There has got to be an I Ching stanza that correctly correlates with this request from Chinese officials in Guizhou following massive riots there:

At around 4am yesterday morning, police used megaphones to urge people to leave the area, and local television stations broadcast notices asking people who participated in the protest to turn themselves in. [you can read the entire story here, though i'm sure it's being covered widely in intl press]

i'm thinking something along the lines of "The Thunder knows it cannot control the lightning/ Once released it follows its own path/ Wise fishermen know it is better to stay close to shore/ Fish recognize the currents long before they are seen as waves."

Le Cannabis dans La Maroc

Apologies for the alliterative outburst last night. i've had to teach several classes on adjectives this week and obviously they overran my thought processes.

Yesterday i read this article about the non/use of blogs, which in some ways characterizes my own internet habits right now (write more than read - tho i read a fair amount - list links i rarely check, etc). Pondering it all, i was reminded that while it's good to be evaluating what we do with our time here (within limits) i personally need to avoid using philosophical dilemmas as justification to stop whatever project is or could be at hand. Neither healthy nor intelligent. The author's position is that blogging has become pretty much a wash out - most people writing about shopping lists, weekends on the lake - so, unless you are a pro who'd be publishing anyway, don't waste anymore of our bandwidth/your time, it's all too self-reflective and inertial. To me, this doesn't seem so different from telling people they've got to vote for Obama, Abbas or MSZP if they want to be part of the liberal solution. It appears that in the US, if you don't go where pollsters would like you to go, then you'll screw things up for everyone (on top of being totally shunned by all your favorite celebs). i'm asking (for example): why shouldn't people vote for Ralph Nader if he offers them a platform they want to endorse? 'Oooh, nooooo, don't do that - we must we must have Obama!' Besides, Ralph can't possibly win you're wasting your vote.

ERGO

Why shouldn't i or anyone else send our thoughts out into the virtual void? Does it diminish my thinking them if i'm not able to write a 2000 word treatise on each (any) idea? As my grad school advisor used to say Keep It Short and Simple. Given the current zeitgeist simple probably isn't doable, but otherwise... this pressure to be at the top of the class - the winner - or don't bother at all is not a healthy one for any society but especially a world in crisis. It's everywhere and feels so global, permeating nearly everything i come in contact with in the public sphere.

i'm tired of that and of course i'm continuing on with the blog, hopefully with more frequency. If nobody reads it that's ok. i can't play the piano, but i still have the right to make noise, no? The whole point of this is to find our voices and make them resonate. How many drummers would it take to make the wall around Palestine crumble? Aspiring to write like Salmon Rushdie or Margaret Atwood is always going to be a ridiculous aim, that's just never going to happen. Blog on, i say, and alliterate at will!

This graphic comes courtesy of the brilliant folks at adbusters, i'm posting it here to relieve my self-loathing after a conversation with a student early this morning in which he gave me some of the lamest reasons i've heard in a while for not using public transportation in a city the size of Budapest. How 'bout this: there are people on the metro who don't shower and would consequently contaminate his business suit (paraphrased in the interests of clarity).... This guy's a multi-national exec with 2 young kids who will no doubt thank him one day for ridding the world of polar bears, radioactive Pacific atolls and human settlements in the Niger Delta.... Why self-loathing? Because his English and mental universe are far too limited for me to even try and explain why that's a bullshit reason to drive, and so i just kind of shrugged my shoulders, sending spasms of pathetically contained pissedoffness up into my frenzied blunderbuss command center.... which stayed there all day .... don't even ask about the phraseology of a little tirade i spewed out when a citroen-like car nearly knocked me over this afternoon 'cuz he just couldn't stop at the red light what with all that high volume drum & bass ricocheting around his combustible piston-propogated brain. i'm telling ya, the longer this preferred irresponsible ignorance about automobile dependency drags on, the crazier it's making me. Contemplating the traffic havoc a 40-room hotel on my lovely pedestrian street is going to cause leads me to a word i haven't used since i stood next to Israel's Apartheid Wall: SABOTAGE. Mark my word, our ELF-en friends may soon be planting an IED near your SUV... anger-alleviating blowback? Start in Texas and fan out from there.

US Money Subverts EU Federation??

This is interesting and certainly worth looking into further.... it would not be the first time that US companies sent money through a back channel to influence foreign referendums or elections in the direction of their own financial interests. Hardly. However, in the case of the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty, it may also be more convenient for the ever-dogmatic french to blame it all on pesky american neo-cons than to address the real concerns many europeans have about setting up a federated EU government that would usurp states' rights. If you do internet radio, check out this broadcast from the somewhat wacky but often on the mark Finton Dunne. If you can stand the anti-New World Order rants, he makes some deeper points worthy of attention.

Israeli Knesset Legalizes Murder

While the international media has been sure to cover the story of a Druze Shin Bet officer killing himself at Ben Gurion airport while Sarkozy was busy saying his good-byes, they haven't bothered to mention (why would they?) a new piece of legislation just passed by the Israeli Knesset that allows people to kill intruders on their property. Here's a synopsis of the exchange which took place on the Knesset floor, aptly illustrating the insanity of political debate in the country's public arena.

MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) slammed Labor ministers for voting in favor of the law and said they made a lot of "foolish mistakes." Meretz whip Zahava Gal-On said at the committee meeting a fortnight ago that the bill "gives permission to kill people," and suggested sarcastically: "Just spray the intruders and be done with it. Hand out machine guns to every moshavnik." MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beitenu) told Gal-On "then don't come by my home," to which Gal-On replied "I can't believe this is real, the Knesset is crazy." "The Knesset is crazy for having people like you in it," Rotem retorted.

This is the kind of dialogue that makes us laugh when we see it in a Gene Wilder film.... Of course, the Knesset has people like this in it because citizens vote to put them there. It's yet another level of the total lack of accountability for murder that has permeated the society through all these decades of occupying Palestinian lands. In fact, settlers in the West Bank have had this kind of unretricted power for years - beating, killing and forcing Palestinian families out of their homes at gunpoint. Kill a kid, and if someone does manage to press charges that eventually make it into a courtroom, the worst that will happen is a few months of community service, with time off for R&R on the jewish sabbath. Hard to say whether Palestinians on either side of the Israeli border will take a little solace or not from hearing a Knesset member say something they say to themselves every day: I can't believe this is real.

History to Beat the Heat

Afternoon heat brings lethargy while the night's warm, still air impedes deep sleep of any length. BUT i'm not so lethargic that i can't find the energy to turn you on to this very imaginative and historically intriguing new website: The Lazarus Project. It's a project of the Balkan writer, Aleksandar Hemon, and photographer, Velibor Bozovic, and uses an innovative approach to chronicling the story told in Hemon's newest book of the same biblical name. If you're interested in early 20th century american anarchism and how East European immigrants to the US were systematically treated as potential anarchist threats (sounds all too familiar, no?) then this photographic journey mirroring the tale in the novel will be of particular interest. Alternately, if you just like good photo essay work, the site does not disappoint. Hemon's writing is beautiful, contemplative... the story jumps the sea to Bosnia and Ukraine, offering very provocative insights into this part of the world and the experience of war.... and survival. Highly recommended!

Tracking Zimbabwe - Tsvangirai takes refuge in Dutch Embassy

Provocative piece in the Times UK about the current options for starving out Mugabe and Zanu-PF. When one considers the extreme levels of repression, the absolute lack of basic freedoms to anyone in an opposition group - or just not supporting Mugabe - it is simply atrocious that no coalition has come forth to intervene in any real, substantive way. Sending Zanu officials' kids home from Oxford is simply not enough.

Anyone who believed the world would not let Rwanda's frenzy of machete massacres be repeated is certainly feeling very, very disappointed right about now.... while the various heads of state, et al. who made that promise have had yet another layer of onion skin peeled back from their racist cores. If i were super naive, i might be asking, Why Baghdad but not Harare? yet we all know the answer to that one, not even worth bringing up except to note the rhetorical hypocrisy. At this point, the way forward without military force seems unclear, which is hard to digest since as a matter of principle i don't want to start touting military intervention as the best possible alternative. Someone out there got a better idea?

Now Wonder We're Losing It

Story on msnbc.com yesterday from AP about how so many americans feel things are spinning out of control. Is that supposed to be some sort of news agency revelation? Obviously the staff at AP has not been reading my blog :-)

But really, when we lose people like the great George Carlin it's hard to expect us to stay mentally stable. Why do i say this? Because few people are able to interpret and analyze political and social realities as he could. Here's a segment as tribute. i've rarely laughed as hard as i have at his shows. Bye George, say hi to Andy.

i decided to remove the 2 Nemzeti Vágta slideshows from the blog because they made the page take forever to load. If you're interested in seeing them, i think you can go to my picasa albums page... please let me know if you tried and this didn't work!

Throwing Bodies on the Gears

The UK group Leave It In the Ground has had a busy week. First, they hijacked a coal train headed for Drax, reportedly Britain's largest coal-fired power plant. Check out the Guardian's video of the action here. Yesterday, they occupied a structure in Derbyshire that sits upon a site where UK Coal wants to develop an open cast (open pit) mine: 1 million tons of coal extracted in 5 years. As Mario Savio famously intoned, " There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." (1964)

Sticking with this theme, here's an al-Jazeera report from the recent Xingu Forever Alive Encounter, a huge gathering of Amazonian peoples with a 'no compromise' position towards stopping construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River. According to International Rivers, there are 5 dams planned for this basin: the main hydroplant and 4 smaller dams to create holding basins. According to a report from Root Force:

Eletrobras representative, Paulo Fernando Vieira Souto Rezende spoke of the need for new dams to meet increasing electric demand in Brazil. During his speech, non-indigenous farmers and river dwellers became angry and began to chant and boo. When the speech was finished, a group of indigenous women and warriors rushed the stage, brandishing machetes and war clubs. The apologist for genocide was shoved to the ground and poked with a machete, cutting his arm. He was pulled away by conference organizers and taken to a hospital.

Another conference report quotes one chief as saying: “We ask you to tell (president) Lula that we will not accept dams on the Xingu. If they try to build dams, there will be war.” So, there it is. Indigenous peoples staking their position against the progress (as opposed to progressive) agendas of South America's self-proclaimed Bolívarian leaders.

Elsewhere, at the juncture connecting the two american continents, it seems that the US company AES plans to move forward in building three hydroelectric projects in Panama that are certain to totally devastate a World Heritage Site, the Amistad International Park, and displace two indigenous tribes, the Naso and Ngobe. While the Guardian recently ran a story looking at the 'march of progress' as seen through the eyes of the Naso King and members of his tribe, i also found this overview of the area here, centered around the Proyecto ODESEN ecology center. In a letter from the Ngobe tribe to AES sent back in late 2007, they stated:

El bloqueo del río eliminará de manera efectiva una porción importante de nuestros peces y camarones, porque unas ocho y once especies de ellos necesitan poder moverse entre el rio y el mar para poder sobrevivir. Las represas van ha impedir este movimiento migratorio. Además, las represas van a inundar vastas áreas del territorio donde vivimos.

(Blockage of the river will eliminate an important portion of our fish and shrimps, because 81 of these species need to be able to move between the river and the sea in order to survive. The dams are going to infinge upon this migratory movement. Furthermore, they will flood huge areas of the territory in which we live. - my translation, pls excuse any errors)

Now the Naso are in their 7th month of a blocade against another dam being planned by Colombian electric firm Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EMP). Late last month, the blocade was attacked by paramilitary forces - if you read spanish, lots more information about this situation can be found here.

So friends, it's the same story over and over. Choose hydro over coal for cleaner air, nuclear over biofuels to prevent mass starvation, off-shore oil rigs to mitigate the biofuels controversy, GMOs to protect food crops from large scale drought and infestation... and always the indigenous people, who've managed to sustain themselves since time immemorial without any of this stuff, are being pushed off their lands, their co-evolutionary survival knowledge dying out along with their cultures. i spent 4 months living in a cave once, on top of a mountain overlooking the Wadi Araba (when i become more adept at Google Earth, i'll zero in on it for you). That was before the age of laptops and internet, before everyone had a cell phone, before i myself felt compelled to maintain a stock of 4 different hair conditioners. It wasn't a perfect life, i'll give you that - no showers, books, etc - but it was certainly a sustainable life from a kinetic point of view and compared to how i live now, i'm not sure that the imbalance comes out on the side of the present. In the Americas, i would say for certain that it does not.... just something to think about, because the struggles of these native peoples are the direct result of our refusal to do what they have already mastered.

túl sok eső.... raining here for days, my sinuses will never dry out.... playing around with some images, trying to place Radnóti in (perhaps) broader consciousness/context... at the edge of a river soon to overflow its banks? China, Burma, Iowa all submerged while polar bears sunbathe on melting chunks of ice... hungarians tell me that if it rains on 8 June, expect 40 more days of it. 40 days. that's of biblical proportions. i'm absolutely sure neither i nor anyone i know on the pannonian plains can possibly warrant enough of anyone's attention to be the butt of an epical plague. ok, it's not biblical, calm down. we're talking climatic chaos, don't leave home without mask & snorkel, maybe just don't leave home at all.... does anyone dare go to a Pacific Rim country without packing an earthquake emergency kit? recently read that the FAO wants us to eat more insects, that's how they solved a locust plague in Thailand and now thais want to keep tossing them in their woks. this disgusts me. sorry to be a culinary elitist when we and our crops are being struck down by these legendary plagues, but i really find insects repulsive as appetizer or entrée.... in Uganda people were scarfing down fried white termites, i´m glad they find them scrumptious and i reserve my right to steer clear of land animals with exoskeletons... the other night at friends´home in the countryside a hedgehog came along to clean out the cat´s dish. cute, hedgehogs. back in USSR times, i was on a train from Moscow to Kiev with a woman smuggling out a russian hedgehog, one with needled armour that fit in her handbag. a foreign thrill, but i wouldn´t think about spearing one of them for dinner, either.... anyway, that was severe digression, i started out with Radnóti's thoughts on our interconnectedness and that's where i'd like to leave this. the blog passed the 500 hit mark today (ok, this includes me logging in to post and edit) somebody out there's reading this stuff and so a shout out to whomever you may be, wherever you may be, cuz i appreciate serving as someone else's entertainment escape hatch while i'm close to drowning here in my own aqueous nightmare.

War, Inc.

This film has already had a lot of excellent reviews from people who actually know how to write them, but i’m forging ahead regardless, part experiment and part penance for having been impatient and snatched it out of cyberspace. Promoting it on the blog seems like the least i can do. There’s just no telling how long it’s going to take for this satirical masterpiece to hit theatres in Budapest and even though a Hungarian soldier died last week in Afghanistan while defusing a bomb, (a news item lost in the media coverage of UK soldiers dying there – more than 100 but lower round numbers always more appealing news fodder than seemingly undramatic higher ones), i generally inhabit a solitary universe when it comes to ranting about destruction in the Middle East and all the nasty, obscene details of the neo-con agenda in action; sometimes one is compelled to step outside the law for confirmation of sanity, n’est-ce pas? So Mr. Cusack & Co., begging your forgiveness here, it’s not that i’m a cheapskate, i definitely want the film to be a financial success so you’ll be encouraged to make its pedagogical sequel (Yonica organizes disaffected Latin American vets from Iraq to kidnap former VP when he goes to open new Ecuadoran pipeline…. closing shot of him using a banana leaf to wipe ass while Howler monkeys break into his stash of Cuban cigars). Furthermore, i promise i’ll see War, Inc. on the big screen when eventually it does play in my neighborhood - and bring along some friends, to boot!

OK, first a musical interlude (since this entry is going to push the Leningrad Cowboys off my front page).


Now, on with the review.

Art Buchwald once reflected, “After all of these years in the business, I think you want to be known as a satirist, because you want people to nod their heads instead of laughing, saying, ‘Yes, he's right.’" This means, of course, that a successful satirist must bide his/her time until a critical mass within the intended audience is sufficiently up to speed to appreciate the brilliance of the work, and either angry or desensitized enough (both?) to accept its implications. Kubrick understood this, modifying both the release date and script of Dr. Strangelove so as not to pinch the wound left by JFK’s assassination, yet offering up his spot on vision of Cold War madness at a time when the nuclear arms race had already begun to spin out of control in fuller public view. Coppola was able to drop little snipits of satire in Apocalypse Now – “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” – though probably in the context of that extremely dark cinematographic masterpiece, these should probably be considered outlets for cynicism rather than satire, since one thing Nixon did succeed at was turning a generation of Americans into hardcore cynics.

Another piece of the equation then, is that satire can serve as a vehicle for the reluctant cynic to inspire progressive (as opposed to regressive, read “barbaric”) change. In the realm of warmongering, one has to hope this would take the form of people demanding limits, if not a complete end, to whatever military endeavour is targeted by the work in question. The great thing about War, Inc. is that it succeeds in doing this on a number of levels: superpowerdom, war profiteering, as well as individuals grabbing onto threads of self-respect in the midst of 21^st century violence and commodification madness. If you don’t come away clamoring against crony-corporatism and embedded media, and thinking about how many times you’ve eaten at Burger King or Pizza Hut in the past month, then sorry but you just weren’t ready for this film. (Hey, don’t worry, some might say you’re in excellent company; unfortunately and believe me when i say this, those people are not your friends.)

The story line of War, Inc. revolves around a repentant jackal (John Cusack) sent to a fictitious country, Turaqistan, to off a bookish leader who’s stepped out of line by building his own pipeline and thus, asserted a right to control the movement of oil/gas independent of the Americans (whom we all know believe themselves to have titan-like first dibs on all Earth’s natural resources). The country is occupied by a privatized military force: Blackwater, Halliburton and CH2MHill rolled into one well-armed savage beast. Cusack maneuvers through the film as though he's just come off the set of Blazing Saddles and can't quite believe that during the interim, the manifest destiny doctrine has actually come to encapsulate the entire globe. ("My horse! My horse!") A perfect blend of cynicism and self-reflective surreal. There’s a leftie reporter determined to get the real story, and a Central European pop star, whose wedding to the son of Turaqistan’s president is set up as an opaque promotional event. Joan Cusack and Dan Akroyd brilliantly embodied the shock doctrine background the writers drew from, and Ben Kingsley takes his role from Polanski’s Death and the Maiden and turns it on its insane little head. The film was mostly shot in Bulgaria, and employed some excellent local talent for lesser - though key - supporting roles.

The sink-your-teeth-into-it momentum of the film is generated by Marisa Tomei’s and Hillary Duff’s stellar performances. Tomei portrays a smart, self-possessed journalist who understands the Big Picture, how absolutely out of control (and beyond reach to reign in) oil occupation forces have become; she sees those so engaged as being no more than that (essentially, robotic). You know this character would easily despair towards suicide were it not for her noble mission, the very framework of which defines her world, and yet she’s nearly gleeful upon encountering the possibility that behind a managerial level killing machine, a human being may actually exist. A potent message here, intended or not, the best way to not completely lose it in these insanely troubled times is by having personal relationships that matter. Flipside, it is through people like her that those inside the monster may be able to find the footing necessary to get out. That there is no middle ground is clear, since even the apolitical Barbie Doll eventually must make the choice to either revolt or succumb.

Though i’ve still no idea exactly where she came from (i’ve been told she’s a pop singer???), or perhaps because she was a total unknown to me, i say give Hillary Duff an Oscar for her portrayal of the sexpot, Yonica Babyyeah. She nailed the part to a cross and then carried it without once losing her balance. That imagery may seem overblown, but it actually fits with how i perceive not only the character, but her real life counterparts. Yonica is the micro to globalized warfare’s macro. One some level, even she understands that the best way for a wistful young woman surrounded by greedy men to achieve any kind of reasonably comfortable, i.e. stereotypically middle class, lifestyle, is by turning herself into a commodity that satisfies male greed. The performing aspect of this is a way for girls to trick themselves into believing they actually exert power over their situations, but in truth, i don’t believe it works that way: you either play roulette or you don’t. However, Yonica is hardly in need of redemption, she’s just figured out how to survive and then, as i’ve already alluded to, she gets to choose between staying in that bubble or bursting it. Anyone criticizing Duff or the film itself, in all likelihood will be among those who don’t want to see her break free, the folks satisfied with the status quo or afraid of the world beyond it.

If none of the this inspires you to see War, Inc. then i’ve got one more hook to toss out. John Cusack and/or his producers opted to do their initial publicity on the web, largely through a site on MySpace. After spending millions to make the film (remember that Lou Reed lyric? Does anybody really need another million dollar movie?) and given the increasing disillusionment by entertainment industry artists (and writers) with the way consolidation for profit has homogenized their output and artistic options, it’s close to noble that the War, Inc. team tried to get this film out without a major studio marketing campaign. Think of it as buying Pearl Jam tickets directly from the band instead of going through Ticket Master. We need successful alternative models to Hollywood marketing, wasting massive resources to get in the Guinness book of opening box office sales and supply big studio producers with obscene amounts of wealth.

But hey, even if you don’t care about any of this and just want to be entertained, go see War, Inc. It is the definitive satirical film of our times and there’s no question that with so much really serious shit going on in the world, you’ll feel more able to process at least some little part of it all after indulging yourself in a hearty, if not slightly self-conscious, laugh.

Lame Phuck Numero Uno

Nothing quite like waking up on a sunny day stretching the muscles savoring the espresso checking out the headlines and immediately wanting to barf. This morning's Guardian has a group of stories covering W's current and final trip to the EU, including Bush voices regret for macho rhetoric in run-up to Iraq war. What the hell? i thought this was the guy who never looks back and knows not the meaning of regret. After 8 years of totally arrogant warmongering, he actually has the nerve to say, "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric." It seems to me that war criminals who order foreign military invasions as expressions of their unbridled, pathological greed don't have a whole lot of rhetorical options. i mean, isn't that part of the pathology? i recall that at least one psychologist who analyzed W's speech habits concluded The Decider was most self-assured when spewing out threats and accusations. Quoting the Guardian story again: "The phrases he used to win support for the war such as 'bring 'em on' and 'dead or alive' he said, 'indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace.'" Yeah, right George. You're a man of peace like Henry Kissinger was a great diplomat.

What's more accurate is that both of you are among the greatest liars of all time. "'One of the untold stories of Iraq is that we explored the diplomacy a lot,' he said. 'We all wanted to solve this 'disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences' in a diplomatic fashion. After all, I went to the United Nations security council.'" i believe this is an untold story because it never actually occurred. Yeah, you brought your rhetoric to the UN, and every statement you and your lackies made to the wire-tapped Security Council is known to have been totally fabricated in the interests of a corrupt agenda. It's amazing that he still doesn't get it, no? W is a totally lame phuck who's been totally unmasked, truly the emperor oblivious to his own ugly nakedness.

Regarding his replacement, "It's going to be important for the American people to figure out who can handle the task of the 21st century.....It's a challenging job. It requires tough decision making, clear thought, and an experience level." Yes, that's what he said: an experience level. i suppose someone whose most noteworthy experiences were signing execution orders, running businesses into the ground and doing blow in daddy's White House wouldn't be overly anxious to get any more specific regarding what the level should be. Anyone who gets up and goes to work every day has an experience level, for god's sake. Yet for George, it's an irrelevant question: men of faith don't need any experience, God the great equalizer will just tell them what to do whenever there's a fork in the road. Sorry Georgie Porgie, i'm an atheist and have higher expectations of potential employees, a paradigm of the presidency far beyond your lexical experience so i won't bother elaborating. It's tempting to say, "Go back to Crawford and stay there," but then i would be lying, because where you really belong is in a dark, dank prison cell in the Iraqi desert, begging for water.

Infinitely unqualified to write music reviews, but someone's just given me REM's new album and i gotta put in a plug, encourage anyone who thinks the band had become passée to listen to Accelerate. They are rocking with that combination of righteous anger and raucous irreverence that was so tempered down in Empire of the Sun (which i also like, but it's ballet music in comparison to the new release). Exceptional lyrics... is that Mr. Richard Perle Michael's singing about?

Mugabe madness update

As a few people pointed out to me after the March election, getting Mugabe to go quietly was a pipe dream... ergo and admittedly: i was far too optimist, far too soon. The madness has continued, with CARE recently having their operations suspended amidst accusations that distributing food and other services to 500.000 needy Zimbabweans was "an alleged political activity." In some respects, this is the other side of the failure recently dealt in Rome with respect to the food crisis: it's important to rethink the whole biofuels plan, but lack of equitable food distribution is also crucial and the situations in Zimbabwe and Somalia probably exemplify this right now better than most other places (tho it's obviously a far-reaching aspect of the global starvation crisis). Under different circumstances, one would assume that starving people out is not an effective strategy for winning a run-off vote, but Mugabe is among that vile breed of dictators who believe that dead or incapacitated voters are the best assurance of electoral victory... and if they refuse to die, then just stuff the ballot boxes again.

i'd like to say this is just a desperate old man struggling with the notion of retirement, but that would be far too forgiving. The international community is ranting at him to ease up on the entire range of outrageous restrictions he continues to impose - arresting foreign diplomats recently got a lot of worldwide media attention, and for good reason, but it's hard not to think that the persecution of diplomat personnel pales in comparison to what most of the country's poor are experiencing. Tsavangiri was arrested again, though the Guardian reports that Mbeki was able to apply enough pressure to secure his release. The election is set for 27 June, so this kind of anti-MDC/opposition activity is likely going to worsen. The sickest aspect of the crackdown on food aid is that CARE apparently understands Mugabe is using the food as "baits for votes." The BBC is reporting that Human Rights Watch has completely written off free elections as impossible in the current climate of massive intimidation. HRW also claims Mugabe's Zanu-PF has set up torture camps. Absolute madness, literally.

Another rant on US presidential candidates and then i'll stop for a while. Read this piece by Pepe Escobar on the AIPAC convention taking place this week in the US. All the big name politicians are in attendance, including McCain, BO and HCR, Condi herself leading the refrain on 'Vomit It All Up For Zionism.' Have i mentioned before how much i detest these people?

The way that AIPAC is able to turn otherwise more or less reasonable individuals into gurgling marionettes is surreal. Escobar notes what Killary said at another AIPAC gala in February: "Israel is a beacon of what's right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism." i guess her campaign strategists opted for completely alienating the arab-american voting bloc this time around? Think about what this says to anyone Israel has declared ENEMY: you've been given that label because you are primitive and evil and prostrating in the direction of Mecca is probably the best consolation you've got for the infinite suffering we will continue to mete out. Aspiring populist candidates generally try to avoid that type of position, but when it comes to Israel, there's simply no low that's too low to sink.

This week, HRC asserted the following: "I know Sen. Obama shares my view that the next president must be ready to say to the world. Our position is unchanging, our resolve unyielding, our stance non-negotiable. The United States stands with Israel, now and forever." When people talk like this to save their own political skins, everything else they've every said about democracy and charting a new course for America - well, why bother? Don't they feel just a twinge of embarrassment? If you're going to go out on a limb for another country, the least you should do is choose one that doesn't routinely spy on you, bribe your politicians, get your army mired down in a foreign quag and render you the laughing stock of the UN.

As far as her stepping out on a limb in characterizing Obama's position, the same Huffpost piece has OB saying "... he would 'never take military action off the table' in defending America's interests or those of Israel. 'Do not be confused,' he instructed the crowd. He also called on Egypt to cut off the smuggling of weapons into Hamas-controlled Gaza, described the return of Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah as a priority of U.S. policy, and said he would never 'compromise when it comes to Israel's security.' He also identified Jerusalem as Israel's capital at the end of any two-state solution." [italics mine] How about a national referendum in the 50 states + Puerto Rico to verify that a priority right now should be saving Israeli soldiers? How about a straw poll within the Pentagon? i'm sure the Blackwater, et al. bids for that mission are already in their final drafts. The AIPAC people who hand them these speeches have got to be pulling this stuff out of their asses, since even from this distance, it sure smells that way.

Sometime this winter, i checked out Obama's campaign website and ever since have been getting about 5 emails a day from them. i try to alternate who gets my reply, which is the same letter, sent out over and over again, asking how this position regarding Israel is compatible with the rest of their campaign platform. i've never received any response - shocking, i know - but the main reason is likely that there is no coherent response to be made. It's a campaign financing chess game and the rules are immutable. In what other historical moment has a country of 5 million been able to dictate policy for one of 300,000,000? i'm reminded of Diane Feinstein's suggestion a few years back about how the US Congress and Israel Knesset should hold joint sessions. Maybe if that happened, the Iraqi war vets would get better treatment, even though they'd have to go to Tel Aviv to find it. URRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!

Done Deal

It's after midnight in GMT+2 and though my eyesight is fading, i've just seen the news that Barak Obama has clinched the democratic party nomination... unlike the anniversary of Chernobyl's meltdown (too down & out to even type), i'm not going to pass this without comment.

One understands from the perspective of party politics in the land of the blues that this is an historic outcome. One also understands that saviordom and arrogance are not compatible, and when Obama becomes president (as i expect he will) very little substantive, fundamental change is going to flow from his desk. Pundits compare him to JFK, a romantic analogy in a time of totally lost leadership - particularly at the outermost, imperial rim of the many concentric circles closing in around our lives. However, i am mostly reminded of Bill Clinton's ascension to the offal office, as there was a similar type of 'change is a' comin'" euphoria in the air (yes, even here in the EU). We all know how quickly that melted into a repentant, defanged lycanthropy.

Since i'm advocating for Cynthia McKinney, forget about dishing me as a racist dissenter. One of the last political events i attended before leaving the US was a rally in Oakland for Barbara Lee, graced by the likes of Alice Walker, Danny Glover, Amira Barka and Maxine Hong Kingston. i left wondering why the white offshore banking aristocrats were still in control of 'the conversation,' when the greatest, most astute visionaries are all non-white. The crux of the problem is that Obama is not talking about a substantially different way of doing business; instead, he's filling people's heads with the fantasy that using the same structural models now in place, a different outcome is possible. That's not gonna do it. The whole structure of decision-making needs to be rethought and decentralized in a very radical way. Now there's a word i'm sure the Great BO has yet to hold up to his campaign kaleidescope: decentralization. The fundamental antithesis of what's been going down these past neo-libcon years (if not before) and if we are really ready for change, and really want it, then realigning the dots between who makes decisions about what happens and where has got to be the starting point.

At any rate and as i've mentioned before in this space, BO is at least competent and the system as it now coagulates will likely be managed a bit better. Killary wasn't talking nonsense with that "ready on Day One" line - the Clinton gang was so full of themselves for making it to Pennsylvania Ave that they ended up selling their public souls early on just for the pittance of an approved budget. They weren't prepared to run the federal government and totally lost control of their (albeit moderate) agenda. Campaign promises were traded for packets of power, and the same will happen with Obama because he's already committed himself to not shaking the tree at its roots. He'll need those little packets to save face, cuz one place he's sure not to go is across the street to Lafayette Park - or any other pitstop on Desolation Row.

Nemzeti Vágta - National Gallop

This past weekend, the Hungarians resurrected the traditional Vágta - best translated as 'gallop' in English - in the hopes it will find a place on the EU's list of not-to-be missed summer events. All the counties in Hungary had stalls promoting their wines, crafts, etc., and on Saturday evening the Horseriders Theatre presented a fine production of some hungarian tale which lots of folks seemed familiar with... definitely took us back at least a 100 years to Hussar love triangles, village witches and jesting town criars. One truism about this country is that people are expert in organizing large events and aim for as much grandeur and innovation as possible... ok, putting a cow-on-spit in Kids' World was probably a bit over the top.... In the riding sequences, you'll see the parading of the jockeys (6 per race) as well as a bit of race action, all under the towering bronzes of Arpad, founder of the nation, with his band of pagan horsemen who came here from Central Asia. These cultural roots are more than obvious in some of the costumes and in the yurts.

i've created 2 slide shows, once from Saturday (i got there in the late afternoon) and the other from Sunday (it was hot, crowded, impossible to see the races if you weren't right up on the fence, so i left around 16h). Click on the individual slide show, it will open up a new window, then click on gallery>slideshow/diarama and you should get a full screen show. Right now, there are no captions; i'll try to write some as time permits, but likely only if people ask for them - I have been away from the blog and there are many, many other things i want to rant on now that my focus and energy for it have returned. In the meantime, enjoy the visuals!!!