Update on Green blackout
Topic: politics
An afterthought to the 10/22 item below: On Wednesday 10/25, Amy Goodman did some excellent - and extensive - coverage of Howie Hawkins' being shut out of the debate at UR. The Democracy Now! segment included an interview with Hawkins and a League of Women Voters official telling the whole sad story - a tragicomedy that exposes our local opinion managers for what they are, and aren't. Check out democracynow.org for a download: (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/1422220).

Closed to debate
Topic: politics

With New York’s US Senate race grinding to its inevitable outcome, I’ve been girding my loins – and realizing that discomforting old expression fits the situation all too well. I can actually feel a tightness south of the solar plexus when I think about Hillary Clinton’s easy victory. Here’s a candidate that preserves a reputation as a progressive while being pro-war, pro-death penalty, pro-corporate power and money, pro-inadequate health care, pro-homophobic marriage restrictions. Radicals, and even liberals, are justified in mourning, “With friends like that…”

Sure, she’s better than Republican challenger John Spencer, and way ahead of Alaric and Tamerlane, but no civilized person should cast a vote for her.

Yet there she is, at the head of the pack. And there she’ll stay, thanks in part to local institutions with curious ideas about democratic forms and intellectual honesty.

Here’s what I mean: Last Friday night, Clinton and Spencer took part in a “debate” – the term now meaning banter between candidates who basically are in agreement, answering journalists who move in lockstep – hosted by the University of Rochester. Time Warner’s R News broadcast the event from Strong Auditorium; WXXI carried the audio. As reported later on R News, everything looked peachy. No notes of discord, in the hall or outside. A fine exercise in electoral politics, and a credit to the home team.

But R News left out the real story. And the next morning, the D&C hardly did better, with this one sentence way down in a piece by Joseph Spector: “Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Senate, was not included in the event, drawing protests from him and the League of Women Voters.” You  have to look elsewhere in the news to find out what really happened. Hawkins didn’t take his exclusion lying down. He called the event a “farce” and likened the selection process to the accomplishments of Boss Tweed. And he noted that all four anti-war candidates (himself, a Libertarian, and two socialists) had been undemocratically dumped.

The League of Women Voters was mighty pissed, too, or whatever expression fits their respectable image. As reported by news outlets here and there, the League had determined, using in-house criteria that allow some subjective application but still are relatively fair, that the debates should include Hawkins along with Clinton and Spencer. Nevertheless, the local newspeople and the University went ahead with the farce.

This was particularly galling in the UR’s case – an institution of “higher learning” in cahoots with those who trample the most basic principles of fairness. Okay, okay – what planet am I on? We’re talking about the same institution that hosts the Simon School.

Luckily, we’ve got the internet, and you can check out the Hawkins campaign at www.hawkinsforsenate.org. Brace yourself: this is a pablum-free-zone, with well-thought out statements on the full range of issues. If you get tired of being challenged and respected as a voter, you can switch back to Hillary or John for a snooze.

 

Parkland security
Topic: urban issues

On  and on goes the moralistic crusade against former Congressmember Mark Foley, who admittedly abused his position of authority while pursuing some Congressional pages (young men, not children exactly). For Foley, it’s all over, and the case is stirring up yet more homophobia in Republican ranks. Probably a few more heads will roll. Unfortunately, some of those heads will belong to low-ranking gay staffers who've been quietly pursuing their careers, hoping against hope that the neocon, religio-fascist wave would break and recede. 

True, a greater good may come of this: The crusade might contribute to Republican electoral losses in key districts, notably including that of Tom Reynolds, Western New York’s Bushie Supreme. The Republicans could even lose control of Congress altogether. But the bipartisan pontificating and posing still stink. How many Reps and Senators are in high dudgeon about mass murders by the US military on their watch – and essentially on their orders?

Then there’s a crusade that’s keeping the home fires burning. Friday’s D&C carried another installment about the hapless former head of the Greece Chamber of Commerce, Skip Beaver. He and another middle-aged man were arrested last month in Genesee Valley Park for alleged lewd behavior, an encounter at sundown behind a public bathroom. Beaver, who’s full name has predictably inspired sophomoric comments about sexual orientation, left his position with the Chamber shortly after the arrest. We can wonder whether his straight-laced bosses dumped him, or he left freely, but the fact is he lost his job while still legally presumed innocent. Worse, his name has been splashed all over the front pages. And for what? Fooling around with a 61-year-old in the shadows? There has been no hint that this was anything but consensual. Nor have there been reports of park users harmed, outraged, or even inconvenienced by what went on. Exactly what real offense was committed?

Sounds like another chapter of cops gone wild. A few years ago I spoke to a man who was arrested in GV Park, which has long been known as a gay cruising area. This man had to struggle with the system for months; finally the charges were dropped on a technicality that the higher-ups, at least, must have known about: the two men were playing in a private vehicle and thus not guilty of “public lewdness.” So why did John Law go after them? For the same reason that, time after time, he’s gone after men at Durand Eastman, Genesee Valley, Highland Park, and other locations: the poor dear, defender of a sham morality, is suffering from a horrible persecution complex - in this instance, a complex mixture of psychological flaws that causes him to hound innocent people. He can’t help himself.

And JL’s got lots of company – lots of big pricks on public display throughout the hierarchy. Nor should we fail to note the smaller pricks in the mass media, who ruin lives while pretending to satisfy our right to know.

Divine and demonic missions
Topic: antiwar

More troops into the valley of death?
Topic: antiwar

Why do people spend so much time listening to The Brass? I'm not talking about some new ensemble of horns and trombones; I mean the parade of trumpeting generals, including local Marine retiree John Batiste, who are now calling for Don Rumsfeld's head.

If you pay even approximate attention to what these guys are saying, you see there's no cause for joy - just new riffs on the supposed casus belli. The brass are tut-tutting not about US imperialism (of which they are actually the avant garde) nor about mere murder and mayhem (their stock in trade). No, what gets them is Rummy's lack of effectiveness and efficiency, his basic unsuitability for implementing the Powell Doctrine (quick and massive application of force to annihilate the opposition and avoid another "quagmire," i.e. any situation in which the little guy is able to hold out against our high-tech assaults.)

True to form, the generals just want more bodies to finish the job. Take Batiste at his word. This man - perfectly suited to be a corporate executive who gives closed-door, high-priced pep-talks to business types, as he is doing this week at Nazareth College - thinks we need 350,000 US troops on the ground, minimum. At least that's what he told City Newspaper's Tim Macaluso.

The math says it all: Batiste is telling us we're once again fighting with one hand tied behind our back, as right-wingers contended we were in Vietnam. Men like these are constitutionally unable to say a war is wrong and should be stopped, least of all a war that has left blood on their own hands.

I don't care how many times Batiste goes after his former boss. Mr Spit-shine makes me queasy every time he speaks. Besides, Rummy isn't the issue. The issue is the war and occupation, which must be ended with all deliberate speed, primarily on moral and legal grounds. You might even say it's better for the world that Rummy's still in charge. His ineffectiveness might make it harder for US forces to do maximum damage.