Deschamps

Effected

2012-01-21T11:32:00.000-08:00

I came off of the drug Effexor.I came off of it while visiting my uncle in the Pacific Islands. My uncle hadn't seen me in many years and the people I was staying with had little to no experience with prescription drug's malfeasance. I didn't do it on purpose. I first ran out of supply, then my second supply got destroyed in a record flood that hit Guam. Next up I was completely insane - totally gone - arguing to myself that I didn't need it and unable to access any internet or phone calls back home to people who would know how to help in this really shitty situation. The ensuing bad behavior that resulted from my initially accidental withdrawal was interpreted by the people around me as reflecting my character - which became all the more confusing to them since I had presented myself as a really, really nice guy initially. How can you think that one guy is a really nice, generous person while also possibly a sociopath or worse?The problem with Effexor, which makes its withdrawal so absolutely horrific, is dissociation and depersonalization. I think that I had this while using the drug as well as during its withdrawal, but of course the withdrawal was far worse. When things happened to me or around me, it was as if I were watching it in a movie. I'm on a very, very small doseage of Celexa now and am feeling like that horrifying state of mind is finally fleeing but it's still very disturbing. Putting it very bluntly, a psychiatrist said that it was great I didn't kill myself while coming off Effexor, even accidentally. Whatever this drug does to the brain, that apparently is the risk when the brain stops using it. For a great example, here is Charmaine Dragun, an Australian newsreader who performed a particularly brutal form of suicide after coming off Effexor after ten years of use:

CHANNEL Ten newsreader Charmaine Dragun leaped to her death three weeks after changing her depression medication to a combination of drugs known to influence suicidal thoughts, an inquest has heard.Ms Dragun, 29, was considered a rising star in the Ten newsroom when she took own her own life in November 2007.She had moved to Sydney from Perth, where she read the WA nightly news bulletin from the network's Pyrmont studios alongside Tim Webster, and occasionally read the national news.But while it seemed like she had the world at her feet, an inquest into her death has heard she battled depression and anxiety since her teens.Counsel assisting the Coroner, David Hirsch, told Glebe Coroner's Court Ms Dragun had been taking a steady dose of the anti-depressant, Effexor, for 10 years and wanted to come off the drug.Mr Hirsch said she was being treated by a psychiatrist who reduced her dose of Effexor and introduced her to a replacement drug called Lexapro.End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.The new treatment plan was to be supplemented by fish oil tablets, with the aim that she eventually take up to 12 fish oil tablets per day.After a few days, she reportedly told the psychiatrist she was feeling terrible and the change wasn't working, but he sent her a text message telling her to "hang on".Mr Hirsch said the combination of the two drugs, which she began three weeks before her death, was known to influence suicidal thoughts, or contemplations of suicide.But he said it didn't necessarily follow that a person taking the drugs simultaneously would take their own life.Mr Hirsch said one of the main questions the inquest will consider is whether Ms Dragun deliberately jumped from the clifftop or whether she was in a drug-induced "psychotic state" at the time and unaware of her actions.He said the objective of the inquest was not to lay blame but to help avoid further tragedies.Ms Dragun appeared to be a happy young woman with a wide circle of friends, a supportive family and a loving partner, whom she had been in a relationship with since her teens, the court heard."Despite that support ... she decided to go to the Gap and to the cliff and she decided to take one step forward instead of one step back," Mr Hirsch said."Why she took that step we will never know."

Hirsch, of course, is wrong. Effexor is the daddy of all of the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), really belongin and has been implicated in some really bizarre and inexplicable behavior. Andrea Yates, by all accounts otherwise a good mother, murdered her five own children while on a very high dose of this poison. Dragun jumped off a cliff in Australia while coming off the drug. The drug is obviously meant to combat depression and anxiety but the side effects (based on the user's mental state or if they are coming off the drug) are really unacceptable. I've been a difficult person in the past but I've never really been like I was in Effexor withdrawal. I was in another dimension and wasn't able to really solve the problem because of the dissociation. Problems would be mentally registered and then just observed instead of solved, as if I were The Watcher from Marvel Comics. I imagine that Dragun entered a state very similar of her own when coming off of this poison. The press coverage, however, has credited her committing suicide with everything from anorexia to a feeling of "isolation," none of which had done her in for her previous decade of treatment. It's honestly pretty disturbing that such powerful drugs are not only readily available but given out like candy to anybody who claims to be depressed, anxious or suffering from some other temporary state of affairs.Big Pharmaceuticals are big all over the world and Australia, with its high suicide rate, is especially a critical market for the vultures of antidepressant manufacturers, so the coverage by the mainstream media in that country - just like in the United States - is unlikely to unfavorable to drug manufacturers. I'm still not just alive but kicking pretty significantly, back home and doing normal tasks while also going out and looking for work. Things are back to normal. Given all of that, however, something feels slightly cognitive different. I hit my head a few times during withdrawal, which was pretty damned unpleasant. (At the time, I blamed the people around me for having a shower in which no roof was available and I could easily slip but I'm not sure if any of this crap ever would have happened if it had not been for the Effexor factor.) I think things got knocked around a bit and the result is one that I'm not too sure about. That's not to mention the horrible sexual side effects of Effexor, which will have to be dealt with.My doctor says this all should be a cautionary tale. This will be the last that I really write about it because I would prefer for my story to not be knocked over the head of others too much. I'm lucky to have made it through this horrible antidepressant medication with little more than a few seizures and a whole lot of confusion. Antidepressants are still being prescribed very readily and the story of myself or an even worse story like Dragun or Yates should be remembered before taking these pills. There are alternatives, even if you have to seek them out and won't get advertised them during your favorite television show. Your effort will be worth it in the end.Share

Drugs Kill

2012-01-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

Right before I left for Guam, Carly Henley passed away. She was found hanging by a noose in a fraternity stairwell.Carly wasn't a fan of Marilyn Manson. She didn't have tattoos on her face. By all accounts, she was attractive, intelligent enough to be a student at the University of Washington, upbeat and talented. She wanted to be a singer. Not the picture of a suicidal woman by any means.

Only a year before, she had seemed content with life:

So what happened? Two weeks before she killed herself, she had been prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft. Her mother had insisted on it after her daughter suffered a depressive spell (fairly common for that age). These pills are given out like M&Ms in the United States but can have really nasty adverse effects and withdrawal symptoms. Users (and it is so horrible to say "users" since most kids are put on this stuff by parents and doctors) are the only ones who really understand the power of these drugs. If you have a bad reaction to them, you could end up having uncharacteristic suicidal thoughts. If you go through withdrawal, as I did while traveling, you could also become self-destructive. It is bad medicine and it is not good that these things are being consumed wholesale by the American public.Share

A Drug Induced Loss Of Romance

2011-12-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

There has been quite a bit said about the use, efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical drugs. The range of denunciation has gone from writers like Alex Knepper, a former Frum Forum contributor and current freelance contrarian, to the more predictable suspects of antidepressant and psychiatry hating at the Church of Scientology.As someone who used and is still on a very, very minor dosage of antidepressants, I would like to attest to some of the truly haunting and disturbing elements of modern psycho-medicine. One of the truly horrific arenas of the over-drugging of our society is the resulting dehumanization. Much of human history is the story of religion, organized and disorganized. Especially in Christianity, romance is inherent in the character of religion. In Islam, the Prophet Mohammed seeks spiritual guidance by secluding himself within an isolated cave, while in Buddhism, the Buddha reclines himself in to poverty and dissociation from his previous riches and prosperity in order to come closer to spiritual truth. The romance reaches its height within Christianity, where separation from guarantees and expectations reaches its height with God giving up his only begotten son.This is all very romantic and appeals deeply to people lost in life, often by their own faults and transgressions. Modern psychiatry demolishes this and replaces it with nothing whatsoever. Once you are lodged fully within the realm of psychiatric medication, personal self-development falls by the wayside. Miss a pill or start taking the wrong one and you could very well end up changing your personality completely. Whatever improvements you had learned over the years are completely useless and irrelevant as you become a robot whose circuits can be wired and rewired. Unlike a computer, however, your doctor and psychiatrist isn't at all like a technician who seeks to make you as functional and operable as possible. Instead, they seek to manage whatever you suffer from or that they perceive you to suffer from and continually plant seeds by which new disorders and problems arise. There's nothing romantic about this. There's not even anything appealing about this, but it is quite literally the state by which millions of Americans and others now find themselves.There are a plethora of anecdotes about various individuals who have broken down and transformed due to psychotropic drugs. The listing for these individuals could go on for a long, long time. A key example, in my view, is Charmaine Dragun. Dragun, a native Croatian who became a famous announcer in Australia, committed suicide after taken off the medication Effexor and placed on another antidepressant. Dragun was beautiful, she had a loving family and spouse. Why would she kill herself?

However, the month before her death she began a program to wean herself off one antidepressant while taking another.Ms Dragun drove to Sydney's Gap in November 2007 and committed suicide. She had been due to get married.Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney was told the inquest would investigate whether a change in Ms Dragun's antidepressant medication had triggered her suicide."Objectively, Charmaine had an ideal life, she had everything to live for, but behind the perfect exterior, there was a deep and troubling issue," said David Hirsch, counsel assisting the coroner.He said that she had a lot of help and support from her partner, Simon Struthers, her family and friends."Despite all of that, Charmaine decided to go to The Gap on that Friday afternoon and, at the cliff, she decided to take one step forward rather than one step back.""Why she took the step forward is something we cannot know . . . (but) Charmaine was not stopped, she did not change her mind and she did die."In October 2007 Ms Dragun began reducing her dose of the drug Effexor and started on a new medication, Lexapro. Friends described her behaviour at that time as "disturbing" and "out of character".Mr Hirsch said Ms Dragun had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in 1996 but there were indications she may have been suffering from bipolar disorder.If this diagnosis had been made, then she should not have been on Effexor.Suicide is a known risk of depression and patients of Effexor should be monitored closely at the beginning of a course of treatment or a change in dose.

ResponsibilityOne of the key aspects of the myriad tragedies and wrecked lives due to prescription drug use is a persistent lack of responsibility. This has certainly plagued me.Why would so many people be irresponsible about drug use? After all, people are usually responsible about nearly everything else in life - we regularly are aware of not being hit by cars, avoiding loss or misuse of money and various other threats in our environment.In an article by the Los Angeles Times wherein they report that pharmaceutical deaths now eclipse automobile accidents, an LA police officer summed it up pretty succinctly:

In some ways, prescription drugs are more dangerous than illicit ones because users don't have their guard up, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Opferman, head of a county task force on prescription drug-related crimes. "People feel they are safer with prescription drugs because you get them from a pharmacy and they are prescribed by a doctor," Opferman said. "Younger people believe they are safer because they see their parents taking them. It doesn't have the same stigma as using street narcotics."

Not only does it not have the same stigma, but unlike crack or heroin, you will find advertisements for your favorite pharmaceutical firmly implanted during various television breaks, right next to ads for car insurance or candy bars. It's no wonder that kids take up the behavior that they do: "They said they will have parties where the kids will throw a bunch of pills in a bowl and the kids take them without knowing what they are," Lori said. "We called all of his friends, but no one would say they were with him. But he must have been with someone. You just don't do that by yourself."Responsibility is a powerful thing but it is important to bear in mind that the children who grow chemically dependent early on did not seek out that state. However naive, it's not they who picked out the pills that were placed in that bowl. Their degree of responsibility may in fact be varied - as the medicine made available could have affects on their personality that not even their physician - let alone their parents - quite comprehend.Share

An Open Challenge To Those Who Would Redefine Childhood

2011-05-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

Whenever you argue for something, you need to come with it attached with a basis of personal credibility. It doesn't matter, really, if you word something really well and make something sound fantastic. People need to know where you are coming from. Why did you arrive at this viewpoint?

There has been alot of talk on conservative websites like Hot Air about a family in Toronto (I use "family" because that is the traditionally used term for genetically related groups that cohabitate) that has decided to make ambiguity and mystery the key factor in the life of their child Storm. Despite his having been given by God, evolutionary biology and providence a penis or vagina, the family has decided that potty training and socializing will take a back seat while they use their child to loudly pronounce their ideology to the world.

What strikes me here is the psychology of people that view childhood as a grand field for experimentation. No matter how liberal I am in many arenas, supporting interracial and same sex marriage and even same sex adoption (this isn't quite contradictory with the argument I am making here, as advocates of same sex marriage and adoption consistently argue their rights on the basis that their raising and parenting children actually will fit within tradition), I don't quite understand where they are coming from. This is an issue for me that is feisty and emotional, but I have become enough of an adult by now that I can recognize that emotion and ask questions.

The original touters of this brand of feminist ideology sprouted in the bloom of 1960s liberalism. The generation that bought into a wholesale rejection of any tradition was one that, by all accounts, never grew up and faced the harsh, brutal world. The Baby Boomers came of age in an America that was the most prosperous place on earth. 1950s America enjoyed a record boom that produced suburbia, drive in films and juvenile delinquency (the latter of which, paradoxically, is at its highest in good economic times).

In other words, the Gloria Steinems of the world had never actually faced broken families, lack of tradition and identity and a chaotic upbringing, so they could dispense with the vanguard of their upbringing without knowing what the reality of their proposed alternative would be like. The imageless alternative is always utopian.

I really lived some of the chaos that this family are advocated. While not as extreme, my mother had a heavy dosage of women around and generally avoided romantic liasons because of the chaotic turmoil of her marriage to my father. Little was ever said about my father and I have only recently been able to attain peace in that realm. I empathize with lower income whites, blacks and Hispanics who have had to live in the shadow of no father. Meanwhile, I have noticed feminists like Pamela Paul, who advocate that my method of upbringing, the fatherless method that has birthed juvenile delinquency for millenia, is actually superior.

Unsurprisingly, her argument is totally academic, which I take as evidence, based on the presumption that narrative storytelling is always better to hook readers in with than polls, studies and statistics, that she doesn't have first hand experience on this matter. I've only just been able to find out, at nearly 25 years old, that my father is even still alive. I had to find this out by taking action on my own, as asking family about this basic information usually resulted in getting yelled at. Imagine that for a second because chances are most readers can't fathom that. If Paul wants to know what it's like to have no father in the real world, I recommend she call me or e-mail me. I'll tell her all about it.

My mother raised us all vegetarian. This resulted in me always being the outcast at friend's birthday parties, where pepperoni pizza arrived and I had to tell my friends, who had invited me, that I couldn't eat it. More than once, this was taken as an insult by other children and their parents, who had after all invited me to their house and offered me food. So I know the sort of feeling of being a freak and an outsider that Storm has to look forward thanks to his/her enlightened parents.

So I ask of people who think that this family, by loudly proclaiming their child genderless and devoid of a social structure, how did you grow up? Did your parents socialize you with older people of your gender? If you grew up with a childhood that was traditional, what makes your arguments stronger than the traditionalist argument of someone like me, who did grow up in an unorthodox environment?

This attitude reminds me very much of a line by Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in The Aviator. Attending the household of his lover Kate Hepburn, one of the Hepburns declares loudly, "We don't care about money." Hughes fires back, "That's because you've always had it."

When you've always had something in your life, like money, a father or a firm sense of what it is to be a man or woman, it's easy to dismiss its vitality. For those of us who had a rougher upbringing, we value what you so easily dismiss.

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The Lone Ranger

2011-05-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Creed And Religious Heterodoxy

2011-05-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

The above film was put out by the journal First Things, a publication of the Institute for Religion and Public Life. I've read their journal frequently since the prodding of a friend of mine, Antonio Sosa, a contributor to the Daily Caller.

After watching the video, and having read through First Things frequently, I'm left wondering if the considerable work of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others may have actually had a positive result on Christianity and faith in the west. Christianity, like many big institutions that suffer unquestioning faith, has become the vessel of many a slimeball - be it pederasts in the Catholic Church or racketeers in the American televangelist movement. Dawkins and Hitchens may not actually succeed in their mission of delegitimizing faith but they have succeeded in making the faithful re-examine their own sales pitch. A Christianity that celebrates the intellectual inquiry which is a genuine part of its history (the great theologian Jonathan Edwards celebrated inquiry and didn't fear it) is ultimately healthier for its followers and for the world.

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Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932)

2011-04-20T01:03:00.001-07:00

Some good recession music.

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The Car of Tomorrow

2011-04-10T10:04:00.001-07:00

My friend Antonio Sosa, a writer and contributor to Reason magazine and the Daily Caller, directed me to this great gem of animation:

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Classic Diana

2011-04-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a great little piece of art by an artist called "ratscape," portraying Wonder Woman:

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ThunderCats Trailer Online

2011-04-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

Tally-ho. I was never a big ThunderCats fan but this looks pretty awesome, indeed. It's aimed to broadcast on Cartoon Network, which already has its arms full of awesomeness with Young Justice and broadcasting various animated films from Disney and Marvel.

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The Titans Club

2011-04-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Detroit

2011-04-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

The rapper/rock musician Yelawolf posted this classic photo of Detroit. No words can sum up something so strange.

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Red Dwarf - Children in Need

2011-04-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

Men With Wings

2011-04-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Michael David Cobb Bowen for this incredible video:

My favorite memories as a child were of trips to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. These little sojourns were amazing. Boys are genetically programmed to like military things, something I've seen evidenced more and more as I've gotten older. For instance, my friend Punk Johnny Cash, a staunch anti-war anarchist and founder of the site Gonzo Times, just could not control himself from posting all sorts of stuff on Gonzo Times about the new Captain America film and how excited he is for it.

Without knowing that many men had done the exact same thing well into adulthood, I would imagine myself roaming the world in these hunks of metal. I went to the Museum of Flight numerous times, going into the same planes and watching the same films and eating the same astronaut ice cream again and again.

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Lorrie Moore: Why Reading Is Vital

2011-03-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

Obama Shifting America From Lead Role To Supporting?

2011-03-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

The New Republic has a good article on Barack Obama's foreign policy framework post-Arab Spring:

The explicit theme was the belief that the net effect of the Arab Spring is positive—that the operations of history are taking the Middle East toward better governance, greater respect for human rights, and, presumably, increased security and stability. This belief in organic progress for the region contrasts with the worldview of the Bush administration, as expressed most powerfully by Vice President Cheney, which assumed that absent American initiative, trends in the global security environment were not only negative, but dire. Without vigorous U.S. action, violent extremism would grow in power and the United States would face mounting danger. While Americans might not want to engineer history, they were compelled to.

President Obama's worldview is decidedly more upbeat. This has profound implications for American policy. It means that the United States does not need to re-engineer the world, but only to prod, channel, and support transformation that is already underway. The people of the Arab world will themselves lead the way rather than being led. Ironically, this optimism resonates more of Reagan than of Bush.

The international community, according to President Obama, shares this perspective and thus will lead efforts to consolidate democracy in the Arab world. In another strange twist, this mirrors Donald Rumsfeld's belief that too much American involvement in resolving crises and fixing problems limits the incentive of other states to do so. Drawing lessons from the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, Rumsfeld believed that if the United States minimized its role in the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq, other nations would step up. Only when they did not was the United States forced to shoulder the burden. Whether because the international community learned from Iraq or because the Arab Spring was born within the Arab world rather than being imposed on it by the United States, Obama expects this to be a collective endeavor.

The flipside of this view is the second, implicit theme in Obama's speech, which is that if the United States embraces the Arab Spring too tightly and attempts to dominate it, the results would be negative, perhaps even disastrous. Better to tolerate some things that the United States might not prefer than to attempt top control the revolution.

For anyone who is not a foreign policy wonk here, the United States has been the implicit security provider for Europe since World War II. Many liberal hawks were likely propelled into neoconservatism not just by the fall of the Berlin wall but also by the lack of response by Europe to the crisis in the Balkans, making it seem after 9/11 that the United States was the only force available to respond to acts of crisis.

That's slowly beginning to shift and out of pure expediency, alot of rumblings that wonks had made about European security dependency are beginning to show in Obama's response to the Arab Spring. While left-wing anti-war dissidents may bemoan the fact that President Obama went from making anti-Iraq war speeches in 2003 to joining a coalition effort in 2011, Obama is making a pretty clear jump from the dominant actor of America's past to an actor in a coalition fueled by countries like France and the United Kingdom.

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Taking Care of the Cuckoo

2011-03-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article in Alternet about the 1980s and this really caught my eye:

In 1975, a Democratic Party emboldened by civil rights, environmental, antiwar, and post-Watergate electoral successes was on the verge of seizing the presidency and a filibuster-proof congressional majority. That year, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were two of the three top-grossing films -- the former a parody using the late-sixties sexual revolution to laugh at the puritanical fifties, the latter based on the novel by beat writer Ken Kesey. Meanwhile, three of the top-rated seven television shows were liberal-themed programs produced by progressive icon Norman Lear, including "All in the Family" --a show built around a hippie, Mike Stivic, poking fun at the ignorance of his traditionalist father-in-law, Archie Bunker.

I've seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and that movie among personal life experience solidified my anti-statist anarchist tendencies. In that film, the state takes the place of the mother and father for many at risk patients and the people willing to take that role are often attracted to it for sick reasons - including a fondness for being in power over other people.

Since I saw that movie years ago, I have lived in the Bay Area. San Francisco, the once "City of Love," is beset by several groups ranging from Hispanic immigrants, art students and homeless people. The large homeless population is often credited by locals as the result of Reagan-era policies of not taking care of the mentally ill.

Only recently, this article appeared in The New Republic in the wake of the Arizona shootings:

Starting in the 1970s, civil libertarians worked to eliminate involuntary commitment or, that failing, to raise the standards and burden of proof so high that few individuals would meet it. Important decisions by the Supreme Court and subordinate courts gave individuals new protections, including a constitutional right to refuse psychotropic medication. A few states have tried to push back in constitutionally acceptable ways, but efforts such as California’s Laura’s Law, designed to make it easier to force patients to take medication, have been stymied by civil rights concerns and lack of funding.
We need legal reform to shift the balance in favor of protecting the community, especially against those who are armed and deranged. This means two changes in particular. First, those who acquire credible evidence of an individual’s mental disturbance should be required to report it to both law enforcement authorities and the courts, and the legal jeopardy for failing to do so should be tough enough to ensure compliance. Parents, school authorities, and other involved parties should be made to understand that they have responsibilities to the community as a whole, not just to family members or to their own student body. While embarrassment and reluctance to get involved are understandable sentiments, they should not be allowed to drive conduct when the public safety is at stake. We’re not necessarily cramming these measures down anyone’s throat: I’ve known many families who were desperate for laws that would help them do what they knew needed to be done for their adult children, and many college administrators who felt that their hands were tied.

Now, one has to ask if there is really a left/right divide on this issue. Reaganism spelled well for many of the civil libertarian causes that the left-wing counterculture posting during the 1960s, like getting rid of the draft (something both Reagan and his chief economics influence Milton Freidman favored) and doing away with the large scale mental institutions mentioned above. The institutions were associated in pop culture not just with the lobotomies that beset Jack Nicholson but also with electro shock therapy (watch the film Shine some time).

Just as it was back in the 1970s, mental illness is still an issue. I've posted alot here about Asperger's syndrome and popular films still dominate the media with the subject. The film It's Kind Of A Funny Story, a recent release about a teen who checks himself in to an institution, is very different from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and tells us that we should trust our superiors to be able to treat the vulnerable well. In life experience, both the evil and good attract to these occupations and it could be a big mistake to get reactionary on the issue. It's an even bigger mistake, however, to leave it below the radar.

Revolution Hits Syria

2011-03-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

Cross posted at Little Green Footballs.

I have a good friend who is from Syria. We talked about the wave of revolutions that have hit everywhere from Libya to Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain, seemingly affecting authoritarian countries in North Africa and Middle East that have good, bad and neutral relationships with the West. The wave of revolutions has been vindicating for people, like yours truly, who have actual contact with people from that region of the world and know that they desire the same things anyone else in the world does.

When I talked with my friend, she said basically that Syrians are too complacent to really break from the shackles of the Assad family. A magazine I contribute towards called Earthwalkers had a writer located in the country and he seemed to paint a similar picture:

Still, while calls for an Egypt-style “Day of Rage” protest in Damascus in early February garnered 15,000 Facebook supporters, UPI reported that only about a dozen protesters actually showed up, and were promptly beaten away by plainclothes police.

So how much does online freedom actually equate to freedom in the streets?

Ramy Mansour, a print and TV journalist who also edits the news website shukumaku.com, says that government repression of information is minimal, and mostly self-imposed.

It goes on:

So what’s really keeping Syria from a people’s revolution like we saw in Egypt?

According to dissidents like Abdul Nour, it actually has less to do with technological repression, and much more to do with old-fashioned intelligence: people spying on their neighbors and reporting subversive conversations they overhear in cafes to intelligence services.

Or maybe the country is just not fertile grounds for protest because most Syrians are still happy under the 40-year dictatorship. After all, almost everyone I broached the subject with was quick to tell me how much they loved the government.

Well, the news really is surprising then, isn't it?

Protests continued in southern Syria Monday as demonstrators tore down the statue of Hafez al-Assad, Syria's former president, al-Arabiya reported. It remains unclear whether the statue was torn town Monday or last week as some opposition websites claim.

Protestors in the city of Deraa burned the house of the ousted district governor as well as the ruling party's HQ and a local culture ministry office. Al-Arabiya also reported that Syrian army tanks arrived in the city on Sunday.

The closest analogy here is still the one Tariq Ali made: This is the Middle East's 1848. Universalism is on the march. Beyond it's perception as a wasteland of ignorance, oppression of women and dependency on fossil fuel economics, deep at the heart of the Arab world (and the Persian world, and the Berber world) is the desire for freedom and self-determination.

SebastiAn - Embody

2011-03-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Elly Ney - Mozart Piano Concerto

2011-03-15T02:54:00.001-07:00

Foreign Media Superiority: Signs of Decline

2011-03-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

If you read this week's issue of Time, or at least glanced at the cover story by Fareed Zakaria,you will know that America is in decline. We all know it. The signs are all around us. From the resurgence of domestic fascist and racist elements that have been absent since America became a superpower in the post-World War II era to the increasing erosion of American culture and soft influence globally, not to mention the economic growth of India and China, it's pretty obvious that America is losing its hegemonic status, if it hasn't been lost already.

It's really strange where this shows up the most. One could say that the relative impotence of the United States to respond to crisis in Libya or Japan - the sort of thing that America just did because it could for the last fifty years - is a good indicator of a downward slide.

The signs of decline are evident in more subtle ways however, like the coverage of news in the United States. If you were to watch cable news, you really wouldn't know that much about what is going on. Glenn Beck's bold and messy reaction is outpaced by the analytic approach of Rachel Maddow, but both have the feeling of individuals so immersed in the mess that they cannot look at the elements that are taking us down objectively.

That's where Al Jazeera English and Russia Today come in. Both networks have been taking their coverage of the United States into cracks and corners that even many liberal Americans just wouldn't like to go. Russia Today has made many reports on the endless poverty of the country's Native American population, even sending reporters out to the isolated reservations of South Dakota. Unlike Canada, where the CBC has regular programs on the indigenous population and their struggles, the American media acts as if the first Americans are dead. They only ever pop up in presidential speeches or racist Rush Limbaugh tirades.

Al Jazeera recently covered the issue of endangered wolves in the United States and did an amazing job of it. More so than any sort of conservative propaganda could, you are able to empathize with the farmer Druska and her husband Richard, who make their living by feeding America. A couple thousand wolves is alot more than it sounds like and I can empathize personally with the farmers, as while growing up in Seattle I had a pet cat lost to a small pack of coyotes that had their way into town.

With the Environmental Protection Agency's offices located in a distant Washington D.C., where most food is found conveniently packaged and the thought of its origin completed wiped from the consumer, it becomes clear where the gulf of experience arrises from.

There is an organization called Wolf Haven which does make homes for grey wolves, and it would have been good to have heard from them in this report in order to give an element of civil society as a bridge between rural farmers and the bureaucratic state. Check out their website and provide your thoughts.

It's Not Just "Our S.O.B.s" Faliing In the Middle East

2011-03-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that America's bestest friends in Saudi Arabia have yet to face a rebellion. If the wave of revolutions were simply fueled by anti-Americanism, Saudi Arabia would likely be a centerpiece and Libya wouldn't be the player that it is.

Also, keep in mind that pressure on Iran has been arriving from more parties than just John Bolton and American policy hawks. While walking in Bellevue, Washington very recently I came upon this man, who had really harsh words for the regime in Iran:

The things this man said to me were very politically incorrect, as he said, "When Islam and the government mix, it's like a disease," before adding, "I'm a Muslim."

The most apt analogy that I actually heard about the Arab Spring actually came surprising from the Marxist Tariq Ali. This was before Libya became a player, which may mess with his ideology, since Ali is a firm supporter of Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Qaddafi. Ali compared the uprisings with the revolutions of 1848, which stretched from Italy to Denmark. Many of the revolutions were put down but resulted in very strong social and cultural change within Europe.

The revolutions occurring in the Middle East may be just as significant. The Middle East has tried all sorts of different policy options beside democracy and pluralism. They've tried religious extremism, American clientelism and Arab nationalism. They now are left with liberalism. That comes with all sorts of social impacts that many in the Middle East aren't going to be comfortable with, including cracks in the firm wall that exists between men and women in most countries of the region, but globalization and the availability of information from around the world makes the unwavering manner of Middle Eastern society alot weaker. How it will all end up is anyone's guess but like Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it will look alot different.

Spectruming Out By Myself

2011-03-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

I have Asperger's syndrome, a high functioning form of autism. This has resulted in a sort of epic chaos in my life of insanely ridiculous events that seem to somehow have something to do with my crazed mental state, from getting hit by a rock in the head as a four year year old to having a barbell thrown at my head as a teenager, with everyone from gym teachers to principals screaming at the top of their longs at me in the interum.

For whatever weird stuff is going on in this brain of mine, it's resulted in me being quite dexterous with words. The words simply pop off out of my mind from some sort of mental catalogue. I imagine that I may easily have been a rapper, and I partly love rap music because it's filled with people who seem to share this odd talent. I'm able to pick words out of my head that aren't regularly used in the common vernacular and then formulate them in a manner that makes sense, with no instruction on how to do it or formal training. I can't explain it.

One thing that is clear about Asperger's syndrome is that it makes me really happy to be alone. As much as I try to make it in the social world, it's exhausting and cumbersome at best. The strongest bonds seem to break and the bonds you're left with are ones you didn't expect to last.

Recent months have really reminded me of my love for being alone. I'm in my hometown of Seattle and finishing up an online course. I have money in the bank and am able to spend my time alone. It's amazing. I can go work out, walk or by groceries and listen to the radio and read comic books. I can work on my writing and keep the social world completely under my control.
It reminds me all very much of when I was a little kid. At only about eight or nine years old, I would walk to the local movie theater and watch films by myself. The process was easy enough and all the rules in doing so made sense. There were never any problems. It was only in school that problems arose, and likewise in the workplace.

I can imagine that Temple Grandin's work with animals provide a very similar vindication and great alone time for her, and I envy her for that. For all the bending over backwards that schools do to try to get kids with Asperger's situated in their messed up system, some means of just having them left alone - from screaming teachers and bullying students - is really what is simply wanted. Of course, that is probably too simple for this world, but I can dream.

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The Pacific Northwest's Aryan Separatists

2011-03-08T04:18:00.000-08:00

Just in case you were living in Washington or Oregon and thinking wistfully that you were free of the bigotry of the deep south or the soft apartheid of the northeast, you're wrong. Appearing now is the group Northwest Front, an Aryan separatist group out of the Pacific Northwest:

The Northwest Front is a political organization of Aryan men and women who recognize that an independent and sovereign White nation in the Pacific Northwest is the only possibility for the survival of the White race on this continent.

The founding fathers of the United States would be far closer to being White Nationalists than to any of the other political groups of today. The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution were all White. They shared a common cultural background, and none of them wanted racial mixing.

We don’t stand for hating people, we stand for freeing people, our people, from a yoke of tyranny and oppression that has become impossible for us to live with. We stand for preserving our race from biological and cultural extinction.

The Northwest Front is about building a new, better society where everyone contributes, everyone benefits, and all share a common set of values and cultural beliefs and a common ethnic heritage.

Kid Rock Advocates For Detroit

2011-03-07T02:45:00.000-08:00

Back when I was about twelve or something like that, Kid Rock and Eminem jumped on to the scene. A rambunscious troublesome white kid in the Central District of Seattle, I instantly took with these two guys. They're both very different and have gone in very different directions with their music (which probably could not have been foreseen back then) but they both reek of loyalty to their hometown, Detroit, a city that is besmerched and looked down upon throughout the country.

I don't know how much comparison I can make here but when I was growing up in Seattle, it was alot different than it is now. Seattle looked alot more like the "hick town" it used to often get referred to and bowling alleys, fisheries, hardware stores, military bases and breweries were the blue collar fair before the city exploded with coffee shops, the biotech industry and Microsoft.

I've talked earlier about the steady gentrification of Seattle's historically black and immigrant areas. I can easily imagine, if industry had not taken off as it did, that Seattle could have gone downhill fast and wound up looking alot like Detroit, with airplane manufacturing and the military being the ghost industry instead of automobiles. Some areas, like Glenn Beck's hometown, steadily deteriorated into nothing more than shopping malls. Who then would have been the advocates for Seattle? Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and the guys with Them Crooked Vultures? TCV is vintage Seattle, harkening back to Murder City Devils and the post-punk that dominated Seattle before hipsterdom came into vogue.

Like Seattle and its sister city Portland, which also has experienced substantial rebirth, perhaps it is worth looking at Detroit and similar downtrodden cities (Oakland being a great example). The cities that created America's past aren't really pushing forward innovation (Washington D.C. and San Francisco are great examples of this) and change is brought about by a strange new cast of characters instead of the old guarde.

So with the endorsement of native sons Kid Rock and Eminem, maybe it's worth the time of journalists, investors and others to give another look at Detroit. To have produced such substantial talent in the depths of economic depravity shows that they have something that cities like Boston or San Francisco don't. That talent should be harnessed for a new America.

Porn, Porn, Porn

2011-02-28T10:57:00.000-08:00

Politics is pretty dumb when you get down to it and the best way to understand the society we live in is through articles like this one, "Why Lesbian Port Is the Best," at Alternet. It focuses on Jincey Lumpkin, the creator of Juicy Pink Box, a lesbian pornography company.

The article is a really interesting take down of modern pornography as well, and, being a left-wing journal, looks more at the sociology of porn and comes to a none too shocking conclusion:

The epitome of straight porn is Bang Bros, a production company founded in 2000 that has 18 active porn sites and uses a “gonzo” filming style. It’s unclear if this “gonzo” style is real or not; Bang Bros Corp did not return my e-mails or phone calls to answer that question. Since Bang Bros don’t appear to be facing criminal investigation, it’s likely acted out, like “reality” TV.
One video I watched opens with a van and two men: one behind the camera, the other driving. They start talking to a young man and woman who are on their way to lunch. The cameraman asks a woman wearing a short mini skirt and a tight top if she usually dresses like “that” for work. She responds no, she was just picking up her paycheck. They ask her if she knows why they are filming her and she doesn't know. They look at the young guy, who looks a bit sheepish and says, “He didn't tell you?” The men laugh, and the woman looks confused.
At this point, nausea washes over me. The three actors finally get her in the van. It takes what felt like 30 minutes of laughter and awkwardness for the two men who approached the woman with the camera to finally tell her that they are a porn company and want to film her having sex with the man. Finally, they coax her into it. I almost had to turn it off because it made me so uncomfortable.
The video is a typical mainstream porno portraying the man and woman in the back of the van. I could say they had intercourse, but that doesn't quite feel right. She “gets it.” It's nauseating.

I'll be a completely honest man and say publicly that I have watched my share of porn. It releases tension, something men are just genetically endowed with in spades. I've only watched Bang Bros. a few times and, like the writer, I was a bit disgusted by it. The one time I watched it there was literally a scene in which the woman featured started to talk about where she came from (she was Puerto Rican) and the man in the scene interrupted and said, "Hey honey, I don't care where you come from. That's not why you're here." Yeah, and they make money off of that.

If you've ever seen The Big Lebowski (a film that literally seems to provide quotable logic for everything in life, like some sort of religious scripture), you'll know the character of Jackie Treehorn. Treehorn, while mixing a poisoned drink for Jeff Bridges' character, waxes about the decline of the porn industry. "Now that we're competing those amateurs, we can't afford to invest in little extras like story, production value, feelings."

That's why modern porn is really, really awful, with an average of five minutes, you're now looking at an industry filled with porn made in the style of a skateboarding video or an episode of Jackass. The description "adult entertainment" seems inappropriate, because there's nothing adult about it, and if you're an actual adult, it's probably not that entertaining.

Possibly because it's a feminist tinged article that she is writing, Lisa Gillespie went to the netherworld of Bang Bros. and didn't look at the strange product of Naughty America. Naughty America is a weird enterprise. They create pornographic movies that often weigh in at around half an hour and use the five minute viewing medium as promotion of their actual product.

Unlike BangBros, Naughty America flips the narrative script of porn. Instead of the man talking an unrelenting woman into having sex, which understandably made Gillespie very uncomfortable, the opposite occurs. Naughty America is filled with alpha females - feminists of the Nicki Minaj variety instead of the Maud Lebowski variety - who are often talking cowardly, recessive men into having sex with them. It's fantasy of course, as marketed porn generally is, but their product is one that seems far less tilted in the direction of extreme male fantasy.

Still, Naughty America is largely for a male audience, not a female one or even an equitable one,unlike the product that Lumpkin produces:

“The mainstream industry excludes male homosexuality, puts straight male desire in charge of female homosexuality, whilst the straight woman is just a reflection of the male desire, not showing own feelings, desires, wishes, decisions, except for serving straight male needs for a ridiculously unrealistic stereotype of manhood and male desire,” Lust says. “So as I didn't see myself in those porn films, I also thought that there must be a lot of men quite bored with those dull images. I figured that if I wanted a different [kind of] porn, I had to do it myself.”
She produces longer films, usually at least an hour long (porn these days is usually no more than five minutes long) with actors paired with other actors of the both sexes. She says she recognizes that men also have a need for more realistic and less objectifying porn.
“Less and less people are willing to buy their low quality films as you get this stuff for free on the net quite easily, while more and more people discover our productions,” Lust says. “For a female audience, there needs to be female characters to identify with that realistically are driven by desires and wishes that real women have. It's more balanced; it's like objectifying and being objectified: giving and taking. Like it is in sex: you give pleasure, and you get your share.”

The Liberal Lack of Persuasion

2011-02-23T18:41:00.000-08:00

Like Genghis, I have been emerged in the world of the Right, a world that most progressives only hear about second hand. Unlike Genghis, I was not emerged in it because I was writing a polemical book on the subject but because I agreed with many of the core premises.

What was one of those core premises? An issue that is exploding in completely the wrong way in the state of Wisconsin. Public employee unions, the core base of Democratic fundraising, are caught in the ire of a Republican governor who knows just how influential they are in policy making. The right makes the power of teacher’s unions a chief crossroads issue because they know the large scale dissatisfaction with public schools on the part of parents, students and everyone except those receiving a paycheck due to the whole enterprise.

I had a column in a local Seattle newspaper several years ago and I spent nearly a year both expelling pent up anger and looking at the core of what is wrong with public education. I grew up in a very progressive area, have liberal family and friends and only knew a handful of conservatives or libertarians, none of whom were people I cared for that much. However, for purely intellectual reasons, the more I looked at the problem, the more all the answers that came out were “right wing.” This is the essential core paradox of modern American education politics, if you advocate change in how public education operates, you are a conservative. If you shout about the welfare of teachers as if that job description automatically translates to saint status and are opposed to charter schools, online schools, vouchers, tenure reform or any other solution that would better serve students and want the system to remain as it has largely been for one hundred years, you’re a progressive. It’s bizarre.

If you’ve read what I’ve just written, you could understandably write me off as someone with an axe to grind. Sure, there is a bit of that. I was bullied non stop by both staff and students at schools, having large backpacks and barbells thrown at my head. I saw incompetent and abusive staff hit kids, badmouth disabled children and bounce around from school to school, just like the infamous “Rubber Rooms” made famous by the film Waiting for Superman. That’s what the SEIU seeks to preserve and charter schools and tenure reform are what they seek to oppose. Ever wonder why so many school violence occurs? It’s not about guns, as easy as it is to blame that. It’s because bullying is routine and educational establishments are more concerned with paychecks, logistics and technocratic issues than making sure children are in a safe, encouraging environment that doesn’t resemble a downgraded prison.

If you understand that sentiment, try projecting it to other issues. On a national level, progressives appear as austere, condescending, judgmental technocrats who want the broad populace to adhere to their standards without ever taking the time to understand where the people they make demands of are coming from. Nobody likes to be talked to like they’re stupid and as long as progressives continue along that line, books like What’s the Matter With Kansas?, asking why on earth so much of America votes against its economic self-interest, will be written by folks that have two feet permanently locked in an echo chamber.

Genghis touches exactly on this when he says, “Not only do many people here ignore the larger world that simply does not buy into many liberal ideas, they don't even attempt to persuade one another, preferring to insult the very people that they need to on their side.” That reminds me all too much of a professor I had, a disciple of the 1960s Bay Area school of left wing demagoguery. I had actually met him right after working for a conservative think tank, where I had become disillusioned upon hearing the n-word regularly leveled by a co-worker, right in proximity to one of the country’s worst urban ghettoes and during a time when reports came out of Tea Partiers hurling that same epithet at members of congress.

Coming back to the Bay Area to finally finish my Bachelor’s Degree, I wanted to help out minorities. The disgust of being in such proximity to full-on racists made me feel guilty. I had seen up close that the level of flat out racist groups on the right was rising and wanted to expose it. This journalism professor saw my interest in the subject as racist itself, shouted the n-word several times at me and literally drove me to the point of swearing back and quitting his class, something I hadn’t done before. I was there, ripe for taking and conversion, and this guy was so hooked on demonizing everyone that moved that he couldn’t help but do it again. The piece that I wrote on white nationalists in the Bay Area eventually got published at Little Green Footballs. I'm actually quite proud of it. I’ll let you decide if it was racist or not.

In contrast to the Left’s technocracy and condescension, the Right talks to the personal. While the Left makes films about global warming and talks about carbon footprints and sustainability, the Right appeals to everyday people through figures like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Rick Warren, who largely spend their shows and sermons instructing their audience on how to live their everyday lives for their betterment.

If one reflects truly on the successful progressive movements in American history, it seems quite fitting that they talked to the personal. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. portrayed racial equality as befitting to simple, basic decency. Southern populists like Huey Long succeeded in building public works by portraying hoarders of wealth as selfish and stealing from the people. They didn't belittle those they were trying to convince or make them feel like pions.

This is really all basic psychology. You're not going to convince someone of anything by screaming at them and making them feel like dirt. That so many overeducated people seem to have lost this concept is pretty damning for those who exalt education.

Qaddafi: Hopeless

2011-02-23T01:02:00.000-08:00

The Scorpion's Gate

2011-02-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

Do you remember Richard Clarke? He was a terrorism expert who left the Bush administration in anger and frustration, seeing the administration as fixated on carrying out an invasion of Iraq instead of curbing terrorism.

Clarke wrote a memoir, Against All Enemies, that received alot of fanfair. Of all of the betrayals that the Bush administration experienced, Clarke's was the strongest, in his expertise being on terrorism and the Middle East - the issues that were crystallizing George W. Bush's presidency.

After he wrote the memoir, he wrote several thriller novels. The first one, The Scorpion's Gate, portrayed Saudi Arabia overthrown by Islamists:

It's 2010, and the newly established Republic of Islamyah; the former Saudi Arabia; is trying to destabilize Bahrain: the Diplomat Hotel has been bombed, and, as the first chapter of this intense debut thriller closes, the Crowne Plaza is "pancaking." Meanwhile, the deposed House of Saud is holed up in Houston; the Chinese are providing arms and training to Islamyah; the Iranians have the bomb. Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad thinks the time is ripe to invade Islamyah and seize its oil, for which the U.S. is locked in deadly competition with China. Cooler heads in the U.S. (and British) hierarchies are very, very alarmed. Sound familiar? Clarke's Against All Enemies delivered an apostate critique of the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts, along with a vision of the future very much like today. The writing's nothing special; what is special is Clarke's passionate and deftly detailed version of the present, albeit one told in terms of its consequences. It's a brilliant conceit, and though it's sometimes drowned out by the din of various axes being ground ("It''s 68 degrees [in Washington]on January 28 and the White House still claims that global warming isn't a problem?"), the story is crowded with terrific double crosses, defections and deceptions. They're icing, though: Clarke's dramatic micro explanations of how things "really" work; from a hand who served Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes;are the true story. This is the first novel to shift all the way from Clancy's Cold War to the present war on terror.

The timing - 2010 - is ominous in that Clarke was only one year off. And how on earth could Clarke have known that Bahrain would start to destabilize on its own, without outside intervention? Or that numerous countries throughout the region would experience revolutions simultaneously?

If you're interested further, The Scorpion's Gate is for sale through the Amazon.com widget on the right side of this blog.

Shadeism

2011-02-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

There's a really incredible phenomenon of discrimination within communities of color based on the degree of "shade." I had heard of this before but had never heard an actual term for it: shadeism.

This video on "shadeism" was posted by a friend of mine, Aneesah Dryver, who runs a blog on relationships. Aneesah said when posting it, "I've had to deal with shadeism growing up. Thank God I grew to love my beautiful dark skin tone. I hope little girls learn that they are still beautiful even though they don't look like the girls in the videos, magazines, etc

Shadeism from Shadeism on Vimeo.

Bill Gothard's Submission Theology

2011-02-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

AlterNet has an expansive expose of Bill Gothard, a Christian sect that preaches submission to the man in the family, as the unquestionable authority:

Vyckie Garrison, who runs the website No Longer Quivering, “a gathering place for women escaping and recovering from spiritual abuse,” told me that she and her now ex-husband, although they lacked the money to attend Gothard’s seminars, followed his teachings through his homeschool curricula. She said her husband had believed, based on Gothard’s teachings, that he was responsible for his family’s salvation through the authority he exercised over his family, a role which turned him into a “tyrant.”

That story sounds quite a bit like the same family narrative that has affected many Muslim women whose male relatives or husbands have accepted the more extreme doctrines. The call for "submission" especially recalls the most potent criticisms of Islam.

Bigotry As Comfort

2011-02-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

This article recently ran at Talking Points Memo's Book Club, in promotion of Michael Wolraich's book Blowing Smoke. You can purchase it as a Deschamps associate by clicking the widget to the right.

I like Michael's description of Beck as "rationalizing" bigotry.

There's a video of Beck discussing the infamous Father Charles Coughlin and dismissing comparisons between him and the two. In the video, he notes that Coughlin viewed poverty and inequality as a chief issue, which differentiates him from the Ayn Rand touting Beck. The lack of self-awareness shows as he continues to describe Coughlin, saying that Coughlin believed the Great Depression was caused by a "cabal of international bankers" who worked in tandem to usurp "American sovereignty." That that was the basic argument of his George Soros obsession seems to be lost in the midst of Beck's self-awareness deficit. Beck's alleged cabal of bankers is likewise overwhelmingly Jewish and his frequent use of Nazi imagery, and his use of screenshots of the Sinai peninsula (Go back and watch the video for yourself. It's right there in the open.) while talking about Soros is an act of blowing the fascist dog whistle louder than it's been blown in a long, long time. We'd have to be able to catch Beck in private to know if he uses derogatory terms for Jews, but from the outside it seems to rationalizes old, indeed ancient, anti-Semitic arguments by substituting "progressive" for "Jew." As his fans at the white nationalist website Stormfronthave put it, Beck goes "as close as you can get to naming the Jew without actually naming the Jew."

There's so many more examples of his rationalization of bigotry, as Michael has put it, and Charles Johnson and I have documented them pretty well. The rationalization threatens to cascade into the avenues that may even surprise, however. Even with significant disillusion with the right wing, stories such as the effort of House Republicans to legally redefine "rape" to "forcible rape" continue to astonish. As a female friend said, this is apparently justified because "in the whole 'I'm a poor defenseless man,' world, rape is a tool used by nubile young women to trap defenseless older men."

As Michael put it, it's no longer about proving that Beck and the Tea Party brigadiers carry bigoted resentment but explaining it. It seems as if, at least on an unconscious level, significant levels of the population have bought into the paradigm that racism and bigotry is okay now that WASPs are no longer in total control in society. This could possibly explain the adoption of terms like "ruling class" by Rush Limbaugh just as he makes crude imitations of Chinese accents.

The decline of America as a superpower plays into all of this. Americans have not felt a strong need to think about the rest of the world for a long time, and the country's untouchable hegemony seemed to vindicate that. Now Americans are losing jobs to people halfway across the world who actually speak more than one language, have a stronger work ethic and are willing to work for less. The irrationality of racism and stereotypes provides a comfort that at least you're still superior to the people you're losing out to. You can see this in clips where Glenn Beck proclaims that there are no working toilets in India.

Fall of Empire, End to Wars: Johan Galtung's Predictions

2011-02-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

Comics Will Rot Your Brains!!

2011-02-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

A couple years ago, I set up a booth at a flea market in order to get rid of a huge number of comic books. I wasn't giving up the medium or anything like that but was instead trying to clear house of a good deal of comics that I'd acquired during a comic shop's going out of business sale in the mid-90s. The comics were mostly published by the now-defunct Malibu Comics and were published during the 1990s, easily one of the lowest points in comic book publishing history. I just wanted them off my hands.

I was struck by a hostility from older people at what I was selling. I kept hearing, "You know, these things will rot your brains" being said by grown men in a serious tone of voice. At the time I thought they were just "old," but in retrospect most of these nervous pervises were Baby Boomers. They were kids during the Red Scare, which was also a time when comic books were tackled by demagogic lawmakers and imposed with a rating system called the Comics Code Authority. (While mainstream publishers like Marvel Comics have abandoned the Comics Code, it can still be found on the covers of Archie Comics.)

In a recent Reason magazine article, writer Brian Doherty reviewed the book The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu. Doherty writes that Hajdu argues that the comic book genre was subjected to a witch hunt by lawmakers, churches and academics comparable to the ones that took on Elvis Presley and communists. Hajdu's argument makes sense in explaining why so many Baby Boomers were getting freaked out about the comic books I was selling at that flea market. The book describes kids that beat up other kids who were caught with comic books. Were some of those bullies at that flea market?

Doherty notes that this may not seem relevant to the average reader but it should. Similar assaults have been made on music and video games and will likely continue towards new entertainment mediums in the future. Recall Tipper Gore, the wife of former presidential candidate Al Gore, and her Parents Music Resource Center or Hillary Clinton's efforts to legislate against violent video games.

Comic book companies are still being assaulted by moralist authoritarians in this country, and organizations like the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund have been set up to aid poor comic book creators that are defending themselves in court against bullying censors. While there are a few pretty racy comic books out there (both in regards to sexual and violent content), comic book publishers do a pretty good job of making it evident on the cover. Marvel has many "All Ages" lines that are tame and fine for little kids. In contrast to that, they have also set up a line called "MAX" that is clearly aimed at teenage and older readers. Comics that don't fall into those lines but have mature or older content are usually labeled as such. Like any medium, be it video games or movies, what ends up in the hands of kids falls down to the individual parent or guardian who is buying it or the retailer who is selling it, and not the publisher, who has little control over where their comics end up.

Johnny Lee Clary On Pat Robertson's 700 Club

2011-02-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

Johnny Lee Clary is actually a pretty great guy. I recommend looking him up and watching video of him. It'll make your day better.

Rep. Paul Broun: Abortions Have Killed More Black Babies Than Any Other Babies

2011-02-18T07:46:00.001-08:00

This is really bizarre. George Orwell reiterated throughout his career that politics was the perversion of language and the layman should really keep this in mind when watching a video like this one of Rep. Paul Broun, where he inserts into his speech political jargon long unused in the mainstream like "eugenics" and "colored:"

You have to really wonder about the Republican Party. While President Obama runs away from any dialogue on race as much as he can, Michelle Bachman, the above Rep. Proun, Glenn Beck, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other right wing groups seem to be injecting into their dialogue as much as they can.

Inside Story: Libya

2011-02-18T07:17:00.001-08:00

Al Jazeera English provides a half hour documentary on the ascent of democratic uprisings in Libya, where Muammar Qaddafi has been in power for forty years:

Bracing For A Sun Storm

2011-02-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

This is very interesting. Over at Disinformation, they're rushing a bit towards the armageddon diagnosis:

A massive solar flare could make for a beautiful night for people in the northern United States – provided it doesn’t knock the lights out.
The blast of charged particles unleashed from the sun earlier this week has been peppering the Earth over the last few days, but it’s biggest punch is expected to hit the Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday.
Monday’s eruption, considered an X-class flare, is the biggest solar flare in four years. It is already being blamed for disrupting radio communication in China, and could potentially affect power grids and satellite communication around the globe.
However, for the United States, the most likely outcome from this latest space storm could be a colorful night sky over New England and even parts of New York State.

Scott Brown Tells All

2011-02-17T05:08:00.000-08:00

This is really interesting:

Brown, 51, has written a book, “Against All Odds,” in which he also recounts physical abuse at the hands of several stepfathers. In the interview, he recounts an instance when he contemplated buying a house where he lived with one of his stepfathers so that he could “burn it down” as a cathartic act.

At Truthdig, a blogger asks "Is it just us, or does the publication of a revealing memoir, including details of childhood molestation and abuse, by a first-term senator herald yet another sea change in the game of political publicity?" It does indeed seem a bit odd, and to be blunt Scott Brown does seem rather odd. I actually met him in Washington D.C. and he seemed very congenial. He stood out a bit not just because of all the cameramen around but because he was very polite to the owners of local restaurants and other individuals who are technically "beneath" him.

Confessing personal demons also seems like a significantly more constructive act than what farther to the Right Republicans like Haley Barbour have been using their time doing (or not doing). Surely speaking about his experiences can help others who have had similar experiences to open up about theirs.

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More Racial Controversy Hits Haley Barbour

2011-02-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

In the latest racially charged incident in his home state, Haley Barbour on Tuesday drew fire when he refused to condemn a proposal honoring a Klu Klux Klan leader and Confederate general on a state license plate.

"I don't go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen," Barbour, who is considering a run for the White House in 2012, said when asked about the plate, the Associated Press reported. "I know there's not a chance it'll become law."

CNN also has video of the governor saying "he's a historical figure" when asked about the issue. Just in case you get the idea from above that Barbour doesn't go around using strong words about anything, here's him on February 12 (only days ago) talking about the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood:

Washington (CNN) - Republican Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Saturday he was "mortified" to hear a top Obama administration official describe Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as a "largely secular organization."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the remark in testimony before a House panel on Tuesday. His office later clarified the statement through a spokeswoman, saying that the Muslim Brotherhood was participating in Egypt's secular political system and that Clapper "is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization."

Education: The Myth of US Superiority

2011-02-14T23:03:00.000-08:00

From the Alyona Show:

Keep in mind while watching that the boos that Kentucky senator Rand Paul received when he talked about taking a good look at the military budget.

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Chinatown In Kurdistan?

2011-02-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

This video is really fascinating reporting from Al Jazeera. Chinese foreign direct investment would be expected in an area that is so rich in natural resources but immigration of Chinese and a market for Chinese cultural goods seems like a whole other step towards liberalism.

Who Are The Welfare Queens?

2011-02-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

Also posted at Little Green Footballs and Dagblog.

Goldy, a Seattle based reporter and blogger, did a concise read of where money was being generated and where it was being spread to in Washington state:

A friend of mine is in the Libertarian Party of Georgia. We have regular talks about politics, especially that of his state, where the budget gap has actually been filled due to the help of stimulus dollars from the federal government. When I said that he'd better not tell the Republicans in his state that, he said the party is all rhetoric.

Washington is not an anomaly. Rural states in Georgia also eat all public dollars while hollering about tax paying and fiscal responsibility. At the federal level, this hypocrisy continues in spades as red states dominate the list of federal spending per dollar of federal taxes, with New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana and West Virginia topping the list.

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Glenn Beck Reveals The Root Of Modern Socialism: The Pop Star Fabian

2011-02-12T23:39:00.000-08:00

Cross posted at Dagblog.

In another captivating expose of the deceit of the liberal class, Glenn Beck revealed that the plot for modern day communist rule started with the most innocent seeming of figures: the late 1950s/early 1960s teen heartthrob Fabian.

Beck cited lyrics to Fabian's song "This Friendly World" to illustrate the British Fabian Socialists shared more than just a name. "In this song he asks 'Why should any heart be lonely?' and 'Why should any heart be afraid?' His words, not mine. Well, Mr. Fabian lover boy, where have I heard that before? Equality, freedom from fear, Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights, Karl Marx. No, not Saul Alinsky, it's something earlier than that. Lucifer!"

Later in Beck's chilling documentary, which was of impressive Frontline quality, Glenn Beck connected the dots between Fabian, whose career peaked in the early 1960s, and the Fabian Society, which coincidentally was the same period in which the Young Fabians were created. "By making fan clubs for heartthrobs like Fabian and socialist indoctrination camps indistinguishable, Fabian socialists were able to indoctrinate young Americans like Barack Obama's mother, who then marries a Kenyan and turns against her Nixon-voting parents. Fabian was the first community organizer," Beck said. "Do your own research. You think I'm crazy? Go to hell."

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Algeria's police crack down on protesters

2011-02-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

From Al Jazeera:

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Al Qaeda Populating U.S. With Peaceful 'Decoy Muslims'

2011-02-12T20:48:00.001-08:00

Frances Fox Piven, Glenn Beck and Social Change

2011-02-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

Frances Fox Piven, a target of Glenn Beck's conspiracy theorizing, wrote an excellent piece clarifying the activity that made her part of the grand conspiracy:

The Nation article, entitled "The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty," called for large-scale campaign by social workers, lawyers, community organizers, and the poor themselves to claim benefits. Such a campaign, we thought, would not only relieve some of the acute poverty in the slums of America; it would also generate rising welfare costs for cities and states at a time of intensifying racial conflict.
The latter could prod a national Democratic administration that depended on urban constituencies to reform the archaic grant-in-aid welfare system, which still retained features of the old poor law, to introduce some kind of federal guaranteed-income policy. And in fact, by the end of the decade, even Richard Nixon, under the tutelage of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, became, a cautious advocate of a national guaranteed income.

Now guess who else was a proponent of a form of minimum income? Two heroes of the right,Frederich Hayek and Milton Freidman. Here is an article on Freidman's vision - the "negative income tax" - from the New York Times:

Market forces can accomplish wonderful things, he realized, but they cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs. His proposal, which he called the negative income tax, was to replace the multiplicity of existing welfare programs with a single cash transfer — say, $6,000 — to every citizen. A family of four with no market income would thus receive an annual payment from the I.R.S. of $24,000. For each dollar the family then earned, this payment would be reduced by some fraction — perhaps 50 percent. A family of four earning $12,000 a year, for example, would receive a net supplement of $18,000 (the initial $24,000 less the $6,000 tax on its earnings).
Mr. Friedman’s proposal was undoubtedly motivated in part by his concern for the welfare of the least fortunate. But he was above all a pragmatist, and he emphasized the superiority of the negative income tax over conventional welfare programs on purely practical grounds. If the main problem of the poor is that they have too little money, he reasoned, the simplest and cheapest solution is to give them some more. He saw no advantage in hiring armies of bureaucrats to dispense food stamps, energy stamps, day care stamps and rent subsidies.

Freidman's "pseudo-welfare" (for lack of a better term) would be aimed at streamlining the process, which Piven herself says is needed:

But who can decipher the impact of a policy to regulate financial institutions when the policy and regulations run to the length of an encyclopedia, and the text of the encyclopedia deals with such incomprehensible matters as credit default swaps? The blank space in the democratic process is an invitation to propaganda by those who want to limit the democratic influence of the public, and propaganda is flourishing in American politics today.

The appeal to right wing demagogues is that they provide quick, easy explanations to the problematic consequences of progressive change. Among those consequences is significant social change:

Lunatic though they are, the ravings about our plan for an orchestrated crisis to destroy capitalism—or a Muslim caliphate that will devour Europe—are important because they provide theories of a sort to people who are made anxious by large-scale changes that have overtaken American society. Those includedeindustrialization and our loss of pre-eminence in the world, changes in family and sexual norms, and, perhaps most of all, the growing diversity of the American population and the election of an African-American president. Social scientists themselves do not agree about the causes of all these developments, and people without the luxury of time and training are often left angry and confused.

That Piven actually recognizes what causes the appeal is very illuminating and welcoming. The oncoming ascent of women in society is going to lead either to nihilism or some sort of ideological muscularity on the part of young men who feel left behind, with pragmatism among those that really understand what is happening. Recognizing this is the best way to offset it, while taking the approach of feminist Pamela Paul will only propel it ever forward.

When it comes to the social change of changing demography, this topic made its presence in full at CPAC this week. Check out Little Green Footballs for full coverage.

The Crackpot World Of 'Alternative Right'

2011-02-11T20:16:00.000-08:00

Cross posted at Little Green Footballs.

Kilgore Trout posted an interview with Kevin DeAnna, who founded Youth for Western Civilization, an avowedly anti-immigration and Affirmative Action group. After doing some quick looks at their group, it was easy to discover that Richard Spencer, founder of Alternative Right (a really far right website), is a featured speaker at YWC events and DeAnna contributes to Spencer's website.

Want to know how absurd Alternative Right is? Richard Spencer just created a blog post calling the Eminem/Chrysler advertising campaign "Negro fascism." The Onion couldn't come up with anything so out of this world.

Shout This One To The Mountaintops

2011-02-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

There is alot to be said about bluntness, and some things in life just simply aren't solved by beating around the bush. Take this beautiful marking I found on the window a bar in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood:

It may not be as poetic as "The New Collossus" sonnet that adorns the Statue of Liberty, but the message could not be any clearer or difficult to misinterpret. The above message should be next to Emma Lasarus' words on the Statue of Liberty, as well as placed before the Senate building, the Capitol building and the White House (the last three being where it is needed the most).

Talking Eminem, Asperger's and Homophobia With A Reader From Buenos Aires

2011-02-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

A reader from Buenos Aires recently left a comment on my blog that actually made me think of several things regarding Eminem that I had never even thought of before:

Hi! At last I've come across a highly interesting, intelligent essay on Eminem. Personally, I think he's an unappreciated genius and his album Recovery is fantastic. "Cleaning out my Closet" is impressive. There's another song that should be a hit, called "When I'm Gone"; can't remember whether it's in Recovery, but I certainly have it on one of my Eminem CD's.

Do you think he has some Asperger characteristics? I'm no expert, but I have a degree in Philosophy that helps me to view the world from diffirent angles... I hope! Eminem could write English perfectly at about 4 years, as well as rhyme words with enormous ease as he grew up. I saw him in an interview once, on video, and I believe he really has difficulty smiling, as well as being unable to grasp why certain truths shock people. He grew up in that area of Detroit where homophobia was openly expressed, as well as other racist opinions, all considered normal. What I mean to say, I think, is that he's unaware of the need to be hypocritcal, as for example Hollywood moguls were (and are), concerning homosexuality. But I believe Eminem has the capability to change, with a little help from his friends...I hope so! I like your reference to Johnny Cash. Elvis, Marilyn and so many others were not able to cope, so sad!
Thank you for a great eye-opening read. How can I follow you? On another blog?

BTW, I have am Eminem video on my blog, the "When I'm Gone" one. I hope it's not premonitory. Greetings from Buenos Aires!

There is alot there. So, let's start off with this one:

He grew up in that area of Detroit where homophobia was openly expressed, as well as other racist opinions, all considered normal. What I mean to say, I think, is that he's unaware of the need to be hypocritcal, as for example Hollywood moguls were (and are), concerning homosexuality.

Like Marshall Mathers, I'm also fairly desensitized to "homophobia." I'm in full support of same sex marriage, don't have any problem with people of the same gender holding hands, etc. Like Mathers, I was exposed to black culture pretty early on by attending a heavily minority middle school in which "faggot" was hurled as an epithet on an almost daily basis. (Geez, what am I on? It was hurled on a daily basis.) At a certain point it loses meaning. So does calling men "bitches" as a way of degrading, which I wasn't even aware was homophobic until someone told me.

I didn't grow up on the outskirts of the worst ghetto in America like Mathers did. I grew up in Seattle's Central District/Madison Valley area. The area has completely transformed over the last decade, with indie rock becoming its soundtrack instead of hip-hop and large swaps of its indigenous population fleeing for Renton or Bellevue. Seattle still has a niche hip-hop scene but its starting to gravitate from surrounding areas like Tacoma, South Park or the Eastside cities I just talked about.

White, liberal hipsters (of the sort that are now dominating American cities) are probably some of the most offended by hip-hop in my experience. The often brutal masculinity, anger, sexism and homophobia that comprises it simply does not match their sensibilities. This isn't meant to be condescending but to simply state a general fact. Kanye West is unusually popular with them because he makes hip-hop that is good but largely free of a lot of what hip-hop has historically been.

I do include Eminem in my upcoming Asperger's book, even though he is not actually diagnosed. I'm not sure that he has a genetic variant of it but I do think that he suffers from alienation dating back from early childhood: abandonment by his father, being dropped over in other people's care by his mother, being one of only a few white boys at his school. As I say in the book, most of our socialization is learned and if someone is alienated from day one, they are going to show signs of Asperger's. His mother has Munchausen's syndrome and told him for years that he was mentally ill, another severely alienating experience. Alot of men of my generation have dealt with this wave of almost non-stop alienation and the success of Mathers speaks to that. If his experience were an anomaly, he wouldn't be so popular.

You're not going to get Eminem to stop using "faggot" or "bitch" to diss other men any time soon, but it seems that he's no longer homophobic (if he ever really was) where it counts. Check out this recent interview with Sir Elton John:

In a recent interview, Sir Elton said that the people who think Em has recently lost his sense of humor are dead wrong.

"He's got a great sense of humor," John told Rolling Stone. "When David [Furnish] and I had our civil partnership, he sent us a present. In a case, on velvet cushions, were two diamond c--- rings. So there's a homophobe for you [laughs]."

What a bigot!

As for unappreciated genius, Eminem is probably going to go in the books as more like Johnny Cash than Elvis Presley (who he was often compared to because of his making white a black genre of music). Cash, like Eminem, lived in several worlds: friends with evangelicals and religious leaders while also covering songs by Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. His songs contain the darkness of Cash and recent efforts even seem to carry the same air of redemption. With broken marriages and several children (two adopted), a severe drug addiction and a hatred for one of his parents (Johnny Cash likewise hated his father), a biopic of Marshall Mathers might look alot like Walk the Line.

Suburbs - The New Center Of American Poverty

2011-01-29T12:09:00.001-08:00

Cross-posted at Dagblog.

A great article in the Economist shows this changing dynamic:

The Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan area, a two-county sprawl of condominiums, marinas and retirement homes, saw the proportion of people living below the poverty line rise by more between 2007 and 2009 than any other big city in America, from 9.2% to 13.7%, according to the Census Bureau. Nor is Sarasota an aberration. All the other metropolitan areas that saw jumps of four points or more are also formerly fast-growing southern and western cities: Bakersfield, California; Boise, Idaho; Greenville, South Carolina; Lakeland, Florida and Tucson, Arizona.Arizona now has the second highest poverty rate in the nation, after Mississippi. The especially severe housing bust that ended the breakneck growth of these sunbelt cities has brought with it deprivation on a scale they have never previously encountered and are struggling to address.

That perhaps explains why politics has become so extreme in Arizona. The remoteness and sprawl of suburbia, built for what was a population that previously could afford to trek distances to receive what they need, now is an impediment to the impoverished who may not have access to a car or the funds to pay for gas:

Poor inner cities in the Midwest and north-east still have higher overall poverty rates, but in recent years, notes Elizabeth Kneebone of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, poverty has grown fastest in the suburbs, especially in the sunbelt. A third of America’s poor, she notes, now live in suburban areas. Many cities in the sunbelt, adds Margaret Simms of the Urban Institute, are suffering from what it calls “double trouble”, meaning a plunge both in property values and employment, with concomitant jumps in poverty. This trend is significant, says Scott Allard of the University of Chicago, since it is harder for the poor to seek assistance and to hunt for jobs amid the suburban sprawl.

The Workers Union vs. The Owners Guild

2011-01-28T08:10:00.000-08:00

There is a great article up at Alternet (probably the best political news site). It's a shortened version of a segment by Rachel Maddow in which she declares that Dwight Eisenhower would be seen as a raging progressive today. There was a great segment in there about unions that I think would provide some clarity:

You want to talk about red meat for the base? Listen to some of the language the president used. "Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society." Wow.
How about this one? "Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice."

The reason why this has so much trouble applying to today is because, as this society has became rooted in consumerism, unions have become a totally different entity. The Economist wrote an excellent article in which it contrasted the vast social differences between the unions of old and the unions of today: "this time, the defenders of vested interests are not brawny miners spouting Trotsky, but nice middle-class women, often hiding behind useful-sounding groups like the National Education Association (American teachers) or the British Medical Association."

That fits very properly into the debate Genghis, myself and others are having at TPM. The United States still has a blue collar population (and may well have more of one if things continue on the current path), and they can be found everywhere from Oakland, California to rural Pennsylvania. Despite scrounging for pennies and feeling the hurt of globalization, the blue collar worker is bamboozled into adopting the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. I suspect Limbaugh knows this dynamic is at work, because he has ominously started including terms like "the ruling class" in his diatribes. This dynamic also keeps modern day Huey Longs from rising and trying to really shake up the system.

Unions are no longer independent organizations of angry workers demanding decency, they are now the guilds of the comfortable. In California, a state beset with fiscal havoc, new, shinier prisons continue to be built with the potent political influence of organizations like the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which endorsed Jerry Brown in the last election. (Their influence should help explain why Dianne Feinstein was a fierce opponent of marijuana legalization.)

Just as a prison-industrial complex has been fueled by people who have a direct interest in keeping it going, so too has an educational complex been fueled by a class that has a direct stake in keeping the status quo going. While the American public school system was set up to lift up a wave of early twentieth century immigrants and give them the same tools that native citizens had, it now seems to be holding them back from competing properly with other countries. The fact that any sort of restructuring, be it an increase in charter schools, mayoral control, vouchers or reduction of school size, is met with a reactionary accusation of being "market-based" or "conservative" is really bizarre.

There is a fantastic book that everyone should read - The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet. (The book is available for sale through the Amazon widgets to the right.) In it, he asserts that the trade union has long been the vanguard for community and its erosion plays a strong role in the rise of a more alienated society. With unions looking more like the establishment that Trotskyists fought against, it's no wonder that the middle class is able to fall for the persecution politics of Beck and Limbaugh.

Alyona Minkovski: Say Hello To "Gender-Neutral Models"

2011-01-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

Andrej Pejic Andrej Pelic, an East European born fashion model, is apparently taking the fashion industry by storm and showing that it's not an all female fashion world anymore. You know that gender roles are breaking apart when a young man can cut an "hourglass figure" and compete with the world's top runway models. You go, boy.

Study: Confederate Flag Triggers An Anti-Black Mindset

2011-01-26T07:07:00.001-08:00

Cross-posted at Little Green Footballs.

Shocking, I know. From Disinfo:

The Confederate flag, which continues to fly on buildings throughout the American South 150 years after the Civil War, is a potent symbol. But of what? Cultural heritage, answer many Southern whites. Lingering racism, insist many blacks.
Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter view. It suggests exposure to the flag evokes anti-black sentiments among whites, regardless of their stated beliefs on racial issues.
Specifically, white students at a large state-supported Southern university who were exposed to images of the still-ubiquitous battle flag judged a fictional black character more harshly. They expressed less willingness to vote for presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.
“Whether or not the Confederate flag includes other nonracist meanings, exposure to this flag evokes responses that are prejudicial,” a research team led by Florida State University psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger writes in the journal Political Psychology. Displays of the flag, the researchers assert, “may actually provoke discrimination — even among those who are low in prejudice.”
“White participants exposed to the Confederate flag reported a significantly lower likelihood of voting for Obama than those exposed to the neutral symbol,” the researchers report. (No similar impact was found for black participants.) Exposure to the flag had no effect on their self-reported measures of liberalism or conservatism; this suggests the flag’s psychic impact was on racial rather than ideological attitudes.
The second study featured 116 white students, half of whom were exposed to the Confederate flag via a sticker attached to a folder that sat upon their desks. They read a story about “a young man named Robert who engaged in ambiguously negative and aggressive behavior.”
Specifically, Robert — a young black male whose picture was provided — “refused to pay his rent until his landlord painted his apartment, and demanded his money back from a store clerk.” The results: Those exposed to the flag, which was sitting on the corner of their desks while they took the test, rated Robert more negatively than the others.

It would be interesting to see parallel studies - exposing the confederate flag to non-black minorites i.e. Asians, Hispanics, Middle Eastern or North Africans and another exposing African Americans to the flag.

This study solidifies what all of us know - the confederate flag has and still does symbolize prejudice and subjugation.

The Poetic Brilliance of Nas

2011-01-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Parcbench. Cross-posted at Gonzo Times.

Between the erratic megalomania of Kanye West and the silliness of Soulja Boy and Lil Wayne, it’s easy for anyone to give up on hip-hop as a genre altogether, switching over toward musical genres that encourage creative maturity, diversity of sound and intelligence.

That’s what I’ve done. While I listened to nearly nothing except hip-hop throughout middle school, high school and the first few years of college, there are only a handful of rap groups on my iTunes now, outflanked by indie electro and rock bands like M83, White Lies, The Cure and Morrissey.

The rappers and rap groups that are still hanging around on my computer, however, will be there for a long, long time. The work of Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Pharoahe Monch, Nas and similar acts is of enough poetic greatness that it’s almost tragic that they have to share the same genre as Soulja Boy, Ludacris or 50 Cent.

The most brilliant in this group of conscious rappers, in my view, is the prolific and unpredictable Nasir “Nas” Jones. Having released nine albums since his breakout 1994 album Illmatic, Nas is a master of words, able to weave linguistic puzzles that take years of listening to decipher.

On his most recent album, which was left “Untitled,” Nas recorded the sort of songs that I always hoped would be produced in hip-hop. On “Queens Get The Money,” Nas rapped over piano keys, illustrating a story of a child born out of wedlock (who we have to get is a 1973 Nasir Jones, “Pregnant teens give birth to intelligent gangsters, Their daddy’s faceless, Play this by your stomach, Let my words massage it and rub it, I’ll be his daddy if there’s nobody there to love it, Tell him his name’s Nasir, Tell him how he got here, Momma was just having fun with someone above her years.”

In an interview with the public radio show “The Sound of Young America,” the rapper Pharoahe Monch noted that hip-hop had been reduced to a brand to be marketed to a teenage demographic. That would explain the immaturity of most of what is seen as hip-hop on MTV, be it Lil Wayne putting his arm around a girl on a rollercoaster or Eminem dressing up like celebrities. It’s now made to sell horrible overpriced clothes for teenagers and not as a poetic outlet for inner city geniuses forgotten by the larger society.

It’s also unfortunate that a large portion of the population may have an image of Nas built from Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculous attacks on the man. Like many rappers, Nas has made songs that deal directly with inner city violence. (Hailing from the Queensbridge housing projects, this shouldn’t be a surprise.) The song that O’Reilly grabbed and played over and over was “Shoot ‘em up,” which had a chorus of “Shoot ‘em up shoot ‘em up, kill kill kill murder murder murder.” It’s worth noting that “Nastradamus” is the artist’s least popular album and was completely skipped over when he released his Greatest Hits album in 2007.

Bill O’Reilly, and Fox News at large, tried to make the case that Nas, because of songs that dealt with violence and, yes, at times glorified it, shouldn’t be allowed to perform at the 2008 remembrance concert at Virginia Tech. I don’t want to defend the most violent and offensive aspects of hip-hop, but it is worth noting that O’Reilly skipped over the far more notable song “I Gave You Power,” from Nas’ album “It Was Written,” a song in which Nas tells the narrative of a gun that has been handed from criminal to criminal, paving a road of bloodshed and tragedy with lyrics echoing the heartbreaking crime stories of Johnny Cash: “He pulled the trigger but I held on, it felt wrong, Knowing n**** is waiting in hell for him, He squeezed harder, I didn’t budge, sick of the blood, Sick of the thugs, sick of wrath of the next man’s grudge, What the other kid did was pull out, no doubt, A newer me in better shape, before he lit out, he lead the chase, My owner fell to the floor, his wig split so fast, I didn’t know he was hit, it’s over with, Heard mad n**** screamin, n**** runnin, cops is comin, Now I’m happy, until I felt somebody else grab me.”

“I Gave You Power” alone looms over the terrible hip-hop songs coming out today. Nas is a poetic genius, and a trip through his discography will acquaint listeners with what hip-hop can be.

Inside Story - Tunisia and power

2011-01-24T02:17:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera has made an absolutely great special on Tunisian democracy protests and Western policy towards the region. Juxtaposing the pro-democracy and reform rhetoric of Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton along with examining French, British and Chinese economic interests. I recommend watching the whole thing and keeping your eye on the situation.

Kanye West and the Return of Black Power

2011-01-22T03:15:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Dagblog.

If you've bought Kanye West's new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, you'll quickly realize that West has adopted a fairly healthy dose of race consciousness. The album cover is that of a black man being mounted by a white woman (an act of jungle fever that I assume was put for what he would assume to be shock value):

Kanye West's song "Gorgeous" puts the emphasis on Kanye's pigmentation, as he jeers that those "black-balled" him forgot about his "black balls," while elsewhere he says, "I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS. I won't be satisfied til all my niggas get it, get it?" Now, as a hip hop connoisseur, this sentiment is always around but Pharoahe Monch said the same things in his 2007 album Desire, it didn't seem to be said with the same level of anger.

It's not upsetting that black power seems to be making an open return once again, it's just depressing. It shows that the animosity and anger that breeds it hasn't gotten away with the election of the first black president and that any one who had thought it had because of the alluring mirage of political correctness and coalition building was drastically mistaken.

Why shouldn't it return? While yours truly doesn't find that cover shocking or inappropriate, Glenn Beck's rallies have illustrated that there still are people that it would scare the bonkers out of. A friend of mine, who is African American, had become more conservative over the years and even started thinking of herself as a Republican. As of 2008, however, that dissipated and she has since converted to Islam, a much friendlier (at least in America) form of conservatism if you happen to be of color.

Meanwhile, classic black power anthems like Public Enemy's "By The Time I Get To Arizona" seem all the more appropriate as, from shootings to punitive immigration laws, Arizona fits Chuck D.'s description: ‎"And a smile on your face- 'cause the whole state's racist!"

Just imagine the racial intensity that could have destroyed this country if the attempted terrorist attack in Spokane had been successful:

The Associated Press has a report from an unnamed official in the investigation into the bomb discovered on the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, who says it was the most potentially destructive device he had ever seen — a sophisticated IED with a remote detonator.
“They haven’t seen anything like this in this country,” the official said. “This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I’ve ever seen.”
There have also been reports that the bomb was packed with shrapnel to maximize injuries, and placed on a concrete bench to direct the full force of the blast toward the parade marchers. This was an extremely serious attempt at mass murder, and we’re very lucky the backpack was spotted by city employees before the parade began.
The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s).

This country would have erupted in racial violence, with many furious at the resurrection of old hatred by old methods. And you know what? Those furious would be completely justified in their fury that, after 150 years of abolition, much of white America is still seemingly uncomfortable with the decent, equal role of a group that was brought here by force. Persecution politics breeds other forms of persecution politics. Let's just hope things get better.

Eminem and Jimmy Iovine on 'Recovery' Reviews

2011-01-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

This is amazing:

The Cato Institute: "How the War on Drugs Is Destroying Black America"

2011-01-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

I was actually legitimately surprised to see this article mailed to my mailbox today:

The main obstacle to getting black America past the illusion that racism is still a defining factor in America is the strained relationship between young black men and police forces. The massive number of black men in prison stands as an ongoing and graphically resonant rebuke to all calls to “get past racism,” exhibit initiative, or stress optimism. And the primary reason for this massive number of black men in jail is the War on Drugs. Therefore, if the War on Drugs were terminated, the main factor keeping race-based resent- ment a core element in the American social fabric would no longer exist. America would be a better place for all.

I have friends who I know would disagree with alot of the premises there. (Black conservatives are long derided, and even defined, by their dismissing the presence of racism.) Nevertheless, a headline like "How the War on Drugs Is Destroying Black America" is really pretty rough and hard hitting for the Cato Institute.

That Cato would put it is as their showcase article, written by New Republic contributor John McWhorter, illustrates that they may be trying to really break from the race-baiting, impenetrable border creating lot that passes itself off as "libertarian" at Tea Party rallies and Glenn Beck marches. (With a potential history creating disaster averted at an MLK rally in Spokane recently,the Cato Institute's decision to appeal to the Left seems even smarter.) Cato (and its similar satellites at Reason) all too often are riddled with articles like "Austerity Doesn't Mean No Growth" or "The Science of Libertarian Morality," which quite frankly have little appeal to the broad public that doesn't define their identity as "libertarian."

As for the substance of McWhorter's argument, it is succinctly put when he argues "the main factor keeping race-based resent- ment a core element in the American social fabric would no longer exist." This is usually illustrated in progressive terms by comparing the warehousing of black America (which usually starts in public schools that aren't too different from prisons) to a modern day form of Jim Crow, as is done in this lecture series, the advertisement for which I took a photograph of at the Central District YMCA in Seattle:

Alan Moore's Unearthing

2011-01-19T17:32:00.001-08:00

I received many gifts for Christmas, and one of them was a friend of the family buying something of my choosing. What was it? Alan Moore's Unearthing of course!

This is not a normal item, by any means, and certainly not a normal purchase. There is a $9.99 version of Unearthing available on iTunes, covering the audio version of the album. If you don't want to spare the massive cost of the original product (which, I would like to add, is available through this website by clicking on the Amazon widget to your right), you have the option of getting that cheap version. You can probably also bootleg it as well.

Following is the box of the box set, included within three phonograph records, a poster, a photo, three CDs and a transcript:

As you open the layers of this chocolate orange, it becomes increasingly clear that Alan Moore knows that you know he is strange and that he knows it about himself as well. There's no explanation for the artwork and there doesn't really have to be:

Once you've opened up this big folder, Alan Moore himself reminds you of how much more intimate the record is than the compact disc:

Our lady in nude makes an epic return as well:

There are several excellent shots of professional models throughout the rest of the record. I'm perhaps just not informed or intelligent enough to understand the relevance of the art to the nostalgic history of British comic books that is told throughout the album, but it is gorgeous nonetheless.

Alan Moore's mug makes a triumphant return both in the record artwork as well as in an accompanying photograph, which comes in a nice sealed envelope that I rudely unsealed:

Then comes the transcript.

That little makeshift preview of the Unearthing about wraps itself up. Clips of the album are available all over the internet, including this one:

I do recommend the leveling of currency involved in buying Alan Moore's epic record. Sure, it's a large sum but it's an actual auditory and visual experience that can't be duplicated through MP3 or even CD. (Believe it or not, I've listened to the records several times more than I have the CDs included in the box set, despite converting them to my iTunes.)

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Where Art Thou Masculinity?

2011-01-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

‎"We know where the men are separated from the boys, but does the world know?" That sentence alone, and the lack of anything like that or anyone capable of saying anything like that, is why modern society and masculinity especially is a shell of what it once was or even could be.

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Miles Davis' Hagiography

2011-01-18T10:25:00.000-08:00

Bob Levin left this comment for me on the Miles Davis "hagiography:"

I think Cheadle wants a hagiography. Miles is from my part of the country, and musically, you grow up with Miles' stories. You don't want a biopic. Just listen to the music. It's like eating meat. Eat the food, don't tour the manufacturing plant.

A little correction--Cheadle wants the role of Miles. And he could play it any way the story goes. Still, stay away from the manufacturing plant.

I generally agree, but such great stuff was done with Joaquin Phoenix and his work in Walk the Line that you can't help but wonder what could be done with Miles Davis. Musicians tend to be crazy and I'm not sure how much the general public would relate with him. Cheadle would be wise to go in a different direction and try to use modern computer illustration technology to provide a visual accompaniment to Birth of the Cool and Kind of Blue.

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Burl Ives - Cool Water

2011-01-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

Johnny Cash's latest posthumous album has a great cover of this song. I know it's near blasphemy to say so but, after hearing the original, I think it might be superior:

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Up A Tree

2011-01-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

I made this a couple years ago. Enjoy.

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Make San Francisco Bike Safe!

2011-01-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

I am very good friends with the man this happened to:

A serious hit-and-run accident on Christmas Day that left a 24 year-old man fighting for his life has neighbors again talking about safety at the corner of 25th and Bartlett where the incident occurred.

At 12:20 a.m. on December 25th, a car going east on 25th street, made a left turn onto Bartlett and hit the cyclist, who was going west on 25th Street, police said.

There is a stop sign on Bartlett but no stop sign on 25th Street. The cyclist had the right of way because the car was turning, police said.

Several neighbors wrote to Mission Loc@l saying that they have seen car crashes and several close calls in the area.

"I can't help but wonder if there was a stop sign, like there is on Bartlett at 24th, 23rd, 22nd, ...etc. Maybe this accident wouldn't have happened?" a neighbor said in an email. "I live at the corner and I've seen close calls with cars, bicycles, and most common is with walkers."

There are four way stops on Bartlett at the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Streets intersections.

Miriam Jacobson, another neighbor said she thinks that people use the smaller streets as shortcuts to avoid traffic.

Actually, to say that we're good friends would not be doing anybody justice. I have been friends with the individual since 1999, an eternity considering both of our lifetimes. He's seen me at my best and my worst and checked me at each of them. He designed the banner for this blog. I've tried to do the same checking for him but I'm not sure I've done the best job.

There were bicycling accidents, people getting hit by cars and similar events all during our growing up. People were killed jogging and bicycling in my neighborhood. He grew up in a much more car-heavy region so neither of us should be unaware, however, you never think this sort of thing is going to happen to you. San Francisco, it should be added, is even more dangerous in this regard than in the areas where I grew up.

I've seen him since the accident and the damage is visible. He's in a neckbrace and has stitches but he is walking, talking and laughing. He posted a picture of us together on Facebook and I commented by saying "I love you."

The lifestyle that is rife in San Francisco can be disorderly, strange and directionless. Combined with people driving in for work or nightclubbing from the East Bay, a huge homeless population, tourists, the massive urbanization within this tiny little area creates alot of friction. I'm glad to see that my best friend's injury hasn't become a simple bump in the road for either of us and that some sort of reform is being done in the "City of Love:"

During routine business at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting Tuesday, Director Cheryl Brinkman recounted how enjoyable it was to ride her bicycle on the new physically separated bike lane on Division Street between 9th and 11th Streets. Brinkman said she hoped the SFMTA would consider how it could improve the connection for cyclists between the Wiggle and the Panhandle, including the possibility of adding physical separation to the bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets between Scott and Baker Streets.

"I think it's such an important connection and I've been riding that stretch more and more recently," Brinkman told Streetsblog. "I don't know if it's the quality of the traffic changing, or if I'm getting older, but riding with the moving traffic so close to my handlebars is very unpleasant. I choose not to ride that section anymore."

Brinkman added that she had heard from several people living in the Sunset and the Richmond districts that they would ride downtown to work if it weren't for those three blocks along Oak and Fell. "It seems such a shame to have that great corridor but to have those three blocks that way," said Brinkman. "It shouldn't be designed so that only the brave cyclists use it. No one should be dissuaded because they are frightened."

As it turns out, Mayor Gavin Newsom is open to a study to improve that section of the bicycle network. According to Johanna Partin, a policy adviser to the Mayor, he would be "supportive of anything that would increase bike safety in the city."

I moved to the Bay Area years ago and probably would have lived in San Francisco and gone to SF State if it had not been for the chaos of the city. California State University - East Bay, where I've finished my degree, was closer to the South Bay and San Jose area. San Francisco is an old, old city and needs to revise its infrastructure drastically if it's going to be a city of importance in the future.

When I posted the story on Twitter, professional voice actress Hélène Janover retweeted the post and was kind enough to tell me, "I live in the neighborhood for years and know the dangers of being on foot or on bicycle there." Urban areas are like that and measures are necessary to make sure tragedy doesn't occur.

I'm currently thinking through ideas about this. A makeshift public service announcement aimed at everyone - pedestrians, drivers, bicyclists, lawmakers - in urban areas about the dangers of bicycling and the need to lessen the dangerous presence of cars in heavily packed urban areas might be a good place to start. This could go in any direction and I'm just excited to be active and not angry. If you'd like to get involved, let me know!

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We Are Glass

2011-01-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

Danged Immigants!

2011-01-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Voice of the Migrant.

As the friend who sent this wrote, "You can't sneak into North Korea, so it's immoral to sneak into the US! Let's write a song about it!"

How "The Dark Knight" Helps

2011-01-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Dagblog.

For all sorts of reasons personal and other, I never feel comfortable commenting on the wake of tragedy. Perhaps that's a mistake, as without proper absorption these things can just be forgotten and not learned from.

The political right as a whole is not responsible for the death of a child and a judge in Arizona.Columnist Kathleen Parker or American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, who have both written splendid works on the role of growing boys in our society, have no bearing on this madness. In fact, their writing may provide wisdom as regards the frequent alienation of young men that all too often "snap."

However, there is an ultra-paranoid tinge of American politics, which can be seen everywhere from Russia Today's Max Keiser to the insane talk show host Alex Jones to the bipolar Glenn Beck (who deviates from warm and fuzzy Billy Graham acolyte one day to the creepy aforementioned Jones the next) that is appealing to the basest level of people's fear zone. I experienced this first hand when I was working in Washington D.C. Thinking it would be good for a laugh, I handed a friend (who was a Tea Party supporter) some literature by the infamous Lyndon Larouche, the cult leader who has been running for president as a Democrat for three decades. Instead of laughing at it, I was caught off guard as this friend got really into Lyndon Larouche's monetary conspiracies and thanked me for telling him about them.

There's nothing "conservative" about the like of Keiser, Jones or Larouche and it shows the inadequacy of our political vocabulary to label them in the "liberal-conservative" paradigm. Instead, they're more like the other side of liberty that was illustrated so beautifully in the film The Dark Knight.

On the one hand, we do have the Batman side of liberty - willing to use rough tactics on the bad guys but only in protection of the innocent and embracing vigilantism simply because the corruption of the system has caused them to lose faith. On the other hand is the Joker, which as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred describes in the film, "just wants to see the world burn."

Instead of getting down into the flames of "right" and "left," it may perhaps be wise to look at the Batman differentiation. For whatever I disagree with him, Ron Paul does legitimately seem as if he believes his model of liberty will benefit society. His case against the war on drugs is the strongest I have ever heard. (It's worth noting to anyone who will now dismiss libertarian ideology that tragedies have been perpetuated by the state in pursuit of the war on drugs.) Alex Jones and Max Keiser, however, seem to have demons of a more personal nature that they use their wide ranging microphone to expel on the country like some sort of toxic fallout.

Superheroes Policing American Streets?

2011-01-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

The world seems to be descended into something out of a work of fiction, so why not comic books? This story comes out of Milwaukee, by way of Comics Alliance:

Newly released documents from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police department reveal that authorities have investigated reports of the existence and activities of a "gang" of rogue police officers known as the Punishers that may have been operating in the city since at least 2005. They are alleged to wear black gloves, caps and tattoos brandishing skull emblems, inspired by the Marvel Comics vigilante. Some of the policemen in question were involved in the beating of Frank Jude, Jr. in 2004 and were convicted of civil rights violations and fired. However, documents released as part of Jude's civil action against the city and his attackers reveal that the Punishers may have remained active through 2008 despite having been stripped of their police authority.

Jude was accused, apparently falsely, in 2004 of stealing a wallet and police badge at a party for off-duty police. The alleged Punisher cops -- who decorated their vehicles, lockers and bodies with the familiar skull emblem -- beat him savagely, kicking him in the head and groin, cutting off his clothes, jamming pens in his ears and threatening him with a knife and a gun. The biracial Jude said the Punishers used racial slurs during the beating, and he is seeking $30 million in damages.

In a less dark instance comes masked vigilantes in Seattle, my hometown:

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Your Republican Party

2011-01-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Dagblog.

Dennis Prager: Fallen Hero

2011-01-07T14:19:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Little Green Footballs.

I wrote up a comment on samuraishake's post and it turned into something long enough for an entire post, so here it is.

I listened to Dennis Prager's radio show regularly during the Bush years and stopped a little after Obama was elected. During the Bush years, he largely made alot of sense. He would talk about how the Left tended to use racial victimization, while illustrating that the Bush administration had brought in more minorities than any other administration. He had a really candid conversation with a caller of Indian descent about how, in her words, her culture found lighter skin to be preferable. Prager said gently that this was something she would have to overcome.

After Obama was elected, Prager descended into the mud. His columns are pure reaction and he is constantly (and apparently thoughtlessly) defending the Right against all criticism, buying into the nonsense that a liberal media is trying to paint conservatives as racists, when conservatives paint themselves that way and the media just highlights it.

I interned for a prominent conservative organization (which will not be named) and was disturbed by some racial comments co-workers made. It caught me off guard because I'd actually believed alot of the things I heard on Prager's show. I actually wrote in a letter to his program asking him if he thought there was a racism problem on the Right and what I should think of such comments. I got no response, not even a form letter.

I feel sorry for him honestly. He co-authored an entire book called Why The Jews that is about the historical persecution of the Jewish people. He's had wonderful, candid discussions about the role of men and woman towards one another. If he keeps going the way he's going, however, he's going to find himself surrounded by anti-Semites because he refused to see what's obvious.

Prager is a good example of what happens when a commentator ties himself to one side of the political spectrum permanently.

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Don Cheadle Lobbying For Miles Davis Biopic!

2011-01-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Little Green Footballs.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Don Cheadle is hoping Hollywood jumps aboard the Miles Davis train.
The "Iron Man 2" actor helped shape the screenplay for a Davis biopic in which he would star as the legendary jazz trumpeter and musical innovator. Herbie Hancock has reportedly been tapped to score the film.
"We just turned in the script and we're going to find some money to make this thing," Cheadle told The Hollywood Reporter at a party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of "Bitches Brew," Davis' game-changing improvisational double album.

There's one problem I have with a Miles Davis biopic and why it might work as an arthouse/independent film but not as a mainstream hit like Walk the Line or Ray. Miles Davis was a trumpet player and instrumentalist, not a vocalist. A sing-a-long musical element has been in most all successful biopics of musicians and I'm not sure how even a good director could get the average moviegoer to connect with Bitches' Brew. The director would have to highlight vocal-tinged songs like Blue Xmas with Gil Evans and make singers like Evans play a role in the film.

Also, for some reason a Miles Davis film appears in my twisted mind as a black and white, noir-ish film, centering around his 1950s-60s work. A little use of CGI to create a mystical element when he plays his trumpet (think Sin City) would be good too.

School Shootings: The Blood Is On Your Hands, America

2011-01-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted at Gonzo Times.

One of the gifts of Asperger's syndrome is that I'm not beholden to social regulations. I break them regularly and without any effort. When it comes to America's growing past time of school shootings, this gift may come in use.

Another one just occurred in Omaha, Nebraska:

OMAHA, Neb. (CBS/AP) Robert Butler Jr., the Millard South High School senior who shot two administrators, killing one, before killing himself posted a disturbing status update on Facebook before the shooting.
The status update reads:
"Everybody that used to know me, I'm sorry but Omaha changed me and f**ked me up. And the school I attend is even worse," the message read. "You're gonna here about the evil s**t I did but that f**king school drove me to this. I want you guys to remember me for who I was before this. I greatly affected the lives of the families ruined but I'm sorry. Goodbye."
Butler was new to the school. "He started going to school here in November," Omaha Police Chief Alex Hayes said. "He was a transfer student from Lincoln." He was the son of an Omaha police officer.

When I was a little kid, I was forced to transfer from View Ridge Elementary in Seattle to Meany Middle School, then a school located in the heart of Seattle and home to the historically second largest group of Black Panthers in the country. The bullying was so intense that I simply stopped going to school. I started going back, to a different school, the next year but in retrospect I should have just stayed at home. I would have been much happier then being placed in another taxpayer funded hellhole where children are regularly abused and then treated like psychopaths when they lash back.

If you wonder why so many children who have been bullied end up going loco, don't blame guns. Those are just tools. They could be using knives, hammers, fists, chairs or bricks and the anger would be the same. Blame yourself for not listening. Blame yourself for only thinking about bullying now, after a wave of gay suicides, when the Columbine School Massacre happened twelve years ago.

How many more shootings in how many more American towns and cities do you need until people start to think, "Wow, maybe there is something about our schools that makes people lose their minds."

Why do you think the rapper Eminem is so popular? Check out his latest video, "No Love." In it, a child lashes out at his tormentors just as many others have, only using his fists and feet instead of guns:

Believe me, Marshall Mathers is speaking for alot of people in that video, yours truly including. My upcoming autism book will detail in full the bullying I experienced. I'm not against collectively funded education (like taxpayer funded online courses for homeschoolers) but, if I ever have children, it will take quite alot for me to send my children to a brick and mortar school, public or private.

Commentator Joanna said:

I totally feel you. I was TORMENTED throughout my school years, and Iused to BEG my parents to send me to an alternative to regular school. All to no avail.

I will not send my children to school. No way in hell. First of all, students and teachers alike are often abusive. I would not want my child to be bullied, NOR would I want them to become a bully.

Not to mention that lack of truth in the school system's program of education. It is pure brainwashing designed to diminish the contribution of anyone but out white, male, so called founding fathers. No thanks.

No toxic environment for MY kids.

... I cannot help but wonder if this young man's race had something to do with his negative experience at that school, which was overwhelmingly white.

Defending the Huckleberry Revisionism

2011-01-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

Cross posted at Dagblog and Firedoglake.
Note to readers - Writing isn't cheap. As much as I enjoy it, I need your support for the means to continue blogging and for the means to publishing my book on autism, which is close to completion. You can help out by doing your shopping through the Amazon.com advertisement on the side of my blog. Several books come recommended for you, including the biography of Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears album, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, which was dedicated to America's Native American population.
Over the night, a great deal of controversy exploded over the revising by New South Books of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The frequent use of the epithet "nigger," which appears 219 times, is edited out and replaced with "slave. "independent Some of the most belligerent animosity came from Michael Moynihan, the gifted writer and editor at Reason Magazine:
Don't read Evelyn Waugh's Scoop or Black Mischief (colonialist and racist); toss the reactionary and sexist Kingsley Amis on to the fire (probably shouldn't read Girl-20; definitely shouldn't read Stanley and the Women); and simply pulp the entire back catalog of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series, which manages to offend every minority group, every country, every-not-an-Englishman on virtually every page.
There is serious outrage on the part of Moynihan, not a characteristic of most of his work. It's a bit reactionary but understandable. A Southern friend of mine, Will Pierce, who appears sometimes on podcasts for Gonzo Times, was equally outraged by this. It all made me think that Twain has a very emotional attachment for many people, especially in the south but certainly not regulated to that region. I'm of Southern and Middle American descent and when I ran it by my mom, a person who would toss someone out the window if they omitted the word "nigger," she said that it "takes away" from the relevance and impact of the word.
My own viewpoint on this is interesting. I grew up on hip-hop, and just rappers that should appeal to me like Eminem or the Beastie Boys. Over the years, I swallowed up Wu-Tang Clan (and all of their solo stuff), Jay-Z, Nas, 50 Cent and Kool Keith.
As I've become an adult, however, "nigger" and the more friendly "nigga" have disgusted me more and more. I still listen to some hip-hop but my library tends towards white, Filipino, and rappers of not African American backgrounds simply because, admittedly, once you've stepped inside the ghettoes of Washington D.C. or met older black men whose lives were malted with racial derision, you can't stand to hear the word anymore unless you lack some sort of compassion or have simply become numb. I no longer really think that black comedians and rappers are empowering themselves by redefining the word but just transforming into a new sort of oppressive usage.
That's not to say the original text should be banned from us. New South Books is publishing their book independently for educational use. This isn't an order from Obama's Department of Education. I have copies of the N-word heavy book on my shelf still and am pretty sure Homeland Security will not take them away.
Likewise, comic book adaptations like Classics Illustrated or the PBS series Wishbone, which featured a dog in roles such as Don Quixote and Rip Van Winkel, have veered away from strict adherence to the text in presenting them to new audiences.
Here is New South's explanation of their book in full:
A new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, forthcoming from NewSouth Books in mid-February, does more than unite the companion boy books in one volume, as the author had intended. It does more even than restore a passage from the Huckleberry Finnmanuscript that first appeared in Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and was subsequently cut from the work upon publication.
In a bold move compassionately advocated by Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben and embraced by NewSouth, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn also replaces two hurtful epithets that appear hundreds of times in the texts with less offensive words, this intended to counter the “preemptive censorship” that Dr. Gribben observes has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists nationwide.
In presenting his rationale for publication, eloquently developed in the book’s introduction, Dr. Gribben discusses the context of the racial slurs Twain used in these books. He also remarks on the irony of the fact that use of such language has caused Twain’s books to join the ranks of outdated literary classics Twain once humorously defined as works “which people praise and don’t read.”
At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain’s works will be more emphatically fulfilled.

Voice Of The Native

2011-01-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

After thinking it over, this blog is now going to be used as a bridge between work I do elsewhere, in order to bring it all together with a hopeful community. I have joined Amazon Associates and would greatly appreciate if you used the links on this page to do your shopping. I've recommended several books that I think will make for great reading. To start off this new era at Deschamps, as it were, let's celebrate New Year's Day.

Cross posted at Voice of the Migrant , Dagblog and FireDogLake.

I just recently moved back to my native Seattle. Returning here always has strange effects and they almost always have to do with music. Whereas California is fixated on film and media as its mode of cultural expression, Seattle speaks in musical notes. Nirvana was from here, as was Jimi Hendrix, Courtney Love, Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, Blue Scholars, the list goes on...

It's not Northwest music that I'm finding myself listening to, however. Instead, Seattle provides a keen reminder of the significance of America's native population. Seattle itself is a butchering of the name of Chief Sealth by stupid white settlers who couldn't even manage to get that right. Even if it is physically distant from the nation's capital or the writing of the Constitution, American history is in your face with the names of as constant reminders - Snohomish, Yakima, Muckleshoot, Puyallup. Washington state is host to reservations just like much of the rest of the United States, a sad legacy that is mapped out on the Governors Office website.

That sad history is reflected in music by numerous artists, Elton John and Johnny Cash standing out prominently. John wrote the song "Indian Sunset," which tells the story of a young Iroquois man whose heart is broken by the slow motion destruction of his people:

Johnny Cash made an entire album dedicated to America's Native population called Bitter Tears. A book has recently been released on the making of the album, called A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears by writer Antonio D'Ambrosio (which is linked to at the side of this website. "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," the story of a native of the Pima Indian tribe and World War II veteran, who descended into alcoholism after participating in the famed photograph by Joe Rosenthal at Iwo Jima in Japan.

That song is incredible, but the whole album is also inspiring. "Apache Tears" is one of many songs that should be permanently in one's music library:

I once had an encounter in California in which someone, who for whatever reason had logged in his mind that I must be a racist due to factors of his own decision, tried to latch me on a racist by bringing up the sad history of Native Americans:

Him: "When I was in Seattle, I noticed no real hostility toward black people but people were sensitive about Indians."

Me: "Indians? Well alot of Indians tend to live in Bellevue, I guess..."

Him: "So then Indians are the nigg*rs of Seattle and live in Bellevue because you won't let them in Seattle?"

Me: "Bellevue is actually a really well to do, affluent place. It's near where Microsoft and Bill Gates are located. Are you talking about Native Americans?"

Him: "Yes, I guess I should have said Native Americans."

That discussion, if one is liberal enough to call it that, was sad as it reflected how racially sick alot of people in this country are but made me feel proud that I was not even able to be baited on the subject because no such prejudice was there. Political correctness can go pretty off the deep end when taken too seriously but it's seem common decency to use the term "Native American" instead of the ignorance-oozing epithet "Indian."

In Seattle, much had often been said in disrespect about Yakima, where 33.7% of the population is Hispanic and 2% Native American, but on my few visits there I was left with the same strong impression that I had toward the Hispanic district of San Francisco. Any objective observer of America's Hispanic populations has to be left with an impression of a group that has taken society's lemon seeds and made it into lemon meringue pie, only to sell it back to the seed sellers. This lifelong impression, along with much of the research I did on Latin American politics while working in Washington D.C., is a significant reason why I started Voice of the Migrant, with the help of Nate Parham and Punk Johnny Cash.

Native Americans are largely undiscussed in the American media, as if their existence were a historical aberration. Foreign media, like Russia Today, do bring up their role in the American story in an effort to show the country's imperfections, while the like of Rush Limbaugh use their economic marginalization as red meat to his prejudiced listeners.

Americans can never have a real, holistic awareness of who they are as a people unless they consider the experience of Native Americans. Whether it's through a book like A Heartbeat and a Guitar, a graphic novel like Apache Skies, Dan Carlin's superb "Apache Tears" podcast or the video I've posted on the experience of Alaska's native population and Russian explorers, an easy and healthy resolution this year would be to become familiar with the people who were here first.

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Kent - Töntarna

2010-10-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

Flipping On Health Care

2010-09-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

Dan Carlin is one of my favorite political commentators. Carlin started as a libertarian and espouses alot of very libertarian rhetoric regularly, though I've notice him back away from the label. It's becoming clear why. In his most recent podcast, he said to listeners pretty harshly and dramatically, "My daughter was recently denied coverage because she has hay fever, so in case any of you were wondering why I flip-flopped on some sort of government health care, that's why."

Christopher Hitchens years ago called American health care a mix of the worst of socialism and the worst of capitalism. Rationing, long lines and denials despite good standing are all occurrences, and without the socialist consolation that at least the hell you're going through won't cost you anything. No, in the United States, our bureaucratic nightmare is for profit.

Carlin's experience wasn't an anomaly, and Hitchens' diagnosis still stands over a decade later:

Cathy Wiser, a former PacifiCare policyholder from the San Fernando Valley, recalled her frustration with the company. Testifying at the outset of the administrative law hearing in December, she told how PacifiCare had rejected medical claims for her son, who had Crohn's disease, even after she repeatedly faxed over forms indicating that he was covered.

PacifiCare lost the documents in its computer system, she said, heightening her anxiety over her son's health.

"Nobody should have to go through this," Wiser said in an interview last week. "Insurance companies should not be allowed to victimize patients at their most vulnerable, when they need them the most."

Wiser's experience sounds an awful like the sort of mice maze that students and their parents have to go through in the American public school system. Conservatives and libertarians have been right in their advocacy of more individualized charter school approach, but simultaneously seek to defend a system in which all the same problems are being done by the "free market." For some reason, when people like Wiser and Carlin have to fear for the health of their children due to corporate paper shuffling, a state sanctioned version just doesn't seem as frightening.

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Islamophobia: FL Koran Burning Pastor

2010-08-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

After just having seen Mississippi Burning and and not far from one of many trips I have taken to the southern United States, I can't help but think that the pastor in this clip says the word "Mossem" alot like other slurs like "nigra." This is really ugly, hideous stuff and it doesn't have anything to do with genuine concern for gays or women in the Muslim world. It's a movement of people anxious about a changing world and looking for someone to hate.

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Red Dwarf Class Warfare

2010-08-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

In the documentaries that accompany the DVDs for the classic British comedy Red Dwarf, it's said that Chris Barrie, who plays Arnold Rimmer, and Craig Charles, who plays Dave Lister, really did not get along. At all. At play there was likely the class tension that is strong in British life. I always wondered why the anger at each other was so intense in the first season of the show and that background explains it quite well.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Barrie and Charles, their not getting along actually made the dynamic more believable and the show even richer, dooming them to eight more seasons and possibly more with each other. Funny that, isn't it?

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A New Theory of Evolution: Animals and People Work Best When You Leave Them Alone

2010-08-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

Darwin has been amended:

Sorry intelligent-design fans, your theory is still wrong: Scientists at the University of Bristol have published a study arguing that Charles Darwin may have been wrong to argue that competition between species is the driving force in evolution. Ph.D. student Sarda Sahney and colleagues argue that the availability of “living space” is more important than competition. They argue that big evolutionary changes take place when animals move into spaces that are empty of other living animals—for example, when birds evolved the ability to fly. Darwin’s theory held something quite different—“that intense competition for resources in overcrowded habitats is the major driving force of evolution,” as the BBC puts it. A professor from Yale raises a good objection: "And in general, what is the impetus to occupy new portions of ecological space if not to avoid competition with the species in the space already occupied?"

This is actually pretty profound if I read it correctly. It validates what I've been saying for a long time and what George Orwell manifested in The Road to Wagan Pier:

I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and that people can be trusted to behave decently if only you will let them alone.

It also validates a whole different form of libertarianism - one best on individual sovereignty and not the sick social engineering philosophy of "survival of the fittest."

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What It Means To Be An American

2010-08-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Must watch material.

Penn Jillette on the Faithful Preying for the End of Atheists

2010-08-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson Go At It

2010-08-17T23:14:00.001-07:00

Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens debate Christianity:

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Hitchens speaks on cancer, suicide and God

2010-08-07T03:18:00.000-07:00

This is fairly heavy, so fair warning to anyone who doesn't want to have death on their mind. It's pretty cool to see Anderson Cooper and him such a frank discussion on national television about such intense issues of the human state.

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The Crazy Train

2010-08-06T15:35:00.001-07:00

This video shows a pretty good glimpse into how pathologically insane and dumb the Republican Party has become. "Obama wants to open the borders to Mexico and turn this into a Muslim country." Lord, are those two statements supposed to somehow support one another?

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Scenes from a Protest

2010-08-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

Nearly two weeks ago, there was a protest of pro-Mehserle demonstrators that didn't end up bloody, fortunately, but was pretty tense and emotional. I got alot of pictures of it that will probably never end up in publication. I'm going to post these in bursts so stay tuned.

Desperation in Oakland?

2010-08-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

Taken in the scenery aided Jack London Square area of Oakland:

Anne Rice Quits Christianity

2010-08-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

From Kirsten Powers at The Daily Beast:

In a posting on her Facebook page, she said: "I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

Christianity is not really the problem for Miss Rice. Christianity, along with other faiths, tend towards a cemented view of the world that is more of a form of longing for cultural perpetuity than anything else. Expressions of oppressive religiosity are more reflective of that sort of societal expression than of the actual validity of a belief in God.

Take, for example, the hijab and the nijab in Islam. The Koran mandates that women dress "modestly" - a suggestion that means a forbiddance of running ramparts in a bathing suit but not a mandate to cover one's self so only the eyes can be seen. A friend of mine, Larry Bernard, who knows quite a bit about Islam, credits this with the receding of Islamic society since its golden age. "A people in decline need to be controlled," he said. It is no wonder then that it was when the American south was at its economic nadir that its race relations were the most extreme, or that, in the midst of extreme recession, we are seeing political activity that would never have normally made itself known.

Anne Rice doesn't really have a problem with God, she has a problem with what God is used for. I am not a believer, but if she is able to formulate what God is for herself, she may find she doesn't have to leave her faith at all.

If not, secular humanism and free-thinking is booming in response to the religious fundamentalism that has usurped much of the world. Rice has quite a community of non-believers if she cares to join.

Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris

2010-08-04T23:39:00.001-07:00

This is brilliant.

Hatewatch: Burn a Koran Day

2010-08-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

With all the comparison of President Obama to Hitler by Tea Partiers, it appears that the Gestapo analogies are largely misplaced here. It really is amazing how badly religious sects treat one another:

On July 22, Hatewatch reported the announcement of a provocative spectacle
planned for Sept. 11 by Dove World Outreach Center, a twisted little ministry
based in Gainesville, Fla. Just about everything you need to know about the
event is contained in its title, “Burn a Koran Day”; everything else, including
the back story to Dove World, can be found here.

At the time of our original post, the event’s Facebook page had several
hundred fans. Now, nearly two weeks later, the page has more than 3,000 and is
growing. Many of these — largely drawn from the United States and Poland — have
added more than 2,000 images of graphic violence (committed both by and against
Muslims) as well as crudely designed anti-Arab and anti-Muslim Photoshop jobs
(including multiple versions of posters urging the nuking of Mecca).

What's really quite amazing is that this wasn't occurring during the Bush years. I mentioned on this blog before what Dan Carlin told me about bad economic times providing "the opportunity for things to flourish that would otherwise not have a chance to arise." That is definitely what is occurring here. We're in an America where political candidates are running on keeping their states ethnically pure and churches are organizing book burnings.