O.K., so I was planning on putting out a post about the silly little debate that the conservative and libertarian webloggers were having amongst themselves recently about the liberal Southern white boys who inhabit their own media bubble. But for the time being Andrew Sullivan’s pit of narcissism website is offline, so that will have to wait.

In the meantime, however, I would like to bring a happy addition to the web world to your attention. For your reading pleasure, Bitch Magazine has converted their online (S)HITLIST section into a very readable MovableType weblog format. They update about twice a month or so, and their archives are eminently readable. Warning: this weblog may cause sleep deprivation – the night I found out about this I ended up getting to sleep about 4 hours later than I’d intended, because I spent so long combing through their entire archives.

In Swaziland, a tiny country surrounded by South Africa, sub-saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy maintains a regime of tyranny over the women of the nation. Under Swazi law, women are considered minors, and cannot own property, acquire a bank loan, or enter into a legal contract without the consent of a male relative. The King is promising that a new constitution will be written sometime soon now, but with no commissions or discussion at all in the palace about gender equity, its’ likely that this new constitution will merely recycle status quo ante as far as women are concerned.

In a recent fit of misogyny that veers into the completely senseless, Jim Gama, a power behind the throne and Right-wing hate radio host near the capital Mbabane has ordered that soldiers strip women wearing trousers in the royal villages. (One is reminded of the Shah’s charming little habit of having soldiers tear off women’s chadors with bayonetts during his campaign of forced Westernization.) According to women’s rights activist Pholile Dlamini, Gama became the most powerful traditional authority in Swaziland because he "endeared himself to the national leadership by being a super traditionalist who regularly belittled women on the air."

Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news that I don’t at all intend to link with the preceding story: power-behind-the-throne Dick Cheney decided to spend the anniversary of the September 11^th massacre building national unity and currying mainstream consensus by sitting down for an interview with Rush Limbaugh, a Right-wing hate radio host who endeared himself to the national leadership by being a super-traditionalist who regularly belittles women on the air.

But I digress.

There is a gargantuan poster hanging in our local movie theatre of Reese Witherspoon looking a bit sassy in a very New York black turtleneck, with the words SWEET HOME ALABAMA stamped across it, advertising the upcoming motion picture from Touchstone Pictures. As soon as I saw it, I thought, Oh Lord, he we go again, another patronizing movie about the wild and wacky local color of the South. I decided not to make my full judgment until I saw the previews, though. Who knows, maybe they were doing something interesting. After all, all you can see on the poster is a huge image of Reese Witherspoon’s head.

Well, OK, I saw the trailer. Apparently this ill-conceived romantic comedy was the product of combining two premises:

1. Intelligence and sophistication are signs of vice.
2. Fortunately, neither of these unhappy characteristics are to be found in the South.

Reese is a stylin’ jet-set New York City fashion designer who has everything that the big city has to offer. She comes back home to her ol’ Alabammy home, surrounded by the requisite cast of crackers, rednecks, and a droopy-faced smell-hound. Along the way we have the required jokes about bugs, Civil War re-enactors, and Yankees cluelessly tramping around trying to understand the curious habits of the savage natives.

So here we go again, with a bunch of folks from New York and L.A. making yet another insulting flick in which my home state is reduced to one big expanse of cartoonish stereotypes of white country bumpkins. From what I can tell, this movie is going to have all the subtle grace and sensitivity towards its subjects as a minstrel show; Rastus and Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima have merely been replaced by Bubba and Lurlynn and Bobby Ray.

Most Israelis oppose the occupation and want the settlements dismantled.

Let’s say that again: a clear majority of Israelis oppose the occupation and want the settlements dismantled.

It’s a secret that Ariel Sharon and his hawkish allies, both in the US and Israel, don’t want you to know. It’s a secret they’ve managed to cover up not only from the American public, but even from most of the Israeli public. It’s a dirty little secret that, even in these dark days, ought to give us some hope for the longer term. As harrowing as the daily news coming out of Israel is, 2/3 call for unilateral withdrawal from the occupied territories. 2/3 call for evacuation of all or most of the settlements. 60% believe that Israel should agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Now, let’s not get too optimistic here: clear majorities of Israelis also call for strong military measures. 74% say that Sharon is doing a good job, and 60% say that the Israeli army should be allowed to attack the refugee camps in Gaza. But they are short-term hawks and long term doves. The long-term measures they support–ending the occupation–will pull the bottom out of the vicious circle of violent escalation and vengeance that the occupation has sustained. They are quickly growing war-weary (much as America did as the Vietnam war rolled on), and are in no mood for the bloody escalation that will be needed to sustain or expand the occupation for much longer.

Why hasn’t this been heard? Why does Likud continue to pretend as though it had a blank check from the Israeli populace to continue and expand the occupation and ethnic cleansing indefinitely? Why don’t we know that the vast majority of the Israeli populace wants a peaceful, two-state solution?

Well, part of the reason is the well known fact that the Israeli press allows for a much greater range of debate than the American press over controversies such as the occupation. In America we tend to be blinded to the huge presence of moderates and the burgeoning peace movement within Israel. Instead we get fed infantile formulas, as if there were only Sharon’s side and Hamas’s side, and if you are not with Sharon you are with the attacks on civilians. Positions such as those taken by, say, Ha’aretz in Israel, are marginalized and confined to the Left-wing alternative media in the US.

That’s part of the reason we haven’t heard about the pro-peace supermajority in Israel. The other reason is that many Israelis themselves don’t know about it. Policymakers, as they often do, have ignored majority views, and opinion-shapers in the media follow along with this distorted picture of reality (the same thing happens in the United States on issues such as drug prohibition, where government drug warriors and their media lackeys are far to the Right of the American public). The power of the settler lobby in the Knesset, and Sharon’s refusal to actually discuss settlement issues head-on, have aided and abetted the misperceptions. As a consequence, in polls, Israelis significantly overestimate pro-settlement and pro-occupation opinion in their own country, even though they themselves predominantly believe in withdrawal and evacuation.

So let’s spread the secret, and say it as much as we can. Let’s bust up the lie that the Right-wing elites have tried to push down our throats.

Next time tells you that we have to stand with the Israelis, tell him where the Israelis really stand. Next time someone calls you an anti-Semite for opposing the occupation, tell her what the voice of Israeli Jews is calling for. Say it again: most Israelis oppose the occupation.

OK, as promised, here’s the report from the past few days of cross-state rabble-rousing. The big event was a protest at the DEA offices in Montgomery, as part of a national day of direct action at about 60 DEA offices across the country, fighting back against the federal government’s nation-wide crackdown against medical marijuana dispensaries.

We drove up to Birmingham on Monday night to petition at the primary election polling places to get Dr. Jimmy Blake on the ballot as an independent candidate for Jefferson County Commission in the November general election. The sun was beating down on us all day, and the breeze couldn’t bother itself to blow for more than about five minutes. Nevertheless, the pay was good, and Vestavia Hills was a hopping place for getting signatures. One poll worker said she’d sign the petition because she supported Jimmy Blake, but she didn’t think we should be outside a primary polling place to petition. Well, OK, I thought, and I don’t think you all should be using state funds to subsidize the internal party business of the two major parties. I’d be glad to stop petitioning out front of primary polling places if Demopublicans actually had to go through the same shit to get on the ballot that independents do. But I held my tongue. A signature is a signature.

On Wednesday morning we drove down to Tuscaloosa and began to plan the big event for Thursday 6/6.

Thursday we met Floyd Shackleford in Wetumpka The Montgomery TV press had arrived thanks to the efforts of the media collective assisting ASA, and we got a chance for some great film of Floyd delivering our Cease & Desist order from 73% of the American people to the DEA. We held a banner (DEA: Stop Arresting Patients) and distributed the fake WANTED posters I put together for the event, while Floyd and I talked to the interviewers.

We had prepared Burma-Shave signs which we hoped to hold by the side of the road for passing motorists to see, but we arrived a bit late and all we had time to do was deliver the Cease & Desist order and talk to the press. We had also run off lots of copies of flyers to hand out to passing pedestrians, but the DEA building was off in a office building ghetto a bit off the main streets, so there was no foot traffic for handing out our flyers. I was a bit disappointed that it turned out to be more of a press conference than an actual demonstration. Nevertheless, the newsmedia coverage was a lot more sympathetic than I thought it would be, and it came together pretty well for something we had thrown together in less than a week of active planning. The day was beautiful, the drive home peaceful, and the remainder of the day restful.

Take action! Thanks to the publicity from participating in the national event, we are quickly gaining contacts around the state for future actions toward taking the high ground in the drug war. If you are in Alabama and would like to join the network we are developing of activists who are fighting to end the federal government’s assaults on states’ rights and compassionate care, get in touch and ask me to add you to the contact list.