Current Threads

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Friday, September 14, 2001

Living by the Sword

v: Since Tuesday's debacle, I've read several dozen news accounts, another dozen analyses, and another dozen personal accounts of the tragedies in New York and D.C. By more than one measure, I feel as though I may have personally dodged the bullet: Two years ago , I had a small civilian-service job at the Pentagon, for which I had to be at work each morining at 7am; by the same measure, the plane that hit the Pentagon most certainly passed over my family's home on Capitol Hill, before the errant pilots determined that the Dept. of Defense would be a more suitable target.

What to make of it all?

I think the last thing that we as a Nation should try to do is extract some sort of Biblical justice from the perpetrators. Certainly, that's exactly the kind of retaliation they - whomever they are - would like us to attempt. But the last thing we need to do, given the situation, is produce MORE martyrs. Terrorism, if not revolutions THRIVE on martyrs, as they requicken the causes and calls for retribution. Given that the weapons of choice were commercial airliners, next time it could be a commuter train, a passenger bus, an ignited filling station, an electrical works or computer virii introduced to any possible number of sensitive control systems. Indeed, the terrorists have taken the plowshares of everyday life and commerce (in the West), and hammered them into sickles. Given the openness and technological dependencies of modern Western society, the opportunity for destruction is legion. Violence only begets further violence; in a situation such as ours, it is best to seek a third way.

Amid all of the sadness, shattered lives and recrimination, though, I have yet to see a single American leader take responsibilty for what has happened, much less hear one telvision "journalist" mention that Osama bin Laden (faq) and his ilk are products of CIA insurgency in the Middle East. As a state, the U.S. has wrought violence upon the third world for the past 50 years, through policy, commercial duplicity and outright violence - it is no accident that they call us 'The Great Satan': We sell the World arms to use against enemies and subject-citizenry alike, and our only threshhold, our only discretion is that our clients pay our asking price and serve our short-term ends. While that may be a way to elect a president, it is most decidely not a way to build a sutainable foriegn policy. The chickens have come home to roost.

Some were quick to criticize Gen. Powell - that "no, it was a deliberate act of war against the United States!" - but the simple fact, taken to heart by both Russia and China - is that if it could happen here - in the vaunted U. S. of A., it could happen anywhere... Granted, the deliberate destruction of civilian lives in an undeclared war is a crime against Civilization, and we are all, most certainly at risk.

Just as well, the blanket declaration of war is an unfortunate one, since the notion of war, with all of it's bellicosity - words like "hunt" and "destroy" - play directly into the hands of the enemy. Terrorists aren't only fomentors of violence, by their very vocation, they are criminal psychologists manqué plying their trade on the body politic, less interested in therapies than dissecting the patient. They beckon the fear, uncertainty, trembling and ritual sacrifice that accompany random acts of violence. They want us to rage, to hate, to commit sordid acts of vengence becuase it will validate their cause, and simultaneously, expose our flank. In the end, an eye for an eye simply leaves everyone blind and invalid.

I do hope that we can bring this awful chapter to a close, with a minimal loss of future lives. I also hope that we can bring any of the remaining culprits to trial, such that we can begin to understand his or her intent and aver future destruction. - 09/14/01

Inappropriate Responses:
God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says
Washington Post, 9/14/01
Rep. Barr: Allow Assassinations of Terrorist Leaders
by Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com 9/14/01
Nothing like Pearl Harbor
by Michael Kramer, New York Daily News 9/11/01
Seeing Arafat Hurt by Attack on U.S.,
Sharon Cancels Plan for Peace Talks
New York Times 9/15/01
Liberal's Party (sic) - Conservatives Pick Up Tab
by Gary Aldrich 9/14/00
Time to use the nuclear option
by Thomas Woodrow, Washington Times 9/14/01
This Is War
by Ann Coulter, Natoinal Review Online 9/13/01

Worth Reading:
An Eye for An Eye?
by Tom Turnipseed
[We] Can't See Why [We]'re Hated
by Seumas Milne, The Guardian (UK) 9/13/01
Terrorists are made, not born
by Bruce Shapiro, Salon
Terrorism, Television and the Rage for Vengeance
by Norman Solomon 9/14/01
For America, A Dose of Reality
by Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe 9/12/01
Addressing the Sources of Middle Eastern Violence
Against the United States
by Steve Niva 9/14/01
'You can't bomb us back into the
Stone Age - We're already there.'
by Tamim Ansary, Salon 9/14/01
Reader Comments on Commondreams.org
See the comments by William Mandel halfway down page...
The Dark Smoke
by David Corn, The Nation 9/14/01

[ 2:52 PM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Friday, August 31, 2001

An Irony Worthy of Voltaire

George W: Garbage In, Garbage Out
by John Balzar
full text : www.commondreams.org

In American politics, there are crystalline moments. Something small happens to sum up things bigger. Jimmy Carter fights off a "killer rabbit." Jerry Ford stumbles. Michael Dukakis rides in a tank. The elder George Bush puzzles over a modern cash register. To that, we can now add: George W. Bush designates a dump in Fresno as a national historic landmark.

A single image, one deed, and all the preceding speechifying and posturing fade like afternoon clouds. The air grows quiet. Nothing more needs saying.

Carter went down as weak. Ford as a bumbler. Dukakis as a geek. The elder Bush as out of touch. And now his son can be seen for what he is: Dirty George. Yes, Bush's Interior Department quickly pulled back on landmark designation once someone noted that the oozing, gaseous California dump was a Superfund site, which had poisoned the surrounding water and forced the closure of playgrounds. But too late. No brass plaque necessary to remember this flight of lunacy.

Americans want to believe in a new president. It's the nature of democracy to hope for the rightness of our choice, even if it wasn't exactly our choice. But then there comes one of those moments.

Wait, don't blame Bush! Interior Secretary Gail Norton did it! It was a mistake! Hey, this is the oldest "sanitary landfill" in the country. It was a dump-and-cover innovation imitated around the world. It deserves recognition!

Dumbstruck silence.

The fact is, Bush has turned his administration over to people who actually think to memorialize a 145-acre heap of rotting garbage as a notable part of our heritage. And it's not just the deed, which might be a minor lapse except it occurs when Americans of both parties wonder how an administration can be so utterly tone-deaf to concerns about stewardship and a clean environment.

So, we despair. But let's also take heart. With a festering mound of trash to symbolize George W. Bush's view of America, greater scrutiny is apt to now befall the more serious outrages he envisions. For instance, how about $35 billion in subsidies the administration is pushing for its pals to perpetuate our dependence on oil, gas, coal and nuclear power? [ more ]

v: Sort of fitting that this article is followed by the final apocalyptic image from the original 'Planet of the Apes', eh? As for the Voltaire reference, I'm thinking of 'Candide' ...

[ 5:46 PM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Sunday, August 19, 2001

Planet of the Apes Redux

(see link above for some thoughtful reviews of the 1968 version of PotA)

V: No, I'm not confusing Tim Burton's 'Planet of the Apes' with Coppola's new edition of 'Apocalyse Now', though there would certainly be merit in doing so. Instead, my point is that the new version of PotA is almost entirely shorn of the elements that made it a thoughtful, timely film back in 1968. Like everything coming out of both Washington and Hollywood these days, Burton's redux is a spectacle in want of substance...

Like so many remakes of this sort, PotA in Burton's hands have undergone a profound whitewash (pun intended) - now this may in fact be a reaction against the self-consciousness of the film-and-arts disciplines of the past 15 or 20 years, and a will to forgo the political unconscious that operates in works of popular culture. But the political unconscious - whether conscious or not - is often the sustaining contribution to important works of art.

I hate to say it, hate to even think it, but there seems to be a 'unified field' thing operating in the spheres of Art, Culture and Politics these days. "Move on" seems to be the drumbeat and mantra of the moment, as, I see institutions offering up spectacles - entertainments, artworks, political leaders - that want to operate above the rules of history, as if whatever came before them was of no consequence and little relation to current circumstances...

So what does this have to do with PotA? Everything, and nothing at all...
[ more ]

[ 10:21 AM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Flintstone Futurama

by Maureen Dowd full text : www.nytimes.com

...Growing up with "The Jetsons," "Star Trek," the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the World's Fair with lunar colonies and underseas resorts, and Disney's "Tomorrowland Speedway," we imagined the 21st century as sleek and expansive, a cascade of creativity and invention in the arts, technology, science and medicine.

But the combination of the narrow Bush vision and shrinking economy is creating a climate where everything feels crimped, more about limiting expression than liberating it.

We face the jarring prospect that some of our top scientists may move to England, where they won't face the same strangling curbs on stem cell research, which is bound to go forward even without President Bush holding up his little "Stop" sign. Expatriate scientists are redolent of American artists in the 20's who flocked to sophisticated Paris, far from Prohibition and Calvin Coolidge.

We've had the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Aquarius. Now we're in the Age of Arrested Development. [ more ]

[ 8:47 AM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Thursday, August 02, 2001

From: Victor Sparrow <vhsiv@zzapp.org>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:56:15 -0400
To: <letters@nytimes.com>
Subject: 'Holland Cotter's 'Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?' (Arts, NYT - 7/29/2001)

To the Editors:

Cotter's article smacks of Dubya-ism : "Forget the controversy, move on, and we'll all be better for it. And in the meantime we'll appoint a few high-profile minorities to the Cabinet". 'Post-black' and 'post-ethnic' will only go over when the rest of the world is 'post-white'.

The article itself belies an apologetic tone -"Contemporary American art has felt the need to think about race and ethnicity intently in the past few decades..." But Holland ultimately capitulates to the marketplace, rather than ever say that the new contributions and viewpoints are valuable in themselves, as other than marketing schemes. Somehow, I think that Cotter only regards art as entertainment, unless it's got a promotional budget and museum giveaways attached to it.

Cotter himself says the following:

"What, after all, can identity politics really be expected to mean, in any
gut-level, go-for- broke sense, to an art establishment that is
overwhelmingly white and middle class? For most of its members, race and
class are a comfortable given, not a problem.

"Race and class are a problem, though, for minority artists. And
multiculturalism ended up being as much a hindrance as a help. It
made ethno-racial identity a source for gaining culture power, but
it also turned it into a trap."

Maybe multi-culturalism was a fur-trading scheme, and the non-white artists were the Indians, and the 'overwhelmingly white' artists were the prospectors?

It seems to me that several 'overwhelmingly white and middle class' careers were sprung and sustained by multiculturalism - and my sense of multiculturalism predates 1990 - commencing somewhere in the mid-80's, with the ascendance of Keith Haring, Julian Schnabel, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Ray Smith and Francesco Clemente. Even established players like Nancy Spero, Frank Stella, Brice Marden and Robert Rauschenberg had something to gain from leaving their 'known' continents to explore other (non-white) cultures. I'd say that race and class were opportunities for many 'overwhelmingly white' artists to expand their reach and fortify their careers. Unlike denial, there is a Heisenbergian principal to the art world: Whatever takes off, alters the established system and becomes itself changed.

In fact, the multiculturalism of traps, fur-trading schemes and 'overwhelmingly white and middle class' origins can be dated as far back as Eugene Delacroix and the Orientalist movement of the 19th century. At that time, neither Europe nor America were integrated enough for any non-White artists to emerge from the wilderness to attain any measure of notoriety in the Western art markets, save as archeological and anthropological curiosities. Since that time, Ingres, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Picasso, Pier One and countless others have all mined 'the other' for inspiration without accreditation.

Therein lays the flaw of 'post-ethnic' declarations - 'post-black', 'post-latino' and 'post-asian' notions only really apply if the executing artist is non-ethnic to begin with. Thusly, the contemporary art-market maintains its status quo.

-Victor Sparrow

[ 2:11 PM | permalink | add/read comments ]

What’s your problem?

Why whites think discrimination is a thing of the past.
Delusion has taken on a whole new meaning among the dominant racial majority.

by Tim Wise
full text: www.metrotimes.com

Just a few years ago, a public opinion poll indicated that only 6 percent of whites in the United States believed racism was still a “very serious” problem facing African-Americans. While larger percentages believed racism to be somewhat of a problem, only this anemic share of the white community saw it as an issue of great importance.

When you consider that twice that number — or as many as 12 percent — have told pollsters they believe Elvis Presley is still alive, it becomes apparent that delusion has taken on a whole new meaning among the dominant racial majority. Apparently, it is easier for whites to believe that a pill-popping, washed-up lounge singer faked his own death and is playing midnight gigs at some tropical resort than to believe what black folks say they experience every day.

It makes me think that if ignorance is indeed bliss, then my fellow whites must be among the happiest folks on the planet.

[BREAK]

Of course, I hardly expect the facts to matter much, as an awful lot of white folks seem impervious to them. When it comes to racial realities, the levels of ignorance are so ingrained as to be almost laughable. Perhaps that’s why 12 percent of whites actually say blacks are a majority of the nation’s population, and why most whites believe blacks are a third of the nation’s population, instead of the 13 percent they actually represent. We seem to see black people everywhere, and apparently we see them doing quite well.

Apparently, we even see them as our buddies. Some 75 percent of whites in one recent poll indicated that they had multiple close black friends. Sounds great, until you realize that 75 percent of white Americans represents about 145 million people. So 145 million say they have multiple black friends, despite the fact that there are only 35 million black people to go around. Which means one of two things: either whites are clueless about black people, friendships, or both; or black folks are mighty damned busy, running from white house to white house to white house, being our friends. In which case, we can put away all that nonsense about blacks “taking our jobs.” After all, how could blacks have time to work at all, what with all the backyard barbecues they’re attending at the houses of their white pals? Hell, maybe Elvis will even invite them all to Graceland when he makes his triumphant return to Memphis.

For the full text of this article, see: www.metrotimes.com

[ 1:52 PM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Friday, July 13, 2001

Politics is Dead, Long Live Branding:
Why George W. Bush is President

By Jock Gill
full text: www.democrats.com

Let’s talk about branding, as in the image-making machinery and its current role in our society. Is it now the case that hyper-inflated brands are now competing with religion, the arts and philosophy as a principal attempt to give meaning to our lives?

The GOP certainly understands the role of brand as a major source of meaning, importance, and substance for too many of us living in debt-driven consumer cultures. The GOP also clearly understands that branding is a major source of power, and its retention, in a market driven environment. Today they impose upon us the Bush brand. A brand whose value would collapse if the role of the public sector were restored to its proper place as a counter balance to an unchecked market, and brands were once again linked to a physical reality.

From the point of view of business and politics, I speculate that the GOP and their allies use branding very effectively to simplify politics and deflect the voters' attention away from the critical issues and problems of our time – for example: AIDS, mail order terrorism, and deterioration of the life support system we depend upon. The GOP uses their hyper inflated brand to redirect the voters’ attention to "images and myths” that bear little resemblance to the hard and inconvenient realities. That is, the GOP is very good at leveraging the disconnection modern marketing has created between the thing [reality] and its brand. The brand now floats free, untethered to any reality which might be used to confirm its content, much less it truthfulness. In fact, Klein, together with Baudrillard, would argue that the hyper-inflated brand has now become more important than the thing. Smoke and mirrors, sizzle and snake oil have trumped reality. Fantasy rules. Reality bites... [ more ]

[ 4:38 PM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

President Bush fails to fulfill promise

By Thomas Day

Daily Collegian
Pennsylvania State U.
full text: news.excite.com

(U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Follow the money and the answers to President Bush's right-of-Reagan agenda become so clear.

Now I can't say I have ever been a fan of President Bush to begin with, but the first five months of his administration have been marred by one disappointment after another from an administration that promised to bring "integrity" back to the White House. Behind his amiable personality and slick Texas charm, George W. Bush is running a disgraceful administration, putting the White House up for sale to special interests and Republican campaign donators. As the American people are slowly catching on to the president's sullied agenda, it is becoming clear that this administration will have its work cut out for itself to regain the trust of the voters.

According to a Gallup/USA Today poll released earlier this week, President Bush's approval rating has slipped 10 percent since April. His current 52 percent approval rating marks his lowest rating since being inaugurated into office. For a president who just had just won passage of his budget, the centerpiece of his campaign last fall, a 52 percent approval rating seems pretty anemic. Indeed, it has been six years since a president has received such a low approval rating.

The Gallup/USA Today poll indicates an increased awareness of not only Bush's extreme right-wing stances on issues central to the American people, but an awareness of egregious character mishaps made within the administration from the president down.

Just last month the Republican National Committee hosted a fund raiser paid for by the tax payers at the Naval Observatory, Vice President Cheney's residence. Included at the "Presidential Gala" as it was called, were lucrative campaign donors from the oil industry, the National Rifle Association and Phillip Morris. Weeks after the function, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the president suggested that it was time to settle the federal government's lawsuit against leading tobacco companies like Phillip Morris. One can't help but see a distinct cause and effect.

Of course, the Bush administration claimed the "Presidential Gala" was just a gathering of friends and was not a fundraiser. The Bush administration was lying. The function raised a record $23.9 million in soft money for the Republican National Committee.

Those who have followed the plight of the John McCain-sponsored campaign finance bill know that the president opposes the bill in part because of its provision banning the use of soft money. Soft money like the money raised by the RNC at the vice president's residence. Are we beginning to see a pattern here?

George W. Bush and his administration have misled the American people from the get-go. His negative campaign against Al Gore and the Clinton-Gore fundraising tactics deceived the voters into assuming his fundraising methods were principled. As we have seen early in the Bush presidency, the Bush-Cheney administration has no business accusing Bill Clinton and Al Gore of unscrupulous conduct in the White House. [ more ]

[ 11:51 AM | permalink | add/read comments ]

Monday, July 02, 2001

George Bush an Asshole?

On June 17, a day before Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka would be meeting US Secretary of State Collin Powell, Ms. Tanaka visited German Town High School in Philadelphia where she studied for two years when she was a high school student.

Ms. Tanaka's visit to Washington DC was agreed to by the US government after strenuous efforts by the Japanese government. The objective of her trip was to vindicate what she expressed about US foreign policies at meetings with her counterparts from other countries. She conveyed her messages of criticism about the foreign polices of the US government to them. She must have told them faithfully what she believed.

Her address immediately caused problems in the Japanese political world.

During the conversation with her old classmates at the reception in German Town High School, The Weekly Post learned that Ms. Tanaka made a remark about George Bush, "He is totally an asshole" in English.

The majority of her classmates seemed to support the Republican Party, however, they were critical about Mr. Bush's new missile defense plan. When Ms. Tanaka made this remark, the classmates in the room were reportedly excited.

There has never been a statesman in Japanese history that called a US president, 'an asshole.'

Full story: www.weeklypost.com

[ 9:13 AM | permalink | add/read comments ]