Shop til you're dropped. Another reason to observe Buy Nothing Day: when the 6 a.m. siren blew at a Florida Wal-Mart on Friday morning, a herd of thrift-crazed shoppers, intent on snatching up $29 DVD players, trampled 41-year old Patricia VanLester. Few shoppers noticed VanLester under foot, and when EMTs finally got to her she was unconscious on the floor, a DVD box under her. Wal-Mart, inspired by the spirit of the holidays, offered to put a DVD on hold for the still-hospitalized woman.

Quote du Jour, starring John McCain: "Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor, and I've never known a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination that this Congress has."

The pain of the peacemaker. Father John Dears, an ardent anti-war activist, has borne the brunt of harassment by both the military and fellow Catholics for his viewpoints--including one episode where 75 soldiers chanted "Kill, kill, kill" in the front yard of his church. Of that confrontation he says: "We must be making a difference if the soldiers have to march at our front doors. That they failed to convert me or intimidate me, that they had to listen to my side of the story, may haunt their consciences as they travel to Iraq. No matter what happens, they have heard loud and clear the good news that God does not want them to kill anyone."

Photos from the front lines

Leif Utne prefaces his photos from the FTAA conference in Miami with these words:

For all the horror of the Miami police department's war on dissent, and all the anger I and others have rightfully expressed, I have to point out what a beautiful and inspiring sight it was to see some 15,000 people -- including young anarchists, middle-aged environmentalists, immigrant laborers, retired trade unionists, and more -- gathered together to oppose this undemocratic trade deal.

I hope these pictures convey both the horror and the beauty of what I saw.

Beating Bush beyond the grave: Remember how Sally Baron, a 71-year old Wisconsinite who died in August, requested in her obituary that memorial donations "be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush"? On October 2, another such obituary appeared, honoring 81-year-old Louisiana resident Gertrude Jones. As Snopes' Urban Legends page reports, a guest book has been set up on Gertrude's behalf--with entries as recent as today--filled with 17 pages of comments, including more than a few by mourners who've been inspired to donate to the Democratic Party.

Nixonian tactics? An aide to Republican Orrin Hatch has been busted for hacking into computers in the offices of Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and Dick Durbin. Hatch launched an investigation when the senators reported the thefts of memos from their servers. Plus, the Washington Post on The Nixon in Bush.

Humanitarianism? Norwegian soldiers serving in Iraq are baffled by politicians who call their efforts a "humanitarian mission." Didrik Coucheron of the BFO, an officers' organization: "Anyone can see that a uniformed soldier with a helmet, shrapnel vest and an AG3 across his stomach is a soldier and not a humanitarian construction worker."

Draft? If Bush is reelected, will he reinstate the draft?

Nobel prizewinner Jimmy Carter on Bush's unilateral attack on Iraq: "I thought it was a serious mistake, maybe the worst mistake in foreign policy that our country’s made in many years. But now we are there, we have to support our troops there and pray that we can cut down on our casualties.”

As my friend Jim says, "The Left needs its billionaires." We've got it in George Soros. Joe Conason looks into Conservatives' ire at Soros' ample funding of democratic causes. Plus: a rightwing perspective on the man and his Open Society Institute.

W's illegal W? When Bush flubbed a line in the State of the Union--the one where he referred to unconventional weapons delivered in a "wial" not a "vial"--it was just a slip of the tongue. But when Democrats discovered the same line used in a pro-Bush TV ad, delivered with silver-tongued perfection--i.e. rerecorded--it just might be illegal. If the Republican party rerecorded the line, they weren't being truthful when they said they didn't coordinate the ad with the president; if that's the case they may have violated campaign laws.

What's in a name? First brother Neal Bush has been up to no good, according to records released from his March divorce proceedings. On several occasions he had sex with women who were likely prostitutes in Thailand and Hong Kong, and was offered $2 million in stock from Grace Semiconductor, even though--as his ex-wife's lawyer put it--he had "not a lot of demonstrable business experience that would bring about a company investing $2m in you."

Woe is Yee. Captain James Yee, the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of espionage, can't catch a break from the government. While he's been set free after three months in captivity and assigned to a new unit--likely because the charges of espionage wouldn't stick--Yee has been hit by new allegations: adultery and having viewed porn on his computer, both crimes in the military. Said Yee's lawyer: "They have destroyed this man's reputation for what turns out to be no good reason, and now it appears they are pursuing matters in a completely vindictive manner."

A powerful, cinematic Flash animation brings out the dead, calculating that, if current trends continue, another 2,400 American soldiers will be dead in Iraq a year from now.

A mouth big enough to speak out of both sides of: FAIR's Nov/Dec issue of Extra! includes ample reasons why Rush Limbaugh ought to turn himself in for his illegal drug use, straight from the horse's mouth. Like this 1995 opinion: "...too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

Friday is International Buy Nothing Day, a symbolic act of resistance against overconsumption as a Western cultural value. On the biggest shopping day of the year, stay home and claim your rightful role as a citizen not a mindless consumer. Adbusters reports that 62% of Americans will refrain from shopping on November 28.

It's a start. At Fort Carson yesterday the president met with 98 relatives of 26 soldiers killed in Iraq--only the third such meeting. He still has not attended a single funeral for the 431 US citizens killed in Iraq in the armed forces, even though 40 of the funerals took place just four miles from the White House. Bush has carved out time, by contrast, to attend 41 fundraising receptions since the war began. (Via Cursor).

Neocon dingbat Ann Coulter waxes anti-Semitic:

In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats' other big idea – too nuanced for a bumper sticker – is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew – along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering.

(Via Atrios.)

Southern Exposure. TalkLeft points out a timely, new group blog on Latin American affairs.

The Moral Myth of War

George Monbiot parses the moral arguments trotted out to justify war in Iraq:

The key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn't mean that it is motivated by the moral case.

...the White House is not a branch of Amnesty International. When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan's, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon's and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent.

It is hard to see why we should expect anything else. All empires work according to the rules of practical advantage, rather than those of kindness and moral decency.

(Thanks, Tamara.)

Weekend news

General Wesley Clark, on Bush's new ad campaign that questions the patriotism of Democrats: "I'm not critical of President Bush because he's attacking terrorists; I'm critical of the president because he is NOT attacking terrorists."

Clark is right, it seems. New York City--where, you recall, the World Trade Center once stood--is the nation's number one terror risk, but ranks 49th in federal counterterrorism aid--receiving only $84 million of the $900 million the city says it needs to protect itself. Also, Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, reports that Osama bin Laden "is not an individual that is as important as is the ongoing campaign of the coalition against terrorists."

The Queen is steamed. George W. Bush's entourage has trashed the gardens at Buckingham Palace, doing more damage in three days than have the Palace's 30,000 annual visitors. Racking up "tens of thousands of pounds" of damage and destroying "historic and rare plants" dating back to Queen Victoria's reign, Bush and Co. turned the palace lawn into a helipad for Marine Force One and two Black Hawk helicopters.

Hoover's America: According to a confidential FBI memorandum, agents have been gathering extensive information on antiwar protesters, and police have been advised to report any suspicious behaviors to FBI counterterrorism squads. Critics say it squelches free speech. The ACLU's Anthony Romero: "The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent. The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover."

The brutal murder of two American GIs in Mosul--their throats slit, skulls smashed with bricks, and bodies mutiliated--feels more like Somalia than Vietnam. CORRECTION: The US Army has retracted the story about throat-slitting and mutilation, but two GIs were killed by gunshots to the head.

An Exxon representative reports that worldwide annual emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to increase by 3.5 billion tons, or 50 percent, by the year 2020. Global demand for energy will increase by 40 percent, he added, assuring that "The oil resource base is huge -- it's huge -- and we expect it to satisfy world demand growth well beyond 2020."

Art of war: Howard Zinn and Radiohead's Thom Yorke discuss the role of artists in times of war in an excellent Alternet interview. Zinn: "True, the political power is controlled by the corporate elite, and the arts are the locale for a kind of guerilla warfare, in the sense that guerrillas in a totalitarian situation look for apertures and opportunities where they can have an effect. When tyrannies are overthrown--as, for instance, in fascist Spain or the Soviet Union--it starts in the culture, which is the only area where people can have some freedom."

FTAA action alert: activists jailed and allegedly tortured

Reports of violence at the Miami FTAA conference and in area jails, from United for Peace:

Protestors were attacked by police wielding batons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber, wooden, and plastic bullets and other chemical agents. Over 100 protestors were treated for injuries; 12 were hospitalized. Police dispersed large groups of peaceful protestors with tear gas, pepper spray and open fire. Small groups leaving the protests were harassed, arrested and beaten. This campaign of fear and intimidation culminated in the closure and militarization of downtown Miami. There were confirmed reports of military tanks patrolling the streets after dark on Thursday night.

Our legal team estimates more than 250 arrests. People have become political prisoners and are being held in jail. More than 50 of them were arrested while holding a peaceful vigil outside the jail in solidarity with those inside. They were surrounded by riot police and ordered to disperse. As they did, police opened fire and blocked the streets preventing many from leaving.

We are now receiving reports from people being released or calling from jail that there is excessive brutality, sexual assault and torture going on inside. People of color, Queer and transgender prisoners are particularly being targeted. There is a confirmed report of one Latino man arrested along with 62 others outside Miami-Dade County Jail Friday, who is currently hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit for an injury he received after being beaten in the head with night stick by an arresting officer.

Donate here to support legal efforts for the jailed protesters. Take other action steps here and here.

And in other news

Spam rage? Charles Booker of San Francisco was arrested this week in what may be the first case of spam rage: angered by being bombarded with unsolicited emails touting penis enlargement pills and Viag)ra, Booker threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the spammers, to "disable" an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list. He was released on a $75,000 bond.

California will be the first state to require that electronic voting machines be equipped with printers so that voters and vote verifiers can ensure a tamper-free, fair election. Only problem is, the requirements won't go into effect until 2006.

From the archives: "Let the Eagles Soar." Or not.

Repression in Miami: A model for Homeland Security?

Two weeks ago, Miami mayor Manuel Rodriguez called the police build-up in anticipation of the FTAA conference "a model for homeland security." With reports coming in of severe repression of free speech, police infiltrating the crowds dressed as protesters and creating the pretext for violence, and countless cases of activists injured by police batons, bean-bags, plastic and rubber bullets, and pepper gas, perhaps we have reason to fear a secured homeland.

As Leif Utne reports, the security detail, comprised of some 6,000 self-proclaimed "Robocops," is headed up by Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who also oversaw security at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000. Brenna Bell, of the National Lawyers Guild and the Miami Activist Collective, called Timoney's handling of the Philadelphia demonstrations "the most violent police repression of protesters in this country in recent history, until yesterday." The repression in Miami, she continued, "shows that free trade agreements are not possible without this kind of violence."

With $8.5 million of Miami's security expenses came from the $87 billion Iraq spending bill, it's no wonder protesters are calling "occupied Miami" a "police state."

PLUS: What's so bad about FTAA? Take a look at its precursor, NAFTA, to get an idea: while "total trade among the three NAFTA countries has more than doubled, passing from US$306 billion in 1993 to almost US $261 billion in 2002," the Economic Policy Institute has found that "between 1994 and 2000, the U.S. lost more than 3 million jobs and job opportunities—equal to 2.3% of the labor force." These job losses are largely attributed to NAFTA, which caused many manufacturing jobs to move to Central and South America, where labor is cheaper and both labor and environmental standards are weaker.

AND: More on the police state. The ultra-conservative news site NewsMax reports that Gen. Tommy "We don't do body counts" Franks says that if the US is hit by a WMD attack, "the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government."

Bush's bashing: new ad campaign questions Dems' patriotism

In its first TV commercial of the election campaign, the Bush administration comes out with a cheap shot, impugning Democrats for criticizing his bungled war on Iraq: "Our war against terror is a contest of will, in which perseverance is power," he says after the screen flashes the words, "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists." As MoveOn writes, "The ad doesn't question opponents' ideas, it questions their commitment to America. But there is nothing more un-American than attacking an adversary's patriotism for political gain." Help fund ads to set the record straight. Click here to donate and your giving will be matched $1 for every $2 donated.

ALSO: The remixed State of the Union (large videofile).

AND: Mapping the money in the campaign.

Why George loves Jacko

William Rivers Pitt writes:

Enron, the stock market, the reasons for September 11, the nomination of Henry Kissinger to chair the investigation into that event, the disinformation that was pushed by the Bush administration before the attack on Iraq, the civilian casualties during the attack on Iraq, the American troop casualties during and after the attack on Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, the missing Osama bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan that is far from over, the outing of a CIA agent by the Bush administration in an act of political revenge, and about two hundred other explosive stories did not get the attention that Michael Jackson is getting now.

Leif and Pat and the FTAA

In an unlikely encounter in the Minneapolis/St.Paul airport on his way to cover the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations in Miami, Leif Utne spotted conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. The FTAA is one thing they agreed upon (in Buchanan's words): "I’m agin it!. [smiles] I’ve been against all this for years, and what they’re doing now, it’s madness...I approach it from the standpoint of protecting the American worker. Others talk about people in developing countries. I stand for American jobs."

What would the FTAA--essentially an expanded NAFTA--mean for media? Here's Free Press' take on it:

In the U.S., laws that limit media consolidation could be considered 'trade violations.' Policies that promote media localism, diversity, and pluralism could be classified as 'barriers to trade.' Multinational corporations could seek cash 'compensation' — paid for by taxpayer dollars — if tribunals of trade lawyers found our government's public interest media policies to be 'unduly burdensome' to competition. FTAA member nations would have to comply with FTAA rulings or face multi-million or -billion dollar punitive sanctions.

And what's so bad about the FTAA? Larry Weiss of the Minnesota Fair Trade Association explains.

Perle admits war was illegal

From The Guardian:

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

Read more.

This just in: antiwar protesters are evil

The rightwing group AIM--ironically "Accuracy in Media"--has figured it all out: antiwar activists are "communists, socialists, radical Muslims and other America-haters." The article goes on to say, "Moveon.org is regarded even by the liberal U.S. media as a front of the Democratic Party. The group has benefited from millions of dollars from George Soros and Peter Lewis, financial backers of the drug legalization movement."

For a glimpse into AIM's editorial bent, consider this opinion on the "biased" media coverage of Martin Luther King day: "The major media deliberately concealed the facts about how the civil rights movement has degenerated into a collection of political extremists, homosexual militants, Muslim activists, and anti-American Marxists." Or a guest columnist's thoughts on the "militant" Democratic senators who opposed a handful of Bush's extremist judicial nominees:

Among those highly qualified people President Bush nominates are Roman Catholics who (unlike, e.g., Senators Daschle, Kennedy and Leahy) practice the Faith more than selectively; Blacks whose outstanding legal and/or judicial careers embarrass and expose the professional Black we-are-all-victims leadership; Americans who believe with our ancestors that we are a nation "under God" (an honored phrase from President George Washington's Farewell Address until its recent Ninth Circuit guillotine); and men and women of many faiths who believe abortion is the functional equivalent of murder.

Even their fundraising appeal asks you to "Support Accuracy in Media's Crusade for Honest News Coverage."

I would, if that's what they were selling.

Open Letters

The Guardian prints 60 open letters to George Bush from people all over Great Britain: playwright Harold Pinter, Conservative MP Michael Portillo, Salam Pax (the Baghdad Blogger), writer Polly Toynbee, Anita Roddick, and an opinionated 12-year old named Mickey.

Tunisian cyber-dissident freed

In an alarming number of countries around the globe, badmouthing the power elite can land you in jail. Zouhair Yahyaoui knows it all too well; after criticizing the totalitarian regime of Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on his now-banned website TUNeZINE, he was sentenced to a 28-month prison term for making fraudulent use of internet connections (read: distributing pro-democracy materials and criticizing Ali online). After several hunger strikes and alleged torture by prison officials, he was released today. Tunisia, one of the "countries most hostile to the free flow of information," according to Reporters without Borders, is--ironically--hosting phase two of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005, a conference geared toward closing the divide between communication haves and have-nots. While Tunisia may seem like an unlikely host, they’ll be in good company: 60 percent of the 185 UN member nations participating in the summit don’t allow a free press.

For more information on the World Summit, taking place next month in Geneva, visit Communication Rights in the Information Society.

News of note

A new report by the prestigious Centre for Strategic and International Studies, written by Dr. Anthony Cordesman, paints a grim picture in Iraq. The Iraqi resistance reportedly has a war chest of up to $1billion, with an additional $3 billion stashed in Syria, and attacks on Americans by Sunni Iraqis will continue "until the day the US leaves." Cordesman concludes that US troops are dying because of the ideological approach of the Bush administration, stating that "four years into office, the Bush national security team is not a team".

Italy has all but shut down as some 250,000 people crowd around the Basilica of St. Paul to mourn the soldiers killed in Iraq. Why can't our government muster a commemoration even half as grand to honor our 400+ war dead?

Hi-tech protesters are chasing Bush across London.

George W. Bush is the "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen," says the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

Falling short of legalizing gay marriage, Massachusetts has overturned the ban on same-sex unions.

The spoof website What Brand Are You? backfires--or succeeds spectacularly--as users of the site have trademarked 20 of the names, generated by an advertising agency to poke fun at the banal business of corporate naming.

Microsoft is going down the path paved by Google News: they've launched their own auto-generated news site, Newsbot.

Militarizing Marketing

The new Converse—recently bought out by Nike—is pinning its hopes for brand-name rebirth on the Loaded Weapon basketball shoe. MTV Europe will be conquering teen minds with a military strategist and four-times decorated Vietnam veteran Bill Roedy at the helm. And marketing experts are again talking about branding in terms of empire building. The trend prompts a question: has the Bush Doctrine leaked into marketing?

In September, the online journal MarketingProfs.com put an American imperial twist to an old theme—giving the oldest military treatise in the world, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (already repurposed in The Art of War for Executives by D.G. Krause and The Six Principles from Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Principles for Managers by Mark McNeilly), a Bush-style revisiting. "How can you reconfigure your marketing strategy to be more deceptive, agile and pre-emptive?," writes Michael Perla. Like the Bush administration ditching international law in the Iraq war, The Business Standard likewise urges marketing strategists to consider "who is making the rules—and imposing them onto their competitors? Making the rules makes you master of the game."

But achieving "market capture" means more than account planners fancying themselves five-star generals or bullet-ducking GIs. Brand strategists (strategy, by the way, comes from the Greek strategos for general) Wolfram Wordemann and Andreas Buchholz urge a rethinking of how consumers are perceived: "put yourself in the shoes of a conqueror and go for that territory in the consumer’s mind that will sustain your empire." And, just as in military propaganda campaigns, that means dehumanizing the enemy—only, in this case, the enemy and the coveted turf are one and the same.

Speaking at an American Association of Advertising Agencies conference in September, Olgilvy & Mather Worldwide’s Mark Earls urged account planners to stop thinking of consumers as individuals. He showed video clips of soldiers at war, soccer hooligans, and street riots to illustrate that humans should be treated like herds. As Ad Age reports, "Mr. Earls said that just as cats only swim when they have to, most people only think when they have to. Survival as part of the herd is a question of 'keeping up, not bumping into people and going vaguely in same direction as everyone else.'"

Perhaps this is old news: hasn’t advertising long been the realm where "brand battles" take place and "guerrilla marketing" is employed? Hasn’t the account executive always been the macho, no-holds-barred field marshall? Indeed. In the context of preemptive war, terrorism, and a US administration wielding a $396.1 billion military budget, it simply becomes more clear. But it’s also more effective: armored vehicle sales have soared among the ultra-rich, up 20 percent in 2001. SUV sales, powered by ignore-the-rules marketing campaigns, have exploded like bombs bursting in air (Gregg Easterbrook, in the New Republic, wrote that "The whole point of the Hummer is a total--and aggressive--disregard for what anyone else thinks. The Hummer broadcasts such a blatant 'fuck you' to the rest of the world that it ought to be considered a new vehicle class, the FUV."). The real question is how do we, the enemy, establish a beachhead in our minds.

Militarizing Marketing 2

For all of its merits, our military is not, and cannot be, a democratic institution. The administration, and often the Army itself, try constantly to obscure this fact, most recently under the Thoreauvian rubric 'An Army of One.' Surely this had to be one of the most disingenuous recruiting slogans that has ever been devised, for no army has ever been about promoting individualism but rather its exact opposite, bending the wills of many individuals into a single, blunt instrument of incredible violence.

Kevin Baker, "We’re in the Army Now: The G.O.P.’s plan to militarize our culture," Harper’s, October 2003