politics

As I previously mentioned, I'm running for President of the Free Spirit Alliance. My complete candidate's statement is now available at http://www.infamous.net/FSAPresStatement.php.

Here's an abbreviated version; the version linked above goes into more detail about my experience in FSA.

When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists...When his work is done, the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!" -- Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu (trans. S. Mitchell)

Hi. I'm Tom Swiss, and I'm currently serving as vice-president, and running for the presidency, of the Free Spirit Alliance. You might not know my name, but odds are that you know my face. You've been to the concerts that I've MCed, or to the Bardic Circles I've hosted, or you've been to one of my workshops on shiatsu or Zen or self-defense, or you've heard one of my Discordian fire circle rants. After the past year or two, you might know me as "that guy in the purple top hat".

From my involvement in our events and in our political process, I've come to believe that 1) we have a lot of smart, determined, hard-working, and productive people in our community -- and 2) we need to do a better job of making it easier for them to participate in this organization.

One of the obstacles I saw was the use of Robert's Rules of Order in our meetings. Last year I began a campaign to replace them with an alternative called "Martha's Rules", a more consensus-oriented approach that encourages dialog and discussion, but still allows for majority rule when deadlocks occur. I'm very pleased that at the most recent business meeting, the membership decided to adopt this alternative on a trial basis.

I also think that we can do a better job in using the Internet to enable communication. As a professional computer geek, I've been involved in on-line discussion groups since the late 1980s, from FidoNet and USENET through mailing lists to web forums and social networking sites. I've recently started working with Eve, our webmaster, to set up a wiki site for FSG staff to record and document procedures and information, and I think we can also expand it as a general community resource.

The past few years I've been trying to promote FSA events within the Baltimore area arts community. As part of that, I've been hanging out with "Burners" -- attendees of Burning Man and of the local Burns, Playa Del Fuego and Wicker Man. This is a community that already overlaps with us -- I've seen many familiar faces at PDF and Wicker Man -- and I think that many other people in it are looking for a spiritual connection in a way that is right in line with what we do.

And I think that we can learn from the radically participatory way that Burns are organized. The Burners have a wonderful term, "do-ocracy": those who do stuff, make the decisions. I would like to bring that idea of radical participation into FSA.

I want to make it so easy for the people of our community to participate and get stuff done, that there ends up not being much for the officers and trustees to do but sign checks and schedule meetings. I want to work hard to make it easy for members to get stuff done so that I can be a supremely lazy President. It's paradoxical, but you should expect that from me by now.

For that to happen, the President must be a highly visible presence. The President acts as the official spokesperson for FSA; as a writer, a performing poet and musician, and with my experience as MC, I believe I have the skills to represent us in any medium or circumstance, from presiding at our scholarships awards to composing press releases to being interviewed by the media. I would like to raise FSA's visibility in the community, and I think I am well suited to act as our representative.

On a more practical note, after this election the first thing the new FSA officers must address is ensuring that our financial records and paperwork are up to date. We recently learned that we may not be in full compliance with tax law changes from 2006, and we have to get right on that. This is why I recruited Alison Chicosky to run for Treasurer.

As of the June meeting, we've got a powerful line-up of candidates for President. (The line-up may have changed by the time you read this; so it goes.) Duckie and Kal have proven their ability in the position; Fred has held the VP slot and worked hard for us in his role as quartermaster. I'd be happy to continue to serve as Vice President with any of them.

But I think I can offer fresh energy and a new direction for this organization.

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to comment here, or to e-mail me at tms@infamous.net.

If you haven't read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, you oughta. Not just because it's a great book, but because it might be the best way to understand the current political climate, where the investment classes use astroturf movements, big lies, and media manipulation to prey on the fears of working people and actually get them to argue against their own interests, to set the ordinary citizens fighting each other so that they will be too busy to throw off the aristocrats and parasites. The one-percenters read Steinbeck's warning and took it to heart:

Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate -- "We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket --take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb.This is the beginning -- from "I" to "we."

Continuing the process of selling bits of America to the highest bidder, California is considering the use of electronic license plates that would turn vehicles into ad space available for sale:

The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen.

...

Interested advertisers would contract directly with the DMV, thus opening a new revenue stream for the state, Price said.

"We're just trying to find creative ways of generating additional revenues," he said. "It's an exciting marriage of technology with need, and an opportunity to keep California in the forefront."

It is remarkable the lengths that politicians will go to avoid discussing the mature solutions to our budget shortfalls: undoing the tax cuts that the richest Americans have received over the past few decades, real health care reform that busts up Big Pharma and Big Insurance, criminal justice reform that ends the "War on Drugs" and stops the prison-industrial complex, and ending the wars and cutting back the military-industrial complex. But in the conservative mainstream media, those are dismissed as "tax and spend", "socialized medicine" (or the new nonsense word, "Obamacare"), "soft on crime", and "unpatriotic".

Just a few years ago, when BP was pushing their "Beyond Petroleum" campaign and was running a solar panel factory here in Maryland (which closed earlier this year), it seemed to many -- including me, and the Sierra Club -- that if you had to buy gasoline, BP was probably one of the least of the evils.

Well, that's clearly not true anymore. So as we head into summer road-trip season, where am I to fuel up my Subaru (the machine affectionately known as "Scooty-Puff, Sr.") now?

The Sierra Club takes an updated look at the options, and puts Sunoco at the "top of the barrel". ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are at the bottom, with a special Dishonorable Mention for BP.

I've previously reported on the bad science around flu vaccine recommendations, and how the flu in general and H1N1 specifically have apparently been overblown as health threats.

(Please note that my considerations here are limited to the flu. This is not an "anti-vaccine" rant; I got a Tdap shot a few months ago -- and felt like crap for a day or two, but given the seriousness of diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus and the effectiveness of those vaccines, it was worth it.)

Now, the BMJ reports on the conflicts of interest and lack of transparency around the World Health Organization's declaration of the H1N1 pandemic and its recommendations for responses.

Most shockingly, the WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

Portland's Red and Black Cafe is a worker-owned collective -- basically, the place sounds like an Oregonian version of Red Emma's, without the books but with beer and wine.

As part of their "Safer Space" policy, they recently starting refusing service to cops.

Note that Portland cops have already killed three people this year; one of these shootings, that of Aaron Campbell, was even criticized by the city's mayor, who said "...Aaron Campbell did not need to die that January night. The events and on-the-scene communication breakdown that occurred cost the Campbell family a son, a brother, a cousin. The Campbell family's pain, anger and outrage are real, they are justified and they deserve serious attention." Another fatal shooting was of a mentally ill man "armed" with an X-acto knife. And there have been several other questionable shootings over the past few years.

So concern that people displaying the "gang colors" of this organization may be a danger to others, are certainly justified.

Given the sort of people who make it on to the Baltimore City PD, if I owned a place in Baltimore I'd have to consider a similar policy.

I've previously touched on the malfeasance that runs rampant in the Baltimore City police department -- thousands of meritless arrests made each year, the lack of public trust in the force, incidents like people being arrested for asking for directions.

But if you need the most vivid possible example of why, as a general rule, no one can or should trust city cops, the off-duty Baltimore City cop who killed an unarmed man outside a Mount Vernon nightclub Saturday morning -- firing at him thirteen times -- is about as clear an illustration of what sort of scum all too often manages to get hired onto the force as could ever be provided.

Tyrone Brown was a Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq and came home safely, only to find that the city police harbored a violent lunatic, Gahiji Tshamba -- a 15 year BCPD veteran -- who would prove more of a threat than Iraqi insurgents.

Brown apparently made a pass at a woman accompanying Tshamba, and the two had words. Tshamba pulled out his city-issued sidearm and fired 13 times from close range, striking Brown with six bullets.

Now, here's the best part: Tshamba was "disciplined" by police department five years ago for shooting a man while intoxicated. That's right: a Baltimore cop shot a man while drunk and they let him keep his job. The BCPD's line was that the earlier shooting was justified because Tshamba was threatened; if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Of course not all city cops are as insane as Tshamba. But too many are willing to cover up for the true scumbags, and too many are willing to engage in less serious abuses.

The May 31 episode of the CBC's As It Happens (available as streaming WMA or MP3 download) features an interview with Mark Regev, official spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, regarding the recent attack on the relief convoy headed to Gaza, which reports say killed between 9 and 19 people. In this interview (around 14:20 in the MP3 file) Regev admits that the Israeli special forces team assaulting the ship in the middle of the night opened fire with stun grenades, tear gas, and smoke grenades before boarding.

Regev considers firing on a civilian ship in international waters with these less-lethal weapons "restrained", which shows just how far out of line Israel's behavior has become.

If you're trying to figure out how the hell we got to the point where Israel is attacking ships in international waters like some crazed nation of pirates, killing at least nine and kidnapping hundreds of people, and stealing relief supplies intended for one of the most desperate regions on the planet, here is some background reading:

• the title of the Guardian's article, "Israel's Gaza blockade targets Hamas while citizens suffer", pretty much sums it up:

  The blockade, preventing all exports from Gaza and confining imports to a limited supply of humanitarian goods, has failed to bring down Hamas but has heaped misery on Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

  The UN humanitarian co-ordinator said last week that the formal economy in Gaza has "collapsed" and 60% of households were short of food. According to UN statistics, around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water.

• the wik's article on the Gaza blockade:
  

  On January 24, 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a statement calling for Israel to lift its siege on the Gaza Strip, allow the continued supply of food, fuel, and medicine, and reopen border crossings. According to the Jerusalem Post, this was the 15th time in less than two years the council condemned Israel for its human rights record regarding the Palestinian territories. The proceedings were boycotted by Israel and the United States.

  On December 15, 2008, following a statement in which he described the embargo on Gaza a crime against humanity, United Nations Special Rapporteur and member of the 9/11 truth movement Richard A. Falk was prevented from entering the Palestinian territories by Israeli authorities and expelled from the region. The Ambassador to the United Nations Itzhak Levanon said that the mandate of the Special Rapporteur was "hopelessly unbalanced," "redundant at best and malicious at worst."

  In August 2009, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay criticised Israel for the blockade in a 34-page report, calling it a violation of the rules of war.

  In March 2010, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated that the blockade of Gaza is causing "unacceptable suffering" and that families were living in "unacceptable, unsustainable conditions".

  A UN Fact Finding mission lead by South African Judge Richard Goldstone suggested that the blockade was a war crime and possibly a crime against humanity:

  "Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their rights to access a court of law and an effective remedy, could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed." The Goldstone report recommended that the matter be referred to the International Criminal Court if the situation has not improved in six months.

  In May 2010, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated that the formal economy in Gaza has collapsed since the imposition of the blockade.

• the BBC's guide "Gaza under blockade":
  

  Overall, the UN says the blockade has caused the economy "irreversible damage". Unemployment has soared from 30% in 2007 to 40% in 2008, according to the World Bank, though it dropped slightly in early 2010. The UN says that when aid is discounted, 70% of Gazan families live on less than a dollar a day per person.

  ...

  Before the blockade, 3,900 industrial premises were operating, employing 35,000 people - by June 2008, only 90 were still functioning, employing only 860, according to the Palestinian Trade Center. The situation improved slightly during the truce.

  An estimated total of $140m of damage was done to Gaza businesses during the December and January military operation, according to a Palestinian business body, the Palestinian Private Sector Coordinating Council.

The facts of this latest incident are not yet clear. But if, after decades of new coverage slanted in favor of Israel, you find it hard to believe that the IDF would attack an aid ship, you ought to read about how they murdered peace activist Rachel Corrie while destroying Palestinian homes, and read about and see the video of Palestinian farmers taking fire from Israeli troops.

Imagine, if you will, a four-passenger small car that got 32 mpg and could withstand a 50 mph impact -- front or side -- with only minimal injuries to passengers. Pretty cool, huh? A great counter-argument to bozos who claim that only massive gas-guzzlers can be safe.

Now imagine that such a car was built in the 1970s. By federal government contractors.

Jalopnik has the story of Minicar's Research Safety Vehicles, advanced prototypes that the Carter administration's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration created to demonstrate to automakers what was possible in auto safety and build the car of the future -- 1985. They "looked like an AMC Pacer worked over by the set designers of Battlestar Galactica" (original series, obviously) and featured run-flat tires, anti-lock brakes with crash-sensing radar, and dual-stage airbags. These were build by 1979, let me repeat.

With coming of the stupid ages -- a.k.a. the Reagan era -- the RSV's went the way of the solar panels on the White House roof, and our auto industry was set from from government meddling and pressure to make products that would get fewer of us killed:

Like other American inventions such as the VCR, the lithium-ion battery and David Hasselhoff, many of the RSV's technologies only prospered overseas. Anti-lock brakes and air bags were standard on European cars first; Japanese automakers put the first crash-sensing brake system on the market in 2003, nearly 25 years after the RSV sported it. Yet those five-star ratings from NHTSA that have become standard for front crash safety in U.S. cars come from tests at 35 mph, still 15 mph shy of the RSV bar.

Last year, traffic deaths fell to their lowest level since 1961 at 33,963, after remaining stuck at roughly 40,000 for decades, in part because a modern car has more in common with the RSVs than ever before. With smaller cars, tougher fuel rules and bigger worries about oil on the horizon, that 1985 target date for the program may have been set about 30 years too early.

The Bush I era NHTSB eventually destroyed the RSV prototypes -- to "destroy[] the evidence that you could do much better," suggests Minicars's project manager Don Friedman. Turns out, though, that they didn't succeed; two of the prototypes were still in Minicars' possession.