Crime without punishment

It seems everyone has something to say about the credit meltdown. National Public Radio has continuing stories on the crisis, explaining the situation in a more evenhanded manner than it deserves. The commercial television networks, of course, have been covering it in their own way. I can't say how well they are doing because I haven't been watching. I watch PBS's News Hour, which does a pretty decent job, as can be seen here.

The problem I have with both NPR and PBS is that they are establishmentarian. The way the programs are constructed and the information presented encourages what psychologists call learned helplessness. The underlying message is that the common person is a spectator, a powerless observer of events that are controlled by key players on the national and international scene. The viewer and/or listener's role is to become "informed."

For this reason, and a few others, I prefer the "alternative" media. The message is not powerlessness. The best I have read and listened to have been in Salon, Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, Counterpunch, and for emotional fire, Ed Schultz. I've had my differences with Ed Schultz over his bellicose manner, but he's been doing some great analysis lately, and he puts his heart and soul into his work. This article by Naomi Klein is a must read.

Not tending to be a mere spectator, a passively "informed" citizen, I let a concern fester for a while, and then formulate a response. I have a lengthy one pending for this blog, but it's taking more time and effort than I have available for a while. A couple of inspirations came to me by email, and I had time to respond quickly. One was from a group named Fresh Air and Clean Politics, which has a campaign to send letters to Congress to stop the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. They supplied a sample letter, inviting responders to add a few words of their own. Below is my response, with my own words in bold:

To: Fresh Air and Clean Politics, then to my Congressperson

I am writing to you to urge you to stop the bailout. It is not a time for panic but a time for deliberation. We have not even been told what the bailout will be used for.

If there is a bailout it needs to be restructured so that it is transparent, includes checks and balances, requires that those who profited from reckless finance speculation pay for cleaning up the mess and that it is part of the development of a new foundation for the American economy.

We have seen panic throughout the Bush administration and it has never led to a good end. The military attack on Iraq was caused by a drum beat of war that included a massive misinformation campaign. The Patriot Act, which has severely undermined civil liberties was passed without most members of Congress even reading it. Now, this bailout is being pushed in the midst of a Wall Street panic. Is it really needed? Is this the right remedy? Will this prevent irresponsible investment in the future?

There is no question that the U.S. economy needs revitalization. But, a mass bailout of the financial community will not create the new economy we need. Indeed, if hundreds of billions are spent on bad investments it will result in there being no funding available for what is needed to create an economy for the 21st Century where we can all prosper.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Bush regime is comprehensively criminal. Its first priority is crime. The invasion and occupation of "Iraq" is only the most flagrant example. Negligence before the September 11, 2001 attacks, before and after Hurricane Katrina, domestic spying, torture, kidnapping, treasonous exposure of an intelligence officer, etc., etc. - are others.

To believe anything this regime says is to be complicit in its crimes, a legacy that no self-respecting person would want to have.

Please vote no on the bailout and step back and consider the options available to the United States.

Thank You,

Me
________________________________________________

I got another appeal from a group named Just Foreign policy, again with a prepared letter to send to News Hour host Jim Lehrer, who will be moderating the first debate between presidential candidates McCain and Obama. Again, they had their own prepared letter, with the invitation to add a few of my own words. Here's what I sent, again with my own words in bold:

To: Just Foreign Policy, then Jim Lehrer

At the presidential debate, please ask Barack Obama and John McCain about their plans to implement U.S. policy of opposition to Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories, which the U.S. government has long acknowledged is a key stumbling block to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

I also would like for you to ask both candidates if they support an unprovoked military attack on Iran, either by the U.S., or by its proxy Israel.

You might want to ask them both, just for curiosity's sake, if they would start a war with Russia over oil or its relationships with its neighbors.
________________________________________________

For good measure, I sent this comment to Huffington Post:

It shouldn't be too hard to figure out why the Bush criminal regime is able to pose as the savior, just as it did to sucker the country into approving the invasion of "Iraq." The BCR (Bush criminal regime) has tiers of support in the Congress, the judiciary, the news media, and in the ignorant and easy to fool general population.

It won't be until the country is in a serious depression that the populace will finally see the light. Until then, the addiction to industrial luxuries (as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen used to put it) and intellectual submissiveness will keep people sufficiently docile.

I think the best way to look at the situation is cultural. We have a certain kind of culture, and the past eight years have been a festival of malfeasance in business and government at all levels, all done in the context of this culture. Until the culture changes in a comprehensive manner, the criminality will continue to flourish, likely in new mutations, adapting to conditions.
________________________________________________

These three letters pretty well summarize my attitude towards the Bush regime, and about the presidential campaign. As the past seven and a half years have clearly demonstrated, this regime is ruthlessly criminal to its very core. There is nothing the Bush gang does without criminal intent. For this reason only, the "bailout" should be seen for what it is: a scheme to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

There is no bailout for the millions whose homes are being foreclosed. There is no bailout for the many thousands who have lost their jobs during this regime's time in office. There is no bailout for the service men and women returning from "Iraq" and "Afghanistan." There is no bailout for students trying to pay for their education. There is no bailout for the millions of people in this country who are without health insurance. And there is no bailout for the millions of workers whose retirement plans are becoming worthless.

The mainstream media (corporate owned or sponsored) are not to be trusted, because they are obliged to portray the Bush criminal regime as legitimate, with sincere intentions to solve the problems the country faces. All evidence indicates otherwise. The Bush gang and its clients should be breaking rocks in the hot sun for the rest of their lives, but the media giants give them propaganda cover.

We face very difficult times. We can get through these times with our civilization intact and even thriving if we behave as a civilization. The first step is to follow what I call the hand-in-front-of-your-face principle. See truthfully what is in front of us. What is in front of us now is a $700 billion scam, a handout to the already rich to keep them in their status of global parasites. If the rich get richer at our expense without a fight, we will have only ourselves to blame.
_______________________________________________

Here's some money music.

Here's some more.

Monty Python offers this money song.

Here's one from Ray Charles.

I almost forgot Pink Floyd.

And, of course, REM. Hmm. Showing my age a bit. I guess it's R.E.M. I remember reading once that this band's leader referred to the Beatles as elevator music. Would that make them escalator music? Stairway? Fire escape? Rope ladder? Suction cup?

Here's a dedication to the Bush criminal regime. Thanks go to the Bobby Fuller Four. Here's a fun version. Here's the lyrics, chords, and tab.

Here's something we could try.

Maybe it's time to ask for some help.

Idiot's delight

It was a strange week, with "Hurricane Gustav" juxtaposing with the "Republican" convention, the president "supervising" rescue efforts, and the vice president doing his war-mongering thing in "Georgia" and other places.

The convention itself was strange, with pathetic, empty speeches by a series of pathetic, empty political hacks, mouthing words to hateful themes of war, making the rich richer, destroying the environment, and pumping up fear and paranoia.

The main event of the week was the speech by candidate McCain's surprise running mate, "Alaska" governor Sarah Palin (Here's an example of what Palin advocates). A nasty, contentless diatribe against McCain's opponent Barack Obama, Palin's speech ignited the dormant "Republican" masses, rousing them into a mob-like frenzy. The crowd responded several times with shouts of "USA! USA! USA!" and "Drill, baby drill!" It was idiot's delight, on prime-time TV.

As a sideshow to the convention, hundreds of protesters were arrested and roughed-up by local police, who were managed by agents of the "FBI" and "Secret Service." Journalists covering the protests were also arrested, including preemptive raids on houses where journalists were planning their coverage.

If Federal agents were on the scene directing the raids, then they were ordered to be there by higher-ups in the Bush criminal regime, but another in the long list of misdeeds by this scourge on humanity.

I first became aware of the preemptive raids last Saturday when I read Glenn Greenwald's column in Salon, complete with video. It was surreal watching the video, because the neighborhood looked familiar. It turned out that it was on a street where I lived when I was a student in St. Paul, Iglehart Avenue. It was blocks away from where I lived, but it was a weird connection.

As the week progressed, the arrests continued, including the taking into custody of the producers and show host of radio and TV program "Democracy Now."

It started to get surreal at that point. When St. Paul police chief John Harrington held a press conference on Tuesday, I had another sense of the familiar. As it turns out, both he and Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan are graduates of my alma mater, the University of St. Thomas. They were key players in the arrests, though the major role was played by Ramsey County sheriff Bob Fletcher.

Lawsuits will be in abundance over police spying, false arrests, prisoner abuse, and other civil rights violations, but as far as the planners for the crackdown are concerned, it was mission accomplished. More infrastructure for police state was put in place, and more experience was gained. More propaganda was also gleaned from the police festivities, making protesters look like a fringe element, outsiders, crazies, not "real" "Americans."

I have mixed feelings. It was surreal enough that fellow graduates of the school I attended for four years were overseeing the abuses. Amy Goodman, the "Democracy Now" show host who was arrested, is a prominent figure in Madison, visiting here to speak several times a year. I don't particularly like her, finding her to be a bit self-possessed, self-congratulatory, and arrogant. She also skews her reporting beyond bias to a posturing advocacy that I find annoying. Still, her show is one of the best sources of information anywhere. I listen to it on the radio whenever I can.

I could easily have gone to the Twin Cities to do some protesting, but chose not to. When the invasion of "Iraq" was brewing I joined the Madison Chapter of Veterans for Peace, and marched a few times. I hated it. I don't like being on display, and I don't like putting myself in a role of being anyone special, especially some kind of "hero." I said to myself, "I ain't marchin' anymore," and eventually quit the group.

I also knew it was going to be a bad scene. Ever since the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 there has been a steady progression of confrontation, police infiltration, arrests, violence, and polarization between protesters and the police element in various cities around the country. Ne'er the twain shall meet, so to speak, with protesters on one side, and law enforcement on the other.

It's easy to stereotype the other "side," and both "sides" do it. It's silly. On the police side, it's easy to see that cracking down on protesters suits them just fine. They get to try out all their new technology and tactics, and they get to have some fun beating people with sticks, tear gassing them, shooting them with rubber bullets, and throwing percussion grenades at them.

I put a greater onus on the protesters. They could easily defuse these confrontations in advance by doing some self-policing. One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. In city after city, peaceful protesters allow themselves to be used by supposed "anarchists," who are likely to be the most police-infiltrated and provocateured, er, organization, in the entire country. The "anarchists" commit acts of vandalism time and again, all to the delight of the police, who then have an excuse to wade in with the nightsticks and other implements of harm.

They also could have had meetings with the police in advance. If the Federal government is exerting influence on local police forces, it could be prevented from doing so by better communication, whether through mass media, elected officials, or the local police forces.

Protesters could do a little homework. Instead of seeing the police as "the enemy," they could make an attempt to understand how a modern-day police force operates, and what life is like for the individual police officer.

I can give a few examples. One day last fall as I was driving on Madison's version of a freeway, the "Beltline," I ran out of gas. I thought I was going to miss at least an hour of work, to say nothing of the aggravation and inconvenience. As fortune would have it, a Wisconsin state policeman arrived on the scene about a minute after I pulled my car to the side of the road. I was already outside, opening the trunk to find my emergency gas can.

The state cop offered to help, and went back to his squad car to call in to report what he was doing. I wanted to tell him something, and walked over to his car to say whatever it was. He furiously waved me off, and I went back to my car. I realized quickly that I had violated some rule of police procedure, unbeknownst to me.

After a couple of minutes the state cop got out of his car, and told me he would take me to a gas station to get some gas. I thought it would be a long ride, but he took the first exit, went in the opposite direction, and found a gas station within about two blocks. After getting gas, he then circled back around to the Beltline, and I was pouring gas into my car within minutes.

A county sheriff's deputy showed up while I was pouring gas, and shielded me from the traffic, an act which probably saved my life. He did this without fanfare, as if it was normal routine, second nature.

I was back on the road in another couple of minutes, and ended up being only seven minutes late for work.

I learned a lot from this simple experience. Police are there to help, and do so cheerfully without hesitation. The one thing you have to know is that they do it according to procedure, a very strict set of guidelines that is rigid and unbending. If you move outside of those guidelines, then the situation changes immediately.

These procedures have developed over many years of experience, and are designed to keep the officers safe and in control. When their control and safety are jeopardized or threatened, then they go into a different mode.

About a month after this experience I got stopped for speeding on the same stretch of the Beltline, by a Madison police officer. He was all business, but eased up a bit, and asked me if I had seen him coming. I said I did when I changed lanes, and that I was late for work and was trying to make up for lost time. I let him be in complete control, didn't try to argue with him, and was prepared to accept my fate.

He let me go without a ticket. I was surprised, but elated, and went on my way to work. I think the thing that got me through was that I surrendered control. Without any pressure from me, he felt free to make an independent judgement.

A similar thing happened on a state/"U.S." highway about a month ago, late at night. I alternate Obama and Nader bumper stickers in my back window, and get tailgated on a regular basis. I have my own way of dealing with it, what I call the introduction to one's ancestors protocol, but this night when someone came too close I decided to speed up. I don't know if it was the same guy, but it was a county deputy. I was stopped, and told him my story.

I really expected to get a ticket this time, but he let me go. This situation was a little more interactive, but again I didn't argue, and gave the deputy complete control of the situation. It's an attitude thing, not smarting-off, not trying a con, just leaving it up to the cop to make his own decision.

I would keep this reality in mind if I were planning to mount a major protest in some city around the country. Rather than seeing the police as "fascists," "Darth Vader," or instruments of oppression, it would be better to see them as human beings, with families, bills to pay, and a difficult job. They get into life-threatening situations on an intermittent basis, making them kind of binary about confrontation. If you are party to turning the switch to action mode, then you can expect difficulty.

In a past entry in this blog I wrote about an experience I had when I was on riot alert when I was in the Army in Germany in 1970. It didn't take long in that situation to see the defined "other" as a threat, and if my unit had actually been sent out, it would likely have been an ugly scene. It's something I have never forgotten, and I learn from it on a regular basis.

One thing I learned is that to only see your own point of view is stupid, and also dangerous. If you have no sense or respect for what someone else is experiencing, or for the person at all, then you are asking for trouble. If you only behave for internal group reinforcement and position within the group, then you are just playing ego-enhancement games, and not doing the world any good.

The "Republicans" couldn't care less about what any protesters think, and the "Democrats," don't care much. Shouting during their conventions just makes them hate you more, and, as evidenced by the cheering when protesters were beaten in St. Paul, they hate you pretty much anyway.

Enough said. We are entering an age where our entire civilization is at stake. We can choose to foster civilization, or we can choose to foster division. Time will tell what choice we make.
________________________________________________

More information on the convention can be found at Twin Cities Indymedia.

For more pictures of the final day of the convention protests, click here.

Here's something new.

Salon's coverage of Sarah Palin can be found here.

Here's a little free advice from the Beatles. This will help if you want to sing and play along.

Some may remember the late, great Phil Ochs. Lyrics.

Here's some vintage Rolling Stones.Here's the lyrics. Chords & tab.

Can't leave Dylan out. Here's the lyrics, with tab and chords. Here's another. Click here to sing and play along.

Here's another Dylan classic, not my favorite, but pertinent to the predicament (Amen!). Here are the lyrics and chords.

Buffalo Springfield.

Some might remember Barry McGuire, half of the legendary McGuinn and McGuire. The song was written by P.F. Sloan, who is rarely mentioned.

And, to close the circle, the Grateful Dead. This Bob Weir version is a little clearer, sans Jerry, sadly. Here's the lyrics.