Schwarz
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Catskill Culture (good reading list with some chapters published)
I noticed on the front page (lower half) of NYT today that :
"For the first time, computer scientists have created a robot that designs and builds other robots, almost entirely without human help."
So, wasn't that one of those events you have to remeber where you were and what you were doing when it happened ?
also in the news (news letter that is) :
SHELL
"Shell Is Swell" (Abaton/Import abaton@crystal.palace.net)
Vor 2 Jahren erschien ein Tape, das hiess "Shell vs. Neu!" und machte
einen Radio-DJ in NYC ziemlich nervös. Denn die beiden Mädels, die darauf
lustig vor sich hin homerecordeten, waren gerade mal 15. Und kannten Neu!
Die kenne ich auch, Shell aber war bisher nur ein Ölkonzern. Das ist nun
anders, denn diese CD ist unglaublich: man möchte "Fürsorge!" und
"Jugendschutz!" rufen, wenn Marianne Nowottny (die mit ihren zarten 17
schon mal solo in der Knitting Factory spielt!) und Donna Bailey ihre
schrägen Spässe treiben. Zwar nur ganz vage, aber doch spürbare Parallelen
zur jungen Lydia Lunch, bubblegum singalongs - als Ulk viel zu gut. Das
Info sagt dazu Gothteen-Girlpop, ich nenne es Trash-Audio-Art und
gemastert hat das Ganze Elliot Sharp. Karsten Zimalla
This is the Shell review, translated courtesy of alta vista. It reads kinda
like a puzzle......
Before 2 years a Tape appeared, was called " Shell vs. new! " and made
rather nervous a radio DJ in NYC. Because the two girls, who homerecordeten
on it merrily before itself, were even times 15. And new knew! Those I know
also, Shell however was so far only an oil company. That is now different,
because this CD is unbelievable: one would like " welfare service! " and "
protection of children and young people! " call, if Marianne Nowottny (with
their tender 17 already times solo in the Knitting Factory plays!) and Donna
Bailey their diagonal fun float. Only quite vaguely, but nevertheless
noticeable parallels to the young Lydia Lunch, bubblegum singalongs - than
joke much too well. The info. says to it Gothteen Girlpop, I calls it Trash
audio type and gemastert the whole Elliot Sharp. Karsten Zimalla
-- alli
Alas, it seems that German culture is still on summer holiday. Asphyxiated boy where are you?
Abaton
Asphyxiated boy where are you?
I'm here, I've been trying to translate it... but it's in SUCH strong
colloquial language that it's proven quite difficult for me... I'm sorry!
*sob*
But then, I'd challenge any educated German to try to successfully navigate
some hip-hop magazine... I doubt they'd get too far.
More email to come!
xoxo - John
[an interesting compliment about
our valiant narrator that perhaps
you may find agreeable/true]
"you're the aston-martin of robots"
- xovoxovoxo
here a quick, dirty translation of the article on "Westzeit" (as a
contribution by an early Shell fan):
"Two years ago a tape called "Shell vs. Neu!" was released and made a NY
radio DJ rather nervous. And this because the two girlies that had fun
recording at home were just 15. And they knew Neu! I know them too, but
Shell has been only a oil company untill now. This has changed, as this
CD is unbelievable: one feels like calling "children care!", "protection
to the minors!" when Marianne Nowottny (who in her sweet 17 already
plays solo in the Knitting Factory!)and Donna Bailey go for their wierd
fun. Even if there are some vague but sensible parallels to Lydia Lunch,
bubblegum singalongs, they are too good to be a joke. The info calls it
Gothteen-Girlpop, I call it Trash-Audio-Art and Elliot Sharp has
mastered the whole thing." Karsten Zimalla
--------------------------------------------------
If you gotta know everything there is about MN you can sign up here :
http://www.listbot.com/cgi-bin/subscriber
I put a small bid on this group of three pics. Man do these guys know how to party !
"What in Creation ?"
As per NYT 8/25 : Experiment Backs Novel Theory on Origin of Life, By NICHOLAS WADE
maverick theory about the origin of life has
received striking support from an experiment
that mimicked the violent interactions of deep
seated rock and common gases in the Hadean epoch,
the days when the earth had just formed as a planet.
Researchers found to their surprise that even in such
hellish conditions they had created a chemical that is
crucial for the metabolism of living cells.
The result is evocative because the chemical, known as
pyruvate, is a crucial component of living cells, being the fuel for a universal energy
producing process known as the citric acid cycle.
The new finding, reported in today's issue of Science by Dr. George D. Cody and his
colleagues at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory, does not
explain how or where life began but it supports a theory that proposes a new way of looking
at this long intractable problem.
The theory, proposed by a German patent attorney, Dr. Günther Wächtershäuser of Munich,
holds that the origin of life should be sought by looking for a metabolism, some repeated
cycle of chemical change, that could have taken place on the early earth and that could then
have built itself up into more complex molecules and organisms. This contrasts with the
conventional approach, which is to take familiar parts of today's cells, like nucleic acids, and
try to figure out the conditions in which they might have formed spontaneously.
Dr. Wächtershäuser dismisses the latter approach as the broth theory because even when a
researcher has found conditions under which the individual chemical ingredients of life might
have been formed, it is hard to explain why they should then assemble themselves into living
cells.
He calls his own proposal "the iron sulfur world theory" because he believes that metallic
surfaces, particularly that of the common mineral iron sulfide, would have been promising
facilitators, or catalysts, of the chemical reactions that created the precursor chemicals of
living cells.
It is unusual for amateurs, even a qualified chemist like Dr. Wächters häuser, to contribute to
the specialized worlds of modern science. And his ideas, being only theoretical, did not
arouse much enthusiasm until 1997 when he showed that an iron- sulphur surface could
promote the conversion of carbon monoxide to a two-carbon chemical important in
biochemistry of living cells.
To biochemists, his finding had particular resonance because at the center of many enzymes
are iron and sulfur atoms that transfer electrons in ways vital to the cell's energy
requirements.
The idea that living cells are elaborate codifications of some primitive chemical cycle that got
going on an iron-sulfur surface is to them not so alien.
Dr. Cody and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution decided to use a special high-pressure
apparatus they possessed to explore how Dr. Wächtershäuser's proposed system might work
at sites like the volcanic vents in the deep ocean. This kind of chemistry is a dangerous
pursuit, since at high pressures water becomes a violent acid and carbon monoxide eats
through steel.
"We set out to explore the ability of minerals to catalyse reactions that would be important in
a primitive metabolic sense," Dr. Cody said. Putting iron sulfur, a source of carbon
monoxide into their reaction tube, "We came across an unanticipated result," he said. That
was the formation of large amounts of pyruvate.
The tube also contained a hydrogen sulphide-like chemical to mimic the hydrogen sulfide
produced by volcanoes.
Pyruvate consists of three carbon atoms linked together and is an obvious building block
from which sugars and the other carbon-based molecules of life can be constructed.
Dr. Wächtershäuser believes the origin of life lies in autocatalysis, the emergence of some
natural chemical process, like the pyruvate-producing one, in which the products help the
reaction go faster.
"Evolution is better and better autocatalysis," he said in a phone interview yesterday.
If one of these autocatalytic processes started to generate the class of fatty chemicals known
as lipids, these might form a bubble round the system and the first cell would be generated.
The cell would have left the surface on which it was generated and later developed the
elaborate information-storage system embodied in today's DNA molecules.
Dr. Michael W.W. Adams, a biochemist who studies early life at the University of Georgia,
said Dr. Wächtershäuser had developed a very reasonable and testable hypothesis for the
origin of organic material relevant to life. "It makes so much sense to have metal catalysts
involved at the dawn of life," Dr. Adams said, "especially metal sulfides, because these are
essential to most energy conserving processes. I very much think he is on the right track."
In a written commentary on Dr. Cody's report, Dr. Wächtershäuser said that, with the
creation of pyruvate, all of the eight sequential steps needed to make peptides from carbon
monoxide had now been shown to be chemically possible. Peptides are short chains of
amino acids, the components of the protein molecules that are the workhorses of the living
cell.
The new results "greatly strengthen the hope that it may one day be possible to understand
and reconstruct the beginnings of life on earth," he wrote.
"Good to see The Republic of Texas guys back in the news", as per 8/25 NYT An Armed Texas Family Resists the Courts
By ROSS E. MILLOY
RINIDAD, Tex., Aug. 24 -- With a
revolver and a bowie knife strapped to
his hip and a semiautomatic rifle resting
next to him on a barbed wire fence, Jonathon
Gray pondered the question: Just what would
happen if law enforcement officers tried to
enter his father's 47-acre homestead?
"I can tell you one thing," he said. "They ain't
coming in."
The 28-year-old Mr. Gray stood guard today
with two of his brothers, who were also
armed, at the locked gate of their family's
property on the Trinity River just north of here,
some 60 miles southeast of Dallas. Seeking
shade from a grove of hickory trees in
blistering summer heat, they wondered just
which day the authorities would come to arrest
their father.
For more than 15 months, Mr. Gray and his
father, mother and five adult siblings have
defied a court order to turn over the 2- and
4-year-old sons of his sister Lisa, who lost
custody of them to her former husband by
default when she failed to appear at a hearing in
divorce court. Mr. Gray's father, John Joe
Gray, 51, is also wanted by local officials for
failing to show up in court to face charges that he assaulted a police officer in nearby
Anderson County last December.
The family, believed to be heavily armed, has resolved not to participate in court proceedings
or any other government activities, because, Mr. Gray said, its religious and political beliefs
do not permit doing so.
"The secular courts don't have any authority over us," he said. "We go by the Bible and the
Constitution, and I don't see anything in either one about child custody cases. We don't want
anyone to get hurt, but we're not giving up them kids."
The local authorities are proceeding with caution.
Ronnie Brownlow, chief deputy for the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, said:
"We're in no hurry to make a move. The last thing we want is for someone to get hurt."
Mr. Brownlow said that because of John Joe Gray's past associations with right-wing
groups, including the secessionist Republic of Texas, which engaged in a standoff with
law-enforcement officers three years ago, the authorities here had informed the Federal
Bureau of Investigation about the case.
Jonathon Gray said the family belonged to the Sabbatarian sect, a derivative of the
Seventh-day Adventists that strictly interprets the Bible.
The family patriarch refused to talk with reporters today, but last weekend he told The San
Antonio Express-News that he did not intend to surrender the children "as long as God
allows us to survive."
"I am more afraid of God than of them," he said of the authorities.
The elder Mr. Gray, who has lived on his spread for 16 years, is known to his neighbors as
a quiet man with a disquieting hobby: for years, he tried to recruit townspeople to become
members of a militia group.
"He used to come in here all dressed up in those military outfits and camouflage gear, trying
to get people to join up with him," said Susan Stansfield, a secretary at the city hall in
Trinidad.
The Gray family homestead is nestled in thickly forested hills, more than a mile from the
closest neighbors. Visitors have said it is fortified with sandbagged shooting positions,
trenches and an underground bunker built of concrete and wood. The Grays have been
without electricity for nearly six months because they did not pay the utility bills, said
Jonathon Gray, who, like his father, has been unable to work at his trade as a carpenter
because of the need he feels to remain holed up.
Fence lines and trees carry hand-lettered signs like "Disobedience to Tyranny Is Obedience to
God," "90% of Catholic Priests Are Child Molesters" and "We Are Militia and Will Live
Free or Die.
"
Asked today whether he or his father was a member of a militia group, Jonathon Gray only
smiled and said, "No comment."
But last weekend, by the account of both Mr. Gray and the local press, members of various
militia groups as well as religious fundamentalists -- more than two dozen people in all --
visited the family to offer support, many bringing food and other supplies.
Even today, as Mr. Gray and his brothers stood watch, a neighbor who would give her name
only as Punky stopped on the dirt road running alongside their property and told him: "You
keep them out of there. Don't let them in. If you need anything, give us a call."
"I wouldn't let them take my grandchildren either," she said.
NADER
In a message dated 8/23/00 5:12:28 PM, NJ4Nader writes:
Harper's Magazine -- September, 2000
Cover Story: A CITIZEN IN FULL (excerpts)
Ralph Nader campaigns for president with a course in civics
By Lewis W. Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine
"We can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great
wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
-- Louis
Brandeis
Ralph Nader declared himself a candidate for president on February 21 in
a Washington hotel, and for the next two months the national news media
were careful to ignore the proposition. Although well-known as a zealous
consumer advocate, Nader didn't enjoy much standing as a politician.
So little was said about Nader's presidential campaign in February and
March that as late as April 10 it wasn't hard to find New York sources
supposedly well-informed (editors at Doubleday, columnists for Vogue) who
hadn't been told. They had heard that somewhere west of the Pecos River
Pat Buchanan was on the hustings for Ross Perot's troubled Reform Party,
but if in answer to a question about the November election I said that
I intended to vote for Ralph Nader, I could count on expressions of genuine
surprise.
Most of the upscale media adopted a complacent tone when they were obliged
to take notice of Nader's campaign in early May. The candidate by then
had placed his name on the ballot in fifteen states; actively in search
of votes, he was making stump speeches in Kentucky and South Carolina,
attracting endorsements from prominent celebrities (among them Willie Nelson,
Susan Sarandon, Pearl Jam, and Paul Newman), apparently being taken seriously
by the United Auto Workers union. Still not enough of a campaign to warrant
mention on the political web sites maintained by ABC, CBS, and CNN, but
certainly a curiosity deserving of the same attention paid to spotted owls
and giant pandas.
Nader's candidacy gained currency during the spring and early summer (his
acceptance in Denver of the Green Party's presidential nomination, nearly
$1 million raised in campaign contributions, his name on the ballot in
another ten states), but the official portrait in the media (that of the
harmless reformer, high-minded but faintly ridiculous) wasn't retouched
until June 30, when the New York Times promoted him to the rank of public
menace. The upgrade took the form of an impatient editorial, royalist
in sentiment and pompous in tone, reprimanding Nader for his meddling in
an election that was beyond his sphere of competence and none of his concern:
"He is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will
distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented
by the major-party candidates, Vice President Al Gore
and Gov. George Bush.
"It is especially distressing to see Mr. Nader flirt
with the spoiler role.
"Of course, both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader have the
right to run. But given the major differences between
the prospective Democratic and Republican nominees,
there is no driving logic for third-party candidacy
this year, and the public deserves to see the major-party
candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field."
Disappointed as well as piqued, the editorialist acknowledged Nader's "legacy
as a conscience-driven crusader" and took the trouble to commend him for
championing the cause of automobile safety and having "sharpened Americans'
awareness of the flaws in their political system." Which was why it was
distressing to see a man once principled destroy his reputation with conduct
unbecoming a moralist. His irresponsible behavior threatened Al Gore's
chances in "swing states like California," and if he were a true gentleman
and a real liberal he would stay with the seat belts and leave the politics
to the professionals.
It so happened that June 30 was the same day on which I had arranged to
interview Nader in Washington, also to accompany him on his afternoon rounds
of the television talk-show circuit. I'd read the Times editorial on the
plane from New York, and when I arrived shortly before noon at Nader's
campaign headquarters on N.W. Fifteenth Street, I discovered that it had
been received as a gift of rare good fortune. The few campaign workers
present looked like graduate students -- young, idealistic, underpaid,
not the kind of people given to cutting deals with trade-association
lobbyists
or shouting into telephones -- and their response to the rebuke was less
loud or sarcastic than quietly pleased. It meant they were making progress.
The lead editorial no less, publicity that money couldn't buy, 618 words
of fatuous indignation proving Nader a candidate in fact as well as theory.
Several recent news clippings posted on the walls confirmed an uptick
of interest from syndicated columnists suddenly as worried as the Times
about the damage likely to be done to Gore, and among other signs as hopeful,
Nader's web site was receiving 20,000 visits a day; 12,000 volunteers were
setting up storefront operations in every one of the fifty states; there
was talk of a campaign bus, maybe even television commercials; some of
the national opinion polls were conceding Nader 7 percent of the prospective
November vote, as opposed to 2 percent for the far more lavishly financed
Pat Buchanan; Vogue had called with the request for an interview; so had
CNBC and Slate.
I found Nader in the front room on the third floor. He was wearing his
customary rumpled suit. The standard press description gets it right about
Nader's frugal habits and bookish manner -- sixty-six years old and never
married, he doesn't own a car, a cell phone, or a credit card -- but it
misses his candor, his modesty, and his wit. More amused than offended
by the Times editorial, he asked me if I knew who might have written it:
"You've got to love these people," Nader said. "They think the American
electoral process is a gated community."
Never in recent memory, he said, have the Democratic and Republican parties
so closely resembled each other, and if the absence of 100 million citizens
from the polls in the 1996 presidential election didn't indicate, or at
least strongly hint at, an impressive lack of respect for the threadbare
wisdoms in office (and thus "a driving logic" for a third party, or any
party at all that could reinvigorate the country's moribund political
debate),
then what would it take to prompt the editors at the Times to smuggle their
heads out of the sand? For ten years the American electorate has been voicing
its objection to "a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and
for the Du Ponts." The party of discontent voted for Ross Perot, elected
Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota, made credible the candidacy of John
McCain, paraded in animal costumes through the streets of Seattle.
Several well-wishers already had telephoned that morning with the suggestion
that Nader distribute reprints of the editorial as an endorsement, on the
ground that anybody who so provoked the Times couldn't be all bad, and
when Studs Terkel called from Chicago to offer the same advice, Nader said,
"Remember that you're talking to your friend, the clutterer. Obstructing
the playing field for next autumn's Yale-Harvard game."
They talked for five minutes, then it was John Anderson on the phone, saying
that when he had run as a third-party candidate in 1980 the Times had cast
him in the same role --"spoiler," "ego-driven" nuisance, no friend of
America.
"You would think," Nader said, "that in twenty years they could come up
with some new words."
The judges on the bench of prime-time opinion say that Nader lacks charisma,
but the word admits of different interpretations, and if it can be referred
to a lively intelligence as well as a bright smile, Nader seems to me a
good deal more charismatic than David Letterman or Brad Pitt. I know of
few spectacles more entertaining than the play of a mind being put to
constructive
or imaginative use, and I like to listen to Nader talk. I never fail to
learn something new, and in Nader's idealism I find an antidote for the
cynicism that constitutes an occupational hazard on the shop floors of
the image-making industries in New York.
Accepting the Green Party nomination in Denver on June 27, Nader had
presented
his campaign as a question -- "How badly do we want a just and decent
society,
a society that raises our expectations of ourselves?" -- and in Washington
three days later he supplemented it with further commentary and explanation.
"Unlike Gush and Bore," he said, "I don't promote myself as a solution
to the nation's problems. The idea is to encourage a lot of other people
to use the tools of democratic government to take control of the assets
they hold in common -- the public lands, the public broadcast frequencies,
the public money. Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism, homophobia,
taxes, health care, urban decay, you're not going to go anywhere with it
unless you focus on the concentration of power. We have an overdeveloped
plutocracy and an underdeveloped democracy, too many private interests
commandeering the public interest for their own profit. Most Americans
don't realize how badly they're being harmed by the unchecked
commercialization
of what belongs to the commonwealth. If enough people knew what questions
to ask, we have both the ways and means to achieve better schools, a
healthier
environment, a more general distribution of decent health care."
Nader has been asking the questions for forty years. He established his
credibility as a consumer advocate in 1965 when he published Unsafe at
Any Speed, a fierce indictment of the carelessness with which General Motors
manufactured its cars. The book resulted in legislation that forced G.M.
to improve its automotive designs, and Nader went on to search out further
proofs of malfeasance almost everywhere else in corporate America, filing
investigative briefs against oil companies, banks, hospitals; publishing
another twenty books (about corporate accountability, the judiciary and
banking committees in both the Senate and the House, etc.); organizing
numerous civic-minded committees (among them the Center for the Study of
Responsive Law and the Public Interest Research Group); and bringing about,
or at least setting in train, changes for the better in the management
of the country's pension funds, classified information, and toxic wastes.
"The oligarchy," he said, never wants anyone to know what, or how much,
ordinary citizens can accomplish if they learn to use the power of their
own laws. Apathy is good for business-as-usual; so is cynicism. Convince
the kids that history is at an end, that nothing important remains to be
discovered, done, or said, and maybe they won't ask why a corporate CEO
receives a salary four hundred times greater than that of the lowest paid
worker in his own company."
The first of Nader's television appearances, a taped broadcast for CNN's
Crossfire, was scheduled for 2:00 PM, but he was slow to finish talking
to a reporter from Business Week, and in the car Theresa Amato, his campaign
manager, worried about being late.
As Nader was being ushered to his seat at the table between them, Theresa
and I found chairs against a back wall, and Novak greeted the candidate
with a condescending joke. "Well, Ralph," he said. "I see that you have
brought the whole of your bloated campaign staff."
Nader let the remark pass without comment, and while the technicians fixed
his microphone Novak turned to the teleprompter to read the opening tease.
Smoothing his vest, adjusting his tie, he puffed up his voice into the
registers of mock urgency and canned sensation, bringing his viewers the
promise of furious debate -- "Ralph Nader in the crossfire. Ralph Nader
and his third-party presidential campaign. Will it last? Will he find
money? Will he take votes from Al Gore? Is he serious? Can he win?"
The lights went briefly down, and during the lull that accompanied the
first commercial break, Novak sagged back into the posture of a bored
Washington
courtier, the Rosencrantz to Bill Press's Guildenstern (or, on alternate
days of the week, the Guildenstern to Press's Rosencrantz); it was obvious
that with respect to the questions he had just asked, his answer to all
of the above was no. Nor was he particularly interested in the interview
that he was about to conduct. Nader quite clearly wasn't going to be giving
tours of the White House or tipping anybody off to tomorrow's bombing of
Belgrade. But the show was the show, and what Novak had to sell was the
sport of bearbaiting. When the lights again came up, he instantly regained
the pose of "the citizen who cares" and began a garbled interrogation along
the lines of the morning editorial in the Times, "Are you really totally
indifferent to these two candidates?" "If you were to take away enough
votes from California to carry the state for George Bush, I think that
might elect him. Does that give you trouble sleeping?"
Nader said he could sleep. The Democratic Party had shifted its thinking
and policies so far to the right that the only difference between Bush
and Gore was the relative velocity "with which their knees hit the floor
when the big corporations knocked on the door."
Nader began to explain his reasons for saying what he'd said (i.e., with
specific reference to the Clinton Administration's record on child welfare,
medical insurance, national forests, the Glass-Steagall Act, etc., etc.),
but well before he could complete the bill of indictment it was time for
another commercial break, and as soon as the cameras returned for the second
half of the program, Novak was talking about "Ralph Nader, consumer advocate
multi-millionaire!" He had seen a newspaper report placing Nader's net
worth at $4 million, and real money in the hands of anybody to the left
of William F. Buckley struck him as prima facie evidence of hypocrisy.
Liberals were supposed to be poor; their poverty was what made them
liberals.
So, said Novak, as if peering under a pillow or a rock, you have $4 million.
Nader said the number was about right, but he went on to explain that
he lived on only a small fraction of the income and gave the bulk of it
to his several public action committees. The answer didn't satisfy Novak,
and for the next fifteen minutes, attempting to discredit Nader's claim
to the prerogatives of an idealist, he pursued the subject with questions
about how the money was invested, in what kind of stocks, and were those
companies cruel monopolies, enemies of the people, creatures of the corporate
state? Because Nader answered the quiz without embarrassment or evasion,
the effect was lost.
Twenty minutes later we were back in the car, and Nader was saying that
he thought the show had gone about as well as could be expected. He cited
the list of issues on which Gore had sold out his avowed concern for the
environment to the highest corporate bidder -- oil development in Alaska,
organic food standards, greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting chemicals, the
California redwoods.
"Critics tell me that I ought to work 'within the system,' but people 'within
the system' don't welcome new ideas. They like to talk about social change,
but when it comes to actually doing something, they remember that social
change is outrageous, un-American, and wrong. Look at the history of the
country. I don't care whether you're talking about the Revolution of 1776,
or abolitionists forcing the issue of slavery in the 1850s, about women's
suffrage, the late nineteenth-century populist revolt against the eastern
banks and railroads, the trade-union movement, Social Security, meat
inspection,
civil rights. The change invariably begins with people whom the defenders
of the status quo denounce as agitators, communists, hippies, weirdos.
And then, ten or twenty years later, after the changes have taken place,
the chamber of commerce discovers that everybody's profits have improved.
The captains of industry never seem to understand that a free democracy
is the precondition for a free market; try to turn the equation the other
way around, and you end up with an economy like the one in Indonesia."
By the time we returned to the building on N.W. Fifteenth Street three
more newspapers had called with requests for interviews, 60 Minutes had
expressed interest, and Tom Brokaw's producers had asked if it might be
possible for Tom to follow Nader into Minnesota with a camera crew. The
campaign staff was impressed, but not to the extent of sending out for
beer and paper hats. Like their candidate, they understood the political
crisis in the country not as an ideological quarrel between liberal and
conservative, Democrat and Republican, but rather as an argument between
the people who would continue the American experiment and those who believe
the experiment has gone far enough, between the inertia conducive to
acceptance
of things-as-they-are and the energy inherent in the hope of
things-as-they-might-become.
To the delegates at the Green Party convention in Colorado, Nader had defined
his politics as "first and foremost a movement of thought, not of belief,"
and later in the afternoon, riding in a taxi to the PBS studio in Arlington,
Virginia, I asked him whether politics so defined didn't set him up for
a good deal of disappointment. "Maybe it would if I were into mood changes,
he said.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer allotted Nader ten minutes at the top of the
broadcast and didn't bother with the theatrics of false confrontation.
Lehrer asked straightforward questions, but they were so tired and
perfunctory
that it was apparent he didn't understand Nader's critique of the sham
democracy. Nor, like Novak and Press, did he seem to know what was meant
by the phrase "economic injustice." Where was the problem, and why the
complaint? Here we all were in the most prosperous society ever to see
the light of heaven, real estate prices going nowhere but up, the ever
expanding middle class floating in suburban swimming pools on the buoyant
mattress of the Nasdaq, and why were we talking about poor people?
In the time allowed, the conversation couldn't become anything other than
an exchange of platitudes, but it permitted at least one memorable question
and answer. Lehrer was asking Nader what he would do in and with the office
of the presidency in the unlikely event that he won the election. How
could Nader possibly appreciate the complex workings of all those vast
and complex government agencies in Washington? Nader paused for a moment,
as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard. Then he laughed
and said, "Well, I don't know anybody who has sued more of them."
The station provided another taxi to return Nader to Washington, and he
offered to drop me at the airport if I still had policy issues that I wished
to raise. Once again we found ourselves stalled in traffic, but over the
course of the next half hour I mostly asked less lofty questions about
Winona LaDuke, the vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket
-- an Indian woman, a White Earth Anishinaabeg from Minnesota, Harvard
educated, an author, a social activist who shared his views on foreign
trade and human rights. He'd met her a few years ago and had been impressed
by her integrity and strength of character; he knew of no finer person
in the United States.
As my plane to New York climbed into a steep turn over the Potomac, the
sight of the Lincoln Memorial in the lovely evening light reminded me that
a democratic republic knows no higher rank or title than that of citizen.
The media prefer celebrities, who come and go like soup cans or summer
moths, unthreatening and ephemeral. Cheaply produced and easily replaced,
made to the measure of our own everyday weakness, celebrities ask nothing
of us except a round of applause. Like President Clinton, they let us
off the hook. Nader sets the hook on the sharp points of obligation to
a higher regard for our own intelligence and self-worth. Less interested
in the counting of votes than in the lesson of freedom, he mounts his
campaign
on the proposition that the party of things-as-they-are depends for its
continued survival on the party of things-as-they-might-become.
I got out bid on this photographic image/general @ e.bay. last friday
I fucked up !
SEX AND REALESTATE by Marjorie Garber
More Hairy Smith........
Anthology of American Music, Volume Four
"As Per The VV"