Angry White Kid

Free the Hikers!

The families and friends of Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the three Americans currently detained in Iran have just launched a website: www.freethehikers.org.

Please help in spreading the word about this site and the situation of Sarah, Shane and Josh. Their families and friends want them all home safe and soon!

Along with notifying others about the site, you can join the Facebook group and if you are on Twitter, please use the hash tage #ssj.

Here's some more info on Sarah, Shane and Josh from the website:

Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd have been detained in Iran since July 31, 2009, when they accidentally crossed an unmarked border during a hiking trip in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. They were in a peaceful region of Iraq that is increasingly popular with Western tourists.

The three young Americans, all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, are believed to be held in the Iranian capital, Tehran. They have not been charged with any crime, have had no contact with their families, and have not been granted their right to consular access.

Shane, Josh and Sarah care greatly about the world. They admire and respect different cultures and religions and share a love of travel that has taken them to many countries. That’s why they went to Kurdistan, not because they wanted to enter Iran.

The families and friends of the three hikers created this site to tell the story of Shane, Josh and Sarah and keep the world informed about their situation.

We hope the Iranian authorities understand that there’s just one reason why our children and friends happened to be in Iran: because they made a regrettable mistake and got lost. Please let them return home as soon as possible.

YouTubin' it with boysetsfire, Phil Ochs, and Ashes

While writing papers at the end of this last semester, my way of procrastinating was embarking on a YouTube improvement project.  And by that I mean posting videos I want to see up there. 

Here's a sampling on the chance you like them, too.  First, my favorite band, boysetsfire, which I love even though they plugged the CPUSA in some of their liner notes. Second is Phil Ochs playing The Highwayman on an old poetry show.  Finally, my favorite emo band, Ashes.  No video for those, just the music.  Enjoy.

I'm back. Kinda.

Hi there friends, comrades, haters. After more than a year outside the blogging game, I've decided to meander back.  But in its current form it won't be of a very consistent nature.  Here's the deal:

I'm currently in Oaxaca, Mexico and will be here for a while yet. I've been sending updates to emails lists as well as doing translations of news stories and communiques. In the interest of getting stuff out to a broader audience, it makes sense to utilize this blog as well. Shortly, I will be posting some original pieces and translations and will continue to update this as events and my stay progress.  Please do get in touch if there's anything you'd like to see up here relating to Oaxaca.

Hope you've all been doing well. And of course I can't leave with touching on Palestine. Much love, hope, concern and admiration to the Free Gaza Movement! Bon voyage!

Censoring Palestine on Daily Kos

As I couldn't care less about the Democrats, I don't read Daily Kos.  They like to call themselves the "left-wing of the Democratic Party", but on the political spectrum that's still a pretty right-wing place to be, and I'm not interested.

Given that 500,000 other people per day do appear to be interested, and given that anyone can post on the site, it is an important place to raise topical issues that most Democrats could use some educating about, such as Palestine.  Several pro-Palestine bloggers maintain diaries on the site in an effort to do just that.

But ironically enough, as the Palestinians marked the 59th anniversary of the Nakba - their forced expulsion from their homes and homeland - three pro-Palestine bloggers were expelled from Daily Kos. This occurred for no reason other than that the pro-Israel side complained consistently and loudly enough that some apparently weak-willed administrator gave in.

Sabbah, one of the recently-banned bloggers, provides some background on this development. Others on Daily Kos are trying to right the situation.  Unfortunately, I don't see the banned bloggers being reinstated. As the dKosopedia states, "If you are banned as a user for any reason, the only court of appeal is Markos himself."  And as Markos states, Daily Kos "is a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory."  As the Democrats' only concern about the Palestinians is making sure they remain as subjugated as possible, a blog dedicated to Democratic victory is likely not to look fondly on Palestinian rights or have any interest in the Palestinian narrative. 

In short, it's a shameful situation. The banned bloggers should be immediately reinstated and the censorship at Daily Kos - for which it is gaining a reputation - should end. But really, it's the Democrats, the other brand of American Fascism™, so I wouldn't expect much. My hat is off to those who tried, and keep trying, to make a difference.

UPDATE: curmudgiana at My Left Wing shares just how far off the deep end the Kos administrators have gone.  Truly, Daily Kos has now ideologically melded itself with Bush and the selective "war on terror." The purge and silencing of anything contradicting The Party line continues.

Democracy and Deconstruction in Contemporary Media: An Ode to Bill Hicks

Two weeks of silence and now a random posting.  Obviously, this blog has been on an unannounced leave of absence and will likely remain that way for the time being.  But on to the post.  Last Sunday, my friend Jamie came over and we threw on some Bill Hicks.  Jamie hadn't seen/heard Bill before, was clearly inspired, and sent me this the next day.  I don't necessarily subscribe to a bulk of his argument, but I still think it's interesting stuff.  Onward...

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I believe one of the greatest problems in our media landscape today is the curious coming together of democracy and deconstruction.  While media used to follow a more metaphysical program of cramming the absolute beliefs of the rich and powerful down our collective throat, this heavy handed treatment of the populous inevitably lost favor.  The traditional power structures of the “old world” were the industrialists, politicians and religious groups that held a symbolic importance so great they presented themselves as earth-bound elements of God’s eternal plan.  These institutions, however, could not easily maintain their grip on power in a democratic country while maintaining that power through such obvious disregard for democracy’s underlying principles of equality and participation.  So in time the media outlets knew their style would have to change, to become more egalitarian, or they would become increasingly perceived as out of touch with their own target audiences.  Luckily for them, this change was to come about with the proliferation of alternative media outlets.  The number of alternative sources of information grew as the means to disseminate information became less expensive and more easy to obtain.  While the evolving technology of television, computers, printers and copy machines moved this process along, the most fundamental shift certainly came with the birth of the internet and the mouthpiece it provided to anyone with access to the world wide web.  Now the mainstream media no longer had a monopoly on the outlet for mass-produced information, and to a more optimistic mind that may have seemed like a good thing (I for one thought it was great at first).  Here we have the dramatic upheaval of the traditional seats of power who could no longer present their points of view as fact.  This is postmodern philosophy at it’s best: applying an adolescent energy of rebellion and deep socratic questioning to the traditional sources of power, so comfortable in their untouched ivory towers and secure corporate boardrooms that they no longer know how to properly defend their own lies.  Due to the greater dissemination of information and the greater willingness to ask questions that this carries with it, the symbols of the elite’s power could no longer be passed off as signposts of truth, and their claim to be one with the absolute was deconstructed (and Derrida did a jig on Kant’s grave...or something).

Comment moderation is on

I will be moderating comments for the time being due to the pro-Israel buffoon who has mastered copying and pasting but is incapable of making a cogent argument, or for that matter, a complete sentence.  Please be patient if your stuff doesn't appear immediately.

Lee Kaplan - Judge for yourself

In February, I blogged about Lee Kaplan and his disgraceful and manipulative attempts at "investigative journalism."  On that post, he even proved my point by pretending to be someone else and posting positive comments about himself.

Given a recent action of his that is too horrible to share, Lee Kaplan sunk to a new low and further established himself not just as someone interested in protecting Israel by making stuff up, but as a heartless coward intent on destroying lives.

In light of that, I was excited when a fellow blogger notified me about a new site called Lee Kaplan Watch.  Over there you can stay up to date on the latest shameless antics of the Bay Area's favorite nut.  I highly recommend people check it out, link to it, post about it, and anytime the words "Lee Kaplan" come up - you know where to send them.

And while we're on the topic of watches, I'd like to give a shout to Watching JihadWatch and of course the lovely folks over at LGF Watch.

Hey Kiddies, I'm Back!

The honeymoon is over, literally.  I'll be posting some pics shortly and a write up of the trip.

In the meantime, the streets were on the move today with massive demonstrations across the country for immigrants' rights.  More than 20,000 people marched in Oakland alone, where Anthony Soltero, the first fatality of last month's student walkouts was remembered.

More actions are happening later this month, leading up the the May Day's national immigrant general strike. 

The Nauseating Sideshow that is Lee Kaplan

Lee Kaplan, the suave-looking gentleman above, has hit the media jackpot of the netherworld that is the right, and will be on Bill O'Reilly's show Thursday.  In honor of such a lackluster occurrence, let's examine this fellow a little more. 

Many involved in work on Israel/Palestine are familiar with him.  He mainly dwells over on FrontPageMag.com, where he writes "articles" that consistently have "terror," "hate" or "jihad" in the title.  His "research" consists of stuff he either blatantly makes up or hyper-exaggerates. 

Kaplan is exceptionally proud of his "undercover" work.  Among other activities, this has involved putting on blackface and pretending to be Pakistani at the 2004 conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement.  Ehud at Cal Tzedek has recently revealed Kaplan's online penchant for pretending he is Arab and using this Arab identity to defend himself on blogs. 

As I mentioned earlier, Kaplan is also on the board of the neo-McCarthyist Bruin Alumni Association.  In November, he became the Director of Communications for the rabidly Islamophobic organization, the United American Committee, which on February 1 held a national so-called "Rally Against Islamofascism Day." 

Finally, Kaplan is the brains (and I use that term loosely) behind the website Stop the ISM.  Here he claims that the ISM is affiliated with the killers of Malcolm X, "eats its own useful idiots," and "makes Israeli children and the elderly go to bed hungry." 

The sites main assertion, in what appears to be a brilliant display of inductive logic, since the two groups have similarly worded names, is that Palestine Solidarity Movement is actually the International Solidarity Movement.  Yet the whole site, which is premised on that claim, fails to offer any actual evidence to prove it.  Instead, it serves up a wholesale libel-fest of paranoia and disparagement with no actual proof to be seen.  Welcome to the Crazyland Sideshow, with Lee Kaplan as your host.

I Don't Read Blogs

When I first started blogging, I became enthralled with reading blogs. commenting on them, learning all sorts of things from them, but now, my Bloglines aggregator is consistently hitting 2000 new items - at which point I delete them all and say to myself, "Next time, I won't get so far behind, I read blogs everyday."  And as I write this, the notifier tells me there are 1999 new items. 

I don't not read blogs because most of them are utter crap, since there are quite a few great ones, but because I just can't find the time.  It's a struggle attending to my own blog, let alone dropping by to visit others.  It's a shame, but it's just the way it is at the moment. 

So, to make up for not reading blogs and not posting here enough, I want to link to blogs that have caught my interest that I wish I had the time to read:

• Back in Palestine


• Saree Makdisi


• the Disillusioned Kid


• blackademic


• Democracy Sometimes


• The Quaker Anarchist


• Beer and Rap


• Maconami


• Woman of Color blog


• don't listen to him, he's from boston