Stuperbowl Sunday

It looks like I upset a stuperbowl fan. Sue me!

LMNOP will be walking around Lake Merritt for peace as they do every Sunday - even on Superbowl Sunday! At 3pm! Maybe they'll have a radio with them. I guess not many cars will be on the streets. The city will probably be deserted.

More Chinese, nessie, that's what the record books and "Ripley's Believe It or Not" used to say when I was a kid. That there were more Chinese than any other grouping. I remember there was this factoid that claimed 4 Chinese soldiers marching abreast would make an unending stream on the surface of the globe. Kinda like our march on the 18th. :-)

Anyway what's the schedule, Superbowl today, WWIII tomorrow or day after tomorrow. I'm not a sports fan myself but I guess we could all use a little getting out of
here (and now.)

good poem.....not too many words with more that two syllables...."sports" fans should be able to read it.....is war a "sport?".....there are lots of fans ready to ransack the neighborhoods and cops with mace and munitions to prove that war is indeed a "sport"....lots of fans will "tune" in.....now where is my dildo?....ziua

excellent, really.

How many people think Saddam will be watching the Superbowl?

I have to live in the same house with people that are cheering and screaming for the Raiders, because they live in Oakland and suddenly it's 'the thing to do,' but they have never ever been to a peace event or any other activist event, not even a lecture. They don't lift a finger for anyone but themselves. They're lesbian and one is non-white. And pretty much all they care about are gay issues and buying a house. They get the NYTimes delivered. They spend their money at places like Starbucks and the Gap. They drive trucks. They have cell phones. They eat junk food.

Nothing wrong with any of this. Just annoying for me, having to listen to screaming. They didn't even go to the big march last Saturday. They could care less. And if you try to talk about anything that isn't 'nothing,' or essentially gossip, or things like what movies are playing, they stop talking.

But they love the Raiders, all of a sudden, even though they haven't watched any of the other games all season. Clapping and screaming.

Did anyone see if the moveon.org commerial got aired? I heard it's millions for 30 sec.

I thought Berkeley Bowl might be safe to venture into on this day, but it was still packed!

TA you should probably look for a new place to live

Thanks. I would move, but this deal can't be beat. $300/mo. Garden. Huge old house. Tons of sun. Huge room. Only once in the past several years has an AK47 been fired in front of the house.

For those I grin and bear it. It helps to complain at times like these though.

"I thought Berkeley Bowl might be safe to venture into on this day, but it was still packed!"

Super Bowl, Berkeley Bowl, it's chaos out there folks.

On the flip side I took my friend from Germany to a popular Oakland restaurant tonight (Le Cheval) and it was the first time I'd ever been there without the place being ear deafeningly busy. Silent as an xmas morn, practically. Oh yes there were teevees way across the way blaring the blabiddleebloo. And nary a peep when the final results came.

What was really cute was he kept calling it, "Big Bowl" in that gentle german accent. Beigk Bauw-u-luh.

During our discussion I recalled the horrible news that domestic violence skyrockets on Big Toilee Bowl Sunday. This makes perfect sense coming from my perspective. I related it to the inherent bloodlust of this surrogate warfare between feudal city-states. My friend said yah, in Germany there's really horrible violence, gangs of hoodlums who have websites showing them beating people within an inch of life, just for being from another team's fans.

Getting to a terminal I checked out IMC and saw that there were reported riots in Oakland where a woman friend of mine was biking to a party. (Turns out she's okay, and didn't go anyways).

So I go researching this issue and to my surprise, turned up piles of links claiming that the whole SuperBowl Domestic Violence thing is a myth.

Then I see that reportedly, lesbians who "spend their money at places like Starbucks and the Gap...drive trucks...have cell phones...eat junk food" are taking part in the revelry.

Just ever so slightly unexpectedly variant from expectation.

I must say however, that one of the websites rang true for me by outing the fact that males are attacked by women as well:

"Professor Richard Gelles, Ph.D., one of the nation’s foremost experts on domestic violence, states that reported rates of domestic (or intimate) violence against women declined between 1976 and 1986, when he and his colleagues conducted the First and Second National Family Violence Surveys, and have continued to decline since. He recently wrote that female-to-male violence showed no decline and was actually higher and about as severe as male-to-female violence." -- http://www.mens-network.org/superbowl.html

One of the most devastating periods of my life occurred when I was physically attacked by a woman in an anarchist pseudo-community. It severely disrupted my work on many good projects, and came exactly at a time when police were targeting me. COINTELPRO would be proud to have created such a combination. Playing to people's assumptions about gender, however well meaning, is the same as using race or any other division in "innovative new ways" to disrupt and sew division. Divide and conquer. So keep eyes open and be compassionate independent of first impression (she's female, must be right/he's latino, must be right, etc.).

Don't get me wrong, I am rather familiar with the harm caused by domestic violence, and am not suggesting that there isn't a power imbalance and pattern of abuse and domination by males over females. I'm so sickened by how much rape occurs in this society. Being victimized with violence myself (not just that time but many times, and often by males) helps my understanding; literature and readings do as well, and above all my close relationships with women and intuition from childhood show me that so many suffer for the sickness of those who perpetuate domestic violence.

But I'd really like to know if the Super Bowl stats were made up or if they're just a backlash of misinformation by elements of the patriarchy.

It IS interesting to hear sources like "Patriarchy.com" (found through a google search on this topic) whine that the techniques of mass manipulation through first-impression media misinformation through false statistics were used against their male cause. If only they had eyes for the Sept. 11 scam...


Meanwhile (speaking of stereotype swapping) my german friend let me know that I would hate it in Germany because of the huge amount of tobacco abuse in every public place. This rather surprised me as I've been looking at a book called The Nazi War on Cancer by Robert N. Proctor.

From Amazon:

"Familiar as we are with the horrific history of Nazi medicine and science, it may come as a surprise to learn that the Nazi war against cancer was the most aggressive in the world. Robert N. Proctor's thought-provoking book, The Nazi War on Cancer recounts this little-known story. The Nazis were very concerned about protecting the health of the "Volk." Cancer was seen as a growing threat--and perhaps even held a special place in Adolf Hitler's imagination (his mother, Klara, died from breast cancer in 1907). The Nazi doctors fought their war against cancer on many fronts, battling environmental and workplace hazards (restrictions on the use of asbestos) and recommending food standards (bans on carcinogenic pesticides and food dyes) and early detection ("men were advised to get their colons checked as often as they would check the engines of their cars..."). Armed with the world's most sophisticated tobacco-disease epidemiology--they were the first to link smoking to lung cancer definitively--Nazi doctors were especially passionate about the hazards of tobacco. Hitler himself was a devout nonsmoker, and credited his political success to kicking the habit. Proctor does an excellent job of charting these anticancer efforts--part of what he terms "the 'flip side' of fascism"--and, along the way, touches on some unsettling issues. Can an immoral regime promote and produce morally responsible science? Or, in Proctor's words, "Do we look at history differently when we learn that ... Nazi health officials worried about asbestos-induced lung cancer? I think we do. We learn that Nazism was a more subtle phenomenon than we commonly imagine, more seductive, more plausible."
Proctor is no apologist--one of his earlier books, Racial Hygiene is a scathing account of Nazi atrocities--but he clearly wants to engage in the complex moral discussions surrounding the fascist production of science and Holocaust studies. Proctor's thorough research, excellent examples, and dozens of illustrations are complemented by his authoritative prose. The Nazi War on Cancer is a fine addition to the literature on both the Holocaust and the history of medicine. --C.B. Delaney"

Who knows maybe they'll be the first to reverse the (Nazi originated) building codes requiring motorcar parking in new dwellings...

Oh wait!

http://www.globalideasbank.org/inspir/INS-154.HTML

"A car-free settlement in Vaubon, Germany
Adapted from an item by Guy Dauncey in Econews No. 94, who was summarising an item in Seattle Times.
In Vaubon, a former military base outside the German city of Freiburg, a 280-home, 94-acre, car-free settlement has been completed as Germany's biggest experiment in auto-free living. "It's just like nonsmokers seeking smoke-free space," says German lawmaker Franziska Eichstaedt-Bohlig, a Green party housing expert. "People are looking for places where they're not constantly being confronted with cars."

There is a garage outside the auto-free area where residents who want a parking space must pay $18,000. Car-free households contribute $3,500 to a fund that holds a plot of land in trust in case more parking is needed someday. If they later buy a car, the payment will be applied toward a garage space.

"Our goal was not to be so dogmatic - making people promise till the end of their lives never to get a car," says Claudia Nobis, who oversees traffic issues at Vauban. "But whoever doesn't have a car gets a big financial break."


'About half the 280 households in Vauban's auto-free district have opted to go car-free'
About half the 280 households in Vauban's auto-free district have so far opted to go car-free. Private cars are allowed in for pick-ups and deliveries, but can't stay, and anyone who violates the parking rules can be ticketed by the city. The biggest hazards, however, are the jumble of bicycles outside almost every front door.

Guy Dauncey, Econews, Sustainable Communities Consultancy 395 Conway Rd, Victoria, BC,V8X 3X1, Canada (tel/fax 250 8811304 (w); 250 881 1555(h); e-mail: guydauncey [at] earthfuture.com; web: http://www.earthfuture.com)."

>And you just insulted them. What's that make you?

I'm a big sports fan and it didn't insult me. Figured it's just another leftist/anarchists half-wit, sorta like you. And what to my wandering eyes do appear, but by reading some of the other posting by the "regulars" around here, I see I'm right.....again. "Just insulted them". HA! Speak for yourself shithead!!

Seems ironic that people who “support” the working class are quickest to demonize their leisure and recreation. I know from talking to several people at the local bar (many of whom are Union Workers) and the Super Bowl Party I attended (another mix crowd with several working class people) that they were very excited about Super Bowl.

It makes me wonder how many of Super Bowl critiques are really in touch with the American Working Class or if the “Power to the Working Class” is nothing more than a catchy catch phase.

I don't think that working class people should be criticized because they like football, hollywood action movies, etc. but we need to recognize what these types of entertainment are foremost used for, which is maintaining social peace and keep the working class' mind off of revolution or class struggle. When the working class is pacified through the media industry then they are weaker politically and more easyily manipulated by the ruling class. This is the side of anarchist thought which really appeals to me, showing the working class that revolt in itself, reality, can be more enjoyable and exciting then sitting on your ass watching TV.

Yeah, I watched the "Stupid Bowl." Half time lip sync "entertainment", lousy referee calls, idiotic commercials featuring shit beer (legal therefore moral) and government propaganda (marijuana can impair your judgment), morons that call themselves commentators, and whooping football players that probably smoke marijuana (who knocked up the girl?). These images reflect on large part the Useless States of Amerikkka (USA). Fakes, Incompetents, Liars, Windbags, Closet Drug Users. Oh Yeah...Don't forget about the riots after the game....real sport eh? My advice....USA out of North America.....RAH RAH RAH

This is an *excellent* book. I can't recommend it too highly. Read it today. It will open your eyes.

See:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-ridicule.html

Fuck Tradition!
<p>
See:
<p>
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html

It often says more than it means to.

Example:

> I don't think that working class people should be criticized because they . . .

"They," indeed. Why doesn't he instead say "we"? Why does he call us "they"? What does this tell us about him?

Isn't "redsam" himself working class? If so, why does he think of the rest of us as "they"? And if he's not, then where on earth does he get off telling us what to do with our lives, and how to conduct our struggle?

>>> I don't think that working class people should be criticized because they like football, hollywood action movies, etc. but we need to recognize what these types of entertainment are foremost used for, which is maintaining social peace and keep the working class' mind off of revolution or class struggle. When the working class is pacified through the media industry then they are weaker politically and more easyily manipulated by the ruling class. This is the side of anarchist thought which really appeals to me, showing the working class that revolt in itself, reality, can be more enjoyable and exciting then sitting on your ass watching TV. <<<

I work in a mostly working class shop. There are many things that turn the working class off about both the left and the right. Since these boards go on ad nauseum about what turns the working class off about the right, I'll say some of the things that turn them off about the left:

* People I work with were upset that the left acted as if their $300 tax cut meant nothing. True, it's not a lot of money, but it's an extra pizza with the family once a month. That doesn't sound like much, but when every penny counts its a big deal.

* Working people feel that the left cares more about immigrants than about working people. They're fearful of immigrants taking their jobs. Explaining that NAFTA was a product of both the left and the right doesn't really resonate. The left's stand for unbridled immigration turns off a lot of working people.

* Working people feels that the left is willing to GIVE the poor for nothing what they've had to work hard for. I'd say I fall into this category. I had to work my butt off for a tiny little house in an iffy neighborhood and it annoys me to no end to see brand new low-income housing, full of nice new appliances, satellite dishes in windows, nice cars in the driveway--simply given to people who have done nothing to earn them.

* I live in a working class SF neighborhood. We have to raise $50,000 out of our own pockets to build a playground for the neighborhood kids. Yet the city will spend $1 million a year for medical treatment for ONE drunk who refuses to take responsibility and clean himself up. It's things like this that are why Care Not Cash passed last election.

That said, working people do feel that the Republicans are the party of the rich. However, they also feel that the Democrats are the party of the poor.

Let's be honest--the people posting here have their own agenda and do not really give a s**t about the working class except to use them to achieve their ends.