The triumph that was the 11th annual LinuxFest NorthWest...

If you weren't there at Bellingham Technical College this weekend, you missed what is fast becoming the seminal event for Whatcom County's technical community: LinuxFest NorthWest. Don't let those unassuming penguins fool you. At any given hour on Saturday or Sunday, there was more driven, ambitious, brain power in any room at BTC's Haskell than a month's worth pass-thru I-5 traffic in Bellingham.  Coming to Bellingham's annual geek get-together were attendees from Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver, Tri-Cities, etc.  The presentations (or at least the seven hours (1,2) I attended) were brilliant, inspired, and practical. The networking between geeks was great. And the salmon served by BTC's Culinary School at Saturday's lunch was tasty as well.


If there is a hope of Whatcom county becoming a bright light in the technical community of the Pacific North West, it will start at LinuxFest NorthWest.  This weekend, hundreds of people passionate about technology met to exchange ideas, business cards, and flippant thoughts in Bellingham. We ought to do it every quarter - I guarantee there would be that much demand. Congrats to the sponsors, volunteers, and organizers of LinuxFest NorthWest. Maybe #11 was the best yet.  Personally, I would have liked to have seen a greater Whatcom County business and educational presence there. It is not as if we don't have any: CHM2Hill, Logos, DIS, Anvil, FiberCloud, BlackRockCable, WCC, WWU, SPIE, POB,  COB, WC. We have plenty of technical consumers in Whatcom Couty - but I didn't see them in the sponsor list or manning any booths. TAG manned a both as they did last year.  Personally, if I were the Bellingham Chamber of Commerce or any other group concerned about driving technical employment in Whatcom County,  LinuxFest NorthWest is one event I would trip over myself to help sponsor. At least, I would think, twice per year.

the world is debating war now

We should make no mistake about the meaning of President Obama's recent nuclear policy, the Washington nuclear summit and today's Iranian nuclear summit. The world is debating the advent of war in Iran, quite possibly nuclear war.  There are a number of reasons for this, but chiefly:

(1) Iran is about to become a declared nuclear power
(2) The rest of the world powers need Iranian oil and further control of the Middle East and South Asia to fuel their economies.

Once you understand how thoroughly critical to world history both these mandates could be, it is easy to understand why either Israel or the United States may use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran.  "It takes a Democrat to actually use nukes," someone once told me.  This is not a completely empty statement. Obama may have enough chutzpah to actually do it.  There may well be 4.7 trillion barrels of oil left in our good Earth.  But the easiest to extract at the highest profit can be found in Iran and Iraq. And the lure of that cheap oil may be strong enough to risk collapsing the American economy for a few more years.

LinuxFest Northwest

The eleventh annual LinuxFest Northwest will happen Saturday and Sunday April 24th and April 25th at Bellingham Technical College.  This is a wonderful, free, event that allows software engineers, network administrators, consultants and business people of all types to network, learn, and (most of all) to feel as if there really is a tech community in Whatcom County.

I went last year (even though I am mostly a Windows and OpenBSD freak) and had a fantastic time.  Linux really does drive development throughout most of the world now. The influence Linux has in the world of security and networking is undeniably powerful. This year, the organizers have added a touch of social networking to the LinuxFest Northwest website.  I am blown away by the Linux users that are traveling from places like Seattle, Portland, and South Okanagan B.C. to make it the the Festival.

BTW, Bellingham Technical College Culinary Arts will handle lunch on Saturday.  Last year it was fantastic. Your $9.00 cash will get you a choice of:

• Grilled wild Alaskan salmon
• Tri-tip steak sandwich
• BBQ St. Louis pork ribs
• Grilled jumbo vegan Mexican chipotle sausage on a hoagie bun

LinuxFest Northwest!! Don't miss it!

Bloody Easter Sunday...

The "troubles" continue all around in the world - in Peshawar, Dir, Baghdad, Moscow.  All these cities hit by bombings that  killed and injured hundreds during "holy week".   And we ask why?

The major nuclear and economic world powers (China, Russia, United States) substituted sporadic nationalist/terrorist guerilla wars  for the old proxy wars at the start of this century.  More indirect and less traceable, such wars allow the leaders of their countries to blame internal violence on "terrorism" so as to crack down on domestic dissent; all the while scrubbing their hands of the violent networks they have historically developed and run.  These leaders want control of the strategic Middle East and South Asia.  If direct military intervention won't do, then politics, terrorism, bombings accomplish the same. Each side has their players, their objectives, their political dogma, their resources.  And they are strong enough to convince seventeen year-old bereaved Chechen widows to blow themselves up on Moscow subways and let Taliban soldiers waste their lives attacking well-guarded American consulates in Peshawar.

The world is an unsafe place for members of the third world who live on top of strategic oil and gas reserves. Where you find oil, wealth, and military bases you will find nationalist movements, violence, the small arms trade, fanaticism, and grinding poverty. And lots of spooks and assets. Tell me, are we not seeing now in these violent acts, the global build-up to the Iranian War?  And how, dear reader, do you think the next war will effect the economic health of your community?

BTW, Should you like to know what war would look like in Iran...

Communication, Transportation and Education Projects Ongoing in Bellingham

It is easy in this recession to lose track of all the positive growth and economic visionaries working hard to keep Bellingham, WA the cutting edge, progressive, enlightened force it is,  bundled up to America's 49th parallel. For a city of only 75,000 we generate a lot of political noise, energy and hope. And we should be lauded for it.  For all the criticism you may read in this blog and others, this is not in anyway a dangerous, depressed, unfruitful place to live.  Quite the opposite.  Free thinking and visionary souls are drawn here because of our tremendous physical beauty and then they stay to contribute their arts, their minds, their souls to this beauty by the bay.  Is it Brigadoon? Of course not.  But come springtime when the vitamin D gets back into our blood for the first time in six months, this is a beautiful place to live and work. Let me show you what is going on in this town right now.

First, the City of Bellingham is making a first class pitch for Google Fiber.   You can view excellent presentations here that highlight not only the beauty of our city but the intellectual intensity and community activism that drives much of the economic pulse of this very serious college town (WWU, WCC, BTA).  COB's video presentation with a little girl gleefully running red string through out our town may be one of the most touching city video presentations ever.  It is important to realize that there are standout technical environments in Bellingham like SPIE and VRI.  This is SPIE's pitch for Google Fiber.  This is the Bellingham Angels (venture capitalist) pitch for  Google Fiber.  More links:

• http://cob.org/issues/google.aspx :  Google Fiber Video Presentation Page
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bring-Google-Fiber-for-Communities-to-Bellingham/481749265625 : Google Fiber Facebook Page

Second, with strong community effort, Whatcom County is trying to preserve the high quality of its previously well-financed transit system.  This is a laudable effort to my mind. Public transit stimulates economic growth, creates a unified community and provides stable public employment.  I just don't see how an extra two-tenths of one percent sales tax could hurt us now,despite the ferocity of some of the WTA's critics:

• http://www.preserveourpublictransit.org/  : WTA Prop 1 Measure 
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Transit-Works/298055563932 :  Prop 1 Transit Works Facebook Page

Last, a group of very determined private investors are attempting to finance and build a top notch college-preparatory high school - right at the end of my Columbia neighborhood block!  Across the street is currently Bellingham's best private elementary school (I am biased since my daughter attends Kindergarten there!) The end result will be a multi-story, 56,000 sq. ft building (with a gymnasium) on a plot of land slightly less than two acres. Gary Gideon will be the architect. Some links: 

• http://www.sp-academy.org/ : Saint Paul's Academy Bellingham
• http://www.sp-academy.org/aboutHighSchoolConstruction.asp#hswebcam : SPA Construction Site
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bellingham-WA/St-Pauls-Academy/89901418700 : SPA Facebook Site 

Truly, these ongoing and possible contributions to our community are part of the enlightened effort that make Bellingham the beautiful city it is to live in now and will continue to be.

the jobless recovery continues...

04/02/2010: An update to the original post showed surprising job creation in March by the BLS.  168,000 jobs were created, however housing, finance, and IT are still shredding positions as is most of the private sector. The President and the Treasury secretary are happy.

All signs continue to point to a "jobless recovery" (1,2,3), with a larger employment report out on Friday.  Treasury's March 16 report sees prolonged unemployment with job creation under 100K per month for the rest of the year. Year over year, Washington state has lost 89K jobs and seen its U-3 rate soar 1.4 pts to  9.5%  from February 2009 - 2010. For the United States,   "Broader U-6 unemployment rate of 16.8% would imply 25.8 million unemployed Americans."  After a period of unemployment decline for fourth quarter 2009, the unemployment rate appears headed up for the  Bellingham MSA  (Whatcom County). As of January 2010, BLS statistics show Bellingham's 9.4% unemployment rate sits it 154 out of 372 Metropolitan Statistical Areas.   A comparative google unemployment chart (not seasonally adjusted) looks like this with data for year end 2010:

The talk about gains in productivity, bonds, bank surpluses is not abating the continued wealth destruction in mortgage finance, bankruptcies, foreclosures,  unemployment.  So where are we going  in Whatcom County?  If you have cash in the bank you may survive the next year.  If not, you should shed your debt and hold onto your job.  At this point, a dynamic spike in growth is not predicted.

The "Green Zone" rocks...

On the weekend of the seventh anniversary of the Iraq War, I saw Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Jason Issacs and a host of others (including Iraq War vets playing themselves!) simply rock the house in the "Green Zone".  Only, very few people were there for my Sunday matinée.  I don't know why not.  With our country threatening to invade Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq still a mess, why more people wouldn't want to see a movie whose punchline is: "The reasons matter! The reasons we go to war always matter!" Damon gets to say these words in full flak-jacket military dress while grabbing the lapels of Greg Kinnear's suit!

This is a great movie.  Thrilling, uncompromising, action-packed, and direct. Damon plays the entire movie as a hero, without the sense of confusion or pathos in his Bourne characters.  "We're here to do a job and come home safe. The reasons don't matter," says Damon's no. 1 to him in the movie.  "Well they matter to me," says Damon character (Warrant Sargent Roy Miller).   Indeed.

I've never been to Baghdad or been part of the military.  (Hell, I've never been to Washington D.C. or New York either.) So I don't know whether it is believable in the heat of a confused battle for a non-commissioned officer to break ranks with his higher authority and work with the CIA station chief.  I don't know if Special Forces members are allowed to punch out other members of their army like Issacs does to Damon.  But I know this - this is a damn good movie.  See at the Regal Sehome 3  before it goes away...

Eva Golinger

Just discovered this thoroughly engaging activist and  author Eva Golinger  who discusses Venezuelan affairs from a pro-Chavez perspective.  What is fascinating about her text is the thoroughness of the  dissection of American funded 'pro-democracy' efforts of  USAID, NED, DAI, SAIC in Caracas.  Ms. Golinger has written several books about American funded efforts in Venezuela including : The Chavez Code.  Ms. Golinger is also an engaging public speaker. Her blog contains at least four gripping videos about American/Venezuelan political relations, the last of which described covert funding of American NGO disruptive efforts in foreign countries.

Her discussion reminds me very much of recent RNC memo that describes the psychological operations now being carried out on the American populace through public relations of the Republican party.  Among the "psychological operations" most harmful to Washington state is "anti-tax" rhetoric that convinces members of Washington State that they are over-taxed. We are not "over-taxed" in Washington state. If anything, we are comparatively "under-taxed" because we have no corporate or personal income tax.  The lack of corporate tax, which is not made up for by BOT (Business and Occupation Taxes), is hurting all of us dearly. There is literally not enough funding for municipalities to keep our librarians, teachers and bus drivers.  Almost all of the states are desperate for cash, many of them fighting off multi-billion dollar deficits while we fight our foreign wars and ship money by the billions to essentially American state supported actors like (USAID, NED, DAI, SAIC) to destabilize foreign governments.  Why is there no money for our libraries, schools, and bus systems?   Listen to Eva Golinger and find out where all your federal tax dollars are going.  Better to send those tax monies to your state and local communities than Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan.

So what would corporate and state income taxes bring us?  For starters, they would make our tax based infrastructure less dependent on property taxes. Considering the glut in housing stocks and the instability of American residential construction, income taxes could be a stabilizing influence on government revenue.  In addition, it would make the maintenance of wage income revenue critical for the functioning of the state. Lose jobs, lose revenues.  A fallacy we live with in the propaganda of Whatcom County is that housing drives jobs. In fact, jobs drives housing.  Our counties defacto economic plan to attract homeowners from other states is frail without the aggressive development of our employment base, state or private based

Google's public data is redefining economic visualization.

Google Public Data Labs is going to redefine how we communicate and visualize public economic data.  Take a look at this interactive chart and ask yourself: Why is Whatcom County  in last place?





We look a little bit better if we just compare Bellingham to all Washington State MSAs. Maybe.





Feel free to click the 'Explore Data' link and create your own comparison detailing how vibrant our middle class is in Whatcom County, compared to Yakima County perhaps?

"Tech Centers" of the Northwest...

An excellent Wall Street Journal Article, "Where Clouds Displace Forest" talks about the "Tech Centers" of the pacific northwest but not Hillsboro, Portland, Redmond, Bellevue, Renton,  Everett, Seattle or Vancouver.  It means those small communities, mostly in Eastern Washington/Oregon, that have abundant power at cheap industrial rates. Their cooler weather and inexpensive power make an ideal location for high-energy consuming "data centers".  The key to attracting such facilities is cheap local power. In this case, Prineville is made use of a local power provider's very low industrial rates to recruit the new Facebook data center.

What I find somewhat ironic about these data centers stored in depopulated areas is the actual relationship between local and global information.  Facebook,  no doubt, will be hosting accounts from all over the world in Prineville.   Lots of stuff is happening on Facebook - lots of activism, lots of marketing, lots of community, even lots of intelligence gathering.  And where is all this exciting activity physically (or virtually) happening? Somewhere in the high desert of sparsely populated eastern Oregon and Washington.  Should a natural disaster cut the fiber lines that no doubt travel over the mountains to the coast, an entire world of communities will most probably disappear. The physical presence of virtual communities has no relation to locality.  Social networking, at the physical level, is truly a "non-local" business model.

Using financial software.

Like many of you, my wife and I are streamlining our finances.  In doing this, we have been searching for financial software to help us understand what is now a complicated set of accounts.  I have been a little disappointed in personal financial software in the past. So much so that I have purchased, tried and stopped using it. However, some of the software has now improved.  And standardization of bank to financial software protocols is proceeding apace.  We've looked at a number of options before settling on Quicken's Home and Business Software.  The choices are somewhat limited. Microsoft has given up the development of Money. GNUCash is a fascinating program, but somewhat clunky (especially on Windows) when compared with Quicken. The interlink between your bank and your smart-phone is still sketchy for most.

Good personal financial software should at least make you think about your expenses and income. Even so, it is an exhausting task with multiple accounts, many creditors, and increasing costs. To be frank, there are two overriding thoughts that occur to me being a "debt-strapped" member of the middle class about day to day economy:

(1) The level of complication of middle class financial life has increase dramatically
(2) the inflation of services, food, energy costs has increased dramatically as well

It is sobering to realize that in managing your internet/cable, smart phones, hybrid vehicle payments, heavily refinanced home that you have become dependent on technology and services your parents and you did just fine without not too long ago.  Almost as sobering are the increasing costs for utilities, school, energy and food.  Where did the simpler life go?

A look at RNC Psychological Operations?

 "Motivation to Give"

Ben Smith's publication of the alleged  RNC fundraising memo sheds a remarkable light on modern political campaign fund raising.  What I find most shocking about it is not that the fund-raising is well-organized and comprehensive, but that RNC fund-raising leadership appears to be:

(a)  openly callous about playing on the emotions and not the intellect of small donors
(b)  poorly advised on how to protect the security of the members of its organization

Like most funding organizations, donors are effectively divided between small and large donors with separate strategies for both in the alleged document .  On slide 29 ("Motivation to Give" pictured above),  the small donors are characterized by terms that might indicate some pretty harsh psychological operations. Under the 'Direct Marketing' box are these labels:

Visceral Giving
-Fear
-Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration
-Issue/Circumstantially oriented
-Reactionary 

Those terms don't exactly seem to describe the giving Republican electorate as a body of enlightened philosophes.  There must be somewhere in history an example of a well-educated nation state whose democratic members support their political organizations on the basis of idealism, humanity, commitment to hope. If this document is indicative and real,  such an example is apparently not the current Republican Party.

Who loses....

On Thursday night, I visited this incredible science fair at Parkview Elementary school.  The Bellingham Public School system is known for its dedicated teachers and high quality of education and high parental involvement.  All of this was clearly evident at the Parkview elementary science fair.  There must have been 150 exhibits, all neatly positioned side to side, back to back in a room packed with obviously involved parents who I bet had contributed significantly to their children's projects.  It is amazing for a refugee from Oakland, Ca to see public schools systems with such involved parents, happy involved children EXCELLING IN SCIENCE.

For 34 years my father taught high school in east Oakland while he sent his three sons and one daughter to Catholic schools there.  In our school districts, most parents might have said we had little choice if we wanted  a a relevant education.  At one point the public high school a mile or so down the road from the private high school I attended had a 5 grade 8 month reading level amongst their high school seniors.  My embattled father (always a hero in my eyes for his work as a history teacher and coach) once handed me a study about the junior high feeder school to that high school. The study revealed that 50% of the students lived with NEITHER their biological mother or father.  "That fact," explained my father "is why the high school they matriculate too has a 5 grade 8 month reading level amongst their seniors." "THAT is what I deal with all day long."

It pains me to live in a state where there are no corporate income taxes. In this area (Whatcom and Skagit County) , there are four oil refineries, numerous oil support companies, lots of investment banking money, lots of banks. And yet so few good jobs.  It is a miracle that Bellingham's school system, so dependent as it is on property values and property taxes, has managed to deliver such committed parents and committed teachers.  Will this school system and their families survive the great recession (another $2 million is now proposed to be cut from their budget)?  They certainly would stand a better chance if the high dollar volume carbon industry and their support companies here paid corporate income taxes.  Or if Skagit and Whatcom County worked harder at building high tech positions outside of the carbon industry.  But neither has happened so it is probable that the quality of  public schools will collapse with the continued fall in property,excise, sales, B&O taxes in the Bellingham MSA.

When a community has the wealth of its families destroyed, when it is subject to economic terror, its children suffer. Don't talk me about how lucky we are to have oil wealth in our county. Talk to me about how you are going to save our children from the economic destruction their parents are being subjected to, as evidenced by the most recent BLS LAU chart for the Bellingham, MSA below:

A Period of Liquidation

News in the Wall Street Journal this morning reminds us that our country is in an accelerating period of liquidation:

• U.S. New-Home Sales Drop 11.2%
• Lending Falls at Epic Pace

Through September 2009  approximately 1.4 M bankruptcies filings were received by United States Bankruptcy Courts.  Western Washington accounted for 22,450 of those filings.  Whatcom County continues to show increases in bankruptcy volume. 62 bankruptcies were filed in January 2010 vs. the 53 filed in January 2009.  Monthly bankruptcy filings generally increase toward Summer. (Last July, 79 bankruptcies were filed in WC.)  Many bankruptcies are "household bankruptcies" , which makes even relatively small numbers significant predictors for total sales in retail, housing, etc.  To understand this, you can imagine how a sustained rate of 1000 household bankruptcies per year would effect a county with less than 200,000 occupants (like Whatcom County). The effect of having 10% of your households in recovery from bankruptcy after a five year period would be disastrous. That being said, many experts recommend not waiting to file for bankruptcy if you are in trouble. Help on filing for bankruptcy can be found at:

• U.S. Bankruptcy Court Western District of Washington
• Nolo's Bankruptcy and Foreclosure Blog

Oh Canada!

I'm going to skip all the negative economic and political news I could be reporting about this morning.  Instead, let's talk about something really positive.   If you live in Bellingham or anywhere within driving distance of Vancouver, British Columbia...please...please...please...get yourself there for the last week the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Don't worry about not having a ticket to any events. The show at Robeson Square alone is worth the crowds, the border, the drive. Here's how we did it:

(1) Pack some snacks and a camera and some water bottles in a backpack. Arrive at the border early with your passport or Nexxus pass or enhanced license.
(2) Drive to King George (or Scott) Skytrain station. Buy an all day ($9 CN Adult $7 CN Child) pass with your credit card or Canadian cash. (You have to run your bank card as a CC if you don't bring credit.)
(3) Take the Expo Line to the Waterfront or other downtown exits.
(4) Walk to the  Olympic Cauldron. Take lots of photos.
(5) Walk to Cathedral Square. Hang out. Take lots of photos.
(6) Walk to Robeson Square. Hang out. Eat. Skate. Watch wonderful concerts. Watch gymnastics. Watch comedy performers. For extra credit, zip-line across the square. Take lots of photos.
(7) For extra credit, get back on the Skytrain and take your children to Science World.
(8) For those with extra cash, take the ferry or the bus to Whistler or Squamish, stay the week and bask in the glow of victorious nation.

Canada is America's alter-ego.  It's who we should be when we are depressed, sad, angry or full of paranoia. And nowhere is the 'joie de vivre' of Canada in more prolific display than Vancouver, B.C. with or without the Olympics: multi-racial, multi-ethnic, alert, joyous, worldly, and (of course) polite.  My only concern about going there is that I might just throw my border pass in False Creek one day, so I make sure I never come back!

Olympics 2010.  Don't miss it.

Four month mark

For the last four months Google Analytics reports 1388 Visits from 681 Visitors in 23 Countries from 154 Cities. The top ten by visit are:

1.Bellingham 813
2.Seattle 160
3.Bellingham 53
4.Ferndale 34
5.Portland 33
6.Burlington 30
7.(not set)  28
8.New York    8
9.Tacoma    7
10.Bellevue    6

I will report again at the eigth month mark.

Olympic Hallelujahs

It  is thrilling to watch fervent Canadians on CTV cheer their athletes. My daughter and I watched Canadian Maelle Ricker steal the X Cross snowboarding event. With a smile and grace and patience and joy.  As I watch a mostly northern and first world group of nations compete in these Olympics, I can't help but think about those who are not competing; those who are scared for their lives in Afghanistan. Without the slightest irony, our country launched a major new invasion in Afghanistan nearly to the day of the Olympic start, defying with malice the spirit of national cooperation that was born with the Olympics; a period when a truce in fighting was declared. While  the world mourned the tragic loss of Georgian luger during the opening week of the Olympics perhaps a dozen civilians died in Afghanistan because of an errant American rocket.:
"About a dozen civilians have been killed in three separate incidents in recent days as 15,000 U.S. and Afghan forces are in a heated battle around the Taliban stronghold of Marjah.

Hostage said the objective is to persuade the populace to side with the government and against the insurgent force.
"Civilians die every day at the hand of the Taliban," Hostage said. "We have to protect them from that. ... The people know who the bad guys are." "

And we are losing soldiers left and right as well (1, 2, 3,4) Is there no better way?  Did Afghanistan really and truly need to be invaded? What was the point?  The Cryptome has some great full color plates of  Wartime Architecture in Afghanistan. The only mention of the irony of simultaneous war in South amidst joyous Olympic competition in the North might have been in K.D. Laing's brilliant celebration opening interpretation of the words of Leonard Cohen:

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

OIl in Haiti and "Induced Seismicity"

The big secret is now in the open:  Haiti's earthquake is just one more power play in the U.S. control of Haiti and the Caribbean's resources. Two authors are covering this in detail:

• Marguerite Laurent
• William Engdahl 

The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti
Oil Sites in Haiti 
Oil in Haiti, reasons for the US occupation


To understand "induced seismicity" and the probabilities that Western mining companies may have induced the Haitian earthquake through drilling operations, background information can be read at http://scholar.google.com on "induced seismicity".  Ms. Laurent/Ezili Danto describes illegal drilling and mining operations in Haiti since Aristide's "departure" in her blog "Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?"  Ms. Laurent talked about these mining operations by Western forces earlier in an interview in May 2009.

Rethinking Afghanistan

An excellent and topical film on war - "Rethink Afghanistan" - is available at Film is Truth in Bellingham, WA.  You can also order it from the website.   The film is a multi-faceted presentation of many different groups opposed to the continued war in Afghanistan. It documents the costs of the war on the Afghan population, our own country, and on the peoples of South Asia. I recommend it.

Republican "Marxist Envy" Che! Part II

This is my second post that tries to explain the incredulous labeling of President Barack Obama as a "Marxist"  by reactionary forces in the United States.  As contrast, I provide a movie review of Che a Steven Soderbergh/Laura Bickford film now available (with extended commentary and historical interviews/film from the Criterion Collection ) at Film is Truth in Bellingham,Washington.  I highly recommend this film, but especially this Criterion Collection three DVD set  for the archival footage and film and also for the supporting historical commentary by Jon Lee Anderson. Mr. Anderson is publishing a second edition of his work Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.

There are many reasons to reconsider the life and works of Che Guevara today in our country.  Like Batiste's Cuba, America has become a country ruled by  "strong men", its citizenry rotting financially in the compost pile of a corrupt state, ridden with bankruptcy, foreclosure, and unemployment; the official government serving only as a vehicle to hand or tax away the last of our state's riches to those who have plundered our national economy.  Would a Cuban style revolution be possible in these United States?  What would it take to effect such a revolution?

The film makes clear many of the timeless historical markers of revolution:

(1) broad public support including a "soft revolutionary" (ideological) component in urban areas
(2) an armed revolutionary group with outside financial support
(3) visionary guerilla leaders with practical technical and charismatic skillsets
(4) eventually, a unified front of citizens, military, intelligentsia
(5) ruthless strongmen to purge "reactionary' or "counter-revolutionary" forces.

In Cuba, the revolution succeeded, even to the surprise of some Soviet supporters, because the Batiste regime had terrorized its people.   But it also succeeded because bourgeois "Argentine intellectuals" like Che Guevara rallied and committed themselves to the cause of Marxist revolution; in part because their travels through Latin America made clear the devastation caused by American economic imperialism: our henchman, our support of local thugs, our devastation of local economies in the name of American economic affluence.

Jon Lee Anderson'sdisk one commentary strongly asks the question: What is it that made an intellectual, a doctor, a poet and philosopher like Guevara "cross the line"?  What would make a man of gentle intellect and medical training convince himself to murder for the cause of the greater wealth of his people?   Perhaps we should ask what would it take to see such personal conversions here:

• A lack of nationalized health care? 
• An unfettered/polarizing war on the third world in the name of  an endless "War on Terror"?
• The impoverishing effects of  corporatist lobbying  forces in the name of oil, energy, pharma, insurance, banking?
• The widening gap between the rich and the poor?
• The impoverization of our communities and families?

From the ILWU to the Black Panthers , 20th century America has no shortage of well organized and well-armed revolutionary movements among it's working classes. They are usually paralleled with support from intellectual classes. But what events would make us "cross the line"?  What events would make us view the election of Barack Obama as our last failed hope for Democratic reform?  I will wager that these are the questions that are being asked in earnest now in large, bankrupt communities across the nation.  In reality, no one but repressed, paranoid Republican leadership and the denizens of small towns with narrow minds are worrying whether or not Barack Obama is a "Marxist". Whether our President is a "Marxist" or not (and he has does nothing to indicate that he is at this point), our country is rapidly reaching the point of economic degradation where many of us would cheer if he were to declare himself as such.

Republican "Marxist Envy"; Che!

"If you were to listen to the debate...you would think this was some Bolshevik Plot." 
 President Barack Obama speaking to Republicans about their resistance to health care.

Whenever the reactionary elements of American political society need to tar and feather some opponent, they pull out the "Marxist" or "Communist" label.  This is a long term  "straw man" and/or "bogeyman" for the paranoid right wing. The "red scare" is the their primary tactic that they slash against reform or proletarian movements across American 20th century history.  In truth, it used far less often than the label of 'fascist' which is an accurate label for many modern reactionary/conservative movements.

Considering how hawkish and bank-oriented Barack Obama's economic past year of policies have been,  the charges of Barack Obama as a "Marxist" or "Socialist" strike me as lacking credulity. In reality, we cannot realistically compare Obama's imperialist, corporatist, war-time economy to the  policies promulgated by 20th century New World Marxist leaders like Castro, Guevara, Allende, Ortega, or Chavez .  Indeed, I cannot imagine 20th century American Marxists Big Bill Heywood, Norman Thomas, Eugene V. Debs, Harry Bridges, or even Huey Newton or Angela Davis striking as centrist wartime and corporatist economic policies as President Obama.

As a simple example of this: Can any of you imagine any of these Marxists leader supporting anything but either 'single-payer' or (more accurately) true nationalized health care? Would any of these Marxist leaders send such a continued rush of troops to Afghanistan?  Would any of them have tolerated the subversive, reactionary lobbying influences of the lobbyists of pharma, insurance, private health markets to health care proposals?   Would any of them have "bailed out the banking system" with such ferocity instead of nationalizing the banking system? Would any of them have tolerated the widening gap between the rich and the poor in America without very direct 'redistribution efforts'?

I can't imagine such tolerance by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, or Hugo Chavez. I suspect that even Canada wouldn't tolerate our watered down, luke warm, health proposal as it now stands.  If we receive a health care bill, it will most likely not be the most efficient/economical delivery of health care for our citizens. For most part, it will migrate, with corporatist help, into a profit vehicle for the American private health,pharmaceutical, insurance industries.  Our President is most decidedly not Marxist in his policy suggestions.  He seems to truly believe in "Ho'oponopono" from his native Hawaii, a term that suggests a form of tribal or even familial conflict negotiation.

Indeed, the subconscious of the  Republican party in the United States seems to be driven by some form of "Marxist Envy"; their animus propelled by some deep and powerful search for "Communists" coupled to a paranoia more energized than many of the utopian socialist fantasies of the left wing in America. To get an accurate idea of what one of the most recent Marxist revolutions in this hemisphere actually looked like, Bellinghammers can now check out from "Film is Truth" a 2008 Film by Steven Soderberg and Laura Bickford : Che . I recommend especially the supplemental third disk which contains interviews with still living revolutionaries in Cuba who fought along side Che and Castro and interviews with Cuban historians that describe how deep the support for the revolution in Cuba was, how brutal the Batista regime appeared in their neighborhoods and how the armed forces supported Castro and Che. I recommend the film if only to help come to understanding of what it would take for a true Marxist revolution to effect itself here in North America.

Perhaps he is a genius after all...

Many of us who supported the President's election have had some doubts this year: too conciliatory, too hawkish on Iran, Afghanistan, too supportive of larger financial institutions, maybe even too much golf and not enough hoops...

The President's state of the union may help restore some confidence.  He has some momentum now.  The financial forces of the American elite have overreached: They have been given everything, including most of the multi-trillion dollar bailout and yet they are still claiming record bonuses while millions go unemployed, into bankruptcy, into foreclosure. To get some sense of how much economic destruction is pervading America, try googling "bankruptcy blogs" or "foreclosure blogs".  Leave it to Americans to turn their own wealth destruction into a profitable boutique industry.

Now is the time to hammer home his status as a protector of middle class families and his clean tech, high-tech, export-driven agenda.  The  President senses this. He has his foes positioned as greedy, obstructionist and unreasonable and he carefully said as much.  American families should rally to this effort.  Barack Obama wants no easy solutions: He wants long term stability for the middle class.  Quite frankly, even most of us on the left believe this to be a lofty and naive goal at this point.

In reality, we should appreciate someone who holds such noble goals and cultivates conciliatory approaches to the opposition.  But in fact the greedy and the wealthy have conspired to steal the strength of our country in the last ten years and there are few of us with any sort of generational memories who will let them forget it.  War and economic exploitation destroy families.  Let us make sure the President never forgets this.

"Tell me that the people who are responsible..."

This photograph bothers me a lot.  Understanding the "rich history" of the City of Bellingham and BNSF would take weeks of work.  But whatever that history, a derailment into the middle of Boulevard Park or Harris Street Pier would be an unbelievable disaster. Actually, just having some park goers crushed on a pocket beach by a falling retaining wall would be disastrous as well.  The hydrostatic forces on this area can considerable during a storm surge.

We have already had one tragic rail death last year in this park.  Please tell me that the people who are responsible....

What would Alexander Hamilton do?

Tonight, after listening to the President's roaring new populist tone, I began to think that perhaps asking, "What would Karl Marx do?" or "What would Hugo Chavez do?" or perhaps "What would Che Guevara do?" may not be correct approach to fixing American economic problems.  Perhaps we need to go back to the fundamental notions of our founding fathers to understand what "American economic health and society" is destined to look like.  And so I asked myself: "What would Alexander Hamilton do?"

Asking  what any of the founding fathers would do in contemporary times is always a dangerous question.  First, all these men lived literally within inches or minutes of being hanged for treason. Second, the intelligence and education of many of the founding fathers were abnormally significant. The founding fathers were not "media creations" - they wrote important works, spoke multiple languages, and in the face of crisis, they invented new infrastructure. They invented a new form of government. They invented a new form of insurgency. They invented American diplomacy. Hamilton invented a national bank to pay off our revolutionary war debts.

But before I could finish asking myself "What would Alexander Hamilton do?", I realized I had an advantage over the colonists of early America:  I can simply download the Mobipocket version of the Federalist Papers from the Gutenburg Project, and read what Hamilton wrote some 225  or so years ago on my Blackberry Storm at my leisure.   Reading the Federalist Papers is an instructive act.  They are still a primary source for the interpretation of the constitution both for scholars and the judiciary.  Literally, they are still the guidebook for the law of the land. There is far too much "propaganda" in the world of our media.  The original source and the discussion of the events surrounding the publication of the Federalist Papers is immediately instructive if not to simply remember that we are not the first group of Americans to live in "interesting times". 

Some good news?

Amidst a "econowash" of  news clinging to desperate hopes, there is some good economic (sort of) news...But first, the hard truth, Bankruptcies and Unemployment are up in Whatcom County and the rest of the nation (bankruptcies(1), bankruptcies(2), unemployment).  Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge has a great chart accompanying his blog post illustrating the recent increase in insured unemployment that is not seasonally adjusted.


However, I found some good news.   The organization Pro Publica has done a report that shows that "Two Dozen States’ Unemployment Funds in the Red, Nine More Within Six Months".   Pro Publica's report shows that Washington State currently is the most solvent of any unemployment fund!  To see this, simply sort their excellent graph by "Trust Fund Balance".   Well, there is $2.8 B of government funding that will soon be well spent!

"Funny the way it is..."

I suppose I was going to start to  notice this type of thing more often anyway.  As my wife and I (and other busy Dads and Moms) were hustling their kids to ballet class at the YMCA, doggedly sorting through the dumpster in the parking lot was a member of the homeless; complete with shopping cart, multiple garbage sacks and some systematic technique for sorting through the trash. She was a middle-aged, alert women.  I thought about capturing a photograph as a walked to the steps going downstairs to the YMCA's lobby. But she caught my eyes and hid.


There are multiple organizations dealing with the issue of homelessness in Whatcom County. The best  way to get an overview of  "all things homeless in Whatcom County" is through the minutes of  The Whatcom County Coalition for the Homeless.  Currently, the coalition is busy preparing for the "Point-in-Time Count 2010" on January 28th. There have been numerous press articles on Whatcom County's homeless population of late. The Bellingham Herald has reported that "40 to 80 people come into the drop-in center each day" at 1013 W. Holly Street. The drop-in center is reportedly expanding it's hours in January.  The Seattle PI has posted a dynamic article by the Bellingham Herald's Jared Paben on the conflict between the homeless population of Bellingham and redevelopment.  The article, which quotes Paster Chuch Sargent, Lighthouse Executive director Ron Buchinski, and developers  Fred Bovenkamp and Ken Imus, exposes the conflict between urban development and social services in Old Town. You can view this  touching video on the issue of homelessness in Bellingham from Project Homeless Connect.  PHC Bellingham has a sparsely populated but interesting blog  and a Facebook  page on their project.

Google page on Donations for Haiti : http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

Google is maintaining a page for donations to Haiti.  You can donate vi Google Checkout.  Google will also donate $1 million to Haiti to relief organizations. Google is maintaining updated Google Earth views of Haiti as well as offering free Google Voice calls to help US Families reach Haiti.
You can also give "micro donations" via your cell phones for certain organizations:
 "The following organizations are accepting SMS donations in the US only:

• SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
• SMS text "GIVE10" to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief"

"525,600 Minutes: How do you measure a year?"

In the profile to  her stunningly beautiful and elegant photo blog, the late  Molly Mackenzie Hightower describes herself as a ... "a 22 year old from Port Orchard, WA, who just graduated from the University of Portland and is avoiding getting a job. I majored in Psychology, Sociology and French, and plan to get my masters in special ed, counseling or education."

For Molly, "avoiding getting a job" apparently meant spending one year of her young life living and working in Haiti with children of special needs.  Molly wrote and photographed beautifully about the children of Haiti she came to know in her blog "525,600 Minutes: How do you measure a year?" She was very much looking forward to the trip back. In the post "Halfway Point" she commented:

"Its very weird to think that my trip is more than half over at this point. Since school started up in September, it really has flown by. I have a ticket back to Seattle on June 8th, so really, I'm only here for 5 more months and some odd days. My frappachino maker is waiting for me."


Godspeed, Ms. Hightower.

The Fountain Bistro

The North End received a boost in the economic arm for this new year with the opening of The Fountain Bistro at the intersection of Broadway and Meridian.  I think I was expecting another slightly dumpy coffee bar.  Instead, the The Fountain Bistro is a bright, happy place with a first rate wine and lunch menu and a burgeoning chic clientele.   We need places just like this in the North End more than almost anything.
It shows some cheek from owner Jill A. Holmes to field a top notch lunch place in the middle of the Great Recession, but even more so to open a restaurant that is well-staffed, organized and reasonable  in cost.  I could find only one lunch menu item above $10. At the wine bar, I munched happily on a delicious chicken ceaser salad.  Two businessmen in suits networked to my right while two well-dressed matrons on my left engaged in happy, bourgeois converse.  The place was full of diners and  a strong winter light raced through the ample glass windows at this newly remodeled location.
Wow!.  That bright, happy feeling doesn't hit me too much during this time of year in Bellingham.  I will definitely have to do that again. Cheers to the The Fountain Bistro .   Check out their Facebook page.

A must read...on Afghanistan

 "Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan "
is a must read on the culture of American intelligence officers and battlefield success and failure in Afghanistan.  The officers who wrote the article are taking heat for publishing in a think tank outside of the military hierarchy.  In reality, they are taking a brave stand by attempting  to communicate to the public and the president how our intelligence community is failing us in Afghanistan.  The officers who published the article "get it".  They understand we are doomed to fight an endless guerrilla war in Afghanistan if we do not use our intelligence efforts to understand the tribal people who have lived there for generations.

“Revolutionary” Travel Sentiments for the New Year

“Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often an explosion of anger.” - attributed to Thucydides

“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.” - attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville

Among the treasures I received this Christmas, I now count a book given to me by my brother and sister-in-law as dear: “Travel as a Political Act” by a Edmunds, WA based travel writer Rick Steves (paperback Nation Books, New York, NY 2009 ISBN-13:978-1-56858-435-5). Mr. Steves accomplishes something in this work of which past world travelers/commentators (like the ancient Greek general Thucydides or the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville) would have been proud: He translates the political struggles of people from distant lands into local equations.
 

Mr. Steve's travel experiences have not made him a fan of the “war on terror”: “Every three days, a 747's worth of people die on our highways....imagine we downgraded our “War on Terror.” Fantasize for a moment about...all the good we could do with those resources...” [p. 15] Mr. Steves documents the insights from his travels that helped him come to such conclusions: “With each new president, other nations wonder if there will be unilateralism or multilateralism, respect and collaborations or threats and hypocrisy....because I care about our society, I challenge us to do better. In difficult times, we should be open to considering all the solutions we can.” [p. 79]
 

Indeed. Whether visiting El Salvador on the anniversary of Cardinal Romero's assassination, exploring the communes of Copenhagen or embracing his own personal peace quest (“Mission: Understand Iran”) , Mr. Steves continually encourages the reader to use travel as a form of personal evolution; a type of pedagogic seminar to help Americans understand the best parts of themselves through immersion in the struggles of foreign cultures: “If an American diplomat complained to his European counterpart, “America is doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to military,” the European might respond, “Well, you seem to be enjoying it. We're building roads and bridges instead.” [p. 55] This debate between guns and butter, war or prosperity needs to be had more open and frankly in our society. We have yet to connect the economic and social costs of our “Three Trillion Dollar War” to its devastating consequences on the American middle class.
 

Despite an often nonchalant and informal style, Mr. Steve's comments on the outlook of various foreign peoples can be as noble and powerful as a Thucydides or de Tocqueville might have been in their times.: “I have long held that travel can be a powerful force for peace. Travel promotes understanding at the expense of fear. And understanding bridges conflicts between nations....I left Iran impressed more by what we have in common than by our our differences. Most Iranians, like most Americans, simply want a good life and a safe homeland for their loved ones...Our political leaders sometimes make us forget that all of us on this small planet are equally precious children of God. Having been to Iran and meeting its people face-to-face, I feel this more strongly than ever.” [pp 191 – 193]
 

In his final chapter, Mr. Steves coaches his readers on how to use travel as a political act – how to understand others by seeing the world through their eyes. Even now, I find myself practicing his perspective at my hotel room in a small town in southern Oregon, on my way home to Bellingham.  I heartily recommend reading “Travel as a Political Act” for your new year.