(tell him it’s not his to give away)
Nothing Michael Bloomberg has done yet has disgusted me more than his mindless support of the government of Israel’s bloody insanity in Gaza while he’s wrapped in the trappings of the high office of the cosmopolitan City of New York.
Some of us prefer to think before we act, and we don’t pretend to represent an entire constituency when we do.
While he’s talking about the right of a government to defend oneself, referencing a mighty military state allied with the most powerful nations on earth, a nation which actualized its people’s 2,000-year old memory of a homeland only 60 sixty years ago, why can’t the mayor of all New Yorkers bring himself to recognize the rights of an almost people who are almost powerless and have virtually no allies, whose memory of a homeland is more vivid and within living memory, going back, as it does, only those same 60 years?
Bloomberg may understand money and power (he bought his own political office and since then he’s learned to emulate Putin), but apparently nothing else. His sympathies have always been with the guy on top, and that’s where they remain today.
He’s a damned fool, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
[image of the Great Seal of the City of New York from citizenarcane]
Category: Politics
welcome to the Republican party, Barack
coming soon to your neighborhood
Change ain’t happening.
Does Obama think we can turn this around with another tax cut? Or maybe he just thinks a few hundred dollars will make a difference to people who have already lost jobs and houses. Even George Bush can see it didn’t, and doesn’t, although he now has the satisfaction of welcoming his successor into the Republican party.
WASHINGTON � President-elect Barack Obama, commencing face to face consultations with congressional leaders Monday, is embracing an unexpectedly large tax cut of up to $300 billion. Obama said the country faces an “extraordinary economic challenge.” Besides $500 tax cuts for most workers and $1,000 for couples, the Obama proposal includes more than $100 billion for businesses, an Obama transition official said. The total value of the tax cuts would be significantly higher than had been signaled earlier.
[image, from the first Great Depression, from thereaction]
the Obama/Warren mutual annointing thing: total wack
Hieronymus Bosch The Mountebank 1475-80 oil on panel 21″ x 29.5″
I’m going to close my eyes and count to ten, and when I open them I want to find that fat mountebank gone.
I’m very much in and of this country, but I’m not a member of Rick Warren’s wacky faith-based syndicate of dupes. I’m not a Christian of any description, and I’m also not a Jew and not a Muslem or Bah�’ist. I’m not Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddist, Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, Zoroastrian, Druze, Shamanist, Unitarian or Yoruban. I’m also not a part of the Prince Philip Movement.
In fact I’m not a member of any magic cult, and I’m not a part of any other kind of club. I like to believe that I can think for myself. It’s a competence I continue to hope I might share with every American adult, in spite of all the sad evidence to the contrary. At the very least I’d like to think that the person chosen to occupy the office of President of the United States of America can and does think for himself. Yet it now seems pretty clear, as he’s about to be anointed on the steps of the Capitol, that even our latest almighty one doesn’t think for himself, or at least that he doesn’t want us to think that he thinks for himself.
It’s not only that I am appalled by Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to deliver an “invocation” at his, no, . . . our truly-epochal January 20th inauguration ceremony. No, it’s much bigger than that: I object to the fact that even in the twenty-first century, in order to get a proper send-off into the most important secular office a nation can award to one of its citizens, the President-elect of my country feels he has to enlist the public help of any crazy sky pilot to formally summon the private imaginary friend the two of them share.
NOTE: If I were to object only to the specific choice of Warren as the next American high priest, I would hope I could come up with more reasons than those connected with his vocal opposition to gay marriage, comparing it to incest, pedophilia and polygamy. This seems to be all that most people find appalling about Warren.
I would add, and this is just for starters, that he does not believe in evolution; that he would deny women the right to their own bodies, comparing abortion to the Holocaust and those who defend a woman’s right to choice as no better than Nazis; that he has said that women should submit to their husbands; that he believes that Jews who do not convert will surely roast in hell; that he has advocated the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; that he has said that Christians who advance a social gospel (the religious crusade against poverty and inequality) are Marxists; and that he opposes stem-cell research.
But enough. �crasez l’inf�me!
[image from Web Gallery of Art]
Stephen Harper’s “Short Parliament”
document setting out what members of Parliament believed their powers to be, December 1640, ending with: that dissolving of Parliaments suddaynly without redressing the greivances Complayned of is a great greivance
Almost 400 years ago a man of kingly status, and with kingly ambitions, dissolved a freely-elected parliament when it crossed his purposes. Seven years later Charles II really lost his head – on the block.
This week an unelected chief manager of government, with the help of his monarch’s regent, effectively dissolved another parliament which had proved intractable to his will. Stephen Harper‘s fate is yet to be determined.
We may allow for the possibility that each man’s decision had some element of worthy, or at least unselfish motives, but tyranny is tyranny – something too many of us on this side of our northern border still have trouble understanding.
Finally, while we have no wish to see Mr. Harper separated from his head, we might fairly hope for the speedy removal from office of his whole person.
[image from learningcurve]
“Signs of Change” at EXIT ART
“No Border Camps” members dramatize how goods cross borders freely, people don’t (1998)
Queen Mother Moore radicalizing much younger Green Haven Prison inmates in 1973
Barry and I spent almost two hours at the current Exit Art show, “Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now“, on what may have been our last beautiful late fall Saturday afternoon. Let me just explain that it was several times more compelling than even this old activist had expected. I’ll add this caution: It closes at the end of the week, on December 6th.
There are colorful posters, photographs, broadsheets, banners, sound documentations and videos. In addition to the two images above I can show captures of a small selection of some of the more provocative posters below. I’m including only minimal captions since a proper context for the posters generally requires more information than I can supply here.
The single greatest thing about the show may be less its lavish size than its enormous geographical compass. It covers modern social movements just about everywhere on the planet. The video documentaries are particularly intense.
So I hope this short tease works. If you read this blog with any frequency you probably should see this exhibition, especially if you’re the sort who is inclined to muck about in the street, or maybe especially if you’re not yet that sort. Tell your friends, in any event.
I suppose it was not part of the project’s scope, but I noticed that there were virtually no artifacts in the exhibition which were not printed, that is, there were no hand-made “signs of change”. And I’m sure that anyone looking for specific content could find something to say about the curatorial choices, but after I left this rather dense survey of the use of art in social movements I recalled that I had seen very little material devoted to AIDS or homosexuality. That really surprised me, as it’s not as if these two issues, AIDS in particular, did not attract artists of all kinds, or that their response had no aesthetic resonance.
anonymous poster from the 1970s
poster using cover from 1980s UK newspaper, Class War
poster from Chicago feminist collective, “SisterSerpents” (1989) [blue is a reflection on plexi]
poster from “Dirty Linen Corp” (1969)
1970 poster from Amsterdam absurdist theatrical party, “Kabouterbeweging” [gnome movement]
Obama’s hope and change: was it all fake?
today we’ve learned to hide ideas about freedom – if any even survive
Was Obama’s talk about hope and change all fake, or are his continuing conservative decisions and appointments only a cover?
Are they trying to make permanent cynics out of members of the American minority that still believes in participatory government? I’ve been worried for a long time, since well before the election, about whether a new administration would really give us the change we need and want – and clearly mandated on November 4.
I’ve tried to dismiss the evidence: Both the history and the words of the man who is now our president elect had betrayed that he has what in most times and places would be described as a pretty conservative outlook and approach. I’ve been telling myself that it’s just Obama’s way of getting through the door, and that once there he might have to continue pursuing the appearance of circumspection as a stealth device for getting people to go along with the progressive, even radical change the moment demands.
In spite of the great myth, Americans just aren’t very adventurous about government.
I was also trying not to jump to conclusions too early, since the election was only three weeks ago and this kind of speculation seemed to me to be a waste of time at this point, when the new administration was still embryonic, and also because he’s got to be given time to get some smart homies together before charging into Washington.
But as the concessions and appointments continue, apparently announcing a seemingly inexorable reintroduction of the polices and personnel which created the colossal messes both inside and outside our borders which we’re now struggling to repair, I’ve become very alarmed, and I’m finding I’m not the only one. I mean, this is only the latest: Gates stays?
The letter which follows, written by a reader distressed for good reason I would say, was printed in today’s NYTimes. It shares my own last desperate hope for change:
To the Editor:
Re “The Candidate of Change Chooses Experience” (news analysis, front page, Nov. 22):
President-elect Barack Obama was elected running left and is now making appointments from the center-right. He could still instruct his loyal appointees to govern from the left. That would be the change we could believe in. Otherwise, the joke will be on us, again.
Doug Karo
Durham, N.H., Nov. 22, 2008
ADDENDUM:
While I’m at it, let me ask who decided we have to wait almost three months to replace an administration we already voted to get rid of? Everywhere else in the civilized world governments leave as soon as they are asked to leave. Our own government, its Executive together with its Congress, today has by far the greatest burden of responsibility of any governing authority in the entire world; why do we still have to sit so vulnerable and impotent, dead in the water until next year, waiting for the spring thaw [until 1937, described as March 4, for the convenience of delegates to the Electoral College] for the control of these two obscenely-powerful institutions to be handed over to a designated successor?
[image, a detail of an 1854 engraving by Baker & Andrew of Molly Pitcher, from teachushistory]
civil rights, yes, but gay marriage be damned
no plastic grooms
This is the definition of “marriage” from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
mar�riage
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry
Date: 14th century
1 a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage
2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected ; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3: an intimate or close union
I see no religious or sacramental reference in this definition, and I am sufficiently familiar with recorded history and primordial custom to know that “marriage” has traditionally been regarded as a state independent of any and all religions.
I’m not going to jump onto anyone’s bandwagon in a quest to join my contemporary religionists and their reactionary concept of personal relationships, and if I should end up outside City Hall tomorrow (Saturday) it will be only to stand somewhere with a simple sign suggested by my friend Bill Dobbs:
CIVIL UNIONS FOR ALL
Although I’d try to add in something about civil rights for all, since not everyone is cut out for unions.
Two nights ago Dobbs sent an email around: “39 years after Stonewall the gays in New York City say GOD LOVES GAY MARRIAGE”, and he attached an image showing that on the central banner of Wednesday’s demonstration outside the Mormon Church’s New York headquarters across from Lincoln Center.
I’m just as disgusted as Bill, but I’m old enough to actually remember Stonewall and have to ask, what’s the hell’s going on here?
It seems we’re not alone on this. See “sorry, sweethearts, still fiercely disinterested in this one” from johnny i hardly knew you.
[image of Tab Hunter and Roddy McDowall from michaelprocopio]
“Cloud Cuckoo Land”, Moskowitz and Trager at Momenta
“Wanting things a certain way doesn’t limit my utopic thinking.”
“Our civilization values space over historical time”
“Oh, that’s just Booker”
[three stills from the installation of the video of “Cloud Cuckoo Land”, the quotes below each not necessarily matched to the scenes in which the lines occurred]
Wow. Do we need this now. Do we need this now? Do we need this now!
Maybe.
Aristophanes’s “The Birds”, whose “Cloud-Cookoo-Land” utopia inspired the title of Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager’s video and sculptural installation at Moment Art is described as the first play to question the idea of human progress. In the 414 BC comedy two men, “Mr. Trusting” and “Mr. Hopeful”, have fled the old world and together with a friendly Hoopoe and all the other birds, they go about erecting a perfect city in the clouds. In the end their utopia, or dream of an egalitarian state, is transformed into a dictatorship.
Moskowitz and Trager’s own narrative collaboration involves a small family, the conventional home from which they walk away, the progressive commune which they join, and the hopes which they see dashed. Their disturbing 17-minute musical video is installed at Momenta in the midst of the sets and scrims used in its creation.
This is from the gallery’s statement:
The familiar boundaries to which [the main character] clings and the unclear spatial relations within the gallery coalesce and call into question how we envision comfort and safety both societally and psychologically.
the great American car giants to go belly up, or?
crap piloted by doofuses (no, not the toy maker)
Lead AP story: “Pelosi calls for emergency aid for auto industry”
Of course we’re not asking for any return, like demanding that the industry produce a decent, responsible product, like attractive small, efficient, non-polluting small vehicles, or reduce its outrageous demand on scarce resources, and, above all, give its entire historically incompetent management the sack.
Come to think of it, how about converting much of it to passenger rail car manufacturing? Nobody thinks big any more.
ADDENDUM: [added at noon on November 12] He may be an idiot on Iraq and just about everything else, but in the NYTimes Thomas L. Friedman column covers this territory, and in doing so hardly misses a beat. I never read it, but today the headline subject pulled me in.
Also, I neglected to mention yesterday that I grew up in Detroit during the 40’s and 50’s, the Motor City’s heyday (yes, there really were such days). From an early age an unusually knowledgeable car fanatic, even for that time and geography, I always had my doubts about the industry which seemed to totally dominate our culture. My eyes started to open in 1950, when I saw a VW Beetle parked around the corner from our house.
[image from lallylaw]
three wars
Ken Gonzales-Day St. James Park 2006 6″ x 3.7″ [from his “Erased Lynching Series”]
I always talk about three wars when I refer to the martial abominations wrought by the outgoing administration, and I’m always asked, “Three?”. I answer that I’m considering the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, but also the war on terror, which is clearly distinct from the first two, especially as we’ve been told it will it will go on forever. It’s the bogus war on terror for which it was considered necessary to suspend the Constitution and turn at least half of the citizenry into the enemy: suspected fellow-travelers, traitors or terrorists. But this is also the war in which, as we already know, U.S. government operatives and agencies have also been engaged for years in secret lynching operations around the world, as dramatized once again just today by this story: “Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) � Since 2004, the Pentagon has used broad, secret authority to carry out about 12 attacks against al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, The New York Times reported on its Web site on Sunday.
Quoting what it said were more than six unnamed military and intelligence officials and senior Bush administration policy makers, the newspaper said the military operations were authorized by a classified order signed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the approval of President George W. Bush.
Under the order, the military had new authority to strike the al Qaeda network anywhere in the world and a broader mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States, according to the Times.
[image from kengonzalesday]