i_rabbit

The protest at the Westlake Center in Seattle yesterday went smoothly. I witnessed one arrest. It was an eclectic gathering of activist groups ranging from the Revolutionary Communist Party at one end of the spectrum to Earth First! activists at the other. All were in agreement however, that this administration does not represent the best interests of this country, or the world.

Some interesting differences in local news coverage this morning. The Seattle PI ran a front page article and photo while the Times did not. How they chose to portray the event was also strikingly different. The PI choose to focus on the ‘Anarchists on Black’ while the Times chose ‘Lovely Ladies in Pink’.

Which protest were you at?

(or)

Euphoria vanquishes General Ignorance. ~ zentences

I’ll be heading out at noon to protest, e tu?

The aftermath…

The driver called at 11:51am to tell me that he had a flat and was waiting for a new truck to arrive. He finally showed up at 1:00pm and the new machine checked out OK, all systems GO. I proceeded to move earth around at 2:00pm or so. The low cinder block wall came out easily in nice 3′ sections which got dozed to the back of the lot like a giant game of Tetris™. Once the wall was out I began on the Sumac roots, which proved to be stubborn. During one pass the boom knocked the old fence back snapping it in half and necessitating the removal of much wire before I could pull it down with the machine. Once the wire was removed I hopped back in the saddle and started pulling with the bucket. As the fence collapsed a post got in a supply hose, snapping it off at the fitting, and spraying hydraulic fluid all over the place. Work ground to a halt once again as snow began to fall. I called the rental company and explained the situation. They were apologetic for all the technical difficulties, waived all delivery fees, and said they would deliver yet another machine tomorrow morning.

Fence pulling play-by-play:

Surveying the fence situation after pulling stumps.

I know, I’ll use the machine to pull it down!

It worked!

But snapped a hydrualic fitting in the process. GRRRrrr…

Stay tuned for Take three…

The Takeuchi TB16 1.5 Ton Mini-Excavator goes right but not left so they took it back. I’m drinking coffee and waiting for another to be delivered. It is the cold today and the ground is frozen for the first quarter-inch or so.

Welcome to Bollywood

Tomorrow I am getting one of these delivered so-as to begin project MonsterGarage in earnest. A 25′x4′x2′ raised planter bed that runs between the house and shop along the south property line must be excavated. It contains roots of the Sumac that I cut down last year. I have been meaning to remove them once and for all for some time. The side-sewer must run under where the planter bed is now so it is all coming up. It will mean pouring a new retaining wall when finished, and probably rebuilding the fence too, but it is all good. I get to play with heavy machinery - YaY!

Forwarded from my inbox to you with loving concern:

“No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.”

Over the next week, the Not In Our Name statement will carry out an audacious project to puncture the whole shameful celebration of war, greed, and intolerance that will surround the second inauguration of the Bush regime.

Our aim is to publish across the nation a NEW statement of conscience (text below), signed by this nation’s recognized voices of conscience. Bush does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name. And the whole world needs to hear that.

We want this statement to ring throughout all forms of media, and reach every part of the country. In this country, free speech is very expensive. But think what a difference it will make if tens of thousands of us contribute, and a few who are able contribute tens of thousands.

We have but four days left to raise the necessary funds. If you would like to see this statement in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle and many others large and small, then you need to go to Not In Our Name statement web site at www.nion.us, sign this statement, and make your on-line contribution.

Together we can make this happen!

Not In Our Name

George W. Bush is about to be inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. Let it not be said that the people in the United States silently acquiesced in the face of this shameful coronation of war, greed, and intolerance. He does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name.

No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.

In our name, the Bush government claims to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq on baldly false pretenses, raining down unspeakable destruction, horror, misery and death to as many as 100,000 people. It destroys entire cities in the name of so-called democratic elections, while intimidating and disenfranchising tens of thousands of African-American voters at home. It holds an entire nation hostage, forcing on its people torture, hunger, and unimaginable privation and humiliation.

In our name, it holds in contempt both international law and world opinion. It has carried out torture and detentions without trial all over the world and proposes new assaults on our rights of privacy, speech and assembly. It has already stripped the rights of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the US, denying them legal counsel, holding them without cause, stigmatizing, and deporting tens of thousands.

Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily? But under this government anyone can be declared an “enemy combatant” by Presidential decree with no meaningful redress or independent review, by a President whose rationale for concentrating power in the executive branch is “trust me.” Its choice for Attorney General is the legal architect of torture from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib.

As terrifying “trial balloons” are floated about invasions of Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, about leaving the United Nations, about new “lifetime detention” policies, there is no telling what further crimes this government will commit in our name against nations or individuals deemed to stand in the way of its goal of unquestioned world supremacy.

The Bush government seeks to impose a narrow, intolerant, and political form of Christian Fundamentalism as government policy. We must face the fact that this extremist movement is no longer on the margins of society. It aims to strip women of their reproductive rights, to drive gay people from public life back into the closet. It seeks to drive a wedge between spiritual experience and scientific truth, smugly denying thousands of years of human scientific achievement.

We believe all people must be free to find meaning and sustenance in whatever form of religious or spiritual belief they choose. But we will not surrender our right to think to extremists and the President in whom they have their strongest ally. The Grand Canyon was not created by a biblical flood. Women are not human incubators. Breast cancer is not retribution for having an abortion. AIDS is not a punishment from God. Evolution happened. Religion can never be compulsory. This government may claim to make its own reality, but we will not allow it to make ours.

Millions of us worked, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, did everything we could to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. It was a massive effort, bringing forth new energy, new organization, and new commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to let our failure to stop Bush in this way lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad mobilization of people committed to a fairer world, a freer world, a more peaceful world must move forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now.

The movement against the war in Vietnam never won a presidential election. But it blocked troop trains, closed induction centers, marched, spoke to people door to door — and it helped to stop a war. The Civil Rights Movement never tied its star to a presidential candidate; it sat in, freedom rode, fought legal battles, filled jailhouses — and it changed the face of a nation.

We must change the political reality of this country by mobilizing the tens of millions who know in their heads and hearts that the Bush regime’s “reality” is nothing but a nightmare for humanity. This will require courage and creativity, mass actions and individual moments of courage. We must come together whenever we can, and we must act alone whenever we have to. This will require extraordinary acts from ordinary people.

We give our love and support to the soldiers who have refused to fight in this immoral war, and we pledge to create community that backs courageous acts of resistance. We applaud the librarians who have refused to turn over lists of our reading, the high school students who demand to be taught evolution, those who brought to light torture by the U.S. military, and the massive protests that voiced international opposition to the war on Iraq. We stand with the tens of millions of people throughout the world who fight every day for the right to create their own future.

It is our duty to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.

Among the initial signers are:

Janet Abu-Lughod, professor emerita, New School
Michael Albert
Edward Asner
Michael Avery, president, National Lawyers Guild
Rosalyn Baxandall, chair, American Studies/Media and Communications, State University of New York at Old Westbury
William Blum, author, US foreign policy
Judith Butler, author and professor, University of California at Berkeley
Daniel Ellsberg, former Defense and State Department official
Jorie Graham, Harvard University
Abdeen M. Jabara, past president, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
C. Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!
Staughton Lynd
Reynaldo F. Mac¡as, chair, National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies
Robin Morgan, author and activist
Jill Nelson, writer
Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center - CUNY
Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter (Bulworth)
Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights
Matthew Rothschild, editor, The Progressive magazine
Luc Sante, writer
Naomi Wallace
Howard Zinn, historian

You may sign this statement at http://www.nion.us/READ_AND_SIGN.htm. You may also e-mail your name, how you would like to be identified and your state of residence to sign@nion.us. (Personal contact information will not be shared or utilized for any other purpose.)

The suggested financial contribution is $200, but larger contributions are encouraged. Please contribute through Pay Pal at the www.nion.us web site. Checks should be made out to Not In Our Name and mailed to Not In Our Name, 305 W. Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013. If you are mailing a check, please let us know by e-mail so we know how much newspaper space we can reserve.

Please join us won’t you.

YaY! I just noticed that zentences is back online. For a while I was seeing only “connection refused” when querying the oracle. I will sleep more soundly tonight knowing that balance has been restored to the ‘net.

Dave Pollard has an excellent essay on his site regarding Neil Postman’s book (published twenty years ago) Amusing Ourselves to Death. In it he succinctly analyzes modern media and its cause-effect relationship with the ‘masses’.

I post this here because it is getting to the heart of my recent bout of cynicism. I encourage any of you who know me to read this. It explains, in articulate ways that are not my forte, how I too feel both disconnected from the ‘real world’, and manipulated, as a result of corporate sponsored media. He also points out how blogging might be an answer.

“Blogs and other public forums are clearly filling a void that the broadcast media of the day have created, and allowing a small but growing minority to rediscover the skill of written exposition, and to engage in an awkward but occasionally remarkable online public discourse.”

His comments about 9/11 and the recent tsunamis in South Asia strike a chord and resonate with my own gut reaction to the events, and the media frenzy that responded. Especially after listening to NPR this morning when they interviewed the head of a relief agency (unfortunately I did not catch which one for reference) and he was talking about how water was at the top of the list of critical supplies but that it was prior to the tsunamis as well, and that nearly 100,000 people died per year in the region due to an unhealthy water supply. Shouldn’t that be in the news and part of the rebuilding efforts?

North Korea has recently begun a state-sponsored campaign to eliminate bad hair days altogether.

From the BBC article:

“People who wear other’s style of dress and live in other’s style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin” ~ Nodong Sinmun newspaper

“Hair is a very important issue that shows the people’s cultural standards and mental and moral state” ~ Minju Choson newspaper

What would Jeebus do?