block party

Crash winning was about as surprising as rain from a dark cloud, and really who cares? Forest Gump beat Pulp Fiction. I think to people locked in uni-race lives or, more importantly, uni-class lives, Crash probably seemed more daring and provocative than it was.

Went to see Dave Chapelle's Block Party tonight instead of staring at dressed up people thanking other people for three hours and loved it. It was so full of life and just got at something. It maybe sagged a little here and there, but it seemed a result of not pushing the material or putting things in that weren't there, so you could respect the sags, and they were slight.

Talib was amazing.

(where to start with his solo stuff: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47E19DD46A87420C5963A47C2B161A158FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4B8C0063F20FA495CEAEFC6AB679AFF962A5500ED2C0EF50ECAD1B&sql=10:zlm8b5p4zsqs )

Donald Rumsfeld is tacitly admitting failure in Iraq if anybody wants to bother to listen. He's setting up another "stab in the back theory" which is common among fascists. Just like the right wing in Germany that believed the Germans would have won the First World War if only the commie-Jews hadn't gotten in the way even though their soldiers were starving and in active rebellion while facing an onslaught of never-ending fresh troops from the U.S., now we're starting to hear the "pesky kids" whines of those that have been caught dressing up in disguises (here, competent and professional governmental leaders or air force pilots), claiming if we weren't believing the "terrorists" in the prisons we'd be sniffing the scattered rose petals of victory in Iraq. From Rumsfeld:

"They're taught to lie, they're taught to allege that they have been tortured, and that's part of the [terrorist] training that they received. We know that torture is not occurring there. We know that for a fact. … The reality is that the terrorists have media committees. They are getting very clever at manipulating the media in the United States and in the capitals of the world. They know for a fact they can't win a single battle on the battlefields in the Middle East. They know the only place they can win a battle is in the capitol in Washington, D.C., by having the United States lose its will, so they consciously manipulate the media here to achieve their ends, and they're very good at it."

Kind of like the Lincoln Group, but apparently better.

It's all about will, nothing to do with a mismanaged, immoral war fought in the name of one thing while being about another.

Meanwhile, they sneak in the injured under cover of night, as if those soldiers are people to be ashamed of, instead of about; sometimes they hold a few of them up as examples of how much they care and the boys, five or six years from their first shave and a decade away from 30 say a few things and learn to live with missing limbs and cognitive difficulties.

And if this war is still just because we removed a dictator, then will somebody please tell me why we're giving Saudi Arabia all this money? Why is the Sudan the Sudan? I've never been much for being isolationist, but it would be nice if we didn't enter into world affairs like misbegotten Tom Buchanons.

Read that Felix Pie has tripled twice in the opening days of spring training, perhaps the Cubs will get lucky and won't fuck him up the way they did Corey Patterson. I'm feeling good about #31...

Saw they were building a Dave and Buster's in Times Square tonight. Can old Forty-Deuce die any more completely? Horrible.

Tomorrow is Populism with the studenten. Another age full of corruption, imperialism and the far-reaching abuse of the common people by the wealthy people.

I'll end with a few quotes from some articles I read on detainee abuse in this cluster-fuck we've been urged to support so that we don't "screw it up":

DICK CHENEY: "They're living in the tropics. … They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want. There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people."

From an FBI Agent at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more. [On one occasion] the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

DONALD RUMSFELD (again): “What took place at Guantánamo is a matter of public record today, and the investigations turned up nothing that suggested that there was any policy in the department other than humane treatment.”

Alberto J. Mora, former general counsel of the United States Navy, serving under Ronald Reagan, George Bush the elder and until recently, George Bush the lesser and now legal counsel for Wal-Mart's international wing: “If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It’s a transformative issue.”

A Really Good Quote from the New Yorker Article About Mora on February 20th: Mora drew Haynes’s attention to a comment that Rumsfeld had added to the bottom of his December 2nd memo, in which he asked why detainees could be forced to stand for only four hours a day, when he himself often stood “for 8-10 hours a day.” Mora said that he understood that the comment was meant to be jocular....

Congress is retroactively changing laws to protect the president and our country is torturing people, and in a country in which it takes an excruciatingly long time for the people to realize there's a nose on their face, a movie like Crash is singled out. Really, it all kind of makes sense.

From www.mcsweeneys.net an article that gets at Crash's lameness:

CONVERSATIONS I'VE HAD
DURING A NORMAL DAY
IN LOS ANGELES,
MODIFIED TO
INCLUDE THE SHOCKING
DEPICTION OF RACISM
FOUND IN PAUL HAGGIS'S
2004 FILM CRASH.

BY BRENDON LLOYD

- - - -

ME: Are we working tonight?

CO-WORKER: Yeah.

ME: This sucks.

CO-WORKER: I can't freakin' stand those Indians.

ME: I'm part Cherokee.

CO-WORKER: Then why don't you go smoke a peace pipe and get the hell out of my country?

- - - -

FRIEND: How was work?

ME: Not bad. The usual stuff. Yourself?

FRIEND: I sure hate those Mexicans.

- - - -

WAITER: Can I take your order?

ME: I'll have the club sandwich, easy on the mayo.

WAITER: To drink?

ME: Why are you people always asking me what I want to drink?

WAITER: What?

ME: You heard me.