Where Biloxi Meets Barack

Our fathers asserted that great principle--the right of the people to choose the government for themselves--that government rested upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expression it uttered the same idea, community independence, and the dependence of the government upon the community over which it existed. It was an American principle, the great spirit which animated our country then, and it were well if more inspired us now.

Jefferson Davis, Boston 1858

Introducing these two videos with the words of Jefferson Davis may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out. In an earlier life, an anarchist comrade told me that the most basic right we have is the right to secede. Davis, as President of the Confederate States of America, fully embraced that principle, though he's generally credited with doing so for all the wrong reasons. The fact that creation of the CSA immediately lead to a long, bloody war, and that the Confederacy was lead by slave-owning elites whose slave-holding friends footed the bill for their rebellion, has and will forever color the "wrongness/rightness" of secession itself. In Oregon and California 80 years later, four counties banded together to create the State of Jefferson; curiously, researching this subject we find that the movement is again afoot. "We have nothing in common with you people down south. Nothing," said Randy Bashaw, manager of the Jefferson State Forest Products lumber mill in the Trinity County [CA] hamlet of Hayfork. "The sooner we're done with all you people, the better." Interesting, but i digress.

On my grande finale american road trip, i drove down to the Gulf of Mexico and stopped to visit Jefferson Davis' post-bellum home in Biloxi, Mississippi. The artifacts room there has a number of his early writings on display, many from the 1830s-40s when he was waxing Jeffersonian-like about liberty, democracy, and the rule of law as foundation for all civilized men. i confessed to having been impressed; in that era, people wrote about these things with an eloquence and passion which few today are able to match. When finally the southern states decided there wasn't any point in continuing the slavery debate, Davis wrote just as eloquently for that cause. Make no mistake about it, slaves were property and for him there was no disconnect between government for and by the people, and his right to maintain his personal possessions free of all threat and harassment. We should likewise remember that 90% of the southern whites did not own slaves, but as with many northerners, the very idea that africans and (by then) afro-americans were human beings equal to themselves and deserving all the same rights was, quite simply, a travesty in the eyes of all things right and christian. The elimination of slavery was not synonymous with equality in the minds of many, many people. Sadly, there are some among us who still lag far behind the program, and i'm not sure i'd challenge President Obama if he decided they needed to be separated from the general population to spend some time in re-education camps. Or, let them secede. i'm sure Bono and friends wouldn't hesitate to update their anti-apartheid boycott tracks.

Checking out responses to Diddy's election vlogs, i'm really struck by how deeply they (the responders) are moved by Obama's campaign - his very presence. It's easy to say the election isn't about race, but that's only looking at one ridiculous angle: will white people vote for a black man? (Ridiculous because anyone who bases their vote on race or ethnicity is just politically immature, period.) Obama's pending victory is a major milestone in the amazing continuum of afro-americans' role in shaping the ever-evolving (devolving? let us hope not for much longer) US. This rant of Diddy's is a brilliant testimony to that history and what one should have learned from it. Ironically, this doesn't necessarily fall so far from what Jefferson Davis said 150 years ago: government rests on the consent of the governed. Caring and responsibility are implicit in that, but so too is empowerment. As Nelson Mandela famously wrote, only free men can negotiate. The spirit of President Davis is probably still pondering that concept, while the freedom train marches on and hopefully the best man wins.

Lame Phuck. Installment #3

Check this out. While the cats are clawing at each other to take control of the henhouse, the foxes who still reign the coop are now trying to pull this stunt: sneaking an article that grants them immunity into a congresionnal bill on detainee treatment. Another coup from the coop! Are they actually going to succeed in getting a democratic congress to agree to this? To agree to let them leave on the 20th January with retroactive immunity from prosecution on war crimes violations? Impeachment was never a plate on Pelosi's table, but this?? Total protection from ever having to be held accountable in a US court for the multitude of egregious, horrific crimes? Lest i seem to be directing all my anger at the democrats, let me add that the audacity of W Dick to even suggest such a piece of legislation (no doubt initiated on the Dick side of the equation) is at once obvious and mind-boggling. Their arrogance knows no bounds.

Also today, Minister of War Gates said he wants to send another 20.000 US soldiers to Afghanistan. Aside from being able to do security at the Afghan Govt-Taliban-Pakistan negotiations, what the hell are these forces going to accomplish in a region which has made it pretty clear that rule by proxy is never going to be acceptable? The Lame Phuck is still pushing his torturous imperial agenda down the throats of the poorest of the poor - one gets the impression that W is happy with Laura, yet he seems intent on fucking over as many people as he can between now and the 20th. (Excuse the strong language here, but in case you couldn't tell, this really really pisses me off!)



In the realm of international law, i'm not sure that a national government's granting of immunity from prosecution of war crimes translates into the International Criminal Court's acceptance of immunity. So if an international body decided to go after Cheney, Wolfie, Rummie and George - and Elliot Abrams - i HATE Elliot Abrams - this US congressional bill wouldn't stop them. Admittedly, i'm not an expert in international law but considering what happened to Pinochet in the UK, it leads me to think these guys would still have to watch their back when travelling outside the US. Pinochet, as i recall, abdicated power as part of a deal in which the Chilean Senate granted him immunity in that country's courts. Doing the quickie wiki check on Pinochet's arrest in London following an order from a Spanish court: it was the first time that several European judges applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former head of states, despite local amnesty laws.

So guys, it's not over till it's over and the law may get you yet.

The Weather Underground

Started writing this piece a week ago but couldn’t finish before taking off for a long weekend. Afterwards, it seemed outdated and ready for the ever-expanding ‘incomplete ideas’ folder (as opposed to the circular file which would’ve claimed it back in the days of pens and typewriters). Then i saw this video and this story. Enthusiasm instantly rekindled: if the reactionary right is Seig Heiling itself towards revolt by machete, the left might as well talk about whether reasons for not using violence against the state also pertain when it comes to protecting people from the totally unapologetic, violent wing-nuts whom Sarah Palin and FOX are apparently unleashing for prime time insurrection. Listening to these people, one wonders if a McCain-Palin victory next week will calm them down or embolden them into a frenzy. If Obama wins, i think the answer to this dilemma is fairly obvious. As i mentioned last week, i’m down with Diddy under the covers; friends back home are already warning me to expect long-term guests if these people take over the government (which they will inevitably succeed in destroying; curses on anyone who makes W look moderate). Others i know may well be contemplating various levels of community self-defense, particularly if they’ve had any experience dealing with wild-eyed Israeli settlers.

So, the ironic aspect of the whole Bill Ayers business is that it’s actually not a bad time for people to be thinking about the Weather Underground. Naturally, neither Palin, McCain, nor any of their sheep utter the name of Ayer’s group in the ‘domestic terrorist lover’ attacks against Obama. Bring up the Weathermen and the next thing you know, liberals may start talking about Timothy McVeigh and the dangers posed by “patriotic” militia movements. Ok, that seems unlikely; McCain’s has had to deflect Qs about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy, Grand Master of Patriots Extemperaneous, but the republicans don’t like putting things in context because they rarely know anything about history. However, i also think that liberals, broadly speaking, do not want to have a showdown over insurrectionist politics with people who’ve got NRA tattooed on their biceps and/or spend their weekends casting Satan out of the kids’ playground. As a northerner and northern Californian, i’ve always felt the fundamentalist militia volk were stuck in the shadows, safely removed from the functional majority; now it seems like they’re burrowing out of the leaf litter. On the campaign trail, MoveOn.org type groups are probably right to minimize the role of Ayers in Obama’s political background (somehow i've ended up on all their email lists); however, the Weathermen were not the Klan, they were and still are on my side of the aisle and i’m happy to be inspired to write about them especially in the context of this election and its possible outcomes.

The Weather Underground are one of the few groups in America who actually tried to carry out an armed insurrection. NB: with much less volatile weaponry than is available nowadays. They never came close to the scale of death and destruction in Oklahoma City (1995), for example. Neither secessionists nor racists, they had an analysis that concluded the system of power had to be dismantled and if that required violence… well arguably, there shouldn’t be an ‘if’ in that sentence. During that period, there was so much domestic and really extreme international violence being committed by the US govt that in most any other country, armed opposition would have been considered obvious. (It certainly seemed obvious to the Vietnamese.) In any event, they were worlds away from inciting hate crimes, e.g. the assassination of an afro-american politician, and never believed that they were on a mission from any god. Some activists from that period have maintained that the decision to use violence discredited the nonviolent civilly disobedient anti-war movement and distracted from its goal of stopping the war in Southeast Asia. i’m not going to argue that point either way (would Martin have succeeded without Malcolm? would SDS have controlled the streets without Days of Rage?). What is true is that they did not target individuals in a random way, and after 3 of their own members were killed while working with explosives in a NYC flat, they tried to take measures to ensure that facilities but not people were present at their targets. The FBI were after them, they disappeared for years. Marge Piercy’s VIDA is loosely based on one of their members (Kathy Boudin?) and is a great tale of how hard it was to live outside the law and still be honest, even with oneself.

It’s my view that because the Weathermen (and women) were white kids from mostly elite colleges, e.g. Harvard and Columbia, individually they make an easy target now. What if the FOX-feeding right were to start carrying on about Obama’s ties to former Black Panthers? i think we can agree that they would have dug themselves a very deep hole on that one, being infinitely incapable of dealing with the historical facts of racist violence in a public forum, nor the case for self-defense by those still being gun downed by police who think that being African is a crime. One of the key, threatening things the Weather Underground did was forge political ties with the Panthers; their “War Against America” statement followed the assassination of Fred Hampton, Chairman of Chicago’s Black Panther organization. White revolutionaries crossing the color line at that level was more than even a lot of the anti-war left at the time could cope with, so the last thing anyone wants to discuss on the republicrat stage now are revolutionary movements that have the potential to inspire (especially young people) to engage in heroic fantasies of interracial self-defense. McCain , of course, is happy to talk about supporting the brave troops who are protecting democracy, so long as the discussion doesn’t involve any IVAW vets.

Two great documentaries have been made about the Weather Underground, quite stylistically different. In Emilé D’Antonio’s film, Underground, it’s really clear that the subjects are in hiding and the urgency (or at least awareness) of that permeates nearly every scene. The director-outlaw dynamic is brilliant. More recently (2002), some younger filmmakers who were looking back at a time they, themselves, didn’t directly experience released The Weather Underground as a retrospective documentary, interviewing members of the group in their current locales, including prison. Both films are worth checking out. D’Antonio’s team were subpoenaed by the FBI for information about the Weatherman, and one of the producers, Mary Lampson, had this to say about the group. “The strength of a movement can be judged in part by the government’s reaction to it. Their response to this film has been swift and harsh. They do not want to allow the U.S. people a chance to react to the ideas expressed in this film.” And what ideas is she referring to? ''We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence was itself a form of violence. That's really the part I think is hardest for people to understand.''

Hard then, hard now. Who wants to see political violence rip through the streets of Chicago, NYC, LA again? Only those who would provoke it, i’d like to believe. Thinking today about the Weathermen, we have to ask if “doing nothing” still means not using fire to fight firepower, or could it now just entail staying home doing Sudoku puzzles with the iPod phones securely blocking out all non-self-selected sound? i don’t think the level of violence in our world today has maxed out – for most people – yet we can recognize the correlation between poverty and violence. The Weather Underground’s tactics may not have achieved much more than getting them on the Most Wanted list, but the group’s commitment to supporting their allies, circumventing the racial Other, are certainly worth thinking about today. Describing Bill Ayers as a terrorist has face-value impact on the minds of those who otherwise would never have known he existed, but describing him as a revolutionary? – entirely different because it leads us to ask how today’s revolutionary might, or should, be defined. That, to me, is the more compelling question now, and the Weatherman are an excellent reference point for anyone wanting to have that discussion.

Wrapping up or rounding out this rant, i offer the second half of an interview Jane Fonda did recently with Al-Jazeera. Her observations about being used as a Leftist demon are pertinent as they are interesting. Needless to say, her commitment to being hopeful also, for me, makes her a true maverick (since assigning that label to someone seems to matter in this pre-election week).

Photos from Krakow

Not sure how this is going to work, but trying a new slideshow format by inserting it as an actual blog entry... hopefully won't muck up loading time. Photos have short captions; wikipedia has just about all the historical details starting with its page on the city, followed by its endless (circular) links to specific sites and districts.

Krakow is an extraordinary city! i breathed in so much that's new, i'm still in a state of stimulation overload... sorted out thoughts coming soon, in sh'allah.

Krakow '08

Barbar goes mobile

Check out this latest innovation for tracking elephants who could be heading toward local villagers' crops. The technique is called 'geofencing' and my friend Barbar wonders why it can't also be used on Taliban/al-Qaeda members as a first step in shutting down Bagram and Guantanamo. Alternately, my buddy Mohammed wonders if they could start putting them on Israeli settlers in order to keep them away from Palestinians trying to harvest their olives. Of course, technology is only good as our imaginations... where o where should we confine Dick Cheney to after January 20th? The intestines of a West Virginia coal mine might suffice.

Back to the Banality of Evil

Frightened, intellectually overwhelmed white people have a long, long history of taking hate crime scapegoatism to an extreme. The way this behavior pattern is being reinvigorated right now in the US hardly pushes the envelope of that paradigm. That is to say, it wreaks of all the standard-bearing traits that characterize fascist social movements; to credit it with breaking new ground gives credit where credit is not at all due. Those of us living on the other side of the pond may be completely out of touch with what's really happening in the US, but we don't want to see america devolve into pointless, reactionary choas - in some ways, perhaps moreso than those inside the country: there's something about seeing your native land collapse from afar that is just so painful. i'm not being narcissistic here, am i? Where i'm from provided the framework i still use to filter a great deal of my experience, tho i've got a lot of other reference points to choose from. We live through and sort out so many lies in the course of a lifetime; at some point, you get down on your knees and beg that your most basic visions of what's possible don't get tossed onto the pile of fantasies whose time was never meant to be. i also don't want to see the W Dick gang walk away from their long, long litany of crimes unscathed, and if Sarah and Todd Palin start roaming the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania, that's exactly what will happen. Guaranteed.

i've been reading an anthropologically focused, historical book about Gypsies in Europe, Bury Me Standing, whose penultimate chapter is entitled "The Devouring" and chronicles the experience of Gypsies during the Third Reich (the name is a direct translation of the roma word for their holocaust, porriamos). Going through the chronology of anti-roma propoganda, legislation, rounding up and deportation - leading to eventual death for 10's of thousands - one cannot help but see the hate coming from McCain-Palin and their flock of encephalitic sheep as being conducive for a home-grown american version of the same: against arabs and muslims certainly, against other groups of terrorist-loving, baby-killing haters of america probably (one assumes someone in her crowd's got their crosshairs set on Hillary). These people are dangerous, driven by that strange mix of fear and hate that causes them to become totally unhinged in the name of god and country. True Volk.

The reason i bring up the Roma here is because as i've gone through this book, reading of slavery and laws that render the mere fact of BEING a gypsy a criminal act punishable by hanging, the parallels to african-american history are everywhere, and everywhere stark. Partly in the experience of the Roma, but moreso in the mindset of the prejudiced. It leaves me with a nauseated feeling: there are no limits to what an angry mob of fascists will destroy, and there is a subset of armed americans who still see afro-americans the way most europeans still see roma. It seems naive to embrace the belief that really bad things can't happen again. i've seen right wing Israelis attack Palestinians and felt the vibe of a maniacal group bonding experience... it ain't pretty... the ties between fanatical christian right and fanatical zionist settlers make obvious sense. These people are very serious about being 21st century assholes, and while i'm willing to stand up to them rather than run, part of me also wants to crawl under the covers with Diddy. 'Have they raptured yet? Is it safe to come out?'

Check out the latest from Brave New Films and tell me that these people who are so often eager to invoke the memory of Ronny the Raygun aren't going much, much further to encourage hate and fear than RR ever did against the evil soviet empire. i voted in 1980 and don't recall anyone at a Reagan rally calling for the murder of Carter or members of NYC's russian community. If McCain were to win this election - and maybe even if he doesn't - rural american has all the potential of a crusade in the making. How ironic indeed that at the same time as these volk are gearing up to show their racist patriotism, the bushies have succeeded in violating the law again, putting army units on the streets. Surely this presents a conundrum to the reactionary wingnuts with 'I love the NRA' tattooed across their biceps? Well, i'm happy to let the Toad Palin's of rural american fight it out with the infantry, except that's not what the world needs right now even though one could argue that it may well be what america needs to jump the track and, ultimately, find a new and more humane direction. The most famous road in North America is Highway 66 - not 666, which is the bottomed out route the followers of hate are hopefully about to blow a gasket on.

Age matters, sort of

My friend M did a comparison recently between Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin (the only two women who've run for Vice Prez on the US' major party tickets), which brought to light more than a few of Palin's experience and knowledge gaps - let's call them voids, since gap implies at least a framework of knowledge that's just missing a few puzzle pieces. This gave me the idea of looking into the age of presidents and prime ministers around the world, to perhaps throw a wrench into the argument that Barack Obama, age 46, is too young to occupy the White House. Someone over at CafeBabel had a similar idea, looking at the relationship between progressive policies and leadership age. The conclusion reached by that author: "Europeans have a clear preference for electing leaders who are in their fifties. It seems impossible to be elected if you are older unless the leader is popular while occupying higher functions." The youngest head of state in the EU is 42, Swedish prime minster Frederik Reifeldt. Making a correlation between socially progressive agendas and younger leadership seems to hold up fairly well across the EU spectrum, according to this piece.

While there actually doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list of current world leaders' ages anywhere on the net, i did find a list of the ten youngest leaders currently in office. This includes: Bulgaria's Sergei Stanishev - 42, Cheney's Georgian buddy Mikhael Shaakashvili - nearly 42, and, interestingly enough, Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, who just turned 43 last month. (If you were Medvedev, would you feel better about dealing with a US Prez 3 years your senior, or one who's about the age of your father and probably more authoritarian?) Clearly, the conservative argument that Obama is too young to do the job is yet another house of cards used to scare people who know less about how the world works than the pundits like O'Reilly who are spewing out this type of "advice" to confused, waivering voters.

Looking solely at female leaders, most of those currently in power were born in the 1940's and early 50's, which puts them in their 50's and 60's now. This includes Michelle Bachelet, Andrea Merkel and Cristina Kirschner. Expanding on M's theme, consider potential Commander-in-Chief Sarah Palin's resume compared to Bachelet's (pediatrician with a minor in military strategy), Merkel's (former Federal Minister of Environment, Protection of Nature and Reactor Safety, among other credentials), and Kirschner's (lawyer and former Senator from Buenos Aires). Sorry Sarah, but seeing Russia out your smokehouse window just doesn't cut it compared to what these women bring to an office of national leadership. What would you talk with them about at state dinners, the latest tanning salon oils?

Back to the boys, i'm not sure there's any real conclusion to be made other than stating the obvious: being under 50 - under 70! - is not a matter that should be used to disqualify a candidate for any nation's highest office. That an opposition candidate has to fall on this as a point of contention for voters only shows the extent to which that candidate is grasping at straws, and probably isn't too keen to increase the rolls of young voters. Let's hope that the so-called youth vote in the US isn't buying the age argument and can do better than McCain and Palin both when it comes to thinking on their feet.

Italians throw a wrench into 'democratic' american empire

News from Vicenza, Italy is of an overwhelming vote in favor of not allowing the US to construct a new military base - Dal Molina - in their environs. The local referendum took the high road, instead of being a mere "NO BASE" measure against the empire's encroachment. According to this report:

The referendum asked local residents if they agreed with the City of Vicenza taking up measures to purchase the Dal Molin area, the site of the proposed base, in order to designate its use in the public interest and to protect the environmental integrity of the site. With a resounding no to the new base, 23,050 voters, or 95.66%, voted in favor of the referendum.

Equally or perhaps more important, was the fact that although Burlesquecroni's regional lackey managed to get the referendum suspended through court action, on the day of the vote over 24,000 miscreants nevertheless went to the polls.

It was an extraordinary example of citizens taking democracy into their own hands, a victory over apathy. And it wasn´t the first time it had happened in Vicenza, where for over two years the people have not only succeeded in blocking construction of a base they don´t want, but also in creating a community which takes an active role in the politics that affect their lives and the lives of others around the globe.

One wonders if the Bush administration is going to approach Italian democracy the same way it has Palestinian: if you don't like the results, just ignore them and do whatever you can to discredit the electorate. With the right friends in power, anything's possible, no? Yet in a country where people are willing to burn thousands of Roma out of their homes and battle the police over garbage dumps, it seems Washington will not have an easy time trying to force its military agenda on the majority. Here's a nice clip from last year, offering some background as to why the resistance to the US base is so widespread.

Mohammed Yunus' perspective

Here's a short interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus, on the economic situation. He characterizes today's capitalism as having "degenerated in a casino" and otherwise explains (with more authority than i can claim) why insolvency has run rampant.

EuroZone country leaders have agreed on a plan to protect their own banking system (and currency), mainly by underwriting banks' debts. Of course, here in Europe you won't find many people screaming about how governments are sliding down that thin slope to socialism... especially here in Mitteleurope, where people are still reeling from all the security lost when freedom from authoritarianism became a package deal that included casino capitalism (yes, we do like that term).

Following their decision, perennially overwrought Gordon Brown had this to say: "The most precious asset which we have lost is confidence.... It is something we will restore through coordinated intervention ... In the medium term we've got to rebuild the international financial system." Shall we try to guess who the EU leaders are hoping win the US election? Probably not the guy who still believes that wars are good for the economy.

Searching for pespective

While "the networks" are replete with images of guys in Armani suits holding back tears on the floor of the NYSE, LSE and other trading pits around the globe, and sure, we are feelin' their pain (as Governhater Palin might say), consider the situation in Zimbabwe, which today has recorded an inflation rate of 231.000.000%!!! According to this story, more than 80% of Zimbabweans are now living on about 1 EURO per day. No Armani suits scavenging the trash pits of Harare, that's for sure. It's worth following the above link, just to see what a 1 billion dollar bill looks like. Even the greedy green eyeballs of Dick Cheney must be jumping out of their sockets at that concept, imagining the cumulative amount of cash he could stuff into a Halliburton travel bag as he prepares to flee Washington.

The point here should be clear, but since the purpose of writing a commentary is to indulge in comments, i'm going to go ahead and articulate some thoughts on the intensifying global economic meltdown. The whole bailout business at its heart is about making sure that the people who have screwed up don't get too screwed and find themselves having to live entirely off of their Cayman Islands accounts. Again, that's my view of the bailout plan, i'm not an economist but i do grasp the purpose of reading glasses. The pundits are freaking out about W going all commie on us by nationalizing banks, but i'm guessing in the corridors of designer wealth, the more substantial freak out is over how the bailout pie will be divided up among the miserly tentacles of JP Morgan Chase. The fact that it's no longer a bull market in Wall Street shouldn't fool us into thinking there's no bull being chucked around. The fate of money markets is not controlled by small mortgage providers, sick people buying insulin with credit cards, or families living in grandpa's shed after losing their homes to foreclosures. No, these markets are controlled by people with the money to control them, people who are willing to let the mid-level traders fry in the interest of pushing their own economic control up another notch or two.

What we are seeing happen now is starting to be described as class warfare precisely because it's going to result in a lot more people falling to the bottom of the barrel; meanwhile, those looking over the top of the barrel are now on extension ladders reaching into the stratosphere. While i'm not stupid enough to claim "We are all Zimbabweans now!" i do believe there is an important parallel to note between the willingness of rich countries to let poor countries' production levels and ergo, their economies, entirely collapse and the unflinching demand by Wall Street bankers that the US taxpayers should take over their debt. Perhaps if by US taxpayers we were referring to the 5% of the population harboring extreme wealth (over $100.000.000? $500.000.000?), one might see a tone of fairness thrown into the equation. Yet that's not who is going to pick up the bill. Haitians may emit a little grin at seeing the IMF turn its sights on America with SAP manuals in tow, but the stark truth is that countries like Haiti (who actually deserve reparations from the US) are being even more completely hung out to dry as what help they might have received is now being directed toward rich bankers who've convinced people that the entire US economy will implode if they no longer have board meetings to attend. Implode, i might add, is absolutely the correct term to apply here.

To some extent, the lack of concern among average Westerners towards poverty in the Global South - specifically, the inequalities and lack of fair playing field that has perpetuated this impoverishment - is now coming back in kharmic fashion to bite them. The attitude that the prosperous West was disconnected from the flailing South created an isolationism of the mind, a belief that "we" have a system that works (but you don't, sorry), and a total lack of attention to the fact that this system has become a complete house of cards - cardboard - loose leaf paper - post its! - built on very little that's tangible even as it's eaten up tangible wealth in order to spread laterally as well as vertically. Calling the current state of affairs a trickle down disaster would be generous albeit erroneous; we're dealing with something closer to the volume of the Yangtze than we are the River Jordan. The really sickening thing about this is that the practice of using money - wealth on paper, a kind of smoke and mirrors exercise - to generate more money (accumulating interest in accord with whatever the financial markets determine that interest should be), has so penetrated every aspect of the economy that real, tangible wealth is being ground up like hamburger meat in order to save a system which is essentially just theoretical even though it allows those who control it to live a life well beyond the planet's means. It's worth noting, as well, that for the first time in a very long time, a West European country on the verge of economic collapse - Iceland - has gone to Russia for assistance. It's going to be interesting to see if the approach here is to use the rubles to rejuvenate Iceland's economy from the ground up, i.e. by investing in things which will produce real wealth, or whether it will mostly be dumped on trading floors to raise the value of financial assets.

Realizing that this all seems rather abstract or more than likely, mentally impaired, i'll try to bring it down to earth a little vis a vis this short film about a kids' bank in India. Sometimes it's helpful to return to basics, which in this case means thinking about what the purpose of banks should really be. Taking a firm anti-capitalist position on the entire banking system has its obvious appeal, but as the kids in this report point out, there is an important service being provided and a perspective on banking that is actually service-oriented in ways that money markets and currency speculation most definitely are not. Consider it a simple reminder that whatever financial structure a society embraces, its ultimate success depends not on whether it can be milked to excess for personal gain, but the extent to which it contributes to the functioning of the community as a whole.

earth2tycho blogging/not blogging update

As i don't want to start with an apology and thereby discredit myself out of the gate, i'm writing to let you know, first of all, that i've updated my links lists a bit and have added an RSS feed. If you have faith that i'm going to come back to life here and offer up acid punch bowls full of witty, if not brilliant, insights into the nature of existence in the 21st century, then by all means feel free to subscribe. i believe you'll get an email every time i post something new, a useful psychological tool for your disheveled writer, who could then use her blog posts in lieu of writing personal emails and thus avoid being accused of neglecting friends' inboxes. i've also added a Personal Links gadget, if you want to check out what strikes me as worth saving from the Guardian or read my anti-Bush limericks at MySpace.

My old comrade Jim is now working with the franciscans at Nevada Desert Experience, involved in various Las Vegas community works as well as maintaining their decades-long focus on shutting down the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and returning the land to its rightful owners, the Western Shoshone Nation. Kudos to Jim for being willing to live in Vegas and may the neon lights of Sin City not blind him. They're scheduled to do another action this week as part of Keep Space for Peace International Week of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space. Coordinated through the Global Network Against Weapons and Nukes in Space, i believe the lengthy names of both event and organization speak for themselves.

This past summer, i also hooked up with Che Sudaka from Barcelona, a frenetic band with a big ska-loving heart. They have taken on the independence movement in Western Sahara as a cause celebre and deserve lots of kudos for doing so, it is a much-ignored part of the world aside from in Morocco, which insists on occupying it. This territory has the unique honor (?) of being the last place in Africa where one can still see the "curious institution" of slavery, alive but hardly well... More on that probably at a later date - CS are a great band and you should definitely go see them and support their work if they play in your locale.

Now for the apology.... well, not exactly an apology, but i've been getting lots of positive feedback about the blog and consequently, some ??'s about why i've been neglecting it in these trying times, so i feel i owe my small but illustrious fan base an acknowledgment (along with a note of thanks!) that yes, i've been a total flake in terms of producing words, but largely this is due to too much uptake of other people's babble... informative but mesmerizing... and i can be very easily mesmerized, especially when sick and trying to make sense of something that at heart, i really could care less about. Specifically, that would be the Obama-McCain-Palin circus and the public coffers bailout of Wall Street heavies, with its ripple effects throughout the globalized economy. At this point, i think i'm following the US election stuff out of pure addiction (it sure beats Brad and Britney); this must be so since the first song i listen to every morning is now Ship of Fools. Aside from Tina Fey's and Alec Baldwin's great Palin impersonations, the US electoral spam is not even entertaining. Just insane nastiness, and stupidity, more of the same old crap: nuclear vs. extinction, killing Iraqis vs. killing Pakistanis, helping the rich get richer vs. being rich and becoming richer... Palin's bounty on wolf paws is nauseating - literally - and she's yakking nonsense about climate change while her fellow - native - Alaskans are literally seeing their land disappear underneath a rising sea level. The Comedy Central folks have been on her ass big time, there's really not much i personally can add to their analysis. John McCain is a major creep and anyone who thinks he's a leader must also harbor secret fantasies about immolating Sikhs and polar bears.

As far as financial news is concerned, it's hard for someone who's never been very interested in money/finance to suddenly dig in and collect hoards of details which, all told, only reinforce my original position that the unreal nature of extreme wealth creates its own kharma of deserved yet likewise (somehow) unreal extreme crises. However, like everyone else whose got nothing to lose, i do have thoughts about the what's happening and a load of links to share offering comprehensible, tho sometimes offbeat, analyses of what's happened and where it's all potentially going. Subscribe to the blog and be the first to read a (loosely) anthropological deconstruction of the capitalist neaderthals' road to perdition.

Ok, that's my awkward lumbering back into the blogosphere after an undesired and delinquent hiatus. Leaving you with this curious piece about Truman Show Delusion, the ultimate 21st century plague, a culmination of all that individualism has to offer.