Political Documentaries at The Dallas Video Festival

This last weekend I spent the bulk of my time at the Dallas Video Festival, one of the best alternative media festivals in the country. It's been running for over fifteen years and is directed by Bart Weiss of UTA. The festival always has a very diverse array of works from video art to political pieces to things are wonderfully strange. Normally drawn to the wonderfully strange, this year I couldn't resist the political works, many of which have not been released yet. Here are a few notes on my favorites.

WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception by Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is a well known media critic ("The News Dissector") who has worked inside as well as outside the media system and now runs mediachannel.org. His is a critical, informed, and entertaining presence. In this film Schechter clearly delineates the marginalization of dissent in the lead up to the war, the collusion between press and the Bush Administration. There are a gold mine of clips that few have seen. CNN's Christianne Amanpour provides a scathing criticism of CNN, saying it's correspondents were "muzzled." Schechter wants to share his experience and give a quick media education and there are segments on the FCC, media ownership, and the issue of embedding. The version of the film presented at the festival was not finished, and was a little rough around the edges in places, but nevertheless it's core argument was clear: the media is a "Weapon of Mass Deception".

The Hunting of the President by Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry
This film played at Sundance and examines in detail the "hunting" of president Clinton from before his presidency to Whitewater, through Monica and the impeachment. It's based on a book by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason. Like many essay style documentaries, this one gets a little thick in places but nevertheless gives us a compelling narrative history of the "vast right wing conspiracy" against the Clintons. From the filmmakers:

Less of an advocacy film and more of an alarming treatise on the political power of the media and personal interests, The Hunting of the President offers us a gallery of defeated politicians, disappointed office seekers, right-wing pamphleteers, wealthy eccentrics, zany private detectives, religious fanatics, and die-hard segregationists, all chiming in discord from the tops of their soapboxes

The film is supported by several strong interviews including a memorable crying scene from Susan McDougal who, as her name was shown during the credits, received universal applause from the sympathetic crowd. David Brock, formerly "a witting cog in the Republican sleaze machine," offers an insiders view of right wing attack tactics. See his book for more including behind the scenes views of the tactics of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham ("the only person I knew who didn't appear to own a book or regularly read a newspaper"), Matt Drudge, and others.

Last Man Standing by Paul Stekler
This was the strongest film I saw overall at the Dallas Video Festival. This not particularly surprising, considering the source. Paul Stekler has been making political documentaries for over twenty years and is head of production in the RTF program at UT Austin. This project amassed 200 hours of footage prior to its being edited down to about 90 minutes. The film follows the Texas state representative campaigns of rivals Rick Green and Patrick Rose, whose candid comments caught on lavaliere mics provide insight into their characters, something rarely seen with political figures (not counting Dick Cheney's "go fuck yourself" comment on the floor of the Senate, of course.) The film looks at

a pair of 2002 elections—one for state representative in a district that includes Lyndon Johnson's hometown, and the other a polarizing race for governor that pits President Bush's ascendant Lone Star state Republican Party versus an historic multi-cultural Democratic ticket. The characters include Karl Rove, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, and especially two, young ambitious candidates for state rep (Rick Green and Patrick Rose), who literally fight it out until late on election night, leaving one last man standing. These elections shed some light on what works in American politics today—and where our politics, in an increasingly diverse and partisan nation, might be going in the future.

Some of the film is painful for a progressively minded person living in Texas to handle. Rick Green's draping of himself in simplistic jingoism and religiosity (while at the same time fighting off several ethics charges) comes to mind. At one point Paul Begala notes that Texas is a very conservative state, "like South Carolina on steroids." People laughed. If comedy is tragedy plus time it makes sense: the elections were nearly two years ago now.

This piece is very tightly put together and is, in my view, at the pinnacle of craft in this style of character driven non-fiction film. Last Man Standing will play Tuesday July 20th on POV, the documentary series on PBS. Don't miss it.

OutFoxed: Fox News Study Released

Fox News continues to fail the "Fair and Balanced" test according to a new report from FAIR. The report exposes how FOX's Special Report with Brit Hume leans right, white, Republican & male. For those who don't watch the network, this is its flagship new report. The report finds:

In one-on-one interviews, conservatives accounted for 72 percent of ideological guests, and Republicans outnumbered Democrats five to one. And, according to the study, Special Report rarely features women or non-white guests in these prominent newsmaker interview spots: 83 percent of guests were white males.

FAIR's current study looked at 25 weeks of Special Report's one-on-one interview segments including 101 guests. Results were compared to those from 2001 and 2002 FAIR studies of Special Report.

* Conservatives outnumbered progressives by more than five to one. Fifty seven percent of Special Report's guests were ideological conservatives;12 percent were centrists, and 11 percent were progressives (while 20 percent were non-ideological). Among ideological guests, conservatives accounted for 72 percent.

* Republicans outnumbered Democrats by five to one (35 to 7). Furthermore, of the handful of Democrats that did appear, the majority were centrist or conservative. Only one of the 35 Republicans, on the other hand, was centrist, and none were progressive. The five-to-one imbalance is a marked regression from the 2002 study, when Republicans outnumbered Democrats by only three to two.

* Women and people of color continue to be scarce. Only 7 percent of guests were women, and only 11 percent were people of color. Only one woman of color was featured in a one-on-one interview: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. And the female and non-white guests were remarkably conservative; no progressive women and only one progressive
person of color appeared.

"Fox is depriving its viewers of real debate and some important and dissenting views," said FAIR's Steve Rendall, co-author of the study.

Read the full report here.

The study was commissioned by filmmaker Robert Greenwald for the film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. The film will screen across the country on Sunday, July 18 at house parties organized by MoveOn.org. The NYT has an extensive review.

Also, check out The News Hounds blog, which tracks Fox News distoritions on a daily basis.

Iraq is Not Part of the "War on Terror" (or it wasn't before now)

There are no WMD's. There is no connection between Iraq and 9/11.

What does this mean? It's time for a change in language. Iraq is not part of the "War on Terror." There's the war in (or on) Iraq, and the misnamed "War on Terror" How do you have a war against an activity, a verb? Shouldn't it be "Fight Against Terrorism?" Or possibly a "War against Al Qaida" which presumably would have an end.

Terrorism has no effective end. Especially, as the reader will note below, if we continue pursuing policies that create and encourage terrorists.

A high ranking CIA employee has written a book titled Imperial Hubris that further shows how terribly off track the Bush administration is with it's Iraq war. How many more of these people does it take before the base starts questioning? The New Republic has changed course, finally. But Fox News continues to bend over backwards to spin everything the "Right" way.

The anonymous CIA official notes in an NBC interview that the Iraq war is

an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat... The major problem with the Iraq war is that it distracted us from the war against terrorism.

The war in Iraq played into bin Laden's hands, he says, by fostering further hatred of America. "Bin Laden is in the Islamic mainstream," he says, and predicts the war on terror will be fought mostly on American soil.

We need to face the fact that Muslims are angry at us not because of who we are, not because we vote, not because women go to school, but because of what we do in the world.

... he's not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, our — the fact that our women go to school. He's not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn't care about all those things. To think that he's trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake. What he has done, his genius, is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims whether they support these martial actions or not — our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian Peninsula, our activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims, be it India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan. Bin Laden has focused the Muslim world on specific, tangible, visual American policies.

But somehow NBC's Andrea Mitchell still doesn't get it, or wasn't listening. And for a supposedly "liberal" journalist, she turns it around, reinforcing the Bush administration view:

Mitchell: You're saying that no amount of public diplomacy will reach the Muslim world and change their minds because they hate everything that we stand for.

Anonymous CIA Official: No, I don't think they hate everything that they — that we stand for. In fact, the same polls that show the depths of their hatred of our policies show a very strong affection for the traditional American sense of fair play, the idea of rule by law, the ability of people to educate their children. I think the mistake is made on our part to assume that they hate all those things. What they hate is the policy and the repercussions of that policy, whether it's in Israel or on the Arabian Peninsula. It's not a hatred of us as a society, it's a hatred of our policies.

Reasons to See Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

Editor's Note: This piece was submitted to the Dallas Morning News who chose not to respond or print it. Regular readers will note some of the content is duplicated in the previous post.

In Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" everyone watches oversized televisions and no one thinks independently.   For Michael Moore, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is "the temperature at which democracy burns."

Several months ago we were debating religious "passion, " now it's time for some unfettered political passion.   Just as Christians encouraged non-Christians to see "The Passion," Bush supporters should see "Fahrenheit 9/11."  

Moore's film is no more propaganda than "The Passion" and is certainly less harmful to children.   And the blood is that of American soldiers, not the thin, fake blood of Hollywood.

A recent critic called Moore's work "outraged patriotism."   Many readers of this column may be outraged at him.   All the more reason to find out what the mutual outrage is about.

If all you know about Michael Moore is his infamous Academy Award speech, then you might consider his fine work in Roger and Me.   How many people do you know who would stand up for the working people of their hometown in such a bold fashion? And this against one of the most powerful corporations in the world?  

Some are claiming that Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary, assuming documentaries are "factual" and "objective."   The thing is, there is no objectivity in film and facts are always clothed in agendas.  

Documentaries have taken the place of political art, and they are always perspectival.   There is no such thing as a "neutral" stance.

Moore's work is in the tradition of political art.   It brings the topic to the fore and challenges conventional notions.   And just like in Bradbury's book, it exposes some for the censors they are.

Many would say that wartime films should always be patriotic, like those from the World War II era.   These films offer self-affirming entertainment, but they rarely question the assumptions of war or explore its morally ambivalent aspects.

A philosopher once said you should hold ideas in suspension, unaccepted, until you really understand the situation.   Similarly, I think until you've seen the film, those voices that normally generate popular viewpoints should be shelved until personal opinions can be formed independently.

It's important that we get beyond the dangerous notion that criticizing the president during a time of war is unpatriotic, or even treasonous, as some have suggested.

Criticizing the president is not the same thing as not "supporting the troops."   Though many seem confused on this issue, both are possible and indeed required for a healthy democracy.

And it's not as if Bush has not created the conditions for a stringent critique.   The 9/11 Commission has confirmed Iraq had no involvement in 9/11.   And we all know there are no WMD's.  

We attacked the wrong country for ideological reasons.  The war in Iraq is not part of the "War on Terror."

A film that brings these and other issues to the front in an election year seems to be just the right prescription for vigorous debate.

Those who would call Moore or any critic of power a "domestic enemy" or a "traitor" are themselves the ones to be feared. They are the modern book burners.   Let's shame these voices of fear and make sure that we're not burning ideas before they are heard.

There may be no one big Truth about this war, but there are a lot of little truths.   Let's listen to them all.

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

A.O. Scott called it "outraged patriotism." But many are trying to keep you from having the opportunity to see Michael Moore's new film Fahrenheit 9/11.

First it was Michael Eisner of Disney who refused to distribute it (and who to date has not seen the film).

In contrast to Eisner, Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, which is distributing the movie said "I believe all companies should be socially responsible, but shouldn't be afraid to showcase cutting edge, daring products... We need less censorship in this country, not more."

If your messages challenge the power structure, advertisers, unquestioned assumptions, or cherished opinions, you are out of luck. Or as Moore notes "if you go too far, the chance of your getting distribution are virtually nil." This is the danger of media consolidation.

Another group that doesn't want you to see the film is a Republican PR firm that

has formed a fake grassroots front group called "Move America Forward" to harass and intimidate theater owners into not showing "Fahrenheit 9/11." These are the same people who successfully badgered CBS into canceling the Reagan mini-series a few months ago. And they are spending a ton of money this week to threaten movie theaters who even think about showing our movie.

This is interesting. Why would they spend their money trying to stop the film from being seen? Why not use the funds to make their own film? Is it because it so very important to some conservative elites to maintain proper group think and to keep all threatening thoughts and images out of sight? "Move America Forward" really means Move America Backward.

The right wing usually wins these battles. Their basic belief system is built on censorship, repression, and keeping people ignorant. They want to limit or snuff out any debate or dissension.

The head of the group was on MSNBC last night and said we needed films like the ones made in World War II, and that we were returning to Vietnam era films. Well, first of all it took while before critical Vietnam films were made. More importantly, they needed to be made. Are no wars bad? Should we always wave flags no matter what the military does, what the policies are? Should all war films be about honor and glory?

This is part of the propaganda machine that preys on proud, busy people with sketchy understanding of history and scant critical thinking training. The kind that listen to talk radio. What is unfortunate is that honest debate and questioning are not part of the ethic. Critique is against the rules.

The pundits and think tanks that feed the daily diet of comfortable, simplified slogans fit a small, familiar worldview. It discourages debate. They think it's the right thing to do to ban a critical film from theaters. It doesn't matter whether Fahrenheit 9/11 is awful, is completely fallacious, or whatever. What matters is that it is available, and the frightening thing is the impulse to ban it.

Moore aims to represent of the working class (though he is actually far from it), and this is threatening to those who would maintain a kind of mind control over them. The working class has been hoodwinked by the right who continually force emotionally charged social issues to the fore. Complex foreign and domestic issues are obfuscated by the culture war: gays marriage, abortion, etc.

The sad part of this scenario is that the conservative Republican policies do not benefit the working class. They are the party of power and privilege, but spend much of their propaganda on symbols and sloganeering that effectively trick people who do not benefit fron their agenda into voting Republican. This two pronged approach has been perfected over the past several decades. It's time we exposed it for what it is: a cynical manufacturing of opinion.

What we need to have is a vigorous debate. Sure the film can be taken apart, sure there are clever editing techniques, sure Moore is creative in his constructing of arguments. But that is film. Documentaries are pure perspective and they all have an agenda. There is no such thing as objectivity or facts devoid of viewpoint. There are simply voices, contingent and perspectival, however disguised.

Let conservatives make their own films and speak their own voices. Just please leave out the putrid country music.

For the entire lead up to the war all we heard was the press repeating the voices of the administration. Finally they are, in places, doing their job. But there are other formats for debate, and we should encourage them all. In the long form of the documentary we are able to listen to an extended argument in the form most comfortable to most Americans. Moore does not suffer from the malformed dictate that journalists suffer - that of presenting "both sides." It's just his voice, take it or leave it.

I'll say it again , we need a national debate. More than the 30 second campaign commercials. More than the back and forth rapid fire insult to the intelligence that is cable news. More than the one or two carefully controlled "debates" that Bush and Kerry will have. All comers are welcome. Let's discourage those who would refuse a multitude of voices and hence smother debate, dissent, and democracy itself.

There may be no one Truth, but there are a lot of little truths. Let's see them all.

FBI Targets The Critical Art Ensemble

The FBI has subpoened several members of the highly regarded Critical Art Ensemble under the baner of the Patriot Act. They are accused of having something to do with "bioweapons."

CAE is under investigation for their use of scientific equipment to produce art projects that question the relationship between commerce, politics and biotechnology. Critical Art Ensemble have been producing performances and theory that merge political realities with technology and theater since 1987.

Many of the rules and regulations that were put in place at the FBI were put there because of well documented abuses. Legislation like the Patriot Act is now stripping away some of those restrictions. So this is what we get, the persecution of artists whose work is critical?

Thus far seven subpoenas have been issued to: Adele Henderson, Chair of the Art Department at UB; Andrew Johnson, Professor of Art at UB; Paul Vanouse, Professor of Art at UB; Beatriz da Costa, Professor of Art at UCI; Steven Barnes, FSU; Dorian Burr and Beverly Schlee.

What's really upsetting is, like similar cases recently, the FBI is frighteningly off track. Is this where they are looking for bio terrorists, among domestic artists? Professors at state universities? They are continuing the administration pattern of diversion and distraction. I'm sure the the real bio terrorists are relieved, as are the rest of the terrorists, happy that we are distracted with Iraq.

The FBI is trying to criminalize art. Seems like this has happened before in history.

Find out more and support the Critical Art Ensemble and the artists here.

The Crisis in Sudan and Darfur

A major humanitarian crisis is occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan in Africa. Politicians are ignoring it. The major news media are barely covering it. Thankfully ABC News did a story and it's on the cover of In These Times. The BBC is also giving it an airing.

Human Rights Watch provides the following overview:

The government of Sudan is responsible for “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world’s poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan’s western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab “Janjaweed” militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians—including women and children—burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.

The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa—often in cold blood—raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses.

The UN has failed to act in many cases and in this case is apparently suppressing its own report. This is where The U.S. should show leadership - moral leadership.

Unfortunately the failures of the United States itself in preventing genocide are well documented. Samantha Power notes in her Pulitzer prize winning book A Problem From Hell that

The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred... (and) no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.

It looks like the pattern is repeating itself yet again in Sudan.

I am a humanitarian hawk. Military power would be used to stop atrocities and otherwise keep power in check. Such efforts should always be international. The world needs to know that certain things will not be tolerated. As it stands now, if you don't have significant oil reserves and are black, well, nobody cares. All the rhetoric about saving the Iraqi people from Saddam and torture chambers is morally bankrupt in the face of inaction in Sudan. Genocide, torture, rape, displacement, and starvation are all occurring on a huge scale. What needs to happen is that some very prominent people need to call attention to the ethical contradictions in this issue.

I agree with Howard Zinn that the United States needs to be a humanitarian superpower, not a military one. Maybe we should take a lot of the troops out of Iraq and place them in the Sudan. Looks like the administration arguments fit better there than in Iraq. After all, the Sudanese government really has harbored Al Qaeda, unlike Saddam (who Osama bin Laden called a "socialist infidel" just 36 days before the U.S. invaded Iraq).

The world is a small place, and cruelty is cruelty. It's the worst thing we can do. It is not lessened by its remoteness. It is not lessened because of religion or skin color or lack of media coverage. We are the tribe of the world, the human tribe. And doing nothing, looking the other way, not thinking about it - these things make us, as Bush likes to say, evil. For the connection to other human souls is not diminished by distance.

What can you do? Call or email your senator and tell them this issue needs urgent attention. Send money if you can.

Resources an Information: Human Rights Watch | Amnesty International | International Crisis Group

Obese Children, Television Advertising, and Suburban Sprawl

A new study finds that the more you drive, the fatter you are.

Kelly Brownell, chairman of Yale University's psychology department and director of its Center for Eating and Weight Disorders notes:

"Most regions look very similar to Atlanta – anything that's built after World War II is pretty much auto-oriented," he said. "We need to start to look at the way we're designing our communities."

"These results show that the environment, affecting our physical activity, is quite influential."

Dysfunctional suburban sprawl patterns are a huge part of the problem. Is there a park next to you? Is it worth going to? Can you walk to the store? Would you want to?

We are becoming voluntarily isolated in our own homes. Instead of being outside relating to the community we are indoors relating to a virtual electronic world of television, internet, and games.

Another new study finds that Texas children are among the nation's fattest. A huge part of the problem, in addition to sprawl, is advertising and its inseparable partner: corporate media.

We don't allow advertisers to sell out kids cigarettes and alcohol, why are we allowing them to see tens of thousands of commercials, all convincing them that they need to eat things that will eventually lead to a variety of diseases?

Advertising supported media is complicit in this arrangement. Major networks routinely refuse ads from consumer groups that are critical of the food advertised in their broadcasts.

"Suck it up, it's the real world.”
-ABC, vice president of advertising, Julie Hoover

So because it's the "real world" it's acceptable to take advantage of our children and make them sick for private profit?

"Personal responsibility" is an embarrassing argument in the face of the onslaught of - literally - brainwashing. Of course parents do need to severely restrict (or eliminate) television and have children not see any commercials until they are old enough to understand the propaganda.

But some people never understand it. They stare unblinking night after night into the glowing orb of commercial messaging with a voiceover screaming thoughts that, at some point, the person will think were their own. That's part of the reason why obese kids become diseased, obese adults.

A major part of the solution is strict regulation of advertising of food to children, if not outright banning.

Further, media literacy and critical thinking need to be taught in the schools. The school's responsibility should not be just to indoctrinate us in to behaving and operating cash registers. They need to teach us to think for ourselves and understand that most messages, images, and sounds they will hear the rest of their lives are commercial messages of one type or another whose sole purpose is to convince them of something, if only for a moment: Buy This.

The television is not kid friendly, especially child-oriented TV. The more "cute" or "cool" it is, the more worried you should be.

We are creating the first generation of children who will be less healthy than their parents.

Dallas Morning News Censors Doonesbury - Again

I'm sure glad the only newspaper in town is protecting us from unsettling, inconvenient thoughts. I don't know how I'd be insulated without them.

Sunday's Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau featured the list of over 700 names of soldiers killed in Iraq (it's over 800 as of today). The Dallas Morning News chose not to run it.

This follows on the heels of another Doonesbury strip that was canned for reasons of "taste."

"We will run a small editor's note in that space on that day, explaining that we've decided not to publish Doonesbury for taste reasons," said Keven Ann Willey, editorial page editor of The News.

This one ran all over the country except in two papers from the same state. Take a wild guess. The Houston chronicle and the The Dallas Morning News. The paper has a history of censoring cartoons that offend its political sensitivities.

I'd like to see some open debate on the editorial pages or weblog regarding the decision not to run the Doonesbury strip for the second time. The explanation that it was not run because it would "somewhat duplicate " the feature on the Texas war dead is not sufficient. It's one thing to show 65 Texas dead, another to list all 700+ as several major news sources have.

Paul Krugman notes:

some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

Is the Dallas Morning News similarly involved in such self-criticism?   Will they investigate their participation in the creation of consent and marginalization (sometimes demonization) of dissent in the lead-up to the war?

The deaths in Iraq, which we were not allowed to see in the Doonesbury strip, are in some part the shared responsibility of the press. The press absolved itself of its responsibility to seriously question administration claims and arguments early on, abandoning its 4th estate charge. They should own up to it, rather than "protect" us from the realities of a war they had a hand in promoting.

Dallas Recycling: The Time has Come

Recycling rates in many western cities are at 30 & 40%. In Dallas the rate is a pathetic 2%. The question to ask is why recycling rates in cities like San Diego are so much higher than ours.

Recycling requires an equal commitment from citizens as well as the city. 

From the citizen perspective, recycling requires – hold on to your gimme caps – a change in the way you think about the riveting topic of trash.  Obviously with all the Hummers and oversized SUVs hurtling around Dallas there's not a popular desire to be efficient or to tread lightly on the planet.

Recycling becomes a part of life.  One develops an awareness that ours is not a world of infinite resources. The plastic you remove from your favorite new purchase is basically with us forever.  Simply throwing things away may be expedient, but it is not responsible.

The change in thinking is this: unless you recycle, when you consume you pollute. 

The city (in good faith) has made small, initial efforts that are mostly ineffective.  They admit their communication and public education efforts have been poor. You can't just say "recycling is good." 

Recycling needs to be encouraged by the way it is implemented.  But the current system actually discourages recycling. 

The blue bag solution is counter - productive.  And making people search out the bags and then pay for them?  No wonder our recycling rate is an embarrassing 2% versus 45% in San Diego.  Further, asking people to separate things is unworkable.  Keep it simple.  Do the separation on the other end. Let us just put the nasty stuff in the trash and the rest in the recyclable container.

When I lived in Los Angeles County they made it simple.  They also made it a mandate. Once a week pickup with a limit of one container.  Any more and you were fined. 

More importantly, another container was provided for recyclables.  It was larger than the trash container.  Once you get in the habit of separating your trash you find that, hey, most of this stuff is reusable.  I found 60-70% of what I used to think was trash to be recyclable.

Dallas is known for its selfish culture, its resistance to change.  But this is one area where we can prove to ourselves that we are capable of looking beyond the boundaries of our own homes and apartments, and beyond the regionalism that restricts our thinking.

Recycling and sustainability are ideas whose time has come for Dallas, finally.

Time to Buy A Hummer and a Gun

Ok, you're thinking, the progressive-minded writer has gone insane. A Hummer and a gun?

I'm the last person that would consider owning a Hummer. I've spent the last several years writing and complaining about these and other oversized SUV's, or Selfish Urban Vehicles.  

Driving around Dallas the past year and a half since I moved back here from the West Coast has made me think otherwise, at least for a few moments. Those few moments are the ones where I see people's cars flip over from driving too fast or one person slamming into another right in front of me.

Or the moment when my wife calls screaming and says some idiot driving too fast in the rain slammed into her car, sending her hurtling across the freeway and into the median. My grandmother was in the car, and is still recovering.  

So when I see a self absorbed suburbanite rushing up behind me talking on the cel phone eating a sandwich I fantasize: I need a bigger car, a monstrosity, a land yacht. One bigger, meaner than the other guy's, one that looks meaner. Time for a Hummer,

Of course I would refer a hybrid vehicle. But in this environment of oversized SUV's I'd be the sandwich.

Let's face it: the freeways are an idiot fest. I'm convinced many people shouldn't be driving, and others need to be severely restricted (or restrained).

As I've had lots of time to sit in traffic and think about these events, watching buffoons in would-be coffins on wheels, I've come up with a few ideas.

One, where are the highway patrol? They are few and far between as far as I can tell.  On Southern California freeways they seem to be everywhere. And whatever happened to the Dallas Police doing rolling traffic slow downs?

Two, how about much stiffer penalties? Start with tripling everything. Then double it again. Better yet, how about tying the fees to the blue book value of the car, or last year's tax return? Some European countries take a similar approach.

A $100 ticket doesn't mean much to people driving 50k + vehicles. Many of those vehicles are SUV's and they are the much more dangerous to other motorists than are ordinary cars. They are also dangerous to their owners and increase our dependence on foreign oil.

Third, how about a ring of radar detectors on all the freeways that work like the toll tag detectors? There's a system like this in London. It would certainly slow down traffic.

While not particularly in favor of SUV's, I'm even less in favor of government restrictions of personal behavior.   But in this case it's a public safety issue. And if we are going to act like children we need to be treated like children. More police, stiffer penalties, less leniency.

Ok, so much for the Hummer. Now for the gun.

Pictures Matter: The Ethics of War Images

Congressman James Inhofe (R-OK) this week said he was more "outraged by the outrage" than the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers and contractors. Of course he was. Like most conservatives and the White House he would prefer we see nothing from Iraq but smiling Iraqis. Oh, but there aren't any of those any more are there?

They also never wanted us to see the pictures of flag draped coffins on that cargo plane returning from Iraq. Basically they don't want us to see anything that will further diminish support for a war that we were misled into. There aren't a lot of legs to stand on now if you are a supporter other than shallow flag waving.

Iraq war supporters say that showing difficult images will lessen support for the war. Well of course it will, and should. That's because Iraq is a war of choice, not necessity. If it was a justified war of necessity, even the worst images would deter only the few who lack the capacity to see the larger issue. The exception is when unnecessary and unjust actions are taken in an otherwise just war.

This is what happened in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki during World War II. Dresden, Germany was firebombed in 1945 and over 100,000 were killed. The bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were entirely unnecessary and cost the lives of more than 200,000 Japanese. (The propaganda which many still believe that it would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of americans was just that, propaganda. Japan was already finished.)

But what if we saw, immediately, or even live, the images from Dresden where entire families, buildings, and blocks were incinerated, one after the other? What about the radiation burn victims from Hiroshima? They should have been in the paper the very next day. First person accounts should have been broadcast across American radio. If they were, such excesses would be less tolerated today.

Just like Vietnam reduced, for some, the appetite for war, so should recent images from Iraq quell the blind patriotism of Bush war supporters, few of whom seem to think beyond the sloganeering.

It's one thing to see dead enemy soldiers, quite another to see dead civilians, especially when they are not "collateral damage" but rather intentionally or carelessly killed. It is our duty to view and reflect upon such pictures, to consider the impact of our political and military actions.

I make a point of looking at difficult images of wars, past and present. I look, and I say "This is what my government is doing. I am responsible for this."

Lupus est homo homini

Good Cents = Good Sense

An Alt7 guest editorial by Greg Metz

The wave of horrendous photographs we have yet to see…

Most recently in the wake of outrageous human rights abuses carried out by the U.S armed services (or contracted services) on prisoners in custody of an American occupied Iraq, President Bush had the audacity to ask for another 25 billion dollars to shore up our defense of freedom (via our invasion of Iraq). This request for additional funding comes following a most recent congressional subsidy of $85 billion extra to this cause.

How much is 112 billion dollars? I flash back to Bush's 2003 State of the Union announcement where the president pledged $15 billion, in 5 incremental years (and uncharitable red tape headed by the past CE0 of Ely Lilly ), to fight the AIDS epidemic that has polarized Africa and become the concern of the world.

30 million people are afflicted with this virus in Africa alone. Many fear this real ‘tyrant', AIDS, may threaten the very existence of that continent and consequently have a tsunami effect on the world.   

This pledge comes at a time when AIDS representatives have stated that a very possible cure if not massive relief to this plague could be achieved if this gift were to be contributed now in a lump sum!

If you tally all the money that has been spent on the Iraq invasion and occupation, coupled with the resources and American lives sacrificed (including those innocent Iraqi citizens lost as collateral damage), and compare this to the beneficial effects for the world for discovery of an AIDS vaccine and related programs for pain relief for AIDS victims, the second far out weighs the overturning of a small country in the Middle East suffering from the indigestion of a toothless tyrant. And at a fraction of the cost!

Hell, or Sugarland Texas

"It's so predictable here" The Washington Post has an excellent article that provides a portrait of a Sugarland, TX resident. B. Stein is a landscape contractor and one of his clients is neighbor Tom Delay.

It all starts at breakfast:

Stein's breakfast is scrambled eggs over congealed grits fried in butter, and coffee that comes not in bean form but already ground and is brewed not through natural brown paper filters but unnatural white ones. " 'Melitta plants four trees for every one used in the production of our filter paper,' " he says, reading the side of the box of filters. He puts the box back in the cabinet. "I could care less."

Sustainability is an idea as foreign as Islam. For such "good Christian folk" there certainly is a strong disdain of the natural environment. And a complete lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of things. This is morally irresponsible at best. People like this will eventually be seen like those who once said they "could care less" about slavery.

Now it's time to be threatened by gay people, again:

"Where homosexuality falls, maybe it's inside the line, but somewhere we have to say: No farther. Our society, our culture, our religion, our history all revolve around the family. The traditional family unit. There are variations, sure, but go too far, and somebody has to say that's wrong.

This is the heart of the culture war. There's an assumption that America always was and/or should be homogeneous. Neither is true.

Reminds me of people in Plano, TX who recently walked out en masse when - aaaaahh! - two men kissed in a play.

Life is tasting a little too sweet for people in Sugarland. They say that "blue people" are always complaining. Well, maybe there are things to be concerned about beyond a weedless front lawn and a lack of homosexuals on your block. Maybe they are unable to understand the moral outrage that drives many liberals, one that takes into account a larger perspective and happens to include people different from oneself. More importantly it includes the future. And compound sentences.

"I don't know," Stein's wife Patrice says. "Maybe I just want to live in a little bubble or something."

Really? It's so hard to tell. Sugarland. Sugar Thoughts.

Leaders like Tom Delay are helping to inflate this bubble, to define it and energize its mythology. In talking to his constituency, compound sentences are a no-no. Simple thoughts for simple folks. Good-Bad. Black-White. Evil-Good.

"You find communities like this all over the place," DeLay says of Sugar Land. "This is what the future is about."

Then it's the end of the world. And this is what it looks like.

Sand Storms, Butterflies, and Dead Zones

Large areas of our oceans are becoming "dead zones" - places where nothing but plankton live. Several studies have been released recently including one by the United Nations Environment Program. There are now nearly 150 dead zones around the globe, more than twice the number in 1990. Some extend 27,000 square miles, approximately the size of Ireland. The main cause is excess nitrogen run-off from farm fertilizers, sewage and industrial pollutants. The nitrogen triggers blooms of microscopic algae known as phytoplankton. As the algae die and rot, they consume oxygen, thereby suffocating everything from clams and lobsters to oysters and fish. "Human kind is engaged in a gigantic, global, experiment as a result of inefficient and often overuse of fertilizers, the discharge of untreated sewage and the ever rising emissions from vehicles and factories," UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said. "Unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly." UNEP is warning that without a concerted effort to improve access to safe drinking water, a third of the world's population will likely suffer chronic water shortages within a few decades. Already nearly 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water in 2000, and another 2.4 billion lacked access to basic sanitation.

There is a myth combined with a large scale public denial about the interconnectedness of the natural world. The myth is that of infinite resources - the frontier mentality from the last century when there was always more land to plunder, and the modernist myth of continual progress. These myths are the biggest dangers to "civilization." More than terrorism. More than the "clash of civilizations."

We need a new model of sustainable civilization.

The state of macro denial will increasingly be difficult to maintain. For example, UNEP researchers have recently linked damage to coral reefs in the Caribbean with sand storms in the Sahara.

Watch out. Dead oceans full of plastic and fertilizers are everybody's problem.

Butterflies cause hurricanes.