http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080612_taking_back_the_republic/

Gore Vidal’s Article of Impeachment

by Gore Vidal

Jun 11, 2008

On June 9, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberties and the Constitution itself.

I wish to draw the attention of the blog world to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment presented to the House in order that two faithless public servants be removed from office for crimes against the American people. As I listened to Rep. Kucinich invoke the great engine of impeachment—he listed some 35 crimes by these two faithless officials—we heard, like great bells tolling, the voice of the Constitution itself speak out ringingly against those who had tried to destroy it.

Although this is the most important motion made in Congress in the 21st century, it was also the most significant plea for a restoration of the republic, which had been swept to one side by the mad antics of a president bent on great crime. And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment.

But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic, and so I turned, as I often do, to the foreign press for a clear report of what has been going on in Congress. We all know how the self-described “war hero,” Mr. John McCain, likes to snigger at France, while the notion that he is a hero of any kind is what we should be sniggering at. It is Le Monde, a French newspaper, that told a story the next day hardly touched by The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or, in fact, any other major American media outlet.

As for TV? Well, there wasn’t much—you see, we dare not be divisive because it upsets our masters who know that this is a perfect country, and the fact that so many in it don’t like it means that they have been terribly spoiled by the greatest health service on Earth, the greatest justice system, the greatest number of occupied prisons—two and a half million Americans are prisoners—what a great tribute to our penal passions!

Naturally, I do not want to sound hard, but let me point out that even a banana Republican would be distressed to discover how much of our nation’s treasury has been siphoned off by our vice president in the interest of his Cosa Nostra company, Halliburton, the lawless gang of mercenaries set loose by this administration in the Middle East.

But there it was on the first page of Le Monde. The House of Representatives, which was intended to be the democratic chamber, at last was alert to its function, and the bravest of its members set in motion the articles of impeachment of the most dangerous president in our history. Rep Kucinich listed some 30-odd articles describing impeachable offenses committed by the president and vice president, neither of whom had ever been the clear choice of our sleeping polity for any office.

Some months ago, Kucinich had made the case against Dick Cheney. Now he had the principal malefactor in his view under the title “Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush”! “Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate.” The purpose of the resolve is that he be duly tried by the Senate, and if found guilty, be removed from office. At this point, Rep. Kucinich presented his 35 articles detailing various high crimes and misdemeanors for which removal from office was demanded by the framers of the Constitution.

Update: On Wednesday, the House voted by 251 to 166 to send Rep. Kucinich’s articles of impeachment to a committee which probably won’t get to the matter before Bush leaves office, a strategy that is “often used to kill legislation,” as the Associated Press noted later that day.

ARTHUR NEEDS YOU!

We are looking for an energetic, people-friendly and organized intern for Arthur Magazine based in the East Bay, Ca.

This is the perfect opportunity to learn how magazines work and get vital experience in the publishing industry. You will be working in the Bay Area Arthur office alongside comics publisher Buenaventura Press on distribution, subscriptions and promotions. We are based in Oakland, just two stops down from the UC Berkeley campus on BART.

This position is 6 hours a week unpaid, any day from Mon-Fri. Training is provided.
Paid position available if qualified.

Skills needed: Organization, good communication, efficiency, but mainly enthusiasm!

Experience with the following programs a plus: MS Office, InDesign, Photoshop (all Mac).

Duties include: Maintaining subscription and distribution databases, customer service, promotion and orders.

If this sounds good to you and you think you fit this description, please send a resume to orders at arthurmag dot com and we’ll get back to you!

Occult L.A.

Los Angeles has long been home to one of America’s most powerful occult scenes. The frontier town was already packed with Theosophists and Hindu gurus when the mystic Manly P. Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society in 1934 and started compiling the largest occult library west of the Mississippi. Some of Aleister Crowley’s most influential followers also made the Southland a crucial center of Crowley’s magickal religion of Thelema. Tonight’s program will combine presentations by independent scholars, and experimental esoteric films from Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, Chick Strand, and others. Leading the evening will be Arthur columnist Erik Davis, author of “The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape.” Also presenting will be Louis Sahagun, author of “Master of the Mysteries”, a new bio of Manly P. Hall; and Brian Butler, an expert on the life of Cameron, mistress of JPL rocket scientist Jack Parsons and LA’s most intriguing enchantress.

Tickets – $12/ $8 for members

Legendary animator/filmmaker/artist/groundbreaker Ralph Bakshi, subject of Arik Moonhawk Roper’s appreciative pictorial/essay in Arthur No. 29, will be making a very rare L.A. appearance this Saturday, June 14 at a special Arthur-presented event at Meltdown Comics and Toys on Sunset…

Bakshi helmed WIZARDS, FRITZ THE CAT, AMERICAN POP, FIRE AND ICE, LORD OF THE RINGS, the MIGHTY MOUSE TV series and many other American filmic treasures. A rare combination of vision, integrity and talent-spotting has endeared him to generations of animators AND film fans.

Come meet who the fuss is all about.

Click on the flyer for more info at meltcomics.com—

Activists seek to counter military recruiters on L.A. campuses

Group will ask school officials for access to high school facilities. But some say their message is controversial.

By Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

LATimes, June 8, 2008

Troubled by military recruiting at Los Angeles high schools, activists are seeking equal access to students on campus to provide what they say is unvarnished information about the armed forces and information about nonmilitary careers.

The Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools*, a Southern California group of educators, volunteers and veterans dedicated to promoting nonviolent alternatives to military service, is taking the proposal to the Los Angeles Board of Education, saying it is vital that students have the truth about military enlistment. That “truth,” however, is subjective: Some view the group’s literature as controversial itself.

Recruiters “are marketers. They have a quota, and it’s their job to get students to sign up. So just like a car salesman, they’re going to say everything they can to get students to sign up,” said Arlene Inouye, coordinator of the nonprofit South Pasadena-based group funded by grants and donations.

“The most important thing we want to tell students is that the military enlistment decision is probably one of the — if not the — most important decision in their life. It’s a really serious matter. They need to hear about some of the realities of what veterans have experienced and what the military enlistment contract actually says.”

Some military officials questioned the peace group’s motives.

” . . . we are not confident that these groups’ intentions are to provide students with opportunities, but rather to spend a great deal of time and effort to provide disinformation that advances their organizations’ agenda with little regard to the individual student,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a Pentagon spokesman, in an e-mail.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, requires schools to provide military recruiters with the same access to high schools as colleges and employers, and compels schools to turn over students’ names, addresses and phone numbers unless parents opt out.

The U.S. Department of Defense spends $3.5 billion annually on recruitment and enlisted more than 181,000 people for active-duty forces in the 2007 fiscal year and more than 138,000 for the reserves. The Southland is fertile ground: Los Angeles County ranked third in the nation in raw numbers of Army recruits in 2007.

Military recruiters’ access varies among schools, with some administrators allowing them to wander the halls chatting with students, work out with the football team, and bring Hummers and sports cars on campus.

Under a pilot proposal, which United Teachers Los Angeles endorsed in April, peace group volunteers would visit 10 to 15 high schools per week and set up a table where they would offer information about enlistment, career alternatives and opting not to have their personal information shared with the military.

In May, Los Angeles Unified School District administrators said they could not unilaterally order high schools to give the group access. Instead, Inouye was urged to meet with principals, assistant principals and guidance counselors.

Inouye will present the proposal to the school board’s curriculum and instruction committee Thursday; it could come before the full board in July.

Legal precedent more than two decades old allows counter-recruiters equal access to schools, but in practice, rules vary widely. Some schools have opened their doors to counter-recruiters for years, while others refuse to allow them on campus. But as concerns about recruitment in a time of war have grown, schools in Oxnard, Minneapolis and Pinellas County, Fla., decided this school year to provide equal access to organizations such as Coalition Against Militarism in Schools, Veterans for Peace and others.

In Austin, Texas, Nonmilitary Options for Youth has worked for more than a decade to reach out to student organizations and guidance counselors. Two years ago, the organization, along with student activists, persuaded district officials to restrict recruiters’ movements on campuses so they could no longer roam the halls talking to students and to clarify counter-recruiters’ access to campus, said Susan Van Haitsma, a leader of the group.

Currently, the group sets up a table at most of the district’s dozen high schools about once a semester, distributing “Addicted to War” comic books, holding a poll in which students vote on how the government ought to spend its budget, and bringing in veterans to talk to students about their military experiences. The group is limited by its small budget and the free time of its volunteers, but Van Haitsma said they reach about 500 students annually.

In Los Angeles, access varies greatly depending on the school, Inouye said. Some administrators will not allow such groups on campus and try to restrict them from distributing pamphlets outside school. Others, such as Garfield High School, are more open.

At a career fair at the East Los Angeles high school last month, Inouye’s organization was given a table next to the Marines.

Staff Sgt. Victor Jimenez distributed T-shirts, water bottles, key chains and posters, and collected dozens of students’ phone numbers. Jimenez said he typically visits the school about twice a week, meeting with interested teenagers to discuss enlistment and going running with students. He also meets with students in his office in Montebello.

“We sit down with them one on one and talk about what the Marine Corps offers for them,” he said.

Recruiters for the Army and the Air Force worked other aisles of the job fair, sprinkled among scores of recruiters from UCLA, a beauty college, Toyota and others. About 1,500 students streamed through the gymnasium.

Jimenez was surprised to learn that the women at the next table were counter-recruiters.

“I don’t care,” he said. “They’re welcome to do what they want.”

But when told some of CAMS’ talking points, his eyes grew wide. “Wow,” he said.

The group does not mince words — a brochure on the table aimed at young women considering joining the military features the testimony of a woman who said she was raped while serving in the Navy, and says women in the armed forces are more likely to be sexually assaulted compared with women in the general population.

The volunteers told students that they would be sacrificing their lives to enrich private companies, that the military unfairly targeted minorities and poor communities, and that they would be sent to Iraq and “get your heads blown off.”

Freshman Ashley Flores, 15, said she was pleased to hear a different viewpoint on campus.

“You see lots of recruiters” at school, said Ashley, who said she was opposed to the war in Iraq and whose stepbrother is an Army soldier stationed there. “I think the military just shows the positives of what you get if you join. They just show the good things.”

But junior Jessica Reynoso, 16, whose brother is also in the Army, said the counter-recruiters’ table was offensive. In the poll about government spending, she bypassed the options labeled “education,” “environment” and “healthcare.”

“I put all my pennies in the military,” she said. “My brother’s risking his life for us.”

Inouye asked students why they wanted to join the military, turning to freshman Adrian Cruz, who plans to enlist in the Marines upon graduation.

“I want to fight for our country,” Adrian said. “I’ll be, like, the hero.”

Inouye told the wiry teen he would end up in Iraq “killing a lot of innocent people,” or could be killed himself.

“I’m only going to kill people who shoot at me,” Adrian replied, patting the round Marines sticker he had stuck to the strap of his backpack.

Adrian said he was angry that Inouye, along with his parents, brother and teachers, questioned his decision about what to do with his life.

“It just made me kind of mad,” he said. “I know they are right. I just put it in the back of my head. I still want to be a Marine.”

Adrian went back to the Marines’ table, where Jimenez, in his dress uniform, handed the 15-year-old his phone number.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

* The Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools is one of the beneficiaries of “So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh,” a 2006 CD compilation by musician Josephine Foster and distributed by Arthur Magazine. This CD is still available–more info here.

Wal-Mart Signals Changes in Its Music Sales
By Ethan Smith

Veteran rockers AC/DC are set to become the next major band to sell a new album only through Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, a move that highlights the growing music-industry clout of Wal-Mart.

The AC/DC deal, however, comes at a time when the retail giant — the largest seller of compact discs in the nation — is signaling it may rock the music world by stocking fewer CDs. Such a move is part of a trend that would further accelerate the already steep decline of CD sales as consumers make the transition to digital music.

…

The New York Times -June 9, 2008

For Some Music, It Has to Be Wal-Mart and Nowhere Else
By ROBERT LEVINE

One of the biggest music events of the summer has already taken place in Fayetteville, Ark. From Tuesday through Thursday last week, the Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas presented shows by Journey, the country singer Keith Urban, the “American Idol” personality Carrie Underwood and the alternative rock group All-American Rejects.

The occasion that brought this all-star line-up together? Not a festival or cause but Wal-Mart Stores’ annual shareholders meeting. Wal-Mart was the largest music retailer in the country last year, so musicians (and their labels) are eager to maintain good relationships, appearing in the special concerts for the chain, which are also open to the public.

During her performance, Ms. Underwood volunteered that a Wal-Mart had recently opened in her hometown, Checotah, Okla., and Keith Urban changed his lyrics from “Goodbye, city, I’m country-bound” to “I’m Wal-Mart-bound.” And the retailer is using its leverage to aggressively pursue new deals.

On Tuesday Wal-Mart started selling on an exclusive basis a three-disc collection by the popular 1980s band Journey called “Revelation.” The difference, however, is that there is no middleman: the album was bought directly from the band without the help of a record label. Journey went right to Wal-Mart and kept most of the money a record company would normally take as profit for the group. Last year Wal-Mart made a similar deal with the Eagles, who like Journey are represented by Front Line Management, the nation’s largest music management company.

The deals highlight the changing dynamics of the music industry as once-powerful labels decline because of the migration to digital downloads. To fill the gap, musicians are scrambling to connect with fans, and Wal-Mart is using these exclusive deals to assume a new role: hit maker.

The Eagles’ double disc, “Long Road Out of Eden,” sold 711,000 copies in its first week and three million since its release, according to Nielsen SoundScan, impressive numbers at a time when CD sales are declining. Journey sold 45,000 albums in its first three days on sale, and Irving Azoff, founder and chief executive of Front Line Management and a music industry veteran who ran MCA Records in the ’80s, predicted that it would sell more than 80,000 copies in its first week. That is probably enough to debut in the top five, and significantly more than its last album sold in total.

“With the downturn, the labels couldn’t match the marketing commitments that Wal-Mart could make,” Mr. Azoff said. “It was well in excess of anything a label could do.”

Front Line took on some of the traditional work of a record label, producing a video and promoting songs to radio. But most of the marketing was done at Wal-Mart itself. The chain ran print, radio and television advertisements that promoted the exclusive availability of the Eagles album. Stores display the Eagles and Journey albums in several locations, not just the music department, and this week some stores had the Journey DVD playing on their big-screen televisions.

In some ways, the arrangements that Wal-Mart has made with Journey and the Eagles represent the mainstream equivalent of the path that artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have taken by releasing albums on the Internet without a traditional label.

“It just goes to show you that fewer artists need to be associated with record companies,” said Larry Mestel, chief executive of Primary Wave Music Publishing and former chief operating officer of Virgin Records. “They don’t need to give up a big chunk of money to the record companies when they’re iconic. They can go direct to Wal-Mart and make four to five dollars per CD.”

It’s hard to tell how much traditional labels are threatened by the prospect of artists’ selling directly to retailers. New albums from more established acts can be less profitable if they have negotiated a higher royalty rate. And although the Eagles are reliable sellers, Journey is what industry executives delicately refer to as a “heritage act,” a steady summer concert attraction that sells relatively few albums of new material.

One reason the Eagles and Journey albums have sold so many copies is their price: $11.98. That’s an unusually low retail price, especially for “Revelation,” which consists of one CD of new songs, one CD of new renditions of Journey classics and one DVD of a recent concert performance. But one of Wal-Mart’s goals in promoting such releases is drawing customers into stores with a bargain they can’t find anywhere else.

“The goal with almost everything we do is to figure out how to make some kind of a profit,” said Gary Severson, Wal-Mart’s head of home entertainment. “But this can also give us the opportunity to add to the brand, and I hope we’ve accomplished that as well.”

Exclusive album deals have been happening for some time with that goal in mind. Wal-Mart and Best Buy, the two largest physical retailers of music, often get special editions of albums, with exclusive songs or video footage. In 2005, Wal-Mart made a deal to become the exclusive distributor of Garth Brooks albums, including a new collection of outtakes. But the Eagles and Journey are the first two major acts that have released albums of new material that are available at only one retailer. And although record labels tread carefully around such deals, for fear of upsetting rival stores, bands need not be so sensitive.

This summer Wal-Mart will carry an exclusive release by the young country singer Taylor Swift in a promotion that also calls for Ms. Swift to promote L.E.I. jeans. (In this case, Ms. Swift’s label was part of the deal.) And Mr. Azoff said that he was already talking to Wal-Mart about an exclusive deal for Fleetwood Mac’s next release. “Classic rock really works there,” Mr. Azoff said.

Front Line is only one of the major management companies that are trying to take on roles that have traditionally been filled by labels. The Nettwerk Music Group, which manages Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan, has set up custom labels for some small artists. And Q-Prime, which manages Metallica, recently hired an executive to start an independent label of sorts.

The idea of treating the label as a middleman that can be cut out fits Wal-Mart’s approach to cost-cutting. In the past the chain has pushed record labels to lower their wholesale prices, arguing that customers would buy more CDs if they were less expensive.

“I think that with any product, when the price goes up, the demand goes down,” said Mr. Severson. “Sometimes it’s about the right artist with the right product at the right price.”

For Journey, some of the success of “Revelation” is also about the right timing. For a band that hit its commercial peak in the early ’80s, Journey has enjoyed an unlikely revival in the last few years. The song “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” has been licensed for “Family Guy,” “Scrubs,” “Laguna Beach” and, most famously, the last episode of “The Sopranos,” and the exposure increased the song’s sales on Apple’s iTunes store. Journey, which has gone through several vocalists, recently hired a new singer, Arnel Pineda, whom Journey’s guitarist, Neal Schon, discovered singing the band’s covers on YouTube.

But Journey would almost certainly not be selling as many albums without the support of Wal-Mart.

“Shelf space has shrunk so much over the last five years that for anyone to give you shelf space and exposure is a big deal,” said Terry McBride, chief executive of Nettwerk Music Group. “Should the labels be worried? There’s been a move away from the labels for a number of years now. And it’s not necessarily their fault. The shelf space to have those records sell just isn’t there. That’s the market reality.”

Michael Barbaro and Stephanie Rosenbloom contributed reporting.