Minuteman Aryans

[The following is an excerpt from Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report. (The text of the e-mail from Border Guardians leader Laine Lawless to "SS commander" Mark Martin is available in a downloadablePDF. )]

A prominent anti-immigration leader has secretly urged the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group to launch a campaign of violence and harassment against undocumented workers in the United States....

The e-mail from Lawless, who was also an original member of Chris Simcox’s vigilante militia before it morphed into the Minuteman Project in early 2005, detailed 11 suggestions for ways to harass and terrorize undocumented immigrants, including robbery and "beating up illegals" as they leave their workplace....

Lawless was featured in numerous media reports on the first Minuteman Project campaign in April 2005, and has patrolled side-by-side with Minuteman vice-president Carmen Mercer. ...

In April, just six days after Lawless e-mailed her suggestions to neo-Nazi Mark Martin, Border Guardians made national news when Lawless and other members burned a Mexican flag in front of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, where Lawless’ group is based. Before the flag was set aflame, Lawless held a press conference.

"As always, Border Guardians remains committed to only lawful actions to combat illegal immigration," she said. "We are committed to practice only peaceful, lawful action in defense of our country."

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=54

Who is This Wally LaFeber and why does he hate Condi Rice?

One of the things that has never ceased to exasperate me about many elements of the right in America is their (ready) accusation of personal animus when their figureheads are criticized on substantive matters. This is, of course, more than a little ironic when you consider how readily the right reduces politics to dubious assertions of personal qualities, like their implied argument that oil family scion George Bush,jr should be president because "he's just a regular guy", a trope that's currently being trotted out for '08 hopeful (and senatorial nonentity) George Allen. (Besides his occasional ejaculations of folksiness, what has this guy actually done?)

But I digress, even before tackling the matter at hand: the matter being your pal and mine, secretary of state Condaleeza Rice. I've been mystified for some time by her apparent ability to deftly manage people's impressions and remain above the muck in which Bush and Cheney and the rest have become mired down. Here's is what Cornell prof Walter LaFeber said of her recently(via Eric Alterman):

Rice’s Georgetown speech is less a movement back to the realism and multilateralism exemplified by her old mentor, Brent Scowcroft, than it is a repackaging of failed neoconservative policies that seeks to disguise regime change with the rhetoric of Wilsonian democracy, and that hides a lack of actual multilateralism (and badly needed legitimacy) with such misleading phrases as “coalition of the willing,” or, in this case, “partnership.” If the second Bush administration does understand the historic mistakes made by the first Bush administration, it cannot by proved by Rice’s appearance at Georgetown. Acheson advocated the Marshall Plan and NATO. In stark contrast, Rice advocates nothing that might institutionalize “partnership.” She offers only the suggestion that the United States “localize our diplomatic posture” and create more “virtual presence posts” in which American diplomats can exchange computer messages with the target audience. It is not a bad idea, just irrelevant to the need for rethinking and radically readjusting U.S. foreign policy. To rephrase, the Rice doctrine revealed at Georgetown never confronts the administration’s failed assumptions about human nature, spreading Wilsonian democracy, and what true partnership with allies should mean.

(emphases mine.) Incidentally, speaking of mentors and who the heck LaFeber is, I note that both current NS advisor Stephen Hadley and Sandy Berger studied with LaFeber, and they of course were the National security advisors who, respectively, succeeded and preceeded Rice in that post.

re-vision

Monday the 24th, as I mentioned, was Armenia's genocide memorial day. I meant to note that the 25th is Holocaust memorial day in Israel, but I've been remiss...

On an ostensibly different topic-- do you do image searches? Not too long ago none of the major search engines had this function, but now Google and Yahoo! have this feature. Even Lycos and AltaVista, for the eight or nine people still using them, will do image searches. Now, apropo of my discussing the revised previous post, I thought I'd share these interesting searches with you:




the 1st set of five is the top five images for "holocaust" via Google image search with the unfiltered, "safe search off" setting. There are three settings, the middle, "moderate safe search" being the default. When I ran that, I got the same top five results. But this is what I got with the third, "strict filtering" setting:

a symbol(!), the Mogen David, doesn't make the cut, neither does the iconic photo of the Dachau prisoners staring at the photographer, while the images of bodies stacked like cordwood appears twice.

I am not criticizing, just observing. I know that the search engine people, at Google and elsewhere, are under enormous social and political pressures that tug at them hither and yon, and to some extent these decisions are essentially made by machines. Nevertheless, I wondered why the star and a picture that humanizes the victims of the deathcamps, shows us their faces, were discarded by the setting for good boys and girls, while the image of bodies piled up was o.k. Both searches are from Thursday night, 27 April '06, between 11pm and 1am.




cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.

United 93

left: from Shankvillememorial.com, right: a still from the upcoming film, "United 93"


I posted this at Salon and my home blog a couple of days ago, but have added a couple of brief additional comments below- JV

here's the letter I posted in response to Stephanie Zacharek's review of United 93 at Salon:

"making money making movies"

As I write this, I note that the previous letter writers are virtually unanimous in condemming the making of this film as inherently exploitative, irrespective of the points of views that might be expressed, and any other thematic underpinnings.

I have to disagree. Although I can understand this reaction, I think it's wrong because making narrative works and sharing them with the world, profit or no profit, is also about deciding who gets to tell the story, not just how it's told.

How is declaring the 9-11 narrative sacrosanct any different from a war supporter venomously decrying anyone who disagrees with his interpretation of the meaning of soldiers' deaths? I haven't seen this picture, living here in the middle of the country in a middle-sized town, and I don't know what I would think of it. But I know that as long as the 9-11 narrative is sacrosanct it's only one narrative, the one we don't dare talk about. This film may spur the creation of another about events of the same day, one that's screechingly jingoistic. Or another that tries to be humanize the hijackers. Or both, and more.

Meanwhile, the deification of the 9-11 dead has been used to launch a war designed to glorify a president and to stifle dissent. And arguably, to predispose people to accept, little by little, life in a prefascist state as normal.

I remember when the 911 emergency tapes were released, without the voices of the callers, except when their survivors "gave" their permission. While I don't believe the occasional conspiracy theory about how the towers were supposedly filled with preset explosives, it occurs to me that when you condition people to see it as normal to create for the dead these kinds of privacy rights, authoritarian leaders can use these expanded expectations that certain things are off limits to cover up their screwups and misdeeds.

We have to start talking about 9-11.

although some of the letter writers seemed like they were written by idiots, this one struck me as worthwhile:

Nothing New:
Movies made about ongoing events, made for propoganda, profit and/or because someone thought it made a good story are nothing new.

On TMC, during their 31 days of Oscar, I saw a movie called "So Proudly We Hail". The movie takes place in the Philippines during WWII. It tells the story of some military nurses who managed to leave before the American forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese. Most of the nurses did not get away and ended up being captured by the Japanese. The movie was made in 1943. From what I've read, at the time the movie was made it was not known what had happened to the nurses who were left behind. Their families didn't know if they were alive or dead.

I'm sure that was no more or less upsetting than "Flight 93". This sort of thing has been going on for a long time. I'm not sure why the events of 9/11 are seen as so much more traumatic. Maybe having TV and being surrounded by media has changed our impression of things.

by "4 greyhounds"

Friday, 28 April: I realize it was and is harsh to suggest that the majority of commenters for this article left idiotic comments, not only because it was tacky, but it was ultimately untrue(there were fewer than 10 letters when I posted my entry; the last I checked there were around 120. And while there where additional ones that struck me as lacking substance, there were also several worthwhile ones.)

Initially, I was just going to change the above sentence, "...although some of the letter writers seemed like they were written by idiots..." I decided to keep it in and comment on it instead, as I'm going to discuss internet revision(-ism) in a couple of subsequent posts.

Not Fair

Carnival fans are undoubtedly disheartened by Katherine Harris' bid for Senate apparently going down in serious flames, but they can take heart in the fact that she has at least--so far--managed to avoid being indicted on several counts of criminal conspiracy in fixing the federal election that propelled George W. Bush into the White House, while serving as Secretary of State for his younger brother Governor Jeb Bush of Florida.

We temps at the Carnival--whooping it up, by the way, while the boss is away--suppose getting off scot-free is something Katherine (as heiress to a sugar fortune made possible by destruction of the Everglades, and no doubt large contributions to governors like the Bush brothers and other crooked politicians) has come to expect. Unfortunately, some of those Florida negroes she illegally disenfranchised in 2000--in order to make sure Jeb's sibling could move up from Austin to Washington--must have figured out how to undo her Jim Crow scheme in the meantime.

Sometimes life just ain't fair.

possible polling divorce, more on Hu visit

from Steve Soto's Left Coaster, via Avedon:

CNN Says Goodbye To Gallup - Surprise, Bush Hits 32%; 55% Say He Isn't Honest
The rumored divorce between Gallup and CNN is a fact (will Gallup go to Fox?). And look what happens. The new pollster's first poll shows Bush falling to 32%.

Soto notes that the democrats supposedly have a ten point advantage going into the mid-term elections. People may well tell the pollsters that, and mean it, but I don't believe it. Every time the dems are ahead they panic, and ask themselves what they need to do to seem more non-threatening so that they might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory supposedly lock in their lead, as if voters' perceptions were tradeable mutual funds. As the Roman poet Juvenal once said, fortune favors the bold, you dumb motherf***ers. (I paraphrase.)

I've been looking for a non blog corroboration of Soto's assertion regarding the split between Gallup and CNN, but have not yet found it. Although I did find this, from Mediabistro's TV Newser:

Yale Restricts CNN Producer During Hu Visit [from last Friday-JV]

"A CNN reporter was thrown out of a private reception in Yale President Richard Levin's office after he shouted a question about whether Hu had seen more than 1,000 protesters gathered on the city green," the Associated Press reports.


The reporter was Joe Vaccarello, an associate producer in the U.N. bureau...

The AP quotes a Yale spokeswoman who says Vaccarello was thrown out because "we invited you to cover an event, not to hold a press conference." But "as far as he knew, there were no restrictions," a CNN source says.
[...]
The reporter "was escorted out of Woodbridge Hall by police," the Yale Daily News added.

I will cross-post this at Hugo Zoom, etc.

Blood in the Street

(On Monday afternoon, June 10, the police arrested thirty-eight persons including [SNCC field secretary Avon] Rollins as they marched to City Hall, still pressing for their demands of municipal government jobs for blacks and an end to segregation of the town's public facilities. The Danville [Virginia] police turned fire hoses on them and beat them with clubs.)

"[Later] a group of sixty-five Negroes (and one whitewoman, a SNCC office worker) walked five abreast from Rev. Campbell's church to the city jail. SNCCer [Bob] Zellner was along, photographing the march. ...

The group, led by Rev. H.G. McGee, sang hymns and circled the jail once...Chief of Police E.G. McCain bellowed 'Let 'em have it' and firemen turned hoses on the people...Nightstick wielding police and deputized garbage collectors smashed into the group, clubbing Negroes who were bunched for safety against parked cars. Some were washed under the cars; others were clubbed after the water knocked them down. Bodies lay on the street, drenched and bloody. Police and garbage collectors chased those demonstrators who were able to walk for two blocks.

At the Bible Way Church, pastored by Rev. Campbell, bloody men and women came in by twos and threes and were shuttled to the hospital. Of 65 demonstrators, 40 were hurt....

After that night's mass meeting at Rev. Campbell's church, police, armed with submachine guns, set up roadblocks near the church .... Standing near the four patrol cars loomed a riot tank with four machine guns mounted on top."

--Dorothy Miller, June 1963
from The Making of Black Revolutionaries by James Forman

Belatedly, hello

You may have noticed something different. If you are among Arvin's cleverer readers, and do in fact read and don't just visit to see pictures of bloodthirsty clowns and politicians, you've already seen and read Arvin's brief explanations, both above and below. Nevertheless I'm thinking some sort of brief introduction might be in order, even though both Skookum-Geo Spartacus O'Neal and I have already done some posting. As you probably know, he normally posts at "SkookumGeoDuck" and I am the blogger formerly known as Hugo Zoom, although I don't have my own special symbol.

We've been assigned, for the meantime, to watch over and care for the "AH files" as it were, this wee iconoclastic blog deep in the basement of the lefty blogosphere, where the fancypants Kevin Drums and Matt Yglesias's(?) of the above-ground corner-office blogs can pretend we don't exist while their agents try to book them on Hardball and they constantly rewrite (and repost) their stump speech post about how the democrats need to outflank the GOP on the right on defense and deregulation and combatting the metric system and Lord knows what else.

Now I'm not as pretty as Annabelle Gish(trust me), and I'm pretty sure Spartacus never played a villain in any Schwartzenegger movies, but I think we're up to the job. If you have any topic requests, just let us know, that's one of the purposes of the comments for this post. Now I can't promise Spartacus will listen, of course, as he does his own thing. I can't promise that I'll listen either, because I'm fickle, but I'd love to hear from you. If you're wondering why he hasn't posted since Sunday, it's either because [a.]he's doing research, or [b.] he's shy and you hurt his feelings by not leaving any comments(you bastards!), or [c.] he's pissed off and is sitting in his tent, or [d.] he hasn't figured out that Monday's Blogger outage was temporary, or [e.] because he actually has a life.

Of course, it may also be that he's rifling through the files and has come across Arvin's secret stash of Lionel Ritchie CDs that A. didn't want anybody to know about, and now he's busy taping them. Or he's drinking Arvin's RC colas and looking for pizza coupons. I'm not sure.

Goytisolo

photo: Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello

Helmut posts this photo of Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo(State of Siege) apropo of an NYT article about him. He also notes his(Prof H's) upcoming anthology On Torture(2007) which will feature a selection from Goytisolo. All this time I was visiting phorenesisiacal, readily offering opinions on this and that, blithely unaware that H was Doctor H. Now I feel like something of a boob. Nevertheless, I thought that posting this image here today was appropriate, since today is genocide remembrance day in Armenia, a weighty topic that dovetails with some of Goytisolo's literary concerns.

(cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.)

Wang Wenyi: the Falun Gong heckler

from Cursor:

Dana Milbank catalogs the 'Host of Indignities' that greeted China and its president, as charges are filed against the Falun Gong heckler, who faces up to six months in jail.

see also:
"feds lower boom on Hu's falun gong heckler:"

Wenyi Wang, 47, a devotee of the Falun Gong movement, was originally booked on a disorderly conduct charge after she crashed Thursday's White House ceremony. But the U.S. attorney's office later decided to charge her with harassing, intimidating and threatening a foreign official for yelling at Hu that his "days are numbered."

and:
"Falun Gong heckler leaves Bush red-faced"
Independent Online, [South Africa] - Apr 20, 2006

"President Hu, your days are numbered. President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," the woman yelled. US officials later identified her as Wang Wenyi, 47, a reporter with The Epoch Times, an English-language publication strongly supportive of the meditation movement that is banned in China.

"Pro-Torture, Pro-Tyranny Media Rebukes Brave Falun Gong Protester"
Prison Planet.com-Alex Jones-Apr 23, 2006

After listening to talk radio in the hours after the incident, we were sickened to hear radio hosts and callers attacking the demonstrator for daring to interrupt President Bush, claiming that it sent the wrong message to China in that the US was not able to manage geopolitical events smoothly.

They were actually insinuating that it was an American virtue to silence free speech and dissent and that the demonstrator made the country look weak to the visiting Chinese despots.

This was echoed by news anchors across the nation. Watch the video and notice how the CNN presenters express relief when the secret service finally grabs and drags her away.

The Drudge Report[!] picked up stories about how not only Chinese TV but also CNN International had tried to censor the protester:

"On China TV: As Hu was speaking when yells of protesters became audible, the screen went black. When the feed came back the screen once again went black when woman was again heard. During CNN International's post-speech commentary, at mention of south lawn heckler, the screen also went black again. The CNN feed returned when the incident ended."

Derek Mitchell, a former Pentagon advisor told the Associated Press that the spectacle was an embarrassment because China, "must know that this Bush administration is good at controlling crowds for themselves, and the fact that they couldn't control this is going to play to their worse fears and suspicions about the United States, into mistrust about American intentions toward China."

The only embarrassment is Mitchell - he is an embarrassment to what it means to be an American. How dare this boot-licking pond scum piece of trash equate the image of America with crowd control and the wholesale abolition of free speech? The Bush administration's taste for staged-managed public town hall meetings and "free-speech zones" would sit perfectly with the Chinese dictatorship as shining examples of how to create the false perception that dissent is only confined to the fringes of society.

from Mykeru: "Falun Gonged":

Nothing will get you your ass handed to you in DC like fucking with one of the administration's photo ops. Since the Bushistas don't have much of a policy, or a plan, not to mention a clue already, and Bush himself is chalking up an approval rating of 33% which is, coincidentally the same amount by which federal spending has grown during his administration -- explaining why real conservatives aren't fond of Bush either -- while the war in Iraq is going about as well as one of Dick Cheney's hunting trips, just on a much more tragic scale, the only thing that Bush and company can do semi-competently is stand there and have their picture taken, trying to act all presidential and shit...

Mykeru also discusses the semantic grey areas regarding what Ms.Wenyi actually said, here.



For my part I am struck by the irony that this middle-aged Chinese lady who never hurt anybody will in all likelihood end up with a felony conviction that will hang on her shoulders for the rest of her life, while in all likelihood Bush has a sealed-record drug conviction from the 70s that we aren't allowed to talk about. And she'll go to federal prison for what? For heckling a totalitarian dictator, and therebye embarassing a mass murderer? Well, yes.

some additional links:

Chinalaborwatch.org

tianamen vigil


from FreeChina.net


cross-posted at Hugo Zoom

David Neiwert's annual question

This past Thursday Dave Neiwert of Orcinus wrote:

Yesterday being the 11th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, I suppose I should just be grateful that, this year at least, we're not cursed with an Ann Coulter profile in Time.
Still, every year since 2002, this sad anniversary reminds me of a question I still haven't heard answered:
Why wasn't April 19, 1995 the "day that changed everything"?

I left this comment:

Aside from the obvious answer of Clinton and Reno, I'm thinking that one of the reasons the right didn't try to make the government a police state in '95 was because at a certain level McVeigh, coming at it from the far right, represented a convergence with the far-left critique of state power that would have applied just as surely if it was George Sr's 2nd-term administration that had staked out and attacked the Davidians with tanks on 19 April 1993.

Pursuing the McVeighs in our midst-- and I agree with the previous commenters that they surely are more than a mere hundred-- means recognizing the distinction between radicals who are merely racists and worshippers of authority like the minutemen, and the other, more disquieting kind.

Republicans and their poodle press don't want that distinction to be made apparent to ordinary people.

I realize I'm leaving levels of nuance out of this argument-- one one hand the neocons want the radical right to seem normal and non-threatening to ordinary Americans, on the other hand they don't want people to see that a certain strain of conservatism is profoundly antithetical to their agenda.

I am by no means an advocate of McVeigh's methods, and I know nothing about his views on race, but we still haven't fully absorbed the lessons of "4-19."

from Wikipedia's entry on McVeigh:

In a book based on interviews before his execution, American Terrorist, McVeigh stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war, and celebrated. But he said he later was shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners, and to see carnage on the road leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. In interviews following the Oklahoma city bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War. Some question the veracity of this claim in light of McVeigh's [failed] attempts to become a Green Beret after returning from Iraq.

(cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.)

Lives on the Line

"It was midnight when I got to the [college] dormitory and packed a few things. We caught a bus that morning at 3:45 A.M.

I kept thinking about what I was doing as I boarded the bus. ...I felt certain that we were writing history...I could see how strongly someone would have to be dedicated because at this point we didn't know what was going to happen. We thought that some of us would be killed. ...

On the ride from Birmingham to Montgomery I was very relaxed. I dozed off. When I awoke in Montgomery, I felt something was wrong.There was no mob, but I felt apprehensive. Then I looked around and saw no policemen whatsoever. I saw only about eight or ten people standing in the door of the bus station. ...

The other Freedom Riders had walked down a little to the left on the platform. I saw Katherine and John Lewis being televised by NBC. ...I saw this Life reoporter sort of spread his arms out as if to keep those eight people back....

A man with a cigar began to beat the NBC cameraman. ...The crowd knocked the cameraman down and he dropped his camera. One man took it and smashed it on the ground....I saw the cameraman start moving down the street. The mob was after him. ...

At this point, our [cab] driver decided to pull off. There were two exits. We went to the exit facing us. There was a crowd coming in this exit. ...At the other exit, we were blocked by cars....Blocked in by the cars, we [girls] looked back. The mob had attacked the fellows. I saw Jim Zwerg being beaten brutally! Some men held him while white women clawed his face with their nails. And they held up their little children--children who couldn't have been more than a couple of years old--to claw his face....

We were still listening to the radio for the outcome of the violence. We heard that the mob had swelled. Other people were being attacked besides the Freedom Riders. [U.S. Attorney General] Kennedy's assistant, Seganthaler, had been hurt and was suffering a minor brain concussion....

The next day, Sunday, we were to meet at the First Baptist Church. ...A mass meeting in our honor was scheduled for that night, with Martin Luther King as the main speaker....Before the address, we received word that a very large mob had assembled outside....Then one of the federal marshal's cars was set on fire and the white mob began to stone the marshals. ...They [the mob] began to throw tear gas canisters....The church was overcrowded and the teargas made it difficult to breathe. ...Eventually, very early in the morning, most of the people were taken home in large Army trucks.

From Montgomery we went to Jackson....We didn't know what would happen when we got to the Mississippi line."

--Lucretia Collins, June 1961
from The Making of Black Revolutionaries by James Forman

Later, taters.

I'm off to stare at distant horizons for a couple of weeks. In the interim, guest commentary and/or the occasional check-in may be forthcoming. Despite my intentions, I didn't plan for my absence very well, but we'll wing it and see what happens.

Ciao. Don't let the lunatics in power destroy start dropping nukes while I'm gone.

Comes A Time

From Editor & Publisher:

NEW YORK As an E&P "Pressing Issues" column recently noted, rock star Neil Young is the son of a famed Canadian journalist, so it should not surprise many that he recently recorded a song in California with a very reportorial -- or at least pundit -- feel to it.

It’s called “Impeach the President,” so there can be little question what it is about.

Apparently it was recorded with a 100-voice choir. Rumors have circulated the past few days on the Web, but E&P has tracked down the strongest confirmation in a blog kept by Sherman Oaks, Ca. musician/singer Alicia Morgan.

Previous reports quoted hints by Young and Jonathan Demme (who directed the new documentary “Heart of Gold”) that Neil was working on a hard-rocking political or “anti-Bush” CD.

Last Friday, Morgan wrote on her LastLeftB4Hooterville blog that she had been “summoned” to a local studio to sing on the new record with 99 others. “I'm not going to give the whole thing away, but the first line of one of the songs was ‘Let's impeach the President for lyin'!’ Turns out the whole thing is a classic beautiful protest record. The session was like being at a 12-hour peace rally. Every time new lyrics would come up on the screen, there were cheers, tears and applause. It was a spiritual experience. I can't believe my good fortune at being a part of this.

“We finished the session by singing an a capella version of 'America the Beautiful' and there was not a dry eye in the house.

“Neil said it should be out in 6 to 8 weeks."

Harp magazine reported on its Web site Thursday that Demme had confirmed in an e-mail, “Neil just finished writing and recording -- with no warning -- a new album called 'Living With War.' It all happened in three days… It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq… Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon.”

I love that term electric assault. For a glimpse of what's in store, read this stirring review from DownWithTyranny.

Now if only Neil Young would assemble a tour with a varied lineup of anti-Bush performers. This country is in dire need of open celebrations of dissidence.

The Real Battlefront

War inside my head
War inside my head
War inside my head
War inside my head

War inside my head ain't a pretty sight
But I don't want no sympathy
It's happened a thousand times before
It's just a harsh reality

[CHORUS]

War inside my head - can you sense it
War inside my head - can you see it
War inside my head - can you feel it
War inside my head

Can you hear the-pain
Can you see the-pain
Can you sense the-pain
Can you feel the-pain
Can you help the-pain
Can you fix the-pain
Can you hear the war inside my head

The only thing real is the way I feel
And that's the pain that's deep inside
The battle from within is gonna begin
And there ain't nowhere to hide

[CHORUS]

War inside my head every night and day
I never get no piece of mind
It ought to be a sin, I just can't win
And pure hell is all I find

War Inside My Head
Suicidal Tendencies
JOIN THE ARMY (1987)

The Real First Casualty of War

by John Pilger
April 20, 2006

During the 1970s, I filmed secretly in Czechoslovakia, then a Stalinist dictatorship. The dissident novelist Zdenek Urbánek told me, "In one respect, we are more fortunate than you in the west. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. Unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines, because real truth is always subversive."

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣

Language is perhaps the most crucial battleground. Noble words such as "democracy," "liberation," "freedom," and "reform" have been emptied of their true meaning and refilled by the enemies of those concepts. The counterfeits dominate the news, along with dishonest political labels, such as "left of center," a favorite given to warlords such as Blair and Bill Clinton; it means the opposite. "War on terror" is a fake metaphor that insults our intelligence. We are not at war. Instead, our troops are fighting insurrections in countries where our invasions have caused mayhem and grief, the evidence and images of which are suppressed. How many people know that, in revenge for 3,000 innocent lives taken on Sept. 11, 2001, up to 20,000 innocent people died in Afghanistan?

In reclaiming the honor of our craft, not to mention the truth, we journalists at least need to understand the historic task to which we are assigned – that is, to report the rest of humanity in terms of its usefulness, or otherwise, to "us," and to soften up the public for rapacious attacks on countries that are no threat to us. We soften them up by dehumanizing them, by writing about "regime change" in Iran as if that country were an abstraction, not a human society. Hugo Chávez's Venezuela is currently being softened up on both sides of the Atlantic. A few weeks ago, Channel 4 news carried a major item that might have been broadcast by the U.S. State Department. The reporter, Jonathan Rugman, the program's Washington correspondent, presented Chávez as a cartoon character, a sinister buffoon whose folksy Latin ways disguised a man "in danger of joining a rogues' gallery of dictators and despots – Washington's latest Latin nightmare." In contrast, Condoleezza Rice was given gravitas and Donald Rumsfeld was allowed to compare Chávez to Hitler.

Indeed, almost everything in this travesty of journalism was viewed from Washington, and only fragments of it from the barrios of Venezuela, where Chávez enjoys 80 percent popularity. That he had won nine democratic elections and referendums – a world record – was omitted. In crude Soviet flick style, he was shown with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, though these brief encounters had to do with OPEC and oil only. According to Rugman, Venezuela under Chávez is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons. No evidence was given for this absurdity. People watching would have no idea that Venezuela was the only oil-producing country in the world to use its oil revenue for the benefit of poor people. They would have no idea of spectacular developments in health, education, literacy; no idea that Venezuela has no political jails – unlike the United States.

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣

Read it all.

Because that, my friends, is what we fight day in, day out: The most gargantuan, insidious, efficient system of propaganda the world has ever seen. That is the true "Long War." The battleground - the prize - is human consciousness.

Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Where's My Consolation Prize?

Tom Engelhardt: Undoubtedly, the Bush administration is not yet out of ammunition, either figuratively or literally. Even as they stand in the rubble of their world, top Bush officials remain quite capable of making decisions that will export ruins to, say, Iran and create further chaos in the oil heartlands of the planet as well as here at home. I don't sell them short, nor do I see a Democratic Party capable of taking the reins of the globe's last standing imperial power and doing a heck of a lot better. Still, there's something consoling in knowing that history remains filled with surprises and that the short, rubble-filled, disastrous career of the Bush administration looks likely to be one of them.

While rubble-filled and disastrous are painfully accurate characterizations of the Bush Years, short is not.

And I'm certainly not feeling very consoled at the moment.

Yes, we can still be surprised. The nature of those surprises ranges from mildly pleasant (no Al Qaeda attacks on home soil since 2001, even though we can surmise attacks are pending) to the extremely unpleasant (Fascism in America has no domestic enemies).

I have some bad news for you, America: Relief is not forthcoming, and reform isn't going to blow across America like an Arctic coldfront.

The sad truth is that liberals are insisting electoral politics can and will deliver us from the knobby boot of oppression -- and that ain't gonna happen. Until political change is forced from the bottom via a sustained generational social movement, we can forget any chance of resurrecting our Constitutional Republic. For now, the prospect of such a gestalt are dim because of our collective refusal to take The Long View and learn how to fuse action with ideals.

With or without George W. Bush and his Merry Band of Mad Bombers, and with or without a Democratic Congress, the Neoconservative Revolution will continue steamrolling over everyone and everything in its way. Even as the prospect of nuclear war hangs in the air like the putrid stench of death, I have seen no evidence - not one single shred - that Americans will tolerate tyranny and lawlessness any less than we have since BushCoup2000.

Dog Days of... Spring?

The North Texas temperature hit a record-setting century mark yesterday.

Friends, the difference between ninety degrees and one hundred degrees Farenheit is a hell of a lot more than a mere ten degrees.


My summer fantasy: That every human pod bloviating about "Mexicans taking our jobs" gets busy patching asphalt potholes or mowing lawns in exchange for $5.50 an hour and no health insurance.

Let. Them. Go.

Won't get to hear it.

Drats. I just can't get enough of listening to people in the moments before their deaths. The American public's only remaining hope is that Moby will weave us a tapestry of this horror and release it on a new album.

Just how long is this post-mortem of 911 victims going to last, anyway? It is not a healthy way to grieve.

For God's sake, the victims of 911 were people, not an event. I don't know about you, but I prefer to be remembered for my life, not the manner in which I make my exit.

The national obsession with turning victims into hero archetypes is appalling, and reflects a dark, disturbing element of our collective psyche.

with voters like this

In his latest post-mortem on The Republic, essayist and malcontent Joe Bageant deconstructs an American voter. What to do with the components is anyone's guess.

Springtime in the Republic of Larry

—Amid the comforts of empire, the citizens blithely bumble

By Joe Bageant

YOU SPEAK OF LIBERTY? OF AN ENLIGHTENED POLITY? YOU BEER-SOAKED KNUCKLE DRAGGERS AND PRECIOUS WET-LIPPED LIBERALS WOULDN'T KNOW LIBERTY FROM A CONGOLESE ASS-EATING TAPEWORM! YOU HAVEN’T GOT THE INSIGHT OF A GODDAM FRUIT FLY, MUCHLESS ENOUGH TO VOTE.
—Northern Virginia internet denizen called THE SCREAMING MAN!

“Grrrrrrrr!”
—Bingo, the philosopher dog


Spring has truly arrived when I once again find myself in the garden shed with my dog Bingo while pretending to fix the lawn mower. Meaning that I need to clean out the stale gas that I purposefully leave in the tank each fall so my wife will have to ask me to tinker with the mower every spring. Screwing around in the garden shed, pretending to do maintenance only a man is supposed to be capable of, is one of the many ruses that keep me from having to do actual yard work. I love to watch a woman do yard work, what with the bending over in shorts and all.

At the same time there are less savory views from my shed. For instance, from here I can see through the shrubbery into the neighbors’ yards. I can see Big Larry, sitting there on his back deck in his skivvies and flip-flops, fresh from the shower boring the wax out of his ear with what appears to be a house or car key, waiting for his wife Linda to yell: “Dammit Larry get in here put some clothes on! Do you know what you look like? Don’t you ever think?”

Based on what Larry looks like, it’s hard to imagine him ever having a thought in his life. And it’s even harder to imagine anybody would care if he did. But there are folks who do. Two massive political parties fret endlessly over this portly “swing voter,” in the belief that there is some internal logic to the way Larry’s vote moves back and forth between the parties. If you ask Larry, he will say: “I vote the man, not the party.” Which is an utter crock, because the truth is that Larry has no idea who he will vote for until he is inside the booth and is forced to pick. And then it usually comes down to which party was the loudest or the most fear mongering during the last five minutes before he went into the voting booth. There is also a “betting on a winner” sports aesthetic that comes into play. But beyond that Larry and millions of voters like him pay no genuine attention to politics. Zilch. To quote Larry on the matter: “I don’t really fucking care.” And he will never care until he gets the impression that something, it varies from election to election, has gone waaaaaay too far and things are definitely going to hell in a way that he can see affecting him. Then politics will have his attention. For about one week in November.

From here in the shed it looks to me like it’ll take years for the conditions to develop where Big Larry will really start caring. For now though, he’s got plenty else to occupy his attention. There’s that concrete patio to put down in his back yard… baseball season just started…and even with the building boom slowing, he’s still getting 12 hours a week overtime driving a bucket truck for Toll Brothers. Between him and Linda, they are pulling down 70-K. And what with their second refi on the house (once more, to pay off credit cards) putting some dough in his mitts, he’s shopping for a new truck. For the most part Big Larry is happy as a hog in slop, except when his back and ‘roids act up up, and will remain so until something really big affects him directly…until something clips him hard right smack in the kisser, like losing his job, or gas hitting five bucks a gallon or maybe Linda running off with some other man…which ain’t gonna happen because, well, it just ain’t gonna happen, that’s all. “She’s as fat as I am god sake!” Who’s gonna steal either one of them away from that $44,000 four bedroom money pit they purchased in 1990, now worth $350,000, on paper at least. Never happen.

Big Larry is not blind. He has noticed that some working folks like himself seem to be going tits up financially of late. Or is that just his paranoia? “Fug it. Just mind your own business, work hard and everything will be OK.” As to the politics behind the looting of the economy, he doesn’t have dog in that fight and doesn’t want one. Like so many working class folks, he blows it off with a single worn out line: “They’re all crooks.” Torture in Iraq? “If it makes us safer, go for it! Have another beer.” The most common citizens of the Empire—and Larry sure as hell is common—being smothered in the commodities and comforts of its far flung corporate and military domination, are always the last to care about the situation out there in the resource colonies.

Then too, same can be said of the middle class, regardless of party affiliation. The professional and semi-professional catering class, the one that juggles the nation’s money, health and legal proceedings, and pretends to teach the X-box generation “consumer mathematics” and higher science, are sitting right there in the sidelines with Big Larry morally, if not physically. Being better educated, they yap about politics more than Larry does. But the truth is that, like Larry, they see no dog of theirs in the fight because theirs is at the groomer for $70 a pop. (Don’t get any fancy notions, Bingo.) Until there is something like, let’s say, a military draft threatening the career paths of their precious little Camerons and Bices, and/or taxes gobbling another twenty percent of their income in ways they can actually observe, they will continue to believe in their 401-Ks and that the two political parties represent a real choice at the ballot box.

Yet another part of the middle class, semi-professionals mostly, is clueless because they are too busy working themselves to death in cold fear of ending up competing with the mouthbreathers for a job at Wal-Mart. I met a guy ringing up groceries at the Food Lion the other day who used to be a social services administrator over in the next county. Assumedly, the faith based initiatives around here, being guided by the hand of God, are doing a better job than he used to do. Still, it seems rather unfair that he would have to compete against God himself to keep track of WIC coupons and teen moms getting their GEDs. Guys like him know exactly what can happen to them in this new “ownership society,” and they know that the game gets harder and harder if you want to keep on owning. They know, especially the semi-professional bean counters, how long a family survives trying to make a $2,200 house payment on a $1,600 monthly unemployment check. So the true middle classers are afraid to do anything at all. Oh, they will vote, mostly according to their greed or self-delusions. They will vote Republican because it is clear the Republican Party will kick the living shit out of anybody who gets between them and a full tank of gas or a fast buck. Or they will vote Democratic, vote for the good cop in our good cop/bad cop political charade, and kid themselves that they’ve struck a meaningful progressive blow of some sort. Such are the times.

Meanwhile, there’s ole Larry digging the wax out of his ear with no idea that the shape, if not the fate, of the nation may depend on whether he ever gets a clue. Look at the guy. What a slob.

A reader pointed out last week that there are an awful lot of slobs in my essays, and by god it does seem true, doesn’t it? The reader, a Becky from Butte (which made me want to sing to myself, Sweet Becky from Butte, with her brother Clute…possibly because I had a couple in me, went on to ask if I especially seek slobs out for some literary reason. After much contemplation, I am sorry to report that I do not. Apparently I am just surrounded by slobs, or at the very least, have an affinity for them, plus the stupidity to look into their souls seeking political truth of some sort about America. We all have our problems.

Maybe the biggest political problem we have is that most Americans think they know what is going on and that they have enough knowledge to cast a rational vote. Those people are also convinced that the effects of media are neutral and that they are actually thinking for themselves. They believe there is a difference between the two parties. And in all fairness, there is. Sort of. Despite the way both parties have gloried in America’s post-war imperialist hard-on, treating the rest of the world like shit when it suits American corporate interests, there is a difference in the way the parties treat the American people. The Democratic Party can be said to be better for America on the grounds of being less brutal, rather kinder to the rabble inside the walls of Rome. Democrats will engage in a knockdown drag-out fight to get dental crowns for illegal aliens in Buffalo, but they will never once consider challenging big oil or big pharm or big anything that might have a campaign buck stashed up its cuff. Still, disallowing that congenital American weakness for a buck and anything BIG-BIG-BIG!, and assuming Diebold and the Republican crime syndicate don’t rig a third election (cough! cough!) getting these rich, deluded, self-important Democratic hacks back into office seems to be the only way we have of stalling off the specter of a totalist corporate state until we can mobilize or whatever the hell it is you do when fascism is on your front porch and leering through your window. The thought of a Hillary Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry being my first line of defense against what people like Shotgun Cheney and that mad bitch Condy Rice want to do to my fat ass in this, the penniless prelude to my old age, is more than chilling.

Down the road 70 miles the road from this garden shed, over in Washington DC, the Republican camp is starting to smell like a Texas whorehouse on dollar night. As I write this, Tom Delay has resigned as House Majority Leader so he could devote more time to the conspiracy indictment smoldering in his lap. Department of Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary Brian J. Doyle has been busted for cyberspace solicitation of a 14-year old girl. Time does fly—It seems like only yesterday the Department of Homeland Security announced Operation Predator, a cyberspace initiative to “identify children depicted in child pornography to help rescue them, and to assist in prosecuting the people responsible for making and distributing the pornographic material…” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation for crooked stock deals. Bush’s top procurement official has been busted for obstructing the investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And ole Scoots Libby says George Bush OK’d the felony security breaches and outright lies used to scare people like Big Larry into supporting our military attack on a sovereign nation led by some fucked up hairball who allegedly was going to come over here and kill us all with—whoo-hoo!—weapons of mass destruction. And as if the scene playing out for the administration couldn’t get any riper, even the dark poisonous toad himself, Karl Rove may yet drop beneath the rising slime of the Plame affair. Nah, we would be almost disappointed if the Prince of Darkness proved a mere mortal. We like our bad guys to be so bad they are protected by Satan’s guilded hand. Too many crap movies and video games will do that to you. At the same time, there is much dirty money on the Republican side of the isle which nobody seems to know anaythong about. Republicans everywhere are swearing they were never, never, never “that kind of Republican,” the kind of Republican who would accept campaign money without an overabundance of questions. Some are even giving back campaign money to the lobbyists with the most shit on their shoes, thereby demonstrating their involvement in the scams by public acts of contrived piety. It would be funny did it not expose what venal lizards crawl the republic’s halls of governance.

Yes, things have been bad my friends and, much as I hate the cliché, things will probably get worse before they get better. Not since the Twenties have we seen such a reactionary syndicate grab national political power. And like their predecessors the neocons are hell bent to reverse every scrap of previous social progress, in this case since FDR’s New Deal. Internationally they are aggressive evangelical paranoids steeled with Biblical justification for a policy of “Bomb their Ass and Take Their Gas.” An armed, petroleum addicted Jesus on steroids roughing up the world for gas money.

At the same time at least some Americans are finally shedding their illusions. We don’t see that very often, but we have seen it occasionally: During the Sixties and Seventies we learned that a president who proclaims “I am not a crook,” is probably just that. The Vietnam War taught most thinking people that American wars are noble wars merely because they are American. Also that the popularity of American wars, like that of sports teams, wears thin when we are not winning, causing people to start grumbling about the coach. The Iraq War is now unpopular with a majority and the president’s numbers are so low pollsters are using a dip net to fish them out of the toilet. That it took over three years of getting our asses kicked by swarthy shoeless peasant stock armed with cheap cell phones and junk ordinance IEDs for the point to soak in that something just might be going wrong with the “mission accomplished” over there…well, it says something about our lapdog media, or our Prozac addled brains, the contagion of national hubris or all three.

All of the above does not even begin to address the shadowy forces rustling in the background of our government, emerging occasionally to announce yet another chilling diminishment of our civil liberties, with almost no real objection. Most of America remains as clueless as Big Larry, believing that “It cannot happen here,” even though they haven’t the education or insight or attention span to grasp exactly what it is that can happen. Big Larry again: “What can’t happen here?” I’m telling ya the guy has about two fingers of forehead.

People with more than two fingers of forehead, those who understand what can happen and obviously is happening, hope and pray the next election will begin to turn things around (which implies there are available candidates with the guts, wisdom and charisma to do so, but that’s a whole nuther matter). At the same time they remain in deep denial of, or are simply too horrified by, what the rigging of two national elections by Republican operatives spells about our condition. It means that the way out of this escalating nightmare, the way back to something resembling freedom just might not be through the ballot box. And as long as the Democratic leadership is afraid to stand up and name the crimes and the criminals involved, the noodle-spined middle class will feel justified in its denial. And ole Larry will just stay out there on the back porch scratching his ass and thinking things are mostly OK. Just like tens of millions of his fellow Americans.

Anyway, the Democratic leadership believes it’s too late to call bullshit on the crooked elections. I know because get their newsletters. They keep me in the loop on these things. They also say Howard Dean is the new Newt Gingrich, only liberal. And yesterday I got one asking me what the Democratic Party should stand for. I’ve got plenty of ideas for sure, but I did not reply because, well, if Howard Dean and the most powerful Democrats in the nation have to ask me what the party of Franklin Roosevelt stands for, then we are in a heap of shit, dear hearts. A heap of shit.

I gotta go.

Bye.

Joe Bageant is the author of a forthcoming book from Random House Crown on working class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working class Americans on the subject of class may be found at http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at joebageant@joebageant.com.

Copyright 2006 by Joe Bageant

Dallas Mega March Pics

My experience at the event is detailed here.

Si Se Puedes, Dallas!

The Earth smiled on Dallas today: not a cloud in the sky and an afternoon high of seventy six degrees Farenheit.

Crooked with a backache, my stomach burning from last night's anti-inflammatories , I almost didn't go. Feeling every day of my forty-four years, I sat drinking latte and watching HGTV like the privileged cracker-ass cracker I am. Despite my resistance, weeds and drooping limbs intruded on my peripheral vision; one or two dead trees needed to come down. My mind, though not wanting to be busy, turned to the messy garage. I gotta get this shit done. The CDs littering my desk. All Those Things To Do.

None of it would get done today.

The allure of People Power overwhelmed my many distractions, all of which melted away the moment I arrived just around the corner from the church where the march was to begin.

Upwards of a half million brown-skinned people owned the streets of Dallas today: American citizens, born in the United States to parents who were or are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America; and the so-called illegals - the invisible grist of the Holy Free Market which sells us the illusion of national prosperity.

They were not invisible today.

On this glorious Spring day, they were all one people - La Raza! - peacefully and forcefully demanding the dignity and rights which they and all human beings deserve.

They build our roads and houses; harvest our crops; cook & serve the the meals we eat, and then they clean the mess. They buy products. They pay taxes. They fix your car. They cut grass and pick up trash. They fight and die in the United States military.

Historically, they have taken a lot of shit from The Man. And The Man is pushing them to a breaking point. By portraying its super-secret labor force as a threat to the American Way of Life, The Man has burned his candles at both ends. And if The Man keeps it up? My Hispanic brothers and sisters are going to wreck this economy. Don't think for one second they lack the means or the will to escalate their response.

I climbed atop some scaffolding and settled in like I was paying rent because the event was building by the minute. Every direction was a sea of people carrying signs and flags, many dressed in white to symbolize peace. I saw more American flags this one day in downtown Dallas than I've seen in my entire life. The vibe was electric, positive, friendly.

Each time I thought the size of the crowd had maxed out, I would see another mass movement far away. The route snaked this way and that, and it was difficult to tell the procession's head from its tail. I never made it to City Hall where the speakers were, and it didn't seem to matter. All that mattered was the people marching.

"Is it really big?" shouted a man in the crowd. He was smiling broadly, his face alive with the joy of solidarity. "It's UNBELIEVABLE!" I yelled back. "The biggest demonstration this city has ever seen!" The crowd roared, echoes of "Si se puedes" - YES WE CAN - ringing off the glass and concrete and into the cacophany of church bells, rumbling helicopters, snare drums and the tinkling bells of street vendors selling frozen fruit bars and ice cream.

ALL who fill the streets demanding social justice are my brothers and sisters, and being part of today's Dallas MegaMarch made La Familia a whole lot bigger. I was proud to share the street and scaffolidng with such magnificent, defiant people. Let's do it again soon.

Too damn tired to edit & post pics tonight. Check back this evening.

Sunday, April 9th: Mega March Dallas

MegaMarch Dallas
FOR AMERICAN VALUES AND JUSTICE

SUNDAY
APRIL 9, 2006

12:00PM TO ORGANIZE

1:00PM TO MARCH

GUADALUPE CATHEDRAL
ROSS & PEARL
DALLAS, TEXAS
I won't be carrying a sign for this event (although I may be wearing one) so that I can free up my hands to take some photographs.

Unlike other American cities which saw a good deal of street action and civil uprisings in the 1960's and 70's, Dallas sat out the civil rights era. A deep current of racial tension permeates every corner of the city today. African-Americans and Mexican-Americans have long been blind to the potential of forming alliances. Starved for power by the moneyed white Dallas elite, both camps prefer the quicksand of internecine backstabbing to the more difficult struggle for human rights and social justice.

So it came as quite a surprise to read yesterday's Dallas Morning News:

Black Leaders Back Immigration Rally

In a show of ethnic solidarity, Dallas black politicians and civil rights advocates joined with Hispanic leaders Wednesday to promote a planned rally Sunday against U.S. immigration laws, particularly those involving Mexico.

"We are in the same boat together, and we stand together," said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. "America is a country of immigrants. We need to continue to embrace immigrants."

Said march organizer and former state Rep. Domingo Garcia: "This is an American march. The immigrants want to become Americans. This is about America, and the American dream and American values."

Kudos to State Senator Royce West (D), Domingo Garcia and the various movers & shakers performing the behind-the-scenes work making this alliance possible.

Observers and participants will use the term "historic" for the upcoming Sunday march in Dallas, but most of them are infatuated with numbers. Of course, turnout is important, but if anything is worthy of the label historic, it is this convergence of people of all colors taking to the streets in pursuit of social justice in Dallas, Texas.

Stranger things have happened, but not many. Be on the lookout for flying pigs and snowballs from Hell.

Meet Your New, Improved God

Stories like this one are an aching reminder of the long-term struggle confronting our clueless, chickenshit society.

From Sunday Herald:

IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will.

In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald.

The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document’s recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of “a revolution in the concept of warfare”. The report orders three new developments in America’s approach to warfare:

Firstly, the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.

Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media – from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) – to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy. Psyops involve the dissemination of lies and fake stories and releasing information to wrong-foot the enemy.

Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.

~MORE

Feeling safe yet?

In a sane world, the term PNAC would elicit howls of derision and stoney looks of shame. But in the world we forfeited to corporatist scum without so much as a fucking fight, PNAC lends its mighty street cred to the Pentagon's most totalitarian ambitions.

This revolution in information warfare is merely an extension of the politics of the “neoconservative” Bush White House. Even before getting into power, key players in Team Bush were planning total military and political domination of the globe. In September 2000, the now notorious document Rebuilding America’s Defences – written by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think-tank staffed by some of the Bush presidency’s leading lights – said that America needed a “blueprint for maintaining US global pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power-rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests”.

The PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Bush’s younger brother, Jeb; Paul Wolfowitz, once Rumsfeld’s deputy and now head of the World Bank; and Lewis Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, now indicted for perjury in America.

Quite a list of luminaries. Makes ya proud to be an American, don't it?

Read any good books lately?

My friend, Maynard, recently found this surprisingly useful publication lying abandoned on an airplane seat. For reasons I am at a complete loss to explain, he thought it might interest me.


Things I did not know before perusing the book:

• Ritalin sounds like fun.
  
  
• Desoxyn is methamphetamine.
  
  
• A solution of chloral hydrate + alcohol was the original "Mickey Finn."

Discover your own fun facts by gleaning the DEA's online version. It'll make you wish you were in high school again.

Protesting in Song: James McMurtry

James McMurtry has long been one of my favorite songwriters, kicking ass right outta the gate in 1989 with Too Long In The Wasteland. Anyone familiar with the writings of Larry McMurtry (James' father and author of The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove and the Brokeback Mountain screenplay) will recognize the territory James mines: small town living & small town minds; the not-so-simple struggle to be free; the consequences of stupid decisions.

"We Can't Make It Here" - featured on last year's "Childish Things" - crashes down on The Great American Illusion like a 5,000-pound hammer. It will go down in history as one of the most forceful protest songs to ever charge the airwaves:

There’s a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on his wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing and both hands free
No one’s paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget’s just stretched so thin
And now there’s more coming back
from the Mideast war
We can’t make it here anymore

That big ol’ building was the textile mill
that fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out
and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore

See those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They’re just gonna sit there ‘til they rot
‘Cause there’s nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don’t come down here
unless you’re looking to score
We can’t make it here anymore

The bar’s still open but man it’s slow
The tip jar’s light and the register’s low
The bartender don’t have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day
Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof,
won’t pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far $5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one your stores
Bet you can’t make it here anymore

There’s a high school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what’ll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? Live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it’s way too late to just say no
You can’t make it here anymore

Now I’m stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
‘ Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can’t make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate ‘em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They’ve never known want,
they’ll never know need
Their shit don’t stink
and their kids won’t bleed
Their kids won’t bleed in their damn little war
And we can’t make it here anymore

Will work for food will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
So let ‘em eat jellybeans let ‘em eat cake
Let ‘em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can’t make it here anymore

So that’s how it is, that’s what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind if you’re listening at all
Get out of that limo, look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone tell us all why

In Dayton Ohio or Portland Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That’s done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There’s rats in the alley and trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can’t make it here anymore

I bring this up to provide some context for the following commentary James McMurtry wrote for Billboard and copied to his MySpace blog. It is reprinted here to save you the trouble of registering at either of those sites in order to read it.


Billboard Magazine
MUSICIANS: KEEP THE POLITICS IN YOUR SONGS
BY JAMES MCMURTRY

Once at a show of mine in Plano, Texas, a woman took it upon herself to dance around in front of the stage with a handwritten sign that read, "Keep Politics Out of Music." She had not liked the anti-Bush rant that I had inserted into the song "Levelland." I wonder what she thought of the works of Woody Guthrie, John Lennon or Bob Dylan? And would she have been equally as offended by the sentiments expressed in the songs of Merle Haggard, Toby Keith or Clint Black? Was it politics in music that she objected to, or more specifically, my politics in my music? I probably lost a fan that day, not the first or the last.

I used to try to keep politics out of my music not for fear of losing fansI had no fansbut rather for fear that my songs would become sermons. I did not want to be seen as another mediocre folkie up there preaching with righteous conviction to mask the fact that his songs sucked.

It was a while before I realized that it is possible to write a good politically motivated song. Steve Earle's "The Ballad of Billy Austin," written from the point of view of a death-row inmate, showed me that it could be done. It is a great song first, a biting social commentary second. Kris Kristofferson's work has the same qualityit gets his point across without sacrificing his art. Oddly, when I first heard Kristofferson's songs, I did not notice the political statements in them. I was a child then, and the Vietnam War so thoroughly colored the world I came into that I could not even see it. The war was like your grandmother's kitchen wallpaper you had seen since you were 3 and no longer noticed. The sight of those glum-faced, young soldiers in the airport was perfectly normal to me.

The soldiers are back in the airports, but they are older now. I did not want my son's generation to grow numb to the sight of them, to become "blas about war," as Lennon once said. So I took a chance and put out a song called "We Can't Make It Here"put it out first as a free download. I received a lot of nasty e-mails right off the bat, but the download got more attention than anything I have put on a CD in the last 10 years.

Now, a year and a half later, WXRT Chicago, a station that has not added a James McMurtry song since the early '90s, is playing its own edit of "We Can't Make It Here" and doing quite well with it. (Yes, I am indeed blowing my own horn here. Somebody has to since my last manager threw up his hands and ran screaming back to Connecticut.)

WKIT, Stephen King's classic rock station in Bangor, Maine, was on the song as soon as it hit the Internet. Maine has lost 30,000 jobs to outsourcing, one of the facets of modern American life that the protagonist in my song complains about.

You could say that my little song became a hit in Bangor. That is good for me, but not so good for Bangor. "We Can't Make It Here" is not popular in Bangor or anywhere else by virtue of it being a great song. Its popularity, like that of most popular songs, lies in the fact that people are hearing their own lives in it. The lives they are hearing in this song cannot be much fun right now.

In a recent article in The Austin Chronicle, interviewer Andy Langer said to Kris Kristofferson, "Some people say the smart thing for folks like you and the Dixie Chicks is just to shut up and sing."

Kristofferson's response was, "I would say back, 'Shut up and listen.' "

Kristofferson is not the darling of country radio that he once was, but he has not gone away. He has continued to use his voice, and his power as a performer has only increased. Last year at South by Southwest, the Continental Club was dead silent when he sang. Even the people on the sidewalk watching through the open door were silent.

But, sadly, most of us so-called artists are afraid to use our voices, afraid to take a stand for fear of committing career suicide. We have to get over that fear because in succumbing to it we become invisible, and invisibility, for an artist, is true career death.

We cannot please everybody and we should not bother trying. It is not our job to be loved. It is our job to be remembered.

Sweet, sweet dissidence

When a kind-hearted, soft-spoken gentleman like Burt Bacharach confronts The Regime in song, a reckoning is taking shape somewhere in the infinite black ether.

Burt Bacharach unleashes his X-rated lyrics
Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith

With the "explicit" version of his "Who Are These People?" song now hitting iTunes with his full approval, legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach is facing a fresh wave of controversy. This version of his anti-administration song features Elvis Costello wailing an expletive at the end.

Bacharach already won Grammy honors for his highly political "At This Time" album, which contains "Who Are These People?" However, the version of the song that went out on CD was "settling," says Bacharach, explaining that "there were mixed feelings in the record company (Columbia) about me, of all people, having something X-rated. "And the feeling was, 'You're already saying so much about your feelings, why keep the record out of Wal-Mart because of that line?' Not that it's in Wal-Mart."

He adds, "When I told Elvis, 'We're going to have to change it,' he was very upset because it's such a powerful moment. You've never heard that word like Elvis does it.' "

Bacharach insists the reason the second version is coming out now is that "things have gotten worse, with more lies, even in the last few weeks. People think we're doing it for sensationalism. No. I don't like to offend. My nature is to try to please everybody," says the septuagenarian music man, who reminds that all through the Vietnam War, he was writing love songs. "What's going on now caught me. I felt I had to say something."

Who Are These People?

Lyrics by Burt Bacharach and Tonio K.

Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
Make em stop

Who are these people that destroy everything
And sell off the future for whatever it brings
And what kind of leaders can’t admit when they’re wrong?
Make em stop

This stupid mess we’re in just keeps getting worse
So many people dying needlessly
Looks like the liars may inherit the earth
Even pretending to pray
And getting away with it

Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
And who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
We’ve got to make them stop

Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives
and who’ll stop the violence cause it’s out of control?
Make em stop

See things really have to change
Before it’s too late

[“we’ve got to make a change or we’re all fucked.” ]

And there's more where that one came from...