8p3B8IcxZCWvxgf0PGtzY2Le4Vj9bdOJP29HCkpkOs9wtyo0NS83HcEnmr68tP9Z10hpyfgs9s5Emzcmx9pk4QvGk_vVWvjtwyVJsszX2X5zU2qnVcY19V26ypAPDa0p6/s1600-h/McCain'sEightInches.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihY4g8ktwWIVC8p3B8IcxZCWvxgf0PGtzY2Le4Vj9bdOJP29HCkpkOs9wtyo0NS83HcEnmr68tP9Z10hpyfgs9s5Emzcmx9pk4QvGk_vVWvjtwyVJsszX2X5zU2qnVcY19V26ypAPDa0p6/s400/McCain'sEightInches.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5248202595533870786" /></a><br />...was eight inches.” <br /><br /><br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-77763288310448614932008-09-13T10:52:00.000-07:002008-09-14T10:24:38.718-07:00Fun Encounters at the Post Office<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The satisfactions of not biting my tongue</span></span><br /><br /> The woman in line ahead of me at the post office said to her two children, “Stop it. Stand still, or I’m going to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse">pinch</a> you hard.”<br /> I noticed the woman had some sort of Christian literature to send; I noticed the hard expression on her face; I noticed how her children’s faces went from happy innocence, as they giggled and jostled each other, to fear and foreboding after their mother’s threat.<br /> Then I heard her respond to something one of them had asked: “No...” she answered harshly, as she stepped away from the line to go up to the counter, “...that wouldn’t be Christian!” <br /> “...and neither is pinching your children,” I said. The timing was perfect. She heard me but didn’t have a chance to hit me over the head, like she probably does to her children behind closed doors.<br /> Many parents think they own their children and think nobody has a right interfere with their parenting. The are wrong; children belong to themselves first, but because abused children grow up either to be problems to themselves or to society, you and I have a right to correct parents, when parents abuse their children in our presence. In fact, not to speak up is a way of condoning abuse.<br /><br /> After I reached the counter and my package was being processed, somewhere during the lively conversation I was having with the postal clerk, I heard myself say, “thank goodness for FDR and Social Security!” This seemed to strike a simpatico chord with the clerk, who then leaned forward to whisper a tidbit from his own political mind: “Can you believe women voters are so stupid they would vote for a woman, simply because she’s a woman?!” Well, I tried to tell him it was all media lies, that mainstream women aren’t going to vote for what I call the McCain/Palin-Comparison ticket, but he was on a roll— “What a pack of idiots, eh?” <br /> The fallacy here, the one the media tend to use, is the notion of the pack. The real idiots are the ones who say, “The American people...” this or that. Or, “Women want...” this or that. “White males...” vote this way or that. I don’t think you can generalize in that way. I think there is far less homogeneity out there, and people are way more complex and individual than that. Having said as much, I will now contradict myself by saying <a href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/">right</a>-wing conservatives do tend to behave as a pack, whereas liberals do not. As Jim Hightower once said, “Trying to organize Democrats is like trying to load frogs into a wheelbarrow.”<br /> What do you think? <br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5147080485605820315.post-66504664147869199642008-09-07T16:15:00.000-07:002008-09-11T08:08:42.944-07:00St.Paul, The Little City that Could ....Be Fascist<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">If your police look and act like<br />militarized, American-style jackboots,<br />you just might be a police state</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiosK4FWxXvD_Rfx9XsIkUt9wvzvAWc1iu_BEuIPGAmhz4iSjOqj4Izq-dbv6GggXQRZ2mkeooGNLbGeZm1iEEw0aC02T1ORJYPUcwcnxt2YmmLq4fT6vsDRNW2_nufTaF7ODUuPS_RnruL/s1600-h/newFaceOfAmerica.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiosK4FWxXvD_Rfx9XsIkUt9wvzvAWc1iu_BEuIPGAmhz4iSjOqj4Izq-dbv6GggXQRZ2mkeooGNLbGeZm1iEEw0aC02T1ORJYPUcwcnxt2YmmLq4fT6vsDRNW2_nufTaF7ODUuPS_RnruL/s400/newFaceOfAmerica.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243467964298575458" /></a><br /> Given the assaults the City of St. Paul perpetrated against the Bill of Rights and the Constitution during this week's Republican National Convention, I could complain at length, reminding city officials of their sworn duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, that is, America. However, they know these things, and, they don’t care. Clearly, they planned from the start to engage in political repression; they had every intention of violating the Constitution and continuing to do so, regardless of the consequences, which they knew would be minimal—the city had made a <a href="http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/conventions/27818659.html">deal</a> with the Republican Party prior to the convention, one that rendered the city immune from lawsuits, to the tune of $10,000,000, the amount the Republicans were willing to cover for whatever lawsuits were incurred over Republican-approved, civil-liberties violations by the police.<br /> Thus we saw the city attorneys, the mayor and the police chief employing a twisted logic in arresting, charging and detaining journalists, photographers, protesters and those who were on the streets of St. Paul to bear witness and hold the city to its responsibility to protect civil liberty in a free society; that is why we saw the law in St. Paul represented by American-style jackboots, bearing nunchucks, clubs, assault rifles, tasers; dropping concussion grenades(!), smoke bombs, and all manner and means of <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/5/nearly_400_arrested_on_last_day">repressing</a> speech and dissent; that is why we heard first-hand testimony by victims of police who engaged in torture behind closed prison doors and in public, where the police apparently thought they had permission to bully political activists. Clearly, the city was guilty, and they planned on denying their guilt and pretending to be concerned about "terrorism," when it is America's movement toward a Pinochet-style dictatorship they defended.<br /><br /> I would be happy if anyone can prove me wrong. If the charges are dropped against Amy Goodman and any and all journalists or peaceful protesters, who did nothing but exercise their Constitutional rights, and we never again see such a brutal demonstration of militarized police in an American city, I will say, “Sorry, I was wrong.” I will be happy to say it. However, I see dark clouds forming— incrementally, the American people have been programmed to accept the militarization of our police and the normalization of attacks against and violations of our civil liberties, and so the authoritarians are secure in the assumption that the American people won’t make a stink. Just take a look at the program “Cops,” if you doubt it. House raids by SWAT teams, SWAT, which was originally intended for “high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular patrol officers,” have become the norm, as is seen regularly on TruTv, MSNBC and elsewhere. This should be <a href="http://www.examiner.com/a-1534390%7EStop_using_SWAT_teams_on_civilians.html">stopped</a>. The use of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT">SWAT</a> teams against civilian demonstrators should be stopped too, now that we see just how creepy and terrorizing it is; but it won’t be. I think the signs are clear: we are here, now—the fascist state has arrived, and there’s no turning back.<br /> Some say the behavior of the police in St. Paul and Denver seemed like practice for something worse to come—soon. I would not be at all surprised. The Bush administration and the Republicans, with Democratic help, have pulled off every criminal thing they could think of, without consequence. What’s to stop them now from postponing the election and installing their version of the Third Reich, that is, a third term for the Bush dictatorship?<br /> It doesn’t hurt to repeat myself, and these days it is even more important to remind people that the other side of the coin of paranoia is naiveté. Let’s not be naive—government of, by, and for corporations —fascism— is our reality, and that oppressive reality will stop at nothing to have its way.<br /> Bless their souls, the <a href="http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/36636prs20080904.html">ACLU</a> is busy with lawsuits over these things. That wonderful organization needs our help now, more than ever.<br /><br />—L.M.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0