The Vivid Air

He’s a gay guy from perhaps the most homophobic country in the world—Jamaica—and he won an award named after the slain activist from a country that could also be the most homophobic country in the world—Uganda.

Well, Jamaica is in the news lately, since a transgendered teen, Dwayne Jones, was shot, stabbed, beaten and then run over by a car last weekend. Right—that’s pretty homophobic. But what’s even worse is that Jones’ father had driven him from the family home, and joined the group of neighbors who drove him from the neighborhood.

So he was living, this 16-year old kid, with three others in a derelict house in Montego Bay. He went to a party, was dancing, and someone noticed his feet, which were abnormally large for a woman’s. He tried to run; he didn’t get away.

What’s behind the persecution? Well, there’s a law dating from 150 years back banning sodomy. There was a tradition in colonial times of sodomizing black slaves as a form of punishment. There are the usual right-wing fundamentalists who have whipped up the masses in places like Uganda—remember Scott Lively? But Jamaica has found a native ingredient to toss into the usual stew—and that’s hate-mongering reggae singers.

Things are so bad for gay people in Jamaica that a lot of them are fleeing—or trying to. That’s what Maurice Tomlinson did when a local newspaper outed him; he immediately began receiving death threats. So he escaped to Canada, where he married his soul mate, Tom Decker.

“In Canada I have a husband, in Jamaica I have a good friend,” he said recently, when he also revealed that he’s had three death threats since the local Jamaican press published the news. So he no longer goes to bars or even parties—he’s under a modified, self-imposed house arrest.

The good news is that he won in 2012 the David Kato Vision and Voice Award. And that has given him, he says, a place at the table; with that, and the support of his organization…well, let him tell the story:

I was able to be a part of the first ever legal challenge to the Jamaican anti-sodomy law before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, successfully challenged Coca-Cola for their support of homophobic murder musicians in Jamaica, launched a constitutional claim against Jamaican television stations for their refusal to air a tolerance-themed ad in which I appear, confronted the government of Trinidad about its atrocious immigration law that bans the entry of marginalized groups such as the disabled, homosexuals and sex workers, and also traveled the world to share with other LGBT advocacy groups the hard-won skills I developed as an activist. It was also AIDS-Free World that nominated me for the David Kato Vision and Voice award. I simply could not have achieved my advocacy successes without them by my side. So I publicly thank AIDS-Free World and hope my successor has an equally supportive organization or group to call 'home.'

So who, you might ask, is David Kato?

Kato was the first openly gay Ugandan, a teacher, a man who had lived for six years in South Africa, which was more liberal. Returning to Uganda, Kato made the decision to come out, did so at a press conference, and got jailed for a week because of it. This, however, didn’t stop him—he went on to become one of the founding members of SMUG—Sexual Minorities Uganda. In 2010, he gave up teaching, and worked full time as an activist.

But the year before, he had attended a UN human rights conference. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

According to a series of confidential cables written by a Kampala-based United States diplomat and later released by WikiLeaks, Kato spoke during a November 2009 United Nations-funded consultative conference on human rights. During the conference, Kato spoke on the issue of LGBT rights and the anti-LGBT atmosphere in the country, but members of the Uganda Human Rights Commission "openly joked and snickered" during the speech, and a rumor circulated that David Bahati MP, the leading proponent of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, had ordered the Inspector General of Police to arrest Kato, causing Kato and other attending members of SMUG to leave the conference immediately after he finished the speech. Bahati then made a "tirade against homosexuality" to the conference, resulting in massive applause and Martin Ssempa, an Evangelical Christian cleric, pounding his fist on the table in agreement.[7]

And then, a local newspaper published his name and address—as they did of a hundred other persons—in an inflammatory campaign to out gay people. (How inflammatory? If memory serves, one of the banners read, “HANG THEM!)

Kato took the newspaper to court—he won, and got a $600 settlement.

He never got to enjoy that 600 bucks; he was murdered shortly afterwards. But even after death, the insults continued. Back to Wikipedia for a description of the event:

Kato's funeral was held on January 28, 2011, in Nakawala. Present at the funeral were family, friends and co-activists, many of whom wore t-shirts bearing his photo in front, the Portuguese "la [sic] luta continua" in the back and having rainbow flag colors inscribed onto the sleeves.[19] However, the Christian preacher at the funeral preached against the gays and lesbians present, making comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah, before the activists ran to the pulpit and grabbed the microphone from him, forcing him to retreat from the pulpit to Kato's father's house. An unidentified female activist angrily exclaimed "Who are you to judge others?" and villagers sided with the preacher as scuffles broke out during the proceedings. Villagers refused to bury Kato at his burial place; the task was then undertaken by his friends and co-workers, most of whom were gay.[20] In place of the preacher who left the scene after the fighting, excommunicated Anglican Church of Uganda bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo officiated Kato's burial in the presence of friends and cameras.

Right—that’s one you’d remember!

And who, by the way, is excommunicated Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo, and why is he excommunicated?

Well, he’s a theologian who studied at Union Theological Seminary and was ordained at St. John the Divine. He’s an LGBT activist who got into a scrap with the archbishop, who turned around and excommunicated him.

 Homosexuality is illegal in more than 70 countries, but that’s the least of the problem. What’s truly scary is that there are places in the world—Russia, Jamaica, Uganda—where LGBT people live very realistically in fear for their lives. And there are people like David Kato and Maurice Tomlinson who—against all odds, despite the churning stomachs, the sweaty palms, the dry mouths—find the courage to stand up, speak out, tell the truth to power.

Women and men who leave the vivid air, as the poet said, signed with their honor.

Passports to Many Countries

OK—first off. I tremble to write this post, because if Irshad Manji reads this it, and troubles to respond, she’ll wipe me off the map. She’s both smarter and tougher than I.

And who is Irshad Manji? Well, many people in the Arab world have an answer—she’s an infidel, a heretic, a traitor. Or, some would say, she’s a person who’s finally had the guts to speak some unpleasant truths.

Some months ago, I was trying to write a review in Amazon.com, since a number of Iguana readers were having trouble uploading their reviews. Not having read anything recently, I decided to review the King James Bible. (It seemed fair—I had read it, though years ago, and it’s a text that has survived for a substantial amount of time. I doubted anything that I could say would seriously hurt it….) I went to the page, scrolled down, and was startled to find that 46 people had give it one star, Amazon’s lowest level. Here’s my favorite:

444 of 534 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars

Far too pornographic for a Christian home!, October 6, 2012

By 

Mrs. Betty Bowers "Mrs. Betty Bowers, America... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Bible: King James Version (Hardcover)

I simply refuse to poison my Christian children's precious minds with lascivious tales of daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him (Genesis 19:30-38) - or harlots lusting after penises that are the size of donkeys' (Ezekiel 23:20). It is, however, excellent for cracking nuts and slapping bottoms.

I tell you this story because a surprising number of Christians are treating the Bible as…well, a sort of supplemental text. Or perhaps additional reading, if wanted.

Right, you say. But what does this have to do with Irshad Manji?

Well, to put words into the lady’s mouth—something certainly unnecessary and probably dangerous—it’s interesting that Christians can do that, and yet a Muslim doing the same with the Quran? In Canada, yes—but how about Saudi Arabia? I bring you The Australian:

A FAMILY row that developed into a televised debate in Saudi Arabia has ended in disaster for a young activist now facing seven years in jail and 600 lashes, as the kingdom continues to crack down on online dissent.

Raif Badawi, 30, founder of a liberal website, has been sentenced by a court in Jedda - convicted of insulting Islam and denouncing the kingdom's feared religious police. A charge of apostasy that could have carried the death penalty was dropped.

Tacked on to those offences was a charge of "parental disobedience", stemming from a bitter dispute between Badawi and his father. The row became so ugly that among those denouncing his son as an apostate was Badawi's father himself.

I read about it at the time, and then considered writing about it. I didn’t, partly out of politically correct fear of playing into Islam / Muslim bashing, and partly because, well, what is there to say? It’s ridiculous and outrageous; now, what about the other 998 words in my post?

It’s a problem I’ve had with the some parts of the Muslim world for some time. A Danish cartoonist draws an offensive cartoon—embassies burn and 100 people die in Nigeria alone in violence related to the affair. This we have to take seriously?

Manji wrote a book, The Trouble with Islam Today, in which she provides the answer—the Muslims. And I saw her defend her beliefs in a great show from Al Jazeera English called Head to Head; it was filmed in temperate waters of the Oxford Union.

Well, she was bright and articulate, as well as quite passionate. And I had come to her through music, specifically through Daniel Barenboim, the pianist and conductor. Barenboim spent ten years in Argentina before his parents moved to Israel in 1952. And speaking of courage, he’s fully the equal of Manji—would you have the balls to break a decades long prohibition of playing Wagner in Israel?

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival,[40] had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works.[41] In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous," and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."

Said was Muslim, and went on to become friends with Barenboim, and later to write a book with him.

Oh, and the two also dreamed up the idea of an orchestra that would have both Jewish and Muslim members. So they started the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999, and it was not always smooth—discussion between the players could get very heated.

Barenboim is believed to be the only person who holds citizenship in both Israel and Palestine. What would happen if all of us did?

A Man of the Word, a Man of the Lab

I used to feel bad about it—taking 45 minutes to watch a documentary, or—in this case—a debate. Why waste that time—shouldn’t I be writing? And even if what I’m watching will eventually turn into what I’m writing, I still felt guilty.

But I found the clip below riveting at all times, and especially because the “presenter” (as he is described in Wikipedia, Medhi Hasan, a devout Muslim, really takes the atheist Richard Dawkins on. In fact, it’s by no means certain who won the debate.

Highlights: at about 14:30, the following exchange takes place:

Dawkins: Do you actually believe that Mohammed split the moon in half? Do you actually believe that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse?

Hasan: Yeah I do, I believe in God, I believe in miracles, I

believe in revelation.

Dawkins can’t get it—he is so absolutely committed to the scientific method and the supremacy of reason that he cannot conceive of any rational person believing the above or, later on when talking to a Christian monk, the reality of the transubstantiation.

Confession—neither can I. Although I’ve always admired Flannery O’Connor’s comment on the transubstantiation: “well, if it’s just symbolic, I say to hell with it!”

It’s clear—the debate in the video clip is 47 minutes of high speed, high-powered super trains racing in opposite directions on parallel tracks.

A little later, Hasan takes on Dawkins on the following quote:

Horrible as the sexual abuse in the Catholic church was, the damage was arguably less than the damage of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.

Dawkins adduces a letter he had gotten from a victim of sexual abuse from a priest, who had also told her that her 7-year old friend, who had just died, was then in hell, since her friend had been Protestant. The woman claimed that the sexual abuse, though bad, had not been as bad as the nightmares she had had of her friend burning in hell for all eternity.

Hasan nails him, saying that Dawkins is an empiricist—would he accept one instance of something as proof that it were generally true? The two lock horns, with Hasan pounding him with the question, at the end, “is teaching my daughter about religion and the prophet Mohammed flying to the heavens on a winged horse child abuse?” At last, Dawkins gives in: “no, it’s not.”

At the end, at about minute 42, Dawkins is asked “Would the world be a better place if religion disappeared tomorrow?”

Dawkins replies, “Ah, yes!”

Well, Hasan gets the last word, saying “goodbye and, dare I say it, God bless.”

Well, Dawkins doesn’t mind getting into a scrap or two. Yesterday, he got into a scrap by tweeting, “all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

And Wikipedia states that his animus against religion is grounded on two beliefs; that religion breeds conflict, and that it encourages or justifies belief without evidence. In the case of pseudoscience—such as whatever they are calling creationism nowadays—being taught as something as valid as science, I’m totally with him. And yes, religion has brought us a bit of conflict, in the past.

And Dawkins argues—the fact that religion may inspire a person to do good is no justification for the existence of God. Ditto for the argument that it feels good to be religious, to have rituals, to meet together as a community.

And am I wrong—from a casual reading of The God Delusion seven years ago—in thinking that Dawkins sees religious belief as a cultural meme, and that it may have developed because, as children, we have an innate instinct to be obedient. That’s useful, in evolutional terms, the offspring that stays closest to the mother has a greater chance of survival than the offspring that explores, wanders, exposes himself to predators or a harsh environment.

“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” is attributed to the Jesuits, no slouches in the education department. It’s true, in my case. Nobody got to me in the religion business in any serious way, and it’s unlikely now that anybody will.  

OK—that’s Dawkins. What about Hasan?

Well, he’s a Shia, he believes that the path to tread is secular, not Islamist, government, and he has written, “The Iraq war was a strategic disaster – or, as the Tory minister Kenneth Clarke put it in a recent BBC radio discussion, ‘the most disastrous foreign policy decision of my lifetime […] worse than Suez.’”

OK—so far so good. He also condemned the September 11 attacks, and wondered why British Muslims are so passionate about foreign affairs, but relatively uninterested in domestic issues.

Now comes the thorny part; consider this remark in a speech from 2009:

The kuffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Koran; they are described in the Koran as “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Koran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world."[19]

Cattle? Ouch! Nor is the explanation much consolation:

“The Quranic phrase 'people of no intelligence' simply and narrowly refers to the fact that Muslims regard their views on God as the only intellectually tenable position, just as atheists (like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris) regard believers as fundamentally irrational and, even, mentally deficient."[21] The Islamophobia Watch website argued Hasan was the victim of a "witch-hunt", writing that these allegations of extremism were "aimed at getting him dismissed from his job."[22]

As always, I’m split. I have a hard time believing in transubstantiation as a physical reality, and if I really believed that I had the flesh and blood of a Jew two thousand years old, I’d be on the church floor wretching. Can you imagine the taste? And would it have been cooked? And would the priest be offended if I asked for some ketchup with the host?

I’ve also been in the room and at the bedside when my mother died. Was it a spiritual experience?

Certainly it was powerful. It changed my life, as have other experiences not spiritual. I would call it a moment of mystery, a moment when time stopped, the world stopped—for me, at least—and some power or reality beyond anything I knew came into the room, delivered death to a woman who wanted and deserved it, and left us all stunned with wonder.

Two Scams, or Not?

OK—check out this painting:

Don’t know about you, but I’d say it was a dog. The hands are ok, the background seems to me to be lifeless, the faces look as if death was a couple of weeks in the past. There’s no richness of detail anywhere in the painting, except perhaps on the bread.

Next picture:

Would anybody think that they were painted by the same artist?

I once read a curious fact—most forgeries expose themselves after a generation or two. Collectively, we keep changing the way we see things—the way your grandmother looked and saw the Mona Lisa was completely different from the way you see the Mona Lisa. Odd, but true; one painting is and will be hundreds of paintings over the course of centuries.

And however odd the fact is, there’s no doubt that everyone in the art world in the late 1930’s was convinced that van Meegeren’s painting of the supper at Emmaus was actually a Vermeer, which the second painting is.

It’s about cite and setting. Joshua Bell, a famous violinist, once took his Strad out of the case in a dreary New York subway. He was wearing casual clothes, tennis shoes. He began playing Bach—and guess what? No one stopped, no one stood there and listened, mouth agape. Look, New Yorkers are sophisticated—a lot of them probably had recordings of Bell. Conceivably, somebody was actually listening to a digital Bell as the person was rushing past the carnate Bell. (Right—if Sarah can do it, so can I. Carnate is now a word, at least on my computer….)

Well, you can hear the story in the first video below. A talented painter earns initial recognition, but then the critics cool. A temperament that is nervy, bitter, unable to handle criticism. Brooding, perhaps. A desire for revenge.

The millions of guilders aren’t the point, at least in the beginning. Nobody likes him as van Meegeren, but as Vermeer, a star shining very brightly in the art firmament? Hah—they like him then! Fools!

He goes on painting the fakes, and selling them; he gives world seven new Vermeers over the course of a decade or two. Astonishing, really, since there are only less than forty Vermeers in the world to begin with.

Then came the problem—he had sold a Vermeer (he thinks of it as real) to Hermann Göring, and a fine work it was.

At the end of the war, Göring’s paintings were seized, and they traced the sale of this masterwork to van Meegeren. Sophie’s choice: confess to the forgery or go to jail for collaboration.

He confessed, agreed to make another Vermeer for the judges, and he does, meticulously scrapping paint off an old canvass, to get the craquelure, baking the canvas to give the hardness, putting in ink to resemble the dust of an old picture. In short, he uses the technology of his time.

Van Meegeren was convicted to a year in jail. He died shortly after the verdict, never served time in jail, and became the most popular man in The Netherlands.

Why?

He had tricked Göring into giving some 200 real paintings in exchange for a fake Vermeer! He had saved the world 200 paintings then in jeopardy, and gotten rich in the process. The public was roaring.

There’s something about a scam that everybody loves—and the story of Joyce Hatto is curiously similar to that of van Meegeren. She too had early success followed by rejection; she too withdraws from the music world—she was a pianist—and broods. She’s unseen and especially unheard for decades, and then, very late in life, she puts out an extraordinary number of recordings. The critics went into summersaults of praise.

Then, a guy in Manhattan looked down at his iPod, as he was walking to work, listening to Hatto play Liszt. And the iPod, querying Gracenote, listed Simon Lazlo as the pianist.

Hatto was married to a charming English gentleman, William Barrington-Coupe, a recording engineer and her personal Svengali. The story was that she was old, very old, nearing death but that each day she went down and recorded in her study—in the back of her garden, as it should be, for a lady English pianist.

And so eager were we to be duped that we bought it. Though it was funny that no one had heard of the orchestras she had played with, or the halls she had recorded in. Oh, and also the conductors.

Hatto died while at the height of her fame—all England mourned the death of one of the century’s greatest pianists.

The Manhattan guy contacted a British critic—and the game was soon up.

Here’s the thing—Barrington-Coupe, like van Meegeren, had used technology extremely well. He could slow down or speed up the music, he could add colors to the sound, he could bring out or soften down instruments or sections in the orchestra. Several of the actual pianists that Hatto had stolen from didn’t recognize that they were the ones playing….

Van Meegeran’s works are periodically on display. Hatto’s works?

You can’t buy them; eBay actually pulled them from the site when they learned they were fakes.

Here’s the problem—I’m not sure that they were, or are. I would say that van Meegeran is a fakester, but Barrington-Coupe may be a fellow musician, playing audio files just as his wife, or Simon Lazlo, played the piano….     

A Writer and His Deadline

Let’s face it—every writer needs a deadline. And so I tell you—it’s 11AM, I have spent an hour or two surfing for something interesting to write about. News flash—the world is in terrible shape.

Ooops—sorry. According to my friend Rafael, “terrible” along with words like “awful” and “horrible” are words to be avoided. Why? Because they carry a disproportionate emotional weight. You had a terrible day at the office? What happened—a coworker went postal, pulled out the semiautomatic, and shot up the office, leaving another coworker to die in your arms?

I considered briefly telling you about Wisconsin, in case you’ve missed my rants. And in fact, I even read up on something called a long range acoustic device (LRAD). I know about such a thing because I was on Facebook, looking at the following photo:

Beneath the photo was a reference to the LRAD, with the news that one had been used in the capitol yesterday. Right, so I trotted over to Wikipedia, and here’s what they say:

In 2004, Carl Gruenler, a former vice president of military and government operations for American Technology Corporation said that being within 100 metres (330 ft) of the LRAD is extremely painful, and that it was designed for use in short bursts at 300 metres (980 ft), to give targeted people a headache. He said that "you definitely don't want to be" within 100 m; and, that the device will cause permanent auditory damage.[3] LRAD officials deny such common uses, claiming that the device is not a weapon, rather it is a "directed-sound communications system", and that it can damage hearing at 15 metres (49 ft).

To be fair, there are many varieties of LRADs. And apparently, yesterday in the Wisconsin State Capitol it was a smaller version of the device that was used. But that begs the point—why use it at all? The rotunda, the location of the protest, is round and very echo-y. (Or maybe echophonous, as in cacophonous?) Actually, even a megaphone is overkill.

Well, as you can see in the video below, it’s a controversial device.

It’s become progressively more repressive, the police response to the protesters. First they couldn’t assemble—they had to get a permit. Then bystanders were threatened with arrest. Then people were informed—taking photos or video was not allowed. And now this—the use of a very nice tool to communicate with someone two miles away, but torture to anyone nearby.

As it happens, I am particularly sensitive to sound, and especially at this time. As I write, the street outside is being pounded with jackhammers, a portable generator is roaring away, and a large scooper is tossing chunks of asphalt into a truck. And this evening, a few short hours after the workers have left, the partier will have arrived, to start a street fair.

I wrote about it before; here’s what I said:

The United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music in interrogations, but it is still being widely used. The term torture is sometimes used to describe the practice. While it is acknowledged by US interrogation experts that it causes discomfort, it has also been characterized by them as causing no "long term effects."[1]

Ya—enough! Would you like to see some totally wonderful art? Check out the Danish artist Peter Callesen….

Definitely what I feel like before coffee….

Right, that’s fun…. Now, how about…

    

Damn—it’s 12:08. Missed the deadline!

All the Governor Money Can Buy

Well, a woman named Diane Ayers, whom I don’t know, stepped right up to the plate and diagnosed the situation. Here she is:

Re Bill Dunn post, your question: "Why did this never happen in Wisconsin's 165 years of history until Scott Walker became governor?"

Because, Bill, this is the first time in Wisconsin history that the core of state government has been illegitimately seized by corporate-owned political fascists, who do not hesitate to suspend civil liberties and distort or defy the constitutional rights guaranteed to this state's citizens.

Their prime directive is to discredit, divide and destroy all those agencies, civic organizations, labor unions, even community groups of individual citizens seeking to communicate their views and concerns.

Their goal? The permanent destruction of democracy in Wisconsin - and eventually throughout the U.S. - replacing it with an institutionalized oligarchy that maintains its control by doing away with public education, worker rights, voting rights, etc., -- creating a powerless underclass that will work to serve and fear to challenge their corporate masters -now and for generations to come.

Right—got that taken care of. Now—can I go to the beach?

Just a minute, you say—what’s going on in Wisconsin?

Scott Kevin Walker, born 2 November 1967, in Colorado Springs moved to Delavan, Wisconsin when he was ten. An eagle scout, he also attended a two week program called Badger Boys State and Boys Nation in Washington DC. This, he said, inspired him to become a politician.

He entered Marquette University; he dropped out. He worked for IBM and then The Red Cross. At age 22, he ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly and lost. He then moved to a Republican district—Wauwatosa—and won three years later. He served nine years in the Assembly, and then became Milwaukee County executive in 2002. He was elected governor in 2010, and promptly instituted a….

Stop!

I’ve been trying, I’ve really been trying, to be neutral, objective, fair-minded; I’m the son of a newspaperman, after all. But after all, this is not a newspaper; it’s my blog.

So I will tell you that yes, dear Readers plus Diane, this is something not seen before. This is a guy deeply in bed with corporate America, especially the mining and oil interests; guys like the infamous Koch brothers, who contributed big, big money into the recall campaign. How much? Well, I just googled “Koch brothers Scott Walker” and the first citation is from Forbes of 2012: “Scott Walker didn’t get a dime from us,” it reads. The second citation? Politifact.com, saying…well, copy and paste time:

1.              Billionaire Koch brothers gave $8 million to Wisconsin Gov. Scott ...
www.politifact.com/.../billionaire-koch-brothers-gave-8-million-wisconsi...‎

◦                Cached




Jun 20, 2012 - "In fact, the Koch brothers alone gave twice as much money to Scott Walker as the total amount of money raised by Tom Barrett." Roughly ...


I’ll come clean—I didn’t click on either of the links. Why? Because there is ample evidence that there’s a link between the Koch brothers and Walker. Remember the famous prank call, from a radio host pretending to be David Koch?

Well, revealingly, all I had to do was type “Scott” into the search bar of YouTube and up it came….

And what had Scott Walker done, to get himself into a recall election? He had proposed curing an expected 3.6 billion dollar state deficit by eliminating the right of the public service unions to bargain collectively. And that spurred crowds of up to 100,000 people to camp out in protest in the capitol.

Nor was this all. Here’s Wikipedia on Scott Walker’s social issues:

Social issues played a part in the campaign. Walker has stated that he is "100% pro-life" and that he believes life should be protected from conception to natural death.[43] He opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest.[23][44] He supports abstinence-only sex education in the public schools, and opposes state supported clinical services that provide birth control and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases to teens under the age of 18 without parental consent.[23] He supports the right of pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives on religious or moral grounds.[23][45] He supports adult stem cell research, but opposes human embryonic stem cell research.[20][44][46][47]

Right—short version: a reactionary.

Who has subverted the rules, rammed down repressive abortion laws, stripped public service positions in favor of his corporate friends. Oh, and had seven or so of his political staff convicted of various crimes. The most recent revelation, by the way, is that as Milwaukee County executive, his campaign staff was actively involved in handling the tragic death of a fifteen-year old kid who was killed by a falling slab of concrete from a county parking garage.

The protests never really went away, and people began singing protest songs at noon in the capitol rotunda. So Walker decided that people would need a permit to protest in the capitol. That of course, led to howls—the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, as well as the state constitution, guaranteeing the right of assembly.

And now comes the slightly thicker edge of the wedge. It turns out that people cannot even watch, and tourists to the Dairy State are being told: spectating is illegal. In fact, a lawmaker, Sondy Pope, was threatened with arrest for just that.

“He stole the election,” said my friend Gary, referring to the 2012 recall, and went on to give specifics. I’ve forgotten, now, and anyway, it seemed irrelevant.

If he didn’t steal it, he bought it….. 

Brian, the Blogging Pigeon

Well, I’m happy to report that on November 28, 2005, while I was celebrating my 49^th birthday, across the world Brian Pigeon was starting his blogging career. Here’s a picture of him:

And here’s his introduction:

My name is Brian Pigeon, and I am London’s premier blogging pigeon.

Pigeon Blog is my online diary.

A bona fide urban pigeon telling it how it is for the pigeons of London.

You can also follow me on Twitter – @brianpigeon

And, if you’re interested, I got me a Facebook page too – Brian Pigeon.

Make sure you get the right one tho coz the other one’s an impostor.

I’m the one who looks like this:

And here he posts the picture above. Well, I can tell you all about this because while munching a tuna sandwich, yesterday, I was watching a documentary about the wildlife in London. I can now tell you that there is a seal in the lower Thames, and that the normally gruff fishermen are improbably throwing their inventory to the seal in the river, as opposed to putting it on ice and selling it. There’s a lady who throws chicken sausages to five foxes—and she’s trained them to sit, too! Hedgehogs are having a hard time of it—they’re sticking the heads into thrown-away coffee cups, lured presumably by that sugar—and then dying. Londoners! Please tear your coffee cups in two!

Then there are the bird people. Oh, and did you know that the British government ordered the peregrine falcons to be killed in World War II? Apparently, the War Office was still using carrier pigeons, and the falcons were eating them….

Now where was I?

Ah, yes—the blogging pigeon. It seems that there’s a London woman—was her name Lisa? Think so—who goes about photographing pigeons; she reports that she been in virtually every neighborhood in the city. And she knows about as much about pigeons as I do about iguanas. And if I may say so, I was considerably more reticent about the sex life of iguanas than is Lisa about the pigeon equivalent. Really, Lisa, I was eating at the time!

Well, I obviously had to check in on Brian Pigeon’s blog—and well worth it. I happened on the page entitled “Press” and discovered that The Guardian, Time Out, and The Times have all reviewed it favorably—wow, and now comes Iguanas! The capping on the cake, or whatever the expression is….

Wow—and Brian has a good head for business, as well as a fine design sense. Look, who could resist the tote bag below?

Or what about the Brian Pigeon Classic Thong?

A bargain at just under twelve buck. Not only made in the USA—thanks, Brian!—but absolutely guaranteed to drive your lover, or even your husband, into the extremes of lascivious lust at the very sight of it. Be prepared—you won’t have a minute’s peace while wearing it.

But enough rank materialism. Brian tells a remarkable story of a common bird: here’s his very first blog post, on that late November day in 2005:

Welcome to the first ever online diary of a London pigeon. Well, in all fairness I come from Hayes which is not strictly speaking London. It’s close enough and, let’s face it, it’s as good as you’re gonna get coz not many of us pigeons have mastered the art of blogging! Mores the pity. You never know though, if enough of them can be arsed to read this – it might just catch on! Pigeon-friendly Cyber Caffs are, as a result, hard to come by so posting may be a little irregular (although I heard there’s quite a good one in Slough? Anyone know it? Let me know in the comments…).

This is a picture of mum. I think she sent it to me so I won’t forget her birthday.

And guess what! Brian has 2859 followers! Wow—wonder how many followers Iguanas will have after eight years!

I bring you the story of Brian as recompense for the video below. And please, call Wisconsin Capitol Police Chief David Erwin at (608) 266-8797, and give him a piece of your mind.

Oh, and Brian? You got any friends on the Capitol Square? Friends who could do what you guys do so well?

Call me….