I think its time that someone from Wilkinsburg talked about the Pittsburgh mayor's race. Even if I was given the choice between the incompetent lying dem pol and the evil republican I'd probably have to go with the former. I just think that the Republican party is evil. When you tell me that DeSantis is the "nice" republican I sort of feel like you're talking about the "nice" Nazi. Not to mention that his website is fulla nothing. I don't even know if he supports public transit or not. What public sector unions would he go after in order to get cuts? Wouldn't he gut public services and bid out the services to Halliburton? Isn't that what Republicans do? I don't think he'll invade Cleveland but I don't know I'm just not sure...Of course, this is also a great opportunity for the Green Party so of course they're not running anybody...Pathetic. Ryan Scott, the revolutionary, doesn't even have a website or a blog, which, and perhaps he doesn't know this, would be a perfect place for a socialist to spew propaganda because its cheap. Doesn't even have a blog...More Pathetic.
Back From Memorial Day Vacation Around the Internets
Let's start light.
If you didn't know this Joss Whedon is continuing Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a comic. I liked the show and thought it got better the longer it went on. It wasn't entirely original, but he stole from many of the science fiction sources that I respect. The first three issues are out. Joss is writing one cycle of the "new" season eight and then turning it over to other writers. I think he writes the final cycle of the series as well. There's an interview with him here.
I like the first three issues. The art could be better. It definitely feels like the show. Most of your fave characters are back. Still no sign of Angel or Spike except in a dream sequence. Remember the bad witch who was turned into a gerbil for awhile? She's back. Remember that guy that Meadow Willow skinned alive? He's not entirely dead. Nuff said. Definitely worth picking up.
I should have published this on Memorial Day. Its Mark Twain's war poem. More info about this here. It wasn't to be published until after his death, which apparently wasn't exaggerated.
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
I guess I don't have anything respectful to say about Memorial Day,(see above post), at least not when it comes to recent wars. You'd have to be an idiot to enlist now. I can understand why gangs are sending their members into the militia to learn skills. I imagine that its always helpful to learn as many ways to kill someone as you can when you're engaging in criminal activity (Can't wait to see those IEDs on American streets. Should make my bus commute more interesting.) but what's everyone else's excuse? If you fight in Iraq then you're fighting to terrorize and murder sand niggers and protect oil company profits. It has nothing to do with democracy. Period. The war should have ended long ago because they shouldn't have found enough people to enlist in the ranks.
Speaking of the true motives behind the Iraq War, its to keep the agreement in place that gives the Iraqi oil reserves to multinationals. If you want this in cartoon form, then Jim Hightower can explain it. If you like your truth in essay form:
This war will wind down when the oil distribution law, or whatever they call it, is signed. It was all about the oil, from day one (really from before day one). Once it is passed by the Iraqi Government that we set up for just this very reason, we will start winding down and leave just enough troops in Iraq to make sure that they don't renege on the law, and to keep Iran in line. If this turns out to be the case, than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and everyone else in government and the oil companies should be put on trial for murdering almost a million human beings for profit. Big Oil has gotten its hands on all that light crude and can pump for another twenty years.
Bush will claim that we have done all we can do to bring democracy to Iraq. He will claim that he doesn't want to waste more "innocent" lives for people unwilling to stand up for themselves and turn to the Iraq Study Group's recommendations (that was put together by James Baker III, THE NO1 Oil Man), and take our troops out of the hard fighting in the cities and they will stay on the big military installations with the premise that we are there to make sure that Al Qaeda will not use Iraq for a training ground.
From Tom Moody, who got it from an unknown artist.
I just think there's a real need for a viable third party right now. We certainly needed it locally. (Did the Greens run a candidate for mayor?) And I think we need it nationally. Here's the trick: It probably can't be done by the usual suspects with your crazy ACORN/PIRG types and your wish fulfillment candidacies. You don't have to win every seat. You need to vie for 25 House seats and 5 Senate seats nationally. You need to work with the dems and focus on republicans and whatever dems voted for continued funding. There needs to be a third option, certainly for progressives but really for everybody.
You need 1 million dollars to run a viable house campaign at the federal level and you need 2 million dollars to run a viable race at the senate level. Period. Otherwise you're being silly. That's about 35 million. That's a lot of money, but not an impossible amount of money to raise. What to call it? "The New Party" is taken but they haven't done anything "new" in years. We've seen where the Green's all volunteer efforts have taken us: nowhere fast. (New Rule: Build a new party around the canvass. Pay your workers and occasionally ask them to pay themselves. Use Progressive Discipline in firing and not the crazy cultlike ACORN/PIRG rules.) How about "The Enlightenment Party"? Turn that new science lobby into something bigger...
More on this later. I'm going to codify these rules when I have some more time.
It is a dark day in our nation’s history. That sounds melodramatic - but it is true. Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history.
The numbers are not pretty. First, 216 House Democrats cast the key vote to send a blank check Iraq War funding bill over to the Senate. As I reported at the beginning of the day and as the Associated Press now confirms, the vote on the rule was the vote that made it happen. As the AP said: “In a highly unusual maneuver, House Democratic leaders crafted a procedure that allowed their rank and file to oppose money for the war, then step aside so Republicans could advance it.” Nauseating.
In the Senate, we saw lots of promises and tough talk from senators telling us they were going to do everything they could to stop the blank check. Some of them bragged that they were going to vote against the bill - as if that was the ultimate sign of heroics. Then, not a single senator found the backbone to stand up to filibuster the bill a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Apparently, Senate club etiquette comes even before the lives of our troops. The blank check sailed through the upper chamber on a vote of 80-14 with 38 Democrats (the majority of the party) voting yes. In all, at a time when 82 percent of Americans tell pollsters they want Congress to either approve funds for the war with strict conditions or cut off all funding immediately, 90 percent of House and Senate Democrats combined voted to give George W. Bush a blank check.
The worst part of it all was the overt efforts to deceive the public - as if we’re all just a bunch of morons. House Democrats have the nerve to continue to insist the blank check they helped ram through the House was all the Republicans doing, and that a sham vote on a GOP amendment today - which most Democrats opposed for show - was the real vote for the war. But, again, as the AP reported, it was their parliamentary motion - passed so quickly and under the devious pretenses of mundane procedural necessity - that showed their calculated complicity. Now, tonight, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actually sending out fundraising emails, claiming: the House just passed legislation that will go to the White House that includes critical issues Democrats have been fighting for including canceling the President’s blank check in Iraq.” Beyond nauseating.
I’m not a purist nor am I a “pox on both their houses” kind of guy. I have worked to elect Democratic politicians and I supported Democratic leaders when they pushed an Iraq funding bill that included binding language to end the war. But what happened today was perhaps the most stunning travesty I’ve seen in a decade working in Democratic politics. A Democratic Party that six months ago was elected on a promise to end the war first tried to hide their complicity in continuing the war in the House, and then gave a few token speeches as the blank check sailed through the Senate club. And it all happened, as the New York Times reported today, because these Democrats believed criticism from President Bush - the man who polls show is the most unpopular president in three decades - “seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left.”
Of course, according to Real Journalist Greg Palast, the republicans are already trying to purge 8 million voters for the 2008 election. Palast has to have a hacker under his hire. How does he do it.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast says 4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings. Being the guy who uncovered the voter “purge lists” of 2000 that disenfranchised black voters, he’s worth listening to, even if the mainstream press chooses not to.
This time around, he claims to have the 500 emails that the House subpoenaed and Karl Rove claims were deleted forever. They prove definitively, says Palast, that the Justice Department is infested with operatives taking orders from Rove to steal upcoming elections for Republicans and permanently alter the Department.
The “clownocracy” of Bush and Rove is criminal and even evil in its attempts to steal past and future elections, according to Palast, and can only be stopped if “Democrats…find their souls and find their balls.”
In an updated new version of his best-selling book, Armed Madhouse, Palast lays out the case for the future theft of the presidency, along with lots of other Executive malfeasance. I chatted with him about the role of the Justice Department in this scheme, and what it means for the viability of our “democracy.
From Paul Pope, a great comix and science fiction artist who has a blog.
Stunning video profile of Hugo Chavez by Real Journalist Greg Palast. There are three parts (part one here and part three here) to the interview at the Youtubes. Part two is what I'm showing here. Contrast this with the Hightower vid of what we're doing in Iraq and what we would probably like Venezuela to be. The United States, especially under this particularly vile Republican crew, has become a force for evil in this world. There really isn't any other way to put it.
Yep. Those Republicans are completely evil. So the Democrats wouldn't give President Bush a blank check on the war, right? Wrong. It looks like they're folding big time. Way to fight fellas. The reviews, from people who have, quite frankly, been apologists for the dems so far, have not been kind.
They never learn. They just never f*cking learn. They get the majority and they still act like they're in the minority. It's ironic that right before Memorial Day they vote to give this president a blank check to send more good men to Arlington Cemetery.
STOP THIS WAR.
The only reason the Democrats aren't going to suffer electorally for this is because next year is a presidential year, and a Democratic president must end the war or suffer punishment like impeachment.
But I don't get the Democrats. I just don't get them. They've added almost a whole Friedman (until September) and what do they think is gonna happen then? The right will claim the surge is working even though it isn't, they'll request six more string-free months, and more Americans die for no damn reason.
Makes me sick.
From a poster at the Booman Tribune:
Actions speak louder than words.
And yet without the Democrats, we would have not invaded Iraq. Without their votes they would not have the supplemental funding for the last 4 years. Without their compliance and complicity there would not be the structure in place now for Bush to declare himself Maximum Leader for life.
Why. Why is ANYONE here surprised that the Dems caved? What actual hope did any of you have? Actions are louder than words, and the actions of the Democratic Party in the last five years are "We made a good show of this but we're going along because dammit, we want the power Bush is accumulating. We like his soft fascism. We want to use it against our own people because they don't know best...we do."
And they will keep taking us for granted, because our other choice is letting the GOP keep control.
I'll comment more on this later.
May 20
Late Sunday Night Around the Internets
Also crossposted at my high brow dirty page: the Red Light District. Hey it was well drawn and while prurient acceptable to general audiences.
It looks like Tuesday's elections had some good results. It would have been nice to see some competition at the higher level races, but it looks like we lose two less than great councilmen and get some people who might actually do some good. Election reactions from the usual suspects here and here.
Meanwhile, over at the Booman Tribune, they've discovered that Chairman Kos and his henchmen (and henchladies) ban people who speak critically of Israel. That's why I got banned so I should know. Here's one of the writers at Booman:
If Daily Kos' banning of Steve Amsel and Eileen Fleming, two peace activists who support the rights of the Palestinian people, a few days ago, and three other peace activists that preceded them, were not enough, today Daily Kos banned two Palestinian peace activists. This action was taken in an apparent attempt to appease a small group of right wing proIsrael supporters who have invaded Daily Kos. If anyone believes that of course they should probably take ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge. The true source of all of these banning is not yet evident, but no one is ready to believe that Daily Kos is getting ready to be sold to an AIPAC subsidiary.
As for Daily Kos' investment in progressive and liberal issues like civil and human rights, the word is that Kos the owner doesn't care one way or another about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though it is a core issue in American foreign policy. That's an interesting prospective when a Left Wing Democrat does not care about human rights issues. Because many people believe that the Left Wing of the Democratic party is taking its lead from the netroots, places like Daily Kos, which is the largest political blog on the internet, not giving a damned one way or another about human rights issues is not exactly what a typical liberal or progressive Democrat would expect from a blog that purports to be liberal or progressive. Leadership in civil and human rights is certainly not what any liberal or progressive Democrat will find at Daily Kos.
Here are the obituaries for the most recent voices snuffed out by Daily Kos, both of whose writings cried out for justice for the Palestinian people, especially because they are both Palestinian.
Read the whole thing here. As I've said before, at the bottom of this page: "Bottom Line: Despite all the mean things I've said I read Kos daily. You kind of have to. But I don't think he can be a leader for all democrats and certainly not for progressives."
Related, at Muzzle Watch (reminds me of what Hesh of the Sopranos said of the Christian Right's love of Israel: "Just wait."):
The recent death of Jerry Falwell can serve as an opportunity to reflect on the growing Christian Zionist (CZ) movement and how such a movement is related to other establishment pro-Israel groups such as The David Project, ADL and AIPAC. To be clear, there is a Faustian bargain being forged, for short term political and financial gain, Israel and the American Jewish establishment are willing to engage with people such as John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) “who is contemptuous of Muslims, dismissive of gays, possesses a triumphalist theology and opposes a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
This bargain also entails muzzling - American Jewish leaders who have been critical of CUFI sponsored local “Nights to Honor Israel” say they have been pressured into silence.
“The pressure has been enormous,” said a prominent Jewish leader who said he was contacted by local community officials after he raised questions about a local Christians United For Israel (CUFI) event. “I can’t even talk about it now; I feel a real sense of intimidation because people in our own community are saying I’m opposing something that’s good for Israel, that I’m hurting Israel.”
In terms of Falwell specifically, although their relationship has not been seamless, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has called Falwell a “towering figure of the religious right” and a “dear friend of Israel”
The fly in the ointment, beyond the occasional “oopsy” anti-Semitic utterances, eg, “the antichrist is probably a Jewish man alive today,” (condemned by Foxman of the ADL), is that the relationship between the Christian Zionists (like Falwell, Pat Robertson and Hagee) and Jews is roughly that of Germany to the Soviet Union before Germany invaded its ally. Christian Zionists believe that as one large piece of the Apocalypse endgame, a unified Jewish state must exist over all of what is now Israel and Palestine and that a new temple must be built on temple mount. The important take home point is that within the framework of Christian Zionist belief is the notion that at the time of Christ’s second coming, Jews will be offered a choice to convert to Christianity or immediately be condemned to hell or some reasonable facsimile.
Speaking of the Sopranos, good episode tonight. I do see an out for Tony. Kill Phil first and that leaves the movie producer as the head of New York, a guy that Tony can work with. He also quiets down the need for a New York retaliation. I can't believe somebody went after Meadow. Tony was in the right. He was there for both of kids tonight. I guess that's what makes the series so interesting. He's not always evil.
May 15
I'm just awaiting the election results like everyone else.
And I've been watching this explanation by Jim Hightower as to why we're in Iraq. You'll all be shocked to learn that it has nothing to do with democracy, but its direct opposite.
May 12
Local stuff about the fine opponents of Kraus and Dowd. I really hate their opponents now.
Funny toon by Stephanie McMillan.
Mean Ol Richard Dawkins talks about why he isn't like a fundamentalist. (I don't think he says this but atheists don't have real political power. I think that's the real difference. I suppose if we were footsoldiers in the republican party...)
You’re preaching to the choir. What’s the point?
The nonbelieving choir is much bigger than people think, and it desperately needs encouragement to come out. Judging by the thanks that showered my North American book tour, my articulation of hitherto closeted thoughts is heard as a kind of liberation. The atheist choir, moreover, is too ready to observe society’s convention of according special respect to faith, and it goes along with society’s lamentable habit of labelling small children with the religion of their parents. You’d never speak of a “Marxist child” or a “monetarist child”. So why give religion a free pass to indoctrinate helpless children? There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.
You’re as much a fundamentalist as those you criticize.
No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may “believe”, in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.
I’m an atheist, but people need religion.
“What are you going to put in its place? How are you going to fill the need, or comfort the bereaved?”
What patronising condescension! “You and I are too intelligent and well educated to need religion. But ordinary people, hoi polloi, Orwellian proles, Huxleian Deltas and Epsilons need religion.” In any case, the universe doesn’t owe us comfort, and the fact that a belief is comforting doesn’t make it true. The God Delusion doesn’t set out to be comforting, but at least it is not a placebo. I am pleased that the opening lines of my own Unweaving the Rainbow have been used to give solace at funerals.
When asked whether she believed in God, Golda Meir said: “I believe in the Jewish people, and the Jewish people believe in God.” I recently heard a prize specimen of I’m-an-atheist-buttery quote this and then substitute his own version: “I believe in people, and people believe in God.” I too believe in people. I believe that, given proper encouragement to think, and given the best information available, people will courageously cast aside celestial comfort blankets and lead intellectually fulfilled, emotionally liberated lives.
First, the Bush Administration has been aware of this matter for months (since October 2006) and never took any action until less than two weeks before SiCKO is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and a little more than a month before it is scheduled to open in the United States.
Second, the health care and insurance industry, which is exposed in the movie and has expressed concerns about the impact of the movie on their industries, is a major corporate underwriter of President George W. Bush and the Republican Party, having contributed over $13 million to the Bush presidential campaign in 2004 and more than $180 million to Republican candidates over the last two campaign cycles.
It is well documented that the industry is very concerned about the impact of SiCKO. They have threatened their employees if they talk to me. They have set up special internal crises lines should I show up at their headquarters. Employees have been warned about the consequences of participating in SiCKO. Despite this, some employees, at great risk to themselves, have gone on camera to tell the American people the truth about the health care industry. I can understand why that industry's main recipient of its contributions -- President Bush -- would want to harass, intimidate and potentially prevent this film from having its widest possible audience.
And, third, this investigation is being opened in the wake of misleading attacks on the purpose of the Cuba trip from a possible leading Republican candidate for president, Fred Thompson, a major conservative newspaper, The New York Post, and various right wing blogs.
Now similar cries are coming from Scotland and France. May 3 elections in Scotland using new electronic counting systems resulted in as many as 100,000 votes being classed as "spoilt papers." (About 90,000 such ballots from Ohio 2004 remain uncounted to this day).
Complex methods of tabulating and weighting the Scottish votes yielded "chaos." Several vote counts were suspended. In some races the tally of rejected ballots was greater than some candidates' winning margin. "This is a temporary interruption to one small aspect of the overall process," says a spokeswoman for DRS, the company responsible for the vote counting technology.
The language in France has not been so polite. A watershed presidential election has just been won by Nicolas Sarkozy, a blunt right-wing Reagan-Bush-style extremist over the socialist Segolene Royal. Sarkozy is a hard-edged authoritarian whose intense anti-immigrant rhetoric matches his support for the American war in Iraq and his avowed intent to slash France's social service system, including a public health program widely considered among the best in the world.
Like the balloting in Ukraine, the US, Scotland and Mexico, Sarkozy's victory was marred by angry, widespread complaints about dubious vote counts whose discrepancies always seem to favor the rightist candidate. Throughout France, the cry has arisen that the conservatives have done to Segolene Royal what Bush/Rove did to John Kerry.
In the not-so-distant past, other elections were engineered by George H.W. Bush, head of the Central Intelligence Agency and father of the current White House resident. During the Reagan-Bush presidencies, in the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other key third world nations, expected leftist triumphs somehow morphed into rightist coups. "CIA destabilizations are nothing new," said former CIA station chief and Medal of Merit winner John Stockwell in 1987. "Guatemala in 1954, Brazil, Ghana, Chile, the Congo, Iran, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay---the CIA organized the overthrow of constitutional democracy."
The recent trend to privatizing vote counts, with corporations claiming "proprietary rights" to keep their hardware and software covert, has added a new dimension to an old tradition. The recent "e-victories" in the US and France have significantly tipped to the right the global balance among the major powers. So while Ohio and California conduct their studies of electronic voting, the whole world will be watching.
For over a decade, given the failures of elected politicians, Mike Gravel has been engaged in some extraordinary research and consultations with leading constitutional law experts about the need to enact another check to the faltering checks and balances--namely, the National Initiative for Democracy, a proposed law that empowers the people as lawmakers.
Before you roll your eyes over what you feel is an unworkable utopian scheme, go to http://nationalinitiative.us to read the detailed constitutional justification for the sovereign right of the people to directly alter their government and make laws.
Among other legal scholars, Yale Law School Professor, Akhil Reed Amar and legal author, Alan Hirsch, have argued that the Constitution recognizes the inalienable right of the American people to amend the Constitution directly through majority vote. What the Constitution does not do is spell out the procedures for such a sovereign right.
Here are the roundup of those online illegal campaign worker stories. I think Agent Ska had it first. Then the 2 PJs came in, but they added a broader legal context. I think the best analysis came from the admiral, who clued me into this union angle I had never even imagined...who is the admiral? How does he know so much about the city's players? Curious.
What's also revealing is that the photos were leaked to online sources. I guess that's the future...
Cory Doctorow on the recent posted numbers scandal. Related: Die DMCA, also a part of Phil's Music Show, now in widescreen.
CORY DOCTOROW, BOING BOING - Michael Ayers, the chairman of the AACS-LA (the organization that sent hundreds of legal threats to websites that published the random 16-byte number that represented one of the keys for cracking the copy-prevention on HD-DVDs) has given an interview to the BBC in which he vows to use technical and legal means to shut down the 802,000+ websites that have reproduced the key. Michael says that this doesn't impact free speech -- that it's possible to discuss the crack and DRM in general without reproducing the key. I think he's wrong. I just taught a class at USC where we talked about this crack as part of our coursework, and part of my lesson was talking about the ease with which this information can be retrieved and spread -- and how that makes anti-copying systems futile. For my students, seeing just how little information was needed to undo the AACS scheme was critical to understanding its fragility. Indeed, one of my students posted this key to the class blog to show his fellow students how trivial this was, prompting AACS to threaten me with legal action as well. . . The companies that made AACS spent millions and years at it. The hackers who broke it did so in days, for laughs, for free. More people now know how to crack HD-DVD than own an HD-DVD player.
I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.
I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
Speaking of the wonderful role that religion plays in demonizing women, there's this great new site called Madre. Here's a snippet from one article that involves Iraq and how you can teleport a smart computer programmer like Riverbend to the 14th century:
This campaign of gender–based violence was intended to subjugate women as a first step in the creation of an Islamist state. As Mithal Alusi, one of 30 Iraqi legislators who called for the protection of women's human rights in a 2006 declaration said, "These attempts to intimidate women are attempts to terrorize society."26 In fact, violence against women is a primary weapon in the arsenal of fundamentalists of various religions, who seek to impose their political agenda on society. Often, the first salvo in a war for theocracy is a systematic attack on women and minorities who represent or demand an alternative or competing vision for society. These initial targets are usually the most marginalized and, therefore, most vulnerable members of society, and once they are dealt with, fundamentalist forces then proceed towards less vulnerable targets.
"This campaign of gender-based violence was intended to subjugate women as a first step in the creation of an Islamist state."
In Iraq, women, Christians, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, and intersex (LGBTTI) Iraqis have been among the Islamists' first targets of violence. For example, the Mujahadin Shura Group vows to kill any woman seen in public without a headscarf. Mujahadin Shura listed among its reasons for opposing the January 2005 Iraqi elections the need to prevent Iraq from "becoming homosexual. " In the northern city of Mosul, the group has targeted Christian women with a campaign of murder, kidnapping, rape, and sexual enslavement. According to the Union of the Unemployed,27 groups such as this use the most violent and inhumane methods to impose their will, targeting "anyone who disagrees with them and does not observe their way of living."28
It's Not Just an Abortion Ban: The Christian Right's Global Agenda
Bringing It All Back Home
For the most part, policies such as these did not cost the Republican Party votes because they didn't impact women in the US—at least not at first. But the US attack on women's reproductive rights abroad followed by the recent Supreme Court ruling is a stark reminder that ideologically speaking, there's no such thing as foreign policy. The Christian Right seeks to restrict women's rights domestically, just as they have internationally—as part of one coherent "vision" that includes much more than a world without abortion.
We only need to look at countries where religious fundamentalists have gained the upper hand in policymaking to see where the US Christian Right would like to take us. Fundamentalists of different religions draw on different texts and operate in diverse cultures and contexts. But when it comes to their rigid and retrograde gender ideology, they show a lot more commonalities than differences. The Christian Right's agenda extends to restricting women's rights to work, equality before the law, education, and freedom from a range of gender-based human rights abuses, including domestic battery and marital rape. And the Christian Right's "vision" goes beyond attacks on any narrowly construed notion of "women's rights." They're angling for more of the kind of messianic militarism that characterized Bush's response to 9/11 (which he originally called a "crusade"), and more neoliberal economic policies that promise greater ruin to the world's poor people and ecology.
May 4
Friday Art Break
From Boing Boing. How to make every movie poster a grindhouse poster.
From Tom Moody: First piece: some of Tom's Art. Second piece: Rube Goldbergesque baby torture machine.
By the way, NARAL gets a lot of flack (Chairman Kos and Oliver Willis spring to mind) for supporting republicans sometimes. Well, that might be tactically suspect, but the reason they do that is that there are many dems that aren't pro choice, or when it comes to stem cells, even pro progress. And of course its apparently unthinkable for dems to ever use a fillibuster to stop a horrific republican appointment to the Supreme Court...sigh. This really is a fight between reason and superstition. I wish the secularists in Turkey all the luck in the world. They have a right to be worried. That's a fight worth fighting here and abroad.
Now there's a book they won't teach you in college. Won't be assigned a lot of Ivan Illich (whole text of Deschooling Society here) and Paulo Freire either. This first paragraph from an alternet article from Barbara Ehrenreich reminded of the late John Holt. Here it is:
"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."
"It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."
"Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."
Now here's a weird call I got and I got it twice. Somebody called me and there was this recorded question about this new Wal Mart that's being built in the East Hills area, but then it turned into one of those sleazy pressure calls which pointed out that the Walmart might impact (I wish I had recorded it) the black owned Giant Eagle across the street. It's overall impact is "We don't want to put the black owned Giant Eagle out of business do we? Come on." Using my ace reporting skills I'm going to guess that these calls were funded by the black woman who owns that Giant Eagle. I guess its meant to create some kind of groundswell of support against the Wal Mart. But we need jobs around here.
Rage Against the Machine doesn't like President Bush. I don't need hanging or shootings you pinko commies. Just simultaneous impeachment. Let's restrain ourselves a bit.
April 26
First response to the debate: I'm voting for that cranky dem ex senator from Alaska, even though I wasn't aware that Alaska had an ex dem senator. He's kind of a radical in that he's ruling out nukes as a first strike weapon. Back to reality: still torn between Obama and Edwards. Related: I'm probably voting for the Agent Ska endorsement slate because a 20 year old has better sources in local politics than I do. And one more thing: The Sith iz kewl! I'm sending her this action figure cause that's what girls like:
Important Youtube update about what's happening in the electoral fraud story from Mark Crispin Miller or: The most important story of the new century that no one respectable covers.
April 24
Speaking of Rudy Rucker and Posthuman Blues, here's a snippet of a great short story called "Postsingularity Outtakes" published online. Around part 6 I start getting lost but it reads cool:
1: The Singularity. The Singularity happened when, encouraged by his business backers, President Dick Dibbs sent an eggcase of nants to Mars. Nants were self-reproducing nanomachines: solar-powered, networked, capable of gnatlike flight, and single-mindedly focused on transforming all available material into more nants. In a couple of years, the nants had eaten Mars, turning the red planet into a Dyson sphere of a duodecillion nanomachines, a three-millimeter-thick shell half a billion kilometers across, with Earth and the Sun trapped inside.
The stars were hidden by giant ads; in daytime the ads were a silvery background to the sky. Dibbs’s backers were well-pleased. And behind the scenes the nant swarm was solving a number of intractable problems in computer science, mathematical physics, and process design; these results were privily beamed to the nants’ parent corporation, Nantel. But before Nantel could profit from the discoveries, the nants set to work chewing up Earth.
Its part of online science fiction effort called Flurb.
My old amsat new world disorder pal Jason Lubyk is up to some new tricks. I interviewed RU as well some years ago. Hard to listen to the podcast but I found the part about changing your own skin color pretty cool. I'd go for an all black or blue look, with white line tatoos...I borrowed this blurb from Doc Menlo.
I think, and I might be off by about a dozen or so bodies, 400 Iraqis lost their lives this week. Try reading the last week of Juan Cole and not weeping...
The very sad history of the war against pot, arguably a miracle plant that we should be exploiting. You might notice that I've added a few NORML ads to my tv station above.
Well the shootings were horrible. And an English major. I think I speak for all English majors in that we don't think he represents us. I used to think this was just another reason to support gun control. I no longer think this for a number of reasons. One, gun prohibition would work just as well as drug prohibition, which means that it works great if you're trying to create a criminal cartel that makes lots of money selling guns. He probably could've gotten better guns off the street and cheaper too. Two, I no longer trust my government. I want the right to buy a gun in case things go south. I admire the White Rose society but I think I prefer a more Alamo/300 like exit. Three, I don't think the answer is everybody having a loaded gun at all times but I wish ballistic shields (I favor the Baker Batshield for pathetic and predictable fanboy reasons.) and bullet proof vests were as easy to get as loaded weapons. Ditto for rubber bullets. Elsewhere: comparisons to the shooting and what's happening in Iraq. And oddly good coverage from Boing Boing here and here.
April 16
Monday Morning Around the Internets
Two good posts from the People's Republic from Pittsburgh. One is about how Bill announced that he won't be making an independent run (He had to take a deal for that ever elusive councilmanic chairmanship I just know it..) and after you read this post you might find yourself asking why would I ever support Bill Peduto again? I mean really. Two, there's a piece about a letter from Catherine McNeilly--that he discovered on a WTAE blog (They do real news on television?..I had no idea. I'll have to start reading that.) that she apparently paid for if I'm reading this correctly. Short version: despite the settlement nothing has changed in the mayor's office. I guess he's Don Imus in his twenties. What a great several years we have ahead of us...
Tonight was the first great Sopranos episode I've seen in awhile. Plotlines for the future: they dig up Mr. Pink's body and desecrate it...? If the New York boss kills Christophuh would Tony really mind? A New York vs. New Jersey war? Is that possible? Who's Doc? Also great: Jericho (Best black character ever. He's black see so no one notices that he's the smartest guy in town. Sure, he knows morse code, is an expert shot but nevermind those nappy headed people...), The Shield has been great, and Heroes will soon return. I watch a lot of tv. I'm also creating my own channel here. The goal is to create early MTV which you could watch for hours because the music was so good.
I didn't go to Flux but Agent Ska did. She has pics. Over in the comments I make a humble proposal: Pittsburgh and Braddock should switch mayors. Pittsburgh would be much much better off. John should run for something higher. Period.
Briggs has become "The Great Black Hope". Did you ever think that the conditions of poor white men in Eastern Europe are tougher than even for black men in the US? Something to think about.
I got a letter in my comments section. I'm printing it whole:
Harvey Pekar and his Pittsburgh illustrator Ed Piskor will speak and show some work at Slippery Rock University's Kaleidoscope Arts Festival http://academics.sru.edu/HFPA/kaleidoscope/performers.htm on April 20th at 12:30 p.m.. Does anyone at this site have some suggestions about how we can best get the word out to those who'd like to be there. Should be fun.
Well I could mention it here on the frontpage and feature Ed's work. Comics people know Harvey Pekar of course. You might know him from that cool film that came out and which was pretty good.
Don Imus is a racist. Much as I love him, I can see it in him. And yes, we're all racists; but Imus stepped in it bad, and it will be fascinating and good to see him reform. I wish him well.
At least he apologized and is doing time. What about all the journalists who were wrong on Iraq? The Rutgers women held a press conference saying Imus hurt their feelings. What about all the American and Iraqi families destroyed, torn apart, blown to the wind, etc., by one of the greatest mistakes in history? Hordes of journalists out of desire for influence and status peddled the administration's lies and distorted reality to rationalize attacking Iraq. Tom Friedman saw the war as good because of suicide bombers in Israel. Ken Pollack didn't see any real strife between Sunnis and Shi'as, and neither did Kristol and Kaplan, and none of them thought the Israeli occupation had any bearing on the case. I could go on and on.
At the very least they showed terrible judgment. Last year I watched Pollack rationalize one or two of his errors before the Council on Foreign Relations. George Packer sought to excuse his credulity, wishy-washily, in Assassin's Gate. Don't they owe us a lot more? Don't the New York Times, Washington Post, and WSJ owe us investigations of their conduct and sourcing? The only reporter to suffer professionally for getting us into this horror is Judith Miller. Shouldn't there be more?
April 12
I am just a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan. I'm not surprised by his death, however, in that he was a manic chain smoker. A pack a day guy at least. Its amazing that he lasted until 84. I also think he died creatively about 23 years ago, right after the publication of Deadeye Dick. His sixties stuff is definitely the best. Recommend Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House. Oh, and Slaughterhouse 5 is great too. He also wins my award for best science fiction title ever: The Big Space Fuck. Here's a collection of Mr. Vonnegut's best quotes over the years. By the way, if you're linked to certain people on the Internets they are probably a part of your Karass, which is defined as "A group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing God's will in carrying out a specific, common, task. A karass is driven forward in time and space by tension within the karass."
Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.
Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next— and on and on.
Galapagos (1985)
I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.
London Observer (27 December 1987)
There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
"Knowing What's Nice", an essay from In These Times (2003)
We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.
On Humans, in an appearance on The Daily Show (September 2005)
…I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy—because we’re experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that’s what’s going on now.
Appearance on The Daily Show (September 2005)
I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
On Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, on The Daily Show (September 2005)
(talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
Its Easter Sunday which means that its a good time for atheist blogging. First up Blog Against Theocracy: Here's the petition I signed:
We, the undersigned, call upon elected and appointed officials to join us in reaffirming America's religious freedom by demonstrating a commitment to the following:
Every American should have the right to make personal decisions -- about family life, reproductive health, end of life care and other matters of personal conscience.
American tax dollars should not go to charities that discriminate in hiring based on religious belief or that promote a particular religious faith as a requirement for receiving services.
Political candidates should not be endorsed or opposed by houses of worship.
Public schools should teach with academic integrity and without the promotion of religious preference or belief.
Decisions about scientific and health policies should be based on the best available scientific data, not on religious doctrine.
We join together, as the most diverse nation in the world, to commit ourselves to defending and preserving this freedom.
Related: Sam Harris on Faith vs. Reason.
Speaking of Christian Jihads, how goes it in Iraq? Here's this gem from Undernews:
BRITISH GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS CONFIRM ESTIMATE OF 650,000 IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
RICHARDHORTON, GUARDIAN, UK - Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality".
The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the research was "robust", close to "best practice", and "balanced". He recommended "caution in publicly criticizing the study".
When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "Are we really sure that the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies?" A Foreign and Commonwealth Office official was forced to conclude that the government "should not be rubbishing the Lancet".
The prime minister's adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".
Now, read the above post and follow it to this conclusion. Froth, who's in law enforcement , says what you would think (I wonder if Froth could say what these guys are saying...? Just an open question of curiosity (On second thought, all of those guys are retired I think)...) he would say about the issue. But a couple of points: First, we don't know that POG has done this. I don't see how they could do it even if they wanted to. Everyone is watching them. Two, I could see where somebody could look at the war and come to the conclusion that non violence hasn't worked. I suppose if we march another four years we can watch another half million Iraqis/Iranians die. I'm sure the marching will make us feel so much better. Three: Froth makes an argument that the marines are just doing their duty and following orders. If I recall, the "I'm just following orders" defense didn't go over too well in Nuremberg. And, quite frankly, it shouldn't have. Who but the most naive and simple among us think we're fighting for democracy over there? We're there to steal their oil and terrorize the populace into submission. It is a volunteer force? They can take responsibility for their actions, right? They're legitimate targets of the resistance....
April 5
Light posting until the weekend, obviously. I have updated my channel though.
Correction: Jeff Simmons, just back from touring in Spain, writes in to tell me that he was never NEVER married to Jill West. My bad as they say. I probably read it on the Internets and thought it was true. More from that email from Joff when I have more time to write...
Was leaning strongly toward Edwards until he betrayed bloggers, and atheist bloggers at that. Now, I was leaning toward Obama, until he said that we should get rid of the timelines in the spending bill. This tells the world that there's no difference between the parties. None at all. And not a decent third party in sight....Edwards and Obama are even again.
April 1
I've quit blogging and I've joined a monastery. Imaginary beings in the sky rule my world, or at least the part of the world I was born in. Besides, I just can't go "negative" anymore. Or at least that's what I said after I took the deal for City Council Chairman.
And now: This special message about the dangers of communism.
, Palast lays out the case for the future theft of the presidency, along with lots of other Executive malfeasance. I chatted with him about the role of the Justice Department in this scheme, and what it means for the viability of our “democracy.
