STATEMENT OF IRAQI OIL WORKERS

I have reprinted the Southern Oil Company Union's statement in the Guardian below. Another of their statements can be found here.

Guardian (London) - February 18, 2005

Leave our country now
From the first days of the US-British invasion of Iraq, oil workers have resisted foreign occupation

Hassan Juma'a Awad

We lived through dark days under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. When the regime fell, people wanted a new life: a life without shackles and terror; a life where we could rebuild our country and enjoy its natural wealth. Instead, our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes.

Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq. Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation, which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.

Workers in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.

The occupation authorities have maintained many of Saddam's repressive laws, including the 1987 order which robbed us of basic union rights, including the right to strike. Today, we still have no official recognition as a trade union, despite having 23,000 members in 10 oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya, and up to Anbar province. However, we draw our legitimacy from the workers, not the government. We believe unions should operate regardless of the government's wishes, until the people are able finally to elect a genuinely accountable and independent Iraqi government, which represents our interests and not those of American imperialism.

Our union is independent of any political party. Most trade unions in Britain only seem to be aware of one union federation in Iraq, the regime-authorised Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, whose president, Rassim Awadi, is deputy leader of the US-imposed prime minister Ayad Allawi's party. The IFTU's leadership is carved up between the pro-government Communist party, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, and their satellites. In fact, there are two other union federations, which are linked to political parties, as well as our own organisation.

Our union has already shown it is able to stand its ground against one of the most powerful US companies, Dick Cheney's KBR, which tried to take over our workplaces with the protection of occupation forces.

We forced them out and compelled their Kuwaiti subcontractor, Al Khourafi, to replace 1,000 of the 1,200 employees it brought with it with Iraqi workers, 70% of whom are unemployed today. We also fought US viceroy Paul Bremer's wage schedule, which dictated that Iraqi public sector workers must earn ID 69,000 ($35) per month, while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. In August 2003 we took strike action and shut down all oil production for three days. As a result, the occupation authorities had to raise wages to a minimum of ID 150,000.

We see it as our duty to defend the country's resources. We reject and will oppose all moves to privatise our oil industry and national resources. We regard this privatisation as a form of neo-colonialism, an attempt to impose a permanent economic occupation to follow the military occupation.

The occupation has deliberately fomented a sectarian division of Sunni and Shia. We never knew this sort of division before. Our families intermarried, we lived and worked together. And today we are resisting this brutal occupation together, from Falluja to Najaf to Sadr City. The resistance to the occupation forces is a God-given right of Iraqis, and we, as a union, see ourselves as a necessary part of this resistance - although we will fight using our industrial power, our collective strength as a union, and as a part of civil society which needs to grow in order to defeat both still-powerful Saddamist elites and the foreign occupation of our country.

Bush and Blair should remember that those who voted in last month's elections in Iraq are as hostile to the occupation as those who boycotted them. Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer, due to "fears of civil war", are in fact speaking only for themselves and the minority of Iraqis whose interests are dependent on the occupation.

We as a union call for the withdrawal of foreign occupation forces and their military bases. We don't want a timetable - this is a stalling tactic. We will solve our own problems. We are Iraqis, we know our country and we can take care of ourselves. We have the means, the skills and resources to rebuild and create our own democratic society.

Hassan Juma'a Awad is general secretary of Iraq's Southern Oil Company Union and president of the Basra Oil Workers' Union

Fake reporter unmasked at White House

I'm just going to let this story speak for itself for now. I've added some links. Oh, and I think the gay porn spin on this is horrendous. I know it's tempting in light of what the right often does, and it exposes the hypocrisy of the Bushites. But it shouldn't matter in assessing Gannon or the Bush method of media control. mjs

The Guardian (London)

February 11, 2005
Guardian Foreign Pages, Pg. 18

Fake reporter unmasked at White House

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

The White House faced fresh accusations of a clandestine propaganda campaign yesterday after it emerged it granted regular access to a rightwing blogger with a habit of asking President Bush easy questions.

Jeff Gannon, who represented a rightwing site owned by a Texas-based Republican activist, had been a regular at White House briefings since 2003 but aroused reporters' suspicions after posing ideologically loaded questions.

The fake White House correspondent quit his job at the Talon News site on Wednesday after liberal bloggers found he had been operating under a pseudonym, and that he was linked to several gay pornographic web domain addresses under his real idenity, James Guckert.

The White House spokesman, Scott McLellan, has dismissed charges that Gannon was part of an underground propaganda effort as "just a wild conspiracy theory". But questions remained yesterday about why the White House suspended the normally rigorous vetting process to issue daily passes to an organisation rejected by the Senate last year for not being a legitimate media outlet.

The extent of Gannon's links to an earlier White House scandal - the leaking of the name of the CIA agent Valerie Plame - also remained unclear yesterday. Gannon has been targeted for questioning in that case.

"It's just common sense that the White House knew who Jeff Gannon was, and they were waving him in for a reason," said David Brock, director of Media Matters for America, the liberal monitoring group which named the reporter last week.

Gannon's unmasking comes only weeks after the Bush administration admitted paying handsome sums to three conservative commentators to promote its social programmes in print, radio and TV, and has led to calls from Democrats for an explanation."It appears that Mr Gannon's presence in the White House press corps was merely a tool of propaganda for your administration," the Democratic congresswoman Louise Slaughter wrote in a letter to Mr Bush.

In its investigations, Media Matters for America discovered that Talon News was owned by a Texas-based Republican activist called Roger Eberle, and that its so-called correspondent was in the habit of lifting verbatim large chunks of White House and Republican party press releases without attribution.

It also discovered a disturbing pattern at White House press conferences during the year or so when Gannon was a regular fixture. "You could see there was a pattern in which the White House press secretary, Scott McLellan, would be getting a more aggressive and less friendly question, and then would seem to call on Jeff Gannon to change the subject. And when he did he got a softball question in return," Mr Brock said. The fake reporter's downfall came last week when he attracted suspicion with a particularly loaded question to the president on how he would enlist Democratic support for his social security reforms.

After falsely attributing quotes to Democratic leaders, Gannon asked: "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" Mr Brock then launched his investigation. Subsequent inquiries by liberal bloggers uncovered Gannon's links to gay porn domain addresses under his real name, and a posted photograph of a man posing in his underwear with his initials.

The exposure prompted Gannon to resign his job at Talon, although he has shown no remorse about his conduct at the White House. "I asked a question at a White House press briefing and this is what happened to me. If this is what happens to me, what reporter is safe?" he told a newspaper in his hometown in Delaware yesterday.

Meanwhile, Talon News was looking for a replacement correspondent on its website yesterday.

We're All In The Machine, But Some Are More In Than Others?

Both sides in the debate over Ward Churchill's 9-11 comments--calling those who perished in the WTC "little Eichmans"--have a preference for hyperbole over science. While there is a place for outrage over both the "efficient" destruction wrought by capitalism and the barbaric "kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-it-out" tactics of Islamic terrorists (and both east and west alternate between efficient and barbaric killing as it suits them), both sides of the debate are guilty of talking largely out of their butts when it comes to making points about scale, magnitude, intent, and tactical justification. Even those who also condemn both Al Qaeda and
American imperialism don't always do so consistently or carefully. It seems as if everyone (and I am not excusing myself for the past couple of years) is off-the-cuff across the board at a time when it would greatly benefit all of us to rigorously study the relationship between a system and its subjects. Indignant hyperbole, the reduction of a mass of people to an emotive label like "Eichman," and conservative blather about leftist professors ought to be transformed into informed comparisons, serious confrontation of the spaces we all occupy, and fair-minded criticism of Churchill's blind spots.

Although few activist-writers are as disciplined as Ward Churchill when it comes to recording the history of colonialism's crimes, and the Native American case for recognition and reparation are irrefutable and immediate, Churchill's failure has always been in coherently describing the enemy, and in so doing, tying the indiginist struggle into the larger struggle against capitalism. There are reasons for these limitations beyond his own rhetorical and political choices, and even with those choices, he is a valuable political ally, and his writings are invaluable resources especially for people from all walks of life who are just learning about the magnitude of colonialism. But as I read Churchill's "little Eichmans" phrase, and the entirety of the work in which it appears, I can't fight the feeling that such deliberate phrasing is symptomatic of a rhetorical commitment that is judgmental, presumptuous, and bourgeois. The phrase itself is an inaccurate metaphor. What is worse is that its composer likely knows it to be so.

[Churchill may reply, has replied, that he doesn't give a crap about tying the indigenist struggle to other struggles. He and M. Annette Jaimes* and others have eloquently pointed out that the indiginist struggle is unique, a foundation for other struggles, and requires an indigenous vanguard. I sympathize with all those arguments, but Churchill has always made the choice--a valid choice--to enter into dialogue with others on the left, and it was Churchill himself who once said that all peoples are and were colonized. More importantly, it's as foolish for indigenists to take other struggles for granted as for those on the anti-capitalist left to ignore indigenous struggles.]

As Andy Liu pointed out, many of the so-called Eichmans weren't even in the building yet, but many poor working people were. Now, there is a certain type of trendy lefty who delights in being harshly dismissive about this fact, displaying a kind of hardheartedness that seems impressive to the cadre; they get to appear tough on "collaborators" at little personal and political cost. But for me, our struggle makes little sense if we don't look at how innocent conscripts and custodians and couriers are casualties in 1944 Berlin, 1991-2003 Baghdad, 2001 New York City, etc.--and how unacceptable that always is. One gets the impression that Churchill wouldn't blink if he learned that some of those who died cleaning the offices of the alleged little Eichmans were poor, indigenous workers. There's a war on, he'd say, people are gonna die if they take jobs working for the bad guys. The problem is that the other side is saying that too, and in both cases it's true: War is what happens when powerful people--whether renegade sons of rich Saudis or rich transplanted Texans--make casualties out of the powerless in order to make money and promote regressive, distopian visions.

Still, to say that Churchill's declaration is insensitive and unwarranted (and bad for the cause of righteous resistance) is not to excuse or affirm the predictable conservative condemnation of that declaration. It's even more ignorant to simply dismiss all questions of the way citizen-subjects are constituted in the dialectic of hegemony and resistance, to just say "Can you believe it, that commie called 'em all little Eichmans...for shame!"

Questions of culpability and collaboration seem like a distraction to me unless they are contextualized by serious inquiry into who is truly culpable. The relationship between capitalist/colonialist exploitation and terrorist forms of resistance is relatively simple: When one side oppresses, it allows and invites cynical manipulators to align themselves with the oppressed and commit further destruction. Both sides are scoring their points on the backs of the poor and powerless. Both sides have successfully brainwashed large segments of their populations into carrying out their dirty work. Being brainwashed doesn't make someone an Eichman. Stepping into the shoes of the poor and powerless--whether those be fireman's boots, the shoes of Iraqi conscripts, those of Afghan women, or the kids from Wyoming who've died in Iraq--may not always yield comfortable ideological lines, but it is an absolute prerequisite to fighting for a world in which people are treated as means and not ends.

And somewhere, under all of this, there's a way of thinking, a radical understanding of how precarious we constituted subjects are, that says even little Eichmans are victims. That kind of radical love may not be historically possible, but it wouldn't hurt to allow its impossibility to haunt us a little.

------------------------------------------------------
*"For the great mass of non-Indian Americans, those who wish not to be Nazis or heirs to Nazism , and whose collective conscience might bestir itself to compel some positive alternation in the colonial relationship were the facts known to them, our present realities remain as far from sight and mind as the history upon which they are predicated...we are mutually confronted with the specter not of simply a present determined by the unrelenting horror of America's past, but a future dictated by the never-quite-acknowledged ugliness of America's present. ...To a very real extent, the key to reversing this process may be fond in achieving the liberation of Native North America, the empire's first victim and in whose ongoing victimization the empire finds the cornerstone upon which the whole of its continued existence ultimately rests." (M. Annette Jaimes, "Sand Creek the Morning After," The State of Native America, 1992)

Bill Gates on Chinese Workers

I'm not going to write a lengthy comment about this. Just listen to how he sees working people:

Bill Gates says China has created brand-new form of capitalism
Saturday, January 29, 2005 10:07:24 AM
http://www.afxpress.com

DAVOS, Switzerland (AFX) - Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates said China has created a brand-new form of capitalism that benefits consumers more than anything has in the past.

"It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened," Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum here.

He characterised the Chinese model in terms of "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead".

Manufacturers have created "scale economies that are just phenomenal", in part owing to companies there and elsewhere on the planet designing good products, Gates said.

Looking ahead, he added: "You know they haven't run out of labor yet, the portion that can come out of the agriculture sector" was still considerable.

SUU Debate Slashed

The trustees at Southern Utah decided to fund the new MA program in communications by cutting debate--which is like cutting a writing lab to fund a grad program in English.

This morning, I sent the following to the opinion pages of The Spectrum, Salt Lake
Tribune, and Deseret News:

To the Editor:

I am not merely saddened by the SUU Trustees' decision to eliminate funding
for Southern Utah's century-old forensics program. I am also intellectually
and morally disappointed in their reasoning. By framing the funding of both
forensics and a Masters Program as a zero-sum game, the Trustees are guilty
of an "either/or" fallacy that will ultimately hurt SUU's academic
reputation.

Hundreds of Communication Studies programs around the country, including
some of the most top-ranked programs, consider forensics a vital
complimentary component to a strong Communications graduate program.
Eliminating funding for speech and debate to fund a Communication Masters
program is like eliminating funding for a writing lab in order to fund a
graduate program in English. Moreover, research overwhelmingly concludes
that speech and debate increases academic achievement across the curriculum.
The presence of a debate team on campus is an intellectual barometer for a
university.

Twenty years ago, as a young member of the speech and debate team at West
Jordan High School, I attended my first summer debate camp at Southern Utah
University. I would not have gone to college had it not been for my
involvement in debate, nor would I (and thousands of others like me) have
completed a graduate program in Communication Studies.

It's a sad day for speech and debate in the West; not merely because we will
miss our friends from Southern Utah. It's a sad day because the Trustees at
SUU ended up eliminating the very program most likely to aid them in their
quest for academic legitimacy. They ought to reconsider, and restore
funding to, the SUU Forensics Team.

Matt Stannard
Director of Forensics, University of Wyoming
Rocky Mountain Regional Representative, Cross Examination Debate Association

Two Fond Farewells

At the end of Fall Semester 2004, both Michael Owens and Joshua Wilkerson said their goodbyes to the University of Wyoming and the Cowboy Debate Team; they'd stopped competing in the Spring of 2003, but had provided us with valuable coaching after that while finishing up their degrees. Both of these remarkable young men have incredibly promising futures ahead of them, and both will leave a gap that we won't even try to fill. Talk about retired jerseys, retired numbers, hall of famers, no metaphors can possibly come close to explaining what Mike and Josh meant to our team, or what they've left behind not only in unprecedented competitive success but also in subsequent coaching and their own unique visions of an already unique squad and philosophy of debate.

Josh was a transfer student, one of the rare out-of-state students that actually stayed on the team and endured the culture shock of Laramie. He won around five extemp tournaments his junior year (and remember, we don't officially "do individual events" at UW...), along with innumerable debate elims with multiple partners, and although he didn't clear at the NPTE his junior year, he did take 4th speaker. He was glib, driven, a brilliant researcher, a tireless peer coach, and a bar hopper worthy of legend, perhaps the one thing that made him feel at home in Wyoming. As we got to know him, we also learned of his genuine friendliness, sensitivity, undying honesty, and team spirit.

But more than all these things, and more than being a brilliant debater --an incredible speaker and a walking lexis-nexus database who would overwhelm you with well-processed research worthy of a first-round NDT debater--Wilkie was different from most of us, because he was, and is, an unapologetic Republican and capitalist. And top that off with his preference for classic rock and long, dirty blues jams (on a team that's 60% hip hop and 40% punk or post-punk), and you had a large, brilliant, loving, gregarious, generous, winning, and very unique soul. Randy DeBerry called him the "LSM"--the Large, Smoking Man. And in spite of his unbending (and I dare say, at times, brutish) Republicanism, Wilkie was one of the best political conversationalists I've ever come across. Josh loves the game of politics and I doubt we've heard the last of him on that level.

In Josh we had a debater who could be as good as he ever had to be; who gently bested less experienced teams and ruthlessly pounded away at rival greats until they fell, relieved to be done with the experience. He could argue "capitalism good" and convince even me. But he could also argue "capitalism bad" and provide reasons I hadn't even thought of. He was a parli purist's dream, speaking slowly and eloquently and always placing accessibility before theory. But he never lost to any of the "faster" parli teams and grew to develop a genuine love for the UW policy squad and their arguments.

There was no question that in 2002-2003, Wilkie would be the appropriate partner for Mike Owens. Mike had walked on the UW squad mid-semester his freshman year amidst the praises of skilled senior Beth Gasson (later Worthen) who promised me he would eventually win nationals. Although Mike had the benefit of four amazing partners, each of those four people also stood in awe of Mike. He has been called one of the best ever. His style was totally unique, completely accessible, terribly intimidating, disarmingly sincere, wildly passionate, completely his own. He was top speaker at both the 2002 and 2003 NPTE's, third speaker at NPDA nats twice, an NPDA finalist as a sophomore with James Worthen, an NPTE semifinalist with Worthen and then with Justin Racette, and with Josh Wilkerson won both nationals his senior year.

Like Josh, Mike could advocate just about any reasonable position, regardless of whether it cohered with his compassionate libertarianism. But where Josh found his strength in economic and political empirics, Mike found his soul in philosophical and rhetorical critiques of statist and collectivist arrogance. Watching him debate helped me understand rhetorical theories of enactment. The speaker became the position he was arguing, and frequently, that position called for the rebellion of individual integrity, the responsibility of one person for another, transcending and encapsulating the foundations of state and law. These were philosophical perspectives that deeply influenced the UW squad. He won those debates because we'd watch and listen to him believe his arguments so much that we believed them too.

Mike's taste in music was much better (in other words, closer to mine) than Josh's. Those who know Mike won't be surprised to learn he prefers cheesy-but-edgy underground pop and has a special place in his heart for the avant gard. But to give credit where credit is due, Josh was much more responsible than Mike. Mike's irresponsibility is only slightly less legendary than his debate skills. If there is an irresponsibility hall of fame, he might get in except that he probably bet money on his irresponsibility. It is only when you see his long list of accomplishments at UW--including editor of the school newspaper, student body officer, representative to the Irish Debates AND national debate champion--that you wonder how he could do all of these things while never getting up before about 1:00 PM except at tournaments. And I'm sure the NPTE committee would agree that Mike's most impressive (immortal, really) work came the year after he won the title. Enough said about that. Too much probably.

In NPDA finals, Josh and Mike defended the Iraq war in front of a panel and audience who largely opposed said war (Rob Klingler's post-final round discussion of this phenomena in last year's NPDA journal is particularly enlightening on this point)...in doing so they overcame a bias in the debate community in the same manner that they, along with so many of their colleagues here at UW, transcended expectations of what debate was, is, and could be. More than that, they are good friends of mine, people who survived the transition from being coached by an insufferable S.O.B. to befriending said S.O.B. But that's like them. They were and are genuine friends of many in the debate community. Part of the reason for that is their honesty and genuine-ness. In an activity where many participants are chameleons and players, Mike and Josh have always been Mike and Josh, what you see is what you get. Amidst some rather disappointing public displays of competitive jealousy, and more than one unsuccessful attempt to smear their reputation, Mike and Josh just kept on winning and hanging out with their friends.

I was lucky enough to be one of those friends, and as is the case with so many successful debaters, coach learned a little more from them than they learned from coach. So this missive might serve as a little farewell nod and wink to two very unique debate immortals who, we hope, will keep visiting and helping out from time to time. But no words could ever do justice to what they've done for UW, or for this activity. Goodbye, Wilkie and Mike, and thanks, and best of luck.

death, proportionality, and memory

If a friend hadn't started a thread about the recently departed Susan Sontag, I would have missed that piece of news amidst the stunning cataclysm of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

There's not a doubt in my mind that Susan Sontag would point out that her death occurred around the same time as around 150,000 others, that she died in relative comfort, and these folks didn't, and that the tsunami was as much a social disaster as a natural one. She'd be right, as she mostly was.

I read Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors as an undergraduate. As a student teacher of a philosophical writing course I caused some trouble among some religious conservative students who reported to their parents that they were forced to read Sontag's calm, intelligent ridicule of those arguing AIDS was God's punishment. I was angry at the way these college students ran crying to their mommies and daddies, but more disappointed at their failure to appreciate a method of close reading and extensive literary review that would have been a great model for them in any kind of philosophical, political, or polemical writing. Sontag's Metaphor works were treasure troves of reference, analysis, and review. Her conclusions only came at the end of amazingly long and original lines of reading the work of others. From what little I know of the rest of her writing, this was the rule, not the exception.

Currently, a few conservatives are pissing on Sontag's grave, pointing out that she had the audacity to criticize America. Yawn. Didn't see that coming. She was a brilliant writer, a mostly careful thinker, and like so many intelligent Americans, was disappointed with how thorough and self-deceiving the American ruling class could be with its various corruptions and imperial designs. I have no idea if everything she said was factually correct or appropriately timed, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that conservatives have been reminding us for the last two years that Bush's factual misstatements about Iraqi WMD should not be called intentional lies, that we should give Bush the benefit of the doubt. The truth is, we dwell in a post-ethical public sphere, where the charge of lying is a post-hoc construct and even obituaries are politicized.

Again, I'm drawn back to what Sontag might herself say. Don't we have better things to do?

Some socialist tsunami analysis, then, because it's important, and I'll bet you need something important to read. Oh, and if you can, give some money to an aid organization. Andrea says to remind everyone they don't need your clothes or cans of tuna, bro. They need money, because it's difficult to get stuff over there.

For the love of God--don't let him resign!!! (you're out of your #@! element, donnie!)

Calls for Rumsfeld's resignation here, here, here, here and here. I say NO FREAKING WAY!

Don't let him go! It's very important that Donald Rumsfeld stay on as the leading spokesperson of the war, the fearless leader, the wise old man, le directoria, the big tomato, the head cheese, the schoolmaster, the man with the patch, the man behind the podium, the man behind the curtain...

The chief poet of the new dawn, the general's general, the sexy old secretary, the walker of the talk, the talker of the walk, the doctor in the house, the poster-boy, the stands-on-his-feed for eight hours a day, the man with a way with words, the wordsmith, the boss, the big boss, the man on the lawn, the man in the suit, the smiling ringmaster, the guy with something to say...

Please, let him have something over the President that makes it impossible for Bush to tell him to get lost. Please, let him have proof that Bush copulates with goats, drinks beer from a straw, takes baths in grape jelly, and smacked Lynn Cheney's behind.

"What's that, Mr. President? You wanna fire me? I don't THINK SO! Now excuse me while I go explain to the press that the absense of a signature is not the signature of an absense..."

Relevant Rhetorical Criticism

I have been fortunate this last semester to lead an incredible seminar on post-September 11 institutional rhetoric and response. I am amazed at the research the participants in the seminar have done. Each day of class discussion has been full of pluralism, relevance, and critical excitement. I would like to share some previews of the students' final projects.

These students represent every end of the political spectrum...there are punk-rocker anarchists and socialist feminists, moderate republicans and democrats, and conservative, evangelical Christians. What they all hold in common is a commitment to exploring tools of rhetorical criticism to better understand and participate in political life.

One student is doing a narrative and symbol-imagery analysis of the Creative Commons Movement, an alternative licensing system that gives creators the choice of how much copyright protection they want. Since intellectual property is such a central component of contemporary power arrangements, and since traditionally the debate has been contained in a dichotomy between absolute protection and absolute commonization, this movement strikes at the very heart of the concept of "ownership" that contextualizes current bourgeois society--a society that is, in many ways, fundamentally under attack--and said attack is partially strengthened by the "spectre of free information."

Another student is taking a rather ironic route towards contemporary criticism of President Bush. Using as his starting point the derisive comparisons of Bush to a "rogue cowboy," this student is analyzing three John Wayne movies as tools for comparing Bush to a cowboy. These movies, "The Searchers," "The Cowboys," and "Stagecoach" feature Wayne in different functional "cowboy" roles: Fighting "savage" Indians, moving cattle, riding through dangerous territories, themes that offer symbolic tools to analyze just how much of a cowboy Bush really is. Themes of chaos-versus-civilization permeate both classic western movies and post-September 11 institutional rhetoric. This essay shows a great deal of promise in examining the attributions of such themes and images in politics.

Another student is analyzing David Rovics' song "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" in a framework modifying Richard Gregg's model of the ego-function of protest rhetoric. Rovics invokes a community of rebels through reappropriation of an institutional label normally designed to medicalize and theraputize dissent. Rovics reappropriates this diagnosis to create a community of proud, "sick" protesters.

Another student is applying a model based on Marx, Foucault, Gramsci and Goffman to analyze the rhetoric of the English-Only movement. This student argues that language is important to power; it reconfigures power relationships and this power bleeds into the material sphere of political life. Arguments in favor of English-Only include appeals to English as "The Language of Opportunity," and other rhetorics of empowerment, including arguments that English is the language of "responsible citizens and productive workers."

Randall Lake's landmark article on Native American protest rhetoric is the basis for one student's application of Lake's model to the rhetoric of Hamas. Are their arguments designed to convince those outside of the organization? This student doesn't think so. Instead, rhetoric might be an end in itself, or serve a self-justifactory or internal cohesion function. What happens, however, when outsiders notice this rhetoric? What happens when splits within the movement problematize the rhetoric? What happens when the rhetoric doesn't accomplish its mobilizing function?

Another student is taking on quite a task: A symbolic convergence/fantasy theme analysis of the division in the current anti-war movement. ANSWER, a Workers World Party front group that ended up very influential in the entire American anti-war movement, demanded a framework for protest that tied opposition to the Iraq war with opposition to capitalism as a whole. This allowed those outside of the movement to identify ALL participants in the movement as dirty communists...but it also forced those inside the movement who were NOT anti-capitalists to distance themselves from important avenues of organizing and protest. Successful movements create shared meanings. We create worlds of symbols together. This is an example of symbolic convergence not occurring. Like so many of the papers in this seminar, this one is not merely an application of a model, but a commentary on the effectiveness and flexibility of that model.

The tendency of media organizations and politicians to call certain areas in a war "hot zones" is the basis for another student's application of Chris Cuomo's critique of stability rhetoric, and agenda-setting theory, to current representations of the war. The idea that war is a singular event means we ignore that which is "outside the battle." Everything outside of the "hot zone" is assumed to be stable and peaceful. Clearly, such assumptions are breaking down right before our eyes and ears.

Another student is analyzing the rhetorical failings of punkvoter.com. Utilizing Gregg's ego-function theory as a starting point (but not an end point), this student argues that the site, organized by Fat Mike of NOFX, is little more than a glorified voter registration site, even though it is laden with punk symbols and an empty appeal to radicalism. The site promises the ability to confront the system, but offers no real political strategy to do so, and is myopically opposed to Bush, appealing to the imagery of "punk identity" rather than good political analysis.

Two students are applying Dana L. Cloud's model of the "affected public" to media and Presidential support for the Iraq War. Cloud's "affected public" is one that is constituted in response to crises like 9-11, abandons reason and causal analysis in favor of individualist, emotion and religious-based therapeutic imagery. One student is concentrating on the media's complacency in the essential lack of public reasons and justifications for the war, while the other student is demonstrating how Bush himself created an affected public through invoking images of absolute good and evil, as well as dehumanizing rhetoric. Cloud's alternative to an affected public, by the way, is a materially-supported Habermasian public forum, where reasons, and argument, are valued.

Another student is analyzing the "Boycott France" movement through Marsha Vanderford's frquently-cited model of social movement vilification. Although the boycott movement isn't very rational, serious, or cohesive, it still contains the fundamental elements of vilification that so many rhetorical scholars have cited Vanderford on: The creation of an adversarial force, revealed in an exclusively negative light, with diabolical motives, which are magnified during the vilification process.

If you've seen "support the troops" magnets on people's cars, you'll enjoy one student's analysis of what such magnets tell us about ourselves. This student argues that the commodification of troop support strokes our egos more than affecting any positive outcomes for the troops. He uses both commodification theory and Gregg's ego-function theory to analyze the fundamental convenience and content-free power of those magnets (many of which, by the way, are made in China).

When elite media outlets refuse to air certain ads they deem too "political," are they engaging in strategies of power maintenance? One student thinks so, and is arguing that the recent refusal by a major TV network to show a Move-On.org ad can be explained by Andrew King's theory of elite power maintenance.

Finally, one particularly ambitious student is taking on the entire pro-life and pro-choice dichotomy by arguing that traditional pro-life appeals to religious fundamentalism and absolute individual responsibility will ultimately fail. This student is drawing on the very small but articulate pro-life feminist movement (along with some collectivist and socialist arguments against abortion) to suggest ways to re-invent and re-orient a centrist-left anti-abortion movement. Central to this movement is the argument that abortion is essentially a form of patriarchal oppression, a sign of late capitalism's pro-death culture, and, in essence, tells women to respond to their own oppression by transferring that oppression to a weaker social entity--the unborn. I'm looking forward to the explosive responses this project might inspire from both sides of the abortion debate.

I will ask these students whether I can post their papers to a new weblog I am creating over the holiday break, a site entitled ARGUMENT NOW! With their permission, I will post the essays and works cited, and have space for commentary. Each essay will have its own unique link so that scholars and students can utilize and cite those essays relevant to them. ARGUMENT NOW will ultimately serve as a space for collecting and posting student and other work on rhetoric, argumentation and debate.

It's been a kind of guilty pleasure to participate in the seminar this semester. I have rushed to class every Tuesday and Thursday looking forward to the discussions, arguments, readings and responses these brilliant and energetic people have been generating. I am especially encouraged by the relevance of all this work. These students are learning--and teaching--critical skills that do not merely constitute academic navel-gazing. The skills gained in this type of criticism can be passed on to millions of students, teaching them how to listen to and watch political speeches, advertisements, campaigns and the half-assed institutional justifications thrown at us by a system that, by and large, underestimates the intelligence of the public.

More on the Morality of Insurgency

Ashreaf Fahim of Middle East International points out in this article that (1) most of the Iraqi casualties since the invasion have been civilians...(2) that the Bush administration has exaggerated the extent to which the insurgency is composed of "outsiders"...(3) that U.S. soldiers in the field understand that the insurgents are Iraqis and will keep recruiting more Iraqis--even if Rumsfeld does not acknowledge this...and (4) that no one in the mainstream media is question the morality of crushing a nationalist insurgency. Obviously, in light of what I wrote on Friday, that last point converges with my own lamentation concerning the lack of any serious discussion on the ethics of the invasion, or its resistance.

Here is a relevant exerpt from the article:

"The failed strategy in Falluja is writ large across Iraq. In its engagements in Samarra, Najaf, Ramadi and elsewhere, the US has tended towards measuring success in terms of body counts. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld bragged that the US killed up to 2,500 insurgents in August alone (many of whom would have fallen in the siege of Najaf). But it is highly likely that the US is creating more enemies than it is killing. A 19-year-old private, Mario Rutigliano, understands this if Rumsfeld does not. After the US attack on the northern border town of Tall Afar in mid-September, which killed 104 Iraqis, Rutigliano told the Washington Post: “It doesn’t matter how many we kill, they’ll always keep coming back. They’ve all got cousins, brothers. They have an endless supply.”

"The upshot of this cycle of death and vengeance is that there are now 8-10,000 hard-core insurgents, 20,000 if active sympathizers are included, according to US officials quoted in the New York Times. Though former members of the Ba’thist security forces may have comprised the original core of the insurgency, its ranks are now swollen with ordinary Iraqis. Combating Iraqis who are fighting to liberate themselves from their “liberators” presents the Bush Administration with serious moral and legal quandaries and, of course, and an acute public relations dilemma.

"To traverse this minefield and salve any unease the American people might have about crushing a nationalist uprising, the Administration has sold the “foreign fighter” argument to the media. Zarqawi, the alleged leader of the Tawhid and Jihad group, has been a particular hit, with the media gratefully wielding him to personalize the amorphous Iraqi quagmire to a befuddled nation. Even a recent headline in the left-leaning Christian Science Monitor read: “Fallujans flee from US-Zarqawi fight”, suggesting a showdown between the Jordanian guerrilla leader and 5,000 Marines.

"The media has also taken the US military’s assurances that the strikes have been “precise” at face value, with occasionally surreal results. A recent CNN broadcast featured raw footage of a house in Falluja that had been flattened by an American air strike, and, as wounded children were pulled from the rubble, broadcaster Carol Lin informed viewers, without qualification, that the US had struck a “Zarqawi meeting place”."

Again, I ask: Is it moral for occupiers to crush nationalist uprisings? And is it moral for those attacked to rise up against the occupiers? I have never been one for abstract moralizing in the past. I am more comfortable with a certain kind of historical relativism than, probably, most of you are (although I find it impossible to reject ethical claims based on face-to-face encounters or appeals to doing the least amount of harm possible). I am posing these questions to the both the moralists and relativists alike among all those reading. It's time for a serious discussion about why what "we" are doing is more ethical than what "they" are doing...and, hopefully, how to construct an account of universal ethical responsibility that might both forgive conscripts and fighters on both sides, and forewarn against such bloody, hopeless, elite-engineered wars.

Iraq: the Morality of Occupation, the Morality of Resistance, and the Morality of Counter-Invasion

Dave Lindorff of Counter-Punch has written a strong piece accusing the Bush administration of having waited until after the election to begin the operation in Fallujah as well as announce a massive increase in troop deployments to Iraq. Lindorff points out that, time and again throughout the election, Bush denied that the U.S. needed more troops; Kerry (not by any means an anti-war candidate) called for more troops and, ironically, Bush made that into a liability for the Democrats. None of these arguments should make you keel over. It's obvious that the Fallujah operation was delayed until after the election, and any thinking observer knew all along that more troops would be deployed.

So what's so provocative about Lindorff's piece? His assertion, no doubt shocking to readers of all political persuasions, that the Iraqis not only have the right to defend themselves against the occupation, but also to bring the war back to the United States in the form of what our established discourse calls terrorism:

...unlike the Vietnamese, who did all their fighting in their own unhappy
country, Iraqi insurgents and their supporters can be counted on at some point
to bring the war home to America--as is their right.

This is tantamount to--identical to, really--arguing that "terrorism" against the U.S. is justified. While Lindorff lacks the nuance or intellectual-ethical rigor to distinguish between terror against innocent civilians and military targets (for even if it can be established that the U.S. is sloppy or negligent in making that distinction with Iraqi civilians, that is not an automatic justification for terror against any other set of civilians), the argument is very important in establishing the parameters of moral inquiry about this war. And I have long believed that such inquiry is the only discursive remedy (if any conversational remedy exists anymore) to the unquestioned, uninterrogated logic of warfare that has swept over all channels of establishmentarian public discourse in America.

Lindorff's assertion that Iraqi insurgents and their supporters have the right to bring the war back to America converges (without necessarily replicating) the starting point of a philosophical conversation I have hitherto only dared have with myself. I begin such an inquiry by calling on Jurgen Habermas's notion of discourse ethics * and arguing that, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the invasion, the invaders (the Bush administration) failed to procedurally justify their actions--not only to their U.S. constituency, but also to the agents most affected by the decision, the Iraqi people themselves.

Drawing upon the very Habermasian (but also, I believe, Unitarian-Universalist, and Christian) sentiment that there is not --there cannot be-- any significant moral difference between American citizens and Iraqi citizens, I simply fail to see the basis for the arguments necessary for a conscientious person to support U.S. action but not Iraqi counter-action. Likewise, I fail to see the basis for any command to close such moral inquiry on the basis of patriotism or nationalism.

I am willing to concede that life in America is much better than life was in Saddam's Iraq. I am willing to grant the possibility that Bush really believed Iraq constituted an immediate, pressing threat to U.S. security. My questions here are not pragmatic (and so I am also willing to listen to a critique of the deontological-sounding nature of my questions here) but hinge on the morality of both the U.S. invasion and Iraqi resistance. My appeal is not to some transcendent morality, but to a set of commitments and justifications derived from the maximum possible consideration of the moral agency of those affected by the decisions of more powerful political agents. In other words, part of the admittedly unfulfillable project of this inquiry is to step into the shoes of the Iraqi people, particularly those who have chosen to take up arms in (as they see it, and undoubtedly as we would see it in their situation) defense of their autonomy. I refuse to reduce that choice to psychopathology, religious fanaticism, or anything that assumes those moral agents are less intelligent, less human, than you or me.

I'd appreciate genuine engagement of these questions, or at least thoughtful criticism of the foundations from which they are constructed. I hope you readers will leave comments on my weblog reflecting such engagement.

My thought-questions, then, are as follows:

1. Given that the Iraqi people were not consulted (or alternatively, that their stated wishes were ignored) as to their preferred course of action to depose or deal with Saddam Hussein, is an appeal to the interests of the Iraqi people a viable, morally defensible justification for the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq? In other words, in the absense of cogent proof that Iraq constituted a threat to the United States or other countries, is U.S. presence there justified?

1A. If it can be established that the U.S. failed to provide positive justification for the invasion and occupation, are Iraqi insurgents morally justified in violently resisting the occupation?

1B. If the justification of U.S. invasion and occupation (and the accompanying de-justification of Iraqi resistance) rests on an appeal to "democratization," don't we return to the original question of why such an invasion and occupation could justly occur without the consent, or any demonstrable sign of desire for such actions, on the part of the Iraqi people?

2. Given that it is reasonable to assume that citizens of the U.S. would aggressively fight foreign invasion and occupation EVEN IF it could be proven that U.S. leaders constituted a threat to their own people and to the rest of the world, do the Iraqi insurgents have the moral right to defend themselves and Iraq from the U.S.-led foreign occupation? **

3. Do the Iraqi insurgents have the moral right to "invade" the United States by encouraging or facilitating acts of anti-U.S. military strategy on U.S. soil?

4. Is there a point at which these questions of moral justification can rightfully be suspended solely based on the national identity of the questioning agents? In other words, are these questions "off limits" because we (those asking them) are American citizens?

To conclude: This is not so much a moral indictment of the U.S. invasion (although that is certainly a compatable element with the analysis as a whole; but it's not necessary to establish this) as it is an inquiry into why and how we can reasonably deny that Iraqi insurgents have a legitimate right to use violence against occupying U.S. and coalition forces...and, for that matter, to use violence inside the borders of both the United States and other coalition nations. I do not condone either such current or possible violence, but I am curious as to what moral basis exists for its condemnation. Again, comments are welcome, highly encouraged, and will be treated with reciprocal seriousness and respect.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:

* The invocation of Habermas's discourse ethics immediately leaves me vulnerable to a very simple answer to my philosophical dilemma: Habermas clearly sees democracy as the only legitimate context for authentic determination of consent. Since Iraqis under Saddam did not possess such ability to consent, then the whole operation of calling for their participation in deliberation is futile.

However, this doesn't even come close to getting the U.S. off the hook, or more importantly, to justifying a condemnation of the Iraqi insurgency's claimed right to fight against coalition forces. First, that objection calls for a violation of the rule of consent based on the fact that consent has already been and is being violated in the status quo. In other words, because Saddam denied his constituency a voice, it's okay for us to deny them a voice. Second, the objection ignores the various conduits of communication the U.S. and the outside world did have with the Iraqi people. There was every reason to believe that, in a context of genuine consultation, a significant portion of the Iraqi people would have said no to an invasion (See: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=315091; http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/sc9.htm; http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,907780,00.html).

Third, the objection ignores the less-destructive, more creative alternatives to fullscale war, alternatives that those in power would have been obligated to discuss and seriously consider under a strict Habermasian discourse ethics. (See: http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-49/2-49-readerhammond.html; http://www.winwithoutwarus.org/html/press_3.11.2003.html; http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_041123nv.shtml; http://www.nd.edu/~krocinst/media/iraq.html)

Fourth and finally, the objection fails to distinguish between the initial act of deposing Saddam and the subsequent acts of "reconstructing" Iraq, where such acts involve heavy-handed coercion and have been answered by violent insurgency and rebellion.

** I believe that question #2 renders problematic those justifications which appeal to the (undeniable) brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime. The question is: If Bush declared martial law, began executing and torturing American citizens, and destabilizing the region, wouldn't ordinary Americans STILL fight against outside occupiers? Or, having conceded the desirability of those invaders overthrowing Bush, wouldn't ordinary Americans rightly object to the occupation lasting any longer than necessary to overthrow Bush? Why should we assume that Iraqis ought to be less determined and nationalistic than us?

Deconstructing Capitalist Ethics: Two thought-provoking movies

Watching George W. Bush win re-election--purportedly because of "moral values"-- in spite of serious ethical flaws in his administration and amidst feasible charges of vote tampering and race- and class-based voter intimidation... Listening to friends and colleagues I once trusted and respected call each other names over political differences (and I am unable to exempt myself from such transgressions)... Reading daily of corporate fraud and corporate murder... Watching, over and over again, athletes beat up fans and each other...Reading about the Department of Justice's determination to prosecute sick, dying human beings for using medicinal marijuana; rushing to speed up the prosecutions before the victims die... And through it all, watching and listening to children, college students, and adults celebrate these horrors with a vigor one can only call blood-lust...

Well, you might say that the relationship between the twilight of capitalism and the twisted perversion of morals (and the concurrent celebrations of brutality mentioned above) has been much, much, much on my little mind. Watching my sons (two of them about to turn 13, the other one, 19 months old, learning to talk and think) grow up through all this makes the phenomena all the more urgently interesting. I want to know how we ought to expect to raise ethical, loving children in a society that cavorts sanctimoniously about moral values while in reality rewarding and lauding dishonesty, shallow popularity, and above all, shameless and endless brutality. Marx said Money was the modern "jealous God." If so, Brutality is Money's Holy Ghost.

I doubt that either "Napoleon Dynamite," or "Spellbound," were made with any of this in mind...in fact I am quite sure they were not. But both movies contain implicit --and often explicit-- messages criticizing the brutality and emptiness of winning for the sake of winning. Both movies carefully examine the pressures of competition and conformity on children, and even though the movies creator's are probably good old fashioned American capitalists, both movies --the former a work of very believable fiction, the latter an unbelievably true documentary-- have important things to say about the way capitalism reproduces itself in social relationships.

***

Ann and I saw Jared and Jerusha Hess's Napoleon Dynamite in a theater over Thanksgiving weekend. Much has been said about the movie's "Mormon" context (The Hesses, as well as stars Jon Heder and Aaron Ruell, are former BYU film students, and the movie takes place in Lewiston, Idaho, with a Utah-Idaho cast and crew). But this is decidedly nowhere near a Mormon inspirational film. It was a hit at Sundance, where it was immediately picked up by Fox Searchlight, and its themes are dark, universal, and subversive. Napoleon (Heder) and his older brother Kip (Ruell) live outside of Lewiston with their frequently-absent grandmother. Napoleon is a first-class geek who draws pictures of fantasy creatures and has a Dragonslayer poster in his room. Kip chats online for hours every day, finally meeting (and, in bonus footage at the end of the film, marrying) LaFawnduh, an African American woman (Shondrella Avery) in one of the most unlikely (and, again, subversive) hookups in recent screen history.

Unethical greed and brutality manifest themselves in two different ways in "Napoleon Dynamite." First, Kip falls under the spell of the brothers' Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a middle-aged loser who enlists Kip to sell tupperware-like junk door-to-door. Rico even tries to entice high school girls to buy his mysterious breast-enlargement products. Rico's shallowness and self-loathing (he longs to re-live his days as a mediocre high school football player) are directly related to his schilling of these products, and his assumption of the stupidity of the townspeople he seduces. Only Kip's encounter with urban authenticity, in the form of LaFawnduh, saves him from a life of pushing junk door-to-door punctuated by endless online chat sessions.

Second, and more powerful, is the high school Napoleon attends. It isn't so much a high school as an incessant collection of ritualized and administration-sanctioned competition, cliquishness, and brutality. Napoleon is routinely pushed against lockers, harassed by jocks, made fun of by pretty girls, and ignored by teachers.

Here also, I must add, is something that struck me as very significant in the film. Nobody would have been surprised if Napoleon would have reached a "breaking point" after the ten thousandth locker-beating, and stabbed or shot a few people. After all, we've been told that's how geeks respond to jock-induced abuse in contemporary America. Instead, Napoleon maintains his gently irritable nature, scowling and stumbling through his classes and onto the playground, playing tetherball alone, and manifesting no greater abnormality than a few harmless fantasy-lies about his "skills" in martial arts and girlfriends. It makes you feel good, then, that his patience is ultimately rewarded.

Just as Kip is saved by outsider LaFawnduh, Napoleon is saved, and the battle against brutality is propped-up, by two delightful and inspiring characters: the pretty, awkward nerdess Deb (Tina Majorino, who I really hope we see more of), who begins the movie like Rico selling crap door-to-door (in fairness, she is trying to establish a college fund, but quickly gives up on the door-to-door venture) and ends up falling hard for Napoleon; and Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a new student whose kindness and sincerity propels him as the symbolic force deployed by the movie against shallowness, competitiveness, and (of course) bigotry.

Pedro runs for school president against the sure-winner Summer (Haylie Duff). In the end, the students pick gentleness of spirit over shallow popularity, although their choice is sealed by Napoleon's surprise dancing skills in one of the most delightful and sincere scenes I've ever seen in a movie. To me, that dance, like Pedro's run for the presidency, Deb's idealism, and Napoleon's refusal to fight back, are all responses to ideologies of exploitation, class hierarchies, and violence. The quiet latino kid isn't supposed to beat the blonde popular girl. Napoleon isn't supposed to be able to dance better than the dance team, nor is he supposed to walk away from abuse unscathed. Deb isn't supposed to be pretty. These things happen because the Hesses and their characters insist not only on protesting the brutal and exploitative ethics of our time, but also in offering an alternative way of being, doing, and relating. See "Napoleon Dynamite" and if you have kids, take them too.

***

Jeffrey Blitz's documentary "Spellbound" actually came out in 2002, but Ann bought the DVD recently and we finally sat down to watch it last night. After being entranced by "Napoleon Dynamite," it's likely that we were conditioned to look for similar patterns of unhealthy competitive behavior, and we weren't disappointed. Like "Napoleon," the movie is about geeks, but in this case, they are real: the movie follows the lives and perspectives of eight young people who all qualify for the 1999 National Spelling Bee championships in Washington, DC. You couldn't ask for a more diverse group of kids--one is the daughter of Mexican immigrants, another a rich, prep-school bound girl from Connecticut, another a poor African American girl from the D.C. projects. One boy and one girl are South Asian immigrant children, although the attitudes of their parents could not be more different.

All of the kids do well at the Spelling Bee championships, and one even wins. But it is the parents who pose the most interesting dialectic between the brutal drive for success and the quiet acceptance of their children's talents. Blitz clearly has more sympathy for the latter parental philosophy, and so do I, but the former is the more instructive of the two. With few exceptions, the wealthier families are the ones who put more competitive pressure on their children. One child, Neil Kadakia, has a father who chatters endlessly about how many thousands of words he and his son have practiced that day, of all the computer equipment he has purchased to help his son win, of how many coaches (coaches!) he has hired to help his son learn the linguistic origins of various words, and how important Neil's success is to his family. Neil's mother unironically refers to their quest for Neil's spelling bee championship as a "war."

But as sickening as that portrayal was, I have to admit that I was even more disturbed by the less-blatant elitism of Connecticut preppie Emily Stagg's parents: Obviously loaded beyond belief, their daughter takes riding lessons, studies endlessly for the bee, and sits uncomfortably at the dining room table with her equally uncomfortable rich parents, pontificating and philosophizing about winning and losing. Mr. Stagg, at one point, opines that Americans are more competitive than Europeans, obviously proud that he knows enough to make such distinctions, and blissfully unaware of the life situations of the less-privileged kids portrayed in the movie...or, it seems, of less-privileged people anywhere.

In emphasizing the positive and supportive responses of the parents (including Neil's) to their kids' gradual and ungraceful eliminations from competition, Blitz is only partially successful in his obvious effort to paint a happy face on this very odd competitive subculture. Those hugs and "I'm proud of you"'s can't really answer the earlier incessant parental rhetoric about the link between this particular competition and success in the cold, cruel world that will finally suck the life out of these talented youngsters. There is, finally, subtle critique, and no solution, in this documentary. And that's a good thing. By all means, watch this movie and celebrate the success and character of these very sincere (if somewhat misled) children. But shake your head in disgust at the partially-hidden system of which the competition is only a prepatory ritual...and those disgustingly rich, smug, hypercompetitive parents.

Evolutionary Basis for Altruism?

You'll certainly be hearing more from me about this very soon...

UCLA study points to evolutionary roots of altruism, moral outrage

If you've ever been tempted to drop a friend who tended to freeload, then you have experienced a key to one of the biggest mysteries facing social scientists, suggests a study by UCLA anthropologists. "If the help and support of a community significantly affects the well-being of its members, then the threat of withdrawing that support can keep people in line and maintain social order," said Karthik Panchanathan, a UCLA graduate student whose study appears in Nature. "Our study offers an explanation of why people tend to contribute to the public good, like keeping the streets clean. Those who play by the rules and contribute to the public good will be included and outcompete freeloaders." This finding -- at least in part -- may help explain the evolutionary roots of altruism and human anger in the face of uncooperative behavior, both of which have long puzzled economists and evolutionary biologists, he said.

"If you put two dogs together, and one dog does something inappropriate, the other dog doesn't care, so long as it doesn't get hurt," Panchanathan said. "It certainly wouldn't react with moralistic outrage. Likewise, it wouldn't experience elation if it saw one dog help out another dog. But humans are very different; we're the only animals that display these traits."

The study, which uses evolutionary game theory to model human behavior in small social groups, is the first to show that cooperation in the context of the public good can be sustained when freeloaders are punished through social exclusion, said co-author Robert Boyd, a UCLA professor of anthropology and fellow associate in UCLA's Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture.

Full: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/uoc--usp112404.php

Some Sweet Music Behind the Barricades
David Rovics at the Wyoming Union, October 27, 2004

"And all the political poets/Couldn't think of what to say/So they all decided/To live life for today/I spent a few years catching up/With all my friends and lovers/Sleeping til eleven/Home beneath the covers/And I learned how to play the banjo/After the revolution"

Thanks to some friends well ahead of the curve, I started listening to David Rovics about a year ago. But until I looked at his web site, and communicated with other fans around the country, I had no idea how influential he was. Rovics is an heir to Phil Ochs, a reminder of the role that the political folk singer still plays in local discourse. Rovics's performances have run the full spectrum, from playing in front of tens of thousands of protesters in Miami, to house parties of 10-15 people, or in our case, a relatively small crowd of eager Wyoming students and activists.

Although a delayed flight into Denver made David arrive late, there were still 30-40 people waiting faithfully for him at the Union. He apologized profusely as he checked sound levels, and launched right into the hilarious (and scary) "Operation Iraqi Liberation," which, of course, forms the acronym "O.I.L." Like Ochs's more topical work, it was a funny and functional piece full of enlightening one-liners and clever plays on words, the kind of political satire that is sorely lacking in most corners of bourgeois political commentary.

What followed was a delightful, funny, sad, thoroughly envigorating and musically-skilled tour through current and past activism and critique by a charming and intelligent musician. He even covered one of Ochs's more well known tunes, "Draft Dodger Rag." I particularly enjoyed "Oppositional Defiant Disorder," a song about the DSM IV's classification of rebellion as neurosis. A couple of audience favorites were "The Alligator Song," which suggests that we can detect the effects of toxins in the environment by looking at the shrinking size of Alligator genitallia (a thesis confirmed by scientific research), and the very effective and sarcastic soon-to-be-classic "Who Would Jesus Bomb:"

"Maybe Jesus would bomb the Syrians/'Cause they're not Jews like him/Maybe Jesus would bomb the Afghans/On some kind of vengeful whim/Maybe Jesus would drive an M1 tank/And he would shoot Saddam/Tell me, who would Jesus bomb?"

Bob Dylan once accused Phil Ochs of being a journalist rather than a musician. Of course, Dylan proved what he really meant by that statement as he gradually abandoned most of his radicalism in favor of reactionary religious mysticism and trite love-story narratives. It was a shame, because Dylan's brilliant lyricism could have been combined with Ochs's political discipline to create some truly nuanced political music. For Ochs, as for Rovics, though, nuance is much less important than musical journalism: Both Ochs and Rovics take up the mantle of speaking for those struggling ordinary people in past and present who could use a helping hand, a voice and guitar, to publicize and immortalize their causes. What Dylan derisively called "journalism" is really the process of placing a human face on important social issues, a personalization of the political that does not innoculate the social with excessive individualism. A good example of this is "The Face of Victory," Rovics's deeply disturbing and angry song about an Iraq War veteran:

"A rocket launcher hit my tank/Started up a fire/Blew my legs right off of me/And now you’re looking at the face of victory.../They sent me back to Michigan/Put some plastic on my stumps/Sent me on my way/And now I roll on down the city streets/Looking at the people/While they turn their eyes away/Down at the Burren/They were talking about the government/And how it’s all a ruse/And I get a little madder/Every time I see the president/Smirking on the evening news/And I think of how they duped me/And so many more good people/And I think of the price we paid/The rich keep getting richer/And the bastards are already scheming/About the next nation they want us to invade..."

Rovics doesn't let his partisanship get the best of his humanism, though. In "The Dying Firefighter" he acknowledges the heroism of those who rushed into the WTC towers before they collapsed, and he does so in an unfiltered appeal to altruism and self-sacrifice. Similarly, in "The Death of Rachel Corrie," Rovics chooses personal lamentation over political posturing, asking only whether the Israeli bulldozer driver who killed Corrie has become what he once hated. (I must add that this song was particularly affecting and vindicating to some of us in the debate community after we had to endure the infantile and mean-spirited ridicule of Corrie's death by some folks over at Net Benefits who should certainly have known better).

Rovics's stylistic range is incredible. Unlike so many one-dimensional folkies and punks, he proves himself adept at various folk traditions, displayed in a range from the 3/4-time "Trafalgar Square" to ballads like "More Gardens Song" and "I Wanna Go Home." Similarly, he borrows from the Joe Hill tradition of creative ad hominem ("Butcher for Hire" is an attack on roving police chief John Timoney, responsible for the most efficiently reprehensible displays of police oppression in recent memory) and the Utah Phillips tradition of enlightening history lessons (before hearing "Saint Patrick Battalion" I had never known that a group of about 800 Irish-Americans had fought alongside the Mexicans to resist American Imperialism in 1847).

David Rovics closed his set with "After the Revolution" and the a cappella "Behind the Barricades," a delightful synthesis of love and activist politics--a synthesis we lovers and revolutionaries sorely need:

"As the movement grows/There will be hills and bends/But at the center of the struggle/Are your lovers and your friends/The more we hold each other up/The less we can be swayed/Here's to love and solidarity/And a kiss behind the barricades"

I left the show with a renewed fighting energy and more than enough strength to endure the debacle of an election six days later. As Rovics, and so many others, repeatedly and effectively point out, it's not about what goes on in the beltway (which will be evil no matter who is there) so much as it is about what goes on in the streets, and in our mutual interactive struggles. And I was reminded, once again, that music reflects an internal-social sentiment vital to political solidarity. You can download all of David's music for free at http://www.davidrovics.com/. You should. You really, really should.

Post-Election Assessments: Time for Serious Class War?

Here is what my very good friend Trond Jacobsen posted to edebate last night:

Setting aside the tactical decisions and missteps of this particular campaign to look instead over the longer term, I believe that if the Democrats want to win, and progressives want to help them, quality of life issues for the working class should be the heart of the platform and the substance of campaigns and campaign rhetoric. Wages, benefits, protection of right to organize, heath care, overtime protection, child care, etc.

These are the issues. Social issues are important, but not as important. Civil rights are important, but not as important. Protecting the environment is important, but not as important (at least in near term). Choice is important, but not as important.

I know others disagree. Let's debate it out.

New Deal Democrats sparked a realignment by focusing (at least rhetorically and in many ways in actuality) on using the government to make a marginally more equitable though still unjust system. The reward was better than parity in Presidential elections until LBJs actions in 64/65 calved southern bigots (and others in the more recent period) from the party, and even then the Democrats had a lock on the legislative branch.

Enter the DLC and Clinton. Win two presidential campaigns - but lets be clear that at least in 1992 there is no way Clinton wins without Perot in the race -but lose control of Congress. Incumbency has always been a very powerful force and to precipitate a reversal on the scale of 1994 takes both major effort and major failure to accomplish. Having failed to recover control of either Congress or the White House with tepid incrementalism now for several elections, coupled with the apparent success of mobilizing the Christian right to vote in greater numbers by the GOP, the window of opportunity to restore power via the cautious approach has closed.

My view is that for all Kerry's many weaknesses and the mistakes of the campaign, this election is the highwater mark for this cautious approach. We had as strong a candidate as possible from the primary pool. I still thinkthat is true.We matched in money. Kerry spent roughly 50% MORE on advertising in PA, OH, and in FL than the Bush. The Dems did not get blown away by GOP dollars. We had our most successful voter mobilization effort ever. We had a huge outpouring of networking and coordination and cooperation. And we lost. Not a landslide, not even close, but a decisive loss nonetheless.

A new approach is necessary. Or more accurately, a return to an earlier approach. The bottom line is that the Dems did not carry Ohio, a state that has been absolutely hammered by/under the Bush administration. Whatever a progressive may think about the wisdom or need to support the Democrats as the lesser of two evils must now seriously reflect on that strategy. It makes some sense on paper but if the Dems continually lose and grow relatively weaker over time as a result, this approach (my approach this election) leads nowhere.

Barring a willingness to return to earlier approaches, the Dems wont win. There is no way to trump anti-gay bigotry with soft-peddled class warfare - only the strong stuff will do.

Trond E. Jacobsen