A nice collection

See, among other things...

F911 in full
Going Upriver in full
Kerry Vietnam testimony
911 panel testimony

Sloppy form, too...

Nope, he's not scratching his nose. TX Gov. Bush showing his true frat boy charm. I hope his God isn't watching (and by that I mean the public polls and Karl Rove). You saw it here first...er... here, first. Watch the full video.

Derrida's Ghost

Here's a little bit from "Signature Event Context" - printed both in Margins of Philosophy and Limited Inc (p. 8):

"To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say 'my future disappearance,' it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful, of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to 'act' and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead, or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written 'in his name.'"

We Make the News

What strikes me most about the O'Reily scandal is not the delicious hypocrisy. Neither is it the hilarity of the falafel comment. What gets me is the fact that the sensationalism of the news, like a strain of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, has finally made it all the way up the food chain. We're not talking the salacious predicaments of OJ or Bill Clinton (people the news media spent too much time talking about). Now we have CNN and MSNBC covering a competing network's anchorperson. The news cycle has fully collapsed. There's no more representational space. The 24-hour networks are three points on a twirling merry-go-round. (Dan Rather doesn't count as that concerned something other than a studio soap opera.) I'm polemicizing, yes, but I think this story marks a watershed of media self-reflexivity and a certain cult of celebrity. I also want to point out the idea that the figurehead of a large corporate media outfit has replaced the figurehead of a nation as the out-of-control alpha-male who must be chastened. This leads me to think that a certain velvet revolution has transpired under our noses.

Turns out it's all a game...

What's with all this "Monday morning quarterback" talk? No more flip-flopping or Massachusettes liberal. That's old news. Now the Iraq war is a football game. Okay. Man, when the administration decides to run with a phrase, they really hammer it. At least you can tell which pundits on the news receive talking points directly from the oval office. And you know who in the blogosphere listens to AM radio and Fox News, both of which treat the war like a football game. That's handy, I suppose.



Election coverage is about as fever-pitched, foaming, and anheuristic as it's ever been. I'm always astonished that for all the criticism that my academic friends dish out regarding the "horse-race" mentality of the news, their discussions among themselves sound no different. I think it has to do with a vague sense that our birthright as "rhetorical critics" is being stolen. Or maybe it's about the destruction of democracy as we know it. One or the other.

You know we have reached a precious stage of instantanous campaigning, real-time dial polling, and on-the-spot punditry when this game, The Political Machine, can be billed as an "educational tool." In this simulation, the candidate's ideology and stand on the issues are replaced with more wieldy elements: charisma, comeliness, compassion, credibility, experience, etc. Maybe it's for those who have grown out of Dungeons and Dragons (John Kerry, 3 hit points!). If you feel in this election that you are choosing between two quickly-drawn cartoon characters, try out this feeling out in a more suitable environment. If you think I'm being cynical about the campaign process, just look at this game.

They're Not There

Try on this ad from Operation Truth. 7000 U.S. soldiers wounded. 1000+ killed.

Hotsy Totsy

It occurs to me that the the phrase "painted into a corner" is nonsense. For it to qualify as a legitimate expression, it needs to be not only plausible, but common. Yet for all the painting I have done - and all the painting I know my family and friends to have done - I cannot think of one instance where someone has gotten into a fix and painted him/herself into a corner. I can hardly stand to imagine it actually occurring. The excruciating inevitability of the ensuing joke is just too much for me to stomach. The fact that the above situation is so unbearable testifies to my point. The phrase is a "thorn in my side," which is, by way of example, much more palatable for reasons now obvious. I continue to hold that no one has ever literally painted him/herself into a corner. If you know otherwise - even if you are from Singapore (and a great deal of this blog's readers are, strangely) - please email me, and set me straight. Perhaps the conundrum is more likely in places that lack the idiom. I should think so, though I'm certainly not wishing it on anyone.

While I'm at it, I don't want anyone using the phrase "It's that kind of thing" as a descriptor ever again. Example: "I just came from a cocktail party where everyone refused to make eye contact. You know, it was that kind of thing." No matter what you're describing, it's always "that kind of thing." It cannot logically be otherwise! So, no more of that kind of thing, please.

Let it be known that I still very much do like the phrase "hotsy totsy," though.

A Glitch in the Matrix

Iraqi puppet prime minister Iyad Allawi was being interviewed on Fox News yesterday. They were asking him real hardball questions like "Doesn't it make you angry that people are calling you a puppet when you are risking your life every day for your country?" and "There are some people in America who would like it if Hussein were still in power. What do you say to these people?" Allawi went on to parrot, in the most thinly-veiled manner, the administration talking points he'd been given. No big secret. This echo effect has been lampooned by everyone from Chis Matthews to John Stewart.

Here's what caught my attention. Fox News has a little capsule at the bottom of their cluttered screens that features a one-sentence summary of the talking head so that people can watch TV in noisy bars. The capsule showed "Allawi: We're all in this together" BEFORE he delivered the sound bite. I looked up for the "LIVE" icon in front of the flapping flag at the top of the screen, and there it was. I know Fox can be ostentatious, but I've never seen them show this much of their vast-right-wing-conspiracy slip before.

One Bear, Many Wolves

In swing states, Bush is running an ad that visually compares the threat of future terrorism to a pack of wolves roaming about (the edge of a rancher's field?). It's great. The ad is a take-off of one Reagan aired in 1984 that compared the communist threat to a big black bear. "The bear may be friendly or it may be dangerous. Isn't it wise to be stronger than the bear?" - or somesuch. The wolves, on the other hand, "are looking for signs of weakness." (I didn't know the WTC and the Pentagon were "signs of weakness" - quite the opposite.) The switch in biological metaphor reminds me of something said by an American general at the close of the Cold War - that at the fall of the Soviet Bloc we would see "a million poisonous snakes issue forth from the belly of the slain dragon." I think a rereading of Deleuze and Guattari's essay "One or Many Wolves?" in A Thousand Plateaus is in order.

Here's what the wolves themselves have to say about it: Wolf Packs for Truth!

But back to bears... Whereas the image of Russian bears tends to float for me, evoking images of the circus or the "bear market" of Soviet-style communism, the pack-of-wolves image locks in tight like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Whereas bears infiltrate your neighborhood, scare your children, maul Czechoslovakia, and rummage through the garbage like homeless beatniks looking for a handout, wolves aren't particularly threatening. That is, unless you do either one of two things to the metaphor. The wolves are threatening if they are trying to destroy your property (i.e. the terrorists are just spitefully envious of our wealth). Better yet, the wolves are out to get YOU - one of the livestock. Luckily, a rancher is there to help. He knows a little bit more about wolves than you, a lowly ruminant, do. And ruminants do not need a Bill of Rights. They just need to feel safe so that they're fat and happy come slaughter. (To this I say, "Four legs good; two legs baaaaad!) This second option has even more metaphoric-enthymematic punch. 1) Who else besides the trusty rancher keeps a flock? 2) And who believes he is a lone emissary of God? Answers* at the bottom of the page.

Oh, and I heard the strangest thing today. Bush was responding to a comment by one of Kerry's associates who said, by way of Bush's recounting, "The war on terror is a metaphor, like the war on poverty." To this Bush replies, "It's no metaphor," to a crowd of carefully screened, screaming supporters. To Bush, I respond, Uhhhh, it is a metaphor. Unless you are willing to grant the destruction of the meaningfulness of that word - and this position wouldn't surprise me given the administration's nonstop assault on the English language. One could say that every word use is a metaphor to some extent. What matters is the distance you have to travel from the word before you hit paydirt. You have to go a long way with "terror," so we conclude it is more metaphoric than most. The funny thing is that the path is circuitous, snaking through not only the 9/11 attacks, but all kinds of things - like terrifying protesters, the terror that your government may be lying to you, or the mundane terror of office cubicle life without the proper soothing pharmaceuticals. We declare war on it all! We also know that with the sweep of the hands on the clock, live metaphors die. They cease to be "hands." It seems to me that Bush is purposefully killing a metaphor. The whole crew is out there, circling it like Caesar's men. What does it mean to off this one? Well, if a "war on terror" becomes a real thing (rather than a flailing and opportunistic response to the actions of a handful of mostly Saudi hijackers), then it can be defined in any way those in the bully pulpit see fit. What a wonderfully rhetorical malleable real thing! And to seize upon the thing that even eeks out pleasure as a persuasive appeal--fear: that's time-tested. It occurs to me that if there is a giant uber-corp entity that will assimilate the globe (what a friend of mine calls the "one giant Japanese fishing concern floating on the Pacific"), it will have to gain a monopoly on what scares us first. In killing the metaphor of "terror" and declaring "war" on it (the province of government and big industry), we are witnessing a hostile takeover of our fears, generally. I suppose there is one question left: Is this "hostile takeover" a metaphor or not? These days, it's difficult to say.

*Answers to today's quiz: 1) Bush/Jesus; 2) Jesus/Bush

Microgram

Since 1967, the Drug Enforcement Agency' s Forensic Science Office has secretly published a bulletin called Microgram. This year, the journal was made public in what Michael Erard of Reason Magazine identifies as a functional admission of failure on the part of the DEA to stop the flow of drug information in the age of the Internet.

You can find an archive of Microgram here. It's worth a look - if only for a laundry list of astoundingly creative ways people have hidden drugs in years past. This is the find of the day.

The Implosion Factor: John Stewart and Crossfire

By now, you are probably aware of John Stewart's (of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show") appearance on CNN's Crossfire. If not, you can download the video and transcripts. Watch it. According to the University of Pennsylvania's Annenburg School of Communication, the Daily Show makes you smarter. Or at least its audience beats out Crossfire. Here's some more redux from the Toronto Star (a gosh darn great paper). That this moment of media self-reflection is even possible represents a real turn in public conscience regarding mainstream media's handling of matters vital to our democracy. To borrow the motto of Free Press, media is the issue. To John, we're with you, brother. With his kind permission, I would like to reprint an essay of a dear friend of mine, Mike Wagner, an associate instructor in Political Science at Indiana University.

Caught in the “Crossfire”: Big Media Just Don’t Get It
Mike Wagner

My Friday giggles of glee have turned into just another day of shaking my head
at Big Media. The fallout to fake newsman John Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s
blow hard hack-fest “Crossfire” illustrates how unwilling the mainstream media
are to examine themselves critically in any meaningful way. Our republic is
worse for it.

Stewart came to face the crossfire with a mission: to beg “Crossfire” co-
hostiles Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to stop the partisan hackery and help
the public by engaging in real political debates about issues that take the
nation’s politicians off of their Stepford-ready talking points. Carlson’s
reaction? “But, Mommy! Stewart asked softball questions to John Kerry, when he
was on Stewart’s fake news program, “The Daily Show!”

Here is where the problems begin for poor Tucker and his pals in the elite
media. What does it say about the state of the nation’s media when a comedian
is being chided for not holding a politician’s feet to the fire during an
interview? Isn’t that journalists’ job? Shouldn’t we be worried about what
actual journalists, or even bow-tied political “commentators” for that matter,
ask our nation’s leaders? Ceding journalistic news authority to a man whose
show appears on the same network as crank-calling puppets and “South Park”
seems an odd strategy for “the world’s news leader.”

Stewart rightly responded to Tucker’s whining that Stewart’s job is to be
funny, not be another Edward R. Murrow, or even another Dan Rather with a
fistful of wet-inked documents with “1971” printed on them. Carlson did take
his hands out of his diapers long enough to say that he liked Stewart better
when he was funny, though any hearing person would have noticed that the
live “Crossfire” audience laughed at every point Stewart made. Meanwhile, I am
sure I saw a tumbleweed roll across the silent screen when that unjustifiably
pompous little “rhymes with Tucker” tried to bring the funny to Mr. Stewart.

What’s worse is that in the childish post-Stewart world of “Crossfire,” Stewart
is the one taking the heat in columns across the country. The real issue is
that the mainstream media’s coverage of the last two presidential elections has
been written as if it was lifted from some desperate housewive's unfinished
novel from her college years.

In 2000, Big Media gave us Dumbo vs. Pinocchio. In 2004, it’s Flippy the
Flopping Liberal vs. Mr. Christian Wars-a-lot (now, with more Compassion!).
Where are the in-depth issue stories that might point out how when John Kerry
voted against the first Persian Gulf War, he said on the Senate floor that he
worried that the United States would remain mired in that region for years to
come? Where are the stories that - besides showing that yes, President Bush
lied when he claimed to have never said he didn’t think about Osama bin Laden
very much during the last debate - examine the percentage of U.S. forces sent
by the president to attack Al Qaeda versus the number of forces sent to oust
Saddam?

Later on during “Crossfire’s” clueless, impish grilling of a comedian’s
inability to deliver the tough interview, Paul “from the left” Begala said in
response to Stewart’s complaints about post-presidential debate “spin rooms”
that Begala felt that all the spinners were true believers and that made it
okay. Another argumentative misfire from the “Crossfire” crew. Stewart’s
point wasn’t that the spinners don’t believe in anything, it is that they will
say anything. Of course they believe their candidate is better. Stewart’s
question is what all of ours should be: can’t the media find a way to
independently cover the election in a way that forces the candidates and their
spinmeisters to provide voters with credible, useful information that allows
them to make an informed choice? Maybe we should leave it to the comedians…

Ask Sherwin Williams

I am continually perplexed by the Sherwin Williams paint company's logo. One would think that this might have been an adbusters spoof, but I assure you, it's not.

Public Service Announcement

There has been a new development regarding election year

politics and the corporate media.  It should be noted,

first off, that Michael Powell, appointed chairman of

the FCC by the current administration, is a strong

proponent for the kind of media deregulation that has

allowed ClearChannel radio, for example, to gobble up

nearly a third of the nation's radio stations.  In short,

the current administration is very friendly to large

media corporations that want to get even larger.  Though

John Kerry has not mentioned media law as an issue,

chances are he is not quite so cozy with big media.



Sinclair Broadcasting, a company that owns 62 local

channels on a variety of networks (and reaches 25% of the

nation's electorate), has ordered

its stations to pre-empt their regular programming and

air an anti-Kerry documentary called "Stolen Honor,"

which was produced by some of those involved in the

Swiftboat Veterans for Truth group.  You may remember

them for the controversial smear ad from which even Bush

distanced himself.  Contrast this with Fahrenheit 9/11,

which had tremendous popular backing and buzz before it

hit the theaters - and still had to fight tooth and nail

to get a showing.  "Stolen Honor" has come from nowhere

and now has a free ticket to ride on the public

airwaves, audience size and accessibility of which

Michael Moore can only dream. 



There are pieces in the Washington Post, New York Times,

and The Nation.  Also MediaChannel.



Wanna do something?



Other Resources:

Media Reform

Media Ownership Links

More Terrified?

This Associated Press poll of the U.S. and allies in the Iraq war finds that most people, including Americans by a small margin, believe that Operation Iraqi Freedom has increased the terror threat. According to the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, an Tel Aviv Univerisity think tank, people are correct in their assumptions. Oh, and Hans Blix. Too bad he's so 'irrelevant'. Part of Old Europe, you know.

Iraq: The Movie, the Game, the Ride

This just in from the NY Times. The army, apart from launching the free America's Army video game, mobile carnival recruitment units, extreme-style TV ads, movie trailers, sports gear, etc. - has now unveiled plans for a Universal Studios-style theme park to open in 2009 in Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Va., 12 miles south of the Pentagon. According to the overseer of Army museums, from which the theme park would be a critical departure, "There's a general lack of understanding about what the life of the soldier is like. Whether you agree with what the government does or not, everyone can identify with the trials and the tribulations of the young men and women who put themselves in harm's way to do a job that most of us don't want to do ourselves. And we'll tell those stories."

I agree with his assessment, but not his conclusion. Yes, there is a general lack of understanding. For those fighting oversees in hotspots like Iraq, however, it is worse than it looks on TV.


An artist's rendering of the planned 4-D theme park-style of the proposed museum.

The military is responding to an immininent PR crisis. 1) Pulling out of Iraq for the current administration (and perhaps for Kerrey too, if he is elected) is not an option for current geo-politico-economic reasons; 2) The news is as bad as it can get for an imperial campaign such as this (Noam Chomsky's response was "It's wholly unbelievable that it's not working ... it almost always does."); 3) It is getting increasingly difficult to keep a lid on the bad news; 4) The Pentagon has stretched its troop allowances to the max; 5) The Bush administration has publicly promised not to reintroduce the draft (this may not hold after the election). Aside from one slip-up and charges from the Kerry camp of a post-election surprise, the rhetoric has remained consistent. This flies in the face of Defense Dept. efforts to re-tool draft boards.

Thus, the recruitment campaigns have pulled out all the stops - from the explosion of JROTC in high schools to the data mining requirements in an obscure provision of No Child Left Behind to the culture-wash of film, ads, toys, games, and theme parks in the last three years. We are likely to see further cultural penetration of our everday lives by the military-entertainment network in the near future.

miscellany

I'm going to poach a few things from bushflash.com, which is an archive for clever independent web media.

Satan for Bush

The Fear Factor and the RNC
(This is too much...)

In other news, Jacques Derrida has sadly passed away.

a small collection

It’s not that I want to live forever. It’s just that I don’t want other people living after I am dead!
- Bob Odenkirk

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
- Woody Allen

I don't want to become immortal through my work. I want to be immortal by not dying.
- Mike Royko

Jetman!

Sweeeeeeeet! (window's media)



I still think we didn't give this idea enough time.

Yusef Komunyakaa

I'm quite excited to be seeing one of my favorite living poets tonight, Yusef Komunyakaa, at the Penn State spiritual center. If you get a chance, pick up the collection Dien Cai Dau, the majority of which deals with his time spent as a Vietnam journalist. But these are much more than war poems.




Here's one of my favorites called "You and I are Disappearing." Here you can access more online Komunyakaa along with RealMedia readings.

======

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak

she burns like a piece of paper.

She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.

We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,
while she burns

like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,

silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

Final Word: WMDs

If we have a winner on the WMD issue, it appears to be Scott Ritter, former marine and veteran Iraqi arms inspector. In the run up to the overthrow and occupation of Iraq, Ritter maintained that 95% of Iraq's weapons capacity (a capacity that would not be in existence without U.S. assistance over the years) had been destroyed after Gulf War I, when Saddam finally defied the empire. We might count Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector after Ritter in a close prognosticative second place. Of course, Ritter was routinely targetted by a war-hungry mainstream media as a whipping boy, a nutcase. Now the CIA has given the final word. The final word looks much like the story that Ritter has been telling for quite some time now: Hussein's weapons capacity was destroyed in 1991, and far from recovering in the decade following, due to murderous U.S.-led sanctions, it had only declined. Ritter responded to Colin Powell's February 5th, 2003 UN smoke-and-mirrors display in Robert Greenwald's documentary Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War. Ritter's response was: "I've been in those buildings; there's nothing there." This was no secret.

UPDATe: Here's Scott Ritter writing in the Independent on October 11, 2004 concerning the news.

I'm always amazed at the 'manufactured surprise' from the mainstream news media at such announcements as the CIA's. There was no shortage of voices that could attest to the WMD situation in Iraq, perhaps the most thoroughly-inspected country since the UN's founding.

I think we can all learn much from The Who:

I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Here's lookin' at you lookin' at me, kid...

the eye

Rich Doyle in the Penn State English dept. introduced an intriguing question of aesthetics and the eye in one of his courses. Kate happened to be in there, and she said the question went like this: Consider the ocellus of the peacock feather. Why is the eye a near universal object of aesthetic beauty for both humans and non? What do recurring aesthetic forms say about the gaian (i.e. living earth) mind?

Here are some theories:

1. The ocellus is not beautiful, thus not worth thinking about particularly. OR: The whole premise that the pattern on the peacock feather is an eye is misleading. The pattern could just as well be concentric circles, in which case you may stop reading.

2. The ocellus is an aesthetically beautiful visual object by virtue of being an eye. If we could hear ears, they would sound great. On the flipside, watching an eye being cut (viz the Andalusian Dog or The Story of the Eye), or hearing the sound of a railroad spike being driven into a person's ear, would be the most unbeautiful aesthetic experience. Good thing we can taste tongues (thanks to the French), smell noses (thanks to the Eskimos), and feel skin.

3. The ocellus is aesthetically neutral, both beautiful and unbeautiful. Think of pupil dilation. Dilated pupils are welcoming signals - of sexual attraction, usually. The poisonous/hallucinogenic plant belladona (meaning 'beautiful woman') was used by women in medieval Europe to dilate the pupils and make themselves attractive. Magazine models are usually touched up to such effect. Likewise, if you want to scare someone, try on a pair of zombie-eyed pin-prick pupil contact lenses. BTW, I've always found this interesting: here's what pupil has to do with pupil [Middle English, from Old French pupille, from Latin ppilla, little doll, pupil of the eye (from the tiny image reflected in it). See pupil1.]

4. The ocellus is a signal for food, and this is hard-wired into us. Think of the evolution of caterpillars who have fake ocelli on their tails. Why is this? Because the survival rate increases for those whose fake eyes could migrate to less vital parts of the body. This signals that eyes are synonymous with food - they are places for the beak to strike. They are consumable and useful. Is the aesthetic ocellus playing with this? I've been reading about aesthetics theory recently. Leo Tolstoy in an essay "What is Art?" mentions that one of the conditions of the beautiful is that it be unuseful. This is perhaps the basic idea behind Duchampian found art. So the peacock ocellus is aesthetically beautiful because it is not food. If it were food, perhaps it would not be the supreme object of beauty, a transcendental form, or what have you. The impulse to find it attractive does not go away, though.

5. Potpourri: Ocelli are not only coded as food, though. They are social signs for social animals, and signs of danger lurking in the grass if you happen to be prey. They are curious for all kinds of reasons. This is why eyes draw eyes - deep into a painting as one point of interest, or diffused if looking at a crowd. We need to know if and how we are being watched. This does not explain the aesthetic presence of the peacock feather, which is not frightening. For a female peacock, it might just be mesmerizing trickery - snake charming stuff. Perhaps we are no different.

Courtesy of http://snapatorium.blogspot.com/

No Link

The heavies have weighed in on the Saddam - Al Qaeda link. Of course the first was the famous 9/11 panel denial of administration claims. Then came the CIA (on many occasions). This recent admission is the most definitive. Kerry pressed the issue during the first presidential debates. Now, feeling the question safe enough to cover (like Bush's Guard duty), the mainstream press is pressing. Donald Rumsfeld laid bare the most prized rationale for putting our servicemen and women into harm's way, killing tens of thousands of people, and destabilizing a nation. No Al Qaeda - Saddam link. Sorry, Bill O'Reilly. [Whoops! Update! Rumsfeld: "I was misunderstood!" We all are sometimes, Rummy. Especially when we know more than the CIA.] This particular reversal cannot as easily be written off as a 'mistake of insufficient intelligence' as in the case of, say, the WMD's. Whether or not the U.S. supplied them, we know that Hussein had chemical weapons at one point in the 1980's when he was killing Iranians for us. The U.N. had sanctioned the WMD claim with inspections and resolutions (that apparently worked). In regard to Al Qaeda, no one, save the administration, was claiming a link. With no more cards to play, perhaps the administration is betting on the power of rising gas prices and plain old greed to sustain the war and make the 'blood for oil' equation palatable. At this point, perhaps ignorance and fear are still running the game. See these PIPA Knowledge Reports out of the University of Maryland.

The Miami Model and Debates

The Indymedia-produced film "The Miami Model" is available for download in its entirety thanks to the wonderful people at archive.org. It's an interesting piece of work regarding the massive use of force by the Miami Repression Machine against protesters of the Nov, 2003 FTAA meetings. 91 min. Another documentary, Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War" is available for download. 54Mb Real Media.

In other news, John Kerry was towering and "presidential" last night at the Florida debates, while our president reminded me of a raccoon that had been caught digging through the trash. I really think his eyes are growing closer together. I guess everyone on "both sides" now agrees that "Hussein was a threat" of some kind. This is John Kerry obviously backtracking. One thing that I found interesting was the president's comment that the military would remain "all-volunteer." The administration has made comments to the effect that they don't plan on reintroducing the draft, but last night Bush seemed to make a definitive statement on the matter. This despite the recent calls for the activation of selective service and the Pentagon's suggestion on their website (later taken down) that local selective service boards be revived. (Democrat reps Charles Rangel and John Conyers as well as Sen. Fritz Hollings' proposal for universal service, on the other hand, is a separate attempt to provoke discussion about military uses.) I don't see how the administration can back itself into a corner like that, but I'm glad they are. It kind of begs the question as to whether the meaning of the word "volunteer" will go the same way as "freedom" in the administrative lexicon.