Memo Protests Continue -- Keep Hope Alive!

I didn't think I could get more annoyed about the lack of coverage of the "Downing Street Memo," but I got even more annoyed by it when I was listening to a lovely podcast of Counterspin this afternoon on the subway. FAIR has an action alert associated with the memo and the characterization of people who are interested in the minutes as "wingnuts."
Raw Story has published a nice little time-line of public statements connecting Bush to early Iraq war plans. It's nice, but doesn't include the kind of details that you get if you go check out Normon Solomon's Target Iraq, which is now online for free.
Brandon30721, of the Dailykos, suggested that the hearing should be held on the capital steps, not in the DNC. (That evil man, Sensenbrenner wouldn't give him a room on Capitol Hill.) People at afterdowningstreet.org are calling for CSPAN to broadcast the hearings, which will be on Thursday at 1:30pm.

Craziest Street Comments: Open Thread

What is the nuttiest, funniest, or most remarkable thing someone's said to you on the street? I ask because, at about 11am today as I was on my way to that celebrity hang-out, the NYPL, I heard a man muttering, in true a true Bowery-brogue,
"nice feet."
(I didn't respond)
"hey!" he got louder, "nice feet," he wanted me to KNOW, "Really! That's a beautiful foot you got there."
So, I took it in. I admit, I was pleased, but I didn't turn to see him. Maybe I should have, but I generally don't respond to comments from strange men. I was reminded of Trilby, whose feet were an erotic thrill among NY's elite in the gilded age.
So, how 'bout you.... comments from strangers?

I don't know why I'm disatisfied with the garden right now. I didn't realize those verbena were going to be so red!! 

The flower box looks great 

Rose in full bloom 

Iraqi Trade unionists on Tour -- June 17

Be There or Be Square...
Iraqi labor leaders are speaking in NY
Friday, June 17, 5:30-8:00 p.m.
1199 SEIU
330 West 42nd Street
9th Floor
New York City

This event is sponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), 1199ers for Peace & Justice, CWA-1180, UUP-SUNY AFT 2190, PSC/CUNY AFT 2334, and Code Pink New York. For more information see www.uslaboragainstwar.org or contact Nancy at codepinknyc@hotmail.com.

Top Ten Lists

I just got an email from a friend about "Human Events" magazine's top ten most harmful books of the 20th century. It's distressing to read, but if you're interested in what the wing-nuts think, go to here. Of course Marx and Engels topped the list, but I was most surprised to see John Dewey's book on education. They also include Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. John Stewart Mill's On Liberty and Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality" were runners-up...the latter probably because it is such an apt description of so many of the right.
If you look and see the ten books they think everyone should read, they're pretty standard fare (Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics, etc) but they also include Burke's wildly inaccurate "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (but no Tom Paine for balance) and Surprise Surprise, the Bible is #1 and the Federalist Papers are number two. Leo Strauss and some of the more wacked out people, like Hayek, only make it to "honorable mention."
But so readers, I'm sure I'm not the only blogger asking today,,,what would you list as must-reads for every college student? What would you put down as "harmful books"?
I generally don't agree with the idea that books are harmful but if any are, how 'bout these?
Moynihan report on the Black family
The Left Behind series
Charles Murray, Losing Ground
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Thomas Dixon, The Klansman (the film Birth of a Nation is based on it)
Theodore Herzl, Der Judenstaat (Herzl's Zionist manifesto)
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Herbert Spencer, Progress: Its Law and Causes (social Darwinism)
or Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of
Wealth
Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (analysis of how to sway crowds, a favorite of demagogues)
Jean Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (the original theorist of "supply
side" economics and popularizaer of laissez faire capitalist theory)

Ken Wiwa on Blair's Africa Commission, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner Case

The top story in the London Guardian today was about Africa. Bob Geldof's name was prominently displayed. Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro Wiwa, who was killed by the Nigerian govt. for his Ogoni activism, made interesting comment. It's almost amazing to see such a thorough-going critique of bad banking practices in such a mainstream newspaper at the moment that the British govt. is being hailed for its goodwill. He says the panel is good but the prescription for change, not. "For example, its insistence on economic growth as the only curative is hard to swallow. Is it likely that the very institutions, governments and corporations that have made a killing on the continent can be trusted to repent, tear up their business and political models and 'fix' Africa?
Finally he makes a point that suggests that what Walter Rodney said about the relationship between the West and Africa is till too true: He says....Africa is not poor. As the Africa Commission report has noted Africa is rich in human and natural resources. It has two-thirds of the world's mineral resources. Africa pays out more in debt relief than it receives in aid. Africa trains and sends 77,000 professionals abroad each year to work in North America and Europe. There are more Ghanaian doctors in New York than in the whole of Ghana.The problem is that Africans have been forced to live in nation states whose raison d'etre was not to enrich the lives of the people within them; rather, they existed to transfer the resources abroad.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, there is a story in the NYT on the debt relief plan, which

Also in the news is the reopening of the murder cases of the conspiracy to kill James Chaney, Micky Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. The Times article mentions the political impact that the lynching, about which much of the town's white population knew, still has for Neshoba County whites. What it doesn't mention is how the pioneer of today's Republican party participated in that in 1980, as Derrick Jackson pointed out in 2000 in Commondreams,
Reagan established the institute in 1980 by kicking off his presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss. The Neshoba County Fair for decades had been the legendary gathering spot of segregationists and near the site of the grisly murders of three civil rights workers.

Reagan took the microphone and, to the roar of thousands of white fairgoers, said, ''I believe in states' rights.'' Anyone who knows Southern race policy knows that saying ''states' rights'' is like waving a Confederate flag, telling racists they can do whatever they want to black folks. For a perspective from a Mississippi native, who can tell you exactly what it was about, no matter what the GOP-spin-meisters would have you believe, check out Donna Ladd's August 04 comments.

Mumia and Assata Shakur Update

You never know who you may run into in that hip hangout, the New York Public Library. Today, I ran into Graham Russell Hodges and Kathleen Cleaver (not at the same time.) Hodges is working on a new book. Cleaver was in town for a meeting.
We talked and she gave me a new perspective on two ongoing cases. I want to write first about the Mumia Abu Jamal case, because I posted about it a few days ago, and was quite critical of the current defense team. I must admit that the two issues that have troubled me most since 2001 were the sectarian attacks on people involved in the defense movement and the arrival on the scene of Arnold Beverly, whose story of being hired by the mob to kill Daniel Faulkner has always seemd a bit far-fetched to me- it sounded like something from the movies. However, note this...The story makes more sense if you think about how incredibly corrupt the Philly police force was and is.
If I'd been keeping up with the news, I would have known sooner what Ms. Cleaver told me, that the ultra-sectarian lawyers are off the case. Indeed, as Lindorff wrote in Counterpunch a little under a year ago,
In the past year, Abu-Jamal has finally seen the light. Dropping his flakey and woefully inexperienced legal duo (neither attorney had any federal death penalty appellate experience at all), he has hired the San Francisco-based Bryan, an acknowledged death penalty litigator and appellate pro, for his lead attorney.
He has also dropped the Arnold Beverly appeal, though many of his more ardent backers seem still to have missed-or ignored--this important development.
For his part, attorney Bryan has been reaching out to people and groups that had backed away from the movement in recent years. "I'm convinced that Mumia is innocent. Not everyone agrees with that, but this movement is open to anyone who feels that there has been a miscarriage of justice and that Mumia deserves a new, fair trial," he says.
So, despite the completely bad decision by Judge Dembe, it looks as if there's some hope for the movement to grow.
What's going on with Assata Shakur?
Every now and then, one hears of an effort to get Assata Shakur out of Cuba and bring her to the US. Shakur escaped from prison in 1979 and is now living in exile in Cuba, where she has received asylum. It seems that every few years, New Jersey makes an effort to get her back. However, this time, the United States has listed Assata, now a 57 year old grandmother, as a terrorist, and has added a 1 million dollar bounty to her head. The US has apparently circulated
information about the bounty internationally, so that bounty hunters from all over the world can go hunt for her. A creepy thought, and so weird. Cleaver wondered, "Why is this so important to New Jersey," and compared it to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. As Cleaver pointed out to me, the current bounty offer & the terrorist label are terrible for a number of reasons, so if you haven't yet, check out and see what you can to support the "hands off Assata" campaign.

Open Thread: Anxiety Index

Apparently it will take decades to repair the ozone hole above Antarctica. Remember the Ozone hole? Still there. I think about it all the time in the Summer when I am out in the sun.
From the same website, you'll find this information:
Statistics

# Over the past 100 years global mean temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius and in Europe by about 1.2 degrees Celsius
# The 1990s was the warmest decade over the past 150 years (EU environ site)
# Temperatures are projected to increase further by 1.4 to 5.8 C by 2100
# The UK, with one per cent of the world's population, produces 2.3% of the world's C02

Statistics 1 and 2: (Source: EU Environment Agency); Statistic 3: (Source: Friends of the Earth, 2003)


Quotes

"Global warming, caused by burning fossil fuels, is the worst environmental problem we face today."
# Greenpeace, 2003

"In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
# David King, UK Government's Chief Scientist, 2003

"The parties should protect the climate for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity, and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."
# Article 3, UN convention on Climate Change, 1992 End of item

And what does our govt. have to say?
Even when they're caught red-handed fixing the scientific reports, the Bush admin stays on message. This time, at least they got caught.
And now....post your favorite anxiety producing stories. Let's see if we can drive up the anxiety index along with the temperature.

A House Made of Books, A World Made of Books

Go to this link to take a photo tour of a really wild house. I wish my house looked like that, but it doesn't. I'm just back to a world governed almost entirely by reading.
If you think of reading as virtuous, reflect on this. I'm reading this book right now, by Ernie Lopez and Rafael Perez-Torres called "To Alcatraz, Death Row and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw." Ernie Lopez, whose life story it is, was beaten hideously by his father, whose sole occupation was, according to him, to sit in the house reading all day, "that was his life, reading, and he would read every day, all day long up until midnight." Despite his education, he was cruel to his children. It really was because of him that little Ernie became a criminal. Because his father demanded that Ernie make money for the family by selling newspapers during the height of the Depression, he found himself stealing in order to make enough money on bad selling days.
I read all day today too. Today it was Gerald Horne's book on the Watts uprising of 1965. A thought provoking account that I wish I read before seeing "Bastards of the Party."
As for what's going on in the world today, I heard Brian Lehrer talking to Steven Spinola and Gifford Miller about the various development plans and it sounds like at least some people are going to try to do the stadium anyway. Noooo! I'm glad that at least someone on the show (Lehrer) pointed out that there's a glut of office space in NY and a housing crunch. It doesn't make sense even to build high-rise office space in downtown; Golderberger's right. Make Ground Zero into housing, puhleese.

Very Bad News about Mumia Abu Jamal's Appeal

This morning I had an email about Judge Pamela Dembe's May 27th rejection of Mumia Abu Jamal's most recent appeal for Post-Conviction relief. You can read about the case and the decision at free mumia.com One of the main items in the email is that there has been "a deafening silence from many of those who were outraged ten years ago."
Why is this? Part of it has to do with the overturning of Abu Jamal's death sentence in December of 2001 in Pennsylvania. This move was viewed as a victory and considerably slowed momentum for the defense. I recall thinking during the five years of activism on this issue that commuting the sentence would be the most skillful strategy for making the movement "go away." (Readers should know however, that while the sentence was overturned, it could still be reinstated, especially after the turning down of this appeal by the Court of Common Pleas).
I think that the movement's lack in momentum also has to do with the some very bad political decisions on the part of people in the defense movement upon the publication of a seriously problematic book by a member of the defense team. Briefly, there has been so much sectarianism in the immediate defense movement that it has been very difficult to retain a mass base. The best political analysis of the case appears in Dave Lindorff's book, reviewed here. Not all the slowed activism on the case can be attributed to the focus on the war. After all,when I read the latest decision by Dembe, it was clear to me that all the issues are still there, and quite urgent to a number of people. The primary reasons she gave for denying the appeal were that it was "untimely" an issue that has haunted all death penalty cases since the 1996 passing of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and McCleskey vs. Kemp decisions, and that the witnesses brought forth by the defense team are "untrustworthy," which speaks to the general disbelief of anything done/said by prisoners/defendants in criminal cases. Both of these issues are even more urgent today, given revalations from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the patriot act.
However, when I hear the deafening silence around the case, I am still reminded of of the words of the first lawyer, Fred Moore , who fought for Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s...

...Sacco and Vanzetti are entitled to the unswerving loyalty of those who pretend to be their friends. A committee that would serve them must be broad gauged enough and intelligent enough to act in such wise as to permit all shades of political and industrial opinion to cooperate freely in the struggle for justice. I am compelled to believe that your committee is not actuated by such motives....all but... are of one political faith and you have looked askance and with disfavor upon the aid or assistance of anyone unless they accepted your political dogma. Members of your committee are not even affiliated with organized labor. You have never made any sincere or honest effort to reach even the Italian public of America. It is impossible to secure a decision from you which is abided after being made. At the so-called convention of last February you created a committee of members of the same political faith as yourself and all Italian. Arbitrarily and by your own action you have cut yourself off from all contact, moral and racial with all other groups in America. Now you are bankrupt. (Fred Moore to SVDC, 7 July 1924)
While I wouldn't say what Moore said - either about the SVDC OR about the Mumia team, I was frustrated by the firing of Leonard Weinglass from the case and alarmed by the strategic direction since 2001. My larger point is that the Sacco-Vanzetti defense was damaged by sectarian conflicts in ways that injured the lives of the defendants; I think this is true of Mumia's case as well. Moore was eventually fired from the case that year because of his efforts to control the political direction of the defense committee instead of just working on the legal aspects of the appeals. (If you want to read more about the story behind Moore and the defense committee, you'll hvae to wait on my book...or read my dissertation.)
Meanwhile, with the rejection of this latest appeal by Judge Dembe, there is a new urgency to Mumia's case, and interestingly, it looks as if momentum may grow. I have been unable to find any further information about Mumia's current legal status, or about what the next steps in the case are, but just this week it looks as if some Mumia supporters have wound up in positions of power in a "renegade" NAACP chapter in Ossining, NY (right outside Sing Sing prison.) I think that's a very good thing, no matter what my disagreements with some strategic decisions. FYI: There's a march in Philly on June 16th to support Mumia and oppose this most recent court decision. You can read about it on links above.

Crumbling City Dept.

I don't know whether it's working on a book, or what, but I was wide awake at 5 this morning. My solution for this kind of insomnia is to use it, at least somewhat productively. If I stay awake it will mean getting all my important procastination chores done when I would otherwise be sleeping, leaving more time for doing the real work of the day.
So, now that the stadium's gone, the big NY development stories are about Ratner's plans for the Atlantic Yards and what the hell is the plan for downtown. Paul Golderberger's article in the 5/30/05 issue of the New Yorker, "A New Beginning" was a sensible plan....but possible? likely? Tell me what you think.

totally other news...the white stripes' new album is out. and I loved it when I saw this headline on the newstand the other day.

Quote of the Hour and more

Every student of history knows that this phenomenon is a common one; rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms - and so it has been from the reign of Augustus to the present day. They cherish absolute power withthe moral authority that comes from popular assent. Almost all have failed in this endeavor and learned to their cost that it is impossible to keep up such appearances for long when there is no reality behind them.
Alexis De Tocqueville, 1856

And then there's this tidbit about French history.

Nice picture of anti-stadium celebrants.

Crazy News

I just got an email from h-afro-am that there is a plan to exhibit African people in the Augsburg Zoo this month. That's right, people, in the zoo. You can read about it on the prometheus website. It does not seem to be an urban legend.

Stadium News & More

OK, it's time for some Good news updates. I'm not really hugely familiar with city council politics, but this all seems promising to me, even though this one-neighborhood-development-vs.-another-one" is not the reason to jettison the Jets stadium. Do you like how NY1 refers to this as jeapardizing NYC's bid for the olympics? That's a pipe dream. If I were France, Germany and the rest, I'd boycott this rogue state instead of sending my athletes to play here. After all, we all know that the jingoistic media will just cover "team America" anyway. It makes me ill to think about it.
Also in the good news department, is some motion among party elites around the Downing Street Memo. I heard Amy Goodman do this interview on the radio this morning and I was impressed, but also dubious. The only way to get an impeachment movement going on this issue is to base the entire 2006 election on impeaching the pres. and ending the war. Does that mean that the Democratic party is suddenly going to become oppositional?? oy. hard to imagine.

Confusing headlines...What is going on with Microsoft? Some headlines say they made concessions, while others represent the inability of the EU to get Microsoft to share proprietary info on the Windows operating system with Open source people as a victory for Microsoft. Clearly, a corporation whose software controls 90% of the world's personal computers is in a position to tell the law what to do. Here's what the folks at slashdot have to say about it.

And OK, I've been printing some mean things about students lately. But none of them has ever pulled off something this f---ed up. As Jenny Holzer said, "abuse of power comes as no surprise." But really, I am surprised.

I heard that there was a "free ice-cream social" in Prospect Park today. This was it - five kids and the staff of the Lefferts Historic House hunched around a hand-cranking ice-cream machine. I didn't have the heart to sit and wait while they worked...especially when the handle broke .But I still say that Brooklyn is the best Borough. & Thanks to the nice man at the Lefferts House for letting me take this picture. (for more about the site go to: the lefferts house website. 

Is that round-leafed mystery plant a hollyhock sprout? And what about that thing next it to with the ruffly leaves - a weed?? 

Sunday Miscellany

It's 9pm on a Sunday night and I'm only a few pages into DeToqueville...but I'm not ready to settle in just yet. I have summer fever.

Before the fever here are some links: This article and this one about "grade grubbing" via the DailyKos diaries.
When it comes to school and entitlement, there are other, perhaps less insidious, but more frightening events going on, as Joseph Massad reports in his current Counterpunch article.


Tales from Prospect Park:
It was finally a beautiful, hot weekend in NY. Both days started with me in my garden, unknowingly contributing to soil compaction as I wandered about trying to identify the various mystery plants pictured above, and then wound up with me wandering around in Prospect Park.
On Friday night, I was waiting for some friends to show up, and sat reading from around 7:15 until 7:45, on a bench near some 14-15 year old boys skateborading at the 9th street entrance. They were in today's version of junior high rebel gear: long hair, baggy pants, and Marilyn Manson t-shirts. Seated near me were a hip, young mother and her son. I liked her instantly because of her warm smile. Her son was about ten years old, quiet, in a mousy way, with a neat plaid shirt tucked into his khaki shorts and wearing a baseball cap. Pretty adorable, really, but the picture of a school victim in a different context. The two of them and I watched the teen-agers, who insulted each other as they performed their tricks and came up with games such as "jump over/on top of the soda can" on a skateboard - to pass the time. Their hostility was immense. I remembered the boredeom of those years and smiled at their creativity, even as I was appalled at the way that they treated each other. "I skate better than you while I'm eating my ice-cream," one of the better skaters said, drolly licking his good-humor pop while his clumsy friend looked on, transparent in humiliation. They laughed hysterically at each other, calling each other all sorts of names when the the trick failed.
One of them was trying some trick and the others were busy burning something on the ground, and his shame was already worse than anything the others had dished out. He shouted, "fuck!" "Oh fuck..."I'm fucked!" "fuck me!" but nobody noticed. As I watched them I thought about the romantic way that I had viewed such kids when I was their age, how they had seemed daring, exciting, smart, challenging, how attracted I had been to kids like them. I sat there now imagining homes where they were ignored, brushed aside, or where their obvious talents were irrelevant to over-anxious, achievement oriented parents. Unlike the grade-grubbers described above, these middle-class boys have opted out of the game, but in doing so, have created a new competition whose standards are just as impossibly high.
My co-spectators, the mother and son were a happier family, no doubt, than the ones that I imagined these boys came from. Initially, I had thought that the mother was charmed by the scene. We both reacted to something at the same time, I don't remember now, but I turned to her and said, "Kids are so mean." She nodded, "that one's a real piece of work," pointing to one who seemed like the leader. At some point, it became clear that it was not she, but her son who was entranced, that he wouldn't let her leave, that he admired and desired those mean, creative boys. She was impatient, "It's the same thing over and over," she looked bored, "just jumping and cursing."
For him though, it was obviously new and exotic, part of that mysterious world that he couldn't wait to enter. She got up, and went across the square, leaned against a rail and waited. He crossed through the skating area most deliberately, very careful to appear completely unconcerned. I imagined the trouble coming her way all too soon.

The News Gets Older Every Day

Actually, not quite older, but my immersion in the "antient" as Burke would put it, is progressing apace. Today, I came across this set of writings from Italy by Margaret Fuller, one of country's great long lost people. What do we owe her and her fellows? Some smart person defended Burke for progressives in a comment on yesterday's post, and I tried to give the best anti-authoritarian argument I could. Check it out and add your own commment, if you like.
For what we owe ourselves now, go to john conyers' website and sign the petition about the "Downing Street Memo." And if you're in Brooklyn, may I suggest that you amble over to Prospect Park where there will be a free "ice-cream social" at 1pm along with other exciting events, such as free reading at the public library. Speaking of libraries, in another symptom of our backwards corporate city government, there is more bad news. I was in the poorly funded public library last week and they had the little tables set up for the patrons to write letters to the mayor and the city council. They also have a donation page, if you feel so inclined.

Too Early To Think

There's a lot of news happening today, especially regarding NY and the stadium, but I'll leave that to others who are more informed.

Here is an eerily apt quote from Thomas Paine, that could relate to today's Supreme Court in ways he hadn't thought about.

Those who have quitted the world, and those who are not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other, as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive: What possible obligation then, can exist between them: what rule or principle can be laid down, that of two non-entities, the one out of existence, and the other not in, and who can never meet in this world, the one should control the other to the end of time? - Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man 1791

Now, I think that "pro-lifers" might read this as saying that the authors of the Constitution should not be able to "choose" to kill the "unborn" and see it as justification of their wacko ideas. However, it makes more sense to read it, even narrowly, to argue that the dead and what they wanted - or what we think they would have wanted - can't dictate to the living. Paine is not speaking about the "unborn" as they've entered our current political discourse, but interestingly, lumps them with the dead into the category of non-existence. His larger point is that rights can only be held by the living, not by the dead, and I would extrapolate from the importance of "living" over "life" as the basis of rights in general, that only the living have any rights to speak of. The implication of the connection between the already dead and the not-yet-born is that neither group actually is alive and living in the world. Paine makes it very clear that it is up to people actually living in the world to make the laws according to their present conditions.."the circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it."
And take that, you "originalists."

I have way too much to do today to really blog, but I just wanted to thank Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast for posting the pic below on her blog.
If you can stand being awake and upright at 6am and in you're in the city, it's worth seeing Marc & Mark of "Morning Sedition" in person. The guests are more hilarious in person than on the radio, and Marc M. seems to be more at home with a big audience - the "stand-up" vibe is much more obvious than on the radio.

I got up super early yesterday to go to Manhattan and see these guys, Marc Maron and Mark Riley - the funniest team on Air America radio It was fun and the coffee was free. Thanks to Jill at http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com for both taking and posting this photograph.  

Open Thread: Anxiety Index

Who can find the most anxiety-provoking news story of the day?
How about this story about the end of US regulation of the carcinogenic chemical atrazine? This isn't a story of the day...actually the linked stories are all pretty old, but as far as I can see, the regulation hasn't been restored, although the EU has by now banned the use of atrazine entirely. In fact, according to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the EPA is making .illegal deals with pesticide companies. Back in February, when I was a little preoccupied with other things, it seems that the NRDC sued the EPA and found that:
"The EPA's secret, backroom deals with pesticide makers are clearly against the law, and they're a threat to our health," said NRDC attorney Aaron Colangelo. "EPA is required to make independent decisions on pesticide safety, instead of negotiating deals with the chemical industry."

According to government records obtained by NRDC through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPA officials met secretly more than 40 times with representatives from atrazine's main manufacturer, Syngenta, while the agency was evaluating the weed-killer's toxicity. Ultimately the agency agreed to allow atrazine to stay on the market even though the chemical has contaminated drinking water sources across the country. (See EPA Won't Restrict Toxic Herbicide Atrazine, Despite Health Threat.) The EPA also has been involved in private negotiations with the chemical company Amvac over the status of the insecticide DDVP (dichlorvos), which it sells under a number of trade names, including "No-Pest Strips." These negotiations violate EPA's regulations and federal law, specifically the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Freedom of Information Act, according to NRDC's lawsuit.

Live from the NYPL: The Torture Debate

Last night I went to a forum at the NYPL featuring Mark Danner, (who's not as hot now as he used to be, but is really, really smart), Mark Bowden, Elaine Scarry, Darius Rejali, and Aryeh Neier. Because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc. people been having these debates in print and in person a lot lately, as David Simpson notes in his February review of a whole set of books about torture in the LRB. Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down" represented the pro-torture position, though he denied that he was really pro-torture. He argued for what he called "coercive interrogation," which he said should still be illegal (but moral) only in the "ticking bomb" situation (the hypothetical scenario in which a suspect has information about an imminent attack.) As the discussion went on, it ultimately came out that his notion of the "ticking bomb scenario" was pretty broad, so that any interrogation with a high-value suspect in Al Quaeda could be called a "ticking bomb" one.
Simpson's LRB review brings us an excellent critique of the "Ticking Bomb scenario," via philosopher Georgio Agamben: "The state of exception or emergency presumed by the ticking bomb scenario is in fact the normative state of the nation at war, and the US is now indefinitely at war. Giorgio Agamben tells us that the power of the modern state is always premised on the state of exception and on its ability to dispose of bare life as it sees fit and with impunity. The Jay Bybee memo provides empirical evidence of just this, as it argues away any limits on the president’s ‘constitutional power to conduct a military campaign’. Indeed it finds that any efforts to impose limits must themselves be ‘unconstitutional’: even Congress is thought to have no say in how troops are deployed or how prisoners are interrogated."
Only one of the panelists, Darius Rejali, whose forthcoming book "Torture and Democracy" promises to be an encyclopedic history of modern torture, made such an over-arching connection between the modern state and the use of torture as Agamben, and commented on the widespread belief that democracy and human rights exist in opposition to security, that the punchline of the popular ticking bomb story, which he said comes from a 1961 French novel, "The Centurion" is that "democracy has made us weak, but real men know how to respond." The popular version of this notion in the US which I write about in my own (forthcoming) book appears in the heroic character of the "vigilante cop," most recently immortalized with the Dirty Harry character. And need we go further? Hannah Arendt, in Origins of Totalitarianism writes about the centrality of the leader who is accountable to no law, and whose awe-inspiring power as a leader comes from his embodiment as an exception to all law.
This was really an extraordinary discussion. The audience was enthralled for over two hours, and we could have stayed longer. The four anti-torture speakers were not only deeply knowledgeable, but also astute in their analysis of the issues at hand. One of the best parts of the discussion was in answer to an audience member's question about why the Abu Ghraib scandal had not elicited a national outcry. One reason was a lack of leadership from the opposition. As Elaine Scarry put it, it seemed that in the presidential election, the position was that torture was too serious, too grave to be part of the election. Thus, "only if something is minor should it be a major election issue," and this serious issue should just be "respected." Danner was a bit less abstract in his comment. John Kerry, he said, was in the bad political position of having denounced atrocities in Vietnam, and this was deemed bad politically, un-American. Finally, I'll end on this note, all of the anti-torutre speakers pointed out the use of torture is related to the US's weakness in Iraq, that it reflects a profound failure of intelligence gathering, which can only be done in an environment where the US's political mission has some support from the population. Clearly, the continuing, ongoing, use of torture by the US is an urgent problem that the US must face, not only because it is a moral outrage, but because it is so dangerous for the American people who fear terrorist attacks. One might say, in fact, the ongoing torture is itself the ticking bomb.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has published a response to the Bush administration's dismissal of their 2005 report.

Call the City Council about the Corporate Give Away

It's not a good blog day for me. First of all, I'm in a public space and I'm afraid I'll get in trouble 'cause I'm not doing the approved book browsing. Secondly, I've just, after being up till 3:30 AM, finally submitted my grades and now want to get away from all things electronic for at least a while.
However, I think everyone should call the City Council members who are voting for the stadium. Here's a link with the details on what happened.
I think about the stadium every time I have some hateful experience on the subway. Yesterday, as I was leaving home, I discovered that my train had been replaced by a pokey shuttle bus to downtown Brooklyn. Instead of going through that time-consuming ordeal, I walked to a neighboring train. However, my otherwise successful alternative travel plans were wrecked when a "smoke problem" between 125th and 42nd caused the "East side" trains to go out of service indefinetely, spitting me out about 1/2way to my destination. thanks.
Now, this is just the time, don't you think, that the city should be spending a huge amount of money on an unnecessary, traffic-creating, corporate boondoggle. Oh yeah, and while they're at that, why don't they do something about the public schools? Thanks to my anonymous friend in Chicago, who dug that gem about Mark Felts out of his father's pack-rat newspaper collection, as I recall. That's an excellent archive your Dad has developed, and you should be proud. It makes me smile to think of it.

Breaking News...

wow! Now, let's all sing the praises of anonymous sources.

Which road was that exactly, Mr. Burns?

I was a bit perturbed at the NYT's latest act as a mouthpiece for the military this past Sunday. This piece on the dangers of the airport road seems like such a transparent piece of "damage control" on the Sgrena/Calipari shooting. The article suggests that Sgrena was traveling on the dangerous "route Irish," but it turns out, that according to the investigation as reported in the Christian Science Monitor, that Both countries agree that the Toyota Corolla carrying Ms. Sgrena, Mr. Calipari, and an Italian driver was traveling south on a road the US military calls "Route Vernon." It reached a US checkpoint stopping traffic feeding onto "Route Irish," the notoriously dangerous highway to Baghdad International Airport.
The article that I found so annoying was by John F. Burns, who commented in the book, Embedded that "For some reason or another, Mr. Bush chose to make his principal case on weapons of mass destruction, which is still an open case. This war could have been justified any time on the basis of human rights, alone." Such a liberal media, right? Burns must have gotten where he is today because he seems to know just how to spin things so that they seem so accurate, and yet...hmm, fit into the desired story.
And speaking of lickspittle newsmen, my brother, that avid newsreader, told me about a part of Galloway's delivery of the goods that I missed. On his way into the senate, he ran into Christopher Hitchens, who will be now forever known, I think, by the epithets hurled at him here: Before the hearing began, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow even had some scorn left over to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer Christopher Hitchens. "You're a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay," Mr Galloway in formed him. "Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink," he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's questions and staring intently ahead. "And you're a drink-soaked ..." Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a real thug, aren't you?" he hissed, stalking away.
I met Hitchens once. I don't know if he was drunk yet, but he was leering at the undergrad ladies, and wore a medallion and his shirt was far too unbuttoned for my taste.
And now, a large pile of exams awaits.

NYC, Still a Police State where you can see good movies.

While looking sadly for a place to eat on Friday night,after discovering the closing of our favorite Japanese place, Mie, my brother, sister-in-law and I all came across the evidence of the encroaching police state. Police vans lined the street and a lone woman was crying in a wheedling sing-song, "don't ride your bike in the street...you'll get arrested!" to each biker who passed. There was a crowd of legal observers in green baseball hats taking notes, and a little further away, a sizable rally at St. Mark's Church. It was the end point of another NYC Critical Mass ride. I'm really pissed off that despite the fact that May is supposed to be "national bike month," something that could really use promoting in a genuine way in NYC, that the odious, corporate mayor, continues to crack down on a movement that should be seen as improving NY's quality of life. Imagine what it would be like if the city were to ban private cars!

Movie Comments:
This was a heavy movie weekend for me. On Friday night I saw the Jet Li movie, "Unleashed," which, like many of Luc Besson's creations was a bizarre mix of hokey sentimentality and extreme violence. This must be why Besson was initially heralded as the French director with a Hollywood sensibility, a man making films French in Name Only. I like the review I linked to above, which encapsulates this ethos with the statement, "Luc Besson...makes the kind of films that a 14-year-old boy might come up with if he suddenly had access to millions of dollars to bring his fever dreams to life." In this case, the fever dream is of a man (Jet Li) who is kept as a dog by a vicious gangster (Bob Hoskins). "Danny the Dog" goes out with the gangster to collect debts. He beats people to death when his collar comes off and he's ordered to "get 'em" or "kill 'em." The fight sequences, complete with audible bone-crunching, allow the audience to get the kung-fu thrill that they must have come for. The movie, however,like so many ultra-violent spectacles, gives the audience what it wants and then moralizes against it. Danny is finally liberated through music (it turns out his mother was a pianist, murdered by Hoskins) and grows as a human being in the warm embrace of Morgan Freeman and his teen-aged daughter. Given Besson's continual pairing of older men with MUCH younger women, I think the characterization of Besson's films as the products of a fourteen-year-old mind makes sense. The relationships are simplistic, idealized, and rarely sexual.
On Saturday, with friends, I saw a much more "mature" film at BAM, "Madame Brouette," a hilarious, and yet serious feminist Senegalese movie that reminded me, oddly, of some of Lizzie Borden's films of the 1970s. Moussa Sene Absa's film focuses on a woman who strives for independence from men and at the story's beginning, defies convention by taking in her friend who's fleeing from her abusive husband. Not only was the film completely entertaining, which is so rare in "issue oriented" movies, but the music was fantastic. The performers/composers were the French-Canadians,Majoly&Serge Fiori (of Canada's "Harmonium") and the griot, Mamadou Diabate who won the Berlin film festival's "silver bear."

And now, it is too sunny to sit here blogging.

(almost) Too Pretty To Blog

It's finally warm out after a rainy week. I'm cooped up inside reading electronic student final exams....so many descriptions of what James Madison was talking about in "Federalist Papers #10." It's the very hardest thing they read all semester. At times it's the most interesting.
I met a professor who argues that #10 is "fetishized" and isn't half as important as some of the others. You might think that this was a simple intellectual/academic type of argument, but this same professor savaged me last year at a meeting for being a spokesman for the hegemonic "progressive paradigm" in contemporary historiography. Hmm...now, which person was it that alerted all scholars to the importance of #10 -- it was Charles and Mary Beard, the veritable founders of the "progressive paradigm" in historical scholarship. Who else likes to write about Fed #10? why Howard Zinn - at whose popular "People's History of the United States" many wizened conservative academics scoff. And what is my students' reaction upon reading Fed #10 (when they get it?) -- total shock: the Founding Fathers were trying to deter democracy. A ha.
On a similar, anitquated note, I've been reading Edmund Burke lately and found, in my searches through contemporary scholarship on him, that hs is still beloved by many. When one reads his long disquisition on the importance of state religion as a foundation for all societies, it is clear how much the neo-cons are old paleo-cons.
And now....for sunshine.

Bad News Hits Home

My bro sent me this sad link to this story of a Durham cross-burning from the Daily Kos diaries.

Contrasting Headlines on Koran story; A good news source for the Balkans

Headline contrast:
The New York Times says, "Documents Say Detainees Cited Abuse of Koran by Guards." Let's note that the documents in question are FBI documents. Isn't it interesting that the word FBI doesn't appear in the story until you get to the second sentence. Then, the Times makes sure to say that the accusations are "unsubstantiated statements made by prisoners during the interrogation."
Fox's headline is "Govt: Still No Credible Koran-Flush Claims"
They say: Asked why he felt certain that this detainee did not affirm his allegation out of fear of retaliation, Di Rita said, "It's a judgment call, and I trust the judgment of the commanders more than I trust the judgment of Al Qaeda."....Di Rita also said that the terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay had been trained to make such false claims — adding that there are guard log entries of numerous incidents in which detainees themselves have abused the Koran or made allegations of abuse in order to get other detainees agitated. Aren't you glad that Fox is giving idiot right-wingers something to spout?
In direct contrast to what Fox and Di Rita say, what we know from a recent release of several detainees identified as innocent of terrorist charges, is that they were warned NOT to talk about the abuses they suffered.

Another story story based on the same report by Pentagon PR flak, Di Rita, suggests that he actually blames the abuse allegations on inadvertant actions by guards. However, let's not blame Fox's reporters for this one, since the DoD's own version of the story is both constantly changing and also just not true.
To me the issue here is that DiRita's description of detainees "trained to lie" and willfully desecrating the Koran is part of the general pro-torture rhetorical strategy of referring to the people in Guantanamo as "terrorists" and "jihadists." Fox and Rumsfeld agree on the basic notion that anyone in prison, simply by virtue of being there, must be guilty. I went to the "newshounds" website and found this transcript of a Bill O'Reilly interview with law professor, Rosa Brooks. At the end of the of the transcript, there's a copy of the DoD memo that Brooks keeps mentioning. If you want a tidy location for a bunch of memos and whitehouse doublespeak, go findlaw, here.
Meanwhile, in Baku.....
If that doesn't aggravate you, check this out. There's a new pipeline project going straight from Baku (in Azerbaijan) bypassing Russia, and bringing oil into the mediterranean markets. According to Bush, this deal "advances the cause of freedom" while cozying up to such charmers as Ilham Aliyev. Who is Aliyev? He's the son of the previous Azerbaijani president, Heydar Aliyev, who is not a democrat by any stretch of the definition of that word, but rather a relic of the Stalinist world. By the way, you can find a great "behind-the-scenes" account of Bush's visit to Georgia by Paul Rimple on the same website: www.diacritica.com/sobaka

Amnesty International; Student Evaluations and reflections

Just an hour ago, Amnesty International issued its annual report on international human rights violations, which this year highlights the US's use of torture, calling Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time." I'm also glad to see AI's intro to the report the statement that "The “war on terror” appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international “terrorism.”
In personal news...it's that time of year for Student Evaluations.
Yesterday, after a student I used to have mentioned a site to me called "ratemyprofessor.com" I did a little reading. I did indeed have a few ratings there, basically two per year that I'd been at that school, and as expected, they reflected the views of students who had strong reactions to me. One said I was a "wonderful woman." Another one said I was "downright rude" despite being so young. I'm not so sure what this means, but it may be my intolerance of the standard level of student rudeness and disrespect that I encounter, which I find somewhat maddening. I'm hoping that my patience for certain types of student shennanigans has increased, so that I am less likely to display so openly how irritated I am by the things that some students do. Overall, my sense of the totality of the evals was that they would be a fairly good guide for the discerning reader - if a student was interested in a professor who did not "spoon feed" as one student eval put it, my course was for them. If they were looking for an easy "A" they should go elsewhere.
I looked up some of my friends (one of whom is quite famous) and saw such contemptuous things "he is SO boring, but SO easy." Of another, one student wrote that he is "a narcissistic personality" and of another: "he has anger management problems." It was very clear that on this website that being "easy" or easy to get an A from was the principle qualification for getting a lot of "smiey faces" and a positive rating; another important characteristic was being "nice" - which of course is a good thing. The students might, in a employer to servant relation, look upon these teachers with complete contempt, but yet give them positive ratings for delivering the goods (an easy A) despite being boring/stupid, etc. All of it is enough to make me somewhat sympathetic to the views expressed in this article on student evaluations which discusses them as part of a generally corporate university model that turns students into consumers and teachers into service providers.
My question is, in regard to all of this, does being a likeable teacher make you a good teacher? I'm sure that there's a balance...but I will share this: I always get very high marks from faculty observers, and some of my higher-rated colleagues are very excited by some of the "results" I get from my students in terms of writing and articulation of ideas. When I presented my stuff for them at our local "teaching and learning center" they actually didn't believe that I was showing them work that students had really done. I want to believe that I can bring students to this level, because it is more interesting FOR ME when my students really shine. I will nonetheless have to work on making the process of getting there less odious for other students. One person said I barely taught, but simply "made them read" - which reflects an expectation of a more traditional "banking model" of education.
Oddly, I think that the student evals on the website can tell you much more about both the students and the professors than the ones that we use regularly at my nameless school because they provide space for students to comment, AND because they highlight the qualities that are most important to students (apparently): "ease" and "clarity." My general feeling about these evaluations is that they are useful, but that they should not be taken with as much seriousness as they are in the tenure and promotion process - unless they provide space for commentary, which can at least indicate information to administrators, chairs, etc. as much about the student as they do about the person being evaluated. Student evaluations are much less important in research institutions than they are in more teaching oriented colleges, and in some research institutions, being a popular teacher is still seen as a sign of being not a very good scholar. While I have often balked at this and seen it as typical elitism, I can also understand why it is so, especially if you yourself do not teach in a research institution. I think that any serious researcher and dedicated teacher will agree that there is a serious gear shift involved between doing research and teaching. It is an unusual scholar who has the capacity to be extremely rigorous and demanding of himself/herself and speak within a community whose standards for performance continually go up, while at the same time continually relaxing expectations of undergraduates, taking things apart and making them simpler and simpler to understand. The lower the level of student preparation, the harder it is to do this job well. One also begins to feel a responsibility to do some serious compensatory work. As every study that has ever been done has shown, those teaching introductory courses at lower levels get consistently lower evaluations than those teaching advanced courses.
I know that my own evaluations were consistently higher when I taught in four-year colleges. I imagine that some of this reflects my own frustrated ambition.... I also think that the more experienced a teacher is the easier it is to shift gears between the two parts of academic life. My recollection as a graduate student was that junior faculty were both extremely challenging and interesting AND often seemingly arbitrary and unreasonably demanding in their expectations. Given the fact that people in grad school are trained for the intellectual olympics and basically not prepared at all for anything less than teaching at institutions similar to the ones that they attended, it may take a long time for them to adjust their expectations. To add to this, the people who got the very highest ratings at my school - whose students said they made the subject interesting and fun - were those who had been trained within that system, had PhDs from within that system, and/or whose primary goal it had always been to be there. The people from outside institutions seem to have a harder time adjusting their expectations, not only for their students, but probably their expectations of what their careers were to be.

Open Thread: Anxiety Index

Please post the most anxiety-provoking news item that you came across today. I'll pitch in with this one. Genetically modified corn mutates rats. AIEEE!! How many of you really believe that we haven't already all been exposed to this creation by monsanto in some corn-syruped concoction?

Google News Tricks

If you haven't already: try this neat trick. Go to "Google news" and read the headlines for the U.S., then shift the country in the box to "UK" or "Canada." Notice the difference? All the English language papers seem to have the American deal between Republicans and Dems. over the filibuster as the number one story, but the second story in the US is about Bush and Karzai signing a "Strategic partnership." For India, Britain, Italy and Canada the big international story is the string of deadly car-bomb attacks in Iraq, which killed 49 Iraqis yesterday.
Juan Cole, as always on top of the events, notes that among these was the death of the newly appointed anti-insurgency director in Iraq:

AFP says, "Major General Wael Rubaye, the new commander of a special operations room recently set up by the ministry for national security to coordinate the fight against insurgents, and his driver were shot dead by insurgents in the capital early Monday, the cabinet office said in a statement." When your coordinator of the fight against insurgents is shot just after he is appointed, you can conclude two things. 1) You have been heavily infiltrated. 2) Your security is not good.

(How does Google decide which stories to place first? According to Google New's FAQ:
Google News has no human editors selecting stories or deciding which ones deserve top placement. Our headlines are selected by computer algorithms, based on factors including how often and on what sites a story appears online. This is very much in the tradition of Google web search, which relies heavily on the collective judgment of online publishers to determine which sites offer the most valuable and relevant information. Similarly, Google News relies on the editorial judgment of online news organizations to determine which stories are most deserving of inclusion and prominence on the Google News home page.
Other items:
This morning on the DailyKos, there's more stuff about British memos.
I also saw some disturbing news about Venezuela a couple of days ago. There's an interesting story about Fox from the "Newshounds," whose slogan is "we watch Fox so you don't have to." The story, which describes outright lying, distortion, etc. is a window into Fox's journalistic "methodology."
Speaking of wing-nuts, I just found a story on "GOPUSA" (that's right, the people who brought you Jeff Gannon) referring to the Republican compromisers as a bunch of "Republicans in Name Only."
Yesterday, I received a tattered mailing from my alma mater and discovered that my old pal, Dave Noon, has what he refers to as a "surprisingly successful blog": "Axis of Evel Knievel."

Finally, in my late as usual relationship to big stories...I've been reading William Shawcross's "Sideshow" which has long been on my list of books to read. When I went looking for some updates about the author I discovered that he's become a major apologist for imperial power. It's too bad, because he's quite a good writer.

Academic Freedom

One anonymous commenter alerted me to the important event of David Graeber's firing at Yale. The interview I'm linking to is over a week old - I'm not that good at keeping up with Counterpunch. However, it's very important to go there, read the article and sign the petition supporting Graeber, an anarchist anthropology prof. who's just been fired at Yale - probably because of his involvement with GESO, DAN and other groups unbeloved by the tenured fac. at Yale.
He says: If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said "academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue about.
I haven't seen that much hoopla about this case because Graeber doesn't have tenure. (I can't wait to read the interviewer, Joshua Frank's new book, Left Out: How Liberals Helped Re-elect George Bush.) If you want to see who's behind the wicked war on leftie profs, go look at the "students for academic freedom" website. I won't link here. It's easy enough to find - David Horowitz and assorted toadies and cronies. One of the most odious pieces there is a typically politically naive piece by that intellectual poseur Stanley Fish. rggh.

After the rain, the garden is looking lush. 

I finally found lantana for the planter. 

I put more plants in, and plants already there are growing with all this rain. 

Cosmos sprouts growing 

Lots about Saakashvili and Bush, Finkelstein's new book Hooray!

I was shocked when I began reading the latest FAIR action alert that came in my mailbox because it referred to an "inaccurate Newsweek report." As I read down the page, I realized that FAIR was cleverly pointing out the inaccurate Newsweek reporting done on the eve of US bombardment of Iraq.
I was surprised to read the NYT report that George Bush had been greeted "rapturously" by a crowd of 100,000+ in Tbilsi. What I know about Georgia and its major problems with energy all come from a movie called Power Trip that I saw a year ago, but it seems to me that the public there wouldn't be (or shouldn't be) wildly supportive of an apostle of privatization such as our prez, the Oiligarch, Shrub. According to AP report from almost a year ago, "Russia has strategic interests in Georgia, including two Soviet holdover military bases, one of them in Adzharia. The United States also sees Georgia as strategically important because of its location and role as host of a pipeline that is to bring Caspian Sea oil westward." If we start from that point of view, then this article by William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune, which suggests that the whole event is a major provocation to Russia, makes a lot of sense.
I'm guessing that it's because the US played such a prominent rolein what's called the "revolution of roses" that took the hated and corrupt Shevardnazde out and brough the popular, American educated, NATO member-wanna-be, Saakashvili in that people in Georgia greeted the Prez. with such fervor (if indeed they did.)
Last item: I just got an announcement in my mailbox about Norman Finkelstein's new book Beyond Chutzpah. This book, which takes on Alan Dershowitz, is the product of a long controversy. I googled Dershowitz and Finkelstein and found a debate on Democracy Now Two and 1/2 years ago. Dershowitz has argued that the only people who read Finkelstein (whose parents were holocaust survivors) are "neo-nazis" and "fanatics" - in case you're inclined to be persuaded, he puts Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn into these categories.
I cannot stand Alan Dershowitz, so I look forward to this new book with glee. I saw Finkelstein present his work on what he calls the extortion racket of Holocaust reparations cases at the Socialist Scholars Conference back in 2000. He's totally brilliant, but his politics are such that he's had great difficulty in getting and keeping an academic job, from what I hear. Now it looks as if he's nailed something at DePaul, which is good.

Anxiety Index at Red Alert

I've only got a few minutes tonight before getting back to Robert Fisk's book on Lebanon. Today I was in the gym working out, listening to the very un-funny, very serious, very informative WBAI's Free Speech Radio News," which I'm happy to see has a podcast. A lot of the news was frightening; the scariest piece, to me concerned oceanic dead zones. The one that hits the Gulf of Mexico every Summer is larger than ever. Although they've been around for years, I'd never heard about them in such detail.

I think I should maintain an anxiety index. We can start it this way: Every day, whoever reads this can add a comment with the most wildly alarming news-item of the day. We can compete over the worst piece of news. On the days when the news is really bad, I will know because my only desire will be to stick my head in the sand. It's beyond red alert. The anxiety shoots right past "red" and goes right to "lights out," from "alert" to "inert." Maybe we shouldn't do it, competitive anxiety will make me more anxious. As some of you know, I get anxious enough just crossing the street.
On that note, I'm going to go to bed and read about the really bad stuff that happened twenty years ago. Since it's over, the only thing I can worry about while I'm reading is why the hell I still haven't finished the book and when I will get to the next one in the pile.

Right Wing Bloggers Jump All over Newsweek. I Retch.

I just googled "Newsweek" and "Koran" and found several websites announcing "Newsweek Lied, People Died" and referencing "Rathergate."
I don't usually blog in a state of aggravation but I am, in fact, "outraged by the outrage" that I'm seeing on the web in relation fo this issue. First off, so far as I can tell, while Newsweek's editor has apologized, there has been no retraction, and there are several different sources going back over the past year who have made this allegation abou tthe Koran flushing incident. SusanHu of Daily Kos has a good set of comments on this, and they've been linked by several, right and left. It seems to me that if the US weren't torturing people in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and if they hadn't already done some pretty shocking things related to deseccrating Islam, this story wouldn't be as believable as it is. Mark Crispin Miller's blog has a couple of excellent articles that refer to the history of these allegations.
Before writing this entry, I was reading loony right wing blogs, but I don't want the twits to get any traffic, so I'll just say this instead of linking: It's sad really. These people are so genuinely outraged by any criticism of the USA. I think the pose of indignation must be really satisfying if you are so over-identified with the American government that you are unwilling to face the truth about it. Al Franken had a great insight about the ultra-righties in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: Those conservatives who call anyone who criticizes American policies a "traitor" love their country the way a three year old loves its Mommy or Daddy. And now the little three-year-olds are jumping up and down in the sandbox, excited to point the finger at Newsweek instead of looking at the hard facts: People around the world don't like America because America is an actively oppressive force in their lives. The only way that these folks can justify their beliefs about the righteousness of the US is to call all its critics "traitors" and "terrorists." Isn't it sad? It reminds me of how the Israelis reacted to coverage of the massacres of Sabra and Chatila.

It doesn't help that our lap-dog media is unwilling to shake these toddlers out of their illusions.
Let's just list some of the actually important crap reporting jobs that we've seen over the last year that have gotten no attention.
1.Where is the fucking outrage about the smoking-gun memo?
2. and let's recall how The NYT bolstered Bush's bogus WMD claims.
3. The media skewered Dan Rather and CBS over faked memos, but the real story should have been that Bush still never told the truth about his national guard service.
4.How about the way that the big news agencies keep reporting on Social Security as if it's in a "crisis"
5. Then there's the way they keep saying that George Bush was elected president.
6. and they also write as if Bush were actually the president, the guy in charge.
What if we go back further?
6. How about the crap coverage of Iran Contra
There are so many outright lies that get repeated, revealed and then retracted... and now this outrage over an allegation that has been public for over a year and hasn't been revealed as a lie, only a story without a clear confirmation from an official source who is connected to the institution being criticized.
The cynicism of the current administration boggles the mind. Take for instance this slice of Danner's article on the "smoking-gun memo":
an interesting observation that an unnamed "senior advisor" to President Bush made to a New York Times Magazine reporter last fall:
"The aide said that guys like me [i.e., reporters and commentators] were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"


I think the only explanation for the right-wing frenzy is that there are SO MANY lies and SO MANY inaccurate stories that praise and minimize the catastrophic errors and outright wickedness of the Bushies, that the righ-wingers are extra excited when they find even a minor inaccuracy in something critical of the administration. Even their use of "Newsweek Lied, People Died" is an (unconscious?) acknowledgement of what they already know: Bush sent people to die, and has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis and it is all based deliberate lie, a hustle.
Oy Gevult. I think I'll go mad if I think about it any more.

Military Prisons, Torture, Electronic Bird Cage Liner

One of the NYT's top-stories today concerns Newsweek's apology for printing a story (which they do not retract) about the Koran being flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay. If you're interested in reading further on the issue, Juan Cole's website has a thorough commentary about it, which includes a fascinating email from a US military man about the trashing of a Bible during his POW simulation training.

There is also a tepid piece in the Times about Priscilla Owen, sadistic screwball, who is being nominated by our Prez. for the federal bench. In case you didn't read "Bushwhacked" a while back, you can read Lou Dobose's account in Salon. Joe Conason also has a piece about Owen there, which connects her to Enron. I wondered immediately about her relationship with that Houston outfit when I noticed that the times said she had worked previously on "obscure pipeline cases."
Meanwhile, for real news, it is probably worth it to actually go to the newstand and buy a copy of the New York Review of Books this week, as it will print the entire 2002 memo which offers what Tom Engelhardt calls "irrefutable proof" of the phoniness of the war. I'm sure that such a widely circulated and popular magazine's publication of this vitally important memo will turn the tide of public opinion against the war

And as we all wait for that moment, I'm reaching my one-hour blogging limit. My only comment on all this is to be found in Get Your War On.

anti-stadium media blitz and Demonstration -- Tomorrow

Everywhere I went today I was reminded of the stadium swindle. I was in line at the bank and saw an anti-stadium ad on NY1. I was on my way to the train in Park Slope and saw a billboard over the entrance way. The sources of the Ads is a group called the New York Association for Better Choices. This may all be a prelude to the demonstration against the stadium that is planned for tomorrow. You can read more about the demo here. (NYABC doesn't seem to keep their website up to date). Here's the info:
Rally Against the Stadium!
Saturday, May 14
2:00 PM
McCaffrey Park
43rd St. just east of 9th Ave.
RAIN OR SHINE--shelter will be provided in case of inclement weather.

Global Animal News

I was just going through my links this morning and found this interesting piece of news from Capitalist Contradictions, which announced that the CAFTA agreement paves the way for exporting my stepfather's favorite part of the turkey.
This little food export story, symptomatic of the weird life created by the ease and speed of global trade relates to what I had planned to write about already. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine told me that this species of turtle sold in Chinatown was an invasive one that had already destroyed turtle biodiversity in NY's Central Park. The green turtles you see in those plastic boxes this summer are American, called "red eared sliders," according to this article in the NY Press. Here's an article that describes the 18 different turtle species in NY and what you can do to help protect them. Note the presence of the "red-eared slider, non-native" on the list.
So, I spent the better part of the morning reading about invasive species and the threat to biodiversity. It's one more thing to worry about. As I'm writing this, Howard Zinn is speaking on the radio about the ideology of "Manifest Destiny," the story of another "invasive species," the United States of America. OK, it's a strained segue, but US imperialism still sucks.

In Case you Were Wondering...

Bring your antihistamines with you today if you're in NYC There's a pollen attack in progress.

More News from Iraq

Seymour Hersh was great on Democracy Now today. His comment on why it's wrong to call the opposition to the US in Iraq an "insurgency" is the best I've yet seen. He says, "I'm wacko on this word “insurgency.” Just so you know, an “insurgency” means, suggests you’ve won the war and there are people who disagree. They’re rebels or they're insurgents, as I said. No. We're still fighting the war we started, folks.
He says some brilliant and frightening things here. The pace of the discussion, if you read the transcript,is dizzying: this idea of the US's appropriation of the Mukhabbarat, the Salvadorization of Iraq, Hersh's assessment of the mindsets of the President and his cronies.
There is also an intriguing story about conflict within the military-industrial complex over the division of the spoils of this war. It's interesting to see the one place where the Bush admin. wants more corporate accountability to the public sector, to government, even. Well, we all knew there were limits to the "starve the beast" ideology.
The beast is starving in NYC, as you can see from this sad article on the desperate attempts to do something about the dramatically different schools that NYers attend.
Finally, PPRM alerted me to this new article by Matt Taibbi that suggests an alternate investment plan to replace the $600 million stadium subsidy deal. Why doesn't NY just BUY the NY knicks?

Germination!

I went out and squinted at the places where I'd put seeds, and while they could be weeds, I'm happy because I think I have the tiniest beginnings of cosmos and hollyhocks. We'll have to wait to and see about the morning glories and the Texas bluebonnets.

The cosmos are germinating 

Neumann vs. Klein, Corporate Give Away News

Just finishing up two solid days of complete busy-ness. I'm amazed at the amount of time one must spend in meetings in today's academia. It's a relief to finally make it into a classroom, and it's beyond relief when it's time to hit the library.
There is a grim article about the impact that the end of import quotas will have on smaller producing countries such as Cambodia. As those economies go heading toward the toilet so that we Americans can wear cheap clothes made in China and India, there's more corporate give-away news. And there's some more. And then there's more examples of privileges for the privileged.
Interestingly, provocatively, and indeed, sadly, Counterpunch's Michael Neumann has written a strident critique of Naomi Klein's most recent article in In These Times.
The critique reminds me of debates at the Left Forum a few weeks ago, when some argued for supporting parts of the Iraqi resistance while others said, "no to do that is to be imperialistic. you just need to support the resistance." I can see the justice of both positions, but the accusation by those who say "support the resistance - without making distinctions" that those who want to make distinctions about which members of the resistance to support are just being imperialist, arrogant, ugly Americans, I find both intellectually problematic and strategically not realistic. The "support the resistance w/out qualification" crowd seems to me to make a strawman of the other side.
To begin, Neumann makes some claims that suggest to me that he is living in somewhat rarified company. Of Klein's argument that the left needs to expose the lack of democracy of the US occupation, he says, "Everyone but some few Americans know this, and those few Americans are either too steeped in their prejudices to be moved, or don't really give a damn whether the US is out to make Iraq into a democracy." This doesn't fit with the people I've met who are attached to an idea of America as "good" and American intervention as a force for "good." To expose the truth behind the occupation is one of the most vital tasks of organizing a movement. I don't find it helpful to simply dismiss these people as impossible to move.
Neumann dismisses the possibility of making choices among forces opposed to the occupation and makes an analogy to WWII, arguing, "you couldn't say you wouldn't support Stalin if you opposed Hitler." This is true generally, particularly when involved in military action. I even used the Spanish Civil War analogy when I was talking to Anthony Arnove after the Left Forum debate, that it would make sense to argue that people didn't say "we can't support Republican Spain because there are Stalinists in it."
However, that doesn't imply the reverse, that we can't criticize the Stalinists because we are supporting the resistance. It can be argued, a la Fernando Claudin, that Stalinism crushed a revolutionary movement. It would certainly have helped the anti-Stalinist Left in Europe, if there had been a powerful anti-Stalinist left in the US.
When you look at the day to day actions that make up resistance and warfare (as Klein did while in Iraq as a journalist) it seems reasonable to expect that you might gain a more complicated set of attitudes about the resistance. It might even strike you, if you were on the ground, that the victory of one side might be particularly terrible. I'm struck by this in reading Robert Fisk's accounts of Lebanon. Is it wrong, if you are looking ahead to a potentially very drawn out occupation to learn something more about the resistance, and is it wrong to make choices (to an extent) about what kinds of resistance you can personally be in solidarity with? ISO people after all, are very critical of The Philippines Communist Party, although that party is repressed by, and acting in resistance to, a very repressive government that is allied with Bush's imperialist "war on terror."
What is it exactly that Neumann and others believe Klein is advocating? Perhaps i am being naive, but would the American left's support for Iraqi trade unionists, for example, as opposed to the American left's supporting the Islamic Fundamentalists who are currently assassinating trade unionists, really be an example of arrogance?
So, I'm frustrated with Neumann. I agree wholeheartedly with his point that you actually don't need to know the reasons for the war in order to oppose it effectively. He's right: people on the left do spend way too much time refining analyses as if knowledge will in fact set us free. When I was a grad student, it used to drive me crazy when people said that what we needed was a better theory.
On the other hand, I have great respect for Naomi Klein, and it bugs me to read something that's so personally critical of her, to the extent that he refers to her position as barely different from Bush's. This is a polarizing overstatement of a difference, don't you think, particularly among people who endorse "out now" as a position.
Along the same lines, I think Neumann is dangerously wrong when it comes to a winning strategy for the movement. He dismisses the US troops as potential allies, and eschews organizing to bring more people into the movement. Ultimately, he calls for strong, militant, clear action by people already opposed to the war. This may produce militant demonstrations -- but there is little evidence that a nasty (as opposed to a big) demonstration will actually succeed in ending a war, or that such demonstrations have ever succeeded in ending a war.
In Vietnam, and probably in Iraq, the single biggest factor in pushing the war to the end was not the degree of militancy of the civilian resistance in the United States, or even the fact that some in the antiwar movement supported the NLF, but rather, the growth of GI resistance. If you want to encourage and support GI resistance, as part of a support for the US working class, any support for the Iraqi resistance needs to be argued in such a way as to not be completely alienating. While it might feel satisfying to rant in the manner of Neumann, I have found that this type of argument - because of its tone if nothing else - tends to be what turns people away from the left and leftists. Is it overstated, needless, posturing? What do you think?