Joining the Blorg

I've joined the Blorg - the blogger-borg that is Google. By signing up to the Blogger Beta, I fall under their TOS and grant them a licence to shovel for free my meanderings into their Content Channels.

Now, the Blorg seem very benign. They give me email for free with gigs of storage, they let me put up a spreadsheet for free, they will give us books for free. All for free! But they grow...

Nice Google! Funny little things you do with your logo!

Nevertheless, when you peel back the layers of geek chic, of caring company, of innocent startup - when you get to rending the cells to get to the DNA of the Blorg, of Google, you find a publicly traded corporation.

Sadly, like Sauron's Ring, which corrupts you if you have it, the genetic information that makes a publically traded corporation in America right now - that information is corrupt. The corruption spreads through the marrow, and you can see it in things like Google in China, or Google vs. the US Security Apparatus. (What? They were good? How good were they?) Or reading my email to sell my eyeballs to content-driven web ads.

So, I'll likely start another blog in some safer corner of Our Internets, and maybe switch. Who knows. Nothing for now - it's the holiday season and I've had a cold for like a freaking week. Sucks!

Great article on the media and Venezuela's Chavez

As I write, I find myself focusing on certain things - human rights violations in the US (which include authoritarian politics and constitutional desecration) and what's happening in the rest of the Americas - Mexico and South America.

The attempts of our government to overthrow Hugo Chavez of Venezuela are one of the things that really ticks me off. And the corporate press are going along - in a big way. This article, from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, lays it all out.


The Op-Ed Assassination of Hugo Chávez
Commentary on Venezuela parrots U.S. propaganda themes

By Justin Delacour

President Hugo Chávez Frias (700 Club, 8/22/05), the editors of several major newspapers were quick to denounce his outrageous incitement to violence. However, in criticizing the conservative televangelist, the prestige press overlooked its own highly antagonistic treatment of Venezuela’s president, which surely contributed to the heated political climate in which Robertson made his threat.

Even so-called “moderate” columnists have contributed to the deterioration of U.S.-Venezuela relations by distorting the Venezuelan government’s domestic and foreign policy record. Robertson may indeed be “just a garden-variety crackpot with friends in high places,” as the New York Times opined (8/25/05), but the televangelist’s erroneous characterization of Venezuela’s president as a “strong-arm dictator” is hardly distinguishable from, say, Thomas Friedman’s contention that Chávez is an “autocrat” (New York Times, 3/27/05).

In studying the opinion pages of the top 25 circulation newspapers in the United States during the first six months of 2005, Extra! found that 95 percent of the nearly 100 press commentaries that examined Venezuelan politics expressed clear hostility to the country’s democratically elected president...

Of course, Chavez is not only calling Bush the devil, he's also challanging neo-liberal economics. This means he's threatening the bloody pyramid of wealth that the US sits atop - which makes him more than just Bush's enemy.

The U.S. media’s distorted characterizations of Venezuela’s government were typified by Diehl (Washington Post, 1/17/05), who claimed that Chávez is “aggressively moving to eliminate the independence of the media and judiciary, criminalize opposition and establish state control over the economy.”

The Post more explicitly conflated democracy with U.S.-sponsored “free market” policies in a January 14 editorial, in which it asserted that Chávez’s “assault on private property is merely the latest step in what has been a rapidly escalating ‘revolution’ . . . that is undermining the foundations of democracy and free enterprise.”

The notion that U.S.-sponsored neo-liberalism (“free enterprise”) is the only economic model compatible with democracy was further promoted by the Miami Herald (5/8/05), which declared that “the pugnacious Mr. Chávez is determined to push his populist model to the people of the region as a competitor to real democracies...”

And as is common, Chavez is accused of committing the sins of the US.

Aside from neglecting to provide proof for the charge that Chávez destabilizes Latin America, columnists failed to recognize the hypocrisy of accusing Venezuela of meddling in a region where U.S. interference is second to none. In reality, it is the Bush administration—not the Chávez government—that is known to meddle in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. During recent presidential races in Nicaragua (2001), Bolivia (2002) and El Salvador (2004), Bush administration officials openly threatened to penalize the three countries if their citizens elected candidates who opposed U.S. policies.

Good article. I recommend it.

Retail purgatory

I can't call it retail hell, but it was a busy busy day at work. So busy I stayed late.

Which is why all you get is this placeholder. And I get the headache.

Returning from vacation...

It was good, but now I've got this - oh my god - anxiety about the coming week. It's going to be a busy one! One media project has a move, and a fundraiser; another has a scrambling rehersal for a show we agreed to do in a month, and another has a going-away party which should be fun but it's just another thing. Work is hitting the Xmas crap in a BIG way (and I work in retail) and I missed a deadline for the newsletter article.

Media note: I saw that Raw Story has the Karpinski claim - that she saw Rumsfeld's handwriting on the 'how to torture' note at Abu Ghraib - sourced to Spanish media. Amy Goodman had her with that same story a week ago. Bullshit on people for not picking that up.

Tha's all for now - just a little 'hey hello and online journalling, i got a priority list of 6 things before bed' post. (Two already done, and this post is a bonus. Rock-rock on!)

I got nuttin...

So I'm saying it loud and proud!

Nihilix was a blogger for sure
He was suave and oh so mature
He blogged every day
And in every way
Unless he messed up.

Meta-limerick!

Once more into the breach!

I was going to use 'back in the saddle' but I've already used that on a post after I'd skipped a couple of days.

And I have to say that this Thanksgiving holiday will be rough on the old posting schedule. Starting Wednesday, I'll be in dialup-if-that territory, unless I can get the old Lombard laptop to work. (It's showing a corrupted system file. I don't even know if I can put the original 6 meg harddrive back in... I think I removed or moved some of the system files on that... which might be the problem...)

Anyway, leftist Mexican presidential candidate Luis Obrador of the PRD has had himself sworn in as the 'legitimate' Mexican president, after Vincente Fox's party, the PAN, gave their candidate a bare 1% of the vote. While the people of Oaxaca are trying to maintain their people's governement, Obrador is largely silent. This story about one of the re-appeared disappeared shows how the forces of oppression operate: you pick them up, hold them incommunicado, beat and torture them, and then maybe you let them go, maybe they have a little accident... The man, Rene Trujillo Martínez, was a lawyer and a broadcaster on the APPO radio station at the autonomous university; one of the last voices left to the movement.

At the warehouse the gunmen tortured them, sticking needles under their finger nails (the scars were visible three days later), applying electric shocks to their feet, beating them on the head, and choking them, according to the three men, who were later released.

On the "let's taser the shit out of a student in the library" front, the student has filed a lawsuit and the university cops have been identified. One of them is this winner:

In 2003, Duren shot Willie Davis Frazier Jr., a homeless man Duren encountered in a Kerckhoff study lounge, following a physical and verbal altercation.

Hunting for wabbits...

Well, deer, actually.

Using a camera, this year. Got a clear sight but no clear picture of two deer. If I'd had a gun, I probably would have missed with that as well.

Posting limited today and tomorrow. Maybe something late Sunday.

More on the tasering

It's brutal. I watched the video (which I was afraid to the first time) and it is as shocking as Firedoglake says it is.

And then there's the statement from UCLA.

Date: November 15, 2006
Contact: Office of Media Relations ( media@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-2585

Statement from UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams About Incident at Powell Library

University police are investigating an incident late last night in which police took a student into custody at Powell Library. Investigators are reviewing the incident and the officers' actions. The investigation and review will be thorough, vigorous and fair.

The safety of our campus community is of paramount importance to me. Routinely checking student identification after 11 p.m. at the campus library, which is open 24 hours, is a policy posted in the library that was enacted for the protection of our students. Compliance is critical for the safety and well-being of everyone.

-UCLA-

LB516

And here's my email to their lovely media department:

I've read your statement on the Tasering of a student in your library.

This is chilling.

"The safety of our campus community is of paramount importance to me. Routinely checking student identification after 11 p.m. at the campus library, which is open 24 hours, is a policy posted in the library that was enacted for the protection of our students. Compliance is critical for the safety and well-being of everyone"

Safety is paramount?? yet you endanger a student with a semi-lethal technology? Compliance is critical?? How in the world can you claim that your need for students to comply with showing a pass is such a critical compliance to use that force?

There were at least three officers on the scene. If three officers cannot remove someone who was not complying without repeatedly hitting that person with a cattle prod, you need to do some serious thinking.

I've considered schools in the California system for graduate school. I can assure you UCLA is no longer on my list.

And here's the video:

Tasers and people's governments.

May we live in interesting times...

The UCLA police tasered the shit out of a student who wouldn't show ID. Guess that showed him!

Firedoglake

It all started when campus cops at UCLA decided to run a student out of the library on suspicion of Using a Computer While Brown:

When Tabatabainejad, 23, refused to provide his ID to the community service officer, the officer told him he would have to show it or leave the library, the report said.

Vhee haff to see your papers…

(LA Times account.)

Excellent account from the student newspaper, the Daily Bruin.

On the plus side, the citizens of Oaxaca have formed themselves a people's government.

Oaxaca’s APPO Forms Permanent Government, Announces Escalation of Resistance (Narco News)

Three thousand Oaxaqueños responded to the first call of the Asamblea Popular de Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples’ of Oaxaca, or APPO) on Friday, November 10, to forge a new constitution for Oaxaca. The APPO sprang into life in the two days following the attempted eviction of striking teachers from their zocalo encampment on June 14, 2006. It has guided the social movement in Oaxaca since then, and now self-dissolves in favor of a permanent structure of government which includes an executive and legislative branch. The provisional directorship dissolved on formally initiating the work of the constitutive congress.

While the rights of Americans are brutally ripped away, people who are being killed in their struggle announce their determination to rule themselves. It was that kind of day.

Did K Street set us free?

Things are bad. When are we going to catch on? More and more of us are - catching on to something.

What is it that we fasten onto? We have all sorts of drowning going on - in debt, in malaise, in anger... and we fasten on to something we reach for something that provides some hope.

Some have fastened onto a black and white faith that gives simple answers while it supports the current system. As long as there's someone to hate, someone to blame, and someone to tell you with full sincerity that they know what the answer is, people will latch on.

Some have fastened onto political ideology. A secular faith (secular, except when part of the religious reich) which gives us some answers. The left as well as the right do this. If only we can get the majorities. If only we elect the right ones. If only... if only...

Some have had their faith dashed. The megachurch with the grinning formerly closeted fag at the helm. The macho scared male suburbanite with a football team and a tough man president who never loses. He's been losing a lot lately, hasn't he?

The Kossaks and so many others - these kids. I remember being politically active at 24. I was hella active. I loved it - and I thought things were great and big and never more important and we were gonna do it (ok, we lost a lot) but I see these kids now, and they don't remember Reagan. Hell - you got ten years to become aware, and 8 years of Clinton and 6 years of Cheney and you're 24 years old. And it was a loong time since the Democrats had Congress, and frankly, from what I remember, those Congresses weren't the same kind of Democrats. But maybe I'm forgetting - what kind of firebrands they had back then.

So a new Democratic majority in the House. So a feeling of politics mattering. I can see it in some ways - a progressive movement - and I can also see the sellout politics of the DLC and the other corporate Dems - and I wonder if the faith in the new Democratic majorities will soon be dashed.

I was a Naderite in 2000. And I was a WTO protester in 1999. And I formed a union in 1993, and was a Wobbly. I had and have a profound distrust of many structures of power. The Nader critique was a good one - because Bush-the-candidate and Gore-the-candidate weren't that far apart. Al Gore v 2.000 was the crappy southern stiff insider who was flogging his DLC crap. He was into oil in South America, he was death-penalty, he was good for business. His internationalism - and that we cry for that, for the good old days when we weren't unilateralists and instead the US and Western Europe and Japan (a bit) were all holding hands together (as we sucked the third world dry...) - things are so bad that this seems to be the bright and shining path... anyways, Gore was all those things. And Bush seemed like a mix between Dole's boring corporate stuff and Gingrich (but dumber) with a smallish dash of Robertson, and he didn't seem to be the monster.

Perhaps DeLay and Abramoff and Santorum and Grover did us a K Street favor. Maybe they were so good at sucking the corporate power into their machine that they lost some of their hold on the Democrats. Maybe we will be able to talk about things that challange - if not the system, at least the gains the rich and richer have made in the last few years. Maybe we'll be able to stop a war, maybe we'll be able to make some changes in the better. Mounting a better defense is very do-able; going on the attack (subpoena power, anyone) would be even better. Maybe the hand that fed the old Democrats has stopped feeding to the point where it can get bit.

So I am not fastening onto the new House majority. I will have to give them some room, and maybe do some trying to hold accountable (if they do some good accountablity holding themselves, it will be very nice.) I would like to have faith - but I'll wait to see some proof.