cheese it, the cops!

appreciate what you have

check this  from the charleston, wv daily mail. seems pauline lester's home was burgled. the crooks took quite a miscellany of trinkets. a few days later, the stuff showed up on her porch in christmas wrapping. now that is a profound act. pauline lester has been given what she already had, as a gift. she has inventoried what she had, and she has learned to receive it, no doubt with gratitude. indeed, this act transcends all dualisms: of giving and receiving, charity and greed, property and theft, christmas and crime.

i love a good martinet

an interesting story . governor robert ehrlich of maryland has banned the baltimore sun's state capitol bureau chief as well as columnist michael olesker  from access to his office, instructing staffers not to return calls or cooperate in any way. it also appears that he has had a number of sun boxes removed from the capitol area in annapolis. by his own account, he has been angry with the sun's ed page for opposing him and with its news pages for covering an apparent tax boondoggle intended to massively benefit ehrlich contributor willard hackerman and including sales of state parkland.  "it's my government!" ehrlich has been reported to say, over and over. no, bob, it's not. it's the people's. trying to make it impossible for the state's biggest newspaper to cover that government is deeply wrong, arrogant, and stupid.

fcc watch

here's  a nice editorial from the portland (maine) express-herald. the fcc believes that people shouldn't be able to choose the bundle of cable channels they receive. their arguments are bad, but their purpose is, as per usual, to control what you see and hear.

principle, cowardice, or corruption?

i always thought there were two possible reasons the french and the un opposed the american war effort in iraq (i too opposed it, and oppose it). one is principle: no unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations. the other was cowardice. but a couple of stories of late have raised a third option.: corruption.  kofi annan's son made a nifty little bundle on the oil for food deal (nysun ). and i saw quite an amazing little interview this morning on fox, with a former investigator in the french government who evidently suspects that the corruption in oil-for-food extends up to the interior minister of france and chirac himself.  she also says her life was threatened repeatedly. and she spoke plausibly and with restraint: not making any wild assertions. i can't find the thing on the fox site now. i wish i had more details. i'll get em. but this piece from worldnet  gives the flavor. or check this from today's daily telegraph .

prisoners of what

look  ,  as soon as 9.11 happened, the whole administration swung into the rhetoric: the war on terror. this might seem like some sort of metaphor to me, but these folks obviously take it perfectly literally. it follows that the enemy combatants you imprison in this conflict are prisoners of war.  that's *your* account, rumsfeld, not mine. and hence you have committed yourself by the most direct assertion to treat these prisoners in accordance with the geneva conventions, or to declare explicitly that the us is no longer party to these conventions. (in any case, it's clear to everyone else that we are not.) the contradiction could not be more stark: we're going to hold these prisoners until the end of the war in the conduct of which we apprehended them, but they're not prisoners of war.

suicidal whales

dude. why did these perfectly nice, and mostly healthy, whales all beach themselves simultaneously? (story)
who knows? and yet...i think this is final proof that whales and dolphins are the intellectual and spiritual equals of you and me. really, the only difference between us and the so-called lower animals is that we kill ourselves. these guys might have been part of a suicide cult a la jim jones. or maybe they just collectively started contemplating the abyss that is a world and life without god, without meaning, without truth. either way, it's a remarkably hopeful sign.

standardizing universities

the next step in the miserable attempt to standardize american education is to extend it to the college level .  "accountability" etc sounds very nice. but if schools and bureaucracies do not respect the autonomy and the diversity of their students and their teachers, they do not even know what education is, and have abandoned it completely. the tests run the schools. there are a variety of indications that colleges are going to be enduring this onslaught: its often put to us profs as "outcomes assessment" etc. it seems innocuous or just empty  or redundant. but it will end by destroying our autonomy as educators.

hooray for death!

i know this is harsh and maybe a bit odd coming from an anarchist. scott peterson ought to be executed. slowly. on national television.

ssm

the arguments against same sex marriage are deeply disingenuous. in challenging the ssm decision of the mass courts before the supreme court, the legal argument is described like this (as quoted by cnn):

Critics of the November 2003 ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts argue that it violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government in each state. They lost at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Their attorney, Mathew Staver, said in a Supreme Court filing that the Constitution should "protect the citizens of Massachusetts from their own state supreme court's usurpation of power."

Federal courts, he said, should defend people's right "to live in a republican form of government free from tyranny, whether that comes at the barrel of a gun or by the decree of a court."

just who is going to be "protected" here? and from what? no one's rights or existing marriages are violated, or indeed disturbed in the slightest, by the mass. ruling. as to the argument that the original decision is incompatible with federalism because it violates the pledge that each state will have a republican form of gov: that is simply absurd, unless a "republic" is that form of government that interferes most elaborately with your most intimate relations and voluntary contracts. the idea that giving a class of people the right to marry is "tyranny" is a blathering, oxymoronic idiocy.

the us supreme court has refused to review the case.

kazaa

to me, kazaa has become almost unusable because of the incredible infestation of viruses and spyware. i suspect, in fact, that some of this comes from music or movie companies that are trying to destroy p2p. but still, the idea - now being tested in the australian courts - that systems that allow people to swap files over the net are illegal because they can be used to transfer copyrighted info, is offensive. of course, it is the big four record companies that have brought the suit. but even if filesharing were to gut these four companies (which is hardly likely) it would only be doing the world's music a favor. the control of the music industry - radio, television, record stores, etc. - by these four companies is by far the biggest threat to musical expression, musical diversity, and musical quality. evryone except a few artists and execs would benefit by total disintegration.

fcc watch

as this reuters story  indicates, the fcc is exploring the idea that satellite radio makes use of the ""public" (=state-owned) airwaves, and thus is subject to the same "decency standards" as am and fm.  chairman powell will no doubt soon be accusing sirius of engaging in splittist activities.

mill on state education and freedom

"All that has been said [previously in this book] of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unpeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter 5

leftist consensus in academia

george will's column today  is about the leftist lean in academia. i have spent my whole professional life in academia, and i tell you there is near-unanimity on politics. first off, this is stultifying: it relieves everybody of the burden of thought. second,. it confirms itself in an endless circle, in which it is obvious to all professors that anyone as smart or educated as they are must have the same positions they do, everyone else being an ignorant yahoo. (of course it never occurs to them that they've been through a long, long political indoctrination.)  third, it is enforced. people find a way not to like you, or to basically interpret you as a monster for even slight divergences of opinion. the thing is sad. the only people who don't think it's true and a problem are precisely these same 9 out of 10 humanities professors.

my aim was not to become what i became

You find me offensive 
I find you offensive for finding me offensive 
hence should I draw a line at any fences ?
if so to what extent, if any, should I go? 
cause it's getting expensive 
being on the other side of the court room on the defensive 
they say I cause extensive psycholgical nerve damage to the brain 
when I go to lengths this far at other people's expenses 
I say you're all just too god damn sensitive 
it's censorship and it's downright blasphemous 
let's end this shit now cause I won't stand for this 
and Christopher Reeves won't sit for this neither 
and let's clear this up too I ain't got no beef with him either 
he used to be like a hero to me 
I even believe I had one of those 25 cent stickers 
on my refrigerator right next to Darth Vader 
and Darth must have put a hex on him for later 
I feel like its my fault cause of the way that 
I stuck him up in between him and Lex Luther 
I killed Superman I killed Super...Man 
and how ironic that I'd be the bad guy kryptonite 
the green chronic 

(Chorus) 
Cause i aint got no legs or no brain 
nice to meet you 
hi my name is... 
i forgot my name 
my aim was not to become what i became with this level of fame 
my soul is possessed by this devil 
my new name is... Rain Man 

eminem:  "rain man" from the album "encore"

terrorists against terrorists

you're not going to be an 'honest broker" in the palestinian/isaeli situation unless you take it on board that both sides use terrorism.

i'm splitting

"The Dalai is not a common religious personage, but a separatist who engages in splittist activities," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters on the sidelines of a southeast Asian leaders meeting in the Laos capital.

(as quoted here , re: dalai lama gets a visa from russia, for the first time). "splittist activities"? damn. that's cool. i'm for splittists the world over: basically every single secessionist movement everywhere. i guess china considers it self-evident that the infinitely huge megastate is desirable.  me? i'm a proponent of splittism wherever it may raise its nirvanic head. one thing i really do dig, though: kitschy commie rhetoric from circa 1952. i thought it was a lost art!
the image is a picture of the young dalai lama meeting mao tse tung in 1958. they seem pleased to see each other.

subvert our troops

this  should piss some people off.

ba'ath party of america

the republicans are the ba'ath party not only of america but of iraq. they started by setting up their command posts in saddam's palaces, their torture facilities at abu ghraib. turns out the only reasonable iraqi troops they've got are saddam's old commandos (described by reuters as america's "secret weapon").  it's likely the election process, if any, will be conducted in the ba'athist tradition.  according to the us armed forces (washpost ), the number of iraqi detainees has at least doubled in the last few weeks. and that's the number they're admitting to: note that they have widely affirmed the practice of holding people secretly or turning them over to private contractors or other countries  (washpost) . here's a scary story i've been following (bbc ): i think you'd have to be idiotically naive not to think idema was working for the us military with plausible deniability.

International Criminal Court

The US is threatening to  pull hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid in an attempt to  pressure  nations into making it impossible to try American citizens in International Criminal Court for war crimes (washington post)  . This is a wise move, since we are perpetrating war crimes as a matter of policy (alexander cockburn) . Notice that the Attorney General-designate has repeatedly indicated that the US is not bound by the Geneva conventions, and various officials have approved torture in interrogation. It's tough, when Fox News and George Bush refer to American soldiers as "heroes" and anyone they fight as "terrorists" to quite comprehend what you're seeing when you see an American soldier shoot an unarmed, wounded man.  In other words, we seek immunity from the war crimes because we are war criminals. 

Expunge the FCC

I hate everything about the FCC. Here is a completely routine story. The FCC auctions off a couple of hundred FM frequencies to the highest bidder. Now: by what right does the FCC own radio frequencies? Wait a second, let me get my Constitution. And why is it only money which determines who has access to the airwaves? From its most routine actions to its highest-profile attempts to control the content of American media, the FCC is completely incompatible with the supposed American form of government. Destroy it. Erase it. Expunge it.  I promise, there will be a lot of anti-FCC screeds on this blog.

UN's Cowardice in Darfur

The UN has suspended food aid to Darfur because of renewed fighting between the gov and rebels (chicago sun-times).  Meanwhile the UN has condemened the rebels for the new fighting (boston globe).  But the UN should look in the damn mirror. OK: most of the world agrees that the people the rebels are fighting for are the victims of genocide. But no one - not the French, who have military bases in Chad and Eritrea - not the US - who declare genocide and then content themselves by responding with a strongly-worded memo, not the UN - craven to the core - do anything to help. And then they blame the rebels for trying to keep their own people from being slaughtered, raped, and starved.

marilyn manson teaches aesthetics

I just saw (I mean I was in the room) Marilyn Manson teach an aesthetics course at Temple University, under the auspices of MTVU. You shoulda seen the look on the students' faces when they walked in and saw the camera crews and klieg lights. Or again when theyMarilyn walked in and wrote "Mr. Manson" on the board. "Holy shit!" I wouldn't say he's better than me, but, um, he's got better lipstick. His "fiance" was there, dressed as a forties movie star. She was cute. Marilyn was remarkably low-key. No intellectual, but no dummy. The one thing I remember: "Everything has already been created. The only thing an artist can do now is destroy things in an interesting way." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/people/201006_people26.html

protect your sources: valerie plame and dick cheney

I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson of reporters. And one thing I absorbed with my mother’s milk: you never give up a source. Not nobody. Not nohow.

I never thought I’d see circumstances that would make me doubt this. But here they are: when the most powerful people in the world are trying to use you to destroy a political enemy. In the Valerie Plame case I believe that not only would I give up the source to a judge; I would hang the source as publicly as possible.

In this case, what is motivating the reporters to resist, it seems to me, is at least as plausibly their toadying to power as their defiance of it. They’re worried that if they give up the source, no high official in the Bush administration will talk to them again.

They ought to be more worried that these folks *will* talk to them again, and seek to twist their publications to their own vicious purposes.

When Bush administration officials leaked - evidently to anyone who would listen - that the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson was a covert CIA operative, they were conveying a single message: mess with us and we’ll take you to hell. (Wilson had - with first-hand knowledge - accused the administration of relying on blatantly false evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.) And it’s a serious deal: in the wrong place at the wrong moment, being revealed as a spy can get you killed.

That sources must be protected is an important principle of a free press, because only that assurance allows people to tell the truth about, for example, their powerful superiors, without fearing reprisal.

But protection of sources is not the only important principle of a free press. No press is free when it’s being manipulated to the purposes of the powerful, whom it should be questioning or investigating.

The story has often been connected to the vice president’s office. And frankly, I’d look at the vice president’s office as the source of the fog of disinformation revealed by Joe Wilson in the first place.

At any rate, if you consider yourself a representative of freedom or the First Amendment, you had better make sure not only that you can conduct a competent investigation, but that your investigation is not simply being run out of the office of the people you’re investigating.

If protection of sources is essential for an independent press, then surely so is independence, and if your story is more or less written by Dick Cheney, then protecting its sources is a way merely to protect your dependence.

Protecting the source on a story like that is more like the action of a Pravda than a Washington Post or New York Times. Not only will we say whatever Yuri Andropov wants us to say, we won’t tell anyone that it was Andropov who told us to say it.

To her credit, one of the reporters who is being held in contempt for not revealing the sources of the story - the New York Times’s Judith Miller - never even published the story. No one should have published that story, not even Republican ideologue Robert Novak. But at least no one is unclear about his agenda or inclined to think he’s objective.

Novak, no doubt, was only too happy to be used. The other news organizations involved are a different matter entirely. No reporter is obliged to protect someone who is attempting to manipulate her not only into helping commit a felony, but into destroying the independence of her voice and of her publication.

ultimate resolution

Back in the late 1950s, a prescient and deeply reactionary man named J. Bracken Lee (http://archives.utah.gov/referenc/JLee.htm) - a former governor of Utah - had an interesting notion. He would try to get three fourths of the states to pass what he termed "The Ultimate Resolution," which would dissolve the federal government in the event that the national debt ever reached $6 trillion.

All federal employees - from the president to Supreme Court justices to Senators to janitors at the IRS - would be fired immediately, and each of the states would become - as Lee asserted they were in the first place - sovereign nations.

The Ultimate Resolution was actually introduced in nine state legislatures, though passed by none. Too bad, because had the thing become law, the (har har) "party of small government" - the Republicans - would have to rein in the infinite bloat over which they have presided or face the loss of their jobs.

The national debt is about $7.5 trillion(http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/), and the Republicans just voted to raise the debt ceiling. Deficit spending is a massively tempting practice: you can increase services while cutting or at least not increasing taxes. Thus the debt is an index not only of gluttony but of gutlessness.

Of course, let me quickly add that had the Democrats taken the White House this year, the debt would have grown at at least the same rate, and it would have been Democrats voting to raise the ceiling as Republicans howled - everyone, as always, concerned only to score their little political points.

Kerry proposed to roll back Bush’s tax cuts. But he proposed to cut taxes on the middle class. He proposed (more or less) to extend health insurance to everyone who was uninsured, including paying for everyone’s prescription drugs. He supported full funding for No Child Left Behind, whereas in my opinion the only good thing about Bush’s education policy is that he doesn’t put his money where his mouth is.

On alternate Wednesdays, when he wasn’t pledging his sacred honor to withdraw, he was accusing Bush of waging the Iraq war "on the cheap" and hinting he’d increase forces and aid. Etc.

Unfortunately, there are no circumstances of insolvency that entails the disintegration of the federal government. The idea that the Congress fixes its own debt ceiling - whether it’s a dollar or a thousand trillion dollars - while simultaneously being the body does the spending, is a formula for self-indulgence on an herculean scale.

That a few more cycles of slow growth and profligate spending will double the debt and lead to the collapse of the dollar and perhaps a world-wide recession, which in turn will massively increase the federal debt and so on, is a minor matter to people who are more concerned to promise you the moon so you’ll vote for them.

There used to be a libertarian wing of the Republican party, represented by folks like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Those days are so far gone it’s not even funny. There are two wings of the Republican party: neo-conservative militaristic expansionists and religious bigots intent on repealing the Bill of Rights.

If those folks, along with Kerry-style mush-mouthed liberals are the only choices we’ve got, we all need a big old dose of J. Bracken Lee.

It’s just too damn bad that - when debt in the trillions seemed impossible - Lee’s movement didn’t get the Ultimate Resolution on the books. We’d be free today.