Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed. So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is -- rightly -- big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.
To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose -- and so the IMF was delivered into the world.
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Los Angeles heads to the polls today to decide on a range of local ballot measures, City Council races and local school boards. Without many national or statewide candidates on the ballot, turnout is expected to be low, but the races are still heated with big money involved. Among the more closely watched measures on todays ballot are LA's Measure L (allocating funds for the City's library system), Measure M (tax on medical marijuana collectives), and Measure O (tax on oil drilled in city limits). Marina Del Rey Patch has a full round-up of LA candidates and ballot measures, as well as a look at the big money being spent on local races.
An "uncommonly bitter" City Council race in West Hollywood has been the focus of some national attention after the New York Times profiled it as a battle between "prosperity and urban development pitted against the city's history as a countercultural haven." Check West Hollywood Patch for a round-up of the candidates, measures and poll information in today's election.
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On a frigid December night I squeezed into the Sub T Lounge in Wicker Park to warm up beneath the undulating Balkan rhythms of Black Bear Combo. A major player in the brass-band renaissance that's taken over Chicago's alternative music scene, Black Bear is a six-man outfit that infuses eastern-European party music with jazz, rock and funk influences. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for sheer dance madness. I've seen Black Bear at a few clubs around town, but they also play weddings and funerals--the latter being perhaps problematic, as the band's sounds are so infectious the departed might be prompted to climb out of the casket and get down with his bad self.
Most of the group's tunes are originals penned by saxophonist Doug Abram; he gets avid, athletic support from Rob Pleshar on sousaphone, Gerald Bailey on trumpet, Andrew Zeim on euphonium, Dersu Barrows on bass drum, and Eshan Ghoreishi on accordion and daf (Persian frame drum). The rhythms are all fast, and all delightfully sinuous, but still utterly distinctive; within the admittedly narrow boundaries of the sound world Black Bear Combo has staked out, they manage to mine endless variety. Over the course of the evening they may edge towards tonal anarchy, or achieve a sweetness you might almost call refined; but they never repeat themselves, and they never flag. And you, humble patron, never get the chance to sit down and take a breath. What the hell, life's too short for breathing anyway.
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Now Sarah Palin likes Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele. Her new found political romance with Steele couldn't have come at a more needed time for the beleaguered chairman. Steele's shoot-from-the-lip media grandstanding, gaffes, fundraising shenanigans, profligate spending, and put down of the Afghan war have driven nearly every faction of the GOP from mainstream traditionalists to ultra-conservatives bonkers. The screams for his head reached a near tipping point a few months back. But with the crucial mid-terms bearing down, Obama's plunge in the polls, and a string of Palin successes backing bizarre, underdog, insurgent candidates, Steele got a reprieve.
Palin extended that reprieve with her shout out to him on Fox News. She'll headline two fundraising rallies with him this month. So why the sudden political love fest with Steele? Well for one, Steele has been more than willing, no eager, to play ball with her. He's done it in two ways. Outside of Palin, he's the loudest and most visible national figure that's been willing to sing the praises of any one that carries the Tea Party imprimatur-- Sharon Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell, and Rand Paul. It doesn't matter how wacky, way out, or silly they look and sound. They're Tea Party. They won primaries, and they beat down the GOP establishment. One or more of them will likely flame out in November. But that doesn't much matter. For the moment at least they've rocked the GOP mainstream, and fired up the loathe Obama grassroots crowd.
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