Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Another Note from Ecuador

I suppose for not being paid to blog, I get to blog all the more freely -- or at least when I feel like it.  Ecuador has me feeling like it: for eco-trekkers and their naturalist brethren, it's a gorgeous hunk of earth -- and you will catch some reference to that in the following ntoe -- but it's also very much a frontier state, but not in the 15th Century or 19th Century sense although the ghosts of those eras persist.  The State of Ecuador ranges across a 21st Century frontier, one in which the indigenous are connected, educated in key ways, and informed while assorted and contemporary villains, from capitalists to communists -- more correctly: communists acting as capitalists -- and from drug cartel to socialist revolutionaries (the evil seeds of larger stories) infiltrate and roam the countryside, seducing Los Indios ("En Dios" some believe Columbus to have said of the Tainos on the watery eastern  and equatorial fringe of the hemisphere at first contact) into cultivating poppy and demanding territorial autonomy, possibly to grow more plants, under the cover of self-determination.

It's hard to say at my lazy level of effort as well as remote location what's really happening Ecuador, but the impression is that of a great story waiting for an intrepid but every street smart young journalist.

The James Belushi character in Salvador comes to mind.

The Ecuador story, however, may have more of menace in it than mayhem. 

President Correa seems center-left in his "realpolitik", not So Far Gone on the Far Out There New Old Now Old and Lost Left, and the militaries of the region seem to be playing with the forces of the illicit in both crime and politics -- that is, possibly, the drug runners, the drifting warriors of the FARC, plus whatever and whoever has slipped "in-country" in relation to the evil churning away in Tehran.  Such would seem to prey on the good will and remote lot of an isolated rural indigenous constituency, and only time, development, and open cross-cultural, multilingual communications will sort that out.

For my part as regards the prospect of copper mining in Ecuador, I hope all involved will get the full benefit of 21st Century's environmental and labor ethos plus technology.  Anything less -- any treatment of development less than state-of-the-art for the industry involved would be not only politically and socially counterproductive but also in its own way culturally archaic and barbaric--and this I would say not only to President Correa and the governing powers in Ecuador's business and political corridors, but also to the Chinese and other customers and investors involved: these days, word gets around about every state, the character of its people, the worth and value of their business, cultural, and social entrepreneurship. 

The global consciousness and conscience enabled by global communications would seem to raise the bar as it raises the curtains on what only a few years ago would have been interpreted as reflecting less than good manners in remote places, to put it most mildly.

If mining operations or any other industry today produces death, deformation, environmental degradation, be sure that the same will be exhumed, investigated, recorded, and findings distributed across the global framework, and the time frame for that would seem no longer decades out and historical. 

So here's the note:

---

 . . . please consider this,

The main problem is that there has been an embargo on technology in Latin America, while technology transfer went to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and now China, we do not know make a bicycle.

The peasants planted tomatoes and by the climate change, destroyed the tomato plant and now the peasants want to plant drugs to sell drugs to Europe and U.S. with their partners of Muslim brotherhood

Latin America's cities are surrounded by forests, we don't have roads from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast, we don't have trains, factories, heavy industry, for this here the environment is very clean and the chemical composition of air is different, even the clean air is sent to other countries.

We have thousand of acres of natural forest, but if we need exploit oil and minery, we can do this also and reforest more trees in other acres also to sell carbon bonds to the oil company and minery company also, that can fund the reforest and preservation of many acres of forests also and everything will be fine.

At this time, the indigenous people present their proposal of the multinational state, this is to keep the control of more land to plant drugs, and promote their culture and receive the muslim people. 

We can't be naive, a multinational state, will be to spread Islam in this state within a state, as happened in Yugoslavia, in a few years we will have a civil war in Ecuador like Yugoslavia.

---

True?

Not true?

Cranky?

About right?

Perhaps the veracity of the perspective matters less than the concerns and themes expressed: under-development plus incursion by the drug cartels, old hat new socialists, and, for a predominantly Catholic country, "the muslim people." 

Let's not worry the labels--we all have a few of those to carry around wherever we go--but rather the conditions for allowing or enabling the sort of criminal and political sociopaths who really can (and really do) destroy whole regions and states.

# # # 

Pamela Geller -- "I Do It for Art, for Music, for Love, and for Freedom"

I have really wanted to move away from reposting, essentially relaying, the work of other organizations and pundits.

Also note: the above was posted to YouTube in October 2011.

To be candid, when I started this blog in 2006 or 2007, I thought of it as a showcase for a few photographs and short stories.  I never imagined I would be engaged with the phenomenon of human conflict as a kind of One-Man-Watching from the World Wide Web's "second row seat to history." 

However, having at first clicked offshore to Somalia to read English-language news copy (Shabelle) with curiosity about its environmental issues, here is Oppenheim Arts & Letters now far along with the "Islamic Small Wars" theme and growing awareness of what might be considered global frontier issues, but less those involved with the ideological and religious demarcations that make good cover for hotheads and more those that form the linguistic, social, and psychological determinants for how constituents and leaders think about ethics and power.

As Jews always have from the beginning "gone forth" into greater regions of freedom and responsibility -- and have done so communally, physically, and spiritually -- Pamela Geller has here stepped forward of the all-are-the-same post-modern slush that has led every modern person, Muslims much included, to a positively Orwellian fix, one in which the freedom to speak responsibly, openly, plainly, and freely has been compromised by some choosing to accommodate evil as presented by others who have made themselves powerful in the way of kings and emperors, that is through programs involving bribery, corruption, and patronage on one hand and intimidation, imprisonment, mobsterism, and murder on the other. 

Geller seems to understand, as I hope the majority of my peers and readers would, that one has either freedom or does not, and freedom, universally, begins with the freedom to speak openly, honestly, and responsibly and without compulsion.

At minute post 16:19, Geller asks, "Why do I subject myself to this?" and she provides the very best answer: "I do it for art, for music, for love, and for freedom."

So should we all, everywhere in the world: to create, express, love, and to be throughout our short stay our better and best selves for ourselves, for others, for God.

Those who impose on others, sometimes including those as close as family, to conform, derail, and subjugate the same to their own self-aggrandizing purposes?

Let them see themselves in popular reflection as they are or as they have become.

# # #

On Netanyahu's Speech Before Christians United for Israel Conference 2012

Before forgiveness: containment, self-control, self-restraint.

Before submission and enslavement: ethical challenge and confrontation.

Those most enjoying the flowdowns from Greco-Roman esprit and Judeo-Christian thought may be so accustomed to the possession of conscience and the transactional social virtues -- that combination of behaviors from which we have learned to refrain and those more helpful others that we have learned to pursue -- may well take for granted the fragility of the development, possession, and valueing of conscience, empathy, life, and love.

The thought that humans are not of nature, not wild, not in myriad ways as ethically unconscious as many other species, seems belied by the variety of dark and malicious behaviors pursued by and within the species: banditry, rape, and rapine in the name of God; a limitless greed expressed through a toughened illicit drug industry and breathtakingly distributed corruption and mobsterism worldwide.

Much may be credited to people who cannot contain themselves for want of their own aggrandizement. 

The King David part of the Prime Minister's speech stands before that ugly and perhaps still dominant drift in human affairs-- in my opinion, human child rearing and langauge acquisition -- begs to turn the tide. 

Century after millenia after century it succeeds but a little bit at a time.

My rabbi has noted that although God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, He sends an emissary, an angel, to forestall the act and never again directly addresses Abraham.  The interpretation of the close reading: perhaps God had expected Abraham to question his orders; perhaps God had expected Abraham to exercise and express the twin gifts illustrated by their overt absence but implied presence in the story: a consciousness about conditions and human relationships plus an an ethical conscience for determining cosmically, humanly, and socially a good courses of action within them.

# # #

 

A Simple Note from Guayaquil, Ecuador

"At this time, we know that more than twenty thousand Indigenous are walking directed to a small town called Chunchi, enter the Highlands of Chimborazo province, the heart of the mountains, walking during the day and night, with cold and rain, this is the largest indigenous protest of the history and the beginning of a civil war in Ecuador."

As I type this before midnight, March 14, 2012, it's about 60-deg.F. and raining in Chunchi, Chimborazo Province, Ecuador.

In relation to the above quoted statement, that's about how much I can get from the web.

Through my correspondent, I have photographs of the recent march supporting the interests of Ecuador's indigenous and criticizing the state's projects to mine without ample environmental protection, but nothing more than Hollywood would create "for atmosphere" by way of crowds and signage, not that they're not real, but in the same set from a kind of frontline, I don't have the newsies gift of digitally captured altercations, guns, or wreckage.

On the web, Al Jazeera featured the march without drama, and what might be gleaned from Google-translated friendly coverage seems altogether benign.

However, the unsettling themes in Central America's struggles may nonetheless be simmering along beneath the surface of the latest in crowd coverage.

On Ecuador and Hezbollah: Puder, Joseph.  "Latin America: Iran's New Front Against the U.S."  Front Page, February 7, 2012.

On Ecuador and heroin: Ramsey, Geofrey.  "Ecuador Poppy Field Find Highlights Shifting Heroin Production.  InterAmerican Security Watch, November 23, 2011.

On Ecuador and FARC: Times Topics.  "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC)."  The New York Times, November 7, 2011.

While the Catholic Church may expect it has a Catholic country in Ecuador and urban Ecuadorans may expect their rural counterparts to mirror their own political sentiments (and that may be, but who knows?), my correspondent as well as the maps leave much room for conflict, the former by complaining about the unconverted pagan, the latter by telling of yet a sprawling natural frontier far from anchored by high speed highways, strip malls, and, perhaps, military and police barracks.

The State of Ecuador has presence throughout Ecuador, no doubt -- that's how poppy fields fall into the hands of those whose duty it is to destroy them -- but it may lack for the omnipresent control and security so completed and smoothly adjusted in North America and Europe as to go largely unnoticed and unremarked except as a do-good benefit praised for fighting crime, roping in assorted crackpots on the far left and right who manage to make war plans and arm themselves, and sleuthing out the shadows creeping from beneath the dark robes the Muslim Brotherhood has woven into of a broadly distributed and poisonous language program with "realpolitik" ends.

Rafael Correa's state-that-would-be-99-percent-good-in-all-things would have to be much smaller to be so, and so it may be so with its cities, international trade, and good enough infrastructure to function where the same has been concentrated, but as much may leave for unsavory incursion whole regions of semi-autonomous and as yet unsettled -- and not altogether Christian -- space. 

Just as there now a historic mistake in trying to blame all Indigenous people for trying to provoke a coup state in Ecuador and to support FARC army, are the religious leaders, who studied in the Soviet Union and they are atheists, but they use these religious traditions indigenous to try to manipulate indigenous people, they have clay pots filled with water, earth and fruit to offer the gods, capture Christian churches and do ceremonies and rituals of worship fake gods and nature within the churches of the village and cities that fall under your [SIC] control, then, the indigenous people remember your [SIC] old traditions and practice again and they far away of the Christians faith.

Many of my fellow Americans would say to my correspondent, "So?"

But then too the funk of darker forces might drift in to bother the night air. 

Somewhere tomorrow in Ecuador, someone may be cultivating poppy, moving drugs overland for eventual shipping by "fast boat" or even "narco-submarine" (see NPR.  "Ecuador Seizes Drug-Running Super Submarine."  April 20, 2011) while the Indigenous gather together to march on Quito for clean water and respect, and Iran, ever interested in uranium as well as establishing a base for infuence in the western hemisphere, works at elbowing into Ecuador's still open physical and political frontiers (see Warrick, Joby.  "Iran seeking to expand influence in Latin America."  The Washington Post, January 1, 2012).

So how much may one unfunded communicator know -- or gather -- from how distant a chair, even one comfortably "connected with the world" via broadband?

I want to know what is going on this Thursday, March 15, 2012, from midnight to midnight, in Chunchi, Chimborozo Province, Ecuador.

I want the photographs captioned and a Skype connection to the photographer offered; I want to see the video, perhaps time stamped, and, say, somewhere between four minutes and four hours away from the event recorded. 

That day is coming. 

Big Media will see it -- is seeing it -- first.

I'm certain little media -- my kind of media -- will experience something like the same (but different) soon enough.

# # #

Putin's Election Wake -- Russia on the Take

Source: Beast TV, Women in the World.  "Masha Gessen: Putin Isn't Legitimate".  The Daily Beast, March 10, 2012.

It seems I can never cite the children's fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" too often, for far too often it echoes in the politician's modus operandi, both autocratic and democratic.  However, in democratic states, efforts to exchange a real truth -- observable subject, valid and reliable findings -- with a politically correct or advantageous one invariably lead to every manner of investigation, setting aside honeymoons with the press and "teflon presidencies", if not outright laughable absurdities. 

In autocratic states, the dictators put on shows and the cowardly and the corrupt enjoy them!

Or else!

And besides: for the price of complaceny, compliance, a lie or two or several, small or large, one may eat, live another day, scurry around beyond the edges of a shadow that might otherwise descend at any hour.

Everyone else may suffer, but who are they?

What matter the good?

After all, money doesn't stop moving when it gets to Putin.  It just flows through his turnstile, some portion becoming transformed into aggrandizing projects and patronage -- who can say others do not benefit? -- and the rest flows as directed or allowed as only the corrupt, on one hand, or patient, good willed, and befuddled, on the other, can know.

And all know money is fungible. 

A man or woman in possession of it can make it into anything desired (although making it into more money sometimes proves a trick, as one may lack for conscienable leverage or something attractive for selling).

Money invested or spent tells the character of its owner.

Some will flow beneath the president's hand for good; some will disappear in the making of a new and yet too familiar darkness.

One may go on with this tack: who is to say an Ayatollah, king, a ruling junta, a President-for-Life, a Big Boss should not have the right to all of the freedoms, privileges, properties, and rights enjoyed (at his or the ruling junta's sole discretion) by his loyal subjects?

What are the possessions of kind good conscience and discerning fair judgment compared to the adulation due an emperor? 

Take it to the end: what more enjoyable an idolatry that that associated with so captivating and monstrous a presence?

Go with it, fellow travelers.

Democracies enjoy invested citizens.

Autocracies of a certain and dismal depth enjoy subjugated spirits, awarding always the most loyal or least bothersome by managing their security -- or their sense of it -- and reaching, without constraint, friend as forever foe, deeply into their lives, minds, and pockets.

# # #

Qualities of Living - A Quick Note

The magazine International Living produces an annual country-by-country quality of life index for, presumably, American retirees and others looking for an expat's landing pad. Their index variables: cost of living, culture, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk. [1]

In my lengthening journey online and in-synch with some parts of my graduate work, I've taken note of "qualities of living" concieved as some combination of physical, psychological, and spiritual amenity nestled within geographical, political, and social accommodations.

There's more to being somewhere, anywhere, than may have to do with differentiating between being young and serving and older, established, and being served, however ambivalent one may be about the former or comforted by the latter. 

Moreover, setting peripatetic retirees or other wealthy enough jet setters aside, most of humanity hasn't a great choice about where it has happened to be born or living, and now communicating the differences in, say, personal "degrees of freedom", "religiosity" and "religious orientation", financial security, access to true, responsible, independent courts, justice, and "rule of law", customary lifestyles (a cultural variable) and phsycial and psychological "carrying capacity" (too few inhabitants, too many, just right for the area, landscape, resources available, and customary ideals associated with material distribution?), the negativity in the difference may carry some hurtful messages as well as challenges.

No one would wish to be caught in a country at the bottom of a "quality of life" index, but tens of millions of souls have gotten just that deal.

Can things far down the scale be made better or even completely reversed?

I'm confident about saying "yes!" to that question, but the true drivers of dire conditions may need to be understood and addressed to do it.

It may not help, for example, to bloviate all over "economic development" without accompanying conversations about cultural and social assumptions, behaviors, and stressors.

Most certainly as regards justice and security issues -- what could be called "fair deal" issues -- one cannot, must not, shy from the unchecked autocratic control of state revenues, the structuring of military and paramilitary forces, the corruption (ownership) of a judiciary at many levels, and birth-to-cradle control over language issues, access to information (start with a free press), and education.

I invite any to assess for themselves the relationship between the political and social affairs of their state and their state's rank in International Living's quality of life index. 

While looking over the 2011 numbers, do keep in mind that the top overall score is 86 (United States -- may as well stay home, lol) and the low score is 28 (Somalia -- as if one wouldn't guess; however, in the "0" freedom ranking dimension as distilled by International Living, Somalia shares the distinction with Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, North Korea, Burma, Turkmenistan, and Libya -- each state anarchic or locked down but equally badgered or obsessed with conflict and the many fragments of its own martial self-concept. 

Reference

1. International Living.  "International Living's Quality of Life Index 2011: Where the Numbers Come From."  December 30, 2010.

International Living.  "2011 Quality of Life Index."

International Living.  "Where to Find the World's Best Quality of Life in 2011."  December 30, 2011.

Razz Putin at the Criminal Inn -- Masha Gessen's Latest Book

Is their an honest general left in the house!?

"We showed that no one and nothing can tell us what to do. We were able to save ourselves from political provocations that have just one aim: to overturn the Russian state and usurp power. Such attempts will not succeed on our land. They won't succeed!" [1]

Perhaps in the Russia according to Moscow-based journalist Masha Gessen and not a few of the sources and subjects of her journalism, the Russian state has been already overtuned and power usurped by the very man who on his recent "election" (critics have placed the number of associated voting irregularities above 4,000) spoke the above words, turning outward to unnamed others, a common ploy in propaganda, his own most deeply seated motivations and world view.

Gessen, in her book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin [2] (published March 1, 2012), makes cases for the survival of the Soviet-era KGB through its acolyte Vladimir Putin and for several related terrorist incidents as KGB-managed false-flag operations designed to cement Putin's reputation as heroic in the minds of Russians.

Well, perhaps Putin had us fooled, but unlike the panicked denial of reality thrown around by the 911 Truthers (the hijackers weren't real; the Twin Towers had been set with explosive charges; advanced and invisible weapons technology had been used to bring down the buildings; etc.), Gessen sets out her cases calmly and factually. 

They are convincing.

For Gessen, nothing need be invented but only accurately, clearly, and completely compiled and sharply analyzed.

Gessen also handily covers what I'll call the "mobocratic" detentions, exiles, and rub-outs so familiar to watchers of dictatorships and press freedom and security issue.

 Gessen's book has come out -- no doubt planned -- shortly before Russia's elections (March 1, 2012) and its uptake may turn out critical to the popular challenge now unfolding in Moscow.  However, given the sense of the man (far, far better than Bush Jr.'s look 'em in the eye) through Gessen's meticulous journalism, Putin as Supreme Kleptocrat (my term -- I have a lot of fun with "kleptocats" as well as "kleptocrats", "thugocracies", "mobocracies", "theothugocracies" and all the colorful cousins of the same) seems to have a blazing temper matched to a most methodical bent for theivery, my impression, again, garnered from Masha Gessen but easily reinforced with a glance at what's online in The New York Times and elsewhere about Putin.

This is just in (20 minutes ago as I type):

Organizers said about 20,000 people showed up, far short of the crowds of 100,000 that turned out for previous rallies — but protesters were squeezed into a far smaller space on the iconic Pushkin Square and it was too early to gauge how intense the outrage would be. [2]

No doubt in deed and doublespeak, Putin will first attempt to paper over all charges layed against him by his critics and then choke off action on the street, as seems to be happening.  My bet: we will soon see tanks and gunfire, perhaps a suppression not to rival Stalin but rather excede him in the full flowering of familiar narcissistic sociopathathic monomania.

Given the breadth of Gessen's coverage plus the depth of the crimes should any sort of independent counsel and court find them true (journalists are at their best honest reporters, not prosecutors, and all prosecutors, any state, need to know that they are backed by at least one honest general, for generals, loyal or turned, determine the fate of all revolutions), Putin has left himself no position or place to which to retreat.

In a fair court finding -- call the so-far imaginary thing the "Special Tribunal for Russia" and like the other host it at the Hague -- the People of Russia would likely receive the Prince of Russia's palace.

At the moment, I'm finding my Yahoo link imports on Facebook unreliable -- somebody's scrambling something within Facebook or on the web, but in reference, I've copied titles and links faithfully.

For the reference, hit the YouTube page directly. Kensington25's caption: "Some footage I filmed this evening in St Isaac's Square in St Petersburg in Russia of protestors being arrested by riot police. Filmed on 5/3/12."

Reference

I've bolded the Kramer and Herszenhorn piece for its perfect fit with Gessen's assertions.  Also of special interest may be "Putin's Palace" -- leaked photos of unknown veracity (they also appear here: http://acidcow.com/pics/16596-httpruleaksnet1901.html) but oh my the scheme is to rival Versailles, if not to otherwise completely neutralize Napolean's message and those of subsequent revolutions.  Similar photographs appear of "Project South" under a Wikipedia entry, "Putin's Palace" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin's_Palace.  Well, perhaps Russia misses the old feudal lords, the grand aristocracy, the nobility, the age of kings. The Huffington Post, among others, last year carried a piece on the sale of the property -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/putins-palace-350-million_n_831480.html -- but if you look, the story gets murky as to, really, (really), who and how much and when are they moving in?

1. Parfitt, Tom.  "Russia election: Tearful Vladimir Putin declares victory."  The Telegraph, March 5, 2012.

2. Danilova, Maria and Nataliya Vasilyeva, AP.  "Thousands rally in Moscow to protest Putin's victory in Russian presidential election.  The Canadian Press via Yahoo News, March 5, 2012.

Browder, William.  "Hermitage Fund's William Browder."  As told to Diane Brady.  "The Hermitage Fund found and former Putin ally on how exposing corruption in Russia upended his business and changed his worldview."  Business Week, January 6, 2012.

Ganapolskiy, Matvey.  "Imagine That!  Putin Might Not Be So Pure After All."  Yael Levine, Translator. Huffington Post, March 15, 2010.

Gessen, Masha.  The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.  New York: Riverhead, Penguin Group, 2012.

Gessen, Masha.  "Russia After Putin." International Herald Tribune, IHT Global Opinion, Latitude, March 5, 2012.

Gessen, Masha.  "It's not just the Russian middle class in revolt -- this is a true mass movement."  The Guardian, March 3, 2012.

Heritage, Timothy.  "Russia's Putin faces protests after poll triumph."  AlertNet, Thompson Reuters Foundation, March 5, 2012.

Kramer, Andrew E.  "Major Investor in Russia Sees Wide Fraud Scheme."  The New York Times, July 30, 2009.

Kramer, Andrew E. and David M. Herszenhorn.  "Midas Touch in St. Petersburg: Friends of Putin Glow Brightly.  The New York Times, March 1, 2012.

Lebedev, Alexander.  "Abramovich, Berezovsky and the real story of Russia's lost billions."  The Guardian, January 16, 2012.

Loiko, Sergei L.  "Putin declares victory in Russian presidential election."  Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2012.

Emind at MilitaryPhotos.Net. "Putin's new private residence on Black Sea shore.  Note: I usually look for more than one appearance of the artifact but will chance it here with caution about making assumptions.  Gessen refers in her book to a plust-billion-dollar Black Sea complex owned by Putin, and this reference certainly fits the description provided.

Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty.  "Putin's Old Nemesis Speaks Out After Decade of Silence."  March 5, 2012.

Robbins, Carla Anne.  "Mr. Bush Gets Another Look Into Mr. Putin's Eyes."  The New York Times, June 30, 2007.

Walker, Amanda.  "Arrests At Protests After Putin Election Win."  Sky News via Yahoo, March 5, 2012.

Wikipedia.  "Masha Gessen."

Additions to Reference

The Economist.  "The beginning of the end of Putin."  March 3, 2012.

For Russia’s rulers, corruption is not a happy side-effect of power, but the core of the system. A small group of people wholly above the law has, in the past decade, become rich beyond the wildest dreams of the tsars. Mr Putin’s return to power would protect these ill-gotten gains. Reform would put them at risk.

Kelly, Lidia and Alissa de Carbonnel.  "Hundreds of anti-Putin protesters detained in Russia."  Reuters, March 5, 2012.

(Reuters) - Russian riot police detained more than 500 protesters including opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Monday at rallies challenging the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin's victory in the presidential election.

Note: YouTube videos-- catch-as-catch-can, not corroborated, not vetted, but IF the story takes hold, that is if demonstrations grow and suppression-related violance ramps up, one may expect to see more of such footage emerging from both big or capable media sources as well as amateur "I was there" recordings.

YouTube.  "Riot Police Clear Anti-Putin Protesters."  By "Digispyeu".

 

YouTube.  "Moscow, arrests, anti-Putin protest, breakingnews, news cyberfyi feed."  By "DARLENEHUGHES123".  March 5, 2012.

 

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Rianovosti.  "Thousands Protest Results of Presidential Elections in Central Moscow."  YouTube video -- http://youtu.be/aBJbLM5KL-E -- March 5, 2012.

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Russia Today.  "Mass arrests as anti-govt protesters stage Moscow sit-in."  Russia Today, March 5, 2012: http://youtu.be/rtNAQPfH_oA

As it is morning in Moscow, about 6 a.m., March 6, these last may be yesterday's news.  --jso # # #

'Zombie Muhammad" and Judge Mark W. Martin's Muddled Decision

"Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write," wrote Voltaire himself in a letter to Monsieur le Riche, dated February 6, 1770." [1]

"Magisterial district judges are not required to be lawyers, but if they are not, they must complete an educational course and pass a qualifying examination before they can take office. They must also complete one week of continuing education each year in a program administered by the Minor Judiciary Education Board (http://www.mjeb.org). [2]

 

     [3]

Listen carefully to Judge Mark W. Martin toward the end of the clip, and you will hear some fluffled confusion about rights, privileges, and responsibilities.  This is the huge rock on which he has slipped:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [4]

We may agree that while Ernest Perce V's costume and manner may have been provocative, as would have been that of the "Zombie Pope" marcher next to him -- and then who knows who else representing what in this parade -- the parade was legal and peacefully undertaken, every bit as much as the Selma to Montgomery marches of the Civil Rights Era that in weeks won protection by Federal forces against local political paramilitary junta, and every bit as legitimate under the constitutional rules as the post-WWII American Nazi Party's gambit to march through the Jewish enclave of Skokie, Illinois.

At the time of the proposed march in 1977, Skokie, a northern Chicago suburb, had a population of about 70,000 persons, 40,000 of whom were Jewish. Approximately 5,000 of the Jewish residents were survivors of the Holocaust. The residents of Skokie responded with shock and outrage. They sought a court order enjoining the march on the grounds that it would "incite or promote hatred against persons of Jewish faith or ancestry," that is was a "deliberate and willful attempt" to inflict severe emotional harm on the Jewish population in Skokie (and especially on the survivors of the Holocaust), and that it would incite an "uncontrollably" violent response and lead to serious "bloodshed." [5]

According to Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, the courts confronted with the scenario as he described it (for the Huffington Post two years ago) came each separately to the same conclusions: "In the end, the Illinois Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court contributed to the conclusion that Skokie could not enjoin the Nazis from marching."

The freedom to agree with a dictator, flatter a doofus, tell the naked emperor his clothes look swell, praise where praise is not due, and, altogether, refrain from offending a perhaps tender or, alternatively, a feared tyrannical ear, is no freedom at all, but such may be the freedom Judge Martin's well-intentioned, perhaps pacifying remarks, would seem to encourage.

May assorted enemies curse me as a Jew, my neighbors as Christians, perhaps too (why should I doubt it?) my Muslim acquaintance (anywhere in the world), as any may: in the United States, as I have known it, we much embrace the right (not the privilege) to responsibly, honestly, and most sincerely curse the same (and mock the same in funny costumes) right back.

As individuals, we may get off track some, run off the rails, deviate our more than 1.5 points from the median, but that too contributes to the working magic of real freedom within a society the works out its problems with ideas, words, and a little theater in place of criminal cabal and maniacal gunfire.

In this particular instance,the ranks of American athiests, as estimated by their their portion among the nation's available religious affiliations, tell their success in both defending and promoting their preferred way.  Most Americans neither endorse nor adopt their view [6].  However, I would contest the very same assert as their God-given or natural right for themelves and all humans that of speaking comically, earnestly, lawfully, responsibly,and freely on whatever subject concerns them.

Cited Reference

1. WikiAnswers.  "Who said I disapprove with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  n.d.

2. The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania.  "About the Courts". 

3. YouTube poster "Hatohms."  "Halloween Parade Story and Judge Mark Martin intervew on CNN at 5:48 p.m.

4. Wikipedia.  "First Amendment to the United States Constitution."

5. Stone, Geoffrey R.  "Remembering the Nazis in Skokie."  Huffington Post, April 19, 2009.

6. Wikidpedia.  "Demographics of Atheism."

A 2004 BBC poll showed the number of people in the US who don't believe in a god to be about 9%.^[10] A 2008 Gallup poll showed that a smaller 6% of the US population believed that no god or universal spirit exists.^[31] The most recent ARIS report, released March 9, 2009, found in 2008, 34.2 million Americans (15.0%) claim no religion, of which 1.6% explicitly describes itself as atheist (0.7%) or agnostic (0.9%), nearly double the previous 2001 ARIS survey figure of 0.9%.^[32] The highest occurrence of "nones", according to the 2008 ARIS report, reside in Vermont, with 34% surveyed.^[33]

The latest statistics show that a lack of religious identity increased in every US state between 1990 and 2008.^[34] However less than 2% of the U.S. population describes itself as atheist.^[35]

Other Reference

Geller, Pamela.  "Exclusive Interview: Infidel Victim of Pennsylvania Sharia Judge Reveals Inside Details of Case."  American Thinker, February 28, 2012.

Kemeny, Matthew.  "Judge in 'Zombie Muhammad' case is relocated after threats, criticism of ruling.  PennLive.com, February 28, 2012.

 Lat, David.  "The 'Zombie Mohammed' Judge: Let's Discuss.  Above the Law, February 29, 2012.

Pennsylvania Nonbelievers: Atheists, agnostics, nontheists, humanists and freethinkers.

Scolforo, Mark.  "Judge's Dismissal of Harassment Charge Goes Viral."  Associated Press via ABC News, February 29, 2012.

Stefanelli, Al.  "Muslim Admits to Attacking Atheist; Muslim Judge Dismisses Case.  Opposing Views, February 22, 2012.

Vacula, Justin.  "'zombie Mohammad' Ernest Perce threatened with jail for releasing audio of trial."  Examiner, February 20, 2012.

YouTube poster "eperce".  "A muslim Judge, Zombie Muhammad goes to court against the muslim attacker!"  February 19, 2012.  Recording of court proceedings accompanied by still photographs.

YouTube poster "SDAMatt2a" (Soledad O'Brien).  "Jackass Judge Mark Martin: Zombie Mohammad." CNN footage, posted to YouTube February 28, 2012. 

YouTube poster "TYT Network."  "Muslim Attacks Atheist for Insulting Muhammad?"  March 1, 2012.