If Drugs Were Legal, My Friend Would Be Alive Today

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Wednesday January 25, 2012 · 2:15 PM PST

2012/01/25 · 14:15

If drugs were legal, my friend Andrew would not have died Sunday night.

This was not my first reaction. My first reaction was unfocused rage (which itself seems to be a coping method when faced with overwhelming sadness).

I want an excuse to punch someone. (Learned tonight: It is surprising how hard one can punch a flat metal pole and not feel much pain.) I want to kill the person who sold Andrew the heroin. (These feelings are not in the past tense.) Thinking about Andrew and mentally celebrating his life focused my rage, however, on the more culpable target of the multiplied evils of drug prohibition. I want to upend the world and shake things into place.

melancon

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Sunday December 04, 2005 · 2:32 AM PST

2005/12/04 · 02:32

Really. The nation's religious broadcasters oppose a proposal by anti-indecency and consumer groups to allow people to subscribe to cable channels a la carte, rather than bundled. Industry groups actually make a pretty good argument that this seemingly straightforward increase in consumer freedom would actually stifle diversity of content:

But what started largely as a consumer issue has now morphed into a larger controversy involving whether cable operators should be required to continue exposing subscribers to niche channels, including religious ones, that people might not order on their own.

There's a third option that would provide the most freedom, encourage wider sampling of cable TVs offerings, and even provide a slight incentive not to waste one's life in front of a television. Require that cable companies sell content not by channel, not by blocks of channels, but by the minute. Unfortunately I just made that up and haven't heard anyone in a position of influence say the same. But hey, tell the FCC. Or just leave a comment here.

Toys for Terrorists: U.S. Media Help Kill Four Children

melancon

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Friday November 25, 2005 · 7:54 PM PST

2005/11/25 · 19:54

The United States media, through past omission and inaction, helped kill four Iraqi children yesterday. The media did not do the killing directly. Nor did the U.S. military directly kill these particular children. A suicide bomber killed the four children. But the U.S. media holds a specific responsibility for letting it happen. And with their continued inaction, more children will die.

Yesterday – Thanksgiving Day, 2005 – U.S. soldiers handed out toys to Iraqi children in front of Mahmudiyah Hospital. Some people in Iraq are trying to kill U.S. troops, and even U.S. military commanders may have noticed that anti-occupation forces are killing U.S. soldiers at the rate of three a day this month. Handing out toys, predictably and apparently intentionally, attracted children around these combatants in what most people call a war zone. And, indeed, an attack on the U.S. soldiers killed four Iraqi children and 29 other people. Read More

Who Counts the Votes?

melancon

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Thursday November 10, 2005 · 10:40 AM PST

2005/11/10 · 10:40

While celebrating a couple of governorships let's not forget that Obama is bringing up probably the most important subjects for the ongoing political fight in this country: who gets to vote, how, and who counts the votes, and how. The NewStandard reports on some of what we have to look for and fix, in Deep-rooted Voting Irregularities Persist, Watchdogs Say. Read More

We Have One Year to Change the Political Playing Field

melancon

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Wednesday November 09, 2005 · 2:59 AM PST

2005/11/09 · 02:59

Progressives, let alone liberals and people belatedly opposed to corporatist misrule, are poised to pour millions into political campaigns, mostly through television and other media ads and one-shot get-out-the-vote campaigns. Even if we elect Democrats, they aren't going to listen to us for long because none of the issues we most care about - economic justice, civil liberties, environmental protection, universal education to name a few - will ever have the kind of sustained money behind them that, well, money-making-money-and-to-hell-with-everyone-else will have behind it.

To break out of the political game that has us giving money to our biggest enemy - media megacorporations - we have to support and promote independent media, at least as we continue our regular political organizing. Read More

Beware the Power Lusters (there may be one near you soon)

melancon

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Thursday October 27, 2005 · 5:39 AM PDT

2005/10/27 · 05:39

We need a word - a good, insulting, unfair label - for the legions of officials and others who would be Nazis under Hitler, Fascists under Mussolini, Communists under Stalin or in present-day China, Trujollistas under Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s, Baathists undur Saddam, Iraqi government officials under the U.S. occupation, or vocal supporters of the status quo here or anywhere they can get some personal power and privilege out of it.

It's simply inaccurate to call them nazis or fascists or neocons or anything else because that suggests a level of ideological commitment that isn't there. And we can't call them all Colin Powell.

I suggest "power lusters." Read More

The Fight to Rebuild New Orleans Isn't Going Away

melancon

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Sunday October 23, 2005 · 4:27 PM PDT

2005/10/23 · 16:27

New Orleans is still destroyed and local elites are scheming with their national brethren to rebuild it without the people who lived there and made it New Orleans. Fighting for a humane, fair, or even merely competent restoration of this city, and other doubly-stricken areas (by poverty and flood-storm) is the last chance, best chance for Democrats in many areas of the country to ride to power on a popular issue-- even Democrats still wedded to an imperial foreign policy.

It's dropped out of the establishment media's tiny viewscreen, but the raw human needs of many and inhuman greed of a few continue to be a gripping look into what's wrong with inequality. New Orleans’ Displaced Struggle for Housing, Jobs, Neighborhoods by Michelle Chen of The NewStandard tells another piece of that story. Read More

On-line newspaper kicking butt in New Orleans seeks new members

melancon

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Tuesday October 18, 2005 · 4:45 AM PDT

2005/10/18 · 04:45

The NewStandard (http://newstandardnews.net/ ), which has come to attention for its excellent Katrina coverage (it discounted lies about mayhem before it even had a reporter on the ground there), writes: This week marks the beginning of our vital Fall Membership Drive. It is critical that we sign up about 500 new members [to double existing membership] in order to keep publishing, as a small group of readers is offering to match that achievement with an additional injection of up to $80,000. Read More

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