Monday, August 08, 2005
Mercury in song birds
I've posted the entire article from the New York Times today: it's a good learning tool as to how mercury makes its way into the environment. Oh, and this article reports that the population of a particular songbird, called the thrush, has declined 45%, possibly due to mercury:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/nyregion/08mercury.html?pagewanted=2&8hpib
The Canaries Had Their Coal Mines
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: August 8, 2005
HUNTER MOUNTAIN WILD FOREST, N.Y., Aug. 3 - So far this summer, Wing Goodale and his boss, David C. Evers, have used decoys and recorded bird calls to lure about 150 thrushes, warblers and other wild songbirds into nets here and in several others parts of New York City's Catskill Mountain Watershed to determine what is happening to the drinking water.
From each tiny bird, no bigger than a cellphone, Mr. Goodale, a research biologist, gently takes blood samples with toothpick-size pipettes. Then Mr. Evers, also a biologist, stretches out a bird's wing and counts down to its 11th flight feather, which he deftly plucks and puts into a plastic storage bag for sampling.
Mr. Evers, who is executive director of the BioDiversity Research Institute, a nonprofit research and education group in Gorham, Me., is looking for signs of mercury in the songbirds. He has a pretty good hunch that he will find it, as he has already found mercury in songbirds in the Adirondacks and in New England.
If substantial amounts of mercury show up in the blood and feathers he has collected, it could spell trouble for the watershed and, potentially, for the nine million people who rely on the New York drinking water that comes from here because it would mean that the toxin is present in ways that were previously unknown.
"It's far more extensive than was ever put forth to the public," Mr. Evers said.
Mercury contamination has long been present in lakes, rivers and the city's reservoirs.
Mercury, a liquid metal, does not get into water because of broken thermometers, as some believe. Rather, mercury occurs naturally in the earth, including in coal. It is released into the air by coal-burning power plants and other sources.
Emissions from power plants in the Midwest drift toward New York. The real problem comes when the airborne mercury comes into contact with water and is transformed into its toxic form, methylmercury. Although the water in New York City's Catskill reservoirs is considered safe to drink, state health officials have posted advisories warning that pregnant women and children ought to limit their consumption of bass, trout and other fish caught in the reservoirs because the fish have absorbed some of the toxic material.
Until recently, the mercury problem was thought to be limited to water. The discovery of mercury in songbirds that never go into the water may represent a serious new threat.
Mr. Evers was invited to the watershed by the New York chapter of the Nature Conservancy, a national environmental group that has helped protect open spaces throughout the state.
In recent years, New York City has spent about $175 million to buy about 60,000 acres of Catskill woodlands to protect the reservoirs. But what good is buying forest land, asked Alan White, director of the conservancy's Catskill Mountain Program, if the health of the forest itself is at risk?
It is still early in the investigation, but Mr. Evers, who spent more than a decade studying the impact of mercury on water birds like loons, believes that the harmful form of mercury gets caught in the fallen leaves and other litter on the forest floor, where it is consumed by sow bugs, centipedes and other small insects.
As those bugs are eaten by larger bugs, the mercury content is passed on. The buildup of mercury continues as those insects are eaten by songbirds.
Mr. Evers and Mr. White say that it makes sense to think of forest songbirds as early warning systems, like the canaries that used to be carried into coal mine shafts. If the canaries died, miners hurried out of the mines because they knew that dangerous methane or carbon monoxide was present.
In the same way, unnatural levels of mercury in songbirds could be interpreted as a sign of pending danger in the forests. In loons and other water birds, excessive levels of mercury cause erratic behavior and lower birthrates.
The scientists in the Catskills are focusing their attention on the wood thrush, a gutsy little frequent flier with a flutelike voice that can combine two notes at once. The wood thrush can migrate as far south as Panama, more than 2,500 miles from the Catskills.
Printer-Friendly
Single-Page
Reprints
Published: August 8, 2005
(Page 2 of 2)
In recent decades, the number of wood thrushes has declined 45 percent, and the reason is unclear. Mr. Evers says biologists initially suspected that destruction of the bird's winter habitat was responsible. But now he thinks elevated levels of mercury could be to blame.
Skip to next paragraph
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Streams like this one flow into reservoirs. New York is one of a handful of cities that do not filter their water.
The connection between mercury in the birds and the purity of the city's drinking water is indirect, but real. As Mr. White explained, if the songbird population declines, the natural check on insects will be disturbed.
Without the birds preying on them, caterpillars and other destructive insects can defoliate forests, killing trees that filter runoff that eventually winds up in the reservoirs.
Before dawn, Mr. Evers and Mr. Goodale set up nearly invisible traps, called mist nets, along a trail on the western slope of Hunter Mountain, in between the city's Schoharie and Ashokan Reservoirs.
On the forest floor near the nets they placed plastic decoys and CD players that reproduced the thrush's beautiful ee-oh-lay song.
By 8 a.m. they had trapped about 10 birds, including several wood thrushes. Because the wood thrush is somewhat larger than other forest songbirds, it is believed that it will show a higher level of mercury when the tests are completed in about six weeks.
If these initial studies of songbirds indicate, as expected, that there is a serious problem with mercury, Mr. White said the long-range concern would be that "these forest systems will start to unravel," endangering the water supply.
Mr. White said that there was no immediate health danger, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the city's water system and continuously tests for mercury, has not detected the element in the water.
New York is one of only a handful of cities in the country that do not filter their drinking water. What goes into the upstate reservoirs comes out in New York taps 120 miles later unfiltered, although chlorine and fluoride are added.
Mr. Evers says it is much too early to determine what the impact of mercury on the songbirds might be, or how long before the reservoirs are affected in any way.
But he said that, when it comes to drinking water, it is important to anticipate a potential problem.
"The wood thrush is a good indicator species," Mr. Evers said. "If this small-scale, pilot project shows that there is a danger in these parts, it will be time to go to the policy makers and say this is what we've found, and we should do something about it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/nyregion/08mercury.html?pagewanted=2&8hpib
The Canaries Had Their Coal Mines
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: August 8, 2005
HUNTER MOUNTAIN WILD FOREST, N.Y., Aug. 3 - So far this summer, Wing Goodale and his boss, David C. Evers, have used decoys and recorded bird calls to lure about 150 thrushes, warblers and other wild songbirds into nets here and in several others parts of New York City's Catskill Mountain Watershed to determine what is happening to the drinking water.
From each tiny bird, no bigger than a cellphone, Mr. Goodale, a research biologist, gently takes blood samples with toothpick-size pipettes. Then Mr. Evers, also a biologist, stretches out a bird's wing and counts down to its 11th flight feather, which he deftly plucks and puts into a plastic storage bag for sampling.
Mr. Evers, who is executive director of the BioDiversity Research Institute, a nonprofit research and education group in Gorham, Me., is looking for signs of mercury in the songbirds. He has a pretty good hunch that he will find it, as he has already found mercury in songbirds in the Adirondacks and in New England.
If substantial amounts of mercury show up in the blood and feathers he has collected, it could spell trouble for the watershed and, potentially, for the nine million people who rely on the New York drinking water that comes from here because it would mean that the toxin is present in ways that were previously unknown.
"It's far more extensive than was ever put forth to the public," Mr. Evers said.
Mercury contamination has long been present in lakes, rivers and the city's reservoirs.
Mercury, a liquid metal, does not get into water because of broken thermometers, as some believe. Rather, mercury occurs naturally in the earth, including in coal. It is released into the air by coal-burning power plants and other sources.
Emissions from power plants in the Midwest drift toward New York. The real problem comes when the airborne mercury comes into contact with water and is transformed into its toxic form, methylmercury. Although the water in New York City's Catskill reservoirs is considered safe to drink, state health officials have posted advisories warning that pregnant women and children ought to limit their consumption of bass, trout and other fish caught in the reservoirs because the fish have absorbed some of the toxic material.
Until recently, the mercury problem was thought to be limited to water. The discovery of mercury in songbirds that never go into the water may represent a serious new threat.
Mr. Evers was invited to the watershed by the New York chapter of the Nature Conservancy, a national environmental group that has helped protect open spaces throughout the state.
In recent years, New York City has spent about $175 million to buy about 60,000 acres of Catskill woodlands to protect the reservoirs. But what good is buying forest land, asked Alan White, director of the conservancy's Catskill Mountain Program, if the health of the forest itself is at risk?
It is still early in the investigation, but Mr. Evers, who spent more than a decade studying the impact of mercury on water birds like loons, believes that the harmful form of mercury gets caught in the fallen leaves and other litter on the forest floor, where it is consumed by sow bugs, centipedes and other small insects.
As those bugs are eaten by larger bugs, the mercury content is passed on. The buildup of mercury continues as those insects are eaten by songbirds.
Mr. Evers and Mr. White say that it makes sense to think of forest songbirds as early warning systems, like the canaries that used to be carried into coal mine shafts. If the canaries died, miners hurried out of the mines because they knew that dangerous methane or carbon monoxide was present.
In the same way, unnatural levels of mercury in songbirds could be interpreted as a sign of pending danger in the forests. In loons and other water birds, excessive levels of mercury cause erratic behavior and lower birthrates.
The scientists in the Catskills are focusing their attention on the wood thrush, a gutsy little frequent flier with a flutelike voice that can combine two notes at once. The wood thrush can migrate as far south as Panama, more than 2,500 miles from the Catskills.
Printer-Friendly
Single-Page
Reprints
Published: August 8, 2005
(Page 2 of 2)
In recent decades, the number of wood thrushes has declined 45 percent, and the reason is unclear. Mr. Evers says biologists initially suspected that destruction of the bird's winter habitat was responsible. But now he thinks elevated levels of mercury could be to blame.
Skip to next paragraph
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Streams like this one flow into reservoirs. New York is one of a handful of cities that do not filter their water.
The connection between mercury in the birds and the purity of the city's drinking water is indirect, but real. As Mr. White explained, if the songbird population declines, the natural check on insects will be disturbed.
Without the birds preying on them, caterpillars and other destructive insects can defoliate forests, killing trees that filter runoff that eventually winds up in the reservoirs.
Before dawn, Mr. Evers and Mr. Goodale set up nearly invisible traps, called mist nets, along a trail on the western slope of Hunter Mountain, in between the city's Schoharie and Ashokan Reservoirs.
On the forest floor near the nets they placed plastic decoys and CD players that reproduced the thrush's beautiful ee-oh-lay song.
By 8 a.m. they had trapped about 10 birds, including several wood thrushes. Because the wood thrush is somewhat larger than other forest songbirds, it is believed that it will show a higher level of mercury when the tests are completed in about six weeks.
If these initial studies of songbirds indicate, as expected, that there is a serious problem with mercury, Mr. White said the long-range concern would be that "these forest systems will start to unravel," endangering the water supply.
Mr. White said that there was no immediate health danger, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the city's water system and continuously tests for mercury, has not detected the element in the water.
New York is one of only a handful of cities in the country that do not filter their drinking water. What goes into the upstate reservoirs comes out in New York taps 120 miles later unfiltered, although chlorine and fluoride are added.
Mr. Evers says it is much too early to determine what the impact of mercury on the songbirds might be, or how long before the reservoirs are affected in any way.
But he said that, when it comes to drinking water, it is important to anticipate a potential problem.
"The wood thrush is a good indicator species," Mr. Evers said. "If this small-scale, pilot project shows that there is a danger in these parts, it will be time to go to the policy makers and say this is what we've found, and we should do something about it."
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:58 PM |
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
The Progressive Machinery
Liberals and progressives are fond of waxing eloquent and fondly on the beautiful chaos and disorganization of the progressive movement. "We're a big tent", I've read on occasion. We're a coalition of so many groups, I've heard, that coordinating a unified movement is next to impossible. We're a beloved chaos; we encompass so many beliefs and groups that unified movement is like traveling the L.A. freeway: slowly admidst jammed up ideas and goals not quite finding traction.
Folks, compared to the machinery of the New Right, this tortoise ain't even in the race. She's basking in the sun somewhere oblivious to the looming ecological and economical apacolypse.
Yes, we're all fond of each other. And that's a good thing. Just check out the bursting with love threads on Booman tribune, for example. Supporting, loving, stroking with positive thoughts. This mutual admiration society ain't gonna win us any battles though. It is the firm foundation of a building not yet constructed. This building we will call the progressive machinery.
The word "machinery" itself has connotations of cold, lifeless steel, impersonal and anti-thetical to the goals of humanity. You may call it something different if you wish. I favor "progressive machinery", because I wish to conjure something structurally tough, gritty and hard-working, like a grease monkey whose face and hands are smudged with motor oil after a hard day's work.
Grease is what keeps the machinery running, along with regular maintenance. Call this a maintenace check, if you will. Mam', Sir, you're long overdue.
Your mechanic might tell you something like this: Mam', many of the parts of this car are in relatively good shape, but, the chassis is shot, or, the steering needs to be completely rebuilt. Otherwise your car may drift all over the road without any firm direction, and then "crash!"
The passage of the bankruptcy bill and the repeal of PUCHA was just such a crash.
I don't know about ya'll but my head's in a neck brace right now from the trauma of this crash. I mean, these crashes keep happening, with grave consequences for the quality of life in this country.
Not to mention the unaddressed environmental issues that are beginning to show in symptoms such as the massive bird kill that is washing ashore on our Pacific coast.
I'm using this, uh, downtown time to reflect on our losses, and what has gone wrong. How is it that we are so far off track that we, as a progressive movement/group, aren't even keeping in touch with for-reaching legislation that is being steadily rammed down our collective throats?
Where is our agenda and why isn't it more visible? Why wasn't a coherent, unified energy strategy proposed eons ago in anticipation of the eventual attempt to pass the President's energy policy, which keeps us shackled to the old ways and further erodes consumer protection, drastically?
I'm not letting myself off the hook either. I've been lazy. I've been complacent as I rested in the fog of denial, "there is always time..." The time is now folks. The issues were never more urgent. Our immediate and devoted efforts are required yesterday.
Folks, compared to the machinery of the New Right, this tortoise ain't even in the race. She's basking in the sun somewhere oblivious to the looming ecological and economical apacolypse.
Yes, we're all fond of each other. And that's a good thing. Just check out the bursting with love threads on Booman tribune, for example. Supporting, loving, stroking with positive thoughts. This mutual admiration society ain't gonna win us any battles though. It is the firm foundation of a building not yet constructed. This building we will call the progressive machinery.
The word "machinery" itself has connotations of cold, lifeless steel, impersonal and anti-thetical to the goals of humanity. You may call it something different if you wish. I favor "progressive machinery", because I wish to conjure something structurally tough, gritty and hard-working, like a grease monkey whose face and hands are smudged with motor oil after a hard day's work.
Grease is what keeps the machinery running, along with regular maintenance. Call this a maintenace check, if you will. Mam', Sir, you're long overdue.
Your mechanic might tell you something like this: Mam', many of the parts of this car are in relatively good shape, but, the chassis is shot, or, the steering needs to be completely rebuilt. Otherwise your car may drift all over the road without any firm direction, and then "crash!"
The passage of the bankruptcy bill and the repeal of PUCHA was just such a crash.
I don't know about ya'll but my head's in a neck brace right now from the trauma of this crash. I mean, these crashes keep happening, with grave consequences for the quality of life in this country.
Not to mention the unaddressed environmental issues that are beginning to show in symptoms such as the massive bird kill that is washing ashore on our Pacific coast.
I'm using this, uh, downtown time to reflect on our losses, and what has gone wrong. How is it that we are so far off track that we, as a progressive movement/group, aren't even keeping in touch with for-reaching legislation that is being steadily rammed down our collective throats?
Where is our agenda and why isn't it more visible? Why wasn't a coherent, unified energy strategy proposed eons ago in anticipation of the eventual attempt to pass the President's energy policy, which keeps us shackled to the old ways and further erodes consumer protection, drastically?
I'm not letting myself off the hook either. I've been lazy. I've been complacent as I rested in the fog of denial, "there is always time..." The time is now folks. The issues were never more urgent. Our immediate and devoted efforts are required yesterday.
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:24 PM |
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Blogs killed the Activism Star
With the passage of the Energy Bill, and the repeal of New Deal legislation in the form of PUCHA (Public Utility Holding Company Act) safely tucked within the folds of that bill, progressive politics, blogs and all of its stars better take a long, hard look at itself. I would almost call it a crisis. No, I take that back.
It is a crisis. This is how the crisis is defined.
Faster than we can keep up, bad, very bad legislation is being pushed through Congress, under our collective noses. Openly, the new class of robber barons and their Congressional enablers have sunk their teeth firmly into the flesh of democracy. And...they are tearing it apart. And we are letting them.
Let me just say, I define democracy as the way in which a collective relates for the good of the whole. The corporate/political machinery that is eating up our quality of life is not working for the good of the whole.
Yes. Admit it. The bankruptcy bill, and now the repeal of PUCHA demonstrates just how ill-equipped, how ill-prepared we are to deal with the machinery of the new right. Perhaps it is a lack of understanding of the machinery itself.
It is the machinery of fanaticism that is fueling the New Right. Fanaticism stops at nothing, allows no obstacles to impede its progress. Fanaticism attracts the zeal of followers that never give it a rest. Fanaticism overlooks long-term effects and implications, except where these implications are personally concerned.
Fanaticm is now present, along with the zeal of its followers, in the corporate world. The corporate world is selling the soul of America for its goals, and usually, its goals have nothing to do with the quality of life of the average American.
Fanaticism is the oil that greases the machinery of the New Right. This is what we are up against. While I don't by any means suggest that we become fanatics to fight the machinery of the New Right, I do suggest that we must match their zeal, dedication and efficiency if we are to have any chance against their agenda, if we are going to have any chance to rebuild the quality of life for Americans, if we are going to have any chance to save the ecology of the Earth from destruction.
Fanatics adhere to the belief that the ends justifies the means. This belief is the origin of so many of the initiatives and actions of the New Right.
Let me be clear here: the so-called New Right has been around, probably since the formation of this country, in various forms and names. At this point in our history, "they" have become so brazen as to openly flaunt their agenda.
I'm telling you, we must be just as brazen to openly confront them, and propose an agenda that will address and offer solutions as to preserving and rebuilding the quality of life for all Americans, indeed, for the planet.
This is our heritage, our right as humans, to claim stewardship of the planet in the name of peace, economic justice, and respect for the ecology of the earth.
We must create a progressive machinery that can move and function with as much driving force and efficiency as the machinery of the New Right.
First: definitions. I define the new right as a group defined by its extreme agenda and their allies. This gets complicated, because we have Congressional members who stradle both sides of the fence. We'll deal with them a bit later. For now, let it be known that the most important goals of the new right is the dismantling of New Deal legislation.
A partial dismantling occurred with the repeal of PUCHA. We were successful in blocking the New Right's efforts to dismantle social security. We accomplished this by informing and mobilizing individuals and groups on a local and national level. Here in New Orleans, we defeated an attempt, for now, to dismantle public housing that was constructed by the Roosevelt administration. We accomplished this by informing and mobilizing residents and local activists to action.
What happend with PUCHA? What happened with the bankruptcy bill? Obviously, one of the key issues is education. Simply not enough people were educated, and educated each other, fast enough or efficiently enough, to mobilize a successful counter-campaign to defeat this legislation.
Not only that, but it appears we, as a progressive collective, have not offered our own agenda for affordable and clean energy. We have not taken even the first baby steps to co-opt the energy agenda of the country, in the way that the New Right has presently co-opted the energy policy of this country.
Why not? Part of the answer lies with the tools that we choose to use in our efforts, and the way that we use them. I'll focus with online efforts, blogs specifically, and highlight what I feel are the shortcomings in the way they are being used.
Toque Deville in commentary on bootribune said the coverage of the Rove scandal was Jacksonesque in the progressive, online community. This obsession, if you will call it, succeeded, much like Jackson, in relegating the less "glamorous issues" largely out of sight for weeks now.
I do not, however, place total blame with the Rove story and how it has been covered. Blog enthusiasts have some decisions to make in the coming months and years, as to wether to be a passive news administrator, with occasional calls for activism, or, to re-define itself as the tool of activists. The question is, how do we preempt the machinery of the New Right? Though not the only tool, blogs are one that millions can easily tune into, participate in, actively, communicating with each other and the masses, a progressive agenda and counter-agenda to the New Right machinery.
I define blogs so far though, as largely passive administrators of news of the machinery of the far right. We are largely responsive to the push of the New Right machinery. And they are bulldozing us.
Here is one of the problems I have with the Rove obsession. It would be beneficial, of course, to be rid of this evil motherfucker. But you can bet your drawers that some evil motherfucker will take his place, more than willing to do the dirty work of these bastards.
You see, the Rove thing should have been the side panel. PUCHA, Bankruptcy Bill for example, were and are the true front page items that deserve our unfettered attention. Side panel items deserve our time and attention and efforts.
But our movement must begin to competently address those items and issues that require our immediate attention, and continuing attention: legislation that could have a lasting effect on the quality of life in this country must be addressed competently by the progressive, activist community, with designs of actions constantly proposed as methods to counteract this New Right legislation.
We have got to find our own mechanism, to be on top of this New Right mechanism that is slashing and burning the quality of life for American, and this mechanism must include our designs for a progressive America.
We must not only preempt, but we must design and create as well. We must be aggressive and take the offensive in proposing our vision, while tackling the machinery of the New Right. What are we waiting for?
Next Chapter: The definition of the progressive mechanism.
It is a crisis. This is how the crisis is defined.
Faster than we can keep up, bad, very bad legislation is being pushed through Congress, under our collective noses. Openly, the new class of robber barons and their Congressional enablers have sunk their teeth firmly into the flesh of democracy. And...they are tearing it apart. And we are letting them.
Let me just say, I define democracy as the way in which a collective relates for the good of the whole. The corporate/political machinery that is eating up our quality of life is not working for the good of the whole.
Yes. Admit it. The bankruptcy bill, and now the repeal of PUCHA demonstrates just how ill-equipped, how ill-prepared we are to deal with the machinery of the new right. Perhaps it is a lack of understanding of the machinery itself.
It is the machinery of fanaticism that is fueling the New Right. Fanaticism stops at nothing, allows no obstacles to impede its progress. Fanaticism attracts the zeal of followers that never give it a rest. Fanaticism overlooks long-term effects and implications, except where these implications are personally concerned.
Fanaticm is now present, along with the zeal of its followers, in the corporate world. The corporate world is selling the soul of America for its goals, and usually, its goals have nothing to do with the quality of life of the average American.
Fanaticism is the oil that greases the machinery of the New Right. This is what we are up against. While I don't by any means suggest that we become fanatics to fight the machinery of the New Right, I do suggest that we must match their zeal, dedication and efficiency if we are to have any chance against their agenda, if we are going to have any chance to rebuild the quality of life for Americans, if we are going to have any chance to save the ecology of the Earth from destruction.
Fanatics adhere to the belief that the ends justifies the means. This belief is the origin of so many of the initiatives and actions of the New Right.
Let me be clear here: the so-called New Right has been around, probably since the formation of this country, in various forms and names. At this point in our history, "they" have become so brazen as to openly flaunt their agenda.
I'm telling you, we must be just as brazen to openly confront them, and propose an agenda that will address and offer solutions as to preserving and rebuilding the quality of life for all Americans, indeed, for the planet.
This is our heritage, our right as humans, to claim stewardship of the planet in the name of peace, economic justice, and respect for the ecology of the earth.
We must create a progressive machinery that can move and function with as much driving force and efficiency as the machinery of the New Right.
First: definitions. I define the new right as a group defined by its extreme agenda and their allies. This gets complicated, because we have Congressional members who stradle both sides of the fence. We'll deal with them a bit later. For now, let it be known that the most important goals of the new right is the dismantling of New Deal legislation.
A partial dismantling occurred with the repeal of PUCHA. We were successful in blocking the New Right's efforts to dismantle social security. We accomplished this by informing and mobilizing individuals and groups on a local and national level. Here in New Orleans, we defeated an attempt, for now, to dismantle public housing that was constructed by the Roosevelt administration. We accomplished this by informing and mobilizing residents and local activists to action.
What happend with PUCHA? What happened with the bankruptcy bill? Obviously, one of the key issues is education. Simply not enough people were educated, and educated each other, fast enough or efficiently enough, to mobilize a successful counter-campaign to defeat this legislation.
Not only that, but it appears we, as a progressive collective, have not offered our own agenda for affordable and clean energy. We have not taken even the first baby steps to co-opt the energy agenda of the country, in the way that the New Right has presently co-opted the energy policy of this country.
Why not? Part of the answer lies with the tools that we choose to use in our efforts, and the way that we use them. I'll focus with online efforts, blogs specifically, and highlight what I feel are the shortcomings in the way they are being used.
Toque Deville in commentary on bootribune said the coverage of the Rove scandal was Jacksonesque in the progressive, online community. This obsession, if you will call it, succeeded, much like Jackson, in relegating the less "glamorous issues" largely out of sight for weeks now.
I do not, however, place total blame with the Rove story and how it has been covered. Blog enthusiasts have some decisions to make in the coming months and years, as to wether to be a passive news administrator, with occasional calls for activism, or, to re-define itself as the tool of activists. The question is, how do we preempt the machinery of the New Right? Though not the only tool, blogs are one that millions can easily tune into, participate in, actively, communicating with each other and the masses, a progressive agenda and counter-agenda to the New Right machinery.
I define blogs so far though, as largely passive administrators of news of the machinery of the far right. We are largely responsive to the push of the New Right machinery. And they are bulldozing us.
Here is one of the problems I have with the Rove obsession. It would be beneficial, of course, to be rid of this evil motherfucker. But you can bet your drawers that some evil motherfucker will take his place, more than willing to do the dirty work of these bastards.
You see, the Rove thing should have been the side panel. PUCHA, Bankruptcy Bill for example, were and are the true front page items that deserve our unfettered attention. Side panel items deserve our time and attention and efforts.
But our movement must begin to competently address those items and issues that require our immediate attention, and continuing attention: legislation that could have a lasting effect on the quality of life in this country must be addressed competently by the progressive, activist community, with designs of actions constantly proposed as methods to counteract this New Right legislation.
We have got to find our own mechanism, to be on top of this New Right mechanism that is slashing and burning the quality of life for American, and this mechanism must include our designs for a progressive America.
We must not only preempt, but we must design and create as well. We must be aggressive and take the offensive in proposing our vision, while tackling the machinery of the New Right. What are we waiting for?
Next Chapter: The definition of the progressive mechanism.
# posted by scorpiorising : 5:46 PM |
Chief Tootie Montana collapsed at the podium at a City Council meeting in New Orleans on Monday. He died after uttering his final words into the microphone, "I want this to stop". The Times Picayune said he was referring to the "cultural miscommunication" between Mardi Gras Indians and the police that has resulted recently in police harrassment and disruption of the St. Joseph's Day tribal gathering, a gathering that has taken place for decades now. Other accounts report that Montana was referring directly to alleged police harrassment on that day. In my view, the misunderstanding lies with the police and our city leaders.
African-Americans of lower income in New Orleans are getting it from all sides. From the destruction of the St. Thomas Housing Development, to the secretive plans now to do the same to the Iberville Housing Development. I say secretive, because in April, Hands Off Iberville Coalition attended a City Council meeting in which members stated "nothing" was being planned for Iberville. I heard this with my own ears. Then recently, in answer to the coalition's Freedom of Information Request, minutes of a March meeting between Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, developer Pres Kabacoff, and former mayor Sydney Bartholemew, were released to us, revealing the types of alliances and behind the scenes machinations that it takes to demolish and move an entire African-American neighborhood. In the minutes, Kabacoff states there are too many single mothers and their children in Iberville, and they have to be "moved out". He stated he wants the City Council and Mayor Nagin to lead the way in this.
Kabacoff wants our African-American leaders to lead the way in the removal of the heart and soul, single women and their children, of an African-American neighborhood. Were the civil rights implications not so obvious, we might also be wondering if Kabacoff is not asking African-American leaders to commit political suicide.
How long before such decisions will catch up with those who make them? It's only a matter of time before black and white citizens become wise to the spin of such destructive projects whose reverbrations do damage to traditional culture and eliminate low income housing and drive up rents all over the city. Then there is another matter, the questionable shooting deaths of several African-American citizens, including that of unarmed Jenard Thomas in the 7th ward of the city on March 24th of 2005 . It seems like it has become common city practice to victimize the poorest and most vulnerable of its citizens. And the people doing the victimizing are not only the adult children of wealthy New Orleans families, such as Pres Kabacoff, but its own African American leaders as well.
It could be suggested, that in their race to do well for themselves, African-American leaders are, at times, willing to participate in, and/or watch, the attack on this city's African-American neighborhoods, culture and citizens. These same citizens are being marginalized, literally, to the outside fringes of the city with the destruction of St. Thomas and now, possibly, Iberville Housing Development. This, despite the fact that it is these same African-Americans who work in the hotels and restaurants, drive the cabs, serve the chicken and hamburgers, to downtown office workers, conventioneers and tourists, in and around the French Quarter and Central Business District.
Iberville Housing Development is smack dab in the middle of the downtown, on the outskirts of the French Quarter, on prime real estate that developers like the architect of the destruction of St. Thomas, Kabacoff, are drooling to get their hands on. One only has to sit at Popeye's Fried Chicken at the corner or Rampart and Canal St., as Councilman Oliver Thomas did recently and admitted in a recent meeting, and watch the flow of human traffic to know that many of the people there are flowing from Iberville, wearing the uniforms of the hotels and restaurants of our famed inner city.
The destruciton of Iberville would not only be the destruction of desperately needed and disappearing affordable, inner city housing, but the destruction of a neighborhood as well. Originally constructed during the New Deal era, the thick, red-brick buildings represent one of the last, possibly in the nation, downtown African- American neighborhoods that is so close to the vibrant, central economic hum of an American city, This is where the jobs are, not in New Orleans east, no matter how much money is poured there into sagging cinemas that have little chance of recovery, like the recent decision by the City Council awarding $1 million to Plaza Cinema in New Orleans east.
Mr. Tootie Montana, I followed you and your tribe a few times, and aquired some beautiful pictures as a result. I witnessed first hand the splendid and wild energy of the Mardi Gras Indians as they made their rounds in mixed and African-American neighborhoods, that, at least for a while, were able to suspend ordinary drudgery and concerns as you paraded with your spy boys, and anyone wanting a more brightly colored reality.
You're right, Mr. Montana. I, too want the destruction of African-American traditions and neighborhoods to stop before all of the vibrant color of this city is drained of its joy and spontaneity.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Good-by Chief Tootie Montana
Chief Tootie Montana collapsed at the podium at a City Council meeting in New Orleans on Monday. He died after uttering his final words into the microphone, "I want this to stop". The Times Picayune said he was referring to the "cultural miscommunication" between Mardi Gras Indians and the police that has resulted recently in police harrassment and disruption of the St. Joseph's Day tribal gathering, a gathering that has taken place for decades now. Other accounts report that Montana was referring directly to alleged police harrassment on that day. In my view, the misunderstanding lies with the police and our city leaders.
African-Americans of lower income in New Orleans are getting it from all sides. From the destruction of the St. Thomas Housing Development, to the secretive plans now to do the same to the Iberville Housing Development. I say secretive, because in April, Hands Off Iberville Coalition attended a City Council meeting in which members stated "nothing" was being planned for Iberville. I heard this with my own ears. Then recently, in answer to the coalition's Freedom of Information Request, minutes of a March meeting between Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, developer Pres Kabacoff, and former mayor Sydney Bartholemew, were released to us, revealing the types of alliances and behind the scenes machinations that it takes to demolish and move an entire African-American neighborhood. In the minutes, Kabacoff states there are too many single mothers and their children in Iberville, and they have to be "moved out". He stated he wants the City Council and Mayor Nagin to lead the way in this.
Kabacoff wants our African-American leaders to lead the way in the removal of the heart and soul, single women and their children, of an African-American neighborhood. Were the civil rights implications not so obvious, we might also be wondering if Kabacoff is not asking African-American leaders to commit political suicide.
How long before such decisions will catch up with those who make them? It's only a matter of time before black and white citizens become wise to the spin of such destructive projects whose reverbrations do damage to traditional culture and eliminate low income housing and drive up rents all over the city. Then there is another matter, the questionable shooting deaths of several African-American citizens, including that of unarmed Jenard Thomas in the 7th ward of the city on March 24th of 2005 . It seems like it has become common city practice to victimize the poorest and most vulnerable of its citizens. And the people doing the victimizing are not only the adult children of wealthy New Orleans families, such as Pres Kabacoff, but its own African American leaders as well.
It could be suggested, that in their race to do well for themselves, African-American leaders are, at times, willing to participate in, and/or watch, the attack on this city's African-American neighborhoods, culture and citizens. These same citizens are being marginalized, literally, to the outside fringes of the city with the destruction of St. Thomas and now, possibly, Iberville Housing Development. This, despite the fact that it is these same African-Americans who work in the hotels and restaurants, drive the cabs, serve the chicken and hamburgers, to downtown office workers, conventioneers and tourists, in and around the French Quarter and Central Business District.
Iberville Housing Development is smack dab in the middle of the downtown, on the outskirts of the French Quarter, on prime real estate that developers like the architect of the destruction of St. Thomas, Kabacoff, are drooling to get their hands on. One only has to sit at Popeye's Fried Chicken at the corner or Rampart and Canal St., as Councilman Oliver Thomas did recently and admitted in a recent meeting, and watch the flow of human traffic to know that many of the people there are flowing from Iberville, wearing the uniforms of the hotels and restaurants of our famed inner city.
The destruciton of Iberville would not only be the destruction of desperately needed and disappearing affordable, inner city housing, but the destruction of a neighborhood as well. Originally constructed during the New Deal era, the thick, red-brick buildings represent one of the last, possibly in the nation, downtown African- American neighborhoods that is so close to the vibrant, central economic hum of an American city, This is where the jobs are, not in New Orleans east, no matter how much money is poured there into sagging cinemas that have little chance of recovery, like the recent decision by the City Council awarding $1 million to Plaza Cinema in New Orleans east.
Mr. Tootie Montana, I followed you and your tribe a few times, and aquired some beautiful pictures as a result. I witnessed first hand the splendid and wild energy of the Mardi Gras Indians as they made their rounds in mixed and African-American neighborhoods, that, at least for a while, were able to suspend ordinary drudgery and concerns as you paraded with your spy boys, and anyone wanting a more brightly colored reality.
You're right, Mr. Montana. I, too want the destruction of African-American traditions and neighborhoods to stop before all of the vibrant color of this city is drained of its joy and spontaneity.
# posted by scorpiorising : 10:16 AM |
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
On the Theme of Rot and Soul
Rubicon took off on the disassembly theme after George Bush's malapropism:
Disassembly is the modus operandi: the method of control, the way to confuse and distract: color codes for levels of terrorist threat, accusations of traitorous activities on those who dissent, manufactured crisis such as social security, and the method of profit in Iraq.
Who, more than anyone, or perhaps unlike anyone else, is profiting off of the chaos, the disassembly in Iraq?
Halliburton.
Yes, there was a coup in 2000, and again in 2004, in this country. But it was not a coup, necessarily, orchestrated by the republican party. It was a corporate coup, with the cooperation of Bush and cronies. The lines of distinction blur easily in our era, or perhaps they always have, if you study American history, you will note this. Government, and the interest of profit that became the corporate interest, have always colluded. It is the result of the landed gentry and their influence on the formation of our constitution, of the intention of our government in its beginnng.
And yes, there were high ideals in that beginning, and their spirit has lived these couple hundred years, if not their practice. But these high American ideals of democracy and freedom and happiness as the pursuit of the individual, are being crapped on everyday by our own government, at times with our support.
You may believe in the principles of individual freedom and democracy, but if you invade another country and maim and kill their people in the name of those high ideals, you shit on them, you shit on your own principles. The blood of the Iraqis, of our own soldiers and civilians from all over the world, clots the dream of "democracy" and "freedom".
You, in effect, disassemble your own principles. The best way, and we haven't figured out a better way, to assess reality, is to see how something works, its results. It is to use all of our abilities, including reason and analysis, to assess those results.
The results of our invasion of Iraq, resulted in the beginning, immediately, of the "dissasembly" of Iraqi lives. It was a disaster before it started.
IN the meantime, American companies profit from this misery, and the more disassembly in Iraq, the longer the reconstruction is prolonged, the greater the period of time in which Halliburton will profit.
Halliburton profits from disassembly.
So it was actually, more than a malapropism. It was a classic Fraudian slip. The president was telling us how it is done.
But Bush seems to think that he can make torture disappear from everyone's memory—that he can change reality—by repeating, again and again, that any report of torture is "absurd." In his press conference on Tuesday, he said:
We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.
Who knew that Bush was a deconstructionist? Who knew that he had deep thoughts about the disassembly of language? Who knew that he was a disciple of Derrida, a follower of Foucault?
We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.
Who knew that Bush was a deconstructionist? Who knew that he had deep thoughts about the disassembly of language? Who knew that he was a disciple of Derrida, a follower of Foucault?
Disassembly is the modus operandi: the method of control, the way to confuse and distract: color codes for levels of terrorist threat, accusations of traitorous activities on those who dissent, manufactured crisis such as social security, and the method of profit in Iraq.
Who, more than anyone, or perhaps unlike anyone else, is profiting off of the chaos, the disassembly in Iraq?
Halliburton.
Yes, there was a coup in 2000, and again in 2004, in this country. But it was not a coup, necessarily, orchestrated by the republican party. It was a corporate coup, with the cooperation of Bush and cronies. The lines of distinction blur easily in our era, or perhaps they always have, if you study American history, you will note this. Government, and the interest of profit that became the corporate interest, have always colluded. It is the result of the landed gentry and their influence on the formation of our constitution, of the intention of our government in its beginnng.
And yes, there were high ideals in that beginning, and their spirit has lived these couple hundred years, if not their practice. But these high American ideals of democracy and freedom and happiness as the pursuit of the individual, are being crapped on everyday by our own government, at times with our support.
You may believe in the principles of individual freedom and democracy, but if you invade another country and maim and kill their people in the name of those high ideals, you shit on them, you shit on your own principles. The blood of the Iraqis, of our own soldiers and civilians from all over the world, clots the dream of "democracy" and "freedom".
You, in effect, disassemble your own principles. The best way, and we haven't figured out a better way, to assess reality, is to see how something works, its results. It is to use all of our abilities, including reason and analysis, to assess those results.
The results of our invasion of Iraq, resulted in the beginning, immediately, of the "dissasembly" of Iraqi lives. It was a disaster before it started.
IN the meantime, American companies profit from this misery, and the more disassembly in Iraq, the longer the reconstruction is prolonged, the greater the period of time in which Halliburton will profit.
Halliburton profits from disassembly.
So it was actually, more than a malapropism. It was a classic Fraudian slip. The president was telling us how it is done.
# posted by scorpiorising : 11:20 PM |
The Rot of the Soul and Football
This is an extreme example, yes, extreme, but valid none the less, as to why the challenge of stereotypes matters, and mattered over at Dailykos over the Ginger/Maryanne ad.
There is an old expression that "the fish rots from the head." Right now the San Francisco 49ers are stinking like a salmon in the sun. Their more general fall from grace has been a matter of public spectacle, as the "Team of the 1980s" has become a mismanaged, cap-strapped embarrassment. Yet the stench that envelops the Niners invaded the rest of our lives last week with the leaking of a media training video meant to "guide players on how to deal with San Francisco's unique and diverse community." A noble goal, to be sure. San Francisco is home to significant Asian, Pacific Island populations, and is of course synonymous with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community and culture. The video, however, was not aimed to help players with cross-cultural understanding - but instead an exercise in rank bigotry.
How to talk to the Bay Area Asian community? There is a mock interview with a actor playing a Hop-Sing "bucked tooth Asian man". How to reach out to LGBT football fans? There is a mockery of Gay weddings and clucking about "bending for the soap" in the county jail. Even worse, the team's PR department enlisted players such as Julian Peterson to act in the video, with the All-Pro linebacker playing a "bum begging for food"- homelessness being just another hilarious sight on the Bay Area landscape.
There is an old expression that "the fish rots from the head." Right now the San Francisco 49ers are stinking like a salmon in the sun. Their more general fall from grace has been a matter of public spectacle, as the "Team of the 1980s" has become a mismanaged, cap-strapped embarrassment. Yet the stench that envelops the Niners invaded the rest of our lives last week with the leaking of a media training video meant to "guide players on how to deal with San Francisco's unique and diverse community." A noble goal, to be sure. San Francisco is home to significant Asian, Pacific Island populations, and is of course synonymous with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community and culture. The video, however, was not aimed to help players with cross-cultural understanding - but instead an exercise in rank bigotry.
How to talk to the Bay Area Asian community? There is a mock interview with a actor playing a Hop-Sing "bucked tooth Asian man". How to reach out to LGBT football fans? There is a mockery of Gay weddings and clucking about "bending for the soap" in the county jail. Even worse, the team's PR department enlisted players such as Julian Peterson to act in the video, with the All-Pro linebacker playing a "bum begging for food"- homelessness being just another hilarious sight on the Bay Area landscape.
# posted by scorpiorising : 7:23 PM |
Patriot Act Strengthened
While Daily Kossians continued to throw pies at each other, the Senate Committee on Intelligence (a contradiction in terms) voted to give more powers to the FBI:
WASHINGTON, June 7 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation would gain the right to demand a variety of records in terror cases without a judge's approval, under an expanded version of the law known as the USA Patriot Act that the Senate intelligence committee approved late Tuesday after a closed-door debate.
I was counting on Senator Rockefeller, who initially opposed this expansion of powers, to exercise reason. Instead, behind a closed door, under the cover of secrecy he and other members of the committee cowardly voted for the expansion of powers.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the committee, voted for the legislation, saying that the Patriot Act powers are critical tools in the fight against terrorism.
But he said in a statement issued Tuesday evening that he objected to some of the proposed expansions of investigative powers and would continue to work to try to revise the bill.
The House Judiciary Committee, who also must approve or disapprove changes to the Patriot Act, is now all that stands to block expansion of the Patriot Act; it also requires a full vote of Congress.
WASHINGTON, June 7 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation would gain the right to demand a variety of records in terror cases without a judge's approval, under an expanded version of the law known as the USA Patriot Act that the Senate intelligence committee approved late Tuesday after a closed-door debate.
I was counting on Senator Rockefeller, who initially opposed this expansion of powers, to exercise reason. Instead, behind a closed door, under the cover of secrecy he and other members of the committee cowardly voted for the expansion of powers.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the committee, voted for the legislation, saying that the Patriot Act powers are critical tools in the fight against terrorism.
But he said in a statement issued Tuesday evening that he objected to some of the proposed expansions of investigative powers and would continue to work to try to revise the bill.
The House Judiciary Committee, who also must approve or disapprove changes to the Patriot Act, is now all that stands to block expansion of the Patriot Act; it also requires a full vote of Congress.
# posted by scorpiorising : 6:14 PM |
The Loss of Soul or...Dean's Fall from Grace
Pathetic. This writer, so disgusted with the roll-over screw me some more attributes of the democrats, unloaded in this article. And I gotta tell you, our democratic leaders are suffering from a massive case of identity crisis, and before you know it, the party is going to lose badly in 2006, badly, if this continues.
More on this later. Here is the article. Judge for yourself.
The doctor followed with a jumble of self-contradicting phrases, amplified with the old Dean lung power:
" We are really not in the wilderness," because 48 percent of the people voted for John Kerry. (Maybe I'm naive, but I thought the election was a disaster for the Dems, given their losses in the House and Senate -- even despite Bush's scandalous inattention before 9/11 and equally scandalous lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons. And didn't Dean once call Kerry "another special-interest clone in Washington"? )
"People think we should have good jobs that stay in the U.S.," Dean declared. They disapprove of Bush's "borrow and spend" fiscal policy, and pine for the good old days of Clintonian fiduciary rectitude. (Didn't Clinton ram job-exporting and trade-deficit-ballooning NAFTA and China-trade normalization through Congress, over the objections of many in his party?)
"Maybe we can't win the presidency in Mississippi, [but] we have a moral obligation to win the governorship in Mississippi." (What's that mean? Why not a moral obligation to win the presidency in Mississippi, and why couldn't they win both? Wasn't Dean the guy who said, astutely, that Democrats should appeal to working-class Southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup-truck windows?)
But the most remarkable thing about Dean's speech was, literally, its thoughtlessness -- now a virtue in the Dean playbook. Democrats, he said, need to take seriously the fears of "moral Republicans," instead of saying "That's ridiculous" ("Clinton would have said, 'I feel your pain' "). Pointing to his head, Dean explained how to do it: "We have to stop talking from here anymore"; then, pointing to his heart, he said, "We have to speak to them from here."
As for delivering this heartfelt message, Dean said, "When we're talking to the television, we'll say it in ten seconds or less," just like the "good politician" Bush. (Wasn't the very thoughtful Dean famous for turning his campaign rallies into town meetings, with extensive question-and-answer periods? Can't a redneck tell he's being talked down to just as quickly as a New York intellectual? Does Bush's lying in 10-second sound bites make him a tactical role model for the Democrats?)
I could go on -- Dean did -- but it's too sad. I asked a prominent New York Democrat standing near me why DNC Chairman Dean never denounced the Iraq occupation/bloodbath, and the politician, an old acquaintance, seemed to flinch. I promised I wouldn't quote him by name, but his reaction was worth noting: "Maybe he [Dean] should talk about Iraq. Nine American soldiers died in Iraq in the last two days. If [Al] Gore were president, can you imagine the screams from the Republicans?"
All I heard from Dean was a squeak; "the mess in Iraq" was as far as he would go. Anyway, he had already thrown in the Iraq towel in April, in a speech in front of the Minnesota ACLU: "Now that we're there . . . we can't get out. . . . I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now."
More on this later. Here is the article. Judge for yourself.
The doctor followed with a jumble of self-contradicting phrases, amplified with the old Dean lung power:
" We are really not in the wilderness," because 48 percent of the people voted for John Kerry. (Maybe I'm naive, but I thought the election was a disaster for the Dems, given their losses in the House and Senate -- even despite Bush's scandalous inattention before 9/11 and equally scandalous lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons. And didn't Dean once call Kerry "another special-interest clone in Washington"? )
"People think we should have good jobs that stay in the U.S.," Dean declared. They disapprove of Bush's "borrow and spend" fiscal policy, and pine for the good old days of Clintonian fiduciary rectitude. (Didn't Clinton ram job-exporting and trade-deficit-ballooning NAFTA and China-trade normalization through Congress, over the objections of many in his party?)
"Maybe we can't win the presidency in Mississippi, [but] we have a moral obligation to win the governorship in Mississippi." (What's that mean? Why not a moral obligation to win the presidency in Mississippi, and why couldn't they win both? Wasn't Dean the guy who said, astutely, that Democrats should appeal to working-class Southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup-truck windows?)
But the most remarkable thing about Dean's speech was, literally, its thoughtlessness -- now a virtue in the Dean playbook. Democrats, he said, need to take seriously the fears of "moral Republicans," instead of saying "That's ridiculous" ("Clinton would have said, 'I feel your pain' "). Pointing to his head, Dean explained how to do it: "We have to stop talking from here anymore"; then, pointing to his heart, he said, "We have to speak to them from here."
As for delivering this heartfelt message, Dean said, "When we're talking to the television, we'll say it in ten seconds or less," just like the "good politician" Bush. (Wasn't the very thoughtful Dean famous for turning his campaign rallies into town meetings, with extensive question-and-answer periods? Can't a redneck tell he's being talked down to just as quickly as a New York intellectual? Does Bush's lying in 10-second sound bites make him a tactical role model for the Democrats?)
I could go on -- Dean did -- but it's too sad. I asked a prominent New York Democrat standing near me why DNC Chairman Dean never denounced the Iraq occupation/bloodbath, and the politician, an old acquaintance, seemed to flinch. I promised I wouldn't quote him by name, but his reaction was worth noting: "Maybe he [Dean] should talk about Iraq. Nine American soldiers died in Iraq in the last two days. If [Al] Gore were president, can you imagine the screams from the Republicans?"
All I heard from Dean was a squeak; "the mess in Iraq" was as far as he would go. Anyway, he had already thrown in the Iraq towel in April, in a speech in front of the Minnesota ACLU: "Now that we're there . . . we can't get out. . . . I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now."
# posted by scorpiorising : 7:40 AM |
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Yep, it matters.
The kittenish pose of Mary Anne and Ginger right after (or before) a pie fight, in an ad on Dailykos running right now, matters. If Markos wants to buy into packages with Time Warner, that's his business. However, be aware of the consequences: ads appearing of which you won't know the content ahead of time.
It touched off a firestorm on Dailykos yesterday, and resulted in a lot of bruised feelings, on both sides of the gender gap. Ouch. Take off the gloves guys and gals, and let's discuss this, if possible.
I can tell you that since the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's, the issues concerning women have been marginalized and trivialized, and largely dropped from the national radar, with the exception of abortion, and thanks to Planned Parenthood, contraception.
Gone are the days when women held workshops and teach-ins, apart from men, to school themselves in self-empowerment and reclaiming their lives. Women today take it for granted the hard won gains of the feminist era, including the right to a legal abortion, and equality in the workplace. Some of these hard won gains are now threatened, not only by republican policies, but also by sheer neglect from liberals from right, center and left of center. Some of the gains were never fully actualized.
In issues of divorce, men flaunt their cultural power by threatening to cut off support from their ex and children. There was a local, high profile case that made the newspapers here, that included sex, lies and audiotapes, and the ex-husband is heard to say on one tape, "I'll cut off your support, if you don't...", you get the picture. I saw this in my sister's divorce, and he got away with it a good part of the time. There aren't many options. Throw the bum in jail, and there is no chance of earning money to help support the children.
Now, regarding that ad. The obvious positioning of the women in relation to each other, the way they were dressed, and the purpose of the ad which was obviously to titillate (and what kind of IQ would be titillated?), to get you to watch that ridiculus show, the ad was, in my view, demeaning and exploitive. It reinforces the still stuttering stereotype that women are here to please men, and that is their purpose. They are not the complex, feeling human beings that you men are.
One need look no further than the teenage pregnancy rate in this country, along with the incidence of venereal diseases in young people, to look at the negative consequences of that kind of stereotype. There is also a connection, I believe, to spousal abuse and rape and the incidence of rape in our culture. The devaluing of women, and their exploitation, takes place on many levels.
Now I can tell you that our culture devalues and exploits men and children as well, and when we engage in that kind of behavior with each other, we expose ourselves to the same, or, it is already occuring. War is an exploitation and a devaluing of men and women, despite all the speeches proclaiming the "honor" of the sacrifice of life and limb. There is no honor to this, but there is the sacrifice of a peaceful future for our children and grandchildren.
Children are constantly exploited in the ad industry, pressured to pressure their parents to purchase the latest craze, doll, toy gun, certain clothes or shoes. Children are nothing more than consumers, to the ad industry. Devalued and dehumanized.
On Dailykos, I was surprised to hear several women declare they felt nothing in regards to the ad and were actually annoyed with us gals who stated our objections to it running. Some of the men were downright hostile. These are liberal men and women, with whom I have fought alongside, since joining this forum 6 months ago. It was an awakening.
If issues must always demonize the right, then we lose the opportunity to see the seeds of those issues in our own backyards. That ad, that ridiculus ad, is just one of those seeds. It isn't the entire problem, but it is one aspect of the problem, the problem being, that women have yet to take charge of the identity of woman in our culture, and I can tell you, our culture is suffering for it.
There's the issue of anorexia and bulimia.
Now I'm not exacting that the ad industry has created the body imaging problems of young women, but I am putting forth that it reinforces it. The question is, how do these values arise? I can tell you how it gets started, this body image "problem": it is circular, you see.
The ad industry reflects the values of those it represents, and it represents all of us, in some degree or fashion. How many times have I heard well meaning, and not so well meaning family members commenting on the weight gains of young, adolescent girls. I'm no expert on this, but as a woman, and most women do, have a feel for the kinds of pressures women are subjected to in terms of their body images. One must educate and illuminate oneself to be totally free of its tentacles.
I have two nieces, one eight years old, and one just entering her teenage years. The eight year old, as slim as a toothpick as she is active and athletic, is already worried about gaining weight. This is devastating to me, and I can tell you it originates in a culture caught up in worshipping thin women. It's no accident that many women in the fashion industry retain that adolescent look, though they are 20 something in age. There is a conscious and unconscious attempt to control women by encouraging them to keep excessively youthful, even childlike, dependent on men, or that is the fantasy, and easily controlled. This results in excessive control on the woman's part of her appetite, to the point of starvation, or, through forced vomiting.
There are no easy answers, but I can tell you that we need an aggressive push from women to begin to create and reclaim the identity of woman. When we let men do it for us, we become men in drag, fighting wars, starving the poor for corporate greed, and starving ourselves.
It touched off a firestorm on Dailykos yesterday, and resulted in a lot of bruised feelings, on both sides of the gender gap. Ouch. Take off the gloves guys and gals, and let's discuss this, if possible.
I can tell you that since the feminist movement of the 60's and 70's, the issues concerning women have been marginalized and trivialized, and largely dropped from the national radar, with the exception of abortion, and thanks to Planned Parenthood, contraception.
Gone are the days when women held workshops and teach-ins, apart from men, to school themselves in self-empowerment and reclaiming their lives. Women today take it for granted the hard won gains of the feminist era, including the right to a legal abortion, and equality in the workplace. Some of these hard won gains are now threatened, not only by republican policies, but also by sheer neglect from liberals from right, center and left of center. Some of the gains were never fully actualized.
In issues of divorce, men flaunt their cultural power by threatening to cut off support from their ex and children. There was a local, high profile case that made the newspapers here, that included sex, lies and audiotapes, and the ex-husband is heard to say on one tape, "I'll cut off your support, if you don't...", you get the picture. I saw this in my sister's divorce, and he got away with it a good part of the time. There aren't many options. Throw the bum in jail, and there is no chance of earning money to help support the children.
Now, regarding that ad. The obvious positioning of the women in relation to each other, the way they were dressed, and the purpose of the ad which was obviously to titillate (and what kind of IQ would be titillated?), to get you to watch that ridiculus show, the ad was, in my view, demeaning and exploitive. It reinforces the still stuttering stereotype that women are here to please men, and that is their purpose. They are not the complex, feeling human beings that you men are.
One need look no further than the teenage pregnancy rate in this country, along with the incidence of venereal diseases in young people, to look at the negative consequences of that kind of stereotype. There is also a connection, I believe, to spousal abuse and rape and the incidence of rape in our culture. The devaluing of women, and their exploitation, takes place on many levels.
Now I can tell you that our culture devalues and exploits men and children as well, and when we engage in that kind of behavior with each other, we expose ourselves to the same, or, it is already occuring. War is an exploitation and a devaluing of men and women, despite all the speeches proclaiming the "honor" of the sacrifice of life and limb. There is no honor to this, but there is the sacrifice of a peaceful future for our children and grandchildren.
Children are constantly exploited in the ad industry, pressured to pressure their parents to purchase the latest craze, doll, toy gun, certain clothes or shoes. Children are nothing more than consumers, to the ad industry. Devalued and dehumanized.
On Dailykos, I was surprised to hear several women declare they felt nothing in regards to the ad and were actually annoyed with us gals who stated our objections to it running. Some of the men were downright hostile. These are liberal men and women, with whom I have fought alongside, since joining this forum 6 months ago. It was an awakening.
If issues must always demonize the right, then we lose the opportunity to see the seeds of those issues in our own backyards. That ad, that ridiculus ad, is just one of those seeds. It isn't the entire problem, but it is one aspect of the problem, the problem being, that women have yet to take charge of the identity of woman in our culture, and I can tell you, our culture is suffering for it.
There's the issue of anorexia and bulimia.
Now I'm not exacting that the ad industry has created the body imaging problems of young women, but I am putting forth that it reinforces it. The question is, how do these values arise? I can tell you how it gets started, this body image "problem": it is circular, you see.
The ad industry reflects the values of those it represents, and it represents all of us, in some degree or fashion. How many times have I heard well meaning, and not so well meaning family members commenting on the weight gains of young, adolescent girls. I'm no expert on this, but as a woman, and most women do, have a feel for the kinds of pressures women are subjected to in terms of their body images. One must educate and illuminate oneself to be totally free of its tentacles.
I have two nieces, one eight years old, and one just entering her teenage years. The eight year old, as slim as a toothpick as she is active and athletic, is already worried about gaining weight. This is devastating to me, and I can tell you it originates in a culture caught up in worshipping thin women. It's no accident that many women in the fashion industry retain that adolescent look, though they are 20 something in age. There is a conscious and unconscious attempt to control women by encouraging them to keep excessively youthful, even childlike, dependent on men, or that is the fantasy, and easily controlled. This results in excessive control on the woman's part of her appetite, to the point of starvation, or, through forced vomiting.
There are no easy answers, but I can tell you that we need an aggressive push from women to begin to create and reclaim the identity of woman. When we let men do it for us, we become men in drag, fighting wars, starving the poor for corporate greed, and starving ourselves.
# posted by scorpiorising : 2:41 PM |
Friday, April 29, 2005
Did anyone notice...
the big, somehow gentle, beasts, the buffalo, the children of the west, leaping over a tennis net, coralled by the American dream, somber, stoic in their adroit simple lifting of heavy lumberous bodies meant for running in herd on the giant, open plains rather than leaping over our games.
# posted by scorpiorising : 7:32 AM |
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Culture of Death
From Frank Rich:
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH
It takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."
He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.
Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.
Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's.
As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.
When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.
This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.
These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.
As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.
This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus.
It's all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation's Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier.
If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."
We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH
It takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."
He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.
Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.
Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's.
As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.
When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.
This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.
These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.
As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.
This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus.
It's all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation's Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier.
If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."
We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.
# posted by scorpiorising : 6:48 PM |
Friday, April 01, 2005
Letter to Tom Delay
From Senator Lautenberg:
April 1, 2005
Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Majority Leader DeLay,
I was stunned to read the threatening comments you made yesterday against Federal judges and our nation’s courts of law in general. In reference to certain Federal judges, you stated: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
As you are surely aware, the family of Federal Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois was recently murdered in their home. And at the state level, Judge Rowland W. Barnes and others in his courtroom were gunned down in Georgia.
Our nation’s judges must be concerned for their safety and security when they are asked to make difficult decisions every day. That’s why comments like those you made are not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous. To make matters worse, is it appropriate to make threats directed at specific Federal and state judges?
You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:
“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”
Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.
Federal judges, as well as state and local judges in our nation, are honorable public servants who make difficult decisions every day. You owe them – and all Americans – an apology for your reckless statements.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Lautenberg
April 1, 2005
Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Majority Leader DeLay,
I was stunned to read the threatening comments you made yesterday against Federal judges and our nation’s courts of law in general. In reference to certain Federal judges, you stated: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
As you are surely aware, the family of Federal Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois was recently murdered in their home. And at the state level, Judge Rowland W. Barnes and others in his courtroom were gunned down in Georgia.
Our nation’s judges must be concerned for their safety and security when they are asked to make difficult decisions every day. That’s why comments like those you made are not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous. To make matters worse, is it appropriate to make threats directed at specific Federal and state judges?
You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:
“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”
Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.
Federal judges, as well as state and local judges in our nation, are honorable public servants who make difficult decisions every day. You owe them – and all Americans – an apology for your reckless statements.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Lautenberg
# posted by scorpiorising : 9:04 AM |
How to Save Education
I'll let the words speak for themselves.
Saving Public Education - Saving Democracy
E. Wayne Ross, Kathleen Kesson, David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, & Kevin D. Vinson
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced "reporting" to "regurgitating" the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
That elements of the broader public have grown more sensitized to these issues should not surprise us, given just how brazenly and consistently the Bush administration has lied. Even after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in his flight suit on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, when Paul Wolfowitz smugly told Vanity Fair that the administration had used Weapons of Mass Destruction as the "bureaucratic reason" for invading Iraq, the mainstream media scarcely reported his statement. Understanding the standards of American journalism, Washington BBC correspondent Ian Pannell correctly predicted that Wolfowitz's remarks would not likely have any political consequences in the US.
The public, of course, has good reasons to be concerned about the press and the role it plays in a democratic society. Though the enforced, two-party system of "representation" goes a long way toward making democracy meaningless, access to information and ideas remains crucial to the public's capacity to organize and resist. The internet, along with the boost it has given to a resurgent independent media, has greatly expanded that access. Hence, the level of popular dissidence may be greater now than at any other time in US history. The growing influence of the internet and independent media may also be responsible for what limited questioning of official power we've seen in the mainstream news rrganizations.
As Thomas Jefferson observed, the health of democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. While the internet and independent media sources deserve much credit for helping to mobilize significant levels of organized popular protest in recent years, we should recognize that these outlets are essentially reactive. That is, they respond to issues and events in the immediate present. In this regard, they differ little from the mainstream media or even their right-wing counterparts. There is, however, an institution that plays a more formative role in shaping the public mind - our system of public schools. Though children today grow-up in a media-saturated world, we should not underestimate the potential of schools to help young people grow into adulthood with a discerning mind that will enable them to more critically evaluate the messages they receive from whatever news outlet. And yet, with so much media attention focused on the horrors of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and the surrounding scandals, the press - including progressive groups - has virtually ignored how the state and private power have colluded over the past twenty years to strip public schools of their democratizing potential. In the twenty-one years since the Reagan administration's National Commission for Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk, no high-minded bastion of journalist integrity in the mainstream press has recanted its parroting reportage of the Commission's claims. Numerous books and professional articles have appeared in the interim to discredit those claims, but none of them have received any serious or sustained attention from the media. Neither has the media reported the miserable failure of educational privatization pioneers such as Christopher Whittle (CEO of the Edison Project) to rescue troubled schools through the wondrous powers of the business model of management.
The strongly bi-partisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has similarly received no scrutiny that would alert the public to its insidious policy implications. In the first place, this legislation set ridiculously high standards that simply defied common sense. NCLB requires schools and teachers to insure that all students perform at or above grade level within a three year-period. This outrageous requirement includes children with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders no matter how profound. By definition, then - getting these kids to perform at grade level, NCLB holds teachers accountable for doing what medical science has never accomplished; namely, curing mental retardation.
NCLB also holds teachers accountable for bringing the performance of children from the most poverty-stricken homes up to grade level. While Rod Paige, Bush's homebred (former superintendent of Houston's public schools) Secretary of Education, chastises anyone who dares to criticize these "high expectations" and "rigorous standards" as "racists," one must pause to wonder when policy makers discovered their new faith in the remedial powers of schools. After all, the prison industry has long used third-grade reading scores to project how many new cells they will have to construct over the next twenty-year period.
While the policies of NCLB never receive any attention in the press, there has been some considerable recent outcry by Democrats and others because of the Bush administration's refusal to fund this legislation at its originally planned levels. No one stops; however, to examine the policies themselves, or to listen to teachers' complaints concerning how this high-stakes-testing model of school/teacher accountability pressures teachers to adopt the most intellectually stultifying (drill and kill) teaching methods that remove the joy of teaching from them and any potential joy of learning from their students.
Beyond the fact, as revealed for us by Michael Moore's treatment of the Patriot Act in Fahrenheit 9-11, that the vast majority of our representatives in Congress
never bother reading the legislation that they sign into law (What does this imply in terms of accountability?), the truth about NCLB goes beyond any ineptitude on the part of its architects. NCLB sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 70s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves. The current reform environment creates conditions where public schools can only fail, thus providing "statistical evidence" for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of "freedom of choice." In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent. In the end, as evidenced by Secretary of Education Rod Paige's recent characterization of the National Education Association, anyone who contests state-corporatism will be labeled a "terrorist" or, in more Orwellian terms, a "thought-criminal."
While the progressive press and media are perfectly legitimate in pushing their corporate counterparts for greater integrity in their coverage of issues and events, we believe that progressive news and cultural organizations of all varieties owe the public an even greater responsibility to report on the corporate and state assault to privatize public education. We ground this belief in recognition of one very important distinction between the corporate-owned media that progressives have grown so fond of critiquing and public schools. While both the media and schools function as major institutions in the dissemination of knowledge, information, and ideas, the mainstream media will continue to be privately owned and operated. Therefore, the public will always find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to influence their editorial policies. Public schools, on the other hand, are public. That is, insofar as they continue to be operated under public control, the public can wield considerably more influence over the policies that impact the educational practices within public education than it can ever hope to wield over the corporate media. This, in our view, offers the best explanation for the growing movement to privatize schools. Privatization would effectively transfer the control of schools from public hands to corporate hands.
We want to believe that public schools serve us, the public, "We, the people." We want to believe that schools strengthen our democracy, our ability to meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that impact our communities and our lives. Educational resources need to be directed towards increasing people's awareness of the relevant facts about their lives, and to increase people's abilities to act upon these facts in their own true interests. For the past twenty years, however, significant efforts have been made to resurrect a statist view of schools that treats teachers as mere appendages to the machinery of the state and seeks to hold them accountable to serving the interests of state and corporate power. Linked as it is to the interests of private wealth, this view defines children's value in life as human resources and future consumers. In order to combat this movement, progressive media outlets must begin doing more to alert the public to the disastrous consequences it holds for our schools, our children, and our democracy. Progressives everywhere must begin doing more to demand that our institutions of public education foster critical citizenship skills to advance a more viable and vibrant democratic society. They must push for schools to become organized around preparing young people for active, democratic citizenship through engagement with real-world issues, problem-solving, and critical thinking, and through active participation in civic and political processes. Informed citizenship in a broad-based, grassroots democracy must be based on principles of cooperation with others, non-violent conflict resolution, dialogue, inquiry and rational debate, environmental activism, and the preservation and expansion of human rights. These skills, capacities, and dispositions need to be taught and practiced in our nation's schools.
Progressives must also push harder to ensure that all schools are funded equally and fully, eliminating the dependence on private corporate funds and on the property tax, which creates a two-tiered educational system by distributing educational monies inequitably. Promoting greater equality in educational opportunity must also include demands for universal pre-k and tuition-free higher education for all qualified students in state universities. The past two decades have witnessed the increasing involvement of corporations in education in terms of supplementing public spending in exchange for school-based marketing (including advertising space in schools and textbooks, junk fast food and vending machines, and commercial-laden "free" TV). We believe that students should not be thought of as a potential market or as consumers, but as future citizens. We must call for the elimination of advertising in schools and curricula and of the marketing of unhealthy products on school grounds.
As suggested above, the current system uses "carrots and sticks" to coerce compliance with an alienating system of schooling aimed at inducing conformity among teachers and students through high stakes testing and accountability. This system alienates teachers from their work by stripping it of all creative endeavor and reduces it to following scripted lesson plans. We believe that teaching is a matter of the heart, that place where intellect meets up with emotion and spirit in constant dialogue with the world around us. Advancing a more democratic vision of education requires us to work toward the elimination of high stakes standardized tests, and the institution of more fair, equitable, and meaningful systems of accountability and assessment of both students and schools.
The current system also alienates students by stripping learning from its engagement with the world in all of its complexity. It reduces learning to test preparation as part of a larger rat race where students are situated within a larger economic competition for dwindling numbers of jobs. We believe that excellence needs to be defined in terms of teachers' abilities to inspire children to engage the world, for it is through such critical engagement that true learning (as opposed to rote memorization) actually occurs. Students living in the 21st century are going to have to deal with a host of problems created by their predecessors: global warming and other ecological disasters, global conflicts, human rights abuses, loss of civil liberties, etc. The curriculum needs to address what students need to know and be able to do in the 21st century to tackle these problems- and it needs to be relevant to students' current interests and concerns.
Progressives must also work diligently to enlist broader and deeper levels of public support for teachers. Teachers matter. Teaching is a public act that bears directly on our collective future. A broader movement in support of democratic and egalitarian reforms in education must include a commitment to ensure that teachers begin receiving salaries commensurate with other professions. At the same time, we must restore and expand teachers' control, in collaboration with students and communities, over decision-making about issues of curriculum and instruction in the classroom - no more scripted teaching, no more mandated outcomes, no more "teacher-proof" curricula. Local control of education rests at the heart of democracy; state and nationally mandated curriculum and assessment are a prescription for totalitarianism.
Children of immigrants make up approximately 20 percent of the children in the United States, bringing linguistic and cultural differences to many classrooms. Added to this are 2.4 million children who speak a language other than English at home. Those of us struggling to defend the public's welfare in public schools need the support of the wider progressive movement to ensure that the learning needs of English language learners are met through caring, multicultural, multi-lingual education. Citizens in a pluralistic democracy, after all, need to value difference and interact with people of differing abilities, orientations, ethnicities, cultures, and dispositions. Our nation as a whole needs to discard outmoded notions of a hypothetical norm, and either describe ALL students as different, or none of them. All classrooms should be inclusive, meeting the needs of all students, together, in a way that is just, caring, challenging, and meaningful.
Because they do not increase the market value of children, arts programs have never been funded at sufficient levels. Under pressure to increase student achievement rates (test scores), school districts in many areas of the country have eliminated art and music classes from their curricula to give students more time to spend preparing for standardized tests. Progressive elements in our society have always supported these programs. We must, however, do more in order to reverse these economically-driven assaults on the arts in schools, hopefully expanding students' opportunities to learn and excel in the fine and performing arts, physical education and sports, and extra-curricular clubs and activities, in order to develop the skills of interaction and responsibility necessary for participation in a robust civil society.
In the end, whether the savage inequalities of neoliberalism--which define current social and national relations as well as approaches to school reform-- will be overcome depends on how people organize, respond, learn, and teach in schools. With the help of the progressive press and other media outlets, those engaged in the larger struggle for social, political, and environmental justice can, and must, renew their commitment to educational justice and a democratic vision to guide the functioning of our nation's schools. Concurrently, teachers and educational leaders need to link their own interests in the improvement of teaching and learning to a broad-based movement for social, political, and economic justice, and work together for the democratic renewal of public life and public education in America. Collectively, we must make these commitments and act upon them soon, while public control still exists over the public schools. That control will not last unless we do.
E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia), Kathleen Kesson (Long Island University), David Gabbard (East Carolina University), Sandra Mathison (University of British Columbia), and Kevin D, Vinson (University of Arizona) are co-editors of Defending Public Schools (published by Praeger).
Saving Public Education - Saving Democracy
E. Wayne Ross, Kathleen Kesson, David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, & Kevin D. Vinson
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced "reporting" to "regurgitating" the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
That elements of the broader public have grown more sensitized to these issues should not surprise us, given just how brazenly and consistently the Bush administration has lied. Even after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in his flight suit on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, when Paul Wolfowitz smugly told Vanity Fair that the administration had used Weapons of Mass Destruction as the "bureaucratic reason" for invading Iraq, the mainstream media scarcely reported his statement. Understanding the standards of American journalism, Washington BBC correspondent Ian Pannell correctly predicted that Wolfowitz's remarks would not likely have any political consequences in the US.
The public, of course, has good reasons to be concerned about the press and the role it plays in a democratic society. Though the enforced, two-party system of "representation" goes a long way toward making democracy meaningless, access to information and ideas remains crucial to the public's capacity to organize and resist. The internet, along with the boost it has given to a resurgent independent media, has greatly expanded that access. Hence, the level of popular dissidence may be greater now than at any other time in US history. The growing influence of the internet and independent media may also be responsible for what limited questioning of official power we've seen in the mainstream news rrganizations.
As Thomas Jefferson observed, the health of democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. While the internet and independent media sources deserve much credit for helping to mobilize significant levels of organized popular protest in recent years, we should recognize that these outlets are essentially reactive. That is, they respond to issues and events in the immediate present. In this regard, they differ little from the mainstream media or even their right-wing counterparts. There is, however, an institution that plays a more formative role in shaping the public mind - our system of public schools. Though children today grow-up in a media-saturated world, we should not underestimate the potential of schools to help young people grow into adulthood with a discerning mind that will enable them to more critically evaluate the messages they receive from whatever news outlet. And yet, with so much media attention focused on the horrors of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and the surrounding scandals, the press - including progressive groups - has virtually ignored how the state and private power have colluded over the past twenty years to strip public schools of their democratizing potential. In the twenty-one years since the Reagan administration's National Commission for Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk, no high-minded bastion of journalist integrity in the mainstream press has recanted its parroting reportage of the Commission's claims. Numerous books and professional articles have appeared in the interim to discredit those claims, but none of them have received any serious or sustained attention from the media. Neither has the media reported the miserable failure of educational privatization pioneers such as Christopher Whittle (CEO of the Edison Project) to rescue troubled schools through the wondrous powers of the business model of management.
The strongly bi-partisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has similarly received no scrutiny that would alert the public to its insidious policy implications. In the first place, this legislation set ridiculously high standards that simply defied common sense. NCLB requires schools and teachers to insure that all students perform at or above grade level within a three year-period. This outrageous requirement includes children with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders no matter how profound. By definition, then - getting these kids to perform at grade level, NCLB holds teachers accountable for doing what medical science has never accomplished; namely, curing mental retardation.
NCLB also holds teachers accountable for bringing the performance of children from the most poverty-stricken homes up to grade level. While Rod Paige, Bush's homebred (former superintendent of Houston's public schools) Secretary of Education, chastises anyone who dares to criticize these "high expectations" and "rigorous standards" as "racists," one must pause to wonder when policy makers discovered their new faith in the remedial powers of schools. After all, the prison industry has long used third-grade reading scores to project how many new cells they will have to construct over the next twenty-year period.
While the policies of NCLB never receive any attention in the press, there has been some considerable recent outcry by Democrats and others because of the Bush administration's refusal to fund this legislation at its originally planned levels. No one stops; however, to examine the policies themselves, or to listen to teachers' complaints concerning how this high-stakes-testing model of school/teacher accountability pressures teachers to adopt the most intellectually stultifying (drill and kill) teaching methods that remove the joy of teaching from them and any potential joy of learning from their students.
Beyond the fact, as revealed for us by Michael Moore's treatment of the Patriot Act in Fahrenheit 9-11, that the vast majority of our representatives in Congress
never bother reading the legislation that they sign into law (What does this imply in terms of accountability?), the truth about NCLB goes beyond any ineptitude on the part of its architects. NCLB sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 70s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves. The current reform environment creates conditions where public schools can only fail, thus providing "statistical evidence" for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of "freedom of choice." In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent. In the end, as evidenced by Secretary of Education Rod Paige's recent characterization of the National Education Association, anyone who contests state-corporatism will be labeled a "terrorist" or, in more Orwellian terms, a "thought-criminal."
While the progressive press and media are perfectly legitimate in pushing their corporate counterparts for greater integrity in their coverage of issues and events, we believe that progressive news and cultural organizations of all varieties owe the public an even greater responsibility to report on the corporate and state assault to privatize public education. We ground this belief in recognition of one very important distinction between the corporate-owned media that progressives have grown so fond of critiquing and public schools. While both the media and schools function as major institutions in the dissemination of knowledge, information, and ideas, the mainstream media will continue to be privately owned and operated. Therefore, the public will always find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to influence their editorial policies. Public schools, on the other hand, are public. That is, insofar as they continue to be operated under public control, the public can wield considerably more influence over the policies that impact the educational practices within public education than it can ever hope to wield over the corporate media. This, in our view, offers the best explanation for the growing movement to privatize schools. Privatization would effectively transfer the control of schools from public hands to corporate hands.
We want to believe that public schools serve us, the public, "We, the people." We want to believe that schools strengthen our democracy, our ability to meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that impact our communities and our lives. Educational resources need to be directed towards increasing people's awareness of the relevant facts about their lives, and to increase people's abilities to act upon these facts in their own true interests. For the past twenty years, however, significant efforts have been made to resurrect a statist view of schools that treats teachers as mere appendages to the machinery of the state and seeks to hold them accountable to serving the interests of state and corporate power. Linked as it is to the interests of private wealth, this view defines children's value in life as human resources and future consumers. In order to combat this movement, progressive media outlets must begin doing more to alert the public to the disastrous consequences it holds for our schools, our children, and our democracy. Progressives everywhere must begin doing more to demand that our institutions of public education foster critical citizenship skills to advance a more viable and vibrant democratic society. They must push for schools to become organized around preparing young people for active, democratic citizenship through engagement with real-world issues, problem-solving, and critical thinking, and through active participation in civic and political processes. Informed citizenship in a broad-based, grassroots democracy must be based on principles of cooperation with others, non-violent conflict resolution, dialogue, inquiry and rational debate, environmental activism, and the preservation and expansion of human rights. These skills, capacities, and dispositions need to be taught and practiced in our nation's schools.
Progressives must also push harder to ensure that all schools are funded equally and fully, eliminating the dependence on private corporate funds and on the property tax, which creates a two-tiered educational system by distributing educational monies inequitably. Promoting greater equality in educational opportunity must also include demands for universal pre-k and tuition-free higher education for all qualified students in state universities. The past two decades have witnessed the increasing involvement of corporations in education in terms of supplementing public spending in exchange for school-based marketing (including advertising space in schools and textbooks, junk fast food and vending machines, and commercial-laden "free" TV). We believe that students should not be thought of as a potential market or as consumers, but as future citizens. We must call for the elimination of advertising in schools and curricula and of the marketing of unhealthy products on school grounds.
As suggested above, the current system uses "carrots and sticks" to coerce compliance with an alienating system of schooling aimed at inducing conformity among teachers and students through high stakes testing and accountability. This system alienates teachers from their work by stripping it of all creative endeavor and reduces it to following scripted lesson plans. We believe that teaching is a matter of the heart, that place where intellect meets up with emotion and spirit in constant dialogue with the world around us. Advancing a more democratic vision of education requires us to work toward the elimination of high stakes standardized tests, and the institution of more fair, equitable, and meaningful systems of accountability and assessment of both students and schools.
The current system also alienates students by stripping learning from its engagement with the world in all of its complexity. It reduces learning to test preparation as part of a larger rat race where students are situated within a larger economic competition for dwindling numbers of jobs. We believe that excellence needs to be defined in terms of teachers' abilities to inspire children to engage the world, for it is through such critical engagement that true learning (as opposed to rote memorization) actually occurs. Students living in the 21st century are going to have to deal with a host of problems created by their predecessors: global warming and other ecological disasters, global conflicts, human rights abuses, loss of civil liberties, etc. The curriculum needs to address what students need to know and be able to do in the 21st century to tackle these problems- and it needs to be relevant to students' current interests and concerns.
Progressives must also work diligently to enlist broader and deeper levels of public support for teachers. Teachers matter. Teaching is a public act that bears directly on our collective future. A broader movement in support of democratic and egalitarian reforms in education must include a commitment to ensure that teachers begin receiving salaries commensurate with other professions. At the same time, we must restore and expand teachers' control, in collaboration with students and communities, over decision-making about issues of curriculum and instruction in the classroom - no more scripted teaching, no more mandated outcomes, no more "teacher-proof" curricula. Local control of education rests at the heart of democracy; state and nationally mandated curriculum and assessment are a prescription for totalitarianism.
Children of immigrants make up approximately 20 percent of the children in the United States, bringing linguistic and cultural differences to many classrooms. Added to this are 2.4 million children who speak a language other than English at home. Those of us struggling to defend the public's welfare in public schools need the support of the wider progressive movement to ensure that the learning needs of English language learners are met through caring, multicultural, multi-lingual education. Citizens in a pluralistic democracy, after all, need to value difference and interact with people of differing abilities, orientations, ethnicities, cultures, and dispositions. Our nation as a whole needs to discard outmoded notions of a hypothetical norm, and either describe ALL students as different, or none of them. All classrooms should be inclusive, meeting the needs of all students, together, in a way that is just, caring, challenging, and meaningful.
Because they do not increase the market value of children, arts programs have never been funded at sufficient levels. Under pressure to increase student achievement rates (test scores), school districts in many areas of the country have eliminated art and music classes from their curricula to give students more time to spend preparing for standardized tests. Progressive elements in our society have always supported these programs. We must, however, do more in order to reverse these economically-driven assaults on the arts in schools, hopefully expanding students' opportunities to learn and excel in the fine and performing arts, physical education and sports, and extra-curricular clubs and activities, in order to develop the skills of interaction and responsibility necessary for participation in a robust civil society.
In the end, whether the savage inequalities of neoliberalism--which define current social and national relations as well as approaches to school reform-- will be overcome depends on how people organize, respond, learn, and teach in schools. With the help of the progressive press and other media outlets, those engaged in the larger struggle for social, political, and environmental justice can, and must, renew their commitment to educational justice and a democratic vision to guide the functioning of our nation's schools. Concurrently, teachers and educational leaders need to link their own interests in the improvement of teaching and learning to a broad-based movement for social, political, and economic justice, and work together for the democratic renewal of public life and public education in America. Collectively, we must make these commitments and act upon them soon, while public control still exists over the public schools. That control will not last unless we do.
E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia), Kathleen Kesson (Long Island University), David Gabbard (East Carolina University), Sandra Mathison (University of British Columbia), and Kevin D, Vinson (University of Arizona) are co-editors of Defending Public Schools (published by Praeger).
# posted by scorpiorising : 8:19 AM |
This about sums it up.
A tale told by an idiot:
Wildly overplaying the Schiavo protesters, ignoring facts and giving Bush a free ride, the press was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Wildly overplaying the Schiavo protesters, ignoring facts and giving Bush a free ride, the press was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
# posted by scorpiorising : 1:00 AM |
The Brink of Disaster
I'll let the article speak for itself, and for our children's children:
The State of the World? It is on the Brink of Disaster
An Authoritative Study of the Biological Relationships Vital to Maintaining Life has Found Disturbing Evidence of Man-made Degradation
by Steve Connor
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
The dryland regions of the world, which account for 41 per cent of the earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.
Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.
Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.
The State of the World? It is on the Brink of Disaster
An Authoritative Study of the Biological Relationships Vital to Maintaining Life has Found Disturbing Evidence of Man-made Degradation
by Steve Connor
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
The dryland regions of the world, which account for 41 per cent of the earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.
Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.
Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:36 AM |
James Baker the third, you are full of shit...
full of shit, that is, to think that your cynical presence on the Voting Reform Commission has gone down without being noticed by true patriots everywhere. We know of your anti-democratic efforts and attitude in 2000, and we wonder what role you played in the stolen election of 2004. We know that you work for the Bushies, hence, you do not work for democracy. It is all or nothing for your kind. Your greed and hypermanic egos may destroy this country, indeed, this world, for the sake of power, money, and imagined prestige. We will do everything in our power to expose you, for the walking threat to democracy that you are...
From Daily kos:
Coordinated attack on your voting rights happening NOW!
by bejammin075
[Subscribe]
Thu Mar 31st, 2005 at 08:50:39 PST
It is no accident that James A. Baker III is the co-chair of the new blue ribbon commission on voting issues. Baker helped ensure that the votes in Florida 2000 were not counted. How did Baker get on the commission? We don't know yet. The commission was created in secret.
Then there's the Gannon/Talon-like ACVR. The American Center for against Voting Rights. The "non-partisan" ACVR sprang into existance 3 business days before a 3/21/05 House Administrative Committee on voting issues of Ohio 2004. ACVR submitted a 31-page report to the Committee. The report, authored by Mark F. Hearne (General Counsel to Bush/Cheney '04), entirely blames ALL potential vote fraud on Democrats. Presently, the ACVR report is being circulated far and wide to every nook and crany of Freeper Land.
The Baker-tainted blue ribbon commission and the Gannon-like ACVR are both part of a coordinated attack on the right to vote. This is known because of a very peculiar detail reported by the BradBlog:
The Commission was seated in secret, announced on Thursday at 2pm, and lauded in a Press Release published by ACVR just 24 minutes later!
Diaries :: bejammin075's diary :: ::
Reported at the BradBlog:
RNC Political Director Cites Report by RNC 'Voting Rights' Front Group to RNC Email List!
Those words in the grey box above are some freaky shit when you consider what it means. Is it a conspriacy? Is that possible? Is this crazy? Well, it IS a conspiracy. The recent activities of these high-level Republicans can't be reasonably explained any other way. To get a press release out 24 minutes after the created-in-secret-by-secret-people blue ribbon commission means you already had the press release typed up BEFORE the announcement, when none from the established voting rights groups knew about it.
We know James A. Baker III is on the commission PRECISELY because he will thwart any true vote reform.
We can see for ourselves that ACVR and their shitty report are also there PRECISELY to thwart true vote reform.
ACVR fake report on Democratic-only vote fraud
(Warning: If you take blood pressure medication, double it!)
These people have unbelievably big balls. The quote below is from page 20 of the ACVR report, under Intimidation and Voter Harassment:
Unfortunately, on November 2, 2004, activists from these third party organizations violated this voter protection law and harassed Ohio citizens seeking to exercise their right to vote. Many of the individuals engaged in this harassment of voters were representatives of "independent" third party organizations such as MoveOn.org. Some of these individuals - including individuals associated with political campaigns - misrepresented themselves as "nonpartisan" resources for voters. These individuals were cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," the "Ohio Election Protection Project," and other similar pseudonyms.
"cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," ?!?! Look who's talking!
And now we can see from the timing of their actions that they are coordinated. We are going to have to work our asses off to put a stop to this. They are working hard to ensure that no reform takes place, while our voting continues to become more controlled by secret voting software. Are we working hard enough to counter their actions? Are you fired up? After the 2004 election, there was a lot of intense blogging about what went down in Ohio and elsewhere, and the DKos community had a bit of a split as to how to approach believing and/or exposing this crap. But there was one thing we were all in 100% agreement on - we really need some voting reform. This voting reform isn't going to be easy, and it's for high stakes. At a minimum, this high-level GOP effort is perpetrated for control of the world's most powerful military and for increased corporate power. The innappropriate use of our military so far has resulted in well over 100,000 innocent civilian deaths. War profiteering is out of control with 9 billion missing and counting, and our leaders don't care enough.
Velvet Revolution, an umbrella group with over 100 member groups concerned about voting rights, calls it like it is:
Velvet Revolution Condems Baker's Presence on the Voting Reform Commission
Also check out (if you missed it) lapin's excellent recent diary on ACVR
Need a reminder why electronic voting is totally screwed? When Diebold central vote tabulators are set up exactly like they were on 11/2/04, they are proven on 3/8/05 to be easily hacked without a trace.
I only started realizing the truth about the voting situation around the time of the 11/2/04 election. Since then it sinks in more and more each day how bad things really are. And just when I think I understand the full extent of it, it gets even worse. And in reality, it's even worse than how I understand it to be.
From Daily kos:
Coordinated attack on your voting rights happening NOW!
by bejammin075
[Subscribe]
Thu Mar 31st, 2005 at 08:50:39 PST
It is no accident that James A. Baker III is the co-chair of the new blue ribbon commission on voting issues. Baker helped ensure that the votes in Florida 2000 were not counted. How did Baker get on the commission? We don't know yet. The commission was created in secret.
Then there's the Gannon/Talon-like ACVR. The American Center for against Voting Rights. The "non-partisan" ACVR sprang into existance 3 business days before a 3/21/05 House Administrative Committee on voting issues of Ohio 2004. ACVR submitted a 31-page report to the Committee. The report, authored by Mark F. Hearne (General Counsel to Bush/Cheney '04), entirely blames ALL potential vote fraud on Democrats. Presently, the ACVR report is being circulated far and wide to every nook and crany of Freeper Land.
The Baker-tainted blue ribbon commission and the Gannon-like ACVR are both part of a coordinated attack on the right to vote. This is known because of a very peculiar detail reported by the BradBlog:
The Commission was seated in secret, announced on Thursday at 2pm, and lauded in a Press Release published by ACVR just 24 minutes later!
Diaries :: bejammin075's diary :: ::
Reported at the BradBlog:
RNC Political Director Cites Report by RNC 'Voting Rights' Front Group to RNC Email List!
Those words in the grey box above are some freaky shit when you consider what it means. Is it a conspriacy? Is that possible? Is this crazy? Well, it IS a conspiracy. The recent activities of these high-level Republicans can't be reasonably explained any other way. To get a press release out 24 minutes after the created-in-secret-by-secret-people blue ribbon commission means you already had the press release typed up BEFORE the announcement, when none from the established voting rights groups knew about it.
We know James A. Baker III is on the commission PRECISELY because he will thwart any true vote reform.
We can see for ourselves that ACVR and their shitty report are also there PRECISELY to thwart true vote reform.
ACVR fake report on Democratic-only vote fraud
(Warning: If you take blood pressure medication, double it!)
These people have unbelievably big balls. The quote below is from page 20 of the ACVR report, under Intimidation and Voter Harassment:
Unfortunately, on November 2, 2004, activists from these third party organizations violated this voter protection law and harassed Ohio citizens seeking to exercise their right to vote. Many of the individuals engaged in this harassment of voters were representatives of "independent" third party organizations such as MoveOn.org. Some of these individuals - including individuals associated with political campaigns - misrepresented themselves as "nonpartisan" resources for voters. These individuals were cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," the "Ohio Election Protection Project," and other similar pseudonyms.
"cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," ?!?! Look who's talking!
And now we can see from the timing of their actions that they are coordinated. We are going to have to work our asses off to put a stop to this. They are working hard to ensure that no reform takes place, while our voting continues to become more controlled by secret voting software. Are we working hard enough to counter their actions? Are you fired up? After the 2004 election, there was a lot of intense blogging about what went down in Ohio and elsewhere, and the DKos community had a bit of a split as to how to approach believing and/or exposing this crap. But there was one thing we were all in 100% agreement on - we really need some voting reform. This voting reform isn't going to be easy, and it's for high stakes. At a minimum, this high-level GOP effort is perpetrated for control of the world's most powerful military and for increased corporate power. The innappropriate use of our military so far has resulted in well over 100,000 innocent civilian deaths. War profiteering is out of control with 9 billion missing and counting, and our leaders don't care enough.
Velvet Revolution, an umbrella group with over 100 member groups concerned about voting rights, calls it like it is:
Velvet Revolution Condems Baker's Presence on the Voting Reform Commission
Also check out (if you missed it) lapin's excellent recent diary on ACVR
Need a reminder why electronic voting is totally screwed? When Diebold central vote tabulators are set up exactly like they were on 11/2/04, they are proven on 3/8/05 to be easily hacked without a trace.
I only started realizing the truth about the voting situation around the time of the 11/2/04 election. Since then it sinks in more and more each day how bad things really are. And just when I think I understand the full extent of it, it gets even worse. And in reality, it's even worse than how I understand it to be.
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:08 AM |
Saturday, March 26, 2005
The Republicans have discovered life.
I was going to title this piece: The Republicans have Discovered the Sanctity of Life, but I realized that it goes much further than sanctity. The Republicans have discovered life. They have discovered life in Terri Schiavo. They have decided, as in the case of Peggy Noonan, that if it is about life, then there need be no purpose, "then life is the point".
And if life is the point, then this, of course, raises many interesting possibilities. I predict the republicans will begin to discover the cruelty of the death penalty. They will begin to value the lives of those on death row.
If life is the point, then the lives of our soldiers will begin to take on a new and illuminating existence. If we wish to preserve their lives, it will be determined that the best, and only way to accomplish this is to begin an immediate withdrawal of our soldiers from Iraq.(Many democrats will learn from the republicans on this issue.)
If life is the point, then the lives of Iraqis killed in this war will begin, suddenly, to matter. The republicans will conclude therefore, that the immediates cessation of hostilities, directed towards the Iraqi people, is the only way to preserve and protect life.
If life is the point, then Americans who suffer, and possibly die, from inadequate health care in this country, will immediately begin to take on great significanse. Republicans will respond by creating universal health care for all.
Ahhh, but the above predictions, I realize, may be nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.
Because if life is the point, then what happens to quality of life? The quality of Terri Schiavo's life is not important, if life is the point. And with the denial of the importance of the quality of one's life, This will justify the continuance of policies by the administration that do much to damage the quality of life for people all over the globe. I would say that American democracy is on life support.
The republicans may try to save our lives to prove life is the point, but they are shitting in our backyards, at night, when we aren't looking.
And if life is the point, then this, of course, raises many interesting possibilities. I predict the republicans will begin to discover the cruelty of the death penalty. They will begin to value the lives of those on death row.
If life is the point, then the lives of our soldiers will begin to take on a new and illuminating existence. If we wish to preserve their lives, it will be determined that the best, and only way to accomplish this is to begin an immediate withdrawal of our soldiers from Iraq.(Many democrats will learn from the republicans on this issue.)
If life is the point, then the lives of Iraqis killed in this war will begin, suddenly, to matter. The republicans will conclude therefore, that the immediates cessation of hostilities, directed towards the Iraqi people, is the only way to preserve and protect life.
If life is the point, then Americans who suffer, and possibly die, from inadequate health care in this country, will immediately begin to take on great significanse. Republicans will respond by creating universal health care for all.
Ahhh, but the above predictions, I realize, may be nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.
Because if life is the point, then what happens to quality of life? The quality of Terri Schiavo's life is not important, if life is the point. And with the denial of the importance of the quality of one's life, This will justify the continuance of policies by the administration that do much to damage the quality of life for people all over the globe. I would say that American democracy is on life support.
The republicans may try to save our lives to prove life is the point, but they are shitting in our backyards, at night, when we aren't looking.
# posted by scorpiorising : 5:22 AM |
Friday, March 18, 2005
"Mr. Magoo Goes to Washington"
Salon.com's title was so great, I had to reprint it, and a teaser from the article on the Bush nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank. Apparently,
one needs to help lead the nation in a disastrous, bloody war, in order to be president of the World Bank (a la Robert MacNamara):
The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, following his commission of a long and costly series of blunders as deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's first term, comes as no surprise to those familiar with his career. Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.
Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."
Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.
one needs to help lead the nation in a disastrous, bloody war, in order to be president of the World Bank (a la Robert MacNamara):
The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, following his commission of a long and costly series of blunders as deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's first term, comes as no surprise to those familiar with his career. Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.
Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."
Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.
# posted by scorpiorising : 7:46 AM |
Thursday, March 17, 2005
"Scenes from a Cultural Revolution"
From Billmon:
The Left has taken over academe. We want it back.
Mike Rosen, Rocky Mountain News columnist
CU is Worth Fighting For
March 4, 2005
In this great Cultural Revolution, the phenomenon of our schools being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966
_____________________________
I have undertaken the task of organizing conservative students myself and urging them to protest a situation that has become intolerable.
David Horowitz
The Campus Blacklist
April 18, 2003
Students on University campuses were organized into groups of “Red Guards” and were given the chance to challenge those in authority. Students quickly turned their attacks on their closest adversaries, their teachers and university administrators.
Therese Hoffman
The Chinese Cultural Revolution:
Autobiographical Accounts of a National Trauma
2001
_____________________________
Thomas Jefferson knew "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America; David Horowitz knows it also is good for college campuses.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Last Days of Intellectual Oppression
February 23, 2005
Mao came forward with the new slogan: “Rebellion is justified,” which encouraged [students] to assault officials and institutions indiscriminately.”
Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972
_____________________________
It is refreshing that conservative students are increasingly fighting back against academic intolerance. Some conservative students at the University of Texas have begun compiling a "Professor Watch List" to warn students about professors who use their classes for liberal indoctrination.
Phyllis Schlafly
Confronting The Campus Radicals
January 12, 2004
Large numbers of revolutionary young people . . . have become courageous and daring path breakers. Through the media of big-character posters and great debates, they argue things out, expose and criticize thoroughly, and launch resolute attacks on the open and hidden representatives of the bourgeoisie.
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
The Left has taken over academe. We want it back.
Mike Rosen, Rocky Mountain News columnist
CU is Worth Fighting For
March 4, 2005
In this great Cultural Revolution, the phenomenon of our schools being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966
_____________________________
I have undertaken the task of organizing conservative students myself and urging them to protest a situation that has become intolerable.
David Horowitz
The Campus Blacklist
April 18, 2003
Students on University campuses were organized into groups of “Red Guards” and were given the chance to challenge those in authority. Students quickly turned their attacks on their closest adversaries, their teachers and university administrators.
Therese Hoffman
The Chinese Cultural Revolution:
Autobiographical Accounts of a National Trauma
2001
_____________________________
Thomas Jefferson knew "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America; David Horowitz knows it also is good for college campuses.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Last Days of Intellectual Oppression
February 23, 2005
Mao came forward with the new slogan: “Rebellion is justified,” which encouraged [students] to assault officials and institutions indiscriminately.”
Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972
_____________________________
It is refreshing that conservative students are increasingly fighting back against academic intolerance. Some conservative students at the University of Texas have begun compiling a "Professor Watch List" to warn students about professors who use their classes for liberal indoctrination.
Phyllis Schlafly
Confronting The Campus Radicals
January 12, 2004
Large numbers of revolutionary young people . . . have become courageous and daring path breakers. Through the media of big-character posters and great debates, they argue things out, expose and criticize thoroughly, and launch resolute attacks on the open and hidden representatives of the bourgeoisie.
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
# posted by scorpiorising : 4:25 PM |
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
As Always, it is best to let the Iraqis speak for themselves.
Riverbend has this to say about the "accidental" shooting on the car carrying Sgrena to safety, and the subsequent kiling of the Italian intelligence agent sent to protect her. I'll include a teaser on Riverbend's thoughts on the recent election:
We are relieved the Italian journalist was set free. I, personally, was very happy. Iraqis are getting abducted these days by the dozen, but it still says something else about the country when foreigners are abducted. Iraqis have a fierce sense of hospitality that can border on the obnoxious sometimes. When people come to our houses, we insist they have something to drink and then we insist they stay for whatever meal is coming- even if its four hours away. We cringe when journalists and aide workers are abducted because it gives us the sense that we’re bad hosts.
People are always wondering why they abduct journalists, and other innocents. I think its because the lines are all blurred right now. It’s difficult to tell who is who. Who is a journalist, for example, and who is foreign intelligence? Who is a mercenary and who is an aide worker? People are somewhat more reluctant to talk to foreigners than they were at the beginning...
...What it seems policy makers in America don’t get, and what I suspect many Americans themselves *do* get, is that millions of Iraqis feel completely detached from the current people in power. If you don’t have an alliance with one of the political parties (ie under their protection or on their payroll) then it’s difficult to feel any affinity with people like Jaffari, Allawi, Talbani, etc. We watch them on television, tight-lipped and shifty-eyed after a meeting where they quarreled about Kirkuk or Sharia in the constitution and it feels like what I imagine an out-of-body experience should feel like.
In spite of elections, they still feel like puppets. But now, they are high-tech puppets. They were upgraded from your ordinary string puppets to those life-like, battery-powered, talking puppets. It’s almost like we’re doing that whole rotating president thing Bremer did in 2003 all over again. The same faces are getting tedious. The old Iraqi saying sums it up nicely, “Tireed erneb- ukhuth erneb. Tireed ghazal- ukhuth erneb.” The translation for this is, “You want a rabbit? Take a rabbit. You want a deer? Take a rabbit.”
Except we didn’t get any rabbits- we just got an assortment of snakes, weasels and hyenas.
This American woman will add, perhaps it is best for everyone concerned with personal safety, to stay out of the country and out of the war. If a journalist, I would offer okay, fearing for my own personal safety, I will stay out of Iraq (that is what "they" want, of course, the social isolation of the Iraqis while America and its allies consolidate their power), but I will refuse to print any so-called "good" news, unless I can see it and observe it for myself, because you are asking me to take your word for it, and I simply can't do that and look my face in the mirror each morning.
ON another note, Riverbend also introduces us to another Iraqi blogger, Free Iraq.
We are relieved the Italian journalist was set free. I, personally, was very happy. Iraqis are getting abducted these days by the dozen, but it still says something else about the country when foreigners are abducted. Iraqis have a fierce sense of hospitality that can border on the obnoxious sometimes. When people come to our houses, we insist they have something to drink and then we insist they stay for whatever meal is coming- even if its four hours away. We cringe when journalists and aide workers are abducted because it gives us the sense that we’re bad hosts.
People are always wondering why they abduct journalists, and other innocents. I think its because the lines are all blurred right now. It’s difficult to tell who is who. Who is a journalist, for example, and who is foreign intelligence? Who is a mercenary and who is an aide worker? People are somewhat more reluctant to talk to foreigners than they were at the beginning...
...What it seems policy makers in America don’t get, and what I suspect many Americans themselves *do* get, is that millions of Iraqis feel completely detached from the current people in power. If you don’t have an alliance with one of the political parties (ie under their protection or on their payroll) then it’s difficult to feel any affinity with people like Jaffari, Allawi, Talbani, etc. We watch them on television, tight-lipped and shifty-eyed after a meeting where they quarreled about Kirkuk or Sharia in the constitution and it feels like what I imagine an out-of-body experience should feel like.
In spite of elections, they still feel like puppets. But now, they are high-tech puppets. They were upgraded from your ordinary string puppets to those life-like, battery-powered, talking puppets. It’s almost like we’re doing that whole rotating president thing Bremer did in 2003 all over again. The same faces are getting tedious. The old Iraqi saying sums it up nicely, “Tireed erneb- ukhuth erneb. Tireed ghazal- ukhuth erneb.” The translation for this is, “You want a rabbit? Take a rabbit. You want a deer? Take a rabbit.”
Except we didn’t get any rabbits- we just got an assortment of snakes, weasels and hyenas.
This American woman will add, perhaps it is best for everyone concerned with personal safety, to stay out of the country and out of the war. If a journalist, I would offer okay, fearing for my own personal safety, I will stay out of Iraq (that is what "they" want, of course, the social isolation of the Iraqis while America and its allies consolidate their power), but I will refuse to print any so-called "good" news, unless I can see it and observe it for myself, because you are asking me to take your word for it, and I simply can't do that and look my face in the mirror each morning.
ON another note, Riverbend also introduces us to another Iraqi blogger, Free Iraq.
# posted by scorpiorising : 6:33 AM |
Friday, March 04, 2005
The Internet is threatened.
A campaign finance law is to be extended to the internet, and, in the process, political punditry online is threatened. Outrageous.
How can the government place a value on a blog that praises some politician?
How do we measure that? Design fees, that sort of thing? The FEC did an advisory opinion in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don't think we'd hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you'd have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.
It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did. And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in. Line drawing is going to be an inherently very difficult task. And then we'll be pushed to go further. Why can this person do it, but not that person?
If the FEC succeeds in silencing the political debate online, fascism will have won. This is outrageously unconstitutional, oppresses freedom of speech, and will be challenged.
How can the government place a value on a blog that praises some politician?
How do we measure that? Design fees, that sort of thing? The FEC did an advisory opinion in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don't think we'd hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you'd have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.
It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did. And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in. Line drawing is going to be an inherently very difficult task. And then we'll be pushed to go further. Why can this person do it, but not that person?
If the FEC succeeds in silencing the political debate online, fascism will have won. This is outrageously unconstitutional, oppresses freedom of speech, and will be challenged.
# posted by scorpiorising : 5:48 AM |
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Hillary Clinton favors outsourcing...
if it wins her friends with the power brokers in India. Looks like I may never vote in another presidential election. She is free trade all the way.
From the Asian Times article on her recent trip to India:
Hillary clears outsourcing air
Hillary Clinton made it apparent where she stood on outsourcing during
her India visit, in an attempt perhaps to clear the Indian misgivings
received during the Kerry campaign. "There is no way to legislate
against reality. Outsourcing will continue," she told an audience of
Indian big-wigs. She pointed out that there were 3 billion people who
feel left behind and are trying to attack the modern world in the hope
of turning the clock back on globalization. "It is not far-fetched to
imagine ... if the Indian miracle would be the one of choice of those
who feel left behind," said Hillary.
Hillary has been at the forefront in defending free trade and
outsourcing. During the height of the anti-outsourcing backlash in the
US last year, she faced considerable flak for defending Indian software
giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for opening a center in Buffalo,
New York. "We are not against all outsourcing; we are not in favor of
putting up fences," Hillary said firmly, despite inevitably invoking
the ire of the anti-free trade brigade.
Hillary further clarified her position during her recent visit as well
as solutions that could be beneficial to both countries. She urged
Indian industries to invest more in the US to allay negative
outpourings over outsourcing of American jobs to India. "I have to be
frank. People in my country are losing their jobs and the US
policymakers need to address this issue," she said. She ruled out that
the anti-India feeling was a reflexive reaction, and explained that the
feeling was more because of the imbalance in trade between the two
countries, which in turn caused anguish among Americans about the
nature of the economic relationship.
"In 2003, US merchandise exports to India was $5 billion, while India
exports to the US was $13.8 billion. Though the US understood that the
economic vibrancy of India was in its own interest, there are people
who feel left behind and might stir up negative feelings against India
because they do not understand the economic benefits of outsourcing,"
"If the feeling was to be arrested, Indian companies should invest more
in the US to create a balance in trade relations," she said. Hillary
added that she had personally wooed Indian companies to establish
partnerships with American counterparts. "In June 2002, TCS partnered
with the University of Buffalo to bring patented research to the market
place. I would like to see more of such partnerships," she said.
From the Asian Times article on her recent trip to India:
Hillary clears outsourcing air
Hillary Clinton made it apparent where she stood on outsourcing during
her India visit, in an attempt perhaps to clear the Indian misgivings
received during the Kerry campaign. "There is no way to legislate
against reality. Outsourcing will continue," she told an audience of
Indian big-wigs. She pointed out that there were 3 billion people who
feel left behind and are trying to attack the modern world in the hope
of turning the clock back on globalization. "It is not far-fetched to
imagine ... if the Indian miracle would be the one of choice of those
who feel left behind," said Hillary.
Hillary has been at the forefront in defending free trade and
outsourcing. During the height of the anti-outsourcing backlash in the
US last year, she faced considerable flak for defending Indian software
giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for opening a center in Buffalo,
New York. "We are not against all outsourcing; we are not in favor of
putting up fences," Hillary said firmly, despite inevitably invoking
the ire of the anti-free trade brigade.
Hillary further clarified her position during her recent visit as well
as solutions that could be beneficial to both countries. She urged
Indian industries to invest more in the US to allay negative
outpourings over outsourcing of American jobs to India. "I have to be
frank. People in my country are losing their jobs and the US
policymakers need to address this issue," she said. She ruled out that
the anti-India feeling was a reflexive reaction, and explained that the
feeling was more because of the imbalance in trade between the two
countries, which in turn caused anguish among Americans about the
nature of the economic relationship.
"In 2003, US merchandise exports to India was $5 billion, while India
exports to the US was $13.8 billion. Though the US understood that the
economic vibrancy of India was in its own interest, there are people
who feel left behind and might stir up negative feelings against India
because they do not understand the economic benefits of outsourcing,"
"If the feeling was to be arrested, Indian companies should invest more
in the US to create a balance in trade relations," she said. Hillary
added that she had personally wooed Indian companies to establish
partnerships with American counterparts. "In June 2002, TCS partnered
with the University of Buffalo to bring patented research to the market
place. I would like to see more of such partnerships," she said.
# posted by scorpiorising : 7:08 AM |
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