The Dashed Election Guide

Cousin Lemuel writes from Ontario(where he had to cope with the Great Blackout out east: we note in passing the counter-intuitive reports that say Toronto had more serious looting problems than did New York City), and where an election is likely to be "called" soon (rather than recalled). He writes of his own election blues dilemmas. His list is as follows:

I'm tired of investing hope and washing out.

I'm not sure about any of "my' candidates. Will they act like I want them to act, on the outside chance they are elected?

Or will they find a "higher calling" a more "strategic analysis"?

My time is more precious to me and I don't feel like wasting it.

What better use of time than a democratic struggle?

Yes, if the candidate is trustworthy and simpatico.

Once I'm there (in the campaign) auto-pilot will take over. I will be campaign-man and do my duty.

I'm not sure I like that any more.

All good points. Then he asks us for advice. We are not used to being asked for advice. Usually we are given it. "Love it or leave it," is a frequent example. However, we will hazard the following Point of View (which is not Advice, mind.)

Radical though we may be according to prevailing standards, such as they are, we tend to adhere to the only and oft-repeated pronouncements of Grandma, which were two:
"You live long enough, you see everything."
"We do the best we can."

We tend to feel that pretty much sums up life, the universe and everything.

Applied to elections, it results in this philosophy: what you're doing basically is hiring somebody. You have to hire somebody, you've got a limited number of probably limited quality job candidates, and you have to choose one.

So you choose the best available for the job. If you're not confident they'll do the job the way you would like---and in politics, that's pretty much a given---then we tend to fall back on the Hippocratic Oath test: which is likely to do the least harm. (Could be we'd also call it the Democratic Oath.) This alone made us staunch supporters of Al Gore in the last U.S. presidential bash. It was in many ways the reason we don't regret voting for Clinton twice: he did some good, he did some unforgivably bad, but basically he did a lot less harm than his immediate predecessor did, and his opponents would.

This by the way is our "general election" philosophy. Not necessarily our nominating or primary election approach. Right now the U.S. is poised to begin primary elections for president, and there's six or eight Democratic candidates vying for the eventual party nomination: to be one of the two major party candidates. We believe this is where a thousand flowers should be blooming, and a vigorous debate should ensue. Many people are choosing sides now, and although we have our eye on a couple of the candidates, we're not choosing yet. We haven't heard the debate. So far the debate has made health care a major issue---one candidate went out on a limb with an ambitious plan, it got a lot of voter interest and response, and so the other candidates had to come up with their own plans. This is how the process should work.

The candidates state their positions. They influence each other. We see who seems to have the goods in terms of smarts, ability to communicate, and smell. Do they smell trustworthy, resourceful, etc.? How electable are they? Some people make their choice on this basis very early. Things change too much and too fast for that, we believe. Of course, if some absolute pig is gaining momentum and emerging as a preemptive front-runner, then strategies change.

Here in the U.S., the issues that we will be looking at in judging presidential candidates will be: health care, campaign finance and global heating. Of course we'll be checking out positions on Iraq, foreign policy in general, other domestic issues, but assuming the candidates in our running are all for quieting the current imperialist warmongering (time for that advice again, eh?) we see these as the most important long-term issues. A comprehensive single-payer health insurance is the most desperately needed economic and social change, cutting across class lines from upper middle to the bottom. Elections are always going to be less than completely meaningful as long as candidates and officeholders can be bought. Global heating is the most important factor for the next generation and the ones following. Already we're seeing effects that may well be charged to global heating, including as many as 10,000 deaths in France from a heat wave and drought. If the number proves out, and the science suggests culpability, it could well be that the climate crisis has already killed more people than 9/11.

The contemporary voter may often be all too easily hoodwinked by image, but there's some sense in the instinct to elect people who can communicate. Only the ability to communicate can leverage enough power to overcome inertia, not to mention the very monied interests. It's chaos theory come to politics, the way a little can go a long way.

So charisma can be a plus, however dangerous it also can be. The point perhaps is to look at it objectively. Not only am I swayed, but are these positions solid, grounded in fact and analysis and good purpose, and are others swayed? Then maybe you've got a candidate.

When a candidate gets elected, they have to go do the job. It is a job like any other: you have to do it every day, but there are still only 24 hours in that day, and you are still only a human being. At this point, a candidate's self-knowledge can be important. How aware are they of their motivations, of their situation? Clinton may not have been completely clear on his motives, but he usually understood his political situation. JFK may not have been particularly astute psychologically, but he had a sense of irony, and that's almost as good. He almost always knew the score.

As voters and citizens, we tend to project a lot on our leaders. We see the flaws in them we'd rather not look at in ourselves. We don't give them the benefit of the doubt that we certainly give ourselves. Few officeholders have much power. Sometimes the ones who seem to be "getting something done" are getting it done because the monied interests want it done, and they're on the payroll already. So a little patience in general, but keep after them on issues. The citizen's responsibility does not end with the vote.

So that's the Voting Guide. Working on a campaign is a more stringent commitment, but if it helps get issues debated, that alone may be worth it. If your candidate gets elected, you might get easier access for your views. And the great thing about hiring somebody for public office is that you can help fire them at the end of their term without getting sued.

Why is the Press Ignoring Bustamante?


It's been all Arnold all the time in the national media, which unfortunately is to be expected. But California media has not been doing much better. Last weekend the Field Poll, which has a consistent record for accurate predictions, showed that Cruz Bustamante led Arnold among likely voters. This was before there was anything that could be described as a Bustamante campaign---no paid media, no endorsements, no speeches or statements after the announcement. You'd think that this would be a wakeup call, that the media should start taking the lieutenant governor seriously. No such luck.

The Sunday SF Chronicle news section was all over Arnold, and featured a photo of the stripper candidate pushing out her chest. But no Bustamante. Nothing. Or as they must be saying across the state, Nada.

It was the same story days later when Arnold had a press conference and then a media-ted meeting with advisers. The media was obsessed with the answers Arnold gave and didn't give. When was he going to give specifics on how he would solve California's problems, and especially balance its budget?

Meanwhile, Bustamante laid out a plan for dealing with the state budget. He gave specifics. He was largely ignored again. He maybe got a paragraph or two in a story on Gray Davis and his "from the heart" speech.

This week Bustamante got endorsements from some labor unions and from the California Democratic congressional delegation. Will this finally earn him some media credibility? Don't bet on it. The media would rather carp on the guy who won't give specifics than report on the guy who does. Gary Coleman has gotten more coverage than Bustamante.

Somewhere we heard or read a reporter saying that the media is re-learning how to cover campaigns. They're trying to figure out how people want them covered. So far their answer is to follow the celebrity. Cover it so that stories on news pages and news channels are indistinguishable from Entertainment Tonight. Forget any civic responsibility in framing the issues that will actually matter to the people of California at a time of crisis, the issues that the governor of California actually has to deal with, and reporting on what the candidates say about them. Talk about your harvest of shame.

If I'm a labor leader or a Latino leader I'm telling my people: Look, they're ignoring you again. They're ignoring what matters to your lives, they're ignoring the candidate who is willing to talk about taxing the rich more fairly and taxing wealthy businesses (and there are plenty of those) to do what government in a democracy is supposed to do. They're ignoring you. Get yours at the polls.

RECALL ARNOLD!
by Theron Dash

Now in our second minute of gathering signatures on petitions to recall Governor Arnold (we still can't spell his last name---reason number one to get rid of the sucker!), the Recall Governor Arnold Movement aka Terminate the Terminator is pioneering the politics of Anticipatory Boredom Remover.

Just thinking about how dull life (i.e. media) will be without a recall campaign is motivation enough. But think as well of all the really hard stuff we'll have to hear about when the circus leaves town. Fortunately California leads the way once again, especially in our cutting edge entertainment-news- industrial complex. Not only have we solved the budget crisis in the default choice of the truly desperate (when too little money is available for too much and there are no good choices, the solution is to throw it all away as fast as possible) but we see the future ordained by the logic of cable TV news: total recall all of the time. Like so totally.

Recall Arnold is the place to be. That he may not win the election is beside the point---who cares about the other nonentities and politicians? Let's get started, and give people something to sign in the Safeway lot.

Total Recall

Okay, so that's not the first Arnold pun you've seen, nor by the level of cleverness adored by major media, will it be the last. Every day changes the California recall election, but unless something major happens in the next 24 hours, the basic situation may be set: Arnold is in, Issa (the rabid reactionary who started this recall mess) is out, Feinstein is not getting in, nor is Riordan. But Democrat Lt. governor Cruz Bustamante is running with the slogan: vote no on the recall, then vote for me. And it looks like the state courts are going to let the recall election proceed in October as scheduled.

So far Bustamante is taking some hits for hypocrisy, but what he's done is just plain good sense. Recent polls showed Gray Davis even weaker than before as the recall became reality. The ballot is in two parts: yes or no on the recall is the first part. Right now sentiment is tracking yes. The second part is where you vote for the replacement governor, should the current one be recalled. Since this is not a "vote of confidence" election, and it makes no sense to recall the current governor in part one and then vote him back into office in part two, Davis cannot be a candidate to replace himself. Davis wants an all the eggs in one basket strategy for the Dems, to totally defeat the recall. But lots of Dems, in and out of office, were getting nervous about this all last week. Then Big Arnold announced, and Bustamante made his move. (Little Arnold-that is, Gary Arnold---also announced, but the only voters who care about that are the ones who are uncertain whether to vote for him or Larry Flynt.)

The media is currently concentrating on Big Arnold, and whether his candidacy might be derailed by "revelations." not from on high but from down low. Of course this is what the media would be concentrating on, especially with a candidate who announced on the Tonight Show. And they'll probably keep their cameras trained on the Arnold show for the next few weeks.

In which case, they'll miss the story. (Hey, they wouldn’t be the media if they didn’t.) Unless Arnold runs a brilliant campaign (his first words hardly suggest he will) and Bustamante runs a terrible one (his announcement was not very well handled, media-wise), then the governorship is likely to remain Democratic. And here's why:

The recall so far has all been about polls, hype, and getting people to register their anger and fear by signing their name outside the supermarket or post office. Californians will sign anything. It's their California-given right. But most of them don't bother voting, even on the propositions their signatures put on the ballot.

Voting is a different dynamic. It all happens the same day, so old-fashioned organizing and organizations are important to getting people to the polls. The Democrats swept the state last time. The patriotic wave for Bush has mostly crested, the surf is no longer up. There may not be a lot of grassroots GOP enthusiasm for Arnold. Rabid conservatives upset with Arnold's views on abortion and gun control may very well go to Bill Simon, their candidate last time, who is on the ballot this time, too.

By the numbers, Cruz Bustamante was the top vote getter in the state just two years ago. It's not because he has startling name recognition. I doubt if he's ever been on the Tonight show. He's not even especially telegenic. But he's a Democrat and he's Latino. Latino voters know him well. No Latino has ever been elected governor. California has no majority population, but the next time it does, it will be Latino. Bustamante is the future, and the future may be now.

So now the Democrats have two decent chances to hold the governorship. Gray Davis will put a lot of money into defeating the recall. That in itself may succeed. Unions will provide organizing, and get their people to the polls. (That Arnold is so aggressively anti-union will help their motivation.) They will be urged to vote no on the recall. But regardless of how they vote on the first question, they can vote on the second, and chances are they'll vote for Bustamante. He is after all the Lt. Governor.

But Davis has indicated he intends to spend the next couple of months governing, "trying to make the lives of Californians better." That's a somewhat better strategy than he started out with, which was Issa-bashing. Bustamante immediately criticized it and told him not to dare going negative. He's running again on "experience," even though this is his greatest weakness---he ran and won on experience, and has gone a long way towards turning it into a dirty word.
People are looking for leadership, and Arnold is sounding that theme. The problems of California are not the fault of Gray Davis, but his leadership has been lacking. But at a time when Davis' best hope is bold leadership and laying out a courageous vision for the future, he seems to be saying he's going to hunker down.

Dissatisfaction with that may be enough to push the recall button to Bye Bye Gray. Then Bustamante should win. If he can articulate a vision and show leadership, he's got the experience to make people more comfortable voting for him in time of crisis.

He may lose some votes on the left to the Green Party candidate and Arianna Huffington, although I wouldn't be surprised if she withdraws in September in favor of Cruz. Peter Camejo is the Green Party candidate, and in some ways has better credentials in advocating for Latinos. But he's running his campaign against Gray Davis. Democrats are not going to vote for him, especially with the memory of Nader and his indirect role in the Bush putsch. Rank and file Democrats are likely to vote against the recall and for Bustamante.

With moderate to conservative Democrats and an energized Latino electorate, Bustamante should have enough to win in a very crowded field. I don't think the Hollywood liberals will vote for Arnold, even if he is pretty liberal on social issues. Not if Cruz looks like he can win. Sometimes liberal guilt actually works out for the best.

A lot will depend on Bustamante. Can he articulate a strong, clear and sensible vision? Can he differentiate himself from Davis without criticizing Davis? He is supporting a "no" on recall, so he's not running against Davis. Then again, he is. It's delicate but doable.

This applecart might be spilled by a higher profile Democrat getting into the race. Leon Panetta is mentioned. Bad idea. Bad for the party, bad for him, now that Bustamante is in the race. I don't know what Panetta's political base is. I do know that he often comes across on TV as softly arrogant, especially when he starts every sentence with "Obviously." Few if any of the Clinton appointees did well at the polls last time. (Come on, you can't count Hillary.)

So pretty soon we may not be talking about Total Recall. We'll be looking at Cruz control.

CA Note from M.Dash

We think of him as a distant cousin: Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who this week referred to Ashcroft & Company as "inept fascists" who "can't even run a police state right" has pretty much nailed the reaction of non-Californians to California's budget crisis and recall election. Here's the link to Jon Carroll's CA column.

DASHNOTE:

If you missed Anatol Lieven's essay (ostensibly a book review) in the Nation, you should read it now, linked here: "The Empire Strikes Back".

It's as true now as it was when it was written, way back in June or July. (Published in July 7, 2003 issue.)

Here's a taste: "Given its immense wealth, the United States can afford a military capable of dominating the earth; or it can afford a stable, secure system of social and medical entitlements for a majority of its aging population; or it can afford massive tax cuts for its wealthiest citizens and no tax raises for the rest. But it cannot afford all three..."

Chaos: Theory and Reality

by Theron Dash

Could it be that the terrorists who created the 9-11 scenario were prophetic theorists in the application of chaos theory to politics and society? Did they foresee that without years of warfare, and huge quantities of blood and treasure, or even devastating weapons to wipe out millions, they could destroy the United States of America? Did they realize that they could do it with just a single day of dramatic horror, much as the well-placed, well-timed flap of a paradigmatic butterfly's wing could eventually cause a hurricane?

We are well on the way to providing their descendants with the material to support such a boast. The dominoes are still falling, but the pattern is clear: America is well on the way to destroying itself.

The events of 9-11 emboldened the hot-wired fanatics and coolly arrogant overseers of ruling class interests populating the Bush administration and their corporate (including media) and Rabid Right support system to manipulate the more infantile instincts of the public to power their apparently self-serving but dangerously delusionary agenda into consequential reality.

Now those consequences are being felt in virtually every home, in every corner of this noisy but numbed republic. With the federal purse closed to every institution except the military, and with prospect of federal poverty and inaction for years to come, the states and local governments are now facing destruction they can no longer hide. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the states cannot fund programs to lend a life-giving hand to the poor, the sick and the old. They cannot lend a life-changing hand to poor and middle class children in the form of good schools and affordable higher education, or in support for the arts and other preposterously inexpensive ways of transforming lives with benefit to all.

And that's just the beginning. Local governments are facing the kind of decisions appropriate to nations mired in poverty or devastating warfare. Because people are being fired and infrastructure support is being neglected, there will be homes that burn down and people burned to death inside them because America cannot afford adequate fire departments. There will be people who suffer and die when earthquakes and storms wreak havoc because America cannot afford to provide timely assistance. Very quietly and individually, there will be people who suffer and die because America cannot afford to provide basic medical care to those who need it, especially now that even emergency room doors are often closed to those without enormously expensive insurance.

No one knows who the victims will be of ordinary but increasingly dangerous misfortunes. We will all soon be forced to understand that few homes, very neighborhoods, and no cities or regions will be as secure as they were just a few years ago.

Each state and locality has its particular layers of additional responsibility for their plight: bad laws, bad governmental practices, bad corporate behavior, bad politics. But since these situations are being repeated throughout America, there is a national responsibility.

Where is America's wealth going? It is going to the wealthy, partly in the form of enormous tax cuts. It is going to the military industrial complex, and it's going down the drain of misconceived warfare and occupation in Iraq. The Bush administration is responsible, and the media and the American people are complicit, however unconsciously or mistakenly.

Consider the blood lust exhibited at the news that Saddam's sons were killed. Consider the rules of engagement there, in which any returned fire permitted total destruction and killing of everyone---in this case, the sons (whose brutality and sadism had been visited on Iraqis, not Americans, who presumably have the right to set their own priorities) and a fourteen year old grandson. Consider that a few million dollars would make a huge difference in many American communities right now, and that the informant who led American troops to Saddam's sons will be paid rewards totaling some 30 million dollars. The current wave of triumphant preening and prediction that these killings spells the end of Iraqi resistance to America's criminally confused occupation will likely prove to be the usual wishful thinking, as it is the same kind of willful blindness and imagery-will-make-it-true so consistent with this delusionary policy as well as the fundamentalist mindset of much of the Rabid Right.

Our Dash in California
by Morgan Dash

California is a nation within a nation, large and wealthy enough to go a long way to solving many of its own problems, yet for that same reason feeling the ups and downs of the America to which it is appended more powerfully than almost any other state.

California's state budget crisis is having effects as severe as anywhere in America, and more severe than many other states. Layered on the national insanity is a political system that often bypasses both the barriers and institutional consistencies of representative government with single issue ballot measures that reflect the natural if moronic desires of Californians (as expressed in a recent poll) for lower taxes and more government spending.

Now mandated through the similar petition process, California will hold the first recall election of its governor in history. This comes when the California budget is still not passed, while millions of people are directly and indirectly affected by the expected cuts that have not yet been officially made (and thousands who are paid through the state are facing dramatic loss of income if the budget isn't passed very soon.)

The recall petitioning and politicking by the rabid right has already diverted attention and serious engagement in the process of dealing with the realities of state income and outflow. The upcoming recall campaign will mean much more politics and much less government, and therefore more chaos and neglect.

The recall campaign also offers governor Gray Davis the opportunity to go on a dramatic offensive, to talk sense about the total political system in the state, and to propose comprehensive reforms. The seeds of this approach are in his budget document itself, which catalogues the absurd and contradictory mandates of the ballot measure system. He has the opportunity to be heard on what the state really needs to do to make the state government work for California's people: To propose needed reforms of the system, to talk in graphic detail about the responsibility of the Bush administration for this crisis, and to propose how California can take advantage of its size and wealth to institute solutions to its people's most pressing problems, regardless of what the federal government does. At the top of this agenda should be a state financed comprehensive health insurance program that guarantees coverage to all Californians.

Gray Davis is widely believed to be excessively political, self-serving and insensitive to the needs of Californians. And that's just among his supporters. He may believe that he can survive a recall election with relative ease, but that may not be the case. If Richard Rioardan is his chief Republican opponent, he is in for a very tough fight. Even Arnold S. has the potential to draw enough votes, especially if he comes out strongly for support of the arts and adds that constituency to those who would vote for him because he's a Republican or a "non-politician" celebrity.

So Davis may decide that the best political move is to shatter his gray image with bold analysis and proposals. If he does and if he can do it with some effectiveness, California and the nation will benefit from the ensuing debate.

By the by, in the interest of family unity I remind you that brother Gabriel continues his archival verse project over at http://gabrieldash.blogspot.com.

Reaping

The United States of Bush was going to crush the Great Saddam, with his weapons of mass destruction and U.S. equipped army and CIA trained terror squads, and bring democracy to Iraq. It granted other less powerful and morally clarified nations the privilege of participating but when they balked, well fuck em. We don't need them. We'll see who gets the damn contracts when the dust settles and the oil flows again. Pass me some of them freedom fries.

So the U.S. of B. figured to get in, wipe out the bad guys, be conquering heroes, scare the shit out of other countries, get the contracts and get out. Couple of months, and on to Iran, or Syria maybe. Get the whole Axis of Evil by Christmas.

And it all worked great until it all started falling apart. The same folks who foisted such an obvious B-movie story of the Heroic Private Lynch onto a tabloid-brain media whose idea of a literary genius is Tom Brokaw, got caught crossing their fingers and telling a little white whopper in the State of the Union. Iraq turned out not to be a self-winding watch you took off a dead soldier; once you owned it you actually had to run it. Costs $5 billion a month just to keep the place in soldiers. Or some say $4 billion. The difference in the estimates could change several million lives back in the states, where the poor, the sick and the children would be paying for all this with their lives, but that's another story...or is it?

Well, turns out the U. of B. S. could use some help after all. How about some soldiers to replace the ones who are falling down with exhaustion and being picked off in the public market? Or a few bucks anyway, can you help us out here? Hey France? Germany? But oddly enough, nobody is lining up to volunteer. What do you mean, we're out of freedom fries?

Now that Bush Nation is showing how easily overwhelmed it is in that one little test case country without much in the way of even weapons of fairly big destruction (but still with lots of automatic rifles), those other Axis of Evil countries are no longer quaking in their boots. More like they're laughing up their nuclear weapons suitable aluminum sleeves.

Turns out those contracts aren't worth much without a government making sure the trains run, not to mention the water, and that there's a law or two, and some people to make them and enforce them, so you don't get picked off climbing the oil rig.

It's all very funny isn't it except for the Iraqis dying, the American dying, the Brits dying, and here at home when the house catches on fire it goes on burning because there's no firetrucks coming and you can just burn in America, and if you get sick or an infected cut and you've got no insurance even the emergency room doesn't have to take you anymore so you can just suffer and die in America, and if there's an earthquake or a terrorist attack you can call homeland security or you can call your momma in heaven for all the good it will do you because nobody's coming and you can wait and starve and die of thirst and exposure in America, and if you're looking for a future and some hope don't look to the schools, don't look for your arts programs your theater teacher who told you yes your life does mean something, you can do something well, there were people who suffered before and found out things, we can at least all sing together but don't bother because all that's unaffordable in America, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history and can't afford anything except an army for the 99% and everything else for the one-tenth of 1%, the gated ones, them of the royal coup, the supreme coup, the corporate backscratch club of the U.S. of Bush.

As the Worm Turns

Now that young Americans are once again the cannon fodder of politicians' ambitions, being subjected to from ten to 25 attacks every day in Iraq, and dying at the rate of one a day for awhile, the worm is starting to turn. The most vocal alarm is coming from a traditional harbinger (people who have been "in country" and have talked to troops there) and from a source that usually isn't heard from this early (families of military personnel.) But it's only going to grow.

At the same time as Americans are beginning to question what the hell we're doing over there, they are also beginning to doubt that there was sufficient reason to start the war in the first place. The White House admission that one of the two pieces of evidence Bush claimed in his State of the Union address to show that Iraq was readying nuclear weapons (the uranium buy in Africa) was false made lots of news, much more dramatically than the earlier revelation that the other bit of evidence (aluminum tubes that turned out to be the wrong kind for nukes) when it was shredded weeks ago.

This is how it happens to extremists. The uranium lie happened because White House political operatives intimidated and overrode intelligence and foreign policy professionals. They've been doing that since 9/11, although until recently it's been heresy to say so. But being hoist on their own petard is only a part of how the worm turns. Extremism always invites its opposite. The claim of complete virtue, of being the force of pure good battling against the force of pure evil, encourages the hidden evil to rise and explode. When it does, the claimer of total virtue looks doubly bad, and moreover, cannot admit to sin or error. It doesn't allow the worm a lot of wriggle room.

The drama, or at least the soap opera, will continue, with its ups and downs, heroes and villains, dizzying ascents and incredible collapses, the inevitable falters and the underdog comes through, or not. Que sera sera may not be much of a political philosophy, but stay tuned. As grandma used to say, you live long enough, you see everything. For instance, Ralph Nader running again.

Meme This: An Essay for a Day

by Phineas Dash

Blogger has switched to a new system which seems unable or unwilling to publish longer entries. I assume this is a temporary problem, so for now I’ve sliced this essay up into separate posts, but you should be able to follow it easily in the normal way, from top to bottom being from start to finish. Just ignore the time checks.


Something called a "meme" is a highly fashionable idea at the moment. What is it? A meme is a highly fashionable idea.

Richard Dawkins is credited with naming it, as a kind of imitation (from the French meme) as an analogue to genes, because it is copied and transmitted from one person to another. Darwinists like Dawkins sometimes use the term as if memes were genes for ideas or information.
But they also use it as if memes are viruses. People become infected with ideas or information, such as buzz-words, fads, "urban legends," and so on.

In that sense, as Lee Cronk writes, "The idea of the meme is itself a meme, and a successful one at that..." Highly respected thinkers like Daniel Dennett use the term. For the short time I was a consulting editor for them, the folks at Adbusters Magazine swallowed it whole. Perhaps they saw in it an alternate pedigree as well, from William Burroughs and his idea of language as a virus.

Are you confused yet? I am. And I suspect we're supposed to be. This meme stuff has the smell of semiotics and deconstructionism, both perfectly good tools until they became dogmas, with their own clergy and secret language. Memeticists who might chance to read the rest of this commentary might simply dismiss it by saying that I don't understand what they mean by "memes." And they may be right. But rather than saying I'm sorry, I am inclined to get loudly in their faces with the simple retort, THEN YOU DIDN'T EXPLAIN IT VERY WELL, DID YOU?

So let's get down to it. First off, no one has ever seen a meme. They have not mapped them as they appear in the human organism, as they have genes. They have not studied them under microscopes, as they have viruses. I mention this because, though sometimes memes are treated as metaphors or similes, they are also sometimes treated as if they have the same effects as genes and viruses---that they are genes and viruses of a sort.

But of what sort? And in what realm? Here is a source of major confusion. Genes are physical things that get passed on from person to person through sexual reproduction. The genes themselves pass on stuff that interacts with other stuff that forms yet other stuff into organized stuff that becomes feet and ears and brains. We say "Genes pass on information" but really, that in itself is pretty close to a metaphorical description. This is how we describe what genes do, in effect.

But memes aren't physical in the sense that genes are. So if genes replicate in the body, and viruses operate in the body, where do memes replicate and operate? Damn good question. (Remember, these are evolutionary biologists, philosophers, anthropologists, etc. talking about memes, not neuroscientists.) Name the realm better, then we can talk. Maybe you're making some sort of sense, or maybe you're just you're violating the categorical imperative by telling me that apples act like automobiles on television except when they don't.

But memes are very popular. The idea that ideas are infectious is infectious. We're enthralled by the speed at which commercial culture, corporate buzz-words, fad-driven media and electronic communication pass "facts", fashions, catch-phrases, images and ideas around.

But look at the words I've used so far, and how many different kinds of ideas and information they describe (don't forget "dogma"). Just exactly what do we gain by grouping them all, and more, under a single heading? Far less than what we lose, I think.

Sure, a phrase, a slogan, a hairstyle, a "look" will "catch on." Melodies can be "catchy," they are "infectious melodies." Certain books and authors, or political leaders, or movie stars, will "catch fire" with the public. Those are nice descriptions of particular phenomena. But they aren't all the same.

A fad is not the same as a dogma, though they both have a social component, a "belonging," a sense that exhibiting the same idea or image is a necessity of membership. But we have far more to learn by finding likenesses and differences, contrasting and comparing, and going deeper, than we do by equating them.

And they are certainly not the same as dogma, as cultural norms, as expectations, as legends, as discoveries, as new theories, as old assumptions, as wisdom. Yes, we can probably learn a few things by looking at them together. But we learn a lot more, with more accuracy and significance, by analyzing them separately, or within a restricted domain, and then comparing them, relating them, synthesizing something from them.

To me, memes are also a dodge, a way of avoiding personal and societal responsibility. We no longer have to worry about such phenomena as conditioning, as social pressure, self-censorship or the economic pressure to conform not only in certain behaviors but in certain worldviews and beliefs and even emotions. (It's not enough anymore to do a job for money; one has to be "committed" to it, be "an associate" and "part of the team," and one must even be "excited" by the goals and sometimes literally the gods of the employer. Giving control of the body and part of the mind to the economy is no longer enough in increasing areas of paid-for endeavor. They demand your soul as a condition of employment and therefore of a certain kind of survival.)

Once you posit ideas as behaving like and practically being biological entities, inherited or caught as infections, self-replicating entities for which you are merely some sort of carrier and they are somehow (like the selfish gene) only interested in their own survival (so to speak), then we are helpless, or require some unspecified form of medical attention (drugs probably.) What's really laughable is that the same sort of people who decry a culture of victimization---who prefer that people with emotional trauma, physical addictions and psychological pathologies just stop whining and get on with it---are now telling us that we're not responsible for what we believe, accept, favor, admire or choose. It's a different flavor of dehumanization, the mirror image of 1950s behaviorism.

Some adherents would say that by positing memes as infections, they are using a potent metaphor easily understood in today's world, in order to warn people that they need to fight off these infections, these pernicious ideas or skewed values or downright lies and subterfuge buried beneath the surface of a cheery commercial image or slogan. Fair enough-but what do you need "memes" for? And once you've gotten your point across, that these are powerfully infectious messages, that in some sense they are feed addictions to consumerism and so on, aren't they pretty useless? Don't they start getting in the way, when you're trying for more precise analysis? Or are you content to fight meme with meme?

Memes institutionalize the superficial. They discourage making distinctions, or developing and communicating more meaningful and significant explanations, or looking for cause (and maybe even cure) in social, cultural, political, economic and interpersonal realms.

Some would say that memes, like genes, are just one factor, and insofar as they are infectious, we can call upon the antibodies of consciousness and good sense to combat them. Fine. As some sort of new simile, as a weak metaphor meant to suggest the power of vivid images in a world high on connection and low on judgment, okay. But I don't think that's how the concept is usually used. Memes are real to their adherents. And they are certainly real enough to spawn an academic discipline, with its conferences, journal articles and books. To which I say, pish, tosh. Get in line behind deconstructionism, semiotics and postmodernism as dogmas that were pushed to absurd heights, and like stock market bubbles of ideas, deflated to nothing, leaving a lot of stale, stinking air.

Part of this also reflects what seems to me an overly mechanistic approach to Darwinist evolution and genetics. But I am not arguing that there is no biological basis for how we receive and judge ideas. New ideas are attractive, I'd guess, because humans survived by taking new information seriously, and not resting until every aspect of it, every possibility, was thoroughly explored. There is survival value in a stable and dependable set of beliefs and practices. (Plus there is resistance to new information by those heavily invested in the old, especially those who derive their power from the established order.) But humanity, and I suspect other creatures, haven't survived by ignoring new information completely. (Plus some will be excited by the old guard's resistance, especially those with less power.)

New information of a negative kind is the most obvious, such as the novelty of a new predator in the neighborhood. (If you think this doesn't still impress people, try the phrase "9-11.") But positive novelty is also important, beginning with new food sources or ways of getting food. We are curious creatures, as many creatures are, and among social creatures, new information that gets the attention of others provides identity and status.

There's also little doubt that humans (like other creatures) find certain qualities in the form of information-melody and rhyme for example-that may indicate some survival value as direct as making information easier to remember, and as indirect as that they cause pleasure, and pleasure has positive physical effects that can enhance survival and fitness for reproduction. And perhaps these qualities are akin to the burrs that encase seeds so the burrs will stick to animal fur and fall off on distant ground where the seeds propagate. But information doesn't come in catch-phrases and melodies. Corporations pay billions to have information crafted, shaped, formed in precisely the most infectious images, sounds and words that money can buy and, more to the point, human minds can devise, because they are trying very hard to do just that.

Some information---like push-button patriotic phrases, expressions of race hatred, or to some extent like the information in commercials and political persuasion-may bypass consciousness and go directly to the unconscious. (I suspect meme-meisters don't make this claim because "unconscious" is not a fashionable idea in their neighborhood.) Again, I find this terminology more useful, more fruitful, for contemplation, analysis and action (the action is: make it conscious and deal with it) than the blunt instrument of memes.

I could go on, but my box of memes is empty. Except for one more: I've concluded that memes make sense to extraverts, because extraverts are oriented towards information more fully formed from outside. So information would appear to them to be like an infection coming into a body. And since most people are extraverts, memes are a popular idea.

Intraverts have their own problems, but some-like being taken over like zombies (or patsies) by the belief that stock markets always go up, or believing in memes and selfish genes mostly because they're cute, fashionable, endlessly repeated, and the boss says so -we are immune to.

king to pawn

by Phineas Dash

Musings inspired by the confluence of Bushism and the Matrix Reloaded, among other distractions...

The idea of kings began perhaps as a mutation of the tribal figure we call the shaman: from one who hears the gods by deftly reading the signs of nature, to the one and only one, who the one and only God talks to.

Maybe the first were charismatic types with a flair for administration and certainly with a taste for power. They ruled by fear and love---by claiming to be the chosen of the King of Heaven who said whether or not the crops will grow to fruition, and by physical force: with an army to subdue the populace, and to fight enemies, invented or real. Conquest could lead to kingship. More lands meant more power. So it went, and so it goes.

When human societies were small and moved through the landscape among equals, there was no need of a king, an absolute ruler. Only when people became dependent on a single source of sustenance---even a single cultivated crop---in a single place, did they feel the need for a single authority. One King of Kings, one king of the realm, and a hierarchy of ownership and administration: the aristocracy to supply the army and control the peasants in exchange for land, power and courtside seats. Warfare of king against king, war within the aristocracy for the right to become king, transformed and absorbed the energies of human societies as they grew.

The religions that emerged from the Mesopotamian deserts were funneled into the king system. Who owns the holy truth? At first it's everybody until somebody claims it all, claims to know, claims the direct line to the King of Kings, so we fall right into following. But it's a damn good job so there are lots of contenders: prophets and heretics and who's on first-- so it becomes dogma eat dogma out there: popes vs. kings, kings vs popes, kings become popes, popes become kings, let's call the whole thing off. How about a savior then? Another name for the new king. Is this the best you can come up with?

We have yet to escape this system. It rules us in our so-called democracies and republics, in our churches, our sciences and arts. It governs our economics and determines how we spend the time of our lives. The authoritarian power may seem dispersed and unidentifiable now, but its basis is clear in how we deify one king or another, even if it is the king or queen of the moment; even if it's Stephen King.

The only meaningful revolt now is the revolt against kings, the idea of kings, the power of kings, the structures of kings, the king’s specialists, the emotions evoked by the system of kings, the beliefs based on the faith in kings and saviors.

Heroes are something else. Heroes and leaders, excellence, special gifts and sensitivities, and a captain to steer the ship, are all real, all to be nurtured and celebrated, and appropriately used. No hero triumphs without help, many myths are stories of groups of heroes, each contributing a talent or strength. The myths of heroes are myths of diversity and cooperation, with leadership and sensitivity to the realities of nature.

We need heroes, but we don't need another savior. Kings and saviors are the wellsprings of violence. The king suckers heroes and turns them into specialists, gets them fighting turf wars against each other, fighting for favor and funding, ignoring each other, learning nothing, dividing so the king can conquer.

We must oppose the king, disobey and resist. The king we must kill is inside us. We must understand what is inside us, what kings and what killers. The hero inside must be encouraged. We must understand, reconcile, invent, encourage, and work at it like the addicts to the king system we are. Saviors won't save us from ourselves.

WMD

Terrorists will try to use Weapons of Mass Destruction in America in the next two years, predicts the Bush administration. Say, doesn’t that include election year? I guess we’d better reelect these folks who are taking such good care of the country. What with Syria harboring terrorists and now Iran touted as a nuclear threat, we sure are glad we’ve conquered Iraq and are hard at work turning it into an American military base and oil well, surrounded by civil chaos.

So what if none of these WMDs are found in Iraq. The most important WMDs are in your minds and hearts anyway. The focus of your fears.

We’re too busy to read biographies of Karl Rove, or Joan Didion’s reporting going back to Bush the Elder that lay out the dangers in scandalously transparent detail. Despite their supposed piety, nothing is sacred to these people but power. They will manipulate every issue and emotion for one purpose: to keep and extend their power. Right now the Bush administration is as dangerous to America as Hitler and the Nazis were to Germany in the 1930s. (Of course, Americans would never commit such violence on a race or class as the Nazis did with the Jews. Never mind that our concentration camps are full of mostly one race, comprising a high proportion of said race, and we execute mostly one class, with some eugenic benefits when they also happen to be retarded.)

We’re so fixated on the latest flavor of fear, so attuned to novelty in our favorite WMDs, that a recently signed pact between the U.S. and Russia promising to reduce their arsenals of nuclear weapons by two-thirds came and went unnoticed. Apart from the mutual cynicism masking a tiny bit of actual progress (at least as measured against standing arsenals, if not previous agreements), this is a disquieting suggestion of how used to the idea of nuclear weapons we’ve become.

It’s been forty years since the nuclear test ban treaty, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis made the awful prospect of nuclear holocaust a clear and present danger. It’s been 58 years since Hiroshima; only fading codgers were around for that, and only retirees remember the days of desert booms and fallout in the backyard. Nuclear war is no longer the sum of all fears (especially if an a-bomb dropped in Baltimore doesn’t disrupt the Beltway too much.) So impoverished is our imagination that it seems quite thinkable that we’ll see a nuclear bomb—not a so-called “dirty” bomb, which is just some explosives that spread a little radiation and a lot of panic, but a bona fide big bang nuke---used by some country against an enemy—before the decade is out, perhaps well before any more chi-chi WMDs. We came close to the first actual nuclear exchange just a year or so ago, and India and Pakistan have not exactly resolved their differences since.

This is not to downgrade the dangers of your favorite WMD; biological and chemical and soon genetic weapons can be deployed cheaply and by small groups, and pretty soon by individuals who find automatic weapons too limiting. It would be nice if our leaders were actually doing something about these dangers other than trying to scare us into voting for them and increasing their power, but of course that's your usual liberal wishful thinking. No, the likelihood of a big bang is just a predictable consequence of our apathy. The nuclear threat has been around so long without anything much ever happening, and people no longer fear it, that it just becomes more likely that it will finally be fulfilled, and we'll see what it really looks like (that is, if we don't happen to be real close to where it happens.) Bet the cable channels can't wait.

West Wing Clipped?

Aaron Sorkin, according to the buzz, left "The West Wing" at least partly due to differences with NBC over political content, both of "The West Wing" and NBC news. The series ratings had dropped this past season and NBC apparently felt part of the reason was that the show's politics (and Sorkin's) are "out of step" with Bushville America. (Yeah, and that's why we watched it.) So Sorkin gave them a final plot arc and a melodramatic last episode that---as nobody else has yet pointed out---exactly mirrors his own situation. President Barlett/Sorkin essentially abdicated, though without necessarily relinquishing all control, leaving the future course of the Barlett presidency/West Wing series unknown, and his/their abdication leaves control in the hands of Republicans/NBC's desire for the show to be more patriotically in tune with...Republicans.

What will Barlett/Sorkin and the Republican president/NBC do next? Stay tuned next fall.

The Matrix Reluded: The Dash Brothers Review the Wachowski Brothers' Movie

subtitle: Crouching Superman, Hidden Grasshopper
plot: fight, fight, talk, talk, talk, talk, fight, fight, dance, talk, talk, talk, fight, fight, etc.

Review: uh, actually we prefer Fred Astaire.

How to Achieve Peace in the Middle East

Of all the complex and dangerous problems in the world, the most dangerous and the least complex is the Israel-Palestinian situation. It is the least complex, that is, on rational terms. In fact, it is now so simple that while it may still lead to world war, it is still likely to bore us all to death first.

This is a case in which I have sympathy for both sides and neither side, or rather, none of the major players. So many people have been killed, and so many living in poverty and oppression and fear for so long, it sickens the heart. Some of the conflict in the early years of Israel had a certain inevitability about it, and was in some sense cleansing. But enough is enough. Particularly in the last decade or so this violent stalemate has become inexcusable.

Everyone involved knows what the final settlement will look like between Israel and Palestine. (I’ve heard experts on both sides say as much on national television.) Everyone has known for years, right down to where the borders will be. But the leaders involved have failed to make this settlement, at least some of them because they’ve used this conflict for their own political ends. That includes the current U.S. administration.

Whatever the reasons and whoever specifically is at fault, the solution is painfully simple. In recent years, whenever a faltering step towards a peace settlement is taken, there is an incident in which people are killed by Palestinian terrorists (or terrorists who advocate for Palestine) and Israeli soldiers, one after the other, though not always in that order. Every killing is an outrage that derails the peace talks and begins a cycle of revenge. It’s happening right now: the so-called Middle East roadmap is announced, some faltering steps are taken, suicide bombs explode in Israeli shopping malls, and the peace process stops dead.

This repeats the same cycle so dear to braindead news organizations who just have to fill in the names to produce the latest version of the same old story: peace talk, terrorist attack, shock, grief, anger, angry retribution, followed by shock, grief and anger, and revenge from the other side, and the collapse of peace talks.

Whatever one can say about those repeated emotions, it does seem that they are being indulged and used for political purposes, probably with a degree of consciousness if not downright cyncism.

In a world in which not much is dependable, you can take this sequence of events to the bank. As for the terrorist violence, I think this is what the military theorists call “asymmetrical” warfare, though physicists might call it a “non-linear” system in which a small action can have large consequences. In this case--- though nobody much points this out-- a few terrorists are in complete control of the peace process that involves entire nations, including the most powerful one. So those leaders purporting to be fighting for peace are defeated every single time by terrorism. “We won’t give in to terrorists,” they all say, and then they all do, by shutting down the negotiations, which is exactly what the terrorists want.

The way to a settlement which is the beginning of peace in the Middle East is therefore very simple: all the leaders involved get together and state unequivocally that they are going to negotiate this settlement, and no terrorist attacks will stop them. They will defeat terrorism by refusing to be terrorized into stopping the process.

This requires political courage. It also tests the sincerity of the parties: do they really want peace, or are they using this travesty of a peace process for other ends? But clearly there is not going to be a peace settlement until something like this happens.

POSTSCRIPT: Rachel Corrie was an American activist crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. That's about all the U.S. press has reported about her. But there is more, much more. Her moving and articulate emails home are published in the June issue of Harper's Magazine. They are also on the Guardian Unlimited website here,here and here. For more on what happened to her and other peace activists in Palestine as well as what our ignorance plus blatant abuses using the war on terrorism as an excuse, there is this Guardian Unlimited story.

Courage Under Fire


by Theron Dash

Now that The War is over, it's time for courage under fire. People whose contributions to the fighting were made in front of their TV sets are giddy with vicarious triumph, and like bullies in the wake of defeated second graders they're out for more easy blood. They'll pounce on anything relatively defenseless ---actors, the Dixie Chicks, even French fries, and oh yes, the First Amendment---that stirs them to vent their mean spirits. And those whose only principle is whatever is selling at the moment are cynically pandering to this spineless ugliness.

It's another time of testing, as was the Blacklist 50s, the FBI Love It or Leave It 60s, the Enemies List 70s, the flag waving Reaganomics 80s, the Gulf War I 90s. There's little point in trying to figure out how bad it is in comparison. It's plenty bad enough.

The media is being tested, and it's failing and flailing. Most Americans, it is said, got their news about the Iraq war from cable news channels. The most popular cable news channel is the most radical: Fox News, which foments a continuum of opinion ranging from the fundamentalist to the fascist. The news coverage is only marginally different.

The other cable channels. CNN and MSNBC, were shamefully competing to be even more rabid, sensationalizing and flag-enshrouded. It is probably too much to expect American television to cover a war that involves U.S. troops with complete objectivity. An American news channel is going to report from the American point of view. But that's a far cry from what they're doing, which is to stifle the least criticism of even the political basis for the war, let alone report fairly on the facts of what happened and what is happening now. It's one thing to cover the deaths of Americans more thoroughly than the deaths of Iraqi soldiers. It's quite another thing to refuse to cover the deaths of Iraqis, civilians or soldiers, except now and then to refer to them euphemistically.

Consider some of what's happened at MSNBC. Just before the war started, when it was clear that it was going to happen and all the news operations were gearing up for it, MSNBC canceled the Phil Donahue show (cable TV's only more than entirely frivilous yet non-radical right talk show), ostensibly because of poor ratings. But an internal memo reportedly claimed that Donahue would be a ""difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo warned that the Donahue show could be "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

More recently, one of MSNBC's star reporters, Ashley Banfield, was called on the carpet by her bosses for saying in a talk in Manhattan, Kansas that Americans didn't see the real war on TV. And no, she wasn't being criticized for uttering an obvious truth.

There are two basic reasons for such bizarre media behavior, exemplified by two other recent outrageous incidents. The Huron (Michigan) Daily Tribune killed an anti-war column by its columnist and reporter, Kurt Hauglie. He was told it was because it might upset readers.

That's one reason. The warm feelings of triumphalist readers and viewers can't be disturbed by the complexities revealed by unsavory truths or troubling points of view. The folks at home might get mad at the newspaper and not buy it, or at the TV station and not watch it. (Hauglie resigned, by the way.)

Then there's the case of Ed Gernon, a veteran TV producer for CBS. He worked on the upcoming miniseries on Hitler. He was dutifully promoting it when he made the mistake of suggesting there were parallels between Germany during Hitler's rise and reign, and America today. But CBS, the erstwhile network of Edward R. Murrow, didn't suggest to him that maybe he was trying a little too hard to sell the series as relevant, and it didn't reassign him to the editing room for awhile and leave the promotion tour to others. No. CBS fired him. That's it. You're gone.

Why? Because he pointed out, correctly if ungrammatically, that Germany was "an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunge the whole nation into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now."

And so by firing him, CBS, rather neatly if absurdly, proved his point. That's the second reason---and since it's really the reason behind the first reason, it's the whole reason: a nation gripped by fear.


Maybe it's time to take another look at the national behavior since September 11, 2001. Since that date, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died preventable deaths. Millions of people are suffering because our government and our electorate are neglecting crucial problems. Our health care system is on the verge of collapse. In the blink of an eye, in the space of a single year, there are formerly middle class people who've gone from a reasonably comfortable life with expectations of a secure retirement and with full medical coverage, to suffering and death as the result of a minor ailment unattended because of this bizarre economy and dysfunctional health insurance system.

Meanwhile the number of black children living in extreme poverty is at a twenty year high. It's gone up 50% just since 1999, thanks to the neglected effects of "welfare reform." I don't doubt that the number of all children as well as adults of all races, creeds and genders in extreme and not as extreme poverty has also gone up. Unemployment continues, and benefits are running out.

Thanks to the cuts in state spending unrelieved by a federal government controlled by political extremists obsessed with enriching the rich, rewarding corporate pals and extending its power, our educational institutions are next on the deathwatch. Need I go on?

But instead of considering all of this, Americans seem obsessed with one event, and it's scared them. It was understandable and even sane to be scared by September 11, for the next weeks and even months. But thanks to that fear, excesses were permitted and encouraged. Civil liberties, inalienable rights, they could all go. It was most important to feel safe. Turn a blind eye to the cronyism and corruption in Washington, the fundamentalist takeover of national life and international relations, it doesn't matter...as long as we can feel safe.

So we send our high tech engines of death and devastation to destroy the ragged wily men who committed this outrage, or at least (since the ones who actually did it foiled us by dying in the process) the ragged wily men who helped them, encouraged and fed them. And after Afghanistan was crushed, and well before it's been rebuilt (if it ever will be), it was time to send those engines to crush another country that looked like it might someday be a threat, whose leader was distinguished from a number of other vicious dictators by his approval of 9-11 (as well as his oil), and of course all those chemical and biological and maybe nuclear weapons he had ready to deliver to Oshkosh and Santa Rosa. (Apparently they got lost in the mail.)

In the meantime, international terrorism has so quieted that there is less of it than at any time since the 1960s, even though the devils Osama and Saddam are probably still alive. Western efforts to root out terrorists and cut off their resources has doubtless been partly responsible for this relative quiet, but the fact is that no Americans have been killed by terrorists since 2001, but lots of Americans have been killed or faced with immense suffering due to other needlessly neglected problems.

Yet we apparently still live in fear. We'll do anything to feel safer, to feel powerful and right. So it may not be too soon to wonder what this country is really made of. Because this is starting to look like cowardice. Yes, 9-11 was terrible, and there will probably be terrors to come. But there are people in many places around the world who live in terror that is far worse, every day of their lives. The people of London during the Blitz lived in more danger every day for years, and they did not snivel or strut. Americans are more in danger from drivers on drugs and cell phones, falls in the bathroom, fat-drenched fast food, second-hand smoke (while the U.S. is trying to torpedo yet another international treaty, this time limiting the death-dealing scourge of Big Tobacco) and getting shot by friends and family and other good Americans with too easy access to profitable guns than they are from terrorists. These days they are also more in danger from not getting adequate medical care, from retiring to a cardboard box on the street, and from wallowing in abject but self-righteous ignorance than they are from a shoe bomb or a half-dozen terrorist attacks on the scale of 9-11.

None of this is about effective action to prevent terrorist acts, especially the big, really devastating kind, like causing a nuclear plant meltdown or throwing an entire city into a panic. Those are problems like any other---a matter of forethought, planning, resources, action: you do your best and if it happens anyway, you deal with it as best you can. (Whether we're even doing that right is another question, and the answer might be, not really.)

There may very well be more American deaths caused by terrorism. Are we so coddled and deluded that we'll let the country fall apart because our current dad-figures tell us we have to or the boogy man will get us?

This is about fear and the manipulation of fear. It's about a nation that lets its fear be manipulated. Americans have great reserves of intelligence, courage, resourcefulness and heart. But it's fear that's being encouraged and exploited. And it's fear that's running the show.

So just as we all need to grow up and realize that terrorism is one of the dangers of this world (especially when we refuse to acknowledge injustice that contributes to it), we have to face the kind of country we are in at this moment. We need to rally around those who the purveyors of fear are targeting, by their aggressive action or by their neglect. We're under fire and we need the courage to survive it, and the presence of mind to encourage those activities and ideas that represent our vision of a responsible society and a worthy future.

Are They Kidding?

by Morgan Dash

I came across two "news" items---that is, items apparently purporting to be factually true, reported by reputable outlets--- that are causing some family dissension. Brother Chris, the family dramatist, claims that if he allowed himself to believe these items, they would be evidence that the world had now gone so far beyond the credible that the already dubious occupation of trying to make dramatic sense of this existence would be rendered futile beyond redemption. (I hope I'm not overdramatizing his position.)

Brother Theron of course believes them with all the roaring absurdity of his simultaneous love-hate relationship with humanity, not to mention the apparent laws of the universe.

I can't settle the argument---maybe you can. Here are the two items. Truth? Fiction? You decide.

1. There is a best-selling book in America called Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It's a slim volume containing a fable which some have found revelatory, about adapting to change. The premise, apparently presented without irony, is that the reader is expected to identify with rats who run the rat race maze, but who are confounded when their expected reward (i.e.”the cheese”) is not in the same place it always had been. (As nuts as that sounds, that's at least a verifiable part of the story.)

It seems that this book has also caught on in China, where it has inspired a number of follow-ups (or "imitators" as stated in the Times Literary Supplement column that is the source for this tale) . These tomes published in the erstwhile land of Confucius include: Can I Move Your Cheese? by Chen Tong; Who Dares to Move My Cheese by Kang Yanning; Make the Cheese Yourself by Dong Huangfu; Whose Cheese Should I Move? by Wu Yizhou, and No More Cheese! by Lin Zhanxian.

The column (signed by "J.C.") concludes the item by observing that "most Chinese people have never eaten cheese."

2. This story involves the Klingon language and the United States National Security Agency. As you may or may not know, Klingons are a race of aliens invented for an episode of Star Trek some 37 years ago. Klingons were somewhat reinvented for the Star Trek motion picture series and became important in subsequent Star Trek TV series. (Worf being the most famous Klingon.) In the first Star Trek movie, a few words of a language meant to be Klingon were heard. These were invented by the ace linguist and master of voices of the Enterprise crew, James Doohan, who played Scotty. (He invented the first Vulcan language dialogue for that film as well.) When Klingons talking in their own language became more elaborate later in the film series, linguist Marc Okrand invented a Klingon vocabulary and rules for a basic language. There's a Klingon dictionary of some 2,000 words; some Shakespeare and parts of the Bible have been translated into this language, and some young fans, who probably would not be caught dead taking Russian or Spanish, learn and converse in conversational Klingon.

You may have guessed a little of where this story is going if you've recently seen the film Code Talkers or if you know that Navajos used a code based on their language--a language, like all Native languages, that the U.S. government tried long and hard to suppress and destroy---for the U.S. armed forces in World War II. The Japanese were never able to break it (although if it had only been used as it was in the Code Talkers movie-to radio back the firing coordinates for fixed enemy positions--- it would have been irrelevant. Presumably the Japanese already knew the position of their own artillery, and whether they knew that the U.S. had a fix or them or not hardly mattered, since they couldn't move them.)

So finally, here is the story: Lawrence Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute, recently gave a presentation to the National Security Agency on the Klingon language, as the "government was curious about the potential for al-Qaeda operatives" to communicate using Klingon.

First we mourn

by Morgan, Christopher and Theron Dash

First we mourn those who died, who suffer lost limbs and deep wounds of the body and the psyche. We mourn the peace of mind of soldiers who will carry with them the consequences of these weeks, these days, and what they saw or did in a single moment. We mourn the future of children estranged by violence. We mourn the continuing suffering of people without adequate water and food, without light.

We are grateful that more life was not lost, that more lives were not rent apart. We are grateful for the acts of courage and restraint, the acts of charity and compassion. We are grateful for those who return to their families, and hope for the best for all in the future that is bound to be influenced by the violence in Iraq.

Now on the level of consequence some things seem to come clearer. There is still much we do not know about why this war really was fought, and why it happened the way it did. We do know that while there was no adequate plan for protecting hospitals or saving artifacts of the cultural memory of many centuries, there was attention paid to securing anything to do with oil production.

While much attention is focused on how long a general occupation of Iraq will go on, and the U.S. insists there will be an Iraqi government run by Iraqis, it has also been more quietly reported that whatever the timetable or eventual form of governance, the U.S. plans to maintain military bases in Iraq for the long term.

That very well could have been a chief purpose of this war. It represents an enormous strategic advantage. The U.S. doesn't even have a real presence in Israel, let alone Arab countries. But with military presence, the U.S. can let the Iraqis have whatever government they want-they can still always protect the oil, which is mostly what "America's vital interests in the region" means, and they can intimidate the entire region, including current "allies" like Saudi Arabia.

So the U.S. doesn't have to ensure domestic order in Iraq---let them squabble and slaughter each other over the spoils, let the factions within the factions have their intrigue, and let criminals run their rackets-none of it will matter except to Iraqis, and the U.S. can claim it has done what it promised to do: liberate Iraq from Saddam and turn over the country to "the Iraqi people," after getting rid of the weapons of mass destruction (made much easier in that so far none have been found, although some will surely show up, and just as surely, many in the Arab world and elsewhere will suspect Americans planted them after they took over.)


In the U.S., the current wave of approval for the war is as predictable as the dead children once the bombs fell. A large portion of the American public got its news about the war from the cable news channels, who had every possible incentive to sell the war and very few to cover it soberly. American commercial television is about only one thing: Adrenalin sells. The audience must be excited, because excited people buy things. Positive people buy things. The only contrast that's allowed is some wallowing in sentimentality with affirmation at the end, so the catharsis leads to that positive buying. Sure, people go shopping when they're depressed, but when they are really sad, or chastened, or fearful, or worst of all, thoughtful, they might stay home. They might feel alienated. They might think, what's the point of buying that gas guzzling SUV? So my grandson as well as my son can be sent over to shoot at children grasping after fallen grenade launchers? So my granddaughter as well as my daughter can live with the nightmares of having dropped bombs on sleeping cities?

Being mad at somebody is good, because it's adrenalin. But it's better that they're mad at weenie peacenik Frog-loving appeasers than piggish CEOs or businesses that ignore global heating and the final solution for the planet's forests, rivers, air and oceans. You want them to admire the stalwart cliché-spouting flag-wrapped president, not be afraid of a fundamentalist fanatic who disdains Darwin as a fuzzy thinking liberal. Basically, though, you want them to feel good about America, the TV series. You want them to tune in, and absorb the commercials. Buy a flag. Better yet, buy a big car and a flag decal for the windshield. You'll probably be paying the interest on the loan for the rest of your life, unless you are a CEO, but that's not a ratings problem, that's not going to be on this quarter's report.

That's the name of this tune. The piper gets paid later.

This just in: later is on the way.

Occupation

by Phineas Dash

The model currently being punditized for the reconstruction of Iraq is the Marshall Plan and the occupation of Germany and Japan as they were transformed into democracies after World War II.

What no one is mentioning is that the Marshall Plan was not without its critics at the time and since. Not for the generous amount of money that was spent or the overall goal of reconstruction, but because it was a United States-only program.

Albert Einstein was one who opposed the Marshall Plan on these grounds. It was an important moment in establishing the United Nations as a force in postwar order, and Einstein believed that the Marshall Plan should have been under international auspices, specifically through the United Nations.

He also argued that if it was only the United States controlling the reconstruction of western Europe, the Soviet Union would see it as an attempt to establish hegemony in the area, and to threaten the Soviet Union. This in fact is how the Soviets saw the Marshall Plan, and they tightened and expanded control over Eastern Europe. Perhaps the Cold War would have happened anyway, but the Marshall Plan was arguably a factor in creating it.

Now the U.S. wants to establish a min-Marshall Plan for Iraq, which will be seen as establishing American hegemony in the Middle East, the one place in the world where political tensions are similar to those existing in Europe in the 1940s and most of the rest of the century. An international program, through the United Nations, would mitigate this image, and also enrich the possibilities for Iraq's democracy. The American model is not the only "successful" model in the world, and European models or the Japanese model, for instance, might offer more of what Iraq needs.

Of course this would loosen American corporate control over the Iraq economy and its oil. So it's not likely to happen. But it's worth mentioning that the Marshall Plan model is not without danger.

But the one thing the U.S. occupation has going for it is that occupation is boring, and it will soon disappear from the media. Does the media have anything at all to say about the administration of Afghanistan? The troops still in the Balkans? Iraq largely disappeared from view after Bush War I and now that Bush War II is about over, it soon will again.

Massage from the President of Freedonia

Freedonia congratulates America on winning the war in Iraq. You're on a roll, all right. An Iraq and roll. I'll have mine with relish and mustard, but no French bread! Freedonia wanted to be part of the coalition of the willing, but where there's a will there's a way, and there was no way we were going to get involved in something like that! But we'd like to do something for your next war effort, like not be the target of it. We'd lend you a musket but we need that for parades. We have a lot of veterans parades, and a lot of veterans of a lot of parades. Unfortunately we can't afford wars but our veterans don't seem to mind. Oh, they complain now and then, how the young veterans don't know what it's like to have it rain on their parades, but they'd really get upset if we gave away their musket. So the best we can do is contribute one of our national songs, adapted for the occasion by one of our national songwriters. It's not really finished but our national songwriters are. We can't afford to support the arts anymore, now that we've poured all our resources into convincing you to go to war on somebody else. And boy can we pour it on. Now we're all poor. Go reign on somebody else's parade!

Sincerely yours
President Rufus T. Firefly

[To the tune of "Lydia, the Tatooed Lady")

Syria oh Syria
let's go get Syria
Syria, we'll tatoo shady

she's another wayward nation
ready for decapitation

Syria oh Syria
the latest hysteria
on Syria the axis will fall

we've got to round up this whole terrorist crew
maybe we'll get to the Bosphorus too
and claim all the oil for the red white and blue
you can get a lot from Syria!

Milky Way Week in Review


Our cousin and Canadian correspondent, Lemuel Dash, reports that folks are wearing anti-infection masks on the streets of Toronto. There's a press report that the reputedly laid back and tolerant Canadians are casting a suspicious eye at anybody that looks Chinese. And somebody else is reporting that so far there are no SARS cases in Japan, despite the frequent traffic to and from Hong Kong. That complicates the "yellow peril" picture, but it won't stop the kind of folks who treat anybody with a vaguely unfamiliar skin tone as al Qeda.


Brother Morgan (and for all we know, he might be a Zen monk by now) was impressed to see his nearby city of Eureka, CA make the Big Crawl on CNN for having the highest gasoline prices in the U.S. Unfortunately, the price they quoted was 5 cents a gallon less than what Morgan had just paid.

What's with this Google news site? Their computers seem to have these recurring obsessions-one week it was the Dixie Chicks (same basic story headlined for five days straight) and lately it's been cannibalism among dinosaurs (with a variation lately on cannibalism among early humans.)

Back to Boredom Already?


I can't believe it! No more white explosions in the green night, and embedded reporters with movie star matted hair and theatrically dirty faces? No more maps and pointers, anchors with caffeine voices, city by city, block by block? Air strikes, armored columns, firefights---all gone already?

And the vocabulary we've just barely learned: embedded, regime change, decapitation. Of course that last one turned a little grisly, when the U.S. tried to "decapitate" the Iraqi regime with four huge bombs that left a sixty foot deep crater where a restaurant used to be. They may not have gotten Saddam, but they definitely separated the head from the body of a young woman. But no use dwelling on that. We kept the ugly wounds, the pain and the dying babies off screen.

But how could it end so quickly? One minute we're watching the rowdy crowds in Baghdad and the Marines pulling down that statue of Saddam. And the next minute...The stock market tanks, and the cable channels start reporting other stories. I guess that was the signal:The stock traders all watched the statue come down, and when they turned back to the business at hand, what they saw was the same old screwed up fading economy that was there before all the adrenalin started pumping and the flag began to wave?

Could this be the end of blowing up stuff? Now it's all talk of reconstruction, restoring order (those burning hulks of cars are pretty neat, though) and putting together some government. And, oh yeah, the whatayacallit, hue-mani-tarian aid. Borrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnng.

And SARS and North Korea and the old Israel/Palestine, Britian/Ireland stuff had the gall not to solve themselve while we weren't looking. They're still there! Really, REALLY boring.

Damn, we're back to the same old same old, and it's a hell of a letdown. But wait---why is Rumsfeld talking about Syria all the time now? Could it be---sure, why not! We've got all those troops over there, all those planes and tanks and stuff, still in good shape. Two wars for almost the price of one! Wind it up! Let's crusade!

Theron's Nineteenth

by Theron Dash

Morgan is supposed to be the literary one so why did I get stuck with book reviews?

For two reasons: I'm not reviewing the books. I haven't read them. I'm reviewing a review of the books, and then I'm reviewing the fact that another book was written. With me so far? Since I'm the brother in charge of unsubstantiated raving, these tasks fall to me.

First case: Ted Widmer's review of Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? and Herbert J. Gans' Democracy and the News in the New York Times Book Review that has been in the pile since mid March and is damn lucky to have been read this soon.

I've got no problem with the review or the books. I just want to answer a couple of questions Widmer brings up. He agrees with Alterman that the image of the liberal media, while a great fund raising tool, is so clearly not true as to be either dishonest or delusional. Maybe it was true, they say, like twenty years ago. But it isn't anymore, and Alterman suggests a lot of the reason has to do with Richard Mellon Scaife and the millions he put into extreme right wing think tanks, foundations and media.

Widmer then suggests Alterman didn't spend enough time answering a key question: "why is it that liberals fare badly on live radio and television?" Fair enough, I'll answer that one.

The first answer would be, how would you know they don't? They are seldom seen or heard. But let's say they do "fare badly." It's perfectly reasonable that they would fare badly.

Why? Because they are reasonable. The people who do well on television shout and spit. They are dismissive, vituperative, utterly shameless. They are the studio wrestlers of discourse. They are the car salesmen of ideas. One big bargain lie after another.

People are so busy, right? They need something short, like a slogan, repeated endlessly. Something familiar, like sex and violence, used to sell everything on TV and always used to sell newspapers. Sexy newscasters can make anything seem frivilous. As for violence, hey, you won't be seeing any reporter embedded in negotiations--the problem with them is that if there are big explosions, they've failed.

The media is divided, somewhat along class lines, into the Endless Business Report and Political Survivor. The corporate interests talk to each other, gull the unwary to feather their nests with self-serving stock tips and advice. The interests of working people and the poor are not so sumptuously served. No, it's circuses for them, and they love it. Entertainment value is the only value. What else can you say about a country that puts "Stupid White Men" on the top of the best-seller list, only to be toppled by "The Savage Nation"?

But it's all part of the same deal. Keep people stupid. Smart people figure out that the commercials aren't true. That's bad for America, my friends. If they got beyond being viscerally simple-minded, they might figure out that buying the right stuff doesn't make them happy, it just makes them work harder and longer and get deeper in debt.

So we can't have thought. We can't waste time producing evidence for our assertions, or actually try to work our way through difficult issues to find a solution. So we make sure to make fun of anybody with a vocabulary and thoughts to go with it. We demean anybody who isn't mean, laugh at any expression of empathy. No, sad situations are great entertainment, little stories of pain and suffering to make us feel better.

Laugh at those bleeding hearts! Those weepy eyed kids who want to save the world! And we won't listen to them because...because they're talking therapyspeak, they're talking hard words, they know all this history about Iraq, they're so...boring.

There are well-intentioned "liberal" "intellectual" people in this country who drone on and on, who can't speak five words without six of them being jargon, who have never met a circumlocution in passive voice they didn't like. But there are also people of liberal imagination who are trenchant, witty and eloquent. You don't see or hear them first of all because they might say something contrary to the interests of our sponsor, and second, they are too damn reasonable, they don't get people mad, frothing at the mouth and calling in, convincing sponsors that billions of people are watching and listening, and eager to stuff into their mouths anything they sell.

Later in the review, Widner writes: "These are all fair critiques. The problem is that Gans, like the rest of us, has no workable idea about what to do next."

Yeah, well I do. That is, I have ideas, and lots of people do. The rub is that word "workable." What's workable? An idea on how to balance the unbalanced right, that will get the approval of the unbalanced right media? The folks who will cry and repeat and repeat and repeat because that's what they do best, "It'll never work!"

Want liberal commentators? Why don't some of those supposed "limo liberals" in Hollywood and wherever else they are pony up some of their millions and do just what Scaife did? Put some power into liberal think tanks, foundations and media. Finance a next generation, and get off the stage.

As for fostering more democracy and the news, the whole political landscape can be transformed, probably state by state, with laws that require public financing of campaigns, that begin making rules that encourage, that mandate, substantive political discussion among and on behalf of candidates for office. No more thirty second campaign spots-if you can't talk on an issue for five minutes, what good are you? There are creative ways of accomplishing this, if you're honest about what the problems are.

The truth is that people with lots of money don't want more democracy, because the power would shift to people who don't have lots of money, since there are usually more of them, thanks to the control of public policy by people who do have money.

So that's those books. Now a book so new it's probably not out yet, called Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben. A piece of it appeared in Harper's. The book is apparently about genetic engineering. My question is WHY? WHY BILL MCKIBBEN ARE YOU WASTING YOUR TIME WRITING ABOUT GENETIC ENGINEERING?

It wasn't so long ago that Bill McKibben was seen on C-Span talking about the climate crisis as the greatest thread to humanity and the world of our age. The consequences could very well be mass extinctions, which would include the human animal. Because of all this, McKibben said, raising awareness of climate change and making sure we do something about it "is the first morally compulsory, urgent issue since the Civil Rights movement."

So-HELLO, BILL? I've got a question---if the climate crisis is such an overwhelming threat that it must be urgently addressed-why are you worried now about genetic engineering? Significant alterations of humanity through genetic engineering is years away-and if global heating is so urgent, GENETIC ENGINEERING AIN'T GONNA MATTER. Unless you’re worried about genetically engineered amoeba. Artifically altered cockroaches. Bioengineered lice.

This has been the problem with environmentalists for at least a decade. There are all these fiefdoms now, all with their issue, their fundraising, their foundations, their turf. And there is no sense of setting priorities.

HEY: THE PRIORITY IS THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE. The issue of global heating and the climate crisis is a meta-issue anyway: it leads to most of the other issues in environment and energy, as well as political and environmental justice. (Including, eventually, bioengineering, especially in the food supply.) It is not only the single most crucial issue---it is a made to order organizing principle.

Peace, there’s another meta-issue. Can’t have it without human dignity, self-determination, non-interference, justice, freedom, peaceful conflict resolution, shared costs, shared sacrifices and shared interests through permanent cooperation.

World Peace. Climate Crisis. That's enough of an agenda for us to handle, thank you all very much.

Skip the War, Pass Me the Hypospray

by Phineas Dash

The war is everywhere but it's not the most important story unfolding, at least in terms of our ultimate fate in this century.

The crisis that will threaten our polities, our societies and our existence in the coming decades will make this war and the wars that follow irrelevant, or simply contributing factors.

The unfolding story of consequence is the disease currently called SARS, about which little is known except that it is spreading quickly and is often fatal.

It will be a story repeated in one way or another for the rest of this decade and this half of the century. For awhile, not many people will notice this, because the stories will seem unrelated. But eventually there will be a generally acknowledged crisis and it will be called a public health crisis.

It will certainly test what is called the public health system, which is not a system at all, at least in the United States. But though it will resonate with the public by being designated a public health problem, even that won't be exhaustively accurate.

Another way of analyzing it would be as an environmental crisis. If and when this becomes a consensus explanation, or even a media-accepted Big Story, it's going to shake the planet.

We would learn that many more illnesses that the public was allowed to realize are caused by environmental factors: air and water pollution; the interactions of chemicals in everything we consume or touch; diseases in food caused by lack of screening or by additives and alterations; the changing climate of global heating; and all of these combined with overcrowded cities, sick buildings and air travel that spreads pathogens rapidly around the world.

Some information will emerge but a lot won't, partly because we don't know very much. It will all stay "mysterious." Of course, we have the computer power to begin to put data together and maybe have a fighting chance of figuring it out. But it will take a big effort, and would likely result in big changes in how we live. Some people---like the people making big money from the way we live now---aren't going to like that.

We will feel utterly betrayed, because the companies that make money making and using these chemicals and biological agents, using genetic manipulation, causing the pollution, etc. have made damn sure nobody is forthrightly studying these factors and their interactions, with anything like the appropriate resources and level of concern.

We will feel betrayed, that is, if we ever find out. We probably won't. We'll follow the news reports about mystifying diseases that kill quickly and dramatically (and never suspect the ones that have relatively minor or transitory symptoms and perhaps cumulatively fatal effects) and in the end we'll never know what hit us.

A public health crisis will eventually get dramatic enough for reporters to be embedded in hospitals and research labs. We'll learn about as much from them concerning how we got in this fix as we learn from reporters embedded in a particular tank division. Maybe we'll watch ourselves die off on TV.

This will be happening as poor people in backward countries are running out of water. Non-poor people in advanced countries will be paying for their water at rates we would now regard as fantastically high. But then, look at the gas pump and remember 1977. That lack of water in places with lots of people will add to the public health crisis everywhere.

But let's not worry about this now. We are embedded in TVland, wielding weapons of mass distraction. Let them drink oil.

The circus has started, the media whipped war fever is underway.

It’s almost inescapable—wafting through the drug store, the frenzied voice of radio DJs hyping the prospect of bombing which will be described the moment it happens so don’t touch that dial, the flow of idiocy on TV that pops up when the VCR is not yet on to play something sensible (Aaron Brown of CNN describing in detail the meaning of an Oval Office photograph as if he were describing a Polaroid of the Last Supper, only to be contradicted by his White House correspondent who says it was taken at an entirely different time with a completely other purpose, and then goes on to describe “riveting details” of the bombing’s beginning, how Our Lord Bush sayeth unto them the historic eloquent holy words, “Let’s go.” Jeez, whatever happened to Let’s roll? So 2001!)

In the meantime a couple of stories from the back pages: telephones in diplomatic offices in a European Union headquarters were bugged, and the U.S. is suspected. A similar charge was made concerning the offices of European officials at the UN.

And, that tape of Bin Laden that Colin Powell made so much of may be a fake. At least, Swiss audio experts cannot confirm that it is authentic. Brendan Koerner, a contributing editor of Wired, reports this as well as contextual evidence that suggests the tape is not authentic, including unusual mentions of U.S. officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Had to put yourselves in the story, didn't you guys?

Of course, the antennae on the alien heads of resident Paranoids here at American Samizat twitched immediately when Colin Powell announced the existence of this tape at the UN, and that it had been received at the A Jazeera satellite channel before Al Jazeera actually knew it received it.

But mitigating against it being an American-made fake is that the link it purported to establish between Osama and Iraq was unconvincing. Or considering the quality of disinformation coming from the U.S. and Britain up to now, maybe not.

Quote of the day

"Wilhelm II remains a poster child for all that is wrong with hereditary government. Vainglorious, desperately insecure, hugely ambitious, quick to take offense, ill-educated, boorish, narrow in his interests, knowledge and associations, the young Kaiser was both a patsy for those in his government and in his army who were gripped by the lust for power---and dangerous in his own right, as he dreamed of the glory that could be his as lord of a world-dominating state."
Thomas Levenson, of the monarch who launched the Great War
in Einstein in Berlin


HOMELAND SECURITY ALERT!

CODE BLEU! Homeland Security will now enforce certain provisions of the Homeland Security Act and monitor all VIDEO/DVD RENTAL stores for traitors and other malcontents who attempt to view any and all movies en francais, including dubbed and subtitled versions. The following films are on our terrorism don't-watch if you know what's good for you list. Innocents are hereby warned that said films may contain coded messages, with instructions to dissidents. These are the FORBIDDEN titles :

Grand Illusion Jean Renoir
J'Accuse Abel Gance
All Quiet on the Western Front (not actually French, but from a novel by a guy with a Frenchie kind of name, made by Hollywood dupes. Don't worry, we're watching them, too.)
Stolen Kisses and The Last Metro Francois Truffaut (disrespect to the military)
anything by Jean-Luc Godard (ditto)

Video stores are "requested" to sanitize other movies of objectionable references and/or francais for example, by eliminating the singing of a certain national anthem in Casablanca.

In addition, libraries will be monitored for so-called American citizens taking out books by Emile Zola, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Moliere, Jean Cocteau, Carolyn Forche, Erich Maria Remarque, and above all, Alexis de Tocqueville.

If we catch you reading these, we won't even have to read you your rights. (You don't have them anyway.)