Saturday, March 22, 2003

WE DON'T KNOW WHO MADE IT, but here's a hilariously intoxicating Gulf War 2 Drinking Game:

drink when:

• bush is called a crusader
  x2 if its by saddam
• saddam is called evil
  x2 if its by bush
• iraq troops surrender to the media
  x2 if to a unmanned vehicle or inanimate object
• a member of the media gets shot at
  a toast to the shooter if its ashleigh banfield (msnbc), geraldo riviera (fox) or arron brown (cnn)
• the united states terrorist threat level changes
• the united states government tries to link iraq to 9-11
• someone implies tony blair is bush's bitch
• someone implies scott ritter is Saddam's bitch
• anybody 'warns' anybody
• the word "escalation" is used
• the media compares the war to blackhawk down
  x2 if its because a blackhawk really goes down
• a puppet government is installed in iraq
  x2 if its by the puppet government installed in the US

posted by clark 11:36 AM

Friday, March 21, 2003

TERRY EAGLETON describes fundamentalists as "necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death." He adds:

"They see God as copper fastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.

Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade."

posted by clark 3:10 PM

FOR OUR OUT-OF-TOWN READERS and others, here's The Nation's listing of national antiwar resource links and Mother Jones's daily updates of un-spun news.

posted by clark 2:12 PM

SEN. ROBERT BYRD made another elequent warning speech on the Senate floor:

"...Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split.

After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe....

A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?...

I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us."

posted by clark 12:03 PM

SEN. ROBERT BYRD made another elequent warning speech on the Senate floor:

"...Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split.

After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe....

A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?...

I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us."

posted by clark 12:03 PM

AS A BREAK FROM THE BLEAKNESS, here's a site that checks whether famous people really said what they're supposed to have said. Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet; Chief Seattle neither saw railroads nor gave a speech mentioning them; Elvis Presley never gave racist epithets.

posted by clark 11:39 AM

NEWSWEEK'S EXCELLENT COVER STORY by Fareed Zakaria, "The Arrogant Empire," is chock-full-O-lucid-observations. Among them:

"A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn't solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country--the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us....

"The Bush administration's swagger has generated international opposition and active measures to thwart its will. Though countries like France and Russia cannot become great-power competitors simply because they want to--they need economic and military strength--they can use what influence they have to disrupt American policy, as they are doing over Iraq. In fact, the less responsibility we give them, the more freedom smaller powers have to make American goals difficult to achieve....

"America's special role in the world--its ability to buck history--is based not simply on its great strength, but on a global faith that this power is legitimate. If America squanders that, the loss will outweigh any gains in domestic security. And this next American century could prove to be lonely, brutish and short."

posted by clark 11:24 AM

DANNY SCHECHTER offers up a handy list of media war-coverage cliches to watch out for.

FOR MAINSTREAM MEDIA WAR COVERAGE ONLINE, here's a list from CyberJournalist.Net.

posted by clark 10:58 AM

THE AFOREMENTIONED KARLA HAILER-FIDELMAN also passes along the following anonymous email she received from "a political consultant I know in Boston":

"All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?

"Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.

"Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does.

"And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.

"Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.

"As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident."

posted by clark 10:30 AM

Thursday, March 20, 2003

KARLA HAILER-FIDELMAN explains why dissenters are the true patriots:

"Personally, I don't need to hide behind a flying flag to be proud of being an American and I know that so long as I can speak out, my brand of patriotism will survive over the sheepish bleating of those who believe you have to go along because someone said so."

posted by clark 10:39 AM

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

SO THEY WENT AND DID IT. They'd promised to do it for months now. They never wanted anything else but this, and made sure there would be no other scenario but "we're gonna go to war anyway, anyhow, period." The Republican sleaze machine wanted war. It always wanted war. Not war-unless-you-capitulate. Not war-unless-you-disarm. Just war, period. And now it's got one.

Now it's up to us, to all of us worldwide, to take their war away from them.

posted by clark 11:10 PM

STILL MORE ANTIWAR RESOURCE SITES:

• Jean Buskin's long-running, ongoing listing of Peace and Justice Events in the Seattle area

• Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War (a group helping coordinate Thursday afternoon's gathering at Westlake, and which also has links to events in Bremerton and on the Eastside)

posted by clark 11:00 PM

MICHAEL MOORE, as you might imagine, has un-gentle words for the president:

" There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM!"

SOME MORE ANTIWAR SITES to peruse:

• American Samizdat (compiled locally by "Dr. Menlo")

• Warblogger Watch (real-time refutation of right-wing punditry)

• Sojourners ("Christians for Justice and Peace")

• Jak's View from Vancouver (God, I wish I was there, or in any sane country, now)

posted by clark 4:55 PM

TODAY THE WORLD counts down the hours toward the most grandiosely stupid single action taken by a first-world nation in my lifetime. I feel like getting smashed, so I'll probably send myself instead to a no-booze recreation joint (perhaps the go-kart place in Georgetown or the Family Fun Center in Tukwila).

Or I might peruse some of my favorite antiwar websites, such as Boondocks Net (not officially connected to the Boondocks comic strip). It's got many intriguing essays and features about past wars (particularly the Phillipine-American War), early political cartoons, and peace and justice movements past and present. My favorite pieces on the site include one about Mark Twain's scathing satirical story The War Prayer and William Dean Howells's more somber 1905 home-front tale Editha.

There'll natch be another antiwar rally today, at the Federal Building at 5. Details are at NotInOurNameSeattle.net.

Other antiwar sites with vital stuff on them include:

• the Nowar Collective (whose cofounder Robert Jensen has written candidly about his current personal fears over the situation)

• the Independent Media Center

• Information Clearing House (slightly conspiracy-theory-friendly, so feel free to be skeptical about the more outrageous of its claims)

• Guardian Unlimited (the UK national newspaper that's become a godsend for US readers seeking unspun news about Bush)

• Bush Watch

• TomPaine.com (easily the best-written and best-edited lefty website)

• Common Dreams (some of the sharpest punditry anywhere)

In punditry you might not have seen on the bigger news sites, the former "most trusted man in America" Walter Cronkite sez a war would not only permanently endanger international relations but could put the U.S. economy into chaos.

And our ol' fave Molly Ivins asks, "Have you ever seen such amazing arrogance wedded to such awesome incompetence?"

Those nude protests you might have read about can be viewed at Baring Witness, which also provides instructions on staging your own big PEACE bodyscape. Individual ladies n' gents had been sending self-portraits with body-paint messages to an Australian site called Nude for Peace, but that site has apparently been blacklisted by its server provider.

posted by clark 10:31 AM

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

WIRED MAGAZINE put out its tenth-anniversary issue last month. Its contents will appear on its website once the issue disappears from the stands.

The issue contains a big section in which the mag, now run by the Conde Nast empire, relived its heritage as the most rah-rah, corporate-hip, cheerleader of the '90s tech boom in all its manifestations. Particularly noticable are all the excerpts from pieces in which the magazine's original regime emphatically insisted that "the old rules" of just about everything no longer applied. (With one exception: It once insisted the only way Microsoft could become a company it could approve of was to move to Silicon Valley, because "the Evergreen State is still the sticks.")

In the world of the old Wired, everything was either Wired (hip) or Tired (square).

What was invariably deemed "Wired:" Giant corporations built up from nothing. Hyper-luxury lifestyles. CEO celebrity cults. Stratospheric stock prices for companies that had never earned a dime. Stock markets that would rise, rise, and keep rising into infinity. Unabashed greed and individual ambition. Power tripping. The relentless thumpa-thumpa of generic techno music. Sex redefined as individual pleasure (hence the "dildonics" fantasies for futuristic elaborate masturbation machines).

What was invariably deemed "Tired:" Thrift. Quiet dignity. Long-term relationships, other than with financial advisors. Labor unions. Health-care reform. Poor people. Caring about poor people. People in rural areas who didn't move there from a city. Cities in North America that weren't San Francisco. The "old media." France. Environmental laws. Minimum-wage laws. Governments in general, except when subsidizing businesses. Literary genres other than science fiction. Movies without special effects.

True to past form, the magazine follows this nudge at its old arrogance with a big bit of new arrogance, in the form of a long cover story extolling hydrogen power, for cars and just about everything else. It's a nice idea (a clean-burning fuel-O-the-future that emits only water vapor).

But you have to use some other generation system to make hydrogen. Windmills and solar panels could be used for that; but the corporate energy czars would rather promote "more fully developed" technologies—petroleum, coal, and especially nuclear power. The Wired piece goes on to suggest environmentalists should start loving nukes, as long as they're being used to make hydrogen, and insists there are no safety or waste-disposal problems with today's nuke-plant designs.

But then an article in the back of the same issue, about the eternally pesky issues regarding permanent radioactive-waste disposal, reminds us we've heard those no-problem promises before.

posted by clark 4:46 PM

Monday, March 17, 2003

HERE ARE SOME IMAGES of the most recent prewar, antiwar action.

"Hands Across Green Lake" didn't actually span the entire 3.2-mile circumference of the lake. But hundreds crowded around the Aurora Avenue side of the lake, waving at honking supportive motorists and making one last stand, one last silent shout of hope that the abyss can be avoided.

posted by clark 10:25 PM

I'LL TRY TO EXPOUND a little further on the addictive quest for what my previous post referred to as "abstract power," the destructive madness that's fueling our governmental elite during its current drive toward doom.

Some of you who lived through the Watergate era remember the "Blind Ambition," as Nixon aide John Dean described the White House mindset of the time.

Look at the number of un-reconstructed Nixonians back in the White House now, imagine three decades' worth of stewing grudges and revenge fantasies.

Next, consider the "Reality Distortion Field."

That's the late-'80s-coined phrase with which Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs was accused of being selectively unaware of business conditions that didn't fit what he chose to believe. The lieutenants and yes-men who surrounded Jobs, according to this theory, held such personal loyalty to their boss that they came to share his delusions?and to feed them back to him, by giving him highly edited market data and highly weighted interpretations of that data.

Finally, we have the example of Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.

This documentary, currently airing on the Game Show Network, tells the tragic life story of Michael Larson, an unemployed ice-cream truck driver from Ohio with three kids by three different mothers, a man obsessed with finding the perfect get-rich-quick scheme that would set him up for life. He spent his jobless days watching the four or five TV sets he'd stacked in his tiny apartment. He watched the now-classic Press Your Luck until he realized the show's big game board wasn't really random, that he could predict the order of its blinking lights and stop it on any prize square he wanted. He got to LA, somehow got through the contestant-casting process, and legally took the network for over $100,000. He then promptly lost it all between a shady real-estate deal and a burglary at his home (yes, he'd kept thousands in small bills lying around the apartment!).

Anyhoo, during the documentary a staff member on the old show recalls seeing a steely, emotionless stare in Larson's eyes. The staffer says he saw the same look years later, when his teenage son started getting hooked on video games. It's the "in the zone" stare one gets when one has become one with the game. Total zen-like concentration on making the right moves in the right sequence, and on the power-rush rewards for success. Total obliviousness to everything that is neither the screen nor the control console.

This country, my loyal readers, is being run by people who try to run government, and war, as one big video game. The chickenhawks don't want to fight. They never wanted to fight. They just want to manipulate the joysticks of power by all means available, including by the means of making other people fight for them, whilst they remain in their posh office suites and luxurious homes bossing everybody around.

I could give a fourth metaphor here, but you already know about the hubris and comeuppance of those ol' dot-com bosses.

posted by clark 9:36 PM

Sunday, March 16, 2003

REVENGE OF THE NERDS: This is written on Sunday, March 16. The day before the Irish Catholic Church's sanitized substitute for the ol' pagan spring equinox fertility rites. A time to honor nature's cycle of renewal; the hope that comes from new life; and the libidinous, procreative spirit that makes it all possible.

But instead the world sits and waits for all hell to break loose, for wanton death and destruction to rain from the sky onto a small country already suffering under a brutal dictatorial regime, now to be decimated by the agents of another brutal dictatorial regime.

No, all you masculinity-bashers out there in alternative-land, this is not a war about penises or testosterone. It's almost the complete opposite of that. Both the Iraqi and U.S. war regimes are fueled by an anti-erotic passion, an ultimately nerdy-geeky quest for abstract power. The U.S. neoconservatives are particularly addicted to this internalized, repressed, retro-pre-pubescent, anti-sex, anti-life state of mind.

This state of mind can be seen among censors who would outlaw images of sex but who don't mind images of violence. It can be seen in a government that promotes abstinence-only "education" in the public schools, but refuses to decently fund basic education in these same schools. It can be seen in a national health care "policy" aimed solely at enriching the drug and insurance CEOs. Indeed, it can be seen throughout a federal Executive Branch whose every large and small decision is predicated upon rewarding big campaign contributors and/or silencing dissent.

A Guerrilla Girls ad in the Village Voice suggested sending estrogen pills to government officials, imagining that would immediately make them start seeing everything correctly. I suspect it would only turn them from sanctimonious, repressed men into sanctimonious, repressed women-in-men's-bodies.

No, we need more passionately female females on the side of peace. And we need more passionately male males. (And, of course, more passionately queer queers, etc.)

In the eternal Dionysian spirit of life, we need to actively be out in the world with an intense, dedicated love. We need to sow the seeds of peace, to cultivate the fruits of true democracy. We need to do our share of initiating consensual, cooperative interaction here and abroad. We need to plow, thrust, pull, push, kneel, gaze, lick, caress, rub, nibble, sniff, and do whatever else it takes to help bring the planet out of its current frustration and toward greater serenity and satisfaction.

Or, to be Irish about it, to help the world become as ecstatic as the end of Ulysses.

posted by clark 1:47 PM

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