I Hope It's Warm Outside

It's nearly noon. I showered, sipped my first cup of coffee, and am leaving Hillary's to go too Barricuda's for more coffee and eggs. As we get ready to go, I'm centering myself, moving forward, and preparing to enjoy the day. The Senate is arguing over the economic stimulus package, Iraqis have finished at the polls, the U.S. military is leaving Iraq and entering an escallated era of occupation in Afghanistan. This morning, I'm happy, ready to ground myself in the movie I'm working on, the articles I'm writing, and the day-in-day-out work of programming TV. I hope it's warm outside, but even if not, I'm rekindling an inner warmth, a sense of joy and liberation, a desire to move beyond the chaos of the mundane towards the tranquility and possibility of radical renewal. I love so many people in the world and struggle to love so many others. I recommitt myself to try.

GROWWWWWLLLLLL!

The silhouette of the Front Range basks in creamcicle orange. T-Pain is blasting You Can Have Whatever You Like and I'm thinking about the future, wishing his words were true. Though it's great to have Bush out of office, I'm nervous about the Democrats in power. According to the ACLU, 50% of the Constitution is violated in The USA Patriot Act. Will the Dems violate the other 50? Will they finally close Guantanamo? Will they release all the children detained as "enemy combatants?" Will Afghanistan be destroyed, again, and again, and again? What about the Palestinian people? What about those rotting in prison?

So many people feel that Obama's election can repair our relations with the hundreds of countries we've destroyed and alienated. I fear the blow-back has yet to come from 8 years of Bush.

At a very basic level, I'm feeling cranky at the Left for its failures to stop the War in Iraq and its failures to stop the war against Afghanistan.

Growwwwwllllllllll!

Monster U.S. -- Leave Iran Alone!

According to the New York Times The Bush Administration continues swaggering about defending Israel from an attack by Iran--the provocation--weapons testing. Now, call me batty, but I think the U.S. has a substantial history of weapons testing, and not just in the desert but on civilian populations. Having tested 1063 nuclear bombs, we have a long history of ecological devastation and military bravado in tests that far exceed Iran's handful. As the only country to drop a nuclear bomb on civilians, as a country with a military budget 96.8 times larger than Iran's and still incapable of fighting the Iraqi Resistance, the United States needs to look in the mirror before talking about other countries threatening the world.

A few U.S. Military facts from Global Issues:

* US military spending accounts for 48 percent, or almost half, of the world’s total military spending
* US military spending is more than the next 46 highest spending countries in the world combined
* US military spending is 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran.
* US military spending is almost 55 times the spending on the six “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) whose spending amounts to around $13 billion, maximum. (Tabulated data does not include four of the six, as the data only lists nations that have spent over 1 billion in the year, so their budget is assumed to be $1 billion each)
* US spending is more than the combined spending of the next 45 countries.
* The United States and its strongest allies (the NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia) spend $1.1 trillion on their militaries combined, representing 72 percent of the world’s total.
* The six potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together account for about $205 billion or 29% of the US military budget.

Clearly, if one wants to look for today's totalitarian regime, the United States is the obvious culprit. Please, let's keep the U.S. hands off Iran.

The Democratic Cannibals and 2-Party Rhetorical Gas

Dissatisfied with the corporate take-over of politics, the oppressive nature of the United States government, and the war in Iraq, many people have objected to both the Democratic and Republican Parties. While Obama has raised hope for change for many and Clinton has allegedly, though not to my knowledge, been something of a policy hack, the truth is both candidates and the Democratic Party have supported the Iraq War and after spending their terms in the Democratic Majority Senate cannibalizing the people of Iraq, they are now eating each other. In this dire situation, were one candidate to step up and articulate a legitimately progressive viewpoint challenging the vast destruction of corporations, the prison industrial complex, and the racist profiling that police continuously engage in, the election might be interesting. Rather, we have an election filled with empty rhetoric and at the end of the day will be left again with an election that will change very little. I hope I am wrong. Somebody in office will have to prove it.

What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?

After watching a number of the Winter Soldier Hearings, I found myself, once again, standing outside the Colorado State Capital at a lackluster peace rally wondering, "why this, again?" According to The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 3988 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Over one-hundred have died from suicide, tens of thousands have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been murdered, countless injured, the soil irrevocably contaminated by depleted uranium, and the people traumatized. Over a third of the U.S. homeless population are veterans and rates of post-traumatic stress disorder have sky rocketed leaving hundreds of thousands of young people forever scarred by Iraq. No need to review the senselessness of this war, the lies that provoked it, the wealthy who send poor Americans to die for oil.

We need to bring the war home. People in the United States need to feel it. Peace vigils fail to bring attention to the horror of the situation. We need the rage and trauma of war to ring through the streets shattering the illusion that "everything's ok." We need politicians and businessmen, the catalysts of destruction, to quiver in fear of the people. Too many corpses, too much violence, too many victims. We need to demand joy, peace, and tranquility, but not without justice. The fight is on. Which side will we be on?

America - Predator, Child Violator

Last night, in a particularly grizzly turn of an otherwise good conversation, my friend and I began to talk about mainstream America's obsession with childhood abuse memoirs--particularly stories of incest, rape, and domestic violence. She argued that people who read such stories may very well be getting off on them, using them as child-pornography. We then proceeded to discuss the obsession with pedophilia, sex crimes, and rape in the mainstream media and how such reporting keeps the public distracted from naming a greater perpetrator of violence against children--the United States government. While a serial rapist may violate and even kill dozens of victims, the United States government is responsible for the death of millions of children--surely a crime greater than rape. While the news obsesses over Internet Pedophiles, corporations lobby for loser environmental standards that cause birth defects, cancer, lowered birth-rates, and premature death. Rather than assisting the victims of such corporate crimes, the current government argues that while billions can be spent regularly on war, health-care for children is not a priority.

The issue of state violence against children is not limited to the current Republican Party. It is important to remember Madelaine Albright's quote on 60 Minutes about the U.S., Democrat sponsored sanctions on Iraq:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

The horror of our present political situation is that the crimes of America dwarf the relatively insignificant and personally brutal and devastating crimes of pedophile rapists. We must demand that the media prioritize attacking the perpetrators of global campaigns of violence against children, whether through sweatshops, bombs, sanctions, or environmental destruction, over the relatively less significant, quasi-pornographic reporting of every-day sex offenders.

Alive In Baghdad

Brian Conley has set up an incredible site, Alive in Baghdad, where people from Iraq speak about there lives. What I love about this project is that instead of getting into the broad abstractions corporate media thrives on, the user simply encounters people trying to live their lives in a time of war. This project is an incredible example of the power of Video Blogging.