[RED/GLARE]

Politics. People. Decline. History. Music. Redemption. Thoughtcrime. Humor. Revenge. Mistakes. Fear. Media. Antiauthoritarianism. Truth. Longing. Insecurity. Schadenfreude. Complaint. Peace. Love. Nothingness. Nature. Something new all the time.

19 September 2006

Introducing Thai-Coup Poetry!

Thai-coup poetry follows a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, is recorded in less than seventeen syllables in three lines, and usually has a middle line longer than the others, sometimes with a reference to the death of democracy.


Prime minister gone

Now freedom can be undone

Tanks rolled on Bangkok

14 September 2006

It’s the anthrax, stupid

It seems a big campaign theme on the part of the neocon/Bush/GOP cabal going into the November elections will be something along the lines of “we have not had another terrorist attack since 9/11, so our policies in Iraq and at home are working.” It was most recently uncorked by Dick Cheney himself on Meet the Press last weekend:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, Tim, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of securing the nation against terrorists. You know, we’re here on the fifth anniversary, and there has not been another attack on the United States. And that’s not an accident, because we’ve done a hell of a job here at home, in terms of homeland security, in terms of the terrorist surveillance program we’ve put in place, in terms of the financial tracking program we put in place, and because of our detainee policy, where we, in fact, were able to interrogate captured terrorists to get the kind of intelligence that has allowed us to disrupt...

This assertion, however, is hogwash. Democrats should not be afraid to call it a lie, in fact. Although Bush & Co. would love to sweep it under the rug of history, most Americans do in fact remember the series of anthrax attacks upon the Congress, the media and the postal service employees who delivered the poison letters. Mr. Cheney forgets — but we shouldn’t — that these attacks upon America occurred after 9/11.

Despite the ad nauseam lies of this radical Administration, the anthrax attacks did happen. Today, they remain unsolved. Like with Usama bin Laden, the trail has gone stone cold. And, friends, this is not a record of strength combating terrorism or protecting the American people. Indeed, it is a record of weakness and incompetence.

11 September 2006

My 9/11

I was temping as the assistant (basically a secretary) to a professor at Harvard Law School, when another secretary got a call from her sister about WTC. The only TV set was in the office of Lawrence Tribe, who, coincidentally, had been Al Gore's lawyer before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. Professor Tribe wasn't there, however.

We watched the coverage from Tribe's office -- a few assistants, students and professors. What I remember best is that Tribe had an inflatable punching-bag style novelty doll of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" right behind the TV set, where the towers were burning. It was something like this...

And although it was meant as a novelty, It was very haunting and to this day I'll always associate Munch's "The Scream" with the burning towers.

I left HLS about an hour later and went home and made my wife come home from work. We gassed up the car, and were basically ready to head out of Boston for a few days. We stayed put, however, and simply got back into the flow of life with the rest of the country.

I wonder: would 9/11 have happened if Professor Tribe had WON the case of Bush v. Gore in 2000?