znet needs our help

and as soon as i get a job, i'm going to give it to them. i'll let mr. chomsky explain why they are so important to the future of human life as we know it:

"We live in an era of media concentration, vast efforts on many fronts (political, economic, military, ideological) to insulate state and private power from critical discussion or even popular awareness, and to reduce citizens to isolated atomized creatures restricted to satisfying personal "created wants." This massive and coordinated campaign has been partially successful, but only in a limited way. The range and scope and dedication of popular activism has also increased, all over the world, reaching a level of international solidarity and mutual support that has never been seen before. The basic conflicts are very old, but they have taken quite dramatic and significant new forms, and the stakes are far higher than ever before. It is, regrettably, no exaggeration to say that the survival of the species is at risk -- and many others with it. We all know why.



The popular movements are the hope for a decent future. They of course have to have access to information and modes of interaction. In addition to alternative print and video, to a very large extent they have relied on the internet, which allows people to escape from the constraints of the doctrinal systems, to explore and investigate and discuss crucial issues with one another, to plan and organize. Z and ZNet have played a crucial role in serving all of these functions. I see that every day. I travel and speak constantly, in this country and abroad, and spend many hours a day just responding to inquiries and comments. I constantly discover that the people and organizations I come in contact with are relying very substantially on Z projects for information, discussion, and opportunities for interaction and organizing, to an extent that is quite remarkable. It also is an invaluable resource for me personally, in all of these respects, and also in my case for providing a forum for intense and very constructive discussion (for me at least), the only one I regularly participate in. And for posting articles, interviews, commentaries, etc., of mine. I know that many others have very much the same experience.



It is of inestimable importance, in my judgment, that Z and ZNet continue to flourish and expand, not to mention their growing video efforts and incomparable media school, arguably the most exciting and instructive I have ever encountered. Again, I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the stakes. I hope that all of us who are committed to resisting and reversing the powerful currents of reaction and oppression and violence, and showing that another world is indeed possible, will contribute as best we can to ensure that the remarkable achievements of Z and ZNet will be carried forward."



--Noam Chomsky

president washington speaks out against large public debts, military establishment, etc.

would george washington be voting for bush? on september 17th, 1796, during his farewell address (the one where he declined to run for a third term), it seems that he "strongly warned against permanent alliances with foreign powers, large public debts, large military establishment and devices of any 'small, artful, enterprising minority' to control or change the government." go spend some time with the nice folks at working for change, you may learn something.

and while you're at it, say hello to the nice boys at fresyes. they've been doing a fabulous job. let them hear about it.

a day of rememberance

your prez. 
somebody got a tummy ache?
via atrios and yahoo!news

blogging with bourbon

for those of us without cable or the desire to watch much of it, here is a summary of the run up to quite possibly one of the most important elections we will ever face in our lifetimes:

The Swifties! Denounce the ad! I denounce all ads! But denounce that ad! I denounce all ads! He didn't denounce the ad! I like eggs! 527s! Response ads! The ad said you lied in Vietnam! How dare that ad say such things! You must react more strongly to the ads! He's not responding strongly to the ads! Shakeup because of the response to the ads! Guard duty scandal revived to respond to the Vietnam angle in the ads! The documents are forged! No they aren't! Yes they are! Vote Bush or die! We need another ad!

yes, in deed. personally, i get all of my information from the daily show with jon stewart. however, it dawned on me while i was reading the article from which the above quote was taken that tomorrow is the third anniversary of 9/11. i would never feign to know where you might have happened to be on that tragic day, dear reader. as for me, i was playing my geetar with some friends at around 12 midnight (japan time) when one of us just happened to check the computor to get his electronic mail from the "internet." through the bbc website, we heard the news. i don't think any of us slept that night.

so, here we are. almost 3 years hence, and where do we stand?
the following is a check list:

(stolen from William Rivers Pitt. check the link above if you don't believe me)

• Millions of jobs lost in the last four years - check!
  
  
  
• Unbearably expensive health care - check!
  
  
  
• A total loss of confidence within the international community in our moral leadership - check!
  
  
  
• The underfunded farce that is the Department of Homeland Security - check!
  
  
  
• The underfunded farce that is the No Child Left Behind bill - check!
  
  
  
• The fact that military assault weapons will soon be making a perfectly legal return to a neighborhood near you - check!
  
  
  
• The deeply illegal outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by Bush administration officials, who did it because they wanted to silence a critic - check!
  
  
  
• The rape and torture of men, women and children in the Abu Ghraib prison, horrors that were sanctioned in writing by Bush's own lawyer and the Secretary of Defense - check!
  
  
  
• The allegation by Senator Bob Graham of Florida that Bush torpedoed any aspect of the 9/11 investigation that came within spitting distance of his friends in the Saudi royal family - check!
  
  
  
• The allegations by several generals that Bush's people started stripping necessary troops and resources from Afghanistan to bolster their ill-conceived charge into Iraq - check!
  
  
  
• The myriad accusations by a dozen insiders that Bush and his people ignored the terror threat until the Towers fell, and then used the attacks to scare the American people into an unnecessary war in Iraq and a mammoth payday for their friends in the weapons and oil business - check!
  
  
  
• The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq - check!
  
  
  
• The fact that no connections between Hussein, bin Laden and 9/11 have been established beyond the bloviating hyperbole of a few senior Bush officials who haven't yet gotten the memo - check!
  
  
  
• Does anyone even remember Enron? - nope!
  

...and jesus wept. i'll have mine on the rocks, mizu-wari.

bush yoga

this is certainly relevant. a bush doll, dressed in flight suit, doing yoga. jai shri ram! aum nama shivaya!
via fact-esque.

veepers creepers

grrrr! 
Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city:

"We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war."

vice presidential candidate john edwards reponds:

“Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it's an American issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that...
John Kerry and I will keep America safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it.”

i hate to say it, but it appears that the american people are already pretty divided.

...and it's only going to get uglier as we approach that magical day in early november.

527, attack!

oh boy. these guys are really going for it with their new ads. in their own words:

MoveOnForAmerica.org was created due to the Bush campaign’s largely timid ads against Mr. Kerry, and will air this first ad starting Thursday Sept. 9th in the Washington D.C. market and in key swing states beginning Monday September 13th. Since the organization is a “non-connected” committee, the ads will run non-stop until Election Day, and are not subject to the McCain-Feingold ban during the campaign’s final 60 days.

jesse taylor over at pandagon has some analysis:

The first ad on the page is a masterpiece of addled storytelling - John Kerry got a murder conviction (actually a charge of being an accomplice to murder) overturned for a man the ad admits could have been innocent. However, the man had done something bad...on a furlough, just like Willie Horton. Or something. It's the good old theory of criminal justice wherein future rights to a full and fair trial (as well as any claim to potential innocence) are denied to anyone who's done anything else wrong in their lives. Except for Bush Administration officials, of course.
The real test here is whether or not these nastier-than-Swift-Boat ads will be fit into the same "527s are bad, m'kay?" framework that placed MoveOn.org right alongside SBVFT. Despite the dubious moral equivalency of Laura Bush, mean and dishonest are not nearly the same thing.

so while we here in the golden state may not be subjected to these ads during the commercial breaks of our favorite shows, rest assured that your fellow citizens in "key swing states" will get to see them repeatedly. here at tepid industries, we feel that the ads are in such poor taste that they will actually cost bush votes and that he will have to state for the record that he had nothing to do with them, much like how he tried to distance himself from those crazed swift boat vets for (anything but) truth.

please contact Stephen Marks at 703-731-3539 and tell him that he is a poopy head.

tepid industries

we're still not quite sure what to do with it, but we have a name and we have some things that we are interested in and now is as good a time as ever to start really thinking about what tepid is going to be. in conjunction with the blog you are looking at, i have recently begun practicing my web design skillz over at the tepid industries temporary page, kindly hosted by the good folks at cox communications. i paid for the domain name www.tepidindustries.com but the bastards at registersite won't let me switch the nameserver (or at least they aren't making it easy...)

at any rate, i've had the page up for a few hours now. it's pretty spartan at the moment, but it will hopefully evolve into something grand -- as soon as i learn java and flash. all i need is a little time and a library card. good thing i'm unemployed!

by the way, if you haven't already, you should really watch i am trying to break your heart. i can't seem to get it out of my head...

and the pResident in chief did some talking and aw shucksin' last night. those nice boys over at pandagon (you may have to scroll down) were blogging it live, as they have been the rest of the convention. you may even notice some witty comments by yours truly if you care to dig for them. but you surely have much better things to do with your life. go outside! take awalk in the sun! smile at a stranger! don't be a dick when others are trying to merge onto the freeway!

4 MORE YEARS!!! YAY!!!

aparently i was not the only one who was shocked and apalled by the repugnikans choice of a keynote speaker. even the lovable center-right commentator andrew sullivan found it a bit, well, crude. observe:

Zell Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party. I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude.

and then, there was uncle dick's acceptance speech. and the whole frenzied chanting of "4 MORE YEARS" and "FLIP-FLOP" whenever john kerry's name was mentioned. i felt like i was reading fear and loathing on the campaign trail '72 again, only it was real and being broadcast directly to my living room. the whole experience begs to be contrasted to the dnc, which i was able to watch from the comfort of my mother's living room on the very day i returned from japan. i would have to agree with sully's characterization of barack obama's speech, which can be viewed here. it was a down-right positive, potentially unifying speech - assuming anyone other than the democratic faithful were paying attention. then there was v.p. nominee john edwards with his message of hope and a better tomorrow. few and far between were the attacks on their opponent. zell miller has clearly lost his mind and has no business on the national stage, so we will ignore him. but the v.p.'s speech, filled with fear, terror, fear, terror, nuclear obliteration, terror, john kerry can't protect you, flip-flop, poopy poopy doo doo pants, provides one of the clearest reasons why we should NOT re-elect these stooges. they can't run on their record so they attack their opponents and try to create confusion and fear while avoiding the issues. they hope that the only choice the electorate will feel it is faced with in the end is one between "4 more years" or certain death.