Victoria loved them all, including Iran

Posted on December 4, 2011 by oddmanout215

People who follow the news in a superficial way may have read about the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran and said “There they go again, those wild-eyed Islamic radicals. Something should be done about them.”

So it was a nice surprise to see a smidgeon of actual history in a newspaper — an explanation in the NYT for Iran’s deep hostility toward Britain, providing context for the news story:

Britain first cast its imperial eye on Iran in the 19th century. Its appeal was location; it straddled the land route to India. Once established in Iran, the British quickly began investing — or looting, as some Iranians would say. British companies bought exclusive rights to establish banks, print currency, explore for minerals, run transit lines and even grow tobacco.

In 1913, the British government maneuvered its way to a contract under which all Iranian oil became its property. Six years later it imposed an “agreement” that gave it control of Iran’s army and treasury. These actions set off a wave of anti-British outrage that has barely subsided.

Britain’s occupation of Iran during World War II, when it was a critical source of oil and a transit route for supplies to keep Soviet Russia fighting, was harsh. Famine and disease spread as the British requisitioned food for their troops…

Once the war ended, Iran resumed its efforts to install democracy, under the leadership of Mohammed Mossadegh… After he was elected prime minister in 1951, Mr. Mossadegh asked Parliament to take the unimaginable step of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry. It agreed unanimously. That sparked a historic confrontation…

More here.

Posted in arts, history, mainstream media, Politics, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

U.N. envoy: Do Occupy protesters have rights?

Posted on December 4, 2011 by oddmanout215

If we live in the land of the free and all that twaddle, then why do our cops treat protesters as if they’re terrorists rather than fellow citizens? Inquiring minds, including a prominent United Nations official, want to know:

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

“I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order,” he said Thursday. “But on the other hand I also believe that the state — in this case the federal state — has an obligation to protect and promote human rights…”

… La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it’s clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces “as long as that doesn’t severely affect the rights of others…”

“…One of the principles is proportionality,” La Rue said. “The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order — but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger.”

And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don’t work anyway, he said. In Occupy’s case, he said, “disbanding them by force won’t change that attitude of indignation.”

It’s a sad day when a foreign national working in New York City has to state the obvious not only to the U.S. government, which has become more and more repressive since 9/11, but to the majority of U.S. citizens who walk around in a fog, assuming police misconduct toward protesters isn’t the same as misconduct against all of us.

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‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’

Posted on December 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

And I don’t want to ball about like everybody else,
And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
And I won’t say that I feel fine like everybody else…

Ray Davis was writing anthems about not fitting in long before punk became fashionable. This one appeared in summer 1966 on the flip-side of “Sunny Afternoon,” but didn’t make it to America until years later when The Great Lost Kinks Album was released.

Posted in arts, pop music | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Obama tries, but wing-nuts reject his love

Posted on December 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

No irony about the sick state of American politics is funnier than the fact that wing-nuts, no matter how far to the right Barack Obama tilts, continue to vilify him as the Great Satan of socialism and the bleeding-heart champion of the poor and unarmed.

Think about it. Our president approved the Fed’s transfer of vast sums to Wall Street banksters. He watched with apparent indifference as millions lost their jobs and/or homes because so much so-called stimulus money had gone to the banks and corporations. His record on the environment and human rights is appalling.

But the wing-nuts think Obama is a socialist who is trying to take away their guns, an absurdity that the NYT’s Timothy Egan explored yesterday:

When it became clear in the early fall of 2008 that Barack Obama, son of a Kansan and a Kenyan, would be the 44th President of the United States, many citizens rushed to their gun shops, stocked up on ammo and camo, and tried to fortify their nests with all manner of lethal weapons…

… Into the early months of the Obama presidency gun sales went though the roof. A nation of at least 200 million firearms reached for ever more, in a hurry and a frenzy.

And then, nothing. No legislation. No speeches about the ubiquity of guns in the most violent of Western democracies. Obama actually increased gun rights, signing a bill with a rider that allows people to pack loaded and concealed heat in national parks…

… There’s no serious case that President Obama is trying to take people’s guns. Guess what grade the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave Obama after one year in office? He got an “F” for his gun stance, or lack of same. This after the N.R.A. predicted that he would be the most anti-gun president in history..

Obama has betrayed his core supporters. He has bent over backwards to demonstrate how unsympathetic he is on progressive issues and values. He has prostrated himself to Republican uglies such as Mitch McConnell every time he should have taken a principled stand. He has abased himself and made a mockery of the New Deal in hopes of winning the love of “independents” and, yes, wing-nuts.

Obama wants to be the right wing’s new Reagan but, no matter how hard he tries, they still call him Hitler.

Posted in climate change, economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, liar, New York Times, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Frank’s Wild Years’

Posted on December 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife’s forehead…

… he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down payment
on a little two bedroom place
his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey’s Big Mouths
drank ’em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then
Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north
Never could stand that dog

Posted in arts, humor, pop music | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Yo, Dad, I think it’s a hit

Posted on December 2, 2011 by oddmanout215

 

Do you hope to make her see you, fool?
Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?

The Doors didn’t even want to bother with “Hello, I Love You,” it was one of their first songs and they thought it was a throwaway. Jac Holzman, the head of Elektra Records, talked everyone involved into recording it after his 10-year-old son heard the band’s original demo and said, “Dad, I think that’s a hit single.”

The book to read is Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture.

Posted in arts, pop music | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Bush, Obama rolled lucky 7s for banksters

Posted on December 2, 2011 by oddmanout215

Did anyone else see the lame TV movie Too Big To Fail, which dramatized the Fall 2008 financial crisis? If not, you didn’t miss anything honest. It was based on the book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the NYT reporter and Wall Street apologist, and pretended to explain how and why the government loaned the banksters more than $700 billion.

It turns out that the Fed, by March 2009, had sneaked $7.7 trillion in loans to the banks. Here’s Ted Rall on what the government’s largesse did to the rest of us:

… Poor and “near poor” Americans comprise the vast majority of the uninsured, un- and underemployed, and foreclosure victims. If Bush-Obama’s 7-7-7 Plan had gone to each one of these 100 million misérables instead of Citigroup and Bank of America, the IRS would have mailed out 100 million checks for $77,700 each.

This would have paid off a lot of credit cards. Kept millions in their homes, protecting neighborhood property values. Allowed millions to see a doctor. Paid for food.

A lot of the money would have been “wasted” on new cars, Xboxes – maybe even a renovation or two. All of which would have created a buttload of consumer demand.

If you’re a “99er” – one of millions who have run out of unemployment benefits – Obama’s plan for you is 0-0-0. If you’re one of the roughly 20 million homeowners who have lost or are about to lose your house to foreclosure – most likely to a bank using fraudulent loan documents – you get 0-0-0.

If you’re a teacher asking for a raise, or a parent caring for a sick child or parent, or just an ordinary worker hobbling to work on an old car that needs to be replaced, all you’ll get is 0-0-0.

There isn’t any money to help you. We don’t have the budget. We’re broke. You can’t get the bank to call you back about refinancing, much less the attention of your Congressman.

But not if you’re a banker. Bankers get their calls returned. They get anything they want.There’s always a budget for them.

They get 7-7-7.

Footnote: I just read that Sorkin graduated from Scarsdale High School, in Westchester County, NY, one of the highest-income counties in the country. Is it any wonder he’s inclined to write from the perspective of the people who rob us?

Posted in economic collapse, fiction, finance reform bill, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Over there is where the Occupy camp used to be

Posted on December 1, 2011 by oddmanout215

Image by TONY WOOD


Robert Scheer links the Occupy movement to the fight against the sort of corruption embodied by the SEC:

… As Judge [Jed] Rakoff stated, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Citigroup with “a substantial securities fraud” in the sale of a billion dollars’ worth of toxic securities that were designed to fail and which the bank had bet against… Citigroup had already paid fines for four similar scams. The judge observed that “although this would appear tantamount to an allegation of knowing and fraudulent intent, the SEC, for reasons of its own, chose to charge Citigroup only with negligence” despite the far more serious charges called for in securities law.

The failure of the SEC or any other government agency to hold the banks accountable provides the essential justification for citizen action of the sort the Occupy movement has offered…

And this is Scheer describing the situation in downtown Los Angeles, which sounds roughly similar to the situation in my hometown, Philadelphia. Police forces in both cities wiped out highly visible Occupy encampments at the same time:

… Of course the traditional cardboard encampments of the homeless three blocks away, a sprawling and constant feature of life in downtown Los Angeles, remained undisturbed. Sanitation and safety issues are of no concern as long as such manifestations of deep societal inequality are so far from the corridors of power as to be, in effect, invisible.

Posted in City Hall, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Philadelphia, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Bloomberg, the mayor who would be Caesar

Posted on December 1, 2011 by oddmanout215

Have I shown you my legions?

Every time this guy opens his mouth, he proves he’s not only an arrogant plutocrat but also a dangerous creep:

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said the New York Police Department was like his own personal military force during a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to PolitickerNY.

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world,” he said. “I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have.”

Bloomberg was speaking about why he prefers City Hall to the White House. But later in the speech, he raised the possibility that he would seek the presidency. He claimed the executive duties performed by mayors prepared them for the White House better than other political positions.

Bloomberg recently came under rhetorical fire for the NYPD’s actions in Zuccotti Park. When police moved to evict “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, reporters were prevented from witnessing the scene and some were even arrested.

The city also closed airspace in lower Manhattan to prevent news helicopters from taking aerial footage of the police crackdown.

The human rights organizations PEN American Center and PEN International condemned the restrictions on press coverage as “an obvious abridgement of the First Amendment right of all Americans to monitor official actions that clearly carry their own First Amendment concerns.”

Imagine if the well-manicured mayor, who bought himself a third term, were actually to become president and have control over the real army.

Posted in humor, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, weasel | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Howdy, stranger. Every man for himself.

Posted on November 30, 2011 by oddmanout215

Coo coo it’s cold outside. Coo coo it’s cold
outside. Ooo coo coo. Don’t forget your mittens.
Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here? And he
said: Well just take a right where they’re going
to build that new shopping mall, go straight past
where they’re going to put in the freeway, take a
left at what’s going to be the new sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place where
they’re thinking of building that drive-in bank.
You can’t miss it. And I said: This must be the
place. Ooo coo coo.

“Big Science” is the title cut from the first album by Laurie Anderson, the New Yorker who seemed to single-handedly bring “performance art” into the mainstream in the 1980s. But it’s not about science at all. It’s about urban sprawl and self-imposed isolation and phony individualism and the other forces that have killed the sense of community in much of America.

The piece is as funny as it is scary. Anderson uses her electronic instruments to create a landscape as big and empty as a prairie, and her voice is beautifully sardonic. She makes numbness sound sexy.

Posted in arts, humor, mainstream media, pop music | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments