The Ballot or the Bling-Bling: With the third Twin Cities Hip Hop Festival kicking off, an event that this year focuses on activism and the electorate, it's worth linking to jim izrael's sharp piece "The Ballot or The Bling Bling," about the problems with mobilizing the Hip Hop Nation to vote: "The leadership behind this movement is trying to link an ambitious wish-list of political reforms to a generation too hypnotized by spinning car rims and diamonds to grasp even the most basic tenets of economic and political responsibility." (Kudos to Witt for pulling the festival off.)

Blues v. Abstract Truth: And writer Greg Tate--whose Bitches Brew dream band, Burnt Sugar, is coming to Minneapolis in December--injects a little politics into his discussion of the roles of hip hop and jazz (but I'm mostly linking to it because I love his use of language):

In an ideal world it would work like this: Hiphop would be our blues medium and jazz our abstract-truth medium, the one charged with breaking the silence about the kulchur of the Black poor, our ethnic accent in its most pristine folkloric form, the other charged with speaking the unspeakable, how the human spirit needs more than the spoils of global capitalism. Point blank, hiphop contains all the Black alienation rage and desperate desire for rhythmic pleasure we used to could (sic) hear in jazz, because hiphop is a vessel for all that sound and fury and signifying Cornel West says one cannot not know about being Black in America. The woundedness and the creativity. The blues by any other name. Too accessible and exploitable in hiphop, all too absent in African American improv today.

Bojah and El Bloqueo: Last night I got to see a quick performance by Brock Satter, aka Bojah, a spoken word artist/musician who's being harassed by the feds for a trip he took to Cuba to perform at the International Hip Hop Festival. He says he traveled to Havana in compliance with then-current US rules, yet a letter from the Department of Treasury is threatening him with civil penalties of up to $65K and criminal penalties up to $250k. As the old Phil Ochs song goes, "[S]omehow it is strange to hear the State Department say /You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay." Help Satter out by attending a fundraiser at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis on August 29.

Bush's example for the world: In St. Paul on Wednesday, Bush asserted that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein. While many disagree with that assertion, an undeniable effect of W's war is the frightening example he's set for preemptive war. Yesterday, Iran stated flat out that it would adopt the US policy of preemption if it feared an attack on its nuclear facilities by Israel or the US.

"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," said Iran's defense minister, Vice Adm. Ali Shamkhani in an interview on al-Jazeera. "Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly. Any nation, if it feels threatened, can resort to that."

Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr reiterated the point: "If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about the Dimona nuclear center, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons."

Republican intelligence official now regrets war: Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, a senior member of the International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committtee, now says the war in Iraq was a bad idea: "I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action, especially without a broad and engaged international coalition."

Kerry's compliance: Helen Thomas, responding to Kerry's baffling admission last week that he would have "voted to give the president the authority to go to war" even if he had known there were no WMDs, asks: "Does Kerry realize that the U.S. invasion of Iraq without provocation violates the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg Tribunal principles?"

And Juan Cole asks: Could Najaf Cost Bush the Election?

Kerry counters Swift Boat ads: For some of the best analysis on the anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads, check out Josh Marshall, who links to this head-on rebuttal of the ads by Kerry:

Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn’t interested in the truth – and they’re not telling the truth. They didn’t even exist until I won the nomination for president.

But here’s what you really need to know about them. They’re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They’re a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know—he wants them to do his dirty work.

Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.

As firefighters you risk your lives everyday. You know what it’s like to see the truth in the moment. You’re proud of what you’ve done—and so am I.

Of course, the President keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: “Bring it on.”

Unraveling: Today's New York Times tracks how the Swift Boat vets turned from calling Kerry "among the finest of those Swift boat drivers," "unsurpassed," and "beyond reproach" to calling him a liar. And their investigation, which finds the ads' claims are "riddled with inconsistencies," follows the money to Bush's Texas funders, a cadre of Bush family friends, and Karl Rove himself.

Kid prez: Seeing the president in St. Paul yesterday (more on that eventually), it's hard not to see his theatrics--cockeyed smirk, practiced eyebrow-furrow, aw-shucks delivery--as somewhere along the continuum between stridently anti-intellectual and downright childish. But as Dahlia Lithwick writes, casting George W. Bush as a doltish kid doesn't serve us well:

[T]he campaign to cast Mr. Bush as a bumbling child ignores the very grown-up machine that stands behind him. Infantilizing the president shifts the focus away from the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Ashcrofts and Wolfowitzes. These are the men who promised us short, easy wars and painless little suspensions of the Geneva Conventions. These are the men of the secret energy-policy meetings. They aren't a bunch of rowdy juveniles. They represent one of the most secretive, powerful administrations in recent memory. Whether the president could outscore your kids on the SAT is a distraction from that fact.

Given: While much of the chagrin at Bush's comments to the UNITY: Journalists of Color conference revolved around his seeming cluelessness about native sovereignty, Native American activists are reacting to another word: given. Bush defines the term as having been "given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity." In a race where previously ignored constituencies may make or break a candidate, this is an un-smooth move. Sovereignty is "the nearest and dearest, No. 1 issue in Indian Country," said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Congress of American Indians. "It's not something that was given to us. As tribes, we see sovereignty as something we've always had."

Boycott the Boss? Remember how the Dixie Chicks' careers ended when Clear Channel banned their music for being "anti-American"? Me neither, yet a New York conservative thinks her Boycott the Boss campaign--aimed at Bruce Springsteen for his involvement with MoveOn's Vote for Change tour--will hurt Springsteen's sales. Conservative Party Senate candidate Marilyn O'Grady says in a 30-second commercial, "He thinks making millions with a song-and-dance routine allows him to tell you how to vote." (Incidentally, type in boycotttheboss.com, and you get redirected to a site that claims a link between Planned Parenthood and Hitler (plus PP's alleged eugenics plan targeting African Americans) and adages like "Friends Don't let Friends Go to Hell," "Go to Church! Don't wait for the Hearse to take you!," and "The Death Penalty is for Serial Killers not Cereal Eaters.")

Income gap becomes gaping chasm: Bush says the economy is "turning a corner." Thing is, for most Americans, what's around that corner isn't so nice. A new story by the AP paints a grim picture of today's economy. Chief among the findings is the fact that the gap between rich and poor is widening at an alarming rate. Consider:

- The wealthiest 20 percent of households (a group that in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income) now controls over 50 percent of the income. Households in every other income group saw earnings fall.

- The middle-class tax burden "has grown since 2001, even as it has fallen for high-income Americans. The top 20 percent of taxpayers shoulder almost a percentage point less of the overall share of total federal tax liabilities. The combined shares of middle-income earners for federal tax liabilities have risen almost 2 percentage points."

- 2.6 million Americans have lost jobs since Bush took office, but a million have been rehired, mainly to jobs with lower pay and fewer benefits. Temp agencies account for about a fifth of all new jobs.

- Three in five of those jobs--that's 60% of them--pay below the national median hourly wage of $13.53. The current average weekly wage in the US--$525.84--is at the lowest level since October 2001.

- Sales of luxury items are booming, with Porsche reporting a 17 percent spike this year.

Anybody but Bush: Anybody? How about: anything? Carrie McLaren and friends launch a site that tests the ABB dictum. See how Shrub fares in a head-to-head with the Michelin man, a hunk of Limestone Fossiliferous, or--more frightening still--Kathleen Harris.

Block the Vote: In yesterday's Times, Bob Herbert writes about continuing efforts to suppress the black vote in Florida:

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

Many facing police interrogation were members of the Orlando League of Voters, a group successful at getting out the black vote. A law enforcement official, perhaps not realizing the un-randomness of the actions, had this exchange with Herbert:

I asked if all the people interrogated were black.

"Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,'' he said.

He also said, "Most of them were elderly."

When I asked why, he said, "That's just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview."

And in piece sounding the alarm about paperless voting in Jeb Bush's state, Paul Krugman follows up the story:

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely African-American - while including almost no Hispanics.

He says the Republicans in Florida are on to something when they urged the faithful to use verifiable absentee ballots to make sure their votes get counted.

Cautious protest at the RNC: With the Republican convention just days away, hacktivists are gearing up for some online protest, while the feds are spying on (and attempting to infiltrate) activist groups to prevent disruptions. In an excellent interview with his son, Norman Mailer says that "If I were a voice in top Republican circles, I might be offering this advice: 'What we need for New York is a large-scale riot. Some of those activist kids will be crazy enough to do a lot on their own, but we can do better with a few of our guys, well-placed, ready to urinate on the good American flag.'" He suggests cautious protest:

Do the activists really know what they’re going into? That’s my concern. Or do they assume that expressing their rage is equal to getting Kerry elected? It could have exactly the opposite effect. The better mode may be to frustrate the Republicans by coming up with orderly demonstrations. Now, when I was young, the suggestion to be moderate was like a stink bomb to me. An orderly demonstration? What were we, cattle? You have to speak out with your rage. Well, I’m trying to say, we would do well to realize that on this occasion, there are more important things than a good outburst. I wish we could remind everybody who goes out to march of the old Italian saying: “Revenge is a dish that people of taste eat cold.” Instead of expressing yourself at the end of August, think of how nicely you will be able to keep expressing yourself over the four years to come if we win. Just keep thinking how much the Republicans want anarchy on the street. I say, don’t march right into their trap.

Called to serve (and serve and serve): How close to a draft are we if this is happening:

He’s 57 years old, afflicted with skin cancer, partially deaf and suffers from high blood pressure. But the U.S. Army still wants Master Sgt. Luis Jaime Treviño.

On July 14, the Vietnam and Desert Storm veteran received his third order to report to active duty — mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As Cursor, points out, Treviño faces jail if he doesn't comply with the order.

Going Native: Bush and Kerry are both courting the Native American vote, but in very different ways. Kerry participated in closing ceremonies of a pow-wow with Zuni and Navajo tribes in New Mexico last week, an affair closed to photographers because of the sacred setting. Bush, on the other hand, spoke before the Unity Conference for journalists of color. When asked by a Native American reporter what "tribal sovereignty means in this century," Bush shocked the audience with an answer that suggested he didn't understand such big words: "Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign... You're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity."

Race and the Race: The Illinois GOP's running of Alan Keyes against Barack Obama isn't the "battle royale" of "black versus black" that they expected, writes Siddhartha Mitter. "Instead, they've given us the past versus the future." The 11-year age difference gives Obama a distinct advantage:

Free of the hang-ups and hangovers of the 1960s, he is not beholden to the dinosaur organizations and icons that dominate African American politics. He can sidestep the tired debates about whether he's sufficiently black (for the militants) or too black (for the assimilationists). Instead, Obama's rise to prominence puts a public face on a new generation ascending to power, among whom racial mixing (black, white, other) is increasingly common; a generation of shades of brown and more boxes to choose from on the census form.

...Keyes can't push Obama's buttons because he doesn't know where they are. Obama represents an emerging politics that threatens to dissolve Keyes' bombast like garlic to a vampire: a post-black, post-identity politics that refuses to get bogged down in sterile "who can speak for whom" debates, refuses to be divided-and-conquered, yet also refuses to make believe that race no longer exists. In the post-identity politics that Obama's rise hints at, race is everywhere — and so is class, and gender, and all the other factors that sometimes drive us apart and sometimes bring us together. Post-identity politics is a work in progress, still figuring out its agenda and methods. But its emergence on the national scene is long overdue.

"Rich, white and wishy-washy." That's what a new ad campaign by People of Colour United--a group backed by J Patrick Rooney, a rich, white insurance mogul--calls John Kerry in a new ad. Another takes a potshot at Teresa Heinz Kerry for calling herself an African-American, despite the fact she was born in Mozambique.

A black George W. Bush: An interesting story about George W. Bush--the W stands for Washington--the first black pioneer to settle (in 1845) in what became the Pacific Northwest's Washington Territory.

Micro-movie festival: Make a film shorter than 90 seconds and submit it to DepicT! and you could win "a cash prize of 3000 pounds, have your film promoted online, published on a DVD courtesy of Orange and see it screened at the Brief Encounters: the 10th Annual Bristol Short Film Festival." Deadline is September 13. View past winners here. (Via Outside Circle Collective.)

Apple notepad computer? Apple seems to be working on some sort of tablet-style handheld computer, according to European patent files obtained by The Register. It's a little unclear what it is--PDA, notebook laptop, wireless media monitor--but the prospect of a keyboard-free computer is appealing to this carpal tunneler. (Via Boingboing.)

Seeing the prez: The Star Tribune's Nick Coleman recounts the story of National Guardsman Tim Walz, who just returned home from service in the Gulf, and his troubles getting in to see Bush speak during his visit to Mankato, Minnesota:

After riding a Bush bus to the quarry, Walz and the kids got off to go through the metal detectors and have their IDs checked. Bush officials took the kids aside and thoroughly inspected them. When one was discovered to have a Kerry sticker on his wallet, they were ordered back onto the bus. Walz objected, and he was asked to leave, too. "You're not welcome," a Bush guy said. "Get back on the bus."

Walz said he had a right to see the president.

So you support the president? a Bush guy asked. I didn't say that, said Walz. Then you're an opponent? I didn't say that, either, said Walz, thinking it was nobody's business.

"If you don't get on that bus," the guy said, "you'll be detained by the Secret Service for interfering with a presidential event."

"I don't want to get arrested," Walz said. "My wife will get mad because I'm supposed to pick up our daughter [Hope, 3] and make dinner. Do you really want to arrest someone who just got back from overseas, because he wants to see the president?"

The Bush guys backed down. They said they'd do him a favor if he behaved himself. He ignored the insult. They said the Secret Service was watching him. They let him in.
A week later, Walz is appalled by the freedom-loving citizens who say he shouldn't have gone to see the president.

"The attitude is that if you're not a supporter, why would you go? It's really disappointing. What happened to being able to listen to the other side?"

And: nearly two weeks after the Bush administration warned the country of terrorist attacks on major financial institutions, a White House insider admits it was all bogus: "I have not seen an indication of an imminent operation."

Mobile Phone Reporting at the RNC: Brooke Singer writes to announce the birth of MOPORT.org, "a free service for generating and sharing mobile phone reports," timed to launch just prior to the Republican Convention. The site "allows people to collectively report about important events in real-time using mobile phones":

Features of a MOPORT:
*Enables Group Reporting using Cellphone Cameras or Digital Cameras and Email
*Instantly Updates when New Submissions Arrive
*Integrates News Feeds from Major Media Sources for a Quick Comparison of Event Coverage
*Sorts Images by Keywords that are Pre-defined and Dynamically Creates New Keywords Based on MOPORTER Submissions
*Sorts Images by MOPORTERS (Identities are Anonymous) for Individual Perspective and Commentary
*Accepts Submissions and Updates for Duration of Event and Later Archived on MOPORT.org for Viewing Purposes Only

Become a MOPORTer here.

FNYC: A not-safe-for-work interpretation of Bush and Company's rationale for selecting New York as the RNC site.

Shout out: Ted Remington, starting up where Official Media left off, has started a fact-check/opinion blog on Sinclair Broadcast Group's The Point. Good luck, Ted.

Peace Chuck: Converse's iconic Chuck Taylor sneakers are back, and among their new line announced yesterday is the Peace Chuck, designed by Yoko Ono to be distributed in 75 countries. One version will feature lyrics from John Lennon's "Imagine" and another will bear the word "Peace" written in 13 languages. The company is also making a 1946 Vintage Chuck Taylor -- a replica of the sneakers American GIs wore during boot camp in World War II. According to the Converse website, the shoes symbolize "a time of patriotic cooperation when an emerging American company and one of its legendary representatives, Chuck Taylor, the `Ambassador of Basketball,' stood beside the men and women of this country during a time of great need." (Although, let's not get too nostalgic for Converse--they're owned by Nike now.) Earlier: Adbusters' Kalle Lasn on the Black Spot sneaker, and a production update on the shoe. Plus: No Sweat Sneakers.

Mind-numbing work: A new study suggests that mundane jobs raise the risk of getting Alzheimer's, whereas workers in mentally stimulating jobs are far less likely to get the disease. (Thanks, Reggie.)

Get out the Bush: Writing that there's an "undeniable tang in the air, that clenching of the cultural colon, that cringe in the collective soul" that "Bush is just about finished, " SFGate's Mark Morford writes:

You know it's time for a change when you hear that Kerry and Edwards both wrote their own riveting, galvanizing acceptance speeches at the Democratic National Convention, heartfelt and effective rhetoric that gives you hope not for the quality of polished oratory but for genuine, refreshing political intellect, and verbal acumen, as you offer deep thanks that at least some politicians can still speak coherently and cogently without mangling the goddamn language at every adjectival clause.

And: John Kerry’s One-Point Plan for a Better America

Plus: Molly Ivins writes that despite Canadians' flair for polite understatement, they "can think of no polite way of asking if we are such freaking idiots we haven't noticed the damage that has been done by the Bush administration to the American reputation all over the world."

(Thanks, Reggie and Kemi.)

Suckerpunch! Bob Harris over at This Modern World introduces a yearbook photo of W's unsportsmanlike conduct in rugby:

As long as we're re-examining the 1960s, looking for signs of character, trying to decide if a man who volunteered for combat and was decorated five times was more or less courageous than a guy who didn't even show up for his own medical exam... here's George W. Bush during his college days, hitting a fellow sportsman in the face.

And: As Atrios points out, Bush lied about playing varsity rugby, a sport that's never had a varsity team at Yale, neither in the '60s nor today. (Thanks, Ben.)

Corsi's credibility: Media Matters outs Jerome Corsi, the co-author of a new anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against Kerry, for the off-kilter flake he is:

• Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"

• Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"

• Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"

• Corsi on Islam: "Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered, and the infidels killed."

• Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"

• Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"

• Corsi on Hillary Clinton: "HELL-ary loves the Arabs so much (kiss, kiss Mrs. Arab*RAT) -- wonder how she would look in a Burkha? "

And: Factcheck.org goes in-depth into the deceptive Swift Boat anti-Kerry add, finding that George Elliott (one of the vets featured in the ad who later regretted his statements) was actually the man who recommended Kerry for a Silver Star; and that the smear campaign was paid for largely by a Houston homebuilder who, with his wife, gave more than $3 million to Texas Republicans in 2002; while also reasserting that none of the men featured in the ad actually served under Kerry.

Anarchy in the RNC

No self-defined anarchist has ever sparked a revolution. But the ideologically uninitiated who have trafficked in the habits of anarchism--chiefly unmediated communication--have toppled dozens of tyrants.
— Siva Vaidhyanathan

With a four-day security budget of $76 million and 10,000 police officers facing protestors, the stage is set for anarchy. And that's just what some activists will be resorting to during the Republican National Convention later this month -- only they'll be trading black masks for radically democratic, tech-savvy protest tools.

Transcending beloved old-school methods, this new wave of activists will use decentralized and distributed technologies to level the playing field with law enforcement. "There's been an incredible technological buildup on the side of the police, and on the other side people are still holding cardboard placards and making puppets," says artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko (pictured).

"In the arms race of direct action, there's been incredible changes in the strategies, the training, and the equipment the police use in treating this political process." But the projects she and others embrace are only anarchistic in a strategic sense. While Anarchy suggests a political philosophy loaded with baggage, the term's Greek origins have little to do with chaos or violence: arkhos (ruler) plus the prefix a (the absence of). This leaderlessness -- "uncoordinated actions toward a coordinated goal," as Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it in his book The Anarchist in the Library -- is what links these new-school approaches:

- Flash radiojacking: Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), will use a special transmitter to break into radio frequencies reserved for corporate stations, giving bursts of information so brief that the FCC can't lock onto their transmission location. During the World Economic Forum demonstrations, BIT called attention to the Bush administration's bogus claims about the safety of the air after 9/11. Each time New York's airborne pollution surpassed the "safe" level, a warning bleep interrupted broadcasts of the local NPR affiliate.

- Bikes Against Bush: Joshua Kinberg will hit the streets on an "internet-enabled tactical media weapon for non-violent creative resistance." Outfitted with a laptop, webcam, GPS device, and SMS-enabled cellphone, his tech-laden bike will receive text messages sent by visitors to www.BikesAgainstBush.com. At the push of a button, he'll select messages to print on the pavement using a robotic chalk-spraying device; each anti-Bush screed will be time-stamped and gps-mapped on the website. The bike's maneuverability effectively makes all of New York a free-speech zone.

- Backpack broadcast: Media collective neuroTransmitter will be toting com_muni_ports throughout the convention. These low-power, backpack-mounted radio transmitters will provide localized, on-the-fly media broadcasts, bearing witness, live, to events you won't hear about on local Clear Channel stations.

- WiFi on Wheels: Yury Gitman will be pedaling his MagicBike during the convention. Offering free internet connectivity wherever it goes, it'll wire the UK-based collective OpenSorcery so members can play a military simulator online and on the streets of New York using high-power projectors. Operations in Urban Terrain (OUT), a first-person-shooter game, aims to critique the militarization of civilian life following 9/11--a condition the group describes as "a government . . . at war with its own citizens, with soldiers in the midst of the fabric of ordinary life" -- by literally broadcasting the game's violence on city walls.

- Inflated Crowd Counts: When the demonstration ends, police will inevitably lowball crowd sizes, while activists will present overly optimistic numbers. The Bureau of Inverse Technology will calculate verifiable figures, thanks to a wireless video camera tethered to a helium balloon high above the action. A rollerblader will maneuver the balloon throughout the entire crowd while the high-resolution camera beams visual data to laptops on the ground. The result: a composite image that'll be analyzed by software similar to the kind used for counting microscopic cells in labs. "If Bush can dismiss this as a 'focus group' with the wave of his hand, how do you answer that? You have to have a higher standard of evidence, you have to have more compelling images," says Jeremijenko. "And we end up with a family aero-portrait -- a self-documentation of our action on the streets."

(Almost) Naked Justice: UK guerilla artist Banksy left London a gift the other night--a 3-ton, $40,000 bronze statue of Justice. Only difference between it and its inspiration--the statue high atop Old Bailey--is that this Justice has her skirt hiked up, revealing a prostitute's thong and thigh-high boots. An attached plaque reads "Trust no one." More on the story here.

More guerilla art: A Canadian artist called Other creates a public art piece of sorts by carving into a park bench then doing woodcut prints off it. He writes of "the fun of being able to leave behind a work of art that someone else can run prints off too....after i get a bunch finished ... i will giving out maps with locations of where the originals can be found and printed off of."

Set the VCR: Tonight's edition of NOW with Bill Moyers addresses art and politics with features on spoken-word artist Sarah Jones, filmmaker John Sayles, and Control Room director Jehane Noujaim.

Here comes the mud: The Bush smear machine is kicking into overdrive this week as a new book comes out asserting that "Kerry earned his Silver Star by killing a lone, fleeing, teenage Viet Cong in a loincloth" and a new BushCo-directed TV ad features Vietnam Vets--none of whom actually served with Kerry--seeking to discredit Kerry's service--to John McCain's chagrin. (One of the anti-Kerry Swift Boaters has since retracted his claims that Kerry didn't deserve a Silver Star.) “Ironically, as pro-Bush figures dredge the memories of veterans for stories to attack Kerry's war record, whatever the truth of the stories they have waited 35 years to share, they confirm one thing," says The Nation's Ian Williams. "Kerry was in Vietnam, in combat. Not even the best investigators that GOP billionaire money can buy has found a veteran who can credibly assert they saw George W. Bush in any military capacity whatsoever, in Alabama let alone in Vietnam, for twelve months, let alone anyone who fought alongside him.”

Homeland Security, Bush-style: Why is the Bush administration insisting that the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban all countries from producing highly enriched uranium or plutonium for nuclear weapons, NOT include a provision requiring inspections? What's the correlation between Bush's timing for terror alerts and the president's approval ratings? And why on earth is CACI--the contracting company implicated in torture at Abu Ghraib--being granted a contract extension worth $23 million?

George W cannot tell a lie: The president finally tells the truth in this clip rebroadcast on Air America (listen for Al Franken's chuckle at the end):

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

(Thanks, Kemi.)

Old news on new terror: NYC and Washington are at the highest level of terror alert since 9/11, yet the intelligence used to determine the threat is MORE THAN 3 YEARS OLD (that is, predating the 9/11 attacks the Bushies failed to see coming)--and all culled from readily available public documents. Apparently the real terror for Republicans is John Kerry's popularity after the Democratic National Convention.

Not political? Good thing Tom Ridge and the White House aren't politicizing terror: "The kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror, the reports that have led to this alert are the result of offensive intelligence and military operations overseas, as well as strong partnerships with our allies around the world..."

Too poor to protest? Kirsten Anderberg makes an interesting point about the upcoming protests at the Republican National Convention: all sorts of progressives will be there, except the ones who need to be there the most--the poor. But is she falling into that common liberal trap--confusing "privileged white kids from suburbs" with the real enemy of progressive change--corporations, hawks, and neocons? (The argument is intellectually lazy: she creates a caricature of RNC protesters as a monolithic bunch of shallow, anarchist-chic dimwits, forgetting that mobilization against the Bush agenda has joined together Jews and Christians, environmentalists and peaceniks, union members and nuns, Raging Grannies and anarchists. Further, she derides protesters for wasting money on this symbolic act of resistance when it could better be used for feeding and giving shelter to the poor--a good point--but then suggests that the rich should use their money to send homeless delegates to the protests.)

Boondocks TV: Aaron McGruder's controversial comic strip, The Boondocks, is soon to be a half-hour TV series.

W's loyalty oath: So you want to see Dick Cheney speak in your town? If you're a Democrat, expect to sign a loyalty oath to George W. Bush to get in the door.

Racial profiling: And the Bush administration insisted upon knowing the race of an Arizona photojournalist who wanted to take a picture of Cheney. The newspaper staff refused to answer the racial inquiry.

Will Ferrell as W in "White House West," a commercial for America Coming Together (6.3 mb movie file).

Obama! The hype about Illinois Senate candidate Barak Obama is legit. This guy is amazing. A sample from his DNC speech:

Don't get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon.

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems.

But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

Find out more at the Obamablog.

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." In 1962, Mississippi sharecropper Fanny Lou Hamer and a group of blacks set out to register to vote. They were met with harassment, literacy tests, fines, imprisonment, and brutal violence. Forty years ago this week, at the 1964 Democratic Convention, Hamer challenged the state party to include her Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party into the all-white affair. "Is this America?", her speech at the convention, concludes with a plea that, in the age of Jeb Bush's Florida roadblocks and voter purges, could've been said today: "All of this is on account of us wanting to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?" (So infuriated by Hamer, Lyndon Johnson, fearing that public sentiment would be with Hamer if the American people heard her speech--and cost him the election--requested TV airtime for a press release to kill coverage of it. The networks complied, but aired the entire speech later that night.) Hamer--whose powerful voice can be heard in this NPR segment--is buried in Montgomery County, Mississippi, beneath a gravestone that reads "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Do something: Join People for the American Way in urging John Ashcroft to investigate voter purges in Florida and determine if the state's election officials violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act during the 2000 elections.

Misusing the Patriot Act: Why are provisions of the Patriot Act--a bit of law meant to battle terrorism--being used against the operator of a fan website dedicated to the sci-fi TV show Stargate-1? (Hint: Hollywood's industry thugs at the MPAA are involved.)

(Via Metafilter.)

Carter on Bush's extremism: Former president Jimmy Carter just hit the nail on the head in his DNC speech--the Bush administration's policies, especially in the global arena, have taken the country in a radically different and damaging direction than all other presidents, and he casts Bush as an extremist. How refreshing to hear a president take a hard stance against terrorism while also upholding American values of human rights, truth-telling, and international cooperation:

In repudiating extremism we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences. First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely, the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs. Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic. Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country. Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others. And finally, in the world at large we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.

And: Follow news from the Democratic National Convention through the blog aggregators ConventionBloggers, politics.Feedster.com, and politics.technorati.com.

How's Saddam? Headline of the week honors go to CNN for their piece on Saddam Hussein's health and demeanor: Saddam 'gardens, eats muffins'. (Thanks, Kemi.)

Learning to walk: After a "near-death experience," a monkey in a Jerusalem zoo began mimicking humans by walking upright on two legs. The same's true of Faith, a dog born with only one front leg (it was on backwards and was thus removed), who was taught to "stand, hop, and eventually walk on her two back legs, like a human."

Kucinich endorses Kerry/Edwards: Dennis Kucinich bows out with integrity: "John Kerry is a good friend and a decent man. He has a lifelong commitment of honorable service to our nation as a military officer and as a Senator. He can be trusted with power. He will help heal America. He has outstanding intellectual gifts he will bring to the White House and to world affairs. I am proud to stand here to say I will do everything possible to make John Kerry the next President of the United States."

Logoizing Abu Ghraib

My new column at Adbusters, first hatched here.

When I first saw that photo of a hooded man in Abu Ghraib’s sickly light, arms outstretched and fingertips wired, I wondered if I was seeing art – Goya meets Matthew Barney, Hannibal Lecter meets Christ on a crate. But the fact that it was orchestrated by American military men for maximum humiliation, rather than aesthetic effect, intensified its macabre allure. Could they have known that their prankish snapshot would fascinate us so, ending up on front pages worldwide, on folk-art murals in Iraq, on a Los Angeles highway overpass accompanied by the words "The War is Over," a suggestion of its inherent rhetorical force? Advertising’s supercharged images had nothing on this.

So it’s no surprise that’s where it ended up. A series of subverted branding posters in New York included the torture victim’s silhouette among a crowd of grooving hipsters, with white wires running not to imaginary car batteries but to gleaming iPods. Blackened out for graphic boldness, the Iraqi man has become an emblem for a dishonorable war – a logo, of sorts, as iconic as Nike’s dunking Air Jordan or the Playboy bunny. And like its corporate counterparts, it comes with a tagline: "iRaq. 10,000 volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent."

In a country where antiwar sentiment is pushed to the margins, it made me immediately jubilant: opposition to war has gone mainstream! Graphically powerful, intellectually interesting (if flawed: what does Apple have to do with Iraq?), the altered ads juxtapose an American version of freedom – young people expressing their individuality and nonconformity through a trendy consumer good – with another kind of "freedom" imposed half a world away. If this imagery could penetrate our commercial comfort zones and tweak our noses, maybe it could germinate resistance to the war. And how ironic if an image eerily reminiscent of the Crucifixion proved George W. Bush’s undoing – a Christian zealot finished off by pictures of a man strung-up and suffering.

But such thoughts quickly turned to unease. To have this kind of cognitive distance to coolly contemplate the rhetorical mechanics of image appropriation must mean one thing: its gut-level impact has been replaced by a less immediate, intellectual one. Its power has been dimmed. While repetition might be to blame, so might the logo-ization itself. The silhouetting negates details of the victim. Like the inherent meaninglessness of the Nike swoosh, it exists only as a vessel to pour branded messages into. Abu Ghraib’s wired man stopped being a human being when he became an abstraction into which all our antiwar gripes can be loaded. Maybe we can live with that. Like the old war photographer’s dilemma, perhaps activists have to determine whether saving a life or sparing a person greater humiliation outweighs the image’s potential to stop further suffering. That seems to be the logic of Freewayblogger, the creator of the Los Angeles highway banners, who says, "He’s already been through his torture – doing my share to remind people of that doesn’t bother me at all."

But there’s a broader tactical question: even with messages conceived on moral high ground, are we best serving our cause – or humanity – by trafficking in images of cruelty or violence? Can we compete in a media environment populated by Janet Jackson’s nipple, Dick Cheney’s "Go fuck yourself," and web photos of a contractor’s hacked-off head? And by trying, are we complicit in ratcheting up our collective tolerance to suffering? When news broke of the first beheading of an American in Iraq, I was overcome by queasiness. In the absence of an image, I imagined the sheer terror of Nicholas Berg’s last hours. But, weeks later, when I worked up the nerve to view photos of Paul Johnson, his severed head propped between the shoulder blades of his orange jumpsuit, I was calmly numb. The image was less bloody and more clinical than, say, Mel Gibson’s flayed Jesus, dressed up with special effects to leave no doubt about the depth of the man’s suffering.

Watching Fahrenheit 9/11, I winced at footage of a GI’s bomb-shattered arm, his tendons snaking out in a Terminator-like tangle, but the image didn’t linger long. What did, profoundly, was the story of Lila Lipscomb, a Michigan mom who lost a son in Iraq. Contorted by grief, physically incapacitated by loss, she testified that war’s impact goes heartbreakingly beyond the mere impact of bullets on flesh. Her story doesn’t need to be abstracted or amplified by smart design. When we logo-ize suffering, we forget what it represents: the dark heart of grief and loss that could easily be ours.

THE LIST
I'm in on-a-deadline/carpal-tunnel zone these days, so posts will be even briefer than usual. And listy:

$18,392: Can a family of four living at the government-designated poverty level get by? Find out on the poverty tour. And: the Department of Labor his launched a website to help the homeless find shelter and jobs. (Great idea, especially if the homeless were more wired and less... homeless.)

iRaq: The creators of the iPod/iRaq culture jam, revealed. And: the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.

WTC/RNC agitprop: Russell Simmons' loft facing the Twin Towers site is a perfect place for free speech during the Republican National Convention. (Via Boingboing.)

Bill's banter: A video montage of Bill O'Reilly, who recently admitted that Fox and his No-Spin Zone "tilt right," demonstrating Fox's contested "fair and balanced" mantra by telling scores of guests to shut up.

AWOL: Bush still hasn't turned over all his National Guard service files, despite a promise that he would "absolutely" release everything related to his apparent service in absentia.

Urban playground: I love the Zen quality of this--an art installation in Toronto that's a swing hidden in a graffiti- and filth-laden alley.

A Krugman classic: The Arabian Candidate. (Thanks, Ben.)

Sweater Vests for Democracy! From NEWSgrist, a link to Knitters for Kerry.

Pizza and privacy: A new flash animation by the ACLU on government efforts to datamine your daily life. (Thanks, Leif.)

And in ice-cream news: As Krispy Kreme announces the launch of a glazed-doughnut-flavored frozen drink, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's is on the road with his Pants on Fire Tour, which features a 12-foot image of a flightsuit-bedecked Bush with trousers aflame.

The September Project: What's your library doing on September 11? The international September Project is organizing discussions on democracy and citizenship (read: The Patriot Act) to be held on 9/11 in community libraries everywhere. See if your library is participating.

The Church of Bush: A troubling look into the minds of conservatives by Rick Perlstein in The Voice:

"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary..."

Conservatives see something angelic in George Bush. That's why they excuse, repress, and rationalize away so much.

And that is why conservatism is verging on becoming an un-American creed.

Republican EPA expert defects:

Russell Train, a Republican, was the EPA’s second chief under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. But he said Bush’s record is so dismal he’s casting his presidential vote for Democrat John Kerry in November.

"It’s almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," he said. "I find this deeply disturbing."

Full story here.

The extent of Abu Ghraib: Seymour Hersh, who broke the Iraqi torture story for the New Yorker, says the US government is holding videotapes of American GIs sodomizing boys and women at Abu Ghraib prison. During a speech to the ACLU, the veteran reporter recounted actions that, if true, would surely amount to war crimes: "The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.' Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out." For more, see Camera/Iraq: The War of Images in the Middle East. See video of Hersh's speech here.

Correction 07.19: As Ed Cone specifies, Hersh did not indicate that it was American soldiers who were sodomizing boys. But if sodomy was going on at all in a prison under US command--by whom? Civilian contractors? Iraqi soldiers?--the story is still important. More from Cone on the background for Hersh's claims here.

The absence of Donald Rumsfeld: Rumsfeld's bad teeth and bombastic ways have been noticeably absent lately. Since April 27, the day before the Abu Ghraib torture story broke, he's only appeared in Pentagon briefings twice. As the AP reports, Rumsfeld's popularity is tanking, and the Bush campaign, understanding that, has been keeping him out of the spotlight. With new revelations about Abu Ghraib emerging, it's probably a smart tactic: it was Rumsfeld who complained that people were talking about Abu Ghraib by defining torture in a way that "doesn't fit a dictionary definition of the word that one would normally accept." (Forcing anal sex on minors wouldn't be normally accepted as torture?)

A POW on the Geneva Conventions: Douglas Peterson a 26-year U.S. Air Force vet, ambassador to Vietnam, and six-year POW in the same country, writes that "Life in a Vietnamese prison was hell, but I was never subjected to such degrading sexual humiliation [as Iraqis faced at Abu Ghraib]. The human body can withstand enormous physical pain and recover. But the human mind is different: One seldom fully recovers from ruthless psychological or sexual torture. I am certain my treatment would have been worse had the Geneva Conventions not been in place and had the world not insisted that Vietnam abide by them."

The full story on Abu Ghraib: Human Rights Watch's extensive report The Road to Abu Ghraib.

Funny money: BoingBoing links to a site that sells cut-out coins, altered to show leaders and heroes from various countries--Bob Marley, George Washington, the Greek god Democritus--smokin' up. More modified money: Sound artist (and former Minneapolitan) Kitundu's politically powerful dollars, hobo nickels (plus an essay on the topic by Jeff Kastner from Cabinet), and a gallery of counterfeit coins, The Grimoire Numismaticon.

Streetwriter: Josh Kinberg's Bikes Against Bush project, a WiFi bike that'll spray anti-Bush messages on the streets in chalk, is featured in Popular Science. Look for the bike in use at the Republican convention (and in my feature on hi-tech protest in the upcoming issue of Adbusters). Also: Doug Schmitz's rightwing tirade against Kinberg's project contends that it (and other ant-Bush efforts) represent the Left's "psychopathic rage towards President Bush." Read Kinberg's encylopedic MFA thesis about the bike--which details its construction, specs, and development, as well as the historical role of bicycles in creative resistance and movements like suffrage--and you'll see that his psychopathic rage is about as measured, thorough, and well-informed around. Which can't be said for Schmitz.

Clean Graffiti

Slim-Fas(cis)t: Whoopi Goldberg will no longer be a spokesperson for Slim-Fast after making anti-Bush comments at a recent fundraiser.

Barcodes for bodies: Mexico's attorney general and other high-ranking government officials have had non-removable computer chips implanted in their bodies both as an identity mechanism and to thwart kidnapping. Must be a trend: next month, a Japanese school will introduce radio frequency ID tags (RFID)--a digital form of bar code--on its students.

Bucky's back: The new Buckminster Fuller US postage stamp.

FUV: A new gallery of Hummers, as framed by the universal hand gesture they so often inspire.

Wear a reminder about election day: November 2, 2004.

Writing a bomb: A wannabe novelist on a flight to Dallas was intercepted by police after a passenger eyed a bit of dialogue intended for his manuscript:

But the agent ignored the crossword, turning the paper sideways to read a line I'd scribbled in the margin: "I know this is kind of a bomb."

She pointed to the sentence, her finger resting on the word "bomb." "What does this mean?" she demanded.

Suddenly a light went on in my head. I remembered the passenger on my left leaning forward in his seat as I scribbled while we waited for takeoff. Seconds later, he'd clambered hastily over me without apology to make his way to the front of the plane. I'd assumed intestinal complications, but now that I thought about it, he hadn't used the bathroom. He'd spoken briefly with the flight attendants and returned to his seat. As the security woman looked at me, I now realized the passenger had been about as interested in my puzzling prowess as she was.

"I know this is kind of a bomb" is what I imagine Bucky, my main character, would say to Julie, his love interest, in the critical scene of my novel. I explained to the security woman that this is what happens when a 42-year-old man who is to literature what a karaoke singer is to opera tries to put words in the mouth of a fictional 19-year-old.

I opened my laptop and showed her shining example after shining example of similarly awful dialogue. She understood that that word, b-o-m-b, was no reference to ordnance or terrorist weapons of any kind.

But my explanation wasn't good enough for the three Dallas police officers who meanwhile had surrounded me — summoned, I supposed, for backup in case the dangerous character tried to write something even worse.

Read more. (Via Cursor.)

Clear Channel Bomb: Radio and billboard giant Clear Channel is reportedly making Project Billboard alter a billboard design planned to coincide with the Republican National Convention. "An illustration of a cartoonish bomb draped with stars and stripes, accompanied by the words 'Democracy is best taught by example, not by war,'" the billboard was rejected by Clear Channel because of the bomb imagery as well as the phrase "not by war." A more tame image--a flying dove--was approved, but the group, which includes founding member Alice Waters, plans on suing Clear Channel for breach of contract. More at NEWSgrist.

Serra on Abu Ghraib: Sculptor Richard Serra is the latest to offer an interpretation of Abu Ghraib's hooded man, a view that, to me, is more powerful than some of the logolike treatments I've seen. His hasty, art brut-like brushstrokes seem to underscore the visceral power of the image. Serra's piece is available for download. (Thanks, Doryun.)

Not liberal: Minnesota state Senate candidate Mary Hamann-Roland wants you to know she did not don a Wellstone t-shirt. Republicans say she did. Once. And that because of it she's not an Independent but a Democrat. Meanwhile, Tom Daschle wants you to know he did not hug Michael Moore.

I'm glad I could help clear the air.

Touch-ups: Under a headline "This Says It All," Rush Limbaugh's website runs a photo of John Kerry and John Edwards with Edwards' outstretched hand, waving to the crowd, covering Kerry's face. Is the VP candidate stealing the limelight from the Prez? Uh, no. Limbaugh doctored the photograph to make a point that, even without the magic of Photoshop, hardly seems worth making. And: Some folks think the amount of physical contact between the two candidates is suspicious (affection between runningmates? In America?!). Wouldn't seeing Bush touching Cheney--seeing anyone touching Cheney--be far creepier?

Bushworld: An incomplete summary of Bush's last few days:

He stormed out of a press conference when asked about his friend and fundraiser "Kenny Boy" Lay (who, along with his wife gave $882,580 to federal candidates, all but $86,470 of which went to Republicans). His military payroll records for his disputed time in the National Guard were reportedly destroyed in an attempt to salvage "deteriorating microfilm" they were allegedly stored on. His war in Iraq (based on horrifyingly flawed intelligence by the CIA he oversees) and the still-unfinished work in Afghanistan have killed 1,000 US military men and women. His administration is putting pressure on Pakistan to find bin Laden and deliver him "on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--a clear indication that stealing headlines from the Democratic National Convention is of greater import to him than finding 9/11's mastermind. He became the first president since Hoover to bail on the NAACP convention. His VP, Dick Cheney (whose legacy has inspired a clothing line) is under investigation by the French authorities and the SEC for an array of charges ranging from bribery to money laundering while at Halliburton. And frustrated liberals will do anything to get him out of office--even if it means having sex with conservatives to sway their votes (link not safe for the kids).

Mourning in America: Somehow, when we see footage of Iraqi mothers wailing amid the rubble of their destroyed homes for dead children buried beneath, it seems so...distant. But watch Lila Lipscomb in Fahrenheit 9/11, physically doubled over by grief at the loss of her son in Iraq, and the destruction of war hits home: my son/friend/brother could be next. Naomi Klein writes how the parents of the fallen--Nicholas Berg's father, Michael Pedersen's mother (Lipscomb), Patrick McCaffrey's mother (who defied Bush's ban on filming caskets returning home)--are finding their voice through grief. And while they don't have the numbers to outweigh the votes of NASCAR dads and soccer moms in swing states, they "might just change something more powerful: the hearts and minds of Americans."

Fury is an entirely appropriate response to a system that sends young people to kill other young people in a war that never should have been waged. Yet the American right is forever trying to pathologise anger as something menacing and abnormal, dismissing war opponents as hateful and, in the latest slur, "wild-eyed". This is much harder to do when victims of wars begin to speak for themselves: no one questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has just lost a son or daughter, or the fury of a soldier who knows that he is being asked to kill, and to die, needlessly.

Memorial: Reagan Pyramid Nears Completion

Shirts against Shrub: Designs on the White House is donating all net proceeds from t-shirt sales to the Kerry campaign (all shirts are designed by visitors to the site and are printed on American-made, sweatshop free shirt stock). My favorite shows W accompanied by the word "Oops."

Thin-skinned: Remember when Irish journalist Carole Coleman asked GW some hard-hitting questions, ruffling presidential feathers? Now the administration has filed an official complaint with the Irish government over the "unnecessarily aggressive" interview. You'd think Bush wouldn't want to keep this nambypamby performance in the news, but...

Spiral Jetty: Under water for most of its 34 years, Robert Smithson's 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty continues to emerge from the Great Salt Lake after five years of drought. Sculpture Magazine dedicates its new issue to this important work, a constantly changing, salt-encrusted "causeway of basalt coiling out into the briny lake."

Independence Day, Bush-style: As George W. Bush was pontificating in West Virginia yesterday about freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, two people in the audience were put in restraints, cited for trespassing, and told to leave because they were wearing anti-Bush t-shirts.

What America Needs: I spent last night sitting on abandoned train tracks outside the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, watching Mark Wojahn's amazing film What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea projected on the walls. In Fall 2002, Wojahn traveled from New York to California by train asking regular people what they think America needs. The answers were often hilarious and always surprising (see the trailer here). A perfect way to spend the 4th. More on Wojahn, including his work with the Twin Cities Artists Front, here.

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

And: Give us back our damn flag: The leftist case for patriotism," from LA Weekly.

F9/11 "Disputable Scenes": In fairness, here's a page that outlines a few scenes from Michael Moore's movie that are seen as questionable. If this is all they've got, it ain't much. That is to say, the rest of the film's assertions--far more damning claims that the few listed here--are essentially spot-on.

Werner Herzog on Michael Moore (by proxy): If only detractors of Michael Moore--especially verbal excrementalist Christopher Hitchens--applied the same scrutiny to the utterances of George W. Bush or the talking heads at Fox News as they do to Fahrenheit 9/11. Because news is the realm where such arguments of fact belong. If a documentarian flubs the facts, call him to the matt, but if his interpretation of fact displeases his critics (as seems to be the case here), that's a different matter altogether. I'll say it slowly: Documentary films are not journalism. While news purports to be "objective," documentary films present facts subjectively presented within the context of a point of view. Even a stolid documentary on the mating rituals of peahens arises from such a vantage point--certain facts are emphasized, others minimized, others left out of the frame altogether.

In 1999, legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog presented his manifesteo "Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema" on stage at the Walker Art Center. His first six points have great relevance for the discussion on Moore's film.

The others, not so much.

LESSONS OF DARKNESS

1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.

2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail." Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.

3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.

7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.

8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."

9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.

10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn´t call, doesn´t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life.

11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

Kerry = Pessimism = Hitler: fafblog on Bush's Hitlerian Democrats ad:

Look at Al Gore, and how ANGRY he is over the torturing of Iraqis in American-run prisons. Such rage and pessimism! Look at Michael Moore, and how FULL OF RAGE AND PESSIMISM over his country being sucked into a bloody war of choice! And look at dark, dour John Kerry, crackin' a joke about his ass! About his rage-filled, pessimist ass. The ass... of HITLER.

Liar, liar: A great post on The Poor Man (and an entertaining string of reader comments) about Nicholas Kristof's column insisting that while "The run-up to Iraq was all about exaggerations, but not flat-out lies. Indeed, there's some evidence that Mr. Bush carefully avoids the most blatant lies," Bush is no liar.

He has lied about his time in the National Guard, and lied about his criminal history. He lied about his relationship with Ken Lay, he lied about who would benefit from his tax cuts, and he lied about stem cells. He lied about his visit to Bob Jones University, he lied about why he wouldn't meet with Log Cabin Republicans, and he lied about reading the EPA report on global warming. He lied about blaming the Clinton administration for the second intifada, he lies constantly about how he pays no attention to polls, he lied about how he loves New York, and he lied about moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He lied about finding WMD in Iraq, he lied about making his decision to go to war, he lied about the CIA's dismissal of the yellowcake rumors, and he lied about the IAEA's assessment of Iraq's nuclear program. He lied about funding the fight against AIDS in Africa, he lied about when the recession started, and he lied about seeing the first plane hit the WTC. He lied about supporting the Patient Protection Act, and he lied about his deficit spending, and now my wrist hurts.

Der Furor: A great dialogue between Jacob Weisberg and William Saletan on Bush's goofy campaign spot, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wide-Eyed." Weisberg's writing:

...the vileness ...must not be allowed to obscure its essential hilarity. What moron came up with this idea? What are they smoking in Karl Rove's office? C'mon, Will. This ad is the campaign equivalent of The Producers—an idea so egregiously tasteless and stupid that it might just succeed as camp.

Footage of Hitler shouting in German is juxtaposed with footage of Al Gore, Howard Dean, and Dick Gephardt getting worked up while criticizing Bush, Michael Moore getting booed for criticizing the Iraq War at the Academy Awards, and John Kerry using the phrase "kick your ass" (which is bleeped out, possibly in an effort to imply he said something worse). I know I should be disgusted by the attempted association of Democrats and Nazis, but it's too funny to get upset about. Cue the goose-stepping mädchen of the Brookings Institution!

What exactly does the Bush-Cheney campaign think that these Democrats have in common with Hitler? Basically, it's that they're too darned excited about politics.

No whiffleballs for Bush: After the prez sat for an interview with Irish journalist Carole Coleman, the White House complained that she "overstepped the bounds of politeness." Her crime, according to John Nichols, was not being "as ill-informed and pliable as the stenographers who 'cover' the White House." Read the White House transcript. More at BoingBoing.

Freedumb: Artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble has been indicted not on bioterror charges, as the government initially implied, but for mail and wire fraud. After a 7-week grand jury investigation, prosecutors say Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, head of the human gentics lab at the University of Pittsburgh, schemed to illegally aquire a difficult-to-obtain bacteria. While a lesser charge than bioterror, a conviction could land Kurtz in jail for 20 years. Background on the case here and here.

Taping While Brown: I wonder if Purna Raj Bajracharya's crime is being Nepalese, by which I mean, looking vaguely Middle Eastern. While videotaping street scenes of his life in New York to send home to his wife, he accidentally taped a building that happened to house an FBI office. When they found out, the FBI threw Bajracharya into solitary confinement for three months, shackling him so fully at times he couldn't move and holding him in a 6 x 9' cell that was kept lit 24 hours a day, then deported him back to Katmandu. Now in Nepal, Bajracharya says he'd testify against those who mistreated him, despite his fears what the US government would do to him in retaliation. But he remains positive: "What happened to me could have been an isolated incident. I still believe the American government is the best in the world." (Via TalkLeft.)

WWJT? In a New York Times interview in which he says of Dick Cheney, charitably, "I don't think he's a mindful human being," Ronald Reagan Jr. weighs in on Abu Ghraib:

If you are going to call yourself a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight -- it has put them in greater danger.

Why Google hates Michael Moore: You'd think that when you google "Michael Moore movie" or "Michael Moore film" you'd get, you know, the Michael Moore movie everyone's been talking about, or at least the filmmaker's website. You don't. You get a link to Michael Moore Hates America, a Moore-style documentary by Minneapolis amateur filmmaker Michael Wilson. The Unknown Soldier investigates why this search strand--and most others involving Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11--lead mainly to anti-Moore screeds.

Google's Gag Order: Perrspectives--a left-leaning website whose ads have been removed by Google for “unacceptable content” and “language that advocates against an individual, group or organization"-- explores Google's anti-liberal bias.

Out: From Joy Garnett--artist, activist, and editor of my new favorite Eyeteethesque blog, NEWSgrist--comes a new site, I'm Voting Bush Out.

The political cost of abortion: A really creepy opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal:

Abortion has caused missing Democrats--and missing liberals. For advocates so fundamentally committed to changing the face of conservative America, liberals have been remarkably blind to the fact that every day the abortions they advocate dramatically decrease their power to do so. Imagine the number of followers that their abortion policies eliminate who, over the next several decades, would have emerged as the new liberal thinkers, voters, adherents, fund-raisers and workers for their cause...

As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results minuscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies. It is a grim irony lost on them, for which they will pay dearly in elections to come.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Fahrenheit burns Bush: I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night--go see it!--and my opinion pretty much matches that of John Birch Society writer (and avowed "ultra-conservative") William Norman Grigg's:

It will have a HUGE impact because Moore – his facile leftist economics notwithstanding – has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool – and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.

(Via Cursor.)

Remember Afghanistan? While Bush administration officials pooh-pooh the claims made by an anonymous CIA counterterrorism expert in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror--among them, that the US waited so long after 9/11 to strike against the Taliban that terrorists were long gone by the time bombs started falling --news out of Aghanistan is increasingly bleak. While the Bush administration has focused on bringing "democracy" to Iraq, Afghanistan has seen the Taliban's power expand. Sixteen people were recently killed by the Taliban for possessing voter registration cards from the September election, and five employees of Doctors without Borders were murdered by the Taliban in early June. Plus opium production has gone through the roof; according to the UN, Afghanistan now produces 75% of the world's supply of illegal opium. Imperial Hubris' author also says we're probably far from catching Osama bin Laden and that al-Qaeda is probably stronger than ever. And: Home of the Not-So-Free, by the Dissident Voice's Kim Petersen.