Impactivism

The Promised Land?

The first black president of a Western country was just elected.

Whether Barrack Obama will be a conventionally liberal president or a transformational president remains to be seen. All signs point to the former. And he may win with the largest electoral vote majority since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Despite my skepticism, and the justifiable critique about America's imperial role in the world, this is a moment of hope. Even as the U.S. media gush about the historic nature of the United States electing a black president. But this change will have to be proven.

Nevertheless, I still believe in the hope of America, an opinion that many of my friends and colleagues reject. The important part is to remember that change only begins with an election, and requires the participation, active engagement and monitoring by ordinary people to succeed as the dream that Martin Luther King and many, many others have envisioned.

Chicago police estimated that 200,000 people waited for Obama's victory speech in Grant Park.

There you go again

As if non-Americans have any say in the U.S. elections. Al Jazeera is, now, from its Anti-American bunker (in Washington, D.C.), broadcasting Webcam videos of people from outside the United States commenting on the importance to the rest of the world of the U.S. elections.

Individuals from Russia, India, Germany, Mexico and other countries all voiced their opinions on Al Jazeera's coverage of the election, "U.S. '08: The World Watches," about why the American election is important to them and their countries. Hey, you know, if you don't like this country, you can always leave.

Oh, right.

Terrorism News Today

So I get home this evening, and turn on Al Jazeera (my prime source of English language TV news in Madrid other than CNN International) and to my shock, they have the nerve (not to mention terroristic tendencies) *not* to be reporting on the U.S. election, even though the first results are probably a mere eight hours away.

How else am I to understand the minutiae of exit polling methodology, and how unreliable it can be but that the TV networks will use it anyway to predict the outcome of the election, perhaps before polls close in some states? Plus I need the hours and hours of advance "analysis" from "experts" wishing people good luck in supressing their latent racism when they go to vote.

Instead, Al Jazeera, in its unpatriotic, anti-American ignorance of what's important in the world, has a report from Goma, Congo, (where, unlike most U.S. news organizations, they actually have a reporter on the ground) which is surrounded by rebel soldiers, as government soldiers plunder, rape and kill civilians in their retreat from the town. Meanwhile, one quarter of a million people have fled their homes in the region, while the international community wrings its hands.

It's as if Al Jazeera is intentially provoking charges of being a terrorist news organization.

Speaking of, does that make me a terrorist if I watch it while supporting Barack Obama for president? (I've also been known to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart.) If so, my future traveling experience may revert to the several years I was on the terrorist watch list because (I believe) I have the same name as an IRA member who was, incidentally, killed 10 years ago by the British Army in Northern Ireland.

Good to know that the government agencies who compile those up-to-date lists aren't monitoring the internets, becuase I have a plane to catch Friday.

It's alright Ma, I'm only crying

So the New York Times reported Sunday that Bob Dylan is the most-cited songwriter in judicial opinions in the United States. At least according to an analysis of the "uses and misuses" of song lyrics in legal writing.

Dylan has been quoted in 26 opinions in the lower U.S. courts. Paul Simon is next, with eight (12 if you count those attributed to Simon & Garfunkel). Bruce Springsteen has five, with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead (dude) and Joni Mitchell trailing.

The latest cite, by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts--and thought to be the first use of a rock lyric in a Supreme Court decision--was in a case about whether payphone companies could sue long-distance carriers:

“The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.“ ‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).”

As much as I love Dylan, I'm just not sure that Roberts' reliance on song lyrics instead of legal precedent is sound legal argument. Notwithstanding the obvious irony that the song lyric is about the feeling of freedom from not having possessions and not about who may sue a phone company. But hey, I'm neither a lawyer nor play one on TV.

Oh, and Roberts got the quote slightly wrong too. It's "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose."

The rise of the new right in Ireland?

There was a provocative piece in the Sunday Tribune by Justine McCarthy about the re-emergence of the right wing in Ireland. The profile of religious conservatives, among other elements of the right, was politically visible in the referendum campaign to defeat the Lisbon treaty. Much of the left also opposed the treaty.

McCarthy focuses on the right's conception of the role of women in Irish society. "The mood of conservatism is palpable," she writes. And since "feminism has lost its balls," how will this "wind of change" be reversed?

The Lisbon treaty debate is still raging, too. Many people in Ireland increasingly believe they will be asked, in a democracy-eroding sleight of hand, to vote again within a year on the same treaty. (Which would, of course, be a second repackaging of the latest effort to "streamline" the functioning of the EU--the failed European constitution was version 1.0, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.)  In Ireland, a similar "those who know better didn't like the verdict of the people, please vote again" occurred in 2001 when the Nice treaty initially was rejected by Irish voters.

So get ready for next year's sequel: Lisbon II. Or as it might be colloquially referred to in Ireland, the "Ah Come On Stop Acting the Bollocks" treaty.

Apparently, here's how Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Brian Cowen reacted to the No vote (thanks to Sarah Carey for the tips):

Are the Irish really "turning their backs" on Europe?

That's what the headline in Spain's leading daily El País said this afternoon. But is it true?

In case you haven't been following, Ireland is the only country in the European Union to hold a public referendum on the Lisbon treaty. This is required by the Irish constitution; every other European country will ratify the treaty (or not, although most seem likely to do so) in parliament.

Irish voters went to the polls yesterday, and the results were tallied today: the treaty was voted down by 53% to 47%. Turnout was moderate: 53%.

The Lisbon treaty is a slightly-scaled-back second attempt at a European constitution. It would make it easier to pass Europe-wide laws without consensus among countries. Critics see this as concentrating ever more power in Brussels-based institutions with little accountability to people in, say, Galway or Bilbao. Proponents say it will "streamline" decision-making. The treaty also shrinks the number of European commissioners, among other changes.

The treaty, meanwhile, also would give legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which includes such social and civil rights as the right to strike or the right to health care, although it is unclear how those would be enforced.

Much pressure was brought on the Irish government by other European leaders to secure a Yes vote. Almost all major political parties in Ireland supported the treaty, along with major business groups. (Sinn Féin, a left-nationalist party, is an exception.)

So why didn't it pass?

It is clear from multi-year opinion polls that Irish people are very pro-European and support the EU project in greater numbers than in many other countries. Indeed, according to the latest Eurobarometer poll, more people in Ireland (87%) than in any other EU country said their country had benefited from membership. But they didn't support this treaty.

As the Economist pointed out this week, the 26 other European governments, if they were honest, would admit that they would struggle to secure a Yes vote, too. And from reports I read from Ireland today, it is definitely emerging that more working class and rural voters voted no, with more wealthy constituencies voting yes.

Dublin MEP Mary Lou MacDonald said the strong No vote indicated that there was "a deep sense that the Government isn't serious about our position as a neutral state" and that people had declined to back the treaty because of a "sense of a loss of power."

Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins said the vote was a "huge rebuff to the political establishment" but a vindication of the rights of "tens of millions of workers" in the EU. Higgins said he believed the No side had "won the argument," despite the fact that the main political parties and "big business" supported the treaty.

"Certainly from the point of view of the Socialist Party, the key elements that we raised, of concern about public services, militarisation and worker rights and the race to the bottom, they got a key echo among working people and in working class areas, and that was shown quite clearly in the result.

"This is not a disaster, which they have been trying to make out. In fact, this can be a rallying call for workers throughout Europe who have been at the brunt of this neoliberal juggernaut from the EU in terms of privatisation of services, attacking their pension rights, attacking the idea of a decent wage and a proper job."

Even the Economist, hardly an opponent of neoliberalism or privitization, argued, "True friends do not become pariahs just because they disagree with you. If nobody can find more convincing arguments in favour of the Lisbon treaty, the EU as a whole may yet find itself whistling in the dark."

Why Murdoch should own the Wall Street Journal

So Seth got me thinking this morning (it happens) in his succinct post "How to write for a billionaire."

With Rubert Murdoch's competitor-scaring bid for Dow Jones so high and so lacking in the normal economics of deal-making being considered by the controlling Bancroft family, it's worth considering that Murdoch's purchase of the esteemed Journal may actually be *a good thing* for American journalism.

“I’m sometimes frustrated by the long stories,” Murdoch says about the Wall Street Journal.

Yes, quite. So we might expect that to change.

Or, as Murdoch told biographer William Shawcross in 1983: “All newspapers are run to make profits. Full stop,” he said. “I don’t run anything for respectability. The moment I do, I hope someone will come and fire me and get me out of the place — because that’s not what newspapers are meant to be about.”

As an advocate of citizen-driven journalism, it's strange that I've been an apologist for the frequently rabidly right-wing WSJ as long as I have. Certainly, the news pages of the paper produce some fine investigative reporting and, according to former staffers, some reporters commonly refer to the right-wing editorial page writers as "Nazis." So no one could accuse them of not knowing the enemy.

But it's seductive to think that a Murdoch-owned WSJ would ultimately destroy the paper.

Because there's no golden rule of journalism that says we have to suffer the whims and fancies of editorial writers that hold conspiracy-theorist fantasies about anyone to the left of, say, Paul Wolfowitz, in order to receive the wisdom and intelligent writing of great news reporters.

So I hope you get to buy the paper, Rupert, and then destroy it. And so allow the journalism that currently thrives there to rise from the ashes elsewhere. At least that way, I don't have to be reminded any longer that denouncements about such infringements on individual rights as labor unions are lurking just a few pages back, like fascists in the emperor's shadows waiting for their Machiavellian moment.

When you dump 160,000 friends, how long does it take to get them back?

Much has been made already of the incredible blunder by Barack Obama's campaign in how it wrested control of the candidate's MySpace page from Obama supporter Joe Anthony.

Anthony had agreed to turn over control of the page he started on popular social networking site. But the Obama campaign decided they wouldn't pay $39,000, which is what Anthony said he proposed for his extensive volunteer work on the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and by some estimates captures one-eighth of the time people spend on the internet, jumped into the dispute, and turned the site over to the Obama campaign.

Personally, I think Anthony should have negotiated payment before he did the work if he wanted to be paid (although we don't yet know the full story of Anthony's communication with the Obama campaign as this conflict developed). Ethically, I don't think you can volunteer your time, and then demand to be paid later. But at the same time, it baffles me that Obama's campaign doesn't recognize the value of Anthony's work. Offer the man a job, for goodness sake.

As of today, Obama's number of MySpace "friends" had dropped 85%, to just over 21,000.

My friend Dana suggests Hilary Clinton should offer the following response: "If Barack Obama is unwilling to pay Joe Anthony $50,000 for two years of advocacy, tech support and writing (a steal for the number of hours clocked in and the number of connections made), while at the same time seizing control of what is effectively Anthony's intellectual property, then what exactly does this say about his stance on the arts, copyright and his efforts within the creative community?"

Good quote. But I'd push back on this point: how much of anyone's MySpace page, whether controlled by Joe Anthony or the Barack Obama campaign, is their "intellectual property?" Isn't that what  exactly what I.B.M., Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Disney and Time Warner argue in the A.A.C.S. case, yet another example of what happens when you try to control a message you think you own, but in a world where the concept of ownership changed when you weren't looking.

Those pesky Guantanamo detainees

Those terrorists at Guantanamo are just never happy, no matter how much we do for them.

In case you missed it, the NYT reported yesterday that more than a dozen prisoners at the U.S. detention center there "are subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment."

You know, kind of like the way you subject yourself to your co-workers breaking wind. It was your choice to go to work, after all.

It reminded me of the indoctrinated news coverage of the prisoners who committed suicide at the prison last summer, whose deaths were (I'm not kidding) generally covered in the mainstream news media as a calculated assault on the United States. As I wrote at the time:

At first I wasn’t exactly sure what was behind the Guantanamo Bay suicides. But after reading the news reports carefully, I finally got it: we Americans are under attack from a bunch of guys rotting in their jail cells.

You see, the terrorists are trying to make us look like the bad guys by killing themselves while they’re supposed to be under 24/7 supervision. As Adm. Harry B. Harris explained to reporters, the men who committed suicide at Gitmo “have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own.” Harris believes the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

That’s right, these guys who choked themselves to death with their own bedding are a perfect example of how the United States is suffering more than anyone in this latest front in the war on terror.

First, media reports reveal that the three detainees had the audacity to avoid discovery by prison guards while they quietly offed themselves. Not happy to play by the rules, they apparently dispensed with the usual suicidal cry of, “Come quickly, I’m killing myself!”

To those of you who whine they were imprisoned for nearly four years without being charged with a crime, I say: Get used to the new reality, constitution geeks.

Next, they fashioned a noose out of their bed sheets. Allowing prisoners such “comfort items” as bed sheets and toiletries will now have to be reassessed, according to Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern Command. We’ve treated these people so well and this is how they repay us? Instead, the army says it will replace the standard issue Bed, Bath & Beyond “Egyptian” cotton sheets with recycled copies of Martha Stewart Living. Hey, it’s good enough for the homeless—plus you can learn how to etch your own suicide notes into ocean-worthy seashells.

Finally, the terrorists capped their carefully-staged prison revolt by unhurriedly hanging themselves until they asphyxiated. The army later said they would reconsider providing other luxury items at the prison such as three-speed brushed nickel ceiling fans, to which prisoners could potentially fasten a noose when they’re not cooling off after a long day of tropical confinement. I know the blinkered ACLU-loving beatniks will complain as usual—but everyone knows the wire cages at the lavish Cuban prison camp already boast A/C to temper the oppressive 110-degree heat.

You know we’re in trouble when it seems like the terrorists are winning the P.R. war against us.

The White House assured Americans that the deceased men were “committed terrorists,” according to the New York Times. Who amongst us actually needs to see evidence produced in court in order to believe the men who work for the president?

Just because the U.N. Committee Against Torture says detaining prisoners at Gitmo violates international law doesn’t mean that we can’t operate it according to basic business ground rules. So, tired of thwarting prisoners intent on hunger strikes by strapping them to restraining chairs and force feeding them through plastic tubes, President Bush announced additional measures the United States will undertake to prevent further suicides:

• All Guantanamo detainees will undergo “sensitivity training” to show them how much it hurts our feelings—and kinda makes us look bad—when they kill themselves in despair at being locked away indefinitely with no legal recourse;
• All newly-admitted detainees must complete a “prison application,” which requires prisoners to disclose all previous instances in which they have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge, and whether they tried to commit suicide there or not;
• To improve prisoners’ treatment by guards, “360-degree review” will be instituted, in which prisoners are encouraged to openly and honestly assess the job performances of the prison guards who terrorize them with dogs and occasionally urinate on their Korans;
• Some prisoners previously transferred from Abu Ghraib will be allowed to leave, on condition that they sign “confidentiality agreements,” in which on-the-job skills such as balancing, hooded, on a wooden box while attached to electrodes and remaining calm in their restraints while being sodomized by a broomstick* couldn’t be disclosed to future jailors, in order to avert leaking any “trade secrets.”

It’s understandable if we occasionally feel just a little bit bad for these evildoers, especially if some of them are merely shepherds from rural Afghanistan who were attracted by our shiny yellow food ration packs—or was that a cluster bomb?

And so what if 25 other Gitmo prisoners previously attempted to commit suicide there? It’s still the Caribbean.

But we can’t forget who the real victim is in this latest terrorist plot—the United States of America. Remember, our enemies only engage in shallow propaganda stunts such as committing suicide while indefinitely imprisoned without trial because they hate our freedoms, our generosity and our love for the rule of law.

*Actually happened, according to a U.S. Army report.

How good was your coffee this morning?

Do you think the people who grew the beans should get more than 3 cents for it?

Good story from Oxfam. Watch below and then go support their campaign.