Al Gore
Remember that line from An Inconvenient Truth
Turns out that’s even more prescient (via) than he was likely aware at the time.
2009-01-29
2007-04-01
I Say ‘God-Damn!’
God damn, god damn, god damn.
But not all of them are focused on border concerns. If you talk to the Minutemen long enough, the subject of immigration inevitably floats to the surface.
“I see the nation descending into poverty, philosophically, and part of it is illegal immigration, a big part of it,” says a twentysomething young man named Eric, who declines to give his last name. “It’s also outsourcing, increasing corporate power, excessive corporate power, that kind of stuff. What I can do here, since I’m so close to the border, is help out with the immigration issue.” His fiancée, he says, can’t understand why does it. David Niewert, Borderline Personalities
So this particular Minuteman is concerned about the globalization of capital, and the “we all see it but pretend it isn’t staring us in the face” future economic downturn in the U.S., and he chooses to do his part by stomping on brown people.
God damn, if that isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Way stupider than healing crystals and intellegent design.
The alternative is the stuff about corporate power was thrown in there because more people care about out-of-control, legally un-accountable corporations than they do brown people, and “Eric” is simply talking up the same bait-and-switch that got the word “Socialist” stuck in the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”.
2006-10-13
The Use of Color
In an earlier post, I had noted that I would write some more on a photograph I had posted to provide a graphic illustration of the kinds of regimes that decided on trials when it was in the best interest of the state, rather than, for example, the interests of justice.
When you look at the use of color in that photo, the first thing you should notice is everyone in that photograph is white. It’s shocking to watch so many people internalize and regurgitate the “White = Normal” lie without even thinking, and that attitude is obvious in the responses to the start of rendition and the Military Commissions Act.
Start with the fact that the U.S. government denies even the possibility of habeas corpus, every day, all over the world. Immediately after 9/11, 1,400 people were rounded up and imprisoned by the INS without charge or the ability to see counsel. Thousands more are languishing in jail after being sold to American troops in Afghanistan by the our heroin-producing “allies” (one would be hard pressed to call anyone who helps junkies stay that way an “ally” in any but the most corrupt, Machiavellian sense). No writ for Iraqis or Afghans suspected of supporting whoever the bad guys are this week in those two countries, either.
Nor is this some new phenomena in American life. There was no habeas corpus for slaves prior to 1861. Or outspoken northern Democrats from 1861 – 1865. Native Americans weren’t allowed to file those writs until 1891. Japanese immigrants and their kids didn’t get it during WWII either.
Even prior to the Military Commissions Act„ whether this basic human right applies to non-citizens residing in the U.S. was a question considered up for debate by the same Congress: recall their earlier attempts to make local police ethnically cleanse Latinos from the U.S. — until the targets of that lily little genocide started marching by the millions and broaching the subject of neighborhood defense committees (rally ’round your family, pocket full of shells).
Naturally, like all laws, this will be primarily used against non-white people, but that does not mean it won’t be enforced against whites who don’t go along. In America, you can’t do that kind of thing to white people without passing laws and such (well, maybe commie-pinko whites, but they hardly count), which is why this law is a huge deal among the progressive groups when it merely institutionalizes what:
- The Bush administration has been already doing for the last 5 years.
- White-owned governments in general have been doing to everyone else for the last 400 years now.
It simply sucks that nobody here seems to care about anything unless they are personally threatened or attacked — well enough that the whole right-libertarian free-market/greed-is-good ideology deserves a look in a whole other light.
I’ll post still more on that photograph later.
2006-09-25
*Ding*
The second-biggest Shia spiritual leader (who, perfectly enough, I’ve never heard of) was quoted on NPR today from something he said last Friday (2006−09−22) as saying that there is no “conflict of civilizations”, only a “conflict of ignorance”.
Which is as near to correct as any statement yet on the current West vs. Mid-East “blow each other up” gestalt. This phrase also appeared three years ago, by a Harvard Middle-Eastern studies professor who was working with a relative of a 9/11 victim:
“I saw this conflict not as a clash of civilizations — there are value systems that extremists on both sides share — I saw this as a conflict of ignorance of the other,” Asani said. “With Elinor, I think her ambition and goal is to remove that ignorance and create a better human-to-human understanding.” Ali Asani, quoted in “For bereaved mother, world is a bigger place”
Even as I write this, I know there’s some right-winger out there (e.g. Ann Coulter) who’s feverishly imagining this demonstrates how ivy league intellectuals who say things they don’t agree with are secretly in cahoots with the Islatermexunist menace — because the whole world must be one giant monolithic conspiracy of everyone you don’t like, and “commie Jews” just doesn’t generate genocidal mania they think is needed these days.
2006-09-18
Threat Levels
From Wired, via Boing-Boing:
Look closely at the “Green” threat level. Yes, you are reading that correctly. As a resident of America, you are more likely to be shot by a police officer than killed in any type of terrorist attack. Now factor in the well-documented racial bias in law enforcement strategies and arrest rates, and suddenly rap songs from 15 years ago don’t sound all that radical. Of course, nobody would even blink hard if D-12 recorded “Fuck al-Qaeda,” and 50 Cent wouldn’t get dropped from his label over a “Terrorist-Killa” single.
2006-07-04
No Santa
I started writing this post to point out that the coördinated demands by virtually every major nutcase over the New York Times’ revealing the data-mining of banking records via SWIFT—the calls for execution, harassment, lynching, etc. — was a clear indication that Karl Rove is no longer a target of Fitzgerald’s investigation. The much-vaunted “Fitzmas” is over, and you got a sweater. Huzzah. But then I realized that was silly, it sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction.
…sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction…
At any rate, it’s actually kind of humorous to watch to Democrats flounder and the Republicans go insane over the issue. Essentially, the Administration is treading extremely close to fucking with the money with their transaction-tracking program. I mean, how many rich people and organizations have their fingers in pies they would be embarrassed to have them in? Monthly dues to the Arse-tickler’s, Faggot Fan Club?1 A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. Wire-transfers to drug-running paramilitaries who are later implicated in a string of dead community and union activists? A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. You get the picture.
Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader…
So the Republicans have opened the door to allow the Democrats a chance to suck Capital’s dick, because Capital is now aware that the Republicans are wearing braces. Therefore, the goal of the smear campaign is to state, quite bluntly, that only a treasonous, objectively pro-terror communist would note the Republicans are wearing braces. Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader.
Historically, however, the chances that any of this information will ever send someone wealthy, powerful, and white to pound-me-in-the-ass prison is nil, regardless of who is in charge. Clinton may have punished the tobacco industry for killing his universal health care plan over the cigarette tax hikes (which we got anyways) with the 90s lawsuits, but that’s a far cry from jail time. It appears the Democrats are either unable or unwilling to exploit this fissure publicly, they could have been caught off-guard by the venom directed at the Times, or they could be exploiting it privately. I think the party is refusing to disclose it’s motives publicly, because the DLC ultimately believes it can get it’s college tuition paid for if it does it privately. As the economic fortunes of the U.S. decline (as they must in a free-trade environment), the only recourse the state will have against the pissed-off newly-poor are repression and nationalism, so I think the Democrats are worried about giving up this power now, since they’ll likely need it back in a decade or so.
I fully expect the Democrats will half-ass it on the abuse-of-power scandals, and will probably end up doing what they say they want to do, if allowed: expanding the FISA Court again, to allow for “mass-target” warrants. If so, I’d expect them to pitch it as a “necessary logical extension of roving wiretaps,” even though the ability of the FISA court to issue non-FI-related warrants in the first place is already a pretty broad extension under the PATRIOT Act. Essentially, I think they’ll take another large step towards a completely secret Star Chamber, and call it a check against the Monarchy.
2006-05-19
Wisdom and The Key
Nothing is unbreakable
No system is perfect
There is always another way
Given proper inquiry, the way can be found
The future lies in the possibility
Where anything is possible
This is what we forgot on 9/11.
2006-03-28
V for Vendetta
Saturday I saw V for Vendetta. I loved it.
There is little I can say about this that I haven’t already heard:
Gay anarchist terrorist blows shit up. Fascist government born of conservative Christian death-cultism and a multinational pharmaceutical plot collapses. The disappeared have their day.
The movie is Rorschach, like Team America. What you say about it reveals yourself.
Alan Moore describes it as not revolutionary enough, having surgically removed most of his novel’s Anarchism in favor of more vague references to perennially nebulous “freedom.”
Naturally, conservative, politically active Christians pushing virulently homophobic messages seem to have a problem with the movie. Go figure. Perhaps most hilarious is the fact that today’s Tom Delay histrionics were pretty directly inspired by V for Vendetta.
That alone makes it the best corporate movie of the last 7 years.
2006-02-01
Two-Minutes Hät
Targeting America in Iraq in terms of economy and losses in life is a golden and unique opportunity. Do not waste it only to regret it later.
Osama bin Laden, December, 2004. (via A Tiny Revolution)
Whatever one can say about Osama bin-Laden, he is not stupid. He is smart enough to understand that the U.S. has blundered into Iraq — and thus smart enough to understand that it was essentially Bush, Cheney, and their fellow conspirators that did the blundering. I hope it is widely understood that if Gore had taken office the U.S. military would likely not have invaded Iraq, nor would it have farmed out bin-Laden’s actual capture to Afghan drug-mercenaries.
He also likely understands that the invasion of Iraq has split the French, Russians, and Germans from the U.S. on matters regarding the so-called “War on Terror.” All three of those countries have actual experience with terrorism (Algeria, Chechnya, and the reported staging ground for the 9/11 hijackers).
It is also likely that he understands the effects of his first speech to Americans — I would not be at all surprised if he also believed that he was partly responsible for getting Bush re-elected. Certainly his last-minute echoing of Kerry’s complaints about the Bush administration provided some people with the excuse to vote Bush they were looking for.
Granted, that is a starting assumption, but I don’t believe it’s unreasonable given bin-Laden’s skillful ability to manipulate western media into believing there is any such thing as “al-Qaeda”. Yes, that’s right, I said it. There is no al-Qaeda organization, and furthermore, there never was. At best there are guys who know a guy, who know a guy, who met bin-Laden years ago. That’s it. People who take up international terrorism slap the label “al-Qaeda” on it so it seems like it’s bigger and badder — and thus better supported — than it really is.
The reason international terrorism exists is because terrorism is — ironically enough from Bush — the “weapon of the weak.” In case people haven’t noticed, there are about 5 billion people who qualify as “weak,” which means that the tiny minority of the world who wish to violently attack the similarly fictional entity known as “America” must by neccessity take up the “weapons of the weak.”
I could continue with the scare-quotes, or wax poetic on how blitheringly stupid it is to have a War on a Type of Weapon (or how declaring war on the “weapons of the weak” is trivially reforged into what it appears the “war on terror” has become: a war on the weak), but it’s more important to make the point: Osama bin-Laden likely knows that within the United States he is the “cartoonish supervillian,” just as George Bush, Jr. is almost certainly a cartoonish supervillian to much of the Iraqi insurgency. If he can read “Rogue State”, he can probably get a satelite feed or a sampling of media clips about himself. At the very least, he can get a summary of how western media portrays him.
Change gears for a moment: if Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War) could’ve parrotted criticisms of McClellan he saw in northern papers and then watch the monumentally incompetent general stay in charge, why wouldn’t he? If you can use reverse psychology on your opponents, via “their” media, why wouldn’t you?
Of course, you can’t permit yourself to assume that bin-Laden is using reverse psychology, because that means he stops being a cartoonish supervillian and come down to the level of the ordinary, manipulative shits that most people run into on a day-to-day basis. Which essentially means we’re killed tens of thousands of people, spent hundreds of billions of dollars, invaded two countries, and generally pissed of the entire planet trying to catch an ordinary manipulative shit who happens to have money, a fanatical take on religion, and a stack of bodybags on his eternal tab.
Osama bin-Laden using reverse psychology in international politics also drags the entire lofty edifice down to the level of ordinary humans. The follow-up question is: Who else among the would-be god-kings is similarly petty? Could it be that the Bush junta itself is populated by ordinary manipulative shits born into similarly vast commercial and political empires? Could they be attempting to use a fellow manipulative shit as an excuse to try and colonize access to the largest oil reserves on the planet, shortly before peak oil — just as bin-Laden is attempting to use Bush to build an “Islamic” Empire?
Though in fairness, I suppose if you have only ever viewed the world through limosine windows, it might be easy enough to overlook that there are millions of people who — by virtue of living there already — consider the oil theirs.
Update: Credited ATR for cartoonish supervilliany crack. Damnable assumptions.
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