WarProfiteers.com

Smart AM: Progressive radio network launches today Air America Radio, a new progressive talk radio network, launches today at noon. With on-air personalities including rapper Chuck D, former MN Public Radio anchor Katherine Lanpher, Janeane Garofalo, Sue Ellicott, and Al Franken (whose noon to 3 pm show is called The O'Franken Factor), the left-leaning programming will debut in four markets, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, as well as on XM radio and eventually in San Francisco and at the Air America website. Conservatives, who've long turned to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Dr. Laura for their dose of vitriolic AM, are already diagnosing the network dead on arrival. "As if National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, CBS and the other left-leaning networks were insufficient," neocon magazine FrontPage writes, adding that unnamed experts are "betting that the new network will fail to make money and disappear within a year." Also: The Guardian on the rising role of satire in new American politics.

UPDATE: Al Franken's Air America show "The O'Franken Factor" will broadcast today on the Twin Cities AM station WMNN Radio (1330 AM) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (The rest of Air America's programming won't be aired.)

Swearing in: Cartoonist Steve Bell's take on the president's upcoming (private) testimony before the 9/11 Commission. And: from Ivan Eland, Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute (formerly of the Cato Institute), Being the Government Means Never Having to Say I'm Sorry.

Good Lord: Faith-Based Rhetoric Visiting a Baptist church in St. Louis, John Kerry criticized "our present national leadership" by quoting James, 2:14: "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" (It's secular counterpart: where's the compassion in "compassionate conservatism"?) The Bush camp shot back that Kerry's comment "was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of scripture for a political attack." Typical Bushie response: attack the messenger to distract from the message. They're doing it to Richard Clarke (to little avail, it seems). They did it to Paul O'Neill. But the protest rings hollow: from an administration that continues to politicize the deaths of 9/11 victims (both in the current commission hearings and in the Bush campaign commercial that features a flag-shrouded body at the WTC site) and that injects fundamentalist religious ideology into nearly every facet of domestic and foreign policy, they're really saying "Democrats have no place quoting the bible. That's our turf." I'm no fan of anybody trotting out biblical passages for political gain, but, in this case, Kerry seems to have a point: Put up, or shut up, Bush.

Frist Twist: Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, who made headlines last week by accusing Richard Clarke of perjury over supposedly contradictory 9/11 testimony (he later admitted he had no personal knowledge of the testimony), says he's appalled that Clarke would try to profit from such a book. "I am... troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their...service as a government insider with access to our nation’s most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001." As Counterspin Central points out, Frist did the same damn thing. Check out Frist's book When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism From the Senate's Only Doctor. Also: A Talking Points Memo reader asks: "I can't help wondering who at the White House reviewed Clarke's book and cleared it for publication? And where will they be working next week?"

Free press in Iraq: US soldiers shut down a Baghdad Shiite newspaper, citing that it printed lies that incite violence. Thousands protested outside the chained-shut offices of the paper, chanting "No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" Also: With a dozen American troops killed in Iraq last week, the US death toll is at 591.

Look here:
Feminist needlepoint: Jenny Hart's hand-embroidered portraits of old-time strippers, female wrestlers, Edith Piaff, and the White Stripes meld granny craft with a hipster's fine art edge. The work is quirky and cute, but after a first look, the subversive power of it sinks in. "Many people assume I'm a 'little old lady' who does this work," Hart says. "It's always fun to dispel that idea."

Youth culture, defanged: In his new series of photographs, Alex Morrison uses skateboarding to explore how youth subcultures become domesticated as they enter into the mainstream. Poached, named after the skateboarding term for stealing and selling documentation of another skater’s tricks, exposes the behind-the-scenes machinations of a TV crew filming a program on skateboarding in a city-sanctioned park. In large-scale color photographs, Morrison documents stunts as they’re staged for the cameras, instead of filmed on the handrails and concrete steps of city centers that often prohibit such behavior. This is a sanitized version of skateboarding, Morrison seems to be saying, "rebellion as cultural readymade." What’s "poached" here is skateboarders’ ability to control the terms of —and potentially profit from—their representation to the culture at large.

Visual culture, Mimi-style: The inimitable Mimi Smartypants, who works as an editor at a medical journal by day, compares a cross-section of "America's favorite stuffed sandwich," the Hot Pocket, with the cross-section of an actual tumor. (Buy her book.)

Old Bob: Linda Ellerbee writes that NPR replacing Bob Edwards as host of "Morning Edition" is a plain old case of ageism. (Makes sense since there's no other obvious reason to replace the nation's most listened-to morning radio host, whose show has grown in popularity by 41% over the past five years.)

Factoring faith: A scientist in the UK, using a 200-year old formula, has determined that there's a 67% chance that God exists.

Running scared? The swift and relentless nature of the Bush administration's attacks on its former counterintelligence chief, Richard Clarke, suggests two things, writes The Guardian: "his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it." Plus: "Richard Clarke KOs the Bushies."

With allies like these... Aljazeera.net reports that Israel fabricated the story of a 14-year old Palestinian would-be suicide bomber that made the cover of The New York Times yesterday. And the US just shot down a UN resolution that would've censured Israel for its illegal assassination of Hamas leader Yassin (on grounds that it's too "one-sided"), despite nearly universal condemnation heaped on Sharon from as far away as Venezuela and Japan to the UN's own Kofi Annan.

Caribbean Chaos: The 15-country Caribbean Community is urging the UN to open an investigation into allegations that the US kidnapped Haiti's democratically elected president, then made it look like a coup. And, now that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is back in the hemisphere, an irate Condi Rice is threatening Jamaica for giving him a temporary home. The Caribbean Community is also considering rejecting the US-backed government in Haiti.

Chomskyblog: Noam Chomsky has just launched a new blog at ZNet, Turning the Tide, and Doc Searles writes about the "technically clueful" Bush blog.

Condi's priorities: John Nichols wonders why Condi Rice doesn't have time to testify publicly before the 9/11 commission yet she can cozy up with Rupert Murdoch during secretive sessions with Fox execs?

Free Culture, free: Stanford law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig is offering his newest book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity as a free PDF.

In "Is Bush Unhinged?" Robert Higgs writes, "'The war on terror,' he insists, 'is not a figure of speech.' Well, I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but that is precisely what it is. How can one go to war against 'terror,' which is a state of mind?"

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein on the "the triumph of idiot culture."

Putting the W in Whoops: George W. Bush's re-election campaign, in violation of the administration's own ban against trading with the military dictatorship Myanmar (Burma)--signed into law just last year--has been selling sweatshirts from that country.

Chomsky endorses Kerry. Sort of. Despite what he sees as only minor differences between Republican and Democratic ideology, Noam Chomsky says that the "cruel and savage" Bush administration needs to be replaced and that John Kerry is his man, since he's a "fraction" better than Bush.

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” --Peter Ustinov

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
— Albert Einstein 

Saturday: International Day of Action
Mark the one-year anniversary of the US's unprovoked war on Iraq during a global day of protest. Say your piece: bring the troops home, end the occupation, turn Iraq over to a UN coalition. Here in the Twin Cities, a march to the Capitol will begin at the MLK Center in St. Paul at 1:30 pm Saturday. (Details here.) Marches are planned on every continent and in more than 50 countries; visit United for Peace and Justice to find one near you.

Must-see TV: MoveOn hosts footage of Donald Rumsfeld backpedaling during a TV appearance where he's contronted about his claims he never characterized Iraq's threat as "imminent." No wonder global mistrust of the US has skyrocketed, while a majority of Pakistani and Turkish residents view Osama bin Laden favorably, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The House of Bush: Paul Krugman says that just about the only thing left for Bush to campaign on is foreign policy--and even that's based on illusions. If his priority is to eradicate terrorism and protect US soil, why divert resources from the hunt for the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks to fight Iraq? "Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists," he writes. "For example, what are we to make of the post-9/11 Saudi airlift? Just days after the attack, at a time when private air travel was banned, the administration gave special clearance to flights that gathered up Saudi nationals, including a number of members of the bin Laden family, who were in the U.S. at the time. These Saudis were then allowed to leave the country, after at best cursory interviews with the F.B.I." Craig Unger's new book, House of Bush, House of Saud, takes a stab: maybe the $1.477 billion that's flowed from the House of Saud to Bush family and friends has something to do with it.

"This war is evil." Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a National Guard infantryman who fought in Iraq then refused to return when his leave expired, has turned himself into authorities."I can no longer be an instrument of violence," he said. "I am not against the military. The military has been my family. My commanders are not evil but this war is evil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression... I don't think we're fighting terror in Iraq. I think we're fighting for oil." He's seeking conscientious objector status.

The Black & Blue Album: After the brouhaha over DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album--the controversial mashup of The White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album--comes Jay-Zeezer, a mix of Weezer and Jay-Z.

Song-Poems Scam: Nestled in the back pages of '60s and '70s magazines, among ads urging you to "Draw Tippy" or buy breast-enlargement cream, were ads seeking "song-poems." Budding lyricists could pay cut-rate recording professionals $200 to $400 to set their "song-poems" to music, tapping into desperate dreams of making it big in the music biz. It was basically a scam: the promised promotion and distribution of the resulting singles and albums never happened, and the music was often so bad--often churned out on quotas of 12 recordings per hour--that it couldn't serve well as even a demo. But hearing the music today--schlocky, antiquated, and tinged with melancholy and weird optimism--the songs are a kind of time capsule from a different era, when we trusted the integrity of those who place tiny ads in the back of Popular Mechanics and when American Idol wasn't there to turn regular folk into superstars. Listen to the American Song-Poem Archive's extensive mp3 collection here.

Headline of the day: Bush Loses Spanish Election

Coalition Casualties: Perhaps the most comprehensive catalogue of military and civilian casualties.

Mentally ill troops: UPI reports that the Army "inappropriately" and knowingly deployed troops diagnosed with mental problems to Iraq.

Geek draft: The government is laying the groundwork for a potential draft of computer and language specialists.

Master of illusions: Creating the illusion that the president is accessible to the press and that reporters think his Medicare reforms are a smashing-good improvement, the Bush administration has hired actors to portray journalists in new local-market TV spots dubbed "video press releases."

Robin Rhode: Art at Street-Level
Adbusters has invited me to write a short, semi-regular column on artists working at the intersection of contemporary art and activism. See the first installment of this online-only feature, sans hyperlinks, here.

While “street art” might have a pejorative sting in fine art circles, it’s an apt descriptor for South African artist Robin Rhode’s work. And not simply because his art—often institutional critiques of museums and government offices—seems more at home outdoors than in the dim halls of officialdom, or because his work arises from the culture of pickup basketball, breakdancing, and graffiti. Rhode, quite literally, makes art on the street. On asphalt playgrounds, concrete sidewalks, and brick walls, this 20-something South African uses little more than a stub of chalk or charcoal to create performances that challenge the boundary between two dimensions and three—and confront the embedded histories and indelible memories that reside in architecture.

His works, public actions often exhibited as photographic series or wall drawings, are comic yet deadly serious: in Getaway, Rhode acts out an escape from The Slave Lodge, a Cape Town building that once housed slaves for the Dutch East India Company. With cartoonish charcoal-drawn motion lines trailing after him, Rhode high-tails it away from the site, stopping between stumbles to strike heroic runaway poses. In the deceptively simple Park Bench, he sketches a precariously angled bench on a white wall then struggles, unsuccessfully, to take a seat. The specificity of the site—the House of Parliament in Cape Town—gives the work its gravity: during apartheid, segregation of public life was legislated all the way down to public benches labeled “Coloured.” In Leak, Rhode takes aim at the sanctity of the art museum. Riffing on Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, an upturned store-bought urinal signed with the alias R. Mutt, Rhode drew a urinal on a wall in the South African National Gallery and proceeded to “fill” it. In an apparent critique of whose art gets hung in the official halls of postcolonial South Africa, he signed the work R. Moet, the Afrikaans spelling of Duchamp’s pseudonym. Taking a back-alley piss—the male act of marking territory—on the clean white walls of the museum sends a clear message to the art world: the museum, like the claimed turf of the graffiti writer, is ours.

Virtual Whitney: The 2004 Whitney Biennial, just opened in New York, offers--for the first time--virtual access.

In defense of marriage: Presidential brother Neil Bush--whose divorce proceedings revealed sex with Thai prostitutes and who faces a paternity suit over the identity of his new wife's child--has remarried! Congrats, Neil.

Iraqi guinea pigs: TalkLeft reports that the US military will begin testing a never-before-used weapon on Iraqis: a high-decibel megaphone that can deafen those hit with it and cause cellular damage.

GOP running scared? The Republican National Committee, in an apparently blatant mangling of campaign finance laws, is sending threatening letters to TV stations in hopes of getting MoveOn's anti-Bush commercials pulled. How spooked must the GOP be by the momentum of this grassroots movement--and growing oust-Bush sentiments--to target a single advertisement? And on "soft money" grounds? The Republicans, let's not forget, are the ones who've dubbed their meet-and-greet fundraising visits with Tom DeLay and Bill Frist as children's and AIDs charity events.

Of course, maybe it's all just a way of taking the heat off of Bush for exploiting the 9/11 dead in his own ads. Or diverting our attention from the point of MoveOn's "Child's Pay" ad: a mushrooming deficit and an economy that shed 1.6 million jobs last year (including 588,000 people who left the job market last month alone) means our kids will be the ones left paying for Bush's irresponsible debts.

Live from the Dump: Broadcasting hope from an unlikely site

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

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

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

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

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

Move over, Atkins: The Nietzschean Diet:

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

--snip--

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