I had considered writing an op-ed on why the uproar over the "racist", "offensive" New Yorker magazine cover was so completely ridiculous, but I could never say it better than Jon Stewart:
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Thank God for the Daily Show
Monday, July 14, 2008
The New Yorker Fist Bump
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign is furious over a New Yorker mag cover illustration of a Muslim-garbed Obama fist-bumping his wife, Michelle, wearing an Angela Davis afro, a camo jumpsuit, and a rifle slung over her shoulder. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
Obama's spokesman Bill Burton: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
Friday, July 11, 2008
Middle-age diplomat: 'Sex with teens OK '
Who knows when this guy got hired, but just think what else happens with our tax dollars! Pedophilia in the Bush State Department. Great family values!!! And this guy even rationalizes it's ok for a U.S. official to continue such backwardness forced upon these girls. Note that he also seemed to have a "sex for visas" scam going on.
Ex-diplomat: Sex with teens OK in foreign cultures
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — An ex-diplomat convicted of having sex with teenage girls in the Congo and Brazil and taping the encounters is asking a judge for leniency, claiming that cultural differences in those countries make sex with girls more acceptable.
Gons G. Nachman, 42, pleaded guilty in April to possessing child pornography after admitting that he had sex with 14- to 17-year-old girls while serving as a consular officer in Brazil and Congo and documenting the encounters in pictures and videos.
The judge has agreed to delay Nachman's sentencing until Aug. 22 so that he can be examined by noted forensic psychologist Stanton Samenow. Defense attorney Stephen Stine said in court papers that a psychological examination might show that cultural differences led Nachman to believe that sexual contact with teenage girls was acceptable, and that should have an impact on what kind of sentence he receives.
Prosecutors rejected the notion that Nachman's victims somehow deserve less protection because they were not born or raised in America.
"Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Brazil have the same inherent value as children in the United States," prosecutor Ron Walutes wrote in court papers.
Prosecutors are asking for a 20-year prison term, the maximum he could receive under the law and much higher than the term of nine to 11 years called for under federal sentencing guidelines.
In a letter Nachman wrote from jail to the director of the Foreign Service pleading with him to intervene and get the charges dropped, Nachman explained the cultural differences as he sees them.
"In the Congo, women develop quickly, both physically and emotionally, due to the substantial responsibility society places on them from early childhood," Nachman wrote. "In Kinshasa, the vast majority of teenagers are sexually active with men that are substantially older. ... Their main concern is marrying young girls to men with financial stability, a concern dating thousands of years and cutting across cultural lines."
The case has been unusual on several fronts. It includes allegations that Nachman pressured attractive female visa applicants in Brazil for sex. Nachman admitted that he had sex with two women whom he met in the visa application process, but he denied coercing them and he was never charged in the matter.
Another odd twist is Nachman's prominence in the nudist community: In the 1990s, when attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, Nachman led several public demonstrations advocating nudity. Nachman now contends that he was targeted for investigation in part because of his well-known affinity for the nudist lifestyle.
In his letter to the Foreign Service director, Nachman says investigators knew of his interest in nudism and illegally searched his apartment with the notion of finding images that, taken out of context, could be used against him.
Nachman says in the letter that he disclosed his activism and lifestyle to the Foreign Service and had no problems receiving a security clearance. State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson declined to comment directly on whether an individual's advocacy for public nudity would be a factor in the State Department's hiring process.
Nachman's prominence in the nudist community was such that, even though his activism was more than a decade ago, some nudists feel compelled to distance themselves from him.
In an upcoming issue of N Magazine, a publication of the Naturist Society, an editorial takes a strong stance against Nachman's conduct.
"The severity of what he did is unambiguous. Although his criminal actions were in no way connected with naturism, for many readers of the international news accounts, there will be guilt by association," the society wrote.
Perhaps the strangest twist in the case was Nachman's request that the judge who will sentence him conduct a marriage ceremony for him and his 21-year-old Brazilian fiancee. He wanted to be married before sentencing since he doubted that he would be able to marry once transferred to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.
U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee rejected the request.
"There is a time and a place for everything. The Court finds that sentencing is neither the time nor the place" for a wedding, Lee wrote.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Houston Museum Exposes Capitalist Slavery
HOUSTON – The magnificent University Museum of the Texas Southern University affiliated with the world famous John Biggers’ School of Art has outdone itself. I attended the current exhibition “Drapetomania: A disease called freedom” today and the museum staff treated me by playing recordings of Paul Robeson singing “Joe Hill” and “No more auction block for me” as well as others.
Although the photos and artifacts documenting the atrocities of slavery in this country and the West Indies delivered a hammer blow to my senses, I walked away from the experience realizing the progress that working people have made over the last two centuries. The exhibit presented the instruments used to keep slaves submissive including spiked collars, and chains and shackles. One painting portrayed “The barbarities of the West Indias” where a white man was forcibly bathing a black man in a hot tub of water and preparing to apply hot curry scrubs to his skin in an effort to maintain his dominance. Notices of slavery auctions, and the last will and testament of a woman leaving a female slave in 1823 to her descendents documented the brutality of capitalism when it transformed human beings into commodities which were bought and sold on the market. Numerous photos of enslaved children picking cotton and engaged in other work activities were heart wrenching.
The main theme of the exhibition was on the medical term coined by Louisiana physician and psychologist, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, drapetomania. The term is a primitive attempt to pathologize slaves’ efforts to run away from oppressive masters. The term labels runaway slaves as “mad and crazy.” The remedy, it seems, according to the doctor, was to place the slaves away from free states and to keep them in submission. The doctor maintained that submission was the God given natural state of the slave and that to allow anything else would only lead to them running away.
The exhibit also presents the accomplishments of working African Americans. Photographers and furniture makers of African descent from Cincinnati were displayed. There were photos of Frederik Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Sojourner Truth and numerous other great African-Americans. Books describing the Underground Railroad and of great African Americans were on display. There was a photo of and letter from California’s only black Governor, Pio Pico. A notice opposing lynching printed by the NAACP decried the lynching of 3436 people between 1889 and 1922. Tribute was paid to the great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, who published “The Liberator” and a copy of this newspaper was on display as well.
I realized that concepts similar to “drapetomania” are still in use today. Capitalism strives to lower wages and reduce benefits of working people in order to maximize profits. In order to accomplish this, various terroristic tactics are employed to keep workers submissive. Strike breaking and union busting as well as the anti-communist witch hunts of the mid twentieth century come to mind as efforts to break the tendencies of working people to escape from unbearable working conditions. Of course, this running away from the miseries of working conditions has taken many forms. Drug abuse, alcoholism and other excessive pleasure seeking activities are pursued by people to sedate their miseries resulting from low wages and benefits and lack of dignity and respect on the job site, i.e. alienation. Working people seeking to form unions and resist imperialist foreign policies are labeled as “terrorists” by the right wing and are degraded for their efforts to improve their working conditions. Substance abuse is a negative means of running away from miseries whereas forming unions and fighting back is a positive response to the unjust nature of capitalist oppression.
It is helpful to think in terms of the progress we have made since the early nineteenth century. This fabulous art exhibit provides a great deal of evidence that human beings united in their efforts to oppose oppressors can achieve the goals implied in the great song, “We shall overcome.”
Although the photos and artifacts documenting the atrocities of slavery in this country and the West Indies delivered a hammer blow to my senses, I walked away from the experience realizing the progress that working people have made over the last two centuries. The exhibit presented the instruments used to keep slaves submissive including spiked collars, and chains and shackles. One painting portrayed “The barbarities of the West Indias” where a white man was forcibly bathing a black man in a hot tub of water and preparing to apply hot curry scrubs to his skin in an effort to maintain his dominance. Notices of slavery auctions, and the last will and testament of a woman leaving a female slave in 1823 to her descendents documented the brutality of capitalism when it transformed human beings into commodities which were bought and sold on the market. Numerous photos of enslaved children picking cotton and engaged in other work activities were heart wrenching.The main theme of the exhibition was on the medical term coined by Louisiana physician and psychologist, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, drapetomania. The term is a primitive attempt to pathologize slaves’ efforts to run away from oppressive masters. The term labels runaway slaves as “mad and crazy.” The remedy, it seems, according to the doctor, was to place the slaves away from free states and to keep them in submission. The doctor maintained that submission was the God given natural state of the slave and that to allow anything else would only lead to them running away.
The exhibit also presents the accomplishments of working African Americans. Photographers and furniture makers of African descent from Cincinnati were displayed. There were photos of Frederik Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Sojourner Truth and numerous other great African-Americans. Books describing the Underground Railroad and of great African Americans were on display. There was a photo of and letter from California’s only black Governor, Pio Pico. A notice opposing lynching printed by the NAACP decried the lynching of 3436 people between 1889 and 1922. Tribute was paid to the great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, who published “The Liberator” and a copy of this newspaper was on display as well.
I realized that concepts similar to “drapetomania” are still in use today. Capitalism strives to lower wages and reduce benefits of working people in order to maximize profits. In order to accomplish this, various terroristic tactics are employed to keep workers submissive. Strike breaking and union busting as well as the anti-communist witch hunts of the mid twentieth century come to mind as efforts to break the tendencies of working people to escape from unbearable working conditions. Of course, this running away from the miseries of working conditions has taken many forms. Drug abuse, alcoholism and other excessive pleasure seeking activities are pursued by people to sedate their miseries resulting from low wages and benefits and lack of dignity and respect on the job site, i.e. alienation. Working people seeking to form unions and resist imperialist foreign policies are labeled as “terrorists” by the right wing and are degraded for their efforts to improve their working conditions. Substance abuse is a negative means of running away from miseries whereas forming unions and fighting back is a positive response to the unjust nature of capitalist oppression.
It is helpful to think in terms of the progress we have made since the early nineteenth century. This fabulous art exhibit provides a great deal of evidence that human beings united in their efforts to oppose oppressors can achieve the goals implied in the great song, “We shall overcome.”
Texas Agency Defies History
A fruitful way to understand the fanatical efforts of America’s right wing is to realize that they want to turn back the clock and the calendar. Their efforts are clearest within the Texas Education Agency, where crazy scandals pop up with the same embarrassing regularity as adolescent acne.
On July 2, former state science curriculum director Christina Comer announced her lawsuit against the agency for having terminated her on charges of favoring science over superstition. Specifically, she is accused of forwarding an e-mail favoring scientific evolution over religious “creationism.” TEA claims to have established an employee policy of “neutrality” on this fact-versus-myth issue, and that Ms Comer was not sufficiently neutral.
Ms Comer’s lawsuit correctly says that such “neutrality” violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S.Constitution by effectively endorsing religion. According to the Dallas newspaper, the agency intends to rewrite the standards for science classes for all Texas school children. Presently, it includes the scientific fact that humans evolved from lower forms of life.
Christina Comer’s brave battle for reality isn’t likely to create much of a stir in Texas, because it’s only one of a long string of battles in which the right-wing tries to impose its unscientific nonsense onTexas children. As far back as the 1960s, Texas text-book hearings have produced shameful attempts to conceal the truth in all types of textbooks. Texas is one of the largest and most influential textbook buyers in the world, so the stakes are high.
Another ongoing scandal from the Texas Education Agency has to do with school vouchers. By a narrow vote, the Texas Legislature decided to stop trying to undermine the public schools in this particular manner, but TEA went ahead with a program to use tax money to pay for private schools enrolling older dropouts. The teachers’ unions and progressive state legislatures are fighting the effort to bring in a voucher system “by the back door.”
Several times in 2008, scandals have broken concerning charter schools who get tax money to help them undermine public education. Even though the highly vaunted state testing system has revealed the failure of such schools as compared to public education, our “experts” at the TEA continue to advocate them. Even when some charter schools have been revealed to have cheated on their record-keeping in order to keep getting state funding, the right-wingers keep endorsing them.
In the Texas election system, TEA officials are usually far down on an overcrowded ballot; consequently, “stealth campaigns” have been successful in getting religious nuts elected to positions of influence during the ascendancy of GW Bush and the rest of the right wing. It will take a reversal of previous election trends to change the situation. Fortunately, help is nigh in 2008!
On July 2, former state science curriculum director Christina Comer announced her lawsuit against the agency for having terminated her on charges of favoring science over superstition. Specifically, she is accused of forwarding an e-mail favoring scientific evolution over religious “creationism.” TEA claims to have established an employee policy of “neutrality” on this fact-versus-myth issue, and that Ms Comer was not sufficiently neutral.
Ms Comer’s lawsuit correctly says that such “neutrality” violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S.Constitution by effectively endorsing religion. According to the Dallas newspaper, the agency intends to rewrite the standards for science classes for all Texas school children. Presently, it includes the scientific fact that humans evolved from lower forms of life.
Christina Comer’s brave battle for reality isn’t likely to create much of a stir in Texas, because it’s only one of a long string of battles in which the right-wing tries to impose its unscientific nonsense onTexas children. As far back as the 1960s, Texas text-book hearings have produced shameful attempts to conceal the truth in all types of textbooks. Texas is one of the largest and most influential textbook buyers in the world, so the stakes are high.
Another ongoing scandal from the Texas Education Agency has to do with school vouchers. By a narrow vote, the Texas Legislature decided to stop trying to undermine the public schools in this particular manner, but TEA went ahead with a program to use tax money to pay for private schools enrolling older dropouts. The teachers’ unions and progressive state legislatures are fighting the effort to bring in a voucher system “by the back door.”
Several times in 2008, scandals have broken concerning charter schools who get tax money to help them undermine public education. Even though the highly vaunted state testing system has revealed the failure of such schools as compared to public education, our “experts” at the TEA continue to advocate them. Even when some charter schools have been revealed to have cheated on their record-keeping in order to keep getting state funding, the right-wingers keep endorsing them.
In the Texas election system, TEA officials are usually far down on an overcrowded ballot; consequently, “stealth campaigns” have been successful in getting religious nuts elected to positions of influence during the ascendancy of GW Bush and the rest of the right wing. It will take a reversal of previous election trends to change the situation. Fortunately, help is nigh in 2008!
--Jim Lane
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Government orders invasion of privacy... on behalf of a corporation
That's right - The US government has ordered Google to turn over Youtube user information to Viacom Inc., in order to help Viacom in their $1 billion dollar lawsuit against "pirates." Check out this statement from our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
"The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection."
So, not only will they get info about users that have posted clips of shows they own, they're obtaining private and personal information about the people that watch them!
The digital age is leading to the destruction of commodity fetishism. Viacom Inc. and it's ilk are doing everything in their power to turn back time and destroy everything that we love about the Web, which is without doubt the most amazing worldwide social advancement in human history.
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