Peridyd's Progress

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm decidedly not endorsing Barak Obama for president (he's a centrist Democrat, which, to me, is too far right to suit my tastes). However, Keillor's comparison between the two--and Keillor has been an Obama supporter for awhile now--is witty enough to pass along.

I, of course, recommend reading the entire Salon article. But, as always, the editor in me can't resist cutting to the chase a bit.

And it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.

Good luck with that, sir.

Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that Mr. McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It's like admitting that you've never clipped your own toenails or that you didn't know that toothpaste comes out of a tube because your valet always did that for you. It's like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world does Mr. McCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail. Does somebody plan to show him how it's done and will they explain to him what "LOL" means?

I find that comparison and contrast quite funny, especially because it's good natured and, yet, still delivers the goods.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Law professor Jonathan Turley interviewed on MSNBC Friday night

I never thought I would say this, but I think it might, in fact, be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought, in my lifetime, that I would say that, that we have become like Serbia, where an international tribunal has to come to force us to apply the rule of law. I never imagined that a Congress, a Democratic-led Congress would refuse to take actions, even with the preeminent institution of the Red Cross saying, this is clearly torture and torture is a war crime. They are still refusing to take meaningful action.

So, we've come to this ignoble moment where we could be forced into a tribunal and forced to face the rule of law that we've refused to apply to ourselves.

I'm not normally one to argue for the prosecution and incarceration of anyone. However, the current administration's human rights violations are so grievous that there is no other remedy which has a prayer of restoring the rule of law other than prosecution.

Blanket pardons are likely forthcoming during the last few days of the administration, and a spineless Democratic congress seems averse to prosecuting its constitutional duty.

The only entity that will not be constrained to honor the president's pardon would be an international tribunal convened to prosecute the war crimes of the past 7 years.

Read the Greenwald post. It's a road map to a just government and an America I could support.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Make that what few white people will ever admit about Jeremiah Wright: that he's right.

America needs more Jeremiads, more truth tellers, not less.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been saying for quite some time that in the U.S. we have freedom of movement but not freedom of thought. There are multiple institutions that police the boundaries of what's thinkable, not the least of which are the supposed liberal media. Those who dare to have thoughts that aren't sanctioned by these institutions are labeled fanatics and are quickly marginalized. You'll never hear opinions that question some fundamental assumptions about the U.S. and our policies. For instance, it's unthinkable to posit that our policies are not enacted in support of freedom and democracy, despite the fact that all evidence points to the contrary.

Interestingly, last night there was an exception to this ideological whitewashing. As Glenn Greenwald notes, last night's Charlie Rose show unwittingly gave a platform to voices from beyond the ideological pale.

Rose's interview with Ali Fadhil and Sinan Antoon unwittingly contests the premises that led us to invade Iraq in the first place, not to mention the tragic aftermath of our invasion and subsequent occupation.

These are voices to which we should attend. Mainstream assumptions about what is and what is not acceptable are fundamentally flawed, and, as long as we believe them, our policies are doomed to failure.

What's exceptional is that these voices of dissent were ever aired.

Please enjoy this brief moment of truly free speech. Thanks to Greenwald for his excellent analysis.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of us who are old enough to remember when the Fourth Estate maintained an adversarial relationship (rather than cocktail-party friendship) with whatever government was in power, the last 15 years of news-watching have been frustrating indeed.

My friend Rob forwarded this excellent article to me from the Huffington Post. It appears that American Morning producer Chez Pazienza has been dooced by CNN.

To say that Mr. Pazienza has not gone quietly into that dark night would be a bit of an understatement, but perhaps I'm a bit biased, since he's so deftly skewering an institution that I feel has been so cynically screwing the self-same viewing public that it's ostensibly serving.

I'll provide this brief excerpt, which will hopefully whet your appetite for what is one of the best political tracts that I've read in a long time.

During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I shared this with a friend the other day, and, as I was writing her about it, I realized that I'd never heard a finer anti-war song. It's the perfect anti-war song for this cultural moment.

I saw Tracy Grammer perform in Corvallis back in 2005 when this song had been just released. This is not difficult music. Transparent and extremely well written. Tracy Grammer's voice has a purity that I've rarely experienced in a recording let alone live. The sound quality of this Youtube video leaves a bit to be desired, but you can get a sense of how great her voice is.

Hey Ho
by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
performed by Tracy Grammer

tv’s on, the favorite son is
watchin how the west was won
daddy, please, a plastic gun
get brother one for twice the fun

little camo helmet-heads
makin brave and playin dead
missiles made of gingerbread
dollars on the dime

chorus
hey ho, so it goes, the point of sale, the puppet show
the merchant kings of war and woe have turned their hands to labor
sound out the trumpet noise, the cannons bark and jump for joy
someone’s dread and darlin boy has fallen on his saber

another world across the sea
home for little busy bees
sweatin in some factory
hurry, please, more of these

action dolls with laser sights
robot planes that shoot at night
faster, kid, and get it right
they’re rollin down the line

hey ho...

these days the spin machine
is always on the silver screen
secret plots and submarines
foreign fiends and magazines

wave the flag, watch the news
tell us we can count on you
mom and dad are marchin too
children, step in time

hey ho...

bring your kids and coddled pets
bouncin babes in bassinets
we’ll play a game with tanks and jets
better yet – bayonets!

marchin bands and color guards
funerals in your own backyard
don’t forget your credit card –
johnny, hold the line

hey ho...

Namaste

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Elizabeth Kucinich, who's making tons of sense, isn't she?

Via Zuky

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's Dad's Weekend football game at Oregon State University will feature twin protests. On the one side are students who are "showing their school spirit" by putting on blackface (OSU's colors are orange and black), largely in defiance of others, who, by providing a counter protest, are attempting to remind these students of the historical roots of blackface.

The use of blackface has a long history in our country and is akin to other offensive stereotypes that have been created and used by white culture to justify racism. Since the mid-Nineteenth Century, white performers have put on blackface in order to entertain their audiences with comic representations of African Americans. The first performances were minstrelsy shows. But those of us who are a bit older (I was born in 1956) can remember seeing cartoons with Bugs Bunny et al which used blackface in the same hurtful and racist manner.

I bring this up to point out that blackface isn't an old phenomenon. I grew up watching television commercials spotlighting their products vian Aunt Jemima and the Frito Bandito, broadcasts containing the "Wascally Wabbit" doing his version of Al Jolson, not to mention occasional movies featuring Al Jolson himself in blackface.

The official campus student newspaper, The Barometer, is the original source of the problem. I never saw the issue in question (I don't really like the paper, despite the fact that it's "award winning"), but my understanding is that they ran a front page story encouraging students to dress up in blackface for today's game, and had a photo of a white student in blackface. They now have issued a non-apology apology that justifies their actions via their ignorance of the painful roots of blackface. Conversation, censorship, and racist letters to the editor have ensued.

White students claim the right to the innocent use of blackface. Those who are protesting their promise to dress up in blackface counter that there is no innocent use of blackface.

To those who are paying any attention to this issue on campus, it's clear that the conversation has a polarizing effect. Like arguments around abortion, no one's being converted.

Yet that doesn't mean that each side is equally entitled to its opinion. Some opinions, I'd like to remind us, are better supported than others. Those who support the wearing of blackface to the game today are wont to claim that blackface is a dead issue today, and they have a right to appropriate it for their innocent (football and school spirited) ends, as if blackface has somehow been cleansed of its historical and racist roots.

As Luke Sugie points out in his excellent, yet censored, commentary on the claims of ignorance being used as an excuse,

it's not surprising that the Barometer took this route. There are few (if any) serious repercussions for not knowing the history of media and ethnicity in this country, even for an award-winning student paper. After all, you can just apologize and claim ignorance, silently allow those who point out such instances to be vilified as uppity one-issue writers, and move on. But the problem when folks in dominant groups remain ignorant of the historical citations they make is that no such privilege exists for the “others,” which Jerred Taylor pointed out in his letter to the editor last Friday.

If I don't know the ins and outs of heterosexual culture, I am liable to be physically assaulted or worse by being queer at the wrong place or wrong time. Similarly, if I don't understand how whiteness is constructed and operated in this country I am liable to face serious negative social, personal, or physical ramifications. The opposite of the two preceding statements is rarely true.

I know the troubling and deeply embedded historical citation being made when someone dresses up like a ninja, slutty Pocahontas, or some other regurgitated stereotype for Halloween - even if they don't. I understand that a historical citation of a stereotype such as blackface, however accidental or well-intentioned, calls forward the hurt and pain of communities who lived or continue to live with those stereotypes. If you don't understand why the image of blackface is so powerful, even the mere appearance of blackface, it's probably because privilege has let you ignore it without consequence.

In the social justice circles I hang out with on campus, the tension yesterday was palpable. In a day of meetings and not enough time to read email, today's protests came up several times.

I fear for what might happen at the game today.

All of which is a long winded way of getting to the point of this post: where in all of these voices is the official voice of OSU? I respect Ed Ray and believe that his commitment to diversity and social justice issues is authentic. But the silence from the President's office is deafening. And the resultant vacuum ends up sounding like a tacit approval of those who would wear blackface, which, since it cannot be scrubbed of its racist roots, is wrong. How difficult would it be for one who is committed to social justice to say just that?

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Democrats are expected to extend wiretap powers for the National Security Agency. For those who wonder why progressives are abandoning the party, this is the reason. Ever fearful of being seen as being soft on the so-called War on Terror, the party is so afraid of its shadow that it casts none.

Ether, pure ether. No substance.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once again, Salon is a lone voice of sanity in what can only be described as our culture's celebrity fetish. (You'll need to watch an advertisement, but the article is worth it.)

While much of America was getting its panties in a fist-size knot over Paris' lack of panties, there were plenty of other things we might have paid attention to. Lookie! The Iraq war! Presto! The "ongoing investigations" of atrocious, illegal acts committed at the highest levels of government! Instead, we are engaging in our new favorite dysfunctional love-hate relationship: Public stoning of the celebrity hooker.

Thanks to Cintra Wilson for her perspicacity. May we learn to pay attention to things that are truly important.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IMG_1785.jpg, originally uploaded by paleck.

For two years running my good friend Paleck has taken it on himself to be the unofficial photographer for Salt Lake City's Gay Pride parade. This year's photos are great, and give the viewer a good sense of how vital and vibrant the gay community is in SLC.

However, as one might expect, support for the queer community is not unanimous. Paleck's done a great job capturing an anti-gay protest.

It's a rich study in contrasts. I especially like the contrast between SLC's finest (a very professional looking bunch whom I'd want running interference for me) and the homophobes.

Be sure to look at the larger sizes.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On this day, during which our warrior culture, my culture, valorizes those who have fallen on the battlefield, I think it is important to offer a reminder that there are other possible epistemes than this one, which posits that war is an inevitable consequence of the human condition.

We are, none of us, fated to be killers. Each of us chooses to continue war; we could, instead, choose peace. The ideology that supports war is quite assiduous in policing the boundaries of what is thinkable. It has become unthinkable, for most, to consider a world without war.

Claude Anshin Thomas, in his memoir, At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, reminds us just what's at stake here:

Peace is not an idea. Peace in not a political movement, not a theory or a dogma. Peace is a way of life: living mindfully in the present moment.... It is not a question of politics, but of actions. It is not a matter of improving a political system or even taking care of homeless people alone. These are valuable but will not alone end war and suffering. We must simply stop the endless wars that rage within.... Imagine, if everyone stopped the war in themselves--there would be no seeds from which war could grow. (qtd. in Mindful Politics, Melvin McLeod, editor)

It's not a coincidence that it's our culture--so focused on externalizing happiness, on locating it in the pursuit of material objects--which lacks a vocabulary for discussing the inner landscape and how the conflicts; dramas; and, yes, the peace of our inner lives become manifest in the material world. War within--especially when it is unacknowledged--yields conflict in our interactions with the material world.

Better one moment spent remembering/discovering that internal war than a thousand days honoring those who have fallen on the battlefields of our ignorance.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a fascinating read in Salon about Turbine's decision to remove marriage altogether from the newly released Lord of the Rings Online because they couldn't tackle the issue of gay relationships.

Turbine claims that the decision has a lot to do with the desire for authenticity, i.e., staying true to the source material. However, as any Melville scholar can attest, claiming that Tolkien doesn't explicitly allow gay characters in the trilogy doesn't get them off the hook. I've read the books (and, of course, seen the movies), and there are--at a minimum--elements of the homosocial in both. Could anyone over the age of consent not at least consider the possibilty that Sam and Frodo's compelling, tender, and heroic love for one another is homoerotic?

I found it interesting to discover that gay marriages have been in computer games since Fallout 2 in 1998.

Kudos to game designers like Timothy Cain with Interplay who insist on letting players decide what kinds of relationships they build online. In-game marriages are a commonplace. The article quotes noted gaming researcher Nick Yee, who points out that 23% of EverQuest players role-played falling in love in the game. Notwithstanding Turbine's desire to remain true to the source material, MMORPGs are rife with sexual role playing (and homophobic players). A game without restrictions that defaults to letting players decide for themselves seems like the best policy.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why is Dennis Kucinich the only one who is stating the obvious? And why isn't he including the President? The only acceptable future, after all, is one that contains the words "President Pelosi."

As a side note, it's cool seeing that Kucinich is using Drupal as his content management system.

Off to Bellingham for a conference.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 05:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Don't look now, but it could be that we actually have a resurgent fourth estate.

The question is, is it too little and too late?

There are a few things to keep in mind as Congress begins to (at long last) confront, contest, and provide long absent oversight of the Oval Office:

1. Bush has stacked the deck of the Supreme Court. (Yes, I think that's where we're heading.)
2. Because of item 1, it's highly likely that the Court will break with precedent (most notably during the last days of Watergate) and actually affirm so-called Executive Privilege, which is never mentioned in the Constitution.
3. If item 2 occurs, progressives can and should put the shoe on the other foot and accuse the Supreme Court of legislating from the bench, something which conservatives have accused the left of doing for more than a generation.
4. If both 1 and 2 occur, we (the citizens of the United States) will have inherited the government and the future that we deserve.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've written earlier about the dangers of technically-illiterate legislation, but this one's from the enforcement side, and it's just so painful to read.

Indulge me a moment while I break it down:

• substitute teacher shows up for class,


• while using the classroom computer, porn pop ups appear,


• substitute teacher tries to stop the popups, but to no avail. Some of the students apparently see some porn


• parents get wind of the fact that their children have viewed human sexual acts, and


• substitute teacher is tried and convicted (?!!!) of putting the children at risk.

The school computer had an inadequate operating system, out of date ant-virus, and an inadequate firewall; the defense was not allowed to provide expert technical testimony which would have unequivocally cleared the teacher of any wrong doing.

A clueless and technically-illiterate judicial system is potentially sending an innocent person to jail.

Sentencing is March 2nd.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Upset with Senator Barbara Boxer's tough questioning of Condoleezza Rice the other day, Limbaugh has suddenly become a stauch anti-racist. He's setting up Boxer as the affluent lynch mobster of Rice, accusing her of "hitting below the ovaries" (Limbaugh's words) because Boxer (rightly?) pointed out that neither Rice nor anyone in the administration has any family who'll be paying a real price for their abysmal decision making in Iraq. In other words, neither Rice, nor Bush, nor Cheney will risk losing a family member in this war.

It is as if asking tough questions of a clueless and often imperious Secretary of State were the same thing as the violent policing of heterosexual white male privilege and racial sexual segregation (for everyone but white males, of course, who felt it their inheritance to "take" black women whenever they chose to).

There's a central irony here, of course. Ever quick to accuse those who've actually suffered instutitional discrimination of being whiners and inferior--at least by implication--Limbaugh's quick to run to the defense of a woman of color who's positioned in a rarefied, affluent, and powerful class, and who (coincidentally?) happens to share his political ideology.

Pardon me if I'm skeptical of Limbaugh's commitment to social justice.

Rather than a lynching, Rush, why not call it what it is: congressional oversight? I know that you haven't seen much of it since 2001, but this is what the founders had in mind: accountability.

Bush and his minions (and, yes, that includes Rice and, alas, Colin Powell) are finally, finally being held accountable. One could only wish that it were more than just speech.

Kudos to Boxer; shame on Rush.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lest we blue-state liberals--who live in cities like "The People's Republic of Eugene"--think that the so-called Heartland is uniform in its support of the Bush regime, here's proof that they're not.

Helen Nichols, a retired Nebraska Teacher has written a book, An Open Letter to George W. Bush: Including a Great Number of Select Quotations, as a way of resisting complicity and docility when faced with the overwhelming and disturbing change that she saw in her country. She remarks that she wanted to be able to tell her grandchildren that she'd done something to resist torture, the loss of civil rights, and murder that have tainted this nation during Bush's tenure in the Oval Office.

Here's an interview with this articulate and exceptional woman in Feministing, which is the source of this post.

This book looks like one to buy.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Madam Speaker (it sounds so good to say that),

In a few short weeks, you will be second in the line of succession to the office of president. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many of your constituents, the two who are at the helm of the Executive Branch have spent the better part of 6 years engaged in a systematic attempt to usurp the law and the Constitution while defrauding the American public and the Congress.

Therefore, I respectfully enjoin you to faithfully execute your oath of office and pursue articles of impeachment against GEORGE W. BUSH, RICHARD B. CHENEY, CONDOLEEZZA RICE, DONALD M. RUMSFELD, and COLIN POWELL.

However distasteful it might be to do so, Madam Speaker, however politically dangerous it might seem, our nation, our Constitution, and the ethical mandates to which all of us are accountable require that you do so.

The need to impeach George W. Bush is neither spurious nor unfounded. As former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega argues in her soon-to-be-released book (an excerpt of which is linked above), the case against the president is substantive, and the harm that has been done to the people of this country, Iraq, and of the world is demonstrable and criminal.

The question is not whether the President subjectively believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The legal question that must be answered is far more comprehensive: Did the President and his team defraud the country? After swearing to uphold the law of the land, did our highest government officials employ the universal techniques of fraudsters -- deliberate concealment, misrepresentations, false pretenses, half-truths -- to deceive Congress and the American people?

Madam Speaker, so much is at stake here that you cannot hesitate nor make decisions based upon political exigencies. In a time of lax expedience, you must possess vision and resolve. In a time of moral cowardice, you must be both ethical and courageous.

Ms. Pelosi, put impeachment back on the table.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the day, Amy and I spent quite a bit of time (more than we perhaps should have) watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy's gone now, but her episodes live on in YouTube.

We could do worse than hope that our daughters would spend a lifetime surrounded by such mythic heroines while finding Willow's "bliss."

Reminded of it by Feministing.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Part of my job working at the Center for Writing and Learning at Oregon State University is to be the faculty adviser for the Craft of Writing Series. It's one of the more rewarding parts of my job, and it's given me the opportunity to work with a great group of students (they're the ones who pick who to invite to campus to speak to their peers), and I've had some unparalleled moments speaking with and listening to the writers we invite. The best moments are almost always unexpected: the luscious prose in Charles D'Ambrosio's essays (the best reading in the series so far); Sherman Alexie's generosity to the students on the Craft of Writing Committee--he gave them so much time; and, today, a gift from a writer whom I'm not even sure that we'll end up inviting to speak on campus.

Jane Smiley's agent contacted me, asking if we might be interested in bringing her to OSU. Smiley, of course, is huge. She won a Pulitzer in '92 for her retelling of King Lear, A Thousand Acres. I know her from her novel Moo, which is about the intrigues of an English department at an agricultural university. Not that I have any experience with that (cough, cough).

Since her agent is fishing for readings, I thought I'd put her name forward to the committee and see if they were interested, so I started doing my homework. Because I'm aware of the fact that we live in what I term the "Age of Google," I, of course, started with a search engine, and I found some astounding essays.

My favorite is "Notes for Converts." It was written back in March, for the Huffington Post. And like all great commentary, it has legs. In my opinion, it will have legs long into the next decade, which, in my opinion, is the first chance that we'll have to undo the damage that's been done since December, 2000, when George W. Bush successfully usurped the democratic process and was declared president by a pliant Supreme Court that didn't concern itself overmuch with context in the State of Florida.

Speaking to the recently-converted, conservative opponents of GWB, Smiley deftly delivers an indictment of Bush and, by extension, the converted since 2000. Here's a brief excerpt:

Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this. (emphasis added)

I hope we can swing the finances to bring Smiley to campus, just so I can thank her for having so perfectly captured the unparalleled absurdity and hubris of this man, his supporters, and of this cultural moment.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you who think that PBS' Lehrer New Hour is balanced, this study from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. I watch the News Hour occasionally, and the study's results seem pretty accurate. I know that I've complained before that it's difficult to get any real diversity in news coverage this side of Democracy Now.

How 'bout that liberal media and leftist Public Broadcasting Corporation? Yeah. Right....

For you progressive TV watchers (if that isn't an oxymoron), Democracy Now is the only real choice.

From Feministing

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The country that I grew up in is officially dead. It's died by its own hands, and largely because it was too full of fear to turn and face itself in the mirror. By authorizing torture, indefinite detention, secret evidence, by suspending habeas corpus, and by abrogating the Geneva Convention, we are now the enemy of freedom, and, chillingly, we are the world's lone superpower. This is now a dictatorship. The most powerful dictatorship in the history of the planet. None of us, unless we are the President himself, has any real rights, and his rights know no limit.

If I believe that this is so, if I declare that we have become our own worst enemy, if I avow that the President and his cabal are the moral equivalent of Stalin, or of Mao--which I do, and don't get me started with the comparisons to Hitler--I can now be seized; I can now disappear forever, and there's not a court anywhere in the world that can challenge my disappearance. That, my friends, is the definition of absolute power. And what did Abraham Lincoln teach us about absolute power?

With apologies to T.S. Eliot:

This is the way [my country] ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

A bit too modest about who is telling the truth here, Olbermann channels Bill Clinton, and, in doing so, puts together most of the pieces, revealing the lies and the real agenda behind the War on Terror. Although he stops short of telling the whole truth (noting that the entire dispute with Al Qaida is the result of our all-too-feeble attempts at foreign policy would go all the way), Olbermann tells so much of it that I'm beginning to think that we have a successor to Edward R. Murrow.

It's longish (almost 11 minutes), so be sure to watch it when you have enough time to savor the experience.

Now the question is, am I becoming an Olbermann fan boy?

Thanks to Greg for sharing this with me.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Of course there have been progressive voices who have spoken thoughtfully about 9/11. None perhaps has spoken as eloquently as this genius poet/lyricist, Ani Difranco.

I listened to "Self Evident" again a couple weeks ago. It had been several years since I had last heard it; too long. As much as I would never want a work of art this powerful to get stale through familiarity, I'm not sure that this piece could ever lose its fierceness. The experience of listening to it again was positively sublime.

Difranco not only "gets it," she deftly negotiates the poetic and the political. She's searing and tender, impeccably alternating between the two.. She kicks ass. She respects the dead. She speaks of a redemption that all can share in, no matter what continent they might inhabit, be they among the living or dead among the rubble. She knows, she sees, she's not fooled by Amerika. She's afraid of neither fear, nor terror, nor the blue-blood violence that our so-called leaders unleash upon the world: dark, besotted fools.

Download it. She's providing it for free. (Prophets nearly always do.)

It's so worth the time you'll spend waiting for it to wend its way into your music collection.

5 star recommendation.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As my somewhat infrequent posting to this blog would seem to demonstrate, I would never want the responsibility of having to write on a daily basis. Nonetheless, a part of me is envious of the platform that journalists have to speak the truth to power. It's one of the primary bullet points in their job descriptions, after all, isn't it?

Alas as we all know, the 4th estate has largely shirked its duty to speak the truth in the years since the Bush administration has been prosecuting its ill-advised "War on Terror." More frequently now, there are some exceptions to the rule of silence, compliance, and complicity that envelops those whose job it is to monitor the Beltway. Two of my favorites are Garrison Keillor and Keith Olberman.

This is Olberman's principled and well-crafted response to the abomination that is Donald Rumsfeld's (or is it Ronald Dumbsfeld's?) most recent thought piece, the one that he uttered most ingloriously this week in front of "his" troops in Salt Lake City. The excerpt is longish (almost 7 minutes) but well worth the time it takes to watch. Olberman finishes with an understated, yet appropriate, use of an obvious influence, Edward R. Murrow. It's appropriate because it's clear that Olberman is attempting to pick up the torch that Murrow carried two generations ago when he nearly singlehandedly ended the McCarthy era by repeatedly exposing the vain senator's fear mongering and trampling of the truth in front of a national audience. Although today's media are much more fragmented in terms of sources (and therefore audiences) than during Murrow's era (as this blog is an apt example), let's hope that those few like Olberman and Keillor can do the same to those who, today, dare to usurp democracy while claiming to support it.

Despite the fact that both Keillor and Olberman are utterly mainstream (which means that I'll end up disagreeing with them once the political tide in this country returns ever so slightly to the left), it behooves progressives to voice support for them precisely because they're part of "the broad political middle," and they dare to contradict the doublespeak that passes for news and political discourse in some circles.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An alert friend of mine forwarded this to me. What I find so interesting is that this is the only case I can think of when the Bush Administration has appropriately realized (and even beyond the Bushies, for as far back as I can think all the way to the Marshall Plan) that it's not in the United States' best interests to maintain a hegemonic position on anything. Instead, this appears to be a more realistic appraisal of the situation: the realization that what's good for the community (in this case, the world) is actually in the long-term, best-interests of the United States.

If it's true that we're going to resist further strong-arming of ICANN--and there are reasons to think that the administration is back-tracking and paying attention to an issue that it had likely ignored (can you say "Iraq civil war"?) now that conservative voices are suggesting that we behave as if we do own the Internet--then it behooves us to discover why we've abandoned the status quo and wrong-headed common sense and taken a more subtle, statemanlike approach.

If it's true, then it speaks volumes. Somewhere in the decision making process that preceded the ICANN meeting, there was an intelligent analysis that came to a simple, but all-too-often missing, conclusion: in the long run the U.S. loses when it tries to maintain absolute control over a international body. You can be sure that this decision was made by an entirely different group of people than those who've used the Bush/Wolfowitz doctrines to justify absolute unilateralism in all things international.

Yes, there are problems with ICANN having representation from only English-speaking nations. No doubt. It still smacks of techno-colonialism, but it is a step in the right direction away from said colonialism.

For the time being, however, all your DNS are belong to US (yeah, I lifted it).

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

This is from Rx at http://thepartyparty.com.

Superb. As a mentor of mine once said, find a seam....

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This, a very chilling article from the Washington Post. Andrew Tilghman writes bravely and honestly about an incident back in February in which he met Private Steven D. Green, a young solider who one month after he interviewed him would allegedly rape and murder a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and her family.

The article is moving for several reasons.

First there's Pvt. Green's sense of pointlessness. He's seen through the façade of the war, and his response to the futility is to dehumanize his enemy—not the politicos—but the other victims of the politicians' actions, the Iraqi people:

"We're pawns for the [expletive] politicians, for people that don't give a [expletive] about us and don't know anything about what it's like to be out here on the line."

Second, there's reporter Tilghman's unstated but subtly acknowledged responsibility for the subsequent actions of Private Green. I know it's terrible to have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and lay blame on anyone. And I don't intend to do that. However, Mr. Tilghman is, I believe, bringing up questions regarding reportorial responsibility. Is this a case in which it would be right to lose objectivity and go up the chain of command to relay what he's heard to Pvt. Green's superiors? It likely wouldn't have done any good. It seems as if Pvt. Green is only looking for a way to cope with the unthinkable. Tilghman writes,

In the end, I never included Green's comments in any of the handful of stories I wrote from Mahmudiyah for Stars and Stripes. When he said he was inured to death and killing, it seemed to me -- in that place and at that time -- a reasonable thing to say. While in Iraq, I also saw people bleed and die. And there was something unspeakably underwhelming about it. It's not a Hollywood action movie -- there are no rapid edits, no adrenaline-pumping soundtracks, no logical narratives that help make sense of it. Bits of lead fly through the air, put holes in people and their bodily fluids leak out and they die. Those who knew them mourn and move on.

But no level of combat stress is an excuse for the kind of brutal acts Green allegedly committed. I suppose I will always look back on our conversations in Mahmudiyah and wonder: Just what did he mean?

Finally, the pacifist and Buddhist in me feel compelled to pose an issue. This and the previous Vietnam generation are the first in which we've truly attended to the psychological consequences of war. As we see, with increasing frequency, soldiers returning from the battlefield with severe enough psychological scars that they're unable to live a normal life without intense therapeutic intervention, is it possible that we will discover that war is not only insane but that it is an insanity-making enterprise? If we learn that, will it be possible to argue (with any integrity) that war is a normal component of the human condition? Is it normal for one's “natural” activities to drive oneself insane?

No one, I would argue, not even the perpetrators of violence, is immune to its effects. Violence takes its toll on everyone. Even those of us who sit in our comfortable middle class homes, thousands of miles from the battlefields. Resist violence. Resist the insane actions of our government.

Shanti.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Menezes, originally uploaded by raccuia.

On July 22nd, 2005, British police and special forces were desperate to make some progress into the investigation of the London Subway bombings. In a show of arrogant bravado that would do the Bush Administration proud, Menezes was mistakenly suspected and killed by a bullet wound to the head, also on the subway, and a mere day after the bombings.

This, from Wikipedia:

The day after the shooting, the Metropolitan Police identified the victim as Jean Charles de Menezes, and said that he had not been carrying explosives, nor was he connected in any way to the attempted bombings. They issued an apology describing the incident as "a tragedy, and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."

Menezes's family condemned the shooting and rejected the apology. His grandmother said there was "no reason to think he was a terrorist." It has been reported that the dead man's family had been offered almost £585,000 compensation. [10]

His cousin, Alex Alves Pereira, said, "I believe my cousin's death was result of police incompetence." Pereira said that police claims regarding the incident had been conflicting, and took issue with their pursuit of Menezes for an extended period and their allowing the "suspected suicide bomber" to board a bus. "Why did they let him get on a bus if they are afraid of suicide bombers?… He could have been running, but not from the police… When the Underground stops, everybody runs to get on the train. That he jumped over the barriers is a lie." [11]

The Brazilian government released a statement expressing its shock at the killing, saying that it looked forward "to receiving the necessary explanation from the British authorities on the circumstances which led to this tragedy." Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who had already arranged to visit London, said he would seek a meeting with the UK's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He later met ministers and had a telephone conversation with Straw.

The Muslim Council of Britain expressed immediate concern about the apparent existence of a "shoot-to-kill" policy and called on police to make clear their reasons for shooting the man dead.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know, I know. It's a bit tacky for a site that has strong Buddhist roots, but I just can't resist.

From Ann Coulter (not that that's likely to happen again), by way of David Letterman.

Via: VideoSift

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm working on a longer, more complex, posting on why the US should have a more dimished role in ICANN, but in the meantime, this goes a long way toward making one of my points for me. Look at the numbers that this bill is passing by (410-15). I refuse to believe that there are only 15 intelligent representatives in the House. Rather, it's more likely that in an election year, they don't want to be seen as weak on child predators, so they instead create a weak law.

One the few representatives who sees the utter inanity of this legislation, a Michigan Democrat, John Dingell, states:

"So now we are on the floor with a piece of legislation poorly thought out, with an abundance of surprises, which carries with it that curious smell of partisanship and panic, but which is not going to address the problems.... This is a piece of legislation which is going to be notorious for its ineffectiveness and, of course, for its political benefits to some of the members hereabout."

I know that policy making is fundamentally a political process, and I'm all for the politicization of policy making, yet something's quite wrong with this picture. Rather than putting some sort of age verification in place, and, perhaps solving the whole issue of identity/authentication on the Internet, this bill threatens to destroy an entire industry, and will leave most of our children with nothing to fill the space that MySpace or LiveJournal (etc.) resided in. Hmmm. I wonder what they'll do on the computer when they can no longer interact with their peers--who, by the way, vastly, I dare say, infinitely outnumber the "evildoers" of the web? Do you think they might surf for p0rn instead? Maybe?

This bill is completely and utterly wrong. It's a mess.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

So the Israeli civilian deaths at the hands of "terrorists" are more morally problematic than the Lebanese civilian deaths because the Lebanese deaths are part of war's collateral damage? Israel is acting in "self-defense," and so their actions are permissible?

I'm trying to understand the rationale, but I'm failing to. Setting aside the problematic of whether or not this is actually self-defense on Israel's part, one must begin with the premise that violence is an appropriate response to violence. Yet, I question the premise. Does violence, in fact, stop violence? Or does it beget more violence?

And then there's the whole question of scale. This recent onslaught of violence is ostensibly in retaliation against the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Two. How many Lebanese civilians have died? Rather than self-defense, this smacks more of a tactic one might use to control a weak, though implacable, foe: intimidation. Again I ask, when has violence ever, in fact, stopped violence? What violent organization willing to attack an enemy with overwhelmingly superior firepower has ever backed down when that enemy has responded with brute force? This is not a nation that Israel is fighting. It's Hezbollah. There's no enemy's back to be broken here. Each terrorist death, each civilian death, will spawn more terrorists--an order of magnitude more.

That this rationale for Israeli violence comes from our nation's ambassador to the U.N. is so problematic. It's not surprising, of course, especially since our nation is largely silent vis-a-vis the Israeli acts of aggression against its neighbors. We should not be surprised when the region erupts in a transnational Intifada--though one might well argue that Al Qaeda is just such an eruption. It is most certainly the "logical" extension of the premises the combatants--including our government--share.

These opponents are locked in a death match. Bound by their hatred and desire for revenge, they have fought and died, fight and die, and will continue to fight and die, not because they are strong men, but because they not strong enough to respond with what will actually stem the bloodshed and heal the grief: compassion, empathy, and love.

Don't fall for the rhetoric of common sense that would have you believe that violence is the rational response to conflict. It is irrational, and it is so precisely because it doesn't work.

--Peridyd


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Posted by Dennis Bennett at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)