Thoughts based on the WA caucus results

Bernie carried the WA State caucuses, winning 72%. The bigger story is that here in King County, the most populous county, the bastion of Seattle liberalism, Bernie only got 64%. That means that those Hinterland Democrats, the ones who actually rub shoulders with Republicans, voted overwhelmingly for Bernie. They must have voted the Bern by 85 or 90% to drag his state average up to 72%. They live among Republicans and in their collective wisdom, almost to a voter, they think Bernie has the best shot at beating the GOP candidate.

When big change is brewing, the middle erodes as the population polarizes. The "same-o same-o," is untenable, so both the left and the right have seen a flood of voters surging their way. Objectively, one side represents the future, the other the past. So when they each gather their strength the one side suffers bouts of desertion, and the other wins by a knockout.

Wouldn't you love to see a Bernie vs Butt Trumpeter contest? Bernie, the straight shooter, consistent, dignified and principled vs Mr. See Me Comb Over. A revolutionary situation is commonly defined as when the people can't go on living in the same old way, and the rulers can't go on ruling in the same way either. We're pretty much there on both counts. Think about the seeming suddenness of the gay rights sea change. Sure, there's more to fight in that regard, but we just went through the most amazing transformation. The future's on a roll.

Bernie, the social democrat vs the guy who represents all the lack of vision and empty, mean bravado that the Republican Party has come to embrace. In that race everyone becomes a Sandernista. And then runs every one of those obstructionist ass-holes out of Washington DC once and for all.

Of course, if voting actually changed anything, they'd make it illegal, which pretty much sums up the Republican strategy over the years, maybe a hint at something. This time around I expect them to count on terrorist bombings to "panic the herd" to the right, but that shows how desperate they are. Those guys are dinosaurs, over-stepping the paleogenic boundary,  who don't know their time is past. Maybe this is the election where it all falls apart for them.

Those Hinterland Democrats, seeded in Republican communities, are our forward observers, our embedded intelligence team. They know the people we have to win over, and they backed Bernie massively, a peep hole into what time it is in America. Let Trump, with his trophy wife, take cheap shots at Mrs. Sanders. Every woman in the country will vote him right to hell. Maybe it takes a Trump to get a Bernie elected. So be it. The middle erodes and the greatly expanded peripheries put up the best they have, representing their dream of the future, and one side wins. Then appoints Supreme Court judges, and does the right thing, over and again. Those Hinterland Democrats can see the tsunami that saves America--and maybe the world. It's a tidal wave of Berniecrats.

Randy Rowland

celebrating Giordano Bruno, Feb 17, 1600

I made a card to send to my father, who instilled in me a love of science. I used the first photo in this series for the card. Then I sent some extra cards to kids and ran out of photos, so you have to settle for this email, originally written to be sent in time for the anniversary of Bruno's execution.

The text inside the card:

2/17/2016

On the anniversary of the execution of
Giordano Bruno in 1600, 

greetings:

Bruno was a Dominican friar who came to believe in the new findings of science, shortly after the dawn of the telescope. Among his beliefs, he thought the earth revolved around the sun, as described by Copernicus, rather than the earth being the center of the universe. He also believed the universe was infinite, with no center at all. Stars, he felt, were other suns, but very far away. Bruno even wondered if those other suns might have planets around them, same as ours. He refused to recant his “heretical” beliefs, and was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition, after about seven years in their prisons. Turns out, of course, that Bruno was correct. Giordano Bruno is widely considered a martyr of science.

Only 10 years after Bruno’s execution, Galileo, famous for his telescope, came under pressure from the Church for his Copernican beliefs. Knowing full well what became of Bruno, Galileo is said to have recanted his theories to avoid a similar fate. Galileo continued, however, to work on his scientific pursuits while under house arrest for the rest of his life.

As of January 2016, over 2,000 planets have been discovered orbiting Bruno’s “other suns.”

Giordano Bruno, 1548-Feb 17, 1600

to which I add, since an email can contain more than a greeting card:

You may remember his story from the Cosmos series. Bruno was a sometimes professor & philosopher, 

living outside of Italy (thereby avoiding the Inquisition).

He returned to Italy and was arrested by the forces of reaction, to face a 7 year trial and torture ordeal, but refused to recant.

On Feb 17th, 1600, Giordano Bruno, condemned by the Pope as a heretic, was burned at the stake.

On the very spot in Rome where he was put to the torch, there now stands a monument to Bruno, erected in the late 1800s in spite of objections from the Vatican. My photos were taken of that monument in Rome, back in 2004.

Keep the faith,

Randy

A Bias For Butter

     It was 1968. I was living underground, and after a few close calls with the law, I escaped to my hide-out. It was a cabin in the woods of Northern California, that somebody friendly to the movement had let us use. Aside from furniture, there was nothing in it except an old 1925 World Book Encyclopedia. For entertainment, while we were laying low, my wife, Sue, and I would sit in the glow of the fireplace each evening, reading that old encyclopedia to each other.

 

     We got all the way to “Butter” before I noticed something wrong. The entry for butter was an unfair rant against the newly created margarine industry. We were butter lovers, but the article was an attack masquerading as truth. From my perspective in 1968, that anti-margarine 1925 bias just reached out and slapped me in the face. After that, we went on to find other offending entries.

 

     I was forced to realize the encyclopedia—the ultimate trusted authority—was not the truth I always believed it to be. It was biased. And along with that thought came another; if the 1925 World Book was so biased, but folks back then couldn’t tell, then a new 1968 encyclopedia was probably just as biased, only I might not see it. I was too close, lacking the 50 years perspective I had on that dusty one.

 

     Like a lot of my generation, I had, step-by-step, lost respect for just about every American institution and authority figure. But until that moment, I’d always trusted the encyclopedia. It hurt to have my bubble broken by that butter bias. They say you have to hit bottom before you can claw your way back out of the hole, on the side of revolution. My disappointment in the encyclopedia was just about bottom.

 

     So now fast-forward to today, and we have Wikipedia. Not only can anybody with an internet connection search for anything they want, for free, but what makes it really cool is it’s an encyclopedia with a built-in mechanism to weed out the bias. Now I’m like most folks, I usually just skim the articles for a quick reference, but if you want to go deeper, you can see the arguments, follow the literature, and get down in it.

 

     I’ll never think of any sort of reference material as The Truth again. But I think Wikipedia is on a whole different level from things back in the day. It turns the old-fashioned encyclopedia into a sort of self-correcting and democratic Theory of Everything. So starting a few years back, when those little pop-ups ask for it, I give them money, while I remember hunkering in that hideout, so long ago, reading the World Book.

 

     This year, in addition to my donation, I bought a small bag of Wikipedia buttons to distribute as gifts to family and friends. With each button, I’ve told my story, and why I believe Wikipedia is such an improvement. I know it’s likely that only a knowledge geek will recognize the Wikipedia logo, I didn’t. But wear the button and perhaps it will rank you among the few. And if you’re yearning for something positive, some proof of human progress, something worth wearing a button about, here it is; Wikipedia.

Tarantino's new movie

We went to see Quintin Tarantino's latest, The Hateful Eight the other day. I had high hopes, given how much I liked Django Unchained. If you remember, in that one Tarantino put slavery smack dab in the middle of a cowboy western, where the biggest horror of the movie was slavery itself. (Hello-Texas was a slave state, but how often has that come up in westerns?) What's more, Tarantino carefully refused to apply his characteristic clown-act violence filter to slavery and earned my eternal respect. The Hateful Eight is not quite that cool, but still is a hell of a movie. Set just a few years after the Civil War, not in Texas, but rather in Wyoming or Montana or someplace cold and snowy, it stars Samuel L Jackson. Like Django, it's a hell of a ride, and all about race relations in America. 

It opened in select theaters in 70mm, a format that came and went in the 60s. Now it's in wide release in the more common digital format as well. We went to the 70mm version at the Pacific Place. I was flabbergasted when the ticket price, even with senior rate applied, was almost $15. The box office guy said, "Well, there's a $4 surcharge for the new format." I almost laughed myself off my feet, since 70mm is an atavistic format, hardly new. Once the flick started, I looked carefully to see what I predicted would happen. The screen was, of course, the same size as always. 70mm, which was twice as wide as the more standard 35mm wide-screen film format, had an aspect ratio that was relatively wide compared to the height. Projecting this 70mm film onto a standard modern screen meant they had to letterbox it, sort of like watching a regular "widescreen" movie which wasn't formatted to fit your old square TV. So really the 70mm thing was just hype, and an excuse to up-charge. I can sort of understand when theaters charge extra for 3D. They take 50¢ glasses, charge you $4 for them. OK, I know it's a rip-off, but sometimes I'm willing to pay the extra for the hope of flash-bang effects. But to charge $4 for a letter-boxed 70mm format is something akin to charging extra if the movie was shot in black and white, instead of color.  And the entire second half of the flick was shot indoors, where there was no chance of any sort of panorama anyway, unless you count two guys standing on opposite sides of the screen firing away at each other.

Format carping aside, I really liked The Hateful Eight. The Seattle Times only gave it a 2 star rating. Of course they only gave Django Unchained one star (and that film went on to win an Academy Award!). The Times clearly doesn't get Quinton Tarantino's views on race in America. I'd venture to say that if Hateful had been done by a black director, it would have garnered a better review. Hateful 8 is an excellent movie, Django was truly ground-breaking.

Randy Rowland

Haskel Wexler

I read with sadness that legendary cinematographer Haskel Wexler passed away. He was 93. Leftist film and video makers should note his name, and hoist a glass his way. He was a fellow traveler who worked on leftist classics such as the 1954 blacklisted film "Salt of the Earth." He shot "Medium Cool," and a generation later was cinematographer for John Sayles' "Matwan," and others. In between, he went to Viet Nam with Jane Fonda, filmed the Weather Underground, and picked up a few Oscars here and there.

Kay and I chatted with Wexler during a break at a conference for "Salt of the Earth," held on the 50th anniversary of the film. We were there because Kay had shown that film year after year to her high school English students. In the early 70s, I had screened an original 16mm print of it many times to soldiers as part of the GI movement against the Viet Nam war, and had later made a point of showing it to union workers in a variety of venues. Haskel Wexler was from the WW II generation, one of the forefathers who faced down the incredible repression of the witch-hunt days, and continued to put out political work that made a difference to the generations who followed. When we met him in 2003, he was still active and quite animated.

What I'm most proud of is that Haskel Wexler once contacted PepperSpray Productions, asking us for permission to use our Lt. Watada footage. I was so pleased that a guy whose work I had admired and used so much had found value in our coverage of the Watada story. Our footage ended up in a film on Lt. Watada where Haskel Wexler is credited as cinematographer, "In the Name of Democracy: America's Conscience, a Soldier's Sacrifice." That's a great honor for all the PepperSpray Collective, and our little connection to one hell of an activist and cinematographer. 

Rest In Peace, Brother Haskel Wexler.

Randy Rowland

Trumbo (the movie)

I was out of town when this movie opened in Seattle, but finally saw it last night. Dalton Trumbo, a member of the CPUSA, author of "Johnnie Got His Gun," scriptwriter for "Spartacus" just to name a few, was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. He did a year or so in prison for refusing to name names, etc. Fighters like him made conditions a whole lot better for radicals like us in the generations who followed him.

The movie is very good, and fellow travelers especially will love it. Luckily, it is still playing in Seattle (Guild 45th), so if you haven't seen it, you owe it to your activist self to get to it this week.

Randy Rowland

Beiruit bombing ignored while Paris receives sympathy

The following is an excerpt from a NY Times article, also carried in the Seattle Times. My comments follow--Randy

Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten
NY Times
By ANNE BARNARD
NOVEMBER 15, 2015

"Around the crime scenes in south Beirut and central Paris alike, a sense of shock and sadness lingered into the weekend, with cafes and markets quieter than usual. The consecutive rampages, both claimed by the Islamic State, inspired feelings of shared, even global vulnerability — especially in Lebanon, where many expressed shock that such chaos had reached France, a country they regarded as far safer than their own.

"But for some in Beirut, that solidarity was mixed with anguish over the fact that just one of the stricken cities — Paris — received a global outpouring of sympathy akin to the one lavished on the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

"The implication, numerous Lebanese commentators complained, was that Arab lives mattered less."

my comments: 

Nobody would think that an attack on a soccer game or heavy metal concert would count as a military victory, but as Clausewitz said so long ago, war is politics by other means. While the West licks their wounds, a very heavy fact is not lost on people from the Middle East: they don't really count. If ISIS wanted to drive a wedge between the Arab street and the West, what better way than the tactic they used. 

Look at the latest terror attack through the lens of "Black Lives Matter." If we can understand the pain that comes from African American disenfranchisement, it isn't hard to understand the pain in the Middle East that flows from yet another example of how little their lives matter. If war is "politics by other means" then terror is too. I have no way of knowing whether ISIS strategists anticipated the difference in world reaction and set this up as a trap for suckers, or whether it just worked out that way, but the propaganda value seems clear.

The Collapse of US Policy on Syria

I want to comment on a related matter: in my view, we are witnessing the collapse and failure of US policy with regard to Syria. For some time now, I've viewed the anti-Syrian efforts of the US with alarm. The US, in my view, has been working consistently for several years to ease Russia out of its only toehold in the Middle East by overthrowing the Assad government. 

Remember when the US created Bin Laden to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan? That came back to bite us in the butt, and I've seen the recklessness of meddling in Syria in the same light. For a few years the US was giving various support to "Syrian rebels" in the name of supporting a democracy movement. That was destabilizing to what had been not a great government, no doubt, but one that was at least secular and relatively stable.

And then the US almost had the war they seemed to be yearning for when the issue of chemical weapons came up. If you remember, somebody used chemical weapons against some civilians and the US insisted it was Assad. (In retrospect, I wonder if it was ISIS or somebody just like them.) After some tense US brinksmanship, Russia convinced Assad to surrender his stocks of chemical weapons and the US military attack against Syria was averted at the last minute. The US press and government almost seemed bummed that things didn't work out. 

Not long after that, there was the ISIS beheading of an American in the desert. Next thing you know, the US further ramped up its support for what were now termed "anti-ISIS/anti-Assad forces." I  saw this as a thinly veiled attack on the Syrian government, under the auspices of stopping ISIS. We were going to train rebels who could be used against Assad. Not surprisingly, that training and weaponry ended up helping ISIS. Meanwhile the US bombed oil refineries in Syria that if they weren't held by ISIS would have reverted to Assad, but didn't bomb ISIS-held refineries in Iraq, which would revert to the US sphere, which made it pretty clear to me that Assad, not ISIS was the real target.

Then, not long ago, Russia moved into Syria with force, backing the Assad government, sending both troops and aircraft, saying it was better to stop terrorism in Syria than having to fight it at home. Suddenly the dynamic changed. 

Now, after this attack in Paris, the American government, which was using "Syrian rebels" (ie ISIS) to undercut Assad is admitting they might have to use Assad to stop ISIS. This amounts to a policy rout. ISIS is the new Bin Ladin, Russia is in Syria to stay, and Syria keeps its current secular government, rather than the right-wing religious government desired by the US. 

Great power politics are again making a mess of a region, with dire consequences for all involved. We can hardly support the right-wing, throat-slashing religious fundamentalism of ISIS or its ilk, but we, the people, can not stand silent about the "super-power contention," as we used to call it, going on in the region, with its blatant disregard for the lives of the people there. And while it isn't good to undercut the "Black Lives Matter" movement with flippant declarations that "all lives matter," it is helpful to use the understanding gained through the "Black Lives" movement to give clarity to the righteous perspective of the Arab street, and keep the focus of our anger on our internationalist duty to first stop our own ruling class.

Randy Rowland