Live from the Dump: Broadcasting hope from an unlikely site

Bantar Gebang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, is Indonesia's largest dump, measuring more than 100 hectares and growing by 6,000 tons of trash per day. The site--populated by hundreds of scavengers in search of food or items suitable for resale--seems an unlikely place to germinate hope. Yet Radio Anak Kampung Bantar Gebang, located right on the dump site, seems to be doing just that. A community radio station started and managed by kids in the area, with the help of radio professionals and social workers, it broadcasts children's songs, discussions, Malayan poetry and news every day. Read some of the participants stories here. The project presents realistic career alternatives to the kids, not to mention technical training, but it could also offer a more pragmatic service, as one scavenger says:

I cherish the hope that this radio will one day send out information about all the problems with which the community of rag-pickers are struggling. At this moment the rag-pickers need protection. If any of them should meet an accident, let's say wounded by a sharp object while turning over some garbage, or hit by a garbage tractor, it would be nice if the radio could announce it, so that help would be coming. We rag-pickers often have problems; if one of us gets sick, no one would care. And if that illness gets worse, the patient surely dies. The radio should give information about people in trouble.

Unfortunately, our national and global media policies are corporate-focused, not oriented toward social justice, the presentation of diverse viewpoints, or non-commercial ventures. While groups like Free Press are doing the important work of promoting policy change, I deeply admire this tiny station with its 20 km reach, and other groups doing in-the-trenches media work: Third World Majority (an Oakland nonprofit that leads digital storytelling projects with communities of color), HomelessWorld.org's Home/Life project (where kids in 11 cities around the world use photography to document their existence), and Prometheus Radio Project (a Philadelphia resource center helping start up micro-radio stations across the US). The corporate media won't promote the work of any of these groups, nor will Viacom or AOLTimeWarner fund it, but we can. Help spread the word, and if you're able, support the work of Homeless World Foundation and the Bantar Gebang station by donating here.

March 14-20 is Media Democracy Week
Media democracy resources:
• One World's media democracy guide
• Media Alliance's Media Justice page
• The Nation's 12-Step Program for Media Democracy
• Philadelphia-based Media Tank
• Alliance for Community Media

Politicizing the dead: The president barred the media from showing bodies of dead GIs coming home from Iraq to "spare the feelings of military families." But his new ad campaign depicts a flag-shrouded body being removed from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Bush has done everything to link 9/11 and the Iraq war, but in this key area--to the ire of families of the WTC dead--he chooses not to. And this from the man who promised not to exploit the deaths of 3,000 for political gains, the guy whose administration has stonewalled the work of the commission investigating the attacks.

Move over, Atkins: The Nietzschean Diet:

While dieters are accustomed to exercises of will, a new English translation of Germany's most popular diet book takes the concept to a new philosophical level. The Nietzschean diet, which commands its adherents to eat superhuman amounts of whatever they most fear, is developing a strong following in America.

--snip--

One must strive to eat dangerously as one comes into the Will to Power Oneself Thin," Nietzsche wrote. "What do you fear? By this are you truly Fattened. You must embrace your Fears, as well as your Fat, and learn to Laugh as you consume them, along with Generous Portions of Simple Salad. Remember, as you stare into the lettuce, the lettuce stares also into you."

Osama for president: Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma yesterday said that a Bush loss in the fall elections would be a win for bin Laden. He's also quoted as saying he wondered what Hitler would've thought had FDR lost his re-election bid. Read between the lines here: Cole is subtly equating a Democratic vote as support for terrorism and a vote against Bush as Hitlerian. (Via CalPundit.)

Redneck Greens: A call to universalize the Left
The truck in front of me, a sleek, yet oddly bovine red pickup, bore one huge word spelled out in vinyl letters across the back window: R E D N E C K. I remember witnessing the derogatory power of that word as a kid; when effectively employed it could generate black eyes. Apparently, now it’s different. Like "queer" or "geek," the term has been, through the wonder of irony, reclaimed as a badge of honor, at least in some circles. One look at the truck—no claptrap rustbucket, but a just-washed, out-of-my-tax-bracket, new Dodge Ram—suggested as much: this statement came from a place of power, not weakness.

It’s a lesson in how words shift meaning through use and—sometimes— concerted effort. It happens all the time in politics. While polls show a majority of Americans agree that the government should pursue progressive aims—a safeguarded environment, accountable corporations, well-funded education—few people welcome the tag "liberal" to describe their beliefs. We have conservatives and their shrill neoconservative cousins to thank for this. The same people who dubbed the wealth-redistribution levy on inheritances the "death tax" and an ideology that threatens the health of women "pro-life." Even the fact that they’re called "the Right" is disconcerting. Thing is, though, to a growing number of Americans, that’s what they are.

Which is why progressives must continue to reconsider language. While John Kerry tries out a sloganeered jujitsu move, attempting to borrow the force of Bush’s troop-killing, tough-guy bumpersticker "Bring 'em on," I'm suggesting something outside the realm of action movies--from the heart of humanism. We need to strip away the rhetoric to reveal our underlying, universal beliefs: doesn’t every parent want safe food for their children? Aren’t we all—lefties and rightwingers—concerned about the hypercommercialization of youth, breathable air, drinkable water, fair pay for a job well done? "In the political arena we generally cannot convince people of anything they do not, in some sense, already believe," writes Jonathan Rowe in Yes Magazine. "But we just might be able to convince people that what we say is really what they think already." It’s not what we believe, it’s how we talk about it.

Of course, Republicans perfected "talking the talk" long ago. The Clear Skies initiative is titled to obscure the fact it weakens the protections of the Clean Air Act. The under-funded No Child Left Behind initiative, despite its empowered, feel-good moniker, is hurting America’s schoolkids. And the comfily named Log Cabin Republicans makes space in the GOP for gays and lesbians, despite fiercely anti-queer stances by the administration (not to mention the February recess appointment of William Pryor, a judge who likens homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality). There’s a lot in a name, apparently. So maybe we should reconsider ours. To create a party that welcomes a wider swath of the forward-looking, people-focused citizenry, that welcomes treesitters, Lieberman Democrats, and farming environmentalists alike, perhaps we need to seize the power of the term "conservative."

Quinn Brisben, a 67-year old white teacher long employed at African American schools in Chicago, discusses such reclamation in Studs Terkel’s book Hope Dies Last: "When people tell me that they are conservative, first question I have is, what do you want to conserve? If you want to conserve the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, I am with you. If you want to conserve the English language to the point where high school kids can understand Shakespeare plays, I am very much with you. Decide what it is that you want to conserve."

Reggie Prim, a community activist in Minneapolis, has already decided: he proposes a new wing of the Democratic party, the conservative progressives. "I want to conserve the progress we’ve made in the last 30 years, and I want to conserve the progress of the Civil Rights movement and the women’s right movement and the gay rights movement. I want to conserve that progress, so I’m a conservative progressive."

This is not mere wordplay: the term "conservative" is completely up for grabs. Consider: Republican president Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act. And it’s a Republican, George W. Bush, who is working to roll back these key environmental protections along with some 200 others. No party owns the word "conservative"--and, if the Republicans ever did, they can thank George W. Bush for letting the trademark lapse.

But fusing preservation and progressivism has another component: deleting "liberal" from our political vocabulary. "Say no: 'That’s not me. I’m sorry, I don’t know who you’re talking about. I'm a progressive,'" says Prim. "Let’s reframe the argument. Let’s move it away so that if a conservative says 'liberal' it’s something that’s can’t find a home: it’s terminology without an object. It just falls off into space, ultimately without any value. And everybody stops talking about liberals all of a sudden, because no one says they’re a liberal. Then, we’ve reframed the argument and taken back the definitions about who we are and where we stand on the issues."

So let’s open up the Left: welcome, conservative progressives! Step right in, those of you representing The Christian Left, The Moral Minority, and The Radical Center (to borrow a term from Ted Halstead and Michael Lind). We’ve even got room for the "redneck" in the pickup truck. How do I know?

As a middle-class central Wisconsin native known to chop wood, bowhunt, and don the green and gold (and sometimes blaze orange) during football season, I speak with some authority. My heritage—growing up with 80 acres of woodlands to traipse through, a trout stream, and a half-acre garden plot—makes conservation, conservatism in the truest sense, a key value. Prim suggests that people like me, and those to my right—like Roy Weitzell, a hockey-lovin’, bluegrass listenin’, University of Alabama–educated DNR employee I met awhile back in St. Paul--establish our own wing of the Democratic Party:

The Redneck Greens.

I'm only half-kidding. We need a group for those of us who want to preserve the environment either out of a sense of symbiotic respect for the land or a pragmatic responsibility to protect what we’ve enjoyed and profited from all these years. Like the environmental justice movement that sought to include those most affected by bad environmental policies—the poor and people of color—a new movement must welcome nontraditional environmentalists: sporting greens, the urban poor, farmers, and "mainstream" people who, rather non-militantly, love the earth. Maybe they won’t protest the occupation of Iraq or cheer that San Francisco is performing gay marriages. Maybe they will. Either way, they can call themselves progressives.

In addition to reclaiming the labels we live by, we need to rethink the vocabulary that perpetuates our country’s polarized, left-right mindset. Thomas de Zengotita, in his January 2003 Harper’s essay "Common ground: finding our way back to enlightenment," argues that once we rethink our postmodernist penchant for identification and labeling we get down to something more basic: "all else being equal, every human life is, by nature—that is, simply by virtue of being human—equal in value to every other and therefore entitled to whatever benefits or protections are at issue in the struggle for access. Everything hangs on the ‘therefore,’ on whether or not it actually operates this way in our political thinking. If it does, then we have found what we need—the basis for a coherent ideology that promises unity for progressives at this critical hour."

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich puts this in practice every day. For example, he considers water not as a concern of the left or right—not as a tug-of-war between corporate rights and communal values—but in broader terms we can all agree with: water is a human right. Similarly, gay marriage—like the miscegenation laws that once dictated who blacks and whites could and couldn’t marry—is really about freedom of association, about human rights.

When framed like this, who can disagree? "Let them try to make hay out of the term 'progressive,'" says Prim. "Who’s going to say, 'I’m against change for the good'?"

Local News: Minnesota Caucuses Tuesday: Tomorrow, Super Tuesday, Minnesota will be holding precinct caucuses. Find out what that means here and where you can go to attend yours here. In addition to helping select the Democratic presidential candidate, these very important neighborhood meetings will also consider other proposals, including a peace platform by the statewide organization Peace in the Precincts, "a grassroots effort to establish national security policies that will both embody and achieve our democratic hopes for peace and freedom."

Byrd on the Bush budget: Sen. Robert Byrd, in a statement to the Senate Budget Committee on Friday, called Bush's budget

a budget of gimmicks, false promises, and unrealistic expectations. It's a budget of misdirection, canards, speciousness, spuriousness, sophistry, equivocation, fallacies, prevarications, and flat out fantasy. Worse, under the guise of reining in budget deficits, this Administration is continuing its assault on the values of the working class...

Only a President who never had to apply for unemployment benefits would oppose extending them when so many workers are without a job. Only a President who never needed overtime pay would advocate taking it away from those workers who rely on it to make ends meet. Only a President who never needed federal aid to attend college would advocate cutting it back for those students who cannot attend college without it.

Read the entire statement here. (Thanks, John K.)

Liberty, Obesity, Fraternity: A cartoon festival for French schoolchildren in the town of Carquefou asked kids to illustrate their vision of the US. The results: images of obese Americans chomping Cokes and Big Macs, Bush in an army tank, Uncle Sam on a motorcycle mowing down the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps the most curious depicts the US as a baseball bat and the world as the ball.

Shock-jock backtalk: Howard Stern just got yanked from broadcast on six Clear Channel stations--and he might be out of a job for good. The timing is curious--Stern has always teetered on the edge of indecency, so why now?--and here's Stern's explanation: "My last words to you are 'G.W.B.' Get him out of office. I'm tellin' you, man, he's in dangerous territory [with] a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out - anyone but Bush."

The political-journalistic-entertainment complex: The excellent Pioneer Press media critic Brian Lambert, in a piece called "Media are patsies on 'Passion' promotion," writes that "helping Hollywood sell tickets should not be a role journalists play so willingly and so agreeably." Shouldn't the same be true of our president? Both George W. Bush and Tom Ridge have given official White House approval to "DHS-The Series," a television show about fighting terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. In an unprecedented display of official coziness between Hollywood and the White House, both Bush and Ridge "endorse and contribute sound bites to the introductions of the series," according to DHS' producers.

Anti-RFID SOL? Wired News reports that RSA Security has come up with a way to jam RFID (Radio Frequency ID) scanners--the "digital barcodes" that are drawing the ire of privacy activists who fear the GPS-based tracking devices won't turn off once tagged products leave stores. Problem is, the technology won't be perfected for years, and by that time the anti-RFID devices will likely be banned.

Gay marriage: an issue of law, equality, and routine paperwork
I believe in the sanctity of marriage. That is, for me, marriage is a sacred act, whether I get hitched in Vegas or the Basilica of St. Mary. I believe the loving union of two men or two women can also be holy, but that's not what the gay-marriage debate is about. It's about law.

While no couple getting married by a Justice of the Peace is required to declare their union before God, every wedding in a church or synagogue ends with the signing of a marriage license. The sacramental part of marriage is a powerful add-on, a time-honored way of making it more than just a legal contract. But, to the government, that's what it is. Legal. While gays and lesbians have long been having religious commitment ceremonies, professing their love to the heavens in services often presided over by ministers of many denominations, it doesn't make them technically married. What they're asking for now, and what the president hopes to block by amending our country's founding edict, is really pretty boring--the right to have a routine signature on the bottom of a legal document, and all the responsibilities and privileges that come with it.

So if opponents of gay marriage can strip their personal religious beliefs away from this matter of civil law--just as the First Amendment instructs our government to--the human rights issue would become starkly evident. "When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs," said Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun in 1992. "A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some." If some people can marry and others can't--regardless of what your church says--we're not created equal.

If you agree that permanently engraining discrimination in our country's founding document is a bad idea, visit my friend Jeff's Human Rights Campaign page to send letters to your elected officials. Then, use the GOP letter-writing tool I mentioned the other day to send a pro-human rights/anti-constitutional amendment letter to newspapers in your state.

Stations of the Crass: Maureen Dowd, linking Bush's break from "compassionate conservatism" regarding gay marriage with Mel Gibson's film The Passion (instead of leaving theater-goers "suffused with charity toward your fellow man" it's likely to send you home "wanting to kick somebody's teeth in"), she writes: "If the president is truly concerned about preserving the sanctity of marriage, as one of my readers suggested, why not make divorce illegal and stone adulterers? Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq; Osama's still on the loose; jobs are being exported all over the world; the deficit has reached biblical proportions. And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage?"

Couldn't've said it better myself:

Once a group is viewed as fully human, it grows harder to accord it some rights and deny it others. In the early 20th century, the laws banning miscegenation were justified as protecting whites against "inferior" blacks. By mid-century, in much of the nation, blacks were no longer inferior, and the case for miscegenation had dwindled to a defense of marriage as such. But if whites and blacks were no longer really different, what was it that marriage needed to be defended against?

Also: As Josh Marshall points out, the photo that accompanies this MSNBC story sums up what the freedom to marry is all about.

Thanks, George W!
Republicans provide Progressives with letter-writing tool: Billmon has a great idea: use the Bush campaign's rather sophisticated letter-to-the-editor writing tool to send progressive-themed mail to your hometown papers. Just enter your zip code, then select which--may I suggest all--papers you'd like your automated, Bush email to go to, then hit send. (It seems to be good software with a surprisingly diverse database; when I type in my zip code, I can select the major dailies in the Twin Cities, plus the alternative weeklies, a neighborhood paper or two, titles from the minority press, and papers in first-ring suburbs; but be warned, the site requires you to accept cookies--i.e. the GOP will be trackin' you.)

Constitutional amendment: Conservative gay blogger Andrew Sullivan, who says Bush's proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage means the president wants homosexuals to be "stigmatized in the very founding document of America", runs a series of interesting letters on the topic. Like this one:

I organized my life around four institutions: my family, the Presbyterian Church, the Boy Scouts and the Republican Party. They summed up what seemed to me a sensible view of life and the world, embodying loyalty, unconditional love, a quiet, thoughtful exercise of faith, a commitment to ethical behavior, and a limited government that did the things it needed for the public good but otherwise left people alone to be all they could become and savor the victory of having done so. Then I came out, and one by one those four institutions turned their backs on me...

GOP humor: We killed Wellstone: Remember the hue and cry in the media and by right-wing pundits when mourners at Paul Wellstone's memorial booed Trent Lott? I wonder how they'll react to this (silently, I'm sure):

During a Feb. 5 meet-the-candidate night for the newly formed College Republicans U. chapter -- not to be confused with the older and more established College Republicans -- representatives for several candidates revved up the jovial crowd with such statements as "We need to put an end to the liberal Matheson era" and support "the Democrat killers."

As the audience giggled off and on, Mike Clement, representing congressional candidate Tim Bridgewater, spoke excitedly about Republican successes when College Republicans work hard, citing the victory of Norm Coleman in the 2002 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota.

As Clement bantered with the audience, one Republican gadfly noted that they defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale in that race, adding: "We had to kill off Wellstone to get it." He was referring to the death in a plane crash of Sen. Paul Wellstone and his family before the election.

(Thanks, Andy.)

Bush suppresses Pentagon findings that climate change will lead to "global chaos":
The Bush Administration long maintained that global warming was pure fiction. But a leaked Pentagon document says that climate change "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern"--and that it poses a far more serious threat to world stability than terrorism. According to a report in The Observer, "the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' [Pentagon advisor Andrew Randall, who commissioned the report] said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat... The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'" The report warns that major European cities will sink under rising seas as the UK is plunged into a "Siberian" climate within 15 years--and that nuclear conflict, droughts, famine, and rioting will break out across the globe. This is huge. Why has the Bush administration actively suppressed this report? The president has already been accused by 20 Nobel scientists of distorting and politicizing scientific findings for the benefit of corporations. So maybe it's simply that Bush is protecting his petroleum pals from news that might kill profits. Or perhaps he knows his "wartime president" ruse relies on making national defense the highest priority. Whatever the reason, the report implies that ousting Bush from office--a noble and hopefully attainable goal--probably won't matter: the environmental damage is likely irreversible.

Birth of a language: Following up the fascinating 1999 New York Times story, "A Linguistic Big Bang," on the same topic, The Economist reports on the usual emergence of a distinct, new language form in Nicaragua. Arising spontaneously among deaf children, with seemingly no relation to the structures of spoken language, Nicaraguan Sign Language is composed of units of meaning (i.e. "words) and nuanced gestures that have evolved over time and become more sophisticated. Researchers are excited about the implications of studying NSL on all language: the question of weather humans tap into a pre-set template--i.e. whether our brains are hard-wired for language--might be answered in Nicaragua with this purely self-invented (and possibly straight-from-the-source) way of communicating.

Read the full article here.

Recommended reading: Robert Newman's excellent novel, The Fountain at the Center of the World," is predicted to become "the talismanic Catch-22 of the antiglobalization protest movement, the fictional complement to Naomi Klein's influential treatise No Logo" by the New York Times book review. (Thanks to whoever emailed the review a few weeks back.)

The ego has landed: According to an early report from Fox, Ralph Nader will be running for president.

Flaws with the Anyone-But-Bush strategy? Mark Hand at Press Action wonders how much better Kerry might be than the neocon Bush, citing the "gung-ho" militarism of the New Democrats and the Progressive Policy Institute:

...John Kerry, the frontrunner in the quest for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, has been promoting a foreign policy perspective called "progressive internationalism." It's a concept concocted by establishment Democrats seeking to convince potential backers in the corporate and political world that, if installed in the White House, they would preserve U.S. power and influence around the world, but in a kinder, gentler fashion than the current administration.

In the domestic battle to captain the American empire, the neocons have in their corner the Project for a New American Century while the New Democrats have the Progressive Policy Institute. Come November, who will get your vote? Coke or Pepsi?

Read the entire article here. (Thanks, Andy.)

Memogate mayhem: Conservative activists are savaging Orrin Hatch. Some are likening him to Neville Chaimberlain. One, in the Washington Post, warned of a "thermonuclear" punishment for the crotchety Utah Republican, and more than a few blame him for a "demoralized" Republican base. His crime? Supporting a formal investigation into the unethical--and possibly illegal--pilfering of Democratic computer files related to confirmation proceedings for ultra-conservative judges. "The right-wing bile over Hatch's Memogate burst of conscience," reports Slate, "only shows how frighteningly militant Washington's church of conservatism has become." And, in case you missed it, George W. Bush has again made an end-run around the Democratic filibuster of a rightwing, activist judicial nominee. Like last month's recess appointment of segregationist judge Charles Pickering, Bush appointed William Pryor to the US appeals bench despite longstanding Democratic efforts to block the move. A crusader against Roe v. Wade, Pryor has the distinction of likening homosexuality to "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia."

Pigs, tattoos, art: Researching Belgian artist Wim Delvoye's installation artwork, Cloaca--a room-sized series of pumps, tanks, and tubes that simulates human digestion (a critique of the art world, he sells autographed byproducts of the machine for $1000 a plop, er, pop)--I came upon another of his recurring themes: tattooed pigs. In his project's most recent incarnation, last summer, he sought to tattoo poems on 23 piglets, anticipating that they'd grow--and the poems with them--to 300 kg by the end of the summer. Another protest against the notion of art as investiment--paintings increase in value just as the poems grow with the pigs, he says. While the work is controversial from an animal-rights perspective (as a vegetarian, Delvoye claims he's humane in the tattooing, and he actually extends the life of pigs destined for slaughter), it's also created a minor stir with a certain artist: Andy Feehan--who tattooed wings on a pig named Minnesota in 1976, before turning the needle on his hairless dog--says Delvoye swiped the idea from him.

What's so patriotic about these screwy cursors for Windows? I mean, I get some of them--a Saddam pointer with $!@# coming out of his mouth--but the rest?

Bushville: The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign will erect a symbolic shantytown named after the president during the Republican National Convenition August 30–September 2. Run by a formerly homeless Minneapolis mom, the group will also lead "reality bus tours" of poor areas of NYC to illustrate the effects of Bush's--and Democrats'--policies.

The origins of Nazism: The Mises Institute excerpts Ludwig von Mises' 1944 Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War, the "first full-scale examination of German-style National Socialism as a species of socialism in general. "

Christian Zionists on NOW: Bill Moyers offers a truly chilling report on the rise and striking influence of Christian Zionism, Christians who support Israel and the West Bank settlements only because they see the unity of Israel as a foreshadowing of the Second Coming of Christ. Click here to see where you can watch the rebroadcast of NOW.

Grey Album protest: February 24 Next Tuesday, 54 web sites and counting will participate in a "day of coordinated civil disobedience": they'll host DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album--his sampling of the Beatle's White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album--in defiance of EMI's efforts to squelch artistic reuse of copyrighted materials. Visit Grey Tuesday to learn how your site can participate. EMI, copyright holders for the Beatles' work, has sent cease-and-desist letters to anyone posting the songs, to DJ Danger Mouse, and any record stores selling his CD. "It's clear that this work devalues neither of the originals. There is no legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this record--this is just arbitrary exertion of control," said Nicholas Reville, Downhill Battle co-founder. "The framers of the constitution created copyright to promote innovation and creativity. A handful of corporations have radically perverted that purpose for their own narrow self interest, and now the public is fighting back."

Quote:
"What you ask is who you are, and what shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think of asking..."
—Sam Keen

Getting a finger on the pulse at Daytona: Reporting from the Daytona 500, the American Prospect takes the pulse of "NASCAR dads," making an unexpected discovery: they’re not as into Bush as you’d think:

Then Bush's motorcade drove by. One middle finger went up in the crowd, then another, and soon they were everywhere.

As the crowd scattered to their seats, one of the few black fans I spotted at the racetrack ran by and saw me scribbling in my notepad. "Writing for a newspaper?" she asked. Before I could respond, she shouted, "Tell them Bush sucks!" Then she disappeared back into the fray.

(Via Cursor.)

One more from Cursor:

"To talk about the price of the Iraq war strictly in terms of U.S. casualties and tax dollars is an obscenity," writes Naomi Klein. "Yes, Americans were lied to by their politicians. Yes, they are owed answers. But the people of Iraq are owed a great deal more, and that enormous debt belongs at the very centre of any civilized debate about the war."

She chides the leading Democratic presidential candidates for ignoring the plight of Iraqis, but reparations are a central element of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's campaign.

Moyers to call it quits: Bill Moyers has announced that he'll be stepping down from his post at NOW with Bill Moyers after the November elections. Producers say they're committed to continuing the show, which draws a weekly viewership of 2.6 million.

Krugman:

...By my count, this year's budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming across the Yangtze River.

It was not ever thus. Bill Clinton's budgets were illustrated with tables and charts, not with worshipful photos of the president being presidential.

The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that office.

Operation Flight Suit was only slightly more over the top than other Bush photo-ops, like the carefully staged picture that placed Mr. Bush's head in line with the stone faces on Mount Rushmore. The goal is to suggest that it's unpatriotic to criticize the president, and to use his heroic image to block any substantive discussion of his policies...

Full article here.

Download while you can: The Grey Album
Stay Free! publisher Carrie McClaren sends this note:

DJ Danger Mouse's recent Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph. Despite that and the fact that only 3,000 copies of the album are in circulation, EMI sent cease and desist letters yesterday to Danger Mouse and the handful of stores that were selling the album, demanding that the album be destroyed.

"EMI isn't looking for compensation, they're trying to ban a work of art," said Downhill Battle's Rebecca Laurie.

"Special interests, including the major labels, have turned copyright law into a weapon," said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson. "If Danger Mouse had requested permission and offered to pay royalties, EMI still would have said no and the public would never have been able to enjoy this critically acclaimed work. Artists are being forced to break the law to innovate."

The Grey Album has been widely shared on file sharing networks such as Kazaa and Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone (which called it "the ultimate remix record" and "an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time"), the Boston Globe (which called it the ""most creatively captivating" album of the year), and other major news outlets.

Download The Grey Album here.

Spies. A day after Chilean officials announced that their UN office phone had been tapped, the Mexican government is pointedly asking the US and UK about spying on fellow UN members in the run-up to war.

Have you seen the WMDs? Call it innovative, call it a sign of desperation, but the CIA's new "Iraqi Rewards Program" is, at the very least, unusual. Using a secure online form you can offer tips on the missing WMDs, the whereabouts of Ba'thist leaders or missing GIs, and more.

AWOL story won't go away: I'm having a hard time keeping track of the Bush-AWOL-National Guard story. First I heard his payroll records showed George W. Bush had a credit of nine days of work between May of '72 and May of '73, then it switched to six days. Hmm. Either way, doesn't the advertisement about the Guard specifically reference one weekend a month and two weeks a year--i.e. 36 days?

To try to make sense of it all, start with TalkLeft's excellent summary. But pay attention, the plot keeps thickening--and getting deeper. As Josh Marshall reports, the White House is reneging on Bush's promise on Meet the Press to release all service records, insisting instead that Bush promised to release only payroll records. Oh. Right. (Sounds a little like the difference between "weapons of mass destruction" and "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.")

I admit, it's a hard story to follow, especially since, as the Star Tribune editorializes, so many people reporting on the story "couldn't tell you the difference between a DD214 [military form] and an Article 15." But as Strib letterwriter Al Raney suggests, there's a paperwork-free way to vouch for the prez: ask his war buddies. "I spent three years in the U.S. Army about 50 years ago... If I were unable to locate my service records, I would contact one of the dozen (or more) Army buddies whose names I still remember. Guess what? Most of them are still alive! If I contacted them, they would "swear to" my military service -- both time and location."

Media no longer AWOL? And from Cursor, an admission by the White House that they were "taken aback" by the intensity of reporters' questions on the subject. (About time the Washington press corps shows a little teeth, eh?)

Political compass: According to this remarkably well documented online quiz, I'm somewhere in the realm of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela in terms of my libertarian and economic leanings. Visit Political Compass to see where you land, then email me your results: paul (at) eyeteeth.org.

My scores, for comparison:
Economic Left/Right: -8.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.79

Ladies & Gentlemen: A new music magazine is being created right here in the Twin Cities. The brainchild of former First Avenue designer Erik Westra and Aesthetic Apparatus designers Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski, Ladies & Gentlemen will include a 12" record album, interviews, essays, and more. Their description:

Ladies & Gentlemen is an all-encompassing arts magazine. The magazine is roughly 12 inches wide and 12 inches high. It is no coincidence that these measurements closely resemble those of an album. The outside cover is screenprinted. Inside this cover is a 24-page booklet containing words, drawings, and pictures incorporating a wide assortment of genres and topics. The cover also houses a 12” record containing exclusive music from six different bands generally involved in the booklet that accompanies it. Each issue is hand-assembled, signed, and numbered in an edition of 1000.

Preorder a copy here.

The craft of war: Boingboing links to a site selling Afghan rugs, including several that depict airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers. To be clear, the depictions seem to be both a historical record and a celebration of the American "liberation" of Afghanistan, not a commemoration of the attacks (a point some fail to grasp).

And: In the age of the Patriot Act and the MATRIX data surveillance program, isn't the "Uncle Sam Window Peeper" craft item a bit ominously titled?

Modified motivation: And here, according to the prez, is why we launched modern history's first American preemptive war: "Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman. He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum."

Fact or fiction: McSweeney's runs a little quiz: guess which of the 14 listed quotations came from George W. Bush and which were uttered by the fictional Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars movies.

Presidential diapers: A businessman in China has applied to use the US president's name for a brand of diapers. "Back in my hometown in Henan Province, the pronunciation of 'Bushi' sounds exactly like 'not wet'," said the man. (Via Gothamist.)

Kudos to Mimi: A friend in Chicago has been quietly writing an online diary for several years and building a fierce cult following. One day HarperCollins UK called up to tell her they wanted to make her anonymous journal into a book, so they did: The World According to Mimi Smartypants. In a recent post, "Mimi"--who, with husband "LT," just adopted a little girl from China--writes about comments from "bus crazies" on young Nora: "A talkative old lady asked, 'Is that baby Asian?' (uh, a little bit) and then observed, 'Asians have great musculature!' 'Musculature' seems like an inappropriate word to apply to a baby, unless baby-clothing manufacturers start making breakaway onesies. Then we could teach Nora to growl and rip her shirt down the front like Hulk Hogan. That would be cool."

Tying Mimi to diapers: Mimi links to this disturbing headline, bringing the post full-circle: "Golden feces wipes smile on Japanese faces."

Teen hermits: "America is at risk of becoming an Acute Social Withdrawal nation - inward-looking and very cold to outsiders," says Jerry Koepp, a volunteer youth director in an Orlando-based rehabilitation program sponsored by the American Health Association (AHA). "It is simply a consequence of a social system that has collapsed. As more and more of our young people refuse to assimilate into mainstream culture and reject our core values, the more likely we are to follow in Japan's footsteps. I think the number of Acute Social Withdrawal will increase exponentially in the years ahead."

Acute Social Withdrawal, either a medical condition or a social phenomenon (researchers aren't in agreement), is defined as "a complete withdrawal from society by an individual for more than six months." In the US in 2002, there were more than 5,200 reported cases of young people, mainly boys between 16 and 20, holing up in their bedrooms; in Japan, the rates are much higher, with one million kids affected by the disorder.