S. Africa wipes Apartheid from the map

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Eric Verlo

A unique subtext of the pre-game coverage of the 2010 World Cup is that South Africa was once banned from soccer competition because of its policy of Apartheid. Reporters ask how the host nation is faring post BDS. In the wake of Apartheid, South Africa has been trying to revert its place names to aboriginal origins, some buried by centuries of colonial heritage, to efface Apartheid’s dark legacy. Those hopeful about Israel’s sooner-than-later repudiation of its racism can take heart that for original place names of a re-christened Palestine, one need look no further than a 1947 map.

Robert Fisk and the language of power, danger words: Competing Narratives

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Celebrated reporter -and verb- Robert Fisk had harsh words, “danger words” he called them, for host Al-Jazeera where he gave an address about the language of power which has infected newsman and reader alike. Beware your unambiguous acceptance of empty terms into which state propagandists let you infer nuance: power players, activism, non-state actors, key players, geostrategic players, narratives, external players, meaningful solutions, –meaning what?
I’ll not divulge why these stung Al-J, but I’d like to detail the full list, and commit not to condone their false usage at NMT, without ridicule, “quotes” or disclaimer.

Fisk listed several expressions which he attributes to government craftsmen. Unfortunately journalists have been parroting these terms without questioning their dubious meaning. Fisk began with a favorite, the endless, disingenuous, “peace process.” What is that – victor-defined purgatory? Why would “peace” be a “process” Fisk asks.

How appropriate that some of the West’s strongest critics are linguists. Fisk lauded the current seagoing rescue of Gaza, the convoy determined to break the Israeli blockade. He compared it to the Berlin Airlift, when governments saw fit to help besieged peoples, even former enemies. This time however, the people have to act where their governments do not.

I read recently that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla might be preparing accommodations for Noam Chomsky to join the passage. Won’t that be an escalation? I imagine if Robert Fisk would climb aboard too, it would spell doom for any chance the relief supplies would reach the Gazans. A ship convoy with Chomsky and Fisk on board would present an opportunity that an Israeli torpedo could not resist.

Here is his list. If you can’t peruse the lecture, at least ponder these words with as much skepticism as you can. The parenthesis denote my shorthand.

peace process (detente under duress, while enduring repression)

“Peace of the Brave” (accept your subjugation, coined for Algeria, then France lost)

“Hearts and Minds” (Vietnam era psych-ops, then US lost)

spike (to avoid saying: increase)

surge (reinforcements, you send them in you’re losing)

key players (only puppets and their masters need apply)

back on track (the objective has been on rails?)

peace envoy (in mob-speak: the cleaner)

road map (winner’s bill of lading for the spoils)

experts (vetted opinions)

indirect talks (concurrent soliloquies, duets performed solo in proximity to common fiddler calling tune)

competing narratives (parallel universes in one? naturally the perpetrator is going to tell a different tale, disputing that of victim’s; ungoing result is no justice and no injustice) examples:
occupied vs. disputed;
wall vs. security barrier;
colonization vs settlements, outposts or Jewish neighborhoods.

foreign fighters (them, but always us)

Af-Pak (ignores third party India and thus dispute to Kashmir)

appeasers (sissies who don’t have bully’s back)

Weapons of Mass Destruction (not Iraq, now not Iran)

think tanks (ministry of propaganda privatized)

challenges (avoids they are problems)

intervention (asserted authority by military force)

change agents (by undisclosed means?)

Until asked otherwise, I’ll append Fisk’s talk here:

Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, gave the following address to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on May 23.

Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words – and the use of words.

It is about semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’ our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean.

For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis. Poor old Oslo, I always think! What did Oslo ever do to deserve this? It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious treaty – in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies – even timetables – were to be delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.

And how easily we forget the White House lawn – though, yes, we remember the images – upon which it was Clinton who quoted from the Qur’an, and Arafat who chose to say: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. President.” And what did we call this nonsense afterwards? Yes, it was ‘a moment of history’! Was it? Was it so?

Do you remember what Arafat called it? “The peace of the brave.” But I don’t remember any of us pointing out that “the peace of the brave” was used originally by General de Gaulle about the end of the Algerian war. The French lost the war in Algeria. We did not spot this extraordinary irony.

Same again today. We western journalists – used yet again by our masters – have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan as saying that their war can only be won with a “hearts and minds” campaign. No-one asked them the obvious question: Wasn’t this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnam war? And didn’t we – didn’t the West – lose the war in Vietnam?

Yet now we western journalists are actually using – about Afghanistan – the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition rather than a symbol of defeat for the second time in four decades, in some cases used by the very same soldiers who peddled this nonsense – at a younger age – in Vietnam.

Just look at the individual words which we have recently co-opted from the US military.

When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies – al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban -have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!

A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ – for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.

Now again, when US generals refer to a sudden increase in their forces for an assault on Fallujah or central Baghdad or Kandahar – a mass movement of soldiers brought into Muslim countries by the tens of thousands – they call this a ‘surge’. And a surge, like a tsunami, or any other natural phenomena, can be devastating in its effects. What these ‘surges’ really are – to use the real words of serious journalism – are reinforcements. And reinforcements are sent to wars when armies are losing those wars. But our television and newspaper boys and girls are still talking about ‘surges’ without any attribution at all! The Pentagon wins again.

Meanwhile the ‘peace process’ collapsed. Therefore our leaders – or ‘key players’ as we like to call them – tried to make it work again. Therefore the process had to be put ‘back on track’. It was a railway train, you see. The carriages had come off the line. So the train had to be put ‘back on track’. The Clinton administration first used this phrase, then the Israelis, then the BBC.

But there was a problem when the ‘peace process’ had been put ‘back on track’ – and still came off the line. So we produced a ‘road map’ – run by a Quartet and led by our old Friend of God, Tony Blair, who – in an obscenity of history – we now refer to as a ‘peace envoy’.

But the ‘road map’ isn’t working. And now, I notice, the old ‘peace process’ is back in our newspapers and on our television screens. And two days ago, on CNN, one of those boring old fogies that the TV boys and girls call ‘experts’ – I’ll come back to them in a moment – told us again that the ‘peace process’ was being put ‘back on track’ because of the opening of ‘indirect talks’ between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t just about clichés – this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.

Maybe one problem is that we no longer think for ourselves because we no longer read books. The Arabs still read books – I’m not talking here about Arab illiteracy rates – but I’m not sure that we in the West still read books. I often dictate messages over the phone and find I have to spend ten minutes to repeat to someone’s secretary a mere hundred words. They don’t know how to spell.

I was on a plane the other day, from Paris to Beirut – the flying time is about three hours and 45 minutes – and the woman next to me was reading a French book about the history of the Second World War. And she was turning the page every few seconds. She had finished the book before we reached Beirut! And I suddenly realised she wasn’t reading the book – she was surfing the pages! She had lost the ability to what I call ‘deep read’. Is this one of our problems as journalists, I wonder, that we no longer ‘deep read’? We merely use the first words that come to hand …

Let me show you another piece of media cowardice that makes my 63-year-old teeth grind together after 34 years of eating humus and tahina in the Middle East.

We are told, in so many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are ‘competing narratives’. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. ‘Competing narratives’ now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase is a species – or sub-species – of the false language of anthropology. It deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly ‘competing narratives’, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not – ‘in competition’. It’s two sides in a football match. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

So an ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’. Thus a ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. Thus Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.

You will not be surprised to know that it was Colin Powell, in his starring, powerless appearance as secretary of state to George W. Bush, who told US diplomats in the Middle East to refer to occupied Palestinian land as ‘disputed land’ – and that was good enough for most of the American media.

So watch out for ‘competing narratives’, ladies and gentlemen. There are no ‘competing narratives’, of course, between the US military and the Taliban. When there are, however, you’ll know the West has lost.

But I’ll give you a lovely, personal example of how ‘competing narratives’ come undone. Last month, I gave a lecture in Toronto to mark the 95th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the deliberate mass murder of one and a half million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turkish army and militia. Before my talk, I was interviewed on Canadian Television, CTV, which also owns the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. And from the start, I could see that the interviewer had a problem. Canada has a large Armenian community. But Toronto also has a large Turkish community. And the Turks, as the Globe and Mail always tell us, “hotly dispute” that this was a genocide. So the interviewer called the genocide “deadly massacres”.

Of course, I spotted her specific problem straight away. She could not call the massacres a ‘genocide’, because the Turkish community would be outraged. But equally, she sensed that ‘massacres’ on its own – especially with the gruesome studio background photographs of dead Armenians – was not quite up to defining a million and a half murdered human beings. Hence the ‘deadly massacres’. How odd!!! If there are ‘deadly’ massacres, are there some massacres which are not ‘deadly’, from which the victims walk away alive? It was a ludicrous tautology.

In the end, I told this little tale of journalistic cowardice to my Armenian audience, among whom were sitting CTV executives. Within an hour of my ending, my Armenian host received an SMS about me from a CTV reporter. “Shitting on CTV was way out of line,” the reporter complained. I doubted, personally, if the word ‘shitting’ would find its way onto CTV. But then, neither does ‘genocide’. I’m afraid ‘competing narratives’ had just exploded.

Yet the use of the language of power – of its beacon-words and its beacon-phrases -goes on among us still. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan? They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq. Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. And then immediately we western reporters did the same. Calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once – ever – have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan. And that most of them, ladies and gentlemen, are in American or other Nato uniforms!

Similarly, the pernicious phrase ‘Af-Pak’ – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters when it originally was a creation of the US state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoided the use of the word ‘India’ whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, ‘Af-Pak’ – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the ‘Af-Pak’ envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase ‘Af-Pak’, which totally deletes the tragedy of Kashmir – too many ‘competing narratives’, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, ‘Af-Pak’, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the state department’s work.

Now let’s look at history. Our leaders love history. Most of all, they love the Second World War. In 2003, George W. Bush thought he was Churchill as well as George W. Bush. True, Bush had spent the Vietnam war protecting the skies of Texas from the Vietcong. But now, in 2003, he was standing up to the ‘appeasers’ who did not want a war with Saddam who was, of course, ‘the Hitler of the Tigris’. The appeasers were the British who did not want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair, of course, also tried on Churchill’s waistcoat and jacket for size. No ‘appeaser’ he. America was Britain’s oldest ally, he proclaimed – and both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940.

But none of this was true.

Britain’s old ally was not the United States. It was Portugal, a neutral fascist state during World War Two. Only my own newspaper, The Independent, picked this up.

Nor did America fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940, when Hitler threatened invasion and the German air force blitzed London. No, in 1940 America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality – and did not join Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941.

Ouch!

Back in 1956, I read the other day, Eden called Nasser the ‘Mussolini of the Nile’. A bad mistake. Nasser was loved by the Arabs, not hated as Mussolini was by the majority of Africans, especially the Arab Libyans. The Mussolini parallel was not challenged or questioned by the British press. And we all know what happened at Suez in 1956.

Yes, when it comes to history, we journalists really do let the presidents and prime ministers take us for a ride.

Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel – our own servicemen dying as they did so – to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist – and we love historical parallels – has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?

Look at more recent times. Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – you can fit ‘WMD’ into a headline – but of course, he didn’t, and the American press went through embarrassing bouts of self-condemnation afterwards. How could it have been so misled, the New York Times asked itself? It had not, the paper concluded, challenged the Bush administration enough.

And now the very same paper is softly – very softly – banging the drums for war in Iran. Iran is working on WMD. And after the war, if there is a war, more self-condemnation, no doubt, if there are no nuclear weapons projects.

Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power – though it is not a war since we have largely surrendered – is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words, in many cases – I fear – better than we do. History, too. They know that we are drowning our vocabulary with the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute experts, or those of those of the Rand Corporation or what I call the ‘THINK TANKS’. Thus we have become part of this language.

Here, for example, are some of the danger words:

· POWER PLAYERS

· ACTIVISM

· NON-STATE ACTORS

· KEY PLAYERS

· GEOSTRATEGIC PLAYERS

· NARRATIVES

· EXTERNAL PLAYERS

· PEACE PROCESS

· MEANINGFUL SOLUTIONS

· AF-PAK

· CHANGE AGENTS (whatever these sinister creatures are).

I am not a regular critic of Al Jazeera. It gives me the freedom to speak on air. Only a few years ago, when Wadah Khanfar (now Director General of Al Jazeera) was Al Jazeera’s man in Baghdad, the US military began a slanderous campaign against Wadah’s bureau, claiming – untruthfully – that Al Jazeera was in league with al-Qaeda because they were receiving videotapes of attacks on US forces. I went to Fallujah to check this out. Wadah was 100 per cent correct. Al-Qaeda was handing in their ambush footage without any warning, pushing it through office letter-boxes. The Americans were lying.

Wadah is, of course, wondering what is coming next.

Well, I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that all those ‘danger words’ I have just read out to you – from KEY PLAYERS to NARRATIVES to PEACE PROCESS to AF-PAK – all occur in the nine-page Al Jazeera programme for this very forum.

I’m not condemning Al Jazeera for this, ladies and gentlemen. Because this vocabulary is not adopted through political connivance. It is an infection that we all suffer from – I’ve used ‘peace process’ a few times myself, though with quotation marks which you can’t use on television – but yes, it’s a contagion.

And when we use these words, we become one with the power and the elites which rule our world without fear of challenge from the media. Al Jazeera has done more than any television network I know to challenge authority, both in the Middle East and in the West. (And I am not using ‘challenge’ in the sense of ‘problem’, as in ‘”I face many challenges,” says General McCrystal.’)

How do we escape this disease? Watch out for the spell-checkers in our lap-tops, the sub-editor’s dreams of one-syllable words, stop using Wikipedia. And read books – real books, with paper pages, which means deep reading. History books, especially.

Al Jazeera is giving good coverage to the flotilla – the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don’t think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships – from all over the world – are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid – as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn’t the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian ‘intervention’ in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?

In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.

But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.

Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton’s attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair’s humanitarian ‘intervention’ in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers – and the people on those boats – that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?

The hell we are! We prefer ‘competing narratives’. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination – be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the ‘peace process’, the ‘road map’. Keep the ‘fence’ around the Palestinians. Let the ‘key players’ sort it out.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not your ‘key speaker’ this morning.

I am your guest, and I thank you for your patience in listening to me.

Mondovino: globalization and terroir, Robert Parker versus your good taste

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Eric Verlo

For those with a curiosity for how wine terroir is holding up against the onslaught of wine factory farming, the 10-hour miniseries version of MONDOVINO is finally available on DVD. For viewers curious about viniculture globalization under Californian colonial domination, the original feature length documentary delivers, with a long finish. Any time critics accuse a film of being one sided, you know it’s about class war.

I had my first lesson in vineyard terroir when my college-aged aunt visited my family in Alsace and spent a season picking grapes. She informed us to our horreur that everything gets stomped in that barrel, bugs and all. I didn’t drink wine then, so what did I care, but it was easy to decide that such was the artistry that probably made French wines great.

But as I said, Mondovino was about much more than wine, and now I’ll get to the point. We may lament the new commercialization of wine, but historically the occupation has always had its strictly-business types. Vintners were rarely agriculturalists who subsisted, they were wine lovers subsidized. We can wince at the Napa Valley nouveau gauche, but even Bordeaux’s great chateaus, and especially all the Premiers Crus, are owned and have been owned by businessmen money lenders, going back centuries.

The modernization and standardization which is destroying contemporary wines is simply the evolution of production control. At last, technology and the ascent of a gilded age have brought vintners to believe they’ve bested nature. It’s true if you don’t care about wine, if you’re content to bottle a soft drink as opposed to allowing wine the breathing space to develop personality. Basically this documentary demonstrates that these gentlemen hobbyists, now plaintively bourgeois about profit, welcome the new global fascism.

Old World Fascists
Of course it is no stretch to imagine that the Mondovino filmmakers are going to ask, how did your father or grandfather like Fascism under the Nazis? They point the question at an Italian family who date their wealth back 900 years as bankers.

Any European documentary delving into family histories will always ask particularly about the war years. In America it’s what did you do during the war Daddy? In Europe it’s about weathering the occupation. Most working class French want to tell you what they did in the Resistance. Rich people you don’t ask because of course they were collaborateurs.

Mondovino’s subjects are the perpetually wealthy, who don’t even register the affront. Of course their families thrived under Fascism, quelle betise to imagine it would be otherwise. How curious it is we are surprised they embrace it so again.

Such moments are the highlights of Mondovino, rich folk posing in elaborate foyers, plaintively matter of fact about Fascism.

One opulent reception room in Florence is packed with ancient paintings, among them a painting of the very room full of paintings, you imagine if you peered closely enough you would see the infinity of mirrors scheme, a Baroque era black velvet number. The Grande Dame mentions that Prince Charles inquired about that painting at breakfast.

Let me add, critics have held Jonathan Nossiter’s camera work to be unstable. Actually he was very easily distracted by momentously relevant tchotchkes and biographical details few commoners are granted audience to encounter.

Fascists in the New World
Mondovino allowed the Napa Valley entrepreneurs to hang themselves. Open mouth, insert vacuous blather, often racist. These nouveau riches landscaped new vineyard for themselves, praising the terrain like it was classic architecture, their aesthetic tributes could only reference the National Mall. That classic.

Over at Mondavi, talk fixated of expansion and conquest. The film’s main plot addressed the Mondavi’s ongoing acquisition of the world’s most treasured appelations. For the worse of course, because what do they know about wine but that it should all taste the same? Son Mondavi dreams of someday having a vineyard on the moon, for no other reason than he thought of it. Wouldn’t it be exciting, he asks, to be able to say: “hey, let’s open a bottle from the moon,” my paraphrase.

The issue of terroir, English readers, has entirely to do with terre which is French for “earth.” Terre with a capital T is “Earth.” Of course the earthbound distinction was lost on this Californian.

Yes, Mondavi is surely alone in pondering what earth, sun and elements would have feed his moon vines.

Most vile of all the New World vintners was a family outfit in Argentina. They sit on a spacious veranda and explain how every boy in the family is named for founding father, the original title holder. Their wealth goes back to the early Spanish settlers and they express the perennial colonizer’s lament, that Los Indios of the regions have no work ethic. Centuries ago the Spaniard had to devise cruel torments to drive their slave laborers to produce. It was an inefficient system to impose on the indigenous and transplanted tribes, unaccustomed to a hierarchical workforce supporting do-nothings at the top.

Globalization
Key to Mondavi’s quest for wine world domination, is a market that has standardized the consumer’s taste. No longer are customers hopping in their car for a Sunday drive, to stop by a neighboring chateau to sample a vintage take a case home. Today the global consumption of wine has meant having to market it without being able to taste it. For that consumers have come to follow the ratings of critics. It was inevitable of course, but Mondovino reveals how hilariously flawed and phony the system is.

Mondovino focuses on two celebrity tasters who make or break wines. Robert Parker and James Suckling. Let’s dispatch the latter quickly.

James Suckling
James Suckling made a niche for himself nurturing Italian wines and coined the term “Super Tuscan.” I didn’t know that, but Mondovino records Suckling attributing the phenomena to the ether before being made to admit that the meme was his own.

More hilarious was a hypothetical question posed to the critic after confessing in an unguarded moment that he might have been too generous with the rating he gave a friend’s wine. The friend, a wealthy vintner, was letting Suckling a villa, which meant he was also his landlord. Naturally Mondovino asked if a discount on the rent would move Suckling to consider a more favorable rating. Suckling took the bait, laughingly nodding, of course, his friend under his breath suggested in such case he could have the villa for free.

It’s not corruption, merely a gentleman’s game. Can we even assert that the ordinary consumer suffers? Taste is subjective. Suckling’s ultimate rating is of negligible consequence to wine drinkers, except to commerce.

Robert Parker
I’m sorry to be getting around to Parker’s scheme so late in this article, because he plays such a profound part in the homogenizing of world wine production. The mechanism is beyond the pale, but it’s simple. Parker is influential and has a distinctive appetite, he has a best friend who consults with vintners about how to make their wine to Parker’s taste. The result has been devastating. Vines that have for ages had their own distinctive gouts have now been McParkered. The consultant charges a large fee to monitor an increasing stable of wines, for the camera his preoccupation was “micro-oxygenate,” and after it’s bottled parker comes around and bestows the high marks. The more they pay, the higher the score.

Mondovino underscores this plot by filming a Burger King billboard as Parker drives past it, while he sings the praises of uniform quality. The filmmakers notice an FBI cap on Parker’s desk and make sure to keep it in the frame. Parker is quite candid and friendly in Mondovino, probably because he had no inkling they did not share his eagerness to see viniculture’s eccentricities ironed to a uniform flat.

When the film was released and Robert Parker emerged as enterprising accomplice to Mondavi’s villain, Parker was enraged. He wrote rant after rant against the film and its makers. I’m not sure he’s over it yet. I wanted to be sure to document what I thought was Mondovino’s most brilliant assault on the witless benefit the Parker-Mondavi venture think they’re bequeathing with their anschluss of world wine. It’s about the subjectivity of taste. Robert Parker’s.

A recurring motif of Mondovino’s interviews was a fascination with dogs. It’s cute, and often we give ourselves leave to believe we have learned something about the owner by just looking at their dog.

In one memorable scene, we’ve met a quite unassuming South American vintner who has only one hectar, but is none the less generous with his wine, his time and friendship. He has a black dog, and when the filmmaker asks his name, the vintner laughs such that the revelation is self-effacing. “Luther King” is his name, because, he tells us in Spanish, he’s “negro.” Mondovino’s dark hats are so distasteful, it’s important that the heroic characters aren’t too pearly clean.

All the asides with the dogs were entertaining in their own right, but could have served entirely to set up Robert Parker’s scene. We’re invited to Parkers home and immediately discover he has something for bulldogs.

Do you like bulldogs? Taste is of course subjective. Robert Parker and his wife love their bulldogs, two, and their home is festooned with Bulldogephemera, statuettes, paintings, the camera frame’s worth. Imagine a wall covered with watercolors and oil portraits of bulldogs as you consider the subjectivity of taste.

Then just as Parker is prompted to discuss that his nose is ensured for a million dollars, we discover that one of the dogs has become incontinent, and there’s the near unbearable dog flatulence from which not even conversation can escape. Imagine Robert Parker’s nose not ensured against that. The interview concludes with Parker rambling about something as a bulldog sits sneering on the carpet forcing the filmmaker to keep a safe distance, and so he focuses in close capturing the ugly, perhaps infirm, definitely defensive, unlikable mug.

The next time you chose a wine because it has a high Parker score, ask yourself how it integrates an atmosphere of dog.

Americans upset by viral Single Ladies video don’t know their ass from TandA

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Eric Verlo

You thought ours was an oversexed culture obsessed with youth, but the recent furor over a viral video shows Americans don’t know their ass from their T & A.

Obviously everyone is aghast about too-young dancers gyrating to Beyonce’s SINGLE LADIES, but I think it says something hilarious about our ineptitude with sexuality. Like the mess of clueless philistines weighing in, I too am inexpert at what titillates about 7-year-olds, and it’s not going to stop me either.

Can we agree the Beyonce hit is lewd? I’m guessing her video was unremarkable, I recall the SNL spoof was camp, but what are Beyonce’s lyrics except deliberately crass? You expect a performance of “Single Ladies” to transcend its theme? You’re going to be offended regardless who is lip-syncing it.

Putting aside whether your daughter belongs onstage participating, where have you been? This is dance. Call it Vulgar Nouveaux or Burlesque Outré, it dates to Madonna’s mother’s virginity. This is dance, all you Kansans, onstage and on screen. Flashdance had nothing on Broadway, American Gigolo hid the sex behind clothes. Beside the point. Young dancers aspiring to tomorrow’s auditions want to learn what their role models are teaching. Children today love Spongebob, but they’re watching South Park and Family Guy too. The only uncomfortable party in the room is you.

I recently attended an elementary school talent show that included some dance-schooled troopers. Some of their precocious moves were admittedly out of place and some even off-putting, but it didn’t stop parents from appreciating the talent and obvious dedicated effort. Our little tarts didn’t come close, by the way, to the spirited Single Ladies performance, clearly well choreographed, taught, and executed.

Was outraged America also so unsophisticated to notice that the now infamous video was a multiple camera production? This wasn’t a family recording leaked by an indignant relative. It was a World of Dance competition where no one watching showed any shock at the performance. While I confess I’m still offended by the Jon-Benet pageant aesthetic, these costumes and the next Britney backup dancers did not surprise.

What entertained me most were the comments threading from the now multiple postings of the video. The original post accumulated over two million views and had to be removed for reasons that are self-explanatory apparently. On account of poorly-spelled death threats, I imagine. Eventually you’ll find observations defending the performance, but for the overwhelming part, everyone wants to weigh their indignation against the next, accuse the dancers’ parents of child abuse and round up a posse to chase the pedophiles they’re sure are lurking.

What I find endearing about their best Sunday earnestness is that these commenters wouldn’t know a stripper’s pole from where they get their haircut. Even as internet porn is so pervasive, and we worry it has saturated our psyche, it turns out the prurient pretenders– as hypocritical we know, as Republican congressmen– know as much about erotica as a prudes.

Even more entertaining is a certain tenor to their comments, part of a trend I’m horrified to recognize has been overtaking blogdom. It began I suppose when the personal computer extended the internet outside the lab. Emails used to abide a scientist’s protocol, then with the world-wide-web came spam. Blogs began with people who had something to say, and when comments deregulated to chat rooms, in came the freaks.

There’s a common tone to compulsive opinion-givers, I recognize it too often as I offer my own. It pervades the blogosphere now almost to have rendered discussion threads unreadable. It’s a tone of tone-deafness, in vocabulary, grammar and attitude. Related to a person not knowing what they’re talking about, the tell-tale ingredient is that they don’t care about the subject either. It’s a characteristic recognized in forced conversations and poor sales pitches, not always obvious when we’re regurgitating differences of opinion or ideology.

If I didn’t always before recognize the ignorance in the insincerity, this Tea Party tinctured pile-on has given me the scent.

The too-cursory indignation Middle America is showing about these 7-year-old dancers strikes a feeble, unfunny note. It’s the puritanical call for women of all ages to reduce themselves behind burqas, coming from voices self-loathing and unworldly.

Why does media minimize the oil spill?

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Until yesterday, how many barrels of oil per day had you been informed were fueling the Deepwater Horizon oil spill calamity?
a) 1,000 b) 5,000 c) 50,000 d) 100,000 +
Experts who aren’t BP said the answer from the beginning was D. The media is only now warming the public to C, even as analysis qualify it’s “at least” that, but BP is refuting revision of their original estimates saying now that it’s impossible to calculate the rate of flow at such great depth. They’re estimating the oil leak like a potential civil liability. Until a claim is made, appealed and/or settled, on the books it’s nothing. The bigger question: why is the media standing between you and the ugly truth?

Freedom Flotilla flagship off to Gaza

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The rechristened MV Rachel Corrie sails today from Dundalk, Ireland, to join the Freedom Flotilla intent on running the blockade of Gaza. Israel is already warning Cyprus against allowing the humanitarian convoy to shelter in its ports, rehearsing plans to intercept, and Turkish supporters are rebuffing Israeli threats to bomb relief ships which attempt to reach Palestine. In other news, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has accepted Israel’s membership, cementing First World culpability for Israeli growth from conquest. Critics had urged Israel’s disqualification because its capitalization has been owed to the occupation and illegal appropriation of Palestinian resources, but could the OECD ultimately disown the US-European joint colonial venture?

What a coincidence that today’s date in 1949 marked the end of the siege of Berlin, when an international effort was mounted by world governments to fly relief convoys of supplies to the besieged population of Berlin. Today western governments won’t abide the expressed will of their citizens and so the people themselves are having to save the Palestinians abandoned in Gaza.

The MV Rachel Corrie has been repainted with a giant Irish flag on its side, and the words “FREE GAZA” along its top. The cargo ship retains its original IMO 6715281 for communications and tracking. Bloggers and journalists will be charting the flotilla’s progress online.

Among the participants on the Free Gaza project are Ken Fleming, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Denis Halliday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq; Matthias Chang, Perdana Global Peace Organizer; Aengus.O’Snodaigh, Sinn Fein; Chris Andrews; Free Gaza Movement co-founder Greta Berlin, Caoimhe Butterly, Ewa Jasiewicz, Fintan Lane, and Niamh Moloughney.

Originally it was Antiwar Mother’s Day

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Eric Verlo

For how many war years longer will a MOTHER’S DAY tradition be to remind the vast Hallmark-washed that Mom’s postbellum holiday originated as a grassroots resistance by mothers opposed to enlisting their sons in war? Quoth abolitionist/pacifist/feminist/poet Julia Ward Howe in the Mother’s Day Proclamation: “We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” Take heed war-loving patriots, Howe also penned the lyrics to Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Up against the wall, antiwar mother.

During WWI the plea expressed itself in a popular song: “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” Of course the song provoked many jingoist responses such as “I didn’t raise my boy to be a coward,” and “I tried to raise my boy to be a hero.” Blood lusty teabaggers were up to their same knee jerk patriotism back then, egged on no doubt by the same industrial military interests. From across the Atlantic, Punch magazine reflected the British eagerness to see the US join their war and lampooned with “I didn’t raise my girl to be a voter.”

Mother’s Day Proclamation, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions
decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us,
reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,
will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth
a voice goes up with our own.

It says:
“Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough
and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel
with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,?

Each bearing after his own time
the sacred impress, not of Caesar,?
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity,
I earnestly ask?

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality?
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient?
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,?
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,?
The amicable settlement of international questions,?
The great and general interests of peace.

Keebler Girl Scout placement on SNL

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Eric Verlo

What was with the new face on SNL, cracking jokes on Weekend Update about Girl Scout Cookies? Was it a staff writer getting his on-camera big break? With unoriginal candle-holding to Gary Gulman’s cookie rap? I’ll bet the SNL regulars wouldn’t touch the shtick because it was pure product placement.

Number one: the humor was too self-deprecating. Wanna laugh at the Girl Scouts as an ineffectual distribution method? That’s like saying multilevel has no reach. Amway may look funny to traditional retailers, but the latter has to advertise like crazy, while the former only strengthens with publicity.

Number two: propagate pure falsehood. For example, complain that Girl Scout cookies are only available in season. In this age of consumer excess, it would seem impossible that the Girl Scout cookie varieties wouldn’t have at least generic imitators. The presumption of exclusivity is not even close. Keebler contracts the same baker elves as the Girl Scouts, so of course the Keebler Triple Fudge is identical to the Girl Scout Thin Mint. If you detect that one seems creamier, it’s because one is fresher. It’s the one with a shorter shelf life, because it goes straight from factory to jobber to supermarket, unlike its pricier, smaller packaged doppelganger which makes the rounds of garages, minivans and outdoor tables until a uniformed para-military future-realtor brings it to your door.

Oil spill photos free of offending oil rig

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The US Coast Guard has confirmed that an oil spill has indeed ensued after the Louisiana drilling platform explosion which claimed 11 lives. Suspicions now grow that Deepwater Horizon may have deliberately scuttled the damaged offshore rig yesterday lest images of the inevitable spill would depict the cause, reigniting the damning imagery that has long tarred oil industry efforts to pollute America’s coasts with the hazardous rigs. Instead of seeing a platform atop a massive oil slick, the public will see a despoiled patch of undefined size and origin; lacking a structure from which viewers could derive the disaster’s scale, or the felonious facility to damn for the deed.

Yeah look at those dead bastards. Nice.

Posted on April 8, 2010 by NMT

Here’s the Wikileaks decrypted Apache AH-64 combat footage of 2007 collateral murder of Iraqi civilians including two journalists, wounding two children.

Wikileaks is tweeting the ensuing developments. Democracy Now has interviews recorded the day after July 12, 2007 by Big Noise Films.

We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.

Let me engage.

Roger, hey, we need to stop that.

Can I shoot?

Request permission to engage.

Picking up the wounded?

Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage.

Come on, let us shoot!

They’re taking him.

We have a Black SUV err, Bongo Truck picking up the bodies.

Fuck.

Request permission to engage.

Engage.

Transcript from the Full video:

00:03 Okay I got it.
00:05 Last conversation Hotel Two-Six.
00:09 Roger Hotel Two-Six [Apache helicopter 1], uh, [this is] Victor Charlie Alpha. Look, do you want your Hotel Two-Two two el-
00:14 I got a black vehicle under target. It’s arriving right to the north of the mosque.
00:17 Yeah, I would like that. Over.
00:21 Moving south by the mosque dome. Down that road.
00:27 Okay we got a target fifteen coming at you. It’s a guy with a weapon.
00:32 Roger [acknowledged].
00:39 There’s a…
00:42 There’s about, ah, four or five…
00:44 Bushmaster Six [ground control] copy [i hear you] One-Six.
00:48 …this location and there’s more that keep walking by and one of them has a weapon.
00:52 Roger received target fifteen.
00:55 K.
00:57 See all those people standing down there.
01:06 Stay firm. And open the courtyard.
01:09 Yeah roger. I just estimate there’s probably about twenty of them.
01:13 There’s one, yeah.
01:15 Oh yeah.
01:18 I don’t know if that’s a…
01:19 Hey Bushmaster element [ground forces control], copy on the one-six.
01:21 Thats a weapon.
01:22 Yeah.
01:23 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight [second Apache helicopter].
01:29 Copy on the one-six, Bushmaster Six-Romeo. Roger.
01:32 Fucking prick.
01:33 Hotel Two-Six this is Crazy Horse One-Eight [communication between chopper 1 and chopper 2]. Have individuals with weapons.
01:41 Yup. He’s got a weapon too.
01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to engage [shoot].
01:51 Roger that. Uh, we have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage. Over.
02:00 All right, we’ll be engaging.
02:02 Roger, go ahead.
02:03 I’m gonna… I cant get ’em now because they’re behind that building.
02:09 Um, hey Bushmaster element…
02:10 Is that an RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade]?
02:11 All right, we got a guy with an RPG.
02:13 I’m gonna fire.
02:14 Okay.
02:15 No hold on. Lets come around. Behind buildings right now from our point of view. … Okay, we’re gonna come around.
02:19 Hotel Two-Six; have eyes on individual with RPG. Getting ready to fire. We won’t…
02:23 Yeah, we had a guy shoot—and now he’s behind the building.
02:26 God damn it.
02:28 Uh, negative, he was, uh, right in front of the Brad [Bradley Fighting Vehicle; an tracked Armored Personal Carrier that looks like a tank]. Uh, ’bout, there, one o’clock. [direction/orientation]
02:34 Haven’t seen anything since then.
02:36 Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em just open ’em up.
02:38 All right.
02:40 I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees [Armored cars], uh, out along…
02:43 You’re clear.
02:44 All right, firing.
02:47 Let me know when you’ve got them.
02:49 Lets shoot.
02:50 Light ’em all up.
02:52 Come on, fire!
02:57 Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
02:59 keep shoot.
03:02 keep shoot.
03:05 Hotel.. Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now!
03:10 All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.
03:12 Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters] and we’re still fire [not firing].
03:14 Roger.
03:15 I got ’em.
03:16 Two-six, this is Two-Six, we’re mobile.
03:19 Oops, I’m sorry what was going on?
03:20 God damn it, Kyle.
03:23 All right, hahaha, I hit [shot] ’em…
03:28 Uh, you’re clear.
03:30 All right, I’m just trying to find targets again.
03:38 Bushmaster Six, this is Bushmaster Two-Six.
03:40 Got a bunch of bodies layin’ there.
03:42 All right, we got about, uh, eight individuals.
03:46 Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we got, definitely got something.
03:51 We’re shooting some more.
03:52 Roger.
03:56 Hey, you shoot, I’ll talk.
03:57 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:01 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six. Over.
04:03 Roger. Currently engaging [fighting/shooting at] approximately eight individuals, uh KIA [Killed In Action], uh RPGs, and AK-47s.
04:12 Hotel Two-Six, you need to move to that location once Crazyhorse is done and get pictures. Over.
04:20 Six beacon gaia.
04:24 Sergeant Twenty is the location.
04:28 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:31 Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
04:36 Nice.
04:37 Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:44 Nice.
04:47 Good shoot.
04:48 Thank you.
04:53 Hotel Two-Six.
04:55 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
05:03 Crazyhorse One-Eight; Bushmaster Seven. Go ahead.
05:06 Bushmaster Seven; Crazyhorse One-Eight. Uh, location of bodies, Mike Bravo five-four-five-eight eight-six-one-seven [military map grid reference].
05:15 Hey, good on the uh…
05:17 Five-four-five-eight eight-six-one-seven [map grid reference]. Over.
05:21 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight, that’s a good copy. They’re on a street in front of an open, uh, courtyard with a bunch of blue uh trucks, bunch of vehicles in the courtyard.
05:30 There’s one guy moving down there but he’s uh, he’s wounded.
05:35 All right, we’ll let ’em know so they can hurry up and get over here.
05:40 One-Eight, we also have one individual, uh, appears to be wounded trying to crawl away.
05:49 Roger, we’re gonna move down there.
05:51 Roger, we’ll cease fire.
05:54 Yeah, we won’t shoot anymore.
06:01 He’s getting up.
06:02 Maybe he has a weapon down in his hand?
06:04 No, I haven’t seen one yet.
06:07 I see you guys got that guy crawling right now on that curb.
06:08 Yeah, I got him. I put two rounds [30mm cannon shells] near him, and you guys were shooting over there too, so uh we’ll see.
06:14 Yeah, roger that.
06:16 Bushmaster Thirty-Six Element; this is uh Hotel Two-Seven over.
06:21 Hotel Two-Seven; Bushmaster Seven go ahead.
06:24 Roger I’m just trying to make sure you guys have my turf [area], over.
06:31 Roger we got your turf.
06:33 Come on, buddy.
06:38 All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.
06:44 Crazyhorse this is Bushmaster Five, Bushmaster Four break. We are right below you right time now can you walk us onto that location over.
06:54 This is Two-Six roger. I’ll pop flares [drop flares]. We also have one individual moving. We’re looking for weapons. If we see a weapon, we’re gonna engage.
07:07 Yeah Bushmaster, we have a van that’s approaching and picking up the bodies.
07:14 Where’s that van at?
07:15 Right down there by the bodies.
07:16 Okay, yeah.
07:18 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.
07:25 Let me engage.
07:28 Can I shoot?
07:31 Roger. Break. Uh Crazyhorse One-Eight request permission to uh engage.
07:36 Picking up the wounded?
07:38 Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage.
07:41 Come on, let us shoot!
07:44 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
07:49 They’re taking him.
07:51 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
07:56 This is Bushmaster Seven, go ahead.
07:59 Roger. We have a black SUV-uh Bongo truck [van] picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.
08:02 Fuck.
08:06 This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. Engage.
08:12 One-Eight, engage.
08:12 Clear.
08:13 Come on!
08:17 Clear.
08:20 Clear.
08:21 We’re engaging.
08:26 Coming around. Clear.
08:27 Roger. Trying to uh…
08:32 Clear.
08:35 I hear ’em co.. I lost ’em in the dust.
08:36 I got ’em.
08:41 I’m firing.
08:42 This is Bushmaster Forty got any BDA [Battle Damage Assessment] on that truck. Over.
08:44 You’re clear.
08:47 This is ah Crazyhorse. Stand by.
08:47 I can’t shoot for some reason.
08:49 Go ahead.
08:50 I think the van’s disabled.
08:53 Go ahead and shoot it.
08:54 I got an azimuth limit for some reason [gunner moved gunsight too far]
09:00 Go left.
09:03 Clear left.
09:15 All right, Bushmaster Crazyhorse One-Eight.
09:20 A vehicle appears to be disabled.
09:22 There were approximately four to five individuals in vehicle moving bodies.
09:28 Your lead Bradley should take the next right.
09:31 That’s cruising east down the road.
09:34 No more shooting.
09:38 Crazyhorse; this is Bushmaster Four. We’re moving a dismounted element [troops] straight south through the Bradleys [tanks].
09:44 I have your Elem- uh, Bradley element turning south down the road where the engagements were.
09:53 Last call on station’s uh Bradley element say again.
09:56 Roger this is Crazyhorse.
09:58 Your lead Bradley just turned south down the road where all the engagements [shooting] happened.
10:03 Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies.
10:11 Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield!
10:14 Ha ha!
10:16 All right. There were uh approximately four to five individuals in that truck, so I’m counting about twelve to fifteen.
10:24 I would say that’s a fairly accurate assessment so far.
10:27 Roger that.
10:29 I want to just be advised Six, Bushmaster Six are getting mounted up right now.
10:35 Okay, roger. Hey, we can’t flex down that road towards that, uh, where Crazyhorse engaged.
10:43 So, uh, I don’t know if you want us to do so or stay put. Over.
10:46 Why can’t they go down there?
10:56 I think we whacked [killed] ’em all.
10:58 That’s right, good.
10:59 This is Hotel Two-Six.
11:03 Hey you got my dismounted element [troops] right there over to your left.
11:06 Roger, I see ’em.
11:11 Hey yeah, roger, be advised, there were some guys popping out with AKs behind that dirt pile break.
11:19 We also took some RPGs off, uh, earlier, so just uh make sure your men keep your eyes open.
11:26 Roger.
11:27 And, uh, Bushmaster ahead are, uh, Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
11:33 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six.
11:35 Yeah Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
11:37 Uh, location I have about twelve to fifteen dead bodies.
11:42 Uh, where else are we taking fire from?
11:48 Currently we’re not being engaged, ah, but just south of that location. Break.
11:55 You should see dismounted elements with Humvees [armored cars] moving to the east, over.
12:01 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight; we have elements in sight.
12:05 Bushmaster Three-Six.
12:07 I’m gonna get down a little lower.
12:09 All right.
12:10 I’m gonna come down a little lower and take a quick gander.
12:13 Roger that.
12:14 Six; this is four. We’re headed to the area where Crazyhorse engaged.
12:26 Bushmaster Six; this is Hotel Two-Six.
12:28 Request to go to the south to our original BP so if you flushed them to the south we will be there to uh intercept over.
12:39 Hey this is Bushmaster Seven; we’re coming up on B… on the ass end of the Brads [tanks].
12:54 Hey uh, Bushmaster Element; this is Copperhead One-Six break.
13:00 We’re moving in the vicinity of the engagement area and looks like we’ve got some slight movement from ah, the ah van that was engaged.
13:06 Looks like a kid. Over.
13:11 This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. Uh, we’re about a hundred meters behind you.
13:16 Got that big pile, to the right?
13:18 Roger, you gonna pull in here? Do you want me to push stuff so you can, uh, get clear of it?
13:21 Right on the corner?
13:22 What’s that?
13:23 Got that big pile of bodies to the right, on the corner?
13:24 Yeah, right here.
13:25 We got a dismounted infantry and vehicles, over.
13:30 Again, roger.
13:31 And clear.
13:48 There’s the Bradley right there.
13:51 Got ’em.
14:00 Hotel two-six; are you uh at this grid over?
14:05 Yeah I wanted to get you around so didn’t you just get that one dude to scare them all away. It worked out pretty good.
14:11 I didn’t want those fuckers to run away and scatter.
14:12 Yeah.
14:15 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six. Roger, we linked up with our two element they are all mounted up in our trucks break.
14:23 We moved south so that we could ah possibly intercept personnel being flushed south. So we are vicinity Fifth Street.
14:30 And ah please line Gadins. Over.
14:37 Bring the trucks in, cordon this area off.
14:39 Can we move the Bradley forward so we can bring trucks in and cordon off this area.
14:44 If the Bradleys could take the south cordon, that could help out a lot.
14:53 Bushmaster or element. Which Element called in Crazyhorse to engage the eight-elem- eight-men team on top of a roof.
15:02 Bushmaster Six; this is Hotel Two-Six. Uh, I believe that was me.
15:07 They uh had AK-47s and were to our east, so, where we were taking small arms fire. Over.
15:20 Hotel Crazyhorse One-Eight.
15:26 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six.
15:28 Yeah Two-Six. One-Eight I just also wanted to make sure you knew that we had a guy with an RPG cropping round the corner getting ready to fire on your location.
15:36 That’s why we ah, requested permission to engage.
15:40 Ok, roger that. Tango mike.
15:46 Hotel Two-Six; do you understand me, over?
15:51 I did not copy last, uh, you got stepped on. Say again please?
16:00 They cordoned off the building that the helicopters killed the personnel on.
16:04 Don’t go anywhere else we need to cordon off that building so we can get on top of the roof and SSC the building. Over.
16:13 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
16:16 This is Hotel Two-Six.
16:19 Hey, whoever was talking about rooftops, know that all the personnel we engaged were ground level. I say again ground level.
16:27 Roger I copy ground level. Over.
16:30 One-Eight roger.
16:33 Can I get a grid to that one more time please?
16:36 Target twenty.
16:36 Roger.
16:40 You want me to take over talking to them?
16:42 S’alright.
16:46 Seven-Six Romeo Over.
16:49 Roger, I’ve got uh eleven Iraqi KIAs [Killed In Action]. One small child wounded. Over.
16:57 Roger. Ah damn. Oh well.
17:04 Roger, we need, we need a uh to evac [evacuate] this child. Ah, she’s got a uh, she’s got a wound to the belly.
17:10 I can’t do anything here. She needs to get evaced. Over.
17:18 Bushmaster Seven, Bushmaster Seven; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo.
17:20 We need your location over.
17:25 Roger, we’re at the location where Crazyhorse engaged the RPG fire break.
17:37 Grid five-four-five-eight.
17:46 Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.
17:48 That’s right.
17:56 Got uh, eleven.
18:01 Yeah uh, roger. We’re monitoring [observing].
18:02 Sorry.
18:04 No problem.
18:07 Correction eight-six-one-six.
18:16 Looking for more individuals-south.
18:18 Bushmaster Six-Bushmaster Seven.
18:29 I think they just drove over a body.
18:31 Hey hey!
18:32 Yeah!
18:37 Maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it.
18:41 Well, they’re dead, so.
18:44 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
18:56 Six; this is Four. I got one individual looks like he’s got an RPG round laying underneath him. Break.
19:05 Probably like to get…
19:10 Look at that.
19:12 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
19:29 Bushmaster Six; Romeo Hotel Two-Six over.
19:44 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
19:56 Hotel Two-Six; Bushmaster Seven colocated with Six.
20:08 Hotel Two-Six; Bushmaster Seven.
20:10 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six over.
20:14 Roger, we got a little girl who needs to be evaced. What’s your location over?
20:22 On route Gadins, I am all the way to the south. So I am Gadins and Fifth Street.
20:28 I say again Gadins and Fifth Street, over.
20:40 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six. Do you want us to push to your location?
20:55 Hey, uh, I need to get the Brads to drop rads I got a wounded little girl we need to take her off the maya.
21:04 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six. Do you want us to move to your location over?
21:30 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
21:34 Hotel Two-Six; this is Bushmaster Seven. Roger, come to our location.
21:39 Okay, roger, we’re coming up north on Gadins and then we will push east to your location.
22:06 Bushmaster elements be advised we have friendlies coming from the south to your location. Over.
22:13 All right, got ’em moving up from the south.
22:35 Bushmaster elements be advised we are coming up from the east.
23:49 Hey One-Two; follow me over. I’m going to try and get out of here as quickly as possible.
24:10 You guys all right back there?
24:13 Yeah, we’re with you.
24:35 Lotta guys down there.
24:37 Oh yeah.
24:37 Came out of the woodwork.
24:38 This is Operation, ah, Operation Secure.
25:16 Yeah we have fifty rounds left.
25:17 Yep.
25:19 Two-Six; Six Romeo over.
25:21 Two-Six; Romeo over.
25:23 Hey roger, what’s your current location over?
25:47 Six; speak it’s Romeo.
25:50 Three-Six Romeo; Six Romeo over.
25:52 Roger, at the six once it’s back on this guy.
25:56 Lost him.
26:00 What’s he got for us?
26:01 Stand by.
26:06 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:21 Hey, did you got action on that target yet over?
26:25 Speak to Charlie roger.
26:32 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:55 Bushmaster Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:59 Roger, you have traffic over.
27:02 Roger. Uh, just wondering if you had anything else you wanted us to drive on?
27:08 Yeah roger keep on, ah, for the time being over.
27:11 Six calls Six Romeo. Can you tell battalion that two civilian children casualties are coming back to SMI in the Bradley over.
27:26 Six calls Six Romeo.
27:29 Bushmaster Six Copper White Six.
27:32 Copperhead White Six; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo over.
27:36 Roger, that’s a negative on the evac of the two, ah, civilian, ah, kids to, ah, rusty they’re going to have the IPs [Iraqi Police] link up. They can put us over here. Break. IPs will take them up to a local hospital over.
27:50 Copy over.
27:54 One six oh.
28:08 … they’re all going to.
28:10 Say again?
28:12 Where all those dismounts [infantry] are going to?
28:18 Going into this hous-. Sorry
29:29 Three Six, Three Six; Bushmaster Six Romeo over.
29:37 Six Romeo, Six Romeo.
29:39 Roger, Bushmaster Seven wants an up on all personnel in your battalion over.
29:44 Roger.
30:08 …friendlies [US troops] on the roof.
30:10 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Bushmaster Four over.
30:12 Bushmaster Four; this is Crazyhorse One-Eight.
30:15 Roger, I can ah hear small arms fire from your engagement area at two zero zero zero ah about three hundred meters from that objective over.
30:27 Crazyhorse; from what I understand small arms fire at two zero zero zero degrees about two hundred meters.
30:39 Just to the southwest.
30:41 Yup.
30:49 Right about where we engaged.
30:51 Yeah, One of them with that RPG or whatever.
30:55 He’s got a weapon. Got an RK–AK 47.
30:58 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
31:02 Gonna lose him.
31:03 Crazyhorse One-Eight this is Hotel Two-Six over.
31:08 Roger, have another individual with a weapon.
31:10 Dammit, they’re in the same building.
31:12 Hey roger that, just make sure that ah, you’re firing from west to east over.
31:16 Just went in the building.
31:18 Crazyhorse Three and Four will be on their way.
31:21 The individual walked into the building previously past grid [map reference]. So there’s at least six individuals in that building with weapons.
31:30 We can put a missile in it.
31:31 If you’d like, ah, Crazyhorse One-Eight could put a missile in that building.
31:46 It’s a triangle building. Appears to be ah, abandoned.
31:51 Yeah, looks like it’s under construction, abandoned.
31:52 Appears to be abandoned, under construction.
31:56 Uh, like I said, six individuals walked in there from our previous engagement.
32:01 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo. If you’ve PIDed [Positively IDentified] the individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building over.
32:08 Crazyhorse One-Eight; will be coming up north to south engaging with Hellfire [missiles].
32:13 All right, I’m going to do manual.
32:17 All right, we’ve been cleared to engage with…
32:18 This is Bushmaster Six Romeo. Crazyhorse One Eight is going to be engaging north to south with Hellfire missiles over.
32:24 This is Hotel Two-Six. Roger.
32:26 All right, you ready?
32:27 No, I’m trying to get over to the November [target]. Trying to find the fucking…
32:33 This is Bushmaster Six. Has that RPG round been extended already or is it still live, over.
32:38 Looks live to me.
32:40 Let me know when you’re going to fire.
32:44 All right, I’m fucking having a brain fart. Where’s the man [manual] advancement?
32:48 You got one on the clutch on the bottom left on your left door.
32:54 Roger let me stand by.
32:57 Got it?
32:59 No.
33:03 All right.
33:09 Let me just put a kilo [Hellfire missile] in there.
33:12 Ok.
33:15 Got it?
33:21 Put a kilo in?
33:22 All right, let me get back.
33:26 I’m gonna come around, get some more distance.
33:27 Roger that, you’re clear.
33:33 Got more individuals in there.
33:36 You wanna hit from north to south or you wanna go from west to east? I don’t wanna fire with the friendlies [US forces] right there, you know.
33:41 Yeah, go north to south.
33:53 Right, come around, right.
33:56 I’m just gonna put one or two in, if they want any more.
34:09 Right.
34:12 Found the missile.
34:15 Roger, I’ll get you in this straight.
34:16 You’re clear.
34:17 I’m firing.
34:26 Target hit.
34:28 It was a missile.
34:29 Left.
34:32 You’re clear. I’m above you.
34:36 Crazyhorse One-Eight; was that explosion you engaging over?
34:38 Crazyhorse One Eight, roger. Engaging building with one hellfire.
34:46 Let’s come around and we’ll clear the smoke. We’ll fire one more.
34:50 Hey uh, we’re going to wait for the smoke to clear.
34:52 Yes Crazyhorse One Eight now. We’re going to put one more missile into the building.
34:57 Yeah, did it ah, go in the building? I see the wall knocked out of the way.
34:59 Yeah, it went in.
35:01 Bushmaster Six Romeo; this is Hotel Two-Six. Yeah roger, that was Crazyhorse engaging with one Hellfire over.
35:10 Yeah roger, I got a November [target] if you want.
35:12 Fire away.
35:13 You want us to fire?
35:18 You ready?
35:19 Yep.
35:20 Bushmaster Six Romeo. They are going to engage ah, with one more Hellfire in that building.
35:24 Uh shit, why I do I have AP flashing on there? [warning on helicopter display]
35:47 We’re not even going to watch this fucking shit?
35:49 Till next one. It won’t come around, I need a little more distance.
35:53 Still want me to shoot?
35:57 You guys, following hot.
35:59 Roger.
36:13 You are clear.
36:14 Roger.
36:16 You going to bring up the missile?
36:18 Roger.
36:19 And firing.
36:20 Come down? There you go.
36:23 Fire.
36:24 All right.
36:28 I’ve got, ah BACKSCATTER [warning on helicopter display].
36:30 All right, come around.
36:32 Roger.
36:34 Coming around left, backscatter.
36:49 Firing.
36:53 There it goes! Look at that bitch go!
36:56 Patoosh!
37:03 Ah, sweet.
37:07 Need a little more room.
37:09 Nice missile.
37:11 Does it look good?
37:12 Sweet!
37:16 Uh, you ready?
37:18 Roger.
37:30 There’s a lot of dust.
37:36 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six. Was there a BDA [Battle Damage Assessment]?
37:40 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight. Stand by, engaging with another Hellfire.
37:43 All right.
37:45 You’re clear.
37:47 Lemme know when I’m clear.
37:50 Roger that.
37:59 He wasn’t.
38:02 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
38:07 Crazyhorse One-Eight.
38:09 Roger, building destroyed. Engaged with three hellfire missiles.

Our prejudice against tent-dwellers

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Eric Verlo

What do home-enabled Coloradans have against disadvantaged people forced to live in tents? The Great Depression saw migrant workers having to subsist under canvas, striking miners have been forced from their homes and into camps in Ludlow and before that Cripple Creek. And of course the first Colorado tent-dwellers to get everyone’s panties in a knot were the Native Americans who held original claim to the territory.

The above photograph is from Dorothea Lange’s historic series which documented the lives of migrant workers as they fled the Dust Bowl for the fertile agricultural plantations of California. The woman at right is the iconic “Migrant Mother” known for a more famous closeup. I chose this shot because it makes clear that she and her seven children were living in a tent.

Colorado was one of the states which the Okies had to cross in search of work in California. As depicted in Grapes of Wrath, Colorado and Arizona only begrudgingly tolerated the vagabonds, making sure they didn’t linger and kept on their way.

Do we fear the poor because they threaten our own sense of prosperity? There but for the grace of God, go ourselves? We shoo them along lest their itinerant ways tax our charity, or they take the righting of economic inequity into their own hands. The Europeans have always shunned the ever-homeless gypsies. Landless people can’t be trusted, they’re in the opposite position of what we look for in businesses, reliable to the extreme of being “bonded.” People unattached to assets don’t have capital to bond them with responsibility.

Before Coloradans were chasing off out-of-state migrant workers, yesterday’s illegal immigrants, they were offended by earlier indigent encampments. When miners struck in Colorado’s southern coal fields, the mine owners evicted them from the company-owned houses. The unions were left to build a tent city in Ludlow to put pressure on the industry to accept some labor demands. The standoff was spun as a standoff between the ungrateful miners, most of them recent immigrants, and a nation’s critical source of heating fuel. The Colorado population was roused to man a militia and beat the miners into submission. As much as consumers feared an interrupted coal supply in the record cold of the winter of 1914, imagine the miners enduring in their tents. In the end, we all know the result: the Ludlow Massacre and the unions were defeated.

The gold miners fared slightly better in their 1894 strike to preserve the eight hour day. When they closed down the mines and camped on site to keep them shut, the folks of Colorado Springs were rallied to form a near 2000-strong army to go attack the ingrates. Fortunately the miners escaped a battle, but the common population’s prejudice against the laborers in their tents was the same.

Could these have been related to the sentiments which inflamed Colorado Territory settlers in 1864, enough to go after the few remnants of Native Americans encamped along Sand Creek?

The Pikes Peak region plays an ignoble role in all of these examples. Men from Colorado Springs and Colorado City formed the population from which participants were drawn for Chivington’s raid against the Cheyenne, the private army which marched against the Cripple Creek gold strike, and the militia which Rockefeller mobilized to torment the tent city of Ludlow. Colorado Springs was a hotbed of Klu Klux Klan activity in the 1930s, epitomizing local xenophobia.

When Colorado Springs city councilman speak of fielding calls from constituents angry about the growing homeless encampments, I cannot help but think of our legacy of intolerance of people deemed lesser than us. Colorado Springs has always been ripe for bigotry and hatred.

Not so long ago our city was the crucible for Amendment Two which sought to deprive homosexuals of protection from discrimination. More recently fear-mongering about immigration from Mexico made Colorado Springs fertile for recruiting gunmen for the Minutemen, to make pilgrimages to the Mexican border with the promise of getting to shoot Mexicans pell-mell. Since the election of President Obama, we’ve seen a phenomenal growth of Tea Party enthusiasts, white bigots determined not to have their taxes spent by a nigger.

What a sorry racist lot we’ve been, anti-labor, anti-progressive and anti-poor. Somewhere in the past there must have been city leaders who defied the simple-minded xenophobia of our historic population, otherwise all our statues of municipal heroes would be wearing clan gowns. Hopefully with the current bloodlust to run off the victims of our current depression, city politicians will lead my setting a higher moral example.

Police/press foist huff n’ puff terrorism

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Time Magazine got caught darkening OJ’s mugshot to make him look menacing, so now the Otero County Sheriff makes sure to art direct the original. Lean into the shadow Mr. Lutalo, let’s see your game face, thank you! Alas, mugshots of even the least of arrestees circulate so widely online, the public can recognize when a suspect is made to look like the Big Bad Wolf. This is 64-year-old Terrorist Ojore Lutalo, the “Amtrak Anarchist” who went one better than Xmas Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab by not even packing combustibles. Ojore is scheduled to go before the Otero District Court Friday. 2/3 UPDATE: ALL CHARGES DROPPED! With apologies I hope. Move along, nothing to see here. As simple as that?

US health industry tells Vic to snuff it

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Vic Chesnutt took his own life on Christmas Day. By coincidence, he’d just given an upbeat interview to NPR’s Fresh Air in spite of an ongoing battle with his health care providers. The segment seemed to pierce the celebrity veil we imagine insulates our talent castes from the worries of everyman. When he died, I reflected on the interview. I was reluctant to mar a eulogy with the villainy of the US medical system — but then NPR re-aired the piece, en memoriam, minus the damning testimony. They added in its place a remembrance by three colleagues who concluded: “To say poor health care killed Vic Chesnutt would be very reductive.”

Reductive? These corporate musicians, at the behest of NPR, have to throw an artisan spin on Vic Chesnutt’s legacy because his art should transcend his mortality?! Vic’s art, real art, is about mortality. Vic’s death was real and the anxiety he expressed in his interview was real. He hadn’t chosen to keep his troubles to himself for the sake of the listeners’ seamless pleasurable enjoyment. Who are these commercial artists to mute Vic’s story? It made me sick.

Others wonder aloud why Vic’s rich musician friends couldn’t have offered to pay for the medical procedures he needed. Perhaps they did, who knows. And perhaps their concern not to be “reductive” was extracted from a much longer session where Vic Chesnutt’s struggles were discussed at length.

Vic’s talent may not have been lost on these would-be eulogists, but we can’t fault them for not being artist spirits enough themselves to know how to shepherd an honest narrative about Vic.

I point my finger at NPR for the rewrite, and I’ll take issue with one of the musicians. At a wake, there’s always someone who uses the opportunity for self-promotion, and at this one it was REM’s Michael Stipe. He discovered Vic Chesnutt, let’s get that out of the way. Michael’s remembrance of Vic was an anecdote about a lyric he thought he’d stolen from Vic. It was so good, he must have stolen it. Stipe was so honest, he called Vic to confess. Vic’s response was gracious, no it’s yours. Stipe insisted, and so did Vic. Such was Vic’s grace, and so elevated was Stipe’s regard for Vic, and evidently so great is Stipe’s humility and –in the end it turns out by Vic’s own lips– his genius. He transcended his master. Much of the draw of coattail opportunism at funerals is that dead men tell no tales.

NPR’s problem, and shall we imagine, the problem of its underwriters, the major health insurers, was that Vic Chesnutt killed himself right after telling an NPR audience he could succumb any day for lack of proper medical care. Chesnutt died from an overdose of pain killers, which raised the disquieting suggestion to listeners that he lived in a lot of pain. Sure Chesnutt had attempted suicide before. He’d written a love song to suicide. The trouble was, he declared in his interview that “Flirted with You All My Life” was a break-up song with death. “I don’t want to die” Chesnutt exclaimed most earnestly.

While our nation’s health insurers have been content to let the common sick extinguish themselves by attrition, their PR crews come to the rescue of high profile victims, usually the focus of mass protests, even if they come late. Vic Chesnutt had given them no time, between the airing of his interview, and his Christmas day demise.

To listeners who heard the first airing, especially ones who might never have heard of Vic, the tragedy of this internationally renown artists being unable to get health care was a climax. It was a moment when entertainment rang dissonant.

For the rewrite, Terry Gross removed the critical segment, leaving the focus on Chesnutt’s earlier suicide attempts. Gross sounded like an insurance interrogator the way she made Chesnutt clarify that his first attempted suicide was actually before his debilitating accident, before health issues would have been a motivation. I would like to see Gross dissect her guests’ responses with such scrutiny, I wonder why she began with Vic.

Thus the rewritten interview became an indictment of Vic Chesnutt’s propensity to self-destruct. Forget narrowing Vic to health care failure, Terry reduced him to habitual suicide. The character assassination continued by next highlighting his song “I’m a Coward.”

In place of the dramatic, redemptive climax, Gross interviewed Michael Stipe, Guy Picciotto and Jem Cohen. Just before wrapping up, Gross raised the issue of Vic’s health care. All agreed the system failed him, but their pre-discussion consensus was not to be “reductive.”

As if the songwriter’s legacy wasn’t going to speak for his whole. Here his colleagues were concerned that their characterization of his death would define him. If Vic had died mid-song, would there have been a need to say his life wasn’t just about that song?

Little did they suspect that NPR would “reduce” Chesnutt however they wanted. Once again where Vic Chesnutt’s sentiment connected with his audience, the industry hovered to intercept.

If you didn’t catch Chesnutt’s original interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, here’s how it ended:

GROSS: I read that you’re in debt like $50,000 because of health insurance issues.

Mr. CHESNUTT: That’s right.

GROSS: So – and this is because you had a series of surgeries and although you pay a lot for your health insurance, it didn’t cover all of it. Is that – do I have that right?

Mr. CHESNUTT: That’s exactly true, yeah.

GROSS: Uh-huh. So, what are your thoughts now as you watch the health care legislation controversy play out?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Well, I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for kidney stone operation is -that’s absurd.

GROSS: Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could – I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just – I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects – I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.

I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.

GROSS: Is it true you can’t get good health insurance?

Mr. CHESNUTT: I can’t get – I’m uninsurable. The only reason I have any insurance now is because I was on Capitol Records for a while. And I had excellent health insurance there. And then when I got dropped from Capitol, I Cobra’d my insurance for as long as it was legally possible. And then – and which was insanely expensive to cobra this very nice insurance. And then, when that ran out, the insurance company said they could offer me one last thing and that is hospitalization. It only covers hospital bills. That’s all it covers. And it’s still $500 a month. So, it doesn’t pay for my drugs, my doctors or anything like that. All it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still owe all this money on top of that.

GROSS: Wow. Well, I wish you the best with your health and your music. And I really want to thank you–

Mr. CHESNUTT: Thank you.

GROSS: –a lot for talking with us.

Mr. CHESNUTT: Oh, I’m honored, honored beyond belief.

William Blum – Anti-Empire Report

Posted on January 6, 2010 by NMT

Here’s William Blum’s latest essay, on Lincoln Gordon, Brazil, Cuba, and the 2009 Nobel Laureate, reprinted from www.killinghope.org.

THE ANTI-EMPIRE REPORT
By William Blum, January 6, 2009

The American elite

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington’s on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil’s military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."

Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

MANN: I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ: I am.

MANN: I think that’s the most important thing that’s happened in the hemisphere in three years.

LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.¹

So the next time you’re faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" … "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America’s past. In its present. In its future. They’re the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.

And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."

Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners

In November I wrote:

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He’s holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in … not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".² A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.³

Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee’s ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.

The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That’s anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?

Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.⁴

For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.

It’s not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here’s Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."⁵

Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?

Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.

More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:

"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. … Under Cuban law … a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of ‘dangerousness’."

That sounds just awful, doesn’t it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don’t use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".

The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we’re bringing democracy to Cuba just as we’re bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.⁶

The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s "political prisoners" are such dissidents.

The Washington Post story continued:

"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.

What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people’s needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.

"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."

What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.

"Access to some Web sites is restricted."

Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."

According to a well-documented account⁷, Sánchez’s tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.

"’Counterrevolutionary activities’, which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."

Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for … for what? In most cases there’s no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don’t accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".⁸

There’s no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.⁹ It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.

Notes

Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ^↩

ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ^↩

Washington Post, December 25, 2009 ^↩

Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff@yahoo.com. To see back issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/^↩

Reuters, December 25, 2009 ^↩

For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 ^↩

Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009 ^↩

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/democ.htm ^↩

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ^↩

Code Pink and the Obama Left

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Eric Verlo

As Code Pink capitulates in Cairo, taking consolation for eking a 1/14 size march as a compromise with Egypt, where originally they promised to march regardless the permissions granted, I’m reminded of Code Pink’s role in 2008, protesting war while cheerleading for Obama. Code Pink was one of the strongest organizing forces at the Denver DNC demonstrations, but inside their clubhouse at the Mercury Cafe, decorations revealed their crush on the Man From Change. The antiwar movement needs players like Code Pink, and the indefatigable Medea Benjamin, but as the denouement of 2009 felled the last Obamapologists, I think they’ve lost dibs on decision making.

Groups like Code Pink can assist with action planning, but if they insist on a voice pretending to represent the goals of real activism, no. How can Code Pink et al be considered longer reliable partners at the grass roots? In Cairo yesterday, over a thousand activists wanted to hold strong, but 87 Judases had Code Pink’s approval, to board Egypt’s counter-activism ploy.

The predicament reminds be of the pharmaceutical commercials where a middle-aged man explains the grief to which he’s come, on account of neglecting his health. Now he’s found a pill to stay healthy and he wants to share his advice with others. What, pray tell, entitles him to give any health advice at all? He’s actually disqualified himself. Lipitor, I think is the latest pitch. Yes, he was an idiot, but he got a second chance with Lipitor, now he recommends it. We trust him — why?

Chapel Hills Mall boycott DAY 4 update

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Eric Verlo

CHAPEL HILLS MALL- Security visited the CFP picket on Wednesday. They’d observed us the past three days via video surveillance, but apparently their camera angles recorded only the backs of our signs, general slogans about Israel, Gaza, and the Gaza Freedom March, which did not adequately explain the inquiries they received about shoppers being asked to boycott VICTORIA’S SECRET and BATH & BODY WORKS. We were eager to explain. As usual, the critical question was how long we planned to be there.

Our answer was tentative: Until more than 87 delegates from the Gaza Freedom March to join Gaza demonstrators demanding an end to the Siege of Gaza. Solidarity protests and pickets are being staged worldwide. It’s up to the US and Israel, through their proxy in Egypt. Who knows if the Limited, parent company of the the aforementioned retail stores, can exert its influence? GFM would-be participant Sam Husseini reports international delegates left behind are being blocked from leaving their hotels. Mohammed Said el-Naidi reports and has picture.

A deal was brokered yesterday by which 100 peace delegates, one per nationality, could proceed by bus to Rafah. Many activists refused, choosing to demonstrate with the hundreds to be left behind. Organizers Code Pink had originally vowed to march on December 31st, regardless if permission is granted by Egyptian authorities, but now are declaring the brokered deal a victory… As a collective, the organizers forming the FGM rejected the offer, but a group left nonetheless.

The final 87 include many journalists who intended to cover the march and Palestinians hoping to be reunited with family members. No word yet whether Colorado Springs representatives are on the two buses headed to Gaza.

To support the GFM efforts, contact the Egyptian Embassy, 202-895-5400 and ask for Omar Youssef or email omaryoussef@hotmail.com with an email like the following:

I am writing/calling to express my full support for the December 31, 2009 Gaza Freedom March. I urge the Egyptian government to allow the 1,300 international delegates to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

The aim of the march is to call on Israel to lift the siege. The delegates will also take in badly needed medical aid, as well as school supplies and winter jackets for the children of Gaza.

Please, let this historic March proceed.

Thank you.

Is it really illegal to boycott Israel?

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Eric Verlo

It is not illegal for US consumers to boycott anyone’s products. But the business decisions of companies affiliated with Israel do enjoy some curious protective constraints…

It’s ironic that as the US enforces rigid sanctions against international companies which violate its embargo against Cuba, the US has enacted laws simultaneously which prohibit its companies from complying with trade restrictions called by others.

As a further embarrassment, the antiboycotting measure specifies just one boycott, literally: the League of Arab Nations boycott of Israel.

So while American consumers are free to make the buying decisions they wish, it is illegal for an American business to adjust its business practices to boycott Israel.

In other words, as much as social justice activists might like to ask a department store not to carry Ahava beauty products taken from Occupied Territory shores, the store would be prohibited by US law to do so as an act of compliance. For another example, fashion labels such as DKNY and cK could decide to discontinue carrying undergarments manufactured by Delta Galil from settler farms in Palestine, but they couldn’t do it because of someone’s boycott.

(Delta Galil supplies clothing to the Gap, Banana Republic, Structure, J-Crew, JC Penny, Pryca, Lindex, DIM, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Playtex, Calvin Klein, and Hugo Boss.)

This law makes a commercial boycott impossible to resolve between customer and business, but ultimately results in more pressure being applied to the source cause, which are the policies of Israel.

According to the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Antiboycott Compliance, in the 1970s two laws were enacted “to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation’s economic boycotts or embargoes. These ‘antiboycott’ laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). While these laws share a common purpose, there are distinctions in their administration.”

Antiboycott Compliance

The Bureau is charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel sponsored by the Arab League, and certain Moslem countries, including complying with certain requests for information designed to verify compliance with the boycott. Compliance with such requests may be prohibited by the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and may be reportable to the Bureau.

The law specifies boycotts called by foreign nations, leaving the possibility that US citizens can declare themselves the originators of a boycott. However other language makes clear that no boycott is to contravene the US government’s declared trade policy with Israel. To elaborate on the EAR:

Objectives:
The antiboycott laws were adopted to encourage, and in specified cases, require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction. They have the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy.

Primary Impact:
The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal foreign economic boycott that U.S. companies must be concerned with today. The antiboycott laws, however, apply to all boycotts imposed by foreign countries that are unsanctioned by the United States.

Who Is Covered by the Laws?
The antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to the activities of U.S. persons in the interstate or foreign commerce of the United States. The term “U.S. person” includes all individuals, corporations and unincorporated associations resident in the United States, including the permanent domestic affiliates of foreign concerns. U.S. persons also include U.S. citizens abroad (except when they reside abroad and are employed by non-U.S. persons) and the controlled in fact affiliates of domestic concerns. The test for “controlled in fact” is the ability to establish the general policies or to control the day to day operations of the foreign affiliate.

The scope of the EAR, as defined by Section 8 of the EAA, is limited to actions taken with intent to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott.

These amendments are examples of Israel’s stranglehold on US legislation. Anti-Israel voices like to paint the picture that as a result, American citizens have been denied the freedom to vote with their pocketbooks where it comes to opposing the policies of Israel. Likewise, pro-Israel groups are content to leave the issue ambiguous. But clearly US individuals are free to make consumer choices and encourage others as they wish.

The function of the TRA further explains its business-limited scope:

What do the Laws Prohibit?

Conduct that may be penalized under the TRA and/or prohibited under the EAR includes:

• Agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to discriminate or actual discrimination against other persons based on race, religion, sex, national origin or nationality.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about the race, religion, sex, or national origin of another person.

Implementing letters of credit containing prohibited boycott terms or conditions.

The TRA does not “prohibit” conduct, but denies tax benefits (“penalizes”) for certain types of boycott-related agreements.

Jokenhagen, the COP15 that wasn’t

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Eric Verlo

You heard about the Yes Men successfully pulling off another stunt in Copenhagen? The delegates were fooled, even the media, and so unsurprisingly, the substance of their theatrics is being glossed over. While the reporters track the footprints to sort truth from facade, they are wiping all traces behind them. Url-shortening conduit bit.ly warns for example that clicking through might endanger your browser. The Yes Men prank Canada is as far as most news stories go. Why Canada — is the more to the story.

First the substance: Canada is a wealthy-nation holdout on the climate talks. Its conservative government is offering to curb carbon emissions by a mere 3% etc. So the Yes Men thought they’d lead by example, role-playing Canada stepping up as all industrialized powers must. Their special announcement was called AGENDA 2020, wherein Canada pledged a 40% cut in emissions by 2020, to reach a 80% cut by 2050. Plus they vowed a “climate debt mechanism” comprising 1% of Canada’s GDP, climbing to 5% by 2030, to go toward emissions reduction and clean energy projects in Africa.

Drastic cuts, and huge payments of “climate debt” are what scientists project will be necessary to reach the environmental 350ppm line in the sand. A COP15 without such figures will be a failure. It’s small wonder the media is describing this “prank” without mentioning what was said.

Some Canadian outlets are providing reasonable detail of the commotion which was provoked. Check out the Globe and Mail, then the Toronto Star for good overviews.

The operation as it unfurled: preparations and execution were a collaboration between YM and the red-jacketed Climate Debt Agents (CDA).

0. YM begin tweeting as Canadian envoy PM Jim Prentice
(example: “My staff have notified me of a fake account pretending to represent me. It is @JimPrentice hope we can get it removed shortly. 5:31 AM Dec 14th from web” )

1. YM botch amusing anti-CocaCola prank

2. YM as Prentice tweets special announcement of a bold step forward.

3. YM (enviro-canada.com) offers Environment Canada press release

4. CDA fakes press conference outlining AGENDA 2020

5. Another CDA press conference features the envoy from Uganda, applauding Canada

6. Phony YM Wall Street Journal European Edition picks up story

7. YM (as ec-gc.ca) Environment Canadia press release pretending to denounce fraudulent prank

8. And the obligatory CDA press conference.

9. The real Canadian delegates provide the hijinks from there.

Championing minor pranks here and there as they toured for the release of their new movie The Yes Men Save the World, a reputation no doubt preceded them to the Climate Conference. The Yes Men anti-CocaCola prank earlier this week was stopped after just 20 seconds, but may have been a ruse to resolve expectations that they were obviously in Copenhagen to do something.

The CBC covers the moves of the Canadian and US delegates to get a handle on their PR. Interesting too were the frantic efforts to unmask the deception. While web sleuths followed the internet clues, a CBC reader comments that so far we’ve heard nothing yet of detective work in pursuit of whoever “hacked” the Climategate emails.

The press conferences are available on Youtube COP15DK, although their credibility is enhanced by the websites constructed around them.

AGENDA 2020

UGANDA RESPONDS

CANADA RETRACTS

CLIMATE DEBT AGENTS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

Of course the Yes Men released their own article to tell the story:

Copenhagen spoof shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke

by The Yes Men

African, Danish and Canadian youth join the Yes Men to demand climate justice and skewer Canadian climate policy.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – “Canada is ‘red-faced’!” (Globe and Mail) “Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!” (Guardian) “Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming!” (The Toronto Star) “A childish prank!” (Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada)

What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century has been revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.

The elaborate intercontinental operation was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the “Climate Debt Agents” from ActionAid, and The Yes Men. It involved the creation of a best-case scenario in which Canadian government representatives unleashed a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world.

The ruse started at 2:00 PM Monday, when journalists around the world were surprised to receive a press release from “Environment Canada” (enviro-canada.com, a copy of ec.gc.ca) that claimed Canada was reversing its position on climate change.

In the release, Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, waxed lyrical. “Canada is taking the long view on the world economy,” said Prentice. “Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense.”

Thirty minutes later, the same “Environment Canada” sent out another press release, congratulating itself on Uganda’s excited response to the earlier fake announcement. A video featuring an impassioned response by “Margaret Matembe,” supposedly a COP15 delegate from Uganda, was embedded in a fake COP15 website. “Canada, until now you have blocked climate negotiations and refused to reduce emissions,” said “Matembe.” “Of course, you do sit on the world’s second-largest oil reserve. But for us it isn’t a mere economic issue – it’s about drought, famine, and disease.”

(The video was shot in a replica of the Bella Center’s briefing room, at Frederiksholms Kanal 4, in the center of Copenhagen. Matembe was actually Kodili Chandia, a “Climate Debt Agent” from ActionAid, a collective of activists that push for rich countries to help those most affected by climate change for adaptation and mitigation projects. The “Climate Debt Agents,” with their signature bright red suits, have been a ubiquitous presence in Copenhagen during the climate summit.)

Then it was time for Canada to react. One hour later, another “Environment Canada” (this one at ec-gc.ca) released a bombastic response to the original release. This one quot ed Jim Prentice, Canada’s Minister for the Environment, decrying the original announcement: “It is the height of cruelty, hypocrisy, and immorality to infuse with false hopes the spirit of people who are already, and will additionally, bear the brunt of climate change’s terrible human effects. Canada deplores this moral misfire.”

Because almost none of the resulting news coverage even mentioned Uganda or “Matembe’s” response, a fourth release was sent from the second website (ec-gc.ca).

Meanwhile, in the real world

The real Canadian government’s reactions were almost as strange as the fake ones in the release. Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for the Canadian Prime Minister, emailed reporters and blamed Steven Guilbeault, cofounder of Quebec-based Equiterre. “More time should be dedicated to playing a constructive role instead of childish pranks,” said Soudas in a first email, while misspelling Guilbeault’s name.

Guilbeault demanded an apology. “A better way to use his time would probably be to advise the Canadian government to change its deeply flawed position on climate,” said Guilbeault.

Soudas and Guilbeault were seen exchanging angry words in the hallway outside of Canada’s 3:30pm press conference, which did not start until 4:30pm, and at which the Canadians refused to answer any questions about the flurry of false releases.

More raised voices were heard when Stephen Chu, the US Secretary of Energy, refused to pose for a photo with his Canadian counterpart, Jim Prentice. After Steve Kelly, Prentice’s chief of staff, begged for 10 minutes, the US guy finally asked why a photo was so important. Kelly replied that “we were carpetbagged this morning by [environmental non-governmental organizations] with a false press release. I gotta change the story.”

Why Blame Canada?

The only country in the world to have abandoned the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions and climate debt targets, Canada also has the most energy-intensive, destructive and polluting oil reserves in the world. The Alberta tar sands, according to The Economist, are in fact the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions.

“By not agreeing to emissions reductions, Canada is holding a loaded gun to our heads, and seems ready to pull the trigger on millions of us around the globe, ” said Margaret Matembe aka Kodili Chandia of the “Climate Debt Agents.” “They leave us no choice but to see them as criminal.”

At last year’s climate summit in Poznan, Poland, over 400 civil society organizations voted Canada worst of all nations in blocking progress towards a binding climate treaty. Will Canada take the dubious prize again this year in Copenhagen?

“The Canadian government is not listening to its citizens,” says Sarah Ramsey, a resident of Alberta who has seen the destruction of the tar sands firsthand. Ramsey traveled to Copenhagen to give voice to a generation of young Canadians. “We are discouraged and demoralized by our government’s position on climate change. We decided to lend our government a hand, and show them what good leadership looks like.”

In solidarity with the delegates from the G77 Bloc of nations, today’s intervention was also meant to highlight an issue at the heart of the ongoing talks-the issue of climate justice, and the climate debt that the developed world owes the developing world. Seventy-five percent of the historical emissions that created the climate crisis came from 20% of the world’s population in developed countries, according to the UN, yet up to 80% of the impacts of the climate crisis are experienced in the developing world, according to the World Bank.

“I meant every word I said,” says Kodili Chandia, a spokesperson for the Climate Debt Agents, who spoke out as a member of the Ugandan delegation. “This debate isn’t just about facts and figures and abstract concepts of fairness-the drought we are seeing right now in East Africa is directly threatening the lives of millions of people, including farmers in my own family. We have not created this problem but we are living with the consequences. That’s why I still say: It’s time for rich countries to pay their climate debt.”

– 30 –

There will be a press conference today at the “good” Bella Center used to shoot the fake announcement videos: 1pm, Frederiksholms Kanal 4, Copenhgaen.

More dream announcements coming soon! Come make your own or stay tuned at good-cop15.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Caracas Commitment Si Se Puede

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

You might imagine the multinational corporate media would blackout the talk of a 5th Socialist International. They are most determined to censor the issues which the world’s leftist parties are resolved to address. Where Obama 2008 and Copenhagen 2009 project a vacuum of ideological momentum, check out the Caracas Commitment.

The Caracas Commitment
November 25, 2009?
By Declaration from World Meeting of Left Parties?
November 19-21 Caracas, Venezuela

Political parties and organizations from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania commemorate and celebrate the unity and solidarity that brought us together in Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and from this libertarian city we would like to express our revolutionary rebelliousness. We are glad of and committed to the proud presence of the forces of change in a special moment of history. Likewise, we are proud to reaffirm our conviction to definitively sow, grow and win Socialism of the 21st century.

In this regard, we want to sign the Commitment of Caracas as a revolutionary guide for the challenges ahead of us. We have gathered with the aim of unifying criteria and giving concrete answers that allow us to defend our sovereignty, our social victories, and the freedom of our peoples in the face of the generalized crisis of the world capitalist system and the new threats spreading over our region and the whole world with the establishment and strengthening of military bases in the sister republics of Colombia, Panama, Aruba, Curacao, the Dutch Antilles, as well as the aggression against Ecuadorian territory, and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We consider that the world capitalist system is going through one of its most severe crises, which has shaken its very foundations and brought with it consequences that jeopardize the survival of humanity. Likewise, capitalism and the logic of capital, destroys the environment and biodiversity, bringing with it consequences of climate change, global warming and the destruction of life.

One of the epicentres of the capitalist crisis is in the economic domain; this highlights the limitations of unbridled free markets ruled by private monopolies. In this situation, some governments have been asked to intervene to prevent the collapse of vital economic sectors, for instance, through the implementation of bailouts to bank institutions that amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Said governments have been asked to stimulate their economies by increasing public expenditure in order to mitigate the recession and the private sector decline, which evidences the end of the supposedly irrefutable “truth” of neo-liberalism that of non-intervention of the State in economic affairs.

In this regard, it is very timely to promote an in-depth discussion on the economic crisis, the role of the State and the construction of a new financial architecture.

In summary, the capitalist crisis cannot be reduced simply to a financial crisis; it is a structural crisis of capital which combines the economic crisis, with an ecological crisis, a food crisis, and an energy crisis, which together represents a mortal threat to humanity and mother earth. Faced with this crisis, left-wing movements and parties see the defence of nature and the construction of an ecologically sustainable society as a fundamental axis of our struggle for a better world.

In recent years, progressive and left-wing movements of the Latin American region have accumulated forces, and stimulated transformations, throwing up leaders that today hold important government spaces. This has represented an important blow to the empire because the peoples have rebelled against the domination that has been imposed on them, and have left behind their fear to express their values and principles, showing the empire that we will not allow any more interference in our internal affairs, and that we are willing to defend our sovereignty.

This meeting is held at a historic time, characterized by a new imperialistic offensive against the peoples and governments of the region and of the world, a pretension supported by the oligarchies and ultraconservative right-wing, with the objective of recovering spaces lost as a consequence of the advancement of revolutionary process of liberation developing in Latin America. These are expressed through the creation of regional organizations such as ALBA, UNASUR, PETROCARIBE, Banco del Sur, the Sao Paulo Forum, COPPPAL, among others; where the main principles inspiring these processes are those of solidarity, complementarity, social priority over economic advantage, respect for self-determination of the peoples in open opposition to the policies of imperial domination. For these reasons, the right-wing forces in partnership with the empire have launched an offensive to combat the advance and development of the peoples’ struggles, especially those against the overexploitation of human beings, racist discrimination, cultural oppression, in defence of natural resources, of the land and territory from the perspective of the left and progressive movements and of world transformation.

We reflect on the fact that these events have led the U.S administration to set strategies to undermine, torpedo and destabilize the advancement of these processes of change and recuperation of sovereignty. To this end, the US has implemented policies expressed through an ideological and media offensive that aim to discredit the revolutionary and progressive governments of the region, labelling them as totalitarian governments, violators of human rights, with links to drug-trafficking operations, and terrorism; and also questioning the legitimacy of their origin. This is the reason for the relentless fury with which all the empire’s means of propaganda and its agents inside our own countries continuously attack the experiences in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Paraguay, as with its maintenance of the blockade against revolutionary and independent Cuba.

Part of the strategy activated by the U.S. Empire is evidenced by the coup in Honduras, as well as in other destabilizing initiatives in Central America, attempting to impose the oligarchic interests that have already left hundreds of victims, while a disgusting wave of cynicism tries to cover up the dictatorship imposed by the U.S. administration with a false veil of democracy. Along with this, it is developing a military offensive with the idea of maintaining political and military hegemony in the region, for which it is promoting new geopolitical allies, generating destabilization and disturbing peace in the region and globally through military intimidation, with the help of its allies in the internal oligarchies, who are shown to be complicit in the actions taken by the empire, giving away their sovereignty, and opening spaces for the empire’s actions.

We consider that this new offensive is specifically expressed through two important events that took place this year in the continent: The coup in Honduras, and the installation of military bases in Colombia and Panama, as well as the strengthening of the already existing ones in our region. The coup in Honduras is nothing but a display of hypocrisy by the empire, a way to intimidate the rest of the governments in the region. It is a test-laboratory that aims to set a precedent that can be applied as a new coup model and a way to encourage the right to plot against the transformational and independent processes.

We denounce the military agreement between the Colombian government and the United States administration strengthens the U.S.’s military strategy, whose contents are expressed in the so-called “White Book.” This confirms that the development of the agreement will guarantee a projection of continental and intercontinental military power, the strengthening of transportation capability and air mobility to guarantee the improvement of its action capability, in order to provide the right conditions to have access to energy sources. It also consolidates its political partnership with the regional oligarchy for the control of Colombian territory and its projection in the Andes and in the rest of South America. All this scaffolding and consolidation of military architecture entails a serious threat for peace in the region and the world.

The installation of military bases in the region and their interrelation with the different bases spread throughout the world is not only confined to the military sphere, but rather forms part of the establishment of a general policy of domination and expansion directed by the U.S. These bases constitute strategic points to dominate all the countries in Central and Latin America and the rest of the world.

The treaty for the installation of military bases in Colombia is preceded by Plan Colombia, which was already an example of U.S. interference in the affairs of Colombia and the region using the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism as an excuse. However, it has been shown that drug trafficking levels have increased in Colombia; therefore, the plan is no longer justified given that no favourable results have been obtained since its implementation, that would justify a new treaty with the U.S.

Today, the global strategy headed by the U.S. concerning drug trafficking is a complete failure. Its results are summarised by a rapid processes of accumulation of illegal capital, increased consumption of drugs and exacerbation of criminality, whose victims are the peoples of Latin America, especially the Colombian people. This strategy should be revisited and modified, and should be oriented towards a different logic that focuses on drug consumption as a public health issue. In Colombia, drug trafficking has assumed the form of paramilitarism, and turned into a political project the scope of which and persons responsible should be investigated so that the truth is known, so that justice prevails and the terror of the civilian population ceases.

We, the peoples of the world, declare that we will not give up the spaces we have managed to conquer after years of struggle and resistance; and we commit ourselves to regain those which have been taken from us. Therefore, we need to defend the processes of change and the unfolding revolutions since they are based on sovereign decisions made by the peoples.

Agreements

1. Mobilization and Condemnation of U.S. Military Bases

1.1.
To organize global protests against the U.S. military bases from December 12th to 17th, 2009. Various leftwing parties and social movements will promote forums, concerts, protest marches and any other creative activity within the context of this event.

1.2.
To establish a global mobilization front for the political denouncement of the U.S. military bases. This group will be made up by social leaders, left-wing parties, lawmakers, artists, among others, who will visit different countries with the aim of raising awareness in forums, press conferences and news and above all in gatherings with each country’s peoples.

1.3.
To organize students, young people, workers and women in order to establish a common agenda of vigilance and to denounce against the military bases throughout the world.

1.4.
To organize a global legal forum to challenge the installation of the U.S. military bases. This forum is conceived as a space for the condemnation of illegalities committed against the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples and the imposition of a hegemonic imperialist model.

1.5.
To organise a global trial against paramilitarism in Colombia bringing testimonies and evidence to international bodies of justice.

1.6.
To promote a global trial against George Bush for crimes against humanity, as the person principally responsible for the genocide against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.

1.7.
To promote a campaign for the creation of constitutional and legal provisions in all of our countries against the installation of military bases and deployment of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

1.8.
To promote, from the different social organizations and movements of the countries present in this meeting, a political solution for the Colombian conflict.

1.9.
To organise solidarity with the Colombian people against the imperial aggression that the military bases entail in Colombian territory.

2. Installation and Development of a Platform of Joint Action by Left-Wing Parties of the World

2.1.
To establish a space of articulation of progressive and left-wing organizations and parties that allows for coordinating policies against the aggression towards the peoples, the condemnation of the aggressions against governments elected democratically, the installation of military bases, the violation of sovereignty and against xenophobia, the defence of immigrants’ rights, peace, and the environment, and peasant, labour, indigenous and afro-descendent movements.

2.2.
To set up a Temporary Executive Secretariat (TES) that allows for the coordination of a common working agenda, policy making, and follow-up on the agreements reached within the framework of this international encounter. Said Secretariat undertakes to inform about relevant events in the world, and to define specific action plans: statements, declarations, condemnations, mobilizations, observations and other issues that may be decided.

2.3.
To set up an agenda of permanent ideological debate on the fundamental aspects of the process of construction of socialism.

2.4.
To prepare common working agendas with participation from Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

2.5.
To organize solidarity of the people’s of the world with the Bolivarian revolution and President Hugo Chávez, in response to the constant imperial attacks.

2.6.
To commemorate the centenary of Clara Zetkin’s proposal to celebrate March 8th as the International Day of Women. The parties undertake to celebrate this day insofar as possible.

2.7.
To summon a meeting to be held in Caracas in April 2010 in commemoration of the bicentenary of our Latin American and Caribbean independences.

3. Organization of a World Movement of Militants for a Culture of Peace

3.1.
To promote the establishment of peace bases, by peace supporters, who will coordinate actions and denouncements against interventionism and war sponsored by imperialism through activities such as: forums, cultural events, and debates to promote the ethical behaviour of anti-violence, full participation in social life, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, acknowledgement of the cultural identities of our peoples and strengthening the framework of integration. This space seeks to raise awareness among all citizens in rejection of all forms of domination, internal or external intervention, and to reinforce the culture of peace. To struggle relentlessly for a world with no nuclear weapons, no weapons of mass destruction, no military bases, no foreign interference, and no economic blockades, as our peoples need peace and are absolutely entitled to attain development. Promote the American continent as a territory of peace, home to the construction of a free and sovereign world.

3.2.
To organize a Peace Parliament as a political space to exchange common endeavours among the world’s progressive and left-wing parliamentarians, and to know the historical, economic, legal, political and environmental aspects key for the defence of peace. Hereby we recommend holding the first meeting in February 2010.

4. Artillery Of International Communication to Emancipate Revolutionary Consciousness

4.1.
To discuss a public communication policy at an inter-regional level that aims to improve the media battle, and to convey the values of socialism among the peoples.

4.2.
To promote the creation and consolidation of alternative and community communication media to break the media siege, promote an International Alternative Left-wing Media Coordination Office that creates links to provide for improved information exchange among our countries, in which Telesur and Radiosur can be spearheads for this action.

4.3.
To create a website of all of the progressive and left-wing parties and movements in the world as a means to ensure permanent exchange and the development of an emancipating and alternative communication.

4.4.
To promote a movement of artists, writers and filmmakers to promote and develop festivals of small, short and full-length films that reflects the advancement and the struggle of peoples in revolution.

4.5.
To hold a meeting or international forum of alternative left-wing media.

5. Mobilize All Popular Organizations in Unrestricted Support for the People of Honduras

5.1.
To promote an international trial against the coup plotters in Honduras before the International Criminal Court for the abuses and crimes committed.

5.2.
Refuse to recognize the illegal electoral process they aim to carry out in Honduras.

5.3.
To carry out a world vigil on Election Day in Honduras in order to protest against the intention to legitimize the coup, coordinated by the permanent committee that emerges from this encounter.

5.4.
To coordinate the actions of left-wing parties worldwide to curb the imperialist pretensions of using the coup in Honduras as a strategy against the Latin American and Caribbean progressive processes and governments.

5.5.
To unite with the people of Honduras through a global solidarity movement for people’s resistance and for the pursuit of democratic and participatory paths that allow for the establishment of progressive governments committed to common welfare and social justice.

5.6.
To undertake actions geared towards denouncing before multilateral bodies, and within the framework of international law, the abduction of José Manuel Zelaya, legitimate President of Honduras, that facilitated the rupture of constitutional order in Honduras. It is necessary to determine responsibility among those who participated directly in this crime, and even among those who allowed his aircraft to go in and out Costa Rica without trying to detain the kidnappers of the Honduran president.

6. Solidarity with the Peoples of the World

6.1.
The Left-wing Parties of the International Meeting of Caracas agree to demand the immediate liberation of the five Cuban heroes unfairly imprisoned in American jails. They are authentic anti-terrorist fighters that caused no harm to U.S. national security, whose work was oriented towards preventing the terrorist attacks prepared by the terrorist counterrevolution against Cuba. The Five Heroes were subject to a biased judicial process, condemned by broad sectors of humanity, and stigmatized by a conspiracy of silence by the mainstream media. Given the impossibility of winning justice via judicial means, we call upon all political left-wing parties of the world to increase actions for their immediate liberation. We call on President Obama to utilize his executive power and set these Five Heroes of Humanity free.

6.2.
The International Meeting of Left-wing Parties resolutely demands the immediate and unconditional cessation of the criminal U.S. blockade that harmed the Cuban people so badly over the last fifty years. The blockade should come to an end right now in order to fulfil the will of the 187 countries that recently declared themselves against this act of genocide during the UN General Assembly.

6.3.
To unite with the people of Haiti in the struggle for the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide to his country.

6.4.
We propose to study the possibility to grant a residence in Venezuela to Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was kidnapped and overthrown as Haiti’s president by U.S. imperialism.

6.5.
We express the need to declare a permanent alert aimed at preventing any type of breach of the constitutional order that may hinder the process of democratic change underway in Paraguay.

6.6.
We denounce the neoliberal privatizing advance in Mexico expressly in the case of the Electric Energy state-owned company, a heritage of the people, which aims through the massive firing of 45,000 workers to intimidate the union force, “Luz y Fuerza”, which constitutes another offensive of the Empire in Central and North America.

6.7.
To declare our solidarity with the peoples of the world that have suffered and are still suffering imperial aggressions, especially, the 50 year-long genocidal blockade against Cuba; the threat against the people of Paraguay; the slaughter of the Palestinian people; the illegal occupation of part of the territory of the Republic of Western Sahara and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan which today is expanding into Pakistan; the illegal sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe and the constant threat against Iran, among others.

Caracas, November 21st, 2009

Declaration of Solidarity with the People of Cuba

The Left-wing Parties of the International Meeting of Caracas agree to demand the immediate liberation of the five Cuban heroes unfairly imprisoned in U.S. prisons. They are authentic anti-terrorist fighters that caused no harm to US national security, whose work was oriented towards preventing the terrorist attacks prepared by the terrorist counterrevolution against Cuba. The Five Heroes were subject to a biased judicial process, condemned by broad sectors of humanity, and stigmatized by a conspiracy of silence by the mainstream media.

Given the impossibility of winning justice via judicial means, we call upon all political left-wing parties of the world to increase actions for their immediate liberation. We call on President Obama to utilize his executive power and set these Five Heroes of Humanity free.

The International Meeting of Left-wing Parties resolutely demands the immediate and unconditional cessation of the criminal U.S. blockade that harmed the Cuban people so badly over the last fifty years. The blockade should come to an end right now in order to fulfill the will of the 187 countries that recently declared themselves against this act of genocide during the UN General Assembly.

Caracas, November 21, 2009

Special Declaration on the Coup D’état in Honduras

We, left-wing parties of Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania, present in the international encounter of left-wing parties, reject the coup d’état against the constitutional government of citizen’s power of the President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

Cognizant of the situation of repression, persecution and murder against the Honduran people and the permanent military harassment against president Manuel Zelaya Rosales, which represents a breach of the rule of law in the sister nation of Honduras:

We support the actions of the national resistance front in its struggle to restore democracy.

We demand and support the sovereign right of the Honduran people to call for a national constituent assembly to establish direct democracy and to ensure the broadest political participation of the people in public affairs.

We denounce the United States intervention and its national and international reactionary right-wing allies and their connection with the coup, which hinders the construction of democracy in Honduras and in the world.

We condemn and repudiate the permanent violation of political and social human rights as well as the violation freedom of speech, promoted and perpetrated by the de facto powers, the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Congress of the Republic, the Ministry of Defence and Security since June 28, 2009.

We reiterate our demand to international governments and bodies, not to recognize the results of the general elections to be held on November 29, 2009 in Honduras, due to the lack of constitutional guarantees and the legal conditions necessary for a fair, transparent and reliable electoral process, the lack of reliable observers that can vouch for the results of this electoral process, which has already been rejected by most international governments, bodies and international public opinion.

To propose and promote an international trial against coup plotters and their accomplices in Honduras before the International Criminal Court, for the illegal actions, abuses and crimes they committed, while developing actions aimed at denouncing to the relevant bodies and in the framework of the international law, the violation of the rights and the kidnapping of the legitimate president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales, because it is necessary to establish the responsibility of those who participated directly and internally in the perpetration of this crime.

We urge national and international human rights organizations to support these measures, to carry on the campaign of denunciation and vigilance with permanent observers in face of the renewed human rights violations, particularly the persecution and sanction through the loss of jobs for political reasons against the members and supporters of the resistance and president Manuel Zelaya.

We repudiate and condemn the attacks against the diplomatic corps of the embassies of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Republic of Argentina, and the embassies of the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA); and express our solidarity with the heroic work of the staff of these diplomatic missions, who have been victims of harassment and hostility by the coup plotters.

We agree to establish coordination among left-wing parties of the world to exert pressure to oust the de facto government and for the restoration of the constitutional president and the right of the Honduran people to install a national constituent assembly that allows for deepening direct democracy.

We urge governments, international bodies and companies to maintain and intensify economic and commercial sanctions to business accomplices and supporters of the coup in Honduras, and to maintain an attitude of vigilance, to break all relations that recognize the coup plotters and the de facto government officers, as well as to take migration control measures that hinder the movement of people who have the purpose of voting in another country where elections are held with the aim of changing the results through the transfer of votes from one country to the other.

We agree not to recognize the international and national observers of the electoral process who are aligned and conspire to attempt to give legitimacy to an electoral process devoid of legality and legitimacy. We demand that rather than observing an illegal and illegitimate process, the return of the state of democratic law and the constitutional government of citizen power Honduras President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is guaranteed.

Caracas, November 21, 2009

Special Decision

The international encounter of Left-wing Political parties held in Caracas on November 19, 20 and 21, 2009, received the proposal made by Commander Hugo Chavez Frias to convoke the V Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism and solidarity based economic integration of a new type. We assessed that proposition in terms of its historical dimension which calls for a new spirit of internationalism and agreed, for the purpose of achieving it in the short term, to create a WORKING GROUP comprised of those socialist parties, currents and social movements who endorse the initiative, to prepare an agenda which defines the objectives, contents and mechanisms of this global revolutionary body. We call for an initial constitutive event for April 2010 in the City of Caracas. Furthermore, those parties, socialist currents and social movements who have not expressed themselves on this matter can subject this proposal to the examination of their legitimate directive bodies.

Caracas, November 21, 2009

Chavez convokes a 5th International

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Eric Verlo

On November 22, meeting with international left wing parties in Caracas, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez proposed the formation of a 5th Socialist International. (The 1st-4th being: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky) Below are excerpts of his address:

(Translation from the Spanish for Direct Action by Roberto Jorquera.)

At last night’s meeting, after hearing a few interventions, it was my turn to say a few words. For a while we have been reflecting on an idea that last night I decided was important to propose because we analysed it and we felt that there was no better time to launch this idea. And I am very happy today that the international meeting of left organisations has taken up this call as part of its final statement even though it was not part of its agenda.

Here I want to read from the final statement:

“The International Meeting of Left-wing Political Parties held in Caracas on November 19, 20 and 21, 2009, received the proposal made by Commander Hugo Chavez Frias to convoke the Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonise a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism and solidarity-based economic integration of a new type. We assessed that proposition in terms of its historical dimension which calls for a new spirit of internationalism and agreed, for the purpose of achieving it in the short term, to create a Working Group comprised of those socialist parties, currents and social movements who endorse the initiative, to prepare an agenda which defines the objectives, contents and mechanisms of this global revolutionary body. We call for an initial constitutive event for April 2010 in the city of Caracas. Furthermore, those parties, socialist currents and social movements who have not expressed themselves on this matter can subject this proposal to the examination of their legitimate directive bodies.”

I want to take a few minutes to reflect on these issues, particularly to point to the importance that this call has […] In relation to the Fifth International I ask this special congress to include this issue in its debates so that we can analyse it and put it into context and study this proposal and its context. This proposal to call on political parties, revolutionary parties and social movements, to create a new organisation that is able to adapt to the time that we are living under and the situation that we live under; to put itself at the forefront of the people of the world and their calls; to become an instrument of articulation and unification of the struggles of the world’s peoples so that we can save this planet. It is important that the congress discuss this issue. That is why I made the call.

The Fifth International — let’s remember that the First International was established in 1864. Karl Marx with a number of other comrades called for the First International. Many years later Frederick Engels called for the establishment of the Second International at the end of the 19th century. And then at the beginning of the 20th century Vladimir Lenin with many other great revolutionaries established the Third International, and Leon Trotsky in 1936-37 established the Fourth International. All of them had a context but remember that all four Internationals, experiments to unite parties and currents and social movements from around the world, have lost their way along the road for different reasons — some degenerated, lost their force, disappeared soon after their formation. But none of them was able to advance the original aims that they had set themselves.

From the heat of great workers’ struggles and popular struggles against the so-called industrial revolutions and the dominance of the bourgeois class, many experiments where tried. Arising from the heat of the Russian Revolution, Europe was the epicentre of struggles. For many years many social movements and revolutionaries looked to Europe […]

Now I think due to the product of the times we can say that the centre of gravity of revolutionary struggles on this planet is no longer in Europe … With much due respect to all the movements in Europe, Asia and Africa and the Middle East and Oceania and North America where revolutionary forces also exist, the epicentre of the revolutionary struggles and socialist struggle today in the world at the beginning of the 21st century is in our America. And Venezuela has the task of being the epicentre of that struggle. It is our turn to be in the vanguard and we need to take up that challenge. We have a great responsibility. All of you comrades, all of us in the PSUV and allied parties and us in government have that responsibility.

I honestly believe that the time has come to convoke the Fifth Socialist International and we call on all the revolutionary parties, socialist parties and currents and social movements that struggle for socialism and against capitalism and imperialism to save the world. Let us reclaim Rosa Luxemburg’s slogan “Socialism or barbarism”. Let us save the world. Let’s make socialism. Let us save the world and destroy capitalism. Let us save the world and destroy imperialism. That is what it is about. That is the essence of this congress.

Vaneigem on energy as commodity

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

NMT’s in-house Situationist has been conceptualizing a way forward well expressed in this May 2009 interview of Raoul Vaneigem:
“We are being “offered” biofuels on the condition we agree to transgenic rapeseed farming. Eco-tourism will accelerate the plundering of our biosphere. Windmill farms are being built without any advantage to the consumers. Those are the areas where intervention is possible. Natural resources belong to us, they are free, they must be made to serve the freedom of life. It will be up to the communities to secure their own energy and food independence so as to free themselves from the control of the multinationals and their state vassals everywhere. Claiming natural power for our use means reclaiming our own existence first. Only creativity will rid us of work. …

Freeness is the only absolute weapon capable of shattering the mighty self-destruction machine set in motion by consumer society, whose implosion is still releasing, like a deadly gas, bottom-line mentality, cupidity, financial gain, profit, and predation. Museums and culture should be free, for sure, but so should public services, currently prey to the scamming multinationals and states. Free trains, buses, subways, free healthcare, free schools, free water, air, electricity, free power, all through alternative networks to be set up. As freeness spreads, new solidarity networks will eradicate the stranglehold of the commodity. This is because life is a free gift, a continuous creation that the market’s vile profiteering alone deprives us of.”
–Raoul Vaneigem, 2009

Interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, for e-flux, Journal #6. See original article or the copy mirrored below:

In Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem

Hans Ulrich Obrist: I just visited Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who have written an appeal to Barack Obama. What would your appeal and/or advice be to Obama?

Raoul Vaneigem: I refuse to cultivate any relationship whatsoever with people of power. I agree with the Zapatistas from Chiapas who want nothing to do with either the state or its masters, the multinational mafias. I call for civil disobedience so that local communities can form, coordinate, and begin self-producing natural power, a more natural form of farming, and public services that are finally liberated from the scams of government by the Left or the Right. On the other hand, I welcome the appeal by Chamoiseau, Glissant, and their friends for the creation of an existence in which the poetry of a life rediscovered will put an end to the deadly stranglehold of the commodity.

HUO: Could we talk about your beginnings? How did your participation in situationism begin, and what was your fundamental contribution? At the outset of your relationship with the SI, there was the figure of Henri Lefebvre. What did he mean to you at the time? Why did you decide to send him poetic essays?

RV: I would first like to clarify that situationism is an ideology that the situationists were unanimous in rejecting. The term “situationist” was ever only a token of identification. Its particularity kept us from being mistaken for the throngs of ideologues. I have nothing in common with the spectacular recuperation of a project that, in my case, has remained revolutionary throughout. My participation in a group that has now disappeared was an important moment in my personal evolution, an evolution I have personally pressed on with in the spirit of the situationist project at its most revolutionary. My own radicality absolves me from any label. I grew up in an environment in which our fighting spirit was fueled by working class consciousness and a rather festive conception of existence. I found Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life captivating. When La Somme et le reste [The Sum and the Remainder] was published, I sent him an essay of sorts on “poetry and revolution” that was an attempt to unify radical concepts, Lettrist language, music, and film imagery by crediting them all with the common virtue of making the people’s blood boil. Lefebvre kindly responded by putting me in touch with Guy Debord who immediately invited me to Paris. The two of us had very different temperaments, but we would agree over a period of nearly ten years on the need to bring consumer society to an end and to found a new society on the principle of self-management, where life supersedes survival and the existential angst that it generates.

HUO: Which situationist projects remain unrealized?

RV: Psychogeography, the construction of situations, the superseding of predatory behavior. The radicality, which, notwithstanding some lapses, never ceased to motivate us, remains a source of inspiration to this day. Its effects are just beginning to manifest themselves in the autonomous groups that are now coming to grips with the collapse of financial capitalism.

HUO: The Situationist International defined the situationist as someone who commits her- or himself to the construction of situations. What were those situations for you, concretely? How would you define the situationist project in 2009?

RV: By its very style of living and thinking, our group was already sketching out a situation, like a beachhead active within enemy territory. The military metaphor is questionable, but it does convey our will to liberate daily life from the control and stranglehold of an economy based on the profitable exploitation of man. We formed a “group-at-risk” that was conscious of the hostility of the dominant world, of the need for radical rupture, and of the danger of giving in to the paranoia typical of minds under siege. By showing its limits and its weaknesses, the situationist experience can also be seen as a critical meditation on the new type of society sketched out by the Paris Commune, by the Makhnovist movement and the Republic of Councils wiped out by Lenin and Trotsky, by the libertarian communities in Spain later smashed by the Communist Party. The situationist project is not about what happens once consumer society is rejected and a genuinely human society has emerged. Rather, it illuminates now how lifestyle can supersede survival, predatory behavior, power, trade and the death-reflex.

HUO: You and Guy Debord are the main protagonists of the situationist movement. How do you see Debord’s role and your role?

RV: Not as roles. That is precisely what situationism in its most ridiculous version aims at: reducing us to cardboard cut-outs that it can then set up against one another according to the spectacle’s standard operating procedure. I am simply the spokesman, among others, of a radical consciousness. I just do what I can to see that resistance to market exploitation is transformed into an offensive of life, and that an art of living sweeps away the ruins of oppression.

HUO: What were your reasons for resigning from the group?

RV: Following the occupation movements of May 1968, we knew that some recuperation was afoot. We were familiar with the mechanisms of alienation that would falsify our ideas and fit them neatly into the cultural puzzle. It became clear to us, during the last conference in Venice, that we had failed to shatter those mechanisms, that in fact they were shattering us from the inside. The group was crumbling, the Venice conference was demonstrating its increasing uselessness, and the only answers put forward were commensurate with the self-parody we had fallen into. Dissension intensified to the point of paranoid denunciation: of betrayals of radicality, of breaches of revolutionary spirit, of dereliction of conscience. Those times of catharsis and anathema are now long past, and it might be useful to examine how it is that we sowed the seeds of failure for which the group ended up paying such a heavy price. The shipwreck, however, did not indiscriminately sweep away to the shores of oblivion all of us who participated in the adventure. The group vanished in such a way as to allow the individuals to either consolidate their radicality, disown it, or lapse into the imposture of radicalism. I have attempted to analyze our experimental adventure in Entre le deuil du monde et la joie de vivre [Between Mourning the World and Exuberant Life].

HUO: You have written a lot on life, not survival. What is the difference?

RV: Survival is budgeted life. The system of exploitation of nature and man, starting in the Middle Neolithic with intensive farming, caused an involution in which creativity—a quality specific to humans—was supplanted by work, by the production of a covetous power. Creative life, as had begun to unfold during the Paleolithic, declined and gave way to a brutish struggle for subsistence. From then on, predation, which defines animal behavior, became the generator of all economic mechanisms.

HUO: Today, more than forty years after May ‘68, how do you feel life and society have evolved?

RV: We are witnessing the collapse of financial capitalism. This was easily predictable. Even among economists, where one finds even more idiots than in the political sphere, a number had been sounding the alarm for a decade or so. Our situation is paradoxical: never in Europe have the forces of repression been so weakened, yet never have the exploited masses been so passive. Still, insurrectional consciousness always sleeps with one eye open. The arrogance, incompetence, and powerlessness of the governing classes will eventually rouse it from its slumber, as will the progression in hearts and minds of what was most radical about May 1968.

HUO: Your new book takes us on a trip “between mourning the world and exuberant life.” You revisit May ‘68. What is left of May ‘68? Has it all been appropriated?

RV: Even if we are today seeing recycled ideologies and old religious infirmities being patched up in a hurry and tossed out to feed a general despair, which our ruling wheelers and dealers cash in on, they cannot conceal for long the shift in civilization revealed by May 1968. The break with patriarchal values is final. We are moving toward the end of the exploitation of nature, of work, of trade, of predation, of separation from the self, of sacrifice, of guilt, of the forsaking of happiness, of the fetishizing of money, of power, of hierarchy, of contempt for and fear of women, of the misleading of children, of intellectual dominion, of military and police despotism, of religions, of ideologies, of repression and the deadly resolutions of psychic tensions. This is not a fact I am describing, but an ongoing process that simply requires from us increased vigilance, awareness, and solidarity with life. We have to reground ourselves in order to rebuild—on human foundations—a world that has been ruined by the inhumanity of the cult of the commodity.

HUO: What do you think of the current moment, in 2009? Jean-Pierre Page has just published Penser l’après crise [Thinking the After-Crisis]. For him, everything must be reinvented. He says that a new world is emerging now in which the attempt to establish a US-led globalization has been aborted.

RV: The agrarian economy of the Ancien Régime was a fossilized form that was shattered by the emerging free-trade economy, from the 1789 revolution on. Similarly, the stock-dabbling speculative capitalism whose debacle we now witness is about to give way to a capitalism reenergized by the production of non-polluting natural power, the return to use value, organic farming, a hastily patched-up public sector, and a hypocritical moralization of trade. The future belongs to self-managed communities that produce indispensable goods and services for all (natural power, biodiversity, education, health centers, transport, metal and textile production . . .). The idea is to produce for us, for our own use—that is to say, no longer in order to sell them—goods that we are currently forced to buy at market prices even though they were conceived and manufactured by workers. It is time to break with the laws of a political racketeering that is designing, together with its own bankruptcy, that of our existence.

HUO: Is this a war of a new kind, as Page claims? An economic Third World War?

RV: We are at war, yes, but this is not an economic war. It is a world war against the economy. Against the economy that for thousands of years has been based on the exploitation of nature and man. And against a patched-up capitalism that will try to save its skin by investing in natural power and making us pay the high price for that which—once the new means of production are created—will be free as the wind, the sun, and the energy of plants and soil. If we do not exit economic reality and create a human reality in its place, we will once again allow market barbarism to live on.

HUO: In his book Making Globalization Work, Joseph Stiglitz argues for a reorganization of globalization along the lines of greater justice, in order to shrink global imbalances. What do you think of globalization? How does one get rid of profit as motive and pursue well-being instead? How does one escape from the growth imperative?

RV: The moralization of profit is an illusion and a fraud. There must be a decisive break with an economic system that has consistently spread ruin and destruction while pretending, amidst constant destitution, to deliver a most hypothetical well-being. Human relations must supersede and cancel out commercial relations. Civil disobedience means disregarding the decisions of a government that embezzles from its citizens to support the embezzlements of financial capitalism. Why pay taxes to the bankster-state, taxes vainly used to try to plug the sinkhole of corruption, when we could allocate them instead to the self-management of free power networks in every local community? The direct democracy of self-managed councils has every right to ignore the decrees of corrupt parliamentary democracy. Civil disobedience towards a state that is plundering us is a right. It is up to us to capitalize on this epochal shift to create communities where desire for life overwhelms the tyranny of money and power. We need concern ourselves neither with government debt, which covers up a massive defrauding of the public interest, nor with that contrivance of profit they call “growth.” From now on, the aim of local communities should be to produce for themselves and by themselves all goods of social value, meeting the needs of all—authentic needs, that is, not needs prefabricated by consumerist propaganda.

HUO: Edouard Glissant distinguishes between globality and globalization. Globalization eradicates differences and homogenizes, while globality is a global dialogue that produces differences. What do you think of his notion of globality?

RV: For me, it should mean acting locally and globally through a federation of communities in which our pork-barreling, corrupt parliamentary democracy is made obsolete by direct democracy. Local councils will be set up to take measures in favor of the environment and the daily lives of everyone. The situationists have called this “creating situations that rule out any backtracking.”

HUO: Might the current miscarriages of globalization have the same dangerous effects as the miscarriages of the previous globalization from the ‘30s? You have written that what was already intolerable in ‘68 when the economy was booming is even more intolerable today. Do you think the current economic despair might push the new generations to rebel?

RV: The crisis of the ‘30s was an economic crisis. What we are facing today is an implosion of the economy as a management system. It is the collapse of market civilization and the emergence of human civilization. The current turmoil signals a deep shift: the reference points of the old patriarchal world are vanishing. Percolating instead, still just barely and confusedly, are the early markers of a lifestyle that is genuinely human, an alliance with nature that puts an end to its exploitation, rape, and plundering. The worst would be the unawareness of life, the absence of sentient intelligence, violence without conscience. Nothing is more profitable to the racketeering mafias than chaos, despair, suicidal rebellion, and the nihilism that is spread by mercenary greed, in which money, even devalued in a panic, remains the only value.

HUO: In his book Utopistics, Immanuel Wallerstein claims that our world system is undergoing a structural crisis. He predicts it will take another twenty to fifty years for a more democratic and egalitarian system to replace it. He believes that the future belongs to “demarketized,” free-of-charge institutions (on the model, say, of public libraries). So we must oppose the marketization of water and air.¹ What is your view?

RV: I do not know how long the current transformation will take (hopefully not too long, as I would like to witness it). But I have no doubt that this new alliance with the forces of life and nature will disseminate equality and freeness. We must go beyond our natural indignation at profit’s appropriation of our water, air, soil, environment, plants, animals. We must establish collectives that are capable of managing natural resources for the benefit of human interests, not market interests. This process of reappropriation that I foresee has a name: self-management, an experience attempted many times in hostile historical contexts. At this point, given the implosion of consumer society, it appears to be the only solution from both an individual and social point of view.

HUO: In your writing you have described the work imperative as an inhuman, almost animal condition. Do you consider market society to be a regression?

RV: As I mentioned above, evolution in the Paleolithic age meant the development of creativity—the distinctive trait of the human species as it breaks free from its original animality. But during the Neolithic, the osmotic relationship to nature loosened progressively, as intensive agriculture became based on looting and the exploitation of natural resources. It was also then that religion surfaced as an institution, society stratified, the reign of patriarchy began, of contempt for women, and of priests and kings with their stream of wars, destitution, and violence. Creation gave way to work, life to survival, jouissance to the animal predation that the appropriation economy confiscates, transcends, and spiritualizes. In this sense market civilization is indeed a regression in which technical progress supersedes human progress.

HUO: For you, what is a life in progress?

RV: Advancing from survival, the struggle for subsistence and predation to a new art of living, by recreating the world for the benefit of all.

HUO: My interviews often focus on the connections between art and architecture/urbanism, or literature and architecture/urbanism. Could you tell me about the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism?

RV: That was an idea more than a project. It was about the urgency of rebuilding our social fabric, so damaged by the stranglehold of the market. Such a rebuilding effort goes hand in hand with the rebuilding by individuals of their own daily existence. That is what psychogeography is really about: a passionate and critical deciphering of what in our environment needs to be destroyed, subjected to détournement, rebuilt.

HUO: In your view there is no such thing as urbanism?

RV: Urbanism is the ideological gridding and control of individuals and society by an economic system that exploits man and Earth and transforms life into a commodity. The danger in the self-built housing movement that is growing today would be to pay more attention to saving money than to the poetry of a new style of life.

HUO: How do you see cities in the year 2009? What kind of unitary urbanism for the third millennium? How do you envision the future of cities? What is your favorite city? You call Oarystis the city of desire. Oarystis takes its inspiration from the world of childhood and femininity. Nothing is static in Oarystis. John Cage once said that, like nature, “one never reaches a point of shapedness or finishedness. The situation is in constant unpredictable change.”² Do you agree with Cage?

RV: I love wandering through Venice and Prague. I appreciate Mantua, Rome, Bologna, Barcelona, and certain districts of Paris. I care less about architecture than about how much human warmth its beauty has been capable of sustaining. Even Brussels, so devastated by real estate developers and disgraceful architects (remember that in the dialect of Brussels, “architect” is an insult), has held on to some wonderful bistros. Strolling from one to the next gives Brussels a charm that urbanism has deprived it of altogether. The Oarystis I describe is not an ideal city or a model space (all models are totalitarian). It is a clumsy and naïve rough draft for an experiment I still hope might one day be undertaken—so I agree with John Cage. This is not a diagram, but an experimental proposition that the creation of an environment is one and the same as the creation by individuals of their own future.

HUO: Is Oarystis based on natural power, like the Metabolist cities? Rem Koolhaas and I are working on a book on the Japanese Metabolists. When I read your wonderful text on Oarystis, I was reminded of that movement from the 1960s, especially the floating cities, Kikutake’s water cities. Is Oarystis a Metabolist city?

RV: When Oarystis was published, the architect Philippe Rothier and Diane Hennebert, who ran Brussels’ Architecture Museum at the time, rightly criticized me for ignoring the imaginative projects of a new generation of builders. Now that the old world is collapsing, the fusion of free natural power, self-built housing techniques, and the reinvention of sensual form is going to be decisive. So it is useful to remember that technical inventiveness must stem from the reinvention of individual and collective life. That is to say, what allows for genuine rupture and ecstatic inventiveness is self-management: the management by individuals and councils of their own lives and environment through direct democracy. Let us entrust the boundless freedoms of the imaginary to childhood and the child within us.

HUO: Several years ago I interviewed Constant on New Babylon. What were your dialogues with Constant and how do you see New Babylon today?

RV: I never met Constant, who if I am not mistaken had been expelled before my own association with the SI. New Babylon’s flaw is that it privileges technology over the formation of an individual and collective way of life—the necessary basis of any architectural concept. An architectural project only interests me if it is about the construction of daily life.

HUO: How can the city of the future contribute to biodiversity?

RV: By drawing inspiration from Alphonse Allais, by encouraging the countryside to infiltrate the city. By creating zones of organic farming, gardens, vegetable plots, and farms inside urban space. After all, there are so many bureaucratic and parasitical buildings that can’t wait to give way to fertile, pleasant land that is useful to all. Architects and squatters, build us some hanging gardens where we can go for walks, eat, and live!

HUO: Oarystis is in the form of a maze, but it is also influenced by Venice and its public piazzas. Could you tell us about the form of Oarystis?

RV: Our internal space-time is maze-like. In it, each of us is at once Theseus, Ariadne, and Minotaur. Our dérives would gain in awareness, alertness, harmony, and happiness if only external space-time could offer meanders that could conjure up the possible courses of our futures, as an analogy or echo of sorts—one that favors games of life, and prevents their inversion into games of death.

HUO: Will museums be abolished? Could you discuss the amphitheater of memory? A protestation against oblivion?

RV: The museum suffers from being a closed space in which works waste away. Painting, sculpture, music belong to the street, like the façades that contemplate us and come back to life when we greet them. Like life and love, learning is a continuous flow that enjoys the privilege of irrigating and fertilizing our sentient intelligence. Nothing is more contagious than creation. But the past also carries with it all the dross of our inhumanity. What should we do with it? A museum of horrors, of the barbarism of the past? I attempted to answer the question of the “duty of memory” in Ni pardon, ni talion [Neither Forgiveness Nor Retribution]:

Most of the great men we were brought up to worship were nothing more than cynical or sly murderers. History as taught in schools and peddled by an overflowing and hagiographic literature is a model of falsehood; to borrow a fashionable term, it is negationist. It might not deny the reality of gas chambers, it might no longer erect monuments to the glory of Stalin, Mao or Hitler, but it persists in celebrating the brutish conqueror: Alexander, called the Great—whose mentor was Aristotle, it is proudly intoned—Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Napoleon, the throngs of generals, slaughterers of peoples, petty tyrants of the city or the state, torturer–judges, Javerts of every ilk, conniving diplomats, rapists and killers contracted by religions and ideologies; so much high renown carved from baseness, wickedness, and abjection. I am not suggesting we should unpave the avenues of official history and pave the side alleys instead. We are not in need of a purged history, but of a knowledge that scoops out into broad daylight facts that have been obscured, generation after generation, by the unceasing stratification of prejudice. I am not calling for a tribunal of the mind to begin condemning a bunch of undesirables who have been bizarrely put up on pedestals and celebrated in the motley pantheons of official memory. I just want to see the list of their crimes, the mention of their victims, the recollection of those who confronted them added to the inventory of their unsavory eulogies. I am not suggesting that the name of Francisco Ferrer wipe out that of his murderer, Alfonso XIII, but that at the very least everything be known of both. How dare textbooks still cultivate any respect for Bonaparte, responsible for the death of millions, for Louis XIV, slaughterer of peasants and persecutor of Protestants and freethinkers? For Calvin, murderer of Jacques Gruet and Michel Servet and dictator of Geneva, whose citizens, in tribute to Sébastien Castellion, would one day resolve to destroy the emblems and signs of such an unworthy worship? While Spain has now toppled the effigies of Francoism and rescinded the street names imposed by fascism, we somehow tolerate, towering in the sky of Paris, that Sacré-Coeur whose execrable architecture glorifies the crushing of the Commune. In Belgium there are still avenues and monuments honoring King Leopold II, one of the most cynical criminals of the nineteenth century, whose “red rubber” policy—denounced by Mark Twain, by Roger Casement (who paid for this with his life), by Edward Dene Morel, and more recently by Adam Hochschild—has so far bothered nary a conscience. This is a not a call to blow up his statues or to chisel away the inscriptions that celebrate him. This is a call to Belgian and Congolese citizens to cleanse and disinfect public places of this stain, the stain of one of the worst sponsors of colonial savagery. Paradoxically, I do tend to believe that forgetting can be productive, when it comes to the perpetrators of inhumanity. A forgetting that does not eradicate remembering, that does not blue-pencil memory, that is not an enforceable judgment, but that proceeds rather from a spontaneous feeling of revulsion, like a last-minute pivot to avoid dog droppings on the sidewalk. Once they have been exposed for their inhumanity, I wish for the instigators of past brutalities to be buried in the shroud of their wrongs. Let the memory of the crime obliterate the memory of the criminal.
³

HUO: Learning is deserting schools and going to the streets. Are streets becoming Thinkbelts? Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt used abandoned railroads for pop-up schools. What and where is learning today?

RV: Learning is permanent for all of us regardless of age. Curiosity feeds the desire to know. The call to teach stems from the pleasure of transmitting life: neither an imposition nor a power relation, it is pure gift, like life, from which it flows. Economic totalitarianism has ripped learning away from life, whose creative conscience it ought to be. We want to disseminate everywhere this poetry of knowledge that gives itself. Against school as a closed-off space (a barrack in the past, a slave market nowadays), we must invent nomadic learning.

HUO: How do you foresee the twenty-first-century university?

RV: The demise of the university: it will be liquidated by the quest for and daily practice of a universal learning of which it has always been but a pale travesty.

HUO: Could you tell me about the freeness principle (I am extremely interested in this; as a curator I have always believed museums should be free—Art for All, as Gilbert and George put it).

RV: Freeness is the only absolute weapon capable of shattering the mighty self-destruction machine set in motion by consumer society, whose implosion is still releasing, like a deadly gas, bottom-line mentality, cupidity, financial gain, profit, and predation. Museums and culture should be free, for sure, but so should public services, currently prey to the scamming multinationals and states. Free trains, buses, subways, free healthcare, free schools, free water, air, electricity, free power, all through alternative networks to be set up. As freeness spreads, new solidarity networks will eradicate the stranglehold of the commodity. This is because life is a free gift, a continuous creation that the market’s vile profiteering alone deprives us of.

HUO: Where is love in Oarystis?

RV: Everywhere. The love affair, as complex as it is simple, will serve as the building block for the new solidarity relations that sooner or later will supersede selfish calculation, competition, competitiveness, and predation, causes of our societies’ dehumanization.

HUO: Where is the city of the dead? In a forest rather than a cemetery?

RV: Yes, a forest, an auditorium in which the voices of the dead will speak amidst the lushness of nature, where life continuously creates itself anew.

HUO: Have you dreamt up other utopian cities apart from Oarystis? Or a concrete utopia in relation to the city?

RV: No, but I have not given up hope that such projects might mushroom and be realized one day, as we begin reconstructing a world devastated by the racketeering mafias.

HUO: In 1991 I founded a Robert Walser museum, a strollological museum, in Switzerland. I have always been fascinated by your notion of the stroll. Could you say something about your urban strolls with and without Debord? What about Walser’s? Have other strollologists inspired you?

RV: I hold Robert Walser in high regard, as many do. His lucidity and sense of dérive enchanted Kafka. I have always been fascinated by the long journey Hölderlin undertook following his break-up with Diotima. I admire Chatwin’s Songlines, in which he somehow manages to turn the most innocuous of walks into an intonation of the paths of fate, as though we were in the heart of the Australian bush. And I appreciate the strolls of Léon-Paul Fargue and the learning of Héron de Villefosse. My psychogeographic dérives with Guy Debord in Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Beersel, and Antwerp were exceptional moments, combining theoretical speculation, sentient intelligence, the critical analysis of beings and places, and the pleasure of cheerful drinking. Our homeports were pleasant bistros with a warm atmosphere, havens where one was oneself because one felt in the air something of the authentic life, however fragile and short-lived. It was an identical mood that guided our wanderings through the streets, the lanes and the alleys, through the meanderings of a pleasure that our every step helped us gauge in terms of what it might take to expand and refine it just a little further. I have a feeling that the neighborhoods destroyed by the likes of Haussmann, Pompidou, and the real estate barbarians will one day be rebuilt by their inhabitants in the spirit of the joy and the life they once harbored.

HUO: What possibilities do you see for disalienation and détournement in 2009?

RV: This is a time of unprecedented chaos in material and moral conditions. Human values are going to have to compensate for the effects of the only value that has prevailed so far: money. But the implosion of financial totalitarianism means that this currency, which has so tripped us up, is now doomed to devaluation and a loss of all meaning. The absurdity of money is becoming concrete. It will gradually give way to new forms of exchange that will hasten its disappearance and lead to a gift economy.

HUO: What are the conditions for dialogue in 2009? Is there a way out of this system of isolation?

RV: Dialogue with power is neither possible nor desirable. Power has always acted unilaterally, by organizing chaos, by spreading fear, by forcing individuals and communities into selfish and blind withdrawal. As a matter of course, we will invent new solidarity networks and new intervention councils for the well-being of all of us and each of us, overriding the fiats of the state and its mafioso-political hierarchies. The voice of lived poetry will sweep away the last remaining echoes of a discourse in which words are in profit’s pay.

HUO: In your recent books you discuss your existence and temporality. The homogenizing forces of globalization homogenize time, and vice versa. How does one break with this? Could you discuss the temporality of happiness, as a notion?

RV: The productivity- and profit-based economy has implanted into lived human reality a separate reality structured by its ruling mechanisms: predation, competition and competitiveness, acquisitiveness and the struggle for power and subsistence. For thousands of years such denatured human behaviors have been deemed natural. The temporality of draining, erosion, tiredness, and decay is determined by labor, an activity that dominates and corrupts all others. The temporality of desire, love, and creation has a density that fractures the temporality of survival cadenced by work. Replacing the temporality of money will be a temporality of desire, a beyond-the-mirror, an opening to uncharted territories.

HUO: Is life ageless?

RV: I don’t claim that life is ageless. But since survival is nothing but permanent agony relieved by premature death, a renatured life that cultivates its full potential for passion and creation would surely achieve enough vitality to delay its endpoint considerably.

HUO: The Revolution of Everyday Life was a trigger for May ’68, and you have stated in other interviews that it is your key book that you are continually rewriting. Was the book an epiphany? How did it change the course of your work? What had you been doing previously?

RV: The book was prompted by an urgent need I was feeling at the time for a new perspective on the world and on myself, to pull me out of my state of survival, by means other than through suicide. This critical take on a consumer society that was corrupting and destroying life so relentlessly made me aware and conscious of my own life drive. And it became clear to me very quickly that this wasn’t a purely solipsistic project, that many readers were finding their own major concerns echoed there.

HUO: The Revolution of Everyday Life ends on an optimistic note: “We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom.”⁴ Are you still an optimist today?

RV: “Pessimists, what is it you were hoping for?,” Scutenaire wrote. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I try to remain faithful to a principle: desire everything, expect nothing.

HUO: What is the most recent version of the book?

RV: Entre le deuil du monde et la joie de vivre [Between Mourning the World and Exuberant Life].

HUO: What book are you working on at the moment?

RV: I would love to have the resources to complete a Dictionary of Heresies, so as to clarify and correct the historical elements included in The Movement of the Free Spirit and Resistance to Christianity.

HUO: The question of temporality also brings us to Proust and his questionnaire (see inset). What might your definition of happiness be in 2009?

RV: Living ever more intensely and passionately in an ever more intense world. To those who sneer at my ecstatic candor, I reply with a phrase that brings me great comfort: “The desire for an other life is that life already.”⁵

HUO: Do you have unrealized projects? Unrealized books, unrealized projects in fields other than writing, unrealized architectural projects?

RV: My priority is to live better and better in a world that is more and more human. I would love to build the “urban countryside” of Oarystis, but I’m not just waiting patiently, like Fourier at the Palais Royal, for some billionaire to decide to finance the project only to lose everything to the financial crash a minute later.

HUO: What about your collaborations with other artists, painters, sculptors, designers, filmmakers?

RV: I don’t collaborate with anyone. At times I have offered a few texts to artist friends, not as a commentary on their work but as a counterpoint to it. Art moves me when, in it, I can sense its own overcoming, something that goes beyond it; when it nurtures a trace of life that blossoms as a true aspiration, the intuition of a new art of living.

HUO: Could you tell me about Brussels? What does Brussels mean to you? Where do you write?

RV: I live in the country, facing a garden and woods where the rhythm of the seasons has retained its beauty. Brussels as a city has been destroyed by urbanists and architects who are paid by real estate developers. There are still a few districts suitable for nice walks. I am fond of a good dozen wonderful cafés where one can enjoy excellent artisanal beers.

HUO: Do you agree with Geremek’s view that Europe is the big concern of the twenty-first century?

RV: I am not interested in this Europe ruled by racketeering bureaucracies and corrupt democracies. And regions only interest me once they are stripped of their regionalist ideology and are experiencing self-management and direct democracy. I feel neither Belgian nor European. The only homeland is a humanity that is at long last sovereign.

HUO: You have used a lot of pseudonyms. Je est un autre [I is an other]? How do you find or choose pseudonyms? How many pseudonyms have you used? Is there a complete list?

RV: I don’t keep any kind of score. I leave it up to the inspiration of the moment. There is nothing secret about using a pseudonym. Rather, it is about creating a distance, most often in commissioned work. This allows me to have some fun while alleviating my enduring financial difficulties, which I have always refused to resolve by compromising with the world of the spectacle.

HUO: A book that has been used by many artists and architects has been your Dictionnaire de citations pour servir au divertissement et a l’intelligence du temps [Dictionary of Quotations for the Entertainment and Intelligence of Our Time]. Where did that idea come from?

RV: It was a suggestion from my friend Pierre Drachline, who works for the Cherche Midi publishing house.

HUO: You have often criticized environmental movements who try to replace existing capitalism with capitalism of a different type. What do you think of Joseph Beuys? What non-capitalist project or movement do you support?

RV: We are being “offered” biofuels on the condition we agree to transgenic rapeseed farming. Eco-tourism will accelerate the plundering of our biosphere. Windmill farms are being built without any advantage to the consumers. Those are the areas where intervention is possible. Natural resources belong to us, they are free, they must be made to serve the freedom of life. It will be up to the communities to secure their own energy and food independence so as to free themselves from the control of the multinationals and their state vassals everywhere. Claiming natural power for our use means reclaiming our own existence first. Only creativity will rid us of work.

HUO: Last but not least, Rilke wrote that wonderful little book of advice to a young poet. What would your advice be to a young philosopher-writer in 2009?

RV: To apply to his own life the creativity he displays in his work. To follow the path of the heart, of what is most alive in him.

_{Translated from the French by Eric Anglès}

Book burning is old hat for Kindle

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Awww, the “Gift of Reading.” Wasn’t that something we gave ourselves for free in public school? And look at the e-book with which Amazon expects to separate readers from viewers –the latest movie.

Holy Schnikies Amazon picked a whopper of a name for its e-book reader! Is the “Kindle” supposed to inflame our gone-digital hearts to the warm fuzzies of reading? Because kindle wood and books have always been combustible dance partners. Firelight was something man used to have to read by, but kindling was also indispensable for book burnings. Which role most likely foreshadows this Kindle’s potential?

I think the answer lies not too far from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo’s celebrated promise to never again remotely tamper with their readers’ Kindle libraries. Earlier this year, online customers bought digital books to which Amazon then discovered its merchant partner didn’t have the intellectual rights. Amazon refunded the purchases and erased the already downloaded files, revealing what technology experts already suspected, that the Kindle’s software permitted more than a hands-on eavesdropping capability.

In response to the outcry, Bezos promised never to do it again. Fine. His assurance is good enough for me. The truth is, Amazon won’t have to.

The burning of e-books will not be about destroying your and my electronic files. It will happen at the file’s creation or un-creation. And I suspect the censorship will be a lot more clever than a publisher conspicuously sitting on its exclusive rights to release or not release a title. All that need happen to disenfranchise a public from a familiar inflammatory tome is to buy the publishing right and excise the offensive material. Why not– it will be their right. And Jeff Bezos will probably be able to justify amending already sold copies under the guise of issuing corrections, or redistributing free updates to the original editions.

Can you imagine a world void of its disturbing literature? That’s the vision which has guided book burners. The only thing standing between mankind and the more equitable distribution of knowledge are the revolutionary armadas launched by Gutenberg. At which the Kindle is aiming its broadsides.

Original Anti-Zionist jokes in Monty Python’s LIFE OF BRIAN remain cut out of Criterion special edition

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Think you know the saga of the deleted scenes from Monty Python’s LIFE OF BRIAN? Not if you trust Wikipedia. The 1979 comedy didn’t just take the mickey out of Jesus and the feuding Palestinian Liberation fronts, it poked fun at Zionists, as goose-stepping racists led by Eric Idle’s OTTO the NAZIRENE determined to promote Jewish racial purity, carve a Lebensraum from the “traditional Jewish areas of Samaria,” displace the Samaritans into internment camps, and plan an Anschluss of Jordan to “create a great Jewish state that will last a thousand years.” My, my, my. But the defamed parties had the last laugh. They acquired the studio with the rights to the film, obliterated the offending celluloid, reedited the video release, and have rewritten cinematic history.

Maybe you don’t care what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. Did you know someone is messing with the oeuvre of Monty Python? We had the comedy sketches memorized in college. Who could have imagined the originals would be vulnerable to tampering?

I’m not sure this is an overreaction. Monty Python is not Shakespeare, what is? But it’s not Nicholas Sparks either. For a populist phenom I say Python rivals Swift. This is book burning, is what it is — a sinister effacing of creative work. In a recent British poll, Life of Brian was in contention for England’s greatest film comedy. But for your consideration, instead of a director’s cut, we’ve got a censor’s cut.

Here’s the lowdown in brief: three integral scenes of the theatrical release were removed from the video version. The third scene was recut to make up for the absence of the first two. And a key character was stricken from the credits.

When Criterion later released a collector’s edition, the missing sequences were included in the extras as “deleted scenes.” But these scenes were represented by mangled outtakes of the originals, from which key lines remain excised. Then an official narrative was fabricated to recount how the sequences had been removed from the original version to improve the flow, the crude outtakes testifying to why they didn’t make the cut.

But that’s all bullocks –and the niggling weak spot to this digital book burning is, ironically enough, that BOOKS were published in 1979 to accompany the film’s release: a mass-market paperback of the screenplay, and an oversized Monty Python Scrapbook.

The rewrite runs afoul too of anyone who remembers seeing the film in its first release.

Not My Tribe has suffered its own internal dissension over comparing Israel to the Nazis. Apparently it’s SO not done, not even Monty Python can get away with it.

You may have revisited the video many times, now the DVD, maybe you read about the scandals about the film’s release, maybe you memorized some of the Biggus Dickus dialog; are you curious that you missed the bits about Samaria, Jordan and purified Jewish blood?

When the Catholic church objects to a movie, it declares a boycott. Zionists take a more effective strategy. When pulling funding from the project doesn’t work, they buy the rights and delete the scenes. You’d think a film as celebrated as Life of Brian would be inviolate to culture vandals. And so far the desecration has escaped the legions of Monty Python fans. Wikipedia recounts how Otto’s scenes were deleted from the film, and thankfully resurfaced to be included as outtakes on the 2007 Criterion edition. But the account is untrue.

From restored out-takes we might surmise that Jewish objection were limited to the Star of David embellished as a swastika, but from the un-restored material it seems that the modern censors objected to Zionists depicted as determined to carve their own Lebensraum in Samariaby by means of Anschluss and concentration camps, for the sake of a third Jewish reich. And what have we now happening in the Occupied Territories which Israeli settlers insist on calling their Sumaria and Judea of biblical history, and what of the open air internment of the Palestinians in Gaza. Oh My Goodness.

The Criterion edition of Monty Python’s Life of Brian has some famously restored scenes, alleged to have been cut from the original version. They’re available again, and you can see them on Youtube. But it’s Poppycock. The scenes in question were actually removed from the video release, and “lost” by the studio which took over handmade films. The deleted scenes were actually out-takes of the originals. Fortunately, the screenplay published to accompany the 1979 release has the original lines, which vary quite curiously from what’s being peddled as the restored original. Yes, the deleted scenes have deleted scenes.

If you saw the 1979 film in the theater, you might remember Otto, the Hitleresque Zionist with the curiously non-German accent. Here is the original script made from the final take. The out-take restored as “deleted scenes” stray considerably from these lines. The lines in bold have simply been simply clipped.

BRIAN slips out through the back door and descends some steps into MANDY’S garden where he sits, head in hands.

Suddenly a voice assails him.

OTTO: Hail, Leader!

BRIAN: What?

OTTO: Oh, I– I’m so sorry. Have you seen the new Leader?

BRIAN: The what?

OTTO: The new Leader. Where is the new leader? I wish to hail him. Hail, Leader. See.

BRIAN: Oh. Who are you?

OTTO: My name. Is. Otto.

BRIAN: Oh.

OTTO: Yes. Otto. It’s time, you know. . .

BRIAN: What?

OTTO: . . . Time that we Jews racially purified ourselves.

BRIAN: Oh.

OTTO: He’s right you know. The new leader. We need more living room. We must move into the traditionally Jewish areas of Samaria.

BRIAN: What about the Samaritans?

OTTO: Well, we can put them in little camps. And after Samaria we must move into Jordan and create a great Jewish state that will last a thousand years.

BRIAN: Yes, I’m not sure, but I . . .

OTTO: Oh, I grow so impatient, you know. To see the Leader that has been promised our people for centuries. The Leader who will save Israel by ridding it of the scum of non-Jewish people, making it pure, no foreigners, no gypsies, no riff-raff.

BRIAN: Shh! Otto!

OTTO: What? The Leader? Hail Leader!

BRIAN: No, no. It’s dangerous.

OTTO: Oh, danger: There’s no danger. (flicks his fingers) Men!

A phalanx of armed, rather sinister, men appear from the shadows and fall in.

OTTO: Impressive, eh?

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: Yes, we are a thoroughly trained suicide squad.

BRIAN: Ah-hah.

OTTO: Oh yes, we can commit suicide within twenty seconds.

BRIAN: Twenty seconds?

OTTO: You don’t believe me?

BRIAN: Well . . .Yes . . .

OTTO: I think you question me.

BRIAN: No. No.

OTTO: I can see you do not believe me.

BRIAN: No, no. I do.

OTTO: Enough. I prove it to you. Squad.

SQUAD: Hail Leader.

OTTO: Co-mmit Suicide.

They all pull out their swords with military precision and plunge them into themselves in time, falling in a big heap on the ground. Dead.

OTTO: (with pride) See.

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: I think now you believe me. Yes?

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: I think now I prove it to you, huh?

BRIAN: Yes, you certainly did.

OTTO: All dead.

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: Not one living.

BRIAN: No.

OTTO: You see, they are all of them quite dead. See I kick this one. He’s dead. And this one’s dead, I tread on his head. And he’s dead. And he’s dead. All good Jewish boys, no foreigners. But they died a hero’s death and their names will live forever. Helmut . . . Johnny . . . the little guy . . . er . . . the other fat one . . . their names will be remembered . . . eventually . . . forever. So now I go. Hail Leader.

BRIAN: Wait Otto. You can’t just leave them all here.

OTTO: Why not–they’re all dead.

One oh the ‘corpses’ farts. There is a giggle.

OTTO: Wait a minute. There is somebody here who is not dead. There’s somebody here who is only pretending to be dead. Stand up, you.

One of the bodies stands up sheepishly. As he does so, he stands on someone else who quite clearly says ‘Ow.’

OTTO: Who said ‘ow’? You’re not dead either. Neither are you. Stand up, stand up, all of you. Oh, my heck, is there not even one dead?!

They have all stood up averting their eyes in shame.

HELMUT: No, sir. Not one.

ADOLF: We thought it was a practice, sir.

OTTO: Oh my cock! Tomorrow, as a punishment, you will all eat–pork sausages!

There is a horrified muttering at this suggestion. OTTO turns sharply to BRIAN.

OTTO: OK. Tell the Leader that we are ready to die for him the moment he gives the sign.

BRIAN: What sign?

OTTO: The sign that is the sign, that shall be the sign. Men, forward!

OTTO’S MEN march away singing their exciting song.

OTTO’S MEN’S SONG:
There’s a man we call our Leader.
He’s fine and strong and brave,
And we’ll follow him unquestioning
Towards an early grave. He-e gives us hope of sacrifice
And a chance to die in vain,
And if we’re one of the lucky ones,
We’ll live to die again.

BRIAN: Silly bugger.

A second scene involves Otto and his Nazirenes receiving the sign, as the crucifixion party departs the city gates.

JUDITH now is running through the crowded streets. She reaches some steps and climbs up onto a roof. Quickly, she opens a basket and releases a flock of pigeons.

A very STRANGE MAN is lying on a lonely hilltop. Suddenly he rouses himself, sits up and peers into the distance towards Jerusalem.

A flock of pigeons flies up against the sun.

Seeing this, the STRANGE MAN rouses himself and does an extremely odd but elaborate dance.

Further away, on an even lonelier hilltop, a pile of straw moves to reveal that it is in fact a MAN dressed in straw. He watches the STRANGE MAN’S dance closely.

STRAW LOOK-OUT: It is the sign!

Instantly OTTO appears, with all his men.

OTTO: The sign that is the sign?

LOOK-OUT: Yes!

OTTO: Men! Our time has come! Our leader calls! Men forward!

The MEN march into the wall and each other.

OTTO: Oh my cock.

Of course the omission of Otto’s gang created a problem for the film’s final scene, where his men repeat their self-sacrifice beneath the crosses. Here was the original sequence:

Suddenly PARVUS looks up. He has heard something.

OTTO and his MEN appear over the skyline.

BRIAN: Otto! (a new flicker of hope in his eyes)

OTTO: Men, charge!

They charge.

The ROMANS, seeing this formidable army bearing down on them, finger their swords rather nervously and then break and run away back towards the city gate.

BRIAN’S face lights up with renewed hope as he sees OTTO’S army advancing at the double. The army arrives under the cross, swords held aloft. The ROMANS have all run away.

OTTO: (to Brian) Leader! We salute you. Men! Die for your cause!

With immaculate precision they all run themselves through, including OTTO.

OTTO: You see. Every man a hero. They died for their country.

BRIAN: You silly sods.

For the re-edited video and subsequent DVD versions, audio voice-overs were added to explain Otto’s final charge. None of this was in the original.

–[A group of faux oriental-looking warriors come over a hill, led by their leader, King Otto. Care to venture a guess as to who they are? Yes, it’s…]

WORKER
The Judean People’s Front!

PARVUS
The Judean People’s Front!

OTTO
Forward all!

WORKERS
Look out! The Judean People’s Front!

–[The JPF stop in front of Brian’s cross.]

OTTO
Ve are the Judean People’s Front! Crack suicide squad. Suicide Squad! Attack!!!
–[drumroll]
–[They all ceremonially whip out their weapons, open a hatch in their armor, and proceed to kill themselves.]

OTTO
Ungggghhh… that showed ’em, huh?

BRIAN
You silly sods.

11/16
ADDENDUM:
Scan from Monty Python Scrapbook of Brian of Nazareth, (NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1979) page 5: “Dramatis Personae, in order of appearance” lower ninth tenth of list.

Note Eric Idle as Otto, the Nazirene, evidently scrubbed from the revised credits too.

Someone please tell Mrs. Al-Ghizzawi that her husband is cleared for release

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Eric Verlo

…if that means anything. It’s a long story, but after waiting eight years locked in Guantanamo, Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi has a tale that could bear listeners. But his lawyer H. Candace Gorman is not allowed to tell it, she’s under court orders to keep mum. Even after details came through the foreign press, a judge ordered that Gorman remove two subsequent posts from The Guantanamo Blog which offered clarification. NMT learned from the Supreme Court Of the United States Blog (SCOTUSBLOG) that Gorman’s articles are still cached. Naturally we have reprinted them here.

Read them and become a state secret yourself.

Just kidding– the information is not ruled to be a state secret, only “protected,” whatever that means. Regardless that the information is already public, Ms. Gorman herself is not permitted to propagate it. You and I can divulge what we wish.

And divulge we must, I’m sure you’ll agree. Whether or not internet mirrors can be penalized, what is this sham of “protected” information? The concept defiles President Obama’s expressed objective of transparent government. This particular information shames our judicial system. Read it and judge for yourself.

You can keep up on Guantanamo attorney Candace Gorman’s latest efforts at gtmoblog.bogspot.com, but you won’t find these two posts: THE MUZZLE IS OFF, and THE MUZZLE IS BACK ON. I’ve also included the text of Judge John Bates’ gag order, and Ms. Gorman’s latest filing. Halfway down I will offer a summary, if you’re in a hurry.

November 17, 2009
THE MUZZLE IS OFF

In June of this year I received a call from a foreign reporter who asked if I could give her a profile of my client Al-Ghizzawi as he was on a list of men whom the US was looking for a new home and her country was considering accepting him. This was the first I had learned that Al-Ghizzawi had been “cleared” by the Obama review team for release. I gave her information about my client and for all I know a story was published about the plight of al-Ghizzawi at Guantanamo, his status as “cleared” and why he needed a country in Europe to take him.

A few days later an attorney from the justice department called to tell me that Al-Ghizzawi was cleared for release and we laughed about the fact that I already knew the information. However the laughing stopped when the attorney told me that the justice department had designated the information as “protected” and I could not tell anyone except my client and those people who had signed on to the protective order (a court document that outlines the procedures for the Guantanamo cases) about his status as “cleared for release.” I told the attorney that he could not declare something “protected” that was already in the public domain. To make a long story short we were not in agreement and the attorney filed an emergency motion with the judge to muzzle me. Despite the fact that the information was in the public domain I was muzzled by the good judge who apparently doesn’t believe that the constitution applies to me. I couldn’t even tell Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s brother what I thought was good news (I didn’t know then that this was just another stall tactic by the justice department).

Not only was I muzzled but Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s case was put on hold. The habeas hearing that we had been fighting to obtain literally for years was stayed by the judge despite the fact that the US Supreme Court held in June of 2008 that the men were entitled to swift hearings…. So much for the Supreme Court! The president asked the judges to stop the hearings for those men who were “cleared” for release and the judges have fallen into lockstep, shamefully abandoning their duties as judges.

A few months later when I visited Al-Ghizzawi (at the end of August) he had just received word from his wife that she could no longer wait for his release and she asked him if she would sign papers for a divorce. Bad news is an every day occurrence for Al-Ghizzawi and he was holding up well despite this latest blow.

When I returned from the base I asked the justice department to allow me to contact Al-Ghizzawi’s wife and tell her that he had been cleared for release. I hoped that if she knew he was to be released she would hang in there and not go through with the divorce. I was told they would get back to me. When they didn’t I asked again but they still would not give me the ok. In Court papers I pleaded with the judge to let me tell Al-Ghizzawi’s brother and wife, telling the judge about the wife’s request for a divorce, but the Judge, the same Judge who has apparently decided to ignore the supreme court’s directive for quick habeas hearings, ignored this plea as well.

I seriously thought about disobeying the order and trying to get word to Al-Ghizzawis’ wife and then taking whatever lumps were thrown my way….however, despite the fact that the judicial system has failed Al-Ghizzawi and most of the men at Guantanamo I could not bring myself to blatantly disobey a court order. For five months I have kept this information confidential despite the injustice to both my client, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, and to what was our rule of law…. until yesterday, when the muzzle was lifted.

This is only part of the story. I will be writing more about this in the future and our friend the talking dog has more to say on this.

Click on the title for his take.

Meanwhile, if you hear from a habeas attorney that his or her case has been stayed you will know about the injustice that their client is continuing to suffer, you will know that the client has been cleared for release, that the attorney cannot discuss that fact and that the judge in that case has abandoned his or her duty to be a judge. You will also know that being cleared for release is just as meaningless as everything else that has been happening to these unfortunate men…. because being cleared for release means nothing.

And the follow-up:

Saturday, November 21, 2009
THE MUZZLE IS BACK ON

Fortunately for all of you….the muzzle only applies to me.

On Tuesday I reported that the Government finally allowed me to discuss matters that had previously been “protected” in regards to my client Al-Ghizzawi. In fact the Government unclassified and allowed for public release a Petition for Original Habeas Corpus that I filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. I released that Petition to the Public in accordance with the Government’s designation of “unclassified.” On Friday the Department of Justice (DOJ) told me that it had made a mistake and that it had apparently violated the Protective Order (an Order that sets out the rules for the DOJ and Habeas counsel in regards to the Guantanamo cases) entered in the case when it “unclassified” and allowed for public release information in the Petition that it wanted to “protect” and that therefore I must remove my post of November 17 because of the DOJ’s mistake. I explained to the DOJ attorneys that the Petition and my Post of November 17th were widely distributed and are available at various sites on the web… they do not seem to care about that ….they only care that I not report about what they are now trying to declare “protected information”…. 5 days after they unclassified the material and made it available for public release.

This is of course outrageous conduct by the DOJ…. in trying to declare something as “protected” after being clearly designated and distributed to the public but what else is new? For those of you who either remember my November 17th post or have it available on your website…. I originally learned of the so called “Protected” information from a public source and the Judge in Al-Ghizzawi’s case still ruled that I could not discuss it. Anyway, later this weekend I will try to provide all of the links that I can find from other sources who properly reported on the petition and my saga regarding it…. for now I am leaving you with these two links…. here and here as I happen to have these easily available.

I also expect several websites and other media outlets to be reporting on this and making the petition available at their websites because they received it from me back when I was allowed to distribute it or otherwise obtained it on the internet. I also provided interviews earlier this week and I expect that those will soon be available too. If any of you have time out there to find some of the websites where this story and petition are published please feel free to provide a link…or if you see it pop up on websites in the coming weeks please provide those links as well.

This is not the end of this story. Under the Protective Order the Government must actually get the Judge’s permission to retroactively keep me (and only me) from publishing and discussion the information that the Government now seeks to “Protect.” The DOJ will have to file a document with the Court explaining why this now very public information should be “protected.” Ultimately it will be the Judge’s decision. If you do not see my post back up that will mean that the Judge agreed with the Government, that I alone cannot talk about those things that you are privy to discuss.

I will just add…. this is just another day in the life of being a habeas counsel.

Are you looking for a summary? Mr. Al-Ghizzawi is among the Guantanamo inmates who have been “cleared for release.” Foreign governments know this, as well as the foreign press. But officially the status is “protected information.” Meanwhile, probably among other tragic developments, Al-Ghizzawi’s wife is seeking a divorce based on her impression that her husband will never be released. And attorney Gorman is forbidden to tell her she knows otherwise.

Except, that being “cleared for release” now has turned out to mean a worse limbo than before. It means all legal motions are suspended, pending a government action that is not forthcoming. Thus Mrs. Al-Ghizzawi’s prediction may be more accurate than the lawyer’s, that her husband is nowhere closer to being released.

And Judge Bates may understand this too.

Below is the Judge’s gag order:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

ABDUL HAMID AL-GHIZZAWI,
Petitioner,
v.
GEORGE W. BUSH, et al.,
Respondents.

Civil Action No. 05-2378 (JDB)

ORDER

Before the Court is [277] respondents’ emergency motion to enforce the protective orders in this case, which was filed yesterday. Respondents ask the Court to order petitioner’s counsel to remove an article from her website that respondents contend reveals protected information. See Resp’ts’ Mot. to Enforce the Protective Orders [Docket Entry 273], at 1. They also request that the Court direct petitioner’s counsel “not to further disseminate ‘protected’ information.” Id. For her part, petitioner’s counsel asserts that the information she posted on her website and used in the article was disclosed by the government before the present dispute. See Pet’r’s Opp’n to Respt’ts’ Mot. [Docket Entry 274], at 5. Accordingly, she offers, “it is an extraordinarily odd situation to permit everyone else in the world to discuss this matter except counsel.” Id. She also suggests that this Court has no jurisdiction to address a filing made in the Supreme Court in petitioner’s original habeas corpus proceeding. See Pet’r’s Supplemental Resp. to Resp’ts’ Mot. [Docket Entry 276], at 2-3.

Petitioner’s counsel is bound by the various protective orders in this case, whether or not any “protected” information is now available on the internet. Here, despite its apparent inadvertent disclosure, the disputed information remains “protected” material. And accordingly, petitioner’s counsel is precluded from disclosing it. Therefore, it is hereby

ORDERED that respondents’ motion is GRANTED pending further order of the Court; it is further

ORDERED that petitioner’s counsel shall remove the article entitled “The Muzzle is Back On” from her website because it contains “protected” information and derivative material; it is further

ORDERED that petitioner’s counsel shall not disclose “protected” information and information or documents derived from “protected” information as defined by the protective orders in this case; and it is further

ORDERED that the parties may file supplemental memoranda, limited to fifteen (15) pages, addressing this matter by not later than December 7, 2009.

SO ORDERED.

/s/
JOHN D. BATES
United States District Judge

Dated: November 25, 2009

And Gorman’s filing of Nov 25:

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

ABDUL HAMID AL-GHIZZAWI
Prisoner, Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba;
Petitioner,

v.

Barack Obama, et. al.
Respondents.
)

RESPONSE
motion to
No. 05 cv 2378 (JDB)

PETITIONERS SUPPLEMENTAL RESPONSE IN OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT’S MOTION FILED UNDER SEAL

Petitioner Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi (“Petitioner” or “Al-Ghizzawi”) hereby supplements her Response to the Governments Motion under seal as follows:

On November 24th, 2009 Counsel for Petitioner filed a Response to a Motion by the Government despite the fact that she had not actually seen the Motion. Counsel did this because of her well reasoned concern that the Government would wait as long as possible to send Counsel the actual Motion (it was emailed to her 1 ½ hours after the notice went out and one hour after she emailed counsel for a copy) and that it would not fully address all of the facts (as is shown by the Motion). Counsel was preparing and did leave for a family gathering prior to receiving the actual Motion by email. After Filing that Response the Government filed a subsequent “notice of classified filing” and according to an email from the Court Security Office that Motion is entitled “Supplemental Memorandum.” Counsel for Petitioner does not have access to that document, which awaits her at the Secure Facility, has no idea of its contents and is therefore not addressing anything that might be in that supplemental memorandum related to the issues herein.

The issue that Counsel seeks to address herein is surprisingly not addressed by the Government in its Motion and that is the jurisdiction of the District Court to address issues raised in Petitioner’s Supreme Court filing. Counsel does not have the answer to this question although she spent some time on the question over the past few days and had hoped that the Government would explain in its Motion how the District Court could provide a remedy to an issue that occurred in a Supreme Court filing. In essence what the Government is asking this Court to do is to apply district court orders to a Supreme Court case. The Government should have the burden of establishing the District Court’s jurisdiction in this uniquely extraordinary circumstance of attempting to have the District Court enjoin the Supreme Court- As it – as it was the in the United States Supreme Court itself where this document was unsealed. As the Government noted in its Motion, the Petition for Original Habeas Corpus was filed in the Supreme Court on October 2, 2009. Petitioner filed the document under seal. The Government then reviewed the Petition and notified counsel and the Supreme Court that the Petition was declassified for public release. A copy of the Petition was attached to the notice by the Government that noted on each and every page that the document was “declassified for public release.” The history of that document after it was cleared is fully set out in Petitioner’s Response. When the Government later decided that it did not want certain of the information in the Petition released to the public instead of seeking relief from the Supreme Court, where the now declassified petition was filed, it instead has come back to the District Court for relief.

When Counsel for Petitioner filed her original habeas case she simultaneously filed a motion with the Supreme Court to ask that the Petition be filed under seal and it was the Supreme Court that sought a declassified version of the Petition for public filing. Counsel for Petitioner believes that the proper course of action that the Government should have taken would have been to file a Motion with the Supreme Court asking to retroactively “protect” certain information that it “declassified for public release” and which it then later determined it wanted to protect.

Wherefore, for the reasons stated in Petitioners original response and this Supplement Counsel asks this Court to deny the Government’s “emergency” Motion.

Respectfully Submitted,

November 25, 2009

/s/
H. Candace Gorman
Counsel for Petitioner

Law Office of H. Candace Gorman
H. Candace Gorman (IL Bar #6184278)

Stop recruiting US soldier terrorists

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Did I hear this right — Minnesota families are alarmed that their young men are recruited to travel overseas to commit acts of terrorism? Except reporters aren’t talking about shadowy military recruiters with unfettered access to US classrooms and kindergartens enticing American youth to join the global capitalist Jihad, the alarm is about Somali relatives enjoining their fellow refugees to return to their homeland to defend Somalia against Ethiopian invaders.

Trouble is, al-Shabaab, the organization leading the fight in Somalia is being declared a terrorist organization by the US Government. Strange really, because the only acts of terrorism in Somalia are being committed by the US military or their Ethiopian proxy. But terrorism has always been defined by authoritarian propagandists as only what the enemy does. Whether it is a state or an insurgency.

I should think this is problematic when the definition of terrorism is linked to a religious cause. Radical Islam, it would seem, becomes by definition a terrorist goal. Is there not something about the separation of church and state that should hinder the US from deciding that one religion can be outlawed?

Doesn’t this mark an escalation of US state oppression — for the state to decide on which side of foreign struggles its citizens are permitted to weigh? How are foreign populist movements to manage lobbyists in Washington to ensure their struggle isn’t blacklisted as “terrorist?”

It does open the door to American domestic counter-recruiting efforts. Declare the US military a terrorist organization, and we can halt its recruiters in their tracks. No more fresh recruit pipeline to the occupation zones, no more “underground railroad” to Fort Hood. Have the US Congress declare our military a perpetrator of terrorism. It’s not a difficult argument to make. Evidence goes back to before US independence, when “Americans” fought dirty against the continent’s aboriginal population. Now examples of US state sponsored terrorism are gratuitous. The young men we send on Jihad return with haunted consciences from the acts they inflict on innocent populations. What are the motives of indiscriminate bombing, apprehension and torture, but pure terrorism to buttress subjugation to US goals?

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