The Shape of Blogs to Come

A Note To My Three Readers: This Blog Is So Over

2006-07-25T12:34:00.000-04:00

This is going to be the last post on The Shape Of Blogs To Come for a while. No, the blog did not turn into a book deal, the wet-dream of every blogger. Rather, I am leaving the country for a year and while it would probably be possible to keep posting, it would only serve as a distraction. As Sammy Sosa might say, this blog has been very, very good to me. In a year from now I hope to return to updating the site, so visit back in June 2007, maybe even for a new and improved version. Until then, I have set up a travel blog for my year abroad, The Year Of Living (Not So) Dangerously. Hypothetically, I will be writting and posting pictures, but I cannot promise any sort of frequency. Peace, Steve.

Colbert and The NLRB

2006-07-20T18:51:00.000-04:00

Stephen Colbert's show is no secret these days and it is undoubtably one of the best things going on television. This clip demonstrates one of the many reasons why I love the Colbert report: he seems to keep on eye on labor issues. In fact, he pays more attention to them than the mainstream media.

American Writes From Beruit

2006-07-18T19:30:00.000-04:00

You can read a letter written from Lebanon by Michael Provence, a Middle East Historian from UC San Diego, and posted on the Cleveland Peace Action website. He writes:

I just talked to one of janitors who walked to work from the other side of town where the bombing has been most intense. He said every 5 minutes for the last four nights the f-16s have dropped bombs on their neighborhood. Buildings all around him have been flattened. The obvious intention is to punish and terrorize the entire country, and there is no actual policy or goal behind the destruction. Any travel, even around the city, is impossible since the overpasses, bridges, and under city road ways have been destroyed. This represents 15 years of Lebanese post-war infrastructural reconstruction, which the Israelis have destroyed nearly totally in four days.
....
The whole business is laced with absurdity and lies. The Israelis say they want their two captured soldiers and they want to root out Hizballah. They claim the destruction of the infrastructure is designed to limit the movement of the captured soldiers. But the soldiers may be held 1.5 km from the border and the IDF would never be able to find and release them by military action. Everyone knows this. They still have not tried to move into Lebanon by land, since the political cost of another land invasion of Lebanon makes every Israeli politician piss his pants. Hizballah controls the south and represents approximately 40% of the Lebanese population and gains additional support with every Israeli bomb. Bombing from the air is cost free in domestic political terms as the Americans have shown.
....
If you called your congressman to call for ceasefire yesterday, please call again today.

The Numerology of Blogging

2006-07-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

Sometimes one can't help but wonder the use in reading about the world around. For example, sitting here thinking about lord knows what might happen next in Lebanon or having a quiet moment of contemplation over the victims of Indonesia's latest tsunami feels important, my attempt to engage the real concerns of the world. More often than not, however, it turns into a futile ritual of acknowledging the world around you without ever gaining the opportunity to do anything about it, with the connection between you and these events to be perhaps only imagined. As Hegel writes, "Reading the newspaper in early morning is a kind of realistic morning prayer. One orients one's attitude against the world and toward God [in one case], or toward that which the world is [in the other]. The former gives the same security as the latter, in that one knows where one stands." Which is not to say that I do not subscribe to this ritual. By having a blog, it would seem obvious that I am convinced that print media, in its various forms, is not a neutral recorder but an active shaper of reality.

All this reflection is written so that I can describe a five minute period last night where this ritual and some kind of action came together without my trying at all. First, The Jakarta Post runs a story about child workers being exploited in shoe factories. At that same moment, I am in the middle of ordering some shoes from No Sweat Apparel, union-made shoes with full disclosure of working conditions. And where are those shoes manufactured? Jakarta, Indonesia. Not only that, to bring the connection back to print media, a portion of the sales goes to support LabourStart, a most excellent listserv. It was as if the mondernist Gods of media and technology aligned themselves, letting me know my daily rituals were being acknowledged. And don't bother me with your concept of "coincidence."

Within this ritual is another potential futility, "responsible consumerism." Indeed, only a wealthy Westerner (me) could convince themselves that consumption and using their credit card are truly righteous acts. Dont get me wrong, I think we should all buy fair trade coffee, sweat free clothing, and environmentally sustainable products. However, theoretically, I can't say I honestly believe that consumption can determine the mode of production and there many limits to what fair trade can accomplish. Or, in other words, the way I read Marx is that consumption my be part of the cycle of production, but they are not two equal sides of the same coin. Which is why, to put it mildly, American Apparel ain't the vanguard to the revolution, but just another undemocratic, union-busting company.

Thus, the question is left in the air, what exactly did I do last night? Was that engaging the world? Was it purely ritual? Just a more intellectual form of entertainment?

[Update, 7/18]: As it turns out, the shoes I was trying to buy are out of stock until August.

[Update, 7/19]: As a reader points out, the article I link to in reference to the anti-union activities by American Apparel was written by Stephen Wishart, a researcher for UNITE-HERE. As such, he does not represent the disinterested observer so valued by professional journalism. However, I do not believe this rules him out as valuable source on the issue.

One of the objections to American Apparel is that, to put it simply, there is more to a movement for workers' power than humane conditions and wages somewhat above what the labor market will provide, though they are important. The difference between a project like Sweat X and American Apparel is that the goal of Sweat X is to eventaully turn the enterprise into a workers co-operative. It is the attempts to account for both distributional and non-distributional issues that would constitute a complete workers movement. The fact that American Apparel was required to settle with the NLRB over anti-union activity (which does not necessarily constitute guilt) suggests to many that this is not so much a democratic movement than a company selling to a niche market. After all, any democratic workplace would allow for the organization of employees, even if it goes against the perogative of management.

For further reading, here are some articles. There are a number of interesting discussions about AA's relationship to unions, whether AA's merely selling a niche market, and issues of sexism in AA's advertisements. This does not imply that I accept each and every criticism of AA as being fair, but I also don't think it should be given a free pass because of its "sweat-free" status. Of course, in the end, it's still a lot better than buying clothes made in sweatshops.

- Columbia News Service
- In These Times
- Newshour Online
- Washington Square News
- Clean Clothes Connection
- SF Chronicle
- AA's Response In The Nation

NY Times Editorial Board Takes Righteous Stand....In Retrospect

2006-07-17T21:36:00.000-04:00

Let's have a round of applause for the New York Times editorial board's recent editorial "The Real Agenda," which would have been pretty insightful had it been written four years ago. The opening paragraph reads "It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power." One could only hope this was written with feelings of shame for having let the public down, but with "only now" part, it seems they are actually telling us it took five years to see this coming. They end by declaring that "Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time." If Congress has been shirking its duty in the past five years, what might we say the mainstream media has been doing in that same period of time?

A Note From The Underground: Anarchists Make Poor Listeners

2006-07-17T00:24:00.000-04:00

The other night, I was at a social gathering with some self-proclaimed anarchists or, to be exact, self-proclaimed "post-structural anarchists." What they meant by this, I'm not real sure, but they certainly said it with a straight face. Don't get me wrong, I do have some notion of what post-structural anarchism means and, in fact, I think it raises interesting questions and attempts to take on the more honest portrayal of power. What I did not understand is how these anarchists could speak of post-structural anarchism the way a highly religious person may speak of their life philosophy, as if it served as a guiding force leading their every action towards an undoubtable greater good. I could not grasp how a philosphy that is compelling exactly because it refuses the naive and easy answers of anti-authority, punk rock anarchism could spoken of as if it provided all the answers and extinguished all doubt from their voices.

Now, I knew that Mr. T, the most egregious of the offenders, is a well read guy very interested in Foucault. Thus, he is also probably interested in the role of discourse in shaping the world, a highly ironic fact given his own style of conversation: self-righteous monologue. Would it be too much to ask to democratize conversation? By this I mean simply that a good first step to liberatory discourse might be to let someone get a word in every once in a while. To make the progress easier, I'll even suggest leaving as a second step the more radical notion of also listening to what other people are saying.

Sitting there listening to this guy go on about dominance and discourse, the overwhelming hypocrisy of his self-righteous pontificating made me really re-consider who I see as my allies. And as the stories rolled out about talking to Todd May, marching through Tower City with a red flag, or the FBI following him around, it quickly become clear that these stories were (1) largely tied to a fantasy based perception of reality and (2) told entirely with the purpose of self aggrandizement.

In the end, the only respite I could find from this non-sense was stepping outside the apartment entirely. That night, my liberation from oppression was going to come from some much enjoyed silence and fresh air shared with a good friend, the beauty of coming back down to earth.

Visa On My Mind.....

2006-07-13T12:55:00.000-04:00

As I sit here, waiting to hear back from an unresponsive consulate about my visa to Indonesia, I can definitely relate to these Indonesian students who are being left out of the Math Olympiad because the Indonesian government failed to get them visas. With the acception of the ESPN televised spelling-bee, what I can not relate to is a country where a major newspaper considers standout math students national news.
[Update]: finally got my visa, relief ensues.

More News For The Continually Narrowing Demographic

2006-07-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

The high honor of Scene Magazine band of the month has been bestowed on Kent band Beaten Awake. Wait, did I say "Kent band," I meant to say "Kent supergroup," according to the Scene article, which came out of the ashes of the "college town's great '90s boom of bands such as Party of Helicopters, the Man I Fell in Love With, Harriet the Spy, and Six Parts Seven." Indeed, the Kent economy largely ran on the boom of Donut Friends Records and these bands for a while and until Beaten Awake's forming, many people remained out of work.

Don't get me wrong, I am not questioning that all those bands aren't completely rad or that Beaten Awake isn't equally cool. They are sweet and I've spent plenty of time listening to them; however, superlatives of any kind are hard for a Kentite to take seriously. Expect celebration in the streets when their album is released this fall and a parade when they return from their west coast show with the Black Keys. K-town!

World Cup, Racism, and....Go France!

2006-07-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

Going into the World Cup there was a lot of talk about racism in European football and an equal common reaction that such reports are overblown. This story by Dave Zirin on Jean-Marie Le Pen's views on the French Soccer team is a reminder that those concerns are not far fetched. According to the article "Le Pen decried France's multi- ethnic team as unrepresentative of French society, saying that France 'cannot recognize itself in the national side,' and 'maybe the coach exaggerated the proportion of players of color and should have been a bit more careful.'" Particularly galling for Le Pen is that France's two most notable players are Zenidine Zidane (Algerian born) and Thierry Henry (black). Such a position is no surprise from as notorious a racist as Le Pen, but those same people who said stories on racism were overblown often also said that no one would dare do such a thing on the grandest stage in football, but that is exactly what happened when France heard monkey chants in their game against Spain. That's the same Spanish team whose coach made racist remarks a couple years ago to his team to inspire them to stop Thierry Henry and still has his job. So, it tires me to hear people downplay racism in football. There is already enough latent racism in professional sports, how much more obvious does it have to be before it is considered an issue.

Also, if I might add a personal anecdote...I am sitting in a bar in the Domican Republic, quietly rooting for Angola as a I watch their first round match against England among a large group of English fans. Things were tense for the English side, until a late goal to put them ahead, and there was a man at the bar who called any English player who turned over the ball a "wanker." However, when Aaron Lennon turns over the ball, what does this man call him? Under his breathe and to no one in particular, he whispers "fucking ape." As you might have guessed, Aaron Lennon is black. So, to reinterate, I don't want to hear that racism in football is a non-issue.

I'm rooting for France in tomorrow's World Cup final, though not as some sort of stand for racial justice. Rather, the story of Zidane winning a World Cup as he retires from international play is just too good and I think Thierry Henry is overly criticized. After all, he has 3 goals in 6 games, which puts him high on the scoring leader board and he created the PK the Zidane scored on to win the semi-final. Hopefully he can break through against Italy's robut defense.

[7/12/06]: Former Italian government minister says "that the Italians had vanquished a French team that was comprised of 'Negroes, communists and Moslems'", while swastikas show up around Rome during the World Cup celebrations.

My Distaste for Cristiano Ronaldo In Stick Figures

2006-07-07T15:48:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has discussed this year's World Cup with me has found it takes very little to bring out my disgust with the Portugal side, usually attached to some sort of explitive. This piece of graphic design genius (thanks to normblog) sums up perfectly my dislike for Portugal's "all flash and no substance" style of play. Though, to be fair, they will be playing for third place on Saturday while most other teams have been home for weeks.

How Do I Get These Blood and Sweat Stains Out of My IPod?

2006-07-01T21:07:00.000-04:00

It looks like that IPod I plan on getting for my birthday, like most anything, is manufactured under dubious conditions. The IPod factory in Shenzhen, China is reported to be making its workers put in well over the legal number overtime hours in China's labor laws. A report in a British news paper says that in the factory of 200,000, the workers, mostly women, live in dormitories prohibiting visitors and are required to work 15 hours a day earning only £27 or US$50 a month.

Shenzhen, also known as the Overnight City, is a city that functions entirely on these kinds of factories. It's called the Overnight City because it was created out of very little when Deng Xiaoping declared it a special economic zone about 25 years ago. Its is bizarre to think of a city entirely created outside any flow of history but instead on the perogative of one man. Based on Peter Hessler's description of it in his new book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and China's Present, it sounds like a very surreal place.

Book Recommendation: "Everyman" by Philip Roth

2006-06-30T20:04:00.000-04:00

I finished up Philip Roth's latest novel, Everyman, real quick the other day, since it clocks in at under 200 pages. Unlike Roth's previous works, such as American Pastoral, in which he takes on both the personal narrative and the societal narrative, he limits the scope of this book to the phenonomology of humanity's coming to grips with aging and death. This is a refreshing change from the just off The Plot Against America, in which Roth may have over stepped even his own cabailities by trying to mix the personal with inventing his own fictive societal narrative. Instead, he accepts a setting and character biography reassuringly familiar to any Roth readers, so they can focus on his main characters relationship with and subjection to his body. In explaining his Everyman character's perspective on death, Roth could very well be describing what he was trying to do with this novel: "No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies about heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born tolive and die in terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it- he'd come upon it early and intuitvely, and however elemental, that was the whole of it. Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it The Life and Death of a Male Body."

I must admit, I did not expect to like "Everyman" after hearing what it was about. As a continually healthy 23 year old and notorious ageist, I have no patience in my personal life for the constant talk of doctors appointments, failing body parts, death of classmates, and the other forms of sheer catharsis found in the coversations of the old. But, as Roth discusses, it is because I have yet had to realize the facticity of human body nor I have faced its betrayal. It would certainly be interesting to see how I like this novel decades from now (hopefully not sooner), when I have had to come to grips with these issues.

[P.S.]: So, after writing this post, I read this great quote from a Guardian interview of Philip Roth which makes me certain he would be disgusted with blog posts about his book: "I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk."

You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun

2006-06-28T10:05:00.000-04:00

If you check out the official Sleater-Kinney website you can read some pretty big news, Sleater-Kinney is breaking up. The statement says "After eleven years as a band, Sleater-Kinney have decided to go on indefinite hiatus. The upcoming summer shows will be our last. As of now, there are no plans for future tours or recordings."

Obviously, Sleater-Kinney was an awesome band and that makes this news enough. It's bigger news for me as an individual music listener, because they were one of the few active bands from my youthful formative years of musical listening, when musical tastes become developed and teenagers become attached to bands in a way that we never can as we get older. Not only were they still "active," they were still putting our awesome records, their last album The Woods being the best thing they had done since 1999's The Hot Rock.

They had a pretty good stretch of being an awesome band though. So, whose coming with me to the 2010 reunion tour?

Watching "Last Days": Now I'm Bored And Old

2006-06-27T22:09:00.000-04:00

Speaking of final days, I recenlty saw Gus Van Sant's Last Days, his "Not About Kurt Cobain" movie. Call me a philistine, but I have found Van Sant's last two films (of the "Death Trilogy") simply boring. I did not enjoy Elephant, but at least that film had some moments of emotional weight. This "tribute" consisted of two hours of watching an actor dressed as Kurt Cobain stumble around, inaudibly mumbling to himself and interacting with no one. I'll spoil the ending and tell you that "Not Kurt Cobain" dies. The problem is that, besides the obvious Cobain costume, Van Sant gives us no reason to care what happens to this zombie of a character. The only bit of dialogue worth a damn, a speech about a performer "dying of misadventure," is given to the private detective hired by the "Not Courtney Love." Besides that, my favorite scene was when "Not Kurt Cobain" makes maceroni and cheese, but that was only because I was hungry at the time.

Movie Recommendation: Sophie Scholl - The Finals Days

2006-06-27T00:49:00.000-04:00

I recently watched and enjoyed Sophie Scholl - The Final Days, which tells the true story of a students group's attempt at dissent against the Nazi regime in 1943 and their subsequent trail for high treason.

My favorite part of the movie was that the acting, plotting, dialogue, everything was perfectly understated. Where other movies would have turned Sophie Scholl into an over the top martyr, here she was a composed, strong, and conscientious woman whose action and convictions speak for themselves. This was coupled with the performance was Julia Jentsch that was perfectly restrained. Perhaps the dialogue avoided cliche and over-dramatization because it was based on historical records, but the filmmakers need to be given credit for maintaining that focus, not being distracted by backstory or attempts at larger historical narrative. It is fitting because the Scholls actions were simple and ineffective, yet courageous and significant. The movies expresses this perfectly by giving the viewer straight forward visuals and plot, while each exchange between characters holds the weight of everything that is going on in Europe at the time.

Afterwards, I couldn't help but wonder what is it about movies set in Nazi Germany that they can continually be released to awards and acclaim, yet the public's interest in the topic seems inexhaustible. This includes myself, since last year I saw Downfall and thought it was excellent as well. I might venture to say I enjoyed these latest films more because they were German productions that offer a fresh and more complex perspective than American viewers are used to. Stephen Holdman's review in the NYTimes says "In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here?" Yeah, maybe that is an issue in the movie. Any observant American viewer will feel the connection when Sophie's interrogator chastises her for not supporting the troops. Not that this kind of self-examination is avoidable or unhealthy, but it is an odd tendency to turn the film into a commentary on one's own situation. After all, this film just as easily connects to Tiananamen Square in 1989, Kent State on May 4th, the reformasi movement in Indonesia, or any number of other moments of student protest in history. Perhaps that is why these movies continue to be interesting. However, considering this is a German produced film about German history, it seems more likely to me that the filmmakers did not give much thought the politics of contemporary America.

That said, I think the film is worth your time. You can watch the trailer here and, if you are in northeast Ohio, see it here.

New Mountain Goats Song.....

2006-06-22T20:42:00.000-04:00

.......because I know you can't wait. It's called "Woke Up New."

Good News For A Very Narrow Demographic

2006-06-21T16:25:00.000-04:00

Epitonic.com is back up and active after a year and a half hiatus. Back in the day, this site was the spot for anyone looking for mp3s of defunct bands on Gravity Records or any other hardcore bands too obscure to have decent websites. That was relevent in the 90's, but these days every kid who has ever played guitar in his bedroom has a myspace page, so it will be interesting to see what they do with the site now. If nothing else, the website serves as some kind of monument to the time of late-90s "screamo," as it is now called (and here you thought you were just listening to punk rock). If you go to the "radio/genre" section they even have some presumptuous walkthroughs of different genres, so now you can finally put "Graduated From Math Rock 101" on your resume.

In vaguely related news, thanks to the aforementioned myspace.com, I noticed that The "New" Terror Class has reunited in Portland, OR as The Terror Class. As their description aptly puts it, "we cover lots of songs you won't know unless you lived in Kent Ohio ten years ago."

A Quick Request for E-Activism: Close the SOA

2006-06-07T10:39:00.000-04:00

This week, Congress is voting on an amendment to close the School of the Americas, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. You can send a letter to your member of Congress using the School of the Americas Watch website here and it will only take you a couple clicks. SOA Watch expects a close vote. The amendment, introduced by Rep. McGovern (MA) has 133 co-sponsors, and the issue has had close votes before.

Isreali Academic Boycott

2006-05-31T01:06:00.000-04:00

The largest higher education lecturers union in England passed a resolution recommending its members boycott Isreali academics and institutions that do not publicly oppose Isreali policy in the occupied territories. While I understand the sentiment (of opposing the Israli occupation), this seems counter-productive and not well delivered, as this letter published in The Guardian articulates. It would seem to me a far more sensible policy would have been a resolution denouncing the occupation and a call for universities to sell all stock in companies related to the Isreali occupation, along the lines of other divestment campaigns in higher education.

Beyond the questionable effectiveness of such a boycott (would it have any effect at all?), it seems a litte self-righteous and unacademic. Wouldn't these British academics feel bullied if they could only lecture in other parts of the world if they had to sign an oath of being against the US/UK invasion of Iraq or making some formal apology for British colonialism? Or what about censoring any academics coming from US universities with research ties to the US military? There goes your Noam Chomsky lecture series. Isn't this boycott also forsaking an ideal of the academy, open dialogue and debate? And strategically, aren't you alienating a potentially sympahtic Israeli demographic, whose positions are likely more nuanced than "yes or no" on the occupation?

I can appreciate the acknowledgement that academics, like anything else, is political and it is important for academics to examine their roles within institutions that ultimately support imperialism, war, or exploitation. I think this resolution, however, is poorly constructed policy.

US Marines in Haditha

2006-05-29T11:57:00.000-04:00

"One Haditha victim was an elderly man, close to 80 years old, killed in his wheelchair as he appeared to be holding a Koran, according to the United States defense official...An elderly woman was also killed, as were a mother and a child who were "in what appeared to be a prayer position," the official said." (NYTimes, May 29th)

The details of the civilian killings by US Marines in Haditha speak for themselves, but another interesting detail you will find at the end of the article is that some victims claim to have recieved $2,500 in compensation from US military officials. If true, as Rep. John Murtha points out, this would suggest a cover up that goes up the chain of command well past the Marines who fired the shots. Something tells me this story isn't going away anytime soon....

A Get Well Card To Suharto

2006-05-26T16:22:00.002-04:00

Dear "Pak" Suharto,

I have read in the news that your condition is stabilizing and that you may soon be discharged from the hospital. This is excellent news and I urge you to do everything in your power to build up your strength and maintain your health. Make sure you listen to your doctors and allow your well endowed family to help you in your time of need. Indonesia and the world needs you to be strong. After all, at 85 years, time is of the essence. Your health is of the utmost importance, for if justice is to be served, you must be healthy long enough to publicly stand trail as a corrupt, oppressive, and murderous dictator.

Your strength will be needed for your date with justice, your for crimes may take a while to record. In a ideal world, you could expect your dance-card at trial to include the accounting of the 500,000 to 1,000,000 "communists" killed in the political purges of 1965-1966, the couple million political prisoners who were "reeducated" with your help, the over 100,000 dead in the invasion of East Timor, and the vast corruption that enriched your family and cronies at a rate rivaled only by the likes of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.

I realize that, no matter your health, you will agree with your apologists who point to the improved economic and development numbers of Indonesia under your rule. Indeed, compared to the starvation under Sukarno, any reasonable management of the economy would have been an improvement and, when a global comparison is taken, it becomes clear that the living standard increases of Indonesia merely follow the worldwide trends, not by some magical despotic touch.

Don't worry if you do not come to a self-realization and choose to apologize for your many crimes, I don't think anyone would listen. We just need you to stay strong long enough to be publicly denounced, sit in prison for a short time, and then die in prison, the only death you can possibly deserve. You are a strong man, I believe you can recover, justice demands you recover.

Sincerely,

Steve

Iran Pulls Out The Old "WWJD" Card

2006-05-10T17:14:00.000-04:00

If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states and distinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts were would the world be today? Would not your government, and people be justifiably proud? Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger? And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American governments? - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President

You can read Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's letter to President Bush here at Le Monde. He asks some interesting questions and makes some biting criticisms of the Bush administration. He also raises some crazy questions about whether the Holocaust happened. In the end, you learn that this letter is a public invitation from him to Bush (you know, one theocrat to another) to give up on Liberal Democracy and join some kind of world monotheistic triumvirate of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Of course, might imagine a similar letter back to Ahmadinejad asking why his cabinet is full of human rights violators, why dissident journalists are imprisoned, why dentainees are abused in prisons, or why the Iranian government persecutes Arabs and Kurds, if he is a true follower of Islam.

So which is a greater indictment of President Bush: The various list of (mostly fair) criticisms of his administration or that, in Ahmadinejad's mind, if Bush were true to himself he would join this monotheistic world order?

Punishing the Hamas Vote

2006-05-08T23:55:00.000-04:00

[communique from a kiosk in the Great Lakes Mall]

There was an interesting story on the front of the New York Times this morning describing the price that the Palestinian people are going to pay now that the US and EU have cut off aid money and Isreal is not delivering taxes has collected. This economic siege, punishment for having elected Hamas to government, is going to have devestating effects on the health care of the Palestinian people. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts a "rapid decline of the public health system towards a possible collapse" and "no access or limited access to preventative programs" like immunization. According to Physicians For Human Rights, because the Palestinian Authority provides the bulk of medical care, the "lack of funding for this system will lead to the deaths of thousands of people in the short term and extensive morbidity in the long term."

This is a typical scenerio in the US "exporting" of democracy. You can have an election, but if you pick the wrong party you will face severe economic punishment, punishment that will hurt the people far more than the leaders you elected. It also echoes the sanctions on Iraq, in which the US was willing to trade the projected deaths of 500,000 children (oft cited UN estimate) for the opportunity to weaken the Iraqi government.

Also, if I might speculate about strategy regardless of ethical complications, it would seem to me Israel and the US are playing with fire, if their siege warfare does lead to a collapse of the PA. Granted, it will mean the opportunity for power grabs, intervention, or perhaps handing picking its successors, but it seems it could also lead to very dangerous instability. Then again, those orchestrating this policy have the luxury of assuming distance from its blowbacks.

[Update: 5/10]: You can read about the EU, UN, Russia, and the US devising a plan to get aid to Palestinians while circumventing the PA. I'm sure the Palestinians won't mind waiting the "weeks rather than days" it will take to play politics with the aid.

Workplace Democracy and A Sentence From Marx

2006-05-02T21:16:00.000-04:00

I've recently finished a senior thesis, of sorts, on workplace democracy. The paper looks at the different perspectives of advocates of workplace democracy and concludes that democratic control by workers will always be constrained by capitalist relations, whether within the enterprise or between different enterprises. The whole issue of workplace democracy is fascinating and if I were to recommend an article, it would be Edward S. Greenberg's paper "Workplace Democracy in the Core Countries: Problems and Prospects", which sums some of the issues pretty well and is, conveniently, available online. Perhaps you want a shorter summary, in which case I will give a you quote from Marx. As is so often the case, one sentence from Marx contains the logic that drives theses and dissertations, while always hitting the point much harder. This quote appeared at the top of my paper:

Those members of the ruling classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system – and they are many – have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles of co-operative production. If co-operative production is not to remain a sham or a snare…what else would it be but Communism? - Marx, The Civil War in

France

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

2006-05-01T23:32:00.000-04:00

Promoedya Ananta Toer passed away on Sunday and you can read The Jakarta Post's understated write-up here. I recently read his memior, The Mute's Soliloquy, a collection of biographical writings and letters. He spent a large portion of his life as a political prisoner, whether it was under Dutch rule, Sukarno, or Suharto. While Toer was popular with among the left, he was by no means an ideologue. Whether the Dutch called him a "nationalist" or Suharto a "communist" (both of which are criminal over-simplifications), the fact that he was imprisoned under three different regimes is a testament to the way public intellectuals can be percieved as a threat to an kind of authoritianism. I am looking forward to reading his Buru Quartet in the coming weeks.

Chomsky and Ali G

2006-04-20T14:25:00.000-04:00

You can watch Ali G interview Noam Chomsky here. If you are familiar with the Ali G's (Sacha Cohen's) interviews, you will realize that this is not one of his funnier ones, mostly because Chomsky does not end up getting flustered or making any outrageous statements. Which is not to say Chomsky was in on the joke, I think it's pretty clear he was not. I am always impressed with the people Cohen manages to interview, though I find his best material, whether it is as Ali G, Borat, or Bruno, is when he has on axe to grind with his interviewees and perfectly brings out their most frightening opinions.

What Is It Democracy Look Like? Government by Wikislation

2006-04-20T03:00:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago there was a column in the Jakarta Post by Mohamad Mova Al 'Afghani suggesting a system of what he calls "wikislation." The column describes the ways in which the newer, more democratic methods of creating internet content could be applied to the legislative process to create more direct participation by citizens and more transparency by legislators. The new, "democratic" internet the Al 'Afghani is referring to is the web applications that do not create content, but rather facilitate any internet users to create there own content, such as Blogger or Wikipedia. The application of these models to the legislative process would allow for phases in which citizens work collectively on creating legislation and, later, legislators working through changes in leglisation, with all changes and who made the changes being tracked online for all to see. Not only would this promote transparency, accountability, and direct participation, but it relies on the "wisdom of the crowd," which assumes that "with so many eyes watching, defects in content can be reduced or eliminated."

Users and readers of Blogger and Wikipedia, which includes both you and I, are as sympathetic an audience as an idea like this is going to find. Such an idea can be easily dismissed, but the idea that an open-access encylopedia could ever work was originally scoffed at by many people I know, but it is working on some level and presumably will only get better. Of course, making legislation through the internet raises all kinds of issues about internet access and computer literacy, which Al Afghani acknowledges. But before we completely dismiss him, let's consider the ways in which citizens usually interact with legislation.

In the legislation process, citizens rarely have access to the content of legislation until it is in its final stages and can only know about the haggling and negotiating of representatives through the reporting of journalists. Citizens hardly ever look directly at the content of legislation, more often relying on the recycled analysis of pundits who very likely did not read the legislation either. The referendum process can hardly be considered participation in policy making either, since it leaves most people with only a Yes/No vote on one, likely flawed, draft on public policy.

What I like most about the column is that, in a very mainstream publication, it tries to imagine a more participatory form of democracy. It is rare to find examples of someone trying to transcend competitive interest-group pluralism. I think the "democratic" internet that Al 'Afghani serves as an example of why people feel more engaged when they are interacting, but whether they can be applied to legislation is another issue. I don't want to be caught up in the technological issues though, rather I find much more interesting the spirit in which it was written.

Jail Unionists For Peace

2006-04-15T23:03:00.000-04:00

I am convinced that my reading on the internet is going to lead to both blindness and attention deficit disorder, but it does have its merits, particularly easy access to foreign news and the erratic juxtaposition of stories you read when bouncing around your favorite newspapers, listservs, and blogs. This led me to this wonderful juxtaposition: 1) an article in Der Spiegel about labor unrest in Iran that has led to, among other things, the jailing of organizers of a municipal bus-drivers strike and 2) An article in the NYTimes about Roger Toussaint being sentenced to 10 days in jail for his role in the TWU strike in New York.

With the potential push to go to war with Iran, I suspect we will be bombarded by media coverage vilifying the Iranian government. It will mostly be about nuclear weapons, but those searching for justification will probably begin criticizing (rightfully so) regressive Iranian policies that have never seemed to bother US elites before (see the ex post facto concern for Afghan women or the blind eye such issues recieve when they involve key trade partners such as Saudi Arabia). This is not to say elites were ever going to use "save Iranian workers' right to organize" as a justification for war, but instead maybe jailing unionists can be the commonality that leads the US and Iran to peaceful co-existence.

Too Important Not To Mention

2006-04-12T10:53:00.000-04:00

You can (and should) read Seymour Hersh's New Yorker report on the Bush Administration's plans for war with Iran. It's a great report, taking into account the positions of many of the important actors around the issue. You can also hear Seymour Hersh talk about Iran on today's edition of Democracy Now!. The Bush administration can rule this out as "idle speculation", but Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter with well established credibility. So, if President Bush is willing to dismiss this as "idle speculation", perhaps he would also deny the My Lai massacre or the Abu Gharib torture policies, two more stories of "idle speculation" that Hersh helped uncover.

Bill James in the Mainstream?

2006-04-11T18:07:00.000-04:00

Bill James has been at it a while, but an on going question is whether his ideas are going to make their way into mainstream baseball coverage. Today on Pardon the Interruption, I heard Dan Le Batard claim that he did not believe in clutch hitting, when comparing the worth of Derek Lee and David Ortiz. Even hearing someone say that on TV seems like a big deal because it completely shatters the stories sportswriters attempt to create around sporting events. That said, no matter how much broadcasters want to praise Billy Beane, they rarely take on a sabermetrics approach in their analysis. To show just how ready the mainstream is to take on this approach, Tony Kornheiser and Tony Reali scoffed and dismissed the claim out of hand.

Labor's Split on the Guest Worker Program

2006-04-08T21:27:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post and The Plain Dealer both ran interesting articles on the split in the labor movement around the guest worker programs proposed as part of the immigration bill currently being debated. The split goes like this: the AFL-CIO is against the guest worker program and SEIU, UNITE-HERE, UFW, and most of the "Change To Win" crowd support some forms of a guest worker program. The AFL-CIO's argument is that a guest worker program creates 2nd class citizens, turns good jobs into temporary jobs, and will naturally lead to exploitation of workers. SEIU, which represents many service sector immigrant workers, makes the argument that a guest worker program will help formalize and legalize eventual citizenship for a lot of immigrants, who are going to keep coming to American anyway.

At first glance, the AFL-CIO's position sounds a bit more righteous, showing concern for the exploitation of temporary workers. However, as Paul Gerhart of Case western Reserve points out, the AFL-CIO did not support the legalization of immigrant workers already in the States until 2000 and that was mostly a result of pressure from SEIU while it was still in the Federation. Which raises the question of whether AFL-CIO's position is just a retooling of a protectionist position.

Much of the labor seems suspicious of almost every move SEIU makes as self-interested, thus some may say SEIU has its potential increased numbers in mind. Perhaps that true, but the last thing the labor movement needs is to criticize a union for trying to organize workers, and clearly legalization and union organizing are in the interests of immigrant workers. A guest worker program would create legalization, though not citizenship, which would allow for the regulation of working conditions and bring a huge class of workers into the light legally. But this raises the question of how much of an accomplishment legalized 2nd class citizenship really is, not to mention the path from guest worker to citizenship still needs to be negotiated.

As you can tell, I'm not taking a particular stance at the moment, but it raises some interesting questions. Even more complicated, the initial claims of both sides are true: Yes, a guest-worker program is exploitive second class citizenship and yes, immigrant workers driven underground are even more susceptible to exploitation. Perhaps it just leads us the conclusion "legalize everyone!" Unfortunately, the political realists won't have it that way.

Peculiar Posting: Racial Suspicions Lead to Questioning, Hilarity Ensues

2006-04-06T18:39:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I said I could practically feel the Secret Service on their way to my room as I listened to a song with lyrics about killing the president. Now, according to a Reuters report, an English man was reported to police and picked up as a possible terrorist for singing lyrics to the Clash on his cabride to the airport. Apparently, in England they have cabs where you can plug your mp3 player into the car stereo system, so this young gentleman played "London Calling" and sang the wrong lines, prompting the cabby to call the cops. Who would have thought that 25 year old punk rock songs that are constantly referenced in John Cusack movies could be so threatening.

I realize this is in the "peculiar postings" section of MSNBC's website, right next to the one-eyed kitten and the frog eating man, and, admittedly, intitial reaction was to laugh, but is this more funny than bothersome? The name of the man who was picked up is Harrej Mann. The first Reuters report I saw does not talk about this and I was hesitant to speculate on how Mr. Mann identifies himself racially or how he might be identified by others, but would it be unfair to wonder what characteristics worried the taxi driver so much, outside of singing along to the Clash? This article, from Hartlepool Today, says that he is of Indian decent. Here is what Mann had to say about it:

"I got frogmarched off the plane in front of everyone, got my bags searched, asked every question you can think of, from what school I went to, to the more obvious, what am I going to London for? I was being held for questioning under the Terrorism Act. I was laughing about it, but all my mates are absolutely furious. It's just left me bemused. I can agree that there's a culture of fear. They acted on the information they had. I'm just frustrated that it happened to me. It's a mystery."

Well, perhaps not a complete mystery, if the cabby called the authorities because he heard a person of color sing "war is declared" in the backseat of his cab. Admittedly, the cab-driver's motives are pure speculation on my part.

Canadian writer Michael Ignatieff, writes this in his essay The Myth of Citizenship, "Majoritarian tyranny in all its modern forms- from Jacobin democracy through modern totalitarianism- has always exploited the public spiritedness associated with the word citizen: in such regimes, the 'good citizen' is the one who denounces and informs on his neighbors." Which brings me to the words of the Durhman Police spokesperson, "the report was made with the best of intentions and we wouldn’t want to discourage people from contacting us with genuine concerns.” I could not find any information on the dutiful citizen cab driver, but let's hope he's getting a medal somewhere.

The Muses.....

2006-04-06T00:25:00.000-04:00

My friend Beth has started a blog about health care, called Health Care Musings. Beth knows a lot about health care issues, and for a person like myself who feels confused whenever they visit a doctor, I imagine I'll learn a lot from reading her blog.

I've also been reading David Pinto's Baseball Musings. It's a good blog with a statistical perspective, though I would like to see more extended analysis and fewer updates on scores.

Any other good blogs with "musing" in the title?

Tribe's Opening Day

2006-04-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

Some quick thoughts on the Tribe's opening day loss, since we have an extra day to think about it:

- The most encouraging thing last night was the Indians touching up Mark Buehrle for 3 runs in the fourth, especially since Buehrle owned the middle of the Tribe line up last year (a .202 batting average). Perez's right-handed bat might help solve the Buehrle problem.

- The runs CC gave up in the 3rd were kind of fluky, all set up by a missed dive by Jason Micheals, and he looked good in the first two innings. The downside, of course, is the health status of our ace is in question after his first start.

- Long relief? It's the first day of the season, so the bullpen should be completely fresh. Yet, when Sabathia came out, the Tribe seemed at a loss for a long reliever. Danny Graves doesn't seem like the answer. Makes you wonder about sending down Jason Davis, though I know they are excited about Fernando Cabrera, who did not have good command last night.

- Say what you want about "regression to the mean" and other stats suggesting that the White Sox should trend down and the Indians should trend up, I more simple stat is this: The Indians were 5-14 last year against the White Sox and are going to have to start beating them if they want to win the Central.

Don't expect many posts about the Indians in the future, for a couple reasons. Among other, much better reasons, I don't think I have Sports Time Ohio in my cable package.

Please Don't Pray For Me

2006-04-01T16:45:00.000-05:00

The LA Times reports that "The largest study yet on the therapeutic power of prayer by strangers has found that it provided no benefit to the recovery of patients who had undergone cardiac bypass surgery."

Even as an atheist, I'd be willing to accept that prayer has some sort of placebo effect on those who are sick. Thus, my favorite twist in the whole study is that patients who knew they were being prayed for faired worse in their recoveries, which may be a result of increased stress from knowing their condition was so bad that they needed to be prayed for.

After hearing that 2.5 million dollars was spent on this study, I have to agree with Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University when he says "There have now been two big studies, with hundreds and hundreds of patients, that show no effect. Let's move on now and direct our money somewhere else." For example, don't researchers still have to prove that voodoo dolls are not effective? Or better yet, can we have a study proving that spending 5 bucks on a Hallmark brand card does not have a healing effect either?

[Update]: I'm still waiting for Slate.com to hire me as a blogger.

Refused Is Fucking Dead

2006-03-31T19:33:00.000-05:00

Refused is coming out with a tour DVD this April and you can watch the trailer here. I'm looking forward to seeing it, whenever someone I know is cool enough to buy it.

Refused, along with many good bands, are certainly responsible for a lot of terrible rip-offs. If The Shape of Punk To Come were to come out today, I might write it off as some sort of screamo derivative, but that's a stereotype impossible to make without Refused having come first. For this album, context was essential and there was a time and place where Refused really, really seemed to matter.

Refused's extra-musical aesthetic heavily borrowed from Nation of Ulysses, which has made me wonder why Dennis Lyxzen seems to be traveling in some time warp where he embodies Ian Svenonius on a 5 year delay. First Lyxzen is in Refused, who like Nation of Ulysses, made cover art resembling old jazz records, mixed abstractly political spoken word pieces into their albums, and published band communiques and manifestos. He then started The (International) Noise Conspiracy a couple years after Svenonius started The Make-Up. Both these bands were a shift from their previous projects, in that they referenced very overtly a 60s soul/rock political aesthetic, the difference being The (International) Noise Conspiracy's records are incredibly boring. It seems Dennis Lyxzen should start making plans for his new band, name yet to be decided, making sure to spend a lot of time drawing up the ways in which he will borrow elements of Weird War and the Scene Creamers.

Immgration Bill Protests

2006-03-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me this article with the message, "This is exactly why I love LA." I've never even been to LA, but seeing marches from many cities around the country gave me a rare feeling, that of political optimism. The marches have far exceeded even the most hopeful expectations of the organizers and I like to think it makes a clear statement that not everyone sees illegal immigrants as felons. Even more optimism can be found in the fact that the new bill on its way to the Senate does not criminalize illegal immgrants for living in the country nor does it criminalize humanitarian organizations who try to serve them. Credit to Mike DeWine, the Ohio Republican who was one of the Senators who broke with conservative Republicans on the issue of criminalizing immigrants. It, of course, would be naive to say "hey, the protests worked," but I'll be anxious to read articles weighing what kind of influence it had on the decision.

John Carroll University Blog Round-Up

2006-03-25T18:41:00.000-05:00

Working With Words had this to say about John Carroll University, in his write up of the Marian Wright Edelman talk:

Her visit was part of the usual multiculti affairs sort of thing, but it drew an impressive crowd of at least 200. And this is an institution, unfortunately, in much need of her message. John Carroll's new president is said to be particularly embarrassed by a couple of high-profile racial incidents on campus soon after he took over, and he recently announced a plan to fund 100 inner-city high school kids on full scholarships, by far the most ambitious move JCU has ever made in that direction. It's all the more impressive because it comes at a time when the university is being forced to cut its budget.

But neither that new minority scholarship investment nor the university's decision to sponsor City Club programs (another good move, I think) will be enough in themselves to get this university fully engaged with the region's challenges, as any self-respecting Jesuit institution should and must be. The Gund Foundation's #2 official, Bob Jaquay, a JCU graduate, has been known to complain that John Carroll is just "not part of the conversation" about the region (he should know--he's in the middle of most of it). And downtown Cleveland councilman Joe Cimperman, also a John Carroll grad, once told me how disappointed he was in then-president Ed Glynn for having wasted a meeting with then-Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, which he had arranged, mostly chit-chatting about trivia.

It doesn't take much imagination to feel the untapped potential of the University and Joe Cimperman's story about Ed Glynn is no surprise either. It is an accurate picture, but I think there is reason for optimism with the new president.

Other Blogs:

-- John Carroll University showed their support for coat hanger abortions by sending the largest contingent of any Jesuit institution to the Right To Life March in Washington.

-- Getting some love (from alumni) for the Canadian writers series

-- Maybe the first Carroll News article I've ever suggested that people read.

--You can read here that the Packers have signed Tom Arth, former JCU quarterback to a two year deal.

The Bracket Opportunist

2006-03-25T15:46:00.000-05:00

I know, we are already into the 2nd weekend of the NCAA Mens College Basketball Tournament. However, now that Texas is in the Elite 8 and there stock is back up with the media, I'll take the opportunity to mention I have Texas beating UConn in the finals of my tourny bracket. Remember this post sports fans! This prediction is looking pretty good as of 3:48 pm on Saturday afternoon, although their next game starts in about an hour.

What about the rest of my final four? Well, let's just say the other two teams didn't even make it out of the first weekend (Kansas, Ohio State).

Who was in your final four and who do you have now?

Mudhoney Against the War

2006-03-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

I had a "stop the presses" moment the other day when I heard that Mudhoney had a new album about, Under a Billion Suns. I didn't know they were still kicking it, but I'm glad they are. Maybe they will get their due this time around, or at least tour with Dinosaur Jr. and please those who miss the early 90's. Even more surprising was reading that they had a anti-war song on there, "Hard On For War." Now that I've heard the song, it all makes sense though. This isn't some self-righteous political rant, that would not be Mudhoney. No, this song explains how old men start wars to increase their chances of getting laid by sending all the young men off to fight. Now that's the politics of Mudhoney. It makes for a pretty good "Welcome to Cleveland" to President Bush, who is speaking at the City Club as I write this. Here are the lyrics:

Can you hear the little girls asking
Daddy where have all the little boys gone
The little girls, they ask me
Daddy where have all the little boys gone
They don't tease us in classroom
They don't meet us at the mall

The little boys are fighting
They have left us all behind
The little boys are dying
To preserve our way of life
It's our patriotic duty
To make sweet love tonight

See these lovely lonesome ladies
They don't ignore me anymore
All these lonely lovely ladies
Keep on kockin' on my door
I'm the only game in town
And it's so easy to score

Now i know why dirty old men are always pushin' for war
Now i know why dirty old men are always pushin' for war
I've become a dirty old man with a hard-on for war

No (Arab) Blood, No Foul

2006-03-19T18:31:00.000-05:00

This sign was hung up in Camp Nama, a detainee prison in Iraq, often the first stop for detainees in their torture tour through US facilities. This particular sign is in reference to US soldiers using Iraqi detainees as paintball targets. You can read more about US soldiers taking over Saddam Hussein's torture chambers and establishing their own torture methods here. As more information comes out, or rather is pried from secrecy by human rights and civil liberty activists, about US prisons in Iraq the more one things become clear: the facts are laying to waste the myth that Abu Ghraib was just a bad apple in an otherwise ethical US operation.

The "Blood" PS: I can't help but think about race with the use of the word "blood" on the sign. I think there is an hesitency from the anti-war crowd to call this a racist war, but I wonder how possible it would be to run these torture camps without racism towards Middle-Easterners helping to facilitate the treating of Iraqis as animals.

3rd Anniversary of the War

2006-03-18T17:58:00.000-05:00

This thursday on campus we held a anti-war vigil to mark the 3rd Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq that is coming up on the 20th, particularly fitting to hold it on the day when the US launched its largest airstrikes since 2003. This is a going to be a long post, but I really think each of the following readings that we used during the vigil has its own power.

We are here to mark the third anniversary of the current war in Iraq, a continuation of a decade of war and economic sanctions that have crippled Iraqi civilization. Since the invasion began in March of 2003, upwards of 40,000 Iraqi civilians have died from violence, along with over 2,000 American soldiers, and untold numbers of those dying of hunger and curable disease under denigrated living conditions. We are not here today to quibble over numbers. Iraq has experienced a suffering that no number will do justice. We are to give names to these numbers, to hear the stories of those effected by the war, and to stand in solidarity with those who seek peace.

These are the words of Clint E. Hardesty, a Catholic Iraq War Veteran and Conscientious Objector:

Since I have been deployed here in Iraq, it seems as if my day by day my soul is being stretched thin by participating in this war. Condoning something that I have come to believe goes against the very heart of everything I now believe about God, spirituality, and the value of human life is hypocritical for me, and this hypocrisy is plaguing my conscience daily. When I wake up in the morning and realize where I am at, when I read the scriptures, when I pray, when I see and hear about wounded and dying American servicemen, and Iraqi’s, I feel an overwhelming amount of guilt. Guilty because I have not been true to God, my beliefs, or myself. Since I have come to a point where I feel I have to apply for conscientious objection, and have made that decision, I have felt an overwhelming amount of peace, and confidence in what I must do. I believe that war does irreversible damage to the spirit and nobility of man. War hinders man from attaining God’s true purpose for life: a complete and unified love for God, selfless love for one’s fellow man, and a genuine desire to value all human life. War not only propagates human suffering, but even more so, it encourages men and women towards irrational fear and hatred, it promotes fraud and deceit, anger and lack of compassion. All of the aforementioned emotions and actions are in direct contradiction to the teachings and life of Jesus Christ, as well as what I believe all the truly sincere religious teachers in history have taught and adhered to. It is my belief that war and participation in war eclipses the inner light that God has placed in all of us and promotes a callousness and lack of compassion for one’s fellow man. The purpose of man’s life is to love God, to foster a genuine experience of His presence and to adhere to an absolutely rigid desire to value and preserve all life, even the lives of our enemies. It is my belief that war and participation in war is in direct contrast to this purpose.

An Interfaith Prayer For Peace: "A War That Never Ends" from the Fellowship of Reconciliation

We are Americans, US citizens

Followers of many spiritual traditions
Compelled to speak, for ourselves and for others.
Convinced that war brings neither freedom nor peace.
Called to speak the truth as our faiths demand.
May we be filled with the strength to seek peace.

War will not end when the guns are silent.
Violence can never lead to peace.
The government does not faithfully represent
Our desires or those of the people of the world
And so it becomes our obligation to speak and to act
We will bear the responsibility
We will claim our democratic power
We will willingly accept what is required.
We will stand against the forces of death.
We will stand for life.
May we be filled with the courage to seek peace.

Duty calls upon us to prohibit violence
Directed at our helpless brothers and sisters
To limit the monstrous domination of war
To repair the ruin, whenever, wherever we can:
The direct horrors inflicted on the people
The damage to homes, lands, heritage, institutions
The disruption of their eating, traveling, breathing, living
May we be filled with the compassion to seek peace.

We grieve the terrible wounding of those sent off to fight
Children captured by the demons of war
Who will suffer illness of body and spirit
Whose families too absorb the blows of violence
We grieve the rupture of families where a member is killed
Parents, spouses, infants overcome with grief
Losing a source of sustenance and survival
May we be filled with the endurance to seek peace.

War will not fulfill those government promises.
For it is based on lies, and lies have been told.
Here we stand on truth, and stand together.
United as one humanity, here we are.
We grasp the horror of war in all its fullness.
And embrace it with our joined compassion.
May we be filled with the vision of peace.

Recognizing our weakness
We call on the Spirit of Mercy to guide us now.
Nothing is stronger. The spirit will prevail.

Amen.

From an Op-Ed in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Their names will not appear on any war memorial of those killed in the Iraq war. But their lives were cut short by the horrors of war just as though they had been targeted by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

One summer night, the two Iraq war veterans drank too much. The buddy had a new sports car, a "welcome home" gift from his father. These two young veterans sped down a highway careening and crashing the new sports car. Both died.

Their names were not seen on any national TV news program listing those who gave the ultimate price. Their names will not appear on any war memorial of those killed in the Iraq war. But their lives were cut short by the horrors of war just as though they had been targeted by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

This is not likely an isolated case. How many returning soldiers become casualties, the number of beaten and abused military spouses, may never be completely known. The returning veterans from Vietnam who have dealt with the horrors of their war through drug and alcohol abuse took years to quantify and the numbers are likely "best guesses."

The casualties of war go far beyond the battlefields. They are in the homes and coffee shops, the support groups and the cemeteries of those cities, towns and hamlets that continue to send their youngest to serve in the nation's wars.

It is a cycle that somehow needs to be stopped. Reading the names of those we know about in this latest war will bring to my mind the unnamed thousands of veterans who came home scarred and those others who are just as much part of the war dead and wounded but who never set foot "in country."

In March 2004, 28-year-old Sgt. Camilo Mejia turned himself in to the U.S. military and filed an application for conscientious objector status. On May 21, he was sentenced to one year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. He was released from prison on Feb. 15, 2005.

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors - the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man decapitated by our machine-gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military nor been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me - they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price humanity has paid for war.

From the diary of 19-year-old Iraqi Thura Al-Windawi
First day of Shock and Awe

Dear Diary,

It's 9:02 p.m. There is shooting outside from the Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein is on TV talking about the missiles dropped on Mosul by British planes....

I hear and feel the first missiles exploding--when the earth shakes, your whole body shakes as well. What is going to happen to us? There is only fear in my house....

(Later) The B-52s came tonight, but they've now accomplished their horrible mission and it's time for bed. I've still got the sound of their engines ringing in my ears. The explosions made an incredible racket, and each time they sent out great gusts of wind that blew the curtains about. Even though it's cold outside, we've left all the windows open because we're afraid the force of the blasts might smash them and send the glass flying into our faces.

I'm in abed made up on the floor, covered with a thick blanket. I don't know if I'm shaking because of the cold or the fear. I can still feel the pressure of the bombs in my ears.

Last night was one I'll never forget I can hardly bring myself to describe it. In the middle of the night we were thrown out of our beds by some massive explosions. With the whole city in pitch-darkness, no one knew what was happening. The explosions were coming from somewhere nearby.... Some of the missiles flew over our house and we could see the huge flashes light up the sky when each one hit, followed by the deafening sound of the explosions and a
great gust of wind.

The bombardment is really freaking us out. The sound is so
loud you know the explosions are Very near.... We are all
staring at each other. Dad doesn't know what to do and
neither does Mum.

Closing:

Three years ago, I was a freshman here at Carroll when the war began. Before the war we were doing many of the same things we are doing now. We marched in Cleveland, in Washington, we wrote letters, held vigils, and we watched millions of people around the world speak out against the war. I must admit, at the time I honestly thought we were going to stop the war and I was not the only one. But the invasion began anyway. Were we naïve to think we could stop the war? At first I thought so. Many of us, myself included, were left feeling powerless, hopeless, and discouraged.

We are here three years after the war has started, and I know now that we were not naïve. “How do I know?” you might ask. I know that we were not naïve and the fact that we are here again, three years later shows that our cause is real. We know it is real because we are marking the very real suffering of those dead, those mourning, those tortured, and those starving.

This vigil alone won’t stop the war and that’s ok. It is our attempt to bring dignity to those whose deaths have been turned into numbers. It may be that we will be back here again next year, marking the 4th anniversary of the war in Iraq. And that’s the point. Those who start wars, those who profit from wars, and those who glorify wars can count us to keep coming back again and again and again, calling for peace. Today, tomorrow, next week, and next year, we will each work for peace in many ways, all of which add up. To show my solidarity with your work for peace in the coming year, I’ll leave you with a passage from a poem called “The Peacemaker” by Walker Knight:

“Peace not just hating war,
despising war,
sitting back and waiting for war to end.
Peace not just loving peace,
wanting peace,
sitting back and waiting for peace to come.
Peace, like war, is waged.”

Neko Case's Jockstrap and Other Musical Happenings

2006-03-13T16:30:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to Neko Case's new album, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, quite a bit lately. She brings a much bigger sound and much more ambitious production with this album, which leaves Blacklisted in the dust. What made me appreciate the album even more was hearing some tracks off the Jenny Lewis solo album Rabbit Fur Coat. To use a sports cliche, Jenny Lewis is not fit to carry Neko Case's jockstrap, if for some reason she decided to wear one. Jenny Lewis would have to really step up her game if she wants to unseat Neko Case as my country siren of choice.

I previously mentioned the hype behind the new Mogwai album Mr. Beast. Perhaps I need to give it some more listens, but right now it isn't doing anything for me. The second track, "Glasgow Megasnake" brings the post-rock, so to speak, but the rest of the album doesn't really grab me. All the tracks are under 6 minutes (?!) and a lot more piano. Which isn't to say this is not a good album, but with Young Team and Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003, I'm not sure I need any more Mogwai albums.

Then there's The Ladies, a side project of Rob Crow of Pinback and Zach Hill the drummer of Hella. Its hard to imagine Zach Hill drumming on pop songs without completely dominating the listeners attention, but it works here. My favorite lyrics are from the song "Non-Threatening": "I just want to say, I think its alright to want to kill the president/Even though I'd never do that/That doesn't mean it's wrong." After playing it on my computer, I was waiting for secret service officers to rush into my room, but so far so good.

Lastly, I have to give the thumbs up to Dave Chappelle's Block Party. It is a great concert movie, with a sick line up (Mos-Def, Talib Kwali, Erykah Badu, Kanye West, Dead Prez, and the Fugees reuniting, ridiculous). Dave Chappelle, of course, is funny, but in the more natural, off the cuff way that makes him so likable. If you are going expecting to watch 2 hours of Rick James, you will be disappointed but you deserve to be.

P.S. To the dudes in the theater who laughed really hard everytime Chappelle said the word "bitch" and at no other time - - Dave Chappelle hates you, but he rightly has taken you people for millions of dollars in dvd sales. End post-script.

Bonds, Steroids, and The Left

2006-03-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

David Peterson has an interesting post about the Barry Bonds steroid scandal. In it, he points out how some leftist were quick to stand up for Barry Bonds, with Dave Zirin going as far as to compare Bonds's detractors to David Duke, even though it seemed quite undeniable that Bonds was on the juice. I must admit, early on when Bonds was being hounded, I too was sticking up for him, though not claiming he is innocent. Here were my reasons:

1) Being guilty and a scapegoat are not mutually exclusive and I think on some level Bonds is both. If Bonds was juicing (he was), clearly he was not the only one. Bonds was certainly enjoying the most success, but that was because he was both a great hitter and a juicer. But is the player who is barely able to stay in the majors because of steroids any less of a cheater than Bonds? I do not think so, and every slugger good and bad was blowing up in size. The only just system would be to implement testing across the board, not just pick out the players who seem most likely to be juicing, as was going on at the time. In the end, going after Bonds or Giambi may have been the only way to force the MLB to move on the issue at all, but that didn't make it fair.

2) Was it racist? Comparing detractors to David Duke is going pretty far, seeing as hit detractors werer right; however, the idea that Bonds, no matter how guilty he is, was treated differently by the media is not outlandish, particularly given the institutionalized racism of sports media. Bonds is also disliked by the media because of a bellicose personality, but he was obviously being treated differently than McGwire.

3) What about accountability? Yes, Bonds made a fortune and leap-frogged many hitters in the record books, but is Bonds alone to be held accountable for this? I agree with David Peterson that "any suggestion that the players themselves, the coaches and trainers, the ownership regimes, Baseball's national executives, and, last but not least, sportswriters, didn't know about all of this, and in great detail, surely would have to count as the biggest of the Big Lies." Yet, no one was blaming Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, Phil Knight, ESPN, or anyone else making loads of money off of steroid use by players. A steroids ban that only punishes players the most is like having OSHA inspections that punish employees and not employers. Dave Zirin's latest column raises this issue of "the chain of command" (though Zirin still says Bonds is the "greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth" and takes a dangerously relativist position on performance enhancing drugs).

4) As an avid baseball fan, I didn't want to believe that they game I love was completely corrupt or that Bonds's achievements were hollow. What Bonds was doing was incredible and, let us the fans admit our complicity, fun to watch. This is, after all, entraining and I too liked the idea that I was watching the greatest hitter since Babe Ruth. A classic case of fan denial --Just like my pretending that March Madness or college football are amateur sporting events.

These might be some of the impetus for one who identifies with the left to stand up for Barry Bonds, even if the idea that Bonds was innocent is pure self-deception. A more "proper left" position would have been to admit the steroid use and critique the institutional forces that have made it a necessity to be a baseball star.

If you want some left self-critique, let's ask ourselves about the players' union. The players' union continually resisted moves to clean up the game, even though steroid testing was ultimately in the interests of the players. By cleaning up the game with a comprehensive steroids ban, the pressure on players to use steroids just to keep up would be eliminated, not to mention to more obvious health benefits. Instead, the union wanted to protect their high priced sluggers and hope that their increasing salaries would drive up the pay scale for everyone, in the process lowering their players life expectancies. The players union has been terribly irresponsible on the issue and should have their feet held to the fire as well.

One last thing about Bonds, which we should not forget. Bonds was a famous, wealthy baseball star before he used steroids. He used steroids to become the most famous, most wealthy baseball star. So we may point out how too much blame is being piled on him, but let's save our tears for someone else.

An Interuption From The Tourist

2006-03-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

I recenlty spent an afternoon traipsing around Chicago, walking to the point of exhaustion as a way to wear out my nerves before an interview. I took some pictures and, upon looking at them now, I realize they are quite possibly the most typical, tourist style photos, taken 800 times each day. That said, I have a digital camera now and I'm going to use it on this blog, damnit.

This is Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park, designed by Frank Gehry. Radiohead wanted to play there this June but got the snub from Chicago city officials. In part, it had to do with a scheduling conflict with the rehersal of the Grant Park Synphony Orchestra, but also the city is concerned about noise complaints from neighbors if they bring rock bands to the park. In the summer they have a lot of free concerts here, a good place to hang out with friends listening to music and draining wine bought at a convience store...or so I am told.

The Chicago River, which will be green in about a week...

The Hancock Building, taken from Lake Shore Park. Through some miscommunication, I used to think the Hancock Building was the Water Tower and I never understood what it had to do with water. Actually, it's just in the water tower district. "Why would a tourist take a picture of the Hancock Building and not Sears Tower?" you ask. Well, sorry Chicago, but the Sears Tower is ugly and I don't care how tall it is. That, and I just didn't make it over to the Sears Tower.

The most interesting thing I saw while I was there was a protest outside a local news channel advocating gay marriage rights. As is always the case, I didn't get the chance to take a picture, because I was too busy running past to catch the train to get to my flight on time.

The Pizza P.S.: The first pizza place I went to specialized in New York style pizza, blasphemy in Chicago, so I had to walk a couple more blocks to find the classic Chicago style pizza. In the end, New York style pizza is more my style. Its hard to buy pizza by the slice when you have to eat it with a fork. Maybe that is indicative of the we the midwesterners, a slower pace where we have time to actually sit down and eat our pizza with utensils.

P.S. on the P.S. : I stole this style of post-scripts from the communiques of Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas. I recently read Shadows of a Tender Fury, a collection of Marcos's communiques from 1994. If you ever get the chance to read any collection of his writings, I highly recommend it. My next post I think I'll talk more about Marcos and his tour current tour of Mexico.

Iraqi Blogs

2006-03-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

Obviously, I am a blogger, just as your probably are if you are reading this. Yet, it is a rare feeling to find a blog or collection of blogs that is actually opening up some very new or significant. This Aljazeera article talks about the phenomenon of Iraqi blogs and provides a list of some of the most prominent Iraqi blogs. These blogs are absolutely fascinating and tonight will not provide me enough time to get my fill. In the future, I'll try to follow these blogs and point out some of my favorites. If there are such thing as important blogs, these must fall into that category, particularly when all we get from the Western media on Iraq are commentaries from afar, reports confined to the green zone, and news services that make little attempt to understand the people they are reporting on.

This One's For New York

2006-03-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

According to Democracy Now!, a Zogby poll found that "an overwhelming majority of US troops believe the widely discredited theory that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. 90% said the Iraq war was a retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s supposed role in 9/11." The Bush Administration's connecting 9/11 and Iraq is nothing new and neither is their denial of it. It's pretty damning though that the most intensive and indocrtinating state institution, the military, is producing the citizens most likely to think Iraq and 9/11 are connected. How irresponsible is that? Support the troops? Can we try accurately informing them?

Also, check out Arundhati Roy welcoming Bush to India in a way only she can.

Talib, You a Buckeyes Fan?

2006-02-26T23:21:00.000-05:00

Consider this a continuation of my post about Mos Def's Denali commerical. Talib Kweli's pretty tight, but I noticed the other day Talib Kweli is doing raps for Big Ten college basketball commericals. That's interesting, because I remember his track "Drugs, Basketball, and Raps." The chorus goes "gettin' caught in the trap for the cash/its the drugs, basketball, or the raps/there's more to us than that." Well, this commerical has got two of three.

Now, on a certain level I realize I have no business trying to speak about Talib Kweli and why he's doing this commercial. The irony is worth mentioning though, as well as the disappointment for those who might have tried to take too seriously the politics of early Rawkus Records albums.

Small World or Big Scene?

2006-02-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

That anomaly Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the indie band that is actually independent of any record companies, spent a long time with out a label or even a name (well, now they sort of have a label, Wichita Recordings is releasing their album in Europe). What they do have is a review in The Jakarta Post which, while being the largest English newspaper in Indonesia, posts reviews of American music every couple weeks at best from what I can tell.

Being featured on All Things Considered is probably a bigger deal, but getting buzz in Southeast Asia proves something about scope and it makes me curious where such a review fits into the context of Jakarta. A decent number of people speak English in Indonesia, not just ex-pat Americans, so who would care about this band? And if newspapers are a way of unifying a nation and normalizing culture, what kind of cultural consequences are there if people in Indonesia and Brooklyn are reading about the same unsigned indie rock band? Should we be shouting "cultural imperialism!" or enjoy the cultural exchange (I suppose its only exchange if Williamsburg kids start reading about Indonesian pop music)?

And before everybody starts claiming that Pitchfork is to credit for this, can I just say that if it wasn't Pitchfork it would be some other website. I think its a misconception that Pitchfork "makes" anything or anyone. Which isn't to say I don't check it more often than I should.

The Coming Apocalypse.....

2006-02-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up to more than a post-debauchary hangover, I woke up to the apocalypse. It began by reading how to prepare for the coming bird flu pandemic, which "experts fear will mutate into a highly pathogenic form that kills hundreds of millions of people in a matter of weeks or months." These are experts fearing this, not the overly religious or neurotic. One expert is quoted as saying "We talk about how people should bury their dead in their backyards, how far from the septic systems. In case you're wondering, it's $20 apiece for high-quality body bags." Then I read that the earth is on pace to be warmer than it has been in half a million years, and another expert says, "You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded."

The absurdity of the situation is that there are billions of people on Earth, but for the most part all we can do is sit around and hope that the institutions that run the world decide to act responsibly and try not to end the world too soon. Which makes me glad I am too young to have lived through the Cold War. The existential dread would be too much.

The Return of Winona Ryder

2006-02-19T15:19:00.000-05:00

I see Winona Ryder news as bookending my college career. As a freshman, I indulged in watching the E! Channel, looking for coverage of Winona's shoplifting incident and subsequent trial. As my college career comes to a close, Winona's making a return after a relatively quiet 4 years outside of narrating The Day My God Died (and some movie called Mr. Deeds, though I believe that is only a nasty rumor). You can watch the trailer to her new movie A Scanner Darkly here. Not sure how well I'll be able to tolerate a movie staring Keanu Reeves, but I think its got some potential. What I am sure about is how hot the feature Another Magazine did on Winona Ryder this month. She's got a couple other films on the way, so let the love affair continue.

New Whiskey & Co.

2006-02-16T01:05:00.000-05:00

Whisky & Co. sing country songs about living in a small town, doing drugs, and drinking yourself to death, and they rule. You can listen to a new Whiskey & Co. song "Nightlife" here. Can it be? A song about cleaning up their lives? I don't know if the Whiskey & Co. song title "Long Cut Strait", which you can listen to here, is actually new, but it isn't on their self-titled debut so it is new to me. Either way, the chorus "a sober man's secret is a drunk man's speech" is both a bit of wisdom and predictable in the absolutely best way possible. Their new album "Leaving the Nightlife" coming out on No Idea Records has been continuously pushed back, but is currently projected for March. Their first album is a small obsession for me and I'm really looking forward to the new one, though I'm not sure I want them to write songs about recovering instead of embracing alcoholism.

Corporate America Looks For Profit Margins, Finds Them In Workers' Pockets

2006-02-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

This following quote, taken from an article called The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States by Eileen Applebaum and Rosemary Batt, provides an interesting refutation to the claim that unions hurt productivity and American competitiveness:

The weakness of US trade unions means that US firms are not constrained, as are those in Germany or Sweden, to seek out high-productivity solutions to problems of competitiveness; in the United States, low-wage, low-productivity alternatives remain available.

Basically, capital can find different ways to extract profit, but cutting wages and degrading workers is not productive in any real sense. You think this is what President Bush meant when he kept referring to the competitiveness of the American economy in his State of the Union speech? More likely he meant, rather than become more productive, we can just take the difference out of wages, health care, and pension.

Hackett and Brown

2006-02-10T16:31:00.000-05:00

The Plain Dealer is reporting that Paul Hackett, running in the Democratic primary against Sherrod Brown, has only been a registered Democrat for 2 years and voted in 2 Republican primaries in the 1990s. Perhaps there is an explanation for this, but it seems to be just one more reason to think that any progressives supporting Hackett are really fooling themselves.

Yes, he's a veteran, now get over it. There are lots of vets of every politcal stripe, it doesn't mean you have to vote for every one that comes along. It reminds me of so-called progressives like Michael Moore who supported Gen. Wesley Clark, another former Republican or when democratic strategists made John Kerry's veteran status a major part of his campaign. Those both worked out pretty well.

Mark Cuban's Blog

2006-02-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

I found Mark Cuban's blog today. That's right, I found it, just like Columbus did North America. It is not a particularly good blog. It is a mix of talk about nba, investing, and some television production company Cuban owns. Noteworthy is his latest post, where he continues a media feud with Lakers coach Phil Jackson. To me, he comes off like an 8th grader who posted to his live journal after getting stuffed in a locker at school. I'm sure 9 time NBA champion coach Phil Jackson is checking the Cuban blog daily.

Is Cuban bad for basketball? No, he's inconsequential. He is a walking media stunt, a childish eccentric and, perhaps, an embarrassment to his family, but he is not hurting (or even influencing) the game in anyway. In fact, some people love this shit. Media outlets spent two weeks talking about Joey Porter using Jeremy Stevens as his straw man, so there must be a market for the nonsense. And until Cuban sends a midget out to shoot freethrows, he's certainly not the most disgraceful owner to date. Thankfully though, Bill Veeck never had a blog.

Doodles of the Bourgeoisie

2006-02-02T14:07:00.000-05:00

The New Yorker has a cartoon caption contest that you can take part in on-line. Much better are the send-ups of this contest by ModernArthur.com here or McSweeny's here or Radost.net here. I point these out just to say, here's to hoping I never start finding New Yorker cartoons funny.

Pretty Ain't Enough To Get You Fair Calls

2006-01-26T00:11:00.000-05:00

Maria Sharapova lost to Justine Henin-Hardienne Wednesday night in the semi-finals of the Australian Open. In the third set, Sharapova got hosed on two calls, one a winning shot on a break point called out and another when her serve was broken after a winner to hold serve was called out. It took the television viewing audience less than one minute after either of the calls to know that they were confirmed incorrect by the electronic judging system used by ESPN. Yet, there are still those, including no. 1 women's player Lindsey Davenport, who are against instant replay. The arguments against it seem to be expenses, tradition, inaccuracy, and breaking the flow of the match. But when you are talking the most important points in the most important tournaments, these seem like minor trade offs. Expense seems unlikely, seeing as television broadcasts are already using them in major tournaments, tradition means holding onto a tradition of errors, and inaccuracy is matter to putting work into the system. I understand not wanting to break the flow of a match, but not every call need be under review, simply give each player the option of reviewing a couple key calls, making sure you get the match changing calls right and also adding an interesting extra bit of strategy. There are various ways that it could be implemented and I'm not proposing any one specific plan. So let the debate begin, but something needs to be done, and not just because one very beautiful player lost a match.

The Transit Workers

2006-01-23T16:13:00.000-05:00

Remember the NYC transit strike? Well, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 has voted by 7 votes to reject the deal struck between their union president and the MTA. I am not qualified to comment on the internal politics of TWU Local 100. I will say this....Democracy, in a sense, is inherently unpredictable and the fact that there has been lively debate and well organized dissent within the union would seem an encouraging sign of union democracy. And, as Working Life points out, it shows rank-and-file members feeling empowered to make further demands to protect their health benefits, especially interesting since the national union thought Toussaint was pushing it with the first strike.

Now, to see how it plays out.....

The Non-Ideological Classroom

2006-01-21T17:20:00.000-05:00

A UCLA alumni group called the "Bruin Alumni Association" has started a campaign of monitoring and attempting to intimidate "radical" professors at uclaprofs.com. Maybe their most interesting step thus far is offering students 100 dollars to record their professors' "non-pertinant ideologocial comments."

You can also see profiles of UCLA's top "radical" professors, which consists of ad hominem attacks and an inventory of any support the professors have for vaguely progressive/left causes. For example, the first professor on the list Richard Abel is guilty of such crimes as "signing petitions as often as once a month" and supporting community organizing groups whose goals are "living wages, affirmative action, worker retention, and affordable housing." Radical indeed.

Or check out their article on "student radicals, most with a personal stake in a system of racial preferences" also known as the "race lobby", protesting the end of affirmative action programs. I wonder what exactly they mean by a those with a "stake in a system of racial preferences." Our fascist dictionary suggests they mean any person of color.

The push for a "non-ideological classroom" has been a concept that the right has used around academia quite a bit recently, where "non-ideological" means reinforcing the status quo, current power structures and the canon of old white men. Not only is a non-ideological position a chimera, but would a non-ideological classroom even be disirable? Should professors teach totalitarianism and democracy with equal weight, just to be fair and balanced? Or is that how positivist science works, giving all positions equal weight? Of course not.

It's hard to say how much this group actually matters or how much it is an attention grabbing project of one Alumni, Andrew Jones, but we can certainly file it under McCarthyism.

"Next time you wanna be a hero try saving somethin other than hip-hop" - Aesop Rock

2006-01-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

There are too many meta-rap songs about what hip-hop needs and how it can be fixed and some times you can't blame them. Even worse than preachy, boring hip-hop though, would be preachy, boring hip-hop that never lives up to its image. Consider Mos Def. In the 90's, Mos Def fashioned himself as some sort of socially conscious rapper of importance and Rawkus Records was going to save hip-hop. Now Rawkus Records is owned by MCA and I can't watch the Cavs game without repeatedly hearing Mos Def trying to sell me a GMC Denali. Sorry Def, I don't seem to have the cash for that one. Or, as El-P said, "Sign to Rawkus/I'd rather be mouth fucked by Nazi's unconscious"

PS: Not that Mos Def is the only guilty one . In that same Cavs game I heard Atmosphere trying to sell me And 1 shoes.

MLK Day

2006-01-17T14:14:00.000-05:00

Happy Martin Luther King Day, though this post comes a day late thanks to some technical difficulties. If you listen to yesterday's edition of Democracy Now! you can hear a large portion of King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church in 1967. Then, Time magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," a part of King's legacy that not so surprisingly didn't make it into President Bush's outstandingly trite speech honoring King. Bush's speech, like so many other attempts to appropriate and co-opt Kings legacy on all sides of the specturm, should be taken with a grain of salt. What makes Democracy Now!'s tribute so effective was its presenting of King in his own words.

New Built to Spill

2006-01-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

You can hear a new Built to Spill song here, at their new MySpace page. The new album You In Reverse is out April 11th. Tight!

Should Sheets and Habitat for Humanity Merge?

2006-01-13T00:36:00.000-05:00

I just want to clear up a name mix-up that keeps complicating my convenient store outings to buy lighters and processed pastries. Circle K is a convenient store serving 4,100 locations worldwide and is "one of the most widely recognized convenience store brands, known worldwide for quality products and great customer service." There is probably one in your current or former hometown and is a great place to run into old friends. Circle K International is the campus service and do-gooder organization sponsored by Kawinis. They seem to share the name amiably though independently. The service organization pre-dates the El-Paso's great world-wide bodega by a couple years, but both embody the ideals of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest generation": service, fellowship, big-gulps, and lottery tickets.

Barbara Ehrenreich's Blog and the Sago Mine

2006-01-10T13:19:00.000-05:00

You can read Barbara Ehrenreich's blog here. She is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America and her latest book, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream (yes, she loves parentheses).

Her latest post, about the Sago mining disaster, is titled "The Canaries in the Mine" and points out the 200 safety violations at the mine in 2005, costing a grand total of $24,000 in fines. As this NYTimes article points out, it is cheaper for companies to pay fines than follow safety regulations. With the recent mining accident and the (old) news that Bush Administration is weakening OSHA (aka, making it "business friendly"), the Canary in the Mine seems an appropriate symbol. Sherrod Brown explains the symbol in many of his speech's this way:

Every day when I go to work, I wear on my lapel- not the congressional symbol that most of my colleagues wear- but this small pin which depicts a canary in a cage. One hundred years ago American coal miners took a canary down into the mine with them. If the canary died, it meant the air in the mine was toxic, and the miners knew they had to get out- fast. In those days, there were no mine safety laws and no trade unions. Miners had to look out for themselves. America has come a long way since those days. But it has been a battle- a 100-year battle for social and economic justice.

That progress is true, but here are some reasons to think we have a ways to go:

The average Appalachian mine is less than five feet high, with some less than three feet. Some miners take straws with their lunches because there is not enough space to tilt a soft-drink can over their heads.
almost every other piece of safety equipment are nearly identical to those used more than 20 years ago.
Some mines still extract coal with explosives, a technique that has changed little in 100 years.
Since 2000, 84 mines have not paid any citation levied against them that exceeded $10,000
Black lung disease still stalks the coal fields even though the technology to prevent it has been available for nearly 100 years, and federal rules that would eliminate it have been in place for more than 35 years. The toll from black lung has plunged to around 1,000 deaths annually now.
The Sago Mine had 202 safety violations last year, a number that included 16 blatant violations that were considered immediate hazards to miners' safety. (From NYTimes)

Coffee Mark-ups and My Condition

2006-01-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

This Slate article (by way of Brewed Fresh Daily) shows why we who spend much of our time in coffee shops have very little excuse to complain about the ridiculous mark-up on our coffee.

In fact, if you are like me, addiction and all you are still not a desirable patron:

Discarding food as a self-canceling expense at best, the coffee needed to account for all of our profit. We needed to sell roughly $500 of it a day. This kind of money is only achievable through solid foot traffic, but, of course, our cafe was too cozy and charming to pop in for a cup to go. The average coffee-to-stay customer nursed his mocha (i.e., his $5 ticket) for upward of 30 minutes. Don't get me started on people with laptops.

Sorry honorable cafe owner, but try a 2 dollar black coffee and a couple hours of taking up a whole table. Any chance you can make that fair trade, while you're at it?

Let the Hype Begin

2006-01-05T11:45:00.000-05:00

I realize it was just 12 hours ago that Texas won the national championship. However, let me say that, with Vince Young probably coming back and Troy Smith drawing comparisons to Young, I am already looking forward to the Ohio State at Texas match-up on Sept. 9th. Go Bucs!

"America's Heartland" Brought To You By The Monsanto Corporation

2006-01-04T12:31:00.000-05:00

The other night, I was watching a segment on PBS's America's Heartland about a farming family in Montana that started their own business selling soap made from goat's milk. It was a story about American farmers sans government subsidies or corporate consolidation, a rare example indeed.

While we wish all the best for this family in Montana, don't get your hopes that America's Heartland is proof of a new kind of American agriculture. Turns out, one of the largest sponsors of America's Heartland is the Monsanto Company! That would be the same Monsanto that is a driving force in genetically modified foods, monopolization of seeds, consolidation of the farming market, maker of Agent Orange, chronic polluter, etc. They even want to patent that pig!

So what does it mean when we have Monsanto bringing us "public" programs about small, organic famerers or Wal-Mart underwriting NPR programs?

Rudolf Meidner and the Wage Earner Funds

2006-01-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Counter Punch posted a write up of the life of recently deceased Rudolf Meidner by Robin Blackburn. Meidner was a big thinker in the construction of the Swedish welfare state, though his plans were more radical than what eventually came to pass. In the article, Blackburn describes Meidner plan for "wage earner funds" below:

Rudolf Meidner's share levy, unlike so many modern taxes, was extraordinarily difficult to evade. On the other hand it was not at all punitive. Unlike traditional corporate taxation, it did not subtract from the cash-flow or resources which the enterprise needed for investment. It diluted shareholder wealth without weakening the corporation as a productive concern. According to the original plan every company with more than fifty employees was obliged to issue new shares every year equivalent to 20 per cent of its profits. The newly issued shares -- which could not be sold -- were to be given to the network of 'wage earner funds', representing workplaces and local authorities. The latter would hold the shares, and reinvest the income they yielded from dividends, in order to finance future social expenditure. As the wage earner funds grew they would be able to play an increasing part in directing policy in the corporations which they owned.

The "wage earner fund" as Meidner saw it was severly weakened by the time it came to pass, with the public holding a very small percentage of stocks and lacking the usual shareholder rights (the Swedish elites were no fools). The plan is an interesting proposal in economic democracy that offers both redistributive elements (raising funds for social expenditures) and non-distributive elements (community input into the functioning of industry) without the centralization that many Socialists normally advocate.

Though nothing new, it is these kinds of innovative plans that "the left" needs to be persuing and experimenting with to try to break the stagnation of the wage/price sprial , where wage demands alone are no longer a force for redistriubtion.

New Links: Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and The Grapevine

2006-01-01T19:57:00.000-05:00

Allow me to recommend two relatively new Cleveland blogs. The first is the Cleveland Homeless blog, run by the Northeast Ohio Coalition For the Homeless. The other is the Homeless Gravine blog, which is sponsored by the Homeless Grapevine Newspaper, a program of NEOCH. Both blogs offer a perspective of Cleveland you won't find in your Plain Dealer.

The Northeast Ohio Coalition For the Homeless has their annual Homeless Stand Down coming up this February. Also, if you spend a little time downtown, you will come across a Grapevine street vendor. It's legit, so give 'em a buck, take the interesting reading, and know that your donation is both helping that particular vendor and the paper itself.

Druken Hopes For New Years Make-Outs Are Extended

2005-12-30T12:18:00.000-05:00

Looking for that random, drunk make-out this New Year's Eve? Thanks to the Leap Second you will have an extra moment to go begging around the party for that special/random someone. Better yet, if you have some game, you may be able to use the extra second to cop a feel. Let's be honest though, we may be using that extra second to take a shot by ourselves. Either way, good luck and use your second wisely.

Album Countdown 2005

2005-12-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

If you listened to The Un-Clear Channel last monday on WJCU, you heard the following albums of year countdown. This list was compiled using the most up-to-date technologies of pretension available (a mix of what I liked and what I played most) and, while ordering the merits of pop albums is arbitrary, what's a radioshow countdown without an order? It took me exactly 5 minutes after the show to think of ways in which I should have re-ordered them. Here it is anyway, feel free to post your own or argue mine, chances are I'll end up agreeing with you.

1. Sufjan Stevens Come On Feel the Illinois
2. Sleater Kinney The Woods
3. Pelican The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
4. The New Pornographers Twin Cinema
5. Mountian Goats The Sunset Tree
6. Wolf Parade Apologies To The Queen Mary
7. Sigur Ros Takk
8. Low Great Destroyer
9. Iron and Wine The Women King EP
10. Tiger Bear Wolf S/T
11. Sage Francis A Healthy Distrust
12. Mastodon Leviathan
13. Wilco Kicking Television Live in Chicago
14. White Stripes Get Behind Me Satan
15. We Versus The Shark Ruin Everything!
16. Decemberists Picaresque
17. Out Hud Let Us Never Speak of It Again
18. Ladytron The Witching Hour
19. Beck Guero
20. Silver Jews Tanglewood Numbers
21. Evens S/T
22. Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, Its Morning
23. Kind of Like Spitting In The Red
24. Broken Social Scene S/T
25. Kill the Hippies Erectospective

Adam Nadel's Iraq Photos

2005-12-26T21:33:00.000-05:00

I found this photo essay by Adam Nadel at NYTimes.com to be really powerful. It is different from other American media in that it is humanizing the Iraqi people instead of using them for political ends.

No One's Favorite Website Is Perfect Part II: My Mistake

2005-12-22T14:12:00.000-05:00

This post is to clear a factual mistake in a post on November 11th, about the Grenada comic book. The site the posted the comic, www.ep.tc, had in its notes around the comic a claim that A.C. Langdon, the sponsor of the comic, was a fictional character invented by the CIA. As you can read in the comments of that post, a reader has offered evidence of Langdon's existence. The person in charge of www.ep.tc has been contacted and asked if they could offer some insight into the issue and if more information comes in, it too will be posted.

This whole incident calls into question the exact orgins of the comic, which needs to be investigated further. I think the comic is still a fascinating case, though taken with a grain of salt.

A Much Needed Critique of Charity

2005-12-15T17:37:00.000-05:00

It is not often you see a mainstream critique of charity, so it was quite refreshing to see Paul Theroux's op-ed in the NYTimes about the disempowering nature of charity, the parternalism of Western aid, the political grandstanding of the white saviors of Africa, and the complete ignoring of structural problems in Africa. He rightly points out that money and volunteer efforts are doing Africans a disservice unless they acknowledges African agency in their own lives and are tied to empowerment and sustainability, not charity.

Critiquing charity is not easy and often not a popular position, and one might have to accept that any project will have certain contradictions once its put into action, but these contradictions should not be swept under the rug. So the next time we see beautiful, famous, or important Americans talking about Africa, we might ask why we never get to hear Africans speak of their own condition or why they are only portrayed as objects of complete helplessness.

[Update: Dec 18th]: You can read Roldo's column Are Charities Solutions or Evasions, where he points out the regressive nature of corporate charity, as well as offering some concise wisdom like "Wealth demands charity. Otherwise, people might get the idea that heavier taxes on the rich might be the answer to solving problems" and "Wealth interests use the concept of charity to avoid government action, especially if it is based on progressive taxation. They would then pay the largest share of the burden."

Slug on Sunny Day Real Estate

2005-12-11T17:10:00.000-05:00

Slug, the mc of Atmosphere and sideproject Felt, had this to say about the Sunny Day Real Estate album Diary in the December issue of Spin magazine:

Diary was the first nonrap record that made me want to be a storyteller, which is strange, because the lyrics are really obtuse. Prior to that, I did not give a two shits about white people and their guitar music, so I will give Jeremy Enigk a huge hug if I ever meet him.

Video of Mercenaries....I Mean Contractors

2005-12-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

You can go here to watch video, supposedly of London based security contractors working for Aegis Specialist Risk Management firing on Iraqi civilians, with commentary from Washington Post reporter Jonathan Finer. The video is posted annoymously and is impossible to verify, but it is a phenomenon not uncommon to Iraqi civilians.

Regardless of the varafiability of the video, it is worth noting that:

there are over 25,000 private security contractors in Iraq
private contractors are immune to local prosecution
Aegis company rules "allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances."
Aegis was previously called Sandline International until it broke the rules of an arms embargo in Sierra Leone.

Borat Responds to Kazakhstan Government

2005-12-06T00:46:00.000-05:00

Through Bedazzled.tv you can find Sacha Baron Cohen's character Borat responding to the Kazakh Foreign Minister's denouncing of his character as derogatory. Cultural insensitivity? I would point out that in the skits I'm familiar with, Borat's character often exposes the cultural insensitivities of the people around him; at the same time, Cohen is getting cheap laughs from American ignorance. Its an interesting contradiction, which ultimately is left up to the audience and why they find Borat funny.

To develop a previous theme, as of last year the US was negotiating to build a base on Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea coast, is already training Kazakh military, and has permission be build a airfield in the former capital. Coincidentally, Chevron and their chief advisor on the issue at the time, Condoleezza Rice, worked out a 40 year deal to build an oil pipeline through Kazakhstan, a deal negotiated by Dick Cheney and James A Baker III.

No One's Favorite Website Is Perfect: Wikipedia

2005-12-03T01:24:00.000-05:00

I like Wikipedia, and there is a part of me that wants to believe in it as some sort of free flowing, truly democratic source of information. I do not know the details of wikipedia's quality control, but it definitely is not perfect. Earlier today, I was about to complain that wikipedia listed Antioch Arrow as "math rock" (come on, Gravity Records is punk rock, period). This issue, no doubt trivial, is even more trivial than usual compared to John Seigenthaler, who was wrongly accused on Wikipedia of directly participating in Robert Kennedy's assasination, even though he was high up in RFK's administration and a pallbearer at his funeral. I still like Wikipedia, but clearly it is not the utopian, anarchists encylopedia that all of us on the bandwagon want to believe it is.

[Update, Dec. 11th] Perpetrator found, anti-climatic NYTimes article here.

Don't Fug With Miranda July

2005-12-02T02:47:00.000-05:00

Perhaps you (like Lindsey) read Go Fug Yourself, a blog that has gotten a ton of attention for making fun of celebrity outfits. They definitely having something going, but they have stepped over the line when they fug with Miranda July. In a way, it speaks to how much of a celebrity Miranda July has become, but I've got to stand up for her. I don't even think she looks bad in this picture. Perhaps they might take exception to the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and leather pants she wore to the IFC release party, but I think that is a case of someone keeping it too real for Go Fug Yourself.

Thankful For Empire

2005-11-27T14:32:00.000-05:00

"Our nation is the greatest force for good in history." - George W. Bush Aug 31st, 2002

Thus begins Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, a perfect articulation of what we already know, that the United States is an empire. Johnson's book does not just detail the long list of imperial interventions since the Philippines, he describes the expansion of executive military power in our government and the complete erosion of civilian control of the military. Whether it is the secret "black budgets", clandestine prisons, outsourcing of military duties to corporations, or the domination of the Dept of Defense in setting foreign policy, Johnson suggests that Congress is on its way to being as powerless as the Roman Senate post-Republic (does the Iraq War vote come to mind?)

One of the most interesting institutions described by Johnson is the regional Commanders in Chief (CINCs). These are semiautonomous generals and admirals who have split up the world like a Risk board, one taking the Middle East (CENTCOM), the Pacific (PACOM), Europe (EUCOM), and Latin America (SOUTHCOM). They are not only in charge of intelligence, arms sales, special ops, nuclear forces, and training foreign soldiers for internal security (i.e. state terrorism), these generals essentially set US militarist foreign policy in their regions. These CINCs are so autonomous they answer to no one but the president and the secretary of defense. They do not even have to inform the President's Chief of Staffs, let alone any sort of civilian or semi-transparent official. These men (well, I’m assuming their all men) are arguably some of the most power people in their given region and the ultimate administrators of US Empire.

To understand US Empire, all it takes is a simple thought experiment: Imagine a nation, any nation, with a military base in your hometown. This military base has facilities more richly funded than any institution for Americans, filled with 20 something men who neither know nor care to know about America, its culture, language, or history. Surrounding the base are poor American women and girls selling themselves to these foreign soldiers, who by the way are immune to all American laws, while the former neighborhood around the base is full of bars serving the foreign soldiers.

To an American, this is an unthinkable scenario. The Department of Defense acknowledges 725 bases on foreign soil, using a fairly narrow definition of military base. If that is not that perfect "fuck you" to the rest of the world, perhaps the 234 military golf courses we operate around the world will do that trick.

What is it Democracy Looks Like? School of the Americas Protest - Sunday Nov. 20th

2005-11-22T23:27:00.000-05:00

Here are some photos from the School of the Americas protest at Ft. Benning, GA, the first being mine and the other from soaw.org. More pictures, thoughts, and reflections on the demonstration coming. Until then, you can read coverage by SOA Watch, AP, or NYTimes.

Reform Ohio Now and the Columbus Dispatch: What Happened?

2005-11-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

Though I am not a conspiracy theorist, I must pass along something pretty bizarre about the Reform Ohio Now election results.

On November 6th, the Columbus Dispatch published its last poll results before the election. Here is their poll results compared to the election results:

ISSUE 1 ($2 Billion State Bond initiative)
PRE-POLLING: 53% Yes, 27% No, 20% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 54% Yes, 45% No

ISSUE 2 (Allow easier absentee balloting)
PRE-POLLING: 59% Yes, 33% No, 9% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 36% Yes, 63% No

ISSUE 3 (Revise campaign contribution limits)
PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

ISSUE 4 (Ind. Comm. to draw Congressional Districts)
PRE-POLLING: 31% Yes, 45% No, 25% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 30% Yes, 69% No

ISSUE 5 (Ind. Board instead of Sec. of State to oversee elections)
PRE-POLLING: 41% Yes, 43% No, 16% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 29% Yes, 70% No
This is with a +/- 2.5% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval.

The Dispatch polls are anomalistically off on Issues 2-5. Some will point out that almost half of Ohio counties were using electronic voting for the first time. Maybe someone over at the Columbus Dispatch has some explaining to do, but the Dispatch polls are traditionally the most accurate in the state and a newspaper that supported President Bush in 2004 is not easily accused of a liberal skew in their polls. I do not know what to make of it. What is for sure is that the Columbus Dispatch polls were wildly inaccurate just days before the election.

Perhaps we should have a ballot initiative calling for independent oversight and investigation into our elections. Oh wait......

No, Literally

2005-11-15T00:14:00.000-05:00

I heard a man with a PhD say this twice in the same lecture:

The Japanese love manga, they literally devour them.

Yet, during question and answer, nobody asked this man to elaborate on the details Japanese people eating comic books. Are they printed on edible paper? Do you eat them with meals? What do they taste like? What are the nutritional effects of "literally devouring" a graphic novel? Do parents let their children eat gaphic novels with sexually explicit content? Does eating them rule out recycling the paper? Unfortuantely, all these questions were left unanswered.

By the way, David Cross does a great bit about the word "literally" on one of his Sub Pop releases. You must hear it.

Mogwai Tempts the Wrath of Indie Snobs Everywhere

2005-11-14T14:38:00.000-05:00

Check out this quote from Mogwai's manager, Alan McGee, in regards to their new album, Mr. Beast:

"Probably the greatest art rock record that I've been involved in since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. It's possibly better than Loveless."

Mr. Alan McGee, I warn you, do not taunt the gods. Then again, this quote had its intended effect, making me anxious for the new Mogwai record.

.........Really Bad Cleveland Accent

2005-11-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

Being someone who has spent time away from the Cleveland area to live in New York, I can definitely appreciate this blog: Really Bad Cleveland Accent. It also brings out a typical contradiction of mine, where I say in the same breathe that its too bad young people don't stick around Cleveland and then tell you my potential plans for leaving.

Christine Borne posts about Stephen Colbert and Cleveland, which I quote below:

Stephen Colbert interviewed Stephanie Tubbs Jones last night on the Colbert Report and posed the question: "22 astronauts have come from Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the planet?"

A Comic Not So Funny

2005-11-11T15:04:00.000-05:00

Go here and you can read a comic book titled Grenada. It is a comic book printed by the CIA and air-dropped on Grenada after the 1983 US invasion. The comic begins with an introduction from Grenadan democratic activist and political prisoner A.C. Langdon, who speaks of the struggle for democracy and the brutality of Communism. The site that has posted the comic, www.ep.tc, claims in its notes on the comic that A.C. Langdon never existed, nor did his organization VOICE; however, a reader offers evidence contrary to this point here. [Note, Dec. 22: ep.tc has been contacted and asked to provide substantiation of this claim, and as soon as we have more information, it will be posted] Some of my favorite A.C. landon quotes are "This is anarchy! Communist anarchy!" and "Thank you daddy Reagan."

Propaganda at its finest. Maybe those pesky malcontents in Iraq would settle down if we only produced the perfect comic book to explain the civilian deaths.

Sherrod Brown

2005-11-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

Northeast Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown made an appearce at the Feminist Majority Conference at Case Western Reserve this weekend. You will rarely hear me talk up elected officials on this blog, but Sherrod Brown has a strong record of supporting progressive and working class issues, as strong a record as anyone (including progressive poster-boy Dennis Kucinich).

Brown, who by the way is going to make a Senate run next year, found time in his schedule to talk to 20 or so college students about globalization, trade agreements, and their effects domestically and abroad. I got to ask him about the 15 Democrats who voted for CAFTA and he told, without naming names, about how these Democrats were paid off in the form of money for highway projects and he expected them to face strong primaries for their selling out working people.

This was a conference sponsored by the Feminist Majority, and when a young woman asked him a question about Congress and the unacknowledged domestic work of women, his wife, pulitzer-prize winning columnist Connie Schultz, laughed knowingly before Brown had do admit that such issues were far from the current Congress's agenda.

I don't know what his chances are to win a Senate seat, the fact that a guy like Sherrod Brown can even exist in electoral politics these days makes me unjustifiably optimistic.

Election Day - Take Part in the Ritual

2005-11-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

This was in an e-mail I got from the League of Pissed Off Voters. They don't mention it, but vote yes on issue one as well:

Tuesday.

You.

Me.

A cozy little voting booth with the curtains closed.

A yes, another yes, and another, and oh YES!

VOTE YES TUESDAY NOV. 8TH ON STATEWIDE BALLOT ISSUES 2, 3, 4, and 5!
Issue 2: allows everyone to vote early by mail, like the system they have in Oregon. No more long lines in the rain. If we pass issue 2, we'll have a voting party at my place next October – BYOB (bring your own ballot). YES on ISSUE 2.
Issue 3: takes big money out of politics – brings campaign contribution limits back down to $2,000, and bans corporate contributions altogether. That's hot. YES on ISSUE 3.
Issue 4: do you live in a gerrymandered district? I do, so a right-winger who doesn't represent my views or the views of my neighbors is speaking for us in Washington. Gerrymandering means the party in power gets to draw the district lines in a way that guarantees their own re-election. Issue 4 creates a bipartisan commission to draw the lines, with input from citizens. Issue 4 means no more gerrymandering. May the BEST candidate win. YES on ISSUE 4.
Issue 5: In 2004, Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell was in charge of the Ohio election and co-chaired the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign – at the same time. Yeah, we saw what happened with that. Issue 5 creates an independent board of directors to oversee the elections, so it's no longer in the hands of a partisan politician who takes sides in elections. Take cheating out of the game, and OUR PEOPLE WIN. YES on ISSUE 5.

Kent State Protest

2005-11-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

Kent State didn't called in the National Gard, but a Kent State student is facing expulsion for a protest of Army recruitment on campus. Dave Airhart, Iraq war veteran and a member of the Kent State Anti-War Committee, climbed up a rock-climbing wall at an ROTC recruitment event and when at the top, dropped a banner saying "Kent, Ohio For Peace." He is now facing probation or expulsion by the Kent State judicial affairs. He has since gotten letters of support from the likes of Howard Zinn and Cindy Sheehan. You can sign on a petition in his support here.

Cassette Jam '05

2005-11-06T12:08:00.000-05:00

HERE

WJCU Press

2005-11-04T15:39:00.000-05:00

WJCU and Cleveland college radio get some press in Cleveland Free Times. Nice work Free Times but it is 88.7 not 88.9 FM. The article makes an interesting distinction between stations run by communicaitons departsments, which are interested in the vocational possibilities of college radio, versus student run stations that exist as an end onto themselves. They place WJCU accurately somethere in the middle of that dicothomy.

Dean Brackley, Society of Awesome

2005-11-04T00:05:00.000-05:00

If you have any interest in Catholic social justice thought, I suggest listening to Dean Brackley's keynote address at a conference called "Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education," hosted at John Carroll University. If you are short on time, just listen to his 10 minute conclusion, where he calls out Jesuit Universities for not aligning their priorities with the Jesuit mission of peace and justice.

Marx Wins!

2005-11-03T17:39:00.000-05:00

What's next? First we have Noam Chomsky voted top public intellectual. Now, a Radio 4 listeners' poll votes Karl Marx England's most revered philosopher. Since the Left can't seem to win in real politics, at least we can win the intellectual equivalent of American Idol.

Chomsky as Top Public Intellectual

2005-11-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

Prospect and Foreign Policy magazine have released a list of the Top 100 "Public Intellectuals," in which Noam Chomsky was publicly voted number 1. The irony of the list, of course, is that presenting things in list form is a fairly unintellectual format.

Emma Brockes of The Guardian interviews Chomsky as coverage of this award, whatever its worth, and the interview eventually breaks down into childish bickering. Brockes portrays Chomsky as a crochety old man, no doubt true, who spouts off about any old thing. Many of Brockes's complaints about Chomsky are simple-minded or impossible to resolve if one is a "public" intellectual. She claims that Chomksy's work is not sufficiently scholarly. This is contensious perhaps in his political writings, but he is undeniably a renowned expert of linguistics. Ultimately, this is just an imposing of an intellectual orthodoxy that should be seen as trade practices, not a key to the truth. Scholars write in this style and publish in these esoteric journals. Great, no one will read it and, thus, they will not be a public intellectual. You can't have it both ways and maybe this is why we don't have many public intellectuals. Perhaps being able to sythesize complex ideas into coherent public arguments is a skill worth noting, especially since many academics can't do it, rather than a criticism.

Brockes ends her interview in what she probably felt was a righteous challenge of this demi-god leftist. Here is the exchange, described by Brockes:

Seeing as we have entered the bad-tempered part of the interview, I figure we may as well continue and ask if he finds it ironic that, given his views on the capitalist system, he is a beneficiary of it. "Well, what capitalist system? Do you use a computer? Do you use the internet? Do you take an aeroplane? That comes from the state sector of the economy. I'm certainly a beneficiary of this state-based, quasi-market system; does that mean that I shouldn't try to make it a better society?"
OK, let's look at the non-state based, quasi-market system. Does he have a share portfolio? He looks cross. "You'd have to ask my wife about that. I'm sure she does. I don't see any reason why she shouldn't. Would it help people if I went to Montana and lived on a mountain? It's only rich, privileged westerners - who are well educated and therefore deeply irrational - in whose minds this idea could ever arise. When I visit peasants in southern Colombia, they don't ask me these questions."
I suggest that people don't like being told off about their lives by someone they consider a hypocrite. "There's no element of hypocrisy." He suddenly smiles at me, benign again, and we end it there.

That's great, but if Brockes had read any Chomsky interviews, she would know that everyone tries to ask this same question and they get his classic 2-part response: 1) It is a myth that the market economy creates technological progress because most technological fields were originally subsidized by the state 2) Simple living is not an effective model for political activism. Many people, including myself, probably could have recited it verbatim for her.

This isn't to deify Chomsky, we should be critical of his claims, and her questions about Srebrenica were good. But if you want more public intellectuals, which would be good, you need to make room for them.

Updated Nov 4: If you are further interested in this story, you can read a Chomsky's claims about the interview here. Chomsky has challengd the Guardian to produce a source where he says Srebrenica was not a massacre, as well as challenging Brockes's mis-matching of questions and answers. My take on it is that the headline is irresponsible, but if you read the article closely it is clear even by Brockes's account that Chomsky was supporting a paper's right to publish a story, not supporting the legitimacy of their claim.

K-Town!

2005-11-01T19:57:00.000-05:00

Kent Roosevelt's boys soccer team is playing Stow in the Regional Semi-finals tonight in Beloit, OH. A win tonight would put them in the final 8 of Division 1 in Ohio and a likely match up with St. Ignatius in the Regional Final.

NBA Season

2005-11-01T19:27:00.000-05:00

The NBA season starts tonight....who you got winning it all?

My prediction is almost as boring as the team that is going to win it. The Spurs will win the West and the Title. The Indiana Pacers win the East through the play of madman Ron Artest. The Cavs make the playoffs, but will not be one of the top 4 seeds in the East. The Lakers don't make the playoffs even with Phil Jackson back as coach.

Iraq War Costs and the Anti-War Movement

2005-10-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

The NYTimes reports that while the last of the money to rebuild Iraq is in sight, the needs of the Iraqi people seem endless, which brings to mind the common anti-war complaint that the war costs too much money.

No my anti-war friend and ally, you need to be more exact in your language than that. Perhaps you want to argue that money should not be spent to destroy the Iraqi nation and kill the Iraqi people. Maybe you would suggest money should be spent on doctors, medicine, and infrastructure rather than weaponry. But if you are going to pit needs at home against the needs abroad I don't think I can get on board with that.

Given the levels of American consumption and wealth, I have a hard time accepting that the living standards of both the American working class and the Iraqi people cannot be increased. Sorry America, you need to foot the bill of rebuilding Iraqi because your high standard of living relies on the destruction and exploitation of the world at large. If we can be sure of anything, it is that no amount of money spent on Iraqi infrastructure can make up for the decade of war we have waged on the Iraqi people. I would, however, raise the radical notion that an Iraqi child and an American child equally deserve food to eat or that an Iraqi woman and an American women equally deserve health care or an Iraqi city and an American city equally deserves electricity and running water. As simple and obvious as that idea my be, when American economic privilege is put on the line, even folks "against the war" don't necessarily support it.

If you want to call for a de-militarized, ethical, and truly democratic reconstruction of Iraqi, I am with you. If you want to say that the rich should be footing more of the bill for this reconstruction, I hear you. If you want to complain about costs, I can't get with you on that, the needs in Iraq are far too desperate.

Two World Series Jokes

2005-10-28T11:13:00.000-04:00

Here are two World Series jokes that I have heard. Let me know which one you like better:

1. Q: What do you call a fan who rooted for the Red Sox last year and the White Sox this year?

A: A Bi-Soxual

2. Fake Headline: White Sox beat Houston 4 Time in One Week...Bobby Brown Still Holds Record

New Link, John Ryan Blog

2005-10-27T22:45:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to point out a new blog link, this one to John Ryan's blog. John Ryan is the executive secretary of the AFL-CIO in Cleveland. This blog does not seem to be one of those overly-calculated, institutional blogs that many organizations or companies are setting up these days, so it might make for an interesting forum for local issues.

The White House vs The Onion

2005-10-26T14:19:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes reports that the White House is investigating The Onion's use of the presidential seal in their parody of George W. Bush's weekly radio address. You can chalk one more up for The Onion being the greatest and most successful 'zine project of all time and the only news source I trust.