Activism Across America

Tomorrow in Venice Beach, California, there will be a protest march consisting of a group of women wearing no shirts. The initial reaction many people, especially teenage boys, may be nothing beyond the level of a hubba hubba, but there’s a lot more at stake in this demonstration than the groin may indicate.

Americans have no trouble understanding the burkha as a tool of repression against women in fundamentalist Muslim societies. For men to be able to show their faces, when women are not, limits the social humanity of the women who are enclosed by their clothes.

You may say that a woman’s shirt is not the same, because breasts are sexual objects that ought not to be displayed in public, where strange men can ogle them. However, fundamentalist Muslims make the same arguments about women’s hair, or their faces.

It’s true, of course, that hair can be sexy. A face can be very sexy. However, we American men are able to go through our lives with women’s hair and faces exposed without being distracted by them.

The same can be true of breasts. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t even think of a woman’s breast without becoming excited. Now, I realize that the excitement came not from the breast itself, but from the transgression of a limitation in order to create a sexual display.

A breast exposed for sexual purposes is exciting. A breast that just so happens to be exposed is not exciting. American men can learn to understand that.

Let’s not burkha the torsos of American women. Let us make chest and breast equal.

Go to Go Topless to find out more about the protest.

Congratulations to Direct Action to Stop the War for a successful anti-war protest… against a software company in San Francisco.

Fail to see the connection between a San Francisco software company and an antiwar protest? Let me help you out, then: The connection is a game called America’s Army that since 2002 has been used by the U.S. Army to target minors as young as thirteen for military recruitment.

Ubisoft developed the game in cooperation with the Pentagon as a propaganda tool to encourage kids to join the Army and support George W. Bush’s wars.

Direct Action to Stop the War has responded with a successful protest against UbiSoft’s involvement in the recruitment pro-war software project. Yesterday, a large group of people gathered outside the offices of Ubisoft, and rallied under the theme War Is Not A Game.

Keep up the good work, Direct Action.

When it comes to the ways of the Senate Democrats, California has the best and worst of what’s available. Senator Barbara Boxer does what a Democrat is supposed to do - upholding progressive values, and defending the Constitution. Dianne Feinstein, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to give a damn about anything other than the calculus of power.

Let’s take the recent vote on the FISA Amendments Act as an example. The FISA Amendments Act represents one of the worst aspects of the presidency of George W. Bush. It retroactively legalizes a program that spied on the personal communications of millions of law-abiding American citizens - without a search warrant or any other judicial oversight. The law allows this abuse to continue. It wrecks the protections guaranteed by the Constitution.

Barbara Boxer did the right thing. She voted against the FISA Amendments Act.

Dianne Feinstein did the wrong thing. She voted in favor of the FISA Amendments Act.

California, you have my congratulations… and my sympathy.

The ABC News Democratic presidential debate this week was a new low point in a campaign that has exposed once more the profound superficiality of television news organizations. Although the ABC News moderators, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous never could find the time to ask a single question about this week’s astonishing admission from George W. Bush that he now openly admits having known about, and even approved of, a program to administer torture.

Although not a single question dealt with the important and substantial constitutional crisis created by President Bush’s open violation of the law and the Bill of Rights, Charles Gibson did find the time to demand answers from Barack Obama about why he wears flag lapel pins some days, but not every single day all the time.

For almost an entire hour, the Gibson and Stephanopolous refused to ask any questions about any topics that would actually affect the American people, and instead offered question after question about non-policy character attacks. Gibson and Stephanopolous treated the presidential debate like a piece of entertainment news. True to form, ABC/Disney could only look at the 2008 election at the childish level of a cartoon.

In Burbank California from 4:00 until 7:00 this evening, a group of citizens will gather outside the ABC/Disney headquarters at the West Alameda Gate, between South Buena Vista and Keystone Streets. Organized by the Courage Campaign, they will hand out American flag lapel pins to ABC employees as they enter and leave headquarters, in protest of the shameful disservice done to American voters by the ABC News team behind this week’s presidential debate.

In the glossy word of TV Land Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous live in, all it takes to be patriotic is to put a little pin in your jacket. Here in the real America, we citizens know that genuine patriotism comes from speaking out against those people who try to cheapen our democracy with scapegoat politics that avoids the real issues upon which our nation needs to get to work.

Today at noon in Palo Alto, California, the FCC - Federal Communications Commission - will hold a public meeting to discuss and hear public comments about issues related to the development of the Internet

If I could be there, I might make a comment about network neutrality, or about the need to develop protections for the Internet-using public from illegal spying by the government on our private Internet activities without a search warrant.

How would you comment?

Well, actually, you can comment. No matter where you are. Go to http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi and enter proceeding number 07-52.

Location: Dinkelspiel Auditorium
471 Lagunita Drive
Stanford University
Palo Alto, California

Thanks to Free Press for bringing this to our attention.

This morning, I stopped for a minute and thought about the larger meaning of a sign posted at the entrance of the Westin hotel in Long Beach, California. The sign read: “Warning: The Hotel Premises and Property Contain Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer and Birth Defect and Other Reproductive Harm.”

I concluded that it’s not just a warning sign for the people staying in the hotel.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is home to a striking amount of biodiversity. Though this biological diversity cannot be seen by those of us who live above the waves, we benefit from it nonetheless.

I was shocked to discover that only one percent of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is actually a sanctuary. In a few weeks, Superintendent Paul Michel, who administers the Sanctuary, will decide whether to add marine protected areas (MAPs) in the federal parts of the Monterey Sanctuary to add protection to the fish who swim there.

The Ocean Conservancy is urging people to contact Michel, and urge him to support the additional protection. Please, if you live in California, give a few minutes to help out.

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article describing the terrible environmental record earned by California Representative Duncan Hunter in Congress. He got a zero percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. The reaction of his supporters was an indication of the pathological disregard for a clean environment among right wing activists in America today.

One supporter called the zero percent rating an “impressive recommendation” for the Hunter for President campaign. Another supporter, writing for a blog called Ohio Duncan Hunter for President, remarked, “If you are a conservative, you know there’s always something fun about ticking off the envirowhackos.”

We don’t think that asking someone running for President of the United States to earn more than a zero percent rating on environmental legislation makes us “envirowhackos”. It’s saddening to me to see that defending polluters who trash the Earth is regarded by some Americans as “something fun”.

(Source: Ohio Duncan Hunter For President, December 21, 2007)

Duncan Hunter, arepresentative in Congress for Southern California and Republican presidential candidate in 2008, seems to hardly have ever met an environmental cause that he gave a damn about. In fact, in 2006, Congressman Hunter didn’t meet a single piece of environmental legislation that he was willing to support. His rating in the League of Conservation Voters National Environmental Scorecard for 2006 was zero percent. Duncan Hunter didn’t vote in favor of keeping the environment clean one single time.

That kind of extremist, stubborn refusal to act as a steward of the Earth has no place in the White House in this time of escalating environmental crisis. (Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is best known for this proposal to create a Department of Peace that would counterbalance the power of the Department of Defense (once called the Department of War) in the American federal government.

Kucinich has introduced legislation to the House of Representatives to create a Department of Peace: HR 808, the Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act. On December 16, citizens in Sacramento, California will meet to discuss the bill, and its relationship to the development of a more thorough peace movement. The meeting will take place at the Unitarian Universalist Society, at 2425 Sierra Boulevard.

At the meeting, David Dionsi of the Teach Peace Foundation will also discuss developments in Iran, Iraq, and the issue of depleted uranium.