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"Cinema and the 2004 United States Presidential Election"
Domingo de Santa Clara
The last thing I feel like writing about at the moment is, of course, the election. The ending of the whole saga was, like a poorly scripted sit-com, depressingly predictable with a promise of more of the same, week after morbid week. I wish I could simply turn off the T.V. and they would all go away but of course, I can’t.
One of the only positive aspects of this “most important election in our lifetimes” is that the stakes were/are so high that a whole slew of artists have gotten politicized. It seems that it takes a grotesquely insane president to make filmmakers tear their attention away from the latest issue of Res magazine, if only for a couple of seconds.
eh writes:
"Nine Viable Proposals to Save the World"
Global Institute for Alternative Thought
How to return America to American values of democracy, liberty, and minding one's own garden instead of spying on and imprisoning one's neighbor? Glad you asked! You are welcome to borrow or steal, unattributed, the following ideas, generated by the Think Tankers from the Global Institute of Alternative Thought, generously funded by myself and staffed by 1 person. Of course we borrow and steal ideas too. Here's what G.I.A.T. recommends over the next few months to save the world. In fact, we believe that these modest steps, absent any revolution, represent the last best hope before the end of civilization as we know it:
"Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster"
William Rivers Pitt
Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster.
What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse.
"The Limits of Electoral Politics"
Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets
Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":
(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship
The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt
minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token
democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would
progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .
"The Vote Fallacy:
Strategically Advancing Radical Politics in the 2004
Elections"
Ben Grosscup
While election seasons are widely seen as times when the polity
practices politics, this is an illusion; electoralism that accepts the
premises of representative democracy is conceptually distinct and
incompatible with practicing true politics. Politics involves public
debate on the issues of a self-manging political community that leads to
social policy. Voting is no political act in that it has nothing to do
with this.
"Gays Ponder Bush Victory:
President Takes One Quarter of Gay Vote, Stunning Some Activists"
Lou Chibarro Jr., Washington Blade
Gay rights leaders pored over the numbers behind President Bush's
victory over Senator John Kerry in Tuesday's election to assess
whether gay marriage provided the president with the hot-button
social issue he needed to propel him to a second term in the White House.
"Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked"
Thom Hartmann
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"Anti War Video"
Knife Party
Knife Party's anti-war video maybe found here.
"The New Historical Simultaneity:
The End of Modernization and the Beginning of Another World History"
Robert Kurz
The globalisation debate seems to have reached a state of exhaustion. This is not due to a weakening of the underlying process, but to the lack of air for new interpretive ideas. Almost nobody dares to speak of the end of the history of the modernization. It is certain that, meanwhile, whole libraries were already written on the fact of the globalisation of capital (the transnational dispersion of the economic functions) and the separation between the national economy and the world market, and the whole previous referential framework remains diluted. But the consequences to take out of that recognition were delayed most of the times up to now. The old concepts still go to tow, although they no longer correspond to the new reality.
"Dead Party Walking"
Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch>
"Mister Kurtz, he dead." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Buried in the ossuary of roadkill from the November election you will find all that remains of the once brawny Green Party, now splattered into a micro-stain on the electoral scorecard with evidence of its passing barely detectable by even the most expert political forensic scientist.
The Green Party, notorious spoiler of Democratic aspirations in 2000, not only wasn't a factor in this election; its very existence was scarcely mentioned by the press ... or by anyone else.
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