"The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come."

--Professor Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with an old acquaintance named Al Mancini of ABC radio. He told me what potential sponsors want are leftists who doN'T take themselves too seriously, like Michael Moore and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. As much as I love Moore (and like Stewart), being taken seriously is exactly what the left needs. For the billionth time, I don't give a three-legged-ass how offended or alienated your right-wing friends and relatives are by THE TRUTH, there's plenty in life FAR more important than your kin folk's fragile sensibilities--such as ending the torture going on in our name and with our taxes even as you people are reading this ...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/1622230

MICHAEL MOORE: First of all, it's in a satirical chapter called "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-In-Law." I'm going through a bunch of ideas how to convince that knucklehead down at the other end of the table at Thanksgiving dinner why he should maybe see things our way.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/02/19/export274.txt

"The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come." That means the abolition of war ain't some hobby for spoiled suburbanites to fit inbetween concerts.

A local named PJ Perez once made this crack about me online, "The funny thing about any sort of 'radical' or 'activist' – take notes, Saab Lofton – is that they can't possibly be switched to the 'on' position all of the time."

Well, being on all the time is "absolutely necessary", as professor Zinn put it ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051231/ap_en_mu/people_bono_1

LONDON - Rock star Bono said Saturday that his commitment to campaigning against poverty caused tensions within U2. Bono acknowledged that his campaigning had sometimes "raised eyebrows" among his fellow band members ...

"When I do my rant on making poverty history, I have got Larry Mullen, our drummer, behind me looking at his watch, timing me," he said.

"There was one point when I thought, 'I'm going to be thrown out of the band for this stuff.'"

But Bono said he now feels the other band members recognize that U2's audience appreciates what he is doing.

"I thought we would wear our audience out, but it hasn't happened," he said. "People are smart out there. They know what you are doing, they know the compromises you are making, they get it."

... and I'm here to make sure that Las Vegas gets it. Lord knows it ain't easy, case in point:

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/trust_but_verif.html

Several months ago, I received a telephone call at home from an outspoken black columnist at Las Vegas City Life, in response to my letter requesting that he devote a weekly column to abuses committed within the American criminal justice system. My reference was to arrests-without-warrants, surreptitious home entries, illegal FBI mail intercepts, and government collusion with the multi-billion dollar film industry (the biggest and most undisclosed scam around). WEe spoke for 55 minutes, freely and passionately. Throighout, we both noticed a telltale clicking sound, which grew louder and more frequent as we made particularly sharp comments. The columnist, Saab Lofton, was fired a couple weeks later. My name is Philip Lundquist and should someone visit Las Vegas and bring credulity and a capacity to brave some rough patches in presentation of these truths, I will stand behind what i have written here. Should these matters become fully known to the American people, much of the blase reactions to these government crimes and indecent senses of entitlement will surely go by the wayside.

Posted by: Philip Lundquist | Dec 29, 2005 10:55:41 AM

... meanwhile, in the shy, subtle white left, Arizona Cottonwood--or whatever the fuck her real name is--once told me the following:

"What has your propaganda machine gotten you? Its made you the target. You put yourself out there to be an easy target."

And how did that line from Back to the Future go?

George McFly: I know what you're gonna say, son. And you're right, but uh ... Biff just happens to be my supervisor, and I'm afraid I'm just no good at ... confrontations.

Well, that's what 2006 will be, The Year of the Confrontation. And so help me GOD, if you white leftists don't start confronting your ig-nant-ass right-wing kin, then history will record that Amerikkkan Fascism was just as much y'all's fault as it was the elite's ...

Earlier today, I was at the mall selling copies of my second novel ...

http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2005/06/2486.php

... and I was wearing what I usually wear whenever I do so ...

http://www.jarretkeene.com/?p=645

... this white man actually offered me one hundred dollars to run around the mall and pretend like I was flying--all so his insignificant ass can have a laugh. Of course I told him to kiss my black ass, but that's not the point. The point is whites put far too much importance on escapism; on being able to keep from taking anything too seriously, which brings me full circle: Al Mancini from ABC radio was claiming that left-wingers are too self-righteous or whatever. Thing is, we have every-fucking-right to be ...

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/04/07/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

This will sound like a dirty joke at first, but bear with me: An Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman emperor and a Spanish inquisitor walk into a bar. The pharaoh sits next to Bill Gates and asks, "Why don't you enslave your workers?"

Gates answers, "The unions would come after me."

The emperor sits next to Dick Cheney and asks, "Why don't you distract the public with bread and circuses?"

Cheney answers, "These days, our entertainment is allowed to be tainted with anti-authoritarian subtext. Hell, stuff like 'The X-Files' and Men in Black are as indicting as they are distracting!"

Finally, the inquisitor sits next to John Ashcroft and asks, "Why don't you torture the population into submission?"

And Ashcroft answers, "Can we say, 'Amnesty International'? Hello?!"

The moral is we [Humans] have evolved as a race. But it took us anywhere from 500 to 3,000 years to reach our current standard of living ...

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/05/12/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

... the left and the right aren't two sides of the same proverbial coin. One is smarter than the other. As elitist as this may seem, the best illustration of their differences can be found in the movie based on Jean M. Auel's novel Clan of the Cave Bear. In it, Daryl Hannah portrays a young Cro-Magnon woman raised by Neanderthals. There's a scene in which Hannah's character discovers a more efficient way of counting numbers, but is immediately told by a wise elder to suppress this knowledge (back then, the forces of planned obsolescence wielded clubs).

"Numbers were a difficult abstraction for people of the Clan to comprehend. Most could not think beyond three," Auel writes. "With difficulty, Creb [the elder] could count to 20. Numbers beyond 20 blurred into some indistinct infinity called many."

Flash forward from the end of the Paleolithic period to the present and you'll find that pioneers from Preston Tucker to Ralph Nader are treated as badly as Hannah's character.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2005/03/09/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

I'm glad the consensus among the activists was that Amnesty International would survive the passing of its founder. It just seems to me a far more fitting homage would be for Benenson to look down from heaven and see that the fruits of his labor were no longer needed on Earth.

Let me put it this way: A revolution is simply rapid evolution (notice how the two words are only an "R" away from being identical). So if there isn't a global, civil libertarian version of the Cuban revolution in our future, never fear. There's always evolution to fall back on.

I predict the future by first looking backward.

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was at an all-time peak. Today, the KKK is fodder for Jerry Springer -- which is to say that aside from the occasional and inexcusable hate crime, the group's become a form of comic relief in certain circles. Therefore, I foresee that by the dawn of the 22nd century, white supremacy will be extinct; the Republican Party will replace the KKK in terms of both power and popularity; the Democrats will be where the GOP currently is; and the Green Party will be considered as mainstream as the DLC. It's as simple as a Cro-Magnon replacing a Neanderthal. (Assuming we don't nuke ourselves to Kingdom Come and back before the 22nd century, that is.)

Within the aforementioned future, Amnesty International will eventually become just as obsolete as an abolitionist is today because, in part, the human race will have long surpassed the mere legal integration of the 1960s and progressed to emotional integration. Since slavery has been abolished, the Underground Railroad is now a potential tourist attraction instead of a form of sedition. Likewise, I hope a member of Amnesty will someday be viewed the same way today's political arena views a Quaker toting around a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/08/06/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

FUCK 2005! IT'S ALL ABOUT 2006!!