Karl Kemp is a wealthy antique and art dealer in New York City. He owns Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques which operate out of two very upscale stores that specialize in some of the most expensive furniture available to purchase on the planet. Shown on the left, Kemp poses with his Boxer dog in one of his many warm and cozy showrooms displaying furniture for the perusal of his ultra-wealthy clients.
The average American would likely have to spend more than an annual salary to purchase a single piece of furniture shown in this friendly, promotional image. However, Kemp is apparently having some troubles at his one store, located near other obscene boutique shops like Prada on Madison Avenue, in Manhattan. Several homeless people are trying to stay warm this winter by sheltering themselves over a heated exhaust vent in the sidewalk in front of his precious storefront.
As reported first by Mathew Chayez in the New York Sun, Karl Kemp decided to sue these homeless people for one million dollars, after two years of attempting to remove them from in front of his upscale Manhattan shop through social services and police complaints. In addition, Kemp is asking the New York court to enforce a de-facto restraining order on these people to make them stay at least 100 feet away from his storefront. The lawsuit names these nameless poor, trust-fundless, souls as John Smith, John Doe, Jane Doe and Jane Smith.
It's quite interesting to read the reactions of people commenting about this story as it spread to other media -- like the New York Post and the New York Daily News -- then later on CBS news and the Washington Post. It was discussed on NYC blogs like the Gothamist before it went to the international media, but the comments by New Yorkers are most diverse and telling.
The Real Fisher King
The Gothamist speculated that Kemp may have simply filed the lawsuit to draw attention to his concerns about the problem. Ironically, John Doe's reaction to his recent status as a New York media celebrity has been, "Leave me the fuck alone. I don't want to be fucking involved," or scurrying away from the cameramen and reporters now showing up at his warm spot in front of Karl Kemp's to photograph or interview him.
All the media attention has done much more than simply annoy John Doe, though. It has also apparently identified him over the last week as Robert Greenlee, 54, from Pennsylvania. His brother recognized him from NY Daily news photos thirty years after of his disappearance. In contrast to Karl Kemp, Greenlee has also been the beneficiary of the charitable spirit from another New York multi-millionaire, Edward Baron Cohen, who happens to live down the street from the antique shop.
John Doe, aka Roger Greenlee, might be mentally ill -- and he also might be the real-life Fisher King, too. He's already flipped the mirror of self-assured morality around in the capital of the haves and have-nots. At the same time, I recall that wisdom comes from understanding.
[added 01-21] The city officials in St. Pete, Florida ordered police to swarm a homeless tent-city and destroy it Friday. It wasn't the first time. The homeless people said they prefer to live in a group for security reasons after two homeless men were murdered recently. Video and related stories from the local TV news can be found here.
Several months ago, I blogged a GooTube Tuesday entry about Iranian executions by hanging. Specifically, I wanted to draw your attention to Nazanin Fatehi, who unlike the other teenager I featured that day, had some hope of being spared the hangman's noose for her alleged crimes. She had been granted a chance to appeal her death sentence in January.
The Iranian courts recently have had that trial and young Nazanin Fatehi was spared the death sentence. However, under the Iranian interpretation of Sharia law, she must pay approximately $40,000 US in diehl, or blood money, for the death of her would-be rapist in order to be released from prison to rejoin her family. You can go to the HelpNazanin website to read updates, and donate toward her legal fund, if you can.
At the time that I blogged about Nazanin in October, I wasn't aware of the mini-documentary that had been filmed, "The Tale of Two Nazanins." This 30-minute film hosted by Bodog.tv documents the intense struggle of international organizations, like Amnesty International -- and others, like Nazanin Afshim-Jam, the Canadian beauty queen and activist -- all trying to help this condemned child.
Having just watched "The Tale of Two Nazanins" for the first time, and with the knowledge that everyone's efforts may have assisted in convincing the Iranian officials to spare this teenage girl's life this past week, I couldn't stop tears welling up in my eyes. I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Martin Luther King was an American hero. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His devotion to non-violent change and true reconciliation inspired the likes of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and they changed that country long after MLK's death at the hands of an assassin. In this country, his sincere devotion to peace and social change still resonates with sincere people working for the betterment of the minority, the poor, and the voiceless.
I spent today trying to learn more about this courageous man, understand his message in the context of times in which he lived and draw parallels to the times in which we all live today.
Many people will casually categorize Martin Luther King as a freedom fighter and civil rights icon for the minority population of black people in the United States, but whose importance was temporal. I think his message of equality has a timeless quality.
And being a white guy from Detroit, myself, I understand that some people label themselves as black, some label themselves as African-American, and still the national organization in front of social issues for almost 100 years is still called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some Hip-hop and Rap artists still use the word Niggah, and I don't think that's helpful for anyone.
However, no matter how you define yourself, it's important not to allow the society to define you. Call yourself whatever you want to call yourself. When angry young black men screamed at me and called me Cracker, when I was just trying to commute to work and make a living, I had to shake off those incidences. That is just an obvious symptom of self-segregated neighbors.
Self-segregated neighbors are all over the United States, but they are in the news most often now in the city of Baghdad. Sunni and Shia.
Martin Luther King gave an amazing speech almost 40 years ago concerning Viet Nam. While his words are certainly historic, listening to his voice halts one in their thoughts. The sincerity, passion, and comprehension of that conflict brings a parallel to our time concerning the current war for the soldiers fighting it, the largely ignorant arm-chair generals conducting it, and the propagandized public who support it.
Shown above is a cool short video that quickly explains the importance of the "net neutrality" issue from the net activists at savetheinternet. Share the video with your friends and raise awareness. It was really only by a stroke of luck that the largest merger in U.S. telecommunications industry history, between AT&T and BellSouth, included a two year promise to maintain net neutrality on their digital backbones. Over the next few months, the new Congress will likely take up this vital issue of free speech and availability of maintaining the internet as a digital democracy. These legislators need to know that you care about this. If they don't hear your voice, they're only going to hear from corporate lobbyists.
The issue of "net neutrality" is really only the symptom of allowing already huge multi-billion dollar companies to gobble each other up in mergers and consolidation. At some point, raw capitalism and corporate greed runs afoul of cherished public concepts, like protecting consumers from corporate monopolies. In certain industries, like communications and digital media, monopolistic control becomes a greater threat to an open society.
This weekend in Memphis, Tennessee, a conference is being held by activists in the growing media reform movement. Corporate mergers in the media sectors for print, radio, and broadcast and cable television have had the expected results -- more profit at the expense of free expression. Even worse, in the area of news media, the effect is the dumbing down of the American public. You can check out freepress.net for specific examples of how news rooms are being gutted, investigative journalism is being replaced by government press releases, and the image of America being broadcast around the world is not that of a country made up of diverse people with diverse views, but instead the world views America through the warped lenses of FOX or CNN.
Freepress.net is streaming some of the conference live on their web site. This morning, I took the time to watch the very informative and inspiring speech by Bill Moyers that he delivered at the start of the conference. It was archived last night in two parts on YouTube, each about 30 minutes long. (Part 1) (Part 2)
Bill Moyers is in a particularly good place in his life to offer an historical perspective about the media industry. He is old enough to give personal testimony about the corporatization of radio, TV, and print media. As he looks out into our future of the expanding digital media era, that's where all these competing interests of the public, government, and corporations converge and collide.
If you're not inclined to be politically active, think about it this way -- do you want to live in a world where your own voice is muted, your access to information is denied, and thus your ability to make a decision is warped? One need only look at the closed societies around the world (China) to see how well that plan works out for individual liberty.
Another digital media milestone occurred recently. The Electronic Frontier Foundation celebrated its 16th birthday. Laughing Squid has some candid photos of the birthday party. Apparently, my own cyber civil rights hero, John Perry Barlow, was spotted in the crowd.
Like most humans, I think visually. Then, I translate those globs of visual information into words that I can try to speak aloud, or even more arduously write in a blog entry. The image above is my understanding of the situation in Iraq in simple visual terms.
The media reaction
Oftentimes, the news media and consequently, the people, have a kitchen table debate about specific details without remembering the context in which that debate is really formed. The media details seem to focus on "how many troops" and the partisan political fight over the details of Bush's much-anticipated "New Way Forward" speech.
Since Noam Cholmsky has clearly taught us about the media food chain, I will only examine the Associated Press and Reuters news wire services which create the first voices in the echo chamber -- reprinted in hundreds of newspapers across the country -- which every-town Americans actually read.
"Democrats, who came to power in midterm elections two months ago in large part because of growing public opposition to the war, must walk a fine line between criticizing Bush's plans and appearing to be obstructionists or undermining the military.
And they presently rule Congress with insufficient numbers to block Bush's plan.
For Bush, the decision to send more troops to Iraq — rather than begin a withdrawal of combat forces as recommended last month by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group — is a huge gamble."
"President George W. Bush told skeptical Americans on Wednesday he was dispatching about 21,500 extra U.S. troops to Iraq, and in a rare admission, said he made a mistake by not deploying more forces sooner.
"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," Bush said in a televised White House address. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."
The same way forward
President Bush's speech can be found on the White House website. You can watch the video and read the transcript. With some welcomed minor changes, as detailed and perhaps confusing as Bush's plan might be, it simply repackages the 2005 National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. I created the visual image of that plan above. You can also download the PDF file.
It's not nakedly a bad plan. It has validity. The problem is the Bush/Cheney implementation of that plan from day one. Iraq suffers from the incompetence of the Bush administration in the form of the Katrina syndrome, in my opinion. Driving that incompetence are the ideological neocons, like VP Cheney, who "won't talk to evil" when it comes to Iran or Syria.
A well-crafted speech
Bush mentioned Iran about a half-dozen times in his "new way forward" speech about Iraq. This clearly defines the Cheney neocon cabal in the administration as adding Iran to the list of "our enemies" -- joining al-Qaeda, the Bathists dead-ender insurgents, the Sadrists, etc.
Clearly, Cheney travelling to Saudi Arabia in November solidified the security alliance with the Sunni Arab states who also have regional concerns about Iran. Ideologically, Saudi Wahabbi Sunni Muslims think of Shia in Iran and Iraq as heretics.
Whoever wrote Bush's speech last night was very good. No swaggering. No cowboy ultimatums. It was delivered from the venue of the White House library. Bush was toned down to a thoughtful, contrite, and pragmatic leader -- despite simply repackaging the same plan.
There was no mention of the clash of civilizations, or crusader talk of the past. However, despite no "God Bless America" at the end, one still has to note the continued use of the phrase "calling of our time" and the capitalization of the term "Author of Liberty" in the conclusion of Bush's speech.
Bush's speech would be better labelled as "We messed up and we're trying to fix it," rather than a "New Way Forward," but I certainly also hope for the best in Iraq.
