Memo Hearing
Today, in the basement of the Capitol, Representative John Conyers held an unofficial hearing on the Downing Street Memo. The ball is rolling.
politics
Hope is the Antidote
The grassroots activism surrounding the Downing Street Memo has recently begun to percolate up through the corporate media into newspapers and television. Although the story isn’t garnering front page or top-of-the-hour coverage, I am beginning to feel an imminent tidal change in the zeitgeist: finally, America is getting a clue. Perhaps the constant barrage of infotainment isn’t numbing the masses like it used to. After all, you can only distract a man so long with shows starring slutty slack-jaws scampering about before he notices you’re simultaneously stealing his savings and sending his sons off to slaughter.
Downing Street and the Secret of the Pro-Life Murderers
The following is an email I wrote to my colleagues last week. The corporate media has yet to address the memo in a manner befitting its importance.
Dear Friends,
You are receiving this email because I respect you and want to let you know about a very important matter. Several weeks ago a British memo was leaked to the London Times. This document, now widely known as the "Downing Street Memo", was comprised of the minutes of a meeting between Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his advisors in the summer of 2002. I have attached this document in PDF format for your perusal. The text details the coordination between the US and UK for a war in Iraq that had not at that point been approved by our Congress. The following is a paragraph from the memo, with an interesting part bolded:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Governor Schwarzenegger Protest
Today the Governor of the State of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, visited my place of work amidst a protest consisting of teachers, nurses, and other union activists who are upset about his proposals. I made a video clip of the protest with my digital camera and have attached it to this entry.
News Sources
The disconnect between print, television and internet news has grown increasingly evident lately. For years, only profit-engendering news was deemed worthy of space on the paper that once grew as trees in our forests or the airwaves that belong to us all. Now that we've got a medium that hasn't been thoroughly corrupted by greed yet, independent sites like Buzzflash, Truthout, Alternet, and Common Dreams are publishing items that become huge scandals months down the line on traditional news sources.
Votester Meme
I just had an idea…what if you threatened all your friends that if they didn’t vote, and didn’t threaten all their friends similarly, you wouldn’t associate with them anymore? Based on the six degrees of separation principle, wouldn’t this get most everybody out to the polls? Or is this an overly hostile action that could backfire and make a bunch of non-voting enemies, or worse, Republicans?
What Should We Do About Terrorism?
On 2001-09-13 I wrote the following in response to the terrorist attacks and subsequent debate over how to react.
An Eye for an Eye vs. Turn the Other Cheek
A few days ago, if you had asked me, "Should we ever bomb our enemies?", I would have given you the pros and cons of shooting weapons at people: destroying your enemy, but occasionally killing innocent victims. It was easy for me to distance myself from the so-called 'collateral damage' because I didn't have to be bombarded with the imagery of, say, innocent Yugoslavian people jumping from the burning buildings on which we had just dropped a couple of missiles. But everything is different now, everything has changed; we are now the victims, and we have a choice - to treat our enemies as they have treated us, or to turn the other cheek, so to speak, and to refuse to stoop to their level.
On the hypocrisy of American audiences
Before the invasion of Iraq and the Oscars, I went to a theater to view Martin Scorsese's film, "Gangs of New York." Set in tumultuous New York City in the mid-1800's, the opening scene chronicles a battle between an Irish immigrant group known as the Dead Rabbits, led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), and the pre-existing Anglo group calling themselves Native Americans, led by Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). The Priest consecrates his ragtag army as they prepare their crude homespun weapons, and leads them out of their slum caves and into the bright crisp wintry solitude of an intersection in Five Points.
On the realities of discourse as opposed to pipe dreams about emergent democracy
The meme about the emergence of a global consciousness through the medium of the internet is rising into the general awareness. I don’t think the people who make these pronouncements spend much time actually communicating on the web or other locii of public discourse. The ignorant, brainwashed, and willfully malignant are, if anything, more pronounced online, perhaps because they normally hide behind social niceties in “real” life. And in fact, many who claim to be open-minded are actually trapped in a narrow world as well.