Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Election Day USA: Protest music CD compilation

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I haven’t downloaded any of these yet, so I can’t vouch for any of the actual songs, but I like the project: Election Day USA.

SEA LION RECORDS is proud to present a CD COMPILATION of ANTI-BUSH, ANTI-WAR music to be released to college and public radio stations during late SUMMER 2004, titled: ELECTION DAY USA

ALL 20 SONGS on the COMPILATION are LISTED BELOW, with FREE RealAudio and MP3 links…  ENJOY!

16 different artists were selected to be part of this compilation. The relatively small number of songs that professionally made CDs can hold did limit how many songs we could include. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who submitted work that wasn’t included. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by all of us, looking for ‘closure’ to this Bush matter in November 2004.

(via BOP)

iTunes: “Fish Below the Ice (Plankton Enriched)” by Shriekback from the album Dancing Years, The (1990, 5:51).

A bird in the hand is worth one from the Bush

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Amazing, the things that go on when people turn out to see the Presidential motorcade…

Sean had to go back to work (he snuck out to join in the fun), so we drove him back to my place where his car was, then me, Adam, and Brendan went to another spot along the highway that we had spied earlier. A friendly Kerry supporter named Mr. Shenk let us use his front yard to display our banners. Now comes the good part. After waiting around for about 45 minutes, the motorcade passed by us again. A few police cars, followed by a van or two, drove by. Then, a Bush/Cheney bus passed, followed by a second one going slower. At the front of this second bus was The W himself, waving cheerily at his supporters on the other side of the highway. Adam, Brendan, and I rose our banner (the More Trees, Less Bush one) and he turned to wave to our side of the road. His smile faded, and he raised his left arm in our direction. And then, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, extended his middle finger.

Read that last sentence again.

I got flipped off by George W. Bush.

A ponytailed man standing next to us confirmed the event, saying, “I do believe the President of the U.S. just gave you boys the finger.”

Just in case you had any doubts about just what Bush thinks about those who disagree with him.

The terrorists have already won

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Okay, let me get this straight. Because we’re worried about a terrorist attack disrupting the election process, we’re planning to disrupt the election process in the event of a terrorist attack?

That doesn’t even start to make sense to me.

iTunes: “Breakfast in Vegas (Greasy Eggs and a Line to Go)” by Khan, Praga from the album Breakfast in Vegas (1999, 5:49).

Two from This Modern World

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This Modern World, currently under the stewardship of Bob Harris as Tom Tomorrow moves, kicks today off with two equally incindiary articles (though each for different reasons).

Item one: According to The New Republic, Bush requests Bin Laden’s capture in time for elections.

Okay, this one isn’t a surprise in the “gee, I didn’t see that coming” category…more in the “I can’t believe they’re this blatant about it” category.

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan.

[…]

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. …The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.”

[…]

A third source, an official who works under ISI’s director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq’s] meetings in Washington.” …according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Item Two: Children held and possibly tortured or abused in Abu Gahraib?

This one started with a German news report, and has started to find its way around the world’s news sites — at least, those not in the U.S. — and may potentially threaten Norway’s relations with the U.S.

Three days ago, a German TV newsmagazine called Report Mainz broadcast an eight-minute segment reporting that the International Red Cross found at least 107 children in coaliton-administered detention centers in Iraq.

The report also quotes from a yet-unpublished June 2004 UNICEF report, which (as near as I can tell through my crappy German) confirms that children were routinely arrested and “interned” in a camp in Um-Qasr. UNICEF seems particularly vexed with the “internment” status, since that means indefinite detention.

Another storm seems about to begin. Possibly a large one.

[…]

Hit the Norwegian links, and you’ll find that the local Amnesty International has stated that “Norway can not continue its military collaboration with the US in light of the alleged torture of children.” Norway actually listens to its activists; you’ll find that the Prime Minister’s office says it plans to address the situation with the U.S. “in a very severe and direct way.”

If this ain’t news, I don’t know what the hell is.

Okay, so maybe these aren’t the cheeriest stories to start your day with. Sorry about that. I’ll see if I can do better.

It’s illegal to photograph the Ballard Locks

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That is, it’s illegal if you look like a terrorist.

Being a Ballard resident, the Ballard Locks seemed like the best available subject for my project. I knew I’d be able to set up my tripod and work under fairly consistent conditions. Having spoken with the park ranger in charge of the facility on Monday, I also knew that I had every legal right to photograph from that location. So, I went to the Ballard Locks, in the rain, found the best location I could, and waited for passing trains and boats.

Within about thirty minutes of my setting up my tripod I noticed a lone security officer coming down the hill to ask me a few questions. Well, no…that’s not exactly accurate. He wasn’t politely asking me questions. He’d accessorized his ensemble with a ninety-pound German Shepherd, and was talking at me in authoritative and degrading tones. He wanted me to know that he was an authority.

[…]

I gave the cop my ID, and it was quickly whisked away by one officer to the top of the hill. I went on to express my sense of helplessness, shame, humiliation and anger about the confrontation. I insisted that I was a photography student and that I had done absolutely nothing wrong. I acknowledged my constitutional rights. I pointed to curious bystanders, and pointed out that they had cameras, but that none of the police were interested in them. I identified a man with a canvas and easel, standing directly underneath the train bridge, and asked why no one was asking him for his ID. In retrospect, I realize that I still wanted someone to say it to my face.

The police officer had failed to rebut my arguments, but he was definitely being a lot nicer now (which was quite welcome). He’d been explaining how the SPD are required to investigate all calls, which I said I understood, but I was still looking for some real accountability. That’s when one of the three non-uniformed men stepped forward, brandishing his badge, and began talking at me with his own rendition of the voice of absolute authority.

“I’ve listened to this for over five minutes. Look here. You see this?” Special Agent McNamara said, producing his badge. “This is a federal badge. We’re not with the rest of them. We’’re federal agents from Homeland Security…”

Meanwhile, of course, many other people — residents and tourists alike — are happily snapping photographs of the locks. But then, they’re not dark-skinned, so they don’t look like terrorists, and are safe.

This kind of crap is absolutely ludicrous. It’s exactly the kind of behavior that Bush and company are encouraging with stunts like Ridge’s recent “there’s a threat, but we don’t know what, where, or when, but it’s dangerous, but we’re not raising the alert level, but something could happen to somebody somewhere” stunt. And it’s so disturbingly close to Gestapo-style “let me see your papers” policing that it frightens and saddens me.

In some sense, I’m lucky, as a fair-skinned, red-haired caucasian. Much of the racial profiling that has become so apparently popular these days, I’m never going to have to deal directly with. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t see it, it doesn’t mean that I’m not upset by it, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m about to turn a blind eye to it.

(via Arcterex, Boing Boing, seattle.metroblogging, and others)

Another excuse called into question

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One of the many excuses for our invasion of Iraq (once we couldn’t find any WMDs or any connection to 9-11) was that Saddam was a bad, bad man and needed to be seriously spanked, as evidenced by the fact that he gassed his own people, ordering the use of nerve gas against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in March of 1988.

And, just like all the other excuses we’ve been given, this one is being called into question, and may not be true.

Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.

Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of that association as ‘Chemical Ali’. Saddam Hussein is widely alleged to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.

The Halabja massacre is now prominent among the charges read out against Saddam in the Baghdad court. When that charge was read out, Saddam replied that he had read about the massacre in a newspaper. Saddam has denied these allegations ever since they were made.

…the CIA boss has gone public with his evidence, and this evidence has been in the public domain for more than a year.

The CIA officer Stephen C. Pelletiere was the agency’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. As professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, he says he was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf.

In addition, he says he headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States, and the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

Pelletiere went public with his information on no less a platform than The New York Times in an article on January 31 last year titled ‘A War Crime or an Act of War?’

A little web searching led me to a copy of Pelletiere’s article from the Times.

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq’s “gassing its own people,” specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds.

…immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds’ bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent – that is, a cyanide-based gas – which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

Now, there were enough records of human rights violations in Iraq under Hussein’s rule that I in no way doubt that he is a bad, bad man who needs to be soundly spanked. However, from everything I’ve read to date, it very strongly appears that he told the truth when he said that Iraq had no WMDs, and he told the truth when he said that he heard of the Halabja massacre through the media, and did not order the gas attack.

It’s a little sad when there seem to be more verifiable instances of Saddam Hussein telling the truth than there are of the Bush administration.

(via Holden)

Fahrenheit 9/11

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At this point, writing up much of a review is more or less pointless. If you’re of a mind to see this film, you’re quite likely to already, and if you’re not planning on seeing it — well, you should.

Most of what was in Fahrenheit 9/11 I knew about already, of course, having been trolling the various political sites regularly for a while now. The single biggest bit that I didn’t know much about beforehand was shots of the protests in DC during Bush’s inauguration. I’m not in the least surprised that there were protests, I just wasn’t paying as much attention to the news back then, and hadn’t heard much about what happened.

I was also very impressed by how Moore handled the day of the attacks. Rather than show us the same footage of the airplanes hitting the towers that we’ve seen time and time again, he stayed with footage of the reactions of people in the street as they gazed up at the towers, and later, as they moved through the streets, ash and papers floating down around them out of the sky. Far more effective and powerful than if he’d stuck to footage that we’d already seen enough times to become at least somewhat inured to the horror.

I was also a little surprised at some of the things that weren’t mentioned in the film. At one point, Moore mentions some of the member nations that joined the US in the “Coalition of the Willing” for the attack against Iraq, calling out a few that didn’t actually have any military forces to contribute. What he didn’t choose to mention, though, was something that I looked into at one point — the human rights records of the member nations. Rather disturbing to see what some of our partners in “fighting for democracy” are doing on their own turf.

My one real worry about the film is that it’s going to be preaching to the choir for most of its run. At least now, in its initial theatrical run, it’s far more likely that the majority of the people seeing it are people like me, who don’t need to be convinced that Bush needs to go. If Moore and Lion’s Gate/Miramax can get Fahrenheit 9/11 into the video market by mid-to late September or early October, though, the increased exposure of rentals might end up reaching a far wider range of people who aren’t as likely to bother seeing it in the theatre.

One can hope, at least.

iTunes: “Instruments of Darkness” by Art of Noise, The from the album Best of Rave, The Vol. 1 (1991, 3:40).

9/11 ≠ Iraq

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Designs on the White House has been running a t-shirt design contest, and they’ve just announced the winners. Some good shirts in there, I’m hard pressed to find a favorite.

This just might be it, though:

I was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy and all I got was this lousy president.

iTunes: “New Jersey Turnpike” by Anderson, Laurie from the album United States Live (1984, 11:19).

Hagar the Horrible

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In the midst of a Seattle P-I article about trying to convince more young women to vote comes this little tidbit of information:

This week, Cavendish said, the falling piece of sky was Bush’s reappointment of “Hagar the Horrible” — W. David Hagar — to the influential Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA.

…there were the 25,000 pro-choice activists who pleaded with Bush not to make this move.

Hagar, Time magazine reports, refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. And in his book, “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” (co-written with his wife, Linda) he recommends reading Scripture as treatment for premenstrual pain.

More urgent to young women is the fact that Hagar used his position on the reproductive health committee to oppose the otherwise overwhelmingly approved vote to recommend over-the-counter sale of the morning-after contraceptive Plan B. The vote to approve the sale of Plan B was then overruled by the Bush administration.

Old white men using religion to dictate what young women can and can’t do with their bodies. And people say that there’s no reason to vote?

I read something earlier this week — unfortunately, I don’t remember where — that gave me pause to think. One of the tactics that the right has used to counter the “Pro-Choice” designation of abortion rights activists has been to deem themselves “Pro-Life”, implying that Pro-Choice equates to “Anti-Life” or “Pro-Death”.

Given Bush’s track record of sending more people to their executions while he was Governor of Texas, plus his railroading America into sending almost 1000 soldiers to their deaths in an unjust war, can he really campaign on a “Pro-Life” platform?

iTunes: “Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, The from the album Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury (1992, 3:47).