Law and Order: SVU Reviews DD

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Trophy” Season 12. See this for a summary.

At the beginning there are two very minor characters that are in an inter-racial relationship.

“Penetration” See this for a summary.

A small part of this is about the FBI investigating the far-right. More specifically there’s a smaller part about anti-muslim bigots. It focuses on a protest of what some called the “ground zero mosque.” There was an effort to build a mosque close to the World Trade Center in NYC. In a post at the time, I suggested that those behind it should compare their refusal to build it somewhere else to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on that bus.

“Pop” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

A fairly innocent minor character says that his brother died after breathing in dust at Ground Zero (the World Trade Center on 9/11). The collapse of both towers released a huge amount of dust that included glass and other things you don’t want to breathe in. Some agency of the Bush administration, probably OSHA or the EPA, said it was safe but it wasn’t and a lot of people ended up very sick because of it.

“Mask” Season 12. See this for as plot summary.

The two victims are a gay female couple.

“Flight” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

The rapist is a wealthy defense contractor and the SVU initially investigates cautiously because of the power and influence he has. At one point Detective Fin points out that they would approach it very differently if the suspect was blue collar.

The US, Afghanistan and the War on Terror

 Before he lost the 2020 election, Trump was close to ending the US military presence in Afghanistan. He had promised to do so, referring to it as an endless war. I had mixed feelings about it. In the first two years after 9/11 I supported our presence there, even while I actively and solidly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq (I describe that work here).          

I was influenced by a minority statement from members of the national leadership of the Young Democratic Socialists and believed that it was a time, like WWII, when the progressive thing to do was to support an American-led multi-lateral effort against fascist forces who were a threat to justice and peace in the world. 9/11 was largely about killing as many Americans as possible and it’s easier to kill civilians than it is to kill members of the military, so Al-Qaeda primarily went after civilians. Even the plane that DID target the military had civilians on board. And, not everyone working in the World Trade Center was a “little Eichman” as Ward Churchill said (Ward was my faculty advisor and in general I am proud of that, but he was wrong about somewhere around 99% of the people who were working in the WTC). Although it would have been a crucial part of successfully defeating Al-Qaeda, I don’t think that changing America’s foreign policy to address the complaints of Al-Qaeda would have been enough by itself to stop them. A successful and progressive war on terror would have involved an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and that’s partly because America’s imperialistic foreign policy (and crucially it’s support for Israel) is not the only thing that motivates Al-Qaeda and it’s supporters to want conflict with the US. It’s relevant that we are a relatively liberal society and they are religious fundamentalists who see most Americans as infidels. In short, Al-Qaeda are religious fundamentalist fascist terrorists who had carried out an attack aimed at killing as many American civilians as possible and who were sheltered by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

I believe that if we had done the following, we would have been victorious against Al-Qaeda:
1. Changed American foreign policy, especially when it comes to the Middle-East. Looking beyond the Middle-East, I think that a lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent people and groups and nations in this world would have been more interested in helping America defeat Al-Qaeda if we were pursuing a better foreign policy aimed at reversing the transfer of wealth between the global “North” and the global “South” and democratizing the global economy and generally pursuing global justice. Looking at the Mid-East specifically, we shouldn’t be supporting Israel for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda (I make a pretty good argument against Zionism here) but forcing Israel to negotiate seriously and respectfully with the Palestinians would also dry up a lot of Al-Qaeda’s support in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
2. Made the War on Terror very multi-lateral. Although I’ll concede that NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan hasn’t seemed to help, the effort against Al-Qaeda would have been even less successful if it were just the US. In the very early months after 9/11 Germany offered ground forces and the US declined the offer. It would have been more multi-lateral and if other things on this list had happened there would have also been some Muslim nations prominently involved in Afghanistan.
3. The US had purged itself of bigotry towards muslims. Instead we had popular commentators and politicians spewing anti-muslim bigotry which affected how the Muslim world reacted to 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan.
4. Had a better set of domestic policies. Going back to part of #2, we would have had more allies globally if American DOMESTIC policy was better. A lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent individuals and groups and nations aren’t enthusiastic about helping the US government when they consider how much poverty and inequality there is in America.
5. Stayed out of Iraq. They had nothing to do with 9/11 and Saddam was hostile to Al-Qaeda. The invasion meant shifting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq and angered a large part of the Muslim world.
6. Treated Al-Qaeda and Taliban members captured in Afghanistan as POWs. We would have been doing the right thing and we wouldn’t have been heavily criticized as we were by almost the entire world. I’m obviously not a fan of either group but I believe strongly that when combatants are captured, they should be treated as POWs. Whether they were allied airmen during WWII, or IRA members in N. Ireland, or American pilots in Vietnam, or the German SS or Islamic State members, they deserve(d) to be treated as POWs.
7. Abstained from torture. We not only tortured, many American politicians like Peter King of NY, praised the Bush administration for it’s use of torture (I’m thinking primarily of waterboarding and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; see this). This turned a huge chunk of the world’s population against us.

So, that’s pretty much why the War on Terror has not been won and why we briefly faced something close to a state (in the north of Syria) based on a version of Islam even worse than the one that Al-Qaeda embraces.

Returning to Trump’s idea of pulling out of Afghanistan, a large chunk of the US military and many civilian commentators don’t believe the Taliban has been following through on their part of the peace deal they agreed with Washington. It seems likely that they will continue with their war against Kabul and when the US and NATO are gone, they will probably win. And they will probably be a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. And one or both of those two will attack America at some point. I doubt that America will change its Israel policy anytime soon. In general I don’t think Biden will have a consistently progressive foreign policy.

Although I have difficulty saying this, I am more in favor of than against us withdrawing from Afghanistan. What do I think we should do when we leave, the Taliban win, and there’s an Al-Qaeda or IS attack on America? What I referred to positively in the list above, and once that’s done, a multi-national invasion of Afghanistan (unless the Taliban hand Al-Qaeda and IS over to some appropriate authority (possibly the US, possibly someone else)).

(one last thing is that there needs to be a change in the US military (especially the Army and Marines), where they make more effort to avoid civilian casualties. It’s estimated that in Iraq tens of, or a couple hundred thousand(s) of Iraqi civilians were killed by the US military. I learned from an interview on the radio of a political acquaintance that when his son was being trained for deployment to Iraq with the US Army Corps of Engineers, he was told to fire at gunmen even if there were civilians in the way who could easily be shot by accident. The US military needs to understand that when they do stuff like that, they are not increasing their odds of surviving the war, because the relatives and friends of civilians killed by the US military are likely to support or become anti-US combatants)

 

(UPDATE 5/9/21 I forgot to mention something. About a week before I wrote this post I wrote a brief note on the same subject in a post of reviews of Law and Order: SVU:

I’m going to keep this pretty brief. Sometime around 2000 I signed at least one if not two email petitions criticizing the Taliban BEFORE 9/11. The first two years of the US invasion of Afghanistan I supported it, partly because of how offensive the Taliban are. I got the impression that Afghan women didn’t support the invasion, but I also supported it because of 9/11 (Al-Qaeda was based there), so it wasn’t just the misogyny of the Taliban (which, by itself wouldn’t justify an invasion considering the opposition of the Afghan feminists). After two years I realized that under George W. Bush’s leadership the War on Terror was a disaster and in that context the war in Afghanistan was not going to help and was just going to make things worse. But I also can’t imagine a successful War on Terror that doesn’t include defeating Al-Qaeda. I’ll take that thought a little further in another post that I’ll work on soon and publish soon.

 

I AM concerned about what a Taliban victory would mean for girls and women in Afghanistan. An article sort of about that is here) 

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UPDATE 10/24/23 A little more on why a progressive and successful response to 9/11 would have involved taking down Al Qaeda. In 1998, a few months after the Good Friday peace agreement in N. Ireland was ratified by the voters, a splinter group from the IRA detonated a bomb in Omagh, N. Ireland, and killed 29 civilians. The thing is, at that time maybe about 1% of the Catholic population supported armed struggle, and yet the splinter group (the "Real IRA") was able to carry out attacks. Even if all seven things on that list above were done, it would not have 100% ended Al Qaeda's willingness and ability to carry out attacks on western targets.

********

 

UPDATE 7/3/24 I believe that there are a bunch of progressives who seem to think that the American civilian population just has to take hit after hit after hit until they stop voting for ass-holes. I don't think American civilians deserve to die.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews O

 This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m getting into some of the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Wrong is Right” Season 2. I can’t find a summary to link to or copy so here’s my summary: It’s about a teenager who kills the man who adopted him because the man and his boss were molesting him.

The thing is, the man who adopted the boy is an expert on missile guidance systems that the military use and during the Persian Gulf War his legal status as a sex offender was turned off so that he could easily cross international borders to work on missile guidance systems (I’m not sure it makes sense that someone with that speciality would be needed in multiple countries during the war, but that’s what the writers came up with). His legal status was never turned back on and he adopted a boy. We also learn that the man’s boss at a defense contractor also attacked the boy. I don’t think that the show is claiming there’s a connection between the defense industry and the sexual abuse of minors the way they might or probably would claim that there’s at least some racial profiling by the police- I don’t like the defense industry and I don’t believe there’s such a connection. But I still liked the idea of that industry looking bad in this episode.

“Honor” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “A woman found in the park shows signs of being viciously assaulted. She is identified as Nafeesa Amir, the daughter of Afghan diplomat Saleh Amir (Marshall Manesh). During the investigation, the detectives learn that Nafeesa and her brother Jaleel (Anil Kumar) were raised according to Taliban traditions in which an "honor killing" is the punishment for disobedience. Although her individuality has been suppressed for her entire life, the SVU squad turns to Aziza Amir (Susham Bedi) for help, hoping that the love she feels for her daughter is stronger.”

This is a pretty good look at the political Islam of Afghanistan’s Taliban. It does a pretty good job of suggesting that the Taliban are in conflict with most Muslims and with the Koran.

I’m going to keep this pretty brief. Sometime around 2000 I signed at least one if not two email petitions criticizing the Taliban BEFORE 9/11. The first two years of the US invasion of Afghanistan I supported it, partly because of how offensive the Taliban are. I got the impression that Afghan women didn’t support the invasion, but I also supported it because of 9/11 (Al-Qaeda was based there), so it wasn’t just the misogyny of the Taliban (which, by itself wouldn’t justify an invasion considering the opposition of the Afghan feminists). After two years I realized that under George W. Bush’s leadership the War on Terror was a disaster and in that context the war in Afghanistan was not going to help and was just going to make things worse. But I also can’t imagine a successful War on Terror that doesn’t include defeating Al-Qaeda. I’ll take that thought a little further in another post that I’ll work on soon and publish soon. (UPDATE 3/32/22 That post is here)


“Baby Killer” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The tragic shooting death of a young girl leads investigators to a little boy Elias (Nicolas Martí Salgado). Elliot and Olivia interview him with his parents (Sara Ramirez and Robert Montano) as he is one of the youngest murder suspects they have ever questioned. Meanwhile, Alex argues with her co-workers over what punishment would be ethical. Ballistic evidence reveals that Elias picked up the gun after a gang related murder which he must have witnessed. In addition to providing a mitigating circumstance for Elias' case, this allows the detectives to apprehend a wanted criminal (Carlos Leon).”

There are a few minor things worth mentioning:

1) The killer’s teacher says that officially classes should have no more than 32 kids and hers has 40 and one of the detectives says “it must make it kind of hard to give each student the attention they need.” The teacher shows the detectives a violent picture the killer drew in class but says that she didn’t act on it because she wasn’t shocked by such things coming from children. Although the picture wasn’t a sign the boy was going to kill the girl, I think that violence among young students might decline if teachers had more time for students who need it, and that’s one more reason for there to be more teachers and smaller classes.
2) When discussing what lead to the shooting members of the SVU team point out that because the HMO of the killer’s parents wouldn’t cover their daughter’s medical condition they had to work more than normal to pay the medical bills but couldn’t afford regular child care so they sent their son to an illegal, cheap and sub-standard child care operation. We need universal health insurance or something close to it (like Obamacare with a public option) and we need, for multiple reasons, free or heavily subsidized child care.
3) A psychiatrist who used to be a recurring character on Law and Order when she worked with the authorities says that her heroes are “not those who started wars but those who brought about peace.”
4) Since the little boy is Latino and the little girl he killed was Black, there is talk of racial tensions. On one hand, the girl’s mom tries to stop this talk, but the little boy ends up killed by a Black little boy.

“Asunder” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is here: “The truth behind the alleged rape of a woman (Amy Carlson) by her police officer husband (Nestor Serrano) comes to light when a history of domestic abuse is uncovered. Monique Jeffries leaves the squad and files a discrimination suit against the NYPD.”

This is one of the episodes where they go after a cop.

Fuck George W. Bush: Three New Poems

Below are three more poems. For an explanation of how I write my poems, see this. The last one is based on lyrics I agree with, the others are NOT.

For the rest of the lyrics, click on the "lyrics" label at the bottom.

1. Smash the Klan II. What you think it's about.
2. From Out of the Ashes. The birth of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland.
3. Surf the Euphrates. About the Iraq War.

“Smash the Klan II” based on “Aryan Pride” by Final War. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about slightly militant opposition to the KKK among white people. It’s sort of inspired by the time that I joined around 100-300 people in 1995 protesting a “rally” by the Klan in Boulder. At the end we surrounded the building they had rallied in front of and trapped them there for about an hour or two until the police tried something sneaky that involved getting them out in an ambulance.
2. Instead of “crossing the border,” many Mexican-Americans are partly or totally descended from Mexicans who lived in what was Mexico until it became CA, NV and the South-West of the US (and TX).
3. The 54th Mass was the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the segregated Black unit that fought in the American Civil War and whose story is told, accurately or otherwise, in the movie “Glory.”
4. Racists have a greatly exaggerated sense of how much anti-white bigotry there is. In a paragraph more than half-way from the top of this post that starts with “Even without that…” I explain why I think anti-white bigotry is a very small problem.
5. I exaggerate how easy it is for white people to get a job, although if we focus on times when it’s a white person and a person of color, it IS pretty easy for the white person to get the job. Affirmative Action helps a lot, but “Hispanics” and Blacks still have an unemployment rate fairly close to twice that of white people (it’s a bit higher for Blacks than for “Hispanics” and the gap fluctuates a bit, but it’s around twice; see this). Racists think that white people are discriminated against and have more trouble getting a job. Of course, that’s probably because they think that the natural order of things should involve full employment in good jobs for white people and see anything else as unfair.
6. My thoughts about the white identity and European-American ethnic identities are in the first 2/5 of this (you should also read the conclusion, which is the second to last section) (I realize that BEFORE they read that many anti-Klan white people might not like what I say, but I think that after they read it, they will).
7. The St. Patrick Battalion was a group of American soldiers, most Irish and almost all Catholics, who deserted the US Army during the US-Mexico War and joined the Mexican Army. I’m sure it varied from individual to individual, but to one degree or another they thought that what the US was doing to Mexico was unjust (they were also alienated by anti-Catholic bigotry in the US Army (and of course Catholics *used to be* on the Klan’s list as well)).
8. After I started altering stuff, I switched the first verse with the chorus. Also, there were only three verses in the original, and the fourth verse is totally mine.
9. **70% of this poem is me, 30% is the original. I don’t know if the 3rd line of the second verse in the original lyrics I found on-line is what was actually written by the original lyricist.

Many people hate the Klan for spreading prejudice
Gay people, Muslims, and Jews are on their fucking list
Black people aren’t criminals like you see on your TV
The border crossed Mexican-Americans, its a fact of history

Chorus
Brothers and sisters, join together as one.
We’ve got the fucking KKK totally on the run
in memory of the brave 54th Mass soldiers who died
Fuck the Nazis, and fuck the Klan and fuck Aryan Pride!

Racists cry “Black man, yeah Black man full of hate”
Widespread anti-White bigotry is the bullshit story they narrate
Its fucked up how white people can secure any job by race
It’s funny how the Klan deny that that’s totally the case.

Chorus

Our solidarity won't be broken, and we won’t hide from an affray
We will keep on working until we asphyxiate the KKK
Our message will be spread. Our voices loud and clear
Inform the youth, of the truth, the Klan’s greatest fear.

Chorus

We’ll never be proud of being white, it’s an artificial identity
It’s totally steeped in privilege, hate and inequality
We’re proud of being Irish, Scottish and German, Greek, Polish and Italian
We’re in solidarity with the oppressed, just like the St. Pat’s Battalion

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“From Out of the Ashes” based on “After the Fire” by Skrewdriver. original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the aftermath of the anti-Catholic pogrom in the Lower Falls Nationalist/Republican area of Belfast in Aug. of 1969 (it wasn’t INCREDIBLY Republican BEFORE that month, but not long afterwards it certainly was). In July, August, and September, and mostly during a period of 2-3 days, in Belfast, 1,505 Catholic families fled their homes (probably something like 18% of Belfast’s Catholic population, probably something like 1.8% of the North’s Catholic population). In one night alone 650 families were burnt, or at least forced, out of their homes.
2. The DUBLIN-BASED LEADERSHIP OF THE IRA had demilitarized it in the years before Aug. 1969 and only a few IRA weapons were available to help defend the area, a defense that was largely unsuccessful.
3. The Civil Rights Movement that started in mid- and late 1968 was overwhelmingly committed to non-violence and had hoped to democratize N. Ireland.
4. Provos refers to what we call in recent decades Sinn Fein and the IRA. They broke off from SF and the IRA (what became known as Official SF and Official IRA) partly because of the leadership’s decision to demilitarize the IRA.
6. Initially the British Army kind of saved the Catholics from police-led loyalist mobs and were welcomed for about 9 months, but they became increasingly like the notorious Black and Tans unit of the British Army that served in Ireland during the War of Independence 1919-1921.
7. Squaddie is a term for British soldier.
8. On the night of June 27th 1970, the Church of an isolated Catholic enclave in East Belfast was attacked by a loyalist mob. The British Army wouldn’t defend the area but members of the PIRA did. It was their first major action.
9. I like calling The Troubles the Second Anglo-Irish War, the first being the War of Independence.
10. There is or was a T-Shirt designed by either SF or their old American support organization Irish Northern Aid, that said: “From Out Of The Ashes Arose The Provisionals.” It was referring to the ashes of the mythical bird, the Phoenix (in this case representing the IRA they split off from (actually, I used to think it was the ashes of the burned out homes, and I kind of prefer that interpretation because there were some good people in the Officials in the early 1970s and I don't believe in speaking positively about the feud between the two groups)).
11. Skrewdriver were British and supported the British and Unionist causes in Northern Ireland.
12. Based on a fairly scientific look, only .3% of the PIRA’s operations resulted in civilian death.
13. **62% of this poem is me, 38% is the original.

The fires burned for hours, it was a time of terror.
Dublin had ordered the IRA disarmed but they were totally in error
Those nights there were burnt out homes, our community was battered
Non-violence had been our people’s hope, but now that hope was shattered

Chorus
After the fire, the ruins there did lay.
After the Provo victory there will come a brand new day.

The Falls stood in misery, and initially welcomed the British Army Man
But increasingly the Squaddies acted just like the old Black and Tans
Then, on the night of June 27th, it was known the Provos had come alive-
Seeds of resistance once sown, now had grown, new life that would not die.

Chorus

The new Anglo-Irish War is approaching, and with the Provos we shall be.
They rose from the ashes of August ’69 and they will fight for you and me.

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“Surf the Euphrates” based on “Surf Nicaragua” by Sacred Reich (despite their name, their politics are very progressive- I'm fairly familiar with all of their music and at least some of it is more or less socially liberal and it's also economically progressive and it's anti-war). Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the Occupation of Iraq.
2. The Euphrates is a major river going through Iraq.
3. One of the MANY reasons Bush had for invading Iraq was that it has a lot of oil.
4. A major argument in favor of invading was that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda. In fact, shortly after the war began a poll found that about 70-75% of Americans thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11. It was such bullshit that Tony Blair didn’t use that argument when trying to convince the British people and Parliament to invade. It’s also been strongly suggested that the % of the anti-US forces that were foreign Islamists was very tiny.
5. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found, and that was predictable based on what the UN weapons inspectors were saying just before the invasion and what former Marine and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter said around 2000.
6. Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense.
7. Based on multiple pieces of anecdotal evidence and the existence of Iraq Veterans Against the War (now, About Face), and how unpopular Bush became shortly after the 2004 election, I imagine a lot of American soldiers who voted for Bush in 2000 or 2004 wished they hadn’t after they did one or more tours there.
8. I think another reason for invading Iraq is that it provided multiple opportunities to give money to corporations. Besides arms contractors and those doing privatized work for the military, corporations getting money for reconstruction spent about half of what they got doing actual reconstruction (often a contractor would keep half and give the rest to a subcontractor and sometimes THAT corporation would keep half and give the rest to another subcontractor).
9. This poem is not pro-insurgency. It was reasonable and natural that a large majority of Iraqis wanted the US out, but my favorite slogan of the anti-war movement was “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home.” Also, some group at some point, and they may have been anti-war, was raising money to send men and women serving there body armor, and I would have supported that (it’s different than giving them extra ammunition with which to kill Iraqi civilians). (it’s also not pro-Saddam- it would be great if Saddam had been pushed out of power in a better way, but the methods that the US and UK used were bad)
10. Besides the insurgency, there was other instability caused by the invasion and occupation- Al-Qaeda attacks on Shiite neighborhoods, ethnic cleansing by Shiites and possibly some by Sunnis, and tension between some of the Shiite population and the Occupation forces. At one point it came close to a full-blown Sunni-Shiite Civil War.
11. The Surge was a brief but dramatic increase in the number of soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
12. Between 1991 and 2003 Iraq was frequently bombed by the US and UK.
13. I think that Bush supporters enjoyed the political dimension of the war, where they tangled with anti-war groups. We were in a time of a “New McCarthyism,” where disagreeing with Bush was seen by a lot of people as politically taboo. As I said, at the beginning of the war, the vast majority of Americans blamed Iraq for 9/11.
14. As far as Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, here is something I included in two posts about anti-Semitism:

Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were many, Israel was a small part of it. There was the opportunity to give lots of money to corporations in multiple ways, the strong desire for using the US military that most GOPers have, the desire to teach the world a lesson in terms of what the US will do to them if they piss off D.C., the desire for oil, the idea of democratizing the Middle-East. I also heard something about it being connected to countering the growing strength of the Euro. It's possible they half believed that stuff about WMDs and Al-Qaeda. Israel was a small part of it.

15. Bush liked the idea of being a popular war-time president the people would rally around.
16. **46% of this version is me, 54% is the original.
17. In a post here I describe what I did to oppose the invasion.

I know a place Where you're all going to go
They'll pay you to kill for oil If You're eighteen years old
First You'll need a haircut And then some new clothes
They'll stick you in Baghdad To play G.I. Joe

CHORUS:
You think you’re fighting Al Qaeda and that you’ll find WMD
But it’s total bullshit, concocted by Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
But now it's too late You're entering Iraq
You voted for Bush, you’ll soon wish you could take it back

What is this we're fighting for and What are our goals
To create a cash cow for US corporations and improve Bush’s polls
Instability  and Sunni resistance grow deeper everyday
The situation worsens, the Surge is on it's the way

CHORUS:

Lessons we have learned Are easy to forget
Hints of Vietnam How soon we all forget
First we used sanctions and bombs, now go in the troops
Another chance for the Right to slander anti-war groups

Why And How I Organized A Very Successful Anti-War Rally in March of 2003

This post is an essay about a major success I had as a political activist which might actually be held against me at this point because I have become unpopular with progressives. So, this is a rare post where the personal agenda is bigger than the political agenda. Some might say it’s unfair to criticize CWP (see below) 17 years later, but A) almost everything I say here (except for the addendum) either I said back then (just not as well) or it was common knowledge among CU-Boulder progressives at the time; B) in 2005 and 2006 I said about 95% of what’s below (except for the addendum) in a massive set of documents about me or relevant to my politics that a handful of progressives read, B) I’m not using names, and C) I really should get a lot of kudos instead of criticism for this.

(when I say anti-war without saying anything more, I mean opposed to what Bush was planning and not necessarily against war in general)

In early March 2003 there was a national Day of Action to protest moves towards war with Iraq. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, I organized the rally component, something which was quite controversial among anti-war activists on campus and in Boulder. For whatever it’s worth, let me say that the main anti-war group on campus, the Coalition to Wage Peace could have handled it much worse than the way they did. I don’t know exactly what conversations took place at the meetings they had after they learned I had reserved the main rally space, but they were fairly positive about it.

I think I will start with a description of my activism in the 9 years before the rally. Between Fall of 1994 and Fall of 2002 I had done a lot of political activity at CU-Boulder (and some stuff off-campus and outside Boulder that I will sort of ignore in this explanation). About  1/8 was with (what would later be renamed) the Young Democratic Socialists in the mid-90s. That was largely about immigration and affirmative action and was slightly effective. Most of the next 1/8 was with a group I started called Students for Justice in N. Ireland and was 1997-1999 (or early 2000). For better or worse, that might have had NO effect on what progressive activists thought of me in 2003, but over all it WAS done in a very anti-racist and sort of anti-homophobic way, and was slightly progressive in some other ways (half of my NI activism is described in a post here between the paragraph “The second big thing…” and ending with the paragraph “In the late 1990s…”; Right below that section of the post is a description of my anti-racist activism). In 2000 and 2001 I swung back to mostly multi-issue progressive stuff with YDS. The biggest thing I/we did in those years was gay rights stuff. The semester before the rally, I started organizing SJNI again and A) we did one event before that rally that was anti-racist and progressive, and that attracted about 25 people, and B) we issued a statement that was anti-homophobic (for that statement and some relevant discussion, see the second half of this, starting with the paragraph “Now that that's over....”) and C) we endorsed the Coalition for Justice in Palestine. The SJNI meetings before the rally had an average attendance of about 8 people. Between 1994 and 2001, the average attendance at my N. Ireland events was 30 (it would have been higher, see the middle third of this (between the paragraphs “Going back to how much was done…” and “according to the Pew Research…”) and for everything else it was 75 (YDS-CU events in 2002 had an average of about 40 people at them, including one partly anti-war event (not the rally around Sept. 1st 2002) that attracted about 75 people).

At the 2001 National Conference of YDS in August I suffered three defeats and since that was in the context of continuing grief about my mom’s death 14 months earlier, the next semester I spent about 20 hours a day in my bedroom. Other things went wrong and it slowly became more and more of a “perfect storm” of things that were mostly personal tragedy and mostly not my fault. I had/have Tourrette’s Syndrome, OCD, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Depression, and these are all made worse by anxiety, stress, and sadness. The next semester I sort of organized the YDS chapter some although it didn’t go very well.

During the summer of 2002 there was a lot of talk about the US invading Iraq in the near future. I, and a very small YDS-CU chapter organized a rally on campus that took place around Sept. 1st in the UMC FountaIn area. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the kind of rally you might be thinking of. Even if there WAS a large crowd, we didn’t have more than a few signs for people to hold. We had about five speakers and when they all had spoken we still had about 10-15 minutes left, so we invited people from the small crowd (about 25-50 people) to speak at the mic. The speakers were great. One benefit of doing a rally there is that you might get an audience with a fair number of people eating their lunch- including people who might not normally go to a political event, but end up listening to the speakers anyway.

Although YDS-CU had a pretty successful (and student union funded) event in Nov. (at which the speaker talked about Iraq about 1/3 of the time), it was a very small chapter that I believe barely existed in the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year.

At some point in late Oct. or very early Nov. someone put up flyers and/or sent emails about a rally in the UMC Fountain area. It’s not clear who called for it. For a lot of reasons I wish it was clearer, but to a limited degree I am almost okay with that- if they didn’t want credit for it that’s okay with me (but I think there’s also an issue of taking responsibility for your actions). It involved about 30-50 people gathered relatively close together and instead of the PA system usually used, there was a megaphone (or whatever it’s called, it amplified people’s voices so everyone could easily be heard) that got passed around democratically. I only remember a small number of the comments made. The one I remember the most is where, after a woman made an anti-war statement that involved referring to herself as an American, someone told her not to identify as an American. There was another rally just like that one about 1-2 weeks later that I attended. Although considering how I ended up in some small degree of conflict with CWP I wish I was more familiar with it’s creation (some time shortly after the 2nd rally I just mentioned) and the next 1-3 rallies it organized (I went to 1-2 of their rallies). I was probably on their email list at some point towards the beginning. I must have also picked up a faIr amount of information about them when they were tabling in the student center. Lastly, I must have also gotten some info from the unofficial campus newspaper. I wish I could be more certain of these things and offer more specific examples but 18 years have passed. There’s also the fact that at various times between the Fall of 2002 and now, I have heard miscellaneous supportive things from other activists in Boulder and I don’t remember hearing practically anything critical of what I did, so I believe that what I say here about CWP doesn’t clash with what veteran activists (some of whom acted as referees between me and CWP) observed in CWP at the time.

Sometime just before and/or just after winter break I formed a LOOSE and very small alliance with a very politically visible Democratic Party progressive activist at CU-Boulder. I don’t believe he was considered a.member of the group I tried to launch but he played a role in the College Dems adopting an anti-war position. I’ll describe the name of the new anti-war group I launched shortly, but here’s what we did. An event that took place in late January or early February was a panel discussion sponsored by YDS-CU and possibly the new group. The senior College Democrat read the anti-war statement of the CU-Boulder College Dems at the beginning of the event. The speakers were either (then) current or former members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Although there was a misunderstanding as the result of the word liberal being defined one way by some progressives and another way by other progressives, 3/4 of the brief talks were pretty good.

The name of the new group is something I cringe at when I think of mentioning it to people now, as it could give people the wrong idea about my political beliefs at that time. It was Liberals Against War. The first thing I need to do is offer a definition of a liberal. My definition is very far from philosophical. A liberal is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Elizabeth Warren. Some will say that Clinton is a liberal, but if you look at his time in the White House, he was not very liberal on social issues, he certainly wasn’t good economically and in general he was the candidate (in the 1992 primaries) of the moderate/centrist wing of the Democratic Party. His running mate in both 1992 and 1996 was married to one of the main people behind the “Parental Warning- Explicit Lyrics” stickers on certain music albums. I AM a socialist but I’m also fairly friendly to the Democratic Party and believe that sometimes, depending on various factors a fair percentage of liberals are allies of progressives. For more of my thoughts on liberals, see this.

LAW barely existed but was one of the sponsors of the March 2003 rally. I launched LAW because I felt like CWP was trying to win people over to the anti-war position by winning them over to the progressive movement. In a misguided attempt at being good white allies (I’m certain 95% of them were white) they adopted Mumia Abu-Jamal as an issue (although I did some stuff supporting him around 1998, a better expression of solidarity would have been supporting Affirmative Action, which I guarantee you is more popular with Black people than Abu-Jamal was at the time (the gap is even greater when you poll people of color in general (see the addendum at the bottom))). At the CWP rally I attended A) one of the speakers said that the only good war was the Civil War and B) someone (probably not a neo-Confederate) yelled “BOO!” (I couldn’t find a survey about Jewish-American opinions of the Allies, probably because no one is going to waste time on that since I’m sure that around 99% of Jewish-Americans are glad that Nazi Germany was defeated (I’m sure that 99% of Blacks are glad that the confederacy was defeated)). The guy who criticized someone for identifying as American became an active member of CWP. They were taking that approach (creating progressives) instead of convincing people that an invasion of Iraq (specifically and not war in general) would be wrong. They were not responding to the arguments being made by the Bush administration and its allies. Crucially, they were not challenging the idea that there was a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Shortly after the war began, a poll found that around 75% of Americans believed Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Although I’m embarrassed that I supported the first two years of the invasion of AFGHANISTAN, the fact is that response to 9/11 was a much more legitimate and helpful one than invading Iraq, and ignoring the desire of the American people to go after those responsible for 9/11 was just politically naive. 9/11 was overwhelmingly aimed at killing as many civilians as possible (if you think I have a racist double standard, A) go fuck yourself, B) see this and C) see the first third of this). Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and I can’t imagine a successful progressive response to 9/11 that wouldn’t have included either successfully convincing the Taliban to give up Al-Aqaeda, or an invasion. The invasion of Iraq was completely unjustified and unhelpful and was predictably a disaster for the Iraqi people and the region. Refuting the allegation that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda was necessary and doable- it was so ridiculous that Tony Blair didn’t use it in his pro-war argument. Some would say that pointing out the lack of a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda as a reason to oppose the Iraq invasion would have implied that the invasion of Afghanistan was okay. But anti-war activists could have said “invading Afghanistan was bad enough, invading Iraq is an even worse idea.” (UPDATE Feb. 2021 my recent thoughts about the US and Afghanistan are here)

So, I organized the March rally. I had organized 2-3 anti-war events in the previous 6 months and I got the main rally space reserved before (perhaps minutes before) CWP tried to do that. Almost immediately, I was asked to hand it over to CWP. I refused. I refused to let CWP co-sponsor the rally, although there was some dialogue and cooperation that I’ll describe shortly. Why did I refuse?

1. At the last or second-to-last CWP rally, a small, brief “riot” took place. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops were responsible for the confrontation turning violent, I am CERTAIN that A) the confrontation was the fault of some people in CWP and B) the confrontation was completely unjustified. Rallies in the UMC Fountain area with amplified sound are only allowed between noon and 1 PM because there are a lot of classrooms nearby. Some people in CWP decided that they would not end the rally and  give up the PA system at 1 PM. UMC staff did something to end it that resulted in a CWP member, joined by others, trying to get the PA back on that involved walking towards the UMC building, and some cops. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the violence was started by the cops, but the confrontation was completely unjustified- partly because it wasn’t at any point described as a student strike, they just felt that in general rallies should have no time limit. Also, in general at the time, student groups at CU-Boulder at least 1994-2004 (probably before and after) had it better than student groups at other campuses (you didn’t need a faculty advisor, you could chalk, student government gave out lots of money with few strings attached, but they had some reasonable rules for student activism (the UMC is part of student government)) I thought a lot of people would be reluctant to attend a rally organized by the CWP and as I’ll explain, there is evidence I was right.

2. After the “riot” the UMC started to enforce a rule about scheduling rallies where you had to attend a formal meeting and promise to follow the rules. I was afraid that if I remained the lead organizer but CWP was a co-sponsor and some faction in CWP pulled the same thing with the PA system, I would be in a lot of trouble.

3. As I said, they were not trying to reach out beyond the progressive community.

4. I’ll go into why this was a good move on my part, but from the very beginning I intended to get the College Democrats to co-sponsor, and I did. IF and it’s huge if, anyone in CWP had suggested the group cooperate with the (anti-war) College Dems, he or she would have been laughed at. Even if I was the bridge between the two as the lead organizer, CWP may have refused to join the Dems in co-sponsoring the rally, and the Dems probably would have refused to work with CWP because of the riot.

Not long after I refused to involve CWP or just stand aside for them, a couple of professors invited me and a rep from CWP to sit down with them and they would assist us in working some things out. I was happy to participate. We agreed that CWP would sponsor the march after the rally and the “student strike” aspect. It was my idea to set aside two out of 10-12 speaker slots for anyone CWP chose to fill them with. The CWP rep. at one point said that they were going to refuse to cooperate with the UMC staff about the PA system (the UMC agreed to make the rally 90 minutes instead of 60). I just put my foot down and said “no you’re not,” and probably because of the presence of the two Profs. that was apparently enough.

I also agreed to attend a CWP meeting the night before the rally. As I sort of explained to them when someone asked why I didn’t just get involved with them, I felt neurologically, and intellectually and politically (slightly) impotent and knew I would get into arguments left and right with people in CWP and didn’t want to get into those fights on a weekly or daily basis. But it was just one meeting and if I hadn’t attended A) they and a lot of people would have thought I was a jerk, and B) it’s POSSIBLE that some CWP members would have skipped the rally and maybe even encouraged others to skip it as well (about 2 weeks earlier there was talk about them organizing their own rally elsewhere). So I did an okay job of briefly explaining why I hadn’t gotten involved in CWP. Also, the official but unpopular campus paper had been tipped off about how awesome I am and about 5 weeks before the rally they did a story about me. A big part of it was me criticizing CWP and probably not doing the best job of it either. Someone asked about that and I may have explained things half as well as I have in this post.

Before I describe the rally, I should say something about my brilliant move getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. First, I’ll be honest, it didn’t take any intellectual or political effort on my part. The progressive Dem leader I mentioned above had already laid the groundwork by getting the chapter to oppose the invasion. Some progressives would say it was a waste of time or actually counter-productive since it would allow the liberal (not progressive or Clintonite) Dems to mend their tattered record on war and militarism, and these progressives want to use that record against the Dems. But here’s the thing. A LOT of people who were against the war or who were very open-minded about opposing it were registered as Democrats. Having the College Dems co-sponsor the rally might have boosted attendance a little, and I’m sorry but if you combine the progressives and liberals in the DP, they vastly outnumber those progressives who just hate the Dems. Also, if we had any chance of stopping the war at that point (and we didn’t but it was the right thing to act like we did, and anti-war organizing at that point laid the basis for opposing the Occupation) we would have needed a MASSIVE majority of the DP. Having the College Dems co-sponsor raised the profile of the anti-war part of the DP within the DP.

The rally was petty good. 1,500 people were there, probably at least 95% were anti-war. I was busy with other stuff and heard practically none of the speeches. Twice there was a progressive song played. I screwed up and didn’t plan what I was going to say and probably about 1/3 of what I said was kind of stupid, but only kind of, and I’m sure the rest was good. After the rally, 200 people went on a march. At one point a CWP member suggested the low number was because of the riot. I’m sure some of the 1,225 anti-war protestors at the rally who didn’t join us for the march just couldn’t go on the march, but I’m sure around 800 of them didn’t go on the march because they didn’t want to be in a riot.

At the rally, a leader of CWP had encouraged people to go to the Engineering College (which has a lot of Defense-related stuff) and “take action.” As we were marching to that building, I told someone I knew with a hat saying he was a peace-keeper of sorts with the well-respected Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (they may have added the word “Justice” after that date but I think they added it before, and today that’s what they’re called) about this and he said we should keep the marchers from getting in the building. I was later told it was stupid to do that, but I was concerned that A) it could lead to police attacking us, and B) it could damage the reputation of the anti-war movement. So, when he said we should stop them, I helped him. For better or worse, after making fools of ourselves for a few minutes, the marchers got in and nothing was done (no “action” was taken, we got a brief tour of part of a research/development/whatever area).

One miscellaneous thing is that a few days before or a few days after the rally, a leading member of CWP gave me a flyer. It was NOT a CWP flyer, I assure you. But it said something like “when war breaks out, people should go to the 16th St. Mall in Denver and destroy stuff.”

There is one thing that I need to address. I screwed up at one point and forgot that the rally was only 1/3 or 1/4 of that days' events. There was also the march, the Student Strike, and a series of teach-ins by Faculty And Staff Against War. There was a web-site for the national coalition of anti-war youth groups that called for the day of action and I said that YDS-CU, LAW and the College Dems were sponsoring that day’s events (I may have mentioned FASAW but I think I didn’t and I almost hope I didn’t because that would mean I was trying to deny CWP credit). That was later replaced by something saying FASAW, CWP and a High School chapter of Amnesty International.

In conclusion, I feel very good about roughly 90% of what I did. Especially getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. Also, I think I might write some poems about the Iraq War and the Occupation. UPDATE 10/11/20 Those are here and here.

**************

People of color and Mumia Abu-Jamal

Among Black people, support for Mumia was not as high as white progressives like to think. According to an article in Salon, Angela Davis and the Rev. Al Shaprton were unhappy that Black clergy in PA were not supporting Mumia. A lot of other stuff in there backs me up. The writer of the article did another piece for Salon opposing the execution of Mumia and called for a new trial.

According to a poll here, in 2002 70% of blacks supported AA and 64% of “Hispanics” supported it (that might include white Hispanics, so it might be higher for Chicana/os and Latina/os). According to an Aug. 2015 (which may be when the first poll mentioned below was conducted)  report by the National Commission on Asian-American and Pacific Islander Research in Education:                 

Support for or against affirmative action is as difficult to discern for Asian Americans as it is for all Americans. For Asian Americans, specifically, there is the issue of omission from most national opinion polls on affirmative action. One source for gauging the level of support for or against affirmative action is a multicity, multiethnic, and multilingual survey of political attitudes and behavior of Asian Americans administered by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The results show that 63.1% of Asian Americans indicated that affirmative action “is a good thing” as opposed to 5.7% who reported that it is a “bad thing” and 18.6% who reported that it “doesn’t affect Asian Americans.” These findings are consistent with a 2004 survey of 701 Asian American college studentsattending 169 colleges and universities. This study found that 62.6% of Asian American college students disagreed with the notion that affirmative action should be eliminated. Both of these survey results are consistent with exit polls during votes on state referendums to end affirmative action. In 1996, 61% of Asian American voters rejected Proposition 209 in California, and in 2006, 75% of Asian American voters rejected Proposal 2 in Michigan.

(I think the frequent exclusion of A-As from polls about Affirmative Action might be because of the Model Minority Myth (and to enhance that myth) and because people like implying that A-As don’t support Affirmative Action and because they want to give as many A-As as possible the idea that their community doesn’t support it and create a wedge between A-As and other people of color)

I wouldn’t be surprised if a massive majority of American Indians support Affirmative Action, but they’re probably less likely to be included in these polls than Asian-Americans are, and when taking 7 college courses partly or totally about American Indians I didn’t hear anything about them being different than other non-white racial groups in terms of their opinion of AA.

As far as my statement implying that support for Mumia is lower among non-Black people of color than it is among Black people:

Chicanos. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at some point in the last 25 years, some of them were driving Black people out of certain parts of LA. Ice-T rapped “And we gotta realize, the boys on the east side/You call em S-A's, I call em allies/Because the day that we all unite/Watch the pigs get real polite.” That’s a reference to Chicana/o East LA and directly and indirectly indicates tension between Chicana/os and Blacks. A lot of Blacks are anti-immigrant and I think that narrowly popular hostility is reflected among Chicana/os.

Asian-Americans. Around 1990 there was a lot of tension between the poor black community and the community of Korean immigrants (and probably their children) and that may have been found among the larger Korean-American community. Although I’ve been told there was a very small yellow-power movement around 1970 inspired by the Panthers, in general I don’t hear a lot about A-As being enthusiastic about what the Panthers were about.

American Indians. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the most racially fucked over population in this country, a majority of them back Mumia.

In general, the idea that ALL people of color are in solidarity with each other is just, unfortunately, ridiculous. I got my degree in Ethnic Studies.

UPDATE 4/16/20 I did a post about Affirmative Action and the working-class here.

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews Q

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Storm Front” parts 1 and 2 See this, and this for a plot summary.


In some ways it’s completely political, as it’s largely about World War II. There are a few elements I’d like to comment on:

A: There’s a bit of Nazi propaganda at one point. Part of it talks about the Nazis taking down the capitalists that were responsible for The Great Depression. This raises the question of whether the Nazis were left-wing or right or a combination of the two. It makes much more sense to put them solidly on the right. The Nazis economic policies were mixed in terms of their treatment of capital. But their policy on labor was not mixed- they got rid of the unions at the very beginning of their reign. Also, they emphasized nation and race much more than class. Lastly, it was conservative politicians that let the Nazis into government in 1933 (and for some years after that, conservatives were still involved in the Nazi state). (I go into more detail here)

B: A Suliban from the 22nd Century says that he didn’t know humans could be as war-like as they were during WWII, based on his knowledge of humans in the 22nd Century. Referring to humans on Earth who have not been at war with each other for many decades is a good idea. He also says that while searching for the Xindi and their weapon, Archer behaved in a way comparable to the humans during WWII (if he was referring to the Allies, that sort of makes sense, but if he was including the Axis, it makes no sense at all). I’m going to say more about this in the next review (below) (“Home”).

C: I realize there weren’t very many white, American characters in the Brooklyn parts of the two-parter, but I think it would have been more appropriate if there had been something that would briefly touch on the racism that people of color faced back then (one of the members of the resistance is a black woman). Also something about Jews being rounded up by the Nazis would have been nice.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this two-parter. I am very interested in WWII, but so far I generally don’t like Star Trek stuff about WWII. I give it three stars out of five.


“Home” See this for a plot summary.


This episode was surprisingly full of political stuff. There are two subjects: How exploring the galaxy requires an ability to fight; and bigotry.

First the bigotry. There are basically three scenes for this. On Vulcan, T’pol’s mother gets upset about the idea of Trip and T’pol getting married and having children: “Do you really believe that a human and a vulcan can have a future together. Imagine the shame your children would endure.” This is probably a reference to their kids being part human and part Vulcan and being rejected by both Vulcans and humans.

As a result of the Xindi attack, many people on Earth became xenophobic about aliens, and Phlox encounters this. Travis and Malcolm stand up to the bigots, which results in a fight. Later, Hoshi is talking with Phlox about going down to Earth:

Hoshi: So you’re going to stay on the ship because of some loud mouth in a bar?

Phlox: My presence could provoke another incident- someone could get hurt....

Hoshi: This isn’t the way to deal with prejudice. The best thing is to show your face and remind people that there are aliens who don’t want to blow up the planet.

Phlox: I can’t blame those men for the way they reacted. Earth has survived a horrific attack. It’ll take time for the trauma to heal.


As far as how to respond to bigotry, I lean towards agreeing with Hoshi. But I’m open-minded about this and would respect the feelings of those who are the targets of bigotry.

On a related issue, I can’t agree with Phlox’s last words. I don’t believe that it was okay for people to express hostility towards Arabs and Muslims after 9/11.

Archer has a lot to say about the need for firepower while exploring. In general I would sort of agree with him, but some of what he says doesn’t make much sense to me. First, when the Captain of the second ship like Enterprise asks him for advice on which StarFleet officer would be best for Tactical (which covers both the weapons systems and the security force), Archer suggests filling that position with a member of the military (apparently StarFleet is not considered part of the military). He then also suggests having a team of military riflemen on board, as he did when he went after the Xindi. It seems like StarFleet can produce people like Archer’s tactical officer- it’s totally unnecessary to fill that position with a rifleman. On the other hand, having a squad of riflemen in addition to the tactical officers and crew is probably a good idea- it seemed to work well for Enterprise. It would probably make sense to have the Tactical officers and crew handle security on-board, and the military would help in the event of being boarded but would normally be available for away missions.

More generally Archer at one point advocates for a more isolationist policy, where StarFleet would stay close to Earth as a defensive force. He doesn’t seem to really mean it.

In the last post (while discussing the episode “Zero Hour”) I talked about how Archer did some things that were immoral during the mission to find the Xindi weapon. I basically said that although he shouldn’t be tossed in jail or even tossed out of StarFleet, he should get some punishment, to make other officers understand that there are consequences for breaking or bending the rules, even for hero Captains, and they should only do so when very necessary. There is nothing about him getting in any trouble in this episode, nor the three after it (I sometimes do reviews at a slower pace than I watch the episodes at). At the end of his de-briefing, the Vulcan ambassador says that he (Archer) did some immoral things, but says they were necessary for his mission to succeed.

It turns out that in some ways, Archer is doing what needed to be done about his immoral tactics. Mountain climbing with a fellow Captain (Erika Hernandez), Archer explains why he wanted to go climbing.

Archer: I figured this was the last place I’d run into anyone who’d want to shake my hand or take my picture or tell me I’m an inspiration to their children. If they knew what I’d done...

Hernandez: You did what any Captain would have done.

Archer: Does that include torture or marooning a ship full of innocent people- Cause I don’t remember reading those chapters in the handbook.


I’m still disappointed that he didn’t receive some kind of punishment, but that exchange is better than nothing.

Overall I give this episode three stars out of five.

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews L

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

These episodes are more or less part of the Xindi storyline that lasts the entire 3rd season of Enterprise. For some introductory comments from me and a link to a plot summary of the first episode of this storyline, see this where I discuss the episode. “The Expanse” (which is the last episode of the 2nd season).

“Impulse” See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s part of the Xindi story line which is fairly political, this episode is relatively non-political. I give it three stars out of five.

“Exile” See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s part of the Xindi story line which is fairly political, this episode is relatively non-political. I give it three stars out of five.

“The Shipment” See this for a plot summary.

This episode includes some efforts by Archer to be sort of diplomatic in his mission to find the Xindi weapon. But he kind of goes back and forth between trying to co-opt an important Xindi he captured and, on the other hand, threatening to kill him.

At one point Archer has the following exchange with Malcolm.

Archer: I thought we were here to stop a war, not start one.

Malcolm: They struck first.

Archer: Because they were told we were going to attack them. They think they’re acting in self-defense. By destroying this complex, we’ll be confirming their worst fears about humanity.

Malcolm: Let’s not forget the 7 million people who were killed.


Disappointingly, this desire for revenge seems to affect Archer, as he indicates that he now favors destroying the complex. He does, however, order something that will protect the community nearby.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Twilight” See this for a plot summary.

The political aspect of this is the genocide of humanity. Besides that, it’s very non-political, but I love the story. I give it five stars out of five.

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews K

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

These episodes are more or less part of the Xindi storyline that lasts the entire 3rd season of Enterprise. For some introductory comments from me and a link to a plot summary of the first episode of this storyline, see this where I discuss the episode. “The Expanse” (which is the last episode of the 2nd season).

“The Xindi” See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s part of the Xindi storyline which is fairly political, this episode is relatively non-political.

I give it four stars out of five.

“Anomaly” See this for a plot summary.

This has one aspect that needs to be discussed, although it doesn’t “highlight the progressive politics of ST.”

While interrogating a prisoner taken during a devestating raid on Enterprise’s supplies, Archer first threatens torture and then actually engages in it.

The prisoner says, “I don’t think you’d be very comfortable torturing another man. You and your crew-mates are far too civilized for that, too moral.”

Archer replies, “I need what was stolen from me. There’s too much at stake to let my morality get in the way.” Then some hours later, needing another piece of information, he puts the prisoner in an air-lock and has it slowly de-compress until the very last second when he lets the prisoner out.

This sort of thing happened one other time in Star Trek. See this, where I discuss the two-parter “Equinox.” In that episode it was made fairly clear that Starfleet opposes torture- that doesn’t happen with this Enterprise episode.

I give this episode three stars.

“Extinction” See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s part of the Xindi storyline which is fairly political, this episode is relatively non-political. I give it two stars out of five.

“Rajiin” See this for a plot summary.

Two political bits:

1) There’s opposition to the trafficking in people (slaves, and in this case, specifically female slaves).

2) Archer once again indicates his willingness to violate someone’s human rights (this is not an example of progressive politics in ST; but it is the exception to the rule).

Rajiin: If I say anything else, they’ll kill me.

Archer: .... how do you know I won’t do the same?


I give this episode three stars out of five.

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews J

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Cogenitor” See this for a plot summary.

This is very political, or something close to political. It reminds one of slavery, especially the part about not being taught to read. In some ways, I support what Trip did- the Cogenitor had the same intellectual capacity as the other Vissians. On the other hand, if all Cogenitors were emancipated (no longer required to act as cogenitors and no longer kept ignorant), many/most/all would probably refuse to do what they had done for centuries- play an important role in reproduction. To one degree or another that would be a problem.

There’s also the tragic ending which makes me wonder if Trip did the right thing.

I give it four stars out of five.

“Regeneration” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. Something about a Borg encounter during that period in the history of Starfleet is really cool. I give it five stars out of five.

“First Flight” See this for a plot summary

A non-political episode. It does however, take us even further back in the history of Starfleet, which I like. I give it four stars.

“Bounty” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“The Expanse” See this for a plot summary.

This episode kicks off the storyline that pretty much dominates the entire 3rd season. The first 1-2 times I watched it I thought it could be described as inspired by a non-progressive response to 9/11. There’s no doubt that it was inspired by 9/11 and there is one moment that comes close to endorsing torture, and in general, at first glance it’s sort of similar to the US and the War on Terror. Based on what I remember from the last time I watched this series about 13 months ago, it’s not as bad as what I thought the first 1-2 times. It’s possible I’ll say something slightly different as I re-familiarize myself with the details, but the effort Enterprise makes to stop a future attack seems like a good one. Archer makes some effort at a diplomatic solution and engages some of the Xindi in dialogue, convincing some of them that Earth is not their enemy.

This episode, which is the last in the 2nd season, ends with Enterprise entering the Expanse to look for the Xindi, gets four stars out of five.

Glenn Beck, American Unity, Capitalist Exploitation

Yesterday I submitted some comments for two blog posts at Hatewatch, the blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The first one was about how workers are exploited. What I said I'm sure has been said better by others, but I have never seen an explanation of exploitation like this one. I think it's pretty good and might be helpful for people.

The post is here. A few things I need to clarify about my comments:

1. When I talk about workers exerting themselves, I mean PHYSICALLY exerting themselves.
2. Of course the wealth re-distribution of progressive taxation involves funding stuff like free universal health-care, free day-care, etc.
3. The figure of 300 (actually something like 100-400 is a better way of putting it) only makes sense with national corporations; with small businesses 20 is probably much more accurate and small business owners probably work more than their employees do (in general, what I'm talking about doesn't apply much to small businesses (there are certainly plenty of exceptions where it DOES apply), depending on how you define small- I lean towards saying it's 1 to somewhere around 50 employees)

Here's the comment:

"
Tom Shelley said,

on October 21st, 2010 at 11:57 am

A response to Rick Nettleton:

How have Democrats contributed to hate? You seem to think that Democratic hate for conservatives is comparable to the hatred against Muslims, LGBT people. I mean the problem with the Tea Party isn’t that they hate liberals, it’s the racism, and homophobia and anti-muslim bigotry. You can’t compare that with hating conservatives.

No, corporations and rich people are not paying their share of taxes. They can easily give more and still live better than the rest of us. Progressive taxation is an important way to re-distribute wealth. And why is it necessary to do so? Because to one degree or another, workers are exploited by the bosses. The details differ a bit from job to job, but for the most part, workers are exerting themselves A LOT more than the people at the top of the corporation; they’re also using their heads almost as much as those at the top. And yet the people at the top make about 300 times more than the workers at the bottom. That is obscene.

As far as business and the nation’s wealth- 1) the WORKERS are responsible for building this country and 2) that wealth is not enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of the population.

Tom"


The second comment is here. Some things I need to clarify:

1. The 9.12 project is partly based on the following (from the 9.12 website, here):

"This is a non-political movement. The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.

That same feeling – that commitment to country is what we are hoping to foster with this idea. We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again."

Here's the comment:
"
#
Tom Shelley said,

on October 21st, 2010 at 11:26 pm

Some thoughts on the 9.12 project:

I hadn’t heard of it beforte this post (I am not following current events and politics as much as I should). I looked at the web-site and I find the idea of Glenn Beck promoting civic unity and bringing Americans together ridiculous. First there is what he has been saying recently (see http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=glenn+beck&x=0&y=0 for some good examples (certainly his talk of hunting progressives the same way Israel went after Nazis)). I mean, he called Obama an anti-white racist and now he wants us to all come together? Then, as far as the spirit of American unity since 9/11 we have plenty of evidence that a new McCarthyism took over the political right, as The Progressive has docuemented at- http://www.progressive.org/list/mccarthy?page=18 .We have Coulter writing a book that calls all liberals/leftists traitors. She said that the American Taliban (the teenager captured sjortly after 9/11) should be executed because she believes that liberals need to be physically intimidated.

During WWII the UK had a coalitiion government because they saw that in that war they needed unity. Bush could have had a few cabinet positions given to Democrats (Cllinton, in the late 1990s when we were NOT in a major and prolonged war, had a Republican for a Secretary of Defense) but he didn’t, and instead used 9/11 to push his radical agenda.

i think I’m missing ione more element of this, but I think I’ve made my point. It’s a joke for Beck to talk about unity.

Tom"