I was reading an article that was advertised on the www.talkingpointsmemo.com blog. "Creative Class Warfare" ( http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.florida.html) by Richard Florida. It is an analysis on why America is facing a Waterloo moment in the sciences and arts because of the policies that are implemented by the BushCo administration.

Florida writes, "Last March, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, at his film complex in lush, green, otherworldly-looking Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has done something unlikely in Wellington, an exciting, cosmopolitan city of 900,000, but not one previously considered a world cultural capital. He has built a permanent facility there, perhaps the world's most sophisticated filmmaking complex. He did it in New Zealand concertedly and by design. Jackson, a Wellington native, realized what many American cities discovered during the '90s: Paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change."

(In an sidebar item from Wired magazine, the computing power of marrying live action to digital creations in the final episode of the Rings trilogy required a computer rendering farm of 1700 dual processor computers networked over a multi-gigabit fiber optic channel. I believe that is a record for digital filmmaking.)

Florida continues, "Think about this. In the industry most symbolic of America's international economic and cultural might, film, the greatest single project in recent cinematic history was internationally funded and crafted by the best filmmakers from around the world, but not in Hollywood."

What is happening is that there is the beginnings of a reverse flow of creative, scientific and intellectual people willing to move to foreign cities in order to have the creative and financial means to carry out their ideas. This is happening now because the perception and reality under the bootheel of BushCo is profoundly unworldly, self-centered, morally simplistic, belligerently militaristic, and has fanned flames of the American anti-intellectual trait that has been a part of America since it's inception.

In other countries the arts are held in high regard and is considered part and parcel of the nation's identity. However, in the good ol' U.S. of A. that is not the case at all. The anti-intellectual tradition of this nation, from the Know Nothings of the 19th Century to the current obession by the Republican party with "outcome" based education, is reflected by the lack of popular support for the arts in America today. The arts is a easy "whipping boy" for the Republicans and religious conservatives because art does make an individual think in addition the aesthetic pleasure one derives from viewing, reading, or listening to a work.

The very fact that art making was a part of the earliest civilizations of humanity shows that art is power. This can be seen in the fact that both communist and facist governments of the last century have tried to control the arts for their own political purposes.

On February 12th there will be a one year anniversary of Poets Against the War public readings across this nation. Please check out www.PoetsAgainstTheWar.org for further information about a public reading or in getting help to set up one in your town.

The best blogger for domestic terrorist activities and the inaction by the current administration to combat this real menace is http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/. I regularly check his website for the latest information on the militia movement in America and how corporate media is not sufficiently keeping the public informed on these dangerous groups and not applying pressure to the current administration on keeping all Americans safe from domestic terrorists. I commend David Neiwert's journalism.

Colorado Senate President John Andrews has held taxpayer funded hearings on David Horowitz's agitations about so-called "leftist" higher education institutions and college professors. In a recent column by Gail Schoettler, appearing in the Denver Post, the ranting of Mr. Horowitz is about a setting up a vast database on all "leftist" individuals and organizations in the United States ( http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E193%257E1879003,00.html ). The danger for our tax dollars is that Mr. Andrews seems all too supportive of Mr. Horowitz's views. Wasting Colorado Senators time and resources on blatant discriminatory practices and disregard for the First Amendment, if implementated, seems to be Mr. Andrews new specialty.

Many thousands of poets of the world have written poems, performed poetry at peace marches and rallies, and are firmly for peace and justice rather then agreeing with the despot, George W. Bush. Sam Hamill writes on the website, www.poetsagainstthewar.org, "It was in fact George W. Bush who put poets in the position of having to protest. In his January, 2003, State of the Union speech, Bush told us that we were either with him or “on the side of the terrorists.” No middle ground and no place for debate. Since Bush and his appointees reserved the exclusive right to define what a terrorist is, his statement makes a terrorist of every pacifist, every conscientious objector, and every citizen who questions the intelligence or morality of the United States engaging in “pre-emptive war."

For excellent poems that are against the agenda that Mr. Bush has in the "war on terror" and his dangerous and immoral "pre-emptive" war strategy then this is the premier site on the web: http://poetsagainstthewar.org/

I have been writing poetry for a very long time. The Denver poetry scene is alive with two stand out venues for poetry performance. The first is at the Mercury Cafe and the second is at Brother Jeff's Coffee House. At the Mercury Cafe there is a wall devoted to the anti-War movement with posters, handbills, artwork, and assorted visual/written artifacts that constantly changes throughout the months.

There are poetry events and readings through the metro Denver area but I wanted to highlight the two longest running establishments hosting.

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Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/) has this mention of Hart seriously considering a run for the Senate against "Switch Horse" Campbell. If Hart does decide to run then he would clear the field of Democratic challengers because he has credentials on Homeland Security that none of the other announced candidates have and the experience of already having served two terms in the Senate.

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle, "Quarantining dissent
How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech" is a nice brief overview of how BushCo's utilization of the Secret Service to tell local law enforcement agencies to construct temporary jails for legitimate protests.

The article brings up an interesting point. In the South Carolina case of protester Steve Bursey- "Federal prosecutor Strom Thurmond Jr. used an obscure federal law of "entering a restricted area around the President" that If convicted, Bursey faces a six-month trip up the river and a $5,000 fine. Federal Magistrate Bristow Marchant denied Bursey's request for a jury trial because his violation is categorized as a petty offense. Some observers believe that the feds are seeking to set a precedent in a conservative state such as South Carolina that could then be used against protesters nationwide."

This use of obscure Federal laws to stifle legitimate protest is seen in the high profile case of GreenpeaceUSA being brought to trial under the century old law of "sailor mongering",

As these cases move through the legal system it will be of concern to all. If federal judges, from the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush appointees, will adhere to the basic principals as enumerated in the First Amendment or see fit to further erode the basic rights of all Americans.




http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/04/INGPQ40MB81.DTL

For feedback send your thoughts and comments to: therebis1475@hotmail.com

I have been gaming for years, going all the way back to the ancient command line interface Star Trek games on IBM 360/370 mainframes. Today, I was checking a game website, www.bluesnews.com, for reviews of the new Max Payne 2 game. At the bottom of the site there was their science website of the day with the interesting title, "Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy". George Dvorsky writes,
"Like the right to vote, those living in a democracy should demand the right to scientific literacy so that they may become informed and discerning citizens. As Carl Sagan noted, "Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works." A central lesson of science, argued Sagan, is that to understand complex issues, people must try to free their minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, contradict and experiment. He strongly believed that arguments from authority were unacceptable.

Skepticism is one of the greatest tools that a person can have, and science teaches this as a matter of course. But the business of skepticism can often be dangerous. As Sagan observed, skepticism challenges established institutions. "If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of skeptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees," wrote Sagan, "Maybe they'll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they'll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?"

Science helps us to be free of gross superstition and gross injustice. "Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove," Sagan argued. "It is no surprise that political revolutions, skepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science."

Indeed, as Schneider has observed, science literacy is not just about the "facts"—knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology or economics per se. "More important for non-specialists," says Schneider, "is to understand the process of science, and how science interacts with public policy issues and gets communicated via the media." http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Transitory_Human/column.aspx?articleID=2003-12-22-2 .

Dvorsky's argument for science and science accountability in ALL schools whether they be private or public. It is obvious that the BushCo administration will not because of their underlying educational ideological and anti-scientific religious biases.

Happy New Year.

I honor those who have given their lives and those maimed by BushCo's illegal war. Our troops did not ask to fight but were ordered by the current administration. David Hackworth writes-
"Even I – and I deal with that beleaguered land seven days a week – was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me a copy of a Nov. 30 dispatch showing that since George W. Bush unleashed the dogs of war, our armed forces have taken 14,000 casualties in Iraq – about the number of warriors in a line tank division.
We have the equivalent of five combat divisions plus support for a total of about 135,000 troops deployed in the Iraqi theater of operations, which means we’ve lost the equivalent of a fighting division since March. At least 10 percent of the total number of Joes and Jills available to the theater commander to fight or support the occupation effort have been evacuated back to the USA!" http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=46&rnd=831.7964477544622

While our troops are engaged in a full scale occupation of a nation that, as has been documented, to have been no iminent threat to the United States. The neo-conservatives have released an open call for global warfare unseen since the days of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. By any stretch of the imagination this is illegal under our Constitution and under United Nations charter, and unjustified by 9/11 attacks by a terrorists. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400061946/commondreams-20

This whole remaking of our nation's Constitution stems from one fact. Mr. Bush has no right to be the President of the United States of America. From the illegal act by the Rehnquist court to intervene in the legitimate recounting of the Florida votes in 2000 there has been the full scale on slaught against the rights of Americans by Mr. Bush and his administration, with the full support of the most radical reactionary Republicans in Congress, and the backing of a activist judiciary at the Federal level.