The Moment passed

Forty Years

Forty years ago today, one day after giving his prophetic "mountain top" speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a white supremacist in Memphis.

I remember as a boy of nine hearing the news on the radio. The high-school student who looked after me til my mom got home from work told me she was worried what would happen at her school the next day. That evening we walked to the corner and looked down the broad avenue we lived near in super-segregated Chicago. The black neighborhood down the way was on fire.

The world lost a great great man that day. May his spirit shine forever.

Embrace of the War Criminals

Americans seem to have a dangerous weakness for doddering old fools.

It needs to be said, Senator John McCain is not some kind of liberal republican maverick. He is a dangerous right-wing scumbag. John McCain was bombing civilian and military targets in North Vietnam during the American war of aggression against Vietnam. When he was shot down, he was rightfully and justly imprisoned. Neck deep in the blood of murdered innocent Vietnamese--who he proudly called "Gooks" until just a few years ago--John McCain is not some war hero but a war ciminal.

McCain's recent and repeated comment about Al Qaeda returning to Iran to rearm and retrain is not an excusable confusion, it is either senile dementia, stupidity, or more of the same duplicitous manipulation of American ignorance about the world that we've had from 8 years of the corrupt Bush regime.

Over and over again John McCain has shown a willingness to embrace the worst of nascent American fascism, the so-called "conservative" movement. LIkely to die in office before his term is up, he is clearly also a kind of trojan horse for dengerous right-wing forces. Look to his vice presidential candidate to see who, in fact, the Blackwater/Oil company corporate axis truly seeks to entrust with the reins of corrupt corporate state power.

Beware.

President Bush Arrested, to Stand Trial

President Bush was jailed today after a citizens' delegation arrested him for war crimes, sedition, and crimes against the humanity. Several other members of his former administration were also jailed. Vice President Cheney is not, howeer, expected to recover from the stroke he suffered shortly after being taken into the people's custody.

A congessional delegation has travelled to the United Nations, where a representative is to tomorrow deliver a statement entitled "we apologize to the world."

In other news, shares in the Trans-middle-east Plowshares Corporation increased in value today after a donation of American weapons of mass destruction to the Jerusalem-based scrap metal corporation.

sadder landmark

dead Iraqis: previous post x 20? x30? x40? x50? who knows?

sad landmark

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A Guide To Campaign English

The following translations may be helpful to observers of the 2008 elections:

"Obama is inexperienced" = Obama is a negro and therefore can't be trusted (funny, no one ever called John Edwards inexperienced. why is that??)
"Obama is arrogant" = Obama is an uppity ni**er

Presidential Candidate Embarassed by Association to Bigoted Institution

"I have always had a deep personal faith that was rooted in the Methodist church in large measure because I was christened into it, I grew up in it. But, it also very much reflected how I thought about faith as I matured. You know, if you look at the Methodist book of discipline it talks about the four contributing streams of faith -- scripture, tradition, experience and reason. I always resonated to the fact that it was both revelatory and scripture-based but that you were invited to use your power of reason to think through your faith and to work through what it meant to you and how you would live it in your daily life."
--Hillary Clinton

"While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.....The General Council on Finance and Administration of The United Methodist Church] shall be responsible for ensuring that no board, agency, committee, commission, or council shall give United Methodist funds to any gay caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. The council shall have the right to stop such expenditures. "
--From the Book of Discipline of the Methodist Church.

And now some fresh air:
“I refuse to limit my God, to lock God into my cultural understandings because culture is fickle,” Wright said. “And culture is often wrong. Culture was wrong about slavery. Culture was wrong about women. Culture was wrong about Africans and Indians, and culture was wrong about Christ,” he said. “I have been the pariah among many of my clergy colleagues who somehow see me as defective or not quite saved because I won’t join them in their homophobic gay bashing and misquoting of scripture.” (Rev. Jeremiah Wright)

Link removed

Well it saddens me a little but I've removed the link on my blogroll to Joe.My.God. I've enjoyed reading the blog for a while now, but I think it has crossed the line recently and I can't really endorse it even for entertainment.

It's proved recently that racism is indeed rampant in the gay male community, a sad fact I guess I had forgotten. Sorry Joe. I can suffer through the shilling for Hillary but not the racism.

You Have To Want It To Be Different

Barack Obama delivered an important speech today on race in America and the racial issues surrounding his campaign.

There's a couple things in his speech I disagree with, but I have to say I am truly impressed with it. In the face of all the Hillary Clinton supporters flinging mud and negativity at his campaign, Obama consistently makes the same point over and over again: if you want change to come, you have to find common ground to stand with all people and make the effort to make things different.

Having watched a few of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's speeches floating around on the internets (and one can guess which campaign is helping to distribute these) I'm struck by how wide the gulf is between those who share Rev. Wright's point of view--and frankly I find far more to agree with in his fiery sermons than to disagree with--and those who are offended by them. I think Obama has struck an important balance in his approach to this controversy.

As a person with strong beliefs far to the left of the general point of view, I'm willing to set my disbelief and distrust aside and say I will vote for this man, with hope, and optimism. I call on those with opinions far to the right of me, or of Barack Obama even, to meet me in that middle ground.

I don't agree with Obama's statement herein on Israel; but you know what? Somebody with my beliefs on the middle east isn't going to be elected president of the united states.

It is so time for change, and Barack Obama is perhaps the only person who can deliver us from the dire precipice we find ourselves on.

Vietnam-War Avoider Has Career Regret

From a George Bush videoconference with military leaders in Afghanistan:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

If only he had stayed home reading Rudyard Kipling instead of being responsible for the murder of thousands.

wow.

Keith Obermann really calls out Hillary Clinton over Geraldine Ferraro. Impressive.

of seminaries, yeshivas, and madrassas

So just to get it out of the way, a massacre of students in a school is a pretty awful thing, even if that school was a training ground for the racist ultra-zionist Israeli settler movement. It's despressing to think that the soul-deadening mathematical response is necessary, but I point out that Israel just killed a hundred people in Gaza, certainly no less an awful thing, the disgusting display of official Israeli "regret" at civilian casualty notwithstanding. (I always learned that regretting something meant you intended not to do it again. The Israeli "regret" is complete and utter racist bullshit.)

All of that said I find it fascinating that the attack on the school was immediately reported as an attack on a seminary. One could argue that seminary is a fair translation for yeshiva. But then isn't it a fair translation for madrassa as well?

A seminary is full of earnest young spiritual seekers, learning the details of faith so that they might commit their lives to prayer and betterment of mankind. A yeshiva is a walled-off temple of mystery, where weirdly-dressed quaint, if somewhat distasteful strangers go to engage in weird mumbling, seeking ancient knowledge to preserve their alien presence in the world of normal people. A madrassa is a nest of terrorist vipers, where they keep their machine guns and scimitars (the ones for cutting off human heads), where crazed and delusional fanatics rouse themselves into an anti-human frenzy before going off and murdering innocents.

The problem here is that seminaries, yeshivas, and madrassas are all the same thing, just as all blood is red. It's really the problem, isn't it, with discussions of the middle east, that the mathematics of this tragedy and its translation are in the hands of manipulators, liars, and killers, and the ones who love them.

dearth of posts

Sorry so little posting of late. Been spending more time on my other blog, which keeps me pretty happy. Anyway, check it out.

Lessee: good news, Obama leads in delegate counts. Bad news, Clinton is still in the race. It's pretty discouraging to see her machine in action. I just don't understand how people fall for it. Bad news, war in Iraq still on. Good news, kittens are still cute.

(rant on islamophobia)

I love blogs. Everybody's got one. I know the person who read mine the most is me!

So I'm saving my latest rant from the comments of Joe.My.God. cause it took me a while to write and for once I feel reasonably articulate.

Apologies if--for shock--anybody has actually followed a link from JMG expecting to read something new here. Gasp!

---

(the subject was an anglican predicting sharia in england)

OK. I'll be the one.

I am so fucking sick of this islamo-phobia. I enjoy JMG, but if you get your knowledge of islam or world-events from this ZOMG!!1! React-to-this-immediately medium, you're doing yourself a disservice.

I live in Brooklyn, in a very mixed but mostly latin neighborhood. About ten blocks away is a super-super orthodox jewish neighborhood. The men wear slippers, long beards, weird hats, long coats. The women wear the jewish equivalent of the burka: wigs, long skirts. The kids are well-behaved. The shops close early on Friday and stay closed on Saturday. There are strings high up on poles around the blocks to mark off the eruv. There are jewish schools and jewish doctors and jewish everything else....and jewish social custom ruling the way the entire community acts. And you know what? These people are happy. They're not hurting anybody. They're not threatening anybody.

Now their beliefs are not my beliefs. You can argue that an ultra-orthodox man who wakes up and realizes he's gay faces awkward choices of removing himself from his community or enduring the closet or disapproval. And eventually I believe enough ultra-orthodox gay jews will get around to building a community where no one is forced to make that choice. But the problem is NOT that jews want to live in a world of cultural comfort. There are ultra-orthodox jews who would like to dictate NY city law, like Noach Dear and his opposition to gay marriage, and that's wrong. But screwing things up for the rest of us is NOT what MOST jews in this very self-contained community spend their time doing.

This is all that's fucking happening in England with the muslims except it's new. Nobody's talking about cutting the hands off thieves in muslim Liverpool, or stoning pakistani gay boys to death in London. Joe, give me a break. You're really baiting controversy here.

You wanna go out and learn something about islam, do so (I recommend a book by a guy named Reza Aslan I'm pretty sure is a gay muslim called "No god but God".) It's not my religion. I understand many of you don't like any religion, and I can't argue with that. Although I do have a religion, I understand religion has mostly treated us like trash. I'm not apologizing for that.

But this hysteria is just ridiculous. Islam is just the new "other" in the next neighborhood over. Let's welcome them and convince them some of western secularism is good, without threatening their religion.

And let's stop this stupid fucking ignorant racist ridiculousness. The world is changing. Help make it better.

Yes we can!

On Super Duper Tuesday February 5, vote for Barack Obama.

Awesome Erykah Badu video

so cool. classic record covers come to life. Thanks to 4 brothers beats blog for turning me on to this.

Obama Routs Hillary in SC

Barack Obama got 55% of the vote in the democratic party primary in South Carolina. That's pretty damn impressive.

Things are likely to get uglier though. Check out this headline on Time.com

"Obama's Rout Rejiggers The Race"

Rejiggers? Are they kidding...has anyone ever seen this word in a headline before? I understand that it's not actually an offensive word but doesn't it sounds like they might as well say "Ni**er Wins" or "Ji**aboo Takes SC". The depth of American racism is gonna reveal itself in a huge way.

Check out this shocking headline from the Hamptons Independent reported on Gawker: "Why I Should Be Your Next President, by Yo Mama bin Barack." This from the enlightened liberal northeast's resort community on Long Island.

On to Super-Duper Tueday.

Share the Joy

So I have become completely fascinated by music blogs. There are a bunch of music-sharing download blogs out there. Some of them are all about people ripping off the system, and it's actually shocking what you can avoid paying for if you look hard enough. I understand now why the record industry is in trouble: it's clear a new money-making paradigm is needed.

I don't approve of downloading just to get something for free. Musicians deserve to be paid for their labor, just like the rest of us, and unfortunately for them they have to share their income with big record companies.

But there are a lot of music blogs that I think are actually doing the artists a bit of a favor, and these are the ones who rip long-out-of-print vinyl that's not currently available on CD reissue and share it with other music heads. There's a big community of "other music" fans out there after '70s jazz and rare groove, lost psychedelic folk, prog rock from all over the world, you name it. I know I spend a fortune on CD reissues, and hopefully some of those profits go off to the artists. But meanwhile, rather than paying exhorbitant amounts for scratchy used vinyl, there's this whole group of people that's all about sharing sounds and rescuing them from obscurity. Hopefully in so doing they're creating a demand that might generate legit CD reissues for deserving artists from back in the day.

Here's some cool links. As near as I can tell, none of these sites link to downloads that cheat anybody.

* My Jazz World
Great lost jazz sides wth an emphasis on the seventies. The blogger has a taste for organ-based soul jazz and smooth-fusion which I don't share, but he also has some awesome rare groove nuggets up for share.

* Loronix
The most amazing collection of Brazilian albums from bossa to MPB to prog to pop, from the 1950s to the 1980s.

* Abracadabra
More incredible lost Brazilian music.

* Hippy Djkit
Lost psychedelic folk and prog folk and rock with a counterculture sensibility.

* Orgy In Rhythm
Obscure rare groove jazz site.

* Disco Delivery
Amazing disco site. This guy really researches and analyzes the music he shares. A real labor of love.

* Ile Oxumare
Promising new jazz site.

Enjoy!

Barack Obama For President

New York's primary in the 2008 presidential election cycle is part of "Super Duper Tuesday" on February 5. After much consideration, I have finally decided to cast my vote for Barack Obama on the Democratic Party ticket, and I urge readers to do the same.

It must be said right off that the Democratic Party is twin partner to the Republican Party, and as long as Americans are shackled to the good-cop-bad-cop routine with which these two corrupt bastions of American imperialism have enforced the will of the mlitary-industrial complex for the greater part of this country's history, we will be repeating an endless cycle of tragedy and disappointment, leading, eventually, to some disastrous collapse of self-avowed democracy to dictatorial despotism. However, someone will win the 2008 elections, and, however sad the fact might be, that person will not be cast up from the ranks of the righteous. That person will not even be a radical reformist in the mold of congressman Dennis Kucinich, nor a third-party critic like former Democrat Cynthia McKinney. That person will be a Democrat or Republican, and I believe that we are all better off--especially given the future composition of the Supreme Court--that that person be a Democrat. In a field of Democrats I believe the best choice is Senator Obama.

Barack Obama is not perfect. As for the global dominance of American capitalism and imperialism, from foreign interventionism including unquestioned bolstering of the State of Israel, to the ridiculous privatization of health and government services, to the tragic repressive waste that is so-called war on drugs, Obama's allegiance to the status quo is writ plainly and clearly. I do not argue that he is a revolutionary, nor even on the order of social heroes of the past who likewise shared a commitment to American capitalism despite their heroic challenges to the worst of American excess like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

Sadly many of the reasons to vote for Obama are negatives. The biggest of these is to deter NY Senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. At this writing Clinton and Obama are engaged in a somewhat bizarre LBJ vs MLK role-playing exercise. If Obama is no MLK, Clinton is unfortunately all too LBJ-like, and that should concern anyone whose priority is the swift removal of US troops from Iraq. The ugly race-baiting spectacle, complete with rambling threats by the former president Clinton himself and somewhat bizarre faux-folksy calls for solidarity with the Clintons from millionaire founder of BET Bob Johnson, reminds me, for one, of the worst of the Clinton years. Having suffered through America's self-inflicted Bushite nightmare I worry we have remembered only the good parts of Clinton's era and not the bad.

Speaking of millionaires, born-again populist, former senator and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards also represents an acceptable alternative to four more years of the Clintons or Republicans, but currently it seems unlikely that his trajectory is anything other than downward.

As everybody knows Barack Hussein Obama is the child of a white American woman and black man from Kenya. His upbringing was anything but typical (for non-Hawaiians or non-Indonesians that is): growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He is a lawyer, and a veteran of something he calls community organizing in Chicago. While not in national office at the time, he vocally opposed the US attack on Iraq from the beginning. He can be an inspiring speaker. His calls for change and hope do seem genuine and refreshing, and while I'm not particularly interested in building bridges with Republicans, his promise to unify and heal the sectarianism of the recent past feels like something more than just another election-year political bromide.

Obama does not support gay marriage, and handled the appearance by gospel singer and arguably anti-gay preacher Donnie McClurkin at a campaign event clumsily. But at his appearance at that ground-breaking candidates forum sponsored by Logo months back, I felt what he did say in support of gay civil rights was heartfelt and less equivocal than Clinton.

Obama seems to genuinely oppose the war in Iraq, and seems to raise questions about the whole idea of the "war on terror." But he clearly does not oppose American intervention abroad. His critique of the war is not as solid as that of say, Kucinich, or even perhaps the now-dropped out of the race Eeyore candidate Governor Bill Richardson. But his opposition to the war seems much clearer than that of Senator Clinton, who I believe would prolong and deepen it, much like LBJ did back in the 1960s.

It's widely reported that African-Americans are concerned that Barack Obama is setting himself up for assassination. It's hard to argue with that. The deep deep racism of many white Americans would seem to virtually guarantee that Obama would become a target of violence at some point. One can only pray--and I guess I mean that literally!--that such a fear doesn't come to pass. But it's because of that racism that I think Obama offers the most hope for me.

Harold Washington was Chicago's first--and only, so far--African-American mayor. Chicago was and is segregated in ugly ugly ways. But Washington's tenure, cut short by a heart attack, changed Chicago, and changed Chicagoans, for the better, in ways both subtle and dramatic. While Condoleeza Rice proves there's nothing inherently better about having black faces in government, I believe that Obama offers us the kind of opportunity for fundamental change in attitude, a fundamental blow against racism, that Harold Washington wound up being in Chicago. Jesse Jackson was a flawed candidate, though I worked on his presidential campaign back in the 1980s; my first political steps outside the tiny world of sectarian socialism. Jackson proved to be too complex a figure, too unable to transcend his personal baggage. Al Sharpton was a flawed candidate, and despite the knee-jerk racist reaction he is met with by most white Americans, he made many principled and admirable stands; but his campaign never transcended that of an outsider, like today's Kucinich or Gravel. Racism didn't end with Harold Washington, and it won't end with Obama. Indeed the backlash will likely be ugly. But the hour is late, and every we step we take as a nation so dyed in the wool of racism out of this ugly caldron is a step toward our redemption.

It is unnecessary, I think, to engage in the fruitless argument over whether women or African-Americans have suffered more or are more deserving of fronting our attack against the Republican monstrosity. Let us look to the individuals offering to lead the charge and this time, the man of mixed racial heritage is my choice.

For the Republican machine must be defeated. Huckabee, a likable opponent of scientific reality, a gregarious foe of gays and non-Christians, as ignorant about foreign affairs as he is committed to his religious faith, offers the logical extension of Bush's evangelical champions and must be defeated. Giuliani, a dislikable bully and opportunist, is a would-be dictator, a fear-monger, and deeply, deeply corrupt, must be defeated. Romney, a slimy, corrupt and disengenuous opportunist, must be defeated. McCain, a doddering militarist, a veteran war criminal, and lapdog of the Republican establishment, must be defeated.

For all these reasons, you can hold your nose, you can cross your fingers, you can apply for an immigration visa to the country of your choice, you can stockpile arms in preparation for civil war, you can redouble your commitment to revolution or to spiritual purity, but the only choice for now, for this dismal reality, is to vote for Barack Obama for president. May God have mercy.