Author: sarah

And campus politics at UCSC are preoccupied with domestic spying at the moment…

Last december NBC News reported on a secret 400-page Defense Department document which listed a UCSC protest as one of more than 1,500 activities in the United States tracked over a 10-month period. The protest organized by Students Against War (SAW) sought to disrupt a career fair and ended with Army, Navy and Marine Corps recruiters leaving campus. In the Pentagon document the protest was classified as a “credible threat” to national security, and registered as such in the database known as TALON, or the Threat and Local Observation Notice.

Since this disclosure the academic community has reacted against the surveillance. In different ways. The academic authorities denounced “an environment of surveillance and intimidation threatens the core values of universities and of our nation and sounds chilling echoes of the McCarthy era” and lobbied to get the counter-recruitement action removed from TALON, with success. ACLU filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of UC students whose activities may have been monitored by the Pentagon, and as part of a national effort to reveal the extent and purpose of Pentagon spying. The students have also accused academic authorities of possible involvement in undercover surveillance of student activities.

for more of the story from the perspective of the academic authorities, click here
for more of the story through indymedia, click here

Speaking of lies…

Bush delivered his state of the union address yesterday.
There was an expectation that there would finally be some communication of a policy plan, especially with respect to health care. Not sure where such an expectation would come from, but in any case he delivered nada. Apart from the promise to establish a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on social security (as he and Clinton turned 60 this year). A commission… While of course he remains strongly commited to further cuts in taxes, as a good chunk of the speech reminds us. A little something about education, a commitment to maths and the competition with other countries – nothing to do with education as a means of emancipation for all.

Drenched in a freedom rhetoric. Freedom as an essential American value, America’s leadership in defending freedom and bringing democracy to other parts of the world, lately Iraq, soon Iran. The immediate revelation of the hypocrisy of it all: Cindy Sheehan was forced to leave because she wore an anti-war t-shirt. The funny new speak that comes with it: state domestic spying is called a “terrorist surveillance programme”.

Ah, one new thing. America is now officially addicted to oil, and needs to kick off. As if the Bush administrations have done anything to stimulate the development of alternative clean energy (Remember Kyoto?). And a strange twist: a defensive argument against protectionism and isolationism, as if that’s what the Democrats stand for and the Republicans are saving the country from.

As if… a speech straight from wonderland… No need to connect with reality, since empire can now create its own version of it.

The speech was disturbingly insignificant – and meanwhile the people of New Orleans are angry…

On the same day Samuel Alito – who has a clearer written record of disagreement with the right to abortion than any Supreme Court nominee in the past – was nominated as the 110th Justice of the Supreme Court. The L-word episode was timely, how moral issues are used as a smoke screen to avoid talking about poverty and economic injustice, the education system in ruins and the illegitimate war…