Got Democracy? A new wave of appropriated images from Abu Ghraib is showing up around San Francisco, only this time the hooded man is featured against a tattered image of the American flag. "It's not pro-Democrat, it's not pro-Republican--it's supposed to make you think," says the poster's creator. "Do these people in Iraq have democracy? And do we have democracy? The Guantanamo Bay issue of suspending people's rights...smacks of McCarthyism, which is a kind of fascism. ...If (this) were any other country--and use the criteria that Bush uses toward other countries--we'd not be called a democracy now." And: God Less America!

Immoral Majority: What's the proper term for the GOP's moral malaise of late--moral relativism? Hipocrisy? Plain old bullshit? Whatever you call it, the Republicans seem to be full of it lately. A week ago, Bill Clinton lost his cool during a BBC interview, frustrated by questions about Monica Lewinsky. Rightwingers had a field day. Yet when Dick Cheney tells a respected senator to "Go fuck" himself, the GOP--not to mention the second highest officeholder in the land, who "felt better" having cussed out a colleague--says it's no big deal. And this on the day the Senate voted to toughen penalties for TV and radio stations who broadcast indecency. Likewise, a new commercial on George W. Bush's campaign site visually likens John Kerry and other Democrats with Hitler. Remember the hue and cry when one of a thousand citizen-made TV spots in MoveOn's Bush in 30 Seconds contest likened Bush's tactics--but not the man himself--to Hitler's? Responding to criticisms by the Democrats, the Bush commercial now features this explanation: "[John Kerry] has not denounced liberal supporters like Al Gore, George Soros, and many others who have made speeches comparing the president to Adolph Hitler." I could debunk the facts--neither Al Gore nor George Soros "compared the president to" Hitler; both made reference to our times as feeling like Nazi-era Germany, but compared only tactics and not leaders--but I'm more curious about their logic. Never the party to take the higher ground, they're saying: we can do it, because THE DEMOCRATS NEVER SAID IT'S WRONG. In an election between an incumbent who looks to his opponent's party for moral leadership, I know who I'll choose.

The Democrats are running an online petition drive to get the president to pull the offending spot from his site. (Aside from comparing passionate Democrats to "wild-eyed" Hitler, I don't think it's such a bad spot. Makes me like the few Democratic firebrands we've got even more. What do you think? Lemme know using the comment link below.)

OK, OK, I will challenge the facts: What Gore said:

The absence of enlightened nation-building after world war one led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise of Adolf Hitler, and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs.

What Soros said:

When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans. My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitised me.

The C Word: Cheney brings political civility to an all-time low, say columnists.

Paying the price: A new study by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus finds that the war in Iraq--which has already has a $126 billion pricetag--will end up costing each American family$3,415. The "annual costs would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million US citizens who lack medical insurance," reports The Guardian. The IPSFPF study also does body counts (figures are for deaths prior to June 16 and therefore don't include death tolls from this week's nationwide attacks):

- Up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed
- 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or insurgents have been killed
- 952 coalition trips killed, including 853 Americans
- Around 694 troops were killed after George Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003
- 50–90 civilian contractors and missionaries killed
- 30 journalists

More math: Mayor Bloomberg assures New Yorkers that the inconvenience of holding the Republican National Cenvention in the city will pay off, bringing an estimated $250 million into the local economy over four days. Matthew Yglesias crunches the number and questions whether almost $7 per day per New Yorker is really worth it. "The city will, I assume, be spending a lot of money on police overtime, barricade construction, etc., which will probably bring the average net economic gain down even further. Then you've got to consider that beyond inconveniencing NYC's 8 million residence, there are millions and millions of people living in Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Westchester who work in the city and will also be paying the inconvenience tax."

Rubber Republican: From the Minneapolis Star Tribune's gossip column, Item World:

When you move into the Uptown location once occupied by Condom Kingdom, I.W. figures you’re gonna get some interesting mail. But nothing prepared Domain Architecture and Design owner Lars Peterssen for the letter that arrived on his doorstep earlier this month. It was addressed to Kondom King. And it was from President George W. Bush. "Will you join Laura, me and the entire Republican Party leadership as we gather… to celebrate my first term in office?" read the letter accompanying the White House invitation. "All of us want to recognize and honor the commitment and sacrifices you’ve made for our Party and our nation." Kondom—er, Lars—was gigantically amused by the mailing. "One of my employees suggested we send in the money and go in appropriate costume," he said. And that would be? "Rubber over the head with a big point on the top."

Soleless consumption: Nike is developing shoes bound for the trash--lightweight, disposable running shoes that only last for 60 miles. Price: $45. They're also developing a $250 shoe, "arguably the most high-tech shoe ever built... it is complete with a computer microchip and operating system that analyzes a runner's step and starts making cushioning adjustments in the heel of the shoe based on the runner's impact with the particular terrain after just three steps." Whew, just in the nick of time for both of these important manufacturing developments.

A "frank exchange of views": That's how Dick Cheney referred to his comments to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the Senate yesterday. When Cheney scolded Leahy for suggesting that the Veep was profiting from Halliburton's contracts in Iraq, the Vermont senator reminded Cheney that he'd once called Leahy a bad Catholic for his views. To which the vice president replied--all statesmanlike, I'm sure--"Go fuck yourself." These guys have really changed the tone, eh? And: A big "And how!" to this opinion by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager (via Atrios):

As for the liberals who think that using the f-word in public is no big deal, it is good to have them say so. Anything that clarifies the massive values-differences between the Left and the Right is helpful. We who are not on the Left think public cursing is a big deal, because we believe that people can pollute their soul, their character, and, yes, their society, just as they can pollute their rivers and their air and their lungs.

Bushies for Nader:TalkLeft posts this note from a reader in Oregon: "I am a Democrat who, a short while ago, gave my email address and phone number to the local Republican party to receive updates on what they were up to. Today I received a phone call from the local Republican party asking me if I wanted to go the Nader convention. They explained the need to get Nader on the ballot to help President Bush. The name on the caller ID on my phone said 'Bush Cheney' implying that they were calling from the Oregon Bush Cheney headquarters."

USDA held captive by industry? Get this: the USDA just decided that frozen french fries can now be legally classified as fresh vegetables.

What is art? (And what is bioterror?) The outrageous case of Steve Kurtz, the Buffalo, NY, artist who'll likely be charged under the Patriot Act for possessing harmless bacteria and lab equipment (part of his work with Critical Art Ensemble), continues to get ignored by major media outlets. Look for my new Adbusters feature on the case, and consider donating to his defense fund. An excerpt:

Critical Art Ensemble is an internationally recognized art group that explores “the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory.” The biotechnology industry it has chosen to address in recent years contributes overwhelmingly to Republican candidates—nearly three-quarters of its $25.8 million in donations to date went to the GOP. The installation at MASSMOCA was to include a DNA extractor that would test food from the local supply for transgenic contamination. “There is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food,” says CAE spokeswoman Carla Mendes. “Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of ‘Frankenfood’ will get you accused of ‘terrorism.’”

Whether Kurtz’s story is a case of post-9/11 paranoia or a move intended to silence outspoken artists will probably never be known, but if it ends up in court, it will raise broader issues about free expression in John Ashcroft’s America. Artist Greg Sholette says Kurtz’s “art itself is going to be up on trial. Critical Art Ensemble has a strong tradition of critiquing capitalism and pushing the edges through its art, but always within constitutional boundaries.” Those boundaries, too, might be on trial: recall that it was Bush, who in 1999, reacted to a spoof site created by the conceptual art collective ®™ark by declaring, “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

Also: Thanks to Paul Shoebridge, the home page now has a pull-down index that features all of my art-related pieces (see "More art activism").

Culture-jamming war porn: Someone jammed a UK billboard promoting the Royal Air Force's "Air Tattoo," a big military airshow, inserting images of suffering from Vietnam, including "napalm girl," Kim Phuc. The term "war porn" is getting increasing usage, applying either to the titillation of violent war imagery or the near-erotic worship of war machines. Air shows are great entertainment, but if we forget that we're seeing equipment made explicitly to kill--"c'mon kids, let's go see the new electric chair exhibition at the fair!"--we're buying into what Salon calls the "military industrial porn complex."

And: I just got an email update from the excellent magazine, Orion, entitled "Weapons of Mass Illusion." OK, people, Weapons of Mass Deception was a great book (as was Danny Schecter's book of the same name, which came out just weeks after Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's), but isn't it time we give the "weapons of mass __________" trope a rest?

Terror teddybear: From The Smoking Gun:

The FBI has subpoenaed records related to the online sales of a teddy bear carrying the message 'Bush Kills Arabs Dead,' apparently as part of a probe into who delivered one of the plush toys to the Michigan home of a federal magistrate, The Smoking Gun has learned.

But, TSG has discovered, the Detroit U.S. Attorney's grand jury investigation will find that the teddy bear, pictured at right, wasn't some sort of a terror threat, but rather a gag gift purchased by a friend of Mona Majzoub, the federal magistrate...

Today's soundtrack: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra's Who Is This America?--politically engaged, butt-shaking afropop in the spirit of Fela and Femi but straight outta Brooklyn.

Tao te ka-ching: From The Australian:

A THAI Buddhist monk agreed to strip corporate sponsorship logos from his famous Bangkok temple Monday after the brash advertisements caused an uproar in the deeply religious kingdom.

Thai television showed images of monks holding large ceremonial fans bearing advertisements for the 'MK' restaurant chain and the BTS mass transit system, as well as prominent sponsorship signs above rows of golden Buddha statues

The use of logos on monk's ceremonial fans, which usually carry reflective passages on the nature of death during traditional Thai funerals, drew particularly harsh criticism...

A furious Thai woman who attended a funeral at the temple told the Thai Post newspaper that whenever she looked up for words of comfort she instead saw a sign enticing her to eat at 'MK'.

And: To earn back karma points for conflating Buddhism and Taoism just to make a bad pun in that headline, here's a public-domain version of LaoTzu's Tao te ching. OK?

Siva in Counterpoise: Counterpoise, a radical library journal, has reprinted excerpts from my interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the new book The Anarchist in the Library, in its new issue. More on Siva here.

Draft Bruce: The founder of New York's Irving Plaza has put a hold on Giants Stadium for the night of September 1--just as the nomination of George W. Bush for re-election will be going on across town--in the hopes that Bruce Springsteen will accept his offer to play a concert there to steal Bush's thunder on national TV broadcasts. Sign the petition to Draft Bruce.

More exaggerations by Bush and Co.: As the Supreme Court gets ready to rule on the legality of holding 595 suspected terrorists in Guantanamo without charge, the New York Times finds that " that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided."

Not OK to be gay: Since the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality was established in 1994, some 10,000 personnel have been discharged for admitting being gay--770 of them in the last year, according to a new report.

CBS' double standard: CBS refused to air Adbusters' Buy Nothing Day ads because, as Robert Lowary wrote in '97, the network's "policy precludes accepting commercial advertising that takes an advocacy position on one side of a controversial issue of public importance and urges the viewer to take action in this regard." They refused to run commercials for PETA and MoveOn during the 2004 Super Bowl for the same reason. Yet they're apparently perfectly fine running an ad bashing Bill Clinton, timed to coincide with Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes tonight. The ad, by Citizen's United, the rightwing flaks who got the infamous Reagan biopic pulled from CBS' airwaves for being mildly critical, essentially blames Clinton for today's terrorism. Learn more, and find a link to contact CBS, at Media Matters for America. And: Putting the ass in Compassionate Conservative, Fox's Bill O'Reilly tells his fans, "I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group... They're just people who are primitive."

Put up or shut up, Dick. If Iraq had continuing and deep ties with al-Qaida, as Dick Cheney continues to assert, why didn't he offer evidence when he testified before the 9-11 Commission?

Israel's Kurdish alliance: Seymour Hersch, who broke the Abu Ghraib story for The New Yorker, drops another bomb. Excerpts from The Guardian:

Israeli military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilise the entire region...

Israel's aims, according to Hersh, are to build up the Kurdish military strength in order to offset the strength of the Shia militias and to create a base in Iran from which they can spy on Iran's suspected nuclear-making facilities.

"Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way - a balance against Saddam," one former Israeli intelligence officer told the New Yorker. "It's Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The critical question is 'What will the behaviour of Iran be if there is an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel? Iran does not want an Israeli land-based aircraft carrier on its border."

...According to Mr Hersh, Israel decided to step up its role in Kurdistan last summer after it was clear that the United States incursion into Iraq was failing, principally because it feared the chaos would strengthen Iran. The Israelis are particularly concerned that Iran may be developing a nuclear capability.

...In the autumn the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak told the US vice president, Dick Cheney, that America had lost in Iraq. Israel "had learned that there's no way to win an occupation," he told Mr Cheney, and the only issue was "choosing the size of your humiliation".

From July last year, argues Mr Hersh, the Israeli government started what one former Israeli intelligence official called "Plan B" in order to protect itself from the fallout of the chaos prompted by America's failure ahead of June 30. If the June 30 transfer of sovereignty does not go well, "there is no fallback, nothing," a former National Security Council member tells Hersh. "The neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat in Iraq," a former intelligence official says. "What's the plan? They say, 'We don't need it. Democracy is strong enough. We'll work it out.'"

Israel has a longstanding relationship with the Kurds, whom they regard as one of the few non-Arab allies in the area. The Iraqi Kurds, who played a key role in providing the United States with intelligence ahead of the war, have been angered by the United Nations resolution on Iraq earlier this month. The resolution did not affirm the interim constitution that granted them minority veto power in a permanent constitution and so could potentially leave them sidelined.

One Turkish official told Mr Hersh that Kurdish independence would be calamitous for the region. "The lesson of Yugoslavia is that when you give one country independence everybody will want it. Kirkuk will be the Sarajevo of Iraq. If something happens there, it will be impossible to contain the crisis."

Also: Co-created by Neal Pollack, of all people, a new site, Pray For Reason.

Tenuous links, weird logic: Bush and Cheney keep trumpeting on about how there really are links between al Qaida and Iraq, despite the 9/11 commission's findings to the contrary. Their tactic will probably work, to a degree: those who trust authority more than facts will buy their arguments (only, what authority does this lot of bunglers have anymore? The Commission's report shows an administration bordering on incompetence in their preparedness for and response to the 9/11 attacks). But whatever links may exist seem far more tenuous than Bush's links to bin Laden's family, Rummy's handshake with Saddam in 1983 (back when the Evil One was on the US payroll), or the US's $40 million payout to the Taliban in early 2001 for their efforts in the War on Drugs. As Condi implied in an NPR interview this morning, changing the subject: does anyone dispute the world's better off without Saddam in power in Iraq? 'Course not, but a more appropriate question is: was it worth it? Was shooting our proverbial wad in Iraq worth it when Osama runs free and his henchmen continue to capture and decapitate Americans?

Last gasp: Israeli artist Emilio Mogilner's not-so-subtle metaphor, 1 Breath Time, featured in my new Adbusters online column.

A simple apology: FaithfulAmerica.org--an online community that "believes in the common good and in community... [rejects] a go-it-alone culture that reduces our politics and our personal lives to selfishness and fear... [and acccepts] the separation of church and state, but not the separation of moral principles from politics"--has produced a simple, powerful commercial apologizing to the Muslim world for torture at Abu Ghraib. The spots began airing on Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya yesterday, paid for by visitors to their site. Donate, watch the ad, or endorse it here. (Via BAGnewsNotes and Cursor.)

Is avarice still a deadly sin? I wonder if Christian leaders will contribute their considerable marketing muscle to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11--a film described by a Fox News columnist as "a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty  —  and at the same time an indictment of stupidity and avarice"--the way they did Mel Gibson's crucifixion flick?

Is Bush bungling his way into a constitutional crisis? From Salon.com:

From failing to anticipate 9/11 to pressuring the CIA to produce bogus justifications for war, from abusing Iraqi prisoners to misrepresenting the nature of Iraqi insurgents, the Bush White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies they corrupted, coerced or ignored have made extraordinarily grave errors which could threaten our national security for years. By manipulating intelligence and punishing dissent while pursuing an extreme foreign-policy agenda, Bush leaders have set spy against U.S. spy and deeply damaged America's intelligence capabilities.

"It's a catastrophe beyond belief. Going into Afghanistan was inevitable, and in my opinion the right thing to do. But everything since then has been a horrible mistake," [Thomas] Powers [author of Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda], says. 'The CIA is politicized to an extreme. It's under the control of the White House. Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis -- what really amounts to a constitutional crisis."

Signal Orange: Interesting, simple project to raise awareness of the 834 American soldiers killed in Iraq:

"Signal Orange represents the dead with the living — wearing T-shirts in their names. There is one shirt for each soldier who died. The front states how he or she died, the back reads, “(Rank) (First) (Last) can’t vote anymore.”

The signal orange color of the shirt was chosen for the same reason it is used where caution is required — it’s the most visible color in person, on camera, and on video. The shirts are to be worn in places where the media is focused, whether that focus is momentary or constant. Examples might include the audience outside a morning talk show, or a parade, or a sporting event, and it certainly includes the Republican National Convention in NYC come September.

Signal Orange doesn’t say that these soldiers or their families condemn or support the war, and it doesn’t speak for them. Whether they opposed or supported the war, they were fighting for our right to decide democratically whether a war is just or not. They’ve been buried twice—once in the ground, and once in the media. If we can make them visible in the media through Signal Orange, we can demonstrate that they had voices that have been lost.

(Via BoingBoing.)

New and improved: AlterNet, revamped.

Red Cross to Bush: Release Saddam Hussein, charge him, or break international law.

Today's numbers from Bush's America:

54 Discrepancy in years between the Bush administration's falsified report that global terrorism is at a 34-year low and actual statistics that suggest terrorism may be at a 20-year high.

127 Number of American "bad apples" being investigated for torture in Iraq and Afghanistan.

9 Percentage of new US job layoffs attributed to outsourcing.

2 Number of top Iraqi officials murdered this weekend.

1 Rank of Afghanistan in global heroin production.

$1+ trillion Pricetag for the proposed defense bill over the next decade.

Bush has gotta go: Sez who? Try 26 diplomats and high-level military officials from the Clinton, Carter, and Reagan administrations. As one signatory of a document to be released on Wednesday said, the consensus among the 26 is that "we are so deeply concerned about the current direction of American foreign policy … that we think it is essential for the future security of the United States that a new foreign policy team come in." And: The Washington Post editorializes that "The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed Mr. Bush's view of the world, but he never adjusted his fiscal strategy; he continues to reduce the tax burden on the wealthy and leave the government without adequate resources for the fight. He has yet to invest the funds and energy, on a scale appropriate to an existential struggle, in public diplomacy, Arab-language training, foreign student exchanges, nuclear materials control and many other ventures that are key to eventual victory. And he has yet to acknowledge that the downsized military he favored in 2000 is no longer suitable in 2004."

Failed airstrikes killed civilians: The Pentagon now admits it ordered some 50 failed airstrikes to try to take out Saddam Hussein and his key advisors early in the Iraq war, far more than were previously disclosed. And the missions killed significant numbers of civilians, according to a New York Times report:

According to Human Rights Watch, a failed April 5 strike that singled out General Majid in a residential area of Basra killed 17 civilians; a failed April 8 strike that was aimed at Mr. Hussein's half brother Watban Ibrahim Barzan in Baghdad killed 6 civilians; and the second raid on Mr. Hussein and one or both of his sons, on April 7 in the Mansur district of Baghdad, killed an estimated 18 civilians.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Garlasco described the campaign to attack high-value targets as "abject failure," saying, "We failed to kill the H.V.T.'s and instead killed civilians and engendered hatred and discontent in some of the population."

Tickle Me Reagan: Shipping next week, the new Ronald Reagan action figure utters Reaganisms like "They try to track them, but federal grants are like rabbits: they multiply like crazy and when they're out you can't catch 'em." And: What would the Michael Moore action figure say? (Scroll down).

Bush/Pope 2004: "It is just unprecedented for a president to ask for help from the Vatican to get re-elected, and that is exactly what this is," says Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, about a report that Bush met with Vatican officials in hopes of getting the church hierarchy to pressure American bishops to speak out against gay marriage and other social issues.

Dick's on Lynndie's list: The 100-name witness list for Pvt. Lynndie England's hearing on her involvement in torture at Abu Ghraib includes high-profile Bushies including Dick Cheney. By putting top government officials like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ricardo Sanchez, and others on their witness list, "England's attorneys are serving notice that in defending their client, they will attempt to put on trial the Bush administration's policies on intelligence gathering from detainees. Like most other military police reservists charged in the abuse scandal, England has claimed military intelligence officers ordered the MPs to 'soften up' the detainees prior to interrogations." Also: The Lynndie England Fan Club: "Support Her... Or Get Out."

Doe John Kerry rock? Apparently. Who knew?

Weed like a win: During the big game between England and France today, Lisbon police will be turning a blind eye to tokers, while targeting drunks. "If people are drinking they lose control, if they smoke cannabis they don’t," says Alan Buffry of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance. “Alcohol makes fans fight. But cannabis smokers will be shaking hands and singing along together.” (Via TalkLeft.)

A secret women's language: Nüshu, a written language passed on to women in China's Hunan Province, is one of the world's oldest languages--and the only exclusively female language known. Researchers found that the calligraphy has more than 2,000 characters and that "the content of nüshu writings have proved to be revealing about society, history, nationality and culture... It is, however, a written language only. Women formed their own written symbols to represent the words in their local dialect. Hence men can usually understand nüshu if they hear it read aloud." Read more here.

Special favors for special friends: Josh Marshall links to this curious tale:

Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.

The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

Reagan's Themepark America: From the Village Voice, "The Death of a Salesman":

I think that Reagan, like no other American, deserves the honor of being the first person ever embalmed at Disneyland.... Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed America's sense of reality--a paltry target, all in all, given our predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John Wilkes Booth. In our bones, we had always been this sort of bullshit-craving country anyhow, founded on abstractions: not land (somebody else's), not people (Red Rover, Red Rover, send Emma Lazarus right over), not even shared history (nostalgia isn't the same thing, and try pulling that Civil War Shinola anywhere west of the Rio Grande). Just monumental words and wordy monuments, with two convenient oceans between them and circumstance; from Nat Turner's status as three-fifths of a man--even though we ended up hanging all of him--to Reagan's child Lynndie England (b. 1983, the year we invaded Grenada and lost 241 Marines in Lebanon), any shortfall could be blamed on something lost in translation. But it was Reagan, whose most profound Freudian slip was the immortal "Facts are stupid things," who beguiled us into living in the theme park full-time, and so much for the Declaration of Independence's prattle about "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"--actually the only time we ever expressed much concern for those. Since his 1980 opponent, Jimmy Carter, was about the sorriest embodiment of the reality principle imaginable--Three's Company 's Mr. Roper on the world-historical stage--facts didn't have a prayer.

Also: for more "Gipperporn," read Wonkette.com.

Green art: British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey explore germination, decay, and growth in their beautiful, largely grass-based art. Check out their range of work, from an 1866 London church entirely covered with sprouting grass to images "imprinted into living grass through the controlled production of chlorophyll."

Reagan fans no fan of Bush? Much has been written on the impact of Reagan's death on the presidential campaign, and many pundits say Bush will benefit. But this quote, buried within a wire report, might suggest otherwise. "[Reagan] made me proud to be an American," said Patricia Fuller, 67, of Thousand Oaks. "We need that again very badly, someone to bring that pride back. I hope there's someone out there." (Via Atrios.)

Spirit of the games: In Greece, Samsung is distributing cards to Olympic torchbearers that read, "If approached by media, please remember the following message: 'I am honoured to have been given the opportunity by Samsung to be a torchbearer for the Samsung Athens 2004 Olympic Torch Relay.'" And: While we're in the realm of overt branding, Pringles has announced that it'll begin printing messages and images on its chips. Hasbro's Trivial Pursuit Junior will be the first featured item, with questions from the game printed on each reconstituted potato-related crisp.

See it: The Agronomist, a new film by Jonathan Demme, "tells the story of Haitian national hero, journalist, and freedom fighter Jean L. Dominique. As owner and operator of his nation’s oldest and only free radio station, Dominique fought tirelessly against Haiti's overwhelming injustice, oppression, and poverty." (Thanks, Kemi.)

They're at it again: The 40th president's body isn't even cold yet, and Reaganiacs are already clamoring to get the Gipper on the $10 bill. Headed by Grover Norquist--who famously equated the estate tax with the "morality of the Holocaust" and says his goal is to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”--the efforts would replace America's first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, on the bill.

Speaking of Reagan: It's over-the-top, all-Ronny-all-the-time coverage of Reagan's death on US TV and radio these days. Even NPR gushes for what seems like hours for a president that many of us see as the most destructive of the 20th century. Sure, he deserves his due--dead presidents make news--and it's indeed worthy of headlines (and our compassion), but I find the ubiquity of coverage, the overwhelming lack of nuance and balance, bizarre. My problem with the reportage is how it's told (what details are left out in the name of "good taste"?) and how often it's told (if half of Morning Edition is about Reagan, what stories were bumped?).

Instead of this tasteful framework for the story--"A contentious president, Reagan was beloved by many for X, Y, and Z, but despised by others for A, B, and C. But those of all political stripes must admit he left an indelible mark on the American psyche."--we get emotion-laden stories that leave out some key moments in Reagan's presidency. John Nichols writes, "All of a sudden, the man who redirected tens of billions of dollars away from domestic needs to build up the largest nuclear arsenel on the planet, ran up record deficits, saw members of his administration investigated and indicted at a staggering rate and, himself, came close to being impeached for allowing aides to create a shadow government that peddled weapons to sworn enemies of the United States and used the profits to fund illegal wars in Central America was remade as a statesman who restored dignity and direction to his country." And when other news is covered--especially on broadcast news--it gets short-changed. When's the last time you heard about the hunt for Osama bin Laden on the evening news? In-depth coverage of US GIs dying in the nearly forgotten war in Afghanistan? The brutal civil war in Sudan that's killed 30,000 people (300,000 more expected to die unless aid arrives soon)? This--news about death that can be prevented--is front-page news. Right?

Pulling the plug: According to MediaChannel, Italy's largest power utility--a state-owned entity--pulled the plug on two left-wing radio stations planning coverage of the massive protests around Bush's visit with the pope. Organizers say as many as 250,000 activists hit the streets. "It is something outrageous because while [Italy's] communication law recognizes the important role of local broadcasting, this role is taken away in a special day with great need of information and communication" Cynthia D'Ulizia the director of Radio Città Aperta said.

Nader on corporatism and conservatism: "Just as progressives have been abandoned by the corporate Democrats and told,'You got nowhere to go other than to stay home or vote for the Democrats,' this is the fate of the authentic conservatives in the Republican Party," says Ralph Nader in an American Conservative interview with Pat Buchanan. Referencing "the giant corporation in the White House masquerading as a human being named George W. Bush," Nader tries to lure true conservatives to his candidacy. And his logic's not half-bad:

I once said to Bill Bennett, “Would you agree that corporatism is on a collision course with conservative values?” and he said yes.

The impact of giant corporations, commercialism, direct marketing to kids, sidestepping parents, selling them junk food, selling them violence, selling them sex and addictions, selling them the suspension of their socialization process—years ago conservatives spoke out on that, but it was never transformed into a political position. It was always an ethical, religious value position. It is time to take it into the political arena.

(Thanks, John K.)

Art or bioterror: The Bush administration, continuing to confuse it's WMDs for a hole in the ground, is now seeking to prosecute members of a respected art collective for making art critical of genetic engineering:

Three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

The subpoenas are the latest installment in a bizarre investigation in which members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have mistaken an art project for a biological weapons laboratory. While most observers have assumed that the Task Force would realize the absurd error of its initial investigation of Steve Kurtz, the subpoenas indicate that the feds have instead chosen to press their "case" against the baffled professor.

Two of the subpoenaed artists--Beatriz da Costa and Steve Barnes--are, like Kurtz, members of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an artists' collective that produces artwork to educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. They were served the subpoenas by federal agents who tailed them to an art show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The third artist, Paul Vanouse, is, like Kurtz, an art professor at the University at Buffalo. He has worked with CAE in the past.

The artists involved are at a loss to explain the increasingly bizarre case. "I have no idea why they're continuing (to investigate)," said Beatriz da Costa, one of those subpoenaed. "It was shocking that this investigation was ever launched. That it is continuing is positively frightening, and shows how vulnerable the PATRIOT Act has made freedom of speech in this country." Da Costa is an art professor at the University of California at Irvine.

According to the subpoenas, the FBI is seeking charges under Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which has been expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. As expanded, this law prohibits the possession of "any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system" without the justification of "prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose."

Even under the expanded powers of the USA PATRIOT Act, it is difficult to understand how anyone could view CAE's art as anything other than a "peaceful purpose." The equipment seized by the FBI consisted mainly of CAE's most recent project, a mobile DNA extraction laboratory to test store-bought food for possible contamination by genetically modified grains and organisms; such equipment can be found in any university's basic biology lab and even in many high schools.

The investigation focuses on the use of E. coli in a work called GenTerra, which has been part of a touring exhibition for two years.

Steve Kurtz's lawyer says this case is about the First Amendment: "It allows people to be different and express themselves in unique and creative ways. It's unsettling any time that the government comes down on someone because of the message they're trying to send or because they're different, because they're not cookie-cutter individuals in the eyes of clean-cut, blazer-wearing people. He's to be applauded for his individuality."

Read full release here. See CAE's biotech projects here

Remembering Reagan: Ketchup as a vegetable. Manuel Noriega. Iran/Contra. "The bombing begins in five minutes." MX missiles. CIA-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (killing 80+ civilians). Silence on AIDs... Just a few of the things you won't be hearing about in the glowing, amnesiac remembrances of Ronald Reagan in coming days. And: Prof. William Anderson writes that "the longest-term effect of his presidency will be the loss of freedom for many people in this country, and especially the loss of entrepreneurial freedom."

The Madness of King George: According to White House staffers, the president is getting increasingly erratic, one moment saying he's guided by "God's will," the next calling those he perceives as disloyal "fucking assholes." In a report for Capitol Hill Blue, one aide says, "This is what is killing us on Iraq. We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.” Also: former US weapons inspector David Kay calls those who continume to claim WMDs will be found in Iraq are "delusional," stating unequivocally, "There are not actual stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction."

A Buddhist perspective: Vietnamese Buddhist monk and "engaged Buddhism" practitioner Thich Nhat Hanh discusses torture, compassion's role in international politics, and more in this Beliefnet interview. "The very ideas of terrorism and imagined weapons of mass destruction are already collective karma in terms of thinking and speaking," he says. "The media helped the war happen by supporting these ideas through speech and writing. Thought, speech and action are all collective karma." And: Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams writes that torture imagery like those revealed at Abu Ghraib are "all too familiar" in Ireland. Plus: A new UN report says that torture at Abu Ghraib "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal".

Fuming about gas prices? With American gasoline prices averaging $2.05 a gallon (and hitting $5.79 a gallon in the UK last week), how come Iraqis are only paying five cents a gallon? The answer: US subsidies. Since Iraq can't refine it's oil into gasoline, the US buys fuel at $1.50/gallon from neighboring countries and has it shipped in to Iraqi service stations--costing US taxpayers more than $500 million for a three-month supply.

A black eye for freedom of expression: San Francisco gallery owner Lori Haigh, in a group show of Berkeley artists, put Guy Colwell's painting Abuse in the front window. Within two days of its installation, the gallery window was egged, trash was dumped at the door, and hateful phone messages started pouring in. The painting features three American GIs amid a group of nude men wired up and hooded, Abu Ghraib style. Haigh eventually moved the painting to an interior wall, but continued to be harassed: one gallery visitor spat in her face, callers told her to leave the neighborhood "before you get hurt," and a man rang her doorbell and when Haigh emerged, he punched her in the face, giving her a black eye. She has since closed the gallery out of fear for her children's safety.

iPod, iRaq, iHop: Now The Onion offers another evolution of iPod, a "new 40 gigabite iHop breakfast platter" that "holds up to 10,000 pancakes."

Something cranky this way comes: Michael Moore's Palm d'Or-winning new film Fahrenheit 9/11 has been picked up for distribution, and will open in the US June 25 (see the trailer online). While it's been getting rave reviews, one bigwig isn't thrilled: Ray Bradbury (author of the sci-fi classic Fahrenheit 451) is, shall we say, displeased at Moore's appropriated title, calling him a "horrible, horrible person" and "a screwed asshole... He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."

Lakoff on "Framing": In an insightful interview UC-Berkeley professor George Lakoff discusses how conservatives are better than progressives at "framing," why hands-off conservative foundations yield better results, and how the "nurturant parent" model dominates progressive movements:

[T]he progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.

Anarchy, tangentially... Tangentium, "an online journal devoted to alternative perspectives on IT, democracy, and society," has dedicated its May issue to Anarchism, Activism and IT. Lest you freak out at that first A-word--as so many do--the publication runs a great article on anarchy:

The trouble with anarchism is that the word "anarchy" has developed false connotations. There is nothing in its Greek origins which implies chaos, violence or vandalism. It in fact describes a particular type of association, or a decision-making method, in which there are no identifiable leaders or rulers. The word is derived from a-, the prefix denoting the absence of something, and arkhos, ruler; compare this with monarch (one ruler), oligarch (few rulers) and so on. Now, it is true that language evolves, and therefore so do meanings. But in a country where the high form of language is still called the "King's/Queen's English", we cannot forget that control over the evolution of language is just one more means of exercising political power. When one sees the relatively abstract word "anarchy" applied to the material phenomenon of, say, a riot, one must remember that this is an application of a metaphor. Therefore, perhaps the first and most important task of the modern anarchist is to seek to reclaim the word.

It's a distinction Siva Vaidhyanathan makes in his book The Anarchist in the Library: his point is that anarchy's tactics--but not necessarily its political philosophy--might hold the key to reviving democracy. He sees distributed and decentralized communication technologies like WiFi, filesharing, and open-source software as a way of resisting hegemonic rule. "No self-defined anarchist has ever sparked a revolution," he writes. "But the ideologically uninitiated who have trafficked in the habits of anarchism—chiefly unmediated communication—have toppled dozens of tyrants."

i is for...
The new iPod ad campaign is ripe for jamming. From the iRaq subversions mentioned earlier to a new, more benign trend--interpreting what the "i" in iPod stands for: Impolite. Isolated. Insecure. Irrational. Idiotic. I'm less Interested in the commentary than in the lightning rod this campaign seems to be. Also: From the folks who created Black People Love Us and Fundrace comes a term that can explain the phenomenon: contagious media."

This opinion is a wholly owned subsidiary of Playmobil:
Via Stay Free, a disclaimer at the Playmobil online toy store:

We would like to know your opinion on our products and our website. However, we want to point out that we do not regard any messages received from you as confidential. Furthermore, we have the right to use your information in any way we see fit and without any obligations whatsoever toward you. The information we receive becomes the property of PLAYMOBIL® on receipt and we have the right to use all ideas, concepts, know-how or technical information including the development, production and distribution of products without any obligation for financial compensation toward you.

Antiwargames: How would you have responded to September 11? Futurefarmers created this simulation as a way of getting at the intricacies involved in responses to that attack. I'm not sure I understand the game's critique (read a discussion of the game here), but it's far more nuanced than the new game making the rounds, Bushgame: Anti-Bush Online Game, a confusing tale of Hulk Hogan rounding up pot-bellied superheros to defeat the Liberty-screwing Bush machine.

Torturous alliances: In an article speculating whether the US traded interrogation training for security contracts with Israeli companies, Ali Abunimah writes, "Although no evidence has emerged directly linking [American defense contractor] CACI's involvement in the Abu Ghraib atrocities to Israel, it has long been known that the US military has been interested in 'learning' from Israel's experience attempting to suppress the Palestinian uprising. In March 2003, for example, the AP reported that the 'the (US) military has been listening closely to Israeli experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli Army operations in Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns.'" The torture techniques long used by Israel against Palestinians match those used in Abu Ghraib: "hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food." But, as John Stanton writes, Israel's and the US's interrogation method really come from the British, who developed "five pillars of torture"--wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, deprivation of food and water--over 30 years of interrogating IRA members in Northern Ireland.

Also: Lisa Hajjar writes in the Middle East Report Online that torture occurs today in two-thirds of the world's countries, that Israel was the first country to publicly break the "torture taboo," and on how the right to not be tortured became international law.

Frances Moore Lappe on Fear: Yes! Magazine runs a surprising interview with Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappe. An excerpt:

I think we are at a new evolutionary stage. We evolved in tight-knit tribes in which we faced death if we didn’t have the support of the rest of the tribe. So little wonder that it can seem unthinkable to say “no, thanks” to the modern-day equivalent of our tribe—our fear-driven culture.

The problem is that our whole tribe—if you will, the larger community of humanity itself—is on a death march ecologically and in terms of the intensification of violence and conflict. So breaking with the pack may be exactly what we should be doing. Saying “no” to the dominant culture that is trapping us in destructive ways of living might be the most life-serving thing we can do. Fear doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to stop. It doesn’t mean that we are failures. It doesn’t mean that we are cowards. It means that we are human beings walking into the unknown, and that we are risking breaking with others for something we believe in.

Swipes, Gripes, Unabashed Adulation: Eyeteeth now has a comment field. Just click 'n' blab.

One Thousand Reasons to Vote Against George W. Bush

Rodeohead: Such ethereal twang: Radiohead, as interpreted by a bluegrass band--complete with banjo, jaw harp, and slide guitar. (Via BoingBoing.)

Crest Frightening Expressions: Branding-induced seizures at a recent taping of the TV show The Apprentice. Egad:

Contestants had been recruited to sell a new toothpaste, Crest Whitening Expressions, in "Refreshing Vanilla Mint" flavor with scratch-and-sniff boxes. At least one of the teams ended up in Washington Square Park, where it hired a plump 51-year-old woman (apparently a street person) to haul the empty boxes back to the truck and bring the contestants new boxes for the munificent sum of $20.

As the woman worked, she was reported to mumble, "I have to do a good job for Crest." After about an hour, she had worked herself into a trance, and she started rolling on the ground chanting "Crest! Crest! Crest!" Finally, an off-duty EMT technician and another passerby helped the woman back to the Crest truck -- where she promply had a seizure and passed out across the front seats.

After being out for three minutes, the woman awoke, vomited, and then said, "Where's my money?"

It remains to be decided if this hunk of reality makes it into the final cut of this reality TV show.

Neoconned: Sidney Blumenthal writes on an investigation that's getting little play in the US mainstream press: which neocon Bush advisor(s) leaked classified information to Ahmed Chalabi, a man "identified by the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency as an Iranian double-agent, passing secrets to that citadel of the 'axis of evil' for decades," and why did the Bush administration cover up this fact? Robert Scheer asks, "We might start investigating which Bush official arranged for this hustler — already on the lam for a decade from major banking fraud convictions in Jordan — to sit behind First Lady Laura Bush during this year's State of the Union speech. Was the Secret Service watching her purse?"

Sontag on Abu Ghraib: Susan Sontag writes on images of torture in today's Guardian:

[T]here seems no reversing for the moment America's commitment to self-justification, and the condoning of its increasingly out-of-control culture of violence. Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies and family. What is revealed by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamour to get on a television show to reveal.

She also writes that the "administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs--as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict," an opinion back up by this fact: Rumsfeld has reportedly instituted a military-wide ban on digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras.

Also: Sontag's Regarding the Torture of Others from yesterday's New York Times Magazine.

Mobile radio for mass protest: I've been told that Neurotransmitter, a media collective in New York, plans to distribute "com_muni_ports"--backpack-contained "radio broadcast units created for short range pedestrian broadcasting"--for alternative reporting of proceedings and protests at the Republican National Convention, August 30 through September 2. Beautiful idea.

Bikes against Bush: Joshua Kinberg is building cyberbikes for the RNC protests. Internet users will be able to log onto his weblog to request messages that will then be marked on the sidewalks of New York using computer-controlled chalk-spraying devices. His thesis advisor--yes, he's writing his thesis on related topics--Yury Gitman, is the man behind the MagicBike, "a mobile WiFi (wireless Internet) hotspot that gives free Internet connectivity wherever its ridden or parked." As Gitman says on his site, "I am like the ice cream man, but with no music and I deliver free wireless access and not ice cream." More technoprotest: Bluetooth Users Against Bush.

New York City Rising: Visit CounterConvention to learn about events and resources related to the massive protests--one million people from across America united against Bush, war, and a repressive Republican administration--planned for the Convention. (See the posters!) Others planning action: RNC Not Welcome in NYC and United for Peace and Justice.

Brand Iraq: Iraq sneakers?

Costs of War: Thanks to Rich for reminding me of Costofwar.com, which at this second, calculates the expenditures on the war in Iraq at $114,432,544,567. And, naturally, that's not counting the Iraqi civilian (as much as 11,005) and US military lives (797) lost.

The Logo-ization of Abu Ghraib: iRaq There's something compelling about this and something creepy: someone in New York City has been culturejamming street advertisements for Apple's iPod, inserting a silhouetted version of Abu Ghraib's shrouded and wired victim amongst grooving iPod-wearing hipsters. Blending into the posterized personages on the iPod ads, these ads for iRaq are signed off with the tagline: "10,000 Volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent." The Grunewald-esque photographs of torture make a visceral case against the US occupation of Iraq--one, when simplified into a silhouetted icon, carries the kind of emotional heft as, say, Nike's dunking Air Jordan (something Freewayblogger seems to have picked up on weeks ago). From a graphical standpoint, the miltary's so-called "bad apples" sure stumbled upon a powerful image. But it's this reductive nature that's somehow disconcerting. Like the meaningless but somehow compelling abstraction of Nike's swoosh, the image simplifies to the extent that every criticism of the war can be loaded into it. Is the Abu Ghraib wired man the brand essence of a souring war and occupation? Earlier: A reworking of another Abu Ghraib image--that of hot-dogging GI Lyndie English--into an iPod graphic, from Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Memory & Exile: The Borderless Art of Emily Jacir

Every morning I walk my dog around Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis. Nothing special, just the comfortable familiarity that comes with wandering beloved terrain day in and day out. But sometimes I wonder: what if this was all gone, if I was banned from ever coming here again? How, then, would I cherish this mundane ritual? Artist Emily Jacir addresses these issues head-on, telling the stories of people who don’t have the luxury of pondering such what-ifs--Palestinians in exile, both within Israel and abroad.

The reality of not being able to return home, or to move freely, is at the heart of Jacir’s recent project Where We Come From (2001–2003). A Palestinian artist with an American passport, Jacir can travel where other Palestinians can’t--into and out of the Occupied Territories, to her parents’ home in Ramallah and to her studio in New York. For the project she asked exiled Palestinians: "If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?" She then took their answers--"Go to my mother’s grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and put flowers and pray." "Drink the water in my parents’ village." "Go to Gaza and eat Sayadiyeh."--and set out to fulfill them.

She paid the phone bill of a man who is forbidden from going to the Jerusalem post office himself. She delivered hugs and kisses to missed family members, took a snapshot of an ancestral home, played soccer with a random boy in Haifa, lit a candle on the beach. She documented her encounters with a photo or video, each shot from her vantage point, a perspective that allowed the person to project themselves into forbidden spaces, if only virtually. The work’s presentation is serene: requests, printed in English and Arabic, are mounted beside the documentation. In this stillness, the border between worlds seems both photograph-thin and unmercifully impassable.

These themes--exile and memory--permeate much of Jacir’s work. In From Texas With Love (2002), she uses an American icon of freedom--a wide-open highway--to evoke the smothered dreams of Palestinians. Again, she began with a question: “If you had the freedom to get in a car and drive for one hour without being stopped (imagine that there is no Israeli military occupation, no Israeli soldiers, no Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, no 'bypass' road) what song would you listen to?” She set their selections--51 songs ranging from Madonna’s "Material Girl" to traditional Arabic music--to an expansive hourlong video, a continuous shot down a seemingly unending roadway. Created during an artist residency in Texas, the piece was about "being in a place so incredible and beautiful and being able to drive freely and to listen to music, and at the same time wanting to cry because this cannot happen back home."

But while Jacir’s work is tinged with sadness, it’s also spiked with humor. In her subversive Sexy Semite (2000–2002), she peppered the Village Voice with personal ads for Palestinians looking to settle down in Israel. One asks "Do you love milk & honey? I’m ready to start a big family in Israel. Still have house keys." Another, more pointed, reads: "You stole the land. May as well take the women! Redhead Palestinian ready to be colonized by your army." The ads slyly suggest a way around an irreconcilable issue in the Middle East peace process: by marrying Israelis, Palestinians can gain citizenship and thus sidestep calls for the "right of return" (an unfulfilled provision of UN Resolution 194 that promises Palestinian refugees the chance to return home). But, given their placement in the love-wanted section instead of world news, the ads seem less about policy than the personal. Individual lives--people seeking love, a sense of home, the kind of daily routine you and I enjoy--are profoundly impacted by the occupation. And perhaps it’s through individual relationships that the conflict can ease. As one ad punned: "Palestinian Male working in a difficult occupation. I’m looking for a Jewish Beauty... Only you can help me find my way Home."

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth."

--Shirley Chisholm, first African American elected to Congress, first woman and first African American to run for president, subject of the new film Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed

Ten stories the world needs to know more about: The United Nations Department of Public Information has posted ten under-reported stories--"second-rung issues that need more thorough, balanced and regular attention." The list:

Uganda: Child soldiers at centre of mounting humanitarian crisis

Central African Republic: a silent crisis crying out for help

AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: a looming threat to future generations

The peacekeeping paradox: as peace spreads, surge in demand strains UN resources

Tajikistan: rising from the ashes of civil war

Women as peacemakers: from victims to re-builders of society

Persons with disabilities: a treaty seeks to break new ground in ensuring equality

Bakassi Peninsula: Recourse to the law to prevent conflict

Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity

Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation  

Powell mislead (and unplugged): Colin Powell, who in his February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council spoke of "firsthand descriptions" the US had of biological weapons labs in Iraq, now admits that the intelligence community provided him with information that was "deliberately misleading." What the mainstream press isn't reporting from this story is Powell's feisty display of independence with his press secretary. When Tim Russert of Meet the Press began asking Powell about the administration's bogus claims that Iraq possessed yellowcake uranium, Powell's press aide turned the camera away, attempting to shut down the interview. Off-camera, Powell can be heard telling her, "Emily, get out of the way. Bring the camera back please." (See footage here.)

Ride oil-free: With crude oil approaching $42 a gallon and prices unlikely to ease soon, National Bike-to-Work Week couldn't be better timed. If you live in the Twin Cities, check out the 2004 Commuter Challenge. Click here to learn about ridesharing, bike routes, and special bus passes.

Love, Republican-style: Having trouble finding that special someone to snuggle up on the couch with to watch Fox News and Hannity & Colmes? Lookin' for a lover who thinks that those whiners at Abu Ghraib should zip it and that George Bush is the best thing since, well, George Bush? Tired of trolling online dating sites and finding only "liberals that don't really share your viewpoints on important issues?" Well, gee whiz, now there's a place for you: singlerepublican.com. (Alas, SingleDemocrat.com is no longer operating, I've been told.)

Beetle Bailey remixed: Beetle Ghraib.

Exit strategies: In a multipart series The Guardian asks leading thinkers how the US can extricate itself from Iraq. A sampling:

Jonathan Schell: "President Bush said recently of the Iraqis, 'It's going to take a while for them to understand what freedom is all about.' Hachim Hassani, a representative of the Iraqi Islamic party, might have been answering him when he commented to the Los Angeles Times, 'The Iraqi people now equate democracy with bloodshed.' Under these circumstances, staying the course cannot benefit Iraq. On the contrary, each additional day that American troops continue to fight in Iraq can only compound the eventual price of the original mistake. More lives, American and Iraqi, will be lost; the society will be disorganised and pulverised; and any chances for a better future will be reduced, not fostered."

Noam Chomsky: "Reparations - not just aid - should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and - together with other criminal states - for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires."

Howard Zinn: "The truth is, no one knows what will happen if the US withdraws. We face a choice between the certainty of mayhem if we stay and the uncertainty of what will follow if we leave."

Bloggers question Nicholas Berg's death: Many have been picking up on inconsistencies and confusing facts related to the videotaped beheading of American Nicholas Berg, some questioning the timing of its release (while Berg was captured April 10, the airing of the video distracts attention from US abuses at Abu Ghraib, some say) to the theory that Berg was already dead when the taped decapitation occurred.

Youch! A zinger from Thomas Friedman. Behold:

Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn't the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope. They would never think of saying, "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training — with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft." Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) Because that might have required a gas tax or a confrontation with the administration's oil moneymen. Why did the administration always — rightly — bash Yasir Arafat, but never lift a finger or utter a word to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of illegal settlements in the West Bank? Because while that might have earned America credibility in the Middle East, it might have cost the Bush campaign Jewish votes in Florida.

And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles.

Power's beattitude problem: Pardon the religious interlude, but this essay by Kurt Vonnegut--where he says "our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees"--is too Vonnegutty to pass up:

Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

From Abu Ghraib to Dover AFB: Understanding images of war

I've been largely silent on the photos of torture coming out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison--more of which were published today--because it's so shocking and sad and unfathomable. And frankly, what can I add to the already-raging discussion? Any honorable person should be angry as hell, so instead of venting my ire, I'm posting the unedited version of my article from the print edition of the current Adbusters. The book I'm writing on, Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others--like the images of US-inflicted torture, charred bodies lynched on an Iraqi bridge, and flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq--haunts me. Maybe Sontag has something to offer the discussion.

Those who oppose war on grounds of its unfathomable barbarity are backed up by harsh photographic evidence: a nude girl, three-quarters of her nine-year old body blistered by napalm, fleeing a South Vietnamese aerial attack; an Iraqi soldier frozen in the hatch of a bombed-out tank, his lips charred away to reveal long teeth, his uniform incinerated to expose striated black muscles. But, while we recoil at such images--agreeing, as we must, that war is hell--what good does it do?

Without a name for the dead or details of why they’re fighting, our ire has no focus. But when the dead are identified—a Palestinian child, an American GI, a North Vietnamese woman—the images lose their neutrality. Now we can place blame. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag writes that photographs of war’s victims are "a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus." In 2004, as always, that rhetoric takes on a decidedly political tone.

During the Vietnam war, imagery turned Americans against military intervention. Watching footage of 58,000 formerly marching, laughing, high-school graduating young people return home in zipper bags can temper patriotic fervor. But by the end of the first Gulf War, George Bush declared, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." Why should Americans be gun-shy about entangling foreign wars when the casualty counts are so low, the killing is seemingly done on videogame monitors, and the dead come home in "transfer tubes"—a termed coined by the first Bush administration—instead of body bags? To further obscure war's gore, Bush issued a military order prohibiting the media from covering the arrival of dead soldiers at Dover Air Force Base, a policy his son, George W. Bush, enforces today. Thanks to this rule, you might've missed the news that the junior Bush's war in Iraq took more American lives by November 2003 than did Vietnam over its first three years.

While allowing us to see the human costs of "liberating Iraq" doesn’t serve Bush’s future war plans—after all, these 767 soldiers died at his command—keeping the dead in the public eye makes political sense when someone else is ordering the killing. A controversial Bush-Cheney campaign commercial, featuring a flag-draped body being removed from the site of the World Trade Center attacks, sends a clear message: Look what "they" did to us. Just as a photographer excludes some images when he focuses on others, the ad pinpoints a collective moment of shock, ignoring the complex issues that surround it.

"The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs," writes Sontag. "Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they are not much help if the task is to understand." Bush, like any wartime president, would rather leave Americans staggered by a visceral image of vulnerability and impotence than have them asking questions. Why was the president hindering the 9/11 investigation? Why did the White House fly some 100 Saudi citizens, including members of the bin Laden family, out of the US days after the country’s biggest terrorist attack? Where's Osama? "Narratives can make us understand," says Sontag. "Photographs do something else: they haunt us."

Yes America Can(ada): In another prop malfunction, George W. Bush rode across Ohio yesterday in a campaign bus emblazoned with the words "Yes America Can." Turns out said bus was made in Canada.

Yes Men strike again: Agitprop art-pranksters The Yes Men covertly infiltrated a Heritage Foundation event and got 10 seconds of applause for announcing from the stage that, in light of George Bush's shortcomings, they were nominating former Reagan Attorney-General Ed Meese for president. "To the next President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America, Ed Meese III!"

No to Michael Moore flick: Disney is prohibiting its subsidiary Miramax from distributing Michael Moore's controversial new movie, Fahrenheit 9-11, which explores the links between the Bush and bin Laden families. As Moore reports, the film "might 'endanger' millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will 'anger' the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush." Maybe the flap will do for the film what Sinclair's censorship did for Nightline's ratings.

No women allowed: An astonishing report from Reuters:

The Bush administration has stripped information on a range of women's issues from government Web sites, apparently in pursuit of a political agenda, researchers reported on Wednesday.

"Vital information is being deleted, buried, distorted and has otherwise gone missing from government Web sites and publications," Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, said in a telephone interview. "Taken cumulatively, this has an enormously negative effect on women and girls."

A council report said the missing information fell into four categories: women's health; their economic status; objective scientific data; and information aimed at protecting women and girls and helping them advance.

The Bush doctrine takes a beating: After 50 former British diplomats criticized Tony Blair's Iraq policy, 53 former US diplomats are accusing the Bush administration of sacrificing the United States' credibility in the world by blatantly siding with Ariel Sharon.

Losing Will: In a column titled "Time for Bush to See the Realities of Iraq," conservative columnist George Will starts out by quoting Bush's Rose Garden speech on Friday:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.

Will continues: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts... Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice." Ouch.

More bruises: Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, the last US diplomat to meet Saddam before his capture, is getting his licks in on his old boss and the GOP:

If you're fiscally responsible, this is not your party. If you believe in a moderate foreign policy characterized by alliances, free trade and the ability to operate in an international environment, this is not your party. If you believe in limited federal government, this is not your party. If you believe that the government should stay out of your bedroom, this is very definitely not your party. In fact, I would argue that unless you believe in the American imperium, imposed on the world by force, or unless you believe in the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations, this is not your party.

If it’s our war, let’s all fight it. If not… Former Marine Corps lieutenant (and founding editor of Texas Monthly) William Broyles, Jr., writes the most sensible defense of the draft in today’s New York Times. Having been called up himself to fight in Vietnam, and with his son serving in Iraq, his perspective is credible:

If this war is truly worth fighting, then the burdens of doing so should fall on all Americans. If you support this war, but assume that Pat Tillman and Other People's Children should fight it, then you are worse than a hypocrite. If it's not worth your family fighting it, then it's not worth it, period. The draft is the truest test of public support for the administration's handling of the war, which is perhaps why the administration is so dead set against bringing it back.