February 9th, 2008 by Wax

The best thing we get out of an Obama candidacy is the possibility of finally facing the post-war racism that’s festering under the skin of this nation.

Some people will find themselves unable to vote for a Black Man for president. It is well for them to actually have to make that decision, to force them to look into their hearts to see what’s inside.

The excuse we keep hearing, that “I would vote for a Black Man, but my neighbor would not” is just a way of trying to evade the truth of their own feelings. I say, let’s have a look under the rug and find out what we’re all made of. At least then we won’t be quite as able to avoid the question.

Plus, it forces a fraction of the African-American community who have pretty much given up on the American Culture to include them, and some who have made a lot of hay from their possibly self-made status as outsiders, to face the fact that they’ve got a full share of our future, good or bad.

Obama’s candidacy won’t “solve” racism, but it will go a long way to bringing the pus to the surface, where it can finally be dealt with.

Oh yeah, and having a person of color named “Obama” as president will put a serious dent in Al Qaeda’s ability to recruit. It won’t be so easy to tell a young Pakistani that this country, which elected someone who doesn’t look all that different from them, is an intractable enemy.

In the last few days, I’ve made my decision: America needs the inspiration that an Obama presidency would bring.

January 2nd, 2008 by Wax

I’m not one of those who believes that Bush or Cheney were somehow responsible for the attacks on 9/11/01, but the more I learn about the history of the neoconservative movement in America, the more it looks like Al Qaeda and the Neocons are two sides of the same ugly authoritarian coin. They certainly have helped each other out over the last decade.

There’s a movie on archive.org called The Power of Nightmares that tells the story of the concurrent rise of neoconservatism and radical Islam in a very clear and persuasive manner. It’s free to view or download, and you can even get a DVD iso so you can burn your own and watch. The story of Leo Strauss and his acolytes was new to me, and it fills in a lot about precursors to George W. Bush that explains how we got to this awful spot. Watch it.

This sort of explains the background for The Waxwing Slain’s recent project “False Flag”. You’ll soon be able to download it for free at http://thewaxwingslain.org. Although they take pains to explain that they’re not throwing in with the 9/11 “truth” movement, they believe it’s important to understand the synergy between the Jihadists and Neocons. Come back and listen. It should be done by the end of January.

Oh, and I almost forgot:
Technorati Profile

If you’re not already familiar with the blog comments of the Internet’s most sensible bomb-thrower, Pope Ratzo, it’s worth doing a little googling of his comments at Slashdot and other well-known blogs. He doesn’t speak for us, but he definitely speaks.

Happy New Year, everyone.

October 28th, 2007 by Wax

Yesterday, about 25,000 of my fellow Chicagoans walked past my home on their way from Union Park downtown to Federal Plaza. I saw kids and old folks, construction workers, LaSalle Street traders, moms and dads and union members. There were nuns and ministers and retired folks, small-business owners and yes, a few hippies. There were North Side liberals and South Side working-class. There were families, lots of families, intact families. Some of the families were carrying poster-size photographs of sons and daughters who had left home in a shiny new uniform and came back in a coffin. There were wives and children of businessmen who belonged to the National Guard who thought they’d spend a few weekends a month camping with their buddies, but found themselves getting shot at halfway around the world.

There were police. Lots and lots of police - groups of 6 or 7 at every intersection along the way. There were a few black trucks, unmarked, with telescoping poles rising 50 feet into the air, holding high-resolution digital cameras trained on the crowd. According to one CPD sarge they had face-recognition software and digital recorders capturing everybody. Somebody, probably somebody who’s got an interest in having the Olympics here in 2016, decided to send an intimidating message: You can demonstrate in my town, but we’re going to know who you are.

There’s something different about these recent anti-war demonstrations. They’re not made up and organized by slightly-nutty ANSWER folks anymore (although some of them are still around). The people who made up these recent marches were my neighbors, people I’d see on the bus on the way to work or behind a counter at the bank. They were people who probably never thought they’d find themselves marching, carrying a sign, a little embarrassed about chanting along with the others, but chanting still.

Just a few blocks from my place, along the route of the march, is the Chicago Police Department Academy. When I walk my dog in the morning, I’ll often see groups of young cadets doing calisthenics or involved in law enforcement training. A lot of those cadets, identifiable by shirts of brown instead of blue, were manning those corners. Not having been on the force long enough to have adopted the world-weary, “what the fuck do you want?” attitude of the veterans, the looks on many of their faces spoke of confusion, ambivalence over a war that many of them could have fought in. Their faces held a carefully-trained contempt for demonstrators, but no small amount of understanding. “What are we doing over there anyway?” “What’s up with Bush?” Some of them seemed uncomfortable in their role. The fifty or so of these cadets that were surrounding the new-ish townhouse on Laflin with the “Die Hippy (sic) scum” sign and yellow ribbons, seemed to wonder why they were required to protect this particular property? Clearly the people that were marching were family, friends, Chicagoans - not people who were going to do any damage to somebody for waving a flag, even if they felt it necessary to fly a hateful sign rather than simply show support for their war, their president. Like the twenty or so counter-protesters who had claimed space across from the Federal Plaza, they had nothing to fear from these people, who were just sick of a useless, deadly and costly war. Just sick of their useless, deadly and costly President.

<photos from the Chicago Tribune >

October 27th, 2007 by Wax

Yet we must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don’t do that? And if, in the end, all that we’ve accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?

Chris Floyd, writing for Glenn Greenwald, lays it on the line.

“dissent or disgrace”. Indeed.

Today is the date of what may be the largest demonstration yet against the Bush Administration’s war of aggression in Iraq and their buildup to war with Iran. We’re heading over to Union Park right now. See you there.

September 26th, 2007 by Wax

Every day the evidence that real change can only come from our own hands and feet becomes more clear.

We wrote and recorded this hopeful, civilian march within a few hours of the first time we read NTODD’s moving post at Paxamericana.net. We were thinking that a Resistance needs theme music.

We invite any artists and musicians that care to create something inspired by the notion of an American Resistance to contact us. If you will license the music under Creative Commons, we will post it here.

The piece above, “Resistance1″ is quite unlike our other music. If you care to, please visit thewaxwingslain.com and give a listen to some of our recent work. Let us know what you think.

NOTE TO VISITORS FROM PAXAMERICANA.ORG:  help yourselves to some free music downloads from our music page.  All of the pieces there are licensed Creative Commons BY, so feel free to download, listen and share.    If you want to skip the brief Siva-inspired Flash animation, you can go straight to the music download page here.   Let us know what you think!

September 20th, 2007 by Otpor

The other day, I read a post by NTODD at Pax Americana that had an impact on me that I’m still trying to figure out. It’s been a few cycles since I’ve decided things are only going to get worse in this country until people start taking an active role in changing things. By “worse” I mean George Bush’s Forever War is going to go on, middle-class Americans are going to get poorer and have less and less control over their own futures, and the poor are going to suffer in a way we’re not used to seeing in the Richest Country in the World™.

Reading NTODD’s inspiring words made me realize that there are others who have comed to the same realization, and who were willing to risk a range of consequences from ridicule to arrest in order to keep the promise of freedom, expressed by the Founding Fathers, alive, and to stop the corporate-led authoritarian steamroller. There are people, regular people, with mortgages and kids in school and jobs and aging parents, who are ready to stand up, even though the politicians we support seem to only want to stand down.

NTODD asks “What’s Next?” and the fact is, I have no idea what’s next. I don’t have experience in political organizing, and I was just a kid when Abbie Hoffman and Co., came to Chicago to lance a similar fetid boil of a political party that seemed to lack the basic conviction it would take to end a similarly useless war. I don’t know how to organize, protest, dissent, disrupt.

But it’s about time I find out.

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