May 2010 archive

May ’70: 3. May Day & Bobby Seale

Me, I don’t have much memory of Nixon’s April 30, 1970 speech announcing the invasion of Cambodia. It could have been because nothing the bastard did would have surprised me by that point, but more likely it’s just that I was already on my way to New Haven to see about Bobby.

That would be Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther Party, who was facing trial in the case of some Connecticut Panthers accused of murdering a member they thought was a police informant. A national call had gone out for a May Day demonstration to defend Bobby, and thousands of young radicals from around the country and especially the Northeast were en route. We had a couple of dozen from NYU’s Uptown campus with us.

Lemme step back here to set a little context. NYU today is a bigtime, self-promoting academic powerhouse whose relentless pursuit of lower Manhattan real estate for expansion has earned them the hatred of all clear-thinking New Yorkers. Back then, NYU was a bit cheesier, with a campus in Greenwich Village and a satellite one in the Bronx. (The Uptown campus was abandoned by the racist NYU administration later in the 1970s when it found the West Bronx was becoming, let’s say, too colorful, and is now the home of Bronx Community College).

We had a pretty good SDS chapter at NYU Uptown and saw no reason to change anything just because the national organization had imploded the previous summer. (In fact, at one point we decided the chapter head, Lon E. Thud, must be National Secretary of SDS-nobody else was doing it, after all). NYU had given me a “compulsory leave of absence for academic reasons” at the end of the previous school year, a tactical mistake on their part. I was still a registered student and, as such, could not be excluded from the campus.

Chalk it up as Incidental Costs — 4 Days Profit is a Bargain

March 24, 2009

RIKI OTT:  […] Exxon promised to make us whole. You know, “You’re lucky you have Exxon.” We hadn’t even gone to court by 1993. We had fish run collapses, bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, you know, domestic violence spikes, substance abuse spikes. The town was just unraveling. And we were waiting for somebody to help us: the State of Alaska, the federal government, the court system, Exxon. Nobody. And–

AMY GOODMAN: There were 33,000 plaintiffs.

RIKI OTT: There are 32,000 claims, 22,000 plaintiffs.

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that is not just an environmental disaster, but a crisis in democracy.

RIKI OTT: It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here?

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: How many animals died?

Riki Ott, author, community activist, marine toxicologist and former fisherma’am. She is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.  

On This Day in History: May2

On this day in 1933, Loch Ness Monster sighted Although legend of a monster living in the Loch Ness had existed for over 1500 years, the earliest account from 500 A.D., it was a news report in the Inverness Courier that sparked the modern day legend. The Loch is the largest body of fresh water in Great Britain that has a depth of 800 ft and is 23 miles long. In 1933, a new road had been built around the lake with great views. The story of a couple who had observed “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface”, that was fueled by the Courier using the word “monster” and a reward of 20,000 pound sterling, sparked a media darling. In 1934, a photograph of a creature with a long neck surfaced, again, increasing speculation that this creature was a survivor of long extinct aquatic plesiosaurs. The photo was revealed to be a hoax in 1994.

Since then there have been both amateur and professional sightings and studies. The have been inconclusive yet tantalizing reports of large unidentifiable objects moving on the bottom of the lake. Using sonar and photography in 19, the Boston’s Academy of Applied Science produced a photo that ‘appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature”.  

Don’t Drink the Water

http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/

In light of this “emergency” the “news” featured video footage of ONE as in a singular worker grinding a giant pipe clamp.  Must be state cutbacks.  

Docudharma Times Sunday May 2




Sunday’s Headlines:

Police Discover Car Bomb in Times Square and Clear Area

David Simon: Katrina and all that jazz

USA

Oil spill threatens Gulf region’s ecosystem and fishing, tourism and shipping industries

Changes to key Guantanamo evidence innocent, officer says

Europe

Greece erupts in violent protest as citizens face a future of harsh austerity

The private trauma of Constable Lock, quiet hero of the Iranian embassy siege

Middle East

American drones deployed to target Yemeni terrorist

Arab nations back Mideast peace talks

Asia

Hot on the heels of Imelda Marcos

PM warns Thai reds face ‘losses’

Africa

Singer Youssou N’Dour challenges Senegal’s ‘autocratic’ leader

Top UN man investigates massacre claims in DR Congo

Latin America

Bolivia nationalises energy firms

Late Night Karaoke

OPEN THREAD

GLBT Nation

This comes before any other consideration.  For too long, we have suffered in the shadows, and, at best, incorporated obliquely as part of a greater whole.  We are not a people.  It is time for us, in the face of our obliteration and lack of consideration, to be, a people.

I was posting a series of posts on facebook, and this came to me.

If you are GLBT, the fact is, you are laughed at.  You are taken for granted.  You are mocked, and ridiculed, even by the people who claim to need you, and to want you as part of your coalition.

You are DESPISED.  You are LAUGHED AT.  And, what is so ironic about this is, you are despised, laughed at, mocked and ridiculed, despite everything having been taken away from you, that you need nothing from these people who are mocking, laughing, and ridiculing you.

If we do not get justice, and swift, severe, uncompromising justice .. then …

It is time for a GLBT nation.

It is time for us to start seeing ourselves — and I would argue globally — as a people, as a distinct (how shall I say it), uh, world.

Gay people are persecuted in China.  We are persecuted in Uganda.  We are persecuted in the United States.

And the irony is, people in BRITAIN — BRITAIN, for god’s sake — they see our individuality and our value as human beings, despite their country’s greater acceptance of our civil rights, as more important of attention than the people in power do in our own country.

If you are an American, Obama and the Democrats laugh at you.  Really, they do.  They issue trite speeches on your behalf, but have no intention of actually doing anything for you, or even in exchange for your vote.  In other words, they don’t treat you seriously .. this is the same, politically, as laughing at you, and Obama himself has mocked you, personally, for trying to hold him to account.

If you like being mocked, ridiculed, and taken advantage of, then carry on.

They see you as being so unimportant they won’t even count you.  Oh, yes, they argue about counting married couples and whether you should be included in that — but as individual GLBT people, worthy of being counted?  This is how meaningless your entire existence is to them.  And these are the people, putatively, who care about your civil rights more than anyone else in this country.

We have tried to exercise our influence within the existing big tents.  What I would argue is this is, has been, and continues to fail.

We need to go beyond political parties.  If out of extreme necessity if nothing else, we need to be a global union.  In so many words, whispered, a phantom — the beginnings of a NATION.

The people who mock, despise and ridicule you, at the same time, and in a very singlehandedly sinister fashion, not only want, but demand your vote, your donation and your work on behalf of their particular political agenda.

Call it a union, if you must.  If you will.  But we must join together.  We also must show the way.  The corporatists threaten to engulf us all.  The corporatists know no nation, no national boundaries, but they hope to control us all.

We have to band together for the common good.  We have very different political philosophies.  We are Republicans.  We are Democrats.  We are — as I am — Greens, and others.  And we are Chinese, Americans, Ugandans, but we all live on the good green planet earth.

And we are in the minority.  Our cultures have adopted a philosophy of despising us, as outcasting us, as ridiculing us — as lepers, until they need us.

But we are all GLBT people.

My Drill Nation

People try to make us drill,

Just to try to get a gill.

The things they do look awful bad

I hope it stops before it gets more mad.

May One – Rerun/Recycled/New President/FooledAgain

A reminder that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.

I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.

Herewith, a recycled essay:

May 1.

A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.

May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.

So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).

Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.

Festival name Date Sun’s Position

Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov)

Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb)

Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May)

Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug)

There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:

   * St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)

   * Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)

   * Lammas (1 Aug)

   * Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)

Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.

It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five seven years now. But who’s counting?

UPDATE: we’ve been lobbing explosives into Afghanistan since Clinton’s time. The definition of insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result. Our MIC PWOT is insane – but it keeps their funding flowing while we lose our jobs and homes.

It’s 2010 now and nothing has really changed that much, has it? I hope you enjoyed this May Day. It’s a day for Working Class Heroes.

There’s more:

DISTRACTIONS

With all that`s been going on, a few distractions may help in dealing with the normal stresses of everyday life.

For those who were there & remember what to me was a major formative time of my life, I`ll start off with the ladies of the sixties, their colorful scarves, the hopes we all had in peace & love.

The world was ours.

For those who weren`t there at the time, these images may take you on a trip to the past, which really still is around in the present.

You simply have to look around & see it.

It only takes to be distracted from what you`re shown, to see the things that are.

OH, THE SIXTIES

 4 DSCN7518

End Big Oil’s Billions in Government Subsidies NOW!

     In the face of HUGE profits made by Big Oil it is time to stop subsidizing them with taxpayer money NOW. The American people are suffering. The Big Oil firms and their extremely wealthy executives are not. With the deficits left over from the Bush/Cheney Administration still harming our nation, the easiest way to cut back wasteful government spending would be to stop subsidizing immensely profitable Big Oil Corporations.

     Americans are spending nearly $3 billion more on gasoline due to higher gasoline prices. And taxpayers are spending billions of dollars in tax subsidies to Big Oil. These subsidies will cost the U.S. government about $3 billion next year in lost revenue and nearly $20 billion over the next five years. The next dollars we spend should go to companies that provide genuinely clean and safe fuel. The costs are too high.

thinkprogress.org

    More below the fold

Cost

Anger and hate are very expensive.  Trust me, I know.  You will sit in your father’s house, the same father who wasn’t there for you, for 20 years, and listen to him say, I just don’t know how to live with a fag.

This is expensive.  It’s expensive for your ideal of yourself.  You want to think of yourself as more than a set of genitals, that wants genitals of the same type.

You will get angry.  You will remember telling your father, you have tunnel vision, and, in the end, dad, this will cost you.  Then, twenty or thirty years later, forgive — like flipping a switch.  Yet, remembering.

You will listen to your father tell you, 20 years later, he doesn’t remember using that word.  That word, that destroys everything you think of as yourself, as just another fag.  Not a son.

Twenty years later, you will tell your father, you welcome the chance to have a relationship with him, only now, his acknowledgement of you as his son must now be unequivocal.

Anger and hate are very expensive.  Sometimes, so expensive, you will and must at least be willing to sacrifice your only remaining parent on the alter of exigency.

Bloodless bigotry is also expensive.

It will cost you your college degree.  It will cost you your self respect.  It will cost you everything.

But, don’t be gay.  Don’t like people of the same plumbing as you, or it will cost you everything, and your dissatisfaction with that lack of self respect will cost you more.

You will stare into the blue eyes of your father, the eyes that are exactly the same as yours, who, twenty years ago, make it impossible for you to realize your dreams, and understand, it’s not about him.

In the end, it has to cost.  In the end, it will cost you fear, self loating, and self disrespect.

And then, it will still cost you more.

It will cost you understanding it wasn’t about him, or them, and nobody can make your choices for you, but you.  You will understand, that you have to hold the world up, not just for yourself but for everyone who comes in your place.

In the end, you will have to understand, nothing will change unless you make it hurt.  And, this hurting has to come without anger.  You will arrive in the place of the bloodless bigotry foisted upon you in the first place.  You will have to understand a life without mercy, that costs you everything, because your oppressors, although very diffenly minded, arrived at the very same place in a very different way, the way without cost, without blood, without loss, the way of callousness, the way of not understanding and not willing to live and let live.

Then, twenty years later, you will stare into the blue eyes of those who did unto you and hear them say, “I don’t remember.  I would never say that”.

This will cost, it will go on costing.  We will pay, and pay, and then pay some more.  And, you have to balance.  You have to listen to the blue eyes of the person who did this to you, and hear him say I don’t remember, I wouldn’t do this, I’m sorry you feel this.  You will have to own your anger.

And then you will have to find discipline.  You will have to learn to forgive, yet understand the cost.

In the end, you have to forgive, but you have to master fear.  The fear of that same loathing and lack of self respect that have been forced upon you for twenty years.  Your inner lion.

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