Last nite I saw Alexander Cockburn give a talk here at the Labor Temple in Seattle. Among a wide range of topics, he stressed the theme of "Creative Liberty." Unlike Molly Ivins, Mr. Cockburn believes that Dubya is dumb. One (of many) things I learned: Alexander Cockburn is related to Laura Flanders. To a person during the questioning session at the end the audience proved themselves to be quite bright. One disputed Cockburn's comparison of Ariel Sharon as a war criminal to Milosevic as a war criminal--the implication being Milosevic wasn't as bad as Sharon. One asked, considering that Israel has never stopped building "settlements," did Israel really ever plan to participate in the "land for peace" deal? Cockburn: absolutely not. Another asked if withholding the massive Israeli subsidies was at all possible via the Democratic Party. Cockburn: absolutely not. We raced to get to the temple by 7 . . . we were a little late and when we were finally seated about five minutes after seven we were forced to sit through several folk singers. I thought something similar the night before N30 back in '99 when I went to see Michael Moore speak at the Seattle Center (along with Jello Biafra, Anita Roddick, and many more), and was also confronted with folk singers: why do they assume that just because you are here to hear a progressive speaker that you also like folk music? I would rather they begin the nite with a tape of Roni Size . . .
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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