i totally called it

This evening's update from The Independent:

Police were forced to use dogs, horses and truncheons to control a crowd of up to 5,000 people who marched on the Bank of England, in Threadneedle Street, on the eve of the London summit...

The rioters then went on the rampage within the bank, which was at the centre of a row over the £700,000-per-year pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, its former chief executive. Telephone lines were ripped out, office furniture wrecked, windows smashed and graffiti daubed on both the inside and outside. A blue office chair was used to smash up one of the blacked-out branch windows, while another chair was thrown out of the window...

A Met Police spokesman said: "There have been a number of missiles thrown at officers and a number of surges at the police cordons, and increasing levels of violence towards police.

Elsewhere in the city, papparazzi were chasing the Obamas and succeeded in catching a sleeveless Michelle Obama on her way into dinner. The savior of the free world gave the Queen an iPod, a subtle way of encouraging her to tune out even more than she probably already does. i read recently that the royals are forbidden by a 350+ year old law of marrying catholics. Interesting. No wonder the IRA refuses to completely disband. But we take note that they were not leading any of the marches in London.

And a quick report on the climate action folks' encampment at the Carbon Exchange:

15:20 - Climate Camp: Still going Strong, over 2000 people and 150 tents, described as a hugely impressive infrastructure. There are theatre performances, compost toilets, a medical tent, a couple of working kitchens, with many people picnicing there. The camp has been attracting passers by and city workers. There are police lines on either side of the camp but people are allowed in and out. Plenty of dancing and banners across the street.

19:15 - Climate Camp: Police have attacked on the South Side of the camp, indiscriminately beating people who are holding their hands up. Police cliam it is to contain the camp as many parts of the city are out of control.

20:42 - Climate Camp: There is now a sit down protest in front of the police vans and lines blocking traffic on Wormwood St being held in solidarity with the climate campers currently trapped by police. Still a party atmosphere with lots of music within the climate camp kettle

22:20 - Climate Camp: Up to a thousand people remain inside the besiged camp. The police have said that they will allow people to leave, but will take names and addresses of everyone who does so. There's been a camp meeting but no consensus has been reached on what to do. Generally there is still a positive atmosphere amonst the peaceful demonstrators.

It seems the only disappointment in my fantasy day was that Starbucks didn't amp up their drinks list. Complete satisfaction derailed yet again.

Happy Fossil Fools Day

It's a big day for Londoners. Some of them will be attempting to catch a few Obama rays when the new prez makes his way over to the Excel Center, or is en route to drink tea with the queen, or do the 10 Downing Street elite dinner party later this evening with his hosts from the Central Bank. (Indeed, a busy day for Barak, although the main question on the tongue of every 'banking economics have melted my brain' journalist is undoubtedly whether Michelle will dare to bare her arms in the presence of royalty.) Yet another group, mixing the francophiles with the francophobes, will be waiting to see Mr. Sarkozeee storm out of the meeting when he doesn't get his way with Chorus Liquidity. However, the most enthralling events are sure to take place on the streets, in the vicinities of the Bank of England and the European Carbon Exchange. UK Climate Action has dubbed their ECE campout 'Fossil Fools Day' (must give credit where credit is due) and the G20 Meltown organizers are rallying people under the banner 'Storm the Bank!' i've clipped the more provocative part of their propoganda here, but you can check out the whole poster set and entire list of rhetorical anti-capitalist questions on their website.

Unable to participate personally in any of these stress-reduction programs, i've allowed myself to speculate telepathically on how the overall experience will pan out. The climate action folks tend to provide the most creative theatrics and would be the place to go for sensible discourse on how to rearrange the Titanic's deck chairs. What i love about hardcore climate activists is that for every criticism of the status quo, they always have an alternative model; even if i personally can't live their ecotopian lifestyle by completely eliminating plastic and other petroleum products from my life, at least i leave them feeling more guilty - er, empowered - carrying away a kilo of craftily designed directives printed on acid-free paper that explain how to live independent of fossil fuels and thereby save our gasping planet, which in turn would make me a hero rather than a disgraceful part of the problem.

The bank stormers are sure to be an altogether different experience. The Bank of England will be the place to go to see London's crowd control officers lose their cool, as i'm expecting strategically placed grecian anarchist types to act out their rage on Britain's equivalant to the Parthenon. Or maybe there won't be any Greeks; the British working class is more than capable of lashing out at their adversaries without foreign intervention, thank you very much. i see molotovs flying over the heads of peace-loving percussionists, leftist intellectuals yacking to the press outside dissipating clouds of tear gas, locked-down 20-somethings chanting 'Eat the Rich!' Indeed, the Bank of England is the place to be if one needs to vent anger of any sort, since even failed relationships can be rationalized as fallout from the unfettered commodification of human beings in the interests of capital: how am i supposed to get a lover to value me when my employer doesn't even want to cough up minimum wage?

When i've had my fill of all this fun or need a recharge to stay up long enough to upload my photos in the hope that HuffPost might publish at least one of 350, then it's off for a jolt of joe at the nearest Starbucks. You may or may not be surprised to hear this, but Starbucks has 307 Free Trade-stickered retail locations in London. Today is bound to be a busy day for them, especially if they tweak the drink list a bit: Bust a Bank Super Chai (spiced tea topped off with a shot of Red Bull), Espresso Economico (light on the coffee, heavy on the whipped cream), or Capituccino (white-washed arabica sprinkled with shredded treasury bills). i've noticed over the years that Starbucks has often made a concerted effort to cultivate business from the radical demo crowds, probably hoping to protect themselves from being attacked with newspaper boxes, et al. Whatever works, right? i've seen their shops get totally trashed by balaclavists and i've seen them deal with out-the-door lines of people sporting 'This is what democracy looks like' t-shirts. So that's definitely where i'd have to go for a glimpse at how business is capitalizing on anti-capitalism, and if i run into Tariq Ali or Tony Benn at the counter, all the more radical chic to blog about.

So, that's what i'm not doing but wish i were this April 1st. Instead - and you just gotta laugh at the irony here - i'm going to design an 8-week english course for two classes i'll start teaching next week at Citibank. Hungarian employees of the bank need to know how to converse effectively with Citibank's Dept. for Undeserved Bonuses, Division of Deceptive Assets Reporting and so forth, and i'm more than happy to be paid to provide them with the proper syntax and synthetic acronyms required for doing so. While my comrades in London may experience frustration at being stuck on the outside of the banks, looking in, i at least get some satisfaction about being on the inside, looking directly into the system's abyss. Actually, that's a lie. i'd much rather be on the streets of London, where getting no satisfaction has long been the noblest theme song of my generation.

Women in Resistance

Speaking of Vietnam (see previous entry), i’ve just finished reading Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram. Dr. Thuy grew up and went to medical school in Hanoi, North Vietnam in the 1960s. She was intensely committed to supporting the revolution in the South, eventual reunification of her country, and standing tall against the american devils. The diaries chronicles her experiences working in hidden clinics, trekking through mine fields to treat resistance fighters in the middle of the night, etc. - all acts of incredibly bravery; she also chronicles her struggle to obtain party membership and show her leadership worth and self-learning as she was given more and more responsibilities by the party. The majority of entries are about her personal relationships, particularly psychic withdrawal from the great love that was not meant to be. After giving it her all for nearly 4 years, she was killed by an american soldier in 1970. The contents in her pack were sent to US military intelligence, eventually the diaries surfaced and were published in Vietnam in 2005.

One of the striking things was her unwaivering belief in a future Vietnam that would be nothing less than utopian. She had such a clear vision of where it all was going, and used that as a source of power to not crack when things got really hairy. Her constant self-chidings about having bourgeois emotional responses to a variety of events is absolutely charming, and because the diaries are so personal, they provide an incredible lens into how/why she felt her own development was an integral part of the development of her country. No hubris here, she simply believed that the decades-long struggle, all the blood it had shed, the political vision it harboured, demanded nothing less from all of them. As the bombing intensified in her area and the clinic had to keep relocating, what she writes conveys a sense that there was a very blurred line between civilians and resistance; everyone living there was effected by the US invasion and understood that survival meant resistance… an almost biologically logical response.

Here’s her entry on 16 January 1969, following a quick evacuation of the clinic. Thuy had stayed with patients who could not be moved.

The whole house is empty. The Clinic is silent and oddly somber. There are only a few wounded soldiers and some staff left. I can hear the murmurs of the stream outside.

I am already twenty-six years old, no longer a naïve girl. Why do I let this gloomy scene color my feelings? In fact, it’s the other way around. Ngyuen Du says, ‘When one is sad, the scenery can never be cheery.’ What joy is there when the American bandits are trampling on our nation and killing our countrymen? What joy is there when our country is still divided, when family members are still scattered in all directions? But, Thuy, does your heart recognize only yearnings and sorrow? Our struggle demands that the people have great joy and a strong will and belief in our cause. Nurture these positive sentiments and wipe away the cloud of sadness from your eyes.

Top Fun: Plane Stupid Sued by RyanAir for millions

If i were 25 years old, hanging out with a bunch of folks fed up with the juxtaposition of climate scientists’ data - let’s call them the ‘facts’ - against announcements about airport expansions, locking down on a local runway would seem like an obvious way to vent. The UK group, Plane Stupid, did exactly that last month at Stansted Airport, one of London's three international air hubs. Reported thus by The Independent: "Sixty militant environmentalists staged a dramatic protest on a taxi runway at Stansted yesterday morning, forcing the cancellation of dozens of flights and prompting a review of airport security." Militants? Please, spare us the bogus terrorist-leaning spin. When militants close down airports, we get something more like this (definitely check out the link, the arabic means DANGER). A bunch of early 20s climate catastrophe obsessives weighted down with fence cutters and carabiners hardly matches the level of danger posed by RPG-carrying renegades patrolling an airport in looted Ethiopian jeeps. Nevertheless, people who depend on functioning airports are right to be concerned: these floating direct action cells do have the potential of making shutdowns on behalf of the atmosphere look like irresistible, guilt-allaying fun. They may not be militant, but they definitely heightened the tension.

Last week, 49 of the 57 arrestees were sentenced to 50-90 hours of community service and must pay various costs arising from damage to airport fencing and legal prosecution. Not a huge amount, but more than any of these people probably have in a bank account. On the heels of these punitive measures from the state, Ryan Air has filed a £2 m (€2.5m) suit against them for financial losses incurred due to 57 flights being grounded and ‘reputational damages’. These latter are claimed to be €500,000, rather remarkable given that the company is also reporting an 11% increase in passengers for the month of December 2008. If the airline thinks it can subsidize rising jet fuel costs this way, all i can suggest to them is be cautious when talking with shareholders.

Plane Stupid has received both kudos and criticism for their action, and it would have been great to email them some questions for this piece (Have you devised a way to get onto tarmacs without damaging fences? Have you considered interfering with military flights?) However, checking their website for contact info, this is what we now find: ‘The Plane Stupid website is currently down for legal reasons.’ Oh well. Among their detractors, there’s this report on a very misguided blockade of EasyGroup – mistaken for the parent company of EasyJet – and a post on Jawa Report that one of their financial backers is the owner of Lush Cosmetics, which has airport shops all over Europe… or so the writer claims (couldn’t find any airport locations in the countries i checked). While i can agree that shutting down a Stansted runway is hardly in the political punch league of Gandhi’s salt march, trashing these folks for engaging in non-violent direct action to make a very important point doesn’t cut it, either. The way things are going with a proposed expansion at Heathrow, we may see MPs, the Mayor of London, and some EU emissions regulators following their lead. It’s simply impossible for the UK to meet its air pollution reduction requirements if it continues to fill the friendly skies with more and more planes.

Air travel in Europe has risen to new heights in part because train travel is now more expensive than flying, thanks to the plethora of budget airlines that have been popping up over the past 10 years. The one exception to this is Spain, where planners continue to excel in creating the most livable country of the 21^st century. Otherwise, there’s been something of a positive feedback system in motion: as more people fly within the EU, train travel goes up to counter the reduction in ticket sales; higher train prices drive more people onto budget flights…. duh. A NY Times story published last summer cites these figures from the European Low Fares Airline Association: “…the growth in passengers on European low-cost airlines has been phenomenal, almost doubling to 120 million per year in 2007 from about 60 million per year in 2005.” They further point out that the doubling of ticket sales includes workers from the newest and poorer EU members to Western European countries happy (or at least willing) to obtain cheaper labor. Mediterranean, Black Sea and similar “we’re only going there because it’s cheap” vacation sites have benefitted to the extreme from companies like Ryan Air connecting them to northwestern population centers. The feedback system is here also operative in encouraging air travel: the cost and time needed to reach places like Varna, Bulgaria or Almeria, Spain by land are prohibitive for most of the tourists traveling to them for a mere 3 days of escapism, and the destinations are investing more money in promoting themselves as ideal cheapo vacation spots. Forget about ecotourism with these crowds: we’re talking suburbanites frying themselves on ‘hotel guests only’ beach chairs and then feasting on cheap paella or whatever. Nobody seems to really care where they are, it’s all about faux jetset vacationing in which one isn’t supposed to be thinking about climate change, Gaza, or whatever else ails the real world.

Just today, british news agencies have been reporting on a grab bag of celebrities and Greenpeace purchasing 1 acre plots of land located precisely where Heathrow’s expansion is to be sited. A great idea, and one which supports in principle the message from Plane Stupid: do whatever you can to keep greenhouse gas reductions on track. More airports are definitely not the answer. Here’s a wild thought: instead of rewarding people for racking up frequent flier miles, start setting limits on air mileage for non-essential purposes. We all get to go once around the earth, and after than you start paying fines – or simply aren’t allowed on a plane without a specific waiver for family emergency, business, etc. Granted, this is not an idea that RyanAir and its peers are likely embrace, but with all that lawsuit money, at least their owners would still be able to fly off into the sunset.

Gaza: Multi-tasking the Outrage

There are so many reasons to be irate about Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip, and a whole other set of outrages about the way officials and hawk pundits (aka Israeli apologists) are processing the current situation, that i've been mentally multi-tasked into a state of mesmerization. Where does one start to dissect all this insanity? Yet continued silence is not a viable option; after recently living in Palestine for 2 years, now is hardly an appropriate time to bail on my support for an end of Israeli occupation and establishment of a viable Palestinian state. So i'm just going to pick one or maybe two points to address right now and deal with other aspects of this debacle in later posts. Unfortunately, this is a conflict that keeps on giving...

This evening there's a story in the Jerusalem Post about attacks on jews in various european countries. Oh no! anti-semitism on the rise in Europe, we all know where that leads. Concurrently, i've been coming across random blogs where people are noting threats and attacks on individuals who've been expressing their criticism of Israel, as well as invectives unleashed by zionists (or maybe just arab/muslim haters?) on mainstream media comment boards that are just as hateful as anything spewed out by a neo-nazi. The thing i 've always noticed about zionists and israelis in general, is that they are expert in throwing tantrums that shut down any possibility of rational dialogue. i don't support hate crimes, but the way that israelis deal with criticism is so infuriating that it hardly comes as a surprise that people outraged by the situation in Gaza are choosing to lash out in these ways. Blaming the victim here? To some extent, yes, i am. As long as world jewry continues to support Israel as their haven, their property, their private little playground in which they are free to commit war crimes on a daily basis, they have very little grounds for complaint when people the world over decide to crash this delusional party. Unfortunately and predictably, attacks on jews in Europe only feeds zionist logic, so not only are such hate crimes morally wrong, they are also counter-productive. What i'd like to see are large groups of jews protesting outside israeli embassies covered in anti-zionist grafitti.

On the flipside, the demonization of Hamas is so out of control that it makes anti-jewish anti-semitism look absolutely mild. Personally, i don't support Hamas as any kind of liberation movement, but i do support the right of Palestinians to choose the lesser of two evils when it came time to vote in 2006. The crazy thing about what's happening now is that Israel has controlled this history from the very beginning. They funded the islamic movement at its inception in order to drive not a wrench but an abyss between palestinian political factions, and then worked with the US to so corrupt their supposedly preferred lackeys, Fatah under Abbas, that Hamas' victory in the elections was more or less assured. i know lifelong Fatah supporters who, in spite of having extremely low opinions of Hamas leaders as competent government officials, still voted for them with the hope that giving them a chance to govern (and hopefully tone down the islamic rhetoric as a result) was a better option than acquiescing to the self-destructive rule of Fatah. Now we've got Tzipi, Condi and everyone in between screaming about how they have to keep killing kids until Hamas is destroyed - what the hell are they talking about? They need Hamas - otherwise the whole premise of palestinians as israel-hating fanatics is going to collapse on their cute little New Jersey doppelganger settlements.

i say this because i think most of the world has had enough of israeli bullying and now supports a free palestinian state. That is a change in global consciousness that is not going back into any closet - ever. i was glad to read that israeli diplomats have been expelled from Venezuela and would like to see more countries follow Chavez' lead. Personally, i'm renewing my commitment to boycott israeli goods and services, and to not casually socialize with zionists, (which i've tried to do in an effort to be even-handed). These people need to be isolated and punished in all the ways that nonviolent resistance can come up with. Gary Kamiya offered an analogy to how the US has treated Native Americans, and rightly concludes that although there are differences, if the US tried to conduct a campaign similar to what Israel's been doing, people would not accept it. Certainly if whites in South Africa said the post-apartheid govt's been a failure so let's go back to the way it was before, we know what the global response would be the minute that first bullet was fired into a Soweto child. Outrage, pure and simple, and very creatively multi-tasked.

Hand me that bottle of ouzo

Seems like the ideal time for a Greek holiday... Guardian reports:

"It is unclear what measures the government is considering in response to the unrest. With a general strike over economic policy planned for tomorrow, its position is looking increasingly precarious. [i'll say] Violence has resumed in the northern city of Thessaloniki and in Ioannina, and Greek demonstrators occupied the country's consulate in Paris."

Here's a photo from Le Monde, which says the consulate occupation lasted for a few hours. On the heels of opposition victory in Thailand, it would seem that the best way to get rid of a corrupt govt in this century is turning out to be the old fashioned way. Qu'est-ce qui se passe, O Canada??

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Pad Thai: Some kind of housing scheme?

If you haven't been following recent events in Thailand, check out my Guardian clips page for the latest report on the airport stand-off in Bangkok. What is most amazing to me about this report is that not one of the stranded travellers seemed cognizant of the fact that they are witnessing a revolution. Literally. If asked about Pad (People's Alliance for Democracy), my guess is that the americans there would say it's a local housing innovation, as in, "My pad or yours?" Or maybe they'd describe one of Thai cuisine's spicier offerings. Either way, it's just hard for me to comprehend how anyone stuck there can talk about it without mentioning the history unfolding all around them.

The Pad folks have been stifling the Thai government for months, there have been some nasty demonstrations in which anti-govt activists were killed by police grenades, etc. and after the parliament decided they could only conduct business by relocating to the airport, Pad dogged them by occupying this facility as well. Persistence is 9/10's of success, as they say. The Prime Minister is due to fly in today from Peru, it remains to be seen (1) if he'll land, and (2) whether the military is going to protect him from demonstrators when he disembarks - if he does land there. Asia Times has been covering this situation as well, and today reports that although the military has been standing down, it's unclear what action it will take at the airport given there are approximately foreign 3000 ticket holders waiting there to board their flights. For the time being, police are staying cool, not wanting to kill anymore Thai's nor bring the street battles into the airport, proper. A fascinating situation both from the perspective of resistance tactics and political movements. As Asia Times' Shawn Crispin says, they have reached a point of no return. Let's hope that where they go next will bring some relief all around, including for those poor tourists who'll never understand what hit them.

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).

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.

Peace Committee of Georgia

Seems like something Code Pink might have issued about the US...

Declaration of the Georgian Peace Committee

Once more Georgia was launched into a situation of chaos and bloodshed. A new fratricide war exploded with renewed strength on Georgian soil. To our great disillusion, the alerts of the Georgian Peace Committee and of progressive personalities of Georgia on the pernicious character of the militarization of the country and on the danger of a pro-fascist and nationalist policy had no effect.

The authorities of Georgia, organized, again, a blood war, feeling the support of some western countries and of regional and international organizations. The shame poured by the current holders of the power over the Georgian people will take decades to be cleansed.

The Georgian army armed and trained by American instructors and using also American armaments, subjected the city of Tskhinvali to a barbaric destruction. The bombings killed Ossetians civilians, our brothers and sisters, children, women and elderly people. Over two thousand inhabitants of Tskhinvali and of its surroundings died.

There also died hundreds of civilians of Georgian nationality, both in the conflict zone as well as on the entire territory of Georgia. The Georgian Peace Committee expresses its deep condolences to the relatives and friends of those who have perished.

The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war, for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively to the current President, to the Parliament and to the Government of Georgia. The irresponsibility and the adventure ship of the Saakachvili regime have no limits. The President of Georgia and his team, undoubtedly, are criminals and must be held responsible. The Georgian Peace Committee, together with all the progressive parties and social movements of Georgia, is going to struggle so that the organizers of this monstrous genocide have a severe and legitimate punishment.

The Georgian Peace Committee declares and asks the broad public opinion not to identify the current Georgian leadership with the people of Georgia, with the Georgian nation, and appeals to all to support the Georgian people in the struggle against the criminal regime of Saakachvili.

We appeal to all the political forces of Georgia, the social movements and the people of Georgia to unite in order to free the country of the anti popular regime, russianfobic and pro-fascist of Saakachvili!

The Georgian Peace Committee

Tbilissi, 11th of August de 2008

(Unofficial translation)

A quick shout out to friends and comrades in Baltimore, who are now in the midst of an unraveling police surveillance scandal. Though never integrated into a terrorist investigation of any merit, anti-war and anti-death penalty groups were nonetheless being illegally 'monitored' (like a heartbeat?) by Maryland State Police. Here's a report from the Sun on pressure to hold state hearings on the matter. It will be interesting to see the type of information they were collecting, and whether these clever little insect spies were employed in gathering it.

Have a look at what the lurked upon are up to: National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Committee to Save Vernon Evans.

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."

Ploughshares Aotearoa Deflate US Military in NZ

Not sure if it's cool to download photos and then publish them on my blog, even with a credit, but i'd people to see this picture and there doesn't seem to be any other way to embed it. The photographer is Derek Flynn and you can see his 5-photo series here at stuff.no.za.

Yesterday at the Waihopai Spy Base in Aotearoa/New Zealand, three men caused an estimated $1 million in damages by deflating "one of the two 30 metre radomes covering satellite interception dishes. The members then built a shrine and prayed for the victims of the war with no end - the so-called 'War on Terror' led by the U. S. Empire which also controls the New Zealand taxpayer funded Waihopai spy base." The consequences of their action, in the NZ legal system, can be followed at the Ploughshares Aotearoa website. At this time, they've been released on bail but can't associate with each other or get anywhere near a military base.

According to the national Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), Waihopai is one of three Escelon bases run by the US in NZ under the "super-secret" UKUSA Agreement. If you live or travel in the Pacific, this is probably the place where your emails, faxes and text messages are intercepted, then analyzed to detect any terrorist polyps. The US can't put this equipment anywhere they can't also insure its security, which means that whether the people on Aotearoa like it or not, they live under the shadowed fist of the Pentagon, policing the world for no other reason than to protect its own infrastructure. This is vicious circle territory, significant if one lives in New Zealand but hardly a point of concern in the US during an election year. For more info on how Waihopai fits into the over-arching militarization of outer space, check out Global Network and the Federation of American Scientists' Space Policy Project.

The More Things Change....

On devine les arguments: «le monde a changé»; «nous ne sommes plus comme de Gaulle au temps de la guerre froide entre les deux blocs américain et soviétique». Raison de plus! Dans un monde unipolaire, il est plus urgent que jamais de garder ses distances. Le caractère obsessionnel de la peur de l’Iran n’est pas moins stupide que l’anticommunisme des années 1950-1970. Denis Sieffert, on Sarkozy’s collusions with Brown/Bush in Bucharest

Coming at this a few days late, so be it…. a small token of after-the-fact solidarity from a veteran of the anti-NATO continuum (graphic from Prague 2002). Once again, a story the international media neglected to cover was the high level of policing in Bucharest, raid of the anti-NATO convergence center, and turning potentially disruptive people back at the Romanian border. There are accounts of what went down here and here, where there are also some pics and rather curious videos. One thing i found particularly interesting – if not surprising - was the state-media collaboration prior to the NATO summit:

“The local corporate media has also been in a frenzy about "dangerous anarchists" who are going to descend on the city and break store windows. One TV news report on Realitatea TV yesterday morning encouraged viewers to throw rocks at any demonstrators that they see on the streets.”

Really, what is there to say about this? It’s a strange equation: stop civil unrest by encouraging civil unrest. Isn’t state-sanctioned stoning of people who aren’t with the program the precise lack of freedom the West is wasting so much oil and so many lives to protect us against? The sad thing is that in Romania, more than a few individuals likely considered such advice to be prudent. i’m reminded of a wonderful book by Mircea Eliade, The Old Man and the Bureaucrats, in which he draws out the gross self-contradictions of the Romanian surveillance systems under communism: the only way the old man can subvert the political machine is by telling them stories that are equally nonlinear and nonsensical.

Yet the dictatorial history is a past ideally left behind. Now reincarnated into a democratic state and member of the EU, this is what we get:

“Gandul [a Romanian newspaper] focuses on the 30,000 intelligence officers from everywhere in the world who arrived in Bucharest in order to ensure the security during the summit. "Eyes in the skies", underground monitoring and ground checks take place everywhere.”

Elsewhere i found the number of so-called security personnel to be only 27,000, and ok, the robocops aren’t all Romanian and Genoa back in 2001 was worse (there were also 1000s more demonstrators), but no matter. People in Eastern Europe who have long-term memories and discuss life in the region during the communist era tend to concur that Romania’s Securitat shared the anti-honor of being most ubiquitous and unwieldy with East Germany’s Stasi (for those unfamiliar with all this: the Stasi were hardcore iron curtain bad guys). i’ve read that 1 in 3 people were informers and nobody trusted anybody else, understandably. So, when you think about it, throwing rocks at dissidents and having hoards of police around to back you up is maybe a familiar, easily re-accessed drill for the average Romanian of 40+ years. It’s not my intent to disparage the Romanian people here; rather, i’m just wondering how much they realize that hosting these summits brings long-term upgrades to their own state security apparatus which might come back to bite them? Personally, i don’t believe there’s any coincidence between the historical legacy of “shut up or we’ll shoot you” and the newly formed “security” relationships the US has been pursuing with any of the former Warsaw Pact states – or the eagerness with which these new NATO members revitalize their old habits of command and control.

Romania, let’s remember, has been playing host to extraordinarily renditioned prisoners and is now the CEE HQ for Northrup Grumman. They also just signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for 17 Multi-Mission Surveillance Radar systems, which “can easily be transported by air, sea, truck or rail and can be deployed in less than 60 minutes.” That’s a far amount of mobile hardware for a country that currently has no threatening enemies, nor any wars on its borders. Of course, these kinds of deals are promoted as job creators, but that’s standard fare and anyway, we all know what it really means. The US has been using their Black Sea ports for refueling and troop transport, and has a commanding presence at Romanian military bases. Romania was promised enormous amounts of Iraq reconstruction money (although it’s hard to unearth how much of that actually became a reality) and all sorts of propaganda was generated to explain to “they, the people” why working with the US on Project Iraqi Freedom made so much sense. The point i want to make here is that the US is using this country big time to manage its military activities in the Middle East, and it’s certainly in US interests to make sure that Romania is secure in every aspect that term can encompass.

As something of an aside, it seems to me that the tension between Russia and NATO now is not because one or the other feels particularly threatened in standard “let’s have another Great War in Europe” fashion. There’s far too much interdependency now between the EU and Russian Federation for that, and it’s just hard to imagine either party initiating such a war. What is much more likely, imho, is that Russia sees a serious conflict unfolding between itself and the US in the Middle East/Central Asia, and US military bases in Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, et al. thus present a significant, combined problem. It’s impossible to get closer to the Mideast battleground without getting closer to the Russian bear, and naturally the bear is going to growl at you when you threaten its territorial domain. What i'm seeing in all this is that the US is using the newest NATO bloc, the countries that are easily manipulated by a combination of dollars and fear (tho one wonders how anyone can drool over dollars these days), to back up American presence in the world's main oil & gas belt.

After W left Bucharest he went on to Croatia, where more of his freedom and security blather was spewed onto the feet of Balkan leaders. There, protesters were not so actively contained: "Croatian television reported protesters had tried to hand Bush a huge postcard with pictures of Croatian towns and resorts reading 'Please, don't come back.' " Unfortunately for the Balkans, it seems likely that whomever moves into the White House in 2009 is going to continue the current policy of subjugating real freedom and security on the peninsula in the cause of US strategic imperatives. Welcome to NATO: please remember to check your independence in at the door.

The Terror Gloss

There are times when social constructs have to attain the level of absolutely absurd extreme before we can see that the absurdity actually exists at a much lower level of the idiocracy chain, and the latest swipe of the terrorist wand is definitely one of those times. When the Dalai Lama is declared a terrorist – Dharamsala Nancy the new Hanoi Jane? – even those people who accept the axis of Islamic evil concept have got to be experiencing lexical dissonance. The Dalai Lama orchestrating a terrorist plot? What spin doctor came up with that notion? Ah yes, the ever-ameobic Chinese government, always embracing the best of what works in the West. But i’m not blaming the Chinese. This is what the W Dick junta has done to the world - their lasting impact, cause célèbre, Chernobylesque meltdown in the sphere of global syllogisms. As it now stands, anyone anywhere who uses violence in charged political atmospheres – or is affiliated with those who do - is branded a terrorist; all acts of dissent that the state (or a corporate entity) doesn’t like become acts of terrorism. China is merely following the US lead, and it becomes harder for the US to publicly criticize them without drawing further attention to its unabashed hypocrisy.

In the old days we had terms like insurrection – revolt – war – occasionally, the crazed rantings of a recent widower or war veteran. Then guerilla wars became “low intensity conflicts,” regionalized with huge imparities, evolving finally into privatized occupation and militarily weeding out evil-doers (itself a twist of “enemy;” is it obvious, the extent to which the West is also highly theocratized?) This is a new New World Order, and woe especially to those whose acts remain somewhat unpredictable, making the state look weak and feel weak. Instilling fear is a mandatory counter measure, leading people to want their big strong uncle to keep them safe: whatever it takes, just do it. This is all about spin at a gross Orwellian magnitude, but it has far more serious consequences than generating middle class suburban paranoia. Countries are being destroyed, cultures are being exterminated, increasingly far and wide as part of a “global war on terror.” War seems to be what globalization is ultimately all about, or at least where its strands are most strongly knotted together. As the safe havens between war zones shrink, arms deals are cut which would have been unlikely or unpermitted a decade ago. Slap a “war on terror” tag on the package and it’s a go. War has always been big business, and terror is proving to be bigger business – the shock doctrine is just part of it.

On any given day that i can tolerate a few minutes of seeing what Little Bush is up to, or Ehud Olmert, or (at the more pathetic end) Musharraf, i am struck again and again by the use of “terror” to justify any level of violence the state apparatus chooses to employ. US soldiers from Iraq speak about how rules of engagement essentially devolved to the point where anything moving was a valid target. Indiscriminate killing – is that not murder? (Is that not terrorism?) In Palestine, same situation. The IDF doesn’t even bother with the whole collateral damage label since all Palestinians are current or future terrorists. The arbitrariness of harassment is maddening, and the soldiers as well as vigilantes operate with total immunity. The US wants to bomb targets in Pakistan, they bomb Pakistan. Israel wants to bomb civilians in Lebanon, they bomb civilians in Lebanon. Columbia wants to eliminate the FARC, they ignore borders and shoot to kill. You can do whatever you want, or pay someone else to do it, with one very crucial provision: do not, under any circumstances, allow the enemy to organize a real army, with colonels and uniforms, marching into battle under a unifying banner, because then you’ll be forced to drop ‘terrrorism’ from the slogan, it will just be war and there will have to be limits, and maybe conscription (in the US, at least), and the whole presentation would have to change.

At the heart of the current public relations campaign is the premise that suicide bombers, RPG-toters, and their various counterparts worldwide are in the fight for the mere existential thrill of killing people and wreaking general havoc. While the latter is in fact probably true, the over-arching problem is that by focusing on terrorism, states are able to ignore the political issues that underlie the resistance movements. Israel mastered this tactic early on, leading the world to assume that once Palestinians ditched the suicide bombings and stone throwing, they might get their independence, or at least Israel wouldn’t have to constantly be punishing them. Putin used the same tactic with Chechnya, Bush continues to slog it out on this premise in Iraq and, along with the rest of NATO, in Afghanistan. Now China has attempted to justify its violence against Tibetans by construing monks as suicide terrorists, shifting the question away from why they are persecuted to why they must be even more aggressively occupied and controlled. It’s effective spin in this age of fear and retribution. In the “have your say” comment boards about Tibet, Chinese contributors say over and over that terrorism is not the way for Tibetans to put forward their cause. The ultimate irony is that the longer legitimate political and cultural rights are repressed or ignored, the closer people move towards taking unpredictable, violent action. To paraphrase Sartre, we don’t get a war without wanting a war, and people get the war they want.

Which brings us back to the absurdity of Jiabao’s government labeling the Dalai Lama a terrorist. Whatever his political shortcomings, the Tibetan leader-in-exile has repeatedly offered to negotiate the establishment of a culturally autonomous region within China, under which Tibetans would control selecting their leaders and basically managing their territory according to their own traditions, while China would be able to continue exploiting the natural resources, secure the borders, et al. One assumes this would allow Han Chinese who’ve moved into Tibet to continue living there, so long as the PLA is not around enforcing cultural genocide. However, since nearly all governments tow the line that there is no negotiating with terrorists, this new classification of Tibetan resisters as suicide attackers serves to undermine negotiations, with public support for doing so. China – like Israel, Russia and the US – has huge military resources and theoretically doesn’t have to put up with anybody who burns their flag. Yet, it’s one thing to not negotiate with a bunch of kuffiya-wearing desperados who’ve hijacked a plane, another entirely to not negotiate with an entire people. The options that leaves us are exactly two: extermination or perpetual war.

This is the essence of why the terminology is so blatantly idiotic and corrupt: political conflict is not about methodology; it’s about greed and sometimes, ideology. Just today, Bush in Bucharest told his NATO comrades that they must “fight to the finish” against Afghani extremists. This was in the context of pushing missile defense systems in South Asia and expanding NATO. The rest of the EU leaders joined in at the refrain: death to the Taliban or bust. On other words, we’ll just annihilate the farmers, herders and religious illiterates in Afghanistan and then all will be well with the world. Guess again. That Bush is trying to get NATO to commit more resources, and intensify the fight, has only got to mean that from their standpoint, the situation is going backwards not forward. Stronger methods are required. In other words, the terrorists in Afghanistan are calling the shots? If that’s the case, the only way to resolve it is to fight terror with terror, and therein lies the rub.

There is no moral high ground here, as any Iraqi exile will tell you – terror, by definition, is determined as such by those at the receiving end of it. i’m no fan of Osama bin Laden, but let’s be real about what these Afghan “extremists” want and why they haven’t put down their toys yet: i guarantee they are not fighting to protect Osama or whichever crazed mullah is in command at the moment. The US/NATO position that in the war against terror there are no constraints is a license for everyone involved to use whatever means of battle they choose. That US forces cannot succeed in a guerrilla war is not the guerrillas’ fault. Nor is it the Tibetans’ fault that the Chinese cannot get the world to forget about their violent occupation of Tibet. Painting these resistance movements over with lacquers of terrorist fanaticism ultimately lays bare the inability of governments to deal effectively with the political conflicts they, themselves, have initiated and subsequently perpetuated. (To be clear, i do not use “effectively” here to mean success of the invaders; effective ending of a conflict means negotiating conditions that are just, and respect the aggrieved parties, i.e. the unsuccessfully conquered.) It also keeps the battle going, the war profiteering on track, likewise the endless death and destruction. We can call this a fight against terrorism, but really it’s a fight against fighting back, and to pretend anything else is to side with the well-manicured terrorist spin doctors, those people who appreciate the finer aspects of gloss.