New Yorkers Remember 9-11 by Lobbying for Peace

On Friday, September 9, 2005, from 1-2pm on the steps of City Hall, a group of New Yorkers will gather to speak about the Department of Peace (DoP) legislation being reintroduced to the 109th Congress on Wednesday, September 14, 2005; and to thank the 9 New York and 2 New Jersey Congress members who are among the bill’s 53 co-sponsors. Each local co-sponsor has been invited to attend the press conference, along with NYC Council member Bill Perkins, who helped sponsor the press conference and supports the creation of a Department of Peace.

Four years have passed since the worst terrorist attack to happen in New
York City occurred, and many steps have been taken to ensure it does not
happen again. Every necessary precaution to protect this great city should
be enacted, and many New Yorkers are getting behind a proactive solution:
the creation of a United States Department of Peace.

The Department of Peace would work collaboratively with other federal agencies to research, facilitate, and articulate nonviolent solutions to conflict at home and abroad. The DoP New York chapter is sending a delegation to Washington, DC over the anniversary weekend of September 11th, to attend the National Department of Peace Conference where Walter Cronkite is a scheduled guest speaker. Then they will march, but not in the streets of our Nation’s Capitol. Instead they will march through the halls of Congress meeting with lawmakers to win support for this bill.

They have also organized a one-day phone-a-thon, complete with pledge packets that are available on their website (www.nyc-dop.com). There is a twist however, the “pledges” aren’t asking for money, they ask for a promise to call Congress on September 14, to support the bill.

Please join us on Friday, September 9, 2005 from 1-2pm on the steps of City Hall to learn more about this historic legislation and the elected officials working for its passage.

The Many Sides of Labor

...slowly she turned: tarheel tavern #28 - labor day edition

On Labor Day, what better thing to contemplate than...Labor!
Laurie, at "...slowly she turned" takes on Labor for this week's Tarheel Tavern, and lays out her treasure before you. Enjoy!

Hope, haven found in Charlotte

Charlotte Observer | 09/05/2005

Hurricane Katrina survivors find a warm welcome and comfort in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On the Coming Recession: Poverty matters. More to Come...

Ancient Chinese oracle, "I Ching", says recession is in the cards.

I'm not sure why but the Sage is very good to me. So when I asked about Hurricane Katrina, it said, among other things:

"When the eighth month comes, there will be misfortune. Recession is not slow in coming."

Katrina hit during the eighth month. I suspect recession will come in its wake.

Best to be prepared. Foreknowledge is a good thing.

That said...what to do to prepare? Idears?


Other things it said were:

The transition from disorder to order is not yet completed.

The conditions are difficult. The task is great and full of responsibility. It is nothing less than that of leading the world out of confusion back to order. But it is a task that promises success, because there is a goal that can unite the forces now tending in different directions.

The hexagram BEFORE COMPLETION represents a transition from chaos to order. It points to the fact that every end contains a new beginning. Thus it gives hope to men. The Book of Changes is a book of the future.


Interresant!

Iddybud is the guest blogger of John Edwards' One America Committee Blog this week

Jude Camwell's excellent blogging on Iddybud has earned her the honor to be guest blogger on the One America Committee blog this week.
Go and give her a shoutout!

OVERKILL: Military to take on American "Insurgents"

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia”

Somalia? That's in Africa, right?

Something doesn't smell right. This could well be the nightmare scenario. American troups killing Americans on American soil. And for what? Trying to stay alive?

“We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

What is wrong with humanitarian relief? Why torture the soldiers like this? Indeed, why torture fellow Americans like this?

Why do I think this will be just another bad mistake?

Is the Bush mantra:
"When you find yourself in a hole...stay the course!"?
Or worse... "dig faster!"?

Just when you think things are about as bad as they can get, the current misadministration finds new lows in their incessant digging of holes to Hell.

They complain that people are shooting at them...but then they were the ones who talked the citizens into arming themselves in the first place.

In a decade of living in Boston, I never once heard a gunshot. Here in the gunbelt, I hear them on an almost daily basis.

Freaked out that citizens are well-armed? Well... who is to blame for that? Go complain to the NRA!

And Mr. Bush... you might do well to remember how public opinion shifted during the 70s, when people saw their fellow citizens attacked by uniformed police and military.

We are not at war with the people of New Orleans. We are trying to help them. Right?

“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson [Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion] said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

Rehnquist is dead

Now God or the Devil can explain to him why Bush v Gore was an opprobrious decision.

Remember that scenario that Al Gore talked about before the selection?
You wake up. The coffee is brewing, nice music on the radio, sunny outside...and the paper reads: "Gore Wins!"
OR You wake up. Sleet and freezing rain. Miserable weather. The newspaper is soaked.
Through the smears you can see "Bush Wins".

Well it has been Bushweather ever since. And has peaked with Katrina.
It rained on his inauguration. It rains wherever he has gone. The man against nature is finding that nature is also against him. And sadly, us.

Rehnquist was part of the coup that put Mr. Foulfeather into office.
I don't know him, so I won't miss him. Old people die. People with cancer die.
I feel sorry for his family.

He did, however, have some cool robes. And William is a pretty popular name.
But with all the suffering that America and the World has had to go through because of his poor decision-making, don't expect any great outpouring of sympathy. One man has died.
But thousands of others have died needlessly because of him.

I mourn for the thousands.

Mister Bush must be happy to know that Rehnquist's death knocked Katrina coverage off the Sunday talk shows.

Watch for the hairy Justice Scalia to take his place. And for weather to get even worse.

Chavez & France offer assistance as "Flyover Presidency" runs out of gas

Meanwhile Journalists become, well, journalists

The president's 35-minute Air Force One flyover of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency: detached, disconnected, and disengaged. Preferring to take in America's suffering -- whether caused by the war in Iraq or Hurricane Katrina -- from a distance. In this case, 2,500 feet.
-Arianna Huffington

There will be several good things to come out of the Katrina nightmare - a better understanding (at least by some) of the horrors of poverty, a federal government which will be eyed more suspiciously by the public, and perhaps a new awareness by the media of how to do their jobs.
- Hoffmania

How Cindy Sheehan and Katrina Woke the Media from their Somnolence

I have a codeword for it. I call it "Sharks and Condit". Others may call it different things. What "it" is is, for lack of better words, journalists resting on their laurels, otherwise known as asses.
You saw it on 9/10 and the months before. And it has been the zeitgeist from whence these well-heeled articulates go to bat for their corporate sponsors. I mean, report the news. You'd almost think that they were paid to keep their mouths shut. But alas, this is America, and things like that don't happen here. Not in an ideal America. But we haven't had an ideal America since, let me check, never.

This may be changing, as journalists find themselves surrounded by their suffering brothers and sisters...and perhaps realizing that for many at the watercooler of the flyover presidency, having them drown in the bathtub of the inland Gitmo should cause no great loss of nap. For whatever reason, there has been some excellent reporting coming from New Orleans, and just the fact that they are there, not only eyewitnessing, but earwitnessing and nosewitnessing the "Hell on Earth" that the Bush Administration is all too good at creating or allowing, is a service to humanity, and should be commended. So I will. I hope Mr. Pulitzer is noting these braves souls as they signal from the flames of this fresh Hell.

But what can you expect from a "War President" or, in other words, a Prince of War? War is Hell. A war president presides over Hell. President of Hell. Hmm. Isn't there another word for that?


THE PRESIDENT OF HELL

Do the math. War is indeed hell. And this war was elective. Bush and his collaborators elected to spread Hell, and sadly it has found its way back to its source. At least its source nation. Even though Hell's refugees were, in the main, excluded from the selection process. One wonders how soundly the Supreme Court sleeps...

So the Supremes lose a few hours sleep. You still don't see them anywhere near New Orleans. They are safe within their cocoons. They won't even have to do a flyover. They are members of the insouciant class. The journalists in New Orleans no longer have the luxury of insouciance. The molecules of the dead are flowing through their bodies, as they breathe the stench of Truth, spreading like genocide before their eyes. And they realize who they are. And whom they best serve.

DAVID BROOKS: I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield.
...in 9/11 you had a great surge of public confidence. Now I think we are going to see a great decline in public confidence in our institutions. And so I just think this is sort of the anti-9/11 as one of the bloggers wrote.

My hope is that Brian Williams, Bob Woodruff, Shepard Smith, Anderson Cooper, and the other brave new stewards of the poor and disenfranchised, will stay in New Orleans, and be the voice of those whose need is most great. Even those far removed from harm's way are being moved. David Brooks said he assumed that those for whom he has been fighting, would rush to the aid of the poor. I think the fact that they didn't will cause him to reject them more generally. David cannot long defend Goliath. And I think Mister Brooks is realizing that John Edwards, and not George W. Bush, is the one who stands up to Goliaths, and will, himself, cease being a brave defender of the rich and powerful.

Hurricane and Tsunami Katrina will prove to be far more devastating than even 9/11. It is 9/11 in slo-mo. And it is hard to take. Every day is worse than the last. But we don't want happy talk. We need truth. And peace. How can you uplift with one hand, when with the other hand you kill?


WHAT WOULD SOLDIERS DO?

If given the choice:
1- I want to stay in Iraq and kill.
2- I want to stay in Iraq and be killed.
3- I want to go to New Orleans and help save lives.

...I think you would find that the overwhelming desire would be to help out in our own backyard, their own backyard. Bush said he wanted to fight the war "over there"...and yet the most urgent battle, as regards American lives, is the battle for New Orleans. It matters not whether American lives are threatened by foreign terrorists or natural disasters. It is still American lives. And it is a reality, not just a vague notion of some future scenario, the Grand Protector from which, luckily benefitting the Bush family of corporations.

Terror has reached our shores. And the only thing that keeps it from being Bush brand terror is the lack of malice, or I should say malice...beforehand. Katrina was probably even more nonchalant about the destruction is was going to inflict, than Bush pushing the Shock-and-Awe button, or the thousands of other similar acts of kindness. Any malice regarding Katrina came afterwards, in the form of "too little, too late". Had the late-niks prescience, the malice might have come beforehand, but I am not that cynical. It is bad enough already.

But prescience can come in handy. For example, Bush says we don't need to bring our soldiers home to help. "We have plenty of resources. We can get both jobs done." he says, lacking prescience. He is, in fact, getting neither job done. Surely both will get worse. No question.

His echolaliac "stay the course" is only making him sound mechanical. Maybe he is! Not everyone is conscious. It takes individual effort, and then some, to become conscious. Until then you are basically mechanical. Pre-conscious. Twice removed from cosmic consciousness.

Consciousness might allow Mister Bush to realize that allowing our dear soldiers to come home and help save lives might reverse any negative effects from having to basically do the opposite...because of what? His own personal cruelty? Impatience? Revenge? Greed? Subservience?

What better prevention of post-stress disorder, which is a near inevitability for soldiers today?
It would not only be better for the soldiers, it would obviously be better for the refugees in New Orleans. And Lord knows...it might even be better for the people of Iraq.

It is not cutting and running, but rather defending the homeland. New Orleans is on our soil, right? Americans are dying and crying out for help, right?

It is not too late to become the Ideal America. It is not to late to become the Humanitarian Superpower of which so many dream. It is how true, lasting respect is won.

While the President fiddled, New Orleans burned. And drowned. Maybe 10s of thousands. And while Tasmanian devils like Grover Norquist might relish the fact that government too is being drowned, just when fellow citizens are crying out for their help, most people find their humanity awakened. Even journalists. And while the president fiddled, the mother of a dead soldier cried out in the streets of his own howntown. Bats have flaps on their ears. Is this why Bush loves baseball?

BlogCritics Edition

Poll: New Orleans Stores Should Release Food, Medicine

Urgency demands immediate relief. Open the stores. Free the food. Save the lives, not the emergency relief.

One Foot in the Grave: Blog of a now-dead soldier

"I'm the most real thing on TV!"

Raw Story on Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, who posted an entry on his blog sharing his anger about the situation in Iraq, in which he questioned the United States' 'fucktarded' Iraq war plan. He was killed in combat in Baghdad.

Katrina & The Shock and Awe of Global Warming

Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama look like Iraq today. Where will global warming shock and awe next?


RUMSFELD ON FREEDOM AND LOOTING

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." -Donald Rumsfeld

"Now we have a humanitarian crisis, people live in fear of constant violence but they are free to do what the hell they like, whether it be looting hospitals or raiding government buildings. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what freedom is all about and that is what we have brought the Iraqi people." - Donald Rumsfeld

Oops! Have we set a bad example?

MANDARIN DESIGN

...this will
look like some of the pullquotes and styles we see
in magazinelayout...

The copy and paste code makes Magazine style pullquotes easy. Just start typing your text here. We used the named colors silver and gray.
It's easy to plug in your own colors.

Full instructions
for making the first letter big are in the Drop Cap copy and paste style tutorial. For this drop cap we forced the first big letter to span more than five lines. The font-size is adjusted to exactly 100 pixels while the line height is 80 pixels.

Bush Inc: Sell them gas-guzzlers, then jack up the price!

Fun with Gullible Americans

Never known for their brilliance...

Are you one of these?

Have you seen...The Manhattan Masturbator???

perv caught in a fon flash

Watch for the coming movie!
(No pun intended)

FLHurricane.com: Google Map Plot of Katrina (2005) Google Maps Hurricane Track Overlay

Thanks to The Real Paul Jones, we know two great places to track the coming tragedy, and perhaps convince the slowheaded to vamoose, scram, hit the trail, make like a tree, save your freakin' life.
Wikipedia
and
FlHurricane where Google maps are put to the service of humanity.

Bush's Latest Premature Celebration

"ANOTHER week in Iraq, another light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday President Bush saluted the Iraqis for "completing work on a democratic constitution" even as the process was breaking down yet again. But was anyone even listening to his latest premature celebration?"

Frank Rich on the Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation

NOW including such nostrums as these:

"We have long since lost count of all the historic turning points and fast-evaporating victories hyped by this president. The toppling of Saddam's statue, "Mission Accomplished," the transfer of sovereignty and the purple fingers all blur into a hallucinatory loop of delusion. One such red-letter day, some may dimly recall, was the adoption of the previous, interim constitution in March 2004, also proclaimed a "historic milestone" by Mr. Bush."

and

"With a shove from Pat Robertson, her [Cindy Sheehan] 15 minutes are now up, but even Mr. Robertson's antics revealed buyer's remorse about Iraq; his stated motivation for taking out Hugo Chávez by assassination was to avoid "another $200 billion war" to remove a dictator."

and

"The president, for one, has been forced to make what for him is the ultimate sacrifice: jettisoning chunks of vacation to defend the war in any bunker he can find in Utah or Idaho."

and

"Mr. Bush's current definition - "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" - could not be a better formula for quagmire."

and

"For his part, Mr. Hagel backed up his assertion that we are bogged down in a new Vietnam with an irrefutable litany of failure: "more dead, more wounded, less electricity in Iraq, less oil being pumped in Iraq, more insurgency attacks, more insurgents coming across the border, more corruption in the government."

and

"Anyone who can read a poll knows that support is gone and is not coming back. The president's approval rating dropped to 36 percent in one survey last week."

and

"The Leo Burnett advertising agency has been handed $350 million for a recruitment campaign that avoids any mention of Iraq."

and

"Mr. Feingold also made the crucial observation that "the president has presented us with a false choice": either "stay the course" or "cut and run."

and

"The marketing campaign will crescendo in two weeks, on the anniversary of 9/11, when a Defense Department "Freedom Walk" will trek from the site of the Pentagon attack through Arlington National Cemetery to a country music concert on the Mall. There the false linkage of Iraq to 9/11 will be hammered in once more, this time with a beat."

BUSH PRODUCTS: Misleading Americans since 2001

Moog is Dead

Robert Moog with his synthesizers

The Man Who Democratized Music Has Died

New York Times:
Robert Moog, the creator of the electronic music synthesizer that bears his name and that became ubiquitous among experimental composers as well as rock musicians in the 1960's and 70's, died on Sunday at his home in Asheville, N.C. He was 71.
MORE


Who hasn't heard of a Moog Synthesizer? And how many of those correctly pronounce it "mogue" as in "vogue" or "rogue"? Fact is, everyone has heard of a Moog Synthesizer, even if they call it a "mood simplifier", a subset that would include me, mainly because I happen to think it does simplify the mood. Not, of course, because I am a buffoon, like the others who call it that. I taught my precocious nephew how to play when he was but six or seven. And I taught myself on the minimoog and then on the maximoog, the granddaddy...which was housed at the university in Greensboro, along with a monster ARP. Wires and levers were the fashion in those earlier days.

The first one though was the Minimoog, which was made available for public use at Reliable Music, back when it was in the backroom of a pawn shop in downtown Charlotte. Early 70s.
While most people there were hogging the guitars, I was hogging the Moog. Several years would pass before I got the opportunity to goof with the classic Moog, which resembled a telephone switchboard with all the patchcords. A friend of mine was studying electronic music at UNC-Greensboro, and she let me come to the lab and goof around on it.

A few more years would pass, when my old friend, Ken Phillips (who had come for one of his always interesting visits) and I were walking down Mass. Ave in Cambridge, and on a pole outside the MIT campus was a flyer that said Moog and Ray Kurzweil were going to be presenting their latest creation.

My God. My jaw dropped open, and nothing seemed to make it close...as Ken and I sat and listened to what I believe was the first public display of the amazing Kurzweil keyboard, of which Bob Moog had a hand. Another decade would pass before I had my own...which I've never regretted, since it allowed me to create 20 or 30 tapes of music before passing it on to my dear musical wizard and friend, Woody, who is still having a blast with it, and probably has as many CDs.

Once upon a time classical music was reserved for a small coterie of society somebodies, but then symphony orchestras were created and now you can have many violins, many oboes, many contrabassoons, and you can invite in more people. Classical music was being democratized.

But with Moog, and because of Moog, a single person could create symphonies, and actually hear the final product. Before Moog, many may write symphonies, but finding one to play it was a different matter. This de facto gatekeeper has been removed, and it is largely because of Robert Moog. And now he is gone.

There isn't a musician or composer today that doesn't owe him a debt of gratitude.

Long live his legacy!

Play one for Mister Moog!


And speaking of which... I'd love to see folks like ELP, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, PDQ Bach, Tomita, Kitaro, Radiohead, Faust, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Beach Boys and so on, converge on Asheville to do a benefit concert, with their Moogs, to raise money for one of Moog's favorite charities.

Who can get that done?

_______________
Reprinted on Blogcritics

Rush Limbaugh inciting violence in Texas, and should be removed from the radio.

1:15 PM, Aug 22, 2005

I cannot believe how desparate Mister Limbaugh has become of late.
While listening to his hyperventilations, just minutes ago, he worked himself into a frenzy, thinking about liberals I suppose, and started exhorting Texas hunters to take on the Sheehan protesters. Of course he cloaked the message, but only slightly. Anyone listening would know that he meant for Texas hunters to arm themselves and do whatever they wanted, as regards the protesters. (Media Matters will pick up on this, one would assume.)

He may as well be Osama Bin Laden. These are Americans he is trying to have killed...of course by proxy. He will try to wiggle out and say he was just speaking words, and it meant nothing. Just an entertainer.

Rush. Go watch "Fisher King" then learn some manners. Your vitriol and suggestions are only spreading violence. You are not a gentleman. Gentlemen and women should shut you off. Grace, wit, taste, class, humor, love, friendship, brotherhood, community, tolerance, beauty, sweetness and light. Not monobloviation. Not even masterbloviation.

You cannot stand to lose. You got sucked into the Sports frame. Life is not like Sports. You only lose when you play a win-lose game. So you think you are losing, and therefore you want to drag others down with you. May as well be the princes and princesses of peace.

You need to clarify your remarks. You need to make clear that you do not want "Texas Justice" inflicted upon Americans. We have had enough, thank you very much.

Time for Sheriff Andy Taylor to show us the higher path.

New York's CBGB Outlived Ramones, May Fall to Real Estate Boom

Here's a piece by my old friend, Rob Urban, on New York's changing landscape...

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock on New York's Lower East Side, outlived Sid Vicious and all but one of the Ramones. It may not survive the city's real estate boom.

The club faces eviction Aug. 31 when its 12-year lease expires unless it can settle a dispute with the landlord, a homeless agency that runs a shelter upstairs. Owner Hilly Kristal, 74, has drawn support from Tommy Ramone, Blondie's Debbie Harry, the Talking Heads' David Byrne and E Street Band guitarist Steven van Zandt, who is trying to mediate.

Read the full article at Bloomberg.