Don't be a Sucker

This bit of film was produced in 1947 by that notorious gang of liberal pinkos, the United States War Department. Does any of it sound familiar?



Let me be perfectly clear -- this is exactly where wedge issue politics leads. It is all part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to make sure we are too occupied with fighting our fellow citizens and neighbours to notice that the wealthy and powerful are bleeding us dry and making the lives of millions more difficult so that they can enrich themselves. The income gap between the top and bottom of the economic ladder is larger than it has ever been in North America and poverty is at an all time high in the United States as the middle class is being systematically eroded by debt and economic mobility is being stifled by the high cost of health care and education. But any suggestion that the rich are mercilessly exploiting the poor is greeted with pearl-clutching about "class war" and accusations of socialism by the people controlling public discourse.
We are treated to the latest tawdry escapades of people like Paris Hilton and reassured that the system works and is fair when she gets arrested for possession of cocaine, but ask yourself whether a 30-year-old hispanic hotel chambermaid with a couple of prior convictions would have gotten off as lightly in the era of zero tolerance? And while we are fed scapegoats ranging from Muslims to Mexicans, from "Cadillac-driving welfare queens" and "secular liberals who want to take your guns" to "ivory tower intellectuals" and "crooked unions" --we very rarely hear about the new robber barons like the Koch brothers, and when we do, the pushback in the media is massive and immediate. 

We are being played for suckers.

And speaking of FOX News...

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

Bad day in Buffalo

In which a blogger and activist is detained and harrassed by fatherland security thugs at the Canada-U.S. border. IANAL, but I don't think a passport-packin' U.S. citizen can be denied entry to the United States. If they are suspected of a crime within the United States or are wanted for crimes elsewhere, they can obviously be held in custody pending trial or extradition, but I don't think the authorities can keep citizen out of their own country just because they don't like them. Nothing is more dangerous or more odious than a bully with a badge.

UPDATE: It appears we have antidemocratic bullies working both sides of the border. Unless they had some reason to suspect Amy Goodman was going to advocate machine-gunning the medal winners or something, her opinions on the Olympics are really none of the Canadian Border Services Agency's damn business.

None dare call it treason

Six or seven years ago, a commentator merely suggesting that the sun did not, in fact, shine out of George W. Bush's ass was usually good for a solid week of panel discussions on CNN and FOX about "Does the media have a responsibility to support the president in time of war?" and "Why do liberals hate America?" and "Is it treasonous to oppose the invasion of Iraq or does it just make baby Jesus cry?"

Fast forward to today and an open call for a military coup doesn't even merit a mention in the press.

America, you've come a long way baby!

Update Oct 1: NewsMax, which is sponsored in part by the Republican National Committee, has pulled the offending column in the face of blogospheric outrage that has started to seep toward the MSM. But Media Matters kept a copy on file for future reference.

Is Tampa the new Ft. Sumter?

I guess Glenn Beck did his "oh please don't commit any of the violence I've been urging you to commit for the last year" ass-covering episode just in time.

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.
The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.
This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.
Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.
The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.
Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

The story is a bit misleading in that it blames both sides for the near riot. One group of people came there to discuss health policy and here from their elected representative, many at the behest of the their preferred political party or political action group. The other group was there strictly to shout slogans, disrupt the meeting and prevent reasonable discussion at the behest of those with a vested interest or for political advantage. There is no question as to which group is associated with which political party and blaming both sides is like blaming the bank and the bank robbers.

Not that Beck is the only one to blame, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Mahablog rounds up the usual suspects. One of several groups recruiting and busing people to break up meetings is "American's For Prosperity" - a nasty little conservative mouthpiece for hire group that Desmog blog ran across when they were trying to argue that global warming was a hoax.

Obviously the plutocrats are either worried or getting so overconfident that they cannot be touched, that they aren't even bothering to wipe the fingerprints off the weapons they are using to murder democracy in the United States.

This isn't the first time the right has used mob tactics in recent history, but this time it was regular people inspired by the same hatemongers and professional manipulators behind the "tea-bagger" movement, not a crowd of political aides and party operatives.

In encouraging people to come out and disrupt politcal meetings, a very dangerous line has been crossed here. Is American headed back to the pitched street battles of the early 20th century when the industrial barons of the day hired goons squads to attack and kill trade unionists, break up leftist demonstrations and nearly mounted a military coup?

Big darkness, soon come.

Tokyo cops are No. 1!

Talk about taking the piss. I don't think this plan is going to hold water if it is ever challenged on constitutional grounds (not that it ever would be in Japan) but it is certainly going to piss a lot of foreigners off. Apparently, over the last month or two, Tokyo police have taken to stopping people (almost exclusively foreigners) leaving bars in Roppongi and Shibuya, loading them in police vans and taking them down to the police station to provide urine samples for random drug tests.
This follows on the heels of a (admittedly anecdotal but no statistics on these kinds of things are ever likely to be released by the Japanese police) wave of stop-and-search harrassment of foreigners by Tokyo police recently.
Police in Japan have no authority to search a person's belongings without sufficient cause. So, what they naturally do is stop you for walking while being not-Japanese and ask for permission to search your bag and pockets. Refusing to give permission is considered "suspicious behaviour" and thus gives the cops "sufficient cause."
Thankfully, I haven't gone drinking in Roppongi or Shibuya for years.

Sorry isn't good enough

I appreciate that the police in Vancouver have a difficult job to do right now what with the wave of gang violence engulfing the city, but the police have absolutely no right to seize cameras from journalists or any individual who is taking pictures at a crime scene, whether it interferes with their investigation or not. They are within their rights to request that news organizations not publish information that might impede an investigation, or to ask individuals to come forward with photos or videos of crimes, but the decision of what to do with such private property is up to the owner. The officer who assaulted the news photographer and threatened him with arrest should be fired immediately. This kind of conduct is illegal and a violation of a host of constitutional rights. In light of the actions of the police in the Dziekanski killing at the Vancouver airport and the attempt by the RCMP to confiscate evidence of their misconduct, and a cop in Ottawa not so long ago, this kind of thing cannot be tolerated by a free society. It isn't as if the Vancouver cops haven't been accused of this kind of thing before either.