MuffinBlog

After my last post a few minutes ago, I was just thinking that many people might not ever contact their representatives and senators because they don’t know where to start or how hard it will be. Here are some tips for taking action:

1) The NRDC has a great feature on their website that lets you search for your elected officials, and then easily send a message to them in a uniform manor. Visit http://www.nrdconline.org/nrdc/leg-lookup/search.tcl. This page finds both your federal and state officials. Even though it’s relatively easy to find your federal officials via the federal government’s web sites (see tips #2 and #3), finding state officials is a little harder. In general you can go to <state>.gov (substituting <state> for the actual state name, of course), but each state’s web page is completely different.

2) For finding Senators, you can also just go to http://www.senate.gov and use the drop down selection box in the upper right-hand corner of the page to find your senators by state name, and a link to a web form for communicating with them. This may be easier to remember if you forget to bookmark the NRDC page.

3) For the House of Representatives, you can go to http://www.house.gov and use the form on the upper left-hand corner of the page to search for your representative by zip code. If you don’t know the extra 4 digits of your zip code, go to http://www.usps.com and click on the “Find a ZIP Code” link on the far left of the top navigation bar to search using your home address.

I hope this helps make it easier for any Americans reading my blog to communicate with our government. Voicing your opinion is really only a few clicks and an email away. Use it!

I just finished the chapter in A People’s History of the United States on the Spanish-American war. I have to admit that the only thing I knew about this conflict was that it was between the U.S. and Spain. I thought maybe it had to do with Mexico since that is the only country repopulated by Spain I knew that had fought large battles with the U.S. Not only did I enlighten myself to how Cuba came to hate the U.S. government, but also how the U.S. annexed Puerto Rico and Guam as commonwealths, and Hawaii as a state (eventually). I also didn’t realize that we briefly ran a bloody occupation of the Philippines.

Around the turn of the century, William McKinley was president. He was an out right imperialist (along with his successor, Theodore Roosevelt). He wanted war to get rid of the extras resulting in our overproducing industries since U.S. citizens weren’t buying enough (it being a depression and all). There were also the wealthy business people who didn’t want war if the government could simply “open up markets” in those countries that were ripe for exploitation, but they easily capitulated (i.e. completely reversed their stance) to war whenever “peaceful” means didn’t work.

Spain controlled Cuba, and the Cuban citizens didn’t like that. They started to revolt like we did during our war of independence. But McKinley and others realized that a) the rebels were primarily black, and b) if the rebels succeeded in kicking out Spain, there was no guarantee that the new black government would “open their markets” to us (i.e. allow us to come in and exploit their resources). So we sent a warship down their to make our “freedom loving” presence known, and it got attacked and sunk. This helped rile up American sentiment for the “freedom” of the Cubans.

Eventually we declared war on Spain and invaded Cuba, but refused to acknowledge the rebels. We kept the white government that was installed by Spain, but refused to give them sovereignty until they passed the Platt Amendment to their new constitution. The Platt Amendment allowed the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it wanted, and opened up their markets to U.S. business men. We eventually won and also annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii as side trophies (Hawaii was already overrun by pineapple business interests, but wasn’t controlled by Spain). We then slaughtered people in the Philippines to keep it under control. Is it any wonder that Cuba went socialist? Who the hell would want capitalism after having your independence revolt undermined and your country exploited by a capitalist invader? The Cuban missile crisis was basically our fault because we wouldn’t leave the Cubans the hell alone after we scared them out of capitalism!

A very similar thing is happening in Iraq. The oil companies want control of Iraq’s resources and markets, so the government trumps up some story about liberating Iraq and WMD as an excuse to invade with a disaster (i.e. 9/11) to rile up the population and the corporate press to spread the propaganda. We then setup a puppet government and–this is a recent development–push the puppet government to “open the market” (basically we’re trying to get Iraqi politicians to give the oil companies control of Iraq’s oil resources).

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just history repeating itself.

I subscribe to the National Center for Science Education’s news letter, and finally read the latest issue (September 28). One of the articles described how Sen. David Vitter (R-La) is trying to earmark $100,000 to fund a creationist group to degrade the science curriculum in Louisiana. I don’t live in Louisiana, but I am a U.S. citizen. As such, Sen. Vitter is in fact spending my tax money. I decided to write Sen. Vitter to get an idea of why he feels it necessary to hurt our country’s standing in the world in such troubling times as this. Here is the message I submitted via his web site:

First of all, I should say that I am not one of your constituents. That said, you are spending my tax money, so I figured contacting you is appropriate.

I have read that you are trying to give a Christian group $100,000 dollars “to develop a plan to promote better science education.”

To quote you further:

“This program helps supplement and support educators and school systems that would like to offer all of the explanations in the study of controversial science topics such as global warming and the life sciences.”

I wanted to let you know that there is no controversy in the science community about these topics. All you are doing is helping in the demise of U.S. technical leadership by supporting groups who don’t like science.

If that is what promoting better science education is to you, I think you need more than a better explanation of what you are doing with this $100,000. You need to explain why you feel that it is necessary to waste tax payer money on activities that clearly violate U.S. citizens’ right to freedom of religion and hurt our national competitiveness while we have record deficits, declining enrollment in science and engineering education, and are engaged in two costly wars abroad.

I will be posting this message to my blog at www.muffinspawn.com/blog. Feel free to respond there or through my email address. Thank you.

If he doesn’t respond directly here, I will be sure to post any response I get via email.

One thing that is becoming apparent as I read more and more about labor strikes in A People’s History of the United States is that guns in the hands of the strikers does very little to change the outcome. Overwhelmingly, when the federal government decides to send in the militia, the strike is over. Ironically, this puts a different spin on the 2nd Amendment. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I’ve always contended that this amendment should be taken in the proper context. It is speaking in support of a militia, not personal self defense. What’s ironic about this is that the militia was used throughout our early history most often to squelch riots as a result of striking labor unions. From the people’s point of view, this is actually in opposition to “a free State”. It protected the entrenched, wealthy, ruling elite from popular revolt. This isn’t suprising if you consider that the constitution was primarily a tool by the ruling elite to control the under class of this new society. In that sense it perhaps did serve it’s purpose in putting up a successfully executed resistance to British rule. That said, fighting off a government that’s thousands of miles a way across an ocean with the support of a unifying replacement government is hardly comparable to fighting off a government that rules from the same land mass by just individual citizens.

Thus I pull two conclusions from this view of guns in our democracy: 1) being armed is little assurance that a popular revolt against the government will succeed, and 2) the 2nd Amendment is actually a very poor device, when taken in the proper historical context, for justifying personal gun ownership. Perhaps it’s no wonder that people who use it only quote the second half of the sentence. The first half of the sentence only makes things worse for one’s pro gun ownership stance the more one knows about the history of this country.

I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States“, and I believe I have started to make sense of how American society got where it is in terms of the ruling elite and the myth of upward mobility. Democracy in this country originated more as a control tactic by the ruling elite to create a buffer between themselves and the natives, disenfranchised poor, and slaves for fear of revolt. The upper class made enough concessions to a new middle class to engender loyalty to fight their wars and keep the proportion of potentially rebellious under class to a manageable level.

To a large extent, that same paradigm remains in place today. It’s very hard for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty, and society helps keep them there by blaming them for their laziness and natural tendencies towards violence and criminal behavior. The middle class rarely becomes truly wealthy to the point where they become part of the ruling elite. The upper class legally bribe politicians to pass laws that favor only themselves, marry only amongst themselves, purchase superior education for their children, and have secret societies like the Skulls which mold the next generation of upper class into the rulers of the country.

What we need in this country is a solidarity movement where the middle class helps improve the lives of the lower class through things like education sponsorship in return for supporting only political candidates that arise from the two lower classes. Combined with a commitment not to take money from rich donors, maybe then the sources of corruption in our government and the almost complete lack of influence by the lower and middle classes will start to become less entrenched. I think it’s about time we had that revolt the upper class has been dreading and trying to avoid for three-hundred years. This time, though, lets try leaving the pitch forks and muskets at home.

I just came across Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org) which publishes an annual list of 25 “overlooked, under-reported, or self-censored” news stories by the U.S. media. I thought I would do my part and highlight a few that I thought were particular scary. Primarily these stories expose how little compunction our federal government has in supporting legislation that further strips our freedoms and expands it’s corporate-controlled power over other nations.

Domestically, the president now has the right to declare martial law pretty much whenever he wants to. To enhance this new power, the president can also simply declare anyone an “enemy cobatant” in order to strip that person of his or her habeus corpus rights. All animal activists can also be declared terrorists, introducing this country to the possibility of categorical political detention. I wonder why they had to create a law singling out animal activists if habeus corpus isn’t an absolute right anymore. Better safe than sorry?

Militarily the U.S. now has a new regional unified command just for Africa (USAFRICOM) in addition to USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM, USEUOCOM (of which Africa used to be a part), USCENTCOM, and USPACOM. Great timing considering we now buy more oil from Africa than from any other continent. I imagine it might also be helpful in monitoring our proxy war in Somalia by the Ethiopian army. Apparently Bush’s Christian mercenary buddies over at Blackwater are also negotiating with Sudan to train their Christian forces. That could be useful if we ever need to use Sudan to start another proxy war in some other resource-rich nation.

On the economic warfare front, the US and EU are getting good at forcing unfair trade deals down the throats of developing nations. The US was even able to largely secure control over India’s retail and agricultural industries as partial payment for the US supplying India with nuclear reactor material. I’m sure this will be welcomed with open arms by all the family members of dead Indian farmers who have committed suicide because of existing destructive influences from companies like Monsanto and their Genetically Modified seeds. Maybe with a wal-mart nearby they’ll finally be able to afford the GM seeds that they are required to purchase every year (along with special fertilizers) that are currently causing widespread debt problems. Maybe they should just stop farming, get a job at wal-mart, and buy the subsidized food crops from the U.S. instead like Mexico. After we finish deporting all our illegal Mexican workers, maybe the broke Indian farmers will find a way to get in and pick up the slack. It’s likely a lot harder to get in from overseas than to cross miles of desert on foot without water, though, so they might have to just settle for suicide.

Sorry, I got a little sarcastic there. It’s my way of coping with how disgusted I am with the corrupt U.S. government and the media corporations that have helped make it happen by reporting anything but real news. Check out the web link at the top for more details and information sources for these and the other stories on the list.

Apparently Congress doesn’t have anything better to do than to get more strict on censorship of broadcast media. A new bill was passed that makes even slip-of-the-tongue “indecent” words or images an offense worthy of a fine. I’ve been trying to figure out my stance on this, and I’ve found it quite difficult.

Take censorship of “bad” words for starters. I believe that if the concern is corrupting children, the real problem is bad behavior not words. Your child telling a teacher to “cram it up your rectal orifice” is just as bad as telling her to “go fuck yourself.” The problem is the disrespect and reprehensible attitude towards expressing that disrespect, not any particular word. It’s also a respect issue if your child is hanging out with friends in public swearing up a storm. They need to be made aware that others can hear them, and it may cause discomfort in others. Kids learn these words one way or another. Hearing it on TV or radio isn’t going to change that, and it isn’t going to scar them for life.

That said, I would consider it a degredation of quality if constant profanity plagued the air waves. It isn’t that the words inherently offend me (I use many of them myself from time to time), it’s that I prefer intelligent language to language littered with expletives. I love listening to George Carlin specifically because he has a wonderful command of the language, regardless of his use of expletives. He knows how much and when to use expletives to enhance his comedy, but he also demonstrates that he doesn’t have to use expletives all the time to present his verbal creation. From this point of view I would have no problem with individual stations or programs self-censoring themselves to maintain quality, but with federal legislation (especially the draconian bill that was just precipitated into law) there is absolutely no room for creative, intelligent use of “bad” words. So while I’ve convinced myself that federal censorship of words isn’t a sound idea, the question still remains whether stations would regulate themselves appropriately as to avoid degrading quality programming. I don’t have an answer to that.

As for “indecent” images, the questions are very similar. My faith in broadcast television to self-regulate themselves is fairly weak, though. After all, most violence isn’t considered indecent by the FCC; and despite research suggesting kids are affected by violence (either on TV or in real life), it is shown on television with little compunction. How do we justify banning nudity (which to my knowledge doesn’t have any harmful side effects) when we allow violent material that does have evidence against it? If explicit sex weren’t considered indecent, would TV stations consider it unintelligent enough to keep it off the air in order to maintain quality? Again, I couldn’t predict what would happen.

I find it tough even to justify complete censorship of images like actual killings or sexual abuse. Certainly with respect to war both should be acceptable to get across the shear horror of it. People have the right to understand what their country is doing in their name. On the other hand, I would consider snuff films or gang rape videos quite distasteful given that they are legally heinous criminal activities. But are my feelings based on taste or the desire for sacrifice to promote the public welfare based on scientific evidence? The latter would necessitate banning even war footage since it could be harmful to children. The former is simply a matter of opinion that I could never justify as a sufficient reason for censorship.

So in some sense I can forgive Congress for cracking down on “indecent” words and images. On the other hand, these politicians are passing blanket legislation without any regard for scientific evidence. I would have no problem if censorship were in place because it is shown with a high degree of confidence that it’s harmful to children. Banning words and images because a politician doesn’t like them, though, has the stink of fascism.