They Shoot Journalists, Don't They?

It seems some of the major media networks have engaged in yet another left wing, anti-Israel conspiracy by sending the Prime Minister of Israel a letter of outrage about the inability of journalists to enter the Gaza Strip for at least the past 2 weeks. The letter was penned by higher ups in AFP, BBC, NY Times, CNN, CBC, Reuters and AP - we have to give them props for making the effort, since experience has shown that criticizing Israel only intensifies Israeli intransigence. According to this story, "Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel`s Defense Ministry, said journalists would be allowed in only once Gaza militants stopped shooting and said Gaza was being adequately covered by reporters already there." [italics mine] Although there have been cases of journalists caught in factional Palestinian battles in Gaza, particularly when things seriously feel apart a year and a half ago, it's more than disingenuous to put the blame for journalists' lack of security on the Palestinians. The record since 2001 definitely confirms that, as the Committee to Protect Journalists lists "military officials" as the source of fire in every case. IDF doublespeaker Dror went on to say: `Where Gaza is concerned, our image will always be bad... When journalists go in it works against us, and when they don`t go in it works against us.` Oh, poor babies, just can't win for trying, can you?

Here are some snippets from the CPJ's 2007 report on Israel and the Occupied Territories:

One of the more troubling incidents came in early July during an incursion in the eastern part of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Israeli tank soldiers shot Imad Ghanem, a cameraman for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, and then shot him twice more in the legs after he had fallen to the ground, journalists at the scene told CPJ. Sameer al-Bouji, a cameraman for the Pal-Media news agency, filmed the incident, which was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. The footage showed Ghanem dressed in black clothes similar to those worn by Hamas gunmen. An eyewitness, who requested anonymity, told CPJ that some armed residents of the camp were in the vicinity when Ghanem was shot, but the clip indicates that they were not firing at that moment. Both of Ghanem’s legs were amputated.

An Israeli army spokesman who reviewed the footage said the incident was being investigated, but it was unclear who shot the cameraman, The New York Times reported. An Israeli military source quoted by international news organizations, including the Times and Reuters, said that Israel does not recognize cameramen working for the Hamas-affiliated channel as journalists.

On several occasions, journalists said, Israeli forces and border police intimidated, harassed, and obstructed them by firing tear gas and stun grenades. In mid-February, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at several cameramen and photojournalists covering clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian stone-throwers near the West Bank city of Hebron, according to the AP’s Nasser Shiyoukhi and other journalists at the scene. Shiyoukhi told CPJ he was overcome by the gas and that colleagues brought him to a hospital in Hebron.

One has to take particular note of the Israeli position that Palestinians working for Palestinian media outlets are not real journalists. This is an offshoot of their belief that Palestinians are not real people, but only a kind of sub-human figment of the anti-zionists' collective conscious imagination. Gaza is the largest ghetto in the world today, nothing Israel is doing there is legal under international law and they simply don't want people to see the extent of the suffering, especially when the UN is coming down hard on them (again, with seemingly little success). Woe is us, who just can't kill these vermin fast enough! i've been getting a stream of emails about fishermen being gassed and arrested at sea, once again for the mere fact that they are Palestinian: the ultimate crime in the Jabotinsky Handbook for Unrestrained Retribution. Can't have "real journalists" reporting on that, it's certainly not the kind of thing one wants to have pop up on the president-elect's blackberry now, is it?

Sorting out the mess in Congo

After confessing to my lack of understanding re the recent explosion of violence in eastern Congo (DRC), i've been reading through article threads on the Mail & Guardian and elsewhere, getting the situation sorted out historically and otherwise in my under-fired cerebral cortex. i recall a retired government bureaucrat in Dar es-Salaam telling me "there is no tragedy like an African tragedy," and what's happening in Congo now unfortunately seems to confirm this. From what i've been able to digest, here are the main issues being grappled with, all very intertwined so the order i'm presenting them in is irrelevant.

* Kabile's government (DRC) has been harboring Hutus (the FDLR) who fled after the massacres in Rwanda and continued to attack Tutsis in eastern Congo. Protecting his people from them has been one of the rationales given by Nkunda for pursuing this sweep of the region. A lot of Africans seem to view this conflict as the ultimate call for addressing the rampant racism that continues to plague the continent.

* Foreign countries are intent of stripping the resources from this area, signing agreements in Kinshasa without giving the inhabitants a voice and supporting violence against them for refusing to have their territory sold to the highest bidder. China is a main player on this stage. This is Nkunda's other rationale, and he says he's willing to march all the way to Kinshasa if that's what it takes to stop the resource rape.

* The UN needs to broker a cease fire in order to get the refugees out, and thought they had done so but no dice. Peacekeeping troops come from a variety of countries and are not operating under a unified command, so they can't stop the fighting any more than they can protect the civilians caught in it. Nkunda now says he won't deal with the UN until they set up a joint meeting with Kabile.

* President Kagame of Rwanda claims the UN's mission in DRC has been supporting Kabile's support of the FDLR, and there is some speculation that Rwanda is aiding Nkunda in an act of tribal solidarity. The consensus among African commentators is that racism is a major element driving the conflict and needs to be tackled on the broadest level possible within the entire continent.

* The African Union, which has essentially blown off the conflicts in Somalia, Darfur and Zimbabwe, is not seen as having any chance of being effective in this even more complex conflict. This is particularly true with respect to its younger partner/offshoot, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which is discredited with having done nothing to force Mugabe out of power. Since some SADC members, e.g. Angola, have an apparent interest in seeing Kabile stay in power, the credibility of this organization - which the world community would love to see solve this whole business so they don't have to - is next to nil in the eyes of just about every african writing about it.

* The EU is prepared to send forces into the region, yet without a coordinated mission, what they can accomplish in terms of securing a long-term peace is unclear. There are some who see the entire mess, going back to the uprising in Rwanda, as the responsibility of francophone europe; ergo, opinions as to whether the fox can be trusted and effective in really cleaning out the henhouse are extremely varied and contentious.

There's no question that nearly all of the problems found in sub-saharan africa converge in the DRC: lots of horses, lots of carts, i'm not sure that the world can rise to the occasion when it comes to ironing them all out... at least in the near-term, it's clear that's impossible. The question of respecting national sovereignty seems to be used here as an excuse for non-aggressive intervention, just as it always is when it comes to Africans raping and killing each other with all those non-interventionists' arms. Staying out of your neighbor's business is a value highly espoused in the US and, in my experience, most of the rest of the world as well, perhaps excluding arabs. With all the fanfare internationally about Savior Obama coming to set the world right (liberal rapture is truly without comparison in its naivety), there is a chance that this sovereignty-intervention question will start to be addressed. Start - and that's a start. In the meantime, more tragedy in equatorial Africa - prophesy or proverb? Take your pick.

The Things We Go Without

This week i started a collection of short stories by Ivan Klíma, snagged from my generous friend M who always sends me back from Prague with literature to savor. As is typical for so many East European writers, the childhood tales involve trying to make sense of one or another wartime scenario; in this case, a Sudentenland ghetto being thinned out by death camp deportations. The child’s world is a mixture of midnight fantasies and real life food issues: special treats for a family occasion, an extra cupful of soup from a would-be sweetheart in the overcrowded camp barracks, being sure to save enough for his brother to eat. We’ve all seen photos of the skeleton-like survivors from those camps, we know that an extra bite, a hidden piece of bread, was hardly a trivial matter. In a war, which presumably ends at some point, it’s maybe easier to take in extreme levels of deprivation as normal under the circumstances, and to accept rations and other irregularities as exactly that: irregular, for the time being but sure to get sorted out when the fighting ends.

i was thinking about this when i came out of the metro and dropped a coin into the cup of the Astoria station beggar, a very sad older man whose aura of loneliness overwhelms me every time i see him. Maybe you’re thinking that if i’m so concerned about this man, i should take him home for a shower and meal? Fair enough, but here’s the thing: on that particular night, i was going back to a flat with no heat and no electricity, a nearly empty fridge and a sparsity of candles (on top of my running an anglo-saxon establishment here). Obviously the power’s back on now, but i’m still wearing many layers of clothes and rationing the honey. This is not wartime Europe, i work a fair amount but constantly struggle with not being paid on any kind of dependable schedule. It’s become so normal to be plagued by make-it-thru-the-day logistics that what i now notice as “being without” are things which most anyone who’d read this probably takes for granted. i’d be lying if i didn’t admit to feeling a little bit of envy, but mostly i’m just glad to know this isn’t the norm outside my brick walls – as i acquire the tools needed to be a professional something, i can expect my quality of life to improve. Or so the official story insists; at least i’m supposed to have the power to change it. i was recounting my power outage tale to a friend and it turned out that a pipe had burst outside his flat and he’d spent that same night without water. We laughed about the coincidence and whether we’d just be better off living in the woods.

Normally i don’t write much in this space about myself, i’m not very interesting although like most children of the 60's, i guess i’ve had my moments. Last week, the brother of a lifelong friend jumped off a bridge into the Hudson River – i knew him, of course, but have gone for years without hearing anything about him – this news has put me into a quiet, deeply contemplative space… thinking about K, his family, my own periodic obsession with suicide, the limits to our coping mechanisms for dealing with whatever our lives lack - individually or collectively – what we find ourselves having to live without. Really, the human spirit or whatever you choose to call it is an amazing phenomenon when it comes to negotiating voids, distancing ourselves from desires. i can’t remember the last time someone in Budapest asked me how i was and really wanted to know, or maybe they did but couldn’t negotiate my english, and still i go through my life here with a fairly amicable, well-adjusted demeanor. What’s the point of having expectations? It’s a utilitarian world. In a bit of comic coincidence, yesterday i received a facebook ‘message’ from someone in Palestine i really adore but who never communicates except through those silly fb invites, in this case, inviting me to take a test to determine the top 10 things i don’t have enough of. Indeed ironic. What i don’t have enough of is meaningful communication with her! For people like myself, close friends literally all over the map, we just get used to never seeing each other, mostly not seeing this as a measurable problem. There’s not much of a viable alternative for the non-independently wealthy, so we all just cope with this situation and trust that when we do meet again, we’ll be neither disappointed nor disappointing. i’m reminded of something my lover No Nukes once wrote: if we don’t cultivate fantasies while we’re apart, what’s the point in making a trip to be together? No Nukes died nearly 10 years ago to the day and i still miss him… with all the prescribed emotional limits.

My friend’s brother, K, was a very bright, sensitive person and i know for those who were part of his life, the loss is incalculable. i skim over the increasing number of news articles on how financial catastrophe and housing foreclosures are driving more and more people over the edge, knowing that some of those individuals are probably alone in the world but guessing most are not. Our world has driven us to be increasingly short on compassion, even towards those we love. Hungary has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, which makes kind of twisted sense (is there any other way to describe it?) given post-communist era materialism and the rampant individualism it fosters. Whether determined by one’s neighbors’ or one’s own, internal, rating system, everyone’s got limits to what s/he can go without and not lose face or hope. i know many people here who've suffered a suicide in the family, which counter-intuitively seems to have only increased their fears around being real with each other. This is a sad truth, hard to spin into a positive message beyond having respect for a person’s right to escape whatever feelings of misery and hopelessness haunt them. We try to be there for each other, but there are voids which sometimes refuse to be filled, leaving us standing open-mouthed, gaping at the extent to which we can’t understand what’s happened or why. At the same time, one looks inside, trying to tease out the borders of our own coping mechanisms and maybe press down a little on the cracks, just to make sure they’re holding. If you can’t relate to this, be thankful. Thankful but not arrogant, ok? Nobody is fully immune to heartache and depression, even the comfortably numb.

An unexpected outcome of K's tragic death is that it's led to my reconnecting with some people i've been out of touch with for decades. When i say (as i 'm prone to do) that i've lived several different lives over the past 50 years, i mean it seriously. Yet following the threads which string these disparate existences together, falling back on memories which allow me to do that, has always felt like my last resort for not totally losing it when times are tough. i call this the continuum theory for survival, and to anyone reading this who happens to be part of my own personal continuum, know that i'd much rather be typing in gloves and eating cabbage sandwiches than going without my memories of you, past, present and still to come.

Mama Africa passes into eternity

"What I have seen here, I will tell the world in words and in songs." Mariam Makeba

Primate Hell

It had been my plan to totally switch gears and report on some newly identified co-inhabitants of our shrinking blue planet, including a legless lizard, a Borneo fox and a new species of mouse lemur, Microcebus macarthurii, named for the foundation which funded the research into these svelte Madagascar petits (photo by Dr. Blanchard Randrianambinina). In eastern Ecuador, 7 new species of Glassfrogs have been found. but like nearly all these new discoveries - mostly occurring in the tropics, i.e. RAINFORESTS - habitat loss is growing by the day and unless humans ship out to colonize Mars sooner rather than later, biologists aren't all that optimistic about how much longer into the future many of these creatures will survive. Every new species comes with increasingly frantic calls for habitat conservation.

Another spectacular novelty is a newly identified species of manta ray, found in Mozambiquan waters. Here's a super cool photo taken by Andrea Mitchell, an aussie doing her PhD research down there. These animals are certainly otherworldly enough to satisfy my sci-fi challenged imagination. The main threats to their survival are reportedly sharks, the asian medicinal industry and getting caught in seine nets, though not necessarily in that order. Elasmobranchii species feeding on each other may represent a sort of fundamentalist inter-special approach to survival of the fittest, but nothing Mother Nature's delivered on her own has come close to the destruction power of Homo sapiens sapiens. i have nothing against natural remedies and i've always loved my acupuncturists, but with so many of us and so very few of them, can't we find some chamomile blend that will offer up the same health benefits?

As i said, i'd planned to do a "New Non-Voter Roster" or something clever like that with these nocto-marino-primatological species types, but after reading about the crisis in Congo, i just couldn't bring myself to being completely light and airheady. According to lastest reports, dozens of park rangers from Virungi are still missing after the lot of them had to flee from the crossfire between Congolese (DRC) troops and (presumably) Nkunde's crazed hooligan soldados. This is the largest silverback gorilla reserve in Africa, in terms of sq kilometers, and they are now are greater risk than before. The rebels have reportedly taken over the park now.

This is from a year before, thought to be the act of Goma charcoal gangs:

If quasi-local poachers were doing this when there were park rangers around working to protect the gorillas, what should we expect to happen now that these protectors have fled? Can someone tell me what this war is the Congo is really about? What the purpose is? Just a bunch of wild men using territorial conquest as a reason to rape and pillage; the Tutsi position of protecting themselves from Hutu extremists doesn't cut water, given the extremism of Nkunde's forces. Yet even if there was a political justification, do they really need to be disturbing a primate reserve??? There doesn't seem much point in trying to take over territory whose value is destroyed in the process. But i'm sure they don't look at it that way. i'm a member of the vanishing eco-anarcho-liberal species, crying over dead gorillas - for god's sake! Primate hell, no matter which lens we apply.

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.

People in (shattering) glass houses...

"I refer... to Russia's intimidation of its sovereign neighbours, its use of oil and gas as a political weapon... its threat to target peaceful neighbours with nuclear weapons... and its persecution - or worse - of Russian journalists and dissidents." Thus spake Condoleeeza yesterday, in a speech evidently attended by people who've been living in Western Sahara or the Papuan rain forest for the past 8 years - anyplace bereft of world news feeds. She went on to add, "What has become clear is that the legitimate goal of rebuilding Russia has taken a dark turn - with the rollback of personal freedoms, the arbitrary enforcement of the law [and] the pervasive corruption at various levels of Russian society." One also has to assume that no one in attendance recently spent a week in St.Paul-Minneapolis, where US cops arrested hundreds of political demonstrators along with more than a few journalists.

It seems like a waste of time to deconstruct these remarks, so i'll just note that under Condi's watch, the US has built a wall along its border with Mexico, tried to overthrow the sovereign govt of Venezuela and the democratically elected govt of Palestine (and recently Bolivia as well - or so it appears), succeeded in overthrowing Aristide in Haiti, Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban govt in Afghanistan, maintained its support for Karimov in Uzbekistan - the list of dark turns is long and, after eight years, feels too tedious to type out. i might add that these only touch on the international-level hypocrisy in her speech; when we look at what's gone on inside the US' borders, it just gets more hypocritical - shamefully so. This kind of rhetoric makes americans look like total idiots to the rest of the world; it's no small wonder that Putin's grin won't go away and NATO heads of state are counting the days till Condi & C0. pack up their rolodexes and return to their old jobs in the corporate sector.

This is getting downright CREEPY... the next revelation (pun definitely intended) will be that Sarah Palin is actually a Raelian. Given the extent to which the republican party has fucked things up on planet Earth, it actually makes a whole lot of sense that bizarre religious fundamentalists strike them as viable candidates. While i can get into the imagery of Sarah's great-grandma taming a stegasouras, it's not a graphic i would hold up to indicate i understood anything about the realities of the 21st century.

The advantage to being poor is that when the whip comes down, you stay sane while those who've been living in the bubble of runaway wealth falter and freak. That's now gotta include the inept deciders in the oval office, as evidenced in this statement by the US Secretary of the (now defunct?) Treasury. "Henry Paulson, assured the public they could remain confident in the 'soundness and resilience' of the financial system. He reserved the right to bail out struggling firms but said: 'We don't take lightly ever putting taxpayers' money on the line to support a financial institution.'" After the Bear Stearns bailout, who does he think he's kidding here? No, i think finally they're starting to lose it and another debt-dependent war isn't going to solve the problem.

Lame Phuck #2

Breaking news on the BBC informs us that Pakistani soldiers have taken a stand against US troops attempting to cross the Afghan border into Waziristan. It's about time someone said NO to the Pentagon, but perhaps the bigger issue here is what the Confounder and Thief thinks he's doing by sending US troops into yet another hostile country. As far as i can tell, the objective of the flailing W Dick administration is to destabilize as many countries as possible before they leave office: Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Pakistan, Afghanistan - hard to say who's next on the list but i wouldn't be surprised to read that Cheney's decided to stop over in Baku on his way back from Georgia. (Enticing more Russian troops to set up camp close to the Iranian border may look like a way to put a wedge in Russian-Iranian relations, but Putin is so much cooler and shiftier than W, the chances of seeing the Russians get buried in a meaningless regional conflict that destroys their ties with Tehran seem pretty slim.) The reason for sending more US forces to Afghanistan is now blatantly clear, even while attempts to start fighting inside Pakistan's territory have surely been pulled out of the Bush dynastic ass. One wonders if this will give Sen. Obama pause the next time he waxes urgent about putting his foot down with the Pakistanis. In the long term, Pakistan probably deserves as much of a political overhaul as the US, but in the short term, this isn't gonna happen at gunpoint - one of the many ironies may be that with US forces now grouping along its border and launching attacks inside the country, Pakistan's many internal divisions may actually dissipate under a common banner: US OUT NOW!

Another irony, pointed out in the Times of India, is that if Little Bush opts to go to war in Pakistan, US forces will be facing their own sophisticated weaponry. " In July, the Bush administration sought to shift $226.5 million in US counterterrorism aid for the F-16 upgrades." Pretty groovy, eh? Nothing like having your own misguided missiles come back to kill your troops. Irony No. 3 is that these raids across the border are inciting Pakistani tribes to join forces with the Taliban - or at least that's what they're threatening, according to this report.

That W still has the cajones to say he's made great progress in the so-called "war on terror" goes far beyond being disingenuous. He's either living in a dream world or just rubbing our noses in the fact that we've all be screwed. Impeachment looks increasingly mild, given the havoc this asshole has wreaked around the world.

Canada: The next red state?

For all those Canadians wishing you had the opportunity to vote in the US elections and make sure the crazies don't win, just be patient because it seems your time is coming. In less than 20 years, the Canadian military will be fully "integrated" with the Pentagon, though it might make more sense to use the term "subsumed" since it's hard to imagine that folks south of the border who came up with this plan see it as a way to put the burden of directing the world's robocops onto Ottowa's shoulders. Check out the video, it's pretty chilling.

Following up on my recent post about the US-India nuclear deal, Reuters is reporting today that at least 40 private companies (Indian) are now lobbying their government to allow privately owned and operated nuclear power plants. It's a nice idea, diversifying the energy sector and not putting the entire financial burden of that on the state. i'd put it in the same league as applauding oil companies for their leadership in finding a way out of our addiction to petroleum. As a wise man once said, "To hell with facts! We need stories!" One story we can always depend on hearing from the private sector is that in the event of fiscal or material meltdown, the burden of bailout and clean-up must fall on the shoulders of the state.

This is yet another facet of the nuke industry's self-deception. Clean and efficient electricity production? Sure, as long as one doesn't take into account uranium mining and processing, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, transportation hazards, long-term waste storage (let's say 24,000 years minimum), rampant plant cost overruns and impacts of any accidental releases or Chernobyl style meltdown. You can bet that as soon as detectors in Abu Dhabi start picking up high levels of cesium, the Indian government would be asked to step in and manage the emergency response. (If i remember correctly, Exxon was not in charge of trying to salvage the oil-soaked animals who happened to find themselves in the Valdez' spill zone... notice any kind of pattern here?) These nuke people are just living in a dream world and yes, i'd certainly add Candidate Obama to the list of dreamers. Building NPPs in a country whose basic infrastructure is either collapsing or on the verge of collapse is pure stupidity. Building them in countries which are disastrously impacted by earthquakes, monsoons, hurricanes and tsunamis increases the stupidity variable ten-fold. They consume a huge amount of resources to build and maintain, leave a wake of environmental havoc, and pose too great a risk in a world run by incompetent extremists.

......

Few days later. Reading this again, i realized that i neglected to point out that the US "civilian" nuclear power industry was privatized from the get-go and is a good case in point against privatization. elsewhere. The weapons manufacturing network is a joint private-public venture: GE, Dupont, Westinghouse.... all of whom also profit from the civilian nuke sector. (Ironically, in some aspects the two were more distinct in the USSR than the US.) The nuke lobby likes to claim that the number of accidents and other mishaps at US NPPs is very low, but they are not including the weapons plants, managed by the very same corporations. These places are so dirty, their workers suffer the same health crises as veterans of atomic tests, and the only reason we know so much more about the nightmare that is Hanford, et al. and have seen so much more effort put into cleaning them up is because they are ultimately owned by the DOE. Investigating the history of any NPP, one sees a lot more near disasters than might be expected and a whole lot less transparency. The companies have not built up the piggy banks they are required by law to have - a set percentage of plant costs, annually - to collectively pay for a permanent waste storage site. Cooling ponds are filling up, the current nuke waste dump has or will soon reach capacity and stop accepting wastes - this is a big problem, and the taxpayers are going to end up paying the utilities again (essentially) to deal with it because inaction is not an option.

Energy production is too crucial and complex to manage on the basis of profits. On the basis of economics - sure, of course, we must - but even that needs to come through a democratic decision-making process, which is not what private energy companies are about. Remain ever vigilant, the guys are not to be trusted on any continent.

Check out this photo in the LA Times. Incredible!! Natural inhabitants are reclaiming lost territory in wake of housing market collapse. The next evolutionary step: interspecies cohabitation? They're looking smug, but i imagine that's how anyone living in the LA foothills and not paying taxes would look. Conceptually, it's a charmer.

Did John McLame really describe Iraq War vet Adam Kokesh as "noise" and "static"?
Wow, what a heroic way to show your support for the troops.

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)

Armed Anthropologists

The idea that the Pentagon can win this bogus 'war on terror' by bringing anthropologists into the battlefield seems yet another indicator of the dementia that has permeated Washington since the Bush junta came to power (at least). Writing in this week's issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, my former comrade from Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab protests, Hugh Gusterson, discusses two new programs initiated by Robert Gates, Minister of War: the Human Terrain Team system and Project Minerva. According the Gusterson, the American Anthropological Association has already condemned the first of these and expressed reservations about the second being managed through the war department (as opposed to the National Federation of Scientists, which normally funds social scientists' work on behalf of the federal govt). Anthropologists are widely known to have collaborated with the military during the US-Vietnam war and certainly played a shameful role in the conquest of African and North American territories (et al.) - attempting to quantify savagery in support of colonialism or even genocide - so conceptually and in fact, this is hardly a new idea.... but putting them in military camo and arming them? i know what all my anthropology professors would have said about that: insane, immoral and intellectually infantile.

As Gusterson rightly points out, "Embedded anthropologists are on shaky ethical terrain because they cannot realistically get free consent from their interlocutors while dressed in camouflage and traveling with U.S. soldiers in Humvees. Similarly, they cannot control the use of the information they collect for the military, and thus, cannot ensure it isn't used to harm communities they study." In an illegal war, such activity should put the anthros in the same war criminal category as their counterparts in psychology who "monitor" the torturing of prisoners. It's not anywhere near as sexy as spying on people, which was what happened in Vietnam; imagining how any individual scientist could even consider this to be serious anthropological work on any level boggles the mind.

The Pentagon would be better served by sending anthropologists into AIPAC to gain an understanding of how decision-makers in Washington are so willingly and readily compliant with the zionist agenda. Certainly this falls within the purview of understanding the cultural roots of terror? Discussing terrorism with Arabs, i have always found Israel to be their starting point, and the US' support for israeli terror a close second in justifying the actions of Muslims opting to spread the violence into equal shares for all. That there's never been much equity/balance in this equation is also part of the cultural framework behind it. If i were an Iraqi anthropologist, i'd be very interested in studying how the american military has come to see culture as more operative than history in the current phase of this conflict - or why they believe that culture and history can be separated to promote further conquest and occupation in the Middle East today.

Yet another "height of hypocrisy" from Washington

Al-Jazeera is reporting that the US is pushing to remove the ban on nuclear materials trade with India. The hypocrisy here should be obvious: India is no longer a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), already possesses nuclear weapons, and is not open to IAEA inspections because it is not part of the NPT regime. Compare this to Iran's nuclear status and therein lies the rub.

According to al-Jazeera, "Diplomats close to the suppliers group talks say that France, Russia, Canada, Brazil and South Africa are in favour of an agreement." Let's take a guess as to which countries are engaged in marketing their nuclear technologies in new Delhi, should the exemption for purchase be granted. As far as the US nuclear industry goes, this is one way to build up the necessary wad of investment cash for the much-touted maniacal rejuvenation of the US nuclear power industry - it's been well over 20 years since any new plants were built - on top of the normal military tech profiteering that helps firms like Lockheed Martin maintain their company yachts. The US Congressional Research Service published an interesting report about US-India relations last year; start reading on p. 31 if you'd like to see how many billions in weapons are being sold and to get some idea of Israel's role in assuring the flow of arms into Asia continues to increase.

Pepe Escobar Simplifies the Insanity

Escobar's report speaks for itself, so i'm not going to write much. He calls it Full Spectrum Dominance, a term which actually originated with the US SAC (Strategic Air Command) in their Vision 2020 report (late 1990s, early 2000) and detailed the need for the US to control space militarily. Eventually our piping periodista Pepe gets around to this, bringing in the missile defense shield the US is pushing on the new NATO countries (Poland and Czech Republic are to actually get the anti-missile missiles systems, other countries like Hungary and Romania provide related infrastructural needs). Now, before you start having nightmares that Ronald the Raygun has risen from the dead, think back to that period and like John McCain, you'll probably agree: the Cold War geopolitical framework was a lot easier for voters to warp their brains around than the War on Terror for Oil framework. Enough of this elusive taliban shit, snakey Gulf sheikhs and should or shouldn't psychologists be involved in torture. i'm tired of Guantanamo, i want another Cuban missile crisis. White people threatening other white people makes so much more sense, even to the non-white people who are wrecked in the process.

A Day in the Life

Vladimir Voinovitch, who penned the brilliant satire, Moskva 2042, as well as the Svejk knock off yet classic in its own right, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, has long been a great favorite of mine. (Feeling bad you forgot my birthday? Send me another book by VV and all will be forgiven.) In my limited universe of Russian writers, Chonkin could probably not have been written had Alexander Solzhenitzyn not first offered up the story of Ivan Denisovich more than a decade prior - how could anyone dare to satirize the insanity of the soviet system before first having a thorough slog through its dark, gulag-muzzled side? In my late teens and early 20s, poured through all the Solzhenitzyn i could find - no minor task (referring here to the reading, not the finding) - an education in the mentalities of the coerced and the coercers, the nature of totalitarianism, blahblahblah in sum they had a strong effect on me simultaneous to being enmeshed in a world of collectivist ideals. So we're sorry to see the writer pass on, but we remember him for his passion and the skill to use it in ways that unquestionably benefitted both the world of literature and the thinkers of freedom. My vodka glass goes belly up in a toast to the greatest of Russia's literary bulldogs.

How creepy to also read today that Berlusconi is putting soldiers on the streets of Rome. The creepiness is not only in the shades of tyranny this implies, but because part of the PM's stated rationale is to protect the Italians from those nasty, no-good immigrants, apparently creeping onto Italy's shores with godzilla-like intentions. Actually, right now the stated problem is not so much those coming by sea, but the overland-travelling Roma, (seen far and wide as the scourge of Europe - yes, still) in spite of thousands of these Roma holding Italian citizenship. The Minister of Defense "dismissed claims that the soldiers would scare tourists or residents, saying the troops could help address citizens' concerns about security." Personally, i don't think tourists are all that likely to ask soldiers with machine guns whether a particular gelaterria presents a clear and present danger, but maybe i'm too jilted when it comes to interacting with so-called security forces. The rounding up of "undesirables" and creation of fear among minority populations - including political minorities - under any circumstance, is one of the things Solzhenitzyn explored in excruciating detail. The message always seemed clear enough to me: it is the shades of grey that put the T into state tyranny.

When Berlucsoni indicated that other cities were also going to have soldiers decorating their sidewalks, a Sicilian mayor asked, "Have we all gone mad?" Evidently his town hasn't had a murder since the 1960's, which is noteworthy given that island's history. Wanna bet that with soldiers on the streets and the carbinieri free to do other interesting things, this bit of statistical reverie might soon be broken? i've yet to attend a demonstration where the rioting wasn't started by the cops, and i can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would believe that expanding the reach of the il-Duce death eaters now with military backup, would bring Italians more peace, or peace of mind. Ok, at least he isn't hiring Blackwater to do the job.... Alas, another day in the life of 21st century Europe. In yet other uplifting news, we're told that nearly half the world's primates are facing extinction. Do we think the fascists are in the soon-to-be-extinct or the not-yet-pegged-for-extinction half? What role does free will play in extinction, anyway?