“OK, here’s what we’ve got: The Rand Corporation… in conjunction with the saucer people… under the supervision of the reverse vampires… are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.

We’re through the looking glass, here, people…”

-Milhouse Van Houton, The Simpsons, “Grandpa vs. Sexual Inadequacy”

“Now the reason this is happening is because of the ACLU and George Soros, Peter Lewis. Just a reminder: George Soros and Peter Lewis are the far-left, secular progressive billionaires who have funded — they pour money into the ACLU, they pour money into the smear websites, you know, they buy up a lot of the media time. And they basically want to change the country from a Christian-based philosophical country to a secular progressive country like they have in Western Europe. OK? Now, the ACLU is their legal arm, and the smear websites are their media arm. And they pour a lot of money into both. And the ACLU runs around the country suing everybody and intimidating people.

[…]

And in tandem, you use your left-wing smear websites to go after anybody who stands up for Christmas. If you stand up for Christmas, they come after you. So the tandem intimidates. The tandem intimidates. Suing on one hand; smearing on the other hand. And the store CEOs, they got it. We don’t want to get involved in that. We don’t want to be sued. We don’t want to be smeared, so we’re going to say “Happy Holidays.” Intimidation and lawsuits; the combo has worked. In Denver, they were going to ban a Christmas parade — they don’t call it Christmas parade anymore, but we can’t have anything that shows anything about Christmas. Well, that, you know, has been knocked out. Now, I think, they can have one float or something. We’re going to cover that. And in Boston, you saw what happened.

[…]

There’s a very secret plan. And it’s a plan that nobody’s going to tell you, ‘Well, we want to diminish Christian philosophy in the U.S.A. because we want X, Y, and Z.’ They’ll never ever say that. But I’m kind of surprised they went after Christmas because it’s such an emotional issue.

[…]

In every secular progressive country, they’ve wiped out religion… Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, all of them. That’s the first step. Get the religion out of there, so that we can impose our big-government, progressive agenda.

- Bill O’Reilly, The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly, November 28, 2005

Not sure who’s crazier here.

I’m gonna go with O’Reilly, as he’s not an animated cartoon character.

And in fun, related, hypocricy news, after railing against retailers for replacing “Christmas” with “Holidays”, the folks at Crooks & Liars found that Fox News is selling “Holiday” ornaments, even ones with O’Reilly’s logo on it (although by now Fox has discovered the “error” and is properly selling “Christmas” ornaments again).

Almost every year I trot out this article, forget it every existed, and then rediscover it the following year. Kinda like a tradition and neurological disorder at the same time.

But here’s my summary of the real history of the Thanksgiving holiday (with great thanks to the author of the above article, Brian Brasel).

1621- “The First Thanksgiving”
November 1777- The Continental Congress declares a day of Thanksgiving to thank God for an American military victory over a powerful British general.
July 1861- Confederate Congress declares a day of Thanksgiving to thank God for their victory over the Union in the First Battle of Bull Run
April 1862- President Lincoln declares day of Thanksgiving to thank God for the Union victory over the Confederacy at Shiloh
September 1862- Confederate Congress declares a day of Thanksgiving to thank God for their victory over the Union in the Second Battle of Bull Run
August 1863- President Lincoln declares day of Thanksgiving to thank God for the Union victory over the Confederacy at Gettysburg
December 1865- President Johnson establishes a national Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate the Union victory in the Civil War
October 1931- President Hoover becomes the first president to actually make a rhetorical connection between the national holiday of Thanksgiving and the pilgrims

In other words, Thanksgiving was first the “thanks, Indians, for helping us colonists survive in your harsh New World” feast. Then, for around 240 years, Thanksgiving was a string of unrelated “thank you, God, for letting us slaughter the people who disagreed with us” days. Then for another 60+ years, it was the “thanks, God, for letting the North beat the South in the Civil War” holiday. And now, for the past 70, it’s been the Indian & Pilgrim thing again. Well, the Pilgrim thing coupled with pleasant/unpleasant family reunions and the baking of turkeys, pies and casseroles.

Always fascinated by the misremembered history of Americana.

Maybe I don’t have to mention it, but no LMB radio show on Turkey Day.

So which is worse, exactly?

US attempting to prevent detainees from trying to end their legal limbo status, or the White House fighting for the right to torture detainees?

It’s a tough one. Torture is bad, but so is permanent jail with no trial.

This torture debate is out of fucking control. The pro-torture people have confused reality with the show 24. They keep saying that torture is necessary because of ridiculous terror scenarios that just don’t happen in real life. “What if they’ve hidden a nuclear bomb at the cute and fuzzy puppy factory, on field trip day, in bustling downtown Orphanville, during the Olympics, and the bomb’s going to explode in a minute and a half, and we’ve captured the only person who knows where it is, and he says he won’t tell us unless we torture him and is singing ‘la la la, please please torture me, I love being tortured’? That’s why we have to make torture legal.”

Let us for a moment, imagine a magical world in which the United States government/military does not torture people. And in that fictional, magical world, we have run across the completely impossible “terrorists nuke the puppy dogs” scenario above.

GOVERNMENT AGENT #1: This man is the only one who knows where the bomb is. If only there wasn’t this pesky anti-torture law. Guess we’ve got no choice but to let 5 million people die in nuclear fire.
GOVERNMENT AGENT #2: No we don’t!
AGENT #1: Huh?
AGENT #2: Stand back, I’m going to BREAK THE LAW!
AGENT #1: Gasp!
AGENT#2: Jail would be a small price to pay for saving millions.

[Later that day]

AGENT #1: Wow, that was amazing how you saved the day like that. And the president himself gave you a full pardon for torturing that guy!
AGENT #2: All in a day’s work. Now let’s go home and not torture anybody!

Here’s the deal. Legal or not, I’m pretty sure that prisoners get tortured in war and in law enforcement all the time, regardless of the nation or culture involved. And since it’s so easy to illegally torture people in secret, I really don’t understand why Dick Cheney and his army of the undead are pushing to make torture legal in some quarters. Really, Dick, I’m sure that after they start tearing some guy’s toenails out they’ll let you lick the spoon.

Usually, I bypass moral arguments about torture altogether. Just about anyone in law enforcement or military intelligence tells you that torture doesn’t work as a means of interrogation. Sure, the threat of pain is a powerful motivator, but it is a motivator to please the torturer, not to tell the truth. “Yes there’s an imminent terrorist plot, yes I’m the king of the terrorists, yes there’s a nuclear bomb in my freezer, yes I will agree that everything you suspect is true, just please, please take the electrodes off my nutsack.” If torture doesn’t work, what rationale do we have left? Hatred of Muslims?

I also read an interesting essay about torture this week (can’t remember where) which asked the question “what does torture do to the torturer?” Presumably, a torturer is a) already a sadistic fuck, b) a good person who’s going to break under the horrific nature of what they’re doing, or c) twist them into sadistic fucks. This mystery essay pointed out that during times when the US military did technically allow torture (surely under a different, fuzzier name, of course), that the torturers got completely out of control. They were no longer interested in answers and intelligence, they were interested in the pain and the breaking of wills. To the point that they went rogue, refusing to stop torturous investigations even when ordered to by their superiors. How many out of control, highly-trained torture experts do we want roaming our streets?

Do principles fit in here anywhere? America, which so loudly proclaims its love and support of all sorts of scared human values– liberty, equality, democracy, free speech, the right to purchase and consume fried cheese till your arteries resemble plugs of granite– is willing to wring the necks of those values in order to save our own skins? At any point does someone step up and say “fuck that, I’d rather risk a little of my safety than have my country torture people”?

Sorry, no LMB radio show today.

I’ll be giving some sort of short presentation about independent media with fellow RadioActive San Diego DJ Al Uh Looyah this Friday, at a screening of Outfoxed at UCSD.

I’m pretty sure it’s open to the public, come on by.

Antiwar.com gets it right, this is a “moral obscenity”.

Ahmad Chalabi helped provide the lies that sent the US to war in Iraq. I don’t mean he helped convince the president that there was an actual reason to invade, the two were collaborators in the lies and spin. Why would Chalabi do this? Because he hoped to return from exile and rule Iraq someday (although it also looks as though he may be an Iranian agent. Is he working with Iran for his own aims, or has his seeming ambition been a smokescreen for his spywork? No idea). And it has partially worked, the scumbag is the current Deputy Prime Minister.

For completely unfathomable reasons, Chalabi is in DC and meeting will all sorts of top US officials, even though he’s been largely exposed as a fraud. But let’s get to the kicker:

Chalabi plan[s] to visit wounded U.S. soldiers from the Iraq war at Walter Reed Army Hospital

Jesus fucking Christ. The war he helped cook up for his own ambition, killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, killing thousands of Americans, and maiming thousands more on both sides? He’s going to go visit the soldiers his lies helped cripple? I hope those guys leap out of their beds and tear his fucking arms off.

LMB Radio 11-10-05

Whoops, started recording this one late, so you miss the first 20 minutes or so.

I ramble about:

- trials and tribulations of the common cold,
- media reviews,
- DIY radio & wireless barnraising in Illinois,
- Music Industry Screwing 101,
- Evils of “Free Trade” 101

Musically, we’ve got Ministry, Fiona Apple, an Eminem ragtime mashup, Go! Team, 2mex & mums, the Descendants, Autolux, Le Tigre, the Pixies, Japanther, Dangermouse & Jemini, System of a Down, Silversun Pickups, Ghostface, and more.

Since you miss my intro to recorded song #1 (”Last Night I Had a Dream I Didn’t Hate You But Then I Woke Up” by “In the Year of the Pig”), I said something like “I really dig this song. It’s like 3 minutes long, and for the first 2 it sounds like the song could explode in your face at any minute, and then it does briefly, then goes back to the high tension stuff it was doing before.”

Yesterday, the people of the great state of Texas voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

But apparently, Texas already had a state-wide law banning gay marriage.

Okay, here’s the deal. Politicians who want conservative votes love anti-gay and anti-abortion issues. These topics draw right-wingers like moths to a flame, with no concerns about facts or truth or nuance. I figure that some clever politician wanted to drum up some votes, saw that there was already an anti-gay law on the books and said “well fuck it, let’s go for an anti-gay amendment.” Frankly, I think that these politicians secretly hope that these laws fail so that they can use them again next time, while simultaneously whipping up a furor about how Christians are minority persecutees in this country (which pisses me off too. The country’s about 75% Christian, and nearly all elected officials are Chrisitan. Could you shut the fuck up about being persecuted already?)

Unfortunately for these politicians, anti-gay laws are not a renewable resource (although hate is). Sure, now that they’ve exhausted gay marriage as an agitation tool, they’ve still got gay adoption. But what do they have after that? Gay teachers? Gay dentistry? Having same-sex friends?

As I always say, I don’t care so much about the actual marriage issue, I’m just outraged by the message behind these laws. They say that if you’re attracted to people of the same sex, then you’re less human and don’t deserve the same treatment and respect of “real” humans.

This sounds like a hoax, but I think it’s legit.

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

Apparently, a bunch of Catholic bishops from the UK got together and wrote a “teaching document” called “The Gift of Scripture”, part of which claims that you can’t take every part of the Bible literally. And I don’t know my Catholic hierarchy, but I think these guys have authority to speak on behalf of the Church. Ergo, the Catholic Church is saying that parts of the Bible are kinda not true.

As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.

Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.

The bishops say: “Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come.”

The bishops also seem to question the truth of the more misogynist parts of Genesis, and parts where Jews are cursed for the murder of Jesus. Their explanations are vague (well, I haven’t read the document, all my analysis is coming off of news articles about it), but it seems to fall under the category of “you’re always gonna get errors translating from God’s Word to human language.”

Which you’d think means that the entire Biblical text is suspect.

Which I do.

He-bro sent me this story yesterday.

Apparently, Donald “Skeletor” Rumsfeld owns as much as $25 million in stock in the company that makes Tamiflu, the drug used for treatment of the avian flu. Which means that if this feared global pandemic breaks out, he stands to make millions.

I’m not saying that he’s involved or anything, it’s just creepy.

But honestly, probably everyone in every US administration has these kinds of ties. They’re all rich, meaning that they likely have stock and investments in all sorts of major industries. Unlike you and me, who own stock in nothing.

“Gay for Johnny Depp”

Not bad music, either. Screamy guitar rock.

In a way, the riots going on in Paris are absolutely, utterly predictable.

Two teenage boys from a housing project outside Paris were killed while attempting to hide from police (very fuzzy detail on this portion), and many other young people from the community– poor, racially mixed, and tired of discrimination and police abuse– rise up and attack.

Hearing this story, it immediately reminded me of similar riots in an aboriginal ghetto in Redfern, Australia last year. A young man was killed when fleeing police, and in response, the young, poor residents rioted and attacked the police.

Or of the Cincinnati riots of 2001, where the police shot and killed a 19-year old African-American man, Timothy Thomas. The riots lasted for 3 days.

Or the 1985 riots in Brixton, UK, where police shot a black woman in her bed (accidentally, they say), and young blacks fought the cops with clubs and molotovs (the woman survived, paralyzed from the waist down. The officer who shot her was cleared of all charges).

And not all that different from the race riots of the 60s, in Watts, Newark, and Detroit.

Hell, last month in Toledo, riots against neo-nazi agitators– only to transform it into an anti-police riot.

The story just gets told again and again and again. Poor folks of a racial group that is discriminated against by the general population, suffers at the hand of the police, and no one from the wider society seems to care. Then along comes a moment that is simply too much to bear: a child dead, a mother mistreated, an outrageous injustice of some sort. And then, the fire.

So I guess my only question here is about whether these regular uprisings are “anti-police”, or if they’re against “the system.” Poor folks and people of color obviously bear the brunt of police brutality, police harassment, and having their lives torn apart when some number of family and friends are inevitably thrown to the jaws of the justice system. It wouldn’t be hard to see these riots primarily as a way of striking back at the police for the damage they do.

But at the same time, poor people of color face a lot more discrimination that has nothing to do with the police. But the cops are the most obvious symbols of authority that they’re likely to see. “I can’t fight my landlord in court, I can’t yell at my boss, I can’t attack that radio DJ who says that my people are animals, but in the chaos, I can sure as fuck throw a brick through this cop’s windshield.”

“Mépris” is a French word meaning “contempt.” I discovered it in the comment of a Parisian on another blog, as he relayed what his French Carribean and Arab friends told him about their experience. “People are just sick and tired of the waves of racist contempt radiated by the police and the government in particular, employers and landlords, the media, and white French people in general. So yes of course people want jobs, decent jobs, decent housing. But this issue of respect is really important too.”

I think the most poigniant is this quote from a nice Christian Science Monitor article about the French riots:

Taïb Ben Thabet, who has been a social worker in the projects north of Paris for 35 years, fears that the kind of discrimination his young wards face undermines his patient efforts to help them find their place in society.

“I teach them that the state is for everybody, that it treats everybody the same,” he says. “But what credibility do I have when everything I say is contradicted by experience? The kids say it’s all lies.”

The kids are right. This man is frustrated because the government’s actions are undercutting his calming platitudes. He tells the kids that if they’re just patient and flexible, that everything will be okay. It won’t. It seems pretty clear that white French society wants to keep these immigrants in ghettos, far away from the mainstream, where most French people don’t have to see or think about them. Not much different from the US, really. I don’t know that torching police cars is going to build them a better life, but I don’t think that waiting for the problem to go away is going to do the trick either.

(Well, I take some of that back. I’m sure that there are many non-racist whites in both France and the US. I also think that many white French folks, like many white Americans, don’t mind people of color if they’re properly “assimilated.” In other words, once someone talks like you and acts like you and likes the same things you like, it’s hard to dislike them. But asking someone to discard their culture and identity so that you can feel more comfortable is a bit… assholish)

I’ll conclude with my frequent theme of “convenient white racism.” White folks in the US frequently define “racism” as “hating someone of a different race.” Which is handy, because it means that if you don’t hate someone, you’re not a racist.

So, my fellow white folks, what if you found out about an institution, a place, a culture in your society that was racist and you didn’t do anything about it? What if you found out that people of one race were much more likely to face poverty, violence, abuse, and violence than people of your own race? What if this happened all the time?

What if you learn all that, and then you don’t speak out, or try to do anything to change it? What does that make you then?

Actual headline on CNN.com right now:

Bush supports human rights at summit

Anyone with a passing acquaintance with George W. Bush knows that his support for human rights ranks up there with his support for proper grammar.

True, right there in the opening paragraph, we have a quote from Bush saying that

President Bush told reporters that he viewed his participation as an “opportunity to positively affirm our belief in democracy and human rights and human dignity.”

Most journalists though would at least have the sense to put part of that in quotes in the headline, “Bush Attends Summit to ‘Support Human Rights’” or something like that. Although it’s maddening that we don’t live in a world where reporters ignore what politicians say and focus on what they do. I mean, a Congressman can say absolutely anything. That’s not news, really.

Even worse, that headline doesn’t match the rest of the story. The first paragraph has that nonsense quote from Bush. Then there’s a few paragraphs about Argentinian protesters outside the summit. Then a few paragraphs about future IMF involvement in the Argentinian economy. Then a few paragraphs about the structure of the summit meeting and potential conflicts. Then a few about tension between Bush and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Then a few about Bush’s push for a new “free trade” treaty. “Bush supports human rights at summit” is a completely unrepresentative title for this piece. It should clearly be called something like “Bush talks economics, trade at Latin American summit”.

Personally, I think the article should have focused on the potential outcomes of the conference, the likelihood of those outcomes, the effects on those outcomes, public opinion of those outcomes and effects, and the public outcry against Bush.

Which is maybe why I’m not a reporter.

I can’t verify this story, but I have read several eyewitness accounts which seem to overlap properly.

It seems that bike cops patrolling Wednesday’s anti-war protests in Los Angeles had some sort of sonic devices attached to their bikes. The devices emit high-pitched and horrendously loud noise. The reports claim that maybe 30 cops were using these devices to try to control the movement of the crowd. The crowd then stopped in their tracks and confronted the cops, chanting “turn them off” unil the police finally shut off their sonic mace.

To serve and protect and try out new pain compliance technology.

LMB Radio 11-03-05

Rambling topics include:

- 106.9
- Zack does Guerrilla Radio for real
- LAPD uses new noise weapon on protesters?
- Wal-Mart funds studies to bash Wal-Mart
- Libby & Rove neck-deep in it
- ANI-METAL!!
- Cheney as popular as a heart attack
- siege on South Central Farmers

Yes, on this show, I actually spend some time playing and discussing several metal bands who’s “frontmen” are animals. Specifically, a parrot named Waldo and a couple of pit bulls.

Yeah.

Music includes Depeche Mode, Lightning Bolt, Living Colour, Cobra Killer, Danger Doom, Ladytron, Faith No More, Ethyl Meatplow, Bad Religion, Guns N Fuckin Roses, the White Stripes, Jay-Z, Woody Guthrie, Plastilina Mosh, Against Me, and more.

More trials and tribulations for San Diego’s pirate radio 106.9FM. Apparently the high cost of low-power radio is more than the broadcasters can handle, and they are shutting down for now while trying to raise more cash for a future return.

106.9 is the station that rebroadcasts my internet radio collective, so this is sad for us.

If you want to drop some dollars on 106.9, you can do so via Paypal here.

Rarely have I said much of anything about the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame/Niger Uranium/Scooter Libby/Judy Miller/Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/Outed CIA Agent thing. But in the wake of one actual indictment, and the slim chance of more, maybe I’ll give my take on it all.

1) Niger. All of this has to do with one of the many lame bits of evidence that the US gave to justify an invasion of Iraq. The US and Britain received some forged documents saying that Saddam Hussein wanted to buy tons of unrefined “yellowcake” uranium from the Niger government, which allegedly showed his continued attempts to make nuclear weapons. Even if this document had turned out to be real, it ignored the fact that Hussein already had 500 tons of the stuff lying around Baghdad that he couldn’t refine.

(And, interestingly, there is now evidence that these forged documents about Niger were created by Italian intelligence and given to the US by a key foreign policy advisor to Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. That man, Giovanni Castellanet, is now the Italian ambassador to the US. Blogger Josh Marshall is keeping a close eye on the investigation into Italy’s involvement in all this)

2) The leak. I honestly believe that the leak of Valerie Plame’s undercover CIA status was an accident. Hold on, hold on, let me finish. To me, it seems that the goal was simply to discredit Joe Wilson, who had exposed the Niger documents as fraud. The official smear story was “Wilson doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the only reason he was sent to investigate was cuz his wife set up the trip for him.” And for that smear to work, they had to mention that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame/Wilson, worked for the CIA. And since no one was supposed to know that, the leakers blew her cover. And, potentially anyone who worked for the same CIA front company Brewster Jennings.

Of course, I don’t think Bush & crew would give a fuck about endangering the life of a CIA agent or ruining her career, but I don’t think that that was their goal here.

3) Protecting the sources. Apparently, the reporters who received these leaks felt the need to “protect the anonymity of their sources.” Now, the leakers here were not heroic whistleblowers telling us that cigarette companies manipulate their nicotine levels or that soylent green is made of people. These leakers were attempting to smear an innocent man in order to convince a nation to go kill people in another nation. In most cases, the source is an eyewitness who tells the reporter about a crime. In this case, the source was committing a crime by speaking to the reporter, and the reporter was the eyewitness!

4) Judy Miller. There are about three relevant things about Judy Miller here. The first is that the pro-war drumbeat was largely promoted by Miller’s stories in the NY Times. Stories that were fed to her by Achmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who wanted to replace Saddam as the head of Iraq. As a fellow with an agenda, every word out of his mouth should have been suspect, but Miller printed his tall tales like they were the Word of God.

Second, Miller is the only reporter who actually went to jail to protect the White House smear campaign. And yet… none of her fellow reporters seemed to want to defend her. Which leads to:

Third, Judy Miller is out for Judy Miller. No one seems to believe that she was concerned about her source or her journalistic integrity, just that she was trying to keep herself out of trouble. Atlhough I half believe that she let herself go to jail so she could become a First Amendment martyr and go on to book deals and pundit jobs.

5) The indicments. Unfortunately for any news junkies out there, I can’t force myself to care too much about the details of who said what to who. These motherfuckers are criminals, guilty of acts far more evil than harming a CIA couple. I’d lovelovelove to see them punished, and if we can only see it via a Capone-esque “obstruction of justice” charge instead of the deserved “crimes against humanity”, well, I guess I can live with that.

Overall, though, it looks as though this entire leak incident was a Rove-Libby-Cheney thing. It’s a typical Rove dirty trick. Libby was allegedly obsessed with Joe Wilson and took his Niger debunking personally. And from what I’ve heard, it sounds like Cheney was the one who learned of Plame’s CIA status and passed it along to Libby. At present, there are only indictments against Libby, who has already stepped down and been replaced.

So what’s the result of all this? What impact does it have on anything? Not sure, exactly. Scooter Libby never seemed like that big a player, and I can’t imagine that Cheney will take any sort of fall on this one. But Rove… there is a slim chance that Rove could be indicted, and on top of that, conservatives seem to be floating the idea that he should resign first. That would be a major blow to the Bush administration.

But, even if Rove remains, the leak/indicment scandal does look like a slow-motion implosion of the Bush White House. Will the fight for the new conservative Supreme Court nominee re-unite the wings of the Republican party? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

One of the more ridiculous things I’ve seen lately, conservatives claiming that liberals oppose Bush’s new Supreme Court nominee because they’re racist against Italians.

Now, I realize that Italians do sometimes get a bad rap in the US, with stereotypes about mafiosos and pizza chefs and whatnot. But I’ve gotta think that maybe the dislike of Judge Alito has more to do with his super-conservative, “who needs civil rights?” judicial record.