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Friday, May 30, 2003

All right folks, I'm out for the weekend. Will be back a-blogging on Monday. Have a good one...

posted by Jenny at 10:22 AM |

Save Reading Rainbow

If you've been a child or had one, and enjoyed access to PBS over the past 20 years, chances are that you, like I, are a big Reading Rainbow fan. Alongside Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow is one of the only children's shows out there that doesn't have an inordinate amount of marketing and branding attached to it, and it encourages children to peruse a variety of books and to develop their imagination. LeVar Burton (aka Geordi LaForge of Star Trek: The Next Generation) has hosted the show throughout its existence, and he and the crew do such a wonderful job, it seems like this show would be guaranteed a spot at the top of children's programming. Unfortunately, as David Bauder reports, this is not the case:

..."Reading Rainbow," which has counterintuitively used television to introduce children to a world of books, may only have a few months to live.

"Reading Rainbow" has several strikes against it in the battle for funding. For starters, it has no access to merchandise licensing deals, an increasingly important part of PBS' funding scheme for children's shows. There are no "Reading Rainbow" action figures to sell, no "Reading Rainbow" jammies to keep kids warm at night.

The series is also 20 years old when many corporate benefactors prefer being involved with something new. And the show's narrow audience — children 6 to 8 who are just learning to read — doesn't give sponsors the broad exposure they're seeking, said Amy Jordan, senior researcher on children and the media at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Other programs, like "Clifford the Big Red Dog," have book series attached to them. But "Reading Rainbow" is the only one that introduces children to a wide range of literature, Jordan said.

"What `Reading Rainbow' saw, before anybody else saw it, is that you can use this medium of television to get kids excited about reading," she said.

Over the past several years, Burton and his backers have been producing fewer "Reading Rainbow" episodes because money was short. This season, only four new shows were made. The production company has a $2 million annual budget, and no money to go forward, he said.

"We have pieced it together by hook or by crook every year," said Burton, who helped start the series so children, during summer months away from school, could retain what they had learned.

All of this is coming together in the build up to the possible FCC deregulation that all of us have been fretting about. For those of you who enjoyed the do-it-yourself, nonmerchandising style of Reading Rainbow or Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood, think for a second what it could be like in which corporate sponsors control every aspect of children's programming. Instead of being introduced to a variety of books, children are shown only a certain brand, more of the same, and not encouraged to make their own decisions. Instead of being encouraged to make toy trolleys out of shoeboxes, they will be propelled to buy action figures from TV shows at ToysRUs and WalMart.

For all of you who haven't already done so (and even if you have), I'd like once again to encourage you to contact your representatives about the impending FCC decision. Get on the protest bandwagon (as linked up here by skippy), if it seems appropriate for you. And for those of you who love Reading Rainbow, please, let's put our heads together and figure out how to help them. It's too good a show to be axed in the cultural landfill of corporate television. There's a fact sheet on the series here. Reading Rainbow completely rocks--but as LeVar would say, "You don't have to take my word for it"--check out what Lisa English (from whom much of this info was obtained) thinks.

posted by Jenny at 9:00 AM |

Am STILL having issues adjusting my template. Perhaps one of these days I'll cough up the dough for a more reliable blogging service. In the meantime, another issue is that I haven't been able to link up to this week's archive (May 25-31), which you can find here...hopefully all this stuff will be back in line by next week. *sigh*

posted by Jenny at 6:34 AM |

Notes on Totalitarianism: the value of voting

The downfall of nations begins with the decay of the law, be it that the laws are being abused by those who are in power or that the authority, i.e. the very source of the law becomes doubtful and questionable. In both cases, laws are no longer held valid and the nation living under it has lost, with its “belief” in the law, the realm of political public action and of the responsibility of the citizen. What still remains, and incidentally explains the longevity of political bodies whose lifeblood, as it were, has ebbed away, are the customs and traditions of society. As long as they are intact, private individuals instinctively continue to behave according to certain patterns of morality, even though this morality has lots its fundament. However, tradition can be trusted to prevent the worst only for a limited time. --Hannah Arendt, "On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding"

I have spoken about the origins and nature of totalitarianism, and the ways in which such systems have evolved to permeate the political landscape of the United States. Today I'm going to say a few words about the necessity of voting, despite the seemingly sham nature of much of the election process.

Some people refuse to vote because there is "no choice", or no tangible difference between Republican and Democratic candidates. Others cite that voting means nothing, that our voices really aren't counted--"if voting was effective, we wouldn't be allowed to do it"--and that the affairs of government, the choosing of a president, etc., are really based upon the workings of secret cabals, global conspiracies ranging from the industrial CEOs to the extraterrestrial (a la X-Files). While I'm willing to agree at least partially with both of these assumptions, I still urge everybody to go and vote. Go vote even if you have to write somebody in on the ballot in order to console your beleaguered political conscience. And here's why.

As I argued earlier this week, totalitarian regimes rely upon an ideology of kitsch, an image projected by the ruling cadre as to how every aspect of life should appear. This ideology, this cultural mandate, is brought to life by the populace, who through a series of compulsory rallies, celebrations, or otherwise nationalistic displays of camaraderie performatively enact the imagined community as invented by the totalitarian regime. Underlying this spectacle of society is what Vaclav Havel deems a "deep moral crisis": a crisis in human identity brought about through living within a lie. He elaborates: "A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accoutrements of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society" ("The Power of the Powerlessness," Living in Truth[London: Faber and Faber, 1989]: 62). Following Havel (and in the spirit of Gandhi's advocacy of Satyagraha), the antidote to this profound social alienation is life in the truth; owning the fact that the ideology of kitsch is a lie, and refusal to continue with the charade any longer.

How, then, to go about disobeying the society of totalitarian spectacle? Well, in order to reclaim honesty, we must first situate ourselves politically, socially, and economically, and locate the sites from which ideology is transmitted, and the ways in which it is received. I personally believe that boycotts against hegemonic, monopolizing multinationals can be one form of resistance, given the fact that corporate advertising serves as a modern-day ideology mill. Some might argue that this applies equally to political systems: if the electoral college/secret cabal/lack of party selection doesn't allow for democratic pluralism and fair elections, abstain from voting in protest. In the case of the United States, however, I would argue that it is critical to vote, because the right to vote perpetuates the illusion of democracy. The more apathetic segments of society presume that since their right to vote is guaranteed, some semblance of rights must be secure--hence the actual unimportance of heading to the polls. As long as the right to vote is in place, the government can legitimize the majority of its actions. The vote, the Constitution, the writings of our "founding fathers", all of these texts are invoked as part of a ritualized politic; they uphold the image of credibility so crucial to sustaining totaliatarian systems of control. In the words of Havel,

The entire role of ritual, facades and excuses appears most eloquently ... not in the proscriptive section of the legal code, which sets out what a citizen may not do and what the grounds for prosecution are, but in the section declaring what he or she may do and what his or her rights are. Here there is truly nothing but "words, words, words". Yet even that part of the code is of immense importance to the system, for it is here that the system establishes its legitimacy as a whole, before its own citizens, before schoolchildren, before the international public and before history. The system cannot afford to disregard this because it cannot permit itself to cast doubt upon the fundamental postulates of its ideology, which are so essential to its very existence ... To do this would be to deny everything it tries to present itself as and, thus, one of the main pillars on which the system rests would be undermined: the integrity of the world of appearances. (Ibid, 97-98; my emphasis)

So why vote? Are those who vote, who adhere to these appropriated ideals of democracy village idiots, unaware that the emperor has no clothes? On the contrary, through the act of voting, through fervent adherence to democratic laws, we can expose the ways in which the system pervertedly exploits these laws in the interest of power. To invoke Havel once more:

A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws--not just to the laws concerning human rights, but to all laws--does not mean at all that those who do so have succumbed to the illusion that in our system the law is anything other than what it is. They are well aware of the role it plays. But precisely because they know how desperately the system depends on it--on the "noble" version of the law, that is--they also know how enormously significant such appeals are. Because the system cannot do without the law, because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals. Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatensthe whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit its power structures. They draw attention to its real material substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take refuge behind the law to afirm and make credible this agency of excuses, this means of communication, this reinforcement of the social arteries outside of which their will could not be made to circulate through society. (Ibid, 98)

Of course, simply clamoring for adherence to the law is nothing without a greater dissidence--work to change those aspects of the law, or the governing regime, which foster oppression and totalitarian control. But through voting, through ritually performing democracy to the letter of the law (and not according to the propaganda of the regime), we expose the fraudulence of the regime that co-opts freedom in the name of imperialism, and demand accountability. It make take years, terms of elections, for this mendacity to be fully uncovered. But the optimistic side of me assumes that the more who participate, the more who demand accountability in the form of voting documentation (contact your representative about black box voting next week!), fair elections, and the like, the more the system will be exposed for what it is, and the more unified many of us will be in our resolve to change it. It seems that abstaining from the vote because a conspiracy dominates everything is actually an abdication of personal protest power: if the vote is meaningless, then why not use it in anyway--use it because you know what it really means, and what the implications of it are?

And if in fact our votes still DO mean something...if in fact we do have a modicum of say as to who represents us...then all the more reason to head to the polls. Either way, something must be done to get US citizens (and beyond) thinking about democracy, the illusion of democracy in our own country, and ways in which we can innovatively and effectively challenge the totalitarian spectacle of kitsch.

P.S.--For more information on Vaclav Havel, the resistance to Soviet domination in Europe, and the context of intellectual resistance in the Eastern bloc, check out this 1998 article by Walter Capps.

posted by Jenny at 6:17 AM |

Via Atrios, a few choice quotes from the Bush administration on the presence of WMD in Iraq. Good to file away for those debates with hypnotized hawks, or when writing outraged letters to national media outlets...email them to your friends and neighbors!

Update: How timely...

WMD emphasis was 'bureaucratic'

The decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for "bureaucratic reasons", according to the US deputy defence secretary.

But in an interview with the American magazine Vanity Fair, Paul Wolfowitz said there were many other important factors as well.

The famously hawkish Mr Wolfowitz has been a long-time proponent of military action against Iraq.

Picking weapons of mass destruction was "the one reason everyone could agree on", he says in the interview.

The other factor he describes as "huge" was that an attack would allow the US to pull its troops from Saudi Arabia, thereby resolving a major grievance held by al-Qaeda.

posted by Jenny at 2:04 AM |

The ideological significance of Al-Qaida

The spate of attacks and threatened attacks last week owed less to 'the return of al-Qaeda', as trumpeted by some headlines, and more to a broad-based Islamic militant movement that is growing in strength everywhere between Malaysia and Morocco. Those involved may share many of the aims of bin Laden and his associates, they may even accept temporary help from experienced senior individual activists, but they are not part of his group. They do not carry membership cards, they have not taken any oath of allegiance. If these groups, cells and individuals are part of al-Qaeda, they are merely part of an 'al-Qaeda movement' not any structured, hierarchical organisation. This movement is as diverse as the many countries from which its members come. Unless this is understood, and a fundamental change made in the way al-Qaeda is viewed and combated, we will all suffer for a long time to come. --Jason Burke

Although I got my undergraduate degree in International Politics (with an area focus in Europe), I spent a lot of time in the Religion department, conducting research on medieval women's movements. It is this work that brought me to Germany with my grant. I spend a lot of time examining heresy, or rather, the conceptualization thereof, and its role as an ideological unifier in evolving systems of governance. Let me unpack that a bit. More specifically, I am looking at heretical groups who, according to History, appeared on the Eurochristian landscape around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These burgeoning "movements" popped up in the aftermath of sweeping Church reforms which forbade clerical marriage, restructured monastic and clerical systems, and initiated new waves of misogyny among religious groups. These reforms marked the centralization of Church authority across Europe, and the close of the great missionizing efforts of the early medieval era. In the wake of barbaric invasions, churchmen transformed the religious landscape and its corresponding social structure, bending society to provide for Catholic hegemony in a less feudalistic, evolving profit economy. With the recent discussions on the "reality" of Al-Qaida, as elucidated by experts on terrorism and even foreign politicians, I must admit that this work on heresy speaks to the motivations of the Bush administration, the need for an entity such as Al-Qaida to legitimize increased authoritarianism and economic control.

Many of us think of heresies as groups radically different from established, "orthodox" teachings, who are stamped out because of their oppositional nature to governing religious or political principles. And many scholars of medieval heresy tend to fall into the trap set by medieval scribes, who set to depict contemporaneous "heretical" movements as stemming from pagan, even pre-Christian sects depicted in ancient history. In reality, there are many similarities between heretics and "orthodox" groups, at least in the period of medieval history I'm working on, particularly in the realm of theological and spiritual innovation.

Why then, such a fuss to depict heretics as Other, oppositional to the accepted "norms" of orthodoxy? The answer, I would argue, is that these heresies did not challenge a long-standing regime, but a cadre of officials trying to centralize power and maintain control in the wake of destabilizing economic transformations, as well as social innovation such as vernacular literacy and guild formation. Heresies appeared on the religious landscape not in conjunction with ancient, hedonist cults, but rather in response to the sweeping economic and political changes in the reform era, transformations which dispossessed many (particularly women) of their religious and social standing in medieval society.

These "heresies" are bequeathed to us by History as cohesive groups with a unifying ideology (usually Satanic or hedonist), but in recent years, research has indicated that these groups were much less unified than Church historians would have us believe. The Free Spirits, for example, a broad group of wandering men and women who were seen as self-deifying sodomists and formally denounced in the early fourteenth century, gained their name from their Catholic persecutors, and in reality, they were much less a cohesive group, operating strategically to undermine church authority. The supposed "libertine" practices of the Free Spirit have been debunked in many instances as inquisatorial spin, and the myth of solidarity within the "movement" has given way to the understanding that heretical groups such as the Free Spirit were actually labeled and categorized by Church persecutors as threatening, evil entities, branded as such in order to provide a scapegoat for societal ills, and a locus upon which the church could demonstrate (and thus corroborate) its own growing penal authority.

Okay, maybe it's obvious where I'm going with all of this now, but let me say a bit more. It's pretty risky to draw blatant historical parallels between contemporary events and processes in other eras, eras in which social, political and religious reality was vastly different from that which we experience today. Nonetheless, if we look at the Bush administration's depiction of Al-Qaida, I think we might indeed see some similiarities between the War on Terrorism and the medieval Church's efforts to categorize and root out "heresy" across Europe. This is not to say that the nebulous entity known as Al-Qaida is harmless, or that medieval "heresies" (many of which embraced no libertinism and sought to increase Christian piety through acestism, contemplative prayer, and community service) can be equated with the admittedly ruthless practices of terrorists. But it seems that by promoting Al-Qaida as a concrete group of terrorists, easily physically demarcated, instead of a broader ideology of anti-Americanism and self-abnegating attack, and in portraying them as "evil" against the "good" of democracy in the free market, the Bush administration is doing exactly that which the Church did so many centuries ago...struggling to centralize and maintain authority (albeit in a larger geographic realm) in a time of transformation, and fostering a group of scapegoats for the societal ills brought forth in an increasingly globalized economy, with the spread and enforcement of Western cultural hegemony. In this sense, then, the Bush emphasis on the War on Terrorism and the villainy of Al-Qaida (likely to be a very loosely-associated, fractious group of terrorist activists) owes less to administrative stupidity, and more to the need for scapegoats...the need to keep the populace from reflecting upon the role of ideology, and the capacities for "evil", not only superimposed on some foreign, dichotomized Other, but rather within national boundaries, around the block. The "War on Terrorism" is a brilliant move on the Bush administration's part to stunt critical thinking and popular understanding of ideology and cultural difference, and thus manipulate ideology to remain in and extend governmental authority; what is sad is that so many citizens of the United States of America have proven so willing to accept this easy out on cultural understanding and self-reflection.

posted by Jenny at 1:15 AM |

Already heard about the new loophole in Bush's tax cut? The one where families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625 will not receive the $400-a-child check in the mail to follow through on the increased child tax credit? That's about one in every six children under 17, not compensated for by this "family-friendly" tax legislation...

Yes, this is reality we're living in. I keep hoping I'll wake up, though...

Update: Bob Harris has more on this, and the general economic woes the Bush administration is wreaking upon the country, here. Something you should read, but be prepared to get the heebie-jeebies when reflecting upon America's financial future...

posted by Jenny at 12:39 AM |

Next time somebody tells you how horrible the Clinton administration was for its ties to Hollywood, ask them if they've heard about the Bush administration's upcoming propaganda film, slated to be aired on Showtime:

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!"

His Secret Service chief seems taken aback. "But Mr. President . . ."

The President brusquely interrupts him. "Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!"

Was this George W. Bush's moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage.

The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour television movie to be broadcast this September, are as close as you can get to an official White House account of its activities at the outset of the war on terrorism.

Written and produced by a White House insider with the close co-operation of Mr. Bush and his top officials, the movie The Big Dance represents an unusually close merger of Washington's ambitions with the Hollywood entertainment machinery.

A copy of the script obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals a prime-time drama starring a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff addresses to colleagues.

That the whole thing was filmed in Canada and is eligible for financial aid from Canadian taxpayers, and that its loyal Republican writer-producer is a Canadian citizen best known for his adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz , are ironies that will be lost on most of its American viewers when it airs on the Showtime network this fall.

While the film is intended for U.S. viewers, it is produced in collaboration with Toronto-based Dufferin Gate Productions in order to take advantage of Canadian government incentives. It is eligible for the federal Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit, the Ontario Film and Television Production Services Tax Credit and a federal tax-shelter program, which together could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in Canadian government cheques being sent to the producers.

Lionel Chetwynd, the film's creator, sees nothing untoward about his role as the semi-official White House apologist in Hollywood. For him, having a well-connected Republican create the movie was a way to get the official message around what he sees as an entertainment industry packed with liberals and Democratic Party supporters.

"A feeding frenzy had started to develop around this story, and a lot of people who wanted to do this story had a very clear political agenda, very clear," Mr. Chetwynd said in an interview from his Los Angeles home Tuesday. "My own view of the administration is somewhat more sympathetic than, say, Alec Baldwin's. . . . In fact, I'm technically a member of the administration [Mr. Chetwynd sits on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities], so I let it be known that I was also interested in doing it. I threw myself on the mercies of my friend Karl Rove."

...

Mr. Chetwynd's script is based on lengthy interviews with Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, top aide Andy Card, retiring White House press aide Ari Fleischer, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Republican officials in the White House and the Pentagon. He says that every scene and line of dialogue was described to him by an insider or taken from credible reports.

Yet compared with other journalistic accounts of the period, the movie is clearly an effort to reconstruct Mr. Bush as a determined and principled military leader. The public image of Mr. Bush — who avoided military service in Vietnam and who has often been derided as a doe-eyed naif on satirical TV shows — is a key concern to White House communications officials, many of them friends of Mr. Chetwynd.

You know, whenever I read stuff like this, I still shake my head and wonder...this is actually allowed? When, oh when, did we fall through the rabbit hole and end up in some kind of ahistorical quagmire, with propagandists to rival Goebbels?

posted by Jenny at 12:33 AM |

Thursday, May 29, 2003

I'm about to head off into the sunset for the night, but I'll be posting the latest installment of my notes on totalitarianism tomorrow...catch you then!

posted by Jenny at 4:14 PM |

*splutter*

SAMARRA, Iraq - U.S. soldiers opened fire on a festive wedding parade earlier this week, killing three teen-agers and wounding seven others after the celebrants fired weapons in the air, medical officials and survivors said Wednesday night.

The shooting, about 10 p.m. Monday, was only one of a series of deadly incidents this week that have sharply increased tension between U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

The incident highlights a clash of cultures. It is a popular custom in Iraq to fire weapons in the air to celebrate weddings and other festive events.

But the practice has been prohibited under a new weapons policy being enforced by U.S. troops.

Three teens remained in "very critical" condition Wednesday night, and four other young people were in stable condition, said Dr. Abdul al Rahman, who helped treat many of the victims at Samarra General Hospital in this town a 90-minute drive north of Baghdad.

A U.S. Army official, who asked that he not be identified by name, said the incident was under investigation. He said he could provide no comment Wednesday night, other than to say: "Celebratory gunfire is dangerous."

More.

posted by Jenny at 3:55 PM |

You can judge the character of a man by the company he keeps. -- George W. Bush

One to add to the Rummy foreign policy graphics file...this one with people-boiling Islam Karimov!

Via Atrios.

posted by Jenny at 2:49 PM |

Singing hobbits!

Eh, just wait till they come out with the Matrix on Ice...

posted by Jenny at 2:21 PM |

Time responded to the alert on Republican astroturf!

posted by Jenny at 8:05 AM |

Wal-Martalia

It's been a tough couple of months for Wal-Mart. Cursor has some interesting stuff on the multinational megalith up this week...

First of all, former Miss America (!) Carolyn Sapp has launched a campaign called Wal-Mart Versus Women, because of reports of women receiving lower wages and less promotions...here's a CNN transcript on the situation here. Meanwhile, LA Times reporter David Shaw investigates what's left on Wal-Mart's shelves since the company has been scaling down its merchandise in the name of "family values". Wal-Mart's stock performance has been flat in comparison to the doubling price of Whole Foods, but accordingly, as the Whole Foods star rises on the horizon, so too come the reports that this "alternative" market isn't quite living up to its groovy image: aside from the animal cruelty issues we discovered at VeganBlog a couple of weeks ago, it seems that the company is getting into union-busting like the best of them.

Man, I remember the days when there was just one Whole Foods...it seems that Austin is a microcosm for the yuppification of the United States...and it's all coming in the guise of alt.culture. Guess I'm going to have to start growing my own stuff...

posted by Jenny at 7:43 AM |

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

WMD FOUND!!!!

But not where you might think...

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.

posted by Jenny at 11:38 AM |

Blogging to come a bit later today, am slightly under the weather...stay tuned! :-)

posted by Jenny at 8:07 AM |

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

...les hypocrites!

Hesiod thinks it's pretty interesting that warbloggers and the Bush cabal counted Uzbekistan in the "coalition of the willing", paying Uzbekistani dictator Islam Karimov (Bush's special guest back in March 2002) millions of taxpayer dollars, and are now basing troops there in the war against terror...interesting, considering the fact that Karimov is boiling opponents of his regime to death.

But since the "battle of Iraq" was really all about liberation, certainly we'll be headed to Uzbekistan next, right? Right warbloggers?

posted by Jenny at 10:47 AM |

What a crock!

It's enough to make one become a party-line voter...

posted by Jenny at 8:03 AM |

Ministry of ignorants

He did not tell the class who he was, and his mysteriousness reinforced his message that Christian missionaries face danger in Muslim nations. At least six have been killed since Sept. 11, 2001.

"You can tell me Islam is peaceful, but I've done my homework," he said, reeling off a list of Koranic citations. "From the beginning of Islam, the sword brought results faster than words."

Some of what he taught would be accepted by most theologians: Muslims reject the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God — the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Muslims respect Jesus as a prophet, but do not accept the Christian belief that he is the son of God.

But he intermingled accepted facts with negative accounts of Islamic teaching, history and traditions. The pilgrimage to Mecca, he said, is a dangerous event at which people are killed every year. Communal prayers each Friday are "a day of rage," he said.

And Muslims even pray differently than Christians, he said. "Muslims pray to get points," he said, "not to communicate with God." Group prayer on Fridays is for "extra points," he said.

Pat McEvoy, a secretary at a high school in Columbus, said she had known very little about Islam before the seminar. Her school has an influx of students from Somalia, and as she walked through the hallways she regarded these immigrants as "a virtual mission field."

She said she felt an obligation to save them from an eternity in Hell.

"If I had the answer for cancer, what sort of a human would I be not to share it?" Ms. McEvoy said.

The teacher concluded by giving the students tips on what to do and not to do to reach Muslims: Don't approach them in groups. Don't bring them to your church, because they will misunderstand the singing and clapping as a party. Do invite them home for a meal. Do bring them chocolate chip cookies. Do talk about how, in order to get saved, they must accept Jesus.

That's right Pat, bake goodies for the poor savages, those little terrorists-in-training, in the hallways, "educate" them so they won't "misunderstand". I'm sure that this will bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men in the glory of Christ.

God help us all.

posted by Jenny at 7:48 AM |

Another country

The Guardian's Duncan Campbell eloquently begs the question, what the hell has happened to country music?

posted by Jenny at 6:10 AM |

Contact your representative!

With all the progressive hopes and dreams surrounding Election Day 2004, it seems that we should be doing everything we can to make sure that nobody interferes with our votes. As skippy and Lisa English, among others, could tell you, it's possible that our votes could be completely disregarded or even changed thanks to the introduction of computerized voting systems which leave no paper trail and, perhaps most insidiously, are corporate-controlled (i.e., "black box voting"). If you haven't read my recent posts and general web discussion surrounding the unexpected Hagel victory in Nebraska (in which the head of a voting machine company was elected in a state using the machines programmed and maintained by said company), and the Chambliss victory in Georgia, then you might think I'm fully delusional. But if they aren't already in use where you live, these systems will likely be in a precinct near you come the 2004 elections. And frankly, progressive hopes aside for a moment, it seems that this should be something that folks all along the political spectrum should be worried about--but nobody seems to be talking much about it. (Big shocker these days, eh?)

Thankfully, not all of Congress is sitting on this issue. New Jersey Representative Rush Holt (who sat through an official recount after claims that his 2000 victory was rigged) has introduced legislation which will guarantee some uniformity and system of accountability within computerized voting.

Some key provisions of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 include requiring all voting systems to provide a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits and recounts, and a ban on the use of undisclosed software and wireless communication devices in voting systems. This is an extremely timely issue, as Congress is set to consider the legislation early next month. If you're worried about black box voting, then gear up to contact your representative on June 2 (yep, right about the same time we'll be finding out about the FCC deregulation) at the Capitol's toll-free number, 1-800-839-5276. For good measure, you can also find your Congressional representatives' contact info here and send them a nice email.

posted by Jenny at 5:29 AM |

World Musicians Shut Out of U.S. Borders

Utne has a good synopsis for the time-impaired:

The World Beat aficionado and the international musician have become the new pariahs of the new, secure United States. Musicians who hail from countries that the U.S. government has proclaimed “state sponsors of terrorism,” such as Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, are now considered potential enemy combatants and are no longer allowed to tantalize American audiences with the sounds of their respective homelands. The travel restriction comes as a result of the far-reaching Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act, which was signed last year by President Bush, reports Yvonne Wong for WireTap.

One can’t help but acknowledge the irony. The attacks of September 11 woke many Americans from their Alley McBeal, frappuccino slumber to realize that a whole world exists outside of our borders. And now that people are making an effort to learn about different countries and cultures, they find out that Time magazine’s new favorite foreign musician, jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, will not be coming to town because the government has deemed him a potential terrorist.

While the law does not explicitly focus on musicians as terrorists, these foreign entertainers have been swept up in the all-inclusive measures taken to protect the Homeland. And American audiences, which would otherwise have a chance to broaden their perspective through music are now limited to what they hear and see on the evening news. “Depriving U.S. citizens of the opportunity to witness different artistic traditions leads to a dangerous lack of awareness of these cultures,” writes Wong. “Future generations of Americans will be ignorant of the cultures that lie outside of their borders, an ignorance that is particularly problematic in light of the world’s current political climate."

Heck, at least the Dixie Chicks are allowed to tour in "the Homeland"...

posted by Jenny at 3:26 AM |

Blogger is at it again. I'm unable to change or add links to my blogroll...half of them don't even show up on my template anymore (although they are obviously there), and no amount of cutting, pasting, and hitting save makes a difference. So...sorry about that! Until this gets straightened out, you should note that Wampum has a new address...and I was just about to add Magpie and TalkLeft, too. Great blogs to visit, check 'em out today.

posted by Jenny at 3:15 AM |

Sunday, May 25, 2003

I'd meant to leave the blog alone for a day or so, develop the series on totalitarianism and protest, yada yada. But the news keeps dragging me back...

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.

The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.

The suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18 months.

General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber.

The Mail on Sunday reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan.

...

The US has already said detainees would be tried by tribunals, without juries or appeals to a higher court. Detainees will be allowed only US lawyers.British activist Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad, said: "The US is kicking and screaming against any pressure to conform with British or any other kind of international justice."

American law professor Jonathan Turley, who has led US civil rights group protests against the military tribunals planned to hear cases at Guantanamo Bay, said: "It is not surprising the authorities are building a death row because they have said they plan to try capital cases before these tribunals.

"This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists."

Britain admitted it had been kept in the dark about the plans.

posted by Jenny at 11:06 PM |

I was wondering when something like this was going to come out. (Thanks to Bob Harris for the link.) There are tons of fact sheets here:

In a study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in collaboration with the Environmental Working Group and Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility.

Scientists refer to this contamination as a person’s body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied.

posted by Jenny at 10:55 PM |

I've been meaning to post Arundhati Roy's speech at Riverside Church for awhile...as usual, she hits the nail right on the head. Check it out:

Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

posted by Jenny at 10:46 PM |

The pathology of nationalist kitsch: Case #1

I have a cousin who packs heat. He pushes the Texas concealed weapon laws to the limit, carrying a mini-revolver in a fanny pack around his waist at all times, and another gun in a case that he usually has at an arm's length. This cousin, while always incredibly nice to me as a child, has begun sending the most inane forwards since the beginning of the war, you wouldn't believe it. Maybe I'll start quoting them here to blow off steam, too. There was one email in which two Gulf War veterans explain the Iraq situation to their son by making him believe that Saddam Hussein is an evil next door neighbor killing his wife, and coming to kill the little boy next because he "didn't act soon enough"; one horrific dispatch last week about Bush being a god-given Christ figure, sent to serve as our commander-in-chief (no, I am not kidding)...but today I received something that infuriated me so much that I have to post it here. It's embedded in a long email about the pretigious and little-known military histories of Lee Marvin and Captain Kangaroo. Well, I don't know jack about those guys, but I do know something about the last character whose "history" was shared:

On another note, there was this wimpy little man (who just passed away) on PBS, gentle and quiet. Mr. Rogers is another of those you would least suspect of being anything but what he now portrays to our youth. But Mr. Rogers was a U.S. Navy Seal, combat proven in Vietnam with over twenty-five confirmed kills to his name. He wore a long sleeve sweater to cover the many tattoo's on his forearm and biceps. A master in small arms and hand-to-hand combat, able to disarm or kill in a heartbeat. He hid that away and won our hearts with his quiet wit and charm.

America's real heroes don't flaunt what they did, they quietly go about their day to day lives, doing what they do best. They earned our respect and the freedoms that we all enjoy. Look around and see if you can find one of those heroes in your midst. Often, they are the ones you'd least suspect, but would most like to have on your side if anything ever happened.

If anybody tries to sell you this bullshit about our patron saint tallying up his "confirmed kills" over in 'nam, tell them you've got some oceanfront property to sell them in Arizona. Maybe I shouldn't dignify this with a response, but on the other hand, there are some interesting points I'd like to make about the language and the imagery of the text itself, if I may.

First of all, to clear up the record once and for all: during the time of the Vietnam conflict, Fred Rogers was collaborating with child psychologists on children's television programming, hitting his stride with his puppetry, and completing his Presbyterian seminary education. Did you hear that, gun-happy cousin? Seminary, Daniel Striped Tiger, and children's television. Wikipedia has a good article on Mr. Rogers's timeline here, with a cursory note on the "urban legend" about his mythical sniper career...and the fact that an asteroid has been named after him in the months following his death. (one cool point in an otherwise bitter post)

Isn't it interesting how society needs to reappropriate those advocating messages of love and sharing, exoticize them, make them corrupt and thus validate the fact that we cannot strive for anything good, commit to anything, and believe in something beyond ourselves?

And holy geez, the imagery. According to this hyperjingoistic, supermasculinized rhetoric, our heros may be quiet, but they sure as hell have to have many tatoos hidden beneath their cardigan, and, most importantly, have tallied up their number of "kills" in the name of god and country. If one doesn't secretly tote an Uzi, but speaks in a quiet voice to children and wears cardigans because his mother made them, then he's just "wimpy". Whoever wrote this was projecting some serious masculinity issues.

Mr. Rogers (and John Denver, who I just discovered has also been falsely accused of sniping in Vietnam) must be together, singing some songs of peace and love for our sad, screwed-up country today. No no, we can't have gentle human beings (men and women), singing of peace and the simple life, as our heroes. We must distort them, make them corrupt or bloodthirsty, in order to make our own reality of alienation and apathy more palatable. How very disturbing.

Time to go listen to "It's You I Like".

posted by Jenny at 2:15 PM |

FYI: I’m beginning a new series on totalitarianism, dissent, and possibilities for change leading up to November 2004. Today I shall work to build a case that, instead of simply referring to Bush & Co as Hitlerites or “fascists”, we consider what such terms really mean, and how systems of intense social control have evolved in the United States. Watch out—it may just turn into a running manifesto (albeit an impassioned one). Incidentally, there is some good stuff beyond this post, so do scroll down and check it out too. :-)

Notes on Totalitarianism: An Introduction

Totalitarianism has been identified by many writers as a ruthless, brutal, and, thanks to modern technology, potent form of political tyranny whose ambitions for world domination are unlimited. Disseminating propaganda derived from an ideology through the media of mass communication, totalitarianism relies on mass support. It crushes whoever and whatever stands in its way by means of terror and proceeds to a total reconstruction of the society it displaces. –Jerome Kohn, Totalitarianism: The Inversion of Politics

I used to chuckle and think that certain alt.commentators were the Chicken Littles of our time, but sadly, events of late coupled with the increasing social alienation and environmental degradation perpetuated by our rampant consumption has led me to the conclusions that we are living within some kind of twenty-first century totalitarianism. Folks, I think we need to face the fact that we progressives are in deep trouble. Slowly, our country is evolving into a system hostile to civil liberties and nonviolent protest. Animal rights or environmental groups, or any organizations that “disrupt the flow of business” can now be referred to as terrorist entities in broadly-worded legislation, Homeland Security maintains files on peace activists, state-initiated programs are encouraging citizens to inform on one another, teachers are being fired for not promoting pro-war views, artists who criticize the president are receiving death threats. Perhaps most frighteningly, a new voting system is evolving in which all votes will be recorded by computer, with little back-up system or paper trail to confirm the accuracy of collection. Given all our economic woes, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a history prof to see that our American Empire is wobbling, slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard (well put, Eddie), like all of its imperial predecessors, and thus the Right is building a regime to cling to its colonial holdings until the bitter end.

The society born of this consolidation of power smacks of mutant totalitarianism, in which infotainment is given free reign to shape society along sensationalist lines and journalists cave to corporate pressures and the narcotic of war. As befitting a system which seeks to control the total scope of human behavior within its boundaries, Americans have begun to police one another and their neighbors, declaring themselves “threatened” by the readers of the Catcher in the Rye or practictioners of terrorist breastfeeding or defacing the property of resident aliens. Foucault might remind us that the ingenuity of modern discipline lies not in the fact that we are being controlled by the state, but rather that the mechanisms of the state enable us to police ourselves and our neighbors. We now measure the “Americanness” of those around us; that which doesn’t fit our understanding of patriotism is branded as foreign, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion.

Ironically, while many political philosophers would have us believe that totalitarianism is a steely gray, boring and dispassionate world, the effectiveness within the system itself is rooted in an elaborate system of what Milan Kundera deems “kitsch”—the image of a society free of the “shit” of life, a cultural program which promises exhilirating, even libidinous redemption and distraction from complex social problems such as death and oppression (for application of these concepts to the war in Iraq, check out the words and writing of NYT journalist Chris Hedges, whom I've quoted here before). This cultural program is fabricated from the upper echelons of the state, and elaborated upon and enforced at every level of society with the omnipresent threat of recrimination waiting to engulf those who challenge the nationalistic status quo. Thus it becomes standard fare in the United States to exoticize and vilify Europeans as the ungrateful “Other”, to burn Dixie Chicks CDs in a GOP-inspired festival of nationalism, to spread literature exhorting the “Christlike behavior” of our god-given “Commander in Chief”. The Malleus Maleficarum of our time is comprised of a network of liberal-bashing websites and paraphernalia, which cheerfully call for the blacklisting of celebrities and ethnic cuisine. Totalitarian kitsch is a glittery, exciting place, with scrolling video text and streamlined images that make a space shuttle crash killing seven people more devastating and nationally inspiring than faraway earthquakes with thousands of casualties.

This has been a long time coming, the aftershocks of a crisis in Modernity foreshadowed by Montesquieu and made manifest by the twentieth century World Wars. As we picked up the pieces of Western Europe and the Pacific in the aftermath of VE and VJ day, totalitarianism was spreading through the East in the guise of Communism, and by framing the West as a beacon of capitalist freedom, media spin doctors successfully obscured the possibilities for totalitarian governance and mass media manipulation on the homefront. Economic regulation that protected the “small businessman” and plural entrepreneurship has been abolished in the very name of the infamous American dream; “promoting economic growth” has become synonymous with facilitating exploitative global Free Trade zones, from the Philippines to the Mexican maquiladoras. Meanwhile, the sexual and social revolutions of the 1960s have been co-opted and glutted by consumer culture, prompting a backlash more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Rampant apathy and societal disgust, the hallmarks of a society depraved by the crisis of Modernity, have enabled us to abdicate our rights and lulled us into a state of compliance with legislation that would be considered ridiculous.

We have become glutted as a culture, and the crises of reason and gender of the twentieth century has caved to an era of apathy wedded with mass paranoia, in which armed militias patrol uninhabited fields in the Midwest to practice against “terrorist threat” while our voting participation has reached lows humiliating in the context of the developed world. Born of this apathy and paranoia is a media-borne sentiment of abstract community, in which the sight of our manly “Commander in Chief” landing on an aircraft carrier is more noteworthy than the thought of millions of animals being poisoned, poked and prodded for “scientific research”, peace activists and journalists being killed by Israeli forces, or radiation poisoning or epidemics spreading throughout recently-liberated Iraq. Nebulous notions of “values” and “patriotism” have undermined the possibility of civic dialogue on the very real social and environmental problems our country is facing, and every time we head to the mall, we likely cast silent votes for the multinational conglomerates pulling the strings on the Beltway.

Indeed, we live in a distorted world. Many of the “educated” now abstain from voting, convinced that their voice doesn’t matter or that a secret cabal won’t allow their candidate to advance anyway (probably true, but the implications of this will be explored in an upcoming installment). We go shopping instead of discussing politics and participation—we (I'm including myself in this one, take note) throw ourselves into meditation, yoga, and contemplative prayer, but divorce ourselves from the fiber of our being, our relations with others, from the history of the objects we consume and the scale and implications of our consumption.

For those of us who feel that something is wrong, that something precious is dying in our country and in our world, the time is now to act, to begin having conversations, and to locate ourselves in this grand scheme of oppression, consumption, and denial. That’s what I’m going to be writing about here over the next few weeks…how we can band together, how we can educate ourselves about the system and OUR ROLE in it, and how we can learn to forgive. At least my perspective on it. I've been doing that all along, but I think now's the time to unify these thoughts around a certain point. It’s the best way for me to vent in reaction to the idiocy going on around us, and maybe contribute something to the political activism sweeping the blogosphere. Next (tentatively-planned) installment: The value of voting, despite the decay of law.

posted by Jenny at 7:36 AM |

Just visited Oligopoly Watch for the first time in awhile to discover that Steve has added an archive by topic! Now you'll have all that necessary info about media and industry conglomerates, and the principles of oligopoly and oligopsonies, right at your fingertips...stuff we need to know to formulate some kind of response to this mess!

posted by Jenny at 3:08 AM |

Thank you, Tony

It appears that the Washington Times has put together a website where Americans can thank Tony Blair for his undying loyalty to our nation...*derisive snort* Wretch and vomit, indeed. But Richard Kahn has figured out a great use for the site...use it to tell Tony Blair what you really think about him, his politics, and his role in "delineating that the lines of Western global imperialism, as highlighted by someone like W.E.B. DuBois even a century ago, still stand effective today" and "helping to entrench a dominant neoliberal rightist regime in America". Borrowed those lines from Richard Kahn, who discovered this gem of a site. Go there today and share your (in)gratitude with the prime minister.

posted by Jenny at 2:16 AM |