Had a great time tonight going to the Amy Goodman talk in Lawton, sponsored by KCCU. Drove down with a vanful of interesting activists of various backgrounds and experiences, had a rushed dinner at Garfields (because the burgers were way overdone, not ‘carefully cooked to perfect medium well’ or whatever the b.s. was from the waitress) then a thrill to see a huge crowd for the anti-corporate-media independent-media star.

I’ve uploaded my interview with the KCCU station manager to my YouTube channel. You can find it here.

(click the album to see full screen)

Democracy Now! is finally airing in Oklahoma, though many residents will not be in a area where they can pick up the signal on a radio. For them, there is a live stream on KCCU’s site.

KCCU is a non-profit station run out of Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, and is broadcast in/at:

Lawton-Ft. Sill 89.3 & 102.9
Wichita Falls 88.7
Ardmore 90.3
Altus 90.1
Duncan 89.3
Weatherford-Clinton-Elk City 89.1
Chickasha 100.1

Oklahoma progressive activists have been seeking to have the program picked up by stations in the state, but have been rejected by stations who deem the show, which features news of events and interviews of people on the progressive end of the political spectrum. The show comes out of New York City and is hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.

From the station’s announcement:

KCCU is excited to announce new programs for the new year!

“Democracy Now” and “Swingin’ Down the Lane” will join the lineup in the first week of January.

“Democracy Now” is an independent daily journalism program that airs on 750 radio and TV stations nationwide. KCCU is the first Oklahoma radio station to air the program.

Hosted by award-winning journalist Amy Goodwin [sic], “Democracy Now” does not accept corporate sponsorships, and is funded entirely by listener and viewer donations.

“Democracy Now” will air weekdays at noon, taking the place of NPR’s “Day to Day”. Due to budget cuts at the network, NPR is cancelling “Day to Day”. …

x-posted at OKIMC

With the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, for the past two days, CNN viewers in the U.S. have been getting the international CNN feed, rather than the mostly crap CNN usually plays in this country. When CNN is good, which is rare these days, you really can’t beat in, not on basic cable, anyway.

So, now willingly watching CNN without the spectre of Lou Dobbs popping up, I caught an interview (actually, turns out it was a replay of a previous interview) of author Deepak Chopra talking about the so-called war on terror, U.S. foreign policy, and the potential, with a President Obama, for a major breakthrough with the world’s huge population of peaceful Muslims.

I’m not really a big fan of Chopra’s books, but here he’s very down to earth and speaking passionately about the problems in this part of the world, which of course he knows very well, being from India.

I wish I could force every American to watch this. That would be tyrannical, and against my core principles, so all I can do is put the video and transcript here and say, “pretty, please, America, get your head out of your ass and look at the world and our place in it realistically. Thank you very much!”

This video begins with a news report of the situation in Mumbai, then Chopra starts just before 3 minutes in. The transcript below is actually of a different recent interview, by Larry King, but it covers the same ideas.

(CNN) — The Indian city of Mumbai exploded into chaos early Thursday morning as gunmen launched a series of attacks across the country’s commercial capital, killing scores of people and taking hostages in two luxury hotels frequented by Westerners.
Deepak Chopra says extremists could be reacting to Barack Obama’s gestures toward Muslims.

Deepak Chopra says extremists could be reacting to Barack Obama’s gestures toward Muslims.

CNN’s Larry King spoke with author Deepak Chopra about the situation.

Larry King: Let’s go to Dr. Deepak Chopra, the physician, philosopher. His new book is “Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment.”

Where were you born in India, Deepak?

Deepak Chopra: I was born in Delhi, but I have been in these hotels many, many times. I have stayed there, so I know the scene; I know the restaurants. I have been trying to get in touch with my friends and relatives, some of whom I have spoken to, some of whom I can’t speak to. The lines are jammed. We’re texting each other.

A friend of mine from Egypt was in the restaurant at the Taj hotel when the firing started, and somehow she managed to avoid the fray, hid in a basement and is now holed up in a room which is right next to the Taj hotel and is waiting to be told what to do.

The situation is complex, Larry, because it could inflame to proportions that we cannot even imagine. It has to be contained. We now recognize that this is a global problem, with only a global effort can solve this.

And you know, one of the things that I think is happening is that these militant terrorist groups are actually terrified that [President-elect Barack] Obama’s gestures to the rest of the Muslim world may actually overturn the tables on them by alienating them from the rest of the Muslim world, so they’re reacting to this.

You know, this is Obama’s opportunity to actually harness the help of the Muslims.

You know, there’s 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That’s 25 percent of the population of the world. It’s the fastest-growing religion in the world. We cannot, if we do not appease and actually recruit the help of this Muslim world, we’re going to have a problem on our hands.

And we cannot go after the wrong people, as we did after 9/11, because then the whole collateral damage that occurs actually aggravates the situation.

In India, this is particularly inflammatory, because there’s a rise of Hindu fundamentalism. We saw what that did in Gujarat, where, you know, Muslims were scorched and they were killed, and there was almost a genocide of the Muslims.

India has 150 million Muslims. That’s more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. So this is an opportunity right now for India and Pakistan to recognize this is their common problem. It’s not a Muslim problem right now; it’s a global problem.

…

King: Do you think that this is just the beginning, that there’s a potential impact, or more?

Chopra: There is a potential impact of a lot more carnage. But it can be contained. And right now, one of the questions, you know, after I heard Barbara Starr talking about how coordinated this is, that there are militant groups that cross international boundaries, is who is financing this? Where is the money coming from? We have to ask very serious, honest questions. What role do we have in this? Are our petrodollars funding both sides of this war on terrorism? Why are we not asking the Saudis where that money is going that we give them? Is it going through this supply chain to Pakistan?

It’s not enough for Pakistan to condemn it. Pakistan should cooperate with India in uprooting this. They should be part of the surgery that is going to happen.

It’s not enough for Indians to blame Pakistanis. Indians should actually ask the Pakistanis to help them.

And it’s not enough for us to worry about Westerners being killed and Americans being killed. Every life is precious over there. We have got to get rid of this idea that this is an American problem or a Western problem. It’s a global problem, and we need a global solution, and we need the help of all the Muslims, 25 percent of the world’s population, to help us uproot this problem.

King: What does India immediately do?

Chopra: India at this moment has to contain any reactive violence from the fundamentalist Hindus, which is very likely and possible. So India has to condemn that by not blaming local Muslims. They have to identify the exact groups.

And the world has to be very careful that they don’t go after the wrong people. Because if you go after the wrong people, you convert moderates into extremists. It happens every time, and retribution against innocent people just because they have the same religion actually aggravates and perpetuates the problem.

King: Are you pessimistic?

Chopra: I think Mr. Obama has a real opportunity here, but a challenging opportunity, a creative opportunity.

Get rid of the phrase “war on terrorism.” Ask for a creative solution in which we all participate.

King: Is it because the war on terrorism really can never be won because the terrorists (inaudible)?

Chopra: Because it’s an oxymoron. It’s an oxymoron, Larry, a war on war, a war on terrorism.

You know, terrorists call mechanized death from 35,000 feet above sea level with a press of a button also terror. We don’t call it that, because our soldiers are wearing uniforms. They don’t see what is happening, and innocent people are being killed. So, you know, terror is a term that you apply to the other.

King: Thanks, Deepak Chopra, as always, extraordinarily enlightening.

I learn from Sinister that Tulsa World covered the Join the Impact! event there with a pretty decent article. No shocker: it was a not insignificant news event in the city (300 in attendance) and the city’s NEWSpaper did a little writeup about it.

But the 300 that attended the corresponding rally in Oklahoma City (not to mention the thousands across the country) were ignored by the city’s paper — I no longer will incorrectly call it a “newspaper” but it is printed on paper, so at least that part’s true. Again, no surprise, because the Oklahoman habitually refuses to cover the news and events that come from the liberal or progressive end of the political spectrum. “Habitually refuses” is a nice way of saying they have conspired and are conspiring to erase our existence from their pages. It is the largest paper in the state (though shrinking rapidly! Yay!) and it still has a lot of influence in political and cultural arenas (again, less and less so thanks to the internet) so the conspiracy is not piddling, even as their overall status is being reduced.

The OKC event did get covered by a couple of local TV news teams, which is great, but that doesn’t lessen the harm done by being erased from history time and again by the Oklahoman.

Frankly, I’m fed up with it and am resolved to do something about it. I’m exploring several options — including boycotts, petitions, demonstrations. A meeting with the paper’s management is a good place to start, but without some kind of threat to their revenue, I wouldn’t expect such a meeting to have any effect — those people are ideological and have to be moved by other forces than an appeal to simple fairness.

I lived in Waco, Texas, for a while, and I guarantee you that that area is politically and culturally more conservative overall than Central Oklahoma, yet the newspaper there covered peace and justice events — and not just during the nearby Camp Casey action in August 2005, but before that and well after. We might have liked more expansive and positive coverage, and they didn’t cover every single thing we did — no one expects that. But we regularly got a photo of an action — even if only four or five people participated. But they didn’t ignore our press releases, or refuse to send a camera person and/or reporter when they had one available, or keep the fact of our existence and work hidden from their readers. They covered the fucking news that was happening in their community!

Thankfully, the Web gives citizens the opportunity to participate in a new kind of journalism that is rising from the grassroots. Old media is losing this battle because they don’t or can’t adjust to new realities. They are making attempts to use the Internet, but struggling to find a successful method to make it profitable.

So if the Oklahoman wants to continue their march to obsolecence, they can continue to alienate a significant portion of their community by being ideological and reactionary beyond all reason. I’ll dance on their grave, but in the meantime, I expect them to function as the newspaper they purport to be and once in a while cover events their owners and editorial board don’t necessarily endorse.

Oh, and the effing letters to the editor situation is also now on the table. Enough! We’re not going to take it anymore!

I know that we all complain about the Oklahoman and that those who’ve lived here a lot longer than I have maybe just become resigned to the status quo. I hope that we can all band together at this vulnerable moment for the Oklahoman’s bottom line, and make the changes we need happen. Yes, we can!

Stay tuned, I will elaborate about some action steps on this in the near future.

The whole world is trying to figure out what’s up with us here in Red Dirt land. Last Tuesday, for good or bad, we certainly took a different tack, and everyone wants to know why.

The great blog Down With Tyranny regularly has insightful posts about Oklahoma politics, with some of the best rants against Inhofe for years now, and was a good source of info about the Andrew Rice campaign. Today, a look at what the hell happened in Oklahoma last Tuesday. Leading in to the piece is a photo from the Dust Bowl which still epitomizes Oklahoma’s seemingly hopeless situation.

Can You Guess Which State Was The Most Reactionary In This Year’s Elections? Hint: Think Rodgers and Hammerstein

But the state least connected to the American mainstream and most politically isolated on Tuesday was poor, sad, reactionary Oklahoma, which gave almost 66% of it’s vote, the most of any state, to McCain. While analysts are working on a post-mortem, or autopsy, on McCain’s no longer twitching campaign, Oklahomans must be wondering what’s wrong with the rest of America.

Daily Kos’s most famous and beloved Okie diaries, droogie6655321, riffed off Thomas Frank’s 2005 examination of Kansas politics, with What’s the Matter with Oklahoma?

What I’m not interested in is sweeping generalities about Oklahomans. If you want to call us all ignorant, misinformed, racist or backward, I suggest you do it an upcoming open thread and not here. As unfathomable as it may seem to us, there is a reason why Oklahomans choose Republicans over Democrats, and I want to know why.

Droogie’s question generated 988 comments and was followed by Sooner Kos discussion threads here and here

The traditional media weighed in on the anomaly which is Oklahoma. The New York Times:

Where Tuesday’s Tide Was All Republican

“Oklahoma Democrats, with very few exceptions, are the old-line white Southern Democrats,” said David Ray, another political scientist at the university. “They don’t like liberals or liberalism.”

Indeed, the state has a political landscape closely resembling that of the old solidly Democratic South, especially in its southeastern corner, known as Little Dixie, where many Southerners settled after the Civil War. When conservatives of the Old South began abandoning the party decades ago, Oklahoma’s Democrats lagged behind the historical trend. Further, the state has relatively small black and Hispanic populations, and so the Democrats did not absorb as many new voters from those groups as in the states of the old Confederacy.

These days Oklahoma Democrats dread running for local office in presidential election years, for fear of being associated with liberal nominees at the top of the ticket.

“Being liberal in Oklahoma, with the exception of a few legislative districts, will not get you elected,” said State Representative Joe Dorman, a conservative Democrat.

[...]

But Mr. Gaddie said that perhaps the most important factor in Mr. McCain’s strong showing here was religion. An Edison/Mitofsky exit poll found that more than half of Oklahoma voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and that a heavy majority of them had voted for Mr. McCain.

Mr. Gaddie, himself a pollster as well as a college professor, said: “A question we always ask in our polls is ‘How often do you attend church services?’ If a Democrat is not going to vote for a Democrat, they are a frequent church attender.”

Another advantage for Mr. McCain was that the state’s economy, based mostly on the oil and gas industry, has been buffered somewhat from the national economic slowdown. Unemployment remains low, the housing market stable.

For all of that, the Democratic Party is far from dead in Oklahoma, especially in the state’s southeastern section, where, despite the social conservatism, many people still talk about the New Deal and revere Franklin D. Roosevelt.

and Washington Post also remarked on the Oklahoma phenom.

As Much of Nation Went Blue, Okla. Applied Extra Coat of Red

Exit polls found that more than half of Oklahoma voters identified themselves as white, evangelical or born-again Christians. Of those, a heavy majority went for McCain.

State Republican Chairman Gary Jones said it was “not so much an issue of race,” but rather of conservative Oklahomans voting against someone known as “the most liberal member of the Senate.”

Jones said the conservative positions of McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, helped motivate Oklahoma voters.

One thing all these analysts seem to agree on is that Oklahoma not being so hard hit by the economic downturn played a part in the election results. We just aren’t hurting as bad as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, et. al.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But in Oklahoma, the pain wasn’t great enough to trump the other ideology (”family values”) and/or misconceptions about Obama as elsewhere in the nation.

If Obama does a good job as president, which I expect him to do, perhaps Oklahomans will at least drop the latter rationale for not voting for him when he runs for re-election in 2012.

This is destined to be a classic: Mika Brzezenski defending Sarah Palin, Lawrence O’Donnell telling Pat Buchanan, who can’t stop fawning over Sarah Palin and lying about her impact on the ticket, that “yours is the party that celebrates ignorance” then asking if he believes in evolution. Then Pat’s head explodes. Monkeys! And Mika babbles in disbelief (okay, that last part happens all the time).

TV worth watching, I’m telling you!

The political seismic shift that occurred Tuesday night, compressed into ten minutes. I still tear up watching it. Thanks to Jed via Daily Kos.

The shame of western Oklahoma, The Oklahoman newspaper, has a semi-regular feature called "Monday Morning Quarterbacks," which mostly just reviews conservative voices. The only time they quote liberals or progressives is to mock or refute them. Like today:

CURDLE YOUR YERDLE
The Left Wing is playing for keeps this election cycle. The king of liberal/progressive blogging, Markos Moulitsas rallies the troops at dailykos.com with his own adaptation of Knute Rockne. Libs must "do everything necessary allowable under the law to win because elections have consequences," he writes. "This isn’t about who is most pure, but about taking the fight to the enemy ... and fighting fire with fire." Later Kos writes about having the "killer instinct," rubbing salt in conservatives’ wounds and forcing them to go into debt. What’s next, burning their villages?

Umm...project much?

In a wider discussion of the media’s long-time idolization of John McCain, Glenn Greenwald made this very important point about the militarization of our culture.

If I could be granted one small wish about our political discourse, it would be that reporters and pundits would accept — as disappointing and unglorious as it is — that, under our Constitution and basic government design, people who aren’t in the military don’t have a “Commander-in-Chief.” The President isn’t your “commander,” and the “Commander-in-Chief” power, now synonymous in our political culture with “President,” is actually extremely limited (Art. II, Sec. 2: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”).

This endless festishization of “President as Our Commander-in-Chief” is one of those small but pernicious reflections of how militarized we’ve become, of how we are a society in a state of perpetual and endless war. And — though I don’t think there’s a strong complaint to be made that the media generally has been unfair to Barack Obama — this “Commander-in-Chief” fetish is also one of the principal causes of the ongoing media reverence for John S. McCain.