Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
What's new with you?
But I can't get Montevideo out of my mind. I've never been there, but I am ready to move, to become a citizen of Uruguay, to sleep in a shack near Punta del Este.
I want to leave the United States. I no longer want to be American. I've placed many, many calls to Latin American consulates in the U.S., trying to find out the requirements for expatriation. A maze of answering machines is all the further I can get.
It isn't just the shame of the war, the torture, the lies, the lip synching. It's has become actual fear.
See, I go to Colombia. I helped develop a sister church relationship with a small, extremely poor church there. I make frequent phone calls. I mail my friend Andres burned CDs (I worry about that, too). I let one poor family use my ATM card to withdraw money collected from our local church offering. I worry about the NSA confusing what I do with the efforts of terrorists and drug smugglers. They either laugh hysterically or quizzically scrunch their eyebrows, trying to decode the secret plans in our conversations.
I read about the Canadian who was confused with a terrorist, exported to Syria, tortured and imprisoned for ten months, with no apology from the U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales still denies it ever happened. I wonder about those people we never hear about, who never come back.
Last month, the FDA confiscated a benign prescription drug I ordered from Canada. It's not fun to find an official letter from Homeland Security in your mailbox. There went $100 bucks down the drain. My prostate enlargement prevention plan apparently will have to be abandoned. We don't have health insurance.
I applied to substitute teach in Urbana this fall. I subbed for years in the 1980s. I like it – the joys of teaching without the pain of staying up until midnight grading tests and making study plans. After I applied in August, I got a letter from the FBI informing me of an arrest for three marijuana cigarettes in 1968 in Chicago. They didn't have to discover this information. I had listed it on my application. Nevertheless, the Urbana School District has refused to allow me to teach. I got another tersely worded letter in the mail.
Ironically, that same day I saw footage on The Daily Show of the Governor of California smoking pot in his youth. I'll bet if Mr. Schwarzenegger showed up to talk to the Carrie Busey Middle School, they'd let him. But not me.
Here's where the Catch-22 comes in. I can't clear my name of this arrest. All court records have been destroyed years ago, burned in a fire. According to Chicago officials, there is no record of my arrest. I tried to find it back in 1979, using the Freedom of Information Act. At that time, after many months, the FBI issued me got another tersely worded statement saying, to my somewhat deflated ego, that no FBI record existed. It seems to have arisen from the ashes of 9/11. So my crime both exists and does not exist in the memory hole. Didn't some European named Kafka already tell this story?
If a life sentence for three sticks of pot left in my college dorm room while I attended philosophy class weren't enough, the IRS wrote me last month. I'm being audited for the year I went to Colombia to help feed displaced and impoverished people. "It's entirely random," the auditor said. He seems like a nice enough good-cop kind of guy. He says he refuses to listen to the news when he drives here from Indiana. He doesn't even listen to music. He just drives. So far he's spent several weeks going over every scrap of paper I could find in my basement about that fateful year. Gas receipts. Groceries. My DVD store rental tab. My indebtedness to Visa. He's coming back later next month. Maybe the audit will end someday in the distant future, even though my income is so small potatoes I barely have enough to make french fries, or freedom fries, whatever. Luckily, if the government intends to deplete my bank account, it's too late. I beat them to that punch long ago. I might have enough scraped away for a one-way ticket to Montevideo. I'm working on it.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Well, duh.
Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,'' it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," said one American intelligence official.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
chat en alemania
| 16 minutes |
While Nixon Campaigned, the F.B.I. Watched John Lennon
In December 1971, John Lennon sang at an Ann Arbor, Mich., concert calling for the release of a man who had been given 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. The song he wrote for the occasion, "John Sinclair," was remarkably effective. Within days, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Mr. Sinclair released.
What Lennon did not know at the time was that there were F.B.I. informants in the audience taking notes on everything from the attendance (15,000) to the artistic merits of his new song. ("Lacking Lennon's usual standards," his F.B.I. file reports, and "Yoko can't even remain on key.") The government spied on Lennon for the next 12 months, and tried to have him deported to England.
This improbable surveillance campaign is the subject of a new documentary, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon." The film makes two important points about domestic surveillance, one well-known, the other quite surprising. With the nation in the midst of a new domestic spying debate, the story is a cautionary tale.
It focuses on the late 1960's and early 1970's, when the former Beatle used his considerable fame and charisma to oppose the Vietnam War. Lennon attracted worldwide attention in 1969 when he and Yoko Ono married and held their much-publicized "bed-ins" in Amsterdam and Montreal, giving interviews about peace from under their honeymoon sheets. Lennon put to music a simple catch phrase — "All we are saying is give peace a chance" — and the antiwar movement had its anthem. Two years later, he released "Imagine."
The government responded with an extensive surveillance program. Lennon's F.B.I. files — which are collected in the book "Gimme Some Truth" by Jon Wiener — reveal that the bureau was monitoring everything from his appearance on "The Mike Douglas Show" to far more personal matters, like the whereabouts of Ono's daughter from a previous marriage.
The F.B.I.'s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics. At the time of the John Sinclair rally, there was talk that Lennon would join a national concert tour aimed at encouraging young people to get involved in the politics — and at defeating President Nixon, who was running for re-election. There were plans to end the tour with a huge rally at the Republican National Convention.
The F.B.I.'s timing is noteworthy. Lennon had been involved in high-profile antiwar activities going back to 1969, but the bureau did not formally open its investigation until January 1972 — the year of Nixon's re-election campaign. In March, just as the presidential campaign was heating up, the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to renew Lennon's visa, and began deportation proceedings. Nixon was re-elected in November, and a month later, the F.B.I. closed its investigation.
If Lennon was considering actively opposing Nixon's re-election, the spying and the threat of deportation had their intended effect. In May, he announced that he would not be part of any protest activities at the Republican National Convention, and he did not actively participate in the presidential campaign.
After revelations about the many domestic spying abuses of the 1960's and 1970's — including the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. — new restrictions were put in place. But these protections are being eroded today, with the president's claim of sweeping new authority to pursue the war on terror.
Critics of today's domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" would be a sobering film at any time, but it is particularly so right now. It is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Various notes
I'm impressed that Russia's download site, Allofmp3.com, has posted the Beau Brummels album, "Triangle," today. That was a great lost album that failed to be recognized. I own the CD, and listen frequently, having tracked it down as an import. It holds up and has some heartbreaking songs on it, esp. Nine Pound Hammer. They reviewed Bob Dylan on Fresh Air today. Good review.
I never saw the George Axelrod 60s movie, "Lord Love a Duck," although I remember wanting to see this scandalous black comedy when it came out. Today, it is starkly bizarre, a beach party movie that's half a Dr. Strangelove wannabe and half repressed sexual hypocrisy. Things were so weird in the 1960s. Tuesday Weld and Roddy McDowell are like the Will and Grace of their day, the only difference being that McDowell's character has no idea that he is gay as a goose. Or duck, whatever. Black people did not exist in those days. Women only wanted husbands. Everybody winked about sex, but being divorced was enough to cause suicide. And they danced really really badly. I'm posting some video clips later tonight.
On the other hand, Sunday Bloody Sunday is stiff as a board. It's one of those movies I have a hard time remembering well, although I have seen it several times. I don't think I believed those people really had sex or enjoyed it. I think the Leonard Bernstein Penelope Gilliat thing is accurate, though. At least that's what I heard, too.
Church
more chat
Saturday, September 09, 2006
chat
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"Al
Friday, September 08, 2006
September 7, 2006 Report
PG whined all night about his ongoing persecution by the government and, probably, the universe.
Topics included Army recruitment in elementary schools (newsgazettewatch.blogspot.com ) and the insidious propoganda efforts of East Bend's evil secretary.
Root beer and diet orange soda with gourmet bagel chips and ice were served.
The games began with Criss Cross, which proved to be the evening's most popular game. Everybody thought they would win. Baseball, old and new, came into play, with new rules providing face up extra cards on four and old rules providing down cards. Suspiciously, Toledo dealt himself three fours in one round. Even more suspiciously, Spike dealt himself an extra card during one round, negating the entire hand of Best Flush. There was an excess of fumbling (or perhaps cheating). JD tried to cancel a wild nine he accidentally (?) dealt up to Spike.
Against all odds, TJ got his signature hand, a straight flush. This is impossible. Cosmic forces are clearly at work.
PG drew a three late in a game of new baseball, matched a two dollar pot, and green chips began flying with abandon. The Admiral faced the challenge and lost, but his sacrifice may have paid off in the long run as he was a winner in the final tally.
Big winner was JD, pushing him into second place.
A round of Between the Sheets got stymied for several rounds, with a continual replenishing of the five chip ante, but everybody won and it balanced out, more or less.
There was some discussion of liberalism and conservatism, of what it means to be a Buddhist Christian Atheist (or, in the case of PG, a Taoist Atheist Christian), and the final hand of Godless Anarchy (not to be confused with Godless Sodomite Anarchy) was divided between PG's illicit display of "666" and TW's mundane wild card straight.
Next week: Confronting Mario.
