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Saturday, May 17, 2003

If you want to win an election, just control the voting machines

I'm really glad that Utne linked to this, because I'd been meaning to dig it up for you guys and kept forgetting.

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx) has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

"This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm). "They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me."

Is Matulka the sore loser the Hagel campaign paints him as, or is he democracy's proverbial canary in the mineshaft?

In Georgia, Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland was defeated by Saxby Chambliss, who'd avoided service in Vietnam with a "medical deferment" but ran his campaign on the theme that he was more patriotic than Cleland. While many in Georgia expected a big win by Cleland, the computerized voting machines said that Chambliss had won.

The BBC summed up Georgia voters' reaction in a 6 November 2002 headline: "GEORGIA UPSET STUNS DEMOCRATS." The BBC echoed the confusion of many Georgia voters when they wrote, "Mr. Cleland - an army veteran who lost three limbs in a grenade explosion during the Vietnam War - had long been considered 'untouchable' on questions of defense and national security."

Between them, Hagel and Chambliss' victories sealed Republican control of the Senate. Odds are both won fair and square, the American way, using huge piles of corporate money to carpet-bomb voters with television advertising. But either the appearance or the possibility of impropriety in an election casts a shadow over American democracy.

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine over 200 years ago. "To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.."

That slavery, according to Hagel's last opponent Charlie Matulka, is at our doorstep.

"They can take over our country without firing a shot," Matulka said, "just by taking over our election systems."

Taking over our election systems? Is that really possible in the USA?

Bev Harris of www.talion.com and www.blackboxvoting.com has looked into the situation in depth and thinks Matulka may be on to something. The company tied to Hagel even threatened her with legal action when she went public about his company having built the machines that counted his landslide votes. (Her response was to put the law firm's threat letter on her website and send a press release to 4000 editors, inviting them to check it out. www.blackboxvoting.com/election-systems-software.html)

"I suspect they're getting ready to do this all across all the states," Matulka said in a January 30, 2003 interview. "God help us if Bush gets his touch screens all across the country," he added, "because they leave no paper trail. These corporations are taking over America, and they just about have control of our voting machines."

In the meantime, exit-polling organizations have quietly gone out of business, and the news arms of the huge multinational corporations that own our networks are suggesting the days of exit polls are over. Virtually none were reported in 2002, creating an odd and unsettling silence that caused unease for the many American voters who had come to view exit polls as proof of the integrity of their election systems.

As all this comes to light, many citizens and even a few politicians are wondering if it's a good idea for corporations to be so involved in the guts of our voting systems. The whole idea of a democratic republic was to create a common institution (the government itself) owned by its citizens, answerable to its citizens, and authorized to exist and continue existing solely "by the consent of the governed."

Prior to 1886 - when, law schools incorrectly tell law students, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with equal protection and other "human rights" - it was illegal in most states for corporations to involve themselves in politics at all, much less to service the core mechanism of politics. And during the era of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains," numerous additional laws were passed to restrain corporations from involvement in politics.

Wisconsin, for example, had a law that explicitly stated:

"No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office."

The penalty for violating that law was dissolution of the corporation, and "any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation" would be subject to "imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years" and a substantial fine.

However, the recent political trend has moved us in the opposite direction, with governments answerable to "We, The People" turning over administration of our commons to corporations answerable only to CEOs, boards, and stockholders. The result is the enrichment of corporations and the appearance that democracy in America has started to resemble its parody in banana republics...

On most levels, privatization is only a "small sin" against democracy. Turning a nation's or community's water, septic, roadway, prisons, airwaves, or health care commons over to private corporations has so far demonstrably degraded the quality of life for average citizens and enriched a few of the most powerful campaign contributors. But it hasn't been the end of democracy (although some wonder about what the FCC is preparing to do - but that's a separate story).

When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. After the second meeting, on the afternoon of January 27th, the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee resigned his job.

Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Charlie Matulka had requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel. He just learned his request was denied because, he said, Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel.

posted by Jenny at 10:35 AM |

Well, at least they conceded this much...or so it seems:

WASHINGTON, May 16 — The Department of Homeland Security said today that it would conduct an internal investigation to see if there was misuse of federal resources when the department helped Texas law enforcement agencies in a politically inspired search for the private plane of a prominent Democratic state legislator.

The department said the investigation would be conducted by the agency's acting inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, a Houston Republican who is well known among some of the same state lawmakers in Texas who wanted the plane tracked down.

Department officials said they saw no conflict of interest for Mr. Ervin in leading the inquiry, and they insisted again today that the department had done nothing wrong when it responded to a request on Monday from the Texas Department of Public Safety for help in finding the plane.

They said they believed that Texas officials had misled the department's Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center into believing that the plane might have been in mechanical trouble or had crashed.

The Piper Cheyenne, which was owned by a member of the Texas House of Representatives, had been used to fly Democrats lawmakers to Oklahoma, part of an unusual move to block a quorum in the State House of Representatives, which was considering a Republican redistricting plan.

The coordination center in Riverside, Calif., which is normally responsible for trying to block terrorists and other criminals from sneaking across the border into the United States, was ultimately unable to find the plane.
...

Prominent Democrats in Congress suggested today that they would give Mr. Ervin the benefit of the doubt that he would conduct a fair investigation. But some said they would still push for a separate Congressional inquiry into how a federal agency responsible for combatting terrorism was drawn into the middle of a partisan dispute in the Texas statehouse.

"It's interesting that the acting inspector general at the department was active in Republican politics in Texas, but I'm not going to prejudge him," said Representative Martin Frost of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee. "If you want a full investigation, you ultimately would have to have Congress do it."

By the way, Atrios had some dirt on this up the other day...

posted by Jenny at 9:57 AM |

I just found out that June Carter Cash died this week. She was an incredible woman, and she will be missed. I've been looking unsuccessfully for a place to send condolences to Johnny Cash; if you could though, please send some prayers and positive energy his way--this must be a terrible blow.

posted by Jenny at 3:36 AM |

Friday, May 16, 2003

Those sneaky FCC folks...

Look what just appeared on Alternet:

FCC passed a measure allowing certain licensed users of radio spectrum to lease their airwaves to other users, effectively allowing private parties to control a vast amount of spectrum rights. Proponents believe the measure will help spread emerging wireless services. Critics believe this is illegal due to the absence of public interest safeguards.

We really need to keep a watch on these guys...and sign those petitions!

posted by Jenny at 2:23 PM |

What's in your shopping cart?

Everytime I stop by Vegan Blog I learn something new--and usually disturbing. This one goes out to everybody who shops at Whole Foods (yours truly included, when I live in Austin):

It's not always easy being a hip capitalist. Just ask John Mackey, president and CEO of Whole Foods Market. For years employees and union organizers have complained about the company's assiduous union-busting practices. Most recently, however, the company has had to contend with animal-rights groups.

According to Supermarket News, Mackey and other Whole Foods executives and investors were forced to walk out of the company's annual shareholders' meeting in April after representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the vegetarian advocacy group Viva raised pointed questions about the company's meat suppliers. One issue, according to Viva, was the company's policy of buying ducks raised in appalling conditions.

"If we stop selling an item, we're just angering customers and sending them to buy from someone else," Mackey shot back. "So if we don't sell ducks, it harms our customers and it doesn't help the ducks." Interesting logic, but here is a more succinct statement of corporate policy, from Mackey: "Whole Foods will not be coerced by Viva, PETA, labor unions or any other advocacy groups under any circumstances. We will do what we believe is the right thing to do."

By Dave Mulcahey, In These Times

*sigh*

We can't be sure about the origins of our animal meat unless we grow it, slaughter it, and cure it ourselves. Maybe then people would realize the history of their dinner. (Don't get me started on the capitalist divestment of history behind commodities...) It's amazing, the things that go into our daily food consumption. For example, 89% percent of Texans--including me until just a few minutes ago--don't realize that the horse slaughtering industry exists--at least, I knew it existed for dog food, but I didn't know that 23% of all Texans actually eat it themselves...more here, also via Vegan Blog.

posted by Jenny at 12:52 AM |

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Gotta love Willie

Okay, okay, I was somewhat peeved about the Toby Keith song lyrics, and the Gap commercials. I maintain that they are insidious, and I would tell him so if I saw him. However...I cannot stay angry at Willie. And here is a good illustration of why (Via Body & Soul):

Wearing red bandannas sent to them by "personal messenger" from country singer Willie Nelson, four Texas House Democrats walk out of their hotel in Ardmore, Okla., late Wednesday. From left are Reps. Barry Telford of De Kalb, Patrick Rose of Dripping Springs, Jim McReynolds of Lufkin and Mark Homer of Paris. McReynolds held up a note from Nelson that said, "Way to go ... stand your ground." Nelson also sent T-shirts and eight bottles of whiskey to the Democrats, who are trying to thwart a Republican redistricting plan.

We could do a hell of a lot worse for folk heroes in Texas.

Update: Check out the coverage from Willie's 70th birthday resolution in the Texas legislature (before they all disappeared)...:-)

posted by Jenny at 3:49 PM |

Vital evidence, closure stripped from Iraq's mass graves

Tbogg (scroll to "He didn't care") cites Gabriel Syrne denouncing anti-war protestors for opposing the war to unseat Saddam Hussein in light of the discovery of more mass graves:

To all those protesters whose righteous hatred for the United States and Britain was declared out of self-proclaimed desire for peace. Is this the kind of 'peace' you wanted to preserve when you cried "not in my name"?

...

Damn you and your coddled, self-centered and twisted minds. You have caused enough misery and suffering by your irrational and irresponsible opposition to anything that might bring freedom to those parts of the world where free expression is an unknown concept. Perhaps you should change your slogans and cry for 'peace of mind', your minds that is, in the face of the gruesome truth emerging from Iraq.

Like most chickenhawks, he undermines himself by succumbing to sensationalism, lumping us anti-war folks in with the Ba'athist Saddam lovers. If we're such big fans of Saddam, why do many of us give money to humanitarian organizations which have denounced his regime for years? Of course, it's not surprise that Bush supporters use the discovery of mass graves in Iraq to justify their role as self-appointed bringers of freedom, and this gruesome co-optation will sadly fly among most US citizens because of our ahistorical sound-byte culture, where history is made and broken by 30-second blurbs on CNN and FoxNews. Of course, there is more to this story--these are the bodies of Shi'ites who staged an uprising in the aftermath of the Gulf War, a rebellion encouraged yet unsupported by the United States in 1991. Jeanne d'Arc has some ruminations on the coalition forces' complete disregard for the graves themselves, failing to secure them or protect documentation related to the executions.

But there's a more immediate issue raised by the discovery of mass graves in Hilla, Mahawil, and Muhammad Sakran, as well. The way the whole thing has been handled demonstrates that this administration doesn't give a damn about Saddam Hussein's victims. I don't mean just that pretty much the same group of people didn't care in 1991, I mean they don't care now. They've shown the same lack of concern with guarding the gravesites -- and other signs of atrocities -- that they did with guarding the museums, libraries, and nuclear facilities. For two weeks Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have been calling on the occupying powers in Iraq to protect and preserve mass grave sites, as well as any documentation related to executions. It's not just a matter of keeping people away, but of setting up formal bodies to investigate and to provide a place for people looking for answers to come. They didn't do it. Human Rights Watch notified Jay Garner's office and was told the gravesites would be secured. Surprise -- they lied.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement today explaining their attempts to make the U.S. government understand how important this was, and how "unresponsive" the government has been.

This article at New Scientist outlines the consequences of this lack of security, citing that the "desperate excavation of bodies from Iraq's mass graves by frantic relatives is destroying vital scientific evidence."

posted by Jenny at 2:33 AM |

This one deserves some national attention; I think most of us are woefully unedcuated about the struggles regarding burial ground and other sacred spaces between Native Americans and government encroachment:

Yankton Sioux Stop Recreation Construction

posted by Jenny at 2:02 AM |

Gender and "Hardball"

Check out this transcript posted at Atrios...there's a wealth of perplexing commentary here, but one particular segment caught my attention, the part where Matthews refers to "muscular in-your-face politics", "smack down"...as a matter of fact, there's a wealth of gendered commentary in this segment. One almost wonders if Matthews was squirming around about the gay/lesbian discussion and thus felt the need to assert "masculine" imagery (if we attribute "muscular" and "in-your-face" mostly to men, which I believe many would), or his own masculinity...or the masculinity or "non-wussiness" of AWOL?

At any rate, I'm glad I don't get CNBC...

posted by Jenny at 12:06 AM |

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Iraqi National Library's volumes "safely hidden"

Time for a collective sigh of relief (if it's indeed true):

On a rundown street of auto repair shops in old Saddam City, a Shi'ite mosque run by men in tattered clothing has become a secret safe house for Iraqi treasures.

Inside a cavernous room at the Al Hak Mosque in the newly named Revolution City, roughly 400,000 manuscripts, biographies, religious works, and graduate-school theses are stacked to the 12-foot ceiling and gathering dust in the dry, 95-degree heat.
...

''We had to protect the Islamic and Arabic heritage, so we acted before Baghdad fell to chaos,'' said Mohammad al-Jawad al-Tamimi, the mosque's imam. ''These books, it concerns the whole country.''

On April 15 the National Library was looted and set ablaze, compounding the agony of many who cherish Iraq's role as an early, important civilization, and those mourning the loss of precious antiquities from the National Museum. At the time, the media reported that the library was forsaken.

International scholars, as well as James H. Billington, librarian of the US Congress, have been preparing to come to Baghdad to sift through the remains, create an inventory of lost and found works, and help rebuild the library.

But Tamimi -- who disclosed the mosque's holdings to a Boston Globe reporter yesterday and allowed a Globe translator to inspect the holdings -- smiled as he lifted a book with his parchment-colored fingers and insisted that all was not lost.

The books cannot be authenticated until US and Iraqi officials inspect them; the mosque's leaders plan to extend an invitation soon, once looting has entirely subsided.

The library was believed to contain about 2 million works, including some from the Abbasid Empire of 750 to 1250 AD that stretched from Portugal to Pakistan. Copies of most of the books published in Iraq were said to be in the library.

What is certain is that many tens of thousands of books are located here, in a variety of languages, ranging from the myths of Mesopotamia and Iraqi war chronologies to scientific papers by university students written decades ago.

Columns of sealed boxes of computer printers and photocopiers are in another corner, belonging to the library's staff, Tamimi said. He insisted that none of the books or equipment had once been stolen; some Iraqi looters have been turning over goods to mosques in recent weeks.

''We have about 30 percent of the library holdings, and another 60 percent are hidden [at the library] and elsewhere,'' said the sheik's brother, Mahmoud al-Tamimi. ''We brought them all here to protect our past from thieves.''

posted by Jenny at 1:51 PM |

Sheesh, head on over to This Modern World and tally up the Republican astroturf sightings in the last few days! Looks like papers in Kalamazoo, Huntsville, Connecticut, Anchorage, and Tennessee and Kentucky have all been played with the same line about "fostering jobs and economic growth". Be on the lookout in a newspaper near you!

posted by Jenny at 11:11 AM |

Move over, Dixie Chicks

It looks like the "political Right" has found a new scapegoat:

Danny Glover is next on the hitlist of the rightwing censorship brigade. They are pressuring MCI, the telecommunications company, to drop the actor and activist as a spokeperson because of his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war. The TransAfrica Forum -- Glover is the chairman of its board -- is organizing a campaign asking people to contact MCI and express support for the actor. You can find out how to reach MCI at the organization's website.

Haven't seen anything about this on the "news" or around the blogosphere, but it sounds pretty insidious. I was wondering when they were going to go after Glover...

Update: The MCI PR office can be reached at 800/644-NEWS or 202/736-6700 and MCI customers can call Customer Service at 800/444-3333. Email can be done through the website; there is an electronic submission form at http://consumer.mci.com/customer_service/ContactUs.jsp

Here's a sample letter from skippy:

Dear MCI:

I write to urge you to ignore all "supposed grass roots" efforts to get you to drop or punish Danny Glover as your spokesman because of his recent views on the War in Iraq.

Rest assured that it will not be any spontaneous grass roots efforts from real people, but rather an organized, conducted campaign by certain political organizations on the right.

The Dixie Chicks, who were supposedly ostracized for their views, are still top of the charts, and are currently touring to sold out shows across the country. The noise made by the few and the loud against the Dixie Chicks was orchestrated by the South Carolina State Republican party, and did not represent the true feelings of America towards the Chicks.

Please bear that in mind if you receive an inordinate number of messages telling you to drop Danny Glover.

He is a fine man and fine spokesman, and his politics should not bear on his ability to sell long distance phone service.

posted by Jenny at 11:01 AM |

Arrrgh, Blogger is killing my posts! More to come...for the time being, check out TomPaine's new blog--Take On the News.

posted by Jenny at 10:57 AM |

Hey, guess what I found at skippy's blog...the email address for the quorum-busting Texas House Democrats holed up in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Last I heard they were alternating their time conceptualizing reform in a conference room and chowing down at Denny's. What a party! Drop a line of support here.

Update: Republicans hire out a California Homeland Security agency to track the locations of missing Democrats, sending forces to the neonatal unit where a Democrat's newborn twins are recovering in intensive care. Atrios has more here, don't miss it. And Tom DeLay has already made some rumblings about bringing in the FBI (I hate it when my silent speculations are made manifest). That McCarthy era quote keeps playing itself over and over again: "At long last, sir, have you no shame?"

posted by Jenny at 9:36 AM |

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

The politics of the photo op

An Omaha plastics factory will shut down at least one shift to provide a backdrop for presidential speeches. At Airlite Plastics workers will either have their pay docked for missed shifts, or they can work on Saturday to make it up. Company president Brad Crosby maintains that the hourly workers are "not concerned" about the decision. "They're just thrilled about the visit," Crosby told the Washington Post.

There are some pretty funny comments about this up at Atrios's Eschaton...

posted by Jenny at 4:24 AM |

Here are some notes on our society of media spectacle...I think this pretty much sums it up:

If Lincoln had issued his document that freed slaves in rebelling states in the era of all-news channels instead of in 1863, they would have granted him half the screen, the rest to Laci Peterson's memorial. The discovery of the wheel would have shared time with Scott Peterson's bail hearing. Nero fiddling while Rome burned would have given way to Modesto.

Instead of showing us architects of history, TV encourages carpenters with fast hammers. The result is quickened pulses, impatience as a society that is incompatible with historical perspective.

Just as entertainment shows usually fix all problems before the final credits, so do news programs rev up red-herring scenarios and facile answers prematurely. Peel back the fat layers of coverage and you find news consultants, hired hands with their fingers on the pulse of ratings.

posted by Jenny at 4:14 AM |

The Texas redistricting saga continues...

Now that I've just said a mouthful about Greens being the party I most admire, check out what frustrated Democrats in the Texas House did to stall the vote on redistricting yesterday (Via Bob Harris and the Talent Show):

AUSTIN -- Outnumbered by House Republicans determined to pass a congressional redistricting bill, all but a few Democrats went into hiding today to keep the House from meeting. [list of names here] The House's GOP leader responded by ordering state troopers to find and arrest the missing lawmakers.

The House walkout not only blocked the redistricting bill but also action on all other bills on the calendar. The House cannot convene without at least two-thirds of the membership, or 100 members, present on the House floor under legislative rules.

Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick locked down the House chamber so that lawmakers already present could not leave, then he expressed his disgust with the Democrats.

...

House Democrats said they were taking a stand for fair treatment of the minority party. They blamed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom
Delay, R-Sugar Land, for pushing the Texas House to take up redistricting against the wishes of Democrats and some GOP state lawmakers.

"We refuse to participate in an inherently unfair process that slams the door of opportunity in the face of Texas voters," they said in a statement read by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston.

The crisis erupted this morning when, less than 30 minutes before the Texas House was due to convene, the Democrats told the House leadership in letters that they would be absent. They asked the parliamentarian to lock their voting machines until they returned. [text]

"I do not know where they are," said Tamara Bell, chief of staff for House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam.

Only three Democrats remained; all are Craddick allies whom fellow Democrats have dubbed "cross dressers."

...

More than 100 people, however, gathered in the rain outside the Capitol to rally in support of the Democratic walkout. Carrying signs that read "Tom Delay, Go Away," "Don't tread on Travis" and "Sieg heil, Tom Delay," they cheered as state senators spoke in support of the walkout.

The lawmakers had prepared for the trip Sunday night and packed clothes to allow them to stay away for four days, a legislative source told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. That would put them past the deadline for preliminary passage of major pending bills that have been termed a priority by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

"We're leaving, and we'll stay gone 'til Thursday," one member from South Texas, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the San Antonio Express-News.

The latest group of quorum-busters planned to leave the state to avoid having state police detain them and forcibly return them to the House floor, if necessary.

"DPS or the Rangers can't exactly come get us if we are outside of Texas," said one legislator.

Several sources said some of the members were to board a plane leaving from a Central Texas airport to rural Oklahoma. A separate group would fly to New Mexico, while a third group left by bus for New Mexico, according to the sources.

What, oh what, would Bob Bullock say?

posted by Jenny at 4:04 AM |

Monday, May 12, 2003

This guy hits the nail on the head when talking about ideology and corporate imperialism in Iraq...

...progressives who look at Iraq and see only the corporate scam are missing the bigger picture: the ideology that frames the public's view of Iraq. As long as that ideology remains unchallenged, it will be next to impossible to stop the corporate scam, or the spread of American empire.

Progressives who condemn the Starbucks-ization of Iraq find plenty of sympathy in the liberal elite. On talk shows and editorial pages, liberals dispute with conservatives about the details of the "rebuilding" process. But every word of this mainstream debate reinforces the basic view both sides share: the Iraqis must choose between order, American-style, and the endless misery of chaotic savagery. A dark legacy of backwardnesss, religious obscurantism, and totalitarian terror are coming to an end in Iraq, according to the mainstream ideology. After a transitional phase of chaos, Iraqis will eventually enjoy a shining new order-an endless vista of individual freedom, prosperity, and progress that only our modern Western civilization can offer. Our job is to teach them how to do it.

...

Unlike most parents, though, our "experts" are not primarily concerned about the well-being of the Iraqi "children." When liberals complain about the Bush administration's corporate scam, few say it's outright wrong. Their concern is almost always the public image of the U.S. The critics warn that such crude greed is unseemly and embarrassing. They treat the Bush administration like an overbearing bullying parent, who lives in a house with big windows and no curtains. "What will the neighbors think," they ask. How can we create world order if other nations don't trust us to be wise loving parents? The liberals also fear retaliation from other nations, whose corporations are rudely cut out of the action. If you want an enduring empire, you need partners to help you, they warn the right-wing unilateralists. But liberals understand that this scramble for windfall profit is just how capitalism works. For them, it's the system that made America great. And they are as sure as conservatives that the U.S. wants to be a wise loving parent, doing the right thing.

The American corporate empire depends on this whole condescending, paternalistic ideology, viewing the U.S. as the force of order and people of color as inherently disordered. It's the way white people in America have been talking about "the natives" for the last four centuries. The American public tolerates the corporate scam because they take this ideology as unquestioned truth. They have never heard anything else. As long as it goes unquestioned, the corporate empire is free to spread as far as its guns and bombs will take it. If the ideology begins to falter, though, the empire can not long endure.

If we really want the Iraqis to be liberated, we will have to free them from more than Bechtel, Haliburton, and Starbucks. We will have to free them from the ideology that creates and justifies imperialism. First, of course, we will have to free ourselves.

Right on. And this somehow brings me back to that Green/Democrat debate. Thus far, I have never watched a prominent Democrat give a talk or interview and felt that she or he actually questioned the status quo upon which our government operates--a status quo rooted in such ideologies, of the American version of the "white man's burden" to bring commerce (and Christianity) to those uneducated masses of the Third World. This is the issue I have with most "liberal" politicians...they are "liberal" in the traditional sense, following the wiles of Adam Smith's invisible hand, believing that American ideology of liberation and economic "progress" are the world's sole beacon of freedom to the primitive and downtrodden. They happily dish out soundbites about our prosperous, moral nation--a nation in which people delight in incinerating compact discs of "opinionated" country music singers, scrawling derogatory graffiti on the walls of an Iraqi school, and bullying other countries for refusing to go our way...a nation in which the money spent on advertising exceeds tenfold our education spending.

Folks, the USA is one screwed-up place. That's not to say that we're the worst country on earth, or that we aren't capable of acts of kindness and vision. But how can we expect things to get better if we elect people who tell us what we want to hear, stroking our moralistic egos, yet strike deals on the path of least resistance, and collect fat checks under the table from corporate lobbyists? When I think about stuff like this, I feel completely stumped about the upcoming election...how can I vote for a party I don't trust when another group exists that expresses most of my values, and doesn't sugarcoat reality?

Let's get to work on that coalition, and fast.

posted by Jenny at 1:12 PM |

Stop the FCC

skippy informs us that in addition to that MoveOn petition I posted yesterday, there's another one from the Future of Music Coalition to ask the FCC not to deregulate and allow more corporate media conglomeration! skippy has more here, along with personal testimony from a former Clear Channel employee. This is pretty important, folks, please sign both petitions if you feel you can. If this goes through, then I believe the Iraq news coverage we just suffered is just a preview of things to come...

posted by Jenny at 12:51 PM |

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Just what they need!

At Alternet:

The Voice of America reports today that Bush has announced a plan to create a Middle East Free Trade Area to reward countries that "renounce terrorism, embrace the rule of law, honest government and open markets." Considering how well "free trade" has worked for Argentina, perhaps this should be considered another attack on Middle East nations.

posted by Jenny at 1:51 PM |

An interesting day

I've been meaning to post this Center for Cooperative Research essay for awhile...it features Bush's movements on September 11th, and makes it pretty clear how oddly he behaved, considering that he probably knew of the attacks before he sat down with a classroom of second graders for a pre-planned photo op...good stuff here; check it out.

posted by Jenny at 7:28 AM |

Happy Mother's Day

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
--Julia Ward Howe, 1870

When am I going to see that on a Hallmark card?

posted by Jenny at 1:49 AM |