V, Anyone?

'Just wondering if anyone used the link I posted last week to a discussion between William Henry and Whitley Streiber regarding the remake of "V". I was interested in the part of the discussion on the politics reflected in the remake vs. the original, along with Streiber's observations about the corporate agenda, Hollywood, Americans' disappointment with Obama and Streiber's own decision to more or less "drop out" of consumer society.

I hadn't thought about some of the ideas until I heard this.

I'll post the URL again if anyone is interested: http://www.unknowncountry.com/media/index_rev.phtml?cur=474

P.S.
As you might expect, Strieber gets into other, more esoteric, shall I say, ideas that weren't my emphasis here. Please don't let them distract you from the initial ideas.

On that more serious note, in the past week a Seattle police officer was shot while sitting in his patrol car, and as typically occurs in events like this, it was given extensive front page treatment for days, as if the president of the United States was assassinated. Shortly after the memorial service, it was reported the alleged killer was himself critically wounded, shot in the head by police detectives. There was some mystification over what could account for this apparently clean-cut, “classically” featured black man with no felony record, and a student at the University of Washington, to carry out such an act. According to the Seattle Times, police were labeling this as an act of “domestic terrorism.” There was (or so the police said) weaponry in the man’s apartment, and written indications that he was motivated by outrage at police brutality and violence. Why this would motivate anyone to arbitrarily shoot a police officer was unfathomable.

Make no mistake: the killing of this police officer was a cowardly, unconscionable act. The officer was simply picked out at random and shot. The killer was not by all appearances the gang-type that police would automatically single-out for harassment. (unless, of course, you are a black professor at Harvard). But for police who are used to not being held accountable for their own questionable actions, who bristle at any complaint of their use of lethal force, this merely serves as a public relations gift (at least with whites) for further justifying excessive lethal force. And people wonder why someone might believe they are “avenging angels” against an ungoverned force that obeys no laws but its own?

This could be a “teaching” moment for police to understand that there is anger out there that police are not held accountable for excessive force, especially when viewed as unjustified or subject to racial attitudes. But they seem continuously befuddled why an otherwise law-abiding citizen might view police as little more than the instrument of oppression, in the service of the haves against the have-nots, and by extension in the service of whites against non-whites. I noted here a few weeks ago about a “program”—actually more of PR stunt of questionable taste—by Denver police. This so-called racial profiling avoidance tool was as cynical as it was disturbing; police were given “passing” grades if they reacted swiftly enough to a “potential” confrontation—that is killing a suspect if they made a furtive “move” that may (or may not) be “justified” by the possession of an object that might (or might not) be construed as a weapon that may (or may not) put the officer in immediate harm, with apparently considerable leeway on how that is defined.

But none of that really matters, does it? All-white inquests and juries have time and time again either found “justified” or acquitted trigger-happy, paranoid cops merely for the fear that the man they emptied their clips into might (or might not) pose a “threat.” Of course, concerns about the kill first and question the “suspect” later is nothing new; I remember it as the subject of an SNL skit during its first (and best) season that was not necessarily intended to be amusing (when Chevy Chase's sense of social justice infused the show's sensibility) ,and radical groups like the Weather Underground justified their actions in part by police acting like paid assassins against black activists. Whites in general seem to believe that “collateral damage” in police operations—that is, killing innocent, unarmed minorities--is the price that must be paid keep people “safe.” The problem is minorities are the ones who usually have to pay that price for white people’s paranoia—the “price” they pay for the effects of discrimination against other groups.

All too often, we hear of cases like the following: There was a local case a few years ago, where a woman called police one evening, claiming that a man had knocked on her door, and then she didn’t know where he went from there; perhaps he was trying to break-in. The police arrived, but they didn’t see anyone around the house. But there was a park nearby; they decided to see if anyone was there. While “investigating” they saw a man get into his car in the parking lot. Things get a little muddled after that; all we know for sure is that there was a man left dead by police gunfire. The story in the newspaper didn’t identify the man, nor was there a clear motive for the police killing him, other than he might have been a “suspect”—another unarmed one, at that.

Mark, thank you for your words on police! What concerns me is that I hear cases or stories of new police officers being recruited from our military. Many of these officers have PTSD. I try to avoid the police as much as can. In our fascist-Nazi America we will never receive the true reports of the killing of a human being. The words of hatred from Limbaugh and others are now part of the fascist-Nazi American lexicon.

Here are some of my words when W (warmonger) was president. These words may be applied to many persons in power, such as police officers, CEOs from health insurance companies, etc. The checklist is insightful.

I watched Television Ontario (TVO). The program title was “The Corporation – The Pathology of Commerce”. The program mentioned that the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person than surely a person is a person. The program highlighted a checklist for mental disorders. Since a corporation can be considered a person, the mental disorder checklist can be applied to people as well.

Here is the checklist.
1. Callousness toward people
2. Impersonal relationships with people
3. Disregard for the safety of others
4. Deceitfulness
5. Incapacity to experience guilt
6. Failure to comply toward social norms to benefit people

From the checklist corporations displayed a psychopathic mental disorder. If we use the same checklist for our two highest leaders, then we would have to conclude that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney display a mental disorder. It would be my perception that the above two men are unfit to be president and vice-president, respectively. They hold too much power for men who have a possible mental disorder.

Others persons in power can display the same checklist and possess a mental disorder.

Thom, on various occasions, has suggested that sociopaths are running our institutions or as I prefer to call them our asylums.

Uri Avnery is another of my favorite writers.

http://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2009/11/08/a-line-in-the-sand/

The above article solidifies again that fascist-Nazi America is an evil, vile, and wicked nation.

Thanks Gerald - we have a call into Dahr to see if he's available today....

But two Democrats, Reps. Brian Baird of Washington and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, surprised House leaders with their “no” votes. Both lawmakers are widely viewed as being on the liberal side of the political spectrum and represent districts that are considered safely in their hands.

Baird said he opposed the legislation because Congress doesn’t yet know how the bill would affect health-care premiums for people who already have insurance. Baird, who has written his own health-care bill, also said he was upset that Democratic leaders didn’t allow lawmakers to offer more amendments on the House floor.

“For a matter of this importance, and on which reasonable people can and do disagree, there ought to be more opportunity granted for amendments on both sides,” he said in a statement.

Kucinich said he voted against the legislation because it wouldn’t go far enough to curtail the power of private health insurance companies. In a statement entitled, “Why I Voted NO,” Kucinich said: “Insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.”

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/11/08/why-some-democrats-voted-agains...

Richard,

I read somewhere, from someone on my Facebook friends, that actually the Democrats engineered the vote such that those in conservative districts could go home and act as though they were against reform so as to appease their districts, however they were actually for it.

Paul Krugman today:

"Paranoia Strikes Deep

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?

But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.

Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and “values,” only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security.

But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

...the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1

@ Gerald Socha -

Well, you truly amaze me, anyway.

Do you REALLY think that the phrase you CONSTANTLY repeat (fascist-Nazi America is an evil, vile, and wicked nation) encourages calm, thoughtful discourse? Seems to me that your idea is that no "fix" of any kind exists for our nation today, outside of violent revolution.

I disagree - and if that makes me an evil, vile, wicked, fascist-Nazi in your eyes, so be it.

I am tired of the stampede to appease the recessivist minded folk of America to the detriment of Americans and America. Three thoughts:

1. World-wide, the political party which installs a public healthcare system historically enjoys decades' long control of their nation.

2. The bill the House passed was little more than health INSURANCE reform and has little to do with actual healthCARE reform.

3. Over the last seventy years in America, the ‘tweaks’ to progressive programs have been towards the recessivist and not towards the liberal/progressive.

This B.S. is going to haunt AND hunt us.

Richard,

I recently have been thinking that, in many ways, the U.S. has been a battleground between England (the royalists/conservatives/corporatists) and France (the revolutionaries/progressives/populists) since it was a colony. When people laugh at and ridicule anything French, they are actually sneering at the idea of democracy and power in "the people's" hands.

This is our eternal struggle, though it does look as if the corporatists have gained a lot of ground here and in the world.

If this is One Nation Under God, why is Home Depot open for business on the Sabbath...and what does it say about any someone that sells their labor there?

@Quark:

Welcome to the club.

I believe that a big part of issues are that America has largely become a nation without history and rhetorical skills (Thank you, Ronald Reagan). The Labor history thingy is just a symptom. The largely interchangeable use of socialism/fascism/communism/democratic with zero regard for the actual definitions and concepts by the recessivists is a symptom. The rampant use of jingoism and circular and inverted logic steams is a symptom. This is why public education is continuously under assault here. Only in lack of facts can insane lie become truth . . . Where is our George Orwell?

I still hold strongly to the belief that in any political arguement, the first one to characterize the other as a "Nazi" loses

@ mstaggerlee:

Word.

i love the discourse that this site provides! Getting real discussion should be in the mainstream media if we really were a democracy.

To pimp another --- Noam Chomsky - I was listening to audio of Class War The attack on Working People-- he talked about the political slogan of CHANGE and how it was reconstituted from Roosevelt. However, he also said it wasn't happening ---- this was in 1994 about Clinton. Are we still there??

• Eliminates the “doughnut hole”: The House legislation would immediately start closing the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole, which forces those in Medicare to pay 100 percent of their medications once they have purchased more than $2,700 worth of drugs. About 3.4 million Americans fell into the doughnut hole in 2007, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Because lore it is all disingenuous attempts to win votes to get into power. A well educated society would not allow this type of unchallenged thinking. And the fact this inconsistency in logic is actually taken seriously in our country is a measure of how well we are educating or simply empowering people who know better. I was ecstatic to hear labor radio report today and the passage of the law in Wisconsin to include labor history in the class room. (You had better believe we cover it in my own- )

OH MY!!!! John Ensign homeless! At least, he has his government run healthcare to see him through . . .

Source: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/ensign_no_longer_at_c_...

http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/house/1/887

Worth a look see . . .

@Richard

It seems to me that your thinking and comments have an aspect of ivory tower utopianism at their root, and you employ ration and logic to reach your ideals. That is not in anyway meant to disparage. If that comes somewhere near to your truth, then you have my sympathy and support. Sympathy, because so many don't give a s@*! and are so blissfully unaware in any case...(At times it can seem as if you are constantly throwing pearls before swine).....and....support, because I think you are spot on. Accuracy in communicating and cognitive linguistics are crucial to progress in moving people coherently.

@ THOM: Ned Lamount is looking at running for Connecticut's Governor.