Subbing for Malloy Thursday

*

Kewl!

_______________________________________________________
I Will Not Obsess! I Will Not Obsess! I Will Not Obsess!

Are we going underwater again ? ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

By: Carl Ginsburg Wednesday June 18, 2008 10:00 am

You asked for it, You got it! Toyota! So what do you get? According to a 65-page report by the National Labor Committee, "The Toyota You Don't Know," Toyota is engaged in serious human rights violations. The Toyota Motor Company is linked to human trafficking and sweatshop abuse and to Burmese dictators.. Toyota employs 10,000 low-wage temps... is accused of unpaid overtime and serious overwork. The world’s No. 1 car maker is cited by the ILO for repression in denying freedom of association. And Toyota has helped to usher in lower wages and benefits across the U.S. auto industry. Anybody been to Detroit lately?

...more

___
bluerootsradio
mb
cub reporter for tD NewsBusters

...I guess I can always listen to Clout. :)

See ya in a few minutes!

Heavy black clouds and very windy!

May have to shut down again. Jeeesh. Don't they know that Sam's going to be on?

otherwise, noisy!

Sam, don't forget to record the show for VOD!!!!

?

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

*

Sam, don't forget to record the show for VOD!!!!

I get the first hour of Sam on my local radio WCPT. It goes off air at 9 PM CDT in the Summer.

I didn't know that!

I am sure their web link will probably play the rest.

It's all in your head!!!

Go marry a beer heiress already.

joggling and toggling between two computers and several windows..............

awesome intro...spot on

someone, record it

I think Sam just said, its not recording for the VOD.

BLUE DOG RED - is breathing at the moment, the bartender will let you know when the time is right for him to start pouring. Goblets will be passed around.

Reality. TV. Two more reasons to read.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
---Ray Bradbury

Showing 144 viewers @ 13 past the hour.
___
bluerootsradio

i've missed that

What technology Sam is playing with,

Who Sam is talking about (or to),

Which stories Sam is investigating,

these will be THE NEXT BIG THING.

Radio executives, take note! You need Sam to put you ahead of the others.

Or caviar!

Whiners

Yes, we do have Blue Dog Red. It's served in a chilled Mason jars.

bluerootsradio

Hurray, it's SAM! Super opening.

Damn! I was just whining down!

McCain camp tries to link McCain to Colombian hostage release.
Last week, when Colombia infiltrated the FARC to successfully free 15 hostages, Fox News falsely tried to tie the rescue to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) visit to the country. On McCain’s official blog yesterday, Michael Goldfarb glibly insinuated that McCain’s leadership led to the rescue:

Obama’s running on his judgment, so it seems fair to point out that he hasn’t even left the country and he’s already causing a diplomatic row. Meanwhile, McCain goes to Colombia and a bunch of hostages are freed from a terrorist group in a daring raid. Read into that what you will.

Yesterday, McCain (jokingly?) told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that “I’m happy to tell you that I orchestrated the rescue of those hostages.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/10/mccain-camp-tries-to-link-mccain-to-...

The Bar Owner had part 3 of root canal today and has a migraine.
AND met w/her builder.
Best part of the day started with Sammy.

Reality. TV. Two more reasons to read.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
---Ray Bradbury

My mom and my brother and his family are watching the show!

...that was your bestest opener ever. You had good material. :)

Will move to Dubai to their lost kingdom. But who will be king? PS Leave our money behind.

But you have to pay $60 a year to watch him.

___
bluerootsradio

I never believed in the 'Merican Dream' But I've had nightmares.

He just takes a long needed luxury exile, I mean vacation...isn't the money they stole from us freeing?

I'll use his own words (that he used in a "straw man" against Clinton a few years ago. He's "pathetic".

sam's on...i got my internet back...it's 6.30 in vegas...i'm gonna have indian food 2nite...

HEY MY BLOGGAH !

afraid to type--seems to cut off your voice, from time to time....

or, it's my whine?

i need a new pair of shoes

Now fer God's sakes stop whining Sam. *snark*

!

(one more fer good measure)

What did ya do, marry a beer heiress or something? Glad yer back. :)

ßLOW HERE, fella!'

How're you doing? Finally got the tubes again I see!

Sing This To Yourself
© 2008 Jake La Botz

The rawest, saddest, acoustic album ever made. 11 Sordid Tales of Human Misery and Redemption.

Listen to it here and BUY IT - You will never regret this purchase!

Hey Maggies Boy. Good to see you. I haven't had a chance to stop by your place in a while.

I love the smell of Impeachment in the morning.

chArlie!

no, i retired and love a man who's good with the ponies!

i have missed u peeps! thot of u often and have been oxygen starved.

Harry Reid laid it out on the Senate floor:

"[T]his legislation needs more work. That is why I oppose it, and why I am committed to working with a new President to improve it.

"Congress should not wait until the 2012 expiration to improve this bill. I will work to ensure that Congress revisits FISA well before 2012, informed by the oversight that will be conducted in the coming months by the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and by the reports of the Inspectors General.

"Next year, for example, Congress will be required to revisit a number of provisions of the Patriot Act. That may provide a suitable occasion to review the related issues in this FISA bill.

This administration, despite its weakness, somehow is able to raise the spectre of being as they say "soft on terrorism" and unfortunately Democrats who can be so strong on domestic issues somehow collapse, and that's exactly what happened. This is a terrible piece of legislation. It's one of the greatest assaults on the Constitution, I think, in the history of our country. We are going to have to fix it but it is a dark hour for the Constitution....

Complicity, Harry... they are therefore just as guilty.

..no worries buddy! It's been pretty dead over there ever since YB took off for Africa. We pretty much blog here during RadioNation.

Good to read ya!

___
bluerootsradio

I've really missed the Sunday shows.....

Is half glassed.

Tell them I said hi.

I love the smell of Impeachment in the morning.

Watermelon: A Natural Viagra?
Researcher Says Popular Summer Fruit May Have Viagra-Like Effect on Blood Vessels

By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Medical News

Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD

Latest Mens Health NewsLow Iron Levels Cut Cancer Risk in Men With PAD
Dad's Age Plays Role in Fertility
Erections: Use 'Em or Lose 'Em
Watermelon: A Natural Viagra?
Hormone Replacement for Men: Pros, Cons
Want More News? Sign Up for MedicineNet Newsletters!
July 1, 2008 — Men hoping for some fireworks in their love life this Fourth of July may want to skip the burgers and beer at the barbecue and eat plenty of watermelon.

Watermelon may be a natural Viagra, says a researcher. That's because the popular summer fruit is richer than experts believed in an amino acid called citrulline, which relaxes and dilates blood vessels much like Viagra and other drugs meant to treat erectile dysfunction (ED).

"We have known that watermelon has citrulline," says Bhimu Patil, PHD, director of the Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University, College Station. Until recently, he tells WebMD, scientists thought most of the citrulline was in the watermelon rind. "Watermelon has more citrulline in the edible part than previously believed," he says.

How could watermelon be a natural Viagra? The amino acid citrulline is converted into the amino acid arginine, Patil says. "This is a precursor for nitric oxide, and the nitric oxide will help in blood vessel dilation."

So, the burning question: How much watermelon does it take?

"That is a good question," Patil says. Unfortunately, "I don't have an answer for that."

He does know that a typical 4-ounce serving of watermelon (about 10 watermelon balls) has about 150 milligrams of citrulline. But he can't say how much citrulline is needed to have Viagra-like effects.

He's hopeful that someone will pick up on his research and study the fruit's effect on penile erections.

Watermelon's Viagra-Like Effects
On hearing about the Texas finding, Irwin Goldstein, MD, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, was underwhelmed. Suggesting a man feast on watermelon to boost performance, he says, "would be the equivalent of someone dropping a beer bottle in Minneapolis, where the Mississippi River starts, and hoping to see it make an impact on someone in New Orleans."

"To say that watermelon is Viagra-like is sort of fun," says Goldstein. "But to even vaguely hope that eating watermelon will alleviate ED is misleading."

"The vast majority of Americans produce enough arginine," adds Goldstein, medical director of Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, San Diego, and clinical professor of surgery, University of California San Diego School of Medicine. "Men with ED are not deficient in arginine."

Though arginine is required to make nitric oxide, and nitric oxide is required to dilate blood vessels and have an erection, "that doesn't mean eating something that is rich in citrulline will make enough arginine that it will lead to better penile erections," Goldstein says.

Goldstein has served as a consultant for many companies that make ED drugs.

Calling watermelon a natural Viagra is "clearly premature," says Roger Clemens, DrPH, adjunct professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a spokesman for the Institute of Food Technologists.

Clemens studied the amino acid arginine himself, researching a supplement to improve vascular flow for patients with hardening of the arteries or atherosclerosis. He has since abandoned that line of research, he says.

It can require a lot of watermelon to boost blood levels of arginine, he adds. In a study published in 2007 in Nutrition, he says, volunteers who drank three 8-ounce glasses of watermelon juice daily for three weeks boosted their arginine levels by 11%.

Watermelon is low in calories and provides potassium and the phytonutrients lycopene and beta-carotene, in addition to the citrulline.

Clemens' advice on watermelon and the Fourth of July? "Put salt on it and enjoy."

Just don't expect fireworks anywhere but in the sky.

SOURCES: Bhimu Patil, PhD, director of Texas A&M University Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center, College Station. Roger Clemens, DrPH, adjunct professor, pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; spokesman, Institute of Food Technologists. Irwin Goldstein, MD, editor-in-chief, Journal of Sexual Medicine; medical director, Alvarado Hospital Medical Center; clinical professor of surgery, University of California San Diego. Clevidence, B.A. Nutrition, March 2007; vol 23: pp 261-266.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=90745

Welcome back sweetness!! xoxoo!

Yay you guys made it - w00 h00!

Sammy, Sammy, Sammy...think you are making to much of Coot and Viagra...afterall, he may have learned how to marry a millionare from his Daddy...Roberta inherited her money from her father(he was in the OIL bidness, ya know) lol

TONI!

yep. my tubez were tied 4 2 weeks.

i have a 32nd floor view here...i'm in denial, here...100 to 110 degrees every day.

Sam needs a daily show again. We just need someone to pick him up.

I love the smell of Impeachment in the morning.

i JUST got you e-card... i have sum funny stories about moving the kitties. they R happy as poopoo here!

!

You were dating Bill Donohue's daughter?

..you been watching any GRITtv?

___
bluerootsradio

:)

the TSA in Philly is prolly STILL cleaning up...

I haven't had a chance to catch it since I can only access it online. How has it been?

I love the smell of Impeachment in the morning.

Does anybody know, was the Ransom ($20 million) paid in in Merkin dollars or Euros or Swiss Francs or what? I am guessing Euros, Betancour is French you know. Oh, BTW, I got yer "Plan Colombia" right here.

Just came back from vacation to find Sam on Malloy's show!

OUTSTANDING!

Is the Blue Dog Red done breathing yet?

One mason jar please!

Good evening!

Now stop yer whining already!

McCain Interview -

Interview Excerpt:

REPORTER: ...insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control, and —

MCCAIN: I certainly don't want to discuss that issue.

REPORTER: ...it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

[awkward 8 second pause]

MCCAIN: I don't know enough about it to give you an informed answer.

---------

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkQDbfF4RqA

---------------------

Sex, Drugs and Insurance

Excerpt:

That prompted NARAL Pro-Choice America to note that Mr. McCain had voted against a 2005 bill requiring health insurance companies to cover birth-control pills as well as Viagra.

Mr. McCain said he did not recall the vote.

-----------

Link:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/sex-drugs-and-insurance/

Is that like the shirt that Scalia wears?

ew.. ;)

Dang the Blog is SLoooooooooow

Submitted by Thespian Lipsti... on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 8:37pm

Hawt.

Are you pictured there, lesbian?

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

*snicker*

CeeCee@9:45

Watermelon vs. Viagra

From CeeCee's post:

"To say that watermelon is Viagra-like is sort of fun," says Goldstein. "But to even vaguely hope that eating watermelon will alleviate ED is misleading."

ED? The absolutley HUGE success of Viagra is ALL in service of those victims of ED?

Sorry, I don't believe that. I'd like to know the real stats on how many men have ED, and how many men take Viagra total, and then how many men are taking it for recreational
reasons.

Hey, since watermelon is cheaper, it will do for whiners!

300 viewers !

Is our disgrace. He is a man bereft of grace.

I only watch it online, well mostly in iTunes. It's like having 60 Minutes on 4 nights a week when 60 Minutes had balls. She is getting the best guests, most you've never seen before, and is playing some great documentary pieces and movies. It's so refreshing to get "new" news for a change. It's designed so you can watch it start to finish or in pieces. Start at GRITtv

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bluerootsradio

Sammy's on fire tonight! He's the best when debating right wing callers. And I love listening to him talk to Myla.

in 30 years when the US troops are still in Iraq...

cantaloupe vs. prozac

Did someone else get it down?

runs school crosswalks, too.

Go Sammy!
Submitted by Jmach1JP on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 10:16pm.
300 viewers !

===========================

Without even sending out an announcement....

greed is not controllable

power corrupts

hubris and arrogance are drugs

When Phil Gramm says we are whiners, he's speaking as one who think he is one of the elite and we are the rabble. We should be happy with our lot in life and pray for better in the afterlife.

Not a great night.

WooHOO sam seder! Back to playing video games and listening to 'ol sammer.

One of these day I gotta party with ya's!

McCain can only make my life even worse than it already is. This whiner will be a winer if things get any worse.

samsedershow

Janeane's Great grandmother?

..but if you whine sometimes
You get what you need.

___
bluerootsradio

Good luck tomorrow toniD!!! Speedy recovery!!!!!

http://www.samsedershow.tv/index.html

Really good guest and really good interview.

WHINE. WHINE. WHINE.

But he's the elite class and their poopy doesn't stink!

Maron and Seder need a show on Nova M

Off to bed myself, have to get up a 3AM

Need to be up at 3AM. Later guys!

Did Maron come on yet?

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

"...have to get up a 3AM"

Yeesh!
Best wishes ever.

good luck tomorrow Toni

My landladies moronic son keeps screwing up of internets connection..

Crap.Missed half the show..
How's it been going ?

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Some of the articles said dollars..but that is an interesting question you raise...

*

Sherman, set the wayback machine...

April 2007

Dana Milbank - Kucinich's Battle Against Cheney Not So (Im)peachy Keen

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, April 25, 2007; 8:18 AM

"I do not stand alone," Dennis Kucinich said as he stood, alone, in front of a cluster of microphones yesterday evening.
...

Seriously..how did Kucinich end up accepted in that MSP? (mainstream party)...

*

Download Paul Coelho’s Bestseller, “The Alchemist,” for Free on iTunes

HEMP !

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Submitted by MMRules on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 10:47pm

Hey, ask them if Maron came on yet.

They won't respond to me.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

What does the term "Peak Oil" mean? "Peak Oil" is a worldwide concern. Chief Geologist Dr. King Hubbert discovered in 1959 that once the world oil recovery rate begins to crest beyond peak levels, the world will produce less and less oil with each successive year. There are several websites devoted to discussing “peak oil”.
But can't we just cut back on our oil usage in this country and build back our oil reserves? Yes and no. Certainly if this country were to aggressively begin to conserve its use of petroleum and related products we would stave off the effects of "Peak Oil'''. But oil is a worldwide issue. First, to this date there appears to be no real conservation movement underway. Secondly, oil is a worldwide product. The emergence of China and India is sucking up more and more oil in order for their country's business sectors to operate. Each year, it is more and more evident that the huge machine that we have built cannot sustain itself in its present form. Europe and Japan are completely oil dependent as they are on the large list of countries that are considered "net importers" (meaning they use more oil than they produce). The list of countries that are now considered "net exporters" (they use less oil than they produce) is very short. Lastly, even if we could find a miracle "cure" for our lessening oil supplies and we could offer it to the world to eliminate our dependence on crude oil the result would be a cataclysmic worldwide depression that might change the planet forever. The oil industry is a multi-trillion dollar business of refineries and transmission lines including multiple lines of transportation. How could our planet sustain such an economic loss? In short, the world has been consuming more oil while it is drilling and extracting less oil for a long time. These two trends cannot last long. When they collide or when a crisis occurs like a hurricane, political unrest, or a large scale war, *huge increases in the price of oil and oil related petroleum products will occur. It is these basic macro-economic trends that have caused some experts to realize that we must maintain our oil dependence while realizing that the price we may pay could be costly.
What other products require oil to create? Petroleum is used to manufacture an enormous number of products for your life. Less than 20% of all recovered oil is used for any type of fuel. Over 30% is used for the creation of food via fertilizers. Nearly the same amount is used to manufacture plastics. If you were to walk through your home and office, you would become shortly overwhelmed by the thousands of items you use everyday that would not be available to you without our access to oil. In fact, everything we now buy today represents a measurement of energy in order to create and then for us to consume. Below is a short list a few everyday items made from oil.
How many could you do without? Carpets, Roofing, Epoxy paint, Oil filters, Clothing, Ink, Ipods, computers, Sports car bodies, Tires, Motorcycle helmets, Pillows, Heart Valves, Crayons, Parachutes, Telephones, cell phones, Enamel, Transparent tape, Antiseptics, Vacuum, bottles, Deodorant, Pantyhose, Rubbing Alcohol, , Upholstery, Hearing Aids, Car sound insulation, Cassettes, Shower doors, Shoes, Refrigerator linings, Electrical tape, Safety glass, Awnings, plastic dinnerware, Rubber cement, Nylon rope, Ice buckets, coolers, Fertilizers, Hair coloring, Toilet seats, Denture adhesive, Loudspeakers, Movie film, Fishing boots, Candles, LP records, Solvents, Food preservatives, Floor wax, Dishwashing liquids, Unbreakable dishes, Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Combs, Tents, Hair curlers, Lipstick, Ice cube trays, Electric blankets... and the list goes on and on.

http://www.1031greatoptions.com/page/886212

Yes ! Good Luck tomorrow !

Let us know if there is anything we can do for you..
Take care.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I'm willing to help empty beer cans for Lauren's new home.

I hope he didn't forget again..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Did you just hear Sam ?

Maron will be on in the next Hr.

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

read here http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

The actual time clock machine, I mean...
I'm just curious...

First reason: Supreme Court Nominations

Duh....

Second reason: War with Iran.

Duh...

Does anyone believe that?

Submitted by MMRules on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 10:55pm.

I'm in and out a lot tonight.
I'm speaking with a few people on phone calls.

I'm really important (not really).

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

There may not be many folks who understand the "vote swap" thing today.

Third reason: The VP pick.

Duh... (for when McCain dies in office, the old fart) he's choosing Romney, Huckabee, or Brownback. He's GOT to pull in the religious crazies.)

Hope so :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

i.e., Clinton ran as a progressive, then went reich; maybe Obama will do the reverse?

Are you here? It's Liv. I just heard you mentioned on IM.

I love the smell of Impeachment in the morning.

Alice!

Not since I worked at Micky D's for two days at age 15 Oh I lie I worked for Sizzler in LA for about the same time @ 19 yrs

I hope I didn't miss her...

good evening to all!

eya BB!

welcome back!

"Mike," "Randi," "Rachael," "Stefanie," ROFL

Hope you have a speedy recovery!!

T

she has to get up at 3 AM. Oy!

I just got my internets back..

I hope she heard Sam wish her good luck tomorrow..
Sam's always really cool about that stuff.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-sam-seder-show

come help us crush mcsame...

Obama is a martian?

http://www.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121460589609712025.html

Stephen Moore wrote:

Mr. Gramm's biggest worry about Wall Street is that, in the wake of the Enron scandal and now the subprime meltdown, the regulatory pendulum has swung too far toward more government meddling – which could put America's financial-market supremacy at risk.

[end excerpt]

Man, I love your reason for might be voting Obama.
Heads explode is so very nice.
Ahh!
I got zombie friends too!

Sending you good vibes, sweetie :)

Neat image... :)

front steps of the White House -- I agree with Maron. And I can just imagine McCain running out with his face ALL RED and stomping on it and getting poop EVERYWHERE. But Obama? He'd get a White House flower pot and dump the dirt on it or use a poop fire extingusher or something that would mean less poop everywhere.

we're running out of oxygen on a global scale,

the science wonks predict Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/health/webmd/main2147223.shtml

and we're running out of the 3% of fresh water we have on this planet while the same assholes holding us over a barrel with oil buy up water rights.

Geothermal, all the energy we will ever need. No one talks about it tho. Must be a conspiracy by the oil companies.

At Convention, elect Gore and Clinton as VP and/or Obama as VP or other important spots... and WATCH the rethug-ite or AT CONVENTION ... elect Hillary ..
... as most here probably remembers -- I NEVER TRUSTED OBAMA SINCE I started researching the 2 from their beginnings -- since I was for Gore then Edwards... since I am even more radical left than most...
...but whatever
LOL
{...also btw aka wiccandruid} ...*poof*

hi all - been gone so long I can't even find the right thread.
====
Speaker Pelosi's Shift on Hearings and Rep. Kucinich's New Article of Impeachment

After stating unequivocally that impeachment "is off the table," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated to CBS News today that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Rep. Kucinich's has raised in his impeachment resolution.

Pelosi's words provide genuine hope for our cause of accountability for this Administration. We must use Speaker Pelosi's openness to new hearings in the Judiciary Committee to pursue aggressively the serious allegations against Bush and Cheney relating to lies about the Iraq War, the illegal use of torture, the improper disclosure of the identity of a covert agent, the political firing of US attorneys, and on and on.

I again congratulate Congressman Kucinich on his continued leadership and work on behalf of this vital cause.

This issue now reaches far beyond the substance of the Judiciary Committee's original inquiry regarding the firing of US Attorneys for political purposes. The crisis at hand relates to our most fundamental laws and of our Constitution. It is, in many ways, more serious than the Constitutional crisis surrounding Watergate – yet the national media ignores the facts and ramifications of this renegade Executive.

Congress has a duty to protect the balance of powers. Mr. Rove, Mr. Bolten, and Ms. Miers have taken actions that severely undermine these powers, and we should not rely on a federal court alone.

The political tide begins to be turning and that is why I feel so strongly that we should aggressively push for inherent contempt for Karl Rove and impeachment hearings for President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Thanks you for your work and your commitment to our constitution.

- Congressman Robert Wexler

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

ya!

i'm voting for Obama to piss off the racist bigots.

other than that he's as compromised as any other corporate slut in congress.

That called from Foo Fighters concert. I love Foo Fighters, but I can relate to hanging on to give kudos.

i am willing to die for ma beliefs!!!
NOT A PROBLEM!
US has been killing too many people for too long--that is ALL they know!

go ahead!

Get Solar!

so is solar and wind.

theres nothing like having the solar systems biggest nuclear non polluting reactor in the center of the solar system.

ENGLISH pleeze!

Is that what this is now?

;)

Nova M got hit by lightning..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

We are the Madison Avenue culture and we've been brainwashed into thinking it is what we eat, wear, drive, brush our teeth with, and live in that makes us who we are. We gotta wake up quick and drop the CONSUMER persona and get back to the CITIZEN persona.

Great segments, SAM and MARC! THANKS. More Seder v. Maron soon please!!!

I've been a fan of talk radio for three decades, and Limbaugh and national righty crap has been a horror. This guy SEDER is fun and good. What else can I say? I gotta go, but I love the bumpy oddness of Seder talking to us. Shame we don't get him every day over the airwaves. Later and g'night.

"genuine hope"..look at her all one upping him...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (snore)

How's it going with you!?

food, oil, water, prosperity, fish, population, blahblah

but it will all work out in the end...

he left the country.

How was your day at work?

yours?
mpphh!

A boyfriend I used to be with told me recently that he was rawfoodie and his cholesteral went from 200 something to 160 something....in like 3-4 weeks he said. Impressive...

How the hell are you doing ?
Good I hope..

Looks like you just got back to PHX in time
for Monsoon season..
Keep your head down ! :)

Thanks for the Pelosi link..
Maybe she has decided to not be a scared little lamb..
Doubt it though..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

bibimimi submits:

Watermelon vs. Viagra

cantaloupe vs. prozac

♥♫♥♫♥♥♫♥♫♥♥♫♥♫♥♥♫♥♫♥♥♫♥♫♥♥♫♥♫♥

I luvs the fruit!!!

We’re all natural!! ; )

Fruit smoothies fer all my peachy pals! ; )

Woo Hoo!!!

**
PEACHES
"Parodies for Peace Movement"
(It's called a protest movement.)

that's always a triumph... :)

Go Code Pink !

Go Impeaches ! :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

good for him! lots of benefits to eating lower on the food chain--nothing is a panacea, tho....sigh

Woot woot!

any bloggers in the neighborhood?

want to meet tomorrow?

==

caught a little (very little) of whining shawn hannity while driving 'blood ally' earlier.
He played a Ronald Ragan quote talking about the wisdom of the founding fathers having the checks and balances of the different branches of government. Hum I'm thinking, Karl Rove refusing to testify maybe? But no, he immediately starts a segway(sp) into states rights.
~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

*SMACK!!!!!!!*

What a defeatist attitude...Do you not read Science..reality comes from YOU...

Man you are pissing me off right now..

The caller, Mark, said his positions are both right and left on different things -- a good example of what George Lakoff said is the situation. And Lakoff continues further and clarifies that a candidate who triggers coservatism in the brain of his audience will reinforce conservatism. When that is done, it ruins the chances for THE COATTAIL EFFECT we need so desperately! When voters go in that voting booth, we need them to vote A FULL PROGRESSIVE/Democratic ticket.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-mind-and-the-obama-ma_b_...

:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

*

shhhh..I have to listen to the psychic hotline commercial...

can I pull a 'rove' to avoid jury duty? LOL, not likely! Guess I'll just wear an anarchist t-shirt heehee

Yep. I still have preferences, but... Bleh!
I haven't been liking either party since '68. I'm still not all that thrilled with how fast and far we're going downhill.

i'm voting for Obama to piss off the racist bigots.

other than that he's as compromised as any other corporate slut in congress.

:)

Yeah, but anyone who runs for that office is nuts...

Eh!

G'night.

I feel giddy!

sweet dreams!

back to my life.

As opposed to family concerns.

Going to talk to the company tomorrow that I worked the Super bowl with.

==

according to myspace it's Cindy Sheehan's birthday today

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

:)

"All the newslies that's fit to peddle."

SJ!

Mr. Elusive, hiding from himself, I'm sure he thinks that he's the smartest player at the table. What a pathetic tool.

Maybe we can have a WHINE and SHEESH party?

"Friday's my day to play!"

nite

Many thanks.

Tomorrow. Can't wait!

Where is Melina?
________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

I just realized I have got no notion...
Will there be future Seder/Maron shows?
Please say yes...
G'night again.

Remember its a WHINE bar - so don't forget to let the red ones breathe a bit before you swig 'em

Adios mis amigos!!

Reality. TV. Two more reasons to read.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
---Ray Bradbury

Seeya tomorrow..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

i AM Lucille
like i told you from the get----
bad Lucille, butt Lucille
SHOOT ME!--if you so choose too!

between 2000 and 2007.

Bush/Cheney Neocon-style ethnic cleansing, perhaps?

need shower/food

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Melina is at the origami contest with her kid.

i'll bring a box of crackers!

maybe i should take it down

THANK YOU SAM.....heard everything you sed tonight! maybe that is what got me started!

'twas a fast and fabulous show!

I'll be more in touch soon--but surely tomorrow nite (well, I hope).

Sammy, you were simply on fire tonite!

Nighty night dear Sederites :smooch:

Now on my blog

REAGAN RIPPED THEM SOLAR PANELS ON DOWN!

I am rather tired of this falsehood: "The first thing that Reagan did when he got into the White House was rip down Jimmy Carter's solar panels because he wnated to send a positive message to the oil corporations."

I'm not a fan of Reagan's domestic policy. But... when people say that he "ripped them down" I picture a contorted look on his face as he climbed a ladder onto the White House roof himself, then unbolted the panels himself with his bare hands as he threw them onto the White House lawned and yelled, "FUCK THIS SHIT! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

This piece of information from from Jimmy Carter's presidential library contradicts that myth. Reagan didn't immediately "rip down" the panels, and apparently he or someone else simply decided that they didn't want to re-install them after the roof had routine maintenance during 1986-- very late in his presidency.

I'm so tired of the bullshit, folks.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

?

Drat! Janeane tomorrow and I have to work Saturday-you lucky duck! :)

On last thread ToniD said she got a call to get ready.

G'Nite! Sleep well!

Refinery capacity (Barrels Per Day on January 1)

1982 17,889,734 (Reagan & Bush1)
1993 15,120,630 (Start Clinton)
2001 16,595,371 (Start Bush2)
2008 17,593,847

Last 7 years of Reagan and all Bush1 -2769104 BPD -15.48%
Clinton +1474741 BPD +9.75%
Bush2 + 998476 BPD +6.02%

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/8_na_8d0_nus_4a.htm

Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels: Devil With The Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

*

Website exposes Israeli 'nuke secrets' (source: Ynetnews)

Are Israel's nuke secrets available online? The Armageddon website claims to sport vast amounts of information about Israel's nuclear program and its manufacturing and storage facilities, as published by various foreign sources. The site is the brainchild of a large group of Israeli intellectuals, journalists and philosophers affiliated with an Israeli group advocating a Middle East free of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons; the organization says Knesset Member Dov Khenin (Hadash) is among its supporters. According to the website's owners, the site is registered on an Israeli domain and is hosted on Australian-based servers. Armageddon's owners claim to be the proprietors of a second domain – armagedonz.org – which they can use in case the Military Censor tries to take it of the air. The details of the second domain's owner are kept confidential – unlike those of the Israeli domain owner. The group behind the website, backed by several organizations that oppose the distribution of weapons of mass destruction, decided that the topic of WMDs is not given its appropriate place in public debate and that its increasingly growing urgency in the Middle East calls for something to be done.

That is awesome!

I need to talk to her about chickens...

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

Okay, maybe Reagan didn't rip down the solar panels, but he ripped the heart out of Carter's plans for researching alternative energy. The typical Republican mantra is that we just shouldn't "throw" money at things. R. talked about cutting the budget but, of course, did the opposite. And it wasn't just the tax cuts; he put so much money into nuclear weapons and Star Wars. Energy independence could give us safety; more bombs give us nothing to build an economy.

By Angie Zelter
New Internationalist

On the beautiful and rugged western coast of Scotland is an exceptionally deep natural harbour called Faslane. It is home to a British naval base and four Trident submarines equipped with up to 200 warheads. Just one of these has the capacity to deliver eight times the destructive power of the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

...

Angie Zelter is a campaigner specializing in nonviolent direct action. She has been arrested over 100 times and served 16 prison sentences. In 1996 she and three other women disarmed a BAE Hawk Jet bound for East Timor, causing $3 million worth of damage. A jury found them ‘not guilty’. Her book Faslane 365 – a year of anti-nuclear blockades (Luath) will be launched in June 2008.

http://www.ukwatch.net/article/trident_tested

Submitted by Sandy on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 12:30am.

Hey, I KNOW that Reagan was in league with the oil whores. Jim Cramer goes on at length in his books about how he made a killing from Reagan's assistance to oil companies.

But please-- for the love of Saint Fuck-- don't cite this b.s. as some sort of symbollic gesture to the nation and the world. It was actually incidental, and in fact Nancy Reagan, who did most of the interior decorating in the White House probably made the decision at the end of the day.

"Ron, they just look ghastly. Let's not put them up again."
"Whatever."

20 years later: AAAH HAAA! THE BASTARD LET IT BE KNOWN TO THE ENTIRE WORLD AT THAT MOMENT THAT HE WASN'T TAKING CARTER'S SHIT!!!

Please.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

Reagan did Not support solar energy.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/03/solar.html

http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/5577

by Robert Dreyfuss (source: The Nation)
Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Nation -- Yesterday afternoon, as guests balanced buffet lunches on their knees, one of America's top intelligence official made some provocative and fascinating comments about the current US-Iranian impasse

...
During my visit to Iran in March, a top Iranian official told me bluntly that Iran sees itself as the chief obstacle to America's ability to consolidate control of the Persian Gulf and its oil, and he said that the United States sees it in exactly the same way.
...

I'm not the one making the assertion about the solar panels, although it is a lovely myth that does fit the spirit of his attitude. Jimmy Carter was the first president I voted for and is my hero. I hate to see the way he's trashed by the wingers. He saw when the hostages were taken that trying to rescue them would not be possible and HE negotiated their release.It was only the repubs underhandedness (and probably dirty deals) that delayed it. He also spoke the truth about the oil crisis but Americans would prefer to live in a la la land of unlimited, cheap oil. He told Americans to turn down their thermostats and put on a sweater and was laughed at. But he was right, conservation works. And we are certainly never going to have alternatives as long as we prop up petro dictators.

28 years later...It was a shortsighted decision by whoever made the decision at time. Think of how much further along in developing alternative energy we'd be. Now we are scrambling and our resources including the air that we breathe are limited so someone can lay claim to having the most money, power and materials. What did they care they start wars and expend lives, for the economy.

Who might you offer up in your immediate family so that other family members may live?

Vanity Fair Photoshops Faces of Fox

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/549252

wrote it..

That the Vietnam war was lost on the ground and not stopped by protestors...

THAT crazy ass mofo?

yipeee...

-------------------------------------------------------
I Will Not Obsess! I Will Not Obsess! I Will Not Obsess!

http://en.cinemawiki.tv/movie/movie_Adam%27s+Apples.html

It's about the battle between good and evil: Ivan sees only the good, Adam only the evil. Ivan tries to make Adam see the good, Adam attempts to force Ivan into seeing the evil around him. Ivan preaches about the distinction between good and evil, pointing out how much the modern world is in confusion with these terms and how much our common conceptions have changed with time. This is ironical, because the movie questions the whole distinction: in other words, it questions the consequences of the fall (not uncommon in Danish lay theology). While not making an actual statement, it points out that good and evil are, at least to a great extent, constructs of society and dependant on the point of view. On the other hand, by making Ivan absolutely blind to misfortunes in his life, it illustrates how it is possible to see good in everything, and close ones eyes from everything bad.

Hey! We were ON the ground! The "war" was brought back home.
- A Protestor

...I just happen to recall that and was trying to find where I read it and couldn't...

What's it feel like being a protestor for more than one war?

so I put it out there to find out more about things...I'm sorry if I upset you..

How To Convince Your Congressperson Not to Attack Iran
Posted July 7, 2008 | 04:24 AM (EST)
Prof. Muhammad Sahimi of USC
Two bipartisan Resolutions that are being widely construed as tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran are expected to be voted on by both houses of the U.S. Congress this week.
U.S. House of Representatives Resolution (HR 362) and Senate Resolution (SR 580), while non-binding and explicitly stating that they are not granting the Bush administration the authorization to attack Iran, call on the Administration to take a much harder line on Iran. This would include a naval blockade of Iran's ports, which would certainly be interpreted as an act of war.
Both the Senate and House Resolutions are based on factual errors, exaggerations, half-truths, and even outright lies. Therefore, it is of utmost urgency that Americans who oppose an attack on Iran know what the Resolutions actually contain, so that they can lobby their Congressional representatives, with facts in hand, to stop the Resolutions' passage in both the House and the Senate.
To that end, here is the guide to understanding Congress' "Iran War" Resolutions, as well as the errors, falsehoods, and exaggerations within them. Actual sentences from the Senate and House Resolutions are in italics; my rebuttals follow in normal text.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/muhammad-sahimi/how-to-convince-your-cong_...

thanks for posting that article on HR 362 and SR 580.

It's offensive only when shit happens to other people who are vulnerable. Most of us don't carry around a bunch of Obedient Soldier's Pride about having had to come together to figure out how to deal with - and stop - the wreckage other people have started to leave behind.

I think they make some good points in this article.

--------

Constitutional Drift

Obama veers to the right, but does he need to take the Constitution with him?

By Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick

Excerpts:

Barack Obama's rightward drift in recent weeks has hardly gone unnoticed or unrewarded.

What's most fascinating about his efforts to appeal to the American center is the extent to which Obama, as a constitutional law professor and Harvard Law Review president, has repeatedly chosen the Bill of Rights as his vehicle for doing so.

It's not an overstatement to say that in the past month Obama has tugged the First, Second, Fourth, and Eighth amendments to the center.

But Obama appears to be compromising on the wrong constitutional issues while backing away from fights on the right ones. A liberal re-examination of constitutional philosophy need not involve a capitulation to conservative values.

---

But perhaps the most important fight over the Constitution facing Obama is not about the Constitution itself, but over the composition of the Supreme Court.


Obama simply needs to run against the Roberts Court. He must promise to nominate Supreme Court justices who will protect civil liberties, civil rights, and ensure equal access to courts and justice.

He needs to talk and talk about these issues not because these are tender, liberal values he wants his judges to share, but because they are values enshrined in the Constitution, values that have been corroded and neglected in recent years.

By meandering to the right on some of the most important provisions in the Bill of Rights while mumbling about appointing judges who rule based on their "own perspectives," he risks alienating both groups and weakening the Constitution right along with his political prospects.

-------------

Link:

http://www.slate.com/id/2195008

Trucks roared up the street... My neighbor's house was just on fire. Burned really bad. Not sure if he got his doggy out. Left before anyone knew because I can't bear to hear about it.

Went out with Peanut to see whose house it was (my friend lives two doors down). Looking at him I have to wonder what I'd do if there was a fire. I'd just die if I couldn't get my babies out.

So I just now put one of my extra leashes by the back door, thinking that if that were the only way out I'd have at least a small chance of being able to drag him out.

When I ran out I promptly slipped in a bunch of mud and landed on my ass.

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

Oh sad...
Submitted by Meg on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 2:42am.
Trucks roared up the street... My neighbor's house was just on fire. Burned really bad. Not sure if he got his doggy out. Left before anyone knew because I can't bear to hear about it.

___________________________

Meg,
I hope your neighbor was able to get his dog out of the house. Sorry to hear the news. The firefighters are good at rescuing people and furry family members.

:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I hope the doggie and everyone is ok..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

when i leave the chainsaws at home i worry about fire.

nothing like it to ruin your life for a year or two.

Anybody home ?
Submitted by MMRules on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 3:11am.
:)

_________________________

Adsum! Domus dulcis domus!

Domus dulcis domus

Home sweet home

Thanks for the VOD link..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Thanks..

I'm glad you included a picture because I don't understand
Latin ?

I only went to Catholic school for 4 years..2nd thru 4th grade..My folks ran out of money and I was the youngest..
I wish I would have been able to stay in longer..I'm sure I would be able to write better than I do now..
O'well..Tis life..
I'm a wandering Catholic now.. :)

Billy Joel-Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

Sorry but,I couldn't find a "Scenes from an Irish Restaurant".. ;-)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Submitted by MMRules on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 3:45am.
Thanks..

I'm glad you included a picture because I don't understand
Latin ?

________________

Yes, it is Latin.

I try to include clues or translations with my Latin posts.

I also am willing to answer any questions about my Latin messages.

Si vales valeo means

"If you are well, I am well."

I associate Latin with Italy. I also love the Italian language.

p.s. We have a Latin Club on the Seder blog. Seder had a bad habit of saying on his former shows that Latin was dead. Latin lives and it is hot!

Hope to contact you all tomorrow!

Wish me luck, and love to all of you!

Wishing You The Best Luck, Ms. toniD!

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

p.s. Take care and keep in touch.

..and we on the blog want the whole world to know it!!!

See you soon!

{{{{toniD}}}}

___
bluerootsradio

We will be here for you..

Darn..I missed ya again..Hope you got my email..
Take care.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I was married to a Italian girl for 11 years,does that count ? ;)

She's no longer with us,unfortunately..
But,she was Gorgeous and sweet..
Italian and Polish..A great combo..
I miss her very much..

I'm Irish and Germany amongst other things..
Old joke time:
I like to get drunk and attack people.. ;-)
Just kidding of course..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Tea Cheers,Toni D, although, I seem a bit alien here, I still Wish & Pray For You To Knit Well Soon Your Body & Bones ... /|\
;)

Alice, Tea Cheers, too. I was working and got back in the wee hours. Bah Humbug. ;) ... Sea-Ya *Poof*

Sending the very best vibes your way.

(((((((((vibes))))))))

In my thoughts today...

Love you toniD!

the conga line is waiting for ya. god speed.

Crank...sandbag futures? No future here
Submitted by pbtrue1 on Fri, 06/20/2008 - 12:12am.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/235/story/368472.html

Now they are importing the stuff.

Radioactive sand coming to Idaho from Kuwait
American Ecology gets the contract to dispose of material tainted in a fire at a U.S. military base.

Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed toward a dump in southwestern Idaho.

American Ecology Corp. is shipping about 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead to a hazardous waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise.
[...]
The company has previously disposed of low-level radioactive waste and hazardous materials from U.S. military bases overseas at facilities in Idaho, Nevada and Texas, said American Ecology spokesman Chad Hyslop, who is based in Boise.
[...]
All the sand from Kuwait should be in Idaho within 40 days, Hyslop said. Radiation from the uranium in the sand has been measured at about 10 picocuries per gram. The Idaho facility is permitted to accept material with more than 16 times that level, or 169 picocuries per gram.

In a letter to Army officials on Sept. 13, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed the radiation levels "unimportant quantities" and approved the plan to dispose the sand in Idaho.

Contaminated Sand From Kuwait

From toniD
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/3425#comment-229618

[...]
But beyond the ignored mandatory actions the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal (http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf) and just does not even pass the common sense test and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is a dirty bomb. DHS issued "dirty bomb" response guidelines, http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html, on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD regulations.
[...]
Thus the use of uranium munitions is "an act or terror" as defined by DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March 1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified.
[...]
http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html

http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html

http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html

http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html

http://cryptome.org/dhs010306.txt
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/15/razing_urged_for_wa...

http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/29/area_news/doc4816651072f727675597...
-------

Oh, they know all about the contamination and the dangers. We people are the Estimated Collateral Damage, and seen as a renewable energy source.

Have more babies, damnit. Renew that resource!

Get busy...

StarVox..
Submitted by MMRules on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 5:27am.
I was married to a Italian girl for 11 years,does that count ? ;)

I miss her very much..

_________________

You count, MMRules.
Welcome to the Latin Club. [Greetings] Salve, MMRules!

Amor est vitae essentia.

"love is the essence of life"

Excerpt from Dante's La Vita Nuova [original in Italian]

These ladies passed near me one after the other, and it seemed that Love spoke in my heart, and said:

‘The first is named Primavera, only because of what happened today: since I inspired the originator of the name to call her Primavera, she who first passes (prima verrà), on the day that Beatrice shows herself to the imagination of her faithful one.

And if you also consider her first name, it also says ‘she who first passes’, since Giovanna comes from Giovanni (John) who preceded the true light, saying:

[LATIN]-

“Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini" -

I am a voice crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord".




And after that it seemed to me that he said these words also:

"Anyone who considers carefully would call Beatrice Love for the great similarity she has to me."

Later, reflecting, I decided to write to my best friend in verse (withholding certain words it seemed best to withhold), believing that his heart still marvelled at the beauty of this gentle Primavera: and I wrote this sonetto, which begins:

'Io mi senti´ svegliar."

I felt a stirring in my heart
of a spirit of love which slept:
and then I saw Love coming from afar
so happy, that I scarcely recognised him,
saying : "Now think only to honor me":
and he was smiling at every word.
And while my lord was standing by me,
I, gazing at the road that he had come,
saw lady Vanna and lady Bice
approaching the place where I was,
one miracle behind the other:
and as my mind repeats it to me,
Amor said to me: ‘That lady is Primavera,
and this lady has Love’s name, so resembling me.’

p.s. Dante was inspired by his muse, Beatrice. Dante also writes about the heavenly Beatrice in Paradiso -- where he believes they will finally be united in love.

-

toniD
new
Submitted by dan on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 6:55am.
the conga line is waiting for ya. god speed.
*******
:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

That's very pretty.. :)

And,thanks for The Latin Club invite..

You might have to dumb it down for me,sometimes..
I hope you don't mind.... :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Virtually Speaking interviewed David in Second Life last night. I virtually attended this event in virtual reality. (great people)
http://www.inworldstudios.com/vs/
Podcasts are available at this link.
Well worth bookmarking.

squarestate Sirota's Uprising
Sirota's Uprising Discussion at TPM Cafe
by: saindenver
07/07/08 @ 02:49:25 PM MDT

David Sirota is hosting a discussion on his book The Uprising at TPM Cafe this week. His first post is now up.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/07/what_is_the_uprising/

UPDATE 07-10-08
Here are links to this continuing on-line review:
What Is The Uprising? by David in which David offers a summary of the phenomenon of our grass roots approaches to regaining a progressive country from the cons.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/08/whither_the_autocratic_p...

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/08/uprisings_bottom_up_and_...

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/08/populists_and_progressiv...

David offers Five Ideas to Start Going from Uprising to Movement which those of us who have read his work may recall:

* Think Global, Demand Local...Or, Stop Obsessesing About Chris Matthews and Start Obsessing About Your State Legislator
* End the Oxymoron of Autocratic Progressivism
* It's the Economic Issues, Too
* Elections Are Means, Not Ends [think Bushco's failures]
* Remember That Thing Called Direct Action
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/09/five_ideas_to_start_goin...

Robert Greenwald notes

The fact that virtually the entire progressive movement has become almost exclusively involved in electoral politics is a function of the terrible damage Bush and neocons have done to our country. But with the clear end of this era, we need to be thinking about the day after the presidential election.

What and how will progressives operate in a non Bush world.

And that means some damn hard questions about power, issues, the role of politicians, and the role of social movements.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/09/a_new_era_with_new_probl...

And, Jonathan Taplin notes that "real change starts at the state and city level..." pointing out that state and local initiatives are offsetting the centralized conservative attempt to push their agenda down on all.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/09/the_uprising_and_the_new...
It seems to me to be a discussion well worth reading.

I signed up for second life the last time Sam was doing a thang there..Awhile ago..
But,the place keeped making my computer crash..
Of course I was using wireless back then..
Now I'm on a Ethernet chord so maybe my puter won't crash if I go back..
The only problem is I can't remember what my Nic was..
Maybe during one of my moments of clarity I will remember what it was..
Or,find it in my notes if I was smart enough to write it down.
Another moment of clarity ? Hopefully.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/10/105849/881

Books for Soldiers Booth at Netroots Nation Island in Second Life
by sewenviro
Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 07:58:49 AM PDT
[...]
Books for Soldiers
http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/index.php
is a non-profit organization started by Storm Bear Williams that helps soldiers get books to read while stationed overseas. As he states in his "About Us" page:

I am a voracious reader and at the beginning of the Gulf War, I had a closet full of paperback books. Books that were not being used. So instead of selling them at the used book store, I packed them up in small care packages and sent them out to all the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen I had addresses for.

Stormbear, along with many others who have real world interests in the progressive movement, will be on Netroots Nation Island as part of Second Life's involvement in Netroots Nation 2008.

https://www.wexlerforcongress.com/contribute.asp

If you can send Bob some love in the form of dollars. He is facing two opponents this time and needs to know we think he is doing a good job.

Capitol Hill is buzzing today with major developments regarding our campaign for impeachment hearings for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Just today, in what could be described as a perfect impeachment storm:

• Karl Rove once again thumbed his nose at Congress and the American people by brazenly ignoring a lawful congressional subpoena to testify before the House of Representatives;

• Judiciary Chairman John Conyers indicated his willingness to use the power of inherent contempt against Rove if necessary;

• Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced another article of impeachment on Bush's lies regarding the Iraq war; and

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted today saying that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Kucinich raises in the House Judiciary Committee.

After years of work by so many of you, the time appears ripe to finally hold Bush and Cheney accountable.

Speaker Pelosi's Shift on Hearings and Rep. Kucinich's New Article of Impeachment

After stating unequivocally that impeachment "is off the table," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated to CBS News today that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Rep. Kucinich's has raised in his impeachment resolution.

Pelosi's words provide genuine hope for our cause of accountability for this Administration. We must use Speaker Pelosi's openness to new hearings in the Judiciary Committee to pursue aggressively the serious allegations against Bush and Cheney relating to lies about the Iraq War, the illegal use of torture, the improper disclosure of the identity of a covert agent, the political firing of US attorneys, and on and on.

I again congratulate Congressman Kucinich on his continued leadership and work on behalf of this vital cause.

http://lindenlab.com/contact

They should be able to find you from your email, if it is still the same.

good luck!

If not, it costs nothing extra to start over.
(I just hope you didn't have a lot of "Inventory")

Second Life

You should see my costume for the dance tonight.
WOOHOO
:)

Vincent Bugliosi is on main stream T.V. this morning for the 1st time, "Morning Joe" MSNBC. Does this mean that along with Pelosi's statement, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted today saying that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Kucinich raises in the House Judiciary Committee", that the tide is turning? Or at least the main stream media is acknowledging that there is a tide.

How's everybody?

Has Pelosi grown a pair ?
Has Conyers ?

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

you no doubt have seen the news that fannie and freddie are in trouble. this morning statements were made that they are on the verge of collapse and that the government would have to step in and nationalize them (funny they can't do that with oil companies) leaving their shares worthless. the premarket has responded with the overnight price for freddie falling from 8 to 4 on high volume as everyone who can is jumping off the titanic.

more interesting is that large financial institutions hold a lot of this stock and their share price is gapping down in a big way. for example lehman has already dropped 9% this morning. all in all it should be a wild ride today.

Do you mean property,PB ?

If you do,I never got that far..
Second life takes a lot of Gigs..
A strong broadband connection..
I hope my Ethernet chord connection
is beefy enough..
Oops..Is Crank online ? ;p

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

The same Phil Gramm who this week said the economy is not as bad as people think and that we’ve “become a nation of whiners” once tried to peddle so-called “death bonds” to the state of Texas and its teacher pension fund.
http://www.muckety.com/ptmoyb.htm?map=AB16F02EA71617A835E809ACE750D47A.m...

having successfully shredded the 4th amendment thanks to some treasonous democrats in the senate, bush got what he wanted and more in the fisa bill.

this morning the ap is running a story that just adds insult to injury by saying that this countrys most unpopular president still has the "juice".

that link is trying to run a whole bunch of javascript and applets. the page it displays is about adding a muckety map to a web site.

David Sirota was great last night, What Is The Uprising?
Submitted by pbtrue1 on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 7:41am
*******
Thanks for all the David Sirota links.. :)

*
Can you cut & paste us your Dancing outfit here ? ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

No pair for Pelosi. Isn't she profiting from this war?

They are both worthless !

Conyers too,so far !

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

But I think the problem lies in the top tier of the Democratic Party.

I know it sounds cliche-ish, but I will still give them the benefit of the doubt; because in six months time, truly, there will be no excuse...

So, as pissed as I might want to be at the elected democratic party's inaction, I do realize that in six months they will have no excuse to not right the constitutionality of our government. But as spineless as it may be to ask us to wait, I do realize that if the prosecutions take place after Obama is sworn in, then there will be NO PARDONS.

So for me, I'm willing to say that they may actually have a solid plan, but they want to make sure it's knocked out for good....

Will Karl Rove appear on Fox News now that he's in contempt for failing to obey a congressional subpoena?

Submitted by 13ben on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 9:48am.
-----

Yes 13, he will. As a matter of fact, FOX will recommend him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/3432#new

The Pogroms in South Africa: a crisis in citizenship

The Ongoing Struggle for the Right to the Cities

July, 10 2008

By Richard Pithouse
The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They're set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club.

But even here the battle for land continues. The poor are loosing their grip on the scattered bits of land which they took in defiance of apartheid more than twenty years ago. The state is, again, sending in bulldozers and men with guns to move the poor from central shack settlements to peripheral townships. In every relocation many are simply left homeless. It is very difficult to resist the armed force of the state but people do what they can. Officials are often stoned. In principle the courts should provide relief from evictions that are not just illegal but are in fact criminal acts under South African law. There have been notable successes but it is often difficult to get pro bono legal support, legal processes are slow and the evictions continue.

In the Harry Gwala settlement the poorest women are on their hands and knees searching for bits of coal to bake into lumps of clay to keep the braziers burning. S'bu Zikode from Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban and Ashraf Cassiem from the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town are here to meet with the Harry Gwala branch of the Landless People's Movement. These are all poor people's movements that have been criminalised and violently attacked by the state. The meeting is to discuss strategies for holding onto the urban land that keeps people close to work, schools, libraries and all the other benefits of city life. This is what it has come down to. Militancy is about holding onto what was taken from apartheid.

Here in Harry Gwala forced removals started in 2004. That was also the year in which the Landless People's Movement declared a boycott of the local government elections and were subject to severe repression, including the police torture of some activists. In August of the following year 700 residents marched on the Mayor demanding an end to forced removals and the immediate provision of water, electricity and toilets. Provincial Housing Minister Nomvula Mokonyane declared that the evictions "marked another milestone for housing delivery" and explained that "We are doing all this because we are a caring government and want to give you back your dignity". The Municipality's website responded to the march by noting that "Although there was an initial reluctance on the part of the Harry Gwala residents to move, the metro and the [private housing] company met them to work through any objections and give them reasons why such a move would be worth their while." But in May 2006, when the Municipality tried to move ahead with the forced removals in earnest, it became clear that residents were determined to hold their ground. The Johannesburg Star reported that "police fired rubber bullets and bulldozed their way into the Harry Gwala informal settlement near Wattville after residents barricaded themselves in with burning tyres. Shots rang out and people scattered in all directions as metro police fired at them. Twelve people were injured and were taken to hospitals in the area."

The poor start to evict each other

In Harry Gwala the evictions are remembered as a war. Now the settlement is recovering from a different kind of eviction, a different kind of war. It is to this that the discussion soon turns. The Freedom Charter adopted in Johannesburg in 1955 as the manifesto of the struggle against apartheid declared that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it." But for two terrible weeks in May people unable to pass mob tests for indigeneity were intimidated, beaten, hacked, raped and burnt out of shack settlements and city centres across South Africa. The attacks began in the shack settlements around Johannesburg. In Harry Gwala the homes of two Shangaan families, one whom had come from Maputo in Mozambique and the other from Giyani in South Africa, were burnt and demolished. All that is left is squares of burnt earth. The local Landless People's movement moved swiftly to condemn the attacks and to work with the local police, with whom they have often been in conflict, to stop them from spreading further. In the nearby Makause settlement, which is not organised into an oppositional movement autonomous from the state, things were far worse. Here the settlement is dotted with burnt out and demolished buildings. There is also a terribly empty 200 metre long strip where, in February last year, 2 500 shacks were unlawfully demolished at gunpoint by the state and the residents forcibly moved to a 'transit camp' 40 kilometres out of town.

In the second week the pogrom spread to the city centre and there were clashes at the Central Methodist Church, a well known haven for undocumented Zimbabweans, where residents successfully barricaded themselves in with piles of bricks for defence. In January there had been a much more damaging attack on the church. On that occasion the attack came from the police. They stormed in with dogs, pepper spray and batons and arrested 500 people. The church told the media that people were assaulted and robbed in the attack and that even those with documents were arrested.

In the second week the pogroms also spread to Durban, Cape Town and the small towns in the hinterland. In Durban the first attack was on a down town Nigerian bar and was followed by attacks on Rwandese and Congolese people living in city flats and then attacks on Mozambicans, Zimbabweans and Malawians living in shack settlements. In Cape Town it began with the Somali shopkeepers, who have been murdered at an incredible rate for years. The state has dismissed the clearly targeted nature of the ongoing killing of

Somalis as 'just ordinary crime'.

Some of the mobs were singing Jacob Zuma's campaign song, Bring My Machine Gun. Some came out of shack settlements and migrant worker hostels linked to Inkatha. Some were just drunk young men. The most widely reported tests used to determine indigenity, such as seeing if people know the formal and slightly archaic Zulu word for elbow, were taken straight from the tactics that the police have used for years. The mob definition of foreigner always centred on foreign born Africans but in some instances Pakistanis and South Africans of minority ethnicities, especially Shangaan, Venda and Tsonga people, were also targeted. There are a number of credible allegations of police complicity in the pogroms but in some places community organisations were able to work with local police stations to bring the violence under control. There are many accounts of individual acts of brave opposition to the attacks by both South Africans and migrants. In the Protea South shack settlement in Johannesburg migrants were able to successfully organise themselves into self-defence units and to protect themselves with round the clock patrols. It is striking that in many, although not all, of the areas under the control of militant organisations of the poor that have been in serious conflict with the state there were no attacks at all.

After two weeks 62 people were dead, a third of them South African citizens, and figures for the number of people displaced ranged from 80 000 to 100 000. Some had fled the country and others were sheltering in churches, at police stations and in refugee camps. Conditions in the camps are often grim. Human rights organisations have issued strenuous condemnations and there have already been threats of collective suicide, clashes with the police and demands for the United Nations to take over management of the camps from the South African state.

The end of Mbeki's African Renaissance

Thabo Mbeki's Presidency was, in the spirit of Pan-Africanism, animated by a vision of an African Renaissance that would finally redeem the world historical promise of the Haitian Revolution. On the first day of 2004 he resisted considerable international pressure and stood with Jean Bertrand-Aristide in Port-au-Prince to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of that Revolution. Six months later Mbeki welcomed Aristide to Pretoria with an uncharacteristically warm hug on a red carpet. This followed Aristide's kidnapping and removal to the Central African Republic by the American military on the last day of February. Aristide still lives in Pretoria. Some saw these acts of solidarity as a concrete step towards Pan-African solidarity. Mbeki's detractors on the left pointed to the voluntary adoption of a structural adjustment programme in 1996, or the decisive moves to bring popular politics under party control from 1990, to argue that he was merely Africanising domination. But others argued that he, in the spirit of realpolitik and mindful of the fate of Toussaint l'Ouverture, Bertrand Aristide and their revolutions, had made a tactical decision to use the wealth of South Africa to make his global battle against anti-African racism a bourgeois initiative.

Mbeki, the argument went, was mindful of Fanon's critique of post-colonial bourgeoisies incapable of doing much more than fronting for Western business and instead aimed to create an innovative and decisive African elite that, secured by the technocratic management of the poor at home, could assume its rightful place on the global stage.

Most of the slaves that made the Haitian Revolution were born in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their revolution offered citizenship, black citizenship, to everyone who fought in it, including Polish and German mercenaries who deserted their posts to join it. Citizenship became a political question rather than a matter of indigeneity or ethnicity. But for those two weeks in May it wasn't safe to be Congolese in many of the poor neighbourhoods in South African cities. There are still places where Aristide, whose excellent but French accented Zulu could easily mark him as Congolese or Rwandese, would be unwise to tread without security.

State xenophobia

Contrary to much of the discussion in the media this state of affairs is not new. Indeed a month before the recent attacks 30 shacks were burnt and 100 people displaced from the Diepsloot settlement in Johannesburg. When the police eventually arrived their only response was to arrest twenty Zimbabweans for being undocumented. Migrants have been driven out of shack settlements in sporadic conflagrations since October 2001 when hundreds of Zimbabweans were hounded out of the Zandspruit settlement, also in Johannesburg. Three weeks before the attacks in Zandspruit the Department of Home Affairs had announced 'Operation Clean Up' in which people in the settlement were asked to support the Department in 'rooting out illegal immigrants'. Between 600 and 700 people were rounded up and deported to Mozambique and Zimbabwe. When many of the people deported to Zimbabwe found their way back a few days later, and refused a demand to leave within ten days, they were driven out by their former neighbours.

The extreme hostility with which the post-apartheid state has responded to African migrants is well documented in numerous human rights and academic reports. Migrants to South Africa confront a notoriously ungenerous policy regime that is compounded by a bureaucracy and police force that are both systemically corrupt and prone to extorting money from migrants, documented or not, on the threat of arrest and deportation. There are many cases where South Africans have also been arrested and deported to countries they have never previously visited because they could not speak Zulu well, didn't have the 'right' inoculation marks or were 'too black.' If the police suspect that someone may be an 'illegal immigrant' and she doesn't have papers on her she will be detained in a holding cell and then sent to a repatriation centre to await deportation. If she is documented but doesn't have papers on her she may still end up being deported as it is people picked on suspicion of being illegal that have to prove their legal right to be in the country. There is no burden of proof on the state. There is a right to one free phone call from the police holding cells and another from the repatriation centres but that right is routinely denied. Sometimes people whose presence in South Africa is perfectly legal just disappear. Their families only discover what has become of them after they have been deported. One consequence of this is that any one who thinks that they may be under suspicion has to carry their papers with them at all times. The similarity with the apartheid pass system has not escaped the notice of migrants.

The Lindela Repatriation Centre looms with a particular malevolence in the fears of migrants. Set in an old mining compound on the outskirts of Johannesburg its function is to hold illegal immigrants while they wait to be deported. The phrases 'gross violations of human rights' and 'concentration camp' role out with the word 'Lindela' in the language of human rights organisations as naturally as the word 'criminals' goes with 'illegal immigrants' in the language of the politicians, police and much of the popular media. Yet none of this resolute condemnation, much of which is undergirded by exhaustive empirical detail, has had any significant difference. Detailed human rights reports going back to 1999 describe routine violence, deliberate sleep deprivation, sexual assault, the denial of the right to a free phone call, appalling and appallingly limited food, a total lack of reading and writing materials, endemic corruption, unexplained deaths and extended periods of detention with out judicial review. There have been riots in Lindela going back to at least 2004. It is still hell. Senior people in the ANC Women's League, including Nomvula Mokonyane, have financial interests in Lindela.

The state has not been alone in this. On radio talk shows, in newspapers and university lecture theatres it quickly becomes clear that the fears and stereotypes that white people projected onto black people under apartheid are now often projected, unapologetically, onto the poor in general and shack dwellers and migrants in particular. Things that can no longer be publicly said about black people can still be said about the poor, with and without papers. It is not unusual for middle class black people to take this up with enthusiasm. It's been an open season for a long time. The fear and hostility of the old order have been redirected rather than overcome in the new order.

Neocosmos's book

The most important attempt to theorise xenophobia in South African is a book by Michael Neocosmos called From 'Foreign Natives' to 'Native Foreigners': Explaining Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South Africa. The book was published by Codesria in Dakar, Senegal in late 2006. Codesria do not have a distribution network equal to the quality of the work that they have published over the years and it has been more or less impossible to get a copy of the book in South Africa. But Codesria have put it online and a book that seemed to have fallen stillborn from the press is suddenly being widely read and discussed in the wake of the May pogroms.

Neocosmos rejects fashionable attempts to explain xenophobia in terms of postmodernity and globalisation and notes that it was in 1961 that Frantz Fanon described the kind of situation where "foreigners are called on to leave; their shops are burned, their street stalls are wrecked." For Neocosmos, following Fanon and the work of the Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, the essence of the problem is in the structure of the post-colonial state.

Neocosmos, following Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also takes Alain Badiou very seriously. He rejects the largely economistic understanding of politics that has typified influential sections of the academic left in South Africa in favour of a political understanding of politics. He argues that the debates on the academic left have largely been in favour of the state against the market and have tended to exclude any consideration for the agency of ordinary people. He sees in the statist orientation of this left a considerable complicity with the politics of liberalism which, in his diagnosis, can only see rights as something to be awarded and secured by the state.

His book gives a history of how apartheid denied South African citizenship to Africans and attempted, via the Bantustan system, to manufacture foreigners as a political and cultural identity. He also shows how this was continually challenged by popular democratic conceptions of citizenship. For instance Black Consciousness posited the lived experience of blackness as a principle of unity rather than ethnicity and so, against both the apartheid idea of ethnic Bantustan citizenship and the multi-racialism of the ANC, included Africans, Indians and people of mixed race in one non-racial political movement. Some trade unions, and in particular the National Union of Mine Workers, developed an understanding of citizenship based on place of work rather than place of origin. The mine workers' union was even able to take this principle into the first moments of the post-apartheid state by securing citizenship for workers from Lesotho. And in the 1980s the United Democratic Front posited a citizenship based on opposition to apartheid which saw white and black people on both sides of its conception of the nation and its enemy.

For Neocosmos the radicalisation and democratisation of the popular struggles against apartheid in the second half of the 1980s, a process that in his analysis was forced on the leadership from below, created a new nation in struggle. He argues that the demobilisation and corporatisation of that politics, a process that began in 1989 and was more or less concluded by 1993, enabled a return to the exclusive power of the state to define citizenship.

In his view this was the worm that hid in the rose of the new democracy from the beginning. He points to the distinction in the constitution between citizens and persons and notes the consequent logic in frank statements by the ANC that it "can't extend human rights to non-citizens." But he is not replacing economism with legalism. He also argues that a considerable part of the motivation for the immediate commitment to the idea of 'fortress South Africa' was driven by an assumption that 'hordes of foreigners' would threaten South Africa's aspiration to build a powerful modern state that could take its 'rightful place on the international stage'. The continuities with apartheid thinking about South Africa as somehow outside of, superior to and endangered by Africa are clear. He also shows that the idea that the state could manage the poor by delivering basic services to a passive population led to an assumption that efficiency in this regard, and consequent gains in social cohesion, would be compromised by an increase in the number of citizens. For Neocosmos the ANC "is unable to think beyond the confines of exclusion and control...Popular organisational and militant democratic struggles are no longer within its ambit of thought."

He acknowledges the work done by NGOs to catalogue the rights abuses suffered by migrants at the hand of the South Africa state and provides a harrowing overview. Some of the evidence adduced is particularly striking. For instance while many instances are cited of politicians ascribing crime to undocumented migrants and conflating the categories of 'illegal immigrant' and 'criminal' the fact is that 98% of people arrested on criminal charges in South Africa are legal citizens. Equally striking are the statistics for the numbers of Germans, Americans and British people who overstay their visas but are not arrested and do not end up in Lindela and are not deported. In the first months of 1996 the figure stood at 26 000. Neocosmos does not shy away from the strength of popular xenophobic sentiment but stresses that empirical research indicates that "popular attitudes towards foreigners are much more contradictory and not as systematically oppressive as in the case of state agencies."

While he accepts the symptomatic observations of the human rights NGOs he rejects their diagnosis of the cause of those symptoms and their prescription for a remedy. In his view their extensive and detailed cataloguing of state and popular xenophobia has been undertaken in order to ensure that migrants are able to access their human rights, something which is "seen as the responsibility of the state under pressure from those same NGOs". Human rights discourse is orientated around appeals to the state, not a popular democratic politics. It therefore lacks both the capacity to issue compelling prescriptions to the state and to undertake the practical work of engendering better modes of life within communities. All it can do is to make requests. Although he does not say this, it is notable that neither the advances in this discourse, nor its institutionalisation in formal civil society, have resulted in meaningful progress from the perspective of someone picked up by the police for being 'too black' or speaking Shangaan or French.

For Neocosmos "xenophobia and authoritarianism" are "a continuation of apartheid oppression" that are, in the end, a "product of liberalism". He proposes, against the state centric politics of liberalism, a recovery of popular emancipatory politics. This argument certainly has much more going for it than most of the views bandied about after the May pogroms, many of which took the form of simultaneous recommendations for firmer police action, better state intelligence and more projects to educate the poor about human rights. With some modifications it may also be able to explain some aspects of the other forms of popular reaction that have been growing in intensity.

In recent months there have, in some areas, been public attacks on lesbians and women dressed in trousers or in skirts deemed too short. It is certainly the case that as poor women are expected to take over more and more of the work needed to keep families and communities going there is an implicit gendering to decisions about the price of water, the numbers of taps and toilets that are provided to shack settlements, the need for volunteers to take on cleaning work, the care of the sick and so on. But it is certainly not the case that, as with xenophobia, these kinds of attacks can credibly be said to directly follow the logic and practices of the state or to be in any way complicit with the law.

While racist arguments about culture are often still used to explain the attacks on women progressives tend to argue that they are due to a general economic disempowerment. There is certainly a systemic disempowerment consequent to the endless economic crisis that ordinary people must confront, even in boom times. But there is also a systemic disempowerment consequent to both the complimentary authoritarianism of technocratic state and NGO responses to poverty and the top down party control over most of the political spaces through which ordinary people can access the state. It is notable that these kinds of attacks on women have not occurred, and are in fact simply unthinkable, in places where grassroots movements in which women are strong have created a political space for the collective self empowerment of the excluded. The fact that these are not the only spaces in which these kinds of attacks are unthinkable does not diminish the record of democratic grassroots political projects in this regard.

As Neocosmos has noted in a recent essay the popular movements that have rebuilt a democratic grassroots militancy were able to successfully defend and shelter people at risk in the May pogroms and, on at least one occasion, confront attackers head on. There was not one attack in any of the more than 30 settlements where the largely Durban and Pietermartizburg based shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo is strong. Despite being crowded into ever fewer bits and pieces of urban land, all of which remain under threat from a state determined to 'eradicate shacks by 2014', the movement was also able to offer shelter to some people displaced in the attacks. In a widely circulated and translated statement Abahlali baseMjondolo declared that "An action can be illegal. A person cannot be illegal. A person is a person where ever they may find themselves. If you live in a settlement you are from that settlement and you are a neighbour and a comrade in that settlement." The Landless People's Movement in Johannesburg and the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town were also able to mount some opposition to the pogroms. In Khutsong, a town to the West of Johannesburg where popular conflict with the state has probably been most acute, the Merafong Demarcation Forum was also able to ensure safety. All of these organisations have, in the face of considerable repression boycotted elections and sought to build a militant grassroots politics outside of the party structures beholden to the state.

'Foreigners in our own country'

There is a sense in which crises are confrontation with the real. Certain kinds of assumptions, claims and speculations that can survive without a direct challenge melt away in the face of this kind of shock. Others emerge on a firmer footing. Neocosmos' book has come out of the crisis with a lot more life than it had in April. But if the May crisis has appeared to offer some support to his analysis that analysis should certainly be extended. One obvious way in which the critique of the politics of liberalism should be developed would be to consider the various ways in which the South African poor are also excluded from substantive citizenship and the desperate rivalries that this can produce.

With an entrenched unemployment crisis that excludes around 40% of people from formal employment now compounded by the sudden escalation in food and transport prices there's not much disagreement about the depth of economic exclusion. Of course people do invent new modes of solidarity and survivalist communalism to cope but a dangerous desperation is also rife. Not everyone is in a position to confront the prospect of entering their 30s without ever having had a decent job with equanimity. For people bent on plunder anyone who is vulnerable, as undocumented migrants living under a hostile state most certainly are, is at risk.

Exclusion from substantive citizenship is also a question of space. The South African state is seeking to reverse the popular desegregation of cities achieved since the 1980s. There are major projects to drive the poor out of flats in the city centres in the name of creating 'World Class Cities'. Centrally located shack settlements are also under attack from a full fledged programme to 'eradicate' shacks by 2014. While most cities have one or two well funded projects to upgrade centrally located shack settlements they are the exceptions that legitimate the rule. The fact is that the state is beating the poor out of the cities in the name of 'slum clearance', the precise phrase used by apartheid, and before that colonialism, for the same purpose. The poor are being driven out of urban spaces over which there is sometimes a considerable degree of autonomous self management into regulated and commodified contemporary versions of the peripheral apartheid township - a space separate in every way from the fantasy of world class cities but far enough out of town for this fact to be tolerable.

An often politically innovative urban proletariat which appropriated urban land, as well as electricity and water, and often, although not always, turned it into a commons organised with a considerable degree of popular autonomy from state power is being recomposed into an individualized set of consumers safely warehoused on the urban periphery. The return to forced removals is a direct attack on people's livelihoods, access to education and health care, desire for an urban life and identity as citizens. With regard to the latter it is worth recalling that the denial of the right to the city was a central part of the denial of citizenship to Africans under apartheid. Every successful eviction increases the already severe overcrowding in the spaces that survive and escalates competition for space that can take all sorts of forms including ethnic and racial conflict amongst South Africans.

Despite more than 3 years of vigorous protests by the grassroots left across the country against local party councillors and their ward committees the reality of political exclusion doesn't have much elite currency. Civil society doesn't always easily recognise that democracy isn't only about elections and NGOs. People who appropriated or forged substantive rights to citizenship through the insurgent popular struggles of the 80s, or who were promised full social inclusion in Mandela's image of the nation, now find that, what ever their identity documents may say, they have been excluded from a key aspect of substantive citizenship - the right to speak, to be heard and to co-determine their future. Developmental processes are overwhelmingly technocratic and expert driven and the party is, for the very poor, now a top down structure that is used more for social control than as a space for popular discussion.

In fact in many shack settlements party structures are the armed enforcers of state discipline. Many of the thousands of popular protests over the last few years (often clearly misnamed as 'service delivery' protests by both the NGO left and the state) were aimed at trying to subordinate local party structures and representatives to popular power. It has been very striking that in many of these protests the people organising them have declared that they have returned to struggle because they have, again, 'been made foreigners in our own country'. This crisis in citizenship caused by a widespread exclusion from substantive citizenship has expressed itself in some remarkable mobilisations that have united people with and without legal citizenship to struggle to democratise society from below. But in the absence of democratic organisation it can also take the terrifying form of a desire to assert one's own citizenship by turning on the 'real' non citizens. Keeping on keeping on

The popular democratic politics in which Neocosmos invests his theoretical hope is the practical politics that was able to defend and shelter people targeted in the May pogroms, and has previously, although covertly, offered the same protection from the state. It is a politics that moves from the bottom up and which the state and many NGOs, including those on the left, consider to be outside of professional civil society and its aspirations to manage the poor and, therefore, criminal. The police have been trying to beat it into submission since 2004.

Mbeki repressed the return of this politics and could travel to Haiti in his own jet. Aristide embraced this politics and was forced to leave Haiti in an American jet. But in Port-au-Prince and Johannesburg, against the odds, against the soldiers and the police, against the mob that have decided to become the police, against the expert and against the NGO it endures, fragile but alive.

Richard Pithouse, Durban. 16 June 2008

Lovely to hear Janeane again.

What an idiot. He wouldn't recognize his own selfinterest if it hit him in the head.

while googling the Fourth Amendment the other day, I kept getting 'hits' on the Fourteenth Amendment, so i dug a little deeper to find out why that might be...

Turns out that on July 9th, 1868 - 140 years to the day before we lost the Fourth Amendment - the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified.

You know what the Fourteenth Amendment did? Under cover of the rights of citizenship and 'equal protection', American Corporations were ultimately granted the rights of persons, sowing the seeds of corporate oligarchy and fascism... welcome to the American Reich... ironic it innit?

hmmm.