Culture Project

An Unfortunate First

2008-02-05T11:30:00.001-05:00

Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, anti-Taliban fighter, dies of cancer at Guantánamo, his case never settled by law, his story either unheard or unbelieved by his captors. Hekmati was the first man to die of natural causes at at Guantánamo.

The Impossible, Now Possible?

2008-01-05T18:11:00.000-05:00

Obama wins Iowa.

A black man becomes president...?

Assuming Der Bush doesn't cancel elections.

American People Betrayed

2007-12-19T10:45:00.000-05:00

Police brutality in New Orleans. Please be sure to watch to the end.

Journalist Betrayed, Soldiers Betrayed

2007-12-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

But first a lighter fare: Schlock-talker Michael Savage lays into Islam, in a seriously scary way, and doesn't get the Imus routine as a result. Why? Because he laid into Islam, and America right now is afraid of Islam, even if most Muslim-Americans are law-abiding moderates (as are most [insert major group]-Americans).

I hope other minorities are helping Muslim-Americans fight back. Michael Savage was already a grade-A jerk, but his bizarrely fever-pitched screed against Muslim-Americans set a new standard for quasi-mainstream Islamophobia.

Just ask yourself, seriously: Would any on-air personality be allowed to say the same things (that we should deport all of them, that they should shove their religion up their behinds) of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists? He wasn't talking about jihadis - he was talking about all Muslims, a pretty big group.

Anyway, Culture Project's upcoming play Betrayed by New Yorker writer George Packer looks at how the U.S. military and the Bush people essentially betrayed many of the Iraqi interpreters and other aides they hired.

The play's fantastic (we've had a few readings) and Packer's nonfiction accounts of his time in Iraq - ranging from The Assassin's Gate to the article that inspired the play - is definitely worth reading.

But it saddens me to read, in today's New York Times, just how venerable our history of abandoning our allies really is. Short version: To fight communism in Laos and Vietnam, the CIA hired thousands of Hmong warriors (from Laos), then abandoned them when the communists won. The U.S. troops came home, in various states of disrepair. The Hmong were already home, and their socialist government couldn't have been more pissed at them.

Cut to thirty years later. The former fighters are aging; their families now guilty by relation. They move around every few weeks, hiding, and endure irregular skirmishes with the Laotian army. The government of Laos denies that ex-CIA Hmong exist in the jungles, blaming such rumors on "bandits." The Times's pictures prove otherwise.

Also not fun: Iraqi Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was held by U.S. forces for twenty months without being charged with a crime, then released into the care of an Iraqi magistrate. The magistrate will determine whether or not Hussein is an insurgent. He has still not been charged.

Hussein's lawyers "were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense." The AP has fought vigorously for Hussein, with little luck. The military says Hussein helped insurgents. But Hussein hasn't been charged with that crime or with any other.

Jackson Browne Sings

2007-12-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Powerful, swelling and echoing stuff. I guess "haunting" might be the back-of-the-book-jacket word for the first song.

The second, "Roll Out the Drums of War," is punchier, almost like Tool-meets-Neil Young. "Let's not talk about it anymore," might be the most sickeningly right-feeling line. "Who are the profits for?" Or is it "Who are the prophets for?" Either way, good question. "Who makes a fortune?" Word, I can tell you a few names that might fit... This guy's writing is great. Dylan but updated. Never too much, but always incantatory and gripping. The crowd loves it.

Going into over-time, but nobody's cutting the music. He flew in from L.A. just to play tonight. Rock-rock, Jackson.

"I ain't no communist, but I ain't no capitalist. And I ain't no socialist... I only know one party, and it is freedom. I am a patriot," he sings. People clap along. Ends too soon. And it all ends. The question might not have been answered, but it at least has been thoroughly asked.

Holly Hunter and Frank Bidart

2007-12-16T21:49:00.000-05:00

...reads a poem, shortish, involving a beer. I'll find it (I hope) and post in a sec.

Frank Bidart reads "To the Republic," a poem about the Civil War read on AQoI's first night.

Kathleen Chalfant and Darryl Larson

2007-12-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

...takes the stage, dressed in black, to read "Pity the Nation." Found a book by that title in addition to the poem.

Larson reads a Peter Matheson piece about the impact Bush and Cheney have had on our environment: They've cut programs to find alternatives to oil; they've invaded countries for oil; they've not enforced environmental regulations. These crimes, like those committed to steal the elections in 2000 and 2004, are not included in our articles of impeachment, nor those of Wexler nor Kucinich. But That doesn't make them less grave, just less easy to prosecute.

Larson points out that all the money in the world won't save the Bushes and Cheneys of two hundred years from now from the scorching sun and the undrinkable water. Booyakah, future-Bushes. Sadly. Booyakah.

The Last Impeachment Panel

2007-12-16T20:57:00.000-05:00

A panel on stage, Allan Buchman chatting up its members.

Amy Goodman moderates. She opens by noting that the media is the most powerful tool for awareness, a sort of kitchen table that stretches across the country and globe. And is not covering impeachment.

On the panel, Marjorie Cohn, John Nichols, and Naomi Wolf.

To Nichols, Goodman asks why the Dems want to wait for another pres. election to get rid of Bush. Nichols points out that elections are easy. Impeachment is important on its own. We can't just wait for an election; we have to send a message to all future presidents about what how is not okay to govern.

To Cohn, Goodman asks about the reasons for going to Iraq and potentially Iran. The real reason, Cohn says, Bush went to Iraq became clear just recently when we made agreements with Iraq to have troops there indefinitely - to stay in Iraq and move on to Iran. Notwithstanding the new evidence that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, Bush says he has not taken military action against Iran off the table.

Cohn notes that Congress does not have legal authority to start a "war of aggression," one that breaks a treaty, a war whose causes are falsified or blown out of proportion.

Cohn breaks down how impeachment works: The House votes to impeach the president; the Senate acts a court, presiding over the impeachment itself.

Nichols explains that Congress can impeach Cheney and Bush at once (I wrote "Nixon" instead of Cheney first, took a second to see it - Freud at work). But Nichols says to start with Cheney, then move up, exposing the dual criminality of the Dick and the Bush.

Naomi Wolf describes the step by which would-be dictators do their thing: They create vague internal and external threats; they create secret prisons; they create military not answerable to the people; they spy on their own citizens; they harass citizen's groups; they arbitrarily detain and release individuals (TSA for travelers, environmentalists, progressives); they target individuals (Bill Maher, Dixie Chicks, CEOs getting fire); they--oh--here it is--

I think this is so important I'm going to paste in the Wikipedia version, to reiterate:

The Ten Steps to Dictatorship

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Declare all dissent to be treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

Wolf points out that there was still a parliament in Italy when Mussolini took over. He talked to parliament, then he stopped talking. Then at some point later, there was no point even pretending. Bush could declare an emergency tomorrow and boot out Congress. The state is legalizing torture. We could lose democracy, de jure, at any moment. We already have, de facto (the stolen election, torture, crazy war).

Goodman reads from Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which begins with an anecdote of a government worker blogging (!) against torture and being fired for her morals.

Cohn says Mukase won't stop waterboarding because to do so would be to admit that Bush had broken the law. Waterboarding is so obviously torture, there'd be little point admitting it had anything to do with Bush or that torture shouldn't be legal. The only option Mukase et cronies have is to stay the course.

Cohn describes how lawyers are fighting back, protesting, making some headway against the Justice Department by not backing down on Gitmo cases.

Nichols suggests the Democratic candidates should have to debate Naomi Wolf on each point - not Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert and those who ignore the issue of impeachment.

Wolf points out that Bush terrifies so many - libertarians, anarchists, Green Party people. "On paper," Wolf says, "it's over, it's already over. The coup is over." A bill just passed criminalizing anything against Bush as terrorism. You don't need the Long Knives, says Wolf, just these scary laws. This impeachment theater could be criminal. Her book could be criminal.

Nichols is asking Congresspeople to read his book and Wolf's, to just read the articles of impeachment.

Cohn talks about the new bill again - I'm going to look this one up in a sec - and how it criminalizes thought that "advocates force," not only violence, but, say, a protest.

Wolf compares Bush & co. to the Nazis and Stalin, but conservatively, at evidence, at facts. "No one who's read my book," she says, criticizes her comparisons. She tells Cohn, who brought up the Unamerican Activities Committee in the Fifties, that Bush's plan is much more akin to Stalin's than to McCarthy's.

Goodman asks, in closing, what we can do now.

Nichols reiterates that Wexler and others have called for impeachment hearings; write and call and go visit your Congresspeople to ask them to impeach Bush and Cheney. And write and call your local media. We have to get the media involved on a much bigger level. Forget the election for one second. Impeachment is dramatically more important. The presidency had become a pack of lies.

Cohn calls for ending the war, in addition to constantly calling on our leaders to impeach Bush and Dick.

Wolf calls for impeaching and prosecuting B&C. "The only way to save this country." Word up.

Goodman talks about the FCC ending regulations that restrain a few big companies from owning all the major media. Upside, DemocracyNow! has grown quite a bit. And the internet. Don't forget the internet. Please post and repost our videos and articles; comment; send us new leads. Contact your Congresspeople. Show them the videos.

Oh, we're not done. Buchman comes on to remind us that we're going to pursue this issue all year. I think Jackon Browne is going to sing...

David Lindorff

2007-12-16T20:51:00.001-05:00

...from earlier today, sings with his daughter about Iraq. "It's one, two, three - what are we fighting for? ... Five, six, seven - open up the pearly gates..." A charming ditty, I suppose.

[I'm told the song is a version of a Country Joe McDonald song with the refrain, "Don't give a damn, / next stop is Vietnam."

And then a short intermission. The technical director appears on the live-feed, moving mic stands around. The house is almost too packed to move through.

Ned Eisenberg and J.T.

2007-12-16T20:46:00.001-05:00

Ned Eisenberg reads "Bounden Duty," one of my favorite poems by the maestro of weird, James Tate.

Basically, the president asks the narrator, a farmer, to act normal. It's hard to act normal. The narrator's thought process devolves into paranoia. Abrupt, mysterious ending.

Aasif Mandvi

2007-12-16T20:36:00.001-05:00

"I wrote this poem," Daily Show alum Mandvi says, "because I'm afraid of Americans."

The poem begins with the image of a handsome white man on TV telling a young Aasif Mandvi all that he knows about the world. They're best buddies.

Then the white man yells, "Jiiiiihaaad!" "His mouth is open now like a whale..."

"What is this word?" The poem is a fable. The man and Mandvi are friends until the white man yells "jihad."

The poem is frenetic, hypnotizing. The white man eats everything. Mandvi and his mother crouch and hide from him as his mouth engulfs everything. What did his grandfather do to make the white man mad? "It's not your dada, it's not your grandpa," she tells him. He's happy, for a moment. Suffice to stay, it doesn't stay happy.

Duncan Sheik and Nero

2007-12-16T20:27:00.000-05:00

Dunk reads the words of Nero (the first known leader to use a speechwriter) as a woman in a white dress sings and his band plays beautifully behind him.

The speech is chilling. Nero orates about his plan for Rome, his consternations - how can so great an empire have let its poor grow so many? A great song, a creepy Orwellian rant, taking its time.

The next song is a Dunk solo, a light number, years later, as Nero takes "endless long vacations" with his cronies, slits the blood of those who oppose him. "Crowned with Love," I think the piece is. It has a speedy, snowballing, fast-talking power. A "Let Them Eat Cake" nonchalance.

Then Rome burns. "What a night it was, back in 64... (It really was just 64)," says the narrator. Nero quickly lays the blame on others. "Such a photo-op," Nero with the victims, looking like a leader who cares. But he says the people are better off homeless - if only you'd seen their homes before.

A song, beginning with the female lead, "The towers fallen, without an answer, ashes on the wind..." Dunk backs her up. A somber song.

The stage darkens.

John Nichols, Thomas Jefferson, and a Poem

2007-12-16T20:23:00.001-05:00

...gives a rousing call-to-arms regarding impeachment - a perfect way to enter back into the subject. Possibly the best speech of the series (yet).

Bower, as T.Jeff., takes the stage and reads some dry but appropriately deep material, from the (former) T.Jeff.

Then a long poem written from the perspective of a literal fly on the wall during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.

Closing Night - Songs, Poems, Impeachment Proceedings

2007-12-16T19:02:00.000-05:00

Duncan Sheik and Jackson Browne in the hizzy. And a harp. A big ole harp. Soundcheckin.

Found out about tricorner hat-guy. He's Thomas Jefferson, as reincarnated by/into performer Tom Bower. He's with a camera-guy. Doc on Thomas Jefferson? Google's no help here. Maybe it's a secret, shh...

The lobby's absolutely full. It's cold outside. Not the Noreaster predicted, but chilly. The sound quality's great in the theater, but lots of checkin left to be done. I'm not exactly in the way, in the corner of the booth, but I'm not exactly useful.

Action movie previews playing on the wall in the lobby as some doc moves forward, un-fasted. They switch to live feed. House opens.

Duncan Sheik sitting in the house, mingling. Very amiable atmosphere, plus a big harp. Former intern in the house, representin.

Sittin on the steps. Allan Buchman tells us about restoring a piano for Duncan Sheik.

Article V Panel

2007-12-16T15:05:00.000-05:00

Denis Moynihan again moderates. Nation writer John Nichols runs on stage, fields an immediately Moynihan question: Where are we, on impeachment, right now?

Nichols said things are as good as they've ever been, and as bad. He notes that Congress is finally moving: Florida rep. Bob Wexler is holding hearings for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. GO TO HIS WEBSITE, http://wexlerwantshearings.com/, and sing up. This is the best way to get the ball rolling, right now.

Holtzman puts the brakes on Nichols' and Wexler's vision by noting that, if the vision is partisan - if it consists of "Democrats hate Bush" - then it will fail. We need a bipartisan approach. "Let's go back to Watergate," she says. I wince. But her point is we don't need hearings. Watergate started with evidence. Bipartisan call for evidence.

Seems to me that we need something to happen, whether it's thanks to Wexler or not.

Cohn points out we need an independent prosecutor, a special investigator.

Nichols says Wexler and others have just now given us the opening to impeach Bush.

Holtzman and Nichols are getting into it a bit over the procedural differences between special prosecution and Congressional hearings. (Everyone agrees Bush should be impeached somehow, ASAP.)

Lindorff says that Republicans need to be shown that it was dumb and dangerous not to impeach Bush - that the next president probably will be a Democrat and almost definitely will not give up any power whatsoever that Bush gave the presidency.

Horton agrees. "This can only be checked effectively by the impeachment process."

Nichols: Impeachment, seriously pursued, usually succeeds in forcing leaders to step back from the brink. I love this idea. We need to impeach the sons of donkeys not simply because Hillary might win and continue to use the powers d'Bush, but because Bush and Hillary and the Republicans and Democrats need to be told, by the American people, by the voices of reason in Congress, that it is illegal to spy on Americans, to torture prisoners, to utterly ignore the poor of the South in times of crisis, to ignore laws, to start wars.

Holtzman calls it "inertia." We have to press [the Congress]. (She goes back to Watergate with each answer, each time losing some clarity on the matter: Bushiraqtorturegate simply isn't Watergate. This is a new era. Bush is a new terror. I'm sure Holtzman's suggestions are apt and her ideas useful as to how we can oust Bush. But if Bob Wexler gets it done his own way, props to Bob Wexler.)

Nichols tells us to contact our local Congresspeople and tell them to impeach Bush. Particularly Jerrold Nadler. Please do this.

Question from the audience that becomes an angry litany of Buhs's crimes.

New question asks what else we can do.

Nichols says the public is just as angry at Bush as they were at Nixon; the media has changed, however, and we have seen virtually nothing about impeachment on TV.

Cohn notes that Bush is lying about Iran, aggressive against Iran, and not going to be phased by news that Iran doesn't necessarily have nukes. Cohn says getting out of Iraq and stopping Bush before he can go into Iran should be our number one priorities.

Audience member asks/tells something amounting to, "people all over New York want to impeach Bush." Panel agrees; people everywhere want to impeach him.

Holtzman goes back to Watergate. General discussion of lack of media attention to impeachment. Where's the New York Times on this?

Horton (notice his sweet blog) says polls show people, when asked if Bush has committed serious crimes, over 60% of those polled say yes. In Jackson, Mississippi, prosperous white businessmen asked Horton why nobody was impeaching Bush's ass?

Nichols says now is the time to talk to Republicans about impeachment; they are ready; they are either sick of Bush or afraid of giving Bush-powers to Hillary.

Nichols says we can't let the upcoming election become any excuse for not holding Bush accountable.

Horton says for the last several years, the Republicans have been velociraptors; the Democrats, invertebrates. Democracts aren't challenging bad Republican laws. (Well, this has a lot to do with our two-party/arguably-one-class-based-party system. I yearn for a multi-party system.)

Lindorff tells us how Bush took over science programs to manufacture evidence for war against Iraq.

Holtzman reminds us that impeachment is a democratic process envisioned by the framers to be used in circumstances just such as these. We have the time. This will not divide the country; this will unify the country. Rule of law is more important than any one president or party.

Cohn says we have to elect a Democrat in 2008. Bush has done the most dangerous thing, aside from Iraq, by stacking the Supreme Court. Please vote for the Democrat.

And we're done with the articles of impeachment. I for one am convinced - my suspicions confirmed - that we need to get Bush and Cheney out.

Rebel Voices up next, then the big closing concert at 7:30.

More on the Bush Takeover

2007-12-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

For more on signing statements, check out this book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Charlie Savage.

And Al Gore rocks the mic legti on this topic:

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Also, read articles by tonight's Marjorie Cohn, CP Impeach-y alum Elizabeth De La Vega (and another one), and George F. Will.

David Lindorff and the Uni-Exec

2007-12-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Has an awesome white beard and speaks eloquently on the topic of the "unitary executive," the very scary idea that, because we are "at war with terror" (nonsense), the American executive should have legislative and judiciary power - over the world. After one of Bush's Justice Dept. cronies used the term, Bush started using it regularly in his signing statements.

Lindorff notes that Bush wants the president to be the person who can make war, instead of Congress. (Because of "terror," everywhere, invisible, visible, we are always at war; Bush never gives up power...)

The signing statements are Bush's worst trespasses, according to Lindorff.

Closing Day - Article V: Expansion of Executive Power

2007-12-16T14:20:00.000-05:00

What's going on:

2:00 p.m. Participants include Harper's contributor and human rights attorney Scott Horton, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, author David Lindorff, National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn, and Denis Moynihan of DemocracyNow!.

Performers include Josh Hamilton, Tracie Thoms, Ned Eisenberg, Grace Zandarski, and Tom Bower. (One of these performers is wearing a Revolutionary War-style tricorner hat. I'll have to investigate this.)

7:30 p.m. Closing celebration includes performance and commentary from John Nichols, Jackson Browne, Naomi Wolf, Duncan Sheik, Steven Sater, Holly Hunter, Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!, Peter Matthiessen, Kathleen Chalfant, Aasif Mandvi, and others.

***

Right now, Marjorie Cohn (author of Cowboy Republic) and Elizabeth Holtzman (MVP from Article IV) are recapping why Nixon was impeached and what signing statements are. In Holtzman's view, Bush's signing statements are unprecedented, and his not following the law is an impeachable offense. She gets big claps (one standing).

***

Scott Horton takes the stand. Horton explains what certain of Bush's signing statements mean ("flagrant affronts to the Constitution"). The problem is, the statements - little codas that say "Well, as George Bush, I don't have to obey this law I'm signing - are supposed to be used to clarify, not change laws and how laws are executed. Congress makes laws; the executive must enforce them. Cohn asks what Congress could do to challenge Bush. Horton says there aren't many tools available - besides impeachment.

We hear a laundry list of Bush statements. Wow. Bush has pretty much exempted himself from having to tell anyone anything. Horton adds that Bush exempted himself from having to ask permission to use torture techniques like waterboarding on Gitmo detainees. Signing statements give Bush the power to override U.S. law and just torture mothertruckers.

We hear CIA torture-master John Kiriakou in his own words: The CIA didn't torture anyone "willy-nilly;" the orders came from Bush. Period.

Horton points out that even kings have been tried successfully for allowing torture. And we don't like no stinkin kings, right?

Republicans, Debating, Not As A Team

2007-12-13T11:53:00.001-05:00

(Before the titular stuff, mad props to Roger Cohen for his concise, timely defense of secularism in today's NYTimes.)

Ahem.

Props to Ron Paul for saying, in the Republican debates last night:

"We [Americans] maintain an empire which we can't afford."

His answer to budgetary questions, unlike the other candidates', made sense; he recognized that America's attempts to police the world and bully oil-producing nations not only isn't helping us, it's costing us two arms, three legs, and part of a pelvis.

And when asked what he would do in his first year in office:

"We would threaten nobody." Word.

Also, not to be overlooked, Ron Paul on trade:

"It's time we changed our attitude about Cuba."

Mitt Romney had this to say about taxes:

"I don't stay awake at night worrying about the taxes that rich people are paying."

Of course, he followed up by calling for tax-cuts, but at least not rich-people tax-cuts.

Rudy didn't think a failing economy was as big a deal as "Islamic terrorism," which has certainly been the reason behind all my money woes. If only Al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia would stop messing with our housing market and vitiating the middle class... Those rascals.

Fred Thompson was the most frustrating candidate, refusing at first to answer a simple yes or no question about whether or not global climate change was a serious threat caused by humans. (Of course, the moderator should have added "caused in part by humans," or something to that effect - "certainly not helped by human pollution," etc.)

Alan Keyes declined to talk about the environment, instead attacking his opponents and saying America should reduce "hot air" (from politicians); Thompson then - I don't know why, exactly, perhaps in a fit of Dada - said he "agreed with Alan Keyes's position on global warming." Which was cute, but meant he never actually addressed our warming, tidal wave-wracked globe.

Tom Tancredo and Mike Huckabee were both weak on green, the former saying he doesn't believe in mandates. (I.e., simply because the vast majority of us don't want to live in a warm, wet, smoky, landless swamp in a few hundred years, that doesn't mean Tancredo [had anyone heard of him before last night?] and his lizard-people should listen to us.)

Huckabee was quite simply weak. Instead of espousing a coherent policy on/acknowledgment of energy emissions, oil production, the car industry, etc., the Huckster said the U.S. government is the world's biggest energy-user and should therefore be cut down to size, which makes sense most if you're talking - like the Dems (minus Hillary) and Ron Paul - about reducing the U.S. war-machine.

But Huckabee had already said defense was one of three primary features of the vital modern state (including food and oil); he literally called for the U.S. to be able to make its own "tanks, airplanes, bullets, and bombs." Sheesh.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but outsourcing the making of our tanks has never been the issue, no? We're not losing any wars (say, the war against religious extremism, here and abroad) due to lack of/shoddy manufacturing of tanks.

Anyway, Chuck Norris aside, Huckabee is not inspiring.

Duncan Hunter won the G.W.B. Education Award of the evening, however: When asked about, well, education, he said, "Three words: Jaime Escalante and inspiration." Those are four words, Dunk. (You just got slammed.) [Sorry, bad pun.]

No mention of gay rights.

But to bookend:

The whole thing - the gyre of history - turns on this question of religiosity. When asked about "values" (what a terrible reduction/conflation of "metaphysics," "ethics," and "morals"), or in Keyes's case when asked anything, the candidates focused on themselves instead of on the whole of the not necessarily white, not necessarily Christian whole of America.

Instead of saying "church and state are separate; you can be a Muslim-American, a Christian-American, a Buddhist-American, a Satanist-American, an atheist-American, etc.," or anything even remotely similar, they spent their precious seconds trying to out-faith one another.

Need we be reminded? Ours is not a country of "faith," but of reason and individuality: Reason rules the government; individuals are then free to be as faith-y or faithless as they like.

If the government were, say, Buddhist, the Catholics might get mad; if the government were Catholic, the Lutherans might throw a fit, and so on. It's a balancing act wherein the fulcrum is an absence - an absence of a state faith. In fact, it's an absence of any metaphysical principle whatsoever.

"The universe exists and we exist in it" is pretty much the only metaphysical proposition the Framers left us. Some very severe atheists might even take issue with that, but I think 99.999% of Americans can say that, yes, the universe somehow exists.

(Yes, there's the "Creator" bit in the Declaration of Independence, but look at it in context - "endowed by their Creator" is just Deist slang for "alive." Doesn't go into detail about who that Creator is or in what sort of metaphysical hooptie he cruises through time-space.

Full breakdown: Constitution: 0 "God"s, 0 "Creator/created"s; Dec.o.Ind.: 1 "God," 1 "Creator," 1 "created.")

Anyway, I try to take Republicans seriously, as seriously as cancer and good hygiene (both of which, I think, we should consider very seriously), but I just don't get the problem with separating church and state. Seems like a tidy, no-hassle solution to an otherwise impossible problem.

Newest dream-team: Colbert/Bell Hooks '08.

Surveillance Panel

2007-12-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

Okay, Denis Moynihan of Democracy Now(!) is filling in for Amy Goodman as moderator; that's fine, we'll roll with it.

Holtzman fields a question about the nature/balance/ease of impeachment. Nixon's was bipartisan, Clinton's partisan.

Kadidal fields a question... (I miss most of it, reading about Moynihan and Goodman and Hustler magazine. Interesting but sort of psycho. Seems like Moynihan and Goodman are against exploitation, so, go them.)

Now we go to Valeriani, who says Nixon, if alive, would ask, regarding Bush's surveillance and its extraordinary success, "Why the hell didn't I do it?"

(Some thoughts on this very humorous older fellow - Valeriani in a Huffington Post blog post: "Bin Laden tape rants against capitalism. Yo, Osama, where did you get your millions? Tape also urges Americans to convert to Islam. No thanks, we prefer the 21st Century."

Huq quite ably defends Muslim-Americans in another H.F. post.

But don't worry, V. skewers everybody: "Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego announces $198 million settlement with plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Big Bucks for Buggery.")

Valeriani is a journalist. He contacted Russians and worked in Cuba, back in the Cold War days, and had his phones tapped. The FBI called him routinely to ask him to help get Russians to give away sensitive information. When he didn't respond to FBI phone messages for two days, they showed up in front of buildings where he was headed. He had his records with the FBI checked - he was listed as "turned," a friendly informant. Lol.

Holtzman gets a round of vigorous applause for defending the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, no matter how hard such a process would be. (She's responding to V. and his assertion that - because, in the event of a successful B&C impeachment, Nancy Pelosi would become president - some might see an impeachment as an attempt at a "Democrat coup," which does sound silly, typing it.

She points out that a successful impeachment must be bipartisan; if Republicans don't want to impeach Bush, Democrats won't be able to do it alone.

Huq very smartly brings the whole question around to what will happen with the next president, regardless of her party? Will the next president not only abandon but help dismantle and prevent from being reinstated the illegal, warrantless surveillance programs? The extraordinary renditions to secret jails in Syria and Egypt? He defines the "Cheney version of the Constitution," which is that whenever the executive feels it needs to extend its powers in the name of national security, it simply can, no questions.

Don't think, Huq counsels, that a Pres. Obama or a Pres. Hillary won't use the Republican programs of domestic terror that Culture Project, Democracy Now(!), the CCR, the ACLU, and so many others are fighting against.

Valeriani speaks on "scar tissue," how we're no longer shocked by Bush's evils.

Audience Q1: Pressures on the election...

Holtzman says we need the president to be brought to justice, to show that Congress can do its thing(s) - pass laws and remove tyrants from office.

Audience Q2: If Pelosi hadn't taken impeachment off the table...

Kadidal, Holtzman, and Valeriani note that the American people and Dennis Kucinich want to impeach Bush; keep the pressure on, Pelosi will have to. It wasn't a problem (for the Speaker of the House - third in line for pres. after pres. and VP - to bring the pres. to justice) during Watergate.

Audience Q3: Cheney = brains of operation...

Valeriani: He lied about WMDs.

Huq: There's a great deal of public evidence about Cheney's aide's roles in setting aside FISA, torture laws, and the Geneva Conventions. You'd subpoena [Cheney's aides].

Audience Q4: How would ordinary people get Congress to listen, seriously...?

Holtzman: When was the last time you contacted your Congressperson? Get a meeting. Email. Get your block to sign a petition.

Moynihan has a show of hands for who gets the "Saturday Night Massacre" reference. (The audience, educated and in many cases old enough, gets it.)

Holtzman: The tapes were critical. Elliot Richardson appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who looked for the tapes. The tapes got Nixon impeached. (People got fired, hence the massacre.) "We would have seen a similar event" - Ashcroft would have resigned. It's not clear what they changed to make their program compliant with FISA.

Audience Q5: 200,000 phone calls, that night, Saturday Night Massacre, to the Congress. We had 200,000 phone calls. You heard from us.

Audience Q6: Should we impeach Cheney first, because people seem to favor that, in polls? Then impeach Bush?

Holtzman (again): It will take a while to do two. It took a while for us to do one. We had to hire lawyers. The Democrats hired a Republican lawyer, and the Republicans hired a Republican lawyer. It hadn't been done in a hundred years - these things had to be studied. It took about nine months. So there's really enough time, to do it still. But there's not enough time to do Cheney and Bush. We have Bush's fingerprints on it. My whole view is to start the proceedings against Bush; we will accumulate evidence against Cheney.

One of the articles against Nixon was that he stonewalled us for information, and that was voted on by a bipartisan base. So there's a precedent. There's a lot of sentiment around the country for impeachment.

(Have any Congresspeople - Dems or Reps, candidates or not - seen our videos, site, blog? Do they know about this event? Shouldn't we, CP, tell them? Shouldn't we all?)

Huq: The Congress can hold court on its own. (Holtzman: We have our own jail!) The Congress can specifically subpoena the president and hold him in contempt if he doesn't show.

Qs-Final, there's a short storm of them.

Kadidal notes that other forms of government have Justice Departments that can go after corrupt executives. We do not have this. Certainly not in Mukasey...

Holtzman: What happened not only to Congress, but to the ACLU? I still believe it can be done, has to be done. With all the defects in the impeachment process, this is what the framers had exactly in mind. They were freaked about the misuse of power. They knew there was gonna be a Richard Nixon, a George Bush. There's too much misunderstanding about it. Even Obama said it's not democratic - it's in our Constitution, it's exactly democratic. What's the shape of our country going to be? No one else can make that decision for us?

***

This has been live blogging on surveillance; I'm back for one more live-blog-impeachy event on Sunday... (And, yes, for those who have read some of my earlier posts, I still like Obama but disagree with Obama on impeachment and wish Kucinich was as popular.)

Joshua Dratel and NSA Kids

2007-12-10T20:09:00.000-05:00

After a brief reading of interview material shedding light on the weird episode of John Ashcroft and his revelation that Bush's domestic surveillance program was and is illegal, Mr. Dratel takes the stage.

Attorney-client privilege discussed at length.

So, one big problem with intercepting everybody's conversations, is that you intercept privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients, which is super-duper wrong (that's a legal term).

Dratel says that no Bush people complained about FISA, though they don't follow it. It's very easy to get FISA warrants, it sounds like.

Dratel testifies that Bush should indeed be impeached for wiretapping. Massive applause.

***

Now, before the panel, we go back to the court to hear about whether or not the illegal warrantless Bush NSA program is effective. Bush says it's saved "thousands of lives," but agents report that the vast majority most of their illegally garnered tips led to "dead ends or innocent Americans" (which are dead ends).

The IBM guy who invented modern ultra-precise data-mining says that the processes still aren't precise enough, and they couldn't possibly predicted terrorists (who, I'm guessing, are probably smart enough not to say, over a tapped phone, "Hey, let's BLOW STUFF UP" - meaning agents have to rely on bits and pieces that, according to some, usually lead "to Pizza Hut.").

***

CHECK OUT THIS NSA "KID'S PAGE." Wow. I mean, wow. As our tech points out, it's like Joe Camel. Neo-con militarism - now in eight MAD COOL fun cartoon morphing anime animal flavorz!

Maybe Amy Goodman, Mos Def, and I can bust out the ProgressivPoppers, a team of super-heroic delicious cheese-animated jalapeno- and nacho-based foods engineered by Dutch and South Korean scientists to help teach kids around the world about humanism, respect for life, science, democracy, the value of the arts, classlessness, etc.

Maybe not...

KIDZ, here's one "kewl" NSA-Lite character from whom you can learn how to install micro-cameras in your friends' Yu-Gi-Oh! lunchboxes:

Aziz Huq

2007-12-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

...takes the stage. Discusses FISA, the big act that Holtzman, Kadidal, and the dapper Mr. Huq are speaking again and again about. Basically, FISA lets the executive ask a judge for permission to use electronic surveillance on a foreign power. President Carter signed it into law. It for the first time required a warrant for this surveillance. Huq points out the requirements are easy to meet, to get permission under FISA to use electronic surveillance.

Huq notes that FISA is a law; not even the president can get out of it. This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about: Most defenses of Bush, by Bush, by those of his supporters whom I've met, revolve around his just plain being the president.

Huq notes exceptions to FISA: If Congress declares war, the president gets fifteen days free of FISA; then he has to come back and ask for judicial permission for an extension. He can also, in an emergency (a "real" emergency, not just "the War on Terror," fought ad nauseam), the president can go ahead and spy, then come back and talk to the judiciary about it.

Discussion of the NSA - the president ordered the NSA to start surveillance without warrants. Pretty clear here. That's a big no-no, laws-wise. Bien fait!, if only we could get this dude into courts... I mean, into courts he hasn't already packed with his judges... So, I guess, into courts in another country. Darn.

Huq calls Alberto Gonzales an obfuscator (we concur, insofar as our non-attorney minds can understand the former Attorney General's mis-speeches).

Gray area of data-mining: Is it legal to use phone-company data to find "suspicious patterns of activity," paths, webs of calls linking terrorists, suspects, funders, etc.? Well, the next step after identifying paths is to trace those paths to individuals and spy on them. For which you need warrants.

Also, you can be "affiliated to Al-Qaeda" even if you're a cabbie and you pick up a suspect as a fare, or if you give money to any major Muslim charity. Then Bush can spy on you - you might be a suspect.

Also, also, the Pres. went against Congress and used the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens even after having been told not to. Huq says Bush has clearly committed high crimes. Nuff said (for our purposes).

Shayana Kadidal and Elizabeth Holtzman

2007-12-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

...introduces the evening: We'll hear a history of surveillance law. He will act as prosecutor.

The court calls E. Holtzman (served in Congress 1972 - 1981) to the stand. She helped git Nixon ("git" in the "git-R-dun" sense as well as the typical one). She is now a private lawyer and writer. She also wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush. (All of our friendly impeachment books have "impeachment" in their titles, no?)

The court (the performers) read the First and Fourth Amendments.

Kadidal and Holtzman discuss the legalities between wiretapping; the short version is, a court must, must approve wiretapping - all wiretapping. Not only the D.A.'s office, but an independent arbiter must approve wiretapping. "The mere fact of having a judicial review of wiretapping applications, is a restraint on wiretapping."

Kadidal asks why our Constitution's framers made a point to have the executive ask the judiciary for permission to search the citizens; Holtzman answers that the framers had experienced first-hand how illegal searches by the British had plagued the American people. Holtzman notes that no D.A. has complained about the theory behind the process by which wiretapping applications are approved (though they may gripe, one supposes, about individual processes).

The court quotes from the impeachment articles against Nixon, about wiretapping. You might mistake the words for ones about Bush, except that so far only a tiny minority of Democrats and we at Culture Project have taken the steps to try to impeach Bush.

The court notes that the government is now really good at "collecting information," meaning Google-good (in part, thanks to Google). What do "they" (who are they?) know about "us" (which grouping probably includes some of "they"/them)? They can know practically whatever they want. Doesn't mean the CIA will share the info with the FBI, or that the information will lead to any useful military info about, say, one homeless Arab guy on dialysis. But "they" can know a ton.

(Is/are Google/the government's linked servers artificially intelligent? That's my question. I mean, are we being used not only by a self-serving neo-con leadership, but also by an omni-computer addicted to knowin' stuff? It sounds silly to ask, I realize, but given the amount of sheer data in the world today, we're not necessarily far off from an era of a data-organism...)

We hear about the FBI taking on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., via surveillance. Holtzman points out that the FBI and the government in general worked very hard to collect info on, blackmail, discredit, and track the movements of various anti-Vietnam leaders.

Article IV: Warrantless Surveillance

2007-12-10T19:18:00.001-05:00

Monday, December 10, 7:00 p.m.

Participants include DemocracyNow! host Amy Goodman, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, attorney Joshua Dratel, attorney Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Aziz Huq of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, and journalist Richard Valeriani.

(Kadidal, Huq, and Valeriani all appear on the Huffington Post, and you might have seen Huq speak with Lawrence Wright after our Town Hall performance of My Trip to Al-Qaeda.)

Performers include Michael Mastro, Nana Mensah, Gerry Bamman, Chris McKinney, and Sarah-Doe Osborne.

***

[Wythe's computer finally decides to connect to the internet - even for a "professional" internet-user, the connection process is still mysterious in the way that, oh, say, gravity is mysterious.]

We move briskly through the opening incantatory readings. The history of impeachment - check. Poetry - check. Barbara Jordan, Teddy Roosevelt, and others defending the use of impeachment against tyrants - check.

Now some new stuff on secret police. Quotes from Bush about saying he'll allow wiretapping for as long as he feels it necessary. Back to Nixon saying dumb shit about executive privilege: "There have been and there will be in the future..." times when the president can do whatever (literally whatever) he wants. Laughter. A great reading.

Redgraves Reading Poetry - Video

2007-12-10T19:12:00.000-05:00

Save Public Housing in New Orleans

2007-12-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

Fear and Interpretation

2007-12-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

Thinking back on the reading tonight, it strikes me how much of the detainees' poetry seems to stem from confusion as often as outrage. Again and again, Allah is invoked not bitterly, but almost wistfully: The poet doesn't need to ask Allah to destroy the unjust; the poet wants God to explain to his family that the disorder created by those who fight "a war for peace" will be made ordered again.

This leads me to an article by Akbar Ganji on women's rights in Iran, published in the most recent Boston Review.

Ganji's argument is against the unequal treatment of women in modern Iran, which is worth several posts of its own. But he touches upon a bigger, more overarching point about Islam and rationality: Various important Muslim thinkers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini way back to al-Ghazali - thinkers both conservative and radical - have pointed out that the most important aspect of Islam isn't the following of any specific rule whatsoever, it's just belief in the merciful God.

Said another way, generalized even further out from Islam, the most important aspect of a religion - of any ideal - is the spirit behind it, not the specific methods by which that spirit is manifested in the world.

Take America's war on terror. Like George Bush and the wardens of Guantánamo, I am against Jihadi suicide bombers, against Osama Bin-Laden, against kidnappers. The spirit - protect life - is the same. But the methods differ. Progressives refer to the law, to rational arguments against torture, while Bush and his cronies maintain a strict, Jihadi-like focus on a ghostly version of efficiency. If they think torture is efficient, torture is in, even if it violates the spirit itself. The methods get ahead of the reason behind them, the reason for using them - the methods eat their own collective tail.

Thinking about the dichotomy between spirit (compassion, mercy, reason) and method (torture, kidnapping, secrecy, willful ignoring of law, lack of respect for others' traditions), the methodological links between the Jihadis and the anti-Jihadis blur the two categories. An Orwellian, frightening state of mind.

Closing with Buchman

2007-12-09T20:56:00.000-05:00

Lynn R. reads of a man who confessed to trying to kill Osama Bin-Laden. The Taliban caught him. The U.S. found him and promised to release him. Then they sent him to Guantánamo. He was there for some time, then released two years ago. His poem is very, very short.

Now the Redgraves stand to bow. The reading is over? Wow, that was fast. Good - well-produced - but fast.

The applause goes on and on, not abating for a full minute and a half.

Allan Buchman takes the stage again and announces that Culture Project is in the process of producing an event for the United Nations, for Human Rights Day (I think?). December 10, 2008 - save the date.

And... we're done. Gotta get that book.

Guantánamo Poetry, read by the Redgraves

2007-12-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

Corin Redgrave reads "They Fight For Peace," by a poet who's name I can't type quickly or accurately enough.

Very short, abstract, powerful poem.

Lynn Redgrave takes the stage and reads a short history of the poet's life. The poet, Ameer, a Saudi, was detained because he worked in Afghanistan for a charity. He is a leader at Gitmo. Just after a Grievance Commission was formed, the government disbanded it, put Ameer in solitary confinement, and is shipping him off to Saudi Arabia, where he will be held in a secret prison and almost certainly killed.

***

Abdul Aziz, last name withheld, from Riyadh, S.A., wrote "O Prison Darkness."

"We love the darkness
For after the dark hours of the night, pride will rise.
...
We know, God has a design.
...
The morning is about to break forth."

He also wrote, "I Shall Not Complain," an exhortation to Allah (always translated God, I suppose to make it more marketable?) to grant him patience; he will complain to none but God.

***

Jemma Redgrave speaks of a poet named Dossari, who has tried to kill himself twelve times, sometimes via multiple methods at once. He appears in Inside the Wire.

Jemma R. reads "Death Poem," a very strong work asking everyone to watch the poet die ("at the hands of the protectors of peace"). (See an earlier post for full text.)

***

Lynn R. speaks of Dost (sp? all of these sp?), an author of many, many books, a known poet and scholar. He was released, wrote a book detailing his detention at Gitmo, and was then re-arrested by Pakistani officials. He as not been heard from since.

A poem asking why he is deprived of the love of his father. "I," the poet syas, "continue to beat with life... I know a greater freedom."

Cup Poem #1

What kind of spring is this
where there are no flowers
and the air is filled with a miserable smell?

"They Cannot Help"

"Consider what might compel a man to kill himself, or another?"

***

Jemma R. reads of a young man who was hung by his wrists and beaten by the Pakistanis. He was overjoyed to be handed to the U.S. He was stripped and beaten by the U.S., too. He was one of the first round of "enemy combatants."

"This Is My Life," I think is the name of the first poem. It details what happened to him: He came to Pakistan (from Chad) to pursue an education (to learn about information technology and English). He was arrested leaving a mosque; he was not allowed to use the bathroom during a sixteen-hour trip to prison. "We saw such insults from them." The prisoners were beaten and insulted, kept drunk and rich (by the Americans?). "They carried us afterwards to Cuba, because it is an afflicted isle. Their war is against Islam, and justice."

Talk about bad P.R. I mean, if Bush's regime beats up every captured Muslim, of course the other non-captured Muslims are going to hate Bush (and thus you and me - he's our leader).

***

Corin R. loudly reads of a man "Humiliated in the Shackles," writing a letter in his head to his son as he listens to the birds outside his cell, alive, free. He is offered money and land and freedom if he betrays "other" al-Qaeda members. "America - you ride on the backs of orphans and terrorize them daily," Corin/the poet yell. He directs his grievances to Allah and asks his son to be strong, though he himself is humiliated. "How can I write? My soul is like a roiling sea. I am captive, but the crimes are my captors'."

(One feels these poems are going to take on a perhaps unwelcome degree of similarity as they concatenate...)

***

Vanessa R. reads of a man who lost both his legs due to American bombings, not even at the same time. He has been forced to walk at Gitmo on prosthetic limbs held together with duct-tape.

"To My Father"

"Two years have passed in faraway prisons
Two years my eyes untouched by cold" [or kohl?]

Forced confession, defense of honor that needs no apology. Deal-making - "if all Arabs were to sell their faith, I would not sell mine."

***

Corin R. reads of Hassan, a prolific poet taken in Pakistan while studying at a university. He remains at Gitmo, though the U.S. government does not allege that he has participated in any violence whatsoever.

"The Truth"

Inscribe your letters in laurel trees
from the cave all the way to the city of the Chosen
...
Are these lights that I see real?

The Devil leads them (Americans) around in the darkness; they have exchanged piety for cheap commodity. Will you get up and question events?

Illusions soar all around...

(The blog itself necessarily grows more poetic as the scraps well up from Corin's majestic voice - I recommend readers watch the performances on Blip [thanks to the Kunstlers and crew] tomorrow.

These poems are somewhat insular and melodramatic, moreso than other Arabic poems I've read. They are almost all addressed to Allah and speak in vague terms of justice and injustice. Some of this rally-speak is very powerful; the shorter poems, in particular, stick to specifics and turn very clear arguments against the logic of torture - with chilling, image-driven specifics. Their sadness is overwhelming and infectious.)

***

Lynn R. reads about Kabir, a poet detained primarily because he was caught wearing a Casio watch, a brand favored by terrorists (according to the U.S. government?). His poem, "Is It True?," asks if the grass still grows, if he will ever leave prison and see his wife and children again.

***

Jemma R. reads of a Yemeni, Mohammed, a religious teacher. He saw a Qur'an being thrown into a barrel of human waste in prison. "I Am Sorry, My Brother."

***

Corin R. reads of Akhmed, a man who studied at a college in the U.S. and went home after a bad break-up. He was detained, help for years in Guantánamo, then released, November, 2005.

"My Heart Was Wounded By The Strangeness"

Do not blame the poet who comes to your land inspired, arranging rhymes
...
O brother... If you blame yourself, my poem will appease you
...
I will offer advice from pure cordiality.

A quiet poem of fatalistic but not unhappy acceptance, an exhortation to be generous, to forgive. The poem's great power comes from its dwelling on separation (from the brother), not on the daily horrors of imprisonment (though that route works in so many other of these poems).

***

Vanessa R. reads of Ibrahim, a religious scholar and candidate for judgeship who was captured and sold to the United States. When asked why he should be released, he replid: "In the world of international courts, the person is innocent until proven guilty. Why, here, is the person guilty until proven innocent?" His poem asks a lot about Cuba, how Cuba could help the U.S. "What have you gained?" Poetry...

(Here I break to post...)

Vanessa Redgrave

2007-12-09T20:06:00.000-05:00

...abruptly takes to the mic and recounts growing up in England during World War II. She found a book demonstrating egregious torture against prisoners in Germany. She knew, even as a little girl, why England was at war: To stop torture. To end concentration camps.

She reads a definition of torture, discusses the recent questions of what is torture, what should be allowed, what prohibited. She recommends Condie Rice reread Gulag Archipelago.

We are on the eve of international Human Rights Day. She raises the question, is extremist Jihadi terrorism today somehow worse than the terrorism of Hitler and Stalin? The idea behind the laws banning torture - laws formerly endorsed by the U.S., still endorsed, at least in theory, by every other enlightened democracy - were created during and just after WWII. The idea was that nothing, absolutely nothing should allow any sane government to use horrible torture. That is why we fight wars against dictators - to stop torture. To

She speaks about another book, Five Years of My Life.

British PM Gordon Brown formally requested the return of five British detainees, the sons of British citizens; the U.S. denied some.

Gitmo = a concentration camp.

Still waiting - then - Buchman, Ratner, Falkoff, Redgraves

2007-12-09T19:41:00.000-05:00

Eating sour candy (thanks to the Kunstlers). Live feed going to the lobby. People watching in the lobby. Out of coffee. Slight delay, perhaps caused by a minor hip-pain in one of the guests. Audience jovially chatting. The murmur through the booth-wall (I'm again in the booth - it's really crowded) is warm and pleasant. Outside, cold and rainy. Daresay like London in the Holmes books.

Clapping, Allan Buchman takes the stage, wearing a vibrant (extremely vibrant) pink scarf. The Redgraves follow, clapping throughout. The Redgraves sit. Allan grabs the mic and orates, gives props to Michael Ratner from the Center for Constitutional Rights (one wonders if he read Sean Penn's wonderful speech yesterday). Short speech, more clapping. Ratner takes the stage.

Ratner notes that the CCR first took the risk of representing the 300-something detainees at Gitmo. Twice the CCR has won Supreme Court cases; twice Congress has overridden those victories. Another case goes to the S.C. soon. Half the detainees have been released, but there remain over 300. Lawyers interviewed detainee Maji Khan (sp?), but the CCR isn't allowed to know what was said in the interview...

"When we were out front, on the legal front... it was incredible to see the Redgraves, early on, start the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission in the United Kingdom... Most of the U.K. Guantánamo detainees have been freed." He introduces Mark Falkoff, a Gitmo lawyer who put together the book of poetry the Redgraves will read.

Falkoff is a lawyer for sixteen clients at Guantánamo. None of his clients have been charged with crimes. They've been interrogated hundreds of times. Mostly, the lawyers have been asking for a simple hearing to question the legality of the clients' detention; these requests have been denied.

Falkoff was in D.C. one day at a "secure facility," a special locked office where the information on all his clients' cases must be kept - by the government. All the Gitmo writing is automatically classified material, all Falkoff's notes and writings and interviews, since the notes might have something to do with terrorism. Falkoff had translators translate the Arabic notes; he discovered some weren't notes, but poems.

Falkoff read Brian Turner's amazing book Here, Bullet. (I've met Turner; he's one of the most humane, interesting men I've encountered, and his poetry is top-notch.) Falkoff asked around and found that all his lawyer friends with clients at Gitmo had come across such poetry, and he decided to put together a book. [Long aside about life at Gitmo, origins of detainees.]

Only 5% of the Gitmo detainees were captured on the battlefield; the vast majority were picked up by Pakistani mercenaries. (Our government used to pay bounties for "al-Qaeda" representatives, not that we could tell the difference or have even tried, in three years.)

When not given paper, the detainees, would write on their Styrofoam cups - so that at least their fellows could see short haiku about their small, terrible world...

Falkoff had to get special permission to allow the poetry to leave the secure location; at first, this was no problem. Obviously, the poems weren't terrorist details. Later, the government decided that the poems constituted a special threat, since they might inspire people against the U.S. (Well, hell yeah; that's rather the idea. We must become a better United States.)

***

Here, Bullet

by Brian Turner

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Redgraves and Gitmo

2007-12-09T19:25:00.000-05:00

(According to our website:)

Sunday, December 9, 7:30 p.m. - Vanessa, Lynn, Corin, and Jemma Redgrave make a very special appearance to read Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, a collection of poems written by detainees held in the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Marc Falkoff, attorney and editor of Poems from Guantánamo, will also be with us.

Presented in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

***

Packed house (again). Patrons standing in the aisle. Dixie Chicks and Pink on the P.A. Flowers on stage. Little less court room-y, more home-y than previous Impeachment events. No sign yet of Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, or their relations.

***

From the Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak:

Death Poem

by Jumah al Dossari

Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace."

Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

More Bad Housing News In New Orleans

2007-12-09T16:57:00.000-05:00

Civil Rights attorney Bill Quigley arrested while protesting the demolition of public housing in New Orleans. Check out the slideshow. Pretty unsurprisingly vile stuff: Quigley was leading chants, trying to get City Council members' attention; the Council has the power to prevent the demolition. Suffice to say, the Council was not into the chants, so much so that they arrested a very harmless-looking lawyer and made fools of themselves.

Impeachment Guests' Books

2007-12-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

...now linked to, on the right side of this page. If you enjoy/are sufficiently disturbed by our Impeachment hearings and want to read more, check out these crucial texts - keystones of the CP library.

Sean Penn Rocks the Mic

2007-12-08T15:43:00.000-05:00

For serious. Give this speech, delivered last night at San Francisco State, a read.

Faith and Discourse

2007-12-07T13:36:00.001-05:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes today on the lack of moderate Muslim voices following tragedies caused by strict interpretations of Muslim law. She opens with this brain-blendingly vile quote from the Qur'an: "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (24:2)"

On the same day, we can read a hundred articles, both pro-but-really-con and just con, about Mitt Romney's faith and how deeply it informs his identity as an American and a politician. (Oh, and we find updates, lots of updates).

David Brooks says "[Romney] argued that the religious have a common enemy: the counter-religion of secularism," then goes on to lambaste Romney for uniting religions that are just separate, if you really think about it; Brooks even calls this unity New Age-y.

In a way, that makes Romney's faith more appealing: If a dedicated Mormon can respect other faiths, then why can't Brooks and other "centrist social conservatives" (or whatever he/they call himself/themselves)?

The sheer dumbfoundedness of Brooks on secularism or Hitchens on faith lumps those very different writers into a sort of category, opposite to Ali and (in the most generous sense, as per Brooks's article) Romney. The question (for everyone, esp. pres. cand.s) isn't, "do you have faith or not?" The question is, "can you talk with those who do - and don't?"

That said, of course Romney's admitting that his faith influences his politics so greatly is both unsurprising and hugely annoying. (BTW, found a shrill, also annoying, but very well-designed site challenging Mormonism and Romney - challenging in general.)

That's why I think a Pastafarian should run for president in 08. Just sayin.

In the News:

2007-12-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

Bush's abstinence programs don't work;

the Guantánamo detainees get a day in (Supreme) court, sort of - says the NYTimes, "A majority of the court appeared ready to agree that the detainees [at Guantánamo Bay] were entitled to invoke some measure of constitutional protection," which sounds positive given the last few years of absolutely nada on the matter;

and I agree with Roger Cohen (creepy, I know) that Der Bush could learn from the quasi-humility displayed by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in accepting defeat-by-democracy, earlier this week. (Also, if you're interested in South American politics, check out UpsideDownWorld.)

Check out this from Cohen:

Bill Clinton’s latest whining about press coverage of his wife, Mitt Romney’s latest broadside on immigration, the various spins of the Iran intelligence volte-face, and the sterile who’s-got-more-God competition between candidates, look like the machinations of a disoriented power.

The United States needs a new beginning. It cannot lie in the Tudor-Stuart-like alternation of the Bush-Clinton dynasties, nor in the macho militarism of Republicans who see war without end. It has to involve a fresh face that will reconcile the country with itself and the world, get over divisions — internal and external — and speak with honesty about American glory and shame.

what to do about katrina?

2007-12-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all of you who have been checking out our new series A Question of Impeachment, either in the theater or online.

On Monday we had a powerful evening focused on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Many folks had questions about where to find more information and what to do, so here -- courtesy of panelist Tiffany Gardner of NESRI -- is some further information:

With respect to current organizing efforts, two websites are really useful:

www.peopleshurricane.org and www.justiceforneworleans.org

There are protests planned in New Orleans on December 10th (International Human Rights Day) and December 15th (the date of the first demolitions). Specifics of the protests will be provided on the websites above.

BRIEF EXPLANATION:
In a November 16, 2007 letter to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, HUD provided its timeline for the demolition of over 4,000 units of public housing in New Orleans. Demolitions are scheduled as follows:

St. Bernard - December 15, 2007
BW Cooper I - December 15, 2007
Lafitte - December 17, 2007
CJ Peete III - December 15, 2007
Fisher - December 15, 2007

Just before the Christmas holiday ....

These demolitions are set to occur despite the fact that the Gulf Coast Recovery Act (S. 1668), which guarantees survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita the right to return, is still working its way through the Senate. Additionally, Senator Landrieu, as well as members of New Orleans City Council has expressed grave concern over the pending demolitions.

The demolition plans do not provide for replacement housing for former residents of the units. Prior to the storms there were approximately 5,200 families living in public housing. Now, there are just over 1,000 families. HUD has stated that the units to be demolished are inhabitable as the result of the storm. Yet, independent experts attest that the units were minimally damaged. Should these demolitions take place, thousands of New Orleans
families will be permanently displaced.

Republican Senator David Vitter has been a staunch opponent of S. 1668, although he won't publicly articulate his reasons for opposition. Join us in 1. putting pressure of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson by attending the December 15th day of presence in New Orleans and by 2. pressuring Senator Vitter and the senators on the Senate Banking Committee to respect the human rights of hurricane survivors and bring S. 1668 to a full Senate vote.

Please visit the websites above and let the people of New Orleans, and the governments at the federal, state, and local levels, know that you stand with the people of New Orleans.

Videos from Article III Proceedings

2007-12-05T00:38:00.001-05:00

Check out videos from Article III (Katrina):

Judith Browne-Dianis

Sam Jackson

Tiffany Gardner

Closing Arguments

Alec Baldwin

Closing Panel

Huckchuckin It...

2007-12-04T23:23:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the internet crying today? Its brightest meme and one of its ideologically darkest, melting together to form: An ad for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee starting Mr. Huckabee... and Mr. Chuck Norris.

For those of you knew to the Huckchuckzone, Mr. Huckabee is against gay rights, against the separation of church and state, against immigration in the most severe way, in favor of eliminating the Internal Revenue Service entirely, and pro-guns (pretty much all guns - used for hunting). Also not a big fan of science.

Chuck Norris is a conservative karate champion and the creator and star of Walker, Texas Ranger, a show about fighting drug-dealers in rural Texas. And whitewater-rafting. Also not a big fan of science, but he studied with Bruce Lee and so gets some kind of by from young people. (I am glad to be old enough to be mad at young people about this.) If you haven't heard all the "Chuck Norris facts," just Google em.

We return to impeachment...

Katrina in the News; Iran Sans Bomb; More...

2007-12-04T10:34:00.000-05:00

In the news today:

Iran doesn't have the Bomb;

Imus is back;

Katrina victims are in the spotlight again, for their "mood problems;"

and Texas ain't so keen on Darwin.

(From Wikipedia: Iranian newspaper clip from 1968 reads: "A quarter of Iran's Nuclear Energy scientists are women." The photograph shows some female Iranian Ph.D.s posing in front of Tehran's research reactor.)

Well, can't say I'm surprised that Texas might join Kansas and medieval Byzantium, among other wonderful scholastic sovereignties, in their rejection of the principle of evolution.

More surprised that Bush & Co. have announced that Iran, in fact, isn't packing heat, atomically-speaking. I mean, they might enrich a bomb later, but right now, they're doing the whole carrot/stick diplomacy thing. (Could any of our Mid-East regional power experts take notes?)

Support Democracy in Louisiana

2007-12-03T21:46:00.001-05:00

Uwaaay. Kanye was right. T-shirts from Color of Change.

Alec Baldwin moderates the Katrina Panel (long)

2007-12-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

Alec Baldwin notes that, if you care, you think about "why" and "how it [everything Bush] got to this level" all the time. You have to train yourself to stop asking why, how...

At a dinner party, Alec Baldwin asked Bill Clinton about how spending by the government is prioritized. Clinton just gave him a look as if to say, "Don't go there." Baldwin discusses in general how we are all tied to the idea that government just gets to spend tons of money, gets to hire nepotistically... Very disturbing, discussed much by Lapham in books (why we are always at war).

Baldwin wonders what impeaching Bush with only one year left.

Baldwin to Cynthia Cooper: Can Bush be impeached for Katrina?

Cynthia Cooper and a prominent Watergate lawyer looked intensely at the question. Cooper says the president is supposed to uphold the law and take care. She says the Stafford Act very clearly is Bush's purview; he failed to uphold his duty to mobilize the government according to the Stafford Act. The president was specifically told that lives were on the line. He did nothing, prayed for a good outcome. He failed to live up to a presidential standard of upholding the law and Constitution.

Baldwin to Gardner: What do you think Bush should have done? What could have been done in two days?

Gardner: He could have stopped his vacation. He was on vacation. He could have show, on a basic level, compassion. Should have evacuated right away - helped those with no transportation get away from the [ginormous] hurricane. Judith Browne-Dianis says the administration just didn't care, figured the hurricane would literally blow over; people would forget that some citizens had been screwed over. The city's evacuation plan relied on buses, and the bus drivers left.

Erica Hunt points out that there was a yard full of buses only blocks from the Super Dome, unused...

Baldwin: Were there any heroes, of Katrina?

Cooper: National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. He tried to personally motivate Bush.

Lapham: The government behaved exactly how it was supposed to, according to Republican ideologues - who want the smallest possible government. Two nations, divisible by magnitude. The more poor that can be eliminated, the better. The government has no purpose for the rich. They don't need the government. (More privatized cops now than public.)

Baldwin: The fraud and waste of the welfare system is minuscule compared to the fraud and waste of the defense system. Do you think Republicans hate the poor more because of what they cost the system, or more because they vote for Democrats?

Lapham: It's George Bernard Shaw. If you're poor, you deserve to be punished.

Baldwin: Do you think Bush should be literally impeached?

Browne-Dianis: I don't think it would happen now. We're going into an election year. I think he has done enough to show that he should be impeached.

Cooper: Absolutely. Even if on his last day in office. He has many more months to screw up this country.

Gardner: Totally. There was a growing movement to impeach him; the Dems won Congress; Pelosi took it off the table. Kucinich introduced it again.

Jackson: Yes. Bush has continued Reagan's campaign against the poor.

Hunt: Yes, impeachment may be in order, but she's concerned about the symbolism of impeachment and how it might obscure the root causes (of the crimes that led to impeachment). Off course Pelosi took it off the table - she doesn't believe in a common wealth, a common good, any more than most Republicans.

Lapham: Yes, on two grounds - Iraq, a criminal fraud. Second, it's the Constitutional task of the Congress to preserve the balance of power, to assert the legislative authority - unless it does that, it destroys the principle on which this country was set up. (I.e., not just Bush, but any president will be too powerful.)

Baldwin: What happened with Pelosi?

Lapham: Conyers made the grounds for impeachment clear; Pelosi didn't see it as politically useful and abandoned it.

Baldwin: Most people don't want to impeach a president at war, whether or not the war was just to start. Baldwin goes into a long story about Reagan - old-school, against taxes, in favor of letting people admit that they'd rather have a new swimming pool than social programs elsewhere - and how different Bush is. Bush sees Iraq as money to be made. The economy has to be in perpetual debt in order to cut useful social programs. He goes into the racket of war. (You can and should read the book War Is A Racket.)

Baldwin: Lewis, are these people [B&C] the same as we've seen before, and they've just been emboldened by Clinton-fatigue and 9/11? Or are they the worst you've ever seen?

Lapham: These guys are the worst I've ever seen. I see Bush the way I see Britney Spears. Spoiled rich kid adolescents. How do spoiled rich kids show their power? They break things. They spend money.

Baldwin: Goes off about how empty the Texas governorship was, even under Bush. He was a ribbon-cutter.

Baldwin: What can people do now? I don't want people to come into this room and have the "awareness orgasm" where they learn some facts, go home, and have completion. What should they do?

Browne-Dianis: I represent N.O. residents in class-action suits. People are getting kicked out of FEMA trailers. Rents are going up all over. Bulldozing public housing. The federal government runs the housing authority of New Orleans. They're demolishing brick public housing built to survive hurricanes (that did survive hurricanes - they just need new flooring and mold removal). But the plan is to keep the poor out. The right to return does not exist. We have tried ever legal way to stop the bulldozers. We have been denied. Local authorities don't want to be on the side of their constituents, the developers, in case the poor come back and vote somehow. But they don't want to be on the side of the poor. December 15th, let's do something to stop the bulldozers. (She leaves the stage to massive applause.)

Cooper: Let's get major media to look at impeachment. Call the public editor of the NYTimes.

Gardner: We have to stop the assault on the poor; public housing is being demolished all over. The Gulf Coast Recovery Act is being held up by a Republican senator from Louisiana, this jerk. We have to contact Sen. Charles Schumer and get him to pass the bill.

Jackson: December 10th, come to New Orleans. Get organized to stop the bulldozing on the 15th. Contact Jackson at jackson-action@hotmail.com. Help us get the GCRA bill passed. Fight that jerk Vitter; call Schumer.

Gardner: Go to http://www.peopleshurricane.org/.

Baldwin: Have a banner on the website to list everything. (Okay, note to self - I think I've just had my first freelance job request from Alec Baldwin.)

Hunt: Two great sites that can help you keep up with news and events are: Color of Change and Katrina Information Networkth.

Audience1: There's a rally in New York on the 10th. (Send CP info on this, please.)

Audience2: How/why can anyone respect the U.S. if it lets its president defraud us? We must impeach Bush.

Cooper: Bush won't turn over emails; his staff refuse to testify. Same as Watergate (but worse). The people have to stand up in larger and larger numbers and demand impeachment.

Audience3: During the 70s, we had more alternative news, a free press. How do we get the average Joe to know about the impeachment movement?

Cooper: Demanding it can only help; media activism is necessary.

Audience4: Barbara Jordan pointed out that unless we use impeachment, we might as well shred the Constitution. We have to make sacrifice to make change - stop shopping, go down to New Orleans. Buy a ticket, go down there, stand with the residents against bulldozers.

Audience5: I'm not really so sure whether Bush should be impeached. If we impeach Bush and the Dems win the next presidential election, the Reps will use impeachment against the Dems. (?) (Murmuring of dissatisfaction with question.)

Baldwin: Impeachment is a very difficult thing, on purpose. Long aside about Tom Delay. (More murmurs.)

Lapham: (Too quiet to hear, I think he said "it's necessary.")

Audience6: If you don't have time to go to New Orleans, I'm sure one of us displaced New Orleanians (sp?) would be willing to go in your place. (Applause.) If culture is demolished, what is the future of New Orleans?

Jackson: We had doctors, lawyers, musicians in public housing, not just drug-dealers. Really, public housing in New Orleans was not like they said (the media?).

Gardner: Now they're asking for expensive funeral permits. More about the destruction of culture in N.O.

Baldwin thanks everyone; we're out of time.

Cue zydeco. Cue applause.

Two Years Later...

2007-12-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

Sam Jackson tells us that there is less care for mental patients; cops are shooting more and more of them, who are no longer institutionalized. Closed the only public hospital - there is no place to go if you don't have health care.

Homelessness is waaay up; the council wants to push the homeless out of the French Quarter (the traditional tourist spot - where you go to eat muffulattas [giant sandwiches] and hurricanes [red syrupy cocktails]).

Internally displaced citizens are supposed to be taken care of, under the U.N. guiding principles.

Gardner talks about how the U.N.'s principles - based on treaties the U.S. has signed - should make the government help people return to their homes following natural disaster. You have the right to return or voluntarily be resettled. You have the right to health care, an environmentally safe house.

Homes are being bulldozed, still. One man was trying to get his road-home money, got wrapped up in red tape. He finally got the money the day after his home had been demolished...

The public hospital will be reopened, but privatized. Disaster capitalism.

Gardner, in New Orleans, saw a sign for "Condominiums by Donald Trump." (More on infrastructural change in New Orleans.)

Gardner: "I think there is a plan to rebuild New Orleans." It just doesn't include the citizens of New Orleans.

Sam Jackson reports that his community still has no hope of returning "at this moment." Two years later.

Stories from Survivors

2007-12-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

Food was sent too late; people starved before they got any aid.

Police would not come out of their cars.

National Guard cars rolled by, empty except for soldiers with guns, pointed at us.

Load of water dropped by helicopter, exploded on impact.

Military police did not give a man water for his baby; she died before them.

Wal-Mart wanted to provide water for survivors but was told not to go into New Orleans. The army would handle it...

The LSU scientist mentioned earlier compared the situation to apartheid South Africa (he himself is South African, originally).

FEMA didn't accept offers of aid from Amtrak, medical companies, etc., and so on, and so on. Wow...

Former FEMA director Michael Brown said the Bush administration asked FEMA to lie about how well things were going. (His Wikipedia entry is very much worth reading.)

Tiffany Gardner

2007-12-03T19:56:00.000-05:00

IEM - Innovative Emergency Management - a private "risk management" firm. A client of the Livingstone Group, a P.R. lobby based in D.C. founded by a Louisiana Republican. IEM was brought on to work on Katrina but did not confer with LSU scientists who'd long been saying the city and levies were not prepared for a category 4 or 5 hurricane.

"Science was ignored" said on LSU scientist.

The evacuation - woefully inadequate - was called a complete success at the time.

Gardner echoes Jackson's report that no plans were made to help poor people with no transportation. Keep in mind that Louisiana is one of the poorest states in America; Orleans one of its poorest parishes (counties). One Lower Ninth Ward resident did try to evacuate his family, but his car was too small to accommodate his whole family; he stayed behind.

Q: Does the blame go all the way to the top?

A: Definitely. The Stafford Act is Bush's to carry out. The statement that the levies were not supposed to fail was a lie. Bush knew they would fail; scientists had briefed him.

Sam Jackson

2007-12-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

...describes the storm. He's a working-class guy from N.O. He woke up, went to check on his dogs. The water had flooded their fence; they were dead. Coming back, he saw people leaving his housing complex; the water was rising; kids running away; dead bodies and dead animals, ignored. No help at all came to the housing developments.

Q: What was the process/preparation for the storm?

A: None at all. People had no transportation out of the city. People were evacuated, days later, to the Super Dome and Convention Center.

Judith Browne-Dianis

2007-12-03T19:45:00.002-05:00

...reads a detailed, specific article of impeachment against B&C.

Basically, the Stafford Act says that the government - FEMA - will help out after such giant disasters as Hurricane Katrina. Bush is ultimately responsible. (Here's an argument about whether or not the Act is outdated.)

Now a discussion of what we knew beforehand, what was done about it.

Bush was briefed that the levy system would be breached. Then he lied about it later, saying "no one expected" the levies to break at all. He had an opportunity pre-storm to make changes, didn't do it. Nuh-unh.

Budgets for hurricane protection were actually slashed before Katrina, ostensibly in order to fund the War on Terror, elsewhere...

The court calls Sam Jackon to the stage...

Lewis Lapham and Chorus of Actors: What Happened After Katrina

2007-12-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

Lewis Lapham reports: Cheney and Bush outlined the "order of priority" of power restoration to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Rats and dogs overrun the city.

News hadn't reached the director of Homeland Security; he waited 36 hours to declare the city a disaster. He denied that people were starving in the convention center, wet and ignored.

God finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. "I think we have a clean sheet to start again."

The Act of God trope is explored, also the appeal of the DIY-get-away-from-hurricane-ethos: Homeland Security (and other holds of prudent conservatives) didn't want to help people who didn't want to help themselves, who aren't "mature..."

The president compared the scene to a disaster movie. "Devastating. It's got to be doubly devastating... on the ground."

Big boats in trees. (I've also seen cars through second-story windows in the Lower Ninth Wards.)

Lapham points out that a slightly more adventurous president might have hit the ground then, not waited for the army to come in.

Government worker are excused from affirmative action. Minimum wage is abolished by the government to speed up the clean up.

FEMA Director tells Wolf Blitzter things are going "relatively well."

Barbara Bush notes that since many victims were poor and thus couldn't have been so upset by losing their houses...

Laura Bush encourages children to stay in school. (There are no schools.)

The education system is a point of major public debate. Public to private (charter). 123 public schools, down to 4. All union teachers fired.

"Disaster capitalism:" Glass half-full: How can we take this ruined city and make a buck?

(I'd love for my family in B.R. to respond to these posts; my uncle works in land conservation, my cousin in construction law. They have stories to tell.)

Judith Browne-Dianis takes the stage...

Article III: Criminal Negligence and Hurricane Katrina

2007-12-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

Monday, December 3, 7:00 p.m. "The Saints Come Marchin In" on the stereo.

Alec Baldwin's here tonight to lead a panel discussion after the impeachment proceedings. Also here tonight are journalist Lewis Lapham, New Orleans public housing organizer Sam Jackson, Judith Browne-Dianis, of The Advancement Project, Tiffany Gardner of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, author Cynthia L. Cooper, and Erica Hunt of the 21st Century Foundation.

Performers include Bobby Cannavale, Callie Thorne, Tracie Thoms, Denis O'Hare, Jodie Markell, Bradley White, Nana Mensah, and Chris McKinney.

***

Allan Buchman takes the stage to speak about the federal government's continued seeming inability to do anything about New Orleans post-Katrina. What would Bobby Kennedy do? What would Martin Luther King Jr. do? Buchman reports that the government is planning to bulldoze houses in New Orleans, and he's going to do what he can (stand in front of the bulldozers).

DISCLAIMERS: My family is from New Orleans and Baton Rouge, originally, though I grew up in Atlanta. My great-aunt Gail's house on State Street, a milk-carton-shaped two story building from eighty years ago, now leans thirty degrees to one side and is filled with pale green and black molds, like something out of a Miyazaki movie.

I am also a huge Alec Baldwin fan (well, a Baldwin fan in general). He sat next to me for a moment just now, taking notes, I think.

***

Right now, we're running through the origins and purpose of impeachment again, as we did the last three nights. Perhaps moving more swiftly? The quotes still hit home, very efficiently framing the ideas behind impeachment - and reiterating that it was created to use against just such men as Bush and Cheney, men who, whatever their crimes, have not been in all ways open and honorable before the United States citizenry they serve.

Bloggingheads

2007-11-27T09:09:00.000-05:00

Check out Bloggingheads.tv, a great repository of head-to-head expert dialogues via video web logs (compressed via portmanteau into "diavlogs," a great word).

Listening to an Israeli/Arab debate (rather quiet, debate-wise) about Condie's upcoming Mid-East peace conference.

Torture Panel

2007-11-26T20:59:00.000-05:00

Moderated by Vincent Warren, senior staff counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. Carol Gilligan joins Warren, McKelvey, Fein, and Hafetz.

Fein compares U.S. power binge to Rome. I also think about Pakistan, as the situation there comes to a head - executive privilege versus public consensus that wants anything but. We are, of course, still a more free nation than Rome or Pakistan (as Fein says, "We, the people, still rule"), but "the disease of executive omnipotence is one" that will snowball into the future. More about Nixon. [Applause.]

Gilligan brings up the stolen (pres.) election. (I think many of us agree there was at least one.) We had trouble feeling pride when our votes didn't turn out to count. (Author concurs.) The elections aren't slated topics for impeachment debate in this series - though as David Swanson pointed out last time, there's so much to impeach them for - but I wonder if they wouldn't be worth including in a draft of impeachment articles. "We think you stole the election, Bush."

McKelvey, Ratner, and Hafetz are unfortunately too quiet for me to hear at all (the video will fill in). Actually, most of the rest I can't hear. The audience is packed, attentive, quiet, asking long questions. This panel isn't as fast and conflicted as the last, but .

In the booth, I have several video monitor views as well as a long natural view of the stage. (The video aspect of this event is exciting and reminds me of my favorite deepthinking site, TED.)

Gilligan brings back the election, and the gender gap between female votes for Gore and male votes for Bush. "Are you a real man?" She indicts men in general for violence, which is fair I suppose historically, given that men have pretty much run all the armies until now (Nancy Pelosi, Indira G., A. Markel, Sharkosky's wife).

Ratner notes that Maureen Dowd notes that Dems are afraid to seem unmanly, that people like Obama must try to seem "hard" while admitting that, hey, they're not into the war-thing. (Disclosure: I am a bigger fan of Obama than of the other leading Democratic candidates.)

Warren points out that the president says that people who say the president is wrong are terrorists, and this is part of the big problem with the "impeach the who? no way!" mentality. Regarding the abuses of presidential power, the paranoid have been right. (War with Iran, anyone?)

Gilligan recommends focusing on the arts.

Questions wrap up; Buchman grabs the mic to give props to Howard Zinn. "Our problem today is not civil disobedience, but civil obedience." Word up.

Night Three is now one for the video archives...

Torture Short Play

2007-11-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

Before the panel, a short reading with four actors. I can't quite make out the un-microphoned voices. Here's what I'm getting: A tank drove over a car, making an Iraqi man late. The man was jailed under Saddam for not reporting another man who disparaged the leader. His brother (Khalil, like Gibran) went to England to study poetry. Another voice questions the man about his allegiances. More American voices, threatening the man ("people like you") with prison time for not passing a polygraph. Confusion among the Americans about the existence of a database with information on suspects. The information can't be proven accurate - the U.S. is paying informers who'll sell out anyone, who run to Syria. Informers send people to jail, then blackmail the families into paying for help getting those innocents out of jail. Marine grenade-fire outside. Lots of talk of Wonderland and rabbit holes... (If only Carroll was writing the war - we'd be fighting bitchy cards instead of a combination of various extremists ranging from Sunni to Republican.)

Bruce Fein.2

2007-11-26T20:26:00.000-05:00

Quick version: Torture is making us less safe. We are dealing with a mentality - a king-mentality, pre-Magna Carta. CIA operatives can assassinate and torture because they have state secrets. Since when has that been okay? B&C worse than Nixon. (This is always fun to go back to, but seems obvious, right? Is that just me?) All the world is a battlefield - of course Bin Laden wants to kill us everywhere and break rules, but do we want everywhere on earth, this theater, this booth, to be a battlefield? Where U.S. government operatives can do whatever they like?

That concludes the witness portion...

Intermission...

Jonathan Hafetz

2007-11-26T20:09:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Hafetz testifies as to the existence of "black sites," secret prisons where "high-value detainees" are held incommunicado; even the Red Cross can't meet with them. These sites exist throughout Eastern Europe. These are the places where water-boarding has been practiced - even against detainees ultimately proven innocent.

Two very short interludes:

...The story of a man held without trial, tortured - a man who eventually confessed to whatever his torturers implied he did, just to avoid further torture.

...A statement by Condie that the U.S. will not/does not use torture.

Hafetz points out that of course if the U.S. it torturing, it has to tell everyone, "We're not torturing."

The President doesn't believe that international law restricts his actions (para).

"There are no legal restrictions." --> On what Bush can do with suspected terrorists.

Discussion of the order that led to Bush's powers to torture and use evidence gained via torture. (Read Hafetz's article about it in The Nation.)

Discussion of problems even Alexander Hamilton, not the most liberal of founding American dudes, foresaw regarding executive privilege and its extension to torture.

Bush spoke in support of the victims of torture and called upon the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting torture.

Ratner: "Mr. Hafetz, was the president speaking the truth...?"

Hafetz: "Absolutely not."

(Just some background, Hafetz works at the Brennan Center with Aziz Huq, a Culture Project alum from a talk-back after Larry Wright's My Trip to Al-Qaeda. Protecting our right not to be tortured, among many other little legal things-you'd-like-to-keep-around, is something the Brennan Center thinkers know quite a bit about.)

Discussion of Bush's rejection of the Geneva Conventions, which previous president's found quite worth defending. But the president "cannot dispense with the Geneva Conventions."

Final question: Should B&C be impeached? Hafetz: Yes.

Tara McKelvey

2007-11-26T19:58:00.000-05:00

McKelvey, a writer for The American Prospect, takes the stage to talk about her investigations of torture. Dogs used to chase and bite young boys, etc.

So many people she's interviewed - many Iraqis - were tortured, including children. The U.S. hadn't been screening for T.B.; a child died of it; McKelvey points out that this, too, is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

She talks about the people who committed the crimes made famous by photos from Abu Ghraib; she implicates the highest orders of government as well as the lowliest orders of human sadist.

Bruce Fein on Torture

2007-11-26T19:45:00.000-05:00

Covers the ideas behind impeachment again, eloquently, going briefly into Nixon's offenses. We learn that Europeans have testified that torture is useless; Fein asks why then do B&C employ it. (Hubris, anyone?)

Torture doesn't have a definition ala geometry (paraphrasing); one example, though, we prosecuted Japanese soldiers who water-boarded American soldiers in WWII. Fein's quickest definition: "If you thought you would read about it in The Gulag Archipelago... [it's torture]." Nice.

Criminal intent must be present so as to prevent vagueness (the torturer must know what he/she's doing).

Extraordinary rendition - we send "bad guys" to countries that don't mind torture so much, such as Egypt. One big problem, Fein points out, is that this is a secret process; government transparency is lost; executive can act without consultation, without openness. ("The informing" power/process of Congress.)

According to Fein, if you know what is going to happen when you release a prisoner into the care of a sovereign who uses torture, than you yourself are guilty of torture according to U.S. law. Why, asks Fein, do we outsource any justice to other countries? Why don't we take command of our own justice system, top to bottom?

You can't, Fein points out, torture to save lives, just because someone may know something about, let's say, a bomb. We have to accept that bombs will go off; we will find bombers; we will not torture them, jail them sans habeas corpus.

[Applause.]

(Para:) The legal rationale [to Bush's expanded powers] is the rationale of a monarch, of a Hammurabi, who can change his mind at any time.

(Para:) You cannot have a president making claims to powers such as the right to torture, for any reason. You cannot have Bush issuing signing statements that say "yes, but... [I reserve the right to do whatever I want]."

Return to Blog, Rainy Night, More Videos from the Opening

2007-11-26T19:27:00.000-05:00

Rain in the City has mired the trains down and I'm slightly late. Sitting in the booth the perspective is yet again different from the dark cool hush of the theater and the casual pacing-around bar feeling of the lobby.

The opening of Night Three (Torture & Extraordinary Rendition) mirrors the middle of Night One, with a fast repeat of some wonderful quotes about impeachment from thinkers throughout post-Enlightenment history.

Now a reading of something about torture during the famously torture-dense Algerian War (for Independence).

Now comes Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights...

Ratner steps us through ideas behind U.S. statues banning torture, torture by other countries on our behalf (extraordinary rendition), and jailing without due process. He points out that failing to stop torture is ground for impeachment.

Three areas to look at:

- Definition of torture
- Evidence of torture within United States
- Evidence that programs of U.S. torture are authorized by B&C

First we look at such questionable techniques as the "attention grab," the "attention slap," the "belly slap," "long-time standing," the "cold [and naked in the] cell," "water boarding" (simulated drowning, instant heaves, gagging), and (we can only imagine) others.

Bruce Fein is called to the stand...

***

Please check out all the videos by Sarah and Emily Kunstler that document each night of this series; here's just a few of what you can see:

Mary Lee Kortes (3rd Song)

Andy Krikun

Lewis Lapham

Preamble

***

Also, I've been doing googling about Republican blogs and found some weird results. Scary weird. Suffice to say, I'm not convinced.

Persepolis

2007-11-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

"Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution." Animated and sweet-looking. And about the Iran-Iraq War. Probably won't prevent Bush going to war, but...

Persepolis - French Teaser

Posted May 21, 2007

Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution.

Panel: Madness & Fear & Strikes & Great, Great Ideas

2007-11-19T21:20:00.000-05:00

De la Vega explains that you can't charge a sitting president, but you can impeach the hell outta him.

Great to see all these various luminaries - a retired colonel, a lawyer, writers, David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.com, who seems to be moderating - sitting side by side.

Theater as a medium for an impeachment hearing - seems to work.

People still mill in the lobby. I like the lobby. I met some college students who complained that they couldn't go to all the shows because each costs twenty bucks per student, and that adds up. I said I'd try to help them out. (We'll see where/how that goes.)

Ann Wright gets applause, raising her voice that the Dems aren't doin' anythang right now anyways, so why don't they hold B/C accountable? So what if it takes a month? We have to.

McGovern says he swore in the Army to defend America from enemies foreign and domestic, and he never heard an expiration date for that. He points out, as was pointed out last night, that the founders intended impeachment to be used in case any president "started acting like a king," that it is an orderly process.

He also interestingly points out that we all have "outrage fatigue - every week there's a new outrage!" that makes it hard for us keep up the heat. But we have to. We have to keep trying to make our own Congress do its job and reign in the executive.

He also points out that the Constitution is imperative: It doesn't ask you to consider impeaching a bad president. It tells you to.

OH SHITE--

"There's gonna be a war against Iran, folks. You don't believe it? Sure its crazy, sure it's crazy... But most of my colleagues [in national intelligence] agree."

He is serious--McGovern is telling us--you, me, everybody--that Bush and Cheney are going to go to war with Iran. Unless we tie him up with impeachment. Unless we literally prevent the Congress from authorizing war funds, prevent Bush from doing anything, he will go to war with Iran.

Swanson asks something... McGovern points out that we would lose the war with Iran.

Hendrik Hertzberg points out that the Constitution's flaws have got us into this mess, and that while impeachment is great for theater, it's not great for "grown-up politics." Zero chance. Of actually happening.

Everest notes that war with Iran will lead to martial law here (of course). "Impeachment is not now on the political landscape," he says. We, the millions and millions, have to act. We all have to write and protest and (I add) break some shit. "The people themselves have to take it upon themselves." What if three million people wore orange? What about a general strike? (I love his ideas.) The stakes aren't stopping the war on Iraq - not any more - but stopping the institution of torture, the police state, escalation of nuclear weapons since we won't get troops on the ground in Iran. The gap between what the people want and what the imperialists want is so huge... We have to organize (each of us in the room). [Well, I'm in the lobby...]

Swanson brings the audience in, reminding us that over a third of Americans want to impeach and remove Bush.

Wait, no audience yet. De la Vega reminds us that impeachment is a process, not necessarily one that will result in removal. She asks, do we think both B & C have committed impeachable offenses? The majority think so. She disagrees with Hertzberg that impeachment is a "political fantasy." We don't know what the outcome is going to be. It doesn't matter. We can't accept defeat. "We are all politicians." (The idea that we are all part of this, not just politicized, party-liner DC types.)

Audience Q1: "I'm a librarian... I'm not an American citizen." (She's Canadian.) She reminds us that impeachment is a national civics lesson, not a trial. She says (as others have said) we have to impeach Bush or throw out the Constitution.

Swanson clarifies points about Dems in Congress wanting to pass resolutions and fearing the process; I don't really get it, but I'll check "Let's Try Democracy" later; he's mainly talking about Pelosi.

McGovern... orates. (He's sort of like Rip Torn meets George Carlin meets Indiana Jones. I imagine he could wield a whip or khukri.) His point: The Dems want to wait just one more year, then get a Dem president, then beat the Republicans, which is the wrong way to think about it.

Q2: Something about Nazis. Okay. A question to Hertzberg. The questioner is LIVID. Sort of voice-cracking woman, comparing Bush and Hitler, asking what the process would have been to remove Hitler? Now McGovern and Hertzberg are arguing about "they" versus "we." "They, they, they."

Swanson fields it: Tell the other Republicans, the ones who don't want to impeach, that it's not a partisan question: What does it matter who the next president is if the next pres. doesn't have to obey laws? (He's with the "it's not political" camp.)

Hertzberg disagrees. Everest points out that Hilter did come in through political power, same as Bush; torture was approved, made part of the institution. "People just have to be refused to be bound by the terms of what the Democrats or Republicans are saying." "What the Democrats are doing is poison because it's paralyzing - just wait till 2008..." I agree. We don't need to stay at home and watch TV.

Q3: Angry about Hillary. Okay... These microphone-users are newish, I'm guessing. lot of loud cracking.

Q4: Clinton was impeached for a blowjob! Anger. Now yelling about 9/11 inside job Afghanistan domino theory - so what I want to know is, what are people going to do, to get the American people out of...?

Swanson politely cuts him off, pointing out that if we agree that B/C have committed 2999 impeachable offenses -- the man cuts him off -- Swanson regains, moves on.

De la Vega reminds us that the approval rating of Congress is less than that of the pres. (This is lively theater.) We need to send the message that --> Congress does more = Congress gets more support.

Q5: Nixon. Why is it different?

McGovern fields; Everest points out that the social upheaval across the board (anti-war, women's movement, etc.) helped oust Nixon.

Swanson brings it back to the calculus of wait-and-see versus act-now-in-accordance-with-the-people's-wishes. Historical precedents. People liked Clinton, so he didn't get impeached.

Q6: Can't hear it. It's long, rambling, and about lowering the bar for something. No mic. "Raise the standards for the people, we're intelligent," doubt that voting alone will effect chain.

Q7: Leapfrog past Tim Russert. What new ways will help us reach Facebook kids (uh, they're better organized that you, largely).

Q8: The marketplace of ideas is closed. There is no free press. Church and state. Police state. Again, not a question, rambling. But great in that, for the third time, the emphasis is against Pelosi-world D.C. General strike challenged, generally.

Swanson holds up fliers that list specific things we can do. CALL THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE. Yo, I'm going to do that, get my coworkers to do that, and do it a lot.

Angry surprise Q9, something hard to hear about war. McGovern takes his closing remarks to address. The supreme international crime, the war of aggression. McGovern gives an awesome quote, I'll try to find it. He points out that all five major articles of impeachment, all the crimes, are part of a general war of aggression. Jail, as Thoreau said, the only decent place to be in such times.

Ann Wright thanks Culture Project.

Allan Buchman starts to speak, as the host: Mentions our play Guantanamo, back in 2004. The Constitution was out of print. The White House didn't know when they'd start printing it again...

He fields the question of Facebook very well: The whole point is to do art, theater, and to blog about it, get the video up immediately on blip.tv and on our site and on our blogs, etc. Figure out what works. Just figure it out. That's the whole point of the show. I agree.

Ann Wright: "Let's close that mother down" (D.C.) Defends theater as an attempt, a good attempt, one of many. (It seems audience is angry panel isn't mentioning Blackwater. I mean, fuck those guys, but we have a lot of stuff to go through, over five weeks, including Blackwater. We'll get there.)

Everest: Change the discourse - Bush's actions not mistakes, but crimes. Insist on morality - refusing to resist war crimes is a crime. Refuse to wait on Dems or Reps or anyone. Don't think a Dem in 08 will save everything. It won't, because that Dem will have infinite power. (And Bush won't go, anyway.)

Hertzberg: Don't just vote (he stresses voting and was yelled at by audience for it). Remember that Bush did not win the presidency but was put in place by a judicial coup de tat. Get out and get interested in the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. IT DON'T WORK. (That much seems self explanatory, but I'll add links to explain.) We should have a general election. Political activity is pointless if your vote doesn't count. General strike = fantasy; impeachment = fantasy. (He says. He is not a revolutionary. We could do both. He don't have to get out there and strike - I can not-work enough for two.)

Swanson claps. Everyone claps. Lights up in lobby as De la Vega adds very last word (maybe). Lights down in lobby. She thinks the only way we can not impeach Bush is to continue as if we're in a fantasy. To see reality is to impeach.

Swanson adds last-last word: Fourteen more months for Bush is faaar too long. He will go to war, or whatever. We will all die horribly (my maudlin phrasing).

Exeunt.

Break Before Panel

2007-11-19T21:07:00.000-05:00

De la Vega sums up the evening thus far.

People stream into the still half-dark lobby to go or to grab coffee.

On the live-feed, chairs are moved, mics moved.

(FYI future CP bloggers, the wireless signal is all Hulked-up strong in the lobby.)

The lights come up.

My laptop rests atop books and the postcards of other shows.

People are smiling, chatting. Seems like most will head outside. Many stop to peruse books, including Larry Everest's Oil Power & Empire (no comma on the cover).

My friend at Culture Project calls the show "enthralling."

The lights dim again. I'm going to pee, sneak in, and keep blogging.

Retired Colonel Ann Wright

2007-11-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

As Ann Wright speaks about the airstrikes that Bush authorized (extra airstrikes - Clinton had been keeping them up) as soon as he could. Bush also moved money from the Afghanistan funds to Iraq funds - this was not public info, but Wright new and was worried. She was in Afghanistan looking for al-Qaeda, and she was underfunded.

--- MEANWHILE, to my left, one patron complains to another that tonight is so much more "fake" than last night. I'm not sure I know what she means, since last night was a collage of ideas about impeachment, and tonight is an actual (fake) impeachment proceeding. Both forms of theater (fake), but different, apples/oranges.

But I wonder if this legal stuff is gripping the audience? The patron seems furious, almost. I don't know what she expected. I'd like to ask her about it, but I choose to remain invisible for now. ---

Wright speaks about approaching the UN about going to war with Iraq. The UN couldn't believe Bush would go to war without UN backing.

We listen to British Ambassador Christopher Meyer's words about convincing the UN to go to war. Wright notes that, no matter how smooth the war rhetoric otherwise, B/C/the Brits had to show that Saddam had broken promises, gone back on his word, somehow fouled up, in a way that would resonate in the UN.

Downing Street comes up. Still un-farking-believable.

Wright points out that the UN weapon inspectors didn't feel they weren't getting access to Saddam's info. They didn't want to go to war.

Wright lists the victims of the war - Iraqis, Americans, Europeans, the world (its security, its trust)... And she is done.

Next up - panel discussion.

McGovern.2

2007-11-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

McGovern is honestly impressed and amazed how smoothly the fearmongering B/C people handled all their fearmongering...

Now De la Vega and McGovern are passing around a cardboard tube, a prop, used as false evidence of Iraqi nuclear ramp-up before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Q: Can you think of any way in which the Bush Administration did not deceive the public?

A: No, I can't think of any.

Well, there ya go.

***

McGovern is involved with a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which seeks to point out how faulty the pre-Iraq War intel was.

Last Night's Show In Full On Podango

2007-11-19T20:43:00.000-05:00

Word up! Watch it/love it/hate it/write us.

Ray McGovern On Intelligence, National Or Lacking

2007-11-19T20:33:00.000-05:00

McGovern says the public wouldn't have stomached it if Bush and Cheney had come right out and said "we want to seize the oil in Iraq and make the region safe for Israel," so they played on fear. They were playing on fear anyway, then 9/11 happened.

(For more background: Here's a short CNN interview with McGovern that's full of juicy stuff about what Cheney lied about.)

Before 9/11, the link between al-Qaeda and Iraq was investigated and found lacking.

McG. tells a story: Bush was wandering alone in the White House just after 9/11 and took aside his aides and asked, "Was it Saddam? Was it Saddam?" He wanted all the evidence. He wanted to establish a link.

Long, crazy Bush quote about Saddam gassing his own people, then linking up with al-Qaeda. Very emphatic.

Tim Russert asked Cheney if there was any evidence linking Iraq and al-Q.; Cheney said it's "pretty well-confirmed" that one of the hijackers had a link...

PNAC strikes again...

Laptop is about to die. Must post and find new spot to plug in...

***

More McGovern, this time interviewed by Jon Stewart:

Bush and 9/11

2007-11-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

9/11 - Bush called it "The Pearl Harbor of the 20th Century," a mandate for broader war. They (B/C) considered radical Islam the principal enemy to American hegemony and control of oil in the Mid-East.

"Drain the swamp" - is what they wanted to do; go in, steal the oil; remove the cancer of extreme Islam.

But, again, we return to what they said out loud to the American people: "Not only did they not talk about [oil, empire], they vehemently denied" that war would have anything to do with anything other than democracy and justice.

The live-feed, by the by, is about eight feet wide by five tall, projected on a high part of the white wall jutting up and out from above the CP box office. A dozen or fewer patrons watch, enjoying themselves (seems like). The audio could be louder, but it's definitely intelligible.

Larry Everest was being interviewed. He was very astute. I'll have to read his books. He comes out and greets (his wife?). A dapper-looking man. The producers are also around, watching.

Now here comes Ray McGovern. He studied Russian and worked in the CIA. Let me start a new post for him...

Impeachy Night Deux, .2

2007-11-19T20:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, FYI, here's the skinny on tonight's combatants:

Monday, November 19 - 7:00 p.m. Article I: Initiation and Continuation of Illegal War.

Participants include Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright, Elizabeth de la Vega, Hendrik Hertzberg, Ray McGovern, Larry Everest, and David Swanson.

Performers include Kristen Johnston, Willie Garson, Nana Mensah, Chris McKinney, Courtney Esser, and Scott Cohen.

My growing concern is that the attorneys (E. De la Vega is the person asking questions right now), who probably feel that B/C should be impeached, aren't going to go all apeshit hardball on the witnesses, who probably agree with the attorneys. So we're watching a three-hour (now two-hour) love-fest between two groups of smart people - one more versed in the lingo of law, one more loaded with historical and political terms.

The major villain seems to be ultra-right-wing political think tank PNAC - Project for the New American Century.

The gist right now: Airstrikes were ordered against Iraq right away when Bush came to power, sans inciting incident. The Bush/Cheney rhetoric was isolationist in nature, but they wanted to let the world know (paradoxically) that they'd be intervening in the region. Sans inciting incident.

Break In The Fossil Record/Night Number 2

2007-11-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

Oops, I oversleep and arrive late to Night No. 2. I'm currently in the lobby, watching the live-feed from the theater, blogging away, listening with one ear and typing with... the other...? Well, idioms aside, the actual impeachment proceedings are well under way. A very funny woman with shortish blond hair is talking about conspiracy and fraud, in the legal sense. "Outright lies, half-truths... technically true but designed to deceive," she lists as various equally legally interesting aspects of fraud. Fraud-options, I guess.

Meaning: If Bush and Cheney implied Saddam had WMDs and Saddam didn't, then Bush and Cheney committed fraud. They cannot later claim, "oh, I didn't know." People are giggling, because the woman is funny. (I'll find her name in a sec.)

Now a witness is speaking to her about the timing of the intent to go to war with Saddam (dating back to Cheney's Defense Dept. under Bush I).

--- BREAKIND NEWS I just saw thanks to Google's newsreader - Pakistan's highest court has just dismissed challenges to president/dictator Musharraf's running for election again. Damn, yo. ---

Okay, back to impeaching: Neo-con ideology dates back to the Vietnam and Cold Wars, when "realist imperialists" and neo-cons split over the issue of policing the larger world: In short, neo-cons wanted to overthrow "bad guys," including eventually Saddam, while realists wanted to avoid getting entangled in lots of little wars that could of course wreck things in America.

Wow. Rummy signed, along with various other policy-influencers, an open letter to Bill Clinton advising him to go after Saddam. And that blasted Richard Perle!

Let me post this and get the night's blogging started...

Grim News/Further Evidence

2007-11-19T16:23:00.000-05:00

As in, the news is grim, and I find it all further cause to doubt the Bush regime's ability to ethically govern an anthill, let alone Bushlandia, er, I mean, America.

Here are some of the problems: On the same day the US military announces plans to arm tribal groups in Pakistan to combat terrorism, it also announces that attacks in Iraq have fallen to their lowest levels since... last year.

Neither of these announcements strike me as Bush triumphs. The Surge (and that insipid name - it was a soft drink! a green soft drink, I tell you!) has pushed things back all the way to the golden days of Feb., 2006, when we were all so innocent about what was happening o'er yonder in the desert.

The Pakistani tribal arms-deals worry me even more. (And why announce them? Aren't these just the sort of silly clandestine activities that we're supposed to hear about thirty years later, after all involved CIA agents have retired and bought bungalows in Havana?) With the entire nation about to crack up over its dictator/president's attempt to stay in power, should the US really be meddling, somewhere in the back of party, handing out guns and whippets to a bunch of tribal dudes who - sure, may not love al-Qaeda - but also may not love the US? And whose opinions, which we probably don't know very well, could change quickly. Especially given, you know, the whole country's cracking up...

That's 5th grade wisdom, friends: Wait until the civil war clears up to start massive militias. (The Times' article's lead picture is of a member of "the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 soldiers, stood guard at a bazaar.")

In gooder news (allow my purposely lapsed grammar to indicate my disdain for all this positive Republi-statusquo "we're doin' okay!"-mongering), Bush and Rice are pushing for Mid-East peace, finally, as well as peace with North Korea. This is something of a turn-around, since B&R (hereforward "The Warriors," after the movie gang) declined to continue with Bill Clinton's Mid-East/N.K. peace plans.

A friend of Roger Cohen predicts the latest Mid-East talks will be "a unique example of failure," which strikes me as fine way to phrase the general outlook for the waning Bush presidency. Failure. And not even good ole American stealin'-shit failure, as with Nixon. Bush's failure is all his own.

Finally, our last depressing world fact comes to us courtesy the National Endowment from the Arts, which reports that children aren't reading as much as they used to. Well, thanks for that statistic. "The Surge is working" (a lie disguised to keep us happy about our state of constant war?) coupled with "kids ain't reedin no mor" (a truth revealed to depress us into inaction?).

Happy Monday.

Articles.2

2007-11-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

When we finally push through thirty minutes or so of quotes, we arrive at a list of articles of impeachment. Let me simply add them to this post, so that you can refer to them later, if interested:

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush and Richard Cheney

Article I: Initiation and Continuation of Illegal War

George W. Bush’s and Richard Cheney’s initiation and continuation of the Iraq war
constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor...

Article II: Torture and Extraordinary Renditions

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have allowed their administration to condone
torture...

Article III: Criminal Negligence in Response to Hurricane Katrina

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have demonstrated criminal negligence in their
slow and insufficient response to the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita...

Article IV: Warrantless Surveillance

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have abused their power by violating the
constitutional rights of citizens...

Article V: Executive Power

Signing Statements and Habeas Corpus George W. Bush has formally declared his intent to violate the laws enacted by Congress by appending a “signing statement” to legislation that asserts his right to carve out exceptions to legislation as he sees fit...

I'd just like to toss in one more quote, this one by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia:

No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. We proclaim a doctrine that is preemption which is understood by few and feared by many... As a result, the world had become a much more dangerous place.

Whoa. For me, that statement summarizes so well how America has changed in the eyes of its friends (and enemies) abroad.

The actors finish, and the stage goes dark.

Staceyann Chin, Round 2: Open Letter

2007-11-19T10:58:00.000-05:00

...to gay men, dykes, transsexuals, blacks, women, et al.

S.C. doesn't immediately give away how her letter to a gay group relates to the impeachment of the president. She takes her time, reading in measured breaths, appalled that gay women have gone from happily out, in the Ellen era, to shunning the word "lesbian" for more neutral, less politically-identifiable terms today, only a decade or so later. S.C. is pissed. Something has changed, and she's not exactly sure why, and I'm not exactly sure what's changed, but I'm fairly sure I agree with S.C.'s views about it.

Here's my best attempt to decode the calmer portions of her letter:

Gay men used to be united in the struggle against AIDS - everywhere. They supported young black women in other countries who are routinely raped our forced into prostitution. Now those same well-to-do gay men don't seem to care as much. AIDS isn't a huge epidemic in America anymore, at least not for white men, so the issue is over and AIDS will not addressed elsewhere.

[Her tone changes; her face bunches up. This is just an example of something. A general apathy. A malaise with the Left, the enervated, vitiated, minority-lip-servicing-but-really-who-cares-because-let's-face-it, we're-doing-fine Left...]

The less calm regions of Chin's thoughts would look like night in Alaska if you painted them. They are black and white, and cold, cold, cold...

Chin, like a young Bell Hooks, excoriates all of us who do not daily involve ourselves in the plights of the poor and abused and mistrusted, here and abroad, gay and straight and black and whatever. Her point is that struggles are interconnected, and deadly apathy eventually circles back home.

I.e., we cannot stand by and say, "this isn't my struggle; I'm a [fill in identity-group]." Bush and Cheney's crimes effect not only all U.S. citizens and noncitizens, but all people of the world. If this time the boy in the small town dies for the cause of his oil, next time it could be you, for some evil cause you never dreamed of.

Chilling stuff - watch her do it - she twists your own brain on itself, making you ask, "What have I done to help anyone? Am I one of the imperialists (I can't be!)?" But if we all band together...? Incantation that stuns, prepares for the revelations ahead (the proceedings of the impeachment - what to do).

Hard to write in the dark; hard to finish this post; I'm not sure how else to talk about Chin's work but in these immediate impressions. Perhaps a later post will clarify where I think her cynicism and boundless energy and moral laser-guidance can/will take us.

Anyway, I won't yak more about it when you can watch her yourself here. (The audio seems to cut out every few seconds - is that just me?)

The Articles Of Impeachment

2007-11-19T10:11:00.001-05:00

The stage darkens. Spot on the double–platform.

Actors take the stage. On the screen in the back, a mix of quotes from the country's founders, Howard Zinn, the Constitution, and various congress-people. Actors begin to read the quotes, in full, in actorly voices. The images and sound merge, and we the audience begin to ponder impeachment in a slightly less incantatory, more historical-legal way...

"Bind him down from mischief," reads a quote from T. "No Joke" Jefferson, referring to what the Congress should be able to do to/with/about an unruly, tyrannical chief executive.

Most of the opening quotes expound upon the ease and point of impeachment - i.e., that it can and should be used liberally in cases such as Bush's (wherein almost half of America is pretty sure the man did something treasonous, or several things, and is thus not fit to continue serving as president).

Again and again, references are made to the idea that the president and other executives serve the people, not the other way around, and that any merest whiff of king-dom (king-hood? -ness?) from the pres. is grounds for immediate impeachment. After all, the founders and their later writers-about seem to say, isn't it easier to occasionally go through a big messy trial and impeach a guy than to even once allow a guy to take over our democracy and proclaim himself Emperor?

But first some background. The word "impeach" comes to us from Latin and means "to fetter." The modern idea of a legislative body's right to remove from office an executive who commits treason or other high crimes comes from fourteenth-cent. England, when a guy named Peter De la Mare first moved to oust Lord William Latimer, a corrupt official, a crony of the king.

The quotes are becoming more dry and less and less surprising. I'm detecting a theme.

And yet, every few seconds, a gem shines out: We learn that the founders were very specific about the impeachment of the executive (two sections of the Constitution explain how to go about it), but weren't specific at all about its election. They trusted Congress to figure out a way to elect people, but they wanted to make quite sure that everyone in America knew how to remove people, the kind of people who go to war needlessly...

Teddy Roosevelt gets a round of applause for: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public." Actually, I think every Roosevelt quote gets a round. (Go on wichya bad rough-ridin' moustache self, T.)

War is, rightfully I think, the major concern of the quotes. T. Jeff. again: "Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition
from peace to war."

"The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object." - Lincoln.

But the biggest responses from the crowd follow words by Barbara Jordan and a Republican ex-Senator from Kentucky named Marlow Cook.

M.C. has this to add:

I am frightened to death of George Bush. I fear a secret government. I abhor a government that refuses to supply the Congress with the requested information... For me as a Republican, I feel that when my party gives me a dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes the country into an undeclared war, and then adds a war on terrorism to it without a debate by the Congress, we have a duty to rid ourselves of those who are taking our country on a perilous ride in the wrong direction.

This makes me wonder, again, if any conservatives are in the room.

The question comes up often between my older brother and me: Shouldn't conservatives want a leader to be proud of? A competent, popular, effective, not-scary, not-bumbling, not-Napoleonic leader? We're not conservatives, but our grandfather is, and I think he'd agree with Sen. Cook that Bush is the wrong man for the job of President of the United States.

When we finally push through thirty minutes or so of quotes, we arrive at a list of articles of impeachment. Let me simply plop them into this post, so that you can refer to them later, if interested

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush and Richard Cheney

Article I: Initiation and Continuation of Illegal War

George W. Bush’s and Richard Cheney’s initiation and continuation of the Iraq war
constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor. In undertaking that aggressive war, George
W. Bush and Richard Cheney have subverted the Constitution, its guarantee of a
republican form of government, and the constitutional separation of powers, by
undermining the rightful authority of Congress to declare war, oversee foreign affairs, and make appropriations. They did so by justifying the war with false and misleading statements and deceived the people of the United States as well as Congress.

Article II: Torture and Extraordinary Renditions

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have allowed their administration to condone
torture, failed to prosecute those responsible for torture, refused to accept the binding nature of a statutory ban on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and violated international treaties by implementing “extraordinary renditions” of prisoners to countries that endorse torture.

Article III: Criminal Negligence in Response to Hurricane Katrina

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have demonstrated criminal negligence in their
slow and insufficient response to the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when clear evidence warranted immediate and massive action on the following counts: 1) New
Orleans was under-funded prior to the storms, when it was clearly at risk; 2) two years after the storms, 50,000 people remain displaced, and the majority of promised
government aid has not found its way to the people who need it most.

Article IV: Warrantless Surveillance

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have abused their power by violating the
constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice, by directing or authorizing the National Security Administration and various other agencies within the intelligence community to conduct electronic surveillance outside of the statutes Congress has prescribed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Article V: Executive Power

Signing Statements and Habeas Corpus George W. Bush has formally declared his intent to violate the laws enacted by Congress by appending a “signing statement” to legislation that asserts his right to carve out exceptions to legislation as he sees fit, thereby arrogating to himself legislative powers reserved solely for Congress. George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have violated the constitutional and international rights of citizens and non-citizens by arbitrarily detaining them indefinitely inside and outside of the United States, and trying to suspend the constitutional Writ of Habeas Corpus by denying prisoners due process, detaining them without charges, and with limited – if any – access to counsel or courts.

I'd just like to toss in one more quote, this one by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia:

No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. We proclaim a doctrine that is preemption which is understood by few and feared by many... As a result, the world had become a much more dangerous place.

Whoa. For me, that statement summarizes so well how America has changed in the eyes of its friends (and enemies) abroad.

The actors finish, and the stage goes dark.

Lewis Lapham Wrecks Headz

2007-11-19T10:10:00.001-05:00

Former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham walks slowly to the stage. The mic droops not quite near his mouth, and his gravelly voice is hushed. Everyone holds their breath and lean forwards. Lapham speaks. He is not going to sing. It's hard to imagine him singing.

Lapham invites us to consider that John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked his staff to prepare a document explaining why Bush should be impeached. The 182-page report convinced the doubting Lapham of the need to investigate Bush's crimes via impeachment. In his words, why we would run the risk of not impeaching them?

Bush and crew have conspired to commit fraud (to misuse the money we have invested in the executive on what Lapham calls a "frivolous" war). Double-L:

"We have before us in the White House a thief... A liar, who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear. A televangelist... A wastrel... In a word, a criminal - known to be armed, shown to be dangerous." He mentions the regime's "pet Bismarcks and bibles in closed rooms."

Lapham's perfect. The fire in his voice is strangled down to embers by his steely, editorial look and snappy rhythm. His face betrays nothing as he excoriates "the fiction of permanent war" in the name of national security. This is the meat of the impeachment cause: Bush has created war and will keep us mired in war indefinitely in order to preserve broad-ranging powers and ensure his own imperial impunity.

We must stop him. Or rather, we must pressure Congress to do so.

The problems with impeachment are, as Lapham states, "romanticism" - the general American notion that our own president would never perpetrate so great a fraud as a straight-up Wag the Dog, Downing Street, needless war - and "apathy," which should be self-explanatory.

Are we "a public unwilling to recognize the President of the United States as a felon," or a public unwilling to persecute felonies?

(Lapham speaks to us as if we are a congressional investigatory committee, which is flattering but slightly confusing. Given that the stage is full of empty chairs, I believe the trope might be that we are listening in on such. It doesn't matter.)

Lapham winds down. To paraphrase his final point: It isn't the business of Congress to punish the President, but to correct his mistakes and remove him from power. "To cauterize the wound," as it were.

Sounds good to me.

***

P.S. - Here are more impeachment links. A wealth of places to get involved, if you dig through the links to congressional sites and related movements.

Mary Lee Kortes

2007-11-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

Mary Lee Kortes (of Mary Lee's Corvette) and Andy Krikun are up next to do a short acoustic set. Kortes notes that the songs will not be as jubilant as Olson's performance or Flanders' reading. The songs are indeed a touch mournful. Krikun plays a medley of his own material and others', grinning and moving swiftly. (He's the guy who reminded me of Rinde Eckert earlier.) I'm beginning to worry that the light from my laptop, much dimmed though it is, is going to drive the person next to me crazy. I don't want to distract anyone, so I go ghost-ninja mode and fold the screen over my hands. I can no longer see what I'm ytping. The music ends. Appluaes...

Laura Flanders: A Dream of Impeachment

2007-11-19T08:56:00.001-05:00

British Nation-writer Laura Flanders takes the stage next to read from a brilliant Huffington Post article/meditation/fantasy by Robert Brucestein about the impeachment of the entire Bush administration.

This fifth incantation strikes home a little quicker than the previous three or four, perhaps because it's funnier, more concrete, actual about the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and being read by a British person.

(The British make us feel terrible about Bush, but they have Blair. I mention Flanders' accent because its nonchalant authority works to drive home the idea that this is real: We can actually impeach Bush. Brustein isn't really writing a satire or a fantasy, at least not with the lines "an entire Administration was unceremoniously dumped from office." He's describing a future we can attain.)

Some of the further Bush evils Brustein/Flanders point out to us - the theologizing of science and the packing of the Supreme Court. (And - by the way - why don't Supreme Court justices have term limits? Anyone? Help me out with this one.)

Perhaps the most clever moment in Brustein's piece is the depiction of Bush as President Nancy Pelosi's official greeter - as the guy smiling and pointing, not knowing when he's being booed. This is a great version of Bush - not just the Idiot, but the Happy Non-Perceptor. (We will have to make a new tarot card for him. None of the old ones quite work.)

Quick thought: Are there any conservatives in the room? Have any Republicans or at least non-polarized "World Can't Wait" Bush-bashers decided to check out the opposition? Are they too intimidated? I hope not, but I fear they are. I fear they will be, if they show up to these events. I don't agree with Bush-supporters, but it seems logical to bring some in and let them speak their case, at some point.

But not tonight.

Alix Olson: Civil War & Wal-Mart

2007-11-19T08:55:00.000-05:00

Anti-Bush incantations three and four belong to the passionate Alix Olson, who jumps in with a poem called "To the Republic" about the Civil War. Less dead-on than the Ferlinghetti, but a good poem and good reading. Lines to remember:

"Dirt had bleached the blue and grey one color."

"...We now ruin the great work of time."

***

The fourth incantation is a poem about Wal-Mart ("for" Wal-Mart, according to Olson). This one doesn't quite work, for me at least. Olson's energy is through the roof and her recital top-notch - her hands cut the air and dart to punctuate laugh-lines - but the poem itself is, at times, silly to the point of embarrassment.

"Attention shoppers," it begins, using the trope of a Wal-Mart PA-system announcement to let the world know that "global perspective is 99% off" and "all ethics must go;" that Nike's bought the Revolution and all the talented actors are in Cats.

(That last one threw me. I mean, I laughed, but is the idea that the talented follow the money and end up with hack Broadway jobs? Because Cats just makes me think of men in funny cat outfits, prancing - which image isn't exactly socio-economically inclining, meditations-wise.)

Towards the end of the poem, it missteps by referencing a website called "www.fuckallofit." Can anyone see the problem here? There's no domain specified, lol. This website could be .net, .tv, .co.ck, or .del.icio.us.

One of the perennial writerly complaints against spoken-word poetry is its imprecision, something from which this series of anti-Wal-Mart couplets suffers. As a web geek and progressive feminist self-hating white dude, I resent the notion (expounded upon briefly here) that the Web is somehow part of the axis of white/male global dominance.

Its origins (in the startling transformation of a military database into a tool for linking university research material), current do-gooder custodian (Google), and recent history (helping Dean gather support from young progressives; helping Obama or Edwards take the White House in 08) aside, the Web should serve everyone, not just rich white men. The flip side of that statement is that everyone will have to learn about the Web in order to be served.

So, all I'm sayin' is, remember the domain.

***

At this point, people are laughing, feeling good. (Perhaps antsy to see something "meaty?" Or is this just me?)

Staceyann Chin, Round 1: "Pity the Nation"

2007-11-19T08:52:00.000-05:00

(Okay, back to the live-blogging... The internet kept cutting out in the theater, or this would have been up last night. As there was no intermission, I couldn't run down to the production office and post from there.)

Staceyann Chin reads "Pity the Nation" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, after Ghibran (see below).

The short, caustic poem is dead-on as a second incantation against the Bush regime. (That is, until it stumbles on the penultimate line, "My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty." How the eighty year-old master poet left such a cheesy line in an otherwise austere, snappy work, I don't know.) Chin's reading is, as ever, powerful and effective. People are really feeling this.

***

Pity the Nation

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and emty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bull as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

- Khalil Gibran, The Garden of the Prophet (1934).

Rinde Bangs

2007-11-18T22:37:00.000-05:00

Rinde Eckert incants: [Here I can rely only on shorthand; the full version will be up on the web, linked to this blog and the CP website, soon.] "Power wielded with no consideration... becomes tyrannical... Lies... Lies accepted... become tyranny."

He's a striking bald man in a black shirt and gray vest, pounding a wide, thin drum, screaming, chanting, "ignorance! of these facts! in anyone! is disastrous! but, in the powerful! is criminal!"

--then he stops. Sobers, repeats once, leaves.

The energy show has set the scene for something sober but not dry; Rinde's short bizarre banging and chanting has got my full attention.

First Incantation - Welcome by Allan Buchman

2007-11-18T20:15:00.000-05:00

The stage: Two square wooden platforms, one slightly smaller the one under it, to the left. To the right, a piano.

Allan Buchman, Culture Project founder and producing artistic director, comes forward from the wing. He's wearing a dapper cream sweater, waiting to speak to the audience. Every seat is filled, and more are trickling in, apparently squeezing into the right-front wing.

Allan speaks: Good evening. Dig deeply tonight into the voice of our soul. America in crisis. [Themes emerging.] Katrina. Economic disparity. Bloodshed in our name. The silence of our generation, compared to the movements of the past. Break the door of apathy. Pilgrimage of hope. Welcome.

A good, short speech.

(Oh, and we're supposed to have a channel on a podcasting site called Podango. More details on this as I ferret out information about it.)

Pre-Show

2007-11-18T20:04:00.000-05:00

This is all supposed to be live, an inaugural shout into the darkness of the political news-ether (the blogosphere), but the internet in the theater keeps dropping my computer, of vice versa. Someone's rejecting someone in that always-fragile relationship. Anywho, I'm writing this live, so it sort of counts (right?). I'll upload it at half-time, if I can't earlier.

Stage is dark. Usual CP patrons abound. People read the program, particularly the schedule, intently, which is good. We want them to see all the articles—to hear all the arguments. In a way, the question is: Are we preaching to a choir? Is this a problem, in an age when the American president has suspended habeas corpus? I don't mean to be facile with an answer (in form of  question), but perhaps the sight of this many people packed into the theater indicates something fomenting. Will we all write our congress-people when we go home tonight? Will such emails (and perhaps a few snail-mail letters, even) impact such congress-people?

These are the questions occupying my mind as I wait.

The Buzz Begins...

2007-11-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

I'm here in the maroon dimness of Culture Project, awaiting the beginning of A Question of Impeachment, a theater smorgasbord to be much blogged-about by myself (Wythe Marschall, a writer of fiction) and Isaac Butler of the ever-thought-provoking Parabasis.

I believe Mr. Butler will be giving you the thoroughly researched, annotated, conscientious version. I don't ordinarily write "non"-fiction and find the term itself highly dubious. So mine will be the Gonzo emotive highly biased version.

Disclaimers: I am a former and current employee of Culture Project, the theater that's producing A Question of Impeachment. From August 2006 to August 2007 I was their marketing director, and now I'm a roving content manager for their website and graphic designer for their programs.

Further disclaimers: I'm an ultra-progressive. I myself have no doubt that Bush and Cheney should be impeached and brought to justice. (I'm open to arguments, of course; feel free to post why they shouldn't be impeached.)

Currently, someone bald who reminds me of Rinde Eckert is singing a folk-song about the relative literal, metaphorical, and moral wealth of Americans. A decent song. He stops. Sound check is over. Almost two hundred people are crammed impossibly into the tiny Culture Project lobby, watching a huge projection of information about the President and Vice President's crimes.

The house opens...

I'm told to turn the brightness on my monitor all the way down... Okay, going ninja/ghost-mode...

Let the impeachment begin!

O Christopher Hitchens!

2007-11-18T19:01:00.000-05:00

Seriously, he gives we of little (or zero) faith a bad name. Or several bad names, probably.

Check out his latest shenanigans...

and some thoughts on said shenanigans.

We're going to post more on this blog in the future. We promise.

Wow, that's so messed up I can't think of what to say except read this:

2007-09-14T18:45:00.000-04:00

FREE THEM NOW! - Lesbians sentenced for self-defense All-white jury convicts Black women

By Imani Henry, New York, Published Jun 21, 2007 2:58 AM
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/nj4-0628/

On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.

Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them—all because they are lesbians.

The mere fact that any victim of a bigoted attack would be arrested, jailed and then convicted for self-defense is an outrage. But the length of prison time given further demonstrates the highly political nature of this case and just how racist, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-youth and anti-worker the so-called U.S. justice system truly is.

The description of the events, reported below, is based on written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera.

The attack

On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.

As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.

“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.

Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.

The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.

Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.

There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.

After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.

Even with Buckle’s admission and the video footage proving that he instigated this anti-gay attack, the women were relentlessly demonized in the press, had trumped-up felony charges levied against them, and were subsequently given long sentences in order to send a clear resounding message—that self-defense is a crime and no one should dare to fight back.

Political backdrop of the case

Why were these young women used as an example? At stake are the billions of dollars in tourism and real estate development involved in the continued gentrification of the West Village. This particular incident happened near the Washington Square area—home of New York University, one of most expensive private colleges in the country and one of the biggest employers and landlords in New York City. The New York Times reported that Justice Edward J. McLaughlin used his sentencing speech to comment on “how New York welcomes tourists.” (June 17)

The Village is also the home of the Stonewall Rebellion, the three-day street battle against the NYPD that, along with the Compton Cafeteria “Riots” in California, helped launch the modern-day LGBT liberation movement in 1969. The Manhattan LGBT Pride march, one of the biggest demonstrations of LGBT peoples in the world, ends near the Christopher Street Piers in the Village, which have been the historical “hangout” and home for working-class trans and LGBT youth in New York City for decades.

Because of growing gentrification in recent years, young people of color, homeless and transgender communities, LGBT and straight, have faced curfews and brutality by police sanctioned by the West Village community board and politicians. On Oct. 31, 2006, police officers from the NYPD’s 6th Precinct indiscriminately beat and arrested several people of color in sweeps on Christopher Street after the Halloween parade.

Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase in anti-LGBT violence in the area, with bashers going there with that purpose in mind.

For trans people and LGBT youth of color, who statistically experience higher amounts of bigoted violence, the impact of the gentrification has been severe. As their once-safe haven is encroached on by real estate developers, the new white and majority heterosexual residents of the West Village then call in the state to brutalize them.

For the last six years the political LGBT youth group FIERCE has been at the forefront of mobilizing young people “to counter the displacement and criminalization of LGBTSTQ [lesbian, gay, bi, two spirit, trans, and queer] youth of color and homeless youth at the Christopher Street Pier and in Manhattan’s West Village.” (www.fiercenyc.org) FIERCE has also been the lead organization supporting the Jersey Seven and their families.

The trial and the media

Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)

Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.

Ironically, Johnson, who was singled out by the judge as the “ringleader,” is the more feminine of the four. According to the New York Times, in his sentencing remarks, “Justice McLaughlin scoffed at the assertion made by ... Johnson, that she carried a knife because she was just 4-foot-11 and 95 pounds, worked nights and lived in a dangerous neighborhood.” He quoted the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” (June 15)

All of the seven women knew and went to school with Sakia Gunn, a 19-year-old butch lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in May 2003. Paralleling the present case, Gunn was out with three of her friends when a man made sexual advances to one of the women. When she replied that she was a lesbian and not interested, he attacked them. Gunn fought back and was stabbed to death.

“You can’t help but wonder that if Sakia Gunn had a weapon, would she be in jail right now?” Bran Fenner, a founding member and co-executive director of FIERCE, told Workers World. “If we don’t have the right to self-defense, how are we supposed to survive?”

National call to action

While racist killer cops continue to go without indictment and anti-immigrant paramilitary groups like the Minutemen are on the rise in the U.S., The Jersey Four sit behind bars for simply defending themselves against a bigot who attacked them in the Village.

Capitalism at its very core is a racist, sexist, anti-LGBT system, sanctioning state violence through cops, courts and its so-called laws. The case of the Jersey Four gives more legal precedence for bigoted violence to go unchallenged. The ruling class saw this case as a political one; FIERCE and other groups believe the entire progressive movement should as well.

Fenner said, “We are organizing in the hope that this wakes up all oppressed people and sparks a huge, broad campaign to demand freedom for the Jersey Four.”

FIERCE is asking for assistance for these young women, including pro-bono legal support, media contacts and writers, pen pals, financial support, and diverse organizational support. For details, visit www.fiercenyc.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Mos Def and Cornell West on Bill Maher

2007-09-09T21:19:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday Katrina

2007-08-27T18:01:00.000-04:00

Next Wednesday August 29 marks the 2nd anniversary of the day the levees of New Orleans failed under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.

Happy Birthday Katrina is a new site, launched by the Jewish Funds for Justice, that contains really good information about what's happening in and around New Orleans, and concrete things that you can do.

Additionally, you can watch a sneak preview of a provocative Public Service Announcement that will be broadcast this weekend on the Reuters digital billboard in Times Square, titled "HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATRINA."

It's easy for us all to get caught up in our daily work and lives, but having visited New Orleans this past spring and seen up close how powerfully justice continues to elude the citizens of that city and the surrounding area, I can tell you that it is absolutely crucial for us all to remain aware and involved.

What Cheney Was Saying Decades Ago - A MUST-SEE

2007-08-19T19:08:00.000-04:00

Wow...

New York Times Op-Ed Worth Reading:

2007-08-19T14:34:00.000-04:00

August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Viva Peace

2007-07-30T13:22:00.000-04:00

Apparently the war in Iraq is going well--from the tone of the article, one might think "splendidly" instead of just "well."

Also, check out a long story on Obama's rise to prominence. Interesting info. And since the war's going so well and has made us so much safer, I guess it doesn't matter who's president in 08. Guess I'll vote Romney and hope he selects Jesus Christ as his VP.

I'm just glad Rage Against the Machine got back together and immediately started beef with Ann Coulter, and that this somehow relates to Rosie.

Perhaps, if John Edwards wins the Democratic nomination and everybody else bombs badly enough, he can select Rage frontman Zack De la Rocha as his VP. Then we're just one John vs. Mitt / Zack vs. Christ arm-wrestling competition away from restoring morality to the pale house.

Viva Rage.

Contagious Stupidity

2007-07-24T16:40:00.000-04:00

From today's NYTimes:

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq.

WTF?

Isn't it 5th-grade wisdom - perhaps rather 2nd or 1st - that an invasion with no justifiable purpose that has only gone from worse to worst is not and was never worth supporting? Why does America now so value its presence in Iraq? (Did no one else read Theater of War?)

The article doesn't help a ton, and neither does Mark Schmitt's snarky attempt at boo-hooing Democratic pres. candidates' ability to make detailed plans.

It's not comforting to e-open the paper and see that 1) Americans are increasingly, not decreasingly comfortable with the idea that America invaded Iraq, way back when (Gawd, that was, like, four American Idols ago!) and 2) New America Foundation members are not fans of good policy papers.

They want more blather. Empty, Republicrackerish blather, good for nothing, to be held to nothing, to be sprinkled like the chaff of millet on the strong winds of a next CBS fall lineup, or the next celebrity murder-suicide.

"The candidates disappear behind a screen of white paper," Schmitt writes. Paper = reading = the intellectual = reason. And we can't have that. We're a country of Faith, a good, honest, Sarkozy-ian realm...

Ba-humfuckery.

I suppose comfort isn't to be wanted or even warranted these days. I'll keep my policy papers and my anti-war stance, thankyouver'much. How much longer before this America now starts to resemble the Britain of Children of Men? Not much longer, perhaps. But by then I'll have my alligator ranch, so the New American "centrist" faux-radicals won't be able to sneer at me without (reptilian, masticatory) repercussions.

The Washington Post has a scoop - Hillary has breasts!!

2007-07-21T00:11:00.000-04:00

This is truly unbelievable. The Washington fuckin' Post has a story today which includes the following:

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative — aesthetically speaking — environment of Congress. After all, it wasn’t until the early ’90s that women were even allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor. It was even more surprising to note that it was coming from Clinton, someone who has been so publicly ambivalent about style, image and the burdens of both.

THIS IS NEWS?!?!? Next up at the Post : "Rudy scratches testicles during campaign stop".

Beef eaters bad for the environment

2007-07-19T11:09:00.000-04:00

A study in Japan has concluded that preparing 2.2 pounds of beef is the environmental equivalent of driving a car non-stop for 3 hours at 50 mph. You can read the story here.

LAST TWO DAYS AT WCS!!

2007-07-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

Alas, the final two shows are upon us. For the final shows, WCS will be hosting one at the Culture Project and one at the Knitting Factory to conclude EMANCIPATE (a series of concerts featuring women musicians who are also activists in their communities).

Tonight (July 16th) at 7:00 pm. at the Culture Project (55 Mercer Street) WCS will present Laura Flanders on S. Dakota. In this presentation, Laura Flanders is joined by community activists to discuss organizing initiatives to defeat an abortion ban ballot initiative in 2006.

Tomorrow night (July 17th) at 7:30 pm. at the Knitting Factory (74 Leonard Street) WCS will host the final EMANCIPATE concert. This final concert will feature Chantal Kreviazuk, Marta Gomez, Imani Uzuri, and Aguafuego.

And that's it. Don't miss these final two shows: they're going to be amazing!

My New Favorite Song

2007-07-12T18:12:00.001-04:00

Sisterhood out the window!

2007-07-12T13:23:00.000-04:00

I think that imaginative, vocal, and serious protest to hold our elected leaders accountable is crucial, especially in the world we're living in today. That's what Women Center Stage here at CP is all about after all - amplifying the voices calling for change. But I get very concerned when "liberals," "Democrats," "lefties," and related ilk decide to go after "liberals," "Democrats," "lefties," and related ilk.

Why do we keep going after one another? What happened to solidarity?

The NY Times reported yesterday that Cindy Sheehan has issued an ultimatum to Nancy Pelosi:

The war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said in May that she was quitting her prominent role in the antiwar movement and severing her ties with the Democratic Party. But her retirement from politics may prove short-lived.

Now Ms. Sheehan, right, is talking about running for Congress as an independent candidate against Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if Ms. Pelosi, left, a Democrat, refuses to move for the impeachment of President Bush.

Maybe I'm naive, but I feel so strongly that those of us trying to change this country do ourselves a major disservice by publicly attacking our allies.

Especially as women in movements for change, we are in a position to further and facilitate solidarity, to change the paradigm of power-mongering and scapegoating.

Not that we should let leaders like Nancy Pelosi, who are in powerful positions to make change, get away with resting on their laurels. But to go to battle publicly like this...I think it does far more harm than good, and allows Repubs to keep calling us flip-flopping dummies.

The Health of the Doctor

2007-07-10T14:22:00.000-04:00

The next surgeon general might be a gay-hater.

The candidate, a self-described Christian conservative named Dr. James Holsinger, supports research into cloning, has backed lesbian issues in the past, and is anti-big tobacco.

Yet, as a lay leader of the United Methodist Church, Dr. Holsinger opposes gay membership in his congregation and believes that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching."

Worse, Holsinger wrote a paper for a church committee that outlines the various ways in which male homosexuality is abnormal and unhealthy.

I propose a counter-nominee for Surgeon General - Atlanta's own Dr. A. Verras, M.D.

Verras was my doctor as a kid. He's a tiny Greek man with a perma-smile and the most whimsical, non-threatening accent on the planet. All of his medicinal metaphors involve Mickey and/or Minney Mouse (sometimes an ear infection is worthy of a Donald Duck).

I never specifically asked Verras about his views on gay rights, since I am not gay and was not as interested in social justice when I was twelve as I am presently.

However, Verras' bipartisan approach to solving tummyaches and constant references to Disney characters [isn't Disney is one of the gayest-friendly {gay-friendly-est?} companies on the planet?] make him an obvious choice to bridge the pro-anal sex/anti-anal sex divide (or crack) and unite this sad country.

Unicorn Blood & Michael Moore

2007-07-09T15:14:00.000-04:00

Post-Sicko, all candidates full-steam ahead on health care reform. Veeeeery interesting...

But how would one pay for universal health care in so large and freakish a nation as ours?

Well, surprise surprise, the Dems want to end the war in Iraq and roll back the tax cuts that Bush handed the richest 1% of U.S. shitheads.

The Republicrackers, however, see a way to pay for universal, effective health care for all Americans without rolling back taxes for those rich shitheads.

They just won't tell us what that way is, of course.

Well, Ghouliani does says that "the market" will fix everything, but that notion's so retro, so eighties [1880s], that I wonder if he isn't cribbing his economic and health care policies from Queen Victoria - or perhaps from everyone's favorite discontinued cereal mascot, the brother of Count Chocula, Baron von Phenomenally-Bad-Plan.

I mean, I'm not an economist, but couldn't we use the ~$500 billion per annum we spend on blowing up brown people to fund a health care system? Doesn't that make some fucking sense? Or do we just hate the brown people that much, because Allah is that bad, that we would sacrifice our anatomy to kill them?

What is Mitt Romney's plan, one wonders? Boil enough unicorn blood to summon the health care fairy?

Man, I can't believe the same universe produced both Dan Dennett and Mitt Romney. That's a nerdcore celebrity deathmatch I'd love to see...

Al Gore - heed the call!!!

2007-07-09T15:09:00.000-04:00

Steven Weber (Studio 60, Wings) has a great post today on The Huffington Post. It's a rather intuitive question posed to Al Gore - why WON'T he run?? Here it is in its entirety:

STEVEN WEBER JULY 9, 2007

What does Al know that we don't?

Why, given the opportunity that's been presented to him on a silver Prius, is this man not going to run for (and win) the presidency of the United States? If ever there was a clarion call to be answered it is this one: heed the will of the majority of the people, take back the yoke Bush and his cracked team of highjackers have used to steer the country into the ground and pull the ship skyward again.

Why, after his self-imposed banishment to the wilderness (suburbia), where he along with every other sentient being has observed the feckless evil of the current executive tenant and his Neo-posse, does he demur? Could he know that any run at the office would surely turn out to be a hollow chrysalis which, after gestation, would not incubate a butterfly but more likely belch forth a wingless, blind slug; that an educated, experienced, wise adult can lead more effectively and make more of a difference by being an activist/celebrity and riding a wave of pop-culture popularity, rather than relying upon the rusted and jury-rigged contraption quaintly referred to as the electoral process?

Maybe Al knows that America (to paraphrase Paddy Chayevsky) is a dying giant, that perhaps she is dead already. And the "business of government" is merely the scramble of organisms over the carcass's wan, flaking skin; any rumbles from within aren't the sounds of legislators engaged in constructive debate but the gasses issuing from the anuses of the bacteria digesting the sad corpse's putrefying innards. Are we destined to have the presidency so finally and utterly mediocritized that it no longer holds any attraction for the most qualified person in recent memory who would imbue it with the honor and prestige it -- and we -- deserve?

Well then, that's what Al must know. Because only that kind of realization would prevent him from participating. He says that politics no longer holds any allure for him. And really, why should it? He won an Oscar, for chrissakes. He's raised awareness of a real issue that actually effects us all in a way that makes him truly a uniter -- not a divider. He is the world's activist uncle. George Bush standing in front of his American Enterprise Institute portable backdrop can barely scrape up a strangulated hosanna from his meticulously vetted and dwindling audiences.

Having only once appropriated the toxic phrase "cut and run" to describe the result of catching my fishnet stockings on a partially extruded staple embedded in the side of a bed post (A long, dull story. Forget I mentioned it.) I am forced to resurrect it once again. It's an extremely ugly phrase, wielded by extremely ugly people but I will use it as that mediocre apparatchik/harridan Jean Schmidt never intended: to provoke the discouraged conscience of the marginalized true-patriot who would ably restore what has been so ignobly destroyed. On second thought, it's so shallow and inflammatory that I can't stand to apply it even in a good cause. There has to be some other way to convince this man of his worth. May be we need to convince him of our worth?

Because this country, for all its gaudy fascinations, for all its daily desperation to fend off reality by consuming goods from China as though they were oxygen atoms is also a country of souls betrayed by their loyalty to the idea of America the beautiful, the judicious and the brave. And it is not the loyalty itself that is at issue but those whom we have entrusted with it. A presidential election is not a parlor game, though it may resemble one far too closely. It is as close to being a sacred exercise as this secular republic asks of its congregants. We require a real leader now, one with a true understanding of the importance of why this country must function correctly and efficiently. We and the world depend on it. So here's your hat. And there's the ring. America needs you need to lead us now more than ever.

That's what we know that Al doesn't.

Marvelous Thoughts About... Thought

2007-07-06T18:52:00.000-04:00

Dan Dennett is somewhat of a cranky old dude, and not as brilliant a writer as Laing or Jaynes or B. Russell - but he kicks ass on video. He freaks out about Pointillism, which he pronounces in a very funny faux-Gallic way, and he huffs and breathes heavily, but you can't miss this video, it's dope. Even if my boi Dylan isn't into him - I'd hug the dude. Check out Consciousness Explained for more.

Unorthodox And Unafraid

2007-07-05T17:33:00.000-04:00

Consider the case of the young atheist:

He loans a friend a book. Then the boys' school administrators freak out because, in loaning another student a book about religion, the atheist somehow violated the "establishment clause."

Funny.

The kid has a great blog, and he tells his story much better than I could.

(His reading list is very good, by the by, if heavy on the R. Dawkins and Nietzche. But give him a break, he's young.)

I'm quite glad there are others in the world who support free thought. Actually, I just wrote a Sir Salman Rushdie tribute for Wishtank which veers off into a discussion about why we should never limit language/thought/questioning.

Basically, telling kids they can't question their faith is as ineffective as it is immoral. The kids--all of them, bible-thumpers, young Saudis bound for the Madrasah, or even little Dawkinses who think themselves Brights but have never really asked the Hard Questions about existence, consciousness, etc.--are going to find out that others don't necessarily agree with them.

And then they will probably blog about their findings. O Internet...

Well, this says quite a lot

2007-07-05T15:08:00.000-04:00

From today's White House press briefing (with Scott Stanzel in for a vacationing Tony Snow):

Question: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?
Scott Stanzel: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by equal justice under the law.