So Twitter is abuzz with the news that the Port of Oakland has been shut down; major news sites are either ignoring the act or standing with reports from earlier in the day that the port is operating. That makes it sound like the general strike, focusing on the port, has been a failure. But then there’s this:

The Port of Oakland was chosen as the protest site because the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has a rare contract clause that allows workers to honor certain community picket lines. If workers arriving for a 7 p.m. shift decide not to cross the line, a shutdown could result. LA Times

So i suppose that neither sort of report is true, or even knowable yet.
There are also reports of wildcat strikes inside the port, but those may well be work related. It’s possible that the longshoremen will walk out when the Occupy protesters form their picket line outside the port. Full story »

Complaining about George Lucas ruining everything is almost as played out as the Hitler bunker-mashup meme. Unless you can complain about Lucas through Adolf Hitler. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. And that’s where i’m at, bitches.”

Sometimes the best education is the one found in everyday life. Not a few wide-eyed foreign students in Pennsylvania got more education than they bargained for in signing up for a J-1 visa to the United States. Instead of the land of milk and honey, it looks enough like blood and tears for 200 hundred afternoon shift workers to walk off the job at a Hershey’s facility and be followed by others coming off first shift. Across language and cultural barriers they organized themselves to present a petition of grievances to management; apparently, it did not result in a satisfactory response. And that’s when they left. Such lack of gratitude for the opportunity to see America, earn some money and participate in a cultural exchange.

Except the first two turned out to be false advertising and the third is not the exchange of culture they were expecting.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that the London riots are far too complicated to be described, analyzed or understood in the pithy conclusions our media and politicians are only capable of functioning with. Though they clearly started because of police/race issues that were initially approached by the people in a peaceful way … and completely ignored by the police/state nexus of power, the spread and manner of the riots have buried that in a complicated web of motives and behavior. We’re now finding out that a great many rioters are not “young” in the traditional sense; they’re like me and come from the Reagan/Thatcher generation. This information lends some credence to analysis i’ve read saying that initial loss of control by the authorities opened up the flood gates for everyone who thought they could get away with whatever they wanted to do.

Here comes the Fight Club Generation…
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So there i was trying to enjoy my udon noodle bowl and read some St. Augustine on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, Wolf Blitzer was there too, and he wouldn’t shut up. So i got to hear the latest updates on the crisis of the moment; insightful stuff too, like how i’m supposed to be offended because the Speaker of the House used the word “ass” in public. Oh dear… Sure, i laughed at the footage of the Tea Partiers marching with a sign describing the US government as a many “uttered” beast. And i shook my head in disbelief that we pay people like Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell a good salary for being ass-hatted dumb fucks. But the real kicker was Wolf worrying if “their checks will go out.” Full story »

Look! Up in the sky, it’s a bird … it’s a plane. Nope, it’s Super Congress. Where caped, congressional crusaders will wage the battle between good and evil far above the heads of mere mortals and senior citizens living on Social Security. It will be where the “leaders” of both parties (and they’re not leaving any room in this Super Congress for a desperately needed third party) get together to make the big decisions, so it will also function as a reward for years of dedicated ass-kissing, lying and soul-selling. There’s a good reason why the leadership of both parties is for this Super Congress idea; they always manage to find common ground when it’s time to screw you and me. And the best – by far – way to grind the American people into destitution is to enshrine the oligarchy with extra-political rights.

Never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to invent the crisis to seize.
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If this isn’t one of the best things that you’ve ever seen, it’s because you A) haven’t known enough Finns, B) don’t sauna often enough, or C) don’t listen to enough Motorhead. Remedy that immediately.

enormous virtual hat-tip to riverdaughter

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After the Iranian elections, the Department of State formally asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so that Iranian activists could continue to tweet each other and the outside world. The internet will, apparently set you free. Now there’s some evidence that early communication between activists in Egypt was facilitated by Facebook and Twitter. The condemnation when Mubarak’s regime shut down the internet was much more muted. It didn’t stop the protests, suggesting that the internet is, at best, capable of being a tool of freedom but far from a necessity.

There are more than a few reasons why the meme of Facebook revolution is silly, not the least of which being that social networking moguls have neither declared nor proven that a fundamental aspect of their tools is to facilitate freedom. Full story »

So what about Egypt, eh? Is there anything more amazing than the relatively spontaneous gathering of humanity to peacefully declare freedom for itself? This following Tunisia must bring up comparisons to Eastern Europe in the late 80′s and early 90′s. Unlike the “color revolutions” of the 00′s which looked like foreign policy set plays to elevate friendly leaders and haven’t amounted to much beyond the adoption of neo-liberal economics. As Kissinger said, the US doesn’t have friends, it has interests. Consequently, we have a long history of supporting “friendly” dictatorships and one-party states. The equipment used by the Egyptian military and police that proudly proclaims “Made in U.S.A” proves the point. Mubarak’s Egypt is a cruel police state, but that’s ok because he serves our interests. He’ll take our terror suspects who need to disappear. He’ll do what he can to enforce the blockade of Gaza. And he’ll keep his own people in line, quiet about any feelings the 40,000,000 of them might have about US behavior in their neighborhood. All while preaching ceaselessly about freedom and democracy.

We’re standing on the wrong side of history.
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Every great once in a while, procrastination pays. It was procrastination that got me a free iPhone…well that and Apple wanting to get rid of 3Gs models to make room for the next greatest thing. Being a step or two behind the times doesn’t matter to me; hell, AT&T hasn’t gotten off it’s lazy, corporate ass and brought 3G service to America’s social and evolutionary cul-de-sac so half of what makes an iPhone cool doesn’t even apply to me. What i wanted was a free 8Gb iPod Touch that i could use as a phone. Not a fan of many things in my pocket, and i haven’t had a music player for something like a year now. Because i’m lazy and procrastinate, that’s why.

So i’ve been music shopping and ripping old CD’s with a fervor.

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The circus of failure that’s three years old now continues in Ann Arbor. It’s painful to watch the disintegration of a once proud football program, but that’s what this is. I’m not the most avid football fan anymore, but i was raised to be one. Specifically, a Michigan football fan. And i’ve always considered myself a lucky Michigan football fan. Thanks to my grandmother’s mid-life BFA at the UofM, my family had season seats when i was little. Imagine being a five year old at Michigan Stadium sitting in the row behind the band…and the trombone section no less. I was there for the video below. I remember chaos as the band tried to turn their hats and play “The Victors” while 100,000 people went absolutely crazy.

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Don’t you love the smell of bipartisanship in the morning? It smells like … it smells like burning flesh, or victory. After all, those two smell pretty much the same, don’t they? Now that the American people have spoken, or at least a small percentage of them have spoken because it was a mid-term election with predictably low turnout, power players in the Republican leadership are in Ottawa dropping clues for Mr. Obama. If he wants to win their favor and cooperation, then all he has to do is attack Iran.

Last week, David Broder opined that if Obama wants to sail to reelection he only need start a war. That’s real political strategy there, people, never mind dealing with serious problems in the US; the trick is to incite an irrational fear and hatred in the American people. Get ‘em all riled up for some vicarious killing and they’ll follow you anywhere. Some call it the “Bush doctrine.” Oh, hey, now don’t get Mr. Broder wrong: “I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.”

Lindsay Graham agrees, to a point, and he too would just love to see Barack Hussein Obama be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history. Of course he would, loyal opposition and all that. So to that end, Sen. Graham took the opportunity afforded by his trip to Ottawa to outline his favored, possible future for the US in regards to Iran.
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I don’t want to vote. That fairly well disgusts me, because i believe voting to be a responsibility and one that i’m both happy and proud to fulfill. Not that i take it too seriously. I once voted for Frank Zappa, and another time for the Communists (because they nominated two women and my other choice was Bill Clinton). In 2008 i voted for a Senate candidate who proudly noted that his campaign spent $400. I felt he represented spare change i could believe in. And one time i drove forty minutes to vote against George W. Bush even though i knew it wouldn’t matter, but i did it anyway. I generally look forward to the act. But now, it just seems pointless. Depressingly pointless.

We need a hell of a lot more than a rally to restore sanity.

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Am i the only one who’s been wondering (for like nine years now) why Osama bin Laden seems to share foreign policy goals with a broad group of people i like to call Dick Cheney? He wanted the US to invade Afghanistan, and so did Dick Cheney. Remember when he made a campaign spot for John Kerry right before the election? Dick Cheney couldn’t have gotten better than that from Karl Rove. The tape before this last one had Osama bin Laden going on about global warming, confirming Dick Cheney’s message that environmentalism is the same as terrorism.

This last one though, this last bin Laden tape takes the cake.
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I’ll admit it, until this afternoon i had paid exactly zero attention to the Juan Williams “scandal.” I figured that if Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Gingrich, ad nauseum were making a big deal out of it then it had to be stupid. Then i found myself sitting next to an abandoned copy of USA Today at the Secretary of State’s office. That’s how i found out that my little rule of thumb concerning the Political Reactionary Brigade was, yet again, correct. It doesn’t matter that Williams wasn’t fired for the sanctity of political correctness, but rather because his NPR contract as an analyst forbade him from uttering his personal opinions publicly. I’m sure that those so perturbed by his firing are all strong believers in the sanctity of a contract, just as they’re all firm believers in the First Amendment…except that part about separating church and state or when they disagree with what the speakers say. Full story »

Politics sucks because politicians pretty much suck across the board. It’s not just that they all say the same thing in different words, or that when push comes to shove they really don’t care about the people that they supposedly represent, they also end up being a tearfully boring cast of characters. And, no, someone who might have been a witch or prayed to Aqua Buddha while stoned in college does not qualify as interesting. This qualifies as interesting:

h/t to the folks at boingboing

Scholars and Rogues does not often simply point readers in the direction of an article, but there’s an essay up at The Front Porch Republic that deserves a careful reading followed by long thought.

But it is difficult for me to believe that anyone aware of his habituation can remain “at home” in the world for long—I mean this scientized technological everything’s-for-sale world we’re habituated to. If the world isn’t exactly the dung heap (and we the maggots that crawl upon it) that Dulcinea pronounced it to be, it surely isn’t the sort of place we can look at and be particularly proud of or comfortable in. We may be at home, but we are at home only in a kind of somnambulant homelessness. Something needs remodeling, even if we aren’t exactly sure what it is.

But that “something” is precisely what’s at stake. So let us look about.

Read the rest.

Ole Robert Gibbs sure let the cat out of the bag, didn’t he? Take that hippies, and by hippies i mean everyone to the left of and including Richard Milhous Nixon. Not sure that perpetual war for no discernible reason is a good way to spend our children’s tax burden? You must want to raze the Pentagon…or maybe levitate it with good vibes. Not sure that the administration did everything in its power to get every American access to quality, affordable health care? You must be a Socialist, no, worse…you wish you were Canadian. The Kucinich line was a throwaway, we all know who’s holding the leash. What all you radical, pinko, dope smoking lefties don’t understand is this: pragmatism.

You probably think that pragmatism means looking for ways to remedy situations within realistic constraints.
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I never found much point in shouting “Bush’s War”. Maybe i take the whole Constitutional Republic thing too seriously, but i will argue until the end of time that both Afghanistan and Iraq are our wars. We elected the jackass. We reelected the jackass. And the Democratic Party never lifted a finger to stop any of his jackassery. I’ve argued publicly and in private that each and every American of voting age by Oct. 2001 should be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And i mean it.

Still, i could also make a reasonable argument that what was done in my name was done against my will. I didn’t vote for Bush. I didn’t vote for the vast majority of the asshats in Congress either. Now i have to accept a much more personal responsibility for every drone strike and torture coverup.
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