Jill Stein has now raised over $4.5 million to pursue recounts of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the three "battleground" states where the vote for president was closest. She says she doesn't necessarily expect the recounts to change the outcome, but there have been so many reported anomalies and oddities -- including counts totaling more than votes -- that for the sake of "Election Integrity" it is better to check again than to simply accept the outcome unquestioningly.
Seems simple and straightforward enough, doesn't it? Huh. The meltdown among the Trump apologists and normalizers is extraordinary. If they've done nothing wrong, they've got nothing to hide, right? Well...
As Lambert over at NC loved to say during the campaign, "This is a wonderfully clarifying election."
Indeed it is, for there has been a wonderful sorting of internet and media sites between Trump lovers and Others. NC, for one, is fully in the Trump camp as it has been since the campaign began. So too, Ian's Place, where the inappropriate Trump fluffing became something of a joke. The entire political class has pledged qualified fealty to the New Boss, and for all intents and purposes, so has almost all the Legacy and New Media.
As far as they're concerned, the (s)election is a done deal, and those malcontents and other losers can just get over it.
So here comes Jill Stein, who barely got 1.5-2.0% of the vote to say, "Hold on just a darned minute."
The reaction was and is fast and furious. So fast and so furious that it is all but certain that something is wrong with the counts, and not just in the "battleground" states, either.
Our elections have long been international jokes -- or perhaps nightmares depending on your point of view. The 2000 (s)election is still capable of raising the ire of millions of Americans and its results continue to affect the lives and survival of tens of millions around the world.
Now this? No. More and more Americans are saying "No," and some are taking action. They see a clear and present danger to the survival of the Republic -- which seems to have dawned on them rather late in the game, but oh well -- and their own survival as well.
They see through Mr. Trump's con. I've pondered that somewhat these last few months since I started paying more attention to the campaign. I've tried to understand why some people see through his con easily while others are seemingly transfixed by his persuasion and blandishments. How does that work exactly?
Well, it's obvious that some are in on the con and hope that by pledging loyalty early they'll get a reward. Tough luck, suckers when it comes to anyone else, they're gonna cash in on Trump's victory, come what may. The reward doesn't have to be money. For some it's just the shared glory of being on the winning side, no matter the struggle.
It's a game, in other words, not real life. Many of these game-players lack any empathy for their fellows; it's just not in their nature to give a good gott-damb over what happens to anyone else, and at least in part because of that, these non-empathetic players respond to Trump as one of their own. Well, sure, except that he and his ilk are more than happy to skewer their own supporters if there's power or profit to be obtained in doing so. Jeebus, do these people not know that?
Some apparently don't. It's "sad" but not sad to see it.
It's not true that we've never had a rich con man at the head of our government. In fact, there have been quite a few in the nation's history, though none that I can recall were as rude and crude a representative of his class as Mr. Trump. None I can recall lacked any social conscience at all. The closest historic example I can think of is Andrew Jackson, and at least from Ms. Ché's perspective as an Elder Cherokee Woman, he wasn't really as bad as he's been made out to be. Or rather, she says, there were reasons for his badness that have gone overlooked and need to be understood to understand why he did what he did, and why he turned the country in the direction he did -- better for some, much worse for others (such as her own people.) It's not helpful, she says, to think of it as a binary, good vs evil. It was far more complicated than that, and much of it had to do with the inner dynamics of Jackson's own family and how that affected his... mind.
[Note: Ms Ché has done a lot of study about Andrew Jackson. She's been to his plantation outside of Nashville, studied the place and the man carefully, read extensively about the times and the people who backed and fought Jackson, has looked into her own family history -- a history that includes both rebels and accommodationists -- and she's worked with other Cherokees who are attempting to comprehend what was going on in those days (1820s to 1840s) that led to Jackson's rise and the removal of the Indians from not just the Southeast but throughout the settler territory east of the Mississippi. I'm not a whole lot of help in that study. My own ancestral history has shown me that any success my ancestors had in this country depended initially on the removal of the Indians from Ohio and Iowa.
On the other hand, Cherokees, though subjected to some terrible conditions thanks to Jackson and those who served him, have not only survived, in many ways they've flourished, something that Ms Ché discovered was part of Jackson's argument for their removal from their lands in the Southeast. He justified it as a means to prevent their genocide. Jackson was no friend of the Indians, to be sure. But he was apparently not the ogre he's been made out to be, either. I won't defend him, but Ms Ché sometimes does, not to "normalize" what he did, but to expand the story to include more than most histories do.]
Trump apologists went ballistic when Jill announced her intention to raise enough money to pursue recounts of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and their anger only increased when she was able to raise her initial funding request almost overnight.
"A Clintooon plot!" they screamed. "Soros!! Soros!! Soros!!" "Hillary is masterminding this!!!!" Etc.
They say essentially the same things about the street demonstrations that broke out on the announcement of Trump's "victory." They claimed and claim that it is all a "Soros Plot to precipitate a Color Revolution!!!!!"
Nonsense.
Even the Water Protectors are considered to be a "Soros/Clintooon far left plot." It's crazy. CT and paranoia is rampant among Trump Protectors, Defenders, and Apologists.
But there you are, that's where we are in this unstable political situation.
Jill's act of defiance has given them the willies, because she's not Hillary, she doesn't support Hillary, and if anything, she has more contempt for Hillary and the Democratic higher ups than Trumpians do. She's more interested in replacing the corrupt and dangerous system of rule we have today than any Trumpian you'd care to name.
And she sees Trump and his minions as dangerous in office as another Clinton regime might could be. They're all warmongers, thieves, and mountebanks. All of them.
This is all taking place in the context of a furious effort to "normalize" Trump's increasingly erratic and nonsensical talk and behavior. To make light of it, in fact, as if he's only being himself, and himself is what the country voted for.
No they didn't.
The notion that "America elected Trump" is... false. Period. Hillary's popular vote lead is approaching 3 million and may surpass it once all the votes are counted assuming they will all be counted and counted accurately. If America had its say in this election, it was not to elect Trump. It was not to elect Hillary either. The actual "say" of voters this time around was "Neither one, please." A majority voted against Hillary, and against Trump.
Sigh. But that doesn't matter according to the way our presidents are (supposed to be) chosen. Of course those of us who are old enough recall how what's "supposed to be" doesn't matter either when a partisan Supreme Court sees an opening for its own lawless interference in the electoral process. Once that was done and accepted by the political class and its media handmaidens in 2000, the integrity of elections -- to the extent there had ever been any -- was forever compromised.
We the Rabble were shown in no uncertain terms that the (s)election outcome could and would be "adjusted" on behalf of TPTB's preferred candidate at will, and there was nothing the Rabble could do about it.
I think Jill is smart enough to realize that will be the case this time, too, no matter what the recounts show. I don't doubt she's aware that if the results were jiggered in those states on behalf of Trump -- which I tend to think happened -- the recounts are likely to be jiggered as well, "confirming" Trump's "victory" with the same jiggered set of numbers.
That is to say it will be if Trump is TPTB's preferred candidate, and that is not altogether certain at this point. Jill has raised an enormous amount of money for these recounts, more than she was able to raise for her campaign, and she's done it essentially overnight. She raised so much so fast that I can only imagine there are powerful interests who want this challenge to happen. As much as I'd like to think that millions of Little People contributed the remaining pennies in their piggy banks, I doubt that's the case. No, this looks much more like an effort by the High and Mighty to fuck Trump up.
Oh nasty. Well, yeah. That's how these people think. It's how they act. Trump and his followers would be doing it if the shoe were on the other foot, and they'd be rattling their sabres and threatening bloody mayhem the while.
Jill's approach is much.... calmer.
The question of Clintooooon!!!! backing is one of the more ludicrous accusations floating among the Normalizers, as if somehow that would invalidate the effort. Nonsense. Whether she has anything to do with it is not germane to the question of whether the count is accurate or not. Hello?
It's much like the accusation of Soros funding of the demonstrations against the elevation of Trump to the White House. Even if he were funding the demonstrations, so what? No one is being forced to march and carry signs, no one is coercing anyone else to be part of the protests. Those who are part of them are doing so for their own interests and purposes, not on behalf of someone else's agenda.
I'm reminded of the huge antiIraqWar protests back in the day. They were organized by the ANSWER coalition of largely old line Communist organzations. So? The participants for the most part weren't old line Communists and few were even aware of the organizations which formed the ANSWER coalition. It really didn't matter. The point was to physically express dissent from the coming invasion of Iraq.
Millions around the world did. They were unable to stop the invasion and its monstrous consequences.
That failure was educational. People have learned that massive demonstrations for or against pretty much anything can be and will be ignored if the demonstrators dissent from the neoLibCon consensus. Nevertheless, even if they are ignored, mass protest serves a useful purpose in making manifest the Rabble's disagreement with their Rulers, and in bringing together like minded individuals from broadly different political and social positions and perspectives. It's a cumulative thing.
The mass demonstration tactic must be combined with other, less easily ignored tactics to form an effective counter to the ruling consensus. It'll work on occasion. It'll fail too. But it's no good to say that because this or that effort was a failure that "nothing can be done."
What Jill is doing has the potential to undo the (s)election, though she doesn't expect it to. Regardless of the outcome of the recounts, her action throws a spanner in the works and makes the media's (new and legacy) efforts to normalize Trump's elevation to the presidency all that much harder. It isn't "normal" no matter what, nor is it acceptable to a significant portion of the electorate. It's a con....
So we'll see.
As always, we'll see.
And no, this is not about Hillary. Get over it.
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Friday, November 25, 2016
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
The To-Do Over "Making a Murderer"
Well this was interesting.
I'm not usually in to murder shows on the television like "Dateline" and the others. I find them vapid, manipulative, and ultimately all the same. But apparently audiences lap them up because they love their murder mysteries, oh yes they do. I'm told that Nancy Grace still has a following, too. Now there's a believable character...
But over the weekend, I read about a series that was being presented on Netflix called "Making a Murderer," which was described as something one "had to see!" It was "OMG! What the actual fuck!" And on and on. Oh my. A man in Wisconsin was wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit, spent 18 years in prison for it, was exonerated on DNA evidence, was released and campaigned for justice reform, sued the principals and the county which had pursued injustice against him, and just as he was about to settle the lawsuit, he was arrested for murder most foul: the assault, murder, dismemberment and burning of a woman who had come to his property to photograph a van he wanted listed in Auto Trader Magazine.
We don't have cable (yay!) but we do have Netflix, so... Sunday I started watching the ten-part series, and I have to say it was mesmerizing and memorable, truly a "must watch" E-ticket ride for anyone interested in the issue of justice reform in this country.
It was a textbook case of police and prosecutorial misconduct from the get-go, and how they were able to get away with it was shocking. Judge and jury both went along with the prosecutors even in the face of extraordinary doubt raised by the defense. That didn't matter for some reason. All that seemed to matter to the police, prosecutor, judge(s) and juries was putting away these two people (a man, Steven Avery, and his nephew, Brandon Dassey) for.ever.
In other words, even though Steven Avery was wrongly convicted of sexual assault the first time and spent 18 years in prison for it, he was never truly exonerated in the eyes of the police and prosecutors -- indeed not in the eyes of much of his community as well -- and his subsequent prosecution and conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach was considered something of a trophy by the police, prosecutors, and judges... whether or not he did it.
This gets right to the heart of how the so-called "justice system" works, it seems to me. Truth does not matter, winning does. Police and prosecutors want numbers of victories, and courts are often happy to oblige -- regardless of fact or truth.
It's called "justice" because it's a process, it's the way things have been done for many a long year, and it's just too damn bad that sometimes the innocent are swept up in it... too.dam.bad.
In this case, Steven Avery and his nephew Brandon Dassey both went to trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach. Both were convicted, but the evidence against them was scant and/or bizarre to say the least. A conviction in both cases required an enormous amount of police and prosecutorial misconduct on the one hand, repeated instances of judicial "discretion" let's call it favoring the prosecution, and juries willing -- eager? -- to suspend their disbelief and set aside any reasonable doubt about the guilt of these two fellows to convict them.
There were strong indications that the police planted evidence; just a little bit to be sure -- a key, blood stains, and bits and pieces of other evidence -- but there were also strong indications that the accused had nothing to do with Teresa Halbach's murder, that someone else had done it and had essentially framed Avery for the crime -- and got away with it.
If so, that means a murderer is loose in that part of Wisconsin, just as a serial rapist was loose in that part of Wisconsin while Steven Avery was in prison for a crime he didn't commit. That rapist, by the way, committed two more rapes during the time Steven was in prison wrongly convicted.
Steven Avery's nephew Brandon Dassey made a series of obviously false confessions, sometimes coerced by the police, but in one case -- shockingly -- coerced by his own defense attorney's investigator, implicating himself and his uncle in the murder. He was obviously making shit up to satisfy his interrogators, and yet, somehow the "system" bought these confessions whole and treated them as if they were true and factual, when in fact they were anything but. Nevertheless, the prosecution relied on these false confessions for a good deal of their cases against Avery and Dassey. It didn't matter that the confessions were patently false. What mattered was the fact that there were confessions at all, on the premise that "innocent people don't confess to crimes they didn't commit," one of the most egregiously wrong notions in this whole sorry affair.
The truth is, I don't know who murdered Teresa Halbach but I'm pretty sure -- from what was presented in the documentary anyway -- that Steven Avery and Brandon Dassey didn't do it. They couldn't have. They certainly couldn't have done it the way Dassey described the murder in his repeated false confessions (that she was tied to the bed, sexually assaulted, she was strangled, her throat was cut and she was repeatedly shot -- for investigators found none of Teresa's blood anywhere on the premises of the Avery compound where both Avery and Dassey lived. Her DNA was only found on a bullet fragment discovered in a garage months after it had been repeatedly swept for evidence, strongly suggesting the bullet or the DNA had been planted. Or, even more likely, that Teresa's DNA was a test contaminant -- like that of the tester's -- and was not actually on the bullet fragment at all.
There was no uncompromised evidence that tied either Avery or Dassey to Halbach's murder. That alone should have raised a "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the jurors, but for some reason it didn't-- at least not enough of a doubt to acquit either one.
Why not?
That gets us to how the system really works. Avery was targeted as the culprit almost from the outset, when Teresa was reported missing. She had last been seen on Avery's property where she went to photograph a van he wanted to list for sale in Auto Trader magazine. Her car and what was left of her burned corpse were found on his property, her ashes mostly in a burn pit not twenty feet from his mobile home.
But her ashes also turned up in a quarry at the other end of a 400 acre property, and in a barrel found elsewhere on the property. This indicated that her body was burned in the quarry (a quarter mile or more from the mobile home where she was allegedly murdered) and her ashes were then transported in the barrel to the burn pit beside Avery's mobile home where they were later discovered.
None of her blood at all was found anywhere on the property, but her blood was found in the cargo section of her car. It appeared that she was transported while bleeding from a head wound, but where or why? Her car was found in a corner of the Avery compound, inexpertly covered with branches and debris. It was found almost immediately by a civilian searcher who was given permission to explore the property (on which the Averys had hundreds if not thousands of derelict vehicles -- they worked as auto dismantlers) by one of Avery's brothers.
The prosecution ultimately theorized that Teresa was sexually assaulted in Steven Avery's bedroom, then she was taken to the garage where she was shot and killed, and then her body was put in the back of her SUV for transport the couple of hundred feet to the burn pit beside Avery's mobile home where her body was burned in a bonfire that night.
Except there was no blood evidence anywhere except in her car.
She could not have been killed in the garage without her blood being essentially everywhere inside, and there was none, not a drop.
As many observers have said, the actual and objective evidence does not lead to either Avery or Dassey as her murderer. But she was clearly murdered. So who did it?
That's a question the police and prosecutors never examined.
That alone should be seen as malfeasance.
But it wasn't and isn't. Wisconsinites seem to believe that both Dassey and Avery "got what was coming to them" -- pretty much regardless of their actual guilt. It literally doesn't seem to matter in the minds of many of their neighbors whether they did it or not. They have convicted these two in their own minds because "nobody liked the Averys" and their extended family, and they were nothing but trouble anyway, so it's just as well that these two are in prison for the rest of their lives. Because they were no good. Neither of them.
They may be punished for a crime they didn't commit, but so what? There were other things they did that made it appropriate to put them away. Justice may be served sideways, but it's served just the same. These people were and are scum. They can rot in prison forever as far as their neighbors are concerned.
Some of those who investigated the case called them "evil incarnate" -- not because they did the crime, but because of their reputation and their lifestyle, which was not approved of by the community apparently. And if you go against community norms, it would seem, you are literally taking your life in your hands. Tolerance, apparently, did not extend to the Averys and their large number of relatives.
They were dirty. They were not necessarily honest. They were slow-witted, sub-par IQ. They drank and smoked cigarettes. They were accused of inappropriate sexual behavior (ie: masturbating in public). They didn't raise their children right, and they were always getting into minor trouble with the law. Nobody liked them.
Nobody liked them.
That was apparently the key right there. "Nobody liked them."
Thus they could be accused, tried and convicted with nary a nod to justice. It was nothing more than taking out the trash. White trash in this case, but trash nonetheless. Getting rid of "trouble."
This is actually what happens in courts all across the land, day in and day out. Law enforcement is focused on certain elements in the population which are considered 'undesirable' by the community or the powers that be. There is often a racial bias in this focus, to the extent that practically all the law enforcement focus is on people of color, particularly poor people of color, whose communities are under constant and unrelenting siege by the police. Accusations, arrests, trials and conviction go on all the time, many for the most minor offenses, and very often, perhaps most often, the victims are induced to confess or plead out to crimes they have not committed, on the premise that if they plead or confess, they will receive a lighter sentence than if they contest the accusation at trial.
90% or more of convictions (they say) are actually due to plea bargains or false confessions. It's really quite remarkable. And millions are in prison due to these factors.
Every day in every way, this is how the court system works. It's based on lies, falsehood, and bargains, not on truth, justice, and the American way.
For police and prosecutors, it's about numbers of convictions. The judges go along. They know and don't care that what is presented in court is frequently false and that millions are sentenced based on these false claims. It doesn't matter to them.
When people protest, they rarely get anywhere in part because the people in power like things this way, believing as they do that even if the "innocent" are shot or convicted, it serves as a means of suppressing the inherent criminality of the lower orders, so what's to worry?
That's why "Making a Murderer" is to me an important document in the struggle for dignity, justice, community and peace, because it shows just how far into realms of bizarre fantasy the "system" goes to get convictions, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the victims.
It's amazing, aggravating, and true.
What do we have to do to fix it?
I'm not usually in to murder shows on the television like "Dateline" and the others. I find them vapid, manipulative, and ultimately all the same. But apparently audiences lap them up because they love their murder mysteries, oh yes they do. I'm told that Nancy Grace still has a following, too. Now there's a believable character...
But over the weekend, I read about a series that was being presented on Netflix called "Making a Murderer," which was described as something one "had to see!" It was "OMG! What the actual fuck!" And on and on. Oh my. A man in Wisconsin was wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit, spent 18 years in prison for it, was exonerated on DNA evidence, was released and campaigned for justice reform, sued the principals and the county which had pursued injustice against him, and just as he was about to settle the lawsuit, he was arrested for murder most foul: the assault, murder, dismemberment and burning of a woman who had come to his property to photograph a van he wanted listed in Auto Trader Magazine.
We don't have cable (yay!) but we do have Netflix, so... Sunday I started watching the ten-part series, and I have to say it was mesmerizing and memorable, truly a "must watch" E-ticket ride for anyone interested in the issue of justice reform in this country.
It was a textbook case of police and prosecutorial misconduct from the get-go, and how they were able to get away with it was shocking. Judge and jury both went along with the prosecutors even in the face of extraordinary doubt raised by the defense. That didn't matter for some reason. All that seemed to matter to the police, prosecutor, judge(s) and juries was putting away these two people (a man, Steven Avery, and his nephew, Brandon Dassey) for.ever.
In other words, even though Steven Avery was wrongly convicted of sexual assault the first time and spent 18 years in prison for it, he was never truly exonerated in the eyes of the police and prosecutors -- indeed not in the eyes of much of his community as well -- and his subsequent prosecution and conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach was considered something of a trophy by the police, prosecutors, and judges... whether or not he did it.
This gets right to the heart of how the so-called "justice system" works, it seems to me. Truth does not matter, winning does. Police and prosecutors want numbers of victories, and courts are often happy to oblige -- regardless of fact or truth.
It's called "justice" because it's a process, it's the way things have been done for many a long year, and it's just too damn bad that sometimes the innocent are swept up in it... too.dam.bad.
In this case, Steven Avery and his nephew Brandon Dassey both went to trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach. Both were convicted, but the evidence against them was scant and/or bizarre to say the least. A conviction in both cases required an enormous amount of police and prosecutorial misconduct on the one hand, repeated instances of judicial "discretion" let's call it favoring the prosecution, and juries willing -- eager? -- to suspend their disbelief and set aside any reasonable doubt about the guilt of these two fellows to convict them.
There were strong indications that the police planted evidence; just a little bit to be sure -- a key, blood stains, and bits and pieces of other evidence -- but there were also strong indications that the accused had nothing to do with Teresa Halbach's murder, that someone else had done it and had essentially framed Avery for the crime -- and got away with it.
If so, that means a murderer is loose in that part of Wisconsin, just as a serial rapist was loose in that part of Wisconsin while Steven Avery was in prison for a crime he didn't commit. That rapist, by the way, committed two more rapes during the time Steven was in prison wrongly convicted.
Steven Avery's nephew Brandon Dassey made a series of obviously false confessions, sometimes coerced by the police, but in one case -- shockingly -- coerced by his own defense attorney's investigator, implicating himself and his uncle in the murder. He was obviously making shit up to satisfy his interrogators, and yet, somehow the "system" bought these confessions whole and treated them as if they were true and factual, when in fact they were anything but. Nevertheless, the prosecution relied on these false confessions for a good deal of their cases against Avery and Dassey. It didn't matter that the confessions were patently false. What mattered was the fact that there were confessions at all, on the premise that "innocent people don't confess to crimes they didn't commit," one of the most egregiously wrong notions in this whole sorry affair.
The truth is, I don't know who murdered Teresa Halbach but I'm pretty sure -- from what was presented in the documentary anyway -- that Steven Avery and Brandon Dassey didn't do it. They couldn't have. They certainly couldn't have done it the way Dassey described the murder in his repeated false confessions (that she was tied to the bed, sexually assaulted, she was strangled, her throat was cut and she was repeatedly shot -- for investigators found none of Teresa's blood anywhere on the premises of the Avery compound where both Avery and Dassey lived. Her DNA was only found on a bullet fragment discovered in a garage months after it had been repeatedly swept for evidence, strongly suggesting the bullet or the DNA had been planted. Or, even more likely, that Teresa's DNA was a test contaminant -- like that of the tester's -- and was not actually on the bullet fragment at all.
There was no uncompromised evidence that tied either Avery or Dassey to Halbach's murder. That alone should have raised a "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the jurors, but for some reason it didn't-- at least not enough of a doubt to acquit either one.
Why not?
That gets us to how the system really works. Avery was targeted as the culprit almost from the outset, when Teresa was reported missing. She had last been seen on Avery's property where she went to photograph a van he wanted to list for sale in Auto Trader magazine. Her car and what was left of her burned corpse were found on his property, her ashes mostly in a burn pit not twenty feet from his mobile home.
But her ashes also turned up in a quarry at the other end of a 400 acre property, and in a barrel found elsewhere on the property. This indicated that her body was burned in the quarry (a quarter mile or more from the mobile home where she was allegedly murdered) and her ashes were then transported in the barrel to the burn pit beside Avery's mobile home where they were later discovered.
None of her blood at all was found anywhere on the property, but her blood was found in the cargo section of her car. It appeared that she was transported while bleeding from a head wound, but where or why? Her car was found in a corner of the Avery compound, inexpertly covered with branches and debris. It was found almost immediately by a civilian searcher who was given permission to explore the property (on which the Averys had hundreds if not thousands of derelict vehicles -- they worked as auto dismantlers) by one of Avery's brothers.
The prosecution ultimately theorized that Teresa was sexually assaulted in Steven Avery's bedroom, then she was taken to the garage where she was shot and killed, and then her body was put in the back of her SUV for transport the couple of hundred feet to the burn pit beside Avery's mobile home where her body was burned in a bonfire that night.
Except there was no blood evidence anywhere except in her car.
She could not have been killed in the garage without her blood being essentially everywhere inside, and there was none, not a drop.
As many observers have said, the actual and objective evidence does not lead to either Avery or Dassey as her murderer. But she was clearly murdered. So who did it?
That's a question the police and prosecutors never examined.
That alone should be seen as malfeasance.
But it wasn't and isn't. Wisconsinites seem to believe that both Dassey and Avery "got what was coming to them" -- pretty much regardless of their actual guilt. It literally doesn't seem to matter in the minds of many of their neighbors whether they did it or not. They have convicted these two in their own minds because "nobody liked the Averys" and their extended family, and they were nothing but trouble anyway, so it's just as well that these two are in prison for the rest of their lives. Because they were no good. Neither of them.
They may be punished for a crime they didn't commit, but so what? There were other things they did that made it appropriate to put them away. Justice may be served sideways, but it's served just the same. These people were and are scum. They can rot in prison forever as far as their neighbors are concerned.
Some of those who investigated the case called them "evil incarnate" -- not because they did the crime, but because of their reputation and their lifestyle, which was not approved of by the community apparently. And if you go against community norms, it would seem, you are literally taking your life in your hands. Tolerance, apparently, did not extend to the Averys and their large number of relatives.
They were dirty. They were not necessarily honest. They were slow-witted, sub-par IQ. They drank and smoked cigarettes. They were accused of inappropriate sexual behavior (ie: masturbating in public). They didn't raise their children right, and they were always getting into minor trouble with the law. Nobody liked them.
Nobody liked them.
That was apparently the key right there. "Nobody liked them."
Thus they could be accused, tried and convicted with nary a nod to justice. It was nothing more than taking out the trash. White trash in this case, but trash nonetheless. Getting rid of "trouble."
This is actually what happens in courts all across the land, day in and day out. Law enforcement is focused on certain elements in the population which are considered 'undesirable' by the community or the powers that be. There is often a racial bias in this focus, to the extent that practically all the law enforcement focus is on people of color, particularly poor people of color, whose communities are under constant and unrelenting siege by the police. Accusations, arrests, trials and conviction go on all the time, many for the most minor offenses, and very often, perhaps most often, the victims are induced to confess or plead out to crimes they have not committed, on the premise that if they plead or confess, they will receive a lighter sentence than if they contest the accusation at trial.
90% or more of convictions (they say) are actually due to plea bargains or false confessions. It's really quite remarkable. And millions are in prison due to these factors.
Every day in every way, this is how the court system works. It's based on lies, falsehood, and bargains, not on truth, justice, and the American way.
For police and prosecutors, it's about numbers of convictions. The judges go along. They know and don't care that what is presented in court is frequently false and that millions are sentenced based on these false claims. It doesn't matter to them.
When people protest, they rarely get anywhere in part because the people in power like things this way, believing as they do that even if the "innocent" are shot or convicted, it serves as a means of suppressing the inherent criminality of the lower orders, so what's to worry?
That's why "Making a Murderer" is to me an important document in the struggle for dignity, justice, community and peace, because it shows just how far into realms of bizarre fantasy the "system" goes to get convictions, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the victims.
It's amazing, aggravating, and true.
What do we have to do to fix it?
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The Storm -- Redux
 |
| The Storm from overhead via NASA |
Found a link to this stunning slideshow of The Storm over at dKos and I'm reposting it here so that we'll have it available for further contemplation as time goes on. (It's from NASA but it's not that easy to find at the NASA site.)
Despite claims to the contrary from some officials, it does not seem that response to The Storm has been in any way appropriate to the needs of the devastated areas and people, most of whom are not rich and don't have the means to escape the worst effects.
Unfortunately, Our Betters have a privileged claim on government services both in times of peril and times of peace and plenty. The Masses are left, as always, to fend for themselves -- or die. We saw this clearly in New York and parts of New Jersey where the tony well-to-do were provided with practically everything they needed almost immediately after The Storm passes while those many thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans who faced the full wrath of The Storm and particularly the storm surge were ignored for days by official relief agencies (such as FEMA and the Red Cross) as was reported from Staten Island, the Rockaways, Coney Island and elsewhere in the New York/New Jersey area.
Occupy Wall Street brigades stood in the breach, helping where no one else did, stepping in where all the other "helping organizations" seemed to be tied up with currying favor with the High and the Mighty. They did heroic work under trying circumstances and are to be commended, but of course, because OWS is nothing but a bunch of DFHs, they will get little or no recognition from On High, in fact, they might be arrested for their temerity to go where angels fear to tread.
Oh, and there was an "election" yesterday, too.
Turns out those of us who predicted that the Romney campaign would forcefully try to steal the election were wrong. I wasn't alone in the view that Romney et al would do just about anything to have their way, but I was surprised when I heard that Obama was declared the "winner" and that shortly thereafter, Romney had conceded.
No fight in them, or what? Is it something else? Is it that the Rs know full well, and have known from the get go, that Obama is really one of them (well, except for his complexion and kinky hair)? And that they would rather someone like him, somewhat closer to the Masses, execute the Program?
It was never possible for me to imagine someone like Romney -- or Romney himself -- sitting in the Big Chair in the Oval Office except as a joke. Of course I felt the same way about addle-pated (But Ever-Saintly) Ronald Reagan. See where that got me. Given the polling consistency, I doubt that Romney actually thought he'd get there, but the Horserace was as always the most important thing to sell to the unwashed, and so it was, right down to the wire.
The game was called by shortly after 11pm EST, rather shockingly early given all the uncertainties in places like Ohio and Florida and whatnot. Obviously, it could have been strung out much longer than it was, but apparently the mathematicians at the networks wouldn't have it, and so they did their noble thing and let the Kenyan Socialist continue to sit on the Throne.
But who will control him and to what object?
We'll have to see, won't we.
Interestingly, there has been little change in the Senate and House, meaning the idiocy of the last two years will continue. But look at this, the GOP has retaken the Wisconsin State Senate, so that all the sturm and all the drang over the Walker/Koch Brothers take over of the Wisconsin State House will either have to be repeated on a bigger scale, or it will have to dissipate into the mists of time. There's a level of absurdity in these things (anomalies abound in state and local election results) that simply defy rational consideration.
It is what it is.
[Note: Meant to mention the Nor'easter that is now visiting the East Coast, but this post was written early in the morning, before I was fully awake... not the first time, not the last.]
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
As for the Mikwaukee Shooter
This may have nothing to do with anything, but yesterday I made an off-hand comment that in my area of California, Sikhs control a significant percentage of the trucking business -- among other businesses and industries -- and I got to thinking....
The Sikh Temple shooter was described as a truck driver in several reports. I don't know whether Sikhs have significant control of trucking in Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Colorado, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do. They work their damn butts off in the trucking business.
Could be Mr. White Supremacist Shooter got his panties in a wad because he found that "even in Wisconsin" -- so white it shines -- Sikhs were running the trucking business and he felt slighted and shut out.
From what I've seen about him -- and he apparently had quite a public presence through his bands and interviews and so on -- dude was no slack-jawed dummy. He would not have mistaken Sikhs for Muslims and gone to a gurdwara to shoot the people he did because he thought they were Muslims. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew exactly who he was shooting and why.
It may be conventional wisdom to think he was too stupid to know the difference, but there's no sign at all that he was that dumb. There are signs that he was smart, talented, and a risk-taker -- as well as a white-supremacist fascist/nazi -- who had fallen on hard times (his house in NC was foreclosed, among other things, [adding: after he was fired by the Iowa trucking company he was working for in NC, because he got a ticket for driving while impaired in his own vehicle on his own time]) and decided he knew who to blame and punish for his misfortune.
I could be wrong, of course. But it's just something else to consider.
The Sikh Temple shooter was described as a truck driver in several reports. I don't know whether Sikhs have significant control of trucking in Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Colorado, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do. They work their damn butts off in the trucking business.
Could be Mr. White Supremacist Shooter got his panties in a wad because he found that "even in Wisconsin" -- so white it shines -- Sikhs were running the trucking business and he felt slighted and shut out.
From what I've seen about him -- and he apparently had quite a public presence through his bands and interviews and so on -- dude was no slack-jawed dummy. He would not have mistaken Sikhs for Muslims and gone to a gurdwara to shoot the people he did because he thought they were Muslims. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew exactly who he was shooting and why.
It may be conventional wisdom to think he was too stupid to know the difference, but there's no sign at all that he was that dumb. There are signs that he was smart, talented, and a risk-taker -- as well as a white-supremacist fascist/nazi -- who had fallen on hard times (his house in NC was foreclosed, among other things, [adding: after he was fired by the Iowa trucking company he was working for in NC, because he got a ticket for driving while impaired in his own vehicle on his own time]) and decided he knew who to blame and punish for his misfortune.
I could be wrong, of course. But it's just something else to consider.
Monday, August 6, 2012
It (Doesn't) Get Better
 |
| Wade Page and his tattoos from his Myspace page. |
Stories have been percolating all day that the Milwaukee Temple shooter was ex-Army, ex-Psyops, given a general discharge in 1998 for reasons unknown, but who had been previously disciplined for drunkenness. OK then.
He did not, they say, go overseas, and somehow that's supposed to cancel his psyops training (which of course amounted to little more than the leafleting and tabling that political campaigns engage in, of course.)
Somewhere I have a psyops manual from that era (oh, I keep lots of things, but don't always know where they are), and at least superficially, it is pretty benign. It's not really about doing naughties, nor does it even peripherally deal with shooting up Sikh temples, and yet there is an element in it that.... how to put this.... encourages the spread of dread among targeted populations. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It's axiomatic.
Further, it's starting to get out there, via a number of media vehicles, that the White Supremacist band the shooter was involved with seems to have been more "anarchist and anti-government" than, erm, "white supremacist." Which is awfully convenient if you ask me.
And of course they say Alex Jones is going nuts over it. Yes, well... In some ways, Temple-Raston is a nastier piece of work, and talk about psy-ops, well, just listen to the linked piece.
Then there's the story of the shooter's tattoos.
It's not really as much of a muddle as some people are trying to make it out.
And it is now apparently received wisdom that the Aurora shooter was schizo, had been in treatment, and his therapist had been trying to warn the appropriate administrators at UofC that he was about to act out.
Hmm.
Who'd a thunk.
Oh for Cripes Sake
From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Remember the Rightist hysteria when the DHS issued a report on Rightist extremist groups? And DHS dropped the idea of tracking them? SPLC had had this guy on their radar for 12 years. FBI? Not 't all. Meanwhile, Grannies For Peace and random anarchists are targeted for intense scrutiny by "law enforcement." Don't you feel so much safer knowing the Grannies and the Anarchists are never out of sight of the National Security State?
It ain't right...
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.
In 2010, Page, then the leader of the band End Apathy, gave an interview to the white supremacist website Label 56. He said that when he started the band in 2005, its name reflected his wish to “figure out how to end people’s apathetic ways” and start “moving forward.” “I was willing to point out some of my faults on how I was holding myself back,” Page said.
Later, he added, “The inspiration was based on frustration that we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and a society in whole.” He did not discuss violence in the interview.
Page told the website that he had been a part of the white power music scene since 2000, when he left his native Colorado on a motorcycle. He attended white power concerts in Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia and Colorado. At various times, he said, he also played in the hate rock bands Youngland (2001-2003), Celtic Warrior, Radikahl, Max Resist, Intimidation One, Aggressive Force and Blue Eyed Devils.
End Apathy, he said, included “Brent” on bass and “Ozzie” on drums; the men were former members of Definite Hate and another band, 13 Knots.
In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that Page also attempted to purchase goods from the neo-Nazi National Alliance, then America's most important hate group.
Remember the Rightist hysteria when the DHS issued a report on Rightist extremist groups? And DHS dropped the idea of tracking them? SPLC had had this guy on their radar for 12 years. FBI? Not 't all. Meanwhile, Grannies For Peace and random anarchists are targeted for intense scrutiny by "law enforcement." Don't you feel so much safer knowing the Grannies and the Anarchists are never out of sight of the National Security State?
It ain't right...
Killer Kulture
Mars, Bitches!
It was the strangest mash up yesterday, with most of my day taken up in following the Oak Creek Temple Massacre on line and then in the evening staying up late to watch the latest Mars landing, also online. Olympics gymnastics was on the teevee, but I really haven't watched the Olympics since the opening ceremony, and then only to be struck dumb by the... erm... spectacle(?).
[As as side note, once I learned of the modern Olympics' pretty overtly fascist operations and highly corrupt underpinning, if you will, I began to see the Games more as a mean joke than as a serious competition; as a rule, I don't see more than a few minutes of a few events, especially since the Games have been on NBC, whose coverage is another mean joke. But I digress.]
Both the Massacre and the Mars Landing were highly evocative of past events, the Landing going back to the very long ago, the Massacre evocative of much more recent events.
I was struck by how antiquated the NASA/JPL procedures were as the Curiosity Mission neared Mars. My doG, they were still using 3 ring binders to read off their sequences, despite the fact that they had the latest computer equipment right in front of them. They were watching the plots of the landing on large screens at the sides of the room, just as they would have done at Houston Mission Control decades ago, and there were rows and rows of Curiosity Mission Control terminals at which rows and rows of Mission Control personnel scanned monitors for data and announced their satisfaction therewith as the Mission Scientist called on them one by one. Their voices were distorted the way space mission voices have been distorted by space mission radio gear for decades. At one point, the Mission Scientist's radio gear failed, the way that such gear seems to fail fairly often at Mission Control, and a colleague handed over his own equipment so that the Mission Scientist could communicate with the rest of the room.
The Curiosity Mission team was a highly individualistic bunch, though, and I would say the "star" of the room -- who never said a word publicly -- was a Latin looking dude with a fancy multi-colored roach haircut with starsshaven spray painted into the side of his head. He didn't say anything and he didn't really seem to have anything to do but nod his head, grin and look decorative. And why not? It's Mars!
Mohawk Guy is an Internet SuperStar:
Damb, we're easily amused!
I found I was just as caught up in the Landing as I'd been when Mercury capsules were returning to Earth; and it was a real thrill when the announcement came that the Curiosity craft was on the surface of Mars. Even more of a thrill was the first image from the surface, a thumbnail that had been enormously enlarged so that it was almost impossible to make out what it showed. It didn't matter; it was a picture from the surface, broadcast of millions of miles, after a landing that had taken place moments before, and it was from Mars.
Wow.
And all of it was so evocative of so much space exploration since I was a child. Seriously, nothing has changed. It is the same operating theory and practice now as it was 50 years ago and more. The same procedures, the same hierarchies, the same look, the same sound.
Striking too is the fact that there hasn't been a mission to Mars that could actually look for the "markers" of biology -- not for life itself, of course -- since 1976, when the Viking Landers returned ambiguous data that were officially interpreted as indicating a sterile lifeless surface, without any carbon or carbon compounds at all (not even from meteorites) and literally lethal to living organisms due to deadly ultraviolet light and a surface saturated with peroxides and other substances and compounds which would kill anything and everything on contact.
I've made Mars something of a hobby for many years, even set up a website (which still exists though many of the links no longer work) beginning in 1997 or so to explore some of the controversies and disputes concerning what was really what on Mars. I was an active participant in a few space science boards, and through them became acquainted with quite a number of planetary scientists and interested laymen. Through sometimes heated discussions on those boards, I learned a great deal about what was not known or poorly understood about Mars, and especially how heavily images and information released to the public had been manipulated for many years to further certain standard and accepted theories rather than provide the means to explore and debate.
I learned that it was more than marginally likely that the Vikings had indeed "discovered life on Mars" but that there were political reasons both within the government and within NASA's planetary science community to obscure the data and deny the "discovery" -- if it was a discovery.
I made a "discovery" myself based on Mars Orbital Camera images taken near the south pole -- evidence and images of active geysers. And wouldn't you know, the evidence I produced was fiercely denied, and my interpretation was denounced as "an optical illusion."
Later, surprisingly -- or not -- the question of geysers at the south pole of Mars became something of a serious study, and surprisingly enough -- or not -- the presence of active geysers at certain seasons of the Mars year was widely accepted within the planetary science community, mechanisms enabling geysering were explained, and essentially everything but the visual evidence I provided has become standard and essentially uncontroversial. There had been scientific speculation about active geysering on Mars for years, but interestingly, the trigger for the acceptance of the notion was Gregg Orme's "Mars Spiders" investigations, the "spiders" being frequently encountered surface features that were otherwise inexplicable.
I also made stabs at discovering currently active glaciers on the surface, some of which have since been confirmed.
I stepped back from more active exploration of the Mars surface data when it became clear to me after the Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Spirit Missions, that the long-time focus on the question of whether there was or ever had been flowing water on Mars was barking up the wrong tree. Whether or not there had ever been "water" on the surface -- which obviously there was both as ice and flowing water -- the far more common liquid at the surface had been and perhaps still is sulfuric acid.
Liquid water and liquid sulfuric acid are chemically similar (H2O vs H2SO4) and -- depending on what you are looking for and how you look -- they may be indistinguishable, but the one can imply the presence of biology while the other will almost certainly imply the absence of biology (at least on Earth.)
When it occurred to me that quite possibly sulfuric acid had been the primary surface liquid throughout the history of Mars, a whole lot of otherwise difficult to understand evidence seemed to make sense.
Sulfuric acid has a much lower freezing temperature than water, and it doesn't require the atmospheric pressure water does in order to remain liquid over time. Under current conditions, in other words, sulfuric acid could remain liquid and flow over much of the Martian surface (assuming it was available at the surface) whereas pure water could not do so for more than a very brief period before freezing or evaporating. But flowing sulfuric acid would have the effect of sterilizing the surface just as surely as any of the hypothesized oxides, peroxides and superoxides that were once alleged to have combined with hyper-ultraviolet flux to sterilize the surface.
The key to understanding presence of biology or the absence of biology on Mars (which would be even more peculiar if there had been a water regime) lay in acceptance of the idea that "water" as we understand it -- whether solid, liquid or gas -- may never have been abundant at the surface of Mars during any period of the planet's history and continued focus on finding such evidence may be a wild goose chase if sulfuric acid was the key surface volatile throughout Mars's history.
There is evidence of at least some water at some time periods -- including now -- on Mars, and that water could have harbored biology, but if it ever did, it seems to me that any potential biology would have been killed if there was contact between water at or below the surface and the abundant sulfuric acid. Mars, therefore, is potentially self-sterilizing, a Killer Planet, but not necessarily the way planetary scientists have long hypothesized.
Needless to say, the appropriate tests to find out are not being done, any more than tests to confirm the presence or absence of the long-hypothesized sterilizing super-oxides have ever been done. (Actually, there's no experimental evidence on Mars that they exist at all.)
Meanwhile, in Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee, an All-American Killer went on a rampage at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, apparently taking out the prominent men of the religious community before apparently being killed himself by police. I say "apparently" because these All-American massacres and slaughters have a way of turning out to be not quite what they are initially reported to be, and especially the killers themselves aren't quite what they were initially made out to be.
I haven't checked news on either Mars or the Massacre this morning so I'm not sure how either story has developed; I'm recording mostly what I saw/heard yesterday.
There were initial reports of up to four shooters in Wisconsin which police assure us was probably really only the one, seen from different angles. According to later reports, the shooter was some sort of skinhead white supremacist who may have been seeking revenge for 9/11, but at the time, there was no way to even begin to confirm such a thing. However, the authorities quickly classified the attack as an act of "domestic terrorism" -- something they have been highly reluctant to do in the case of white men shooting up people and places or making terrorist threats to blow up this or that monument or facility.
Until recently, at any rate, "terrorism" in the popular mind and among our National Security authorities was almost entirely confined to Muslims and brown people. Only since the advent of the Occupy activities which have involved all kinds of anarchists have white men been rounded up and accused of "terrorism."
This may be the first time that a "skinhead" or "white supremacist" has been designated a "terrorist." But since he was apparently killed in a gun battle with police, he will not be subject to ... interrogation. We may never know the truth about him.
Unfortunately, the threats to and murder of Sikhs in revenge for 9/11 (which they had nothing to do with) has been fairly common in this country for years. In fact, I think one of the first revenge killings after 9/11 was of a Sikh walking on the street. There have been quite a few more since then, but nothing on the scale of the massacre yesterday.
But the myth-makers were busy yesterday assuring us that there had never been any threats to the Sikh community in Wisconsin, which is just silly. Yes, there have been threats. It's a fact of life for Sikhs in the United States, whether in Wisconsin or anywhere else. The myth of no threats against Sikhs is bogus.
Some Sikhs in America do not wear turbans or beards because of the ignorance of too many Americans regarding the origin and nature of Sikhism, and the fact that Sikhs had nothing to do with 9/11 or any other terrorist attack on Americans. (In India it's a different story, but we'll leave that aside for now.)
This is the second All-American Massacre in America's Heartland ina little over less than a month. Let's hope we're not on yet another cycle of copy-cat massacres, but we may be. American Exceptionalism, eh?
It's simply been a fact that people with the itch to kill in our culture find their impetus more easily available when someone else does it "first."
For a time, I wondered if the All-American Massacre was a result of Manchurianizing or otherwise "triggering" particularly vulnerable individuals to kill, whether or not they were actively recruited or trained. I don't think we can ever know. But G2Geek's exploration of "Stochastic" terrorism is worth some additional contemplation. His hypothesis is basically that the American culture itself provides the triggers for these periodic mass killings, that there is something very deep seated in our collective sub-consciousness that almost requires it.
And when you think about all the mass murders and massacres that have been features, not bugs, of Euro-American culture from the beginning, starting almost at the moment Europeans first set foot in this New World and continuing relentlessly ever since, then there may truly be no way out of this Killer Kulture box we're in.
Gun nuts of course reject any controls on their acquisition and use of personal weaponry, which is just absurd. But they may be right that controlling firearms access might not have any effect on the tendency of some Americans to engage in massacre. It may not be due the guns or their availability that enables the routine massacre of Americans by other Americans. It may be the culture itself, going back to the very beginnings of what we now call "America."
Something so deep seated and so out of whack will take more than a superficial approach to change.
---------------------
Now to check the news.
It was the strangest mash up yesterday, with most of my day taken up in following the Oak Creek Temple Massacre on line and then in the evening staying up late to watch the latest Mars landing, also online. Olympics gymnastics was on the teevee, but I really haven't watched the Olympics since the opening ceremony, and then only to be struck dumb by the... erm... spectacle(?).
[As as side note, once I learned of the modern Olympics' pretty overtly fascist operations and highly corrupt underpinning, if you will, I began to see the Games more as a mean joke than as a serious competition; as a rule, I don't see more than a few minutes of a few events, especially since the Games have been on NBC, whose coverage is another mean joke. But I digress.]
Both the Massacre and the Mars Landing were highly evocative of past events, the Landing going back to the very long ago, the Massacre evocative of much more recent events.
I was struck by how antiquated the NASA/JPL procedures were as the Curiosity Mission neared Mars. My doG, they were still using 3 ring binders to read off their sequences, despite the fact that they had the latest computer equipment right in front of them. They were watching the plots of the landing on large screens at the sides of the room, just as they would have done at Houston Mission Control decades ago, and there were rows and rows of Curiosity Mission Control terminals at which rows and rows of Mission Control personnel scanned monitors for data and announced their satisfaction therewith as the Mission Scientist called on them one by one. Their voices were distorted the way space mission voices have been distorted by space mission radio gear for decades. At one point, the Mission Scientist's radio gear failed, the way that such gear seems to fail fairly often at Mission Control, and a colleague handed over his own equipment so that the Mission Scientist could communicate with the rest of the room.
The Curiosity Mission team was a highly individualistic bunch, though, and I would say the "star" of the room -- who never said a word publicly -- was a Latin looking dude with a fancy multi-colored roach haircut with stars
Mohawk Guy is an Internet SuperStar:
Damb, we're easily amused!
I found I was just as caught up in the Landing as I'd been when Mercury capsules were returning to Earth; and it was a real thrill when the announcement came that the Curiosity craft was on the surface of Mars. Even more of a thrill was the first image from the surface, a thumbnail that had been enormously enlarged so that it was almost impossible to make out what it showed. It didn't matter; it was a picture from the surface, broadcast of millions of miles, after a landing that had taken place moments before, and it was from Mars.
Wow.
And all of it was so evocative of so much space exploration since I was a child. Seriously, nothing has changed. It is the same operating theory and practice now as it was 50 years ago and more. The same procedures, the same hierarchies, the same look, the same sound.
Striking too is the fact that there hasn't been a mission to Mars that could actually look for the "markers" of biology -- not for life itself, of course -- since 1976, when the Viking Landers returned ambiguous data that were officially interpreted as indicating a sterile lifeless surface, without any carbon or carbon compounds at all (not even from meteorites) and literally lethal to living organisms due to deadly ultraviolet light and a surface saturated with peroxides and other substances and compounds which would kill anything and everything on contact.
I've made Mars something of a hobby for many years, even set up a website (which still exists though many of the links no longer work) beginning in 1997 or so to explore some of the controversies and disputes concerning what was really what on Mars. I was an active participant in a few space science boards, and through them became acquainted with quite a number of planetary scientists and interested laymen. Through sometimes heated discussions on those boards, I learned a great deal about what was not known or poorly understood about Mars, and especially how heavily images and information released to the public had been manipulated for many years to further certain standard and accepted theories rather than provide the means to explore and debate.
I learned that it was more than marginally likely that the Vikings had indeed "discovered life on Mars" but that there were political reasons both within the government and within NASA's planetary science community to obscure the data and deny the "discovery" -- if it was a discovery.
I made a "discovery" myself based on Mars Orbital Camera images taken near the south pole -- evidence and images of active geysers. And wouldn't you know, the evidence I produced was fiercely denied, and my interpretation was denounced as "an optical illusion."
 | ||
| My cropped and colorized image of Martian geysers near the South Pole c. 1999 |
I also made stabs at discovering currently active glaciers on the surface, some of which have since been confirmed.
I stepped back from more active exploration of the Mars surface data when it became clear to me after the Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Spirit Missions, that the long-time focus on the question of whether there was or ever had been flowing water on Mars was barking up the wrong tree. Whether or not there had ever been "water" on the surface -- which obviously there was both as ice and flowing water -- the far more common liquid at the surface had been and perhaps still is sulfuric acid.
Liquid water and liquid sulfuric acid are chemically similar (H2O vs H2SO4) and -- depending on what you are looking for and how you look -- they may be indistinguishable, but the one can imply the presence of biology while the other will almost certainly imply the absence of biology (at least on Earth.)
When it occurred to me that quite possibly sulfuric acid had been the primary surface liquid throughout the history of Mars, a whole lot of otherwise difficult to understand evidence seemed to make sense.
Sulfuric acid has a much lower freezing temperature than water, and it doesn't require the atmospheric pressure water does in order to remain liquid over time. Under current conditions, in other words, sulfuric acid could remain liquid and flow over much of the Martian surface (assuming it was available at the surface) whereas pure water could not do so for more than a very brief period before freezing or evaporating. But flowing sulfuric acid would have the effect of sterilizing the surface just as surely as any of the hypothesized oxides, peroxides and superoxides that were once alleged to have combined with hyper-ultraviolet flux to sterilize the surface.
The key to understanding presence of biology or the absence of biology on Mars (which would be even more peculiar if there had been a water regime) lay in acceptance of the idea that "water" as we understand it -- whether solid, liquid or gas -- may never have been abundant at the surface of Mars during any period of the planet's history and continued focus on finding such evidence may be a wild goose chase if sulfuric acid was the key surface volatile throughout Mars's history.
There is evidence of at least some water at some time periods -- including now -- on Mars, and that water could have harbored biology, but if it ever did, it seems to me that any potential biology would have been killed if there was contact between water at or below the surface and the abundant sulfuric acid. Mars, therefore, is potentially self-sterilizing, a Killer Planet, but not necessarily the way planetary scientists have long hypothesized.
Needless to say, the appropriate tests to find out are not being done, any more than tests to confirm the presence or absence of the long-hypothesized sterilizing super-oxides have ever been done. (Actually, there's no experimental evidence on Mars that they exist at all.)
Meanwhile, in Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee, an All-American Killer went on a rampage at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, apparently taking out the prominent men of the religious community before apparently being killed himself by police. I say "apparently" because these All-American massacres and slaughters have a way of turning out to be not quite what they are initially reported to be, and especially the killers themselves aren't quite what they were initially made out to be.
I haven't checked news on either Mars or the Massacre this morning so I'm not sure how either story has developed; I'm recording mostly what I saw/heard yesterday.
There were initial reports of up to four shooters in Wisconsin which police assure us was probably really only the one, seen from different angles. According to later reports, the shooter was some sort of skinhead white supremacist who may have been seeking revenge for 9/11, but at the time, there was no way to even begin to confirm such a thing. However, the authorities quickly classified the attack as an act of "domestic terrorism" -- something they have been highly reluctant to do in the case of white men shooting up people and places or making terrorist threats to blow up this or that monument or facility.
Until recently, at any rate, "terrorism" in the popular mind and among our National Security authorities was almost entirely confined to Muslims and brown people. Only since the advent of the Occupy activities which have involved all kinds of anarchists have white men been rounded up and accused of "terrorism."
This may be the first time that a "skinhead" or "white supremacist" has been designated a "terrorist." But since he was apparently killed in a gun battle with police, he will not be subject to ... interrogation. We may never know the truth about him.
Unfortunately, the threats to and murder of Sikhs in revenge for 9/11 (which they had nothing to do with) has been fairly common in this country for years. In fact, I think one of the first revenge killings after 9/11 was of a Sikh walking on the street. There have been quite a few more since then, but nothing on the scale of the massacre yesterday.
But the myth-makers were busy yesterday assuring us that there had never been any threats to the Sikh community in Wisconsin, which is just silly. Yes, there have been threats. It's a fact of life for Sikhs in the United States, whether in Wisconsin or anywhere else. The myth of no threats against Sikhs is bogus.
Some Sikhs in America do not wear turbans or beards because of the ignorance of too many Americans regarding the origin and nature of Sikhism, and the fact that Sikhs had nothing to do with 9/11 or any other terrorist attack on Americans. (In India it's a different story, but we'll leave that aside for now.)
This is the second All-American Massacre in America's Heartland in
It's simply been a fact that people with the itch to kill in our culture find their impetus more easily available when someone else does it "first."
For a time, I wondered if the All-American Massacre was a result of Manchurianizing or otherwise "triggering" particularly vulnerable individuals to kill, whether or not they were actively recruited or trained. I don't think we can ever know. But G2Geek's exploration of "Stochastic" terrorism is worth some additional contemplation. His hypothesis is basically that the American culture itself provides the triggers for these periodic mass killings, that there is something very deep seated in our collective sub-consciousness that almost requires it.
And when you think about all the mass murders and massacres that have been features, not bugs, of Euro-American culture from the beginning, starting almost at the moment Europeans first set foot in this New World and continuing relentlessly ever since, then there may truly be no way out of this Killer Kulture box we're in.
Gun nuts of course reject any controls on their acquisition and use of personal weaponry, which is just absurd. But they may be right that controlling firearms access might not have any effect on the tendency of some Americans to engage in massacre. It may not be due the guns or their availability that enables the routine massacre of Americans by other Americans. It may be the culture itself, going back to the very beginnings of what we now call "America."
Something so deep seated and so out of whack will take more than a superficial approach to change.
---------------------
Now to check the news.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Post Mortem Nostrums
So Walker actually did better in the recall election than he did in the 2010 election. The latest statistic I saw last night before toddling off to slumber was 52/47 Walker -- same as 2010; checking the news this morning it's now at 54/45 Walker.
Oh. Dear.
This despite the fact that Walker is not popular except among the Billionaires as their hired goon, and his policies (well, their policies) are widely deplored -- even by many of those who voted for him.
The post mortems have largely been piles of horseshit and excuses as is the way in the midst of political carnage. It was all that ad money from the Kochs! It was all the dirty tricks! Everyone's tired of recalls! God, if only Russ had run! etc, ad infinitum.
Let's not forget that one of Walker's promises was that he would get rid of the recall process if he was confirmed in office.
Think about that. One of the principal Progressive reforms from long ago, which I believe was first introduced in Wisconsin (or nearby, I'm too lazy to look it up right now) will be on the block now that Walker has been confirmed in office with a bigger majority than when he was first elected. This is insane. But there you are. That's our politics in a nutshell.
The insight I had was that if the People of Wisconsin were really voting based on their disgust with recalls, then ultimately it's an issue of a deeply flawed electoral and political process; they may or may not be thinking of it in terms of rejecting Progressive reforms, but clearly they recognize a systemic problem with the way our politics and elections are conducted. The way it is is not the way it should be.
If, that is, animosity at the recalls themselves was the driving force behind the failure of the voters to recall Walker and his LG. This idea has mostly been the product of Charles Pierce's insights for Esquire. Pierce has long been one of the better writers on topics of this sort, and though he may be wrong in this case, he may be right. If he is, then the broader issue of a deeply flawed political and electoral system must be addressed.
If keeping Walker in office turns out to be a comment on the system itself -- not in any way an approval of him and his policies on behalf of the Billionaires who own him -- then there is a good deal of potential for positive change, though not as long as he and his crew are in office. If Democrats were in office, though, it might be more difficult to address the issues of systemic flaws.
At this point, there's no sign that those flaws will be addressed any time soon, but you never know. People can be spurred to action by all kinds of things, and if the criminal investigation of Walker and his cronies continues and results in indictments, it's quite possible that something unexpected will happen.
Nevertheless, whether the People of Wisconsin decide to do anything about it or not, the problem is systemic. We have a political system that is almost completely unresponsive to the People, and we have an electoral system in which candidates are quite openly bought and sold by a relative handful of plutocrats and oligarchs -- that is when those plutocrats and oligarchs choose not to rule directly themselves.
This is the kind of ersatz "democracy" of the late Roman
People in office are proud of themselves for defying the People's interests and the People's will in order to serve their real constituents: the plutocrats and oligarchs who choose them and get them elected. We, the People, have not had any significant say in the actual political process for many years (some would say since the foundation of the nation), and our access to the governing process -- and even physical access to those who rule us -- is diminishing all the time.
(As a local side note, a "citizens commission" was set up last year to work with city planning consultants on schemes to "improve" the neighborhood's main street, Broadway. The People of the neighborhoods involved had no say in any of this; many had no idea there even was such a thing as a commission until an announcement appeared in the paper, as it hadn't been discussed with or approved by any of the neighborhood associations. The people on the commission were mostly unknown in the neighborhoods, no one was aware of any request to the city that Broadway be "improved," and no one had any idea who these consultants were, and they became alarmed when they researched some of the projects this outfit had done. It was all just imposed from on high, with the appearance of public participation and input. Complaints were made and noted. The commission continues to work with the consultants on plans for improvements nobody seems to want. That's how government works these days.)
When serving the oligarchs is the primary function of elected representatives, their secondary task is to market their unwanted product to the public. We see it all the time at every level of government from the White House on down. One of the points I made about the election of Barack Obama in 2008 was that he was auditioned (for two years) and vetted on his ability to manage the masses -- which he demonstrated he was more than capable of in some of the enormous rallies he presided over at home and abroad.)
Their skill at marketing unwanted product is actually one of the chief means of evaluating the success or failure of various politicians. Viz: the entirety of the Bush/Cheney reign of error and terror.
At no point are the real interests of the People even considered.
This situation can only be addressed if it is acknowledged, and we haven't reached that point in the wider political scheme of things. It is acknowledged among the rebels and those who have consciously withdrawn from the process, but with the political/electoral firmament the real public interests are avoided like the plague; this holds true for both major parties, most especially for the Republicans, but for the Democrats, too. Elections have no effect political recognition of the People and their interests and will in large part because they are marketing campaigns, not policy considerations.
The only way We, the People have found to affect the course of events is through various forms of rebellion outside the system.
But we need to go well beyond rebellion and create living alternatives.
[ * The illustration above is of election graffiti in Pompeii, c. 79AD, when Rome was still sort of something of a Republic -- at least superficially; elections continued under the Empire, of course, until long after they were completely meaningless.]
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
The Wisconsin Thing
I have no idea how the Wisconsin Recall is going to turn out, but it looks like all the smart money is on Scott Walker to retain the Governor's seat. I saw one prediction, in fact, that expected him to win the recall with 52% of the vote to Tom Barrett's 47% -- exactly the same outcome as the 2010 election which swept out the Democrats and replaced them with the most reactionary of Republicans in a rout.
Lessons learned? Well, if the vote is 52/47, probably none. If Walker wins by any amount, probably none. If Barrett wins (and can survive the inevitable recount challenges) the lesson will be that "The People Have Won!" but that would be premature and probably in error.
The lesson ought to be not to rely on elections and the political system to produce positive and desirable results for the People, because it is not going to do that. It is not designed to do that, it is designed to respond to money and to produce positive and desirable results for the Ruling Classes; in other words, the political system exists to serve itself first and foremost. And that will be true of any political system.
From the outset, though, the whole Wisconsin Thing has had the aspect of both farce and tragedy. Of course it was the spectacular reaction to the Walker-Billionaire-Servicing program put forth in the Wisconsin legislature that triggered the round of rebellions and revolutionary fervor we're still immersed in. Wisconsin led the way with huge demonstrations in Madison and a month-long occupation of the Capitol.
The Flight of the Democrats to Illinois so as to disable the legislative system for lack of a quorum was a strategically sound move, but it led to more than a few questions about loyalty and such that focused on process rather than issues.
The effort to flip the State Senate through recalls failed. Yes, two state senators were recalled, but it wasn't enough for a flip of political control, it wasn't even enough for a stalemate, and yet delusionists hailed it as a "triumph."
The lesson that should have been learned was that Scott Walker and his billionaires were getting away with everything they wanted to do and that they were unstoppable by ordinary political means. Something had happened, something profound, to alter the political landscape in Wisconsin, and no amount of marching, singing, occupying, or voting as it happened, was going to change it.
What had happened?
The blame for this state of affairs has been placed squarely on the shoulders of those whose money seems to be controlling the capitol, specifically the Koch Brothers. They through their oil and commodities empire have decided to spend essentially unlimited amounts of money to get their way. Permanently. And they have been very successful.
But there is much more to it than just Koch money. The money is almost peripheral. The problem runs much deeper.
One fundamental problem is the belief that the political system is supposed to be responsive to the People. It is not. In fact, it is purposely designed to thwart the People's interest and to serve the interests of a Ruling Class -- which may be of one or the other party or both simultaneously. The People have no direct role in the process of Rule, regardless of which party is in control of government.
Voters may think that by electing Walker, for example, they are getting what they want, but the fact is they aren't. The voters have essentially no influence at all; Walker serves those who bought and paid for him. Not the voters of Wisconsin.
Any semblance that he might be doing so is more a matter of marketing a product than reality; propaganda in other words.
He's serving those who pay his freight. Make no mistake.
But that would be just as true of Barrett if he had been elected in 2010 or manages to upset Walker in today's recall election.
Just because Barrett is a Democrat doesn't mean he is necessarily a People's candidate. In fact, it is just as likely that he is a servant of the Ruling Classes -- even if they aren't paying his freight -- as any other ranking pol. It's simply the way it is.
There's been incessant yakking about how stupid voters keep voting against their own interests, but those who make these sorts of observations don't seem to be able to handle something much more fundamental going on, something that seemed to be obvious in Wisconsin in the 2010 election, but which has been largely ignored or dismissed.
The Dems weren't seen to be serving the People's interests, and so Dem voters and Indie voters stayed home.
Now the prediction is for a larger turnout but with the same basic result -- and the result will be the same (if it is) because the Dems still aren't seen to be serving the People's interests.
It's not hard to figure this out. But these ideas are fiercely resisted by Dem pols and others who simply can't seem to imagine that voter actually do get it and they aren't actually voting against their interests; in many cases, they're simply opting out of a deeply flawed and often fraudulent system.
When voting cannot produce the results you seek, it's very rational not to play the game any more.
I noted with interest that the Dem Party apparat largely stayed out of the Wisconsin demonstrations against Walker's program early in 2011, and their support of the initial round of recalls was lukewarm at best. From my outsider's perspective, the Dem apparat was essentially absent. It was mostly certain unions and a fired up grass-roots (both of which looked like they were being sabotaged from within and without) that conducted the recall effort.
A clue here was that St. Russell Feingold, supposed arch-liberal-progressive pol, refused repeatedly to get involved in either the demonstrations or the recall effort, saying he had other priorities and wishing the activists well. It wasn't until the demonstrations were essentially over that he even addressed the demonstrators. He refused to stand for election in the recall of the Governor. He made quite clear he did not want to be part of what was going on -- but nevertheless he wished the activists well. That is well.
Mainstream media largely ignored the tumult in Wisconsin, and if national politicians were aware of it, they didn't seem to let on. The People of Wisconsin appeared to tire of the whole thing fairly early, even though the protest marches were huge. The problem seemed to me to be that the demonstrators could never seem to get on the same wavelength as the People.
While the issues being pressed by the demonstrators -- such as collective bargaining rights -- were important, they were more important to public employees who would be affected than they were to the general public; ultimately the focus on collective bargaining rights and pensions for public employees seemed to be self-serving. There was no apparent recognition that Wisconsin private sector workers by and large didn't have the benefits of unions, collective bargaining, pensions or what have you, and that most of them would never have them. As important as it may have been to preserve public employee rights and benefits that had been hard-won through struggle over so many years, it was probably more important in the eyes of the public that most Wisconsinites had no chance of ever gaining these sorts of benefits for themselves. It might have worked better to focus on extending to all workers the same sort of rights and benefits the public workers were trying to preserve for themselves. But that dawning seems never to have come (actually, the case was made several times, but it never became the focus of the protests).
As troubling as the failure to connect with the struggles of private sector workers -- who were getting hammered by the Recession -- was the fact that the public sector unions were conceding pay and benefit reductions without even a struggle. This has been commonplace everywhere. The concessions and the givebacks by public sector employee unions have become standard practice; the problem is that every time they engage in this behavior, they lose support as well as pay and benefits. It's a self-reinforcing downward spiral.
It's not hard for the public to be convinced that the public sector workers are not really interested in the problems of the People themselves, and to see the struggles of the public sector workers as entirely self-serving. Not surprisingly, it's hard to translate self-serving into a populist cause.
Even harder is to translate it into successful political action against a well-funded hyped up political propaganda machine that is out to use every trick in the book to institute radical change.
That process is going to continue regardless of whether there is a Dem or an R in office; it has been stunningly successful already, and it looks to continue in triumph until the end of days, whether or not a Dem office holder pretends to thwart the march of reactionary money.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
"Take Your Shame, Man" -- On the Progressive Failure in Wisconsin
Of course, as has been the case in every other "progressive" electoral disaster, the failure to flip the Wisconsin State Senate majority from R to D through recall is being spun as a sort-of "victory" because, well, Scott Walker might be recalled next year, and gee, next year there will be all these fired up Dems, and gee, maybe Russ Feingold ("I love that man!") will decide to challenge Walker, and gee, wouldn't it all be terrific to fight the Good Fight again? Huh?
doG, I am so sick of this crap "moral victory" propaganda and spin. Jebus F. Christmas dancing on a Ritz, STOP IT!
"Take your shame, man!" (an obscure Catherine Tate reference, see Royal Variety Show video below.) YOU FUCKING LOST. AGAIN.
Fucking Scott Walker and his Kochevik sponsors WON. AGAIN.
Fucking ACCEPT IT. Quit claiming "I'm not bovvered, tho." (another Catherine Tate reference, see below.)
GET FUCKING MAD.
Fight back, to win.
Or, just keep pushing the same old electoral buttons that don't work any more, just keep getting the same frustrating results, just keep claiming to have "won" a moral victory, just keep citing the long struggles of heroes like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, and keep insisting that "next year, next election, next lifetime, something, somehow, will sort of be somewhat "better."
Actually, it's worked to keep "progressives" occupied and out of mischief for the last fifteen years or so. Why not forever?
We are doomed.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Another "Near Win." Yay!
The Supreme Court campaign is actually "too close to call" in Wisconsin. About 500 votes separate Prosser -- the Walker-man -- and Kloppenburg -- the Lady Person -- with some precincts still to be counted. There will no doubt have to be a recount. So it may be several months before this one is decided.
But it isn't a clear-cut victory and because it isn't, it won't be clear-cut even if Kloppenburg wins in the end. Seems to be how it goes in too many cases when it comes to getting reactionaries out of office and something resembling progressives into office in this country.
Every single one of the Near Wins is claimed to be Important, Even Stunning by the Left o sphere, and most of the few and far between Victories wind up Disappointing to the Internet Lefties because the candidate behaves very differently in office and seems to be more concerned with form rather than substance, doing things Correctly rather than doing what is Right. [ Huge sigh]
Now this has been going on for year upon year, time without end. Cycle after cycle.
Something isn't working here if the goal is to actually have enough "progressives" -- however you want to define that -- in office to make a difference, and actually have them make a difference. If "Near Win" is the standard outcome, then whatever is being done to elect "Better Dems" is failing. Badly. Even when Dems somehow wind up in the majority.
But then, what really is the goal?
Is it, as it sometimes seems, the perpetuation of the Status Quo with endless repeats of the same sort of near victory that is hailed as a Joyous Learning Experience That Punished the Other Side?
Is "punishment" the goal? Is "learning" the goal? Or is it just about keeping the game going however one might?
"Near Wins" are actually Losses.
There's no way around that.
---------------------------------------
UPDATE: Sure. A county elections clerk with a poor record of elections shenanigans has all of a sudden "discovered" 7,500 votes for Prosser, thus ending the happy spring of Ms Kloppenburg who now -- conveniently -- cannot even call for a recount.
Yes. Well. Are we surprised?
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Earthquake
Japan is reeling from another disaster, certainly the biggest one since WWII, and one that threatens nuclear “catastrophe” -- as was just reported on NPR -- that will affect far more than Northern Japan.
As I have often said, I don’t have access to broadcast television while I’m in New Mexico, nor do I have cable television here (or in California), and as of 03/12/11, I don’t even have a dial-up internet connection, as the ancient laptop I was using for dial-up access here finally gave up the ghost and probably will not be restored.
I haven’t been out to get a Sunday paper yet -- the Albuquerque Journal is pretty thorough -- so the only real news I have about The Earthquake and its many hideous aftermaths is from NPR on the radio, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that the… reporting is… halting. At best.
When things are going on that defy the Narrative of Events, reporters in the field -- not just on NPR, but generally in the media -- flail. Because they don’t know what the story is supposed to be and events are (to say the least) fluid, they hesitate and stammer and choose their words very carefully rather than use their journalistic skills (assuming they have any) to tell what they know -- and what they don’t know -- about what is going on.
It should be a fairly simple matter to do that: “here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know; here’s what we need to find out; here’s what we’re doing to find it out.”
But they don’t do that. Instead, they repeat what they’ve been told by Official/Government Sources (usually unnamed), and if they have any other information, they couch it very carefully so as not to directly contradict Official Sources (Unnamed). Their stammering and hesitation is a good clue that they’re hiding something important that they can’t say because the Official Media Narrative either hasn’t been coagulated yet, or they’re afraid of losing All Important Access to Unnamed Official Sources -- who will, of course, Help Make Sense of What Is Going On. Thus forming the Official Narrative which then becomes the Standard Media Narrative. Without those Official Sources, the Narrative cannot be formed.
This gets very dicey because it is not just Government Sources the media rely on. No, they also rely on High Powered Corporate Sources and Their Interests, often intimately linked with Government Sources, but not always. The Narrative is formed by the interplay between Corporate Interest (which includes the major media of course) and Official Government Information.
In the case of The Earthquake and the nuclear dangers, the issue is fraught mightily. Corporate Interest is found in the denial of any serious problem that cannot be dealt with adequately by application of appropriate procedures. Corporate Interest favors expansion of Nuclear Power. The Earthquake -- much like the Chernobyl Disaster and Three Mile Island -- has made it potentially very difficult to proceed with the expansion of Nuclear Power facilities.
So how to describe what’s going on?
Until the Japanese Government stated directly that one of the nuclear plants damaged in The Earthquake “may be partially melted down” there wasn’t even a hint in NPR’s reporting that there could be more than a minor problem at the nuclear facilities in question. Exactly what that problem might be, they couldn’t or wouldn’t say. But you knew from their hesitations and stammers that they knew… something. We were not privileged to know what.
This is so dreadful and so aggravating.
On the other hand, the NPR reporting on the Wisconsin Thing was outright atrocious, deceptive, and fit the Corporate Narrative seamlessly. As far as their Narrative is concerned, Scott Walker and his sponsors and supporters are simply doing What Has To Be Done and they are all being perfectly honest and reasonable about it, whereas their opponents and the dozens of protesters in the streets are at best a distraction from the Important Business of State, at worst, violent vandals with no civic consciousness at all. There is no hesitation or stammering: this is the NPR Line on the Wisconsin Thing, and that, as they say, is that.
Then there is the NPR O’Keefe Sting Thing.
Today NPR’s Weekend Edition reports that Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” site is reporting (ah, steps removed, you see, and “The Blaze” is all Conservative And Shit, so it’s OK) that the O’Keefe Tape that resulted in the Firings of NPR’s CEO and Chief Fundraiser was doctored (much as other O’Keefe Stings and their clones have been doctored) to deceive. Hm. Who’d a thunk?
The institutional damage -- which was the whole point of the sting -- has already been done, and there is very little that can be done now to restore whatever has been lost. That is the point of these things. The fact that NPR instantly fell for it (much as the Dept of Agriculture did in the case of Shirley Sherrod) is appalling.
But it says something about how remarkably frail our Institutions are to the predations of the likes of O’Keefe and Breitbart and the rest.
These institutions seem impervious to Reason, but they are brittle and easily shattered -- or stampeded into doing stupid things -- by predators bent on taking them down.
Of which there are plenty.
Pointing out the situation, unfortunately, doesn’t provide a solution.
For example, I’m in something of a quandary about What To Do. Providing government services requires more revenue which should by rights come from the predator class that’s been benefiting mightily from an abundance of tax cuts all these years. The problem is that any advance in revenue -- no matter where it comes from, but the only source allowed to be discussed is the working class and poor -- will go to finance more Imperial Wars of Aggression which have been working out so well.
That’s how the Captive Government works. Everything for the bloodthirsty predators who own and control the Government. Nothing -- or rather, less -- for the “Lesser People.”
So why provide any more money for this Government when you know it will be used to pad the bank accounts of the already obscenely well off and to kill and maim brown people and destroy their houses abroad. That’s all. We’ve seen abundant evidence that there is nothing the People can do to change that. Certainly elections can’t do it.
Therefore, I’m not in favor of taxing the rich on behalf of this Government. We need a different Government, and in my view a different kind of Government, before taxing the rich will make any sense.
And we’re not there yet. Very far from being there, too.
I wish the people of Japan every possible blessing in this time of horror and immense trial for them. What’s happened is almost inconceivable -- except that we’ve seen so many repeated incidents of horror formerly unimaginable in the last few years. Events are in control. Not our petty fretting and concerns.
How petty can I be? Well, I discovered there were several other plumbing issues around the house that needed attention. So I’ve spent most of the morning attending to them. I think I’ve got them fixed, but it remains to be seen. Yes, that’s what I needed to do right now, but all the time I was doing it, I kept thinking how lucky I was compared to so many people who are suffering much worse than me. At least I was able to do these things. They don’t have water. Electricity. Food. Or in many cases homes to putter around in.
My petty concerns are nothing compared to the increasing suffering of the Growing Multitude.
Change must come. But how.
Back to studying my Rousseau, I guess…
As I have often said, I don’t have access to broadcast television while I’m in New Mexico, nor do I have cable television here (or in California), and as of 03/12/11, I don’t even have a dial-up internet connection, as the ancient laptop I was using for dial-up access here finally gave up the ghost and probably will not be restored.
I haven’t been out to get a Sunday paper yet -- the Albuquerque Journal is pretty thorough -- so the only real news I have about The Earthquake and its many hideous aftermaths is from NPR on the radio, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that the… reporting is… halting. At best.
When things are going on that defy the Narrative of Events, reporters in the field -- not just on NPR, but generally in the media -- flail. Because they don’t know what the story is supposed to be and events are (to say the least) fluid, they hesitate and stammer and choose their words very carefully rather than use their journalistic skills (assuming they have any) to tell what they know -- and what they don’t know -- about what is going on.
It should be a fairly simple matter to do that: “here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know; here’s what we need to find out; here’s what we’re doing to find it out.”
But they don’t do that. Instead, they repeat what they’ve been told by Official/Government Sources (usually unnamed), and if they have any other information, they couch it very carefully so as not to directly contradict Official Sources (Unnamed). Their stammering and hesitation is a good clue that they’re hiding something important that they can’t say because the Official Media Narrative either hasn’t been coagulated yet, or they’re afraid of losing All Important Access to Unnamed Official Sources -- who will, of course, Help Make Sense of What Is Going On. Thus forming the Official Narrative which then becomes the Standard Media Narrative. Without those Official Sources, the Narrative cannot be formed.
This gets very dicey because it is not just Government Sources the media rely on. No, they also rely on High Powered Corporate Sources and Their Interests, often intimately linked with Government Sources, but not always. The Narrative is formed by the interplay between Corporate Interest (which includes the major media of course) and Official Government Information.
In the case of The Earthquake and the nuclear dangers, the issue is fraught mightily. Corporate Interest is found in the denial of any serious problem that cannot be dealt with adequately by application of appropriate procedures. Corporate Interest favors expansion of Nuclear Power. The Earthquake -- much like the Chernobyl Disaster and Three Mile Island -- has made it potentially very difficult to proceed with the expansion of Nuclear Power facilities.
So how to describe what’s going on?
Until the Japanese Government stated directly that one of the nuclear plants damaged in The Earthquake “may be partially melted down” there wasn’t even a hint in NPR’s reporting that there could be more than a minor problem at the nuclear facilities in question. Exactly what that problem might be, they couldn’t or wouldn’t say. But you knew from their hesitations and stammers that they knew… something. We were not privileged to know what.
This is so dreadful and so aggravating.
On the other hand, the NPR reporting on the Wisconsin Thing was outright atrocious, deceptive, and fit the Corporate Narrative seamlessly. As far as their Narrative is concerned, Scott Walker and his sponsors and supporters are simply doing What Has To Be Done and they are all being perfectly honest and reasonable about it, whereas their opponents and the dozens of protesters in the streets are at best a distraction from the Important Business of State, at worst, violent vandals with no civic consciousness at all. There is no hesitation or stammering: this is the NPR Line on the Wisconsin Thing, and that, as they say, is that.
Then there is the NPR O’Keefe Sting Thing.
Today NPR’s Weekend Edition reports that Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” site is reporting (ah, steps removed, you see, and “The Blaze” is all Conservative And Shit, so it’s OK) that the O’Keefe Tape that resulted in the Firings of NPR’s CEO and Chief Fundraiser was doctored (much as other O’Keefe Stings and their clones have been doctored) to deceive. Hm. Who’d a thunk?
The institutional damage -- which was the whole point of the sting -- has already been done, and there is very little that can be done now to restore whatever has been lost. That is the point of these things. The fact that NPR instantly fell for it (much as the Dept of Agriculture did in the case of Shirley Sherrod) is appalling.
But it says something about how remarkably frail our Institutions are to the predations of the likes of O’Keefe and Breitbart and the rest.
These institutions seem impervious to Reason, but they are brittle and easily shattered -- or stampeded into doing stupid things -- by predators bent on taking them down.
Of which there are plenty.
Pointing out the situation, unfortunately, doesn’t provide a solution.
For example, I’m in something of a quandary about What To Do. Providing government services requires more revenue which should by rights come from the predator class that’s been benefiting mightily from an abundance of tax cuts all these years. The problem is that any advance in revenue -- no matter where it comes from, but the only source allowed to be discussed is the working class and poor -- will go to finance more Imperial Wars of Aggression which have been working out so well.
That’s how the Captive Government works. Everything for the bloodthirsty predators who own and control the Government. Nothing -- or rather, less -- for the “Lesser People.”
So why provide any more money for this Government when you know it will be used to pad the bank accounts of the already obscenely well off and to kill and maim brown people and destroy their houses abroad. That’s all. We’ve seen abundant evidence that there is nothing the People can do to change that. Certainly elections can’t do it.
Therefore, I’m not in favor of taxing the rich on behalf of this Government. We need a different Government, and in my view a different kind of Government, before taxing the rich will make any sense.
And we’re not there yet. Very far from being there, too.
I wish the people of Japan every possible blessing in this time of horror and immense trial for them. What’s happened is almost inconceivable -- except that we’ve seen so many repeated incidents of horror formerly unimaginable in the last few years. Events are in control. Not our petty fretting and concerns.
How petty can I be? Well, I discovered there were several other plumbing issues around the house that needed attention. So I’ve spent most of the morning attending to them. I think I’ve got them fixed, but it remains to be seen. Yes, that’s what I needed to do right now, but all the time I was doing it, I kept thinking how lucky I was compared to so many people who are suffering much worse than me. At least I was able to do these things. They don’t have water. Electricity. Food. Or in many cases homes to putter around in.
My petty concerns are nothing compared to the increasing suffering of the Growing Multitude.
Change must come. But how.
Back to studying my Rousseau, I guess…
Thursday, March 10, 2011
How Fares Teh Revolution?
Stalled?
Well, I don't want to go quite that far, but maybe so. Since I tend to slow down while I'm here in New Mexico, I'm not really up on all the News of the Uprisings Around the World, but I did hear that the Wisconsin legislature is plowing forward with their anti-union measures and doing it in defiance of the Democrats (still in exile in Illinois) and the People. I heard that the Egyptian military "cleared" Tahrir Square in Cairo with a great deal of violence and that the masses in Iraq are still up in arms -- and apparently still being shot down -- over the absolute corruption of their imposed and managed "democracy."
And then of course there's the continuing slaughter in Libya and the constant dithering over it in the capitals of Europe and the United States. The slaughter in the Yemen. The other Uprisings and slaughters here and there.
The upshot, from my partially disengaged perspective, is that The Revolution is sputtering and best and being turned back on many fronts -- despite some extraordinary rhetorical and documentary efforts on the part of the Revolutionaries and those who support them.
In other words, the rhetorical war is being won rather handlily, but the ground war is not going that well at all, even though there have been a number of apparently victorious removals of tyrants.
A rhetorical device that's making the rounds is this chart demonstrating the direct effects of the Class War that's been underway -- with or without Revolutionary push-back -- for more than a generation.
The Class War hasn't stopped; in fact, the battle has been redoubled by the Billionaires who are determined -- more than ever -- to have their way. In addition, there is a constant litany of "social war" issues being pressed with more fervor than at any time in the past.
As I've said for many years most if not all of the Revolutionary fervor in this country is on the Right, not on the Left, and even though we're seeing some union push-back on the economic front now, for a very long time it has been a matter of holding on to the status quo at best, with very little or no forward thinking, especially not on economic matters.
We're seeing some resistance to the overwhelming corporate influence on Government and the dreadful results that has had on the well-being of the People. The existence of resistance is encouraging, but until the issue is expanded beyond the narrow economic interests of a sub-section of the working population ("Hey! At least they still HAVE jobs!") the Revolution is bound to stall.
In Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, Revolutionary fervor is being attacked militarily in some places, attacked with minutiae in others. While it's obvious to me that the Revolutionaries have broadened their issues from the purely pecuniary to more fundamental principles of Dignity, Justice, and Community, their opposition is strong and there is no easy path forward. That doesn't mean the Revolutions have failed, but neither have they succeeded.
In another post, I asked whether we were seeing a version of 1848, 1968 or 1989. Indeed, as the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt seemed to successfully overthrow tyrants and tyrannical governments, allusions to 1989 were seen and heard with some regularity. But then Libya happened, as well as the stalled Revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, Iran and so forth, and allusions to 1848 cropped up more and more. A couple of the Revolutions of 1848 were more or less successful in changing the nature of governments to some degree, but most were brutally crushed. The Revolutionary philosophies that came out of the Revolutions of 1848 (especially Marxism) were more important ultimately than the uprisings themselves. And that may be the case now.
But what of 1968, a period of largely student driven uprisings all around the world, that were ambiguously successful. What happened as a result of the 1968 Uprisings is actually very complicated. Governments did fall, troops were called out here and there, and many, many student Revolutionaries were slaughtered (Mexico City was one horrible example.) But in China, the Revolutionary fervor of the young was channeled by the Government into the Cultural Revolution which had the ironic effect of strengthening Mao and the regime while nearly exterminating all opposition.
Something like that took place in America when Reagan and his sponsors cleverly -- brilliantly, really -- co-opted the Revolutionary spirit, language and rhetoric (of "liberation" and "freedom") from the student uprisings and used them to further the corporate/aristocratic factions at the expense of everyone else.
It worked and it is working now. The question is whether it will continue to.
The Rightist argument is wearing very thin. People are at the point of not listening any more. The Left may still be in a quagmire of supporting the support for the Status Quo, holding on rather than moving forward, but even that doesn't hold back the resistance from other quarters.
There are still mountains to climb.
Friday, March 4, 2011
This is What a Tyranny Looks Like
Raw Video: 12 News Camera Captures Lawmaker Being Tackled By Police - Video - WISN Milwaukee
We've all been through so much over the last decade and more. During that time, our dignity -- along with much else -- has been stripped from us piece by piece, layer by layer, until we are left bereft of any shred of what we once considered our right and our privilege as citizens and as Americans.
We have largely accepted this condition as the New Normal, for fear on the one hand that if we don't, our situation will get worse, and on the other hand so many Americans have lost the imaginative power to invoke alternatives.
We submit. We justify. We rationalize. We avoid. We ignore.
This is what a tyranny looks like.
Ain't pretty, is it?
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Which Side Are You On?
One of the Crying Shames of the recent rallies in support of the Wisconsin public employees and their collective bargaining rights has been the absence of Democratic elected officials from the rallies. Certainly that was the case at the California State Capitol. Where Democratic electeds hold all the state wide offices and nearly 2/3rd of both houses of the legislature. Just saying. Not one of them could bother their pretty, powdered and perfumed selves to show up at either of the Capitol Rallies, despite being invited.
Only goes to show, I guess, which side they're on, in case anyone had any doubts.
And in Wisconsin, it's been noted that the Saintly Progressive, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, has essentially opted out of any direct support for the protests. Having other fish to fry as it were... Sure, Russ, whatever.
Petering Out?
You be the judge. The protests in Wisconsin, I'm told, are continuing apace, despite the fact that hardly anyone, now, seems to think that much of Walker's program will be thwarted -- if anything, really -- in the end.
If there's anything Democrats know it is How To Cave, and suspicion is growing that they will cave, even the Wisconsin 14, and that, as they say, will be that.
And what of the daily thousands?
That depends. It really does. If the issue is only collective bargaining rights for public employees, it's way too narrow a thing to maintain the kind of public support the demonstrators have managed to achieve over the past few weeks. If the unions and the workers give up on everything else, but insist that collective bargaining cannot be touched, in time, the public will tire of the controversy, and collective bargaining will be given up too. The problem with much union leadership in this country, such as it is, is that they are almost as willing to cave -- and as skilled at caving -- as Democratic politicians are. Unfortunately, they sell their rank and file down the river, for a mess of pottage as they say, over and over again. It's especially the case with public employee unions because they always want to be seen as "reasonable." For their part, the rank and file public employees will often enough slit their own throats to "protect their jobs" or some semblance of a pension or some other future benefit -- like a "raise" instead of yet another pay cut. I've seen it happen over and over again in California, and I'm sure exactly the same sort of thing goes on everywhere, including Wisconsin.
If the issue is solely collective bargaining and solely on behalf of unionized public employees, it's not going to get very far. It's gone about as far as it can.
Just as the Egyptians had to break through the Fear Barrier in order to achieve their Revolutionary objectives -- and they still have to struggle to maintain them -- our own putative revolutionaries have to break through what I call the Issue Barrier.
The Power of Division is still very strong in the United States, and our controlled corporate mass media ensures that it will be difficult (note: not impossible) to learn the truth of what is really going on.
[Speaking of: there is now some suspicion that the Shoving Incident In Sacramento that has gone into heavy rotation everywhere due to the Breitbart Effect, an incident that is supposed to prove the Thuggery of the Unions, was actually a provocation engineered by -- let's say -- Tea Party enthusiasts like Mark Williams and Sal Russo, who said they wanted to do something like this. There were apparently several other "Teamsters" with the young man who was cited, none of whom appeared to be quite what they were claiming to be. I saw some of these "other Teamsters" myself (never saw the young man who was cited) during Saturday's protest and noted they were... not exactly part of the protest. What tipped me off that things might not be what they appeared to be was that their Teamster Jackets never seem to have been worn before. Hm. Isn't that something? Well, nothing is proved, so I'm not going to make too much of it. But the fact remains that there was an announced effort to disrupt the Solidarity Rallies by impersonating protesters and causing incidents that would get on teevee. There was an incident in Sacramento that has been used by the Rightists to prove what Thugs Union Members are. Just keep it in mind.]
That's as may be. The point is that narrowing the issues -- rather than broadening them -- will ultimately sap the strength and the energy from the struggle, until, in the end, the Revolution peters out and fails.
The broader issues that I have seen in all of the North African and Middle Eastern uprisings, and that seemed to be coming to the fore in the Mid West and all the Solidarity Rallies in the United States were Dignity and Justice. These are among the deepest seated desires of human societies. But if those basic premises are lost or forgotten in the struggle over minutiae -- as seems to be happening, but I can't be sure -- then the overall struggle is lost.
Egyptians know that even in "victory," they have to keep the struggle going until they achieve their fundamental goals of Dignity and Justice -- which they know they haven't yet, they're only partway there, and they cannot relent now.
In Wisconsin, as of this moment, the protests have raised consciousness, but they have not achieved any positive goals at all. Walker is still dictating, the Kochs are still counting their money and buying policies and politicians to suit themselves, the People are still largely barred from the Capitol, and the opportunity to jigger and juggle the System through strategy has become the focus for all sides.
But what for? The Walkerites and Kocheviks know what they want, and they are relentless in obtaining what they want. Absolutely relentless.
What do the People want?
That's the question now.
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