Category Archives: Saddam Hussein

09/27/2014
3 Comments
Arab-American Discrimination, Chase Bank, Feisal Istrabadi, Financial Action Task Force, Huntington Bank, Iraq War, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Patriot Act, Saddam Hussein, TCF Bank, US Dept. of the Treasury, US Federal Reserve, Zaineb Istrabadi

Hot Air

Chase-ing Foreigners Away

I ran a blind item here a couple of weeks ago about “[o]ne of Bloomington’s most respected and beloved citizens” who claims she was given the bum’s rush by her bank because she is “closely related to someone who works for a foreign government.” Reps of this person’s bank (she spoke with a number of people on the phone regarding the matter) said they were sorry for giving her the thumb but that’s the way their bank interpreted the Patriot Act.

I elected to withhold the names of the person and the bank until I could speak with someone from that institution (although I did slip in a huge clue by mentioning the bank in question in another context.)

Anyway, I’ve finally contacted the bank and now have its side. So, here’s a fuller version of the story:

The ex-customer whose account was disco’d is Zaineb Istrabadi, a senior lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. Her ex-bank is Chase, the US consumer and commercial banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Zaineb was told that because her brother Feisal Istrabadi once worked for the government of Iraq, Chase would terminate her account. Born in the US in 1962, Feisal attended IU as an undergrad and graduated from the Maurer School of Law in 1988. He was in private practice until 2004, during which time he worked closely with members of the opposition to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

Istrabadis

Zaineb Istrabadi (L) & Feisal Istrabadi

[Zaineb photo — Herald Times]

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After Hussein’s overthrow by US-led forces in 2003, Feisal was rewarded by the new Iraq government with an ambassadorship to the United Nations. He returned to Bloomington in 2007 to take a job with his alma mater law school, where he is a professor of practice. He specializes in “research on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries in transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Feisal’s own Chase account, acc’d’g to Zaineb, was terminated “years ago,” ostensibly because he’d worked for the government of Iraq.

Zaineb, who lives with her ailing mother, says she received a call one morning from her Chase branch office. After some hemming and hawing, the rep said, “Your business is no longer welcome at Chase.”

Zaineb says she’s been a customer of the same bank for at least 10 years. JPM Chase was the third company to own the bank during her term as a customer there. The way Zaineb sees it, she should have been considered a Chase customer for all those ten-plus years.

When Zaineb asked why Chase was taking this action, she was told the Patriot Act was to blame. Or, at least, Chase’s interpretation of same. Zaineb adds that all the Chase reps she spoke with were “extremely apologetic.”

Nevertheless, Zaineb was left looking to park her cash in another bank, which she’s done. She’s also hurt and angry. She says she’s contacted some Arab-American advocacy groups to see what hell they might be able to raise about the situation.

For its part, Chase says it’s operating within the guidelines imposed on it by federal regulators. A Chase employee on the regional level told me, “It’s not the Patriot Act,” that led to Zaineb’s account termination.

Zaineb, acc’d’g to this Chase employee, “is a politically exposed person according to our regulators.” This person says Chase will not offer accounts to anybody with connections to “non-US people” working for foreign governments. This person says the practice is “due to the regulators.”

The person explains: “The regulations are so strenuous around these accounts that we never do business with these accounts anymore.”

Here’s Chase’s corporate line: “This decision is not a reflection on how these customers have handled their accounts, but rather a result of our focus on internal controls.”

Chase Bank is regulated by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a bureau of the Department of the Treasury. Parent JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a multinational banking and financial services holding company with assets of more than $2.5 trillion. That’s trillion. With a T. It is regulated by the Federal Reserve. The regulations my Chase source is talking about come from the OCC.

Chase Architecture

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Zaineb Istrabadi’s experience with her ex-bank is not unique. Arab-Americans around the country are receiving termination notices from their banks. The Arab-American Civil Rights League has filed a class-action lawsuit against Ohio-based Huntington Bank in the US District Court in Detroit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations–Michigan appealed to the OCC to investigate Chase Bank‘s mass account terminations this past spring. The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida has asked the US Justice Department to sniff around for racial or religious discrimination in the national rash of account closures. Sofian Zakout, who heads American Muslims for Emergency and Relief Inc., had both his business and personal accounts terminated. A Minneapolis dentist begged TCF Bank to allow him to reopen his joint account with his wife but was rebuffed.

Much of this purging of Arab-Americans from banks’ customer rolls is due to various institutions’ interpretations of the OCC’s regulations. Here’s how Chase Bank interprets them:

Chase is no longer offering personal and business banking accounts to current or former senior non-U.S. officials, their immediate families, or close associates, given the significant and ongoing regulatory requirements to maintain the accounts. 

Regulatory guidance requires that banks perform specialized oversight and monitoring of these types of clients – requiring a significant amount of resources to support a relatively small group of customers. 

The above paragraphs arose in response to a June, 2013, guidance document issued by the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF describes itself this way:

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an independent inter-governmental body that develops and promotes policies to protect the global financial system against money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The FATF Recommendations are recognised as the global anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) standard.

Some 34 nations as well as the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council are members of the FATF. They are joined by dozens of associate members and observer organizations. It’s an all-star cast of players in the international monetary game.

In short, certain foreign gov’t officials and their kin are under suspicion. Their financial transactions must be strictly monitored. Such oversight costs time and money. The banks, ergo, figure it ain’t worth it.

Bye bye, Istrabadis — and countless other Arab-Americans. It’s not clear at this point if the same monitoring is required, say, of consuls and ambassadors from the United Kingdom or Monaco. In any case, Zaineb Istrabadi wonders how any foreign official working in the United States can pay her or his credit card bill. “How do they do their banking?” she says.

She only knows she and her brother are not doing their banking with Chase anymore.

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06/13/2014
4 Comments
al Qaeda, Big Oil, Civil Rights Act of 1964, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Halliburton, Iraq War, Islamic State in Iraq & Syria (ISIS), Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Racism, Saddam Hussein

Hot Air

Crime Of The Century

So, al Qaeda and its brethren are taking over Iraq right before our very eyes.

Nice, huh?

ISIS Commandos

Iraq’s Nightmare (Photo: Reuters)

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Looks like those +125,000 dead Iraqis as well as 4400 dead US soldiers gave their lives for nothing.

Nothing, friends. Not a thing.

Did I mention we’d spent up to $4 trillion USD on that decade-long slaughter?

All because Georgy-Boy Bush and his coatholders and co-conspirators scared the bejesus out of us with talk of mushroom clouds and poison gas attacks — that weren’t going to come because bad old Saddam Hussein was nowhere near possessing such weapons (the nukes) or having the ability to deliver them (the gas) to New York City, Ellettsville, Wrigleyville and points west.

We fought that pointless, bullshit war because the Bush administration — which hadn’t been elected by a majority of American voters, in case you’ve forgotten — believed it was its god-given duty to remake the Middle East so that multinational engineering firms and oil companies could more easily and happily extract dollars therefrom. The fact that Georgy-Boy’s Poppy had not delivered said hegemony to the global plutocracy also was a motivating factor; the Bush family’s Big Dick legacy was preserved, thanks to the rivers of blood Shock and Awe produced.

Bush

Believe Us, America

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Sadly, our holy land must reconcile itself to the reality that we have committed yet another crime against humanity.

Not that terribly many of us care.

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Hide Your Hate, America

And speaking of America’s crimes against humanity, we did our best to rectify a big one 50 years ago this summer. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the comprehensive Civil Rights Act into law.

July 2, 1964

LBJ Gives Martin Luther King The Signing Pen (Photo: AP)

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Throughout the first half of the year, though, the US Senate wrestled over the bill and, quite frankly, its passage was far from assured. Republican senators from southern states filibustered from late March through early June to prevent a vote. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virgina) alone filibustered for more than fourteen hours on June 10th. Before that, Senator Richard Russell (R-Georgia), told his colleagues, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states.”

A small group of senators from both parties crafted a compromise bill that eventually passed, leading to the Johnson signing.

The bill, it should be noted, forbids discrimination by federal and state agencies against people on account of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also banned discrimination against those groups by businesses that provide “public accommodation” — hotels, for instance, and restaurants. The bill called for an end to unequal application of laws and eligibility requirements in voter registration as well as in school admissions.

Imagine that respected senators could stand in loud and forceful opposition to those ideals and not be pilloried. Things are different today, of course. People have learned how to hide such bigotry behind code words and misdirection.

At least we don’t tolerate blatant assholery anymore.

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12/10/2012
2 Comments
50 Shades of Chicken, 9/11, Aaron Freeman, Bill O'Reilly, Boice Tomlin, Book Corner, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, Heaven Is For Real, Iraq War, Maureen Dowd, Public Opinion Polls, Republican Party, Ryder Film Series, Saddam Hussein, Sam Cooke, United Nations

The Pencil Today:

HotAirLogoFinal Monday

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THE QUOTE

“Who would have ever thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would have ever thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would have ever thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would have ever thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?” — Maureen Dowd

Dowd

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YOU AND IRAQ

Comic and politico Aaron Freeman has put out a call for anyone who can honestly say she or he was not taken in by the Bush Administration’s rationalizations for the Iraq War in late 2002 and early 2003.

Freeman

Aaron Freeman

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You remember, don’t you? Georgey-boy, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and even Colin Powell stood on their heads to implant the images of bloodthirsty brown people, mushroom clouds, and general panic in our imaginations in order to snow us into attacking the Saddam Hussein regime.

Perhaps the saddest moment of the buildup to war was Secretary of State Powell half-heartedly trying to sell the United Nations General Assembly on “evidence” that Hussein and his wild-eyed pals were thisclose to launching a big one against this holy land.

The funnyman — Freeman, not Bush — wonders why anyone would have doubted the word of the Bushies, considering the fact that most highly intelligent people he knew at the time bought the casus belli hook, line, and sinker.

9/11 Panic

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So, take yourself back some ten years to those glory days of yore. Try to remember what you were thinking at the time. And don’t forget we were only a little more than a year past the 9/11 attacks. Be honest and tell us, in the poll below, if you bought the Bush line or you thought, even as we were gassing up our B-2 Stealth Bombers, that he and his gang were full of shit.

Oh, and leave a comment in the box labeled “Other” explaining why you thought one way or the other.

Thanks in advance.

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POLL WATCHING

From phdcomic.com

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THE SHORT OF IT

That’s all for today, kiddies. I been working my fingertips to the bone, trying to get the new Ryder magazine and film series website off the ground, along with publisher Peter LoPilato and developer Boice Tomlin. As a result, I feel lazy today.

Remember to stop in at The Book Corner. A few words of advice, though. Do not buy either of Bill O’Reilly’s bestsellers, “Killing Lincoln” and “Killing Kennedy.” Do not buy “50 Shades of Chicken.” And do not buy any of those I-died-and-went-to-heaven books.

Book Cover

Don’t You Dare!

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Reading should improve your mind, not shrink it.

Otherwise, buy anything you want.

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CHAIN GANG

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10/27/2012
1 Comment
Abortion, Birthers, Business Insider, CNN, Colin Powell, Eric Holder, Gayle Cook, John H. Sununu, Richard Mourdock, Saddam Hussein, Terri Schiavo, United Nations

The Pencil Today:

■

THE QUOTE

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” — Eric Holder

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PICK YOUR PRESIDENT

Get out of bed, splash some water on your face, throw your sweatclothes on, and go vote.

Yup, you can do it today. Special Saturday hours at The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St. are 9am-4pm.

Why wait?

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SUNUNU NEWS

Yes, the Republicans are incredibly good at sticking their feet in their mouths.

And even when they’re not misspeaking, their heartfelt utterances are enough to scare the rest of us half to death. For instance, I have no doubt Richard Mourdock honestly and truly believes what he said the other night about rape babies being conceived because god intends it. If I had a womb, I’d be sleeping with the lights on at this point.

But sometimes they speak real truths. It makes me feel all soiled to say it but John H. Sununu’s take on Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama is just such a case.

The Sudden “Liberal”

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Sununu, the first President Bush’s chief of staff and now a spokesmodel for the Romney campaign, told CNN Thursday night that Powell is backing the Prez because they’re both black.

Oh, my side of the fence is going bananas over that one. How dare he say such a thing! the wisdom goes.

To which I say, Bah!

Look, Colin Powell was such a loyal Republican that he allowed himself to be trotted out before the world and the United Nations with the Bush Administration’s flimsy argument that Saddam Hussein was cooking up weapons of mass destruction during the lead-in to our misguided war with Iraq.

Just Trust Us, Okay?

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He served as Secretary of State under a president so divisive and partisan that he made Ronald Reagan look like a professional arbitrator.

Now all of a sudden he’s behind a Democrat who’s so vilified by the Republicans that a significant percentage of them don’t believe he was born in this country and many of their theorists suggest he’s out to destroy the land he presides over.

I don’t buy it. Sununu’s right. Powell’s backing Barack because they share skin color.

Sununu’s mistake was speaking such a harsh truth out loud. We’re the ones who should be embarrassed because we can’t take it.

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FUN WITH NUMBERS

Gayle Cook is now the richest human being in Indiana.

So says Business Insider in the online mag’s feature this week on the wealthiest person in each of the 50 states.

Bill Cook’s widow can spend her days and nights counting 3.4BB bucks, according to BI’s estimate of her wealth.

Let’s pretend she can magically transform all that wealth into so much cash in the snap of a finger. Then let’s say she decides to go on a spending spree. Say she sets a goal of spending $10,000 a day, just for kicks. She can buy anything she wants every day as long as she doesn’t exceed that 10k limit.

Reimagining Gayle As A Drunken Sailor

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She could, for instance, buy sirloin steak for herself and all her friends as well as a decent number of Bloomingtonians today. At about $6.47 a pound, she’d be able to purchase 1545.6 pounds of the juicy stuff. That’s just in a day, I might remind you.

Say instead, she wanted to fill as many people’s cars up at the gas station as her ten grand would allow. Last I checked, gas was going for $3.45 a gallon here in Bloomington. Assuming all her pals’ hot rods need an average of 10 gallons to top off, she’ll be able to make some 299 people deliriously happy.

We’re talking dough, right?

Even at that rate of expenditure, Gayle Cook would need some 931 years to burn through all her cash.

Sheesh.

Here are some other folks who are the richest in their states:

  • Idaho’s Frank VanderSloot is worth $1.2BB. He’s the CEO of Melaleuca, a company that runs a multi-level marketing racket based on an iffy tree oil potion. By the way, VanderSloot has thrown about a million bucks Mitt Romney’s way so far this year.
  • Tennessee’s Thomas Frist is worth $3BB. He helped Harlan Sanders start Kentucky Fried Chicken and then went on to start up the Hospital Corporation of America, the largest for-profit hospital operator on the globe. Daddy-o Thomas’s kid is Tennessee Senator Bill Frist. Remember him? He was the guy who determined celebrity vegetable Terri Schiavo to be taking a nap back in 2001 merely by glancing at some video footage of her.
  • Illinois’ Sam Zell is worth $3.9BB. He purchased the Tribune Company back in 2008. The Tribune newspaper is driving itself out of business and the Tribune’s former property, the Chicago Cubs, are, well, the Chicago Cubs.
  • Michigan’s Richard DeVos, Sr. is worth $5.1BB. He founded the nation’s biggest multi-level marketing racket, AmWay.
  • John Menard of Wisconsin is worth $6BB. He founded the Menard’s home improvement chain and threw scads of money at Gov. Scott Walker to support his union-busting efforts. Menard also counts the Koch Boys as close pals.
  • Oregon’s Philip Knight is worth $13BB. His Nike outfit sells shoes for a hundred dollars-plus a pop even though they’re worth pennies in materials and are manufactured by tots who are chained in galley ships and are whipped by former gladiators.
  • Virginia’s Forrest Mars is worth $17BB. His Mars candy company makes Snickers bars. He’s worth every penny he has.

Nougat, Peanuts, Caramel, Chocolate — Genius!

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  • Nevada’s Sheldon Adelson is worth $20.2BB. He is Satan incarnate.
  • David Koch of Kansas is worth $32.1BB. Oops, I made a mistake. He’s Satan incarnate.

From all I hear, Gayle Cook’s a good soul, as was her husband. Can’t say the same about the rest of them (although Forrest Mars deserves the Nobel Prize in Candymaking.)

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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.

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Saturday, October 27th, 2012

FOOD ◗ City Hall, Showers Building parking lot — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

VOTE TODAY ◗The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 9am-4pm

BENEFIT WALK ◗ IU Memorial Stadium — 2012 Bloomington Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention & Awareness; 9am-noon

CLASS ◗ Monroe County Public Library — VITAL English as a Second Language tutor training, 1st of 2 sessions; 10am

STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October

POETRY & BOOKS ◗ Various locations around IU campus & Bloomington — Sylvia Plath Symposium 2012, celebrating 50 years since the publication of her “Ariel” collection, Through Saturday, Today’s highlights at IU Woodburn Hall:

  • Theme: 50 Years of “Ariel” and “The October Poems“
  • Karen Kukli on PLath’s archival references to “Fever 103“; 10-10:50am
  • Linda Adele Goodine on the video, “Bee Asana: Healing of Plath,” & the “Seneca Honey Series” photos; 11-11:50am
  • Suzie Hanna & Tom Simmons on the animated film, “Girl Who Would Be God“; Noon-12:50pm
  • Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick on cultural/medico/political aspects of trauma & narrative in “Ariel“; 2-2:25pm
  • Lynda K. Bundtzen on Plath’s “Bee Sequence” poems; 2:30-3:20pm
  • Langdon Hammer 0n Plath’s German “Daddy” & “Lorelei“; 3:30-4:20pm
  • Heather Clark & Anita Helle on Otto Plath’s FBI files & scientific works; 4:30-5:20pm
  • Heather Clark, Langdon Hammer, Anita Helle, & Peter K. Steinberg on archiving Otto Plath; 5:25-5:55pm
  • Linda Gates’ “Mushroom” puppetry & Caroline Harris, Matt Kuyawa, Marek Pavlovski, & Sophie Rich drama dialog of “Blood Jet Is Poetry: The Shared Poetic Language of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes,” discussion led by Laura Passin; 6-7:30pm
  • Book Signing; 7:30pm

LECTURE ◗ IU Swain Hall West — “Mars: Update on the Curiosity Probe,” Presented by IU Geology Department chair Lisa Pratt; 11am-noon

ARTS FEST ◗ Foxfire Park, Nashville — Fall Fine Arts Festival; 11am-6pm

LECTURE ◗ IU Swain Hall West — Physics professor Harold Ogren talks about the Higgs Boson; Noon-1pm

OPERA ◗ IU Musical Arts Center — Indiana District round of Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions; Noon

MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Robbie Bowden; Noon

BENEFIT ◗ Ellington Stables, 680 W. That Rd. — Adoption Day, For Horse Angels Rescue abused & neglected horse care program; 1-5pm

SPORTS ◗ IU Field Hockey Complex — Hoosier women’s field hockey vs. Ohio State; 1pm

LECTURE ◗ IU Swain Hall West — Political science professor Bill Bianco American & Russian cooperation in the International Space Station; 1-2pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Haunted Hayride and Stables — Friendly hayrides; 1-7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Pre-College Strings Halloween Concert; 1-2pm

STAGE ◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — “Richard III“; 2pm

DANCE & BENEFIT ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — “Thrill the World 2012,” Dozens dance Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” For Cardinal Stage Company; 2pm

STORYTELLING ◗ IU Art Museum — Spooky Stories in the Gallery, Presented by Bloomington Storytellers Guild; 2-4pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Lake Monroe, Paynetown SRA — Ghostly Gathering, party, campsite decorating contest, trick or treat, costume contest, “ghost” hunt; 2:30pm through Sunday at 5pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Bride of Frankenstein” & “Freaks“; 3pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Pre-College Harp Halloween Recital; 3-5pm

BENEFIT ◗ St. Paul Catholic Center — Great American bake Sale, For Share Our Strength childhood hunger program; 4:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Bloomington High School North — “Symphonic Spooktacular,” Presented by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra; 5pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Senior Recital: Janessa Reames, soprano; 5pm

BENEFIT ◗ Cardinal Stage Company Building — “Cast a Spell” adult halloween party; 6-10pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Li-An Chen on piano; 6pm

PERFORMANCE ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Different Drummer Belly Dancers; 6-8pm

FILM ◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “All Together“; 7pm

SPORTS ◗ IU Gymnasium — Hoosier volleyball vs. Michigan; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Little Merrie Simmons; 7-9pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Haunted Hayride and Stables — Scary hayrides; 7-11pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Bakers Junction Railroad Museum — Haunted train; 7pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Frank Southern Ice Arena — Skate & Scare, skating, haunted house, cider, trick or treat; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Senior Recital: Cameron Smith on trombone; 7pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — Ultra-Low Budget Double Feature: “The Gamers: Dorkness Rising” & “Beverly Lane“; 7pm

STAGE ◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — “Richard III“; 7:30pm

FILM ◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “All Together“; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Faculty & Guest Recital: William Ludwig on bassoon, Kay Kim on piano; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Jerome & the Psychics, Agent Ribbons, The Gypsies; 8:30-11pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bluebird — Jon McLaughlin; 9pm

STAGE ◗ Bloomington High School South — Comedy, “Once Upon a Mattress”; 7:30pm

HALLOWE’EN FILM ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — “Rocky Horror Picture Show“; 7:30pm

MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Post Modern Jazz Quartet; 8pm

COMEDY ◗ The Comedy Attic — Michael Winslow; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — The Dynamics Halloween Party; 8pm

STORYTELLING ◗ Max’s Place — — “Bone-Chilling Stories,” Presented by the Bloomington Storytelling Project; 8pm

FILM ◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “The Campaign“; 8pm

FILM ◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Side by Side“; 8:30pm

HALLOWE’EN ◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Bloomington Burlesque Brigade’s Halloween Horror Show; 10pm

COMEDY ◗ The Comedy Attic — Michael Winslow; 10:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — Players Ball; 11pm

FILM ◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “The Campaign“; 11pm

HALLOWE’EN FILM ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — “Rocky Horror Picture Show“; 11:30pm

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ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “New Acquisitions,” David Hockney; through October 21st
  • “Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
  • “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
  • “Threads of Love: Baby Carriers from China’s Minority Nationalities“; through December 23rd
  • “Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st
  • “Embracing Nature,” by Barry Gealt; through December 23rd
  • “Pioneers & Exiles: German Expressionism,” through December 23rd

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “Ab-Fab — Extreme Quilting,” by Sandy Hill; October 5th through October 27th
  • “Street View — Bloomington Scenes,” by Tom Rhea; October 5th through October 27th
  • “From the Heartwoods,” by James Alexander Thom; October 5th through October 27th
  • “The Spaces in Between,” by Ellen Starr Lyon; October 5th through October 27th

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibit:

  • Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf; through November 16th
  • Small Is Big; Through November 16th

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibits:

  • “A Place Aside: Artists and Their Partners;” through December 20th
  • “Gender Expressions;” through December 20th

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibit:

  • “CUBAmistad” photos

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

  • “¡Cuba Si! Posters from the Revolution: 1960s and 1970s”
  • “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
  • “Thoughts, Things, and Theories… What Is Culture?”
  • “Picturing Archaeology”
  • “Personal Accents: Accessories from Around the World”
  • “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”
  • “The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey through Mid-century America”
  • “TOYing with Ideas”
  • “Living Heritage: Performing Arts of Southeast Asia”
  • “On a Wing and a Prayer”

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit:

  • “Outsiders and Others: Arkham House, Weird Fiction, and the Legacy of HP Lovecraft;” through November 1st
  • “A World of Puzzles,” selections from the Slocum Puzzle Collection

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Soup’s On — Exhibit:

  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Culture: “CUBAmistad photos; through October

PHOTOGRAPHY ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibit:

  • “Bloomington: Then and Now,” presented by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • Doctors & Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical Professions
  • What Is Your Quilting Story?
  • Garden Glamour: Floral Fashion Frenzy
  • Bloomington Then & Now
  • World War II Uniforms
  • Limestone Industry in Monroe County

The Ryder & The Electron Pencil. All Bloomington. All the time.

08/04/2012
Leave a comment
al Qaeda, Antonin Scalia, Duck and Cover, Eugenics, Forced Sterilization, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth, Iraq War, Michele Bachmann, Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, Nixonland, Nuclear Weapons, Occupy Wall Street, Omar N. Bradley, PBS, Revolution, Richard M. Nixon, Rick Perlstein, Saddam Hussein, Tea Party, US Army, US Supreme Court, Watts Riots

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” — Omar Bradley

♢

BOOM!

WFIU reports that the US Army is staging a two-week nuclear explosion response simulation through mid-August right here in South Central Indiana.

Some 10,000 soldiers and civilian responders are play-acting what they’ll do in the event that some mad brown people drop a nuke on, say, Bloomington or even Indy.

The big burlesque is happening at the Muscatatuck Urban training Center, about 75 miles east-southeast of Bloomington.

Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (Click to enlarge)

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MUTC covers a thousand acres and has more than a hundred training buildings including structures up to seven stories tall as well as good old split-level suburban type homes.

Now, I mention mad brown people because that’s who we’re really afraid is going to hurl the big one at us, no?

Didn’t George W. Bush whisper the words mushroom cloud and Saddam Hussein into our ears back in 2002 and 2003 to convince us to go along with him and his cronies on their war party? How much has changed regarding how we look at Arabs and Muslims since then?

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When Michele Bachmann can get media mileage and a sharp increase in campaign donations out of linking one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides with al Qaeda even now, we haven’t moved an inch off that witless, brainless dime in ten years.

Anyway, MUTC is located, appropriately enough, on the former site of the Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth. Adding to the irony of it all, the IFCFMY is where several thousand forced sterilizations took place after Indiana became the first state in the union to allow that eugenic practice.

I wonder if the people who ran IFCFMY instructed the kids to duck and cover back in the ’50s.

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And how feeble-minded do we have to be to figure we’ll survive a nuclear blast if only we have enough ambulances and EMTs?

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WHAT’S THE ANTIDOTE FOR ANTONIN?

I’ve been taking my time reading Rick Perlstein’s fab book, “Nixonland,” this summer.

Perlstein posits that Dick Nixon was the first television era president to give voice to the bleatings and ramblings of the gleefully uneducated in this holy land.

Rick Perlstein

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Nixon’s was truly a grass roots campaign in 1968. He portrayed college-educated people as snobbish, superior, sex- and drug-crazed lunatics who were going to ram blacks, Jews, peace, welfare, and even a little bit of the Communist Manifesto down good people’s throats. Nixon was savvy enough to realize most Americans had a hard enough time getting out of high school.

He rode a wave of self-pity and manufactured paranoia into the White House.

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The divisions Nixon capitalized on in the United States at the time make today’s Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street tête-à-tête look like a pillow fight.

Perlstein suggests that this nation avoided an actual second civil war by a hair’s width. Bombings, murders, assassinations, mob actions, and the army on American streets were as common from 1965 through 1973 as texting while driving is today.

Watts, August 1965

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Anyway, during Nixon’s early years in the White House, PBS was coming into its own as a news operation to be reckoned with, especially since it didn’t have to answer to advertisers. PBS started nosing into some of the more unsavory aspects of the Nixon administration. The President directed the general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy to draw up a plan to defang PBS.

That general counsel wrote memos spelling out precisely how Nixon could bring PBS to heel. He wrote: “The best possibility for White House influence is through Presidential appointees to the Board of Directors.”

Once Nixon had stacked the board with his boys, they could then work on local PBS stations to play ball with the White House through the granting of moneys that were originally meant to go to the national network. The reason? The national network was top heavy with people from “the liberal Establishment of the Northeast.”

In other words, college-educated men. Bad guys who must be battled.

The author of that strategy was a fellow named Antonin Scalia, now the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court.

Antonin Scalia: Warrior Against Liberals

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Yeah, there was a revolution in the ’60s. Only the guys in power staged it — and won it.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

◗ Bloomington High School North — Yard sale to benefit the Color Guard; 7am-noon

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Fairgrounds — Day 8, 2012 Monroe County Fair, Veterans Program; 2pm — Dead Giveaway; 5pm — Demolition Derby; 7pm; Noon to 11pm

◗ IU Art Museum — Tour: Exploring German Expressionism with docent Yelena Polyanskaya; 2pm

◗ IU Art Museum — Talk: Focus on Hockney with curator Nan Brewer; 2:15pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “David Hockney: The Bigger Picture”; 3pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet; 7pm

◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Original musical, “Dreams & Nightmares”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Jeb Brester; 7-9pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast”; 7:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Cari Ray, The Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band;  7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 8pm

◗ Cafe Django — Dave Gulyas & Dave Bruker; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Costaki Economopolous; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Oslo: August 31”; 8:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Jason Wilber, e.a. strother; 8:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Pam Thrash Retro; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Lexi Minich and the Strangers; 9pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Bonz; 9:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Otto Mobile; 10:30pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; opens Friday, August 3rd, through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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