True Tales from the Underbelly

Harper's Weekly, it's just a column. "Just" a column. Check it out. Hang on to your hat.

True Tales from the Underbelly Halliburton: Your tax dollars at work!

George sez "Strip malls for everybody! If a crack develops in the integrity of another culture, American greed will be ready to fill it."

More and more every day, people are flocking to cities. The implications of this are huge. Go ahead, use your imagination: what do you think might change as this comes to pass? Among other things, short-term natural disasters like earthquakes or storms will have greater impact when they hit cities. Long-term natural disasters like droughts or El Nino may have greater impact too: both development of arable land, and the flight of rural populations to cities will leave us with a less flexible agricultural infrastructure, less able to adapt to change (like, say, long- and short-term climate change).

And that's to say nothing of this. What then?

Irony: not for children

Here's irony for ya: Mainstreaming 'creation science' is evolution at work. Or more specifically, "In the long run, the teaching of 'creation science' to children will produce evidence of evolution."*

It's not newsworthy. Stories like this (Kansas Board of Education is having a hearing about including creationism/excluding science in the curriculum...) and the story about the girl in Florida who got cold feet on the day of her wedding (and then lied about it, telling cops she had been kidnapped...) are not newsworthy. We have instantaneous access to information from all corners of the world, every second of every day, and this is what we're told is news?

Hey, major media, listen: Fuck you.

We're expected to believe that nothing newsworthy is going on anywhere else in the world? We're expected to be that self-indulgent, that self-involved, that we would be more interested in whether or not some normal girl gets prosecuted at the local or state level for ditching her finace? Is that really our business? Why are we being told that it's news?

Because the rest of the world is reporting on things like this, or this, or -god forbid- this, and your handlers don't want you to get upset. You are theirs, their prey, as long as you watch.


*Here's how: The world is watching. The appearance of poor education in America will lead to waning confidence in Americans. Simple.

Agape

Amazing ants. This goes beyond simple "tool use."

Primate language acquisition research goes to a new level. This is exciting stuff- the days of trying to teach apes to speak English are gone: these researchers are trying to find common ground with Bonobos, while providing the Bonobos with innovative challenges and stimuli. What happens when we can no longer pretend that we're the only animals with emotions, culture, and complex motivations? Our awareness of the world, our consciousness, will be irrevocably altered. You watch!

Hippos are aggressive. They've been known to eat people. This one drinks coffee with them. I've read this story over and over, and I'm still slack-jawed: she drinks coffee, and nudges people out of the water. Amazing.

Fork tongued, red handed

Hilarious: a call to Unitarian Jihad!

Condi Rice is BUSTED

Au revoir, rational politics. Frightening. Excellent essay though.

Wow! Some of FDR's radical ideas revisited. It's sick that the Neocons, having only been able to climb the American socio-political ladder because of FDRs policies, now want to dismantle them. "Burn the ladder behind you!" There's good thinkin'!

We don't need no education

Worst invention ever? 1. It fails utterly to encourage communication of ideas between humans. Rather, it encourages students -who should be asking questions- to let machines solve their problems and tell them the answers, in lieu of turning to the giants on whose shoulders they're standing (the giants are apparently napping, or out driving their SUVs to their giant therapist appointments). 2. It presumes -and forces all users to similarly presume- that there is one correct "best" way to express an idea. Sayonara, creativity! But gosh, how convenient for the teacher/professor -er, shall we say operator.

We have always been at war with Iran...

Other nominees for Worst Invention Ever include the gas-powered leaf blower, the wristwatch videocamera, and chocolate covered Cheez-its. What would you nominate?

Go, Turkmenbashi! Never a dull moment in Turkmenistan. I wonder if one has to be a citizen, to run?

Wal-Mart hates you. Encouraging companies to pay sub-standard wages, invites poverty and crime into your community. Resist! Shopping there is only saving you a few dollars a week, if that, and even then you'll have to replace that crap you bought too soon, because it's crap. Further, it's costing your city more than that to keep them here, and you'll pay that bill too, when taxes come due. Who do you think paid for that parking lot, and those traffic lights? Wal-mart: it's not worth the scar.

The goods behind the hoo-hah

The goods behind the hoo-hah about Tom Delay.

Bill Bradley speaks up after what seems a long media silence. Sen. Bradley ran a helluva race against Gore in the 2000 primaries; I say Gore won because of his proximity to Clinton, while Bradley should have won because he'd have fought harder. Maybe this suggests he'll want back in for 2008?

Animals laugh. This story blew my mind. Anyone who knows me, knows that I try not to underestimate non-human intelligence, especially in social animals, but laughter? Wow! I had never thought of it this way before.

My mind already having been blown yesterday, I then tripped across this gem. A new theory of yawning, now based on actual evidence! I've always found it curious that we have traditionally attributed yawning in humans to anoxia (lack of oxygen, from shallow breathing I guess?), while attributing it in other apes to shows of aggression or dominance. Curious, and often amusing, as I watch who yawns in the company of whom. Even more fun now!

Not pretty, but important.

Scott Ritter, no holds barred. Tough!

We've been had.

That's right: Secret plans for Iraq's oil fields were being drafted just weeks after George took office in 2001. Weeks. Long before the "new Pearl Harbor" (in the words of the PNAC) of 911. Ahem. From the brilliant Greg Palast: as usual, well written and thoroughly documented. That's right, folks: we've been had.

So, why is gas still so expensive? Primarily because oil companies are in business for one reason: to make money. Cha-ching!

South America Watch: Otto "The Fourth" Reich versus the Western Axis of Evil, Hugo! and Evil Genius Fidel Castro

The Long Emergency. Scary.

Kill your television

Are you listening? AirAmericaRadio has been doing The Work for over a year now. The morning show, "Morning Sedition," is great mix of humor and news/analysis, and Randi Rhodes (late afternoons) is probably one of the best-informed personalities on the air. Janeane Garofalo comes across better on screen though. Al Franken, well... let's just say he comes across better on paper... but he's on while I'm at work, so I don't hear his show. Good stuff! Stay informed! Kill your television!

Very good, short essay from Noam Chomsky. Say it with me now: Kill your television!

Syria's relationship with Lebanon is more complex than George seems able to understand.

Who's surprised by this, at this point? Hussein wasn't really captured hiding in a hole.

Congressman Tom Feeney told a then-employee to "design a software prototype that could "flip" the vote in South Florida voting machines." If this bothers you, as it probably should, take a minute to write a letter to whatever paper you read/news show you watch asking them: where's the coverage of this?

Scary thought.

Is it getting hot in here?

Is it getting hot? Seems like fights are breaking out all over...

The emotional lives of... cows. Fun, funny article about a subject with staggering implications.

And in robot news... yikes.

and proud we are of all of them

An excellent point.

Hugo and Hu, go

Yikes!

Hugo!

Hugo calls George out, bam! Hugo Chavez is a man to watch. He's no freaked-out paranoid little Napoleon, either: the Bush administration has every reason to fear him, and vice-versa. Venezuela is one of our biggest sources of oil, and Hugo has no intention of selling it cheap, like so many other little dictators have done in the name of greed and nepotism. In fact, within a year of Chavez winning the Presidency -legally and transparently, I might add- the Bush administration sent flunky Otto Reich to organize a coup (it failed: Chavez's support among the people was genuine). Typical of the Bush administration, they didn't even have a viable candidate to put in Chavez's place had they managed to pull it off....

This could be very big. I mean, what if -all of a sudden- Africa could stand on its own again? You think India is a big market? heh

VERY interesting take on the Putin/Bush press conference following their meeting last week.

Just a few of the many reasons to boycott WalMart. Who wants a crappy neighbor?

Who to smite?

Paul Krugman on Social Security: . Sorry, but it's important.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Whoaa. Beautiful -if frightening- illustration of how just a few people control all of the news. Also a chilling portrait of DC society, and Presidential politics. Robert Parry is a journalist with integrity.

Umm... isn't this feudalism? Didn't we fix that or something?

Great. Faith-based environmental policy. Let's hope it's better than our faith-based intelligence on Iraq and North Korea.

Science news. I don't really think a device like this could 'predict the future,' but the implications of their findings are immense anyway. What do you think? Seems to threaten the notion that consciousness is isolated to our brains, doesn't it?

Georgie wargie

Excellent -excellent- speech given to the House on Wednesday. Forget that he's a republican; he's asking hard questions about our foreign policy, questions that no one else in government seems to be asking. It's about damn time!

This is hardly news, but little Georgie is lying to you again. -er, still.

Third columnist found in Bush's pocket. Perhaps Georgie's most blatant, flagrant flaunting of US law yet. And further evidence that he -and the rest of his neo-con pals- are utterly bereft of ethics and morals.

Good essay. Let's kick some ass.

Don't look. No, don't. It's not funny. Stop laughing!



And in robot news...

"Bag o' skin, comin' right up!" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/4184627.stm

Social security: divided we fall

FINALLY someone refutes the idiotic Bush rhetoric about Social Security. Thank you, Rep. Rangel.

Social Security is only threatened by privatization. Social Security is what keeps many elderly people housed and fed.

Who might benefit from "privatization" anyway? Well, we're expected to invest it all in the stock market; it will cost us to play that game. So the first to benefit will be the stock traders, who extract a portion of your invested money as fees for their services (let's call it a "privately levied tax," because it is). Stock trading is VERY restricted, a very private club. They're not interested in you, they're only interested in your money. Do you want to trust your future to someone who is only interested in your money?


But you have to have a certain amount of money to even make it worth their time to deal with you. So, if you don't have $1,000.00 or so (minimum) laying around to get started with, get started on saving that (if you work for minimum or near-minimum wage, you'll know how difficult this can be, but I don't think anyone more privileged can imagine). Once you get that saved up, it's time to look around at how best to invest.

Obviously we want to earn interest, to make sure our investment is growing faster than inflation (otherwise, we're losing money). Savings accounts don't do that. Ever. Checking accounts -even "free" ones, or ones that pay interest, cost money. Money market accounts and CDs sometimes offer higher interest, but rarely exceed the official rate of inflation, so we're still losing money on our money.

How much money does it take, to make money? Inflation right now is supposedly low -about 3-4%- but you should know that fuel and food prices are NOT included in that figure, so let's include that for our own adjusted inflation rate, which I'll estimate at about 7% (on the basis of the rising food and fuel prices I've seen, and which affect me directly). So, we want to be earning at least 7% interest on our money, just to be breaking even. To get rates like that, we would either need to a) have enough money to get a banker's or broker's personal attention (a mere grand is not enough, trust me), b) be really good at poker, or c) make some very lucky picks on the stock market. Or I suppose we could get on a game show and get really lucky, but in the end, it's all about getting lucky.

Luck. The real problem with having everybody depend on the stock market for their safety net, is that the very nature of the stock market is that someone has to lose. The whole point is "every man for himself." Every profit results from someone else's loss. Dependence on this cruel system is what got us this economic disparity in the first place.

Destroying Social Security in the name of "ownership" and "privatization," will only serve to send more money into the hands of the wealthy, and further isolate the less-fortunate in shitty minimum-wage service-sector jobs.

Divided we fall, my friends: divided, we fall.

Armstrong Williams is a whore, and George Bush is his john.

I can't believe this shit.

American politics sinks to new lows every day under the Bush administration. Ethics shmethics.

I suppose we all sell ourselves, one way or another, to make a living. Such is life in a money economy. But there are whores, and there are prostitutes: whores will sell anything, just for the sake of a buck, but prostitutes have limits. Whores sell their self-respect, their ethics, heritage, their grandmothers, for a little bling-bling. Prostitutes sell a service, to put food on the table.

Kill your television.

I mean it.


I'm so tired of harping about the Bush junta, that I'm not even going to touch the problem of our President, the Leader of the Free World, buying journalists.

Is it even news anymore?

Ramsey Clark, man of principle

Great interview with Ramsey Clark, defender of the defenseless

Praising Failure, or "It's all good!"

You gotta read this

Vote fraud? Enron started out as a conspiracy theory, too. As did Watergate, and Iran-Contra, and October Surprise, and election 2000 and...

Straight from the horse's mouth: a Republican spills the beans and explains how the voter fraud was perpetrated. No, really!

Ohio is the new Florida.

Vote fraud gold mine here, good stuff!

Buy blue, a nifty guide for the boycott-inclined. Details about which major corporations supported which political parties.

How does $130,000 bucks sound? It could be yours, if you can prove the World Trade Centre buildings crashed the way the Government says they did. Good luck ;)

Child prostitution... in the White House? You betcha. It gets worse, too: don't miss the very last link on the page. These are the people we're dealing with.

A viable strategy

I've said before that all of us progressives need to be reaching out to the sleepwalkers; that the closer you get, the harder it becomes to hate; that all we need to do to win is close the emotional-geographic gap and show them that their fears of us are unfounded.

That's a tactic. Here is a viable strategy. Excellent bit from an ex-conservative. We have two years.

Remember: they're sleepwalking, so rouse them gently.

Ohio and the UN

A UN for this century, not the last one. Very interesting article from the Guardian, about the place of the UN in politics. Surprising.

Things are getting hot in Ohio. Rep. John Conyers and a number of other Representatives have sent a strongly-worded letter to Ohio Sec. of State Ken Blackwell, asking that he explain a number of irregularities and incidents of apparent fraud or gross incompetence. Sweet!

Let's get small

Well, with the election mostly over, I've had time to get back to thinking. My other priorities had been sitting quietly, patiently, taking orders even, while my social conscience and consciousness held court in my effort to help defeat the impostor president. We fought the good fight, and that was our downfall: we played fair, presented evidence and empirical support, and they responded with spin, propaganda, and threats. It's apparently not over yet, and I'm glad of that, but seeing as how I'm in Kansas, and the trouble is in Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Florida, I came to the conclusion that this issue is pretty much out of my hands.

I started this blogthing as an email habit- I thought too much US-related news was only being covered in less-prominent international news sources, and I wanted my friends to know. As the election approached, I focused on Kerry because the mainstream US press wasn't giving him fair time, or fairly representing his record. Alas, it wasn't about facts at all. Silly me!

Damn the elections. They provide such a seductive story-line. So reassuring, so convincing, that we continue to look for storylines in the news after the big show is over, but The News is not a story in the storybook sense, so there's almost never any real resolution. Enron? 911 investigation (don't even show me the Warren Report Jr.)? Valerie Plame? Diebold? You get the idea.

"There is only one thing bigger than a very big thing, and that is a thing so very small that it can be seen and understood. " -Sinclair Lewis.

I didn't write this

Fraud?

Probably, yeah, but as they say, "if an election can be rigged, it will be." In other words, yes there was probably fraud, and yes it may have been perpetrated on a scale we've never seen before (thank you, electronic voting. What was wrong with paper? Too inexpensive? Too effective? Too ...transparent?? how ironic), but there is always election fraud. So no, this fraud du jour will probably not be the un-doing of this administration. Coz we're dealing with something more insidious still.

What we're really dealing with is racketeering. Gang tactics, Godfather style. It goes like this:

Karl Rove has connections in organized religion and business. He tells them to do what you can to help us out. You scratch our back, and we'll scratch yours, he says, and those well-placed connections call up their connections and say, hey, do what you can to help out The Cause. Those connections in turn tell the ministers and managers, editors, priests, and pundits on their payrolls to do whatever it takes, or whatever you can do; win one for the Gipper, or whatever, and pretty soon we have hackers tinkering with voting-machine code because W has values,because Bill O'Reilly said so, and people who have never cared about politics their entire lives spending the day at the polls challenging other peoples' right to vote, because my minister said God loves Bush, etc.

I have no doubt -none- that this election was tampered with. Suspicious results in Florida, Ohio and New Mexico -all states which used electronic voting tabulation, often without a paper trail- and Republican party-sponsored activities designed to spread disinformation and confusion about the issues and polling dates, are enough evidence for me to cry "foul."

I'm sure there was fraud in some places (tell us, Governor Bush: why did you refuse to allow voting technology with a paper trail?); I'm sure there was voter intimidation, active disinformation campaigns, out-and-out lies, and fear-mongering. Overall, I'm sure most people were doing what they thought was 'right,' but they got those ideas from someone else because it's all so complicated. Unfortunately, those people whose ideas they're adopting, aren't looking out for their interests.

Think for yourself. Stay vigilant. Keep informed. Reach out.

Peace.

Let's be brief:

Voter turnout was incredible, something of which we should all be proud. For a minute.

Ok, enough pride.

We (American progressives) simply didn't mobilize as well as the religious right. We got out the vote, we raised consciousness, we drove new registration numbers through the roof, but the other guy just did a little better. Did I say 'enough pride'? Yeah, and enough hand-wringing, too. Time to learn from our mistakes.

Clearly, web- and blog-activism didn't work. Further, I spent days searching the web for Democratic leadership following the election ("what now?" I wanted to know-), but only found that the Liberal/Progressive arm of American politics has too many heads to follow. We cannot depend on the internet anymore. It is a tool: nothing more, nothing less. We were seduced into thinking that it would solve our electoral problems, but instead we built a leadership hydra with a thousand heads. Surfing and blogging is not communication, it is not community; it is a path to isolation and social death. Put down your keyboard and hit the streets.

We need to organize. They won, because they go to church. They won, because the majority of their mobilized voters congregate every week, and talk about what matters to them. They won, because they have leaders -locally, regionally, and nationally- who determined for them what the important issues were. We lost, because we think for ourselves, and more importantly, to ourselves.

What to do now (pick one and ride it into the ground):

1) Religious extremists will have control of our federal government for the next two years. Our progressive representatives and Senators will need to be reminded to act as the opposition, and ideally thanked when they do. Contact them, to tell them what you think. Phone calls are most effective, they say themselves, followed by hand-written mail, petitions, and emails, in that order (I got that from a letter from Dennis Moore, I think). Call 'em every week. That's what they're there for, after all.
Who's my Representative? Who are my Senators?

2) Resist electronic voting, by whatever means possible. Demand a paper ballot! There is NO REASON whatsoever, to use electronic equipment to vote. Reasons NOT to:
1. Using a computer to vote amounts to handing your vote to someone you don't know, to deliver it by a secret route to a secret place at a secret time. While this might be acceptable in principle, the facts remain that elections are divisive and prone to corruption, and that the equipment is only as reliable as its -inevitably partisan- handlers, designers, and programmers.
2. Computers are expensive, and prone to technical problems that cost money to fix. No system is foolproof, but paper ballots offer numerous advantages, including easy verification, absolute security that the vote you cast was the one recorded, a paper trail, and no possibility of undetectable advance tampering, not to mention they don't cost much and the maintenance cost is very low. Counting paper ballots by hand could be performed by a board drawn from the voter rolls, as volunteers (or perhaps paid like jurors?). Participation of this kind would increase voter confidence in the process, and be a huge step toward rebuilding local communities, as people who might not ever cross paths, would be required to work together toward a common goal.
3. Voting is an act of participation; for many of us the only way we actually get involved in government. Electronic voting only promises to shuffle us through the system quicker, to reduce our involvement by making the process faster and more convenient. This is the last thing we need.
These are just my ideas. See www.blackboxvoting.org for more, especially constructive legal action.

3) Socialize and organize. Yep, this is easy: just be yourself, all over the place. We lost because we trusted everyone to think for themselves, because the corruption and incompetence of this administration is so self-evident. "How can anyone not see this?" we wondered. And, "how can anyone be so mean?"
They can only be like this, because they don't know us. They've allowed themselves to demonize the liberals, when we all really agree on most of what's really important. Who likes abortion? No one is pro-abortion, but many of us are pro-choice, believing that Life starts with the first breath.
Organize your neighborhood, or if your social circle is more spread-out, organize your circle, and encourage them to organize too. Find an excuse to get together every week, regularly, and give yourselves time to talk about what's important to you. Reach out and bring new people into your circles, your organizations; try to reach out to people you might not think of as "your kind." We have been demonized by sleepwalking religious extremists. We need to wake them up, slowly and gently.

Go on, git!

win their hearts and minds

It is 2:30, the day after the election. I've been searching Democratic websites since 5:30 a.m., looking for intelligent analysis of the election, the process, the future. Where are our progressive leaders?

We have two short years until our next chance to gain a little electoral ground. Time's a-wasting! Stop the hand-wringing already!

This happened because the regressives are organized, and they reacted emotionally. Dividing lines are clear: the rational vote went for Kerry, the emotional vote went for Bush. Emotion will almost always win out over reason.

What's important for us to do now, is to reach out. We're all humans here, we're all wanting the same things, basically: love, security, respect. Smile at a stranger, open a door for them. Be nice to someone you don't know. We need to win their hearts and minds. The rest will follow.

dirty work

Spread this one around-- it'll be interesting to see if this gets out in the US press.

What if it's a tie?