Saturday, November 10, 2001

NAOMI KLEIN comments on the eerie connections between the war and the "intellectual property" cartel.

TAKE PRONOUNCIATION AUDIO CLIPS from an online dictionary, set them to music, and you get Dictionaraoke!

posted by clark 1:34 PM

Thursday, November 08, 2001

WHATEVER HAPPENED to investigative reporting?

JUST HOW are we gonna pay for this war, anyway?

BASEBALL COMMISSIONER BUD SELIG (you know, the guy who stole the Seattle Pilots away) has won owner approval (but will undoubtedly get player-union challenges to) a plan to not move two teams but to shut them down altogether. This would leave places for the remaining owners to threaten to move their own teams to, and would lower the leverage of the players' union in the next round of contract negotiations.

Baseball needs to bring more parity to its small-market teams, not pare them down. The Expos, Twins, and Marlins (the three teams most likely to get one of the two death sentences) all were league leaders at different times in the '90s, and all have had reasonable attendance before current owners mismanaged them to near-death. Yet it's those very owners who'd benefit the most from killing the teams. They'll get cash from the other owners, and will be permitted to buy other MLB teams, thus letting them wreak their destructive management styles onto the Angels or A's.

"Contraction" (Selig's term for the scheme) isn't something successful sports leagues do. It's what outfits like the American Basketball Association and the North American Soccer League did, just prior to folding completely. For Major League Baseball to get away with this would be an outrage to the sporting community.

In human physiology, a contraction can lead to a birth. Selig's contraction plan, however, could help lead to the death of baseball as we know it, or at least make it fiscally sicker.

posted by clark 7:38 PM

Wednesday, November 07, 2001

JOHN PILGER WRITES in the London Daily Mirror:

"The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious 'military' targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees."

"...Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time for the people of Britain to make their voices heard and to stop this fraudulent war--and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that require real political courage."

posted by clark 8:37 PM

NICKELS LEADS; MEDIA REFUSE TO CONCEDE: Our Guy, mayoral candidate Greg Nickels, continues to have a substantial lead with only the late absentee votes yet to be counted. The local daily papers and TV stations, still unanimously loyal to Nickels's opponent Mark Sidran, still insist the race is "too close to call," and are full of thinly-disguised pep-rally calls for a Sidran comeback.

KOMO, f'rinstance, began its 11 p.m. newscast last night with a lingering live spot from Sidran's campaign party, with only a brief subsequent visit to Nickels HQ.

I believe Nickels can indeed pull off a victory, based on the trends in the returns. The first votes announced last night were the early absentees, who traditionally lean rightward and gave Sidran an early lead. Then came the results of in-person votes from the polling stations, where Nickels led big.

In the contest's last weeks, the traditional Seattle Democratic machine did its grassroots work--canvassing, phoning, planting signs, shaking hands, kissing babies. Sidran, meanwhile, continued to rely on TV ads, media stunts, and newspaper puff pieces aimed squarely at the only castes he considered important--white, upscale baby boomers and the big-business/real-estate fraternities.

My theory about the results of this strategic difference: Everyone who was going to vote for Sidran decided to vote for him early in the campaign. It's the Nickels voters who had to be drawn from the woodwork, the shadows, the population segments not easily reached by (or oblivious to) corporate-media exhortations.

Thusly, Sidran's lead in the early absentees may indeed not foreshadow a Sidran lead in the late absentees (to be counted on Friday). Nickels may very well pull this off.

If Nickels does pull it off, it could be a major shock-o-rooney to our demographically-obsessed media, who've come to ignore the very existence of anyone in Seattle who's not a white, upscale baby boomer. Indeed, it might be seen as a plebescite, not only on Sidran's war-on-the-poor policies as city attorney but on the whole demographic cleansing that's gone on here over the past decade. Sidran allowed himself to become an icon for the gentrifications, the evictions, the massive rent hikes, the squeezing out of working families.

Nickels, in turn, represents not just traditional Seattle politics but a traditional Seattle way of life, a community spirit endangered by the trampling SUV tire tracks of the big money.

Of course, a Nickels victory wouldn't, by itself, reverse the prevailing trends. But it would at least mean a lot of us are prepared to challenge them.

In other election news, our intrepid team was at the post-election party for Our Other Guy, city council challenger Grant Cogswell. Cogswell (challenging incumbent Richard McIver) and Curt Firestone (challenging incumbent Jan Drago) both mounted hard-hitting, effective campaigns that didn't smear their opponents but called forthrightly for a change from the incumbents' developer-coddling policies. Both challengers are narrowly behind with the late absentees awaiting. If either pulls out a victory, it would tip the Seattle City Council's balance of power toward a progressive bloc that could trash the hated Teen Dance Ordinance, get the monorail project back on track, and at least make any needed recessionary city budget cuts a little more equitable.

In other-other election news, Colorado voters turned down the most ambitious North American monorail proposal to date, which would take residents and tourists from Denver to Vail with comfort and without tire chains.

(This article's permanent link.)

posted by clark 1:27 PM

Monday, November 05, 2001

"HOW TO BE PATRIOTIC and yet not the slightest bit reassured by Bush & Co."

DESPITE THE DOT-COM CRUMBLE, you can still find an e-commerce site offering just about anything you'd like, including fully packaged election campains.

SOMEHOW, nothing quite makes a deluxe, keepsake holiday gift like a package of Oreo cookies.

posted by clark 2:40 PM

THE BANGOR AIRPORT is apparently refusing to let people on planes if the management doesn't agree with the flyer's politics. (The official alibis.)

AN ONGOING LIST of civil-liberties cases and challenges related to the war.

posted by clark 1:13 AM

Sunday, November 04, 2001

A FINAL PLEA: Please, local readers, please vote this Tuesday for mayoral candidate Greg Nickels. Why? Because:

• He's a solid, no-nonsense career civil servant who knows how to navigate the bureaucracy and has a vision of returning Seattle to its onetime (albeit at least partly mythical) ideals of equality and diversity; and

• He's not Mark Sidran.

Not since the referendum to build Safeco Field have the local print media been as unrelentingly, unquestioningly, maniacally in support of any electoral stand as they have in support of Sidran, the self-appointed point man of demographic cleansing. Not only are no positive statements on Nickels's behalf allowed in the papers (aside from "balanced" quotations in news stories), but the editorialists, columnists, and cartoonist David Horsey have repeatedly turned Nickels's any criticism of Sidran into an attack on how could Nickels even dare to sully the rep of the wonderful, wonderful Sidran.

The papers only get this het up about something when the Downtown Seattle Association and the Chamber of Commerce tell them to. Now, I know many of you make it a policy to vote against anything the Nordstroms and the land developers are for. I don't go that far (the business lobby sometimes endorses things I also endorse, such as school levies).

But in this case, at this time, I'd say that'd be just the policy to follow.

There's this growing economic caste divide thang going on in Puget Sound Country (and in the nation at large) these days. Sidran and his backers are either indifferent toward this chasm or are consciously working to further widen it. There might not be much one can do as a local voter to retard the accellerating concentrations of wealth and power, the paring away of civil rights, or the callous disinterest of too many politicians toward the less-than-affluent.

But we can, and had better, do what we can.

posted by clark 10:07 AM

ARCHIVES:

• Past weblog entries.
• 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns.
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise.
• Longer articles and essays.
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces.
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving.
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites.
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate).
• The origin and future of MISCmedia.