8 Reasons Why Cars Suck, Plus 12 Ways Cyclists Can Stay Safer in an Automobile Culture
There are all sorts of safe and easy methods for choosing two wheels over four.
By Mickey Z.
Astoria, NY, USA | Wed Aug 26 16:30:00 GMT 2009
David Buffington/Getty Images
READ MORE ABOUT:
Bicycles | Biking | Cars | Gas Mileage | Public Transportation | Transportation
(In memory of James Langergaard)
We all know cars suck and bicycles rock but with 254,403,082 cars clogging up this planet, cyclists have no choice—for now—except to co-exist with cars. And that can be easier said than done.
In 2005, there were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the U.S. This resulted in 2.9 million injured people and 42,636 deaths. Roughly 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in America—that's one death every 13 minutes. About one in 40 of those deaths is a cyclist.
So, let's recap: cars suck and bicycles rock and it takes some planning to stay safe.
8 Reasons Why Cars Suck
1. Traffic: From 1950 to 1970, the U.S. automobile population grew four times faster than the human population. As a result, we Americans spent nearly 500,000 years stuck in traffic in 2007—nearly 4.2 billion hours.
2. Cars kill children: The leading cause of death for children aged 5 to 14 in New York City is pedestrian automobile accidents.
3. Cars kill animals: Automobiles, SUVs, trucks, and other fossil field-burning vehicles kill a million wild animals per week in the U.S.—not counting tens of thousands of family pets.
4. Sprawl: During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S.
Kristina Williamson/Getty Images
5. Waste: Cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually and approximately one billion discarded tires are littering our increasingly paved landscape.
6. Global warming: More than 333 million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted by U.S. cars each year,—that's more than one-fifth of the nation's total carbon dioxide emissions.
7. Oil consumption: The U.S consumes about 21 million barrels of oil per day. 10,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in the U.S. every second.
8. Car Wars: During the 40 days of the (first) Gulf War, 146 Americans died keeping the world safe for petroleum while at home, 4900 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents.
12 Basic Ways to Practice Safe Cycling
1. Avoid unsafe situations: Never assume motorists can see you.
2. Ride in the street and with the traffic: Think like a motorist.
3. Put lights and reflectors on your bike: Be seen at night.
iStockphoto.com/AntiMartina
4. Use your horn: Let 'em know you're on the road.
5. Avoid busy streets: You know, the path of least resistance and all.
6. Maintain a safe speed: Slower is better.
7. Know the traffic laws: A little knowledge can go a long way.
8. Take good care of your bike: A well-maintained bicycle is a safer bicycle.
9. Always wear a helmet: Helmets are 85% effective in preventing head injury.
10. Use your voice: A simple "Hey" or "Watch it" will do.
11. There's safety in numbers: United we stand...
12. Be an activist for two wheels, not four: Less cars = safer roads and a cleaner planet.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
lately, i've been noticing that there are no pay phones in the phone booths. you know, i liked the pay phone. you had to come to it. it didn't run your life. if you needed to make a call, you looked for one. eventually, the local calls became limitless. i thought that was cool. just stand there and talk, without the machine telling you to hang up. all for 50 cents. i remember the different rates...25, 35, 50. how about that old expression "drop a dime?" what good slang has the cell given us? perhaps romanticizing the pay phone is a reach, but isn't there something soulful about it, at least in relation to that disgraceful invention, the cell phone? i continue to hold out on the cell. the laughter and confused looks have grown over the years. i respond that if someone wants to buy me one and pay the monthly bill, i just might consider owning one. strangely, no one has taken me up on this offer. you see, people want to give you stuff, but then they expect you to pay the bills. it's like the dude on the corner giving out free kittens. when you go looking for him to buy the cat food and kitty litter, the dude is long gone. hence, cats give you a computer, but expect you to pay for the internet. they throw an old tv your way, but don't return your calls when you ask them to cover your cable bill. oh, the indignity of it all.
seriously, don't we have enough phones in this country? i'm not even talking about the cobalt, and the millions in the congo who are being fucked because of our insane addiction to gadgets, inspector. rather, i am speaking merely to our own banal, craven fascination with mindless technology. and, are there really that many people to talk to? if so, why is my phone not ringing? do more people call you if you have a cell? who is it, deep down, that you really want to talk to, more than once or twice a week? but dudes cop out, say they are good for an emergency. bullshit. i have never seen a cell phone used for this purpose. it's always the same dickheads ruining my bus ride, talking about how they are laying some tracks down, or some loud girl yelling at her man. can't this shit wait until i'm far gone, and the people talking have vacated public property?
but no, once the flood hits, the water doesn't recede. and so it is. cell phones, iphones, ipods, texting.
and we laugh and mock the 50's.
in the 50's of the 21st century, we may well be the butt of the joke.
if there is anybody around to laugh.
seriously, don't we have enough phones in this country? i'm not even talking about the cobalt, and the millions in the congo who are being fucked because of our insane addiction to gadgets, inspector. rather, i am speaking merely to our own banal, craven fascination with mindless technology. and, are there really that many people to talk to? if so, why is my phone not ringing? do more people call you if you have a cell? who is it, deep down, that you really want to talk to, more than once or twice a week? but dudes cop out, say they are good for an emergency. bullshit. i have never seen a cell phone used for this purpose. it's always the same dickheads ruining my bus ride, talking about how they are laying some tracks down, or some loud girl yelling at her man. can't this shit wait until i'm far gone, and the people talking have vacated public property?
but no, once the flood hits, the water doesn't recede. and so it is. cell phones, iphones, ipods, texting.
and we laugh and mock the 50's.
in the 50's of the 21st century, we may well be the butt of the joke.
if there is anybody around to laugh.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
giving bush the boot
Iraqi Who Threw Shoes at Bush to Be Released Early
by Kim Gamel
An Iraqi journalist imprisoned for hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behavior, his lawyer said Saturday.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi's act of protest during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world, as his case became a rallying point for critics who resented the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation.
"Al-Zeidi's shoes were a suitable farewell for Bush's deeds in Iraq," Sunni lawmaker Dhafir al-Ani said in welcoming the early release. "Al-Zeidi's act expressed the real will and feelings of the Iraqi people. His anger against Bush was the result of the suffering of his countrymen."
The journalist has been in custody since the Dec. 14 outburst, which occurred as Bush was holding a news conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki, who was standing next to Bush at the time, was said to have been deeply offended by the act.
Al-Zeidi was initially sentenced to three years in prison after pleading not guilty to assaulting a foreign leader. The court reduced it to one year because the journalist had no prior criminal history.
Defense attorney Karim al-Shujairi said al-Zeidi will now be released on Sept. 14, three months early.
"We have been informed officially about the court decision," al-Shujairi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "His release will be a victory for the free and honorable Iraqi media."
Judicial spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said he had no immediate information about the release because it was a weekend.
Followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who were among the leaders of many of the demonstrations demanding al-Zeidi's release, welcomed the decision to free him early.
"We believe that al-Zeidi did not commit any crime but only expressed the will of the Iraqi people in rejecting the U.S. occupation," Sadrist lawmaker Falah Shanshal said. "Al-Zeidi's image will always be a heroic one."
The bizarre act of defiance transformed the obscure reporter from a minor TV station into a national hero to many Iraqis fed up with the U.S. presence.
Thousands demonstrated for al-Zeidi's release and hailed his gesture. A sofa-sized sculpture of a shoe was erected in his honor in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, but the Iraqi government later ordered it removed.
Neither leader was injured, but Bush was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: "This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."
The case's investigating judge has said the journalist was struck about the face and eyes, apparently by security agents who wrestled him to the ground and dragged him away.
Al-Zeidi's family has said he was also mistreated while in custody, although the government has denied the allegation.
"We thank God that he will be released, although we still fear for his safety since he is still in the prison," his brother Dargham said. "He will be released full of pride and strength from all the love he has received from the Iraqi people and international organizations and figures who advocate freedom."
by Kim Gamel
An Iraqi journalist imprisoned for hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behavior, his lawyer said Saturday.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi's act of protest during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world, as his case became a rallying point for critics who resented the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation.
"Al-Zeidi's shoes were a suitable farewell for Bush's deeds in Iraq," Sunni lawmaker Dhafir al-Ani said in welcoming the early release. "Al-Zeidi's act expressed the real will and feelings of the Iraqi people. His anger against Bush was the result of the suffering of his countrymen."
The journalist has been in custody since the Dec. 14 outburst, which occurred as Bush was holding a news conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki, who was standing next to Bush at the time, was said to have been deeply offended by the act.
Al-Zeidi was initially sentenced to three years in prison after pleading not guilty to assaulting a foreign leader. The court reduced it to one year because the journalist had no prior criminal history.
Defense attorney Karim al-Shujairi said al-Zeidi will now be released on Sept. 14, three months early.
"We have been informed officially about the court decision," al-Shujairi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "His release will be a victory for the free and honorable Iraqi media."
Judicial spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said he had no immediate information about the release because it was a weekend.
Followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who were among the leaders of many of the demonstrations demanding al-Zeidi's release, welcomed the decision to free him early.
"We believe that al-Zeidi did not commit any crime but only expressed the will of the Iraqi people in rejecting the U.S. occupation," Sadrist lawmaker Falah Shanshal said. "Al-Zeidi's image will always be a heroic one."
The bizarre act of defiance transformed the obscure reporter from a minor TV station into a national hero to many Iraqis fed up with the U.S. presence.
Thousands demonstrated for al-Zeidi's release and hailed his gesture. A sofa-sized sculpture of a shoe was erected in his honor in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, but the Iraqi government later ordered it removed.
Neither leader was injured, but Bush was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: "This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."
The case's investigating judge has said the journalist was struck about the face and eyes, apparently by security agents who wrestled him to the ground and dragged him away.
Al-Zeidi's family has said he was also mistreated while in custody, although the government has denied the allegation.
"We thank God that he will be released, although we still fear for his safety since he is still in the prison," his brother Dargham said. "He will be released full of pride and strength from all the love he has received from the Iraqi people and international organizations and figures who advocate freedom."
meetings on health care, but not on war
obama and his backers have been barnstorming the nation, offering themselves as human punching bags for fuckhead fascists. an interesting way to get a law passed. kind of funny, but when a u.s. president wants to do something, doesn't he usually just do it? all of a sudden, the town hall format is making a comeback? and how is it that the incoherent rumblings of right wingers have gone unanswered at these events? surely, obama and his men could answer back if they really wanted to. it seems that the forums are an easy way to kill any health plan. "hey america, i tried, but it seems most of you don't want my efforts to succeed." democracy in action, all of a sudden.
but, wait a minute. when obama decided to send more troops to afghanistan, did he first go around the country, asking the heartlanders whether he should do so? of course not. presidents don't need a license to kill, only to heal. when the u.s. government, wants to do something, it does it, and when it doesn't, it pretends that it does by going through motions like these health care forums. so, when nothing ends up getting done, the leaders can say that they tried.
if obama went around the nation trying to sell americans on war with afghanistan, or drones for pakistan, or weapons for israel, there would have been thousands of people who would have shouted him down, held signs, expressed frustration. but, because obama, and more to the point, the american war machine, is set on pursuing those policies, no such forums were held. the decisions had already been made. therefore, there was no reason to play at democracy. that would only confuse the issue.
but now, we are all democrats again. we didn't have forums on the 700 billion dollar bailout, or pollution of the oceans, or home foreclosures, but now, we have rediscovered the joys of the town hall meeting.
just in time to kill any progressive changes in health care.
sounds like the fix is in, doesn't it?
but, wait a minute. when obama decided to send more troops to afghanistan, did he first go around the country, asking the heartlanders whether he should do so? of course not. presidents don't need a license to kill, only to heal. when the u.s. government, wants to do something, it does it, and when it doesn't, it pretends that it does by going through motions like these health care forums. so, when nothing ends up getting done, the leaders can say that they tried.
if obama went around the nation trying to sell americans on war with afghanistan, or drones for pakistan, or weapons for israel, there would have been thousands of people who would have shouted him down, held signs, expressed frustration. but, because obama, and more to the point, the american war machine, is set on pursuing those policies, no such forums were held. the decisions had already been made. therefore, there was no reason to play at democracy. that would only confuse the issue.
but now, we are all democrats again. we didn't have forums on the 700 billion dollar bailout, or pollution of the oceans, or home foreclosures, but now, we have rediscovered the joys of the town hall meeting.
just in time to kill any progressive changes in health care.
sounds like the fix is in, doesn't it?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Published on Friday, August 28, 2009 by Facing South
Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst
by Greg Palast
There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.
I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:
"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."
On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the state police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.
What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.
"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line," said von Heerden. He shouldn't have told me that. The professor was already in trouble for saying, publicly, that the levees around New Orleans were no good, too short, by 18″. They couldn't stand up to a storm like Katrina. He said it months before Katrina hit -- in a call to the White House, and later in the press.
So, even before Katrina, even before our interview, the professor was in hot water. Van Heerden was told by University officials that his complaints jeopardized funding from the Bush Administration. They tried to gag him. He didn't care: he ripped off the gag and spoke out.
It didn't matter to Bush, to the State, to the University, that van Heerden was right -- devastatingly right. Exactly as van Heerden predicted, the levees could not stand up to the storm surge.
In 2006, I met van Heerden in his office at the University's hurricane center; a cubby filled with charts of the city under water. He's a soft-spoken, even-tempered man, given to understatement and academic reserve. But his words were hand grenades: the Bush White House did nothing about the levees, despite warning after warning.
Why? A hurricane is an Act of God. But a levee failure is an Act of Bush -- of the federal government. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, once the levees break, it's Washington's responsibility to save lives -- and to compensate the victims for lost homes and lost loved ones.
By telling me this, the professor had to know he was putting his job on the line. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans.
Shakoor Aljuwani of the Rebuilding Lives Coalition reminds me it is also the fourth year of exile for more than half of the low-income Black residents who once lived in the Crescent City. In the Lower Ninth Ward, 81% have yet to return.
And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden's career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. "In 2006 they started the nonsense -- they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out."
His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden's research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.
Cronies and Contracts
I did not seek out professor van Heerden about Bush's deadly silence. Rather, I'd come to LSU to ask him about a strange little company, "Innovative Emergency Management," a politically well-connected firm that, a year before the hurricane, had finagled a contract to plan the evacuation of New Orleans.
Innovative Emergency Management knew a lot about political contributions, but seemed to have zero experience in hurricane response planning. In fact, their "plan" for New Orleans called for evacuating the city by automobile. When Katrina hit, 127,000 wheel-less New Orleans folk were left to float out.
And van Heerden knew all about it. Well before the hurricane, I discovered, he'd pointed out flaws in the "Innovative" plan -- and was threatened for the revelation by a state official. The same official later joined the payroll of Innovative Emergency Management.
When I asked the company, at their office, for a copy of the plan, they body-blocked our Democracy Now! camerawoman and called the cops.
Not everyone shared the harsh fate of van Heerden. Just this month, Innovative Emergency Management, the firm with the drive-for-your-life plan, was handed a fat contract by the State of Alabama to draft -- you guessed it -- a hurricane evacuation plan for Mobile.
The City That Care Forgot
After the flood, I filmed the uplifting story of Common Ground, the commune of Katrina survivors who, under the leadership of the community organizer Malik Rahim, rebuilt a shattered hulk of a building with their own sweat and donated materials. They housed 350 displaced families.
Since I broadcast that film in 2006, Rahim and the tenants were evicted by speculators who bought the building. Just before Christmas, elderly residents were carried out and dumped in the street, literally, by marshals. The speculators paid the families who build their new edifice not one dime.
We also filmed the story of Patricia Thomas, a woman fighting to return to her home in the beautiful Lafitte public housing project. Speculators have long lusted for this property on the edge of the French Quarter.
And now the speculators have it. Patricia's home, unscathed by Katrina, was nevertheless bulldozed. As Rahim puts it, "They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers." Their plan succeeded. Patricia, homeless, died last year.
This Friday, take a moment to remember a courageous professor, an indefatigable activist and the refugee families who once lived in what was once called, "The City That Care Forgot." Now, in 2009, you could call it the city that everyone forgot.
© Copyright 2009 by the Institute for Southern Studies
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. For one week only, the International Humanities Center is offering, free of charge, a download of Greg Palast's investigative report for Democracy Now!, "Big Easy to Big Empty - the untold story of how the White House drowned New Orleans" at www.GregPalast.com. Download the film or make a donation to support these investigations and get a copy signed by Palast at www.gregpalast.com/bigeasy.
Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst
by Greg Palast
There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.
I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:
"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."
On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the state police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.
What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.
"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line," said von Heerden. He shouldn't have told me that. The professor was already in trouble for saying, publicly, that the levees around New Orleans were no good, too short, by 18″. They couldn't stand up to a storm like Katrina. He said it months before Katrina hit -- in a call to the White House, and later in the press.
So, even before Katrina, even before our interview, the professor was in hot water. Van Heerden was told by University officials that his complaints jeopardized funding from the Bush Administration. They tried to gag him. He didn't care: he ripped off the gag and spoke out.
It didn't matter to Bush, to the State, to the University, that van Heerden was right -- devastatingly right. Exactly as van Heerden predicted, the levees could not stand up to the storm surge.
In 2006, I met van Heerden in his office at the University's hurricane center; a cubby filled with charts of the city under water. He's a soft-spoken, even-tempered man, given to understatement and academic reserve. But his words were hand grenades: the Bush White House did nothing about the levees, despite warning after warning.
Why? A hurricane is an Act of God. But a levee failure is an Act of Bush -- of the federal government. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, once the levees break, it's Washington's responsibility to save lives -- and to compensate the victims for lost homes and lost loved ones.
By telling me this, the professor had to know he was putting his job on the line. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans.
Shakoor Aljuwani of the Rebuilding Lives Coalition reminds me it is also the fourth year of exile for more than half of the low-income Black residents who once lived in the Crescent City. In the Lower Ninth Ward, 81% have yet to return.
And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden's career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. "In 2006 they started the nonsense -- they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out."
His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden's research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.
Cronies and Contracts
I did not seek out professor van Heerden about Bush's deadly silence. Rather, I'd come to LSU to ask him about a strange little company, "Innovative Emergency Management," a politically well-connected firm that, a year before the hurricane, had finagled a contract to plan the evacuation of New Orleans.
Innovative Emergency Management knew a lot about political contributions, but seemed to have zero experience in hurricane response planning. In fact, their "plan" for New Orleans called for evacuating the city by automobile. When Katrina hit, 127,000 wheel-less New Orleans folk were left to float out.
And van Heerden knew all about it. Well before the hurricane, I discovered, he'd pointed out flaws in the "Innovative" plan -- and was threatened for the revelation by a state official. The same official later joined the payroll of Innovative Emergency Management.
When I asked the company, at their office, for a copy of the plan, they body-blocked our Democracy Now! camerawoman and called the cops.
Not everyone shared the harsh fate of van Heerden. Just this month, Innovative Emergency Management, the firm with the drive-for-your-life plan, was handed a fat contract by the State of Alabama to draft -- you guessed it -- a hurricane evacuation plan for Mobile.
The City That Care Forgot
After the flood, I filmed the uplifting story of Common Ground, the commune of Katrina survivors who, under the leadership of the community organizer Malik Rahim, rebuilt a shattered hulk of a building with their own sweat and donated materials. They housed 350 displaced families.
Since I broadcast that film in 2006, Rahim and the tenants were evicted by speculators who bought the building. Just before Christmas, elderly residents were carried out and dumped in the street, literally, by marshals. The speculators paid the families who build their new edifice not one dime.
We also filmed the story of Patricia Thomas, a woman fighting to return to her home in the beautiful Lafitte public housing project. Speculators have long lusted for this property on the edge of the French Quarter.
And now the speculators have it. Patricia's home, unscathed by Katrina, was nevertheless bulldozed. As Rahim puts it, "They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers." Their plan succeeded. Patricia, homeless, died last year.
This Friday, take a moment to remember a courageous professor, an indefatigable activist and the refugee families who once lived in what was once called, "The City That Care Forgot." Now, in 2009, you could call it the city that everyone forgot.
© Copyright 2009 by the Institute for Southern Studies
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. For one week only, the International Humanities Center is offering, free of charge, a download of Greg Palast's investigative report for Democracy Now!, "Big Easy to Big Empty - the untold story of how the White House drowned New Orleans" at www.GregPalast.com. Download the film or make a donation to support these investigations and get a copy signed by Palast at www.gregpalast.com/bigeasy.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
honduran women fighting the man
Catalyzing a New Movement
The Coup and Honduran Women
By LAURA CARLSEN
On the morning of June 28, women's organizations throughout Honduras were preparing to promote a yes vote on the national survey to hold a Constitutional Assembly. Then the phone lines started buzzing.
In this poor Central American nation, feminists have been organizing for years in defense of women's rights, equality, and against violence. When the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was forcibly exiled by the armed forces, women from all over the country spontaneously organized to protect themselves and their families and demand a return to democracy. They called the new umbrella organization "Feminists in Resistance."
On August 18, Feminists in Resistance sat down with women from the international delegation for Women's Human Rights Week, which they organized to monitor and analyze human rights violations and challenges for the organization. One after another they told their stories in a long session that combined group therapy and political analysis—a natural mix at this critical point in Honduran history and the history of their movement.
Miriam Suazo relates the events of the day of the coup. "On the 28th, women began calling each other, saying 'what's happening?'" At first no-one really understood the full extent of the coup, she says, but networks mobilized quickly and women began to gather to share information and plan actions. Independent feminists and feminists from different organizations immediately identified with each other and with the rising resistance to the coup. They began going out to rescue those who had been beaten and to trace individuals arrested by security forces.
For some, the shock of waking up to a coup d'etat wasn't new.
"This is my third coup," relates Marielena. "I was a girl when the coup in 1963 happened. Then I lived through the coup in 1972. We lived in front of a school and I saw how my mother faced the bullets, we thought they were going to kill her … Later in the university in the 80s I lived through the repression with many of the women here … So this has revived the story of my life."
There is a saying in Honduras about the Central American dirty war that "While the United States had its eye on Nicaragua and its hands in El Salvador, it had its boot on Honduras." For the older women who remember the terror of that time when over 200 people were disappeared and hundreds tortured and assassinated, the current coup stirs up deep fears. Gilda Rivera, director of the Center for Women's Rights in Tegucigalpa, says, "I've had a messed-up life. I knew the victims of Billy Joya in the 80s … Now I've been to the border twice, I've lived with a curfew over my head. I wake up alone, terrified."
The older women agree that they have grown and their movement has grown since the 80s.
Marielena notes, "Today's not the same as the 80s because there's a popular movement that the coup leaders never imagined … What Zelaya has done is symbolize the popular discontent accumulated over the years." She recounts the August 5 battle for the university where she works and the surprising participation of students. Her story is echoed in variations by many of the women present.
Although they battle nightmares and long-buried trauma, these women also see a new hope for the resistance this time around and for their own fight for women's rights. The repression and fear has strengthened their resolve. "Sure, I'm afraid of dying but I'm not losing hope," Gilda says. "I see hope in the faces of the people at the marches. And the solidarity from women, from all of you, keeps me going."
For Jessica, events this year brought to mind the contra war of the 80s. "I never imagined that my daughters would have to be in a situation like this," she says. As a mother who has lived through the period before Honduras began its incomplete transition to democracy, and the period when democracy was merely a word that belied a much cruder reality in the country, she worries. "I told my daughter not to go to the march. She said, 'Mom, what about my autonomy?'"
"My little girl—she's 18 now, but she's still my little girl—ended up going with me to the march. It was really gratifying for me that we went together." These women know in their bodies and their hearts the costs of resistance. They also know that the costs of not resisting are far greater.
For the new generation of feminists, the catalyst came with the confrontation in front of the National Institute of Women on July 15. The day the coup-appointed head of the Institute was installed, Feminists in Resistance gathered to protest the takeover of "their" institution. Lesly says, "The police used their billy clubs, they grabbed me by the neck. I was filled with so much rage—I was drowning in it." Many women in the organization experienced a turning point in their lives that day. Adelai explains, "(The Institute) was my turf, something that belonged to me, and they attacked us there. That was a direct assault on our condition as women … What they did there really affected me personally."
Despite a lot of suffering, the women in the Feminists in Resistance meeting agree that the exhausting dynamic of constant mobilizations and repression has deepened their commitment. Their movement has also come together and developed closer ties to the general movement. When word got out that the feminists were being attacked at the Women's Institute, demonstrators from the entire demonstration of the National Front against the Coup immediately marched to the Institute to defend the women and show their solidarity.
Although the Front leadership continues to be mostly male, men in the movement have publicly recognized the contributions of the feminist organizations and women in the resistance. From recovering the wounded, to marching day after day, to developing analysis and strategy papers, women's organizations have played a critical role in opposing the coup.
At a meeting between leaders of the Front and Feminists in Resistance earlier in the day, Salvador Zuniga, a leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organzations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Front, recognized that women have been among the most active and courageous in the resistance movement. He pointed out that the feminist movement is at the center of the rightwing reaction that led to the coup.
"One of the things that provoked the coup d'etat was that the president accepted a petition from the feminist movement regarding the day-after pill. Opus Dei mobilized, the fundamentalist evangelical churches mobilized, along with all the reactionary groups," he explained.
The unprecedented role of women in the nation's fight for democracy opens them up as a target for repression. Zuniga concluded in no uncertain terms, "What I can say is that the feminist compañeras are in greater danger than any other organization. This has to be made public."
Besides being at the receiving end of the billy clubs and pistols along with the rest of the movement, women suffer specific forms of repression and violence; their bodies have become part of the battleground. Human rights groups including the Women's Human Rights Week international delegation have documented rapes, beatings, sexual harassment, and discriminatory insults. Army and police units routinely shout out "whores!" and "Go find a husband!" at the more and more frequent confrontations between the women and the coup security forces.
It's precisely that step out of the private sphere that makes these dangerous times so exciting and energizes the women of the organization. Many report being driven by the adrenaline of knowing that this time they are the ones defining their history. They ride a roller coaster of emotions, often pitching from euphoria to despair in a single day. But one constant is the satisfaction of binding in a political project with other women who understand the full scope of what they demand and share the contradictory feelings storming inside.
The budding movement has come together in the heat of the coup as Feminists in Resistance faces some major challenges, the first to defeat the coup that now enters Day 54 on the resistance calendar. As the rightwing consolidates power and its own perverse brand of institutionalism, they feel like they're looking down the barrel of a gun as far as their rights and safety are concerned. Rumors circulate that the coup will dismantle the Institute for Women. Congress is about to initiate obligatory military service, meaning that mothers throughout the country will be compelled to protect their children from forced induction. Their freedom of expression, freedom of transit, freedom of assembly have all been curtailed under the coup, along with everyone else who opposes the regime, except for them the physical enforcement of reduced liberties is accompanied by acts of sexual violence and threats.
Big questions are on the table at the meeting of Honduran and international feminists. How to fight for a necessary return to institutional order at a time when the vulnerability and insufficient nature of those institutions has been exposed? How to avoid relegating women's demands to a lower plane in a period of acute political crisis? How to break through a media black-out that's even more impenetrable if you're against the coup and a woman? And how to simply hold your work and family together while spending hours a day in the streets and in meetings.
Bertha Cáceres is a leader of COPINH, a leader of the Front, and mother of four. In her political work she has integrated her specific demands as a woman and believes that organized women must be front-and-center in the resistance against the coup.
"First, because (our struggle as women) means confronting a dictatorship based on different forms of domination. We've said that it's not just destructive capitalism, not just the racism that has also been strengthened by this dictatorship, but also patriarchy. So we think our resistance as women means going a step further, toward a more strategic vision, a more long-term vision in fighting for our country."
She points to a national constitutional assembly as a fundamental goal for women. "For the first time we would be able to establish a precedent for the emancipation of women, to begin to break these forms of domination. The current constitution never mentions women, not once, so to establish our human rights, our reproductive, sexual, political, social, and economic rights as women would be to really confront this system of domination."
The women of Feminists in Resistance have no illusions that this will be an easy task. In addition to the challenges above, the movement is in transition to a new stage of nationwide local organization and long-term strategizing, at the same time as it faces increasing repression and human rights violations. The question of the elections slated for November has created another deadline for definitions of September 1, when candidates must be registered and President Zelaya has sworn to return to the country. Feminists in Resistance has a clear position to boycott any coup-sponsored elections, but some other parts of the movement and the international diplomatic community have been more ambiguous.
What's certain amid these rapidly changing national scenarios is that Honduran women have built a movement that, despite little media attention and the barriers of a male-dominated society, has garnered international support from women around the world and respect from the general resistance movement. Their organization will continue to play a central role in what happens next in Honduras—a key determinant of the course of democracy throughout the Hemisphere.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She is currently in Tegucigalpa as a member of the international delegation of Women's Human Rights Week in Honduras. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
The Coup and Honduran Women
By LAURA CARLSEN
On the morning of June 28, women's organizations throughout Honduras were preparing to promote a yes vote on the national survey to hold a Constitutional Assembly. Then the phone lines started buzzing.
In this poor Central American nation, feminists have been organizing for years in defense of women's rights, equality, and against violence. When the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was forcibly exiled by the armed forces, women from all over the country spontaneously organized to protect themselves and their families and demand a return to democracy. They called the new umbrella organization "Feminists in Resistance."
On August 18, Feminists in Resistance sat down with women from the international delegation for Women's Human Rights Week, which they organized to monitor and analyze human rights violations and challenges for the organization. One after another they told their stories in a long session that combined group therapy and political analysis—a natural mix at this critical point in Honduran history and the history of their movement.
Miriam Suazo relates the events of the day of the coup. "On the 28th, women began calling each other, saying 'what's happening?'" At first no-one really understood the full extent of the coup, she says, but networks mobilized quickly and women began to gather to share information and plan actions. Independent feminists and feminists from different organizations immediately identified with each other and with the rising resistance to the coup. They began going out to rescue those who had been beaten and to trace individuals arrested by security forces.
For some, the shock of waking up to a coup d'etat wasn't new.
"This is my third coup," relates Marielena. "I was a girl when the coup in 1963 happened. Then I lived through the coup in 1972. We lived in front of a school and I saw how my mother faced the bullets, we thought they were going to kill her … Later in the university in the 80s I lived through the repression with many of the women here … So this has revived the story of my life."
There is a saying in Honduras about the Central American dirty war that "While the United States had its eye on Nicaragua and its hands in El Salvador, it had its boot on Honduras." For the older women who remember the terror of that time when over 200 people were disappeared and hundreds tortured and assassinated, the current coup stirs up deep fears. Gilda Rivera, director of the Center for Women's Rights in Tegucigalpa, says, "I've had a messed-up life. I knew the victims of Billy Joya in the 80s … Now I've been to the border twice, I've lived with a curfew over my head. I wake up alone, terrified."
The older women agree that they have grown and their movement has grown since the 80s.
Marielena notes, "Today's not the same as the 80s because there's a popular movement that the coup leaders never imagined … What Zelaya has done is symbolize the popular discontent accumulated over the years." She recounts the August 5 battle for the university where she works and the surprising participation of students. Her story is echoed in variations by many of the women present.
Although they battle nightmares and long-buried trauma, these women also see a new hope for the resistance this time around and for their own fight for women's rights. The repression and fear has strengthened their resolve. "Sure, I'm afraid of dying but I'm not losing hope," Gilda says. "I see hope in the faces of the people at the marches. And the solidarity from women, from all of you, keeps me going."
For Jessica, events this year brought to mind the contra war of the 80s. "I never imagined that my daughters would have to be in a situation like this," she says. As a mother who has lived through the period before Honduras began its incomplete transition to democracy, and the period when democracy was merely a word that belied a much cruder reality in the country, she worries. "I told my daughter not to go to the march. She said, 'Mom, what about my autonomy?'"
"My little girl—she's 18 now, but she's still my little girl—ended up going with me to the march. It was really gratifying for me that we went together." These women know in their bodies and their hearts the costs of resistance. They also know that the costs of not resisting are far greater.
For the new generation of feminists, the catalyst came with the confrontation in front of the National Institute of Women on July 15. The day the coup-appointed head of the Institute was installed, Feminists in Resistance gathered to protest the takeover of "their" institution. Lesly says, "The police used their billy clubs, they grabbed me by the neck. I was filled with so much rage—I was drowning in it." Many women in the organization experienced a turning point in their lives that day. Adelai explains, "(The Institute) was my turf, something that belonged to me, and they attacked us there. That was a direct assault on our condition as women … What they did there really affected me personally."
Despite a lot of suffering, the women in the Feminists in Resistance meeting agree that the exhausting dynamic of constant mobilizations and repression has deepened their commitment. Their movement has also come together and developed closer ties to the general movement. When word got out that the feminists were being attacked at the Women's Institute, demonstrators from the entire demonstration of the National Front against the Coup immediately marched to the Institute to defend the women and show their solidarity.
Although the Front leadership continues to be mostly male, men in the movement have publicly recognized the contributions of the feminist organizations and women in the resistance. From recovering the wounded, to marching day after day, to developing analysis and strategy papers, women's organizations have played a critical role in opposing the coup.
At a meeting between leaders of the Front and Feminists in Resistance earlier in the day, Salvador Zuniga, a leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organzations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Front, recognized that women have been among the most active and courageous in the resistance movement. He pointed out that the feminist movement is at the center of the rightwing reaction that led to the coup.
"One of the things that provoked the coup d'etat was that the president accepted a petition from the feminist movement regarding the day-after pill. Opus Dei mobilized, the fundamentalist evangelical churches mobilized, along with all the reactionary groups," he explained.
The unprecedented role of women in the nation's fight for democracy opens them up as a target for repression. Zuniga concluded in no uncertain terms, "What I can say is that the feminist compañeras are in greater danger than any other organization. This has to be made public."
Besides being at the receiving end of the billy clubs and pistols along with the rest of the movement, women suffer specific forms of repression and violence; their bodies have become part of the battleground. Human rights groups including the Women's Human Rights Week international delegation have documented rapes, beatings, sexual harassment, and discriminatory insults. Army and police units routinely shout out "whores!" and "Go find a husband!" at the more and more frequent confrontations between the women and the coup security forces.
It's precisely that step out of the private sphere that makes these dangerous times so exciting and energizes the women of the organization. Many report being driven by the adrenaline of knowing that this time they are the ones defining their history. They ride a roller coaster of emotions, often pitching from euphoria to despair in a single day. But one constant is the satisfaction of binding in a political project with other women who understand the full scope of what they demand and share the contradictory feelings storming inside.
The budding movement has come together in the heat of the coup as Feminists in Resistance faces some major challenges, the first to defeat the coup that now enters Day 54 on the resistance calendar. As the rightwing consolidates power and its own perverse brand of institutionalism, they feel like they're looking down the barrel of a gun as far as their rights and safety are concerned. Rumors circulate that the coup will dismantle the Institute for Women. Congress is about to initiate obligatory military service, meaning that mothers throughout the country will be compelled to protect their children from forced induction. Their freedom of expression, freedom of transit, freedom of assembly have all been curtailed under the coup, along with everyone else who opposes the regime, except for them the physical enforcement of reduced liberties is accompanied by acts of sexual violence and threats.
Big questions are on the table at the meeting of Honduran and international feminists. How to fight for a necessary return to institutional order at a time when the vulnerability and insufficient nature of those institutions has been exposed? How to avoid relegating women's demands to a lower plane in a period of acute political crisis? How to break through a media black-out that's even more impenetrable if you're against the coup and a woman? And how to simply hold your work and family together while spending hours a day in the streets and in meetings.
Bertha Cáceres is a leader of COPINH, a leader of the Front, and mother of four. In her political work she has integrated her specific demands as a woman and believes that organized women must be front-and-center in the resistance against the coup.
"First, because (our struggle as women) means confronting a dictatorship based on different forms of domination. We've said that it's not just destructive capitalism, not just the racism that has also been strengthened by this dictatorship, but also patriarchy. So we think our resistance as women means going a step further, toward a more strategic vision, a more long-term vision in fighting for our country."
She points to a national constitutional assembly as a fundamental goal for women. "For the first time we would be able to establish a precedent for the emancipation of women, to begin to break these forms of domination. The current constitution never mentions women, not once, so to establish our human rights, our reproductive, sexual, political, social, and economic rights as women would be to really confront this system of domination."
The women of Feminists in Resistance have no illusions that this will be an easy task. In addition to the challenges above, the movement is in transition to a new stage of nationwide local organization and long-term strategizing, at the same time as it faces increasing repression and human rights violations. The question of the elections slated for November has created another deadline for definitions of September 1, when candidates must be registered and President Zelaya has sworn to return to the country. Feminists in Resistance has a clear position to boycott any coup-sponsored elections, but some other parts of the movement and the international diplomatic community have been more ambiguous.
What's certain amid these rapidly changing national scenarios is that Honduran women have built a movement that, despite little media attention and the barriers of a male-dominated society, has garnered international support from women around the world and respect from the general resistance movement. Their organization will continue to play a central role in what happens next in Honduras—a key determinant of the course of democracy throughout the Hemisphere.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She is currently in Tegucigalpa as a member of the international delegation of Women's Human Rights Week in Honduras. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
Monday, August 24, 2009
a lot of people are saying they don't want the government involved in health care. well, what do they want government involved in? torture? war? environmental destruction? it's ok for the government to kill people in iraq, but not to save babies in detroit. what bullshit. and now, they want to tell us obama is a socialist and a fascist. well, which one is it? does anyone recall that the nazis invaded russia and killed millions of its people? sometimes, they put that little hitler mustache on obama. ok, fine, but where are these people when the bombs fall? they never make those rallies. where were these angry rednecks when bush was raiding the treasury and starting imperial wars? where were these angry heartlanders when hurricane katrina did its damage?
the truth is, obama's plan, or lack thereof, is nothing much, but this ugly hatred being directed at him strikes me as the stirrings of a 21st century american fascism. these people are worse the government, and that's saying a lot. their stupidity disguises the fact that obama is in fact moving very slowly on health care. his ideas are corporate friendly. he has never argued for a medicare for all, single payer approach, so anything he comes up with is liable to be bullshit. but still, do these angry protestors (some of them likely paid agents of the radical right) think the current set up is good? do they like 46 million people being uninsured? do they like the rising premiums, the uncaring insurance agencies, the rising health costs, the bills for those with health care and for those without it? just today, i went to get some blood work done. i was told that my health plan may not cover it. how can a health plan not cover blood work? i pay about 2 grand a year for this care. how could this even be a question? i wonder what those folks who want to take america back would think of this story. i would love to screen sicko for them, or better yet, salud, but they would just write them off as left wing propaganda.
yeah, everything is left wing propaganda.
until you get cancer.
the truth is, obama's plan, or lack thereof, is nothing much, but this ugly hatred being directed at him strikes me as the stirrings of a 21st century american fascism. these people are worse the government, and that's saying a lot. their stupidity disguises the fact that obama is in fact moving very slowly on health care. his ideas are corporate friendly. he has never argued for a medicare for all, single payer approach, so anything he comes up with is liable to be bullshit. but still, do these angry protestors (some of them likely paid agents of the radical right) think the current set up is good? do they like 46 million people being uninsured? do they like the rising premiums, the uncaring insurance agencies, the rising health costs, the bills for those with health care and for those without it? just today, i went to get some blood work done. i was told that my health plan may not cover it. how can a health plan not cover blood work? i pay about 2 grand a year for this care. how could this even be a question? i wonder what those folks who want to take america back would think of this story. i would love to screen sicko for them, or better yet, salud, but they would just write them off as left wing propaganda.
yeah, everything is left wing propaganda.
until you get cancer.
calley apologized for my lai, but not one of the dead came back to life.
saw food inc. a fine film, though depressing as all hell. i guess most of the good films are.
saw part 1 of the che film. it was quite good. it was similar to battle of algiers, for after a while, i was not conscious of the fact that i was watching a fiction film. the guy who played che was great, and the guy who played fidel was beyond great. i recommend the film, despite it's length. perhaps breaking it into halves is the way to watch it.
for some reason, a quote by c. wright mills is coming to mind. "i have tried to be objective. i do not claim to be detached."
che was an astounding man. moral, disciplined, a part of, and beyond his time.
god, do i hate summer weather.
was watching sportscenter last night, and when manny's face came on the screen, one of the studio guys said "cut the hair." wow. what fascism. the racist, fascist shit comes out in different ways now. these dudes wouldn't talk about someone's skin color, or they would be fired, but they can mock the way a guy chooses to look. but, of course, the way a guy chooses to look says at least as much about him as anything else, and if we get to mock that, what does that say about our culture? it speaks to its fascistic strain, an extreme conservatism that has embedded itself deep into our culture. it is as if the 60's never happened. it is the 50's all over again. conformity is ascendant, and anyone who strays from the dominant modes of dress, speech, etc, will pay with the disdain and insults of the mediocre multitudes. the system is watching, and looking to take down any cultural manifestation that calls into question the dominant structure. something as silly as manny's hair is on the chopping block.
hair today, gone tommorow.
why is there no steroid scandal in football? bodybuilding? pro wrestling? boxing?
more people drank ate at mcdomald's today than ever heard of hank mobley. in fact, more people probably ate at mcdonald's in 10 minutes than ever heard of hank mobley.
pardon my french, but my brain is fried.
till we meat again, some sunny day, i'm david silburger, wishing everyone in turkey, and elsewhere, a happy jew year.
saw food inc. a fine film, though depressing as all hell. i guess most of the good films are.
saw part 1 of the che film. it was quite good. it was similar to battle of algiers, for after a while, i was not conscious of the fact that i was watching a fiction film. the guy who played che was great, and the guy who played fidel was beyond great. i recommend the film, despite it's length. perhaps breaking it into halves is the way to watch it.
for some reason, a quote by c. wright mills is coming to mind. "i have tried to be objective. i do not claim to be detached."
che was an astounding man. moral, disciplined, a part of, and beyond his time.
god, do i hate summer weather.
was watching sportscenter last night, and when manny's face came on the screen, one of the studio guys said "cut the hair." wow. what fascism. the racist, fascist shit comes out in different ways now. these dudes wouldn't talk about someone's skin color, or they would be fired, but they can mock the way a guy chooses to look. but, of course, the way a guy chooses to look says at least as much about him as anything else, and if we get to mock that, what does that say about our culture? it speaks to its fascistic strain, an extreme conservatism that has embedded itself deep into our culture. it is as if the 60's never happened. it is the 50's all over again. conformity is ascendant, and anyone who strays from the dominant modes of dress, speech, etc, will pay with the disdain and insults of the mediocre multitudes. the system is watching, and looking to take down any cultural manifestation that calls into question the dominant structure. something as silly as manny's hair is on the chopping block.
hair today, gone tommorow.
why is there no steroid scandal in football? bodybuilding? pro wrestling? boxing?
more people drank ate at mcdomald's today than ever heard of hank mobley. in fact, more people probably ate at mcdonald's in 10 minutes than ever heard of hank mobley.
pardon my french, but my brain is fried.
till we meat again, some sunny day, i'm david silburger, wishing everyone in turkey, and elsewhere, a happy jew year.
shameful
AMY GOODMAN: The imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier has been denied parole again. The US Parole Commission told the sixty-four-year-old Peltier Friday his release would, quote, “depreciate the seriousness of [his] offenses” and, quote, “promote disrespect for the law.” It was Peltier’s first full parole hearing in fifteen years. He will not be eligible again for parole until July 2024 at the age of seventy-nine.
Leonard Peltier has been in prison for thirty-three years, convicted of killing two police—two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and has been widely considered a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. He is now being held at the Lewisburg prison in Pennsylvania.
I’m joined on the phone by his attorney, Eric Seitz. He represented Peltier at his parole hearing, joining us on the phone from his home in Hawaii.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you for waking up very early, Eric. Describe what happened, what you learned on Friday.
ERIC SEITZ: Well, what we learned was that the Parole Commission, which is a holdover group of people from the Bush administration and an agency of the Justice Department, is never going to parole Leonard Peltier. They adopted in full the position of the FBI that if you kill an FBI agent, you should spend the rest of your life in jail, even if there are serious questions about the conduct of the FBI itself and of the government in prosecuting him.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the questions in this case and the other men who were tried separately who were acquitted years ago.
ERIC SEITZ: There was a trial of two people who were indicted with Leonard. It was held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa before a jury that acquitted them on grounds of self-defense.
The FBI, after that case, decided they couldn’t risk a reoccurrence of the same outcome, so they came up with some ballistics evidence, which purported to link Leonard to the fatal shots by which the FBI agents were killed after this shootout had occurred for some period of time and the two agents had been fatally wounded. So they convicted Leonard of firing the fatal shots, according to the jury.
And afterwards, it turned out that the ballistics evidence was questionable, at best. But the courts have refused to set aside or disturb the outcome since then. So Leonard has actually been in prison now for more than thirty-three years for a crime of which the only other two people who were actually put on trial were acquitted, and that raises all kinds of questions about the fairness of the proceedings and of, in particular, the fairness of the judgment in his case.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in Leonard Peltier’s case, he would have been tried with these men, but he, fearing he would not get a fair trial, had fled to Canada, so he was not tried and then tried separately.
ERIC SEITZ: That’s right. And then there were all kinds of questions about the proceedings by which he was returned to this country from Canada. It is an admitted fact that in the extradition proceedings, the FBI used a series of affidavits that they themselves wrote, purporting to be from a witness who was an eyewitness who wasn’t even there. So the affidavits were perjured, and yet the Canadian government readily agreed at some point to send Leonard back. And after that evidence about the perjury came out, the United States government refused to take any action to correct the situation.
So there have been all kinds of issues about this case which have percolated for more than thirty-four, thirty-five years. And we were hoping at this point in time that we could get a fair consideration from the Parole Commission. We had a very good six-hour hearing before an examiner, not the commission itself, but on their review of the examiner’s recommendations, which we still have never even seen, the Parole Commission basically adopted the position of the FBI. And in some sense, that’s actually helpful to us, because it makes it clear that they are violating the law and the guidelines, and they are basically succumbing to this whole theory that if you kill an FBI agent, you should never be paroled, and that’s not what the law requires.
AMY GOODMAN: The documents that have not been released in Leonard Peltier’s case, how many are there?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, there are thousands of documents from the investigation itself going back to the mid-1970s and beyond that. And a lot of those documents have been shrouded in various levels of secrecy, and there have been Freedom of Information Act cases that have been filed. And many of them have been flushed out, and at various times that’s how we learned about the ballistics evidence that was fraudulent, and that’s how we also learned about the nature of the FBI’s investigation and the fact that they focused on Leonard and the way in which they did after losing the first trial.
Now we’re going to try to get some more of those documents and, in particular, the documents at the Parole Commission, and we’re contemplating the possibility of further litigation, although I think probably much more fruitful at this point is going to be an effort to try to get clemency for Leonard, in terms of his advanced age, in consideration of his health, and because of the fact that this just simply is a case that needs to be brought to resolution properly.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you spoken to Leonard? And what is his response?
ERIC SEITZ: I have not been able to speak with him, because I can’t get calls in to him over the weekend. Other people have talked to him. And I have not yet really found out from them what the results of their visits were over the weekend. But I am hoping to speak with him either today or tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, while we reported that he doesn’t have—he’s not eligible for parole again until July 2024, when he’s seventy-nine, his chances before then?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, as far as the parole board is concerned, there are no chances, because they’re not going to change their position unless the personnel of the parole board changes dramatically.
Basically they have taken a hard-line position. He qualifies for parole, which was the difference this time around. He’s served the minimum time that’s necessary. He’s done everything in prison that he needs to do to make himself qualified. He came up with a parole plan prospectively for where he’s going to live and work for the rest of his life, with people to take care of him. All of those things are requirements, which he met. The only requirement he didn’t meet, according to them, which he can’t change, is the fact that he committed a crime that they regard as so heinous that he should never be released from prison. So, as far as the parole board is concerned, we will file a mandatory appeal to exhaust the channels there, but we have virtually no sense that they are going to change their position ever.
AMY GOODMAN: Eric Seitz, we’re going to leave it there, because we have to move quickly on to our last segment. Again, commenting on Leonard Peltier, who was denied parole once again, Eric Seitz, his attorney.
Leonard Peltier has been in prison for thirty-three years, convicted of killing two police—two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and has been widely considered a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. He is now being held at the Lewisburg prison in Pennsylvania.
I’m joined on the phone by his attorney, Eric Seitz. He represented Peltier at his parole hearing, joining us on the phone from his home in Hawaii.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you for waking up very early, Eric. Describe what happened, what you learned on Friday.
ERIC SEITZ: Well, what we learned was that the Parole Commission, which is a holdover group of people from the Bush administration and an agency of the Justice Department, is never going to parole Leonard Peltier. They adopted in full the position of the FBI that if you kill an FBI agent, you should spend the rest of your life in jail, even if there are serious questions about the conduct of the FBI itself and of the government in prosecuting him.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the questions in this case and the other men who were tried separately who were acquitted years ago.
ERIC SEITZ: There was a trial of two people who were indicted with Leonard. It was held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa before a jury that acquitted them on grounds of self-defense.
The FBI, after that case, decided they couldn’t risk a reoccurrence of the same outcome, so they came up with some ballistics evidence, which purported to link Leonard to the fatal shots by which the FBI agents were killed after this shootout had occurred for some period of time and the two agents had been fatally wounded. So they convicted Leonard of firing the fatal shots, according to the jury.
And afterwards, it turned out that the ballistics evidence was questionable, at best. But the courts have refused to set aside or disturb the outcome since then. So Leonard has actually been in prison now for more than thirty-three years for a crime of which the only other two people who were actually put on trial were acquitted, and that raises all kinds of questions about the fairness of the proceedings and of, in particular, the fairness of the judgment in his case.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in Leonard Peltier’s case, he would have been tried with these men, but he, fearing he would not get a fair trial, had fled to Canada, so he was not tried and then tried separately.
ERIC SEITZ: That’s right. And then there were all kinds of questions about the proceedings by which he was returned to this country from Canada. It is an admitted fact that in the extradition proceedings, the FBI used a series of affidavits that they themselves wrote, purporting to be from a witness who was an eyewitness who wasn’t even there. So the affidavits were perjured, and yet the Canadian government readily agreed at some point to send Leonard back. And after that evidence about the perjury came out, the United States government refused to take any action to correct the situation.
So there have been all kinds of issues about this case which have percolated for more than thirty-four, thirty-five years. And we were hoping at this point in time that we could get a fair consideration from the Parole Commission. We had a very good six-hour hearing before an examiner, not the commission itself, but on their review of the examiner’s recommendations, which we still have never even seen, the Parole Commission basically adopted the position of the FBI. And in some sense, that’s actually helpful to us, because it makes it clear that they are violating the law and the guidelines, and they are basically succumbing to this whole theory that if you kill an FBI agent, you should never be paroled, and that’s not what the law requires.
AMY GOODMAN: The documents that have not been released in Leonard Peltier’s case, how many are there?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, there are thousands of documents from the investigation itself going back to the mid-1970s and beyond that. And a lot of those documents have been shrouded in various levels of secrecy, and there have been Freedom of Information Act cases that have been filed. And many of them have been flushed out, and at various times that’s how we learned about the ballistics evidence that was fraudulent, and that’s how we also learned about the nature of the FBI’s investigation and the fact that they focused on Leonard and the way in which they did after losing the first trial.
Now we’re going to try to get some more of those documents and, in particular, the documents at the Parole Commission, and we’re contemplating the possibility of further litigation, although I think probably much more fruitful at this point is going to be an effort to try to get clemency for Leonard, in terms of his advanced age, in consideration of his health, and because of the fact that this just simply is a case that needs to be brought to resolution properly.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you spoken to Leonard? And what is his response?
ERIC SEITZ: I have not been able to speak with him, because I can’t get calls in to him over the weekend. Other people have talked to him. And I have not yet really found out from them what the results of their visits were over the weekend. But I am hoping to speak with him either today or tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, while we reported that he doesn’t have—he’s not eligible for parole again until July 2024, when he’s seventy-nine, his chances before then?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, as far as the parole board is concerned, there are no chances, because they’re not going to change their position unless the personnel of the parole board changes dramatically.
Basically they have taken a hard-line position. He qualifies for parole, which was the difference this time around. He’s served the minimum time that’s necessary. He’s done everything in prison that he needs to do to make himself qualified. He came up with a parole plan prospectively for where he’s going to live and work for the rest of his life, with people to take care of him. All of those things are requirements, which he met. The only requirement he didn’t meet, according to them, which he can’t change, is the fact that he committed a crime that they regard as so heinous that he should never be released from prison. So, as far as the parole board is concerned, we will file a mandatory appeal to exhaust the channels there, but we have virtually no sense that they are going to change their position ever.
AMY GOODMAN: Eric Seitz, we’re going to leave it there, because we have to move quickly on to our last segment. Again, commenting on Leonard Peltier, who was denied parole once again, Eric Seitz, his attorney.
viva fidel
The Empire and the Robots
August 24, 2009 By Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro's ZSpace Page
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A little while ago, I wrote about U.S. plans to impose the absolute superiority of its air force as an instrument of domination over the rest of the world. I mentioned the project of that country possessing more than 1,000 state-of-the-art F-22 and F-35 bombers and fighter planes in its fleet of 2,500 military aircraft. By 20 years later, the totality of its warplanes will be robot-operated.
Military budgets always have the majority support of U.S. legislators. There are very few states where employment is not at least partially dependent on the defense industry.
On a global level and constant value, military costs have doubled in the last 10 years, as if no danger of crisis existed at all. At this juncture it is the most prosperous industry on the planet.
In 2008, approximately $1.5 trillion was invested in defense budgets. Forty-two percent of world spending on defense, or $607 billion, corresponded to the United States, not including war expenditures, while the number of hungry in the world reached the figure of one billion people.
A Western news agency reported two days ago that in mid-August the U.S. army exhibited a remote-controlled helicopter, as well as robots capable of doing the work of sappers, 2,500 of which have been sent to combat zones.
A robot marketing company maintained that new technologies are revolutionizing the ways of commanding war. It has been published that in 2003 the United States had next to no robots in its arsenal but "today it has — according to AFP — 10,000 ground vehicles and 7,000 aircraft, from the little Raven, which can be launched with one hand, to the giant Global Hawk, a spy plane of 13 meters in length and 35 in wingspan capable of flying at a great height for 35 hours." Other weapons are listed in that dispatch.
While that colossal expenditure on technologies for killing is taking place in the United States, the president of that country is sweating blood in order to bring health services to 50 million U.S. citizens who lack them. The confusion is so great that the new president affirmed that reform of the health system was closer than ever but "the battle is turning ugly."
"But now's the hard part," he added. "Because the history is clear - every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests with a stake in the status quo use their influence and political allies to scare and mislead the American people."
It is a true fact that in Los Angeles, 8,000 people - the majority of them unemployed, according to the press - gathered in a stadium to receive medical attention from a free traveling clinic that provides services in the Third World. Most of them had waited there overnight. Some of them had traveled from hundreds of kilometers away.
"‘What do I care if it's socialist or not? We are the only country in the world where the most vulnerable of us have nothing,' said a woman from a black neighborhood and with higher education."
It was noted that a "blood test could cost $500 and routine dental treatment more than $1,000."
What hope can that society offer the world?
Congressional lobbyists are spending their August working against a simple bill that is an attempt to provide medical care to tens of millions of poor people — the vast majority of them black or Latino — who lack that service. Even a blockaded country like Cuba has been able to do that and, moreover, cooperate with dozens of Third World countries.
If robots in the hands of the transnationals can replace the imperial soldiers in wars of conquest, who will detain the transnationals in the search for markets for their artifacts? Just as they have inundated the world with automobiles that are now competing with humans for the consumption of non-renewable energy and even for foodstuffs converted into fuel, they can also inundate it with robots that will displace millions of workers in their workplaces.
Better still, scientists can likewise design robots capable of governing; thus sparing the government and Congress of the United States that horrible, contradictory and confused labor.
No doubt they would do it better and more cheaply.
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 19, 2009
3:15 p.m.
August 24, 2009 By Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
A little while ago, I wrote about U.S. plans to impose the absolute superiority of its air force as an instrument of domination over the rest of the world. I mentioned the project of that country possessing more than 1,000 state-of-the-art F-22 and F-35 bombers and fighter planes in its fleet of 2,500 military aircraft. By 20 years later, the totality of its warplanes will be robot-operated.
Military budgets always have the majority support of U.S. legislators. There are very few states where employment is not at least partially dependent on the defense industry.
On a global level and constant value, military costs have doubled in the last 10 years, as if no danger of crisis existed at all. At this juncture it is the most prosperous industry on the planet.
In 2008, approximately $1.5 trillion was invested in defense budgets. Forty-two percent of world spending on defense, or $607 billion, corresponded to the United States, not including war expenditures, while the number of hungry in the world reached the figure of one billion people.
A Western news agency reported two days ago that in mid-August the U.S. army exhibited a remote-controlled helicopter, as well as robots capable of doing the work of sappers, 2,500 of which have been sent to combat zones.
A robot marketing company maintained that new technologies are revolutionizing the ways of commanding war. It has been published that in 2003 the United States had next to no robots in its arsenal but "today it has — according to AFP — 10,000 ground vehicles and 7,000 aircraft, from the little Raven, which can be launched with one hand, to the giant Global Hawk, a spy plane of 13 meters in length and 35 in wingspan capable of flying at a great height for 35 hours." Other weapons are listed in that dispatch.
While that colossal expenditure on technologies for killing is taking place in the United States, the president of that country is sweating blood in order to bring health services to 50 million U.S. citizens who lack them. The confusion is so great that the new president affirmed that reform of the health system was closer than ever but "the battle is turning ugly."
"But now's the hard part," he added. "Because the history is clear - every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests with a stake in the status quo use their influence and political allies to scare and mislead the American people."
It is a true fact that in Los Angeles, 8,000 people - the majority of them unemployed, according to the press - gathered in a stadium to receive medical attention from a free traveling clinic that provides services in the Third World. Most of them had waited there overnight. Some of them had traveled from hundreds of kilometers away.
"‘What do I care if it's socialist or not? We are the only country in the world where the most vulnerable of us have nothing,' said a woman from a black neighborhood and with higher education."
It was noted that a "blood test could cost $500 and routine dental treatment more than $1,000."
What hope can that society offer the world?
Congressional lobbyists are spending their August working against a simple bill that is an attempt to provide medical care to tens of millions of poor people — the vast majority of them black or Latino — who lack that service. Even a blockaded country like Cuba has been able to do that and, moreover, cooperate with dozens of Third World countries.
If robots in the hands of the transnationals can replace the imperial soldiers in wars of conquest, who will detain the transnationals in the search for markets for their artifacts? Just as they have inundated the world with automobiles that are now competing with humans for the consumption of non-renewable energy and even for foodstuffs converted into fuel, they can also inundate it with robots that will displace millions of workers in their workplaces.
Better still, scientists can likewise design robots capable of governing; thus sparing the government and Congress of the United States that horrible, contradictory and confused labor.
No doubt they would do it better and more cheaply.
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 19, 2009
3:15 p.m.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
legendary woman and lawyer, unknown to me until a second ago
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants
By MARJORIE COHN
Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant victories for labor, and political activists.
Doris’ legal and political activism spanned several decades and some of the most turbulent but significant periods in US history. She organized workers, fought against Jim Crow and McCarthyism, was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and actively opposed the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At UCLA, Doris became a Marxist. After she was sworn in as a member of the California State Bar, Doris joined the Communist Party USA, remaining a member until her death. Upon graduation from law school, Doris began practicing labor law; but a few years later, she went to work in California canneries as a labor organizer. When Cutter Labs fired Doris in 1956, the case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the Court refused to hear the case, Justice Douglas, joined in dissent by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black, wrote, “The blunt truth is that Doris Walker is not discharged for misconduct but either because of her legitimate labor union activities or because of her political ideology or belief. Belief cannot be penalized consistently with the First Amendment . . . The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be regulated. We sanction a flagrant violation of the First Amendment when we allow California, acting through her highest court, to sustain Mrs. Walker's discharge because of her belief.”
Doris returned to the practice of law and represented people charged under the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act) in California. The Act required all resident aliens to register with the government, enacted procedures to facilitate deportation, and made it a crime for any person to knowingly or willfully advocate the overthrow of the government by force or violence. The work of Doris and other NLG lawyers led to Yates v. United States, in which the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Smith Act defendants in 1957. After Yates, the government never filed another prosecution under the Smith Act.
During the McCarthy era, Doris was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and she also represented several HUAC witnesses. >From 1956 to 1961, Doris successfully defended William and Sylvia Powell, who faced the death penalty, against Korean War sedition charges. The US government charged that articles Powell had written reporting and criticizing US biological weapons use in Korea were false and written with intent to hinder the war effort. When a mistrial ended the sedition case, the government charged the Powells with treason. Attorney General Robert Kennedy dismissed the case in 1961.
A partner with the NLG firm of Treuhaft & Walker in Oakland, California from 1961 to 1977, Doris’ practice focused on civil rights, free speech and draft cases during the Vietnam War. She also defended death penalty cases. Perhaps best known for her defense of Angela Davis, Doris was part of a legal team that secured Angela’s acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. In that case, which Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree in 2005 called “clearly the trial of the 20th century, and one that exemplified the vast and diverse talents of the true Dream Team of the legal profession,” the defense pioneered the use of jury consultants.
Doris was elected president of the NLG in 1970 after a bruising battle during which one opponent labeled her “a man in a woman’s skirt.” She paved the way for the election of five women NLG presidents in the ensuing years.
Serving as Vice President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1970 to 1978, Doris supported the struggles of victims of U.S. imperialism throughout the world and was instrumental in the development of international human rights law. In 1996, Doris served as one of eight international observers at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings led by Desmond Tutu.
In 2004, Doris submitted a resolution on behalf of the NLG Bay Area Chapter to the Conference of Delegates of the California Bar Association asking for an investigation of representations the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq, for possible impeachment.
The writer Jessica Mitford and Doris were close friends for years; Jessica was married to Robert Truehaft, Doris’ law partner. When Doris invited Jessica to join the Communist Party, the latter replied, “We thought you’d never ask!” There is speculation that author J.K. Rowling, who cited Jessica as her main literary influence, named her Harry Potter house elf “Dobby” after seeing Dobby Walker’s name in Jessica’s books. On a recent visit to her home, Doris showed me the Dobby references in works by Decca on her bookshelf.
Doris frequently called me with her concerns and opinions about the issues of the day and in the NLG. She remained intensely engaged in politics until the day she died.
Doris “Dobby” Walker inspired generations of progressive lawyers, law students and legal workers to struggle unrelentingly for justice and equality. She was a friend, comrade and role model to scores of people in and out of the NLG. We will never see the likes of her again.
Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Deifed the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her anthology, The United States of Torture: America’s Past and Present Policy of Interrogation and Abuse, will be published next year by NYU Press. See www.marjoriecohn.com.
By MARJORIE COHN
Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant victories for labor, and political activists.
Doris’ legal and political activism spanned several decades and some of the most turbulent but significant periods in US history. She organized workers, fought against Jim Crow and McCarthyism, was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and actively opposed the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At UCLA, Doris became a Marxist. After she was sworn in as a member of the California State Bar, Doris joined the Communist Party USA, remaining a member until her death. Upon graduation from law school, Doris began practicing labor law; but a few years later, she went to work in California canneries as a labor organizer. When Cutter Labs fired Doris in 1956, the case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the Court refused to hear the case, Justice Douglas, joined in dissent by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black, wrote, “The blunt truth is that Doris Walker is not discharged for misconduct but either because of her legitimate labor union activities or because of her political ideology or belief. Belief cannot be penalized consistently with the First Amendment . . . The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be regulated. We sanction a flagrant violation of the First Amendment when we allow California, acting through her highest court, to sustain Mrs. Walker's discharge because of her belief.”
Doris returned to the practice of law and represented people charged under the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act) in California. The Act required all resident aliens to register with the government, enacted procedures to facilitate deportation, and made it a crime for any person to knowingly or willfully advocate the overthrow of the government by force or violence. The work of Doris and other NLG lawyers led to Yates v. United States, in which the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Smith Act defendants in 1957. After Yates, the government never filed another prosecution under the Smith Act.
During the McCarthy era, Doris was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and she also represented several HUAC witnesses. >From 1956 to 1961, Doris successfully defended William and Sylvia Powell, who faced the death penalty, against Korean War sedition charges. The US government charged that articles Powell had written reporting and criticizing US biological weapons use in Korea were false and written with intent to hinder the war effort. When a mistrial ended the sedition case, the government charged the Powells with treason. Attorney General Robert Kennedy dismissed the case in 1961.
A partner with the NLG firm of Treuhaft & Walker in Oakland, California from 1961 to 1977, Doris’ practice focused on civil rights, free speech and draft cases during the Vietnam War. She also defended death penalty cases. Perhaps best known for her defense of Angela Davis, Doris was part of a legal team that secured Angela’s acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. In that case, which Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree in 2005 called “clearly the trial of the 20th century, and one that exemplified the vast and diverse talents of the true Dream Team of the legal profession,” the defense pioneered the use of jury consultants.
Doris was elected president of the NLG in 1970 after a bruising battle during which one opponent labeled her “a man in a woman’s skirt.” She paved the way for the election of five women NLG presidents in the ensuing years.
Serving as Vice President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1970 to 1978, Doris supported the struggles of victims of U.S. imperialism throughout the world and was instrumental in the development of international human rights law. In 1996, Doris served as one of eight international observers at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings led by Desmond Tutu.
In 2004, Doris submitted a resolution on behalf of the NLG Bay Area Chapter to the Conference of Delegates of the California Bar Association asking for an investigation of representations the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq, for possible impeachment.
The writer Jessica Mitford and Doris were close friends for years; Jessica was married to Robert Truehaft, Doris’ law partner. When Doris invited Jessica to join the Communist Party, the latter replied, “We thought you’d never ask!” There is speculation that author J.K. Rowling, who cited Jessica as her main literary influence, named her Harry Potter house elf “Dobby” after seeing Dobby Walker’s name in Jessica’s books. On a recent visit to her home, Doris showed me the Dobby references in works by Decca on her bookshelf.
Doris frequently called me with her concerns and opinions about the issues of the day and in the NLG. She remained intensely engaged in politics until the day she died.
Doris “Dobby” Walker inspired generations of progressive lawyers, law students and legal workers to struggle unrelentingly for justice and equality. She was a friend, comrade and role model to scores of people in and out of the NLG. We will never see the likes of her again.
Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Deifed the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her anthology, The United States of Torture: America’s Past and Present Policy of Interrogation and Abuse, will be published next year by NYU Press. See www.marjoriecohn.com.
uncle thomas outvoted...davis lives to fight another day.
Troy Davis and the Meaning of ‘Actual Innocence’
by Amy Goodman
Sitting on death row in Georgia, Troy Davis has won a key victory against his own execution. On Aug. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed a federal court in Georgia to consider, for the first time in a formal court proceeding, significant evidence of Davis' innocence that surfaced after his conviction. This is the first such order from the U.S. Supreme Court in almost 50 years. Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
The order read, in part, "The District Court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner's innocence." Behind the order lay a stunning array of recantations from those who originally testified as eyewitnesses to the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail on Aug. 19, 1989. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who originally identified Davis as the murderer of MacPhail have since recanted, some alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. Of the remaining two witnesses, one, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, is accused by others as the shooter and identified Davis as the perpetrator probably to save himself from arrest.
On the night of the murder, MacPhail was off duty, working as a security guard at a Burger King. A homeless man was being beaten in the parking lot. The altercation drew Davis and others to the scene, along with MacPhail. MacPhail intervened, and was shot fatally with a .38-caliber gun. Later, Coles arrived at the police station, accompanied by a lawyer, and identified Davis as the shooter. The police engaged in a high-profile manhunt, with Davis' picture splayed across the newspapers and television stations. Davis turned himself in. With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Davis was convicted and sentenced to death.
Jeffrey Sapp is typical of those in the case who recanted their eyewitness testimony. He said in an affidavit:
"The police ... put a lot of pressure on me to say ‘Troy said this' or ‘Troy said that.' They wanted me to tell them that Troy confessed to me about killing that officer ... they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear."
Despite the seven recantations, Georgia's parole commission has refused to commute Davis' sentence. Courts have refused to hear the evidence, mostly on procedural grounds. Conservatives like former Georgia Congressman and prosecutor Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions have called for justice in his case, along with Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, the NAACP and Amnesty International.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, "The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing." Yet conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented (with Justice Clarence Thomas), writing that Davis' case "is a sure loser," and "[t]his Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually' innocent."
Davis has had three execution dates, and in one instance was within two hours of lethal injection. Now he will finally have his day in court. With the courageous support of his sister, Martina Correia (who has been fighting for his life as well as her own--she has stage 4 breast cancer), and his nephew, Antone De'Jaun Correia, who at 15 is a budding human rights activist, Davis may yet defy death. That could lead to a long-overdue precedent in U.S. law: It is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
by Amy Goodman
Sitting on death row in Georgia, Troy Davis has won a key victory against his own execution. On Aug. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed a federal court in Georgia to consider, for the first time in a formal court proceeding, significant evidence of Davis' innocence that surfaced after his conviction. This is the first such order from the U.S. Supreme Court in almost 50 years. Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
The order read, in part, "The District Court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner's innocence." Behind the order lay a stunning array of recantations from those who originally testified as eyewitnesses to the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail on Aug. 19, 1989. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who originally identified Davis as the murderer of MacPhail have since recanted, some alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. Of the remaining two witnesses, one, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, is accused by others as the shooter and identified Davis as the perpetrator probably to save himself from arrest.
On the night of the murder, MacPhail was off duty, working as a security guard at a Burger King. A homeless man was being beaten in the parking lot. The altercation drew Davis and others to the scene, along with MacPhail. MacPhail intervened, and was shot fatally with a .38-caliber gun. Later, Coles arrived at the police station, accompanied by a lawyer, and identified Davis as the shooter. The police engaged in a high-profile manhunt, with Davis' picture splayed across the newspapers and television stations. Davis turned himself in. With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Davis was convicted and sentenced to death.
Jeffrey Sapp is typical of those in the case who recanted their eyewitness testimony. He said in an affidavit:
"The police ... put a lot of pressure on me to say ‘Troy said this' or ‘Troy said that.' They wanted me to tell them that Troy confessed to me about killing that officer ... they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear."
Despite the seven recantations, Georgia's parole commission has refused to commute Davis' sentence. Courts have refused to hear the evidence, mostly on procedural grounds. Conservatives like former Georgia Congressman and prosecutor Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions have called for justice in his case, along with Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, the NAACP and Amnesty International.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, "The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing." Yet conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented (with Justice Clarence Thomas), writing that Davis' case "is a sure loser," and "[t]his Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually' innocent."
Davis has had three execution dates, and in one instance was within two hours of lethal injection. Now he will finally have his day in court. With the courageous support of his sister, Martina Correia (who has been fighting for his life as well as her own--she has stage 4 breast cancer), and his nephew, Antone De'Jaun Correia, who at 15 is a budding human rights activist, Davis may yet defy death. That could lead to a long-overdue precedent in U.S. law: It is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
sheet
kids know that shoot is just shit with 2 o's. not one of carlin's more profound remarks, but i think it's cute. basically, the truth is better than euphemism, better than subterfuge. the thing is, we are so very far removed from truth in this country, that euphemism and subterfuge are our new realities. for us, the truth has ceased to exist. we wouldn't know what it was if it walked up to us and introduced itself. we have our substitutes. you know them well. work. bills. goals. church. sitcoms. the real house wives of orange county. at times, they all seem about equal. humor is where you can find it, but you can't find truth anywhere. they banished it. kicked it out of the country. removed it from the premises. fox news has multiplied. it's on all the channels now. it fills the streets, has our students ears in their classrooms. extremism is the new neutrality. we are a righ wing culture with two right wing parties, as the masses of whites fear a socialist takeover. hitler would be proud, as would the indian killers and slave catchers from our past. but, in so many ways, we have them licked. we are smoother, slicker. we have a superficial hipness. we have incorporated the victimized, co-opted the oppressed. even snuck a few of them into the elite. given them millions to entertain us. we have even stolen their slang and style. oh, the wonders of modernity. of course, the bombs still fall, usually on the poor and non-white, as they always did. we might love lebron, but we still need our oil. the big o might be in the white house, but nigeria still has resources we insist belong to us. having a token or two doesn't mean you own the train. all of us have a few tokens in our hands. we have "choice" beyond compare. never have there been so many choices. as long as the choices don't change anything. you know the kind of power us modern ametricans have...what kind of oreos to eat, what style of porn to watch, whether to read a moderate right wing or extreme right wing paper. we are overwhelmed by choice, as the wars are waged and the people are poisoned.
never before have we had so many options and so little power.
something to ponder, as i figure out what to listen to next on lala.
never before have we had so many options and so little power.
something to ponder, as i figure out what to listen to next on lala.
Monday, August 17, 2009
dedicated to the walkers and bikers among us
10 Reasons Why Cars Suck
1. Bumper-to-bumper
From 1950 to 1970, the U.S. automobile population grew four times faster than the human population. Today, there are around 200 million cars in America. As a result, we Americans spend 8 billion hours per year stuck in traffic.
2. Cars kill people
During the twentieth century, 250 million Americans were maimed or injured in automobile accidents. Every single day in the U.S., an average of 121 people are killed in car accidents. The leading cause of death for children aged 5 to 14 in New York City is pedestrian automobile accidents.
3. Cars kill animals
Automobiles, SUVs, trucks, and other fossil field-burning vehicles kill a million wild animals per week in the U.S.-not counting tens of thousands of family pets.
4. Cars exploit dead animals
Substances like anti-freeze, bio-diesel fuel, hydraulic brake fluid, and asphalt binder are all made with ingredients culled from the carcasses of departed animals.
5. Sprawling for dollars
During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S. This area requires maintenance costing over $200 million a day. (The surreptitious cost of the car culture totals nearly $464 billion a year in the U.S. alone, much of that going to the sustentation of a military presence in the Persian Gulf.)
6. Getting warmer?
Automobiles emit one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.
7. Oil in our veins
The U.S. spends $60 billion per year on foreign oil. Eight million barrels of oil per day is combusted in U.S. cars. That’s 450 gallons per person per year.
8. They’re all wasted
Cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually.
9. Leaving rubber
With approximately one billion discarded tires littering our increasingly paved landscape, meditate upon this: Every tire loses one pound of rubber per year, spewing minute grains of rubber into the stratosphere and then back down to find a new home in our water and/or our lungs.
10. Cars are hell
During the 40 days of the (first) Gulf War, 146 Americans died keeping the world safe for petroleum while at home, 4900 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents.
1. Bumper-to-bumper
From 1950 to 1970, the U.S. automobile population grew four times faster than the human population. Today, there are around 200 million cars in America. As a result, we Americans spend 8 billion hours per year stuck in traffic.
2. Cars kill people
During the twentieth century, 250 million Americans were maimed or injured in automobile accidents. Every single day in the U.S., an average of 121 people are killed in car accidents. The leading cause of death for children aged 5 to 14 in New York City is pedestrian automobile accidents.
3. Cars kill animals
Automobiles, SUVs, trucks, and other fossil field-burning vehicles kill a million wild animals per week in the U.S.-not counting tens of thousands of family pets.
4. Cars exploit dead animals
Substances like anti-freeze, bio-diesel fuel, hydraulic brake fluid, and asphalt binder are all made with ingredients culled from the carcasses of departed animals.
5. Sprawling for dollars
During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S. This area requires maintenance costing over $200 million a day. (The surreptitious cost of the car culture totals nearly $464 billion a year in the U.S. alone, much of that going to the sustentation of a military presence in the Persian Gulf.)
6. Getting warmer?
Automobiles emit one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.
7. Oil in our veins
The U.S. spends $60 billion per year on foreign oil. Eight million barrels of oil per day is combusted in U.S. cars. That’s 450 gallons per person per year.
8. They’re all wasted
Cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually.
9. Leaving rubber
With approximately one billion discarded tires littering our increasingly paved landscape, meditate upon this: Every tire loses one pound of rubber per year, spewing minute grains of rubber into the stratosphere and then back down to find a new home in our water and/or our lungs.
10. Cars are hell
During the 40 days of the (first) Gulf War, 146 Americans died keeping the world safe for petroleum while at home, 4900 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
went on james moody's website a while back, and he had pictures of his trip to the white house, shaking hands with bush, the whole bit. i should have stuck to the albums.
there was really nothing that dizzy couldn't play. people tend to think of him as a bebop guy, which of course he was, but he did a lot of great playing after bebop too. just a great player, and a wonderful musical spirit.
it's tough to work with someone and know that he basically won't change. i mean, no one should change if they don't want to, but this is something else. you can put in the time with some of these students, day after day, and each day will replicate the day before it...the conversations, the patterns, everything. there are laughs (you are not a good idea, you be neal) but more than anything, there is sadness to it all. it will be nice to step away from it for a few weeks. and when i go back, the students i'll be working with will be more on the ball. they get the joke, that sort of thing. it's not that i didn't dig these guys. i did, it's just that it gets you down sometimes.
remember the excitement after obama's election? where did that go? where are all those people who wanted change? outside the white house, that is. or maybe it was all just a beauty contest, a superbowl, a world series. root, root for the home team, martha. well, it does seem that it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ballgame. but, then again, we always strike out. so, i guess it's better now. at least his old man was from kenya.
but, what about the beggars on the street? the kids in pakistan? what about this polluted earth of ours, on life support, thanks to our eternal molestation of it? can these realities be spoken of? are we allowed to voice these ugly truths, in this time of supposed optimism? just where is the hope that we are hearing so much about? my sense is there is less hope than ever, but i have no sense, so maybe i'm wrong.
i can only hope.
why do i care about manny ramirez so much? he is making over 20 million dollars a year for swinging a baseball bat. i should hate all these guys, including him. but, each day, i get on yahoo and track his numbers for the day. when he gets a couple of hits, my day receives a shot in the arm, but when he goes hitless, i feel as if someone has nailed me with a shot to the ribs. i have never met the man, and now that he is out in la, surely never will. why do i care? the question can not hide the fact that i do. and when basketball season starts, i will cheer with the same unthinking lunacy for the old and tired jason kidd, rooting without hope for that first championship for mr. assist.
hell, it's something to do.
there was really nothing that dizzy couldn't play. people tend to think of him as a bebop guy, which of course he was, but he did a lot of great playing after bebop too. just a great player, and a wonderful musical spirit.
it's tough to work with someone and know that he basically won't change. i mean, no one should change if they don't want to, but this is something else. you can put in the time with some of these students, day after day, and each day will replicate the day before it...the conversations, the patterns, everything. there are laughs (you are not a good idea, you be neal) but more than anything, there is sadness to it all. it will be nice to step away from it for a few weeks. and when i go back, the students i'll be working with will be more on the ball. they get the joke, that sort of thing. it's not that i didn't dig these guys. i did, it's just that it gets you down sometimes.
remember the excitement after obama's election? where did that go? where are all those people who wanted change? outside the white house, that is. or maybe it was all just a beauty contest, a superbowl, a world series. root, root for the home team, martha. well, it does seem that it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ballgame. but, then again, we always strike out. so, i guess it's better now. at least his old man was from kenya.
but, what about the beggars on the street? the kids in pakistan? what about this polluted earth of ours, on life support, thanks to our eternal molestation of it? can these realities be spoken of? are we allowed to voice these ugly truths, in this time of supposed optimism? just where is the hope that we are hearing so much about? my sense is there is less hope than ever, but i have no sense, so maybe i'm wrong.
i can only hope.
why do i care about manny ramirez so much? he is making over 20 million dollars a year for swinging a baseball bat. i should hate all these guys, including him. but, each day, i get on yahoo and track his numbers for the day. when he gets a couple of hits, my day receives a shot in the arm, but when he goes hitless, i feel as if someone has nailed me with a shot to the ribs. i have never met the man, and now that he is out in la, surely never will. why do i care? the question can not hide the fact that i do. and when basketball season starts, i will cheer with the same unthinking lunacy for the old and tired jason kidd, rooting without hope for that first championship for mr. assist.
hell, it's something to do.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
there is a lot going on, but the bullshit stands out. there is so much of it. the people you have to deal with. the jobs you have to do. the bills you have to pay. the shows on tv, the music on the radio, the cars on the road, the false smiles, the chain stores, everything reduced to money. no one relates to you with empathy, with decency, with intelligence. in the end, it's all about getting ahead, feeling superior, pretending to be the shit. and what of us, the ones who just want to be left alone? what of the ones who just want to sleep and read and listen to jazz and take walks and do just enough work to survive? what of us? they will shit on us, that's what. they think nothing of us. they think we are demented, that there is something wrong with us, that we are failures, losers, sick. they can't understand us, so they lash out at us in anger. the landlords and employers and rednecks and store owners and drivers and cashiers and realtors and random passerby. all of them. they stare. they smirk. they do what they can in a 1001 ways to make our lives miserable. they put "these colors don't run" bumper stickers on the back of their cars. they make stupid jokes. they buy up all the property. they moan about the old days, when no child was molested and people respected each other's privacy. they leave out lynching and the burning of asian children with napalm. in their day, they had to walk to school. people worked back then, everyone spoke english, people knew how to spell, they wrote letters, blah blah blah.
everything becomes a morality play. good vs evil. root for the home team. oh, tom brady is back, and the celtics signed rasheed wallace. let's all sit around and bash unions, but never the rich. let's tell racist jokes, but never use the n word. it's all code now. let's give each other the wink before we act like assholes. i've seen whitey in action. i know what to look for. he holds back. thinks he's progressive. uses no slurs. wears his pants baggy. goes to a jay-z concert. watches basketball. fuck him. he ain't cool, and never will be. america co-opts. takes the life out of rebellion, and after the blood has been sucked, the redneck jumps in and nibbles at the crumbs of cool.
the whole thing is so redundant. repetitive. tiresome. is it worth the effort? the getting up in the morning? paying the taxes? is it worth it to make the marches? what changes? have we talked to our friends in the albanian community yet? has jim from cambridge switched to kentucky grilled chicken? does he still doubt that all the farms in cuba are organic? did jared israel really need all of that water?
throughout your entire life, the essentials will be constant. there will always be people trying to fuck with you. beware of the boss, the landlord, the spying neighbor, the corrupt politician, the waiter who refuses to serve you, the guy at the dinner party who asks you "what do you do?" the mainstream movie theater, the top 40 radio station, reality tv, nba and nfl refs, the prices at health food stores, rodents, u.s. foreign policy, the overrating of tom cruise, tom hanks, and denzel washington.
beware. it won't help none, but beware.
everything becomes a morality play. good vs evil. root for the home team. oh, tom brady is back, and the celtics signed rasheed wallace. let's all sit around and bash unions, but never the rich. let's tell racist jokes, but never use the n word. it's all code now. let's give each other the wink before we act like assholes. i've seen whitey in action. i know what to look for. he holds back. thinks he's progressive. uses no slurs. wears his pants baggy. goes to a jay-z concert. watches basketball. fuck him. he ain't cool, and never will be. america co-opts. takes the life out of rebellion, and after the blood has been sucked, the redneck jumps in and nibbles at the crumbs of cool.
the whole thing is so redundant. repetitive. tiresome. is it worth the effort? the getting up in the morning? paying the taxes? is it worth it to make the marches? what changes? have we talked to our friends in the albanian community yet? has jim from cambridge switched to kentucky grilled chicken? does he still doubt that all the farms in cuba are organic? did jared israel really need all of that water?
throughout your entire life, the essentials will be constant. there will always be people trying to fuck with you. beware of the boss, the landlord, the spying neighbor, the corrupt politician, the waiter who refuses to serve you, the guy at the dinner party who asks you "what do you do?" the mainstream movie theater, the top 40 radio station, reality tv, nba and nfl refs, the prices at health food stores, rodents, u.s. foreign policy, the overrating of tom cruise, tom hanks, and denzel washington.
beware. it won't help none, but beware.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
love and marriage in the "only democracy in the middle east."
Israeli Rabbis Ban Marriage
For Jewish ‘Untouchables'
August 09, 2009 By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Tel Aviv -- Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union staged a very public wedding in the streets of central Tel Aviv this week to highlight the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews barred from lawfully marrying in Israel.
Nico Tarosyan and Olga Samosvatov chose to tie the knot in a special ceremony on Tuesday -- watched by family, friends and curious passers-by -- after Orthodox rabbis had denied them the right to wed.
The rabbinate says that Mr Tarosyan cannot prove he is Jewish according to its strict standards and therefore should not marry Ms Samosvatov, who is considered a proper Jew.
Mr Tarosyan, aged 34, who moved to Israel from Moscow in 1995, called his treatment by the rabbis "humiliating".
"In Russia we were hated because we were Jews and here in Israel we are discriminated against as Russians," he said.
An underclass of Jews has emerged in Israel since the early 1990s, when more than one million immigrants began pouring into Israel following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Many were entitled to emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which requires only that they have a single Jewish grandparent. But the authorities -- keen to bolster the number of Jews in Israel's demographic battle with the Palestinians -- also allowed some to arrive with little documentation or faked papers.
This set the new immigrants on a collision course with Israel's Orthodox rabbis, who regard themselves as guarding the Jewish people's ethnic and religious purity, said Ofer Kornfeld, the chairman of Havaya, an organisation that officiates at unrecognised weddings like the one conducted in Tel Aviv this week.
"Civil marriages are not possible in Israel," he said. "So the rabbis get to decide who can marry and who cannot."
Israel has passed control of all matters relating to personal status -- births, marriages and divorces, and deaths -- to rabbis belonging to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy.
Havaya, said Mr Kornfeld, offered unrecognised, secular and non-Orthodox Jews the chance to marry in a ceremony that retained Jewish rituals while tailor-making the event to their own convictions.
Official figures show that as many as 350,000 Jews are classified by the rabbinate as having "no religion", and are therefore unable to marry in Israel. Their only option is to wed abroad -- the marriage is then recognised on their return.
These immigrants face major hurdles in seeking to prove their Jewishness to the rabbis' satisfaction. They must produce evidence that they have a Jewish mother or grandmother in a procedure that can be upsetting to those affected, said Mr Kornfeld.
"Many don't even try because they know it's a difficult and humiliating process that can take months or even years to complete and there is no guarantee of success."
For a man, the rabbis demand that he prove he is circumcised and produce a birth certificate stating that his mother was a Jew, a proof many immigrants from the former Soviet Union have difficulty providing.
"It may help if you can prove that your mother spoke Yiddish or, if she is dead, supply a photo of her gravestone with a Magen [Star of] David," said Mr Kornfeld.
Mr Tarosyan, a computer engineer, said that, although he failed to impress the rabbis, both his parents were considered Jews in Russia. In Moscow, he said, neighbours had daubed anti-Semitic graffiti on the family's door.
Ms Samosvatov, 29, who immigrated from Ukraine with her mother when she was 15, said although the couple considered this week's wedding in Tel Aviv to be the true ceremony, they were saving to travel to Prague later in the year to conduct a recognised wedding.
Mr Kornfeld said they would be following in the path of a growing number of Israelis. "About 6,000 couples wed abroad each year, often in eastern Europe. That's about a fifth of all marriages."
It is not only Jews classified as without a religion who are forced to leave the country, he said. Many recognised but secular Jews, who do not wish to submit to an Orthodox ceremony, tie the knot abroad, as do those marrying across religious divisions.
Israel's Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens -- comprising nearly a fifth of the population -- have their own separate religious authorities who are given exclusive oversight of weddings.
Demands to reform the law have been growing for more than a decade, but every parliamentary bill on civil marriage has been defeated, usually following stiff resistance from the religious parties.
However, a new bill, approved by a ministerial committee last month, seems more likely to become law. It allows for a limited form of civil marriage that applies only to couples where both lack a religious status. Mr Tarosyan and Ms Samosvatov would not qualify as the rabbis consider one of them a Jew.
The religious parties were forced to agree to the Civil Marriage Bill as a condition for entering the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in the spring. The compromise was needed because civil marriage was the key platform of another coalition partner, the far-right Yisreal Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who is now facing corruption charges. The party draws heavy support from the Russian-speaking population.
The liberal Haaretz newspaper welcomed the bill as a "first crack in the religious monopoly" on marriage, but other observers have doubts.
Avirama Golan, writing in the same paper, warned that the law would apply only to a tiny number of couples and would in practice entrench the power of the rabbis, who before approving a wedding would still force couples to submit to lengthy and humiliating investigations to ensure that neither was a Jew.
She added that such couples would be forced into a ghetto, giving "birth to their shunned children who will marry among themselves and be registered separately in the communal records".
The rabbis' agreement to the reform, analysts point out, was possible because the bill maintains barriers preventing assimilation between the majority designated as real Jews and those the rabbis consider "without religion".
Mr Kornfeld said the rabbis' grip on marriage has continued even though nearly 70 per cent of Israeli Jews defined themselves as secular. Even among the religious, some regard themselves as belonging to the more moderate Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism.
Conversion to Orthodoxy is tightly restricted by the rabbinate, with only a few hundred people approved each year. Those converting are forced to adopt a strictly observant lifestyle for themselves and their children.
A general lack of sympathy for the problems of recent Russian immigrants was reflected in a survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute this week. It found that half of all Israelis polled believed that only those born in Israel could be a "true Israeli". Conversely, only 28 per cent of Russian-speaking immigrants in their 30s saw their future in Israel.
For Jewish ‘Untouchables'
August 09, 2009 By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Tel Aviv -- Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union staged a very public wedding in the streets of central Tel Aviv this week to highlight the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews barred from lawfully marrying in Israel.
Nico Tarosyan and Olga Samosvatov chose to tie the knot in a special ceremony on Tuesday -- watched by family, friends and curious passers-by -- after Orthodox rabbis had denied them the right to wed.
The rabbinate says that Mr Tarosyan cannot prove he is Jewish according to its strict standards and therefore should not marry Ms Samosvatov, who is considered a proper Jew.
Mr Tarosyan, aged 34, who moved to Israel from Moscow in 1995, called his treatment by the rabbis "humiliating".
"In Russia we were hated because we were Jews and here in Israel we are discriminated against as Russians," he said.
An underclass of Jews has emerged in Israel since the early 1990s, when more than one million immigrants began pouring into Israel following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Many were entitled to emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which requires only that they have a single Jewish grandparent. But the authorities -- keen to bolster the number of Jews in Israel's demographic battle with the Palestinians -- also allowed some to arrive with little documentation or faked papers.
This set the new immigrants on a collision course with Israel's Orthodox rabbis, who regard themselves as guarding the Jewish people's ethnic and religious purity, said Ofer Kornfeld, the chairman of Havaya, an organisation that officiates at unrecognised weddings like the one conducted in Tel Aviv this week.
"Civil marriages are not possible in Israel," he said. "So the rabbis get to decide who can marry and who cannot."
Israel has passed control of all matters relating to personal status -- births, marriages and divorces, and deaths -- to rabbis belonging to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy.
Havaya, said Mr Kornfeld, offered unrecognised, secular and non-Orthodox Jews the chance to marry in a ceremony that retained Jewish rituals while tailor-making the event to their own convictions.
Official figures show that as many as 350,000 Jews are classified by the rabbinate as having "no religion", and are therefore unable to marry in Israel. Their only option is to wed abroad -- the marriage is then recognised on their return.
These immigrants face major hurdles in seeking to prove their Jewishness to the rabbis' satisfaction. They must produce evidence that they have a Jewish mother or grandmother in a procedure that can be upsetting to those affected, said Mr Kornfeld.
"Many don't even try because they know it's a difficult and humiliating process that can take months or even years to complete and there is no guarantee of success."
For a man, the rabbis demand that he prove he is circumcised and produce a birth certificate stating that his mother was a Jew, a proof many immigrants from the former Soviet Union have difficulty providing.
"It may help if you can prove that your mother spoke Yiddish or, if she is dead, supply a photo of her gravestone with a Magen [Star of] David," said Mr Kornfeld.
Mr Tarosyan, a computer engineer, said that, although he failed to impress the rabbis, both his parents were considered Jews in Russia. In Moscow, he said, neighbours had daubed anti-Semitic graffiti on the family's door.
Ms Samosvatov, 29, who immigrated from Ukraine with her mother when she was 15, said although the couple considered this week's wedding in Tel Aviv to be the true ceremony, they were saving to travel to Prague later in the year to conduct a recognised wedding.
Mr Kornfeld said they would be following in the path of a growing number of Israelis. "About 6,000 couples wed abroad each year, often in eastern Europe. That's about a fifth of all marriages."
It is not only Jews classified as without a religion who are forced to leave the country, he said. Many recognised but secular Jews, who do not wish to submit to an Orthodox ceremony, tie the knot abroad, as do those marrying across religious divisions.
Israel's Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens -- comprising nearly a fifth of the population -- have their own separate religious authorities who are given exclusive oversight of weddings.
Demands to reform the law have been growing for more than a decade, but every parliamentary bill on civil marriage has been defeated, usually following stiff resistance from the religious parties.
However, a new bill, approved by a ministerial committee last month, seems more likely to become law. It allows for a limited form of civil marriage that applies only to couples where both lack a religious status. Mr Tarosyan and Ms Samosvatov would not qualify as the rabbis consider one of them a Jew.
The religious parties were forced to agree to the Civil Marriage Bill as a condition for entering the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in the spring. The compromise was needed because civil marriage was the key platform of another coalition partner, the far-right Yisreal Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who is now facing corruption charges. The party draws heavy support from the Russian-speaking population.
The liberal Haaretz newspaper welcomed the bill as a "first crack in the religious monopoly" on marriage, but other observers have doubts.
Avirama Golan, writing in the same paper, warned that the law would apply only to a tiny number of couples and would in practice entrench the power of the rabbis, who before approving a wedding would still force couples to submit to lengthy and humiliating investigations to ensure that neither was a Jew.
She added that such couples would be forced into a ghetto, giving "birth to their shunned children who will marry among themselves and be registered separately in the communal records".
The rabbis' agreement to the reform, analysts point out, was possible because the bill maintains barriers preventing assimilation between the majority designated as real Jews and those the rabbis consider "without religion".
Mr Kornfeld said the rabbis' grip on marriage has continued even though nearly 70 per cent of Israeli Jews defined themselves as secular. Even among the religious, some regard themselves as belonging to the more moderate Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism.
Conversion to Orthodoxy is tightly restricted by the rabbinate, with only a few hundred people approved each year. Those converting are forced to adopt a strictly observant lifestyle for themselves and their children.
A general lack of sympathy for the problems of recent Russian immigrants was reflected in a survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute this week. It found that half of all Israelis polled believed that only those born in Israel could be a "true Israeli". Conversely, only 28 per cent of Russian-speaking immigrants in their 30s saw their future in Israel.
been out to the suburbs alot this summer, thanks to my camp gig. lincoln, acton, etc. you can't walk anywhere. good greenery though. but man, there's no diversity. it doesn't swing. i'm sure the air is better, and the houses are nice, but it feels like death to me. everywhere i have ever lived, i have been able to walk to a local library. a train or bus has been within a 10 minute walk. when i have ever walked down a street, i have seen people of every color, and have heard spanish, portugese, haitian creole, vietnamese, cantonese, italian, and other languages i couldn't place. the more people you observe, the more you become, if you are open to the observations. you begin to swing, to have a certain rhythm in your speech, in your walk, in your humor. you hear different kinds of music, eat different foods, attain different perspectives on politics, culture, religion. of course, a shitload of rednecks live in the heart of the city. contact does not progressivism make, but it can, if you are willing.
i have walked down the street, and seen david barsamian. i have jumped on a train for 10 minutes, and seen live jazz of the highest order. the ballgames are played in the same city in which i live. the record and bookstores are all here. of course, i was jumped once, but other than that, it's been smooth sailing. i have lived my life without a car. my feet and bus pass have been good enough. the market, library, train station, bakery, bank, ice cream parlor, videostore, diners, all within reach. no, i don't want to mow a lawn. i don't want to hang an american flag. i don't want "going to the city" to be an all day gig. i don't want to look at people whiter than me without end.
i am a city guy, and a city guy i'll stay. the overpriced, unsafe, pest infested, paranoid, angry, city has worked for me so far. the irish telling me i killed christ, the latinos yelling at me to drop my wallet, the black kids trying to punk me at the basketball courts, the chinese guys spying on me at their restaurants, the dogs unleashed, running up to me in dorchester, the woman being knocked down, refusing my help, the man lying in the street outside my old place, blood all over his hands, the inept schools with the bitter, ignorant teachers, the bigoted landlords, the vietnamese guy playing his guitar at the 3 in the morning, the jamaican guy who sold drugs on my old street.
and the old park me and my dad used to play stickball in. the brunch with live jazz, stereo jack's, dino's, lucy parson's, walks with pinko, meeting tilberg, running into walls and hitting high notes in the park, the pizza special at hi fi, the nestle quik at the local grocery store, pick up games in townfield, trips to the pond, castle island, the arboretum, the women who have walked pass, each with their own look and grace, the puerto rican parade, the west indian festival, the free movies at the library, the harvard film archive, the brattle, looney tunes, planet records, raven bookstore, newbury comics, wally's, the regatta bar, scullers, martin's coffee shop, the trotter, lewenberg, and o'bryant schools, umass boston.
the greats prefer the city. bogosian ran away from woburn as fast as he could. woody and tony bennett still have apartments in new york, fancy though they may be. the great musicians had their lofts.
the city has more life and more death, more happiness and sadness, more progressivism and reactionism, more beauty and ugliness.
the city swings.
for better or worse, i want in on the ride.
i have walked down the street, and seen david barsamian. i have jumped on a train for 10 minutes, and seen live jazz of the highest order. the ballgames are played in the same city in which i live. the record and bookstores are all here. of course, i was jumped once, but other than that, it's been smooth sailing. i have lived my life without a car. my feet and bus pass have been good enough. the market, library, train station, bakery, bank, ice cream parlor, videostore, diners, all within reach. no, i don't want to mow a lawn. i don't want to hang an american flag. i don't want "going to the city" to be an all day gig. i don't want to look at people whiter than me without end.
i am a city guy, and a city guy i'll stay. the overpriced, unsafe, pest infested, paranoid, angry, city has worked for me so far. the irish telling me i killed christ, the latinos yelling at me to drop my wallet, the black kids trying to punk me at the basketball courts, the chinese guys spying on me at their restaurants, the dogs unleashed, running up to me in dorchester, the woman being knocked down, refusing my help, the man lying in the street outside my old place, blood all over his hands, the inept schools with the bitter, ignorant teachers, the bigoted landlords, the vietnamese guy playing his guitar at the 3 in the morning, the jamaican guy who sold drugs on my old street.
and the old park me and my dad used to play stickball in. the brunch with live jazz, stereo jack's, dino's, lucy parson's, walks with pinko, meeting tilberg, running into walls and hitting high notes in the park, the pizza special at hi fi, the nestle quik at the local grocery store, pick up games in townfield, trips to the pond, castle island, the arboretum, the women who have walked pass, each with their own look and grace, the puerto rican parade, the west indian festival, the free movies at the library, the harvard film archive, the brattle, looney tunes, planet records, raven bookstore, newbury comics, wally's, the regatta bar, scullers, martin's coffee shop, the trotter, lewenberg, and o'bryant schools, umass boston.
the greats prefer the city. bogosian ran away from woburn as fast as he could. woody and tony bennett still have apartments in new york, fancy though they may be. the great musicians had their lofts.
the city has more life and more death, more happiness and sadness, more progressivism and reactionism, more beauty and ugliness.
the city swings.
for better or worse, i want in on the ride.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
sometimes, you want to tell them all off. all of them. of course, they probably feel that way about you. yeah, never really thought about that. you think they suck, but what if they think you suck?
wynton kelly...damn.
took the kids to the discovery museum, a small science museum in acton, a burb of boston. man, the burbs are a bore. bunch of bland whites. in any case, it was a kick to dig the kids. the place was hands on, interactive, all that shit. i jumped in by sticking my head in a long pipe and hitting high notes. i nailed "the record shows, my balls are froze, and did it my way!" (an original from papa mellish) banged on some stuff that made random noises. held my hand on a buzzer for a couple of minutes until concerned citizens took notice and shot me a look. in short, acted the fool, which i think is perhaps, my truest self, reading and music notwithstanding. (bullshit word, huh? does it even exist?) i find the kids like an adult who is crazier than they are, though they act like fuckheads either way. and why not? adults suck, why not children? the trip went well, at least as well as it could. but, i was still on the clock. i resent that condition. i resent it with every fiber of my being (who am i, wheat germ? that may well have been the first time i ever said "with every fiber of my being.") remember the guaranteed income? they used to talk alot about that. give me enough to survive on, and i would be sipping pina colada's at the local pond, book in hand. could even write that book that no one has asked for. "asses i have seen." sounds like a bestseller to me, but then, my taste is questionable.
until then, work it is. set the clock, grab the morning coffee, sit next to smelly stiffs on the bus. now that i shower twice a day, i notice bo. funny how it didn't bother me when i was the guy who stunk. to the all the bus riders who i may have offended in days of yore, i apologize. i am sure you are all following my blog, and will read this in within minutes.
even the weekends are starting to suck.
well, there is always next week.
for most of us.
wynton kelly...damn.
took the kids to the discovery museum, a small science museum in acton, a burb of boston. man, the burbs are a bore. bunch of bland whites. in any case, it was a kick to dig the kids. the place was hands on, interactive, all that shit. i jumped in by sticking my head in a long pipe and hitting high notes. i nailed "the record shows, my balls are froze, and did it my way!" (an original from papa mellish) banged on some stuff that made random noises. held my hand on a buzzer for a couple of minutes until concerned citizens took notice and shot me a look. in short, acted the fool, which i think is perhaps, my truest self, reading and music notwithstanding. (bullshit word, huh? does it even exist?) i find the kids like an adult who is crazier than they are, though they act like fuckheads either way. and why not? adults suck, why not children? the trip went well, at least as well as it could. but, i was still on the clock. i resent that condition. i resent it with every fiber of my being (who am i, wheat germ? that may well have been the first time i ever said "with every fiber of my being.") remember the guaranteed income? they used to talk alot about that. give me enough to survive on, and i would be sipping pina colada's at the local pond, book in hand. could even write that book that no one has asked for. "asses i have seen." sounds like a bestseller to me, but then, my taste is questionable.
until then, work it is. set the clock, grab the morning coffee, sit next to smelly stiffs on the bus. now that i shower twice a day, i notice bo. funny how it didn't bother me when i was the guy who stunk. to the all the bus riders who i may have offended in days of yore, i apologize. i am sure you are all following my blog, and will read this in within minutes.
even the weekends are starting to suck.
well, there is always next week.
for most of us.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
the trip that went nowhere
we were gonna take the kids to the aurboretum. we were getting them on the van, when one of them stormed away in anger. he was not able to get the seat of his choice. the next thing i knew, he was screaming such classics as "i don't give a shit" and "i'm fucking mad!" i offered to stay behind with the buffoon, but for issues of safety and security (who is he, tyson in his prime?) we called off the trip. only, we didn't. 10 minutes later, we were trying it again. the screaming student was not punished. instead, he was rewarded with getting to pick the seat he would stick his annoying anus in. but, not so fast. it seems that our shouter pointed at another student. this set the second student off. she started screaming "he pointed at me. i'm very angry!" and other such poetic tid bits. the trip was again called off, but not before a third student jumped into the mix. a male student, perhaps coming to the defense of the angry female student, turned around and said to the first student "you are not a good idea." yes, that was the exact phrase. then, we went back to the class, where student #3 again attacked student #1. "you're guilty" he yelled, sending #1 running, tears flowing from his suddenly sensitive eyes. (ironically, when this same kid threw a stick at me, he shed no tears at all) meanwhile, student #2 is still screaming, smashing her hands against the table, and verbalizing her hatred for #1. #3 has his color coded behavior chart put on red, an occurrence which causes him consternation. for some reason, #3 is the only student who is in anyway disciplined. supposedly, #1's disability explains why he often turns violent. yet, when we were playing basketball in the park with a 6 foot 5 kid a couple of weeks back, i noticed #1 was very polite, a real pacifist. how is acting like a brat a disability? in that case, most americans qualify.
that was the first hour of the day.
that was the first hour of the day.
the townie keeps talking
i don't want to see him, or any of them, for that matter. but one needs to eat. this one dude is on the gig. it's not that he does any one thing that is horrific. it's just his presence. it's his existence. he could be millions of others. his identity is secondary. he works in the town he was born in. he barely made it through high school. he is arrogant, i suppose due to his white skin and american birth. he is working class, but detests unions. he is always on the verge of saying something stupid. today, he said "unions are for people who don't like to work." funny, but i always thought you had to be working to be in a union. the terrible townie is surely a fan of the weekend, short hours, minimum wages, etc, and yet, he hates unions. he must think the lovable leaders of industry willingly granted every perk available to the modern worker. no, that's not quite right, for thinking would require thinking, and i don't think he does much of that.
each day, we have to share space with people we wish didn't exist. murder is out of the question. of course, no one really asks the hard questions anymore. so, we need to get by. in this case, it would probably help if i were a big, strong, black or latino guy. at least, the townies would know to shut up in my presence. unless there were 4 of them and 1 of me. then, they might have the "courage" to flaunt their fuckheadedness.
shit, all i'm trying to do is survive. why can't i be that guy guarding the empty atm? you know, these 350 pound fuckers reading a paper? of course, those guys have to wear a uniform, and are probably being spied on. but, at least they are alone.
to be alone on the job, away from the voices of ignorance, racism, and stupidity. to be far from the lunches with the coworkers, from coworkers who want to give you a lift, who ask you if you have any plans for the weekend, who insist on telling you that they are going back to school. to be apart from the plethora of putrid people.
ah, that would probably suck too.
each day, we have to share space with people we wish didn't exist. murder is out of the question. of course, no one really asks the hard questions anymore. so, we need to get by. in this case, it would probably help if i were a big, strong, black or latino guy. at least, the townies would know to shut up in my presence. unless there were 4 of them and 1 of me. then, they might have the "courage" to flaunt their fuckheadedness.
shit, all i'm trying to do is survive. why can't i be that guy guarding the empty atm? you know, these 350 pound fuckers reading a paper? of course, those guys have to wear a uniform, and are probably being spied on. but, at least they are alone.
to be alone on the job, away from the voices of ignorance, racism, and stupidity. to be far from the lunches with the coworkers, from coworkers who want to give you a lift, who ask you if you have any plans for the weekend, who insist on telling you that they are going back to school. to be apart from the plethora of putrid people.
ah, that would probably suck too.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
just saw a motown retrospective on pbs. not bad. of course, they left all the political stuff out...war, ball of confusion, what's going on. no surprise there. sadly, the show focused on only 5 acts...smokey and the miracles, marvin gaye, the four tops, the temptations, and the supremes.
smokey, a better writer than singer. too high pitched, a little flat at times. does some tough licks at times though.
gaye...soulful, good sound. as i said, they stayed away from what's going on, mercy mercy me, and inner city blues. too bad.
the four tops. levi had a fantastic voice, but the group sounds a little corny at times. baby i need your lovin remains one of the great motown tunes. not shown was the stubbs classic lead on "ask the lonely." i highly recommend this song. youtube has a version with no backing band which is quite interesting. levi recently died. for what it's worth, he was jackie wilson's cousin.
the temptations... great harmonies, but they can look a little silly on stage. david ruffin was a good singer. he could really nail his leads. they showed him to good effect on my girl and ain't too proud to beg, but didn't show him perform his classic "i'm losing you." similar to the marvin segment, there was nothing from their later period, where they touched on social issues with ball of confusion and papa was a rolling stone.
the supremes...ross has something, though i'm not a huge fan. you always get the sense that the background singers could have topped her, if they only got the chance. i like someday we'll be together.
well, the show went with perhaps the most famous acts of the label, though it did leave out stevie wonder and the jackson 5. hey, that don't bother me much, particularly in the latter case. stevie had a number of good things that it would have been nice to hear. but hey, what do i know?
but, there were other motown acts who were quite deserving of mention. edwin starr, in my view, may have had the best voice of anyone who ever recorded on the label. his war should be on any motown retrospective. the temps too cut a version of this tune. starr also did apolitical classics like 25 miles, sos, and double o soul.
martha and the vandellas have the supremes beat by a mile, in my view. heatwave, dancing in the street, nowhere to run, and jimmy mack, are classics of the era. martha reeves has more power than ross, and their songs drive harder.
jr walker and the all stars were a soulful group with an emphasis on instrumental performance. shotgun is a classic of the period, and features walker on vocals and sax. walker was a fine r and b tenor player, one of the few who could really play the horn in that context.
and there was eddie holland and kim weston and barrett strong and gladys knight and the spinners. but hey, whose counting?
please, if you are gonna show us something, educate us. give us a true sense of the body of work you claim to be demonstrating.
no wonder nobody knows what the hell is going on.
smokey, a better writer than singer. too high pitched, a little flat at times. does some tough licks at times though.
gaye...soulful, good sound. as i said, they stayed away from what's going on, mercy mercy me, and inner city blues. too bad.
the four tops. levi had a fantastic voice, but the group sounds a little corny at times. baby i need your lovin remains one of the great motown tunes. not shown was the stubbs classic lead on "ask the lonely." i highly recommend this song. youtube has a version with no backing band which is quite interesting. levi recently died. for what it's worth, he was jackie wilson's cousin.
the temptations... great harmonies, but they can look a little silly on stage. david ruffin was a good singer. he could really nail his leads. they showed him to good effect on my girl and ain't too proud to beg, but didn't show him perform his classic "i'm losing you." similar to the marvin segment, there was nothing from their later period, where they touched on social issues with ball of confusion and papa was a rolling stone.
the supremes...ross has something, though i'm not a huge fan. you always get the sense that the background singers could have topped her, if they only got the chance. i like someday we'll be together.
well, the show went with perhaps the most famous acts of the label, though it did leave out stevie wonder and the jackson 5. hey, that don't bother me much, particularly in the latter case. stevie had a number of good things that it would have been nice to hear. but hey, what do i know?
but, there were other motown acts who were quite deserving of mention. edwin starr, in my view, may have had the best voice of anyone who ever recorded on the label. his war should be on any motown retrospective. the temps too cut a version of this tune. starr also did apolitical classics like 25 miles, sos, and double o soul.
martha and the vandellas have the supremes beat by a mile, in my view. heatwave, dancing in the street, nowhere to run, and jimmy mack, are classics of the era. martha reeves has more power than ross, and their songs drive harder.
jr walker and the all stars were a soulful group with an emphasis on instrumental performance. shotgun is a classic of the period, and features walker on vocals and sax. walker was a fine r and b tenor player, one of the few who could really play the horn in that context.
and there was eddie holland and kim weston and barrett strong and gladys knight and the spinners. but hey, whose counting?
please, if you are gonna show us something, educate us. give us a true sense of the body of work you claim to be demonstrating.
no wonder nobody knows what the hell is going on.
"i wish someone would pick up on my art, before it lays down and dies where it is."
sinatra, 1965.
he knew he was slipping. he heard steve lawrence, and vic damone, and he knew that they weren't it. bennett was bad, but different, more of a show stopper. in any case, this quote means more to me than what sinatra is speaking about. where are the creative artists? aren't we better than the mariah/emimem feud, or the next spider man flick? who is there who can write a song or make a movie that will blow us away? once, i walked into a library with pinko, and saw a fellini film that i will never forget. masina walked, smiling, with sadness in her eyes, and to this day, it hasn't been equalled for me. that movie was made over 50 years ago.
it's laying down. it may not be dead, but it sure is hard to find the pulse sometimes, ain't it?
and the arts aren't the only thing dying. this world of ours is on life support. if we were disinterested, we would likely pull the plug, but when you are playing the game, one hates to concede defeat.
well, it's the 9th inning, folks.
and the pitcher is up next.
sinatra, 1965.
he knew he was slipping. he heard steve lawrence, and vic damone, and he knew that they weren't it. bennett was bad, but different, more of a show stopper. in any case, this quote means more to me than what sinatra is speaking about. where are the creative artists? aren't we better than the mariah/emimem feud, or the next spider man flick? who is there who can write a song or make a movie that will blow us away? once, i walked into a library with pinko, and saw a fellini film that i will never forget. masina walked, smiling, with sadness in her eyes, and to this day, it hasn't been equalled for me. that movie was made over 50 years ago.
it's laying down. it may not be dead, but it sure is hard to find the pulse sometimes, ain't it?
and the arts aren't the only thing dying. this world of ours is on life support. if we were disinterested, we would likely pull the plug, but when you are playing the game, one hates to concede defeat.
well, it's the 9th inning, folks.
and the pitcher is up next.
shit is heating up in honduras again. it doesn't look like the big o is willing to move in the right direction, likely driven by his own centrism and the militant support for the coup by the right wing. therefore, it seems that latin america is going to have to take care of this one on its own. for one, the people of honduras will have to lay it on the line, while i do my part by blogging. sounds like a fair trade. also, the governments and people of other nations in latin america will have to up their opposition. i, for one, think a unified military response is justified. the coup regime should be warned that they have only a certain amount of time to get the fuck out of town, or else. between a strong movement within honduras and a unified response from neighboring countries, the coup regime will have to split. hopefully, not too many are killed in the process. but remember, unified responses from latin america halted the dirty tactics within bolivia, and also forced columbia to stop raids in equador.
one thing we know; it ain't gonna come from the states. we are too tied to big business and an imperial foreign policy. all we want are military bases and sweatshops. to hell with the poor. in fact, the more poor, the more people to work in the sweatshops, and to pick the fruit. that's the whole problem. zelaya raised the minimum wage. when you do that, you raise dignity. you say to people, you are worthy of respect. and, you cut into profits. the reason these big corporations are entrenched in these countries in the first place is to steal their resources and then to work the people for next to nothing. you start to question this process, and you run into opposition from the powerful. therefore, you need power of your own; a militant population, and allies willing to lay it on the line.
stay tuned.
one thing we know; it ain't gonna come from the states. we are too tied to big business and an imperial foreign policy. all we want are military bases and sweatshops. to hell with the poor. in fact, the more poor, the more people to work in the sweatshops, and to pick the fruit. that's the whole problem. zelaya raised the minimum wage. when you do that, you raise dignity. you say to people, you are worthy of respect. and, you cut into profits. the reason these big corporations are entrenched in these countries in the first place is to steal their resources and then to work the people for next to nothing. you start to question this process, and you run into opposition from the powerful. therefore, you need power of your own; a militant population, and allies willing to lay it on the line.
stay tuned.
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