Hotel Evictions - Turn Up the HEAT!
Just as we feared, most of those evicted on the 13th did not have alternative housing. Some were arrested for trespassing as they sought shelter in abandoned buildings, and many dispersed throughout the country, refugees once again. This cannot be allowed to happen again. March 1st will be another battle for thousands of NOLA families facing homelessness. It will only be organization and action that can avert this crisis – the courts have already failed the people. Federal Judge Duval refused to intervene, saying, "I'm not sure if I'm serving justice but at least I know I'm following the law." When the courts are not just, justice is up to the people!

On the 13th, private security firms, mercenaries, with shotguns stood ready to evict families with nowhere else to go. It was public pressure through the calls and emails sent in, the threat of an injunction, and our presence at the hotels that kept families housed until March 1st. We need everyone to continue calling and writing everyday before the March 1st evictions!
The NY Times Wednesday reported that under a 1993 amendment to existing foreign investment law, the U.S. government is required to conduct a mandatory 45-day investigation if the investing company is owned and/or controlled by a foreign government. The key word here is mandatory. During this period, Defense, State, Commerce and Transportation department officials, along with the National Security Council and others, would get to put the deal under a microscope, ultimately reporting its findings back to the president. And, Congress would also have the opportunity to more deeply vet the transaction. But the great Bushevik Monarchy once again skirted the law. King Bush once again declared that "I am not above the law, I am the law." The most secretive administration in United States history has once again just flexed its unitary powers, telling Americans and Congress to screw off. So much for mandatory.

I feel like I can't make sense any longer of the Bush administration. Five years ago after 9/11 the Bushites were openly hostile to any suggestion that a foreign government should be able to influence America's response to a terrorist attack. Anyone who accepted international criticism of America's roughshod policy of attack first and ask questions later was accused of internationalism or of sacrificing America's national security to the dictates of foreign interests.

Yesterday, the Bush administration came out with both barrels blazing in support of just such a policy threatening to veto any legislation which attempted to scuttle the sale of a British company which manages a number of American ports to Dubai Ports World a company controlled by the government of Dubai. The Bush administration questioned why a Middle-Eastern company should be excluded from what is only an international business deal.

President Bush, in his recent State of the Union address, identified “radical Islam” as Oceania’s – did I say Oceania? I meant America’s – latest mortal enemy. Given that prior to its annual marketing release a SOTU address has undergone more face lifts than Phyllis Diller, one would assume such a term was not chosen lightly.

The war on “radical Islam” is the latest fork in the meandering etymological road down which this country has been misled since September 11, 2001. What started as the war against terror, proclaimed by the president to Congress in the aftermath of the attacks, has undergone many a metamorphosis.

First was when the “war on terror” was admitted as misnamed by the President in the summer of 2004. “It ought to be the ‘struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try and shake the conscience of the free world.’” Later that summer, the President was roundly vilified for his refreshing candor when he stated that America could never actually “win” the “war on terror”, and that we should instead be satisfied in reducing terrorism to the level of “nuisance”.

Washington – 2/22/06.  Today is day eight of our 34-day fast for peace at the U.S. Capitol, the Washington component of the Winter of Our Discontent campaign organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org

The four of us in D.C., Maureen Foltz, Jeff Leys, Ed Kinane, and I are doing a liquids-only fast.  Maureen and Ed are drinking juice; Jeff and I are trying the water route.  So far, everyone reports they’re in good shape and not feeling any serious side effects. 

Each day between 11:30am and 2pm, we take our banners and signs to the sidewalk bordering the Capitol Building, near the corner of Independence and First St.  We distribute flyers explaining what we’re doing, and try to engage anyone we can in conversation.  Here is the reaction I’ve observed so far.

• To the overwhelming percentage of people, maybe 80%, we rate a quick glance or are completely invisible. 

Maybe we should be careful about making common cause with born-again free speech advocates who never showed any tolerance for it until it became a handy club for bashing Muslims.

Before the furor over the Danish cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad cools into caricature itself - as in, "Remember when all those Muslims went nuts over a bunch of political cartoons?" - and becomes one more convenient example of the cultural superiority of the West, to be pulled out whenever the "clash of civilizations" needs stoking, I'd like to quote Ann Coulter.

I don't do this lightly, but, like Pat Robertson, she's helpful at making hidden agendas grotesquely explicit. I'd also like to note that I found the link to her column on the Web site of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which apparently believes the appropriate reaction to offensive material is to expose, not censor, it. The council also condemned violence and hosted a forum at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., titled "Religious and Political Perspectives on the Cartoon Controversy." Panel discussions on tolerance! How did that fail to make the headlines?

Death is always in the news. From local car crashes to catastrophes in faraway places, deadly events are grist for the media mill. The coverage is ongoing -- and almost always superficial.

It may be unfair to blame journalists for failing to meet standards that commonly elude artists. For centuries, on the subject of death, countless poets have strived to put the ineffable into words. It’s only easy when done badly.

Yet it’s hard to think of any other topic that is covered so frequently and abysmally in news outlets. The reporting on death is apt to be so flat that it might be mistaken for ball scores or a weather report.

Pallid coverage of the dying is especially routine in U.S. news media when a war is underway and the deaths are caused by the U.S. government.

When a news report breaks through cliches to evoke realities of carnage, the result can be memorable. Here’s a passage from an April 1999 story by Robert Fisk, reporting for the London-based daily Independent about a U.S.-led NATO bombing raid on a target in Yugoslavia:

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