Politics: The Real News - Bush heats up words with Iran and Russia

Who has the right to own a nuclear weapon? I've been pondering this for a while now. When Russia and the US both had enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other, we arrived at peace. When India and Pakastan both achieved nuclear weapons, they were forced to decide how far they were willing to go. It seems to me that nuclear weapons may actually be one of the best war deterrents that has ever existed. It brings two sides of a conflict face to face with annihilation. It forces them to decide how important their hatred of the enemy really is. When only one side of a conflict has a nuclear weapon, the side without it is at a decided disadvantage.

The yahoos over here in the US are always running around saying "we should just nuke em" to just about any small country that represents the slightest threat. With this kind of casual attitude about our power, what would they be saying if we attacked a country like Iran and they then shut down the oil infrastructure crippling the US economy? How easily would desperate people in the US, who are now paying $10 per gallon for gas, be convinced that nuking Iran was actually a good idea if it might make it all stop? How likely would they need to be to decide nuking Iran was a good idea if Iran could nuke us back?

So I ask again. Who has a right to own nuclear weapons? Who has a right to say "we should just nuke em?" Now that the genie is out of the bottle with nuclear weapons how can only some people be forced to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation while others can casually sit back and gloat about their ability to annihilate? Don't gun advocates always argue that the best defense against a man with a gun threatening your family is to own a gun yourself? How is it these same people would say that we should attack someone for wanting the national defense equivalent of a gun to protect their families?

I'm just sayin. . . .

Saturday Feature: Unconstitutional

Video Activism: The Real Terrorists

This video is posted on YouTube by an account holder named Knowitz. The account says his name is Justin from Canada and this is the only video he has offered.

Being that this is the date that lives in infamy, I thought it would be nice to review how politics has handled it all. This is a flashback to 2004. Very little has changed.

I'm beginning to wonder if our government finds it more convenient to leave Osama Bin Laden alive. If he really is as marginalized as they like to say he is then he poses no real threat to us while alive. At the same time he seems to be an endless well of political capital for the "strong on national security" crowd. They mention his name and deeds whenever possible and people understand instantly how to feel. This year they scheduled major hearings on capital hill about the Iraq war around this date. I'm sure that is partly to evoke the feelings attached to it but a cynical person might also suggest that they expected Bin Laden to release a tape at this time that would probably mentionin Iraq. That way they can point to him with perfect timing and talk about how we should stay there because he mentioned it.

Think about the brand recognition, in the marketing sense, that has been created around Bin Laden. It would take a whole lot of work to create another super villian that reaches into the gut if Joe Beercan like this man does. What if his successor's name is Alani Mohamed Mehomanhobad and nobody has heard of him? Is that going to serve nearly as well as a political tool as good old Osama? It doesn't even rhyme with "Obama" or "Chelsea's momma."

Another thing that has been bugging me is how people who disagree with the administration are automatically labeled, by supporters, as forgetting the lessons of 9/11 and helping the terrorists. If you really look at the facts it is quite the opposite.

When Bin Laden said that he wanted to provoke America into occupying a Muslim contry, George Bush was the one who did it. When Bin Laden says he wants America to stay in Iraq so they can kill as many Americans as possible, George Bush said we should stay. When Bin Laden said that Americans should be afraid, George Bush and all his supporters started screaming "The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming! They want to kill your children and destroy our way of life!!" If any force in America is helping the terrorists it is good old fashion political opportunism, in this case mostly by Republicans.

Journalism: The Real News Network

Why did President Bush go to Iraq:




Does Bush Want Saddam Without The Mustache?:



Senior Editor for The Real News Network, Paul Jay, talks with Pepe Escobar, an Asia Times reporter who has been in the middle east. First they discuss Bush's visit to Iraq and then they move on to the problems with the Iraq government.

Politics: Adam Kokesh, Tina Richards arrested for defying a poster ban

Updated below

The story here is that an Iraq veteran and the mother of a marine who did 2 tours of duty in Iraq were part of an activist organization,[ The ANSWER coalition, ] posting signs to announce a Washington protest on September 15. There was a dispute with the city over the posting of signs which they are fighting:

ANSWER Coalition Press Conference in Washington DC
to Announce Free Speech Lawsuit Against DC Government

Statement by Sarah Sloan
National Staff Coordinator, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

August 20, 2007

The Department of Public Works is not telling the truth when they say we have improperly posted signs promoting the September 15 March to Stop the War. The fact is that we have posted these signs in accordance with District of Columbia Municipal Regulations.

Specifically, the 65 Notices of Violation sent to us last week from the Department of Public Works claim that we violated Title 24 Section 108.9 of the DCMR which states that “Signs, advertisements, and posters shall not be affixed by adhesives that prevent their complete removal from the fixture, or that do damage to the fixture.”

Therefore, an adhesive can be used to affix posters as long as it does not “prevent their complete removal” or “do damage.” All posters in question have been affixed with a water-based and water-soluble paste. Volunteers have in the past removed these posters following events and found that they are removed easily and quickly.

When politicians campaign for office they plaster their posters everywhere and frequently in a manner that is not in accordance with the law. They are provided 30 days following the election to remove the signs. Frequently they do not remove them. The ANSWER Coalition will remove the Sept. 15 posters following the demonstration…. read on

And so they held this press conference demonstrating that they were using the correct paste and that hanging signs was legal. A young cop, with way too much authority for his age, showed up and told them they needed a permit and they were defacing public property. Things went down hill rapidly from there, the press conference continued, the cops got all hot and bothered and the two were arrested.


This reminds me of the time a few years back when an old girlfriend and I were standing on a NYC sidewalk holding signs to protest a business that was ripping us off. We were not blocking anything or anyone. Just standing there, on a public sidewalk, holding the signs and talking to anyone who talked to us. The business called the cops who showed up and told us we needed to leave or be arrested because we didn’t have a permit. Baffled, we left the scene and went about trying to get this "free speech permit." When we got to the appropriate offices, we were told there was no such thing as a permit for 2 people holding signs.

That fact is that this is unconstitutional behavior but freedom is kind of an illusion at the individual level isn't it? The police were wrong in my case, they are in the wrong in this case and they were wrong when they arrested those two people with anti Bush T-shirts at a Bush event, but the people giving the orders don’t care. Those people won an $80,000 judgement against the government but they still got removed from the event. Mission accomplished for the price of a toilet seat in Iraq.

Nobody can challenge the police at the time, they are the authorities and they can taser you or beat you with clubs or even shoot you if necessary. They count on people lacking resources or being too intimidated to challenge them after the fact and, if they do, the government just says “oops” and uses taxpayer money to pay whatever penalty there is. I don’t know of any restrictions on a government from unlawfully arresting people and then paying court judgments against them as often as they want. The worst they will have is a pissed off comptroller. It’s a perfect workaround when you think about it. They basically just buy as many unconstitutional events as they want, and it’s not even their money.

Not to be cynical or anything.

____________________________________

Update:

It has been suggested that putting up this poster is a violation of the park rules but I would point out that they are not in the park. They are on the sidewalk of a street that boarders the park posting on a utility box. Cars are whizzing by. The mounted cop almost chases them into the street. This makes pretty clear to me that they are on city property not park property (as if that would really matter) and the law is very clear about the use of lamp posts, traffic signals and the supporting fixtures, such as junction boxes:

24 DCMR 108.4 Any sign, advertisement, or poster that does not relate to the sale of goods or services may be affixed on public lampposts or appurtenances of a lamppost subject to the restrictions set forth in this section.

The restrictions include details of how long the poster can stay up, the type of glue, the number of posters per block, the need to tell the city within 24 hours etc. If you follow the above link you can see the details. It is also interesting to note that The Partnership for Civil Justice has filed a lawsuit against the city claiming that many of the restrictions are unconstitutional because they do not provide equal protection under the law. Political campaigns can post for longer than 60 days. Community crime related posters can be posted forever. Grass roots organizations can only leave them up for 60 days. Forcing people to register also violates the right to anonymous speech which is also protected. Would you want to register who you were voting for with the state before an election? The same protection applies here.

So, I will say it again: This cop was a punk who didn't know the law and got uppity with a citizen because he felt like his little tin badge ego was being challenged. It has been reported that he is 35 so I will accept that it is poor professionalism and maturity rather than youthful inexperience.

Saturday Feature: Free-Will productions - The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror

Free-Will Productions is a husband and wife documentary team from Los Angeles who have teamed up with a video editor and a composer. They have been making films since 1995 and they reinvest all the money they make from sales to TV and home video back into new documentaries. In this manner they operate with complete independence. As they put it:

"Free-will productions is proud to say that our only executive producer is our own public."

Their work can be purchased directly from their website linked above. In The Oil Factor, they explore all the various relationships, motives and human costs surrounding oil and the complete dominance of energy interests in the US government. They suggest a direct tie between out interest in Saudi Arabia and the attacks against us by terrorists. They did a great job in their investigations and they have a lot of notable people that contribute their voices to the project.

Comedy: Andy Cobb - The Orifice

Andy Cobb is a web video producer who works in conjunction with AmericaBlog, a very large liberal blog. He has done several very good videos including a call for impeachment done in musical form. This is the most recent video he has posted on his YouTube account and I think it is an excellent exercise in low tech satire.

Video Activism: Billy Vegas - How To Create An Angry American

Billy Vegas is the featured name on www.puppetgov.com who posts these videos via their YouTube page. I Can't find much out yet about who they are but it appears to me like another great example of grass roots video activism. This particular video uses this administrations own words to show how corrupt they are. It also shows how some people are reacting to this outrage.

Politics: Politics TV - Dr. Dahlia Wasfi testifying to congress about Iraq

Politics TV is an independent Media site put together by PTV Media, an independent production and consulting firm. They are focused on the power of the web to get independent perspectives bringing information to people on video, about politics in particular. They do web syndication in podcast type format and they also have a YouTube Page with over 655 videos on it ranging from senate hearings to the presidential debates to their own original programming.

This clip struck me as an incredibly powerful testimony, at the Democratic Congressional forum on Iraq, that puts a human perspective on Iraq in a way that the "dog and pony show" visits from politicians and media pundits just can't capture. The YouTube link describes it like this:

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born to a Jewish mother and an Iraqi father. She recently put her medical career on hold to visit with family members in Iraq, and recently returned from a three-month stay in Basrah and Baghdad. Dr. Wasfi described her experience in Iraq and discussed the life of Iraqis under occupation on April 27, 2006 in Washington, DC.

Education: Ken Schooland/Kerry Pearson - The Philosophy of Liberty

I posted a link to the flash version of this video in a past post but it really needs to be highlighted so I found the embeddable YouTube version and I am giving it it's own spot. It addresses issues of liberty and, in particular, the danger presented by people who want surrogates to defend their liberty for them rather than doing it themselves:

It is based on part of a very influential book by Ken Schooland named The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible. They also have a website based the book. that features the video.

Politics: Max Blumenthal - Generation Chickenhawk

Max Blumenthal is a writer who's articles regularly appear in The Nation and on The Huffington Post. He also does videos now and then and he recently posted this video as a blog entry on the Huffington Post. It makes a very important point about who fights wars and who sits at home advocating them. The Republicans are building a culture, and a whole new generation for that matter, around supporting military actions that they don't want to fight themselves. This is a very dangerous standard to set. Having a voluntary army for defending against attacks is one thing but a country cannot maintain it's liberty in the long term if they allow a situation where one class of people is advocating an aggressive war and another class is fighting and dying in it.

What gets me about these kinds of occasions, that the Blumenthal video represents, where someone is walking around asking people to justify their philosophy, is that suddenly the alarm goes out: "Hey! There's a LIBERAL walking around with a camera asking questions!" and the thought police show up to escort them out. It's standard procedure in this day of people who feel they have a God given right to live in political bubbles. You can't go off the script at these events. Their philosophy cannot be challenged by anyone trying to put them on the record. Never you mind that these people are the future politicians and activists that will be shaping the destiny of our country. . . this is all a private event on private property and no uncomfortable challenges can persist because the owners can eject anyone at anytime. Wouldn't a real free country with real free speech force anyone hosting political events to allow this sort of thing in the room? Aren't political events, by definition, part of the public trust and, therefore, public property? I guess not in this free country.

I think I would be doing a rebellious interpretive dance myself when faced with that mentality (see the video). Notice how that moment is then parlayed into a "disturbance" by the teamwork of the woman who was offended by Blumenthal's hand getting too close while he danced and shouting "excuuuuse me" which is then just what security needed as a physical "disturbance" that justified physical restraint and ejection. . . .


There is a very good Flash Video called The Philosophy of Liberty that everybody simply MUST SEE after watching the Blumenthal video above. It addresses this same issue of people who want surrogates to defend their liberty for them:

The Link Is Here

WATCH IT. It is based on part of a very influential book by Ken Schooland named The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible. It examines what liberty really is and how society must protect it. They also have a website based the book.

Documentary: Chat The Planet - Hometown Baghdad

TV Veterans Laurie Meadoff and Kate Hills are the brains behind Next Next Entertainment, a TV and multimedia production house in NYC specializing in reality and documentary programming for major networks on both cable and broadcast television. Together they head up another, more personal project of theirs called Chat The Planet. They describe their mission like this:

"Chat the Planet is a global dialogue company. We connect young people from around the world to talk about everything from politics, prejudices and war to sex, music and life in general.

Chat the Planet is uncensored, unscripted and unlike anything else in the mainstream media."

The first major project that they took on at Chat The Planet was an online episodic reality series called Hometown Baghdad which consists of 38 short 5-10 minute videos about 3 young men trying to cope with ordinary life in one of the most violent places on the earth today. It was shot and produced entirely by a small Iraqi crew. The above episode titled, jimi hendrix, is typical of the series. The guys must break into a house to dodge a gunfight on their way to the basketball court to shoot some hoops. While there they talk about how their friends are all moving away and one of them expresses their personal philosophy of living.

I love this series because it really makes the Iraq conflict real. These young men are very empathetic characters coping with all the things that ordinary American's like them do every day. It's just that these guys are trying to do it in the middle of carnage and violance. It really cuts right to the heart of it all and makes it very real in a way that our traditional media would never dare to bring it.

Politics: Plisko - Outlaw In Chief

This Scooter Libby clemency thing has basically made my head explode and, as I sometimes do, I caught it on tape. . . .

I just posted it on Current TV last night.

Web Activism: Baba Ali - Muslim While Flying

Ummah Films is a film production company that has been very active on the web over the past year. Their goal is to provide an Islamic message to both Muslims and non Muslims. They want to use entertainment, in an Islamically permissable way, to reach out to people and help educate them about Islam. Baba Ali is the primary human force of Ummah films (he would say only the mistakes are his). Most or all of the blog is entries by him. The YouTube account shows 25 videos released to date. Ali has a real talent for standup delivery and his videos are all one man performances about various issues. I do not know if his name is his birth name or a web personality name but I do still find it to be an interesting ironic and clever twist that a guy who is trying to help break Muslim stereotypes has a name that is Ali Baba backwards.

I am really impressed with Ali. He and I both do web commentary. . though I think he does it far better. . .and he is working to deliver his very important message in a lighthearted way designed to reach people through humor. I am posting the above video from his Metacafe account because it is in the producer rewards program there and all views from that location will eventually put money towards his cause.

Saturday Feature: Loose Change 2nd Edition

This movie uses a lot of titles. If they are too small to read, go to the Google video page where larger view options are available.



Loose Change is a feature length documentary by Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe and Jason Bermas that challenges the official story of 9/11 and points to evidence that it might be an inside job [Wikipedia link]. It is a huge grass roots success story but it is also very controversial for obvious reasons. It was first released on the web in 2005 and it got massive attention. There were then critics who began tearing the film apart including Popular Mechanics Magazine. The filmmakers listened to the criticism and re-cut the film into a second edition and then, after more criticism, it was re-cut again. This new 2nd edition is what I have posted above. For a little perspective on the popularity of this project, this version alone has been viewed over 6 million times. There is now a final cut that they plan to release on September 11, 2007. They have only released a teaser for that version.

I will admit right now that I have been very skeptical of the 9/11 conspiracy movement. It is just such a hard notion to accept. I must also admit, however, that the official story always seemed lacking and many actions and explinations from the government were suspicious and I have lots of questions still. This movie is probably the single best attempt I have seen to bring all the conspiracy claims together into one body of work that I must admit had my eyebrows going up more than a couple of times.

What I find particularly brilliant about it is that it used the web as it's development tool. They knew they would make mistakes and, by releasing it on the web, they allowed it to be vetted by anybody that wanted to take issue with it. They then took all the criticisms and used them to create progressive drafts that tightened up their information. They also built up a huge cult following both for it and against it.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts after seeing it.

Video Activism: Avaaz.org - Stop The Clash of Civilizations

Avaaz.org posted this video on YouTube and I really like the way it uses simple, primitive animations and a creative sound bed to present its message.

Avaaz.org describes themselves like this:

"As major new challenges like climate change and escalating religious conflict threaten our common future, people from around the world are coming together to take global politics into their own hands. Avaaz.org (Our name means "Voice" or "Song" in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Nepalese, Dari, Turkish, and Bosnian) is a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. Our aim is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people -- and not just political elites and unaccountable corporations -- shape global decisions. Avaaz.org members are taking action for a more just and peaceful world and a vision of globalization with a human face."

Producers to Watch: Ava Lowery - WWJD

As far as I know, this is the video that started it all for 16 year old Alabama web video activist Ava Lowery. She founded the website Peace Takes Courage and this was one of the early videos she posted as a very simple flash based slide show. The video began to be a viral hit after she submitted it to The Huffington Post as part of a monthly contest. It drew the wrath of angry Bush supporters, some of whom sent death threats. Word got out about this through the net-roots and it brought defenders in the form of Cindy Sheehan, Air America Radio and the liberal blogs who all saw her as both an inspiration and a sympathetic character who shared their beliefs. She has been one of the few web video producers I know of that have been embraced by the netroots in this way.

She has since had major media appearances where she talks about her work and, at times, seems to completely baffle them. She has been amazingly prolific. Her website lists at least a hundred more videos, many of which now incorporate combat camera video footage and are immediately promoted by various netroots outlets. There is a good Buzzflash interview with here HERE.

Music Video: TIMZ - Iraq

An Iraqi American rapper defending his old hood in rhyme. Not something you see every day. This video originated on YouTube where there is now a collection of videos documenting TIMZ's activism.