Officer-Bob.com Starts His Shift

I was born in Chicago. I’ve lived in this town, this state, this country for forty years. I’ve been making artistic choices of one kind or another for more than twenty-five of those years. More often than not, these choices were about balance.

I became interested in balance when I learned what exactly happened in the world that gave me - of all the billions of the earth - the options I have. What happened was empire. Empire is my counterbalance.

I have spent my life in the interior of the world’s most powerful empire. I am surrounded by proof of this in the form of an unending stream of immigrants, a parade in which my own ancestors marched during the 19th and 20th centuries.

If the imperial character of my home ended there, I might even be a fan of empire. Of course, it does not, and I am not.

This empire, as all before it, breeds its own demise in the form of rampant authoritarianism, official corruption and intellectual stagnation. My friends and I have always tried to stand in opposition to these things, to varying degrees of success.

Officer Bob is one such attempt. It’s a black humor protest of the widening acceptance of senseless force and corrupt officialdom. It’s a counterbalance and a spit into the abyss of history awaiting us.

What I’m trying to say is Officer Bob will never, ever appear on Oprah.

Nixon Speechwriter: I Didn’t Come From No Monkey

In the trailer for his creationist film Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed , actor, former Nixon speech writer and game show host Ben Stein stands before a blackboard in an empty college classroom and writes, Bart Simpson-like: I Will Not Challenge Darwin.

See, he’s being punished, Ben is, as are all of us who dare to question the Unassailable Conclusions of Science. In the convenient binary world of this film, Mr. Stein hopes to do to confused viewers what he did to dry eyes: offer soothing relief along with blurry vision.

Doing nothing to dispel the impression about Stein, first given in the Nixon era, that he is least trustworthy when he’s writing, he goes on to explain in the trailer that something with Nazi overtones called “Big Science” is silencing scientists who “challenge Darwin”.   Even more hilariously it asserts we now live in an “era of Darwin where challenge of the status quo is rarely unpunished” - this nugget accompanied by footage of a cheetah killing a wildebeest.

Setting aside the most obvious problem with the above premise - the small fact that science is challenge, an all-day-every-day challenge to root out the false - even and especially those falsehoods inadvertently produced by science itself - the trailer Stein hosts not only grossly misrepresents science, fascism and cheetahs, the producers also misrepresented their own film to the scientists who appear in it.

According to Cornelia Dean’s piece in the 9/27/07 New York Times “Scientists Feel Miscast By Film On Life’s Origin“, Stein’s producers approached leaders of the science community with a more middle-of-the-road film. For people who don’t accept evolution, they sure had no problem with their own film’s title and theme changing slightly over time.

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”

The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.

But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.

The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms.

Mr. Stein appears in the film’s trailer, backed by the rock anthem “Bad to the Bone,” declaring that he wants to unmask “people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.”

If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.”

The growing furor over the movie, visible in blogs, on Web sites and in conversations among scientists, is the latest episode in the long-running conflict between science and advocates of intelligent design, who assert that the theory of evolution has obvious scientific flaws and that students should learn that intelligent design, a creationist idea, is an alternative approach.

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are “not within the scope or abilities of science.”

Suburban Civics Lesson: Keep Your Mouth Shut

Like a lot of us, sixteen year old Matt Heffernan noticed something was wrong. Unlike most of us, he did something about it, and he is paying a dear price.

The junior at Morton West High School in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn took part in a demonstration on school grounds last week. It was a peaceful sit-in protest against the illegal war in Iraq and the presence of military recruiters at Morton West.

As reported in the Nov. 7th New York Times, the Berwyn police on the scene found nothing wrong with the protest.

But somehow, that wasn’t enough for Berwyn school district superintendent Ben Nowakowski. He felt the police had missed a dire threat in 25 students peacefully speaking and singing. Dr. Nowakowski decided a 2007-style civics lesson - a crackdown - was in order.

Police officers were on the scene, and Berwyn’s police chief, William Kushner, said no arrests were made. “It was all very peaceful and orderly,” he said.

But at the end of the school day, Matt said, Dr. Nowakowski gave the remaining protesters disciplinary notices stating that they had engaged in mob action, that they were suspended for 10 days and that they faced expulsion.

“I was shocked,” said Matt, 16. “We had the sit-in. So I had mixed feelings of confidence — of a job well done — and fright, because my whole educational future is at risk.

The civics lesson continued, according to parents, when Nowakowski’s staff ensured that none of the right students were subject to this risk before he struck:

Parents also complained that deans, teachers and coaches singled out certain athletes and honor students and persuaded them to drop out of the protest.

Rita Maniotis, president of the school’s parent-teacher organization, said the school called her husband to say that their daughter, Barbara, a junior, was participating in the protest and that he should come to get her. He did so, and she was suspended for five days. But other parents were not called and not able to intervene, Ms. Maniotis said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to the punishment doled out,” she said.

The word from Heffernan’s family is Nowakowski’s lesson isn’t over. Not only did the school move to insulate the right students from the crackdown, now the families of the 25 remaining protesters without such cozy insulation are being pressured to “give up” Heffernan and hang the entirety of the disciplinary action on him.

So let’s review the good doctor’s lesson:

• Accomplices to an illegal war are allowed on campus, but legal, peaceful protest is mob action.
• Work within the system to speak your mind and face destruction of your academic future.
• Be anywhere near someone who peacefully speaks his mind and risk your academic future as well.
• Unless you’re an athlete or otherwise politically useful. In that case, you get a pass.

Dr. Nowakowski’s teaching may be more welcome than we might think. Assuming his aim was to demonstrate how things are done in Burma, China, North Korea, Chile, Cuba or Russia, he gets an “A” grade.

But if he’s forgetting that this is the United States, where we take a dim view of repression, coercion, favoritism and runaway authority, then he gets an “F”.

UPDATE: Some recent coverage of the Morton West High story

31 Seconds With Internet Phenomenon Ron Paul

Presidential candidate Ron Paul looks good - for about thirty seconds.

He wins 1000 points for yelling about the problems of the Federal Reserve, fiat currency and fractional-reserve banking.

Then, he loses several million points for being a hardcore no-government libertarian boob whose prescription for an over-privatized country is more privatization. In the face of crumbling national physical infrastructure and disappearing national cognitive infrastructure, Paul thinks the Class of ‘29 had the right idea. Great.

This position is nicely portrayed this way: a burglary ring is working over a neighborhood, systemically breaking and entering, grabbing what they can and running off to fence the goods. Ron Paul’s prescription: fire all the cops and march over to the fence, where the stolen goods are sold and demand they open the books.

Boob.

Ron Paul wins 10,000 points for seeking to end the illegal foreign wars.

Then he loses several million more points for not noticing that these wars ARE privatization projects in and of themselves. They are not aberrations, they are systemic of and essential to the overriding, seldom-interrupted project to privatize all public funds. Since he will not move to re-establish, endorse or protect a commons against the economic (local) and physical (overseas) terror of the unfettered Chicago-school free market, he is, ideologically speaking, a friend to all waterboarders.

A dangerous boob.

A candidate who seeks to limit reproductive freedom is bad enough, but a candidate who seeks to limit reproductive freedom while at the same time favoring the gutting of public education is…a dangerous, moralizing boob positioned at the nation’s birth canal, eagerly waving in generation after generation of complete fucking idiots. In libertarian circles, this is called “enlarging the base.”

I’ll not be voting for a neoliberal Reaganite suckass whose lame, transparently pandering notions of “getting government off our backs” is exactly as disingenuous, anti-democratic and insidious as every other wildly successful public-relations lie told since Freud’s nephew invented the industry in 1915.

DHS Finally Does Its Job, Strained Quotes Result

Nobody’s more surprised than I am at today’s news that US Department of Homeland Security managed to intercept and seize questionable materials bound for the United States, protecting the public from another terrifying spectacle. Sure, preventing the import of a Death Cab For Cutie guitar-player solo record isn’t the stuff of history, but it sure is appreciated. From today’s Chicago Tribune:

Death Cab for Cutie fans may be waiting even longer for a long-promised album by guitarist Chris Walla.

Walla, who was working on the “very political” record in Canada, told MTV that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confiscated his master hard drive, which held all the song files, at the U.S. border.

["It] could be a whole lot worse,” he said, laughing. “I still get to play music. I mean, I’m not at Guantanamo or anything like that. … My drive might be. They could be waterboarding my drive for all I know.”

Is this country’s sad slide into a corporatist state any excuse for a lax attitude toward indie rock solo albums? I think not.

Saturday Sewer: The D-word Makes An Appearance

If you’re looking for bad news, look on Saturday. That is the day that bad news is guaranteed to appear in mainstream newspapers because media professionals and PR operatives know that few people read the Saturday paper. I call the phenomenon the Saturday Sewer. Saturday is the day with the lowest news audience, so public relations professionals in industry, government, and the military know to sit on the week’s un-squelchable bad news until late on Friday in order to have the story printed on a day when the fewest of us are reading.

Today’s Sewer item is culled from a Friday appearance made on NPR’s All Things Considered by Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. Hold on to your Wiis, guys - the General is talking draft.

Lute, a three-star patsy tapped by the White House, is the president’s War Czar, a term that, when translated from asshole to plain English means “Iraq fall guy with little future career to risk.” Lute’s appearance on ATC included the following quote:

“I think it makes sense to certainly consider [the draft]. And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another,”

Classic example of the kind of quote you won’t see on Tuesday’s front pages. Lift the cover on the Saturday Sewer at your own risk.

Neoconscience: Disclosure and exposure

US Army Reserve Sgt. Joe Darby was the Abu Ghraib whistleblower. He was the first soldier to react humanely when shown the now-infamous photos of prisoner abuse. He was the first to not giggle. Once he understood what he was looking at, he was the first who did not luxuriate in the images, nor gawk at their novelty. He was the first to not eagerly and happily pass them along.

Sgt. Darby’s hands and eyes were instruments of conscience, not neoconscience. His reaction was the late arrival of an important, forgotten idea: that where the US is compelled to appear in force, it is also compelled to appear lawfully.

This idea is not some historically abiding impetus. For example, it in no way thematically reflects US foreign policy before or after WWII. Far too many times before or since the US has, without compulsion, appeared in force on the world stage, so it cannot be taken seriously as the voice of principle and diplomacy. Not even in Poland.

Such barrier to overstatement thus placed, what Sgt. Darby re-animated in his refusal to hoot and jabber at the disgraceful abuse photos was an American impulse last displayed to the world at the Nuremberg war trials in the months following WWII.

Nuremberg was an American project. England and the Soviet Union, having their societies near mortally-shaken by the war, each wanted less than traditionally legal proceedings for the captured German high command. Churchill made distinctions between “major” and “minor” war criminals, preferring the latter receive “judicial” trials. The implication of a trial that is non-judicial is left for the reader.

Instead, the US judges and counsel tried 185 defendants and found 142 guilty of at least one of the charges. 24 received death sentences, of which 11 were subsequently converted into lifetime imprisonments; 20 were sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, 98 received prison sentences of varying lengths. 35 were acquitted.

It’s doubtful that a legal exercise conducted by the Soviet Union, having lost twenty million of its people to German aggression, would result in such a diversity of outcomes.

And it’s this notion of lawfulness that arose in the actions of Sgt. Joe Darby when he fingered his idiot sadist colleagues at Abu Ghraib, and by extension, the lawless neocon enablers at the Pentagon, State Department and White House.

Lawfulness today buys you a life of looking over your shoulder. Blow the whistle and no less than Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from the floor of Congress, will rat you out on national TV. Next thing you know, you’re speaking with BBC radio about how you need an armed guard with you wherever you go.

Harbor no illusions about US policy - neither its appalling abuse at the hands of neocons nor its expression of high principle on display at the most important event in human history. Joe Darby doesn’t.

what, no shock and awe? make with the shock and awe!

if you haven’t already, please donate something towards tsunami aid and relief.

and let’s get some letters written to our congresspeople. let’s call upon them to rise up on their hind legs and put the same kind of elbow grease into aiding the stricken region as they did in railroading us into settling a bush family dispute in iraq.

we have got to speak up. the president doesn’t read. his new secretary of state is an incompetent woman who ducked her security-adviser responsibility for 9/11 by complaining that al-quaida never faxed her their plan.

these people aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.  it is possible that the key people in washington do not understand how many muslims there are to help in the wake of this horror.

in other words, this disaster is one of the best opportunities the united states could ever have to combat islamic terrorism. all we need to do is to be seen as putting even HALF of the fervor we had for war into …relief.

for a pittance - a few million - our government could very publically and unilaterally install a tide guage-based tsunami warning system for the indian ocean such as exists in the pacific ocean. the u.s. could finally be widely and unarguably seen as doing something for the poor who live in the third world’s squalor. we have a golden opportunity to reverse how we are currently seen: as only interested in the illegitimate and corrupt governments whose leaders live in the wealthy hilltop districts overlooking the squalor.

the doctrine of pre-emptive military action so successfully championed by wolfowitz, cheney and rumsfeld can be used as the precedent for this pre-emptive humanitarian action.

we went to war because we could - let’s do this for no other reason!

maybe clever t-shirts will help

so yesterday, i was working at the picturesque humboldt park boathouse, sound engineering a excellent concert by the basque music powerhouse kepa junkera (link in english)

one of the hundred or so in the audience was sporting this t-shirt, which i quite enjoyed. it shows a late 1800s photo of three native americans armed with rifles. the slogan reads “homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492″

of course, inter-tribe warfare was not uncommon before whitey got to the continent. europeans are in no way unique in their tendency to kill others and take their stuff.

but the shirt’s reminder about historical context was welcome. i can guess that guy gets a lot of shit for wearing it. if you ever give anybody shit for reminding people of the truth, no matter how uncomfortable the truth is, i’ll never be your friend.

sigh

the kerry campaign is in deep trouble. for the first time in my life, i have displayed a sign endorsing a political candidate in the front window of my home. what do i get for my trouble? this: the guy whose name is printed on it is a hopeless cipher. james carville might not even be able to pull the stick back on this terminal dive, although i’m sure the struggle in the cockpit is entertaining. when that corporate shill john “f” kerry went to the grand canyon and endorsed attacking iraq, i could hear the arteries popping in howard dean’s cerebellum. this tweedledum do-nothing senator is a tragedy of biblical proportions. he leaves no stone unturned in his search for ways to squander the presumably unbeatable advantage of being the candidate who can read.

by all rights, this kerry campaign is an epochal display of incompetence. today, the right is the easiest of targets. they are looking a lot meaner, greedier and more treasonous than usual. busybody suburban matriarchs wear purple-heart band-aids on their flabby forearms without a trace of irony or a pause for the purple hearts coming back from iraq in bags and wheelchairs. thousands dead and maimed, but not from going after bin laden. this turd alone is but the flagship of a punchbowl fleet encompassing haliburton, valerie plame, ahmed chalabi, wmd, the bin laden family, …the list is endless, like the colored handkerchiefs yanked by magicians.

yet, what’s that sound? it’s john kerry, dunking in his cup for his third helping of punch. “me too” he eagerly says. “see? i’m just like you, america. i can’t tell brown people apart, either.”

even america’s bloodthirstiest voters know the coach called the wrong plays after 9/11. some of them are even aware that it wasn’t really the coach, but the offensive coordinator who got us to this point. in the terror bowl, we’re down by two, it’s third and long, we’re on our eighteen and there’s 2:11 left. on the sidelines, bush and cheney won’t get off their cellphones to focus on killing the fundamentalists in afghanistan, they’re too busy with iraq to respond to 9/11. it’s plain for all to see.

kerry’s response?

mmm, good punch.