Tuesday, February 12, 2008
It's Time We Changed the World
A couple of years ago I had the idea that the 1971 Ten Years After song "I'd Love to Change the World (But I Don't Know What To Do)" could be remade into an anthem "I'd Love to Change the World (And I Know Just What To Do)." The song plays at this link with a powerful video. All this time and I never did flesh out any actual lyrics.
A few weeks ago I mentioned the idea to Brett Kimberlin from Justice Through Music. Check out their remake of Neil Young's "Ohio," now "More Dead Cause of Ohio." Brett said he might work on some words for a remake of "I'd Love..." (no promise to keep the new subtitle) and that his band might try it in the studio in the near future. I have not yet heard the work but I understand there is something forthcoming.
At the same time I passed the idea to Brett, I also put it before Rady Ananda. She too has written new words for old songs, as displayed in this parody collection found in the GuvWurld News Archive. Rady took on the "I'd Love..." challenge and about two weeks ago at OpEdNews.com posted her new version titled "It's Time We Changed The World." It totally captures the spirit of what I had proposed. Her words appear in full at the bottom of this post.
Speaking of the GuvWurld News Archive, there were some intermittent outages on the site and in my e-mail service over the past two months. There was also no new content for several weeks. This was part of an unfortunate ordeal with web host iPowerWeb. Thumbs way down for their customer service. In the end, the site is back to its old self but with more disk space, meaning we can continue to add to the more than 5000 articles archived since April 2003. Thanks to Rady Ananda and Jane Allen for their contributions.
Some of the new additions are worth mentioning. Positive stories such as "Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for 1 Dollar a Gallon, and Without Corn" are unfortunately outnumbered by darker economic news including "January's retail sales weakest in nearly four decades," "Layoffs coming, and in large numbers, survey finds," and "The First Bank Failure of 2008."
The real must-read of the bunch is The Progressive's March cover story, The FBI Deputizes Business, archived at GuvWurld here. AlterNet ran the story with a more shocking headline: "FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill'" The take-away from this is that the Manchurian Nation is operating more openly, confidently preparing for when, not if martial law is declared.
Last summer, in my Reflections on Independence, Volume 5, I wrote:What is the most insidious ramification of the military being intentionally stretched too thin? The military is unavailable to respond to an emergency at home. That is devastating in the context of a natural disaster. But what about when martial law comes? It won't be our official military that enforces this, it will be mercenaries. Halliburton and Blackwater will be the occupiers of America, overseeing a network of domestic concentration camps already built. Our military, sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, will not be here to do so. The media, of course, will portray a different reality that will instead reinforce the okayness of the concentration camps and validate the authority of the hired guns, all while our military overseas supposedly, paradoxically, fights for our freedom.
As The Progressive reveals, InfraGard is the latest brown-shirt outfit strong-arming America's descent into fascism. It is not as if we haven't been able to see this coming. In fact, in that same Reflections essay I linked to one of the unitary executive directives explaining the administration's plan for remaining in power. As I said at the time, I don't believe they will allow themselves to be held accountable, for the first time ever, should the political will ever materialize for impeachment. And with no basis for confidence in election results, it can be tough to be optimistic about getting rid of war criminals.
Yet community organizing efforts are undeniably showing encouraging signs, and I consider this the most universally basic response needed without regard to issue. Mostly I'm referring to the work with the Voter Confidence Committee on behalf of hand-counting paper ballots. Tomorrow night the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee will be considering a resolution I wrote. It looks like Vets For Peace Chapter 56 will also consider this same resolution on March 6.
Inroads are also expanding with the Humboldt County League of Women Voters. Over the weekend I teased this quote: "I didn't think I'd get so much buy-in from the whole fucking group! I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time."
That was P-A Winter-Sun telling me how well received was a proposal I helped her prepare recommending the League "study the evidence of failures and vulnerabilities in vote counting equipment currently used in Humboldt County so the League can be better informed, better able to educate the community, and better equipped to establish a position on the best method for counting."
Apparently there was consensus around this. The next step was to be a board meeting, which I believe may have already occurred. From there the topic would return to the full group. I don't know the exact disposition of this now, but I am going to follow P-A's advice and join the League. In fact, I left a message yesterday...
As previously hinted, we are also still awaiting an announcement from the Redwood Chapter of the ACLU to formalize the group's very encouraging statement on election conditions.
So to me it seems there is far more community support, or at least interest, than ever before in the VCC efforts for hand-counting paper ballots. Click here for an .mp3 of an interview I did on KMUD on 1/29, only getting to add it to the archive in the past few days. This link (.mp3) is to my interview during hour two of this past Sunday's Vote Rescue Radio. I also spoke on the air with Mike Dronkers of KHUM last Monday, just prior to the Primary, but alas there is no archive for that.
I do still have some important observations to post from the election itself, but that will be another post in the next day or so. Meanwhile, it is indeed time we changed the world...http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5804
Permalink:
It's Time We Changed the World
Parody of "I'd Love To Change the World" by Ten Years After
By Rady Ananda
1/26/08
Everywhere is fake elections
We should boycott, save the nation from tyranny
When Riggal counts the vote for us
Officials call it, oh should we trust their wizardry?
It's time we changed the world
and you know just what to do
Hand counts will tell the truth
Banks are stealing poor folk homes
Making billions while we all groan in misery
Grow your own food in community
with your neighbors so you can eat - on the cheap
It's time to divide the wealth
Spread it out equally
Fair shares for you and me
Y'know they want to microchip you
tag and clip you, like property.
They mean to own us and all the land.
Find the right place and take a stand.
It's time we changed the world
No one owns humanity
Give up their circuitry
Turn off your TV and settle in.
Read Naomi's "Shock Doctrine,"
History by Zinn and Nace's "Gangs"
will fill you in on their evil plan.
Come on, let's change the world
Cuz we know just what to do
Join ranks with all of you.
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/02/its-time-we-changed-world.html
Labels: ACLU, Brett Kimberlin, fascism, GuvWurld, hcpb, Humboldt Dems, I'd Love To Change The World, InfraGard, Jane Allen, KMUD, LWV, Rady Ananda, Reflections on Independence, VFP, Vote Rescue Radio
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Media Notes
A few days ago I wrote about meeting Marcy Burstiner, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University, who also writes the Media Maven column for the North Coast Journal. I noted that she was expecting some big news about the Eureka Reporter to be announced on Sunday. Sure enough, here is the announcement:Please come and see The Eureka Reporter's new ePaper.
Elsewhere in the paper, Publisher Judi Pollace revealed that the Reporter will stop publishing on Mondays and Tuesdays when 2008 arrives, remaining a free publication five days per week. Burstiner's Media Maven column this week is called "Pray for the Reporter!" Some excerpts:
The ePaper is a free, exact replica of The Eureka Reporter. Readers can log onto any computer with Internet access and view all the text, photos and advertisements exactly as they are printed in the daily paper.Please take a moment to register to access the ePaper.For those who like to bash the Reporter, consider Humboldt County without it. When a newspaper goes from publishing seven days a week to five, that's a sign of hard financial times. There are others. Its reporters are disappearing and more articles in the paper now carry no byline than stories that do carry a byline. (Generally that means that what you think is an article is just a printed press release.)
I got name-dropped in the North Coast Journal by the Media Maven, in the same sentence as Amy Goodman no less (even though she is a left gatekeeper). I'll take that as a feather in the cap, right next to the Journal's January 2006 comment that my previous blog GuvWurld was "gaining some stature in the larger blogosphere."
(snip)
But don't write off the paper yet. It eliminated paper publishing on Mondays and Tuesdays, but it recently added a fourth member to its editorial board: Peter Hannaford, a key adviser to Governor Ronald Reagan and a former partner to former Reagan adviser and lobbyist extraordinaire Micheal Deaver.
It makes for some interesting dynamics on the paper. The way editorials used to work involved a majority vote from the members of the three-person team. That led, at least once, to managing editor Glenn Franco Simmons writing a separate column opposing the paper's stand. If they still use the voice vote, I'd like to see how they get out of a split.
I like having the Eureka Reporter around. It gives jobs to my current and former students. And it prints any opinion out there. For those who see it as a bullhorn for Arkley, they ignore how it prints columns by Amy Goodman, Dave Berman and others. It gives a forum for the 911 Truth folks — those pushing to reopen the investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Centers — who can't get their voices into the North Coast Journal or Times-Standard. My stand isn't whether I support the opinions or not. What I support is the forum for expression. (emphasis added)
As for the ePaper, it is labeled as Beta which means kinks are still being worked out and perhaps some features have yet to be added. My first experience was that I needed to increase magnification so much to read the text that the portion of the text displayed was a fraction of an article. It took me a while to figure out that if I click and drag the image of the paper I can move it around to reveal parts not visible when zoomed in enough to read. It looks kind of snazzy but I'm not sure I like it any better than the regular Reporter site.
Back to Burstiner again. The credits listed above are taken directly from her Media Maven column and omit her role as faculty adviser to the Humboldt State University student newspaper, The Lumberjack. One thing this paper has been steadily following is a faculty-driven "no confidence" campaign directed at University President Rollin C. Richmond. When I met Burstiner last week she encouraged me to submit letters to the Lumberjack and so I saw this all too obvious connection. This week's paper contains a letter I wrote, reprinted in full below (the paper's website is woefully outdated):The Lumberjack, December 5, 2007, Vol. 91 No. 14, Page 22
Voter confidence should count
Dave Berman
Letter to the editor
Dear Lumberjack Editor:
All this talk about a no confidence vote on President Richmond reminds me that many HSU students may be unaware of another no confidence vote that made news here a few years ago.
On July 20, 2005 the Arcata City Council adopted the Voter Confidence Resolution (VCR). This is a statement outlining election conditions around the country, primarily the fact that election results have become unverifiable. From this, the VCR concludes that there is "no basis for confidence" in the results reported. We are instead forced to "trust" the government using secret vote counting machines that produce results we must accept with blind faith.
Votes on a ballot are tangible and should be countable and recountable, indefinitely, reliably producing the same results over and over. Government legitimacy is derived, according to the Declaration of Independence, from the Consent of the Governed. Elections that can't be recounted and results that can't be questioned mean that our Consent is being assumed and taken for granted, rather than sought and freely given.
The Voter Confidence Committee of Humboldt County is committed to improving local election conditions to create transparency, security, and verifiable accuracy as a basis for confidence in the results. We aim to do this by persuading the County Supervisors and Registrar of Voters to get rid of our secret electronic vote counting systems and instead use voters to hand-count paper ballots in the precincts on election night.
This is one of many recommendations in our "Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County," based on an intensive eight month study of the situation. Readers can find this report, as well as the VCR and many other materials related to our campaign for hand-counting in Humboldt, at www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org.
If you are registered to vote in Humboldt, please use the sign up form on our site to let us know you are willing to join in the counting. It is important we show the skeptical local government there are in fact enough of us to get the job done. We estimate it will only take about 1% of registered voters.
Dave Berman is the co-founder of the Voter Confidence Committee
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/media-notes.html
Labels: ePaper, Eureka Reporter, GuvWurld, Judi Pollace, Lumberjack, Marcy Burstiner, Report on Election Conditions, Rollin Richmond, The Journal, Voter Confidence Committee, Voter Confidence Resolution
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Eureka T-S Notes VCC Report
The Eureka Times-Standard (archive) on Thursday published an unbylined piece about the Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County (.pdf).Voter Confidence Committee issues report on November election
Overall, that intro--and the entire brief article, for that matter--uses welcome frames for presenting this report. The rest of the article mentions a variety of topics addressed with recommendations in the report.
The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 07/12/2007 04:14:10 AM PDT
EUREKA -- A report from an election reform advocacy group analyzing the election of November 2006 outlines several issues with the system and potential improvements.
The report by the Voter Confidence Committee, addresses its biggest beef with the county election system -- the use of Diebold ballot-counting machines, which the committee says can't be trusted.
"Under current conditions, vote counting is done in secret, using proprietary voting equipment that requires the public to accept election results with 'blind trust,'" says the report. "While a perfect voting system may not yet exist, it will be clear to readers of this report that many practical election reforms can still move us closer to the realistic idea of establishing a basis for voter confidence in election results."
More...(archive)
After finding the article online this afternoon, I left a message for T-S editor Rich Sommerville, thanking him for the article and asking if he would be willing to meet with a few of the group members to discuss some of the proposals we make. The report is straightforward in offering suggestions for improved media coverage of elections, much of it previously appearing at WDNC or GuvWurld. In the coming weeks and months I look forward to setting up pow-wows with the editorial board at each of our local newspapers.
Oh, and we're active on other fronts too. Next week a few of us will be meeting with County Supervisor Bonnie Neely.
100th WDNC post
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/07/eureka-t-s-notes-vcc-report.html
Labels: Bonnie Neely, Eureka Times-Standard, GuvWurld, Report on Election Conditions, Rich Sommerville, T-S, Voter Confidence Committee
