In the latest issue of the Student Insurgent (at least I think it’s the latest… aside from a calendar advertising events in May at the “Eugene Free School”, I can’t find a date anywhere on this thing), noted advocates for fiscal responsibility, Joey Beats and Cimmeron Gillespie fire a devastating broadside against the Student Rec Center, admonishing the Rec Center for its profligate ways.

We couldn’t agree more! In fact, former OC Editor-in-Chief Ted Niedermeyer scooped the Insurgent on this story about two years ago (story begins on page 20). Still, it’s nice to see the Insurgent kids finally take notice of the massive misallocation of student dollars at the University of Oregon:

This problem of funding as [sic] been a constant issues [sic] for the Rec. Center, as they have gone before student government asking for more money, year after year and received in full, [sic] their requested funding… Such waste is intolerable given the national financial state and our own Fat-Katz administration’s promises of ‘fiscal responsibility’.

No doubt it’s only a matter of time before these newly minted fiscal conservatives at the Insurgent join the Oregon Commentator in demanding higher standards of accountability and less wasteful spending of student money across the board in the ASUO.

Will they reverse their support of that notorious money sink known as OSPIRG? Hope springs eternal.

Then again, one of their letters to the editor in the latest issue describes how the Insurgent gang gave some random anarchist a ride to the Bay Area in a “state-owned” van and proceeded to go “to the co-ops in Berkeley for a naked, neon good time,” so I’m not getting my hopes up.

One can only wonder if that trip was paid for by student money and, if it was, how the Insurgent staff squares that with their sudden commitment to prudent fiscal management.

[EDIT]

The next column in the Insurgent, attributed to “Greenwash Guerillas”, lambasts the U of O for it’s attempts at “greenwashing” through the use of carbon offsets. It begins with the paragraph:

Carbon offsets follow the same logic as indulgences did for the Catholic Church centuries ago. Offsetting argues that if you do something “bad” you can mitigate that by paying someone to do something “good” in your name.

Did we buy up the Insurgent with some of that blog contest money and someone just forgot to tell me, or something?

Well, campus today is all aflutter for the impending “march on Johnson Hall“. In what seems to be a deliberate attempt to rekindle past glories, the “Step Up, Oregon!” faction is going to demand that Oregon distance itself from a clothing manufacturer accused of employing sweatshop labor, breaking the law, and generally being very, very bad.

Even the ASUO is trying to get in on the action.

I want to avoid weighing in on whether Russell is an evil company or not; They may very well be, and I’m in no position to say they aren’t.

The problem I have with virtually every argument that I’ve seen advocating breaking with Russell (apparently in violation of OUS rules) is that they do little more than repeat Workers Rights Consortium talking points without even a hint of skepticism.

We’re told that closing down a factory “…prompted Worker Rights Consortium investigations, which found that the decision to close the factory was at least partly because of [unionization attempts], constituting a violation of Honduran labor laws.”

That’s all very well and good, but did anyone honestly expect them to come to any other conclusion? The WRC has painted a proverbial target on Russell’s back, and I think everyone would be absolutely shocked if they didn’t reach the exact conclusion that they did, in fact, reach.

To put it another way, I find the WRC’s “findings” about as convincing as a report reading something along the lines of “an investigation by the Democratic National Committee found that George W. Bush was a bad President” or “investigations by the Communist Party of the USA found that capitalism is bad”. Those statements may or may not be true, but, like anything coming from the WRC, they’re not exactly unbiased.

As part of their college education, students are expected to show at least a modicum of skill in critical thinking.

It would be nice if those skills could be put to use questioning the veracity of claims of corporate wrongdoing made by an organization whose express purpose is to accuse corporations of wrongdoing.

I’m not necessarily disputing the claims that Russell may in fact be a rotten company. I’d just like to see people be a bit more careful about repeating what amounts to little more than propaganda.

Then again, hope springs eternal.

A sneak preview of our possible upcoming issue of “The Comic Pravda.”

Last week the Model United Nations was on campus, and we received this thoughtful note from a young highschooler/diplomat:

On a side note, I’ve always wondered about how countries like Iran or North Korea get represented in the model U.N. I mean, is there a 15 year-old girl sitting there calling for the destruction of Israel?

On a further aside, The Groovy Fascists is a good band name.

This video of the ignominious end of some kind of student protest at NYU has been making the rounds today, and it really is worth a laugh. It kind of reminds me of the 2000 occupation of Johnson Hall by a motley assortment of protesters demanding that the U of O join the Workers Rights Consortium.

The NYU kids, though, had an even more hillarious list of demands than did the WRC protesters. In addition to the usual laundry list of college progressive smegma, they decided to include such reasonable requests as the establishment of a student commission with full power “to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions” (and you thought the ASUO was bad…), forcing the university to “donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza”, and demanding that someone else pick up the tab for their political theatrics by compensating “all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.”

My favorite part of the video, though (aside from the cameraman bleating out platitudes about “consensus”, “hierarchy”, and “power structures” that he obviously thinks makes him sound “academic”), comes at the end when he’s making video of the protesters’ possessions just in case campus security confiscates their stuff. After making sure to document all the MacBooks, iPods, and headphones the rabble-rousers are carrying around in their bags, he proclaims that the police won’t be interested in confiscating a water bottle, since “they probably drink corporate water.”

Fight the power!

In response to Stephen Steven Soderbergh’s swooning hagiography of Che Guevara, Reason has posted no less than four different articles in the last couple of days condemning the film and lamenting the disgusting love affair people have with the Che, the Castro regime, and its Chavista sidekick in Venezuela.

There’s way too much to try to summarize here, but they’re all worth reading. After all, Soderbergh’s “Guerilla” is almost certain to end up being screened here at the U of O by some student group or another purporting to promote “social justice” or some other euphemism for anti-capitalism.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what a tantrum looks like:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

…

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election.

I can tell you one thing, if electing Obama means we won’t be subjected to another four years of tiresome faux-antifa screeds and “Save the Republic!” posturing, I might consider voting for him.*

To be fair to Ms. Wolf, though, she’s been playing at this little game of hers for awhile now, so maybe she actually believes it.

* Not really.

Everyone wants to be iconic.

I think the DNC (or at least the crazy-fest outside, courtesy of “Recreate 68″) is going to be a hoot and a holler this year.

My personal favorite? “Humanity needs Revolution & Communism, Not a New Face on the Same Brutal Empire”

You can’t make this stuff up.

[UPDATE]

While the “Revolution & Communism” is perhaps the most absurd picture on there (so far), I think this picture of the clenched-fisted tools idolizing Muqtada al-Sadr as some kind of “anti-imperialist” hero beats it for sheer stupidity.

And is it just me, or is that a Coors logo and a small Budweiser logo on the reverse of Muqtada’s picture?

The Olympic Trials are nearly upon Eugene. For many, this means flying in from other parts of the country and renting a hotel room or apartment for a few days and enjoying this spectacle of world-class athleticism.

Indeed, Eugene has gone to great lengths to make the city a fun and welcoming place for people to come and enjoy during the trials. Also practically upon us is the (in)famous Oregon Country Fair, which begins on July 11, a mere 5 days after the Olympic Trials wrap up.

The upshot of all of this is that Eugene’s already-sizeable transient population is set to increase dramatically for the next month or so. In the interest of helping sports-minded hobos find their way around the city during the Olympic Trials and hopefully minimizing the confusion and possible bumfights over stoops and alleyways that might occur when the homeless Country Fair crowd arrives, I thought it might be helpful to post a link to this guide to hobo signs.

Hobo signs can be useful for a transient new to the area who might be wondering where he can get “work for food,” where he can “fake illness” for a place to sleep, which houses are “easy marks” or where “anything goes.” They’re also helpful for warning the wary drifter away from houses where judges live, “men with guns”, or dangerous “brutal” men.

While I do realize the inherent irony in writing on a blog about hobo signs for transients, it is my sincere hope that at least one bum will stop abusing his body while looking at pornography at the Knight Library long enough to find this post. After all, if we can help just one tramp avoid a “bad tempered owner”, then we’ve made the world a better place.

The double feature you’ve been waiting for all year is finally here. 32 pages of Hate + 16 pages of Hack Attack = the apocalypse - if not that, at least one uproarious read. Enjoy.

Shockingly enough, Che Guevara’s kids are tired of seeing their father’s face used to sell products:

Two of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s children said Thursday they were tired of seeing their father’s image used to sell everything from T-shirts to vodka, calling the growth of the revolutionary as a global super-brand “embarrassing.”

Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara’s four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father’s image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries.

“Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It’s embarrassing,” she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by Cuba’s government ahead of what would have been her father’s 80th birthday on June 14.

So it’s official: no one likes “revolutionary” posers wearing Che shirts, not even actual revolutionary communists.

After a long three month hiatus, the Student Insurgent has finally published another issue.

I was going to propose, for our Hack Attack issue, that we just publish blank space and have a caption asking, “Where were the other publications this year?” But alas (or maybe hooray) they managed to spew out another amazing issue, featuring gems such as:

Regarding Ants

Ants truly use the motto, “e Pluribus Unum,” out of many one.

Next, you’re going to tell me that ants Trust In God, as well, right?

If you want a better world, you could do worse than having ants as role models.
-Brian Kvenvolden is a prisoner of war (emphasis mine) in the Wisconsin Prison Industrial Complex.

Great, all we need: prisoners telling us to better our world by following ants. (more…)

Need I say more?

Edit: I was very drunk when I made this post originally. Apparently some peoples’ idea of cleaning out Suite One doesn’t involve boxes, several hand-trucks, and a U-Haul, but merely some Simple Green and a recycling tub. To each his own, I suppose.

If you’re interested in assisting with the Suite One clean-up, considering it is “filthy, filthy”, click the link above, or just join the group and encourage my idea of cleaning-up!

P.S. Drew, are you circumcised I’ll ask this at a more appropriate time.

I was recently invited to the Free Speech Parade Facebook group, hosted by the one and only UO Survival Center. What struck me as interesting was the description of the group:

We support free expression, be that: verbally, musically, poetically, artistically, physically, nutritionally, literarily, meditatively, economically (barter) or otherwise.

A perfect example of this “free expression” they support is Cimmeron Gillespie’s (coincidentally the group’s founder) drumming/musical performances that, I’m sure, we’ve all had the pleasure of encountering.

Perhaps a further buried example would be a student’s right to smoke–the act of smoking as an expression. I am hesitant to jump on the freedom of expression bandwagon here, but perhaps we, as a campus, could broaden our freedom horizons a bit and accept smoking as a tool to unite students, similar to say, a FIG class, or Week of Welcome.

Even better, if we can get the environmental lovin’ kids to support smoking on campus. Can you imagine OSPIRG collecting signatures to save your right to smoke? Student dollars at work on campus? Dare to dream, people, dare to dream!

As for me, I’ll see you at the Smoke-in on Monday, May 12th, sporting a large cigar.