joezep's Xanga

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:23:04 GMT

Frank Rich is one of my heroes. I'm ok admitting that. Sometimes I want to be a journalist.

"The ultimate chutzpah is that Mr. Bush, the man who sold us Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds and "Mission Accomplished," is trivializing the chaos in Iraq as propaganda. The enemy's "sophisticated" strategy, he said in last weekend's radio address, is to distribute "images of violence" to television networks, Web sites and journalists to "demoralize our country."

This is a morally repugnant argument. The "images of violence" from Iraq are not fake - like, say, the fiction our government manufactured about the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman or the upbeat news stories the Pentagon spends millions of dollars planting in Iraqi newspapers today. These images of violence are real. Americans really are dying at the fastest pace in at least a year, and Iraqis in the greatest numbers to date. To imply that this carnage is magnified by the news media, whether the American press or Al Jazeera, is to belittle the gravity of the escalated bloodshed and to duck accountability for the mismanagement of the war. "

The war is not over, and what's more, we are losing it. 100 U.S. soldiers died THIS MONTH. Heavy-handed tactics are alienating what scant support we ever had with the Iraqi populace as a whole. Britain's top general stated on record that he believed we're making things worse by being there. The Lancet, perhaps the top-ranked public health journal in the world, estimated that the war has caused an additional 665,000 deaths (the study is based on pre-war death rates and post-war death rates, and despite President Bush's assertions to the otherwise, is pretty damn sound statistics). Anyway, i get upset that some people have this notion that the war ended when President Bush pulled his photo-op "Mission Accomplished" stunt.

In other news, Vote No on Prop 2. For real, i'm serious. If you need convincing, please give me a call.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:04:42 GMT

Being back in Ann Arbor always brings out the activist in me. I'm pissed about a variety of things at the moment, including military recruitment (but I don't have time to really unload everything I have to say on that), so I'll just dump this little Op-Ed by Paul Krugman out there for consideration. For the record, this kid is against redefining or weaseling our way around the Geneva Conventions. Big fan of the Geneva Conventions myself. An excerpt:

Let's be clear what we're talking about here. According to an ABC News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included forcing prisoners to "stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours"; the "cold cell," in which prisoners are forced "to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees," while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which "the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet," then "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him," inducing "a terrifying fear of drowning."

Go USA!

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:29:17 GMT

Seems an amount of time has passed since my last entry. School has once again commenced, and I'm in Ann Arbor. The plan is to be here three days a week, and Grand Rapids the remainder. Wish me luck. Also, it seems it's time to start considering jobs, as I graduate in December. And in other news, I was in a concert.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 01:01:20 GMT

Check out some more pictures of Egypt

Friday, May 12, 2006

Fri, 12 May 2006 15:06:05 GMT

So I'm in an internet cafe in Cairo. I tried to post some pictures, but it wasn't working, so you guys will just have to wait for those. I am well, and having a wonderful time. Although the Egyptian museum almost induced a case of chronic pharoahnic fatigue. So much stuff in there, it's like a warehouse, packed to the gills with ancient statues and gold and what not. And pretty much no writing to tell you what any of it is. The placards that are there look to have been typed in the 1950's on a typewriter, complete with typos and misspellings. ridiculous. Off to the train station!

Monday, May 08, 2006

Mon, 08 May 2006 12:30:57 GMT

Hey folks, this weekend Anna and I went to the Galilee. It was amazing. Check it out. This is only half the pictures, because we emptied the camera onto her laptop the first night. I'll get them up eventually. Off to Egypt tomorrow! Pray for safe travel.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Tue, 02 May 2006 18:37:19 GMT

So no one mentioned whether or not the link worked, but I'll assume it did, and post another one. This one proves that I'm actually in Jerusalem, and not England.

more pictures!

someone let me know if this is working.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Mon, 01 May 2006 17:21:01 GMT

So I'm too lazy to post pictures in two places. I have a facebook site and it's much simpler to upload photos there. So I'm sticking this link in:

Pictures!

Hopefully this will allow you all to take a peeksy at some of the pictures I took whilst on my 11 hour layover in England. I managed to exit the airport, got the passport stamped and all, and headed out on the tube for adventures in London. Good times were had.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:34:29 GMT

So I've just been reading some Gramsci (you know, light Sunday afternoon fare) and rather enjoyed this bit. It's rather Calvinistic.

"Is it better to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external environment, i.e. by one of the many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the moment of his entry into the conscious world? Or, on the other hand, is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labour's of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one's personality?"

And yes, for Jeff and all my other conservative buds, Antonio Gramsci was in fact a Communist. Which isn't to say that I endorse Communism, cause I don't at this point in life, but I thought it was a well put statement. Cheers Mr. Gramsci.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:29:21 GMT

Well the photo turn-in went splendidly. We had about 80 people show up, as well as about 15 federal agents, local police, and plainclothes police. So that was hilarious. As our contacts in Homeland Security had stated prior to the event, they refused to accept the photos, so we stuck them in the mail. The media turned out big, which was gratifying for how hard I work on generating buzz. In the end, we had radio interviews (either Phillis or myself) with Michigan Radio, WEMU, WWJ, WAAM, and WCBN. I got myself on the cover of the Ann Arbor News and the Michigan Daily, which was a first for me and pretty cool, and Phillis had an article published in the Detroit Metrotimes.

So here's my very first front page (above the fold even!)

Pretty sweet! As a bonus I'm even wearing a nifty hat and fake beard. Some might say I look ridiculous. That's ok. It was for a good cause. The other picture is ACLU organizer Mary Bejian and Ann Arbor Musician Chris Buhalis. He's good. He performed at the Peace Concert benefit last fall, which you should all come to next year because it has lots of great music. Ask Anna Wolff, she was there.

And here's the venerable Michigan Daily (who if you look closely mislabelled me in the picture caption, but that's ok, i got quoted later in the article).

Here's a few more pictures of the event. In no particular order.

This first one is Jim Kleissler, the director of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, and the first pacifist anti-war group that discovered the FBI was spying on them.

This is Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the Michigan ACLU. We've been working closely on the issues of military recruiting, and free speech in the schools (related to political t-shirts). I hope to get him to write me a reference letter for law school.

Here's me doing my Uncle Sam thing. Isn't that sign sweet? The bottom says "To turn yourself in." I spent a while on that thing. It's hanging in my room now.

Here's me with the intrepid Goldsmith brothers, high school ativists extrordinaire. Mitch (on the left) is playing an FBI agent, and Zach is masquerading as GW himself. Zach's sign has one of my personal favorite Bush quotes on it, "If this were a dictatorship it'd be a heck of a lot easier... as long as I'm the dictator." -12/18/00. As you can see, the press was all up ons. And check out the gaggle of feds in the background. Good times.

So all this media attention resulted in an unexpected bonus... my first piece of hate/death threat mail!! Here's a picture of the beauty. This guy is a real pro, mails from various places, wears gloves when he writes (because there are no finger prints) uses a typewriter. But he can't spell worth a damn. I guess an illiterate hate mailer is better then none.

That's probably not legible, so I'll transcribe it lovingly in its entirety. Warning for those of you averse to strong/obscene language, this is not for you.

"Hay Ass-Hole-

You are a fucking disgrace to America, a fucking Communist playing Uncle Sam, I would love to shove that get-up right up your faggot ass, anti-American cock-sucker, you know what you can do with your Communist group Peaceworks don't ya boy?

176 Communist mugshots would make good targets at a gun rang, you pics mock every thing this great America stands for, you couldn't care less for it, nor do you give a rats-ass for those who are laying their life on the line everyday to fight for freedom.

Enemy within starts with scum like you, maybe we should wiretap your phone ass-hole, how many pig Marxists have you been in contact with lately? prior to 9/11 (which coward Bill Clinton caused) FBI agent Rowley urged the DC FBI to request a warrant on Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop computer, he is one of your pals, the FBI did nothing, at the time, the FISA court was refusing warrants from Michael Resnick, the FBI coordinator of terrorist surveillance, because of incomplete paperwork, hell scratch 3000 lives whose civil liberties were violated forever.

Three cheers for wire taps!!!, keep it up America, stop the evil pigs from killing REAL AMERICANS <this leaves you out pig Kuilema> go fuck Bejian, she's your type."

So grammatical and spelling errors aside, my friend has some serious anger issues. So it goes. His assertion that Clinton, or FISA, are to blame for 9-11 is pretty ludicrous. He seems to forget that Bush had intelligence on his desk that was ignored. Not to mention the politics between the FBI and the CIA that led to things getting looked over. But anyway, i'm not going to get into where this guy is wacko, I just wanted to share his lovely sentiments. Peace