Oh, Gay Can You See

Last week, Riz and I had a big conversation about us gays and our marriages. Riz helps me to understand things that I cannot wrap my mind around.
When I wanted to get married, I went to Canada.
I figure, if married Canadians are still considered married when they come the the U.S, then so are me n’ The Wife.
Voila, married.
I am indifferent about taxes and health insurance. I don’t have any assets so my taxes don’t amount to much. Health insurance and western medicine seem like insufferable scams to me, so I rely on forms of healing that are considered “alternative.”
I don’t put much store in the legal rights of marriage. This is more a reflection of my social worldview than anything else. I am kinda Ludditie, kinda Quakerish, seasoned with punkrock and hippie roots.
I am married, I feel married and it is no one’s business unless they want to give us a belated wedding present.
This is my reality, and like many of my realities, it is one I constantly protect.

Here is another one of my realities:
I find white supramacist racism to be deeply and personally offensive. I am willing to hit the ring and go toe to toe on this issue. I am not compelled to fight this fight because I am “sticking up” for anyone else. It is my reality that white supremacist racism damages everyone and I am part of that group.
And another:
Sexual violenct and terrorism is completely unacceptable. There’s another fight, another reality to protect, because sexual violence and terrorism is one of the hallmarks of U.S. culture and history.
In deeply intimate, daily life ways, I fight these fights.
Protect these realities.

I am used to living my life like this. I know my culture and myself well, and part of being me in this culture means fighting. This is just a given. So the fight around gay marriage just kinda fits right in there, it’s just another reality of mine that does not sync up with my culture.
It is completely unacceptable that my marriage is not legal. But since it is illegal, then I fight and protect my reality.
Wheee!
And truly, in the midst of all this, I am married.
The Wife is a joy and a pain to me, I am a joy and a pain to her.
She does the laundry, I do the dishes.
Marriage.

I can’t wrap my brain around the concept of constitutionally banning marriage, I really can’t. I also have a difficult time seeing the fight people are fighting in protests and mass gatherings.
In the three years I have been married, there have been lots of fights. These fights are intimate. We are almost always isolated and alone.
Our fights do not take place in huge protests in parks and on city streets. For us, this fight takes place when the mailperson wants to know if we are sisters cause we have the same last name, or we correct a family member who manages to dysfunctionally, passive aggressively allege that our marriage is not somehow “real.” In seemingly millions of ways, the fight for gay marriage goes down in our daily life.
I am inside of this reality, and so when I see thousands of people protesting for the right to be legally married, I think, “Dang, where were you all when people’s kids get taken away?”

Read this article: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_10978629

That is what me n’ Riz were talking about because he went to a huge protest and I told him I did not see the fight there. But Riz says it is all Of A Piece and I am not seeing the whole picture.
I am too close.
So, after I got off the phone with Riz, I decided I would try to take a few steps back.
But on that very day, The Wife went to the hospital in an ambulance.
I decided to take some steps back, but instead waltzed into the vortex of the fight.

Here is a letter I wrote about that:


Dear Nurse Manager,


On November 18th, I came home from work to find my partner bleeding rectally, waiting for an ambulance. While I packed her bag and made phone calls, the paramedics took her to Vagina Mason. I knew she was going to be admitted to the hospital and suspected she’d probably end up having surgery on her colon. I drove to the hospital in a state of terror. I was so distraught, I had to pull over and call a friend, Sullivan, to meet me at the hospital.
We met out front and made our way to the emergency room around 3:30 or 4 p.m. We found The Wife. She was in excruciating pain. Together, the three of us waited for tests and results.
At one point, I bent over the bed, kissing The Wife’s forehead, smoothing her hair back. Her emergency room nurse, Nurse Montana, came in to the room. She stopped and stared at us. It was only a moment, and no untoward words were spoken, but I felt very uncomfortable with her response to what I suddenly recognized as our homosexuality. In general, I don’t think of myself as “gay.” I just love the person I love and it seems normal to me. To a lot of people, I know it is not that simple, but to me it is and always has been.
It is also no one else’s business.
In that awkward moment, it certainly appeared that Nurse Montana did not consider us “normal.” The odd tension in the room also bespoke this reality. It is a very strange feeling, sensing someone’s judgment and disapproval in such a painfully intimate context. It was like finding out you had a deep cut because someone jabbed their fingernail into it.
At a truck stop in Nebraska, feeling this way is not so bad, but here in the hospital, fearing for my spouse’s life, it was really, really bad. Nevertheless, I was too upset to reflect upon it and just hoped that Nurse Montana would be gentle and kind to The Wife.

I feel the need to mention that I am not particularly sensitive about homophobia. I am a writer and a public speaker. In my work, I encounter pretty much every form of ignorance and prejudice. I know homophobia exists, I understand why it exists and my approach is to understand as many perspectives as possible so that I am able to articulate my position. This is my job. I am not on the rampage, seeking out homophobic slights.

Eventually, a different nurse came in to give The Wife her test results. At this same moment, Sully was about to leave. The nurse said something about this being private information and asked us both to leave. Partially because I knew in my heart that she was going to tell The Wife that she would be needing surgery and partially because Sullivan was leaving anyway, I did not mention that The Wife and I are married and I had every right to remain in the room. I figured I would let her know after I said goodbye to Sullivan. While it is trying to have to assert my relationship status with almost every health care worker we come into contact with, I do understand the culture I live in and know it is something to deal with.
Having to deal with it while I am emotionally taxed and really frightened is a bit much, but, again, there is nothing I can do to change this reality in moments like this.
I understand that.

Sully and I stood in the hall outside of The Wife’s room for a few moments, quietly making plans for the next day and saying our goodbyes. Nurse Montana walked up to us and loudly stated, “The patient has asked that her diagnosis be private. You need to step into the waiting room. Leave now.” She did not address this to Sullivan and I together. She was looking directly at me, and speaking only to me. Before I could respond, she said the same thing again, in a louder and firmer voice. At this point, I was shocked that she was speaking to me in this manner and was stunned into silence. She took a step towards me and again said, “The patient has asked that her diagnosis be private. You NEED to go into the waiting room NOW.” Two other nurses heard Nurse Montana’s broken record technique and tone of voice and assumed there was someone making trouble in the hallway. They came from either direction and stared at me, arms crossed, standing firm. Their body language conveyed the possible need for action. All of this had taken place in less than two minutes, and in that time I did not say a word or move a muscle. There was no need to speak to me as if I was a threat, but Nurse Montana’s choice of words and actions led everyone to act as if I was some drunken, violent person, causing havoc. All of the patients and their families who could see me also stared at me.
It took me quite some time to gather my wits about me. I was truly stunned, no less than if I were physically attacked. In the meantime, Nurse Montana loudly asserted that I NEEDED to go into the waiting room two more times. I finally mustered the wherewithal to say that The Wife and I were married and that my purse was in The Wife’s room.
She was telling me I could get it when The Wife called out that she wanted me in the room with her.
I felt utterly humiliated and demoralized.
Nurse Montana saw me kissing The Wife’s forehead. She had every indication that we were more than casual buddies, but she nonetheless chose to humiliate me in the hallway. At no point did she seek any confirmation about who The Wife and I are to each other. I strongly suspect that if we were not the same sex, none of this would have ever been an issue. I doubt if she would have stopped and stared if I was a man kissing my wife’s forehead, and I doubt that she would have verbally attacked and humiliated me in the hallway, either. I believe she would have politely asked me if I was The Wife’s husband, and if so, to please step out of the hallway.

She did not tell Sully and I that we were causing any kind of disturbance. We were standing close together and quietly saying our goodbyes. If there was a problem with us lingering in the hallway, that issue was at no point addressed.
I went back into The Wife’s room, humiliated beyond belief.
I asked The Wife if what Nurse Montana said was true, and she said no, she never said anything of the kind.
The other nurses treated me as if I had done something wrong for the rest of my time in the emergency room. I do not blame them for this. One of their colleagues pointed me out as some kind of problem and they were naturally leery of me. Nurse Montana’s treatment of me set the tone for everyone else and I was in no place to stand up for myself. Indeed, I stood silently as Nurse Montana came into The Wife’s room again, completely ignoring me. The humiliation did not end in the hallway. It lasted throughout my stay in the emergency room.
Sullivan was also quite horrified with the way Nurse Montana spoke to me, and how the whole scene happened. She saw everyone staring at me, and saw how deeply embarrassed and confused I was.

When I got home that night, I called my mom. She was an RN, supervising an entire hospital for over 30 years. I wanted to know if I had done something wrong by standing in the hallway. She told me that emergency room hallways really need to be clear at all times, but there was absolutely no reason for Nurse Montana to treat me the way she did. Never was I asked to step out of the hallway. From the moment she spoke to me (and again, not to both me and Sully), she was threatening, dehumanizing and incredibly rude.
I would really like to see Nurse Montana sign up for some sensitivity training. I have been around nurses all my life. I used to wait for my mom to come home from work and listen to what she’d gone through that shift. I understand, from second hand experience, the stress and hardship of nurses. I know nurses face violence, disease, abuse, and untold trauma every time they step into the hospital. I also know that good nurses, the best nurses, are folks who are nonjudgmental and compassionate. Maria and Regina on the 12th floor are classic examples of this phenomena. They never batted so much as an eyelash the time I lay next to The Wife in her bed, watching television with her. Whether or not Maria and Regina, personally, think we are aberrations, I do not know. And that is the point. Their personal opinions did not come into play at all. They treated both of us with dignity, kindness, humor and absolute grace.
Nurse Montana would be well served to spend some time silently shadowing either of these women. She (and much moreover the folks she tends to) would benefit from a crash course in compassion and nonjudgmental caring.
I still cry inside when I think about all those people staring at me like I was doing something horrible, when I was also feeling so scared about The Wife’s life. This is one of the worst feelings I have ever had.

I’d really like to know what kind of follow-up happens here, and some kind of assurance that Nurse Montana is learning different ways of treating people she may or may not identify with.

Thank you.
Inga M. Muscio

Oh By the Way

I keep getting emails from folks asking me who I am endorsing for president.
It seems like such a foregone conclusion, I have largely not repsonded to these emails.
Sometimes I am an asshole and alas, this is one of those times.
I said to my asshole self, “If someone has read either of my books and is asking me who I am endorsing for president, they must be fucking insane.”
But then the wife was all, “God you are such an asshole.”
She is from the south and understands things about propriety and decorum that honestly never occur to me. “It’s about making a formal proclamation. Good god, you must be insane.”

The first time I saw Barack Obama’s name was a few years ago and I knew he would be president.
Because I am a writer, I put great store in the resonations of words, karmic, poetic and otherwise. Obama and Osama have the same phonetic resonation and polar opposite karmic associations in the collective imagination. Meanwhile the poetry of a president named Obama dances a merry-assed jig around my heart. I liked the seamlessness of all this and started paying great attention to the beliefs, communication patterns and ideals of Barack Obama.
To me, word resonation is science, divination and a very handy way to figure out things about the world.
In my heart, I endorsed Obama long before he announced his candidacy.

I do not endorse Obama because I think he is my hero who will come and save us all and restore our nation to the potential—as opposted to the historical imperative (with the exception of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights times)—to be a truly great democracy.
(Run-on sentences rock!)

Honestly, I believe that Barack Obama will endure a character-assassinating term in office. He will not be physically murdered because then his murderers will then, in perpetuity, have to endure a national holiday in honor of him. No, they will go after his character. He will be under seige from the moment he steps into the White House. There will be some kind of “terrorist” attack courtesy of the head of Al-Qaeda, Karl Rove.
In fact, Colin Powell strangely alluded to this when he endorsed Obama on Meet the Press. Tom Brokaw asked Mr. Powell what he would recommend to the new president (a.k.a.Barack Obama) if he was asked for advice on January 21st.
I have excerpted Mr. Powell’s response below:

GEN. POWELL: I would start with talking to the American people and talking to the world, and conveying a new image of American leadership, a new image of America's role in the world.
The problems will always be there, and there's going to be a crisis come along in the 21st or 22nd of January that we don't even know about right now.

For the full transcript, go to
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27266223/

The presidential inauguration is January 20th. Colin Powell clearly states that there is going to be a”crisis” (a.k.a. Karl Rove “terroris” attack) on January 21st or 22nd. He could not be clearer. This quote was not, to my knowledge, repeated in any of the news stories about Mr. Powell’s endorsement, but there it is, plain as a plane in a tower, in the transcript.
Even if this particular “crisis” does not come to pass on either of these days, Obama will be under seige upon his fist breath of Oval Office Air.

Though I have willed and believed in an Obama Presidency for almost a year, I don’t see the man as a hero. He is not going to make all of our problems go away. He is going to be very busy, staving off the offensive, every single waking and sleeping hour for the next four years.

Many Obama supporters are content blaming the Bush Administration for the horrors of the past eight years. Bush and his various Turdblossoms are, however, reflections of our culture, and by extension, us. Those men could not exist in the way they have existed without engaging our collective imagination. Perhaps we are horrified that so many people have died horrible deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, that torture is a legitimate policy.
Perhaps.
But in our consciousness and imagination, it seems somehow inevitable that white Christian males will terrorize and murder people who are viewed as the enemy. In our history, we have seen this enacted time after time.
Like Thanksgiving, Columbus Day and the celebration of Lewis and Clark, it appears with such frequency, the atrocity of our collective imagination and will is unseeable.
In this way, no matter what one’s moral position in regards to the Bush Administration’s crimes against humanity, we are all complicit.
We accept many crimes.
As I write this, potential Obama voters all over the country are being targeted with disinformative fliers, emails and phone calls. People are being threatened that the police will be at polling places, checking into backgrounds for outstanding tickets or warrants. I just read an article on the AP about these serious crimes, but they are referred to as “trickery.” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/ap_on_el_ge/dirty_tricks;_ylt=AiKFvn5BncK95Cp_cww2bSJvzwcF)
Crimes are often called tricks (or mistakes) when they are sourced by white Christian males.
It is not “trickery” for a private investigator hired by a Republican lawyer to knock of folk’s doors, demanding proof of citizenship and threats of deportation. Two woman are filing a lawsuit against these assholes, and good for them for doing so, but where are the police? Why are these men allowed their freedom, when they are doing everything in their power to disenfranchise people of their freedom? Voter fraud is a crime. For two victims—out of possibly hundreds of similarly intimidated U.S. citizens—to file a lawsuit is absurd. This is a serious crime and these men should not be on the streets. But they are because it seems inevitable, even reasonable, somehow, for white Christian males to terrorize people they see as the enemy.

Obama is not going to change this fundamental flaw in our cultural reality, and it causes us a lot of problems, personally, civically, nationally, and globally.
But what he will do, just by being himself, is this:
He will affect our collective imagination and consciousness.
This is why I support Barack Obama. Not because of any of his policies or plans, nothing on his resume means a thing to me. He will be dealing with so much harsh shit for the next four years, I don’t really believe he will actually change much at all.
He does, however, bring out the very best in people.
He inspires people to look at themselves and the world differently.
An Obama presidency will bring a pause to the part of us that thinks nothing of stealing someone else’s parking spot, and also someone’s country.
He is a reflection of our collective good will, instead of the meanspirited little turd that has a place in all our hearts.

Good Will Hunting Part II

Letters to Nowhere

Rovian chickenshits have normalized cheating.
Whereas back in days gone past eight years ago, it was somewhat remarkable. Yeah, back when I was a grownup, cheating used to be a sign that you must not thinkyou’re worthy of achieving life’s little triumphs via tenacity, hard work, integrity and yes, gasp, good will.
Believe it or not youngstas, cheating once reflected poorly on one’s character.
It meant you were a loser, not a “winner” with the chickenshit Rovian turpitude to rig the game in your favor.
The simple act of volunteering for the McCain campaign gives one an immediate opportunity to parttake in cheating.
It seems a Dutch journalist named Margriet Oostveen volunteers for various campaigns to get a layperson’s behind-the-scenes story. She doesn’t expect to be made privy of scandalous goings-on, but it’s her attempt to gain a clearer understanding of various politicians. So, she volunteered for The McPain to Nowhere Campaign and, expecting to be enlisted on the phone bank or some innocuous shit, Ms. Oostveen was surprised with the task of lying and cheating from Day One.
A staffer asked her to write fictitious “Letters to the Editor.”
Which editor?
Why, the editor of the local newspaper, silly.
Which local newspaper?
Any local newspaper in the country that might need a generic, xenophobic, ignorant, blindly-supportive letter to any editor in any town where the rigging of the vote needs to somehow be justified.
It was explained to Ms. Oorstveen that the letters would be signed by various locals, thus ensuring the opportunity to “flood” any given newspaper.
She wrote a letter describing herself as a mother who’s son was, like Track Palin, serving in Iraq. Sticking to the “talking points” the campaign furnished her with, she extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin:

Dear editor,
Being the on-in-a-million executive supermom is not even the biggest quality of Sarah Palin. Her biggest plus to me is that, being amazingly smart and qualified, she managed to remain a woman like us. She is the PTA running hockey moms. She is the working mothers of special needs children. She is every caring mother of a challenging teenager. And most of all, she is just like any mother of a child who deploys to Iraq in the service of this country.
My son too, is there.
And my heart needs him back safe so much.
But when I see him again, I also want to see his face glow with pride. Just like the day he told me he enlisted.
That is why Senator John McCain could count on my vote from day one.
With Sarah Palin, I have even more reason to trust in victory. She represents my heart.
Sincerely,


Salon compiled all of the emails between Ms. Oostveen and various turd-blossomettes with the McCain campaign:

http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/

Talking points should not be, but have become, another form of cheating.
There is a self-defense tactic called “The Broken Record.” If someone if hassling you, the idea is to repeat the same phrase over and over, rather than engage in a confrontation. It could go something like this:
“C’mon baby, come home with me.”
“I am very happy spending time with my friends here at this bar. Please go away.”
“C’mon baby, you know you want it.”
“I am very happy spending time with my friends here at this bar. Please go away.”
“I got some good weed and some whiskey at my apartment.”
“I am very happy spending time with my friends here at this bar. Please go away.”
“I thought you liked me. I saw the way you were looking at me earlier.”
“I am very happy spending time with my friends here at this bar. Please go away.”

The Broken Record is a way to assert yourself with someone who does not, in any given moment, understand that you are a human being worthy of respect. By repeating the same phrase over and over, the offender is given the opportunity to see that you will not back down no matter what.

The Chickenshit Rovian Republicans found out about The Broken Record, only they call it “talking points.” Instead of actually engaging with people and honoring our intelligence and innate level of integrity, a defensive, Broken Record tactic is employed.
Here’s an example:

“Hi I’m a maverick. Haya America needs some mavericks. Mavericks love Joe the Plumber. Joe the Plumber knows how important it is to distribute the wealth. Mavericks like us know how Joe the Plumber feels. I’m the hockey mom. Voracious reader! Special needs! Pitbull! Lipstick! Moose hunt! You betcha, I said hell no to the bridge to nowhere! Drill baby drill!”

The idea is, just like in a self-defense situation, to wear down the listener. It has worked well in the past, but I think people are tired of if after eight years.


The Terrorist Ashley Todd


And then we have the I-was-assaulted-by-a-large-black-man-and-he-carved-a backwards-B-on-my-face.
Look, if you’re going to cheat, at the very least, have someone else carve into your face. You see, if you carve something into your face while looking in the mirror, it will appear backwards to the viewer. Forensic scrutiny is not a prerequisite.
Ashley Todd, aged 20.
Oh lord, I can’t even bear to describe her idiocy. If you haven’t read about Ashley Todd yet, then google her foolish ass.
Aren’t white people tired of accusing black men of raping white women yet? I mean, sure, black men do horrible things.
Sure.
In this culture, everyone has ample opportunity to do horrible things. It’s one of the rare places where equality actually reigns.
Back in Reconstruction times, whenever white people felt the need to destroy a black community, someone came forward and said that a black man raped his daughter, wife, mother, etc. Then the whites razed the black community. It happened in every state, in every city where black folks flourished. By the time Emmitt Till was killed, thousands of black men and hundreds of black communities had been destroyed via this accusation.
So Ashley Todd is, in my mind, quite the monster of our times. Not only did she grow up in a culture that celebrates cheating and meanspiritedness, not only is she a Republican operative who understands that “winning” is the only thing that matters, she is also a terrorist. Because of Ashley Todd and women like Ashley Todd (Susan Smith comes to mind), women of any race who actually ARE sexually assaulted by men of any race are terrorized by hostile judicial systems and defense lawyers. Every time a woman comes out saying she was raped or assaulted when she, in fact, was not, defense lawyers all over the nation file that shit away in their minds, pre-forming arguments to get their clients aquittals.
An entire rugby team in North Carolina got off, and in fact were portrayed as “victims” by this very scenario. The fact that the rapists were white and the woman they assaulted was black certainly helped things along for the little thugs.

I doubt if Ashley Todd put much historical thought into her actions and choices. She instinctively knows what white people will respond to and she did her best to become a kind of cheating hero.
It is very sad that a 20-year-old would come up with this scenario, but she is a product of our culture.
A monster, like I say, of our times.
I don’t know how the Ashley Todds of the country will pull through when cheating is no longer the way to get things done.
I don’t in fact know if cheating will ever again be viewed as a character flaw.
Nonetheless, I continue to hunt for good will.

Hunting Good Will, Part I

Don't Get Him Started

The other night I watched Good Will Hunting for the first time since it busted a move on Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s respective careers. Came out in 1997. Dazzled at the Oscars, la, la, la.
I have a hard time remembering movies and books, so it was kinda like watching it for the first time. I do recall enjoying it, but if you’d asked me what it was about, I’da said, “Oh yes, Good Will Hunting. It’s these two white male students who go to some fancy college in the east. Robin Williams plays a professor who helps them to defy the odds and reach new heights.”
Triumphant poignancy ensues.
That’s not what it’s about.
It’s about Matt Damon’s title character, a foster kid/working class math genius who provides custodial services to MIT. During his shift one day, buffing the floor, he pauses to solve an impossible mathematical formula on a chalkboard in a hallway outside a math theorist’s classroom. Earlier that day, you see, the teacher put the problem on the board and promised any student who solved it a chance to appear in some bigshit math journal.
Later on, some passing students see that the problem is solved, they find their professor, and all go to the hallway. While they stare in wonder at the board, the teacher asks who did it. None of the students know. So the next class day, the teacher asks all of the students who solved the problem. No one cops to it. This leads the teacher to find Will Hunting, who is in jail for assault. The teacher gets him sprung, under the condition that Will gets into therapy, enter Robin Williams.
Triumphant poignancy ensues.
There’s a shocking sticking point in this plot—one that still very much lingers in my mind.
When the professor asked the packed lecture hall full of students who solved the problem, I was astounded to realize that I expected someone to take credit, but no one did.
Ten short years ago, there weren’t that many cell phones. Folks in the movie use pay phones. There are no lap tops in classes, no text messages, MySpace pages or other myriad barriers between humans actually engaging with one another. Most of all, there was no C- president who lied, bullied and cheated his way into the White House for eight years, committing war crimes and looting various nation’s financial infrastructures, ours included.
I am now accustomed to people not paying attention to each other, to lying, bullying and cheating. Inspiring teenagers to commit suicide through sordid MySpace machinations.
So when the math professor asks who solved the problem, I was shocked that no one took credit. Worse, I was shocked to find myself shocked for this commonly decent act of normal human good will. No one cheated, or tried to steal Will Hunting’s thunder. I totally expected someone to raise their hand, and NO ONE DID. The wife had the exact same experience and we paused the DVD to recollect ourselves. It was seriously jarring shit.
The viewer knows Will Hunting solved the problem, but that is not the point. In just over one decade, we have become a population of lying, bullying cheaters—that’s the point.
Is it really possible that folks have devolved so dramatically in one decade? People in Good Will Hunting largely dress and talk the same as we do now, but the level of integrity I used to take for granted was freakishly, disappointingly, refreshing.
If no one answers the phone, it really means they are not home.

I told my dear friend Riz about this. He is older than me, and said, “It’s Bush. Don’t talk to me about not blaming Bush for everything. The president sets the tone for the way the people act, period. Reagan brought the “Me Decade,” you remember that? It went like this: Cocaine, me, me, cocaine, me. Bush took that shit to a whole new level. It’s disgraceful.”
Then he said,
“Don’t get me started.”

I was too young to have a frame of reference when Reagan became president. I was a teenager and it was very important to me to act like I knew what was going on. The grownups around me were the ones who showed me how to show I knew what was going on. And I did cocaine a few times too. I never gained an understanding about cocaine.
It hurts your nose.
(“Oh no, not pure cocaine, honey, this is pure shit. It won’t hurt your nose.”
Yeah, right jackass. Snorting baby powder would hurt your nose. Noses aren’t engineered for snorting. They’re engineered for blowing and breathing.)
And it makes you talk like a fool for hours on end and then you stay awake for three days.
Mmmm, fun. Cocaine.
Anyway, I didn’t see the 80s as a grownup. I saw the 80s as an insecure teenager—who, at all costs, must not let on that I am in any way insecure because it will Ruin My Life if anyone finds out how terrified I truly am—trying to figure out how to make my way in this society.
Which was, evidently, the Me Society.
In much the same way that anyone under 30 probably has no frame of reference for good will, intergity and actual human engagement.
Humans are really amazing creatures. Give us 8 years of unmitigated bullshit and we will learn to accept that bullshit is human nature.
Yes, indeed, I am an olden timer, harkening back to days of yore, when folks might actually notice your presence because they aren’t text-messaging their cousin who is pregnant with her best friend’s boyfriend’s baby and nobody’s mom knows yet, and the sht iz gna slam d fan. Im sayn: sht-fukn-strm.

Bugliosi Fever

Growing up in California in the 1970s, Vincent Bugliosi was a name you heard almost every day. At least for a while—during the whole Charles Manson thing. Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the case, seeking a conviction for a man who was not present at either of the Tate-Labianca killings.
I guess people kinda like it when there are clear demarcations of good and bad. It resonates well with our cultural indoctrination to have a good guy and a bad guy. This really doesn't authentically happen often, though folks like to pretend it does. I used to have nightmares about Charles Manson and his creepy/abused cadre of hippie girls. Those crazy-assed eyes of his were terrifying, so it was very clear to me:
Manson = bad.
Bugliosi = good.

In my teens, I read Helter Skelter. It was impressive that Bugliosi wrote the whole book without a ghost-writer. It was also dignified, engaging and very clear to those of us not involved or interested in the law.
I wasn't like a fan or anything, but I did appreciate the man.

Now I am a fan.
He just came out with a new book, winningly entitled, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. I mean, really, impeachment is obviously for presidents who think up erotic uses for cigars and then lie about it.
Fucka impeachment.
This president is responsible for the death, rape, torture, displacement, injury and trauma of millions of people on the planet. Not to mention pillage of our economic infrastructure, but that is another crime.
Could possibly come up in civil court.

I am on the email list of this brilliant Jamacian journalist named John Maxwell. He sends out his articles as well as other stuff. So it was a couple weeks ago I get a link to a video interview with Bugliosi about trying Bush for murder. As this very thing is on the agenda of my daily prayer system, of course I hit the link.
It was very exciting to learn that Vincent Bugliosi wrote this book. It lays out the entire case. He did all the work for any prosecuting attorney in the U.S. with the courage to take it into the courtroom.
Oh dear god, did he really do this?
Yes, yes!
Vincent fucken Bugliosi did this!
One thing that really bothered me though, was he and the interviewer kept talking about the 4,000 U.S. soldiers who have lost their lives. I was like, "What about all the Iraqi folks, Vince? How can you not mention them? What about all the torture victims? The U.S. soldiers who have been raped and murdered by their alleged compatriots? C'mon, Vince."
It really bothered me, and kinda put a damper on the initial elation.
But then I got to thinking. Maybe Mr. Bugliosi is ACTUALLY sending a very clear message to the International Criminal Court. Could that be possible? Hmmm. Maybe he can't get convictions for people who aren't U.S. citizens? Maybe he is not a xenophobic piece of shit after all. Maybe he is, in fact, trying to get a international war crime conviction.
That would be delicious.
Ultra, velvety delicious.
And so yesterday it was confirmed that Vincent Bugliosi has done found himself another Charles Manson, except this one's cadre isn't creepy/abused hippie girls.
It's creepy/reptilian civilization-bringers.

Re; the possible xenophobia, a quote from an interview Michael Collins did with Bugliosi at smirkingchimp.com:

I spent a great amount of time at the L.A. County Law Library and the Ninth Circuit Library here in L.A. working on the issue of jurisdiction, because I realize that even if someone is guilty of murder, if you don't have jurisdiction to prosecute them, you don't have a case, really. I was unable to establish jurisdiction for the over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, children and babies who have died so far in Bush's war. He is guilty of those murders, but I could not establish jurisdiction against him for those murders. But I definitely established jurisdiction on a federal, state and local level to prosecute Bush for the murders of the 4,000 young American soldiers that have died so far in Iraq. ( http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/16353 )

Here is what he has to say about priorities of the U.S. justice system:

I was telling my wife a couple of days ago, I said, "You've heard about these cold case files," and she said, "Of course." And they even have a TV series, I guess, on it. But I've known about them for years down at the DA's office. Very commonly you'll have just one victim of a murder, just one victim, and you'll have a detective assigned to the case pursuing the killer for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and then after he retires, some other detective takes over. Some of these cases go on for 30, 35, 40 years. The Black Dahlia case in Los Angeles, I think, goes back in the ‘30s. They're still investigating it 75 years later. And frequently we read in the newspaper that the killer is found back East. He's living under an assumed name and he's brought back to Los Angeles and he's prosecuted. Just one victim and you have this detective tenaciously and endlessly pursuing this case.

So I said to her, "There may be as many as one million victims, not one victim, but one million victims in their cold graves right now decomposing as a result of George Bush's monumental crime." And I said to her -- "What person in authority on the face of this globe is representing these one million people in their graves, fighting to bring about justice for them, pursuing the person, the guilty person who put them there?" And she said, "You." And I said, "No, you didn't hear what I said. I said what person in authority is going after the killer of these million people?" I said, "I don't have the authority of an emaciated moth. I don't have any authority." ( http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/16353 )

And so the man is—like me, like many of us—obsessed. He wants someone to step up the the plate. He BUILT THE ENTIRE CASE already. When he was the prosecutor in Los Angeles, Vincent Bugliosi got 104 out of 105 convictions in the major cases he worked on. He knows the law. He knows crime and criminals. He is a bad ass.
So now, the act of willing Bush to prison for the crimes he has comitted is no longer part of my daily prayer system. Now I put all of that energy into forging Vincent Bugliosi along his merry way.
All in all, a much more positive focus.
Whee.

Super

I've been wondering about the whole SuperDelegate thing. Though I've been a stalwart voter since I was 18, this is the first election where SuperDelegates have come up so much. At least as far as I can recall. And everyone I ask hasn't ever heard of them either. When did these extra-special voters appear? Where did they come from? And why do their votes matter more than mine?

In 1903, a Republican Wisconsin governor, "Fighting Bob" La Follette set up primaries so that the voters votes actually mattered. He had an ax to grind, in his ongoing crusade to revamp the Republican Party. Back then, the party was divided between shady, criminal "Stalwarts" and progressive, anti-corporate "Insurgents." (Uhm, guess who ultimately prevailed.) I was not aware that the Republican Party once stood in complete opposition to the fools in charge right now, but then I never excelled at Poli-Sci, and so this is probably not a surprise to many people.
In any case, La Follette had been working on the way the elections took place for a long time, and it was his firmly held belief that the people motor and hum our free democracy along.

Here's a brief rendition from Wikipedia on how thing went for ol' Fighting bob:



In 1891, La Follette claimed that Philetus Sawyer, one of Wisconsin's Senators and a powerful Republican leader, attempted to bribe him in order to fix a case. The incident cemented La Follette’s resolve to reform the party. The party dissidents who joined La Follette became known as "Insurgents" (or the "Progressive" faction), and their opponents within the party were called the "Stalwarts". The Insurgents stressed the need for more direct voter control and championed consumer rights. The Insurgents' call for reform gained more support after the Panic of 1893 shook up the economic, class, and ethnic assumptions held by most Americans.
In 1894, the Insurgents began to openly challenge the Stalwarts for leadership of the Republican Party. The Insurgents’ Nils Haugen sought the party nomination for governor in 1894, and La Follette followed in 1896 and 1898. His speeches decrying the sway of big business (especially the railroads) and his call for a more direct democracy (including direct election of nominees in party primaries) drew ever larger crowds.

In 1900, La Follette formed a coalition that temporarily disrupted the Stalwart hold on the nomination process. After securing the nomination, he “traveled to sixty-one counties, gave 216 speeches and spoke to 200,000 people.” He gave many of his campaign speeches (which often lasted over three hours) from the back of a buckboard wagon. He won the 1900 race for governor by 100,000 votes.

From 1901 until 1906, La Follette served as Governor of Wisconsin. During his first term, he proposed to set up a railroad commission, impose an ad valorem tax on the railroad companies, and establish a direct primary system. The Stalwarts blocked his agenda, and he refused to compromise with them.

During the 1902 elections, the Stalwarts organized to oppose La Follette’s nomination and moved to block any reform legislation. La Follette began working to unite insurgent Democrats to form a broad coalition. He did manage to secure the passage of the primary bill and some revision to the railroad tax structure.

When the legislative session concluded, La Follette traveled throughout Wisconsin reading the “roll call”; that is, he read the votes of Stalwart Republicans to the people in an effort to elect Progressives. During this campaign, La Follette gained national attention when muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens began to cover his campaign.
With the press coverage and his successful re-election, La Follette rose to become a national figure. His message against “vast corporate combinations” attracted more journalists and more progressives.



It's kinda hard to imagine a politician of Fighting Bob's caliber thriving in today's political system.

So, back to SuperDelagates. They made their first appearance in the early 1980s. In 1992, Walter Mondale, one of the folks responsible for all this Superness—wrote an opinion piece in the NYT, letting readers know that while everyone is able to participate in our fine democracy, the participation of more knowledgable people matters MORE SUPERLY than the participation of your average citizen.
He wrote:

"The election is the business of the people. But the nomination is more properly the business of the parties. . . . The problem lies in the reforms that were supposed to open the nominating process. Party leaders have lost the power to screen candidates and select a nominee. The solution is to reduce the influence of the primaries and boost the influence of the party leaders. . . . The superdelegate category established within the Democratic Party after 1984 allows some opportunity for this, but should be strengthened."

Note the "but" after "The election is the business of the people." It was once pointed out to me that anything said after the word "but" is always, always a value judgement. According to this theory, the SuperDelegate system—and by extension our entire free democracy—is based on a value judgement.
Wheee! I heart tenuousness, don't you?
Let's harken back to Wikipedia, for a rundown on some of the issues important to Fighting Bob, the personification of the (according to Mondale) "reforms that were supposed to open the nominating process:"

As governor, La Follette championed numerous progressive reforms, including the first workers' compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. Senators, women's suffrage, and progressive taxation. He created an atmosphere of close cooperation between the state government and the University of Wisconsin in the development of progressive policy, which became known as the Wisconsin Idea. The Wisconsin Idea promoted the idea of grounding legislation on thorough research and expert involvement. To implement this program, La Follette began working with University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty. This made Wisconsin a “laboratory for democracy” and “the most important state for the development of progressive legislation”. As governor, La Follette signed legislation that created the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library (now Bureau) to ensure that a research agency would be available for the development of legislation.

And so, there you have it. SuperDelegates represent everything that is UnAmerican in our democracy, and Fighting Bob's fight appears to have been heartily, vindictively vanquished in the past 25 years.

*Thanks to Paul Rockwell at The San Jose Mercury for helping me understand this shit. His article appears at:
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8793401?nclick_check=1

Mean-Spirited Cowardly Bitches

I guess it's time to call out all the yellow-bellied blog bitches who demean my work because of that book "Love and Consequences."

A few years ago, I met a woman named Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer. She presented herself as a gang member from Los Angeles. She told me she was sexually abused by her older brother and, since her family was in denial about this, she was shunted into foster care. Her "birth father" was a member of the Quinalt tribe and her "birth mother" was white. When Peggy moved to Oregon, she went and visited her tribe. Her "bio dad" had shunned his Quinalt roots and she went to the rez to make good with her people. She received monthly checks because she was half native. The first time I met her, I was wearing a blue shirt. This is when she told me about being gang raped by Crips. I saw that the color blue deeply traumatized her, so I never wore blue around her again.
She showed me some of her writing about her life. She is a very good writer. I did an email intro between Peggy and Faye Bender, my agent. I have passed along other writer intros to Faye as well, but this one led to a book deal. As a published writer with an agent, I feel that it is good form to help out other writers when and if I can.

The weekend before last, Faye called me. She said, "Inga, I need you to sit down." This is when I found out that Peggy's entire life for the past decade is a lie. This elaborately constructed life/lie was in place long, long before Peggy ever gave me her writing. As far as I know, her daughter and baby-daddy also believe this life/lie. Everyone who has met her for the past ten years knows her to be the person she describes in the book.
Faye asked me if I would speak to a New York Times reporter. I agreed. Big mistake. Now my name was associated with a highly seasoned pathological liar. Worse, two anecdotes from Peggy's life/lie made it into Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. (Two free Cunt stickers to the first 10 people who can find them!) And so now a whole slew of bloggers and blog commentors have taken it upon themselves to attack me, personally.

You know, it is really easy for people to sit in front of their computers and say whatever they want. There is absolutely no accountability because these folks are, largely, anonymous. Generally also having no experience writing books, their critiques of the publishing process is completely retarded. (Retard means to negate growth. Don't email me and tell me I am disrespecting mentally-different thinkers who should never be referred to as retarded in the first place.) AFTER Faye Bender told me I need to sit down, I, like every other human being Margaret Seltzer has met in the past ten years, was THEN afforded the luxury that the mean-spirited bloggers came into the situation already knowing. People have no call to judge me, my work or anyone else involved with Love and Concequences.
Some bitches attack Sarah McGrath, the editor. Here's a little insight. Peggy and I spoke frequently throughout the three years she was working on the book. Not long after the James Frey scandal busted out, she calls me all pissed off. Sarah was "grilling" her about the veracity of her book and Peggy was absolutely indignant.
Furious.
Outraged.
I told her that Sarah HAD to do that. It wasn't personal.
Sarah McGrath is not stupid, lazy or irresponsible. She had the exact same experience as everyone else Peggy Seltzer came into contact with. Damn fools piss me off, talking shit. Casting a pall on this woman's career for a few days of gleeful meanness, like bullies on the playground.
Dear lord we're an immature folk.
People have the gayest time ridiculing James Frey's publisher, Nan Talese, because she said, "“I don’t think there is any way you can fact-check every single book. It would be very insulting and divisive in the author-editor relationship.”
THIS IS TRUE.
It is not fodder for completely uninformed ridicule.
My relationship with my editor is intimate. A good editor is equal parts therapist, police and dominatrix. And the policing a good editor does, is not around "fact checking." They police your potential, and pull your very best out of you. There is just no place in that relationship for the editor to sit back and wonder, "Hmmm, maybe this writer is a sociopathic pathological liar and I should spend a day playing private investigator."
If I found out my editor was checking into my background, I would be horrified and very distrustful during all future interactions. This does not make for a good book. Now, of course, checking public records will become a routine matter, and will hopefully be the task of ANYONE other than the editor.

Around the same time all this was happening, the media and internet went wild over how "fat" Lisa Marie Presley was. I have always felt bad for Lisa Marie Presley. People are forever scrutinizing the woman's life and comparing her to her dad. It must really suck. A couple days after everyone had SO MUCH FUN saying mean and unnecessary things about her, she issued an angry statement, announcing her pregnancy. No one apologized or said, "Fuck man, that was really shitty of us to say such mean things about you."
I swear to god I am just freaking about how mean people are. What's to gain? Are people so hurt that they need to compensate by saying mean things about others?
Oh wait. I should stop.
I can see the bloggers can now be mean to me by saying I am comparing myself to Lisa Marie Presley. Oh, goodie, that's right! I am bloated with a sense of self-importance and must corraborate this by putting myself in the same social strata as The King's Daughter.
Why are people so mean and cowardly? I mean, really, why? Is this a collective consciousness thing? A social repercussion of the anonymity of the internet? Isn't that why pedophiles and other sexual predators love the internet to much? We all know that pedophiles and sexual predators are the biggest cowards taking space on the planet.
I feel very beat up and attacked by all of the mean things people have written, so this is certainly another form of predatory and abusive behavior.
What is up with all this shitass behavior in our culture?

Definition of Democracy

I came across this article written by Naomi Wolf for the Guardian. It seems awfully fitting in light of the U.S. government's undermining, sabotaging opposition to Venezuela's idea of democracy:


Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

Naomi Wolf
Tuesday April 24, 2007

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329789179-110878,00.html

Those Pesky Constitutional Referendums

The U.S. news keeps talking about how the referendum is all about Chavez keeping power indefinitely. I haven't found one direct quote saying this was the case. I have, however found this description of the referendum:


The reason for the popular majority is found in a few of the key amendments: One article expedites land expropriation facilitating re-distribution to the landless and small producers. Chavez has already settled over 150,000 landless workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides universal social security coverage for the entire informal sector (street sellers, domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40% of the labor force. Organized and unorganized workers’ workweek will be reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction in pay. Open admission and universal free higher education will open greater educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments will allow the government to by-pass current bureaucratic blockage of the socialization of strategic industries, thus creating greater employment and lower utility costs. Most important, an amendment will increase the power and budget of neighborhood councils to legislate and invest in their communities.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7470

Neighborhood councils, by the way, are groups of folks who legislate with and politically represent their community. Anyone can join, there are no age limits, as far as I know. These councils are also responsible for the writing all these constitutional amendments we keep hearing about.

If you hop onto Yahoo News, you will see that a bunch of university students are violently protesting in opposition to the referendum. In that well-known memo from the CIA, the writer is almost glowing with pride because they have secured university students for "uprisings." Well, the kids are all from private universities. And you might have noticed the part above where is says "free higher education will open greater educational opportunities for lower class students." All those kids protesting are pissed of wealthy brats who do not want poor kids invading their schools. You can betcher sweet ass that is how the CIA sold them an uprising.

Goin' After Hugo (Prize offer at the end of this post)

This is going to be a long and involved post. It starts out with a movie called "The Revolution Will Not be Televised." If you haven't seen it already, before reading on, go here:


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144


Even though Hugo Chavez is my #1 friend on myspace, there are problems with the man. The Zapatistas, who serve as the Northern Star on my moral compass have some very serious contentions with him.
As do the indigenous people of Venezuela:

Last 19th July, during the 2nd meeting of the Zapatista People with the Peoples of the World, the “wayuus” indigenous people of Venezuela criticized the Bolivarian government of Chavez, accusing him of implementing Neoliberal policies on indigenous territories, and using manipulation and a double discourse, in what they consider a genocide of the indigenous cultures in Venezuela. "The representatives of the State, have pacted with the Imperialist transnationals to give them oil, mining, and gas concessions against the will of the indigenous communities of Venezuela”.
(http://redamazon.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/chavez-holds-the-controversial-south-gas-pipeline-project/)

Chavez represents a population, that's what I like about him. That's it, plain and simple. Perhaps at this point in history, he is getting fat and hungry on power, but the model of government he leads is one that would well serve almost any population on the planet. It is a one-size-fits-all model for social democracy - a democracy that involves society on every level. When I saw "the Revolution Will Not be Televised" I got SO JEALOUS of people carrying around their constitution in their pockets. I could not even imagine a democracy where the citizens read their constitution and kept it onhand. This close proximity probably has to do with the fact that every article of their constitution was voted on by referendum. Every voting citizen in Venezuela was potentially personally invested in the creation of their constitution. I cannot imagine such a thing in my country. And certainly, my government does not want me imagining such things, either. I am not Samuel Adams and this is not the 1770s. Democracy has already been created here in the U.S. and who do I think I am that I could tinker with the ideas of my forefathers? Get back to work. There are to be no more imaginings from my quarter.

Stan Goff sent me one of his recent articles and it inspired me to set up this little Hugo Chavez Primer.
Here's that article:


A CIA plan to destabilize Venezuela...
by Stan G
Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 03:04:05 PM PST

Stan G's diary :: ::
...is in progress right now.

A memo from CIA officer Michael Middleton Steere, addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington DC, has been intercepted by Venezuelan counter-intelligence; and it shows that the US plans to attempt another coup d'etat against the democratically elected government of Venezuela on the eve of a historic constitutional referendum that will democratize political power to the grassroots of the majority more thoroughly than anything we have seen in this hemisphere... ever. This outcome by a major oil producing nation that has confronted the US government is intolerable to the American political class, not merely the Bush administration. It is part of a continental drift of Latin America away from US domination; and it has world historic significance.

It is very important that this CIA plot get maximum exposure immediately across the net, because the US media, the Republican and Democratic Parties, and the US dominant class, will do everything in their power to assist the desired outcome of this illegal and immoral interference by the United States government in the democratic self-determination of Venezuela.

Widespread, rapid distribution via alternative media has the potential to expose and disrupt this CIA plot. You can do something right now. Get the word out.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/28/18227/641


So I read the article that Stan referred to. I'm pasting it below, but there are some photos (I do not know how to post photos or make hyperlinks) of a teevee grab saying that Chavez has been killed that on this link:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7475


CIA Operation "Pliers" Uncovered in Venezuela
Psyop aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow President Chavez

by Eva Golinger
Global Research, November 28, 2007
venezuelanalysis.com


Last night CNN en Español aired the above image, which captions at the bottom "Who Killed him?" by "accident". The image of President Chavez with the caption about killing him below, which some could say subliminally incites to assassination, was a "production error" mistakenly made in the CNN en Español newsroom. The news anchor had been narrarating a story about the situation between Colombia and Venezuela and then switched to a story about an unsolved homicide but - oops - someone forgot to change the screen image and President Chavez was left with the killing statement below. Today they apologized and admitted it was a rather "unfortunate" and "regrettable" mistake. Yes, it was.

On a scarier note, an internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela. The memo summarizes the different scenarios that the CIA has been working on in Venezuela for the upcoming referendum vote on December 2nd. The Electoral Scenario, as it's phrased, confirms that the voting tendencies will not change substantially before Sunday, December 2nd, and that the SI (YES) vote in favor of the constitutional reform has an advantage of about 10-13 points over the NO vote. The CIA estimates abstention around 60% and states in the memo that this voting tendency is irreversible before the elections.

Officer Steere emphasizes the importance and success of the public relations and propaganda campaign that the CIA has been funding with more than $8 million during the past month - funds that the CIA confirms are transfered through the USAID contracted company, Development Alternatives, Inc., which set up operations in June 2002 to run the USAID Office for Transition Initiatives that funds and advises opposition NGOs and political parties in Venezuela. The CIA memo specifically refers to these propaganda initiatives as "psychological operations" (PSYOPS), that include contracting polling companies to create fraudulent polls that show the NO vote with an advantage over the SI vote, which is false. The CIA also confirms in the memo that it is working with international press agencies to distort the data and information about the referendum, and that it coordinates in Venezuela with a team of journalists and media organized and directed by the President of Globovision, Alberto Federico Ravell.

CIA Officer Michael Steere recommends to General Michael Hayden two different strategies to work simultaneously: Impede the referendum and refuse to recognize the results once the SI vote wins. Though these strategies appear contradictory, Steere claims that they must be implemented together precisely to encourage activities that aim toward impeding the referendum and at the same time prepare the conditions for a rejection of the results.

How is this to be done?

In the memo, the CIA proposes the following tactics and actions:

*Take the streets and protest with violent, disruptive actions across the nation
*Generate a climate of ungovernability
*Provoke a general uprising in a substantial part of the population
*Engage in a "plan to implode" the voting centers on election day by encouraging opposition voters to "VOTE and REMAIN" in their centers to agitate others
*Start to release data during the early hours of the afternoon on Sunday that favor the NO vote (in clear violation of election regulations)
*Coordinate these activities with Ravell & Globovision and international press agencies
*Coordinate with ex-militar officers and coupsters Pena Esclusa and Guyon Cellis - this will be done by the Military Attache for Defense and Army at the US Embassy in Caracas, Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO)
*To encourage rejection of the results, the CIA proposes:
*Creating an acceptance in the public opinion that the NO vote will win for sure
*Using polling companies contracted by the CIA
*Criticize and discredit the National Elections Council
*Generate a sensation of fraud
*Use a team of experts from the universities that will talk about how the data from the Electoral Registry has been manipulated and will build distrust in the voting system
*The CIA memo also talks about:
*Isolating Chavez in the international community
*Trying to achieve unity amongst the opposition
*Seek an aliance between those abstentionists and those who will vote "NO"
*Sustain firmly the propaganda against Chavez
*Execute military actions to support the opposition mobilizations and propagandistic occupations
*Finalize the operative preparations on the US military bases in Curacao and Colombia to provide support to actions in Venezuela
*Control a part of the country during the next 72-120 hours
*Encourage a military rebellion inside the National Guard forces and other components

Those involved in these actions as detailed in the CIA memo are:

The CIA Office in Venezuela - Office of Regional Affairs, and Officer Michael Steere
US Embassy in Venezuela, Ambassador Patrick Duddy
Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO) at the US Embassy in Caracas and Military Attache Richard Nazario
Venezuelan Political Parties:
Comando Nacional de la Resistencia
Accion Democratica
Primero Justicia
Bandera Roja

Media:

Alberto Federico Ravell & Globovision
Interamerican Press Society (IAPA) or SIP in Spanish
International Press Agencies

Venezuelans:

Pena Esclusa
Guyon Cellis
Dean of the Simon Bolivar University, Rudolph Benjamin Podolski
Dean of the Andres Bello Catholic University, Ugalde

Students: Yon Goicochea, Juan Mejias, Ronel Gaglio, Gabriel Gallo, Ricardo Sanchez

Operation Tenaza has the objective of encouraging an armed insurrection in Venezuela against the government of President Chavez that will justify an intervention of US forces, stationed on the military bases nearby in Curacao and Colombia. The Operation mentions two countries in code: as Blue and Green. These refer to Curacao and Colombia, where the US has operative, active and equipped bases that have been reinforced over the past year and a half in anticipation of a conflict with Venezuela.

The document confirms that psychological operations are the CIA's best and most effective weapon to date against Venezuela, and it will continue its efforts to influence international public opinion regarding President Chavez and the situation in the country.

Operation Tenaza is a very alarming plan that aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow (again) its legitimate and democratic (and very popularly support) president. The plan will fail, primarily because it has been discovered, but it must be denounced around the world as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela's sovereignty.



So here we have a very detailed plot to upset the coming constitutional referendum vote and hopefully oust/kill Hugo Chavez in the process. But this is the thing about Venezuela that the white imperialists have the dangedest time understanding: Hugo Chavez has been a very important factor in the creation of a deomcratic model. He is a factor, nonetheless. If the CIA and corporate and political interests kill/oust him, the people will rise up, as was evidenced in "The Revolution Will Not be Televised." It is a government by the people and they are quite happy with its possibilities. If Chavez dies, someone representing the same model will simply replace him.

Hopefully you've watched the movie and read all this information and thought about it. Your assignment now, is to read the following article and recontextualize by utilizing everything you've just taken in.
The first person to email me a compelling analysis of the U.S. government influenced article below will receive a bunch of Cunt stickers.


Venezuela threatens to expel US official

By EDISON LOPEZ, Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 29, 1:18 AM ET

Venezuela threatened Wednesday to expel a U.S. Embassy official for allegedly conspiring to defeat a referendum championed by President Hugo Chavez, accusing the diplomat of plotting to sway public opinion.

The allegation comes ahead of a fiercely contested referendum on reforms that would allow Chavez indefinite re-election and help him establish a socialist state in Venezuela. Sunday's vote has generated large pro- and anti-Chavez rallies and Chavez kept the rhetoric high on Wednesday by repeating his charge that Washington is plotting to kill him.

In Caracas, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro showed state television a document that he claimed was written by the unnamed embassy official and was to have been sent to the CIA as part of a plan to help ensure that Venezuelans vote against the proposed constitutional overhaul.

"It's a script from the CIA to try to generate a block of opinion among Venezuelans that would give a sure victory to the 'No' vote," said Maduro. "We will investigate and if it's that way, we'll remove this person from here as a persona non grata."

He did not provide more details of the alleged plot.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said he was unaware of the document.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said officials there were looking into the reports.

Chavez, an ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has had a friction-filled relationship with Washington. The Venezuelan leader accuses the U.S. of supporting a 2002 coup that ousted him from office for two days, while U.S. officials call Chavez threat to the region's stability.

In February 2006, Venezuela expelled naval attache John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Chavez accused the CNN news network of "inciting" an assassination attempt against him. On Wednesday, Chavez said Washington is also seeking to kill him — a claim he has made in the past.

"Before the world, I accuse the imperialist government of the United States of promoting my assassination," Chavez told supporters in the southwestern city of Merida. "If anything should happen to me, the president of the United States will be responsible for my death."

U.S. officials have in the past denied they are plotting to assassinate Chavez.

In Sunday's referendum, Venezuelans will vote on proposed changes to 69 amendments of the nation's 1999 constitution. If approved, the revisions would allow Chavez indefinite re-election, create forms of communal property and further his plans to establish socialism in Venezuela.

On Wednesday, hundreds of stone-throwing students clashed with police and the Venezuelan National Guard in a protest against the constitutional overhaul. Security forces responded with water cannons and tear gas.

At least 600 students from the private Metropolitan University took part in disturbances that lasted more than four hours.

"We're doing this because we're sick of Chavez, sick of his government, sick of the way he governs," said Roberto, who covered his face, leaving only his eyes visible. He gave only his first name because he feared reprisals from the security forces.

On Monday, a man was shot to death after he tried to cross a protest, near the city of Valencia. Chavez blamed violent elements within the opposition for the killing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071129/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_constitution_19&printer=1;_ylt=AtBEqvT2NR1_nD02xYhMmm69IxIF

Predator Control Project

I had this crazy dream last night. I was a production assistant on a strange talkshow, so I was a viewer, but I was also the host of the show. It was kinda like a PBS fundraiser show, but way different. There were so many vivid and odd details too. Here is how I remember it from the host’s point of view:

Welcome to the Predator Control Project!
Here at PCP, we are working hard to keep America beautiful, and to protect our glorious homeland. For our inaugural hunt this fall, we’re thrilled to announce the following bounties and fair game:

Anyone who sends us the severed left leg of Alaska governor Sarah Palin and/or any of her kin-not to exceed more than 25% of her family’s overall population-will receive 150.00 in cash.
Also, you are free to use low-flying aircraft and helicopters when hunting Governor Palin and her family.
In the case of Idaho governor Butch “Butcher” Otter, PCP-Idaho does not have the allotted state funding to pay you, but the thrill is still yours for a lifetime. Also, according to state law, you must leave 10 breeding pairs of Otter or Otter-descended kin. How you work that out amongst yourselves is entirely up to you.
In Wyoming, you are allowed to shoot anti-wolf lawmakers on sight, but again,. State funding has not yet alloted a bounty prize. We’ll assume you know who to contact to get this on your state’s budget.

Hunting Tips:

* It is most fun to run the individual family members into utter exhaustion, and then fill ‘em up with lead. This is always best achieved with aerial power. If aerial hunting is against the law in your state, hook up with some lobbyists, cause it won’t be difficult to get a bill passed. Within reason, of course. You can’t expect to hover over the Otter kids’ school in yer MI-8MA helicopter.
* In general, to get the most out of your hunt, it is important to have a basic understanding of all the state laws. Bleeding heart humanitarians, unfortunately, raise a hullabaloo and ruin everyone’s hunting experience with their protests and petitions. Know the laws, and always abide by them when you know you can’t grease any palms to break them.
*Wear protective clothing. In some cases, the police might want to shoot back to protect the various officials. We always wear bullet proof everything, Kevlar, shatterproof plexiglass goggles and a serious, serious helmet. Sure, it’s an investment, but the thrill of the hunt and the endless joy of displaying the trophies in your home or office pay out in emotional dividends for years to come. We know this sounds corny in a way, and we’re a heckuva bunch of softies, but anyone who has killed one of these hated predators knows what we’re talking about.
* Lip balm, lip balm, lip balm. Get the good stuff. You’ll thank the lord you did.
*Maintain an open line of communication with your PCP base camp. They must know your coordinates at all times. If you get lost, or your life is endangered, your only hope of survival is your base camp. Do not fuck up on this one.
* Bring high protein snacks. Hunting takes an enormous amount of stamina, focus, willpower and drive. You need to keep the fuel pumping through yer vains if you want to be successful.
* This is not a competition. If you can’t bag a kill without endangering yourself or others, then don’t do it. Your fellow hunters will respect you more for the quality of your hunt, not the quantity of your trophy pile.

To sign up for a guided PCP hunt, or for our information packet to organize your own, go to www.defenders.org
For a great article on the Predator Control Project, go to: http://www.adn.com/front/story/9253882p-9168881c.html

Looking forward to seeing you on the always happy hunting grounds!

Fucken crazy dream, huh?
This is when the lights all dimmed on the stage and the director yelled “CUT! IT’S A WRAP!” and my production assistant-self started running around, wrapping up electrical cords and gathering coffee cups and then I woke up.

Sex Tapes

Here is a headline from the Associated Press:

Girl seen on sex tape found safe

Here is one from CNN.com:

Search for sex tape victim

United Press International:

Girl on sex tape found, police seek man

Las Vegas Sun:

Girl in sex tape found unhurt, fugitive named suspect in assault

When Paris Hilton, Shannon Dougherty, Rob Lowe, Pamela Anderson et al, have sex and someone videotapes it, the result is very much something we can comfortably call a sex tape.

When a three year old child is raped and the rapist videotapes it, the result is not a sex tape. It is a recording of a child being raped. Raping children is a crime that frequently occurs in the U.S. One out of 4 children under the aged of sixteen are sexually molested in this country. Why the FUCK would anyone call a video of a child—A TODDLER—being horribly raped “a sex tape”?
Where is the sex?
These headlines are almost as sickening as the crime, itself. The fact that the media feel comfortable referring to this as a “sex tape” is a very good indication of why this crime against humanity is so widespread and under-punished. If you can think of a three year old child in the same sentence as “sex tape,” sweet jesus, you got problems no less worthy of incarceration than predators and pedophiles.
And people read this shit without batting an eyelash. I got a Johnny Cash song in my head for headline writers and pedohiles tonight:

You can run on for a long time,
Run on for a long time,
Run on for a long time,
Sooner, or later, God'll cut you down.
Sooner, or later, God'll cut you down.

Lookin dang forward to that.

The Age of Atlantica: As Goes Mexico, so Goes the US and Canada

Reprinted with permission from www.narconews.com

The End of Sovereignty and Democracy Tolls for Upstate New York, Northern New England, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces, and, Soon, for Boston and NYC Too

By Al Giordano Special to The Narco News Bulletin

June 6, 2007

Workers and farmers in the United States and Canada have been largely kept in the dark about the tragedy unleashed on their counterparts in Mexico with the 1994 entrance of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But the same all-out screwing is about to happen to them.

An alliance of big business owners is openly plotting the economic Mexicanization of an important region of the Northeast US and Eastern Canada. They call their new world “Atlantica,” and have imposed their borders around it as if drawing a new “country” on a Risk game board. Here’s the map of “their” new country, not one founded upon democratic decisions, but with orders barked from an unelected elite of corporate flunkies whose only law is to maximize profits for the owners. Maybe you can see your house or job, or that of family members and friends, on their map:

If you live or work there, you will soon no longer be a Mainer, a Vermonter, an upstate New Yorker, a Québécois, a Nova Scotian, a Newfoundlander, a Prince Edward Islander or a citizen of New Brunswick or New Hampshire. You have been conscripted into a new kind of citizenship that comes without any of the freedoms that you thought were your birthright. You shall be – by big business decree – an “Atlantican.”

Democracy’s End Game

“Atlantica exists,” claims Charles Cirtwill, president of the Atlantic Instituteof Market Studies (or AIMS, the business-backed ideologicalarchitect of the Atlantica scheme), “whether we want it or not.”

Cirtwill, in his column last month in the Halifax daily Chronicle-Herald, insisted, “there is no referendum to vote down, no constitutional convention to