intellectual properties

#OWS, the police, and walking the walk (post #8)

1. i urge you to watch this video of the retired Philadelphia policeman who was arrested at #OWS, talking about the problems he sees with how the police are interacting with this movement.

he is super respectful of the police, but notes that from his experienced perspective,  there seems to be no link between leadership and the police on the ground.  the mayor says she doesn’t know why it happened. the chancellor says she doesn’t know why it happened. everyone’s apologizing after the fact. but what about preventing this from the top down?

also on this point, this article “Militarising the police from Oakland to NYC ” talks about the fact that since 9/11, our police forces have been increasingly militarized (through funding from DHS) in order to be able to respond to terrorist threats. this causes a mental shift in how police respond to things.  they have been given different tools, different directives. and now they are being used against peacful American citizens, treating demonstrators like terrorists. as the cop in the video above says, police are people too, and subject to emotions and situations. so they respond according to what they’ve been taught and the tools they’ve been given. as someone said, when you’re dressed in riot gear, everything starts to look like a riot….

All over the country, police switched out their traditional uniforms for Battle Dress Uniforms, dubbed by one retired policeman in the Washington Post as “commando-chic” regalia. It wouldn’t be surprising to find that swaggering around armed to the teeth and dressed like RoboCop might lead some cops to adopt a more militaristic attitude.

Former San Jose chief of police Joseph McNamara raised these alarms as early as 2006 in the wake of the Sean Bell shooting in New York. He pointed out that the effects of the drug war and 9/11 had led to “an emphasis on ‘officer safety’ [where] paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed”.

Likewise, in the name of “officer safety”, the Taser became a common tool in everyday policing, deployed with little knowledge of the effects, and a tendency to Taser first and ask questions later. But over the course of the past decade, the body count grew as it became more and more obvious that tasers were sometimes as deadly as the guns they purported to replace.”

2.  in addition to illustrating how militant our “Keep the Peace” police forces have become with few checks and balances, the Occupy movement has shown that our politicians are much more willing to talk strongly about supporting democratic uprisings in other countries, even sending in troops to fight multi-billion dollar wars for others’ freedom, while keeping their mouths shut on our own domestic affairs.  Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama have been on TV since Arab Spring supporting democratic uprisings and movements around the world, but mostly silent about our own.

i realize it’s a pre-election year and they don’t want to too-closely align themselves with what some see as a “leftist” movement (which it isn’t, it’s more of a populist movement), but i dare say they’re losing precious votes and active supporters by more or less staying silent on not only the bank situation (slight nods to “protecting the American Dream” don’t count), but taking a stand for 1st Amendment rights and against police brutality issues. the fact that Obama has made no (or so few) public statements about the rights of Americans in the Occupy movement makes me angrier every day that goes by.

[update] rereading this again, i think it sounds really strident, or, propaganda–y, and i am not wanting to be naive in thinking it’s easy to change an entire way of life, and perhaps Obama “expressing solidarity” with the Occupy movement is all that is really pragmatic at this point. let the movement lead itself.

shifting sites

like most everyone else who was paying attention to the news on saturday morning, i was shocked, then devastated, then angry as the events rolled out in Arizona.  i am not going to get too political about this, outside of saying that, like heavy metal doesn’t cause suicide and rap music doesn’t cause gang violence, while i know there is not a direct cause—>effect correlation between use of imagry and language regarding guns/hunting to refer to “taking out” your political enemies, it still makes me angry that there is so much denial about any COLLECTIVE cultural responsibility and taking back/revisionist history going on with Palin et.al. but, i agree that pointing fingers in this case gets us nowhere and only inflames the political situation when there are larger, more definite problems that lead to this unfortunate tragedy.

in the end, i agree most that more than whatever part the inciteful language may have had, the real cause of the problem here was lack of mental health care for the assailant.  Giffords’ support for the right to bear arms (and buy weapons and ammo at wal-mart and sporting goods stores) is tragic irony enough, but the larger fact that that the reason Giffords was put “on the map” with crosshairs over her district to begin with was because she voted for the public health care option should be the real focus here. had Loughner had access to mental health care, had his family had better access to support, this might never have happened.

congress – are you still working to repeal “Obamacare” ASAP?  maybe you should rethink that. for the health and safety of us all.

the nobel prize now = an A for effort?

many discussions recently about entitlement, telling all children they are smart, beautiful, can do anything, ‘EVERYONE IS A WINNER’, and how this leads to false benchmarks, false hopes……seems to have leaked over to the Nobel arena.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15622

When war becomes peace,

When concepts and realities are turned upside down,

When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor,

When the killing of civilians is upheld as “collateral damage”,

When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as “insurgents” or “terrorists”.

When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.

When advanced torture and “interrogation” techniques are routinely used to “protect peacekeeping operations”,

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”

When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as “national defense”

When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,

When the Lie becomes the Truth.

Obama’s “War Without Borders”

We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.

At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon’s “Long War”:  “A War without Borders” in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might.

Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.

the inaugural poem

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

–Elizabeth Alexander

–NYT

honestly, not the best poem i’ve ever heard or read, but her delivery was fantastic and on-point.

i say amen!

i had to fight myself pretty hard not to pop a cork this morning.
i mean, if there was ever a cause for celebration….
but given that me starting to drink at 9:00am on a tuesday isn’t going to lead anywhere productive and obama called us all to get off our asses and get things done, i refrained.
it’ll have to wait until 5:00.

may a new age of peace and prosperity be upon us,
amen.

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Obama/Lincoln street art in Boston

Quote from the artist …: English said he was born and raised in Illinois and is an Obama supporter. He said he wanted the image to serve as a springboard for conversation about Obama’s candidacy. “I believe Obama will take up Lincoln’s challenge of uniting the country,” English wrote. “This is the most excited I’ve ever been about a presidential candidate and I’m looking for ways that I can contribute as an artist and a citizen.” Some say the comparisons between Obama and Lincoln only go so far.

Obama/Lincoln street art, originally uploaded by .Ariel.

I know the American People are much attached to their Government;–I know they would suffer much for its sake;–I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence… – Abraham Lincoln, 1838

the “mob” lincoln was referring to and the reason this speech was given was a response to the spree of lynch mobs occurring throughout the country at that time. in our modern case, however, the mob, i think, is inside the white house.

native son

He will need to offer more than himself as cause for hope…

Obama is a black candidate who can tell Americans of all races to move beyond race. As such, he is uniquely positioned to put an end to this era, and uniquely vulnerable to becoming its latest victim.

related: the speech Obama could have given.

obama hearts CTL

a follow-up political footnote to the post on synthetic crude for you Obama fans: the New Yorker article reports that from extraction–> production process–>use, a barrel of Coal to Liquid (CTL) fuel (another fuel process being heavily invested in) creates 2x as many total greenhouse gas emissions as a barrel of conventional oil. Barack Obama, along with republican senator Dunning from kentucky, put forward the Coal to Liquid Fuel Promotion Act in January:

U.S. Senators Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) today introduced the “Coal-To-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007.” This bipartisan piece of legislation is based on the bill first introduced by Senators Bunning and Obama last spring and would help create the infrastructure needed for large-scale production of Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) fuel. It is a comprehensive bill that expands tax incentives, creates planning assistance, and develops Department of Defense support for the domestic CTL industry.

“This bi-partisan piece of legislation that I have re-introduced with Senator Obama today will lay out a plan for the 110th Congress on how we need to work together for energy independence. CTL technology offers America the chance to capitalize on an abundant domestic resource that is found in eastern and western Kentucky and across the country. To help spread the message of how important the CTL process is for energy independence Senator Obama and I will form the Senate Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Caucus to help lead this fight. With a strong investment in CTL, America will wean itself off of foreign sources of energy, and at the same time create jobs for working families back home. CTL is a viable, environmentally friendly energy resource that will help cure America’s addiction to oil.”

since when are coal mines environmentally friendly? not to mention that the CTL process is extremely energy consumptive and produces all kinds of toxins and emissions. i like how they frame it as an “environmentally friendly energy resource” based on the final product being cleaner, ignoring the source and process by which it is produced.

after much criticism, obama backpeddled to say he will only support clean(er) CTL plants. to me, this move is barack obama catering to a special interest/industry in order to gain votes from the other side, and then trying to wiggle out of it when challenged by his voter base, and that pisses me off. more on this and barack’s environmental tendencies (not all bad): http://www.blueclimate.com/blueclimate/2007/06/barack-obama-re.html and http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/07/30/obama/ .

“The Conciliator”

speaking of the 2008 election, the New Yorker recently published a long and interesting piece on Barack Obama that i think is worth reading.

you may recall that we went to the Obama ’08 rally in Oakland a few months ago, and i was fairly unimpressed by his speech and presence. then, there was the obama v. hilary youtube video that made them both look bad, and then the obama girl thing just made me roll my eyes, and i’d more or less decided to ignore all of it for a while.

the article in the new yorker is quite a thinking piece, however, and brought to light a lot of things not only about the history and character of Obama, but about his carefully constructed image and choices of references. there is a lot of talk in this article about compromise, and how the current Administration is so entrenched in their positions that they can’t see the forest for the trees (sometimes almost literally), refusing to give even a little on positions like the War in Iraq even when the majority of americans have changed their minds. while some find any sign of compromise to be a weakness, particularly in politicians, others see it as the only way forward in a globalized world.

Obama has staked his candidacy on union—on bringing together two halves of America that are profoundly divided, and by associating himself with Lincoln—and he knows what both of those things mean. He calls America’s founding a “grand compromise”: compromise, for him, is not an eroding of principle for the sake of getting something done but a principle in itself—the certainty of uncertainty, the fundament of union. “I would save the Union,” Lincoln wrote, in a letter to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” “I like to believe that for Lincoln it was never a matter of abandoning conviction for the sake of expediency,” Obama writes. “Rather . . . that we must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side.”

i heard Hilary Clinton speaking on the radio again the other day, and her voice just grates my nerves, and i find her entirely too aggressive. she’s got quite the ego to stand on, and certainly enough experience for the job, but i just don’t empathize with her very much at all. Nader and Kucinich, while i admire their convictions, i think are sadly too ideological to play the real game, and i think are better suited to fight against corruption OUTSIDE the Oval Office, which I hope they continue to do. they’ll get more done that way.

this is not to say i’m on the Obama bandwagon just yet. i admire his honesty about his past (no “i didn’t inhale” statements coming from this guy), but i have to agree that his still-waters-run-deep MO is sort of worrisome in terms of perception. in the world of global politics, always acting like the calm inside the storm might lead to a great amount of distrust on the part of foreign counterparts, who are always going to suspect he’s hiding something, and might lead the american public to think he’s not passionate enough or paying attention. is it better for a head of state to appear charismatic and engaged, or thoughtful and reflective? the article talks about his mannerism being very medical – like a doctor who comes in a pokes and prods and listens and nods, but never gets emotional. i’m not sure how i feel about the leader of the free world being so stoic and reserved. i feel like what we need is someone who inspires us. unfortunately, i haven’t seen that candidate yet.