Project Steev

Our Man From the Left

I was surprised to discover this morning that Thomas Frank is today kicking off his new weekly Wednesday opinion column in the Wall Street Journal. The editors had this to say about his addition to their team: "Mr. Frank can help our readers understand what's on the mind of the American left as it bids to regain control of the federal government."

Hmm. I'm not sure what to think. Mr. Frank will be familiar to some of you as the once editor of the excellent cultural criticism journal called The Baffler, a periodical of irregular publishing cycle that nevertheless regularly skewered the right wing, capitalists, the rich and the powerful, taking up where the Frankfurt School left off to craft their own particular snarky brand of speaking truth to power.

Frank went on to write The Conquest of Cool, an excellent explication of how the advertising industry changed and was changed by the counterculture of the 60s. A couple books later he wrote the best-selling What's the Matter with Kansas?, an anti-heartland screed against the blue states, or against what makes blue states blue. that went over very well in red states, to which I've just recently read a really interesting and intelligent rebuttal to, a book called "Superior, Nebraska" (named after my stepfather's hometown).

Anyway.... I dunno. What's Frank thinking? Why is he helping the business class understand the Left? So far the column seems more suited for Mother Jones than the WSJ, and seems to be mostly an ad for his new book. Maybe that's his main motivation.

Weekend in Alabama for WTR

Last weekend I was in Birmingham, Alabama for one of the twice-yearly meetings of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. I was there to film for the documentary on war tax resistance, and also to give people in the committee a status report of how the film is coming along and show them some footage. It went well, and it was nice to spend a few days in a really green and humid place, very different from Tucson.

David Gross was there too and has a pretty complete summary of the weekend on his blog. One thing he leaves out is a direct link to the local Fox News story covering the press conference the group had. In the clip they aired you'll see a split-second shot of me behind my video camera, filming the event for the doc.

I'm kind of baffled that the Fox cameraman would even shoot footage of me, much less that the editor would include it in the final piece. Why is it relevant to the story that someone else was there taping? He didn't shoot footage of the reporter from the Birmingham newspaper who was also there. Weird.

Well, at least the story itself was fairly neutral on the subject and didn't paint the group as some kind of unpatriotic wackos. Perhaps 2 years ago that's the angle that a Fox station would have taken, but opinion has turned so far against that war that maybe even they are moderating their gung-ho pro-Bush stance.

Another World Is Fundable?

I've been reading an amazing new book called "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex." It's a pretty eye-opening and provocative read, and would probably be for almost any activist, to varying degrees depending on how involved with or how much you've thought about being involved with social change institutions (for some definition of "institution").

The subject is really important to think about. The book is an anthology of different writings by different people, and some of them are from the academy and speak academese, but here is a great summary quote from one particularly clear and to-the-point and down-to-earth piece, by Madonna Thunderhawk, called "Native Organizing Before the Non-Profit Industrial Complex":

When we first heard about non-profits in the late 1970s and early 80s, it seemed like a good thing. We did not necessarily see what might happen if we started pursuing our work through non-profits; instead non-profits seemed to be just another way to raise money. But over the years, it has changed the scope of activism so that non-profits are just part of the system. The focus turned to raising money to keep the organization going, while the actual work of activism became secondary and watered down. And when the money disappeared, the work did too. Before, we focused on how to organize to make change, but now most people will only work within funding parameters. People work for a salary rather than because they are passionate about an issue.

The fundamental question that just reading the title of the book brings up for me is: What is "revolution," and how many people really want it, even those who call themselves "activists"?" Even "radicals"? In other words how many really even want fundamental systemic change? (Because if you don't, maybe it's not a big deal to you that the non-profit world is so fucked up as described by this book. As long as you, if you work in the non-profit world, have a job and you come out with a new membership drive every year, so what, right?)

How many instead are just working for some superficial, minor change? If, say, their city painted bike lanes on every street and reduced speed limits to 15 everywhere and banned cars on weekends, but everything else stayed the same about the world, or even a more extreme (maybe?) example, if we sent home all the troops from Iraq tomorrow but everything else stayed the same - how many would go home and be happy and stop "being active"?

I wish it were easy to bring this up and talk about it with everyone. How many even think about this? What is "revolution" to you, exactly? Do you want it? If not, what is it exactly that you want? How much change is enough? Would you give up your nonprofit activist job, in exchange for the issue you ostensibly work on just going away and being solved? Really? Would you give up your non-activist, just-to-make money job? Your car/tv/computer/nightlife/ice cream/refrigerator? Anything? What if you didn't even HAVE to give up anything, for your issue to disappear immediately, right now. Would you push that button? Really? Then what would you do? What IS this "other world" you keep saying is possible?

I wish I could have a conference where every activist I've ever met, or lets even say every thoughtful person I know who's ever voiced a complaint about any social ill, gets up and answers all these questions, truthfully. Or at least tries - cuz it's not like I have all those questions answered for myself, either, but I want to talk about it.

Watering the Garden

A few things have come to my attention lately concerning... well, concerning "doing the right thing" as just an individual. In other words, what do us normal everypeople do about our part in the wrongs of the world?

A very interesting philosophy professor from Auburn U, Roderick Long, has written a very well-thought essay about this (sadly only in Microsoft Word format, I'm not sure why it's not just HTML). In it he writes about collective responsibility and whether one citizen, consumer, or whatnot is obligated to do something, anything, about big problems like global warming or war. I urge you to read your way through the whole carefully crafted argument, but he ends up with the conclusion that we don't all have to do everything, but it is all of our moral duty to do something about some things, and it's up to each of us to decided which things you will work on. In other words, you may disagree with me and choose to continue paying for war, and/or you may choose to continue driving a Hummer H2, but you have an obligation to be doing something about some collective ills that you're a part of. He also concludes that it is moral and right for governments to compel their citizens to do their part to right collective wrongs.

Just a few days after reading that my attention was drawn to a piece in the New York Times magazine along similar lines but with more specific conclusion by the well-known cooking and agriculture writer Michael Pollan entitled "Why Bother?", something that I understand was going around the blogosphere and forwarding circuit a lot yesterday, so maybe you've seen it already. If not, you should read it. A key side-point that he makes is, when did the idea of "virtue" become something to ridicule and look down on in our culture?

Also in the grey lady was a teaser for a little video conversation about morality and citizen responsibility, the complete version of which is at an interesting little site called Bloggingheads, in which experts and pundits face off against each other and we get to watch it in split-screen.

It's too early to say but could this be a new mini-fad? Maybe this is wishful thinking but what if, somehow, doing your own little part to save the world became some kind of fashionable? What am I thinking... I fear that only if there's a way to frame it in terms of self-interest and greed will selflessness and altruism ever become that "cool"...

More on Tax Resistance

In the wake of Tax Day, I just want to mention and give kudos to David Gross's excellent blog The Picket Line, which focuses on war tax resistance and related issues. We visited David and talked with him in our documentary about WTR, btw. His blog is extremely thorough and almost every day has numerous links to a variety of relevant news bits and items of interest, as well his own personal musings and reasoning. He mentioned yesterday a few actions that took place around the country on Tax Day and it made me a bit sad that we don't have in Tucson an active group of WTRs that organizes any symbolic protests on April 15, despite the fact that I know a small handful of people here who are WTRs and more could probably be gathered, as well as sympathetic folks who haven't taken the plunge but would show up to a post office demo or something. A local group is also great support and an information source for people engaged in this sort of struggle or thinking of starting.

Dear Sirs, Your Government Sucks

Of course this is a futile and symbolic gesture, but this is the letter I just mailed with my tax return:

April 14, 2008

Internal Revenue Service

cc: Congressman Raul Grijalva; Senator John McCain; Senator Jon Kyl; Senator Barrack Obama; Senator Hillary Clinton; (P)resident George W. Bush; Alan Gamble, Executive Director, Peace Tax Foundation

Dear Sir or Madam,

As calculated on the enclosed 1040 form, I am liable from tax year 2007 for 1,923 dollars in federal income taxes. This is quite a bit of money. In fact, it would be enough to pay for almost half a second of the wars that the U.S. is waging in various parts of the world. Yes, that's right, our country is spending about $4000, every second, to violently destroy other countries and murder the people in them. In fact, Joseph Stieglitz, former head of the World Bank, has calculated that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will, in the end, cost about 3 trillion dollars.

I cannot with good conscience be a part of this. Starting about 6 years ago, I realized this moral imperative that I had, and since then I can say that my tax money has not willingly gone toward this carnage or any other miliary ventures, and I'm proud to say that this is true once again for me this year. Sadly, 382 dollars of my taxes were already unwillingly seized from me last year via W-2 witholding. I can't do anything about that, and it fills me with despair that about 50% of those dollars (according to the War Resisters League federal budget calculations) are now paying for people to be killed. If I am to believe Ben Metcalf's excellent article, "Why I Pay My Taxes" in the April 2008 issue of Harper's magazine, a bullet for an M-16 machine gun costs about 30 cents. That means that I might have paid for about 600 bullets. I hope and pray that none of those bullets found their mark, and if they did, that they caused only a minor and temporary injury. Or perhaps my 191 military dollars only went to pay for 2% of a JDAM "smart bomb," (about $24,000, according to Metcalf) and that that particular bomb fell far from its intended target or any "collateral damage." I can only hope that the use of my taxes was a best-case scenario of some harmless waste such as these, but I fear far worse. I can only take comfort in knowing that I did not contribute even more to the carnage, and willingly never will; that the remaining $1541 that I owe will not go toward any further death, and that all the moneys I have withheld from this evil and unjust purpose in past years is also not paying for death.

Instead, these funds have been used by me to pay for peaceful and charitable causes in my community, both local, national, and global in scope. I do believe that a citizen of this country has the obligation to do his or her part, financially, to contribute to the common good. Hence, I do not just keep these withheld taxes for my own personal gain, but I donate them to socially beneficial purposes that the government should, in a just world, be taking care of.

I realize fully that this course I describe is not sanctioned by current law. I would gladly follow the law and pay my taxes if there were a way for me to also follow my conscience and do the right thing. One way this might happen is with the Peace Tax Fund legislation, which has been introduced to Congress repeatedly over the last few decades (currently H. R. 1921). I am encouraging my elected representatives in both the legislative and executive branches to work toward making this type of option available to the citizens of our nation so that they could decide to pay for good and peaceful works of the federal government without supporting killing. Until that time I will continue to refuse to fund war in the only way that I can.

In closing, I would like to note that there are more and more citizens (voters, consumers) who feel the same way as I do. More and more people are realizing that their government is committing horrible atrocities all over the world in their name and with their money. Furthermore, more and more of these people have had enough, and are deciding to do something about it by refusing to pay for this insane horror, for the violence that the U.S. government is committing on the rest of the world. You, whatever bureaucrat or policymaker who is reading this letter and the hundreds like it arriving in your in-boxes this year, you may be able to ignore it this year, or answer it with lip service and form letters, but someday this tide of resistance will be so great that there will be no way to ignore it without severe consequences. I urge you to do something: do the right thing, before that day of reckoning comes. Change not only the options for taxpayers, but change the homicidal, and indeed suicidal, course that this country is on, before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Steev Hise
Tucson, Arizona

Taxi To The Rude Side

So I got peeved this afternoon when after I posted to a social list I'm on a last-minute announcement about an event concerning Prisoner Support and Solidarity, at Dry River tonight, this person wrote back:

On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:32 PM, nmyers@igc.org wrote:
Wait a muinute...don't forget that tonight is the special showing of the
film "Taxi to the Dark Side" at the Loft. 7:00.
Please come and have your potluck and films another time.

The nerve of some people. How ridiculously lame! So I replied:

Nancy,
Night life, or activism for that matter, in Tucson isn't, or shouldn't be, IMHO, a competition, and my announcement didnt say to skip your screening at the Loft, so I quite resent that you seem to think that your event is more important than anything else and that you seem to think that it's okay to actively discourage people from doing something else. The event at Dry River has been planned for months and is at least as worthy of people's attention and attendance. A tunnel-vision, zero-sum, cuthroat jockeying for the time and interest of your fellow community members is not the way to treat other community groups that are or should be allies.

That pretty much says it all.

More About Tactics: the DNC and RNC

I've been asked for suggestions about fundraising for Denver IMC's coverage of the DNC this summer. They need twelve thousand dollars, apparently.

Not that I know anything special about fundraising. However, I actually think covering the DNC and RNC protests should be deemphasized, as should be the protests itself - the more media coverage of these things there are, the more sexy they seem and the more protesters will come to them and future iterations - But these mass mobilizations are a dead and tired and wasteful tactic, IMHO, and especially the party conventions, because, for one reason, for the last several elections the nominees are already chosen beforehand, and the conventions are just theater...

As far as funding goes, if possible the people that are still committed to the tactic should pay for it, but here's an idea: maybe there are some folks who could be persuaded to NOT come to Denver, and could send money instead that they would have spent on travel, that could fund local activist organizing and local indymedia coverage. If 24 people who would have spent $500 flying to denver just stayed home (or 50 that would have spent 250, or whatever, you get the idea), they'd not only have enough to cover the $12K, but they'd save literally tons of greenhouse gases...

Or at least use your carbon credit money, if you believe in that bullshit, to fund green media projects in Colorado. Or whatever, but let's just do SOMETHING different, folks, cuz this shit is tired!

Digging In

Yesterday I was biking home after videotaping a yoga class for a client (and friend), and I noticed a couple dozen people, many who I knew from my neighborhood, digging holes in a vacant lot a couple blocks from my house. There was a huge hand-painted sign ready to be installed that said "Ramona-Magon Memorial Garden and Autonomous Community Park". Wow, I thought, that is so cool. You see, this vacant lot was city property, and it was about to be in the path of a huge new road project that has been a hot battle for years.

Greta and I came back a little later and grabbed some shovels to help out. I took some photos. People were putting in benches, planting native plants, digging water basins. The idea was to put something else valuable to the community there, obstructing the construction project.

My arms are still tired from chopping up caliche (the hardened desert earth that is so common around here) and shovelling dirt, but it felt good to be part of the project. This was a perfect example direct action that I would wholeheartedly embrace. Even if it gets destroyed and doesn't stop the highway, I feel like it is still effective, because planting plants and generating the kind of constructive, barnraising kind of positive feeling is a great thing for the community, even if it is only temporary.

Anyway, I wrote an article on Arizona Indymedia about it. Read more. Look at more photos.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Great coverage by The Onion.

Why Bail Out Those Using Stupid Tactics?

(Note: When I first wrote the following, I was unsure if I should post it as-is; at first I thought it was too extreme and blunt. But a friend said "No, I think you should, it's how most grown-ups think." So, here it is.)

Last week there was a big protest in Florida against a natural gas facility being built that was conveniently located near the site of a big Earth First! semiannual meeting. After each of these meetings, which move around the country every time, organizers pick an environmentally-bad thing to go do a protest against when the meeting concludes - a coal mine, a factory, whatever is handy.

This time it was Palm Beach County's under-construction West County Energy Center. Ten or twelve activists locked down in a circle to prevent trucks carrying rock from getting out. Police came, riot gear, yada yada, hundreds moved aside but 27 were arrested. What did it accomplish? The construction was halted for 6 hours, traffic was blocked, and a couple local papers ran short articles.

Now we, the general, caring activist public around the world, are being asked to finance the bail bond for these brave folks.

Maybe I sound a little curmudgeonly, but frankly I think the whole action was ineffective, ill-advised, and wasteful of time and energy. It didn't have any real effect, it pissed off motorists and workers in the area, and it didn't even have much of a symbolic effect since national media didn't pick up on it. It's also just boring and old and tired, except to the couple dozen young traveller-kid adrenaline junkies that sat out there and got high from the excitement of "sticking it to the man".

And now I'm being asked to waste my money on its aftermath? On an action I never approved or even knew would happen (well, actually, of course I did, in general, because like i said, it happens every 6 months like clockwork).

Think of what else the money could have gone for.
The bond, to bail out 27 white gringos (at least from the photos they all looked pretty gabacho) from jail, was $13,500. That could feed about 22 Bolivian families for a year. Just as one example. Or another example closer to home - that's almost exactly the entire (minus in-kind donations) budget of the documentary about war tax resistance that I'm working on.

Agreed, we could debate about what is more or most effective. But that's not my point. I'm just asking you to think about it. Tactics and strategy matter, and the reasons, and aftereffects, and costs, behind their execution matter.

Another example of this kind of vain and foolish "action" is the upcoming "un-welcoming" of the RNC and DNC in Minneapolis and Denver. More useless mobilising, activists flying or bussing or driving or hoppin' freights in from all over the nation for a week, running around in the streets taunting cops, tipping over dumpsters and shouting at limos that might have delegates (and let's not even address for now that the candidates are already decided by then - the Conventions are just elaborate theater put on for show) in them, all so the kids can later retire to the convergence center each night and sing songs and smoke weed with their cool hipster activist friends and maybe get laid (direct action really gets the hormones pumping, y'know). What does it really accomplish outside of those exciting, social, "coming of age" goals for these youths?

What's effective and what's not? Should one engage in a tactic just because that's what's been done every year for years? Should one support something and bear the consequences just because someone else made a foolish decision? Should one be involved with foolish decisions just to satisfy some desperate and frustrated youthful need for adventure and catharsis?

This does seem harsh, but at this point I think it's extremely important to start honestly critiqueing tactics and strategies. Social change isn't just an empty gesture for bored suburbans youngsters to inject excitement back into their middleclass lives for a few years. A lot of people are in it for the long haul, and they're in it to win. So let's honestly and carefully figure out what works, what doesn't, and why and why not.

toonlet

Some friends of mine have created a great site called Toonlet, where you can make your own cartoons really easily. here's one i just made:

UPDATE: see toonlet.com

Ghost Fleet

Our WTR shoot yesterday ended on the shore of Suisun Bay looking out at a bunch of old warships parked in the water and rotting for the last 50 years or so.
It was a fitting spot to reflect on war and its various pricetags. And just a weird site.

View Larger Map
more background on the ghost fleet.

Bizarro World

Did I wake up in an alternative Universe? I see this morning in my inbox a message to 20-some indymedia lists from one Elijah Gatewood, supposedly a "contributing journalist at IMC affiliates for five years." This Mr. Gatewood is proposing that the Independent Media Center endorse Michael Bloomberg for president.

What?! How could Elijah Gatewood have any familiarity with Indymedia and somehow think it would be conceivable that we would want to endorse Bloomberg, or for that matter ANYONE for the office of President? This guy is a clueless moron, or else I have rolled over in bed through a rift in space-time and woken up in Bizarro World.

It never ceases to amaze me how many crazy wingnuts are out there....

Esteban Caliente interviews Steev Hise

It's been over a week since I uploaded this to the Pan Left video blog, but I forgot to mention it here. It's an interview between my alter ego and me, another humorous Esteban Caliente piece that I started at the G8 in Germany back in June and never finished editing. So I decided to complete it on the last couple days of 2007. It's a bit of retrospection and introspection, a look back at a week of marches and rallies and yelling and chanting, and questioning of progressive activist tactics and strategies as well as my own place in them.

it's downloadable too.

Hedges on WTR

Chris Hedges plugs war tax resistance in a comment in The Nation, December 10 issue.

A country that exists in a state of permanent war cannot exist as a democracy. Our long row of candles is being snuffed out. We may soon be in darkness. Any resistance, however symbolic, is essential. There are ways to resist without being jailed. If you owe money on your federal tax return, refuse to pay some or all of it...

For him, a war with Iran is the breaking point that will push him into that tactic. Unfortunately he fails to mention that others have been doing it since Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam... or World War 2.

Acts of Omission and Commission and "Mission Accomplished"

What are the ethics of doing versus not-doing? Of quitting versus "staying the course"? If you got a group of people into something, or helped get them into it, and they may or may not be worse off because of it, but you want out, are you justified in counting yourself out? Or do you have an obligation to finish what you started, no matter what? And what if others are telling you to quit? What is the moral calculus for deciding when, for each individual, they say, "I will not be a party to this," as opposed to, "I will try to help salvage this mess," or somewhere in-between?

What's the Oil of the 21st Century?

There's a project called Oil 21, "Perspectives on Intellectual Property," started by the cool folks at Bootlab in Berlin. The name come from a quote by some bigshot at Getty Images in which he claimed that IP is the oil of the 21st century.

This is perhaps an unsurprising statement (the Getty family made their money from oil, afterall), but it's a really stupid metaphor, and I'll tell you why: Oil is the Oil of the 21st century. I'm positive that at least until 2040 or so petroleum will continue to be something that shapes the world, informs geopolitics, and causes conflict around the globe more than any other resource, with the possible exception of water.

I guess I'm glad someone still cares a lot about fighting the good fight over in IP land, that virtual world where songs and books and images are drops of vital water in some virtual desert.

But I've really moved on. Most of the masses in the rich world don't care and it's irrelevant - youth steal music and movies and no one can ever stop them. Most of the rest of the world is too busy fighting for water and a place to live and food to eat. Occasionally in that world someone earns enough to buy that food by stacking some pirated DVDs on a blanket in the street and selling them for 50 cents a pop. That will never be stopped.

So, it's a niche issue for rich academics and artists. I'm done. I'm more interested in, for instance, the drops of water that might sustain the real thirst of people in other, more visceral deserts.

Violence vs. Imagination

A largely excellent essay by David Graeber appeared on Infoshop.org the other day. It's called "REVOLUTION IN REVERSE (OR, ON THE CONFLICT BETWEEN POLITICAL ONTOLOGIES OF VIOLENCE AND POLITICAL ONTOLOGIES OF THE IMAGINATION)" It's really worth reading, if you can pick through the typos and missing words and other copy-editing gaffs (or maybe it was never copy-edited past the rough draft? It's really quite astounding how such an academic piece of writing could have so many such errors. hmm).

The piece is mostly about the difference between those who use force and those who use imagination, to get what they want from other people. Imagination, in this case, includes communicating with other people and trying to understand them, which violence never requires, except to some extent, as Graeber points out, when the sides are relatively evenly matched.

He uses this comparison to look at how recent developments in progressive activism have proceeded. One point he makes during this is what an influence feminist thought has had on the 'movement'. Feminism is more than just demanding that women are "equal" in some abstract way, but is also about learning things from how women and other opressed groups look at things.

For much of human history, what has been taken as politics has consisted essentially of a series of dramatic performances carried out upon theatrical stages. One of the great gifts of feminism to political thought has been to continually remind us of the people is in fact making and preparing and cleaning those stages, and even more, maintaining the invisible structures that make them possible—people who have, overwhelmingly, been women. The normal process of politics of course is to make such people disappear. Indeed one of the chief functions of women’s work is to make itself disappear. One might say that the political ideal within direct action circles has become to efface the difference; or, to put it another way, that action is seen as genuinely revolutionary when the process of production of situations is experienced as just as liberating as the situations themselves.

A good personal example from my life recently has been the No Borders Camp - being involved with the process of organizing a situation called the No Borders Camp was at many times indeed quite liberating. But at some point 2 1/2 months ago it stopped feeling that way. It started feeling stifling and wrong and no one was really addressing that wrongness, so I got out. Now I'm still involved as a mediamaker, but every day I get more and more of a queasy feeling about the whole project. Discussion this week with someone who plans to attend has made it clear that I made the right decision and confirms my queasiness. I'm really quite concerned that this will be a big setback, whether or not it's an "experience of liberation, the giddy realignment of imaginative powers," as Graeber puts it.

All I can say, in general and in this case, is, while you and your hoodie-wearing friends are getting their imaginative powers giddily realigned, please keep in mind that someone else nearby might be getting their face kicked in as a result.

(The extensive comment thread following the essay is at times pretty good reading as well.)

The Truth About 9/11 "Truth" Theories

Douglas Rushkoff writes for the new issue of Arthur an excellent, pointed, yet concise piece about what's wrong with 9/11 conspiracy theories and theorists. Here's the main nugget of wisdom, though there are many others:

By looking under the rug for what isn't even there, we neglect the horror show that is in plain view. In the process, we make it even easier for the criminals running our government to perpetuate their illegal, unethical and un-American activities.

Bring Some Home, and Also Do The Right Thing in the Region

This recent article in the New Yorker about troop withdrawal from Iraq and realistic planning underscores and articulates something that I've always known as a feeling since the very first shouts of "support the troops! bring them home!": things are complicated. In Iraq, really really complicated. And simply pulling out all our forces as fast as possible sounds great but it would be disaster, and it would be cruel and horrible to the Iraqis, and to all the Middle East.

And Bush really fucked things up. And it's so so sad, that the hubris and arrogance and politicking and petty greed and ignorance has resulted in something like a million dead Iraqis (so far) and has fucked up the country and maybe the whole region for decades. Decades. Just because some dumbshit from texas and his cronies thought they were playing some little game that would maybe increase their stock portfolios. Fucking lying dipshit idiots.

But this article makes it clear that there's no going back, and there's no just throwing up our hands and saying "oops! Gosh those Republicans sure were bad. Well, ok, we're going home now, bye." Stupid W got us into this, but there ain't no getting out without admitting he fucked up, and doing the responsible thing to at least minimize further catastrophe.

A Million Dollars to Jim Crow Land

Today 50,000 people from all over the country are in Jena, Louisiana to demand justice for the 6 kids being persecuted by the racist district attorney there. If you haven't been following the situation have a look into it. Houston Indymedia has a feature on it.

Around here in Tucson it's lucky if anyone has even heard about it, much less getting involved, even the activist types I know. It's kind of amazing, but I guess most people I know are already so busy with whatever issues they already work on so hard all the time, mostly border stuff or enviro stuff.

A few of us were thinking of going to Jena but, well, it just wasn't going to work. I can't afford stuff like that these days. But I got a t-shirt...

In the spirit of my cynical previous blog post today, despite the good cause, I can't help doing the math: 50,000 people from all over, most of whom probably flew to Alexandria or New Orleans and then bussed or taxied, and got hotel rooms, and ate at restaurants, etc etc.... I bet at least a million dollars was spent collectively by all these committed activists.

Things are already looking up, one kid's conviction was overturned because an appeals court said he shouldn't have been tried as an adult... Maybe this is the best way to spend a million dollars, but maybe not. Think of everything for this cause that could have been done with a million dollars... even better lawyers? Billboards all over Jena? maybe stun guns or self-defense classes for all the african-americans in Jena? bribes? hitmen to take out the DA? I dunno, but all those things would also probably spew less carbon into the atmosphere too. I dunno. I dunno.

October Boondoggle

I just found out about "October Rebellion," a week of protests in DC against the IMF and World Bank. The cause is great but wow, what a waste. When are people going to get past marches and rallies? You'd think that after literally millions of people around the world on one day in 2003 marched against the impending war in Iraq and made no difference at all that people would start to re-evaluate this tactic on a large scale. But it doesn't seem like it's sunk in.

Imagine what we could do if all the effort and time and money and calories went into other things, instead of being put into organizing all the marching and standing around chanting and waving signs, all the greenhouse gases spewed into the air by all those jet-setting activists flying to the mass mobilizations, all the jail support for the ones that get arrested, all the trials and lawsuits and medical bills for the ones that get charged and beat up and gassed, etc etc....

Don't people get that these protests are basically the equivalent of whining to the government, asking them to fix things? Don't people get that the government never will really fix things? The Zapatistas learned that. Like them, let's just dive in and do the work to make the new world we want and stop wasting our time asking power to do it for us.

(As you can perhaps tell, I'm feeling a bit cynical lately, but not cynical enough to invalidate my point above, I feel.)

Control of (Next) Lives

Wow. Bob Ostertag notes in his blog an MSNBC story about China and reincarnation:

China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

It's hilarious but it's also serious, as Bob discusses in his post...

A Glorious Sunny Day to Blockade The G8

Well, for the first time in 5 days it's really nice and warm and sunny here by the Baltic Sea, and various groups are by now at blockade points by the thousands around Heiligendamm, trying to stop the symbolic personal representatives of world power from getting to meet each other.

But I slept in, because I was up late encoding and uploading video and hanging out with the Kein TV video volk till very late. Finally my coverage of monday's migration demos are online, both as an mp4 from my site, and an ogg file on v2v.cc, via bittorrent and other peer-to-peer technologies. I was trying all day to upload it, to Indymedia Germany, to YouTube, etc, and both at the IMC here and at Kein.TV's lab there were internet problems and/or congestion which made it impossible.

Anyway, you should watch, I like how it turned out.

Today, who knows what will happen. There were rumors about police banning absolutely everything, all blockades, all further demos, everything, but it appears, according to the indymedia germany news ticker, that stuff is still going down. I hurt my foot yesterday so i don't know if I'll be running around filming a lot like I would like to. We'll see.

Watching and Waiting

My 5th day in Germany and Berlin. Things have gone well other than the usual new-place frustrations from time to time of getting lost or being super tired or hungry and wandering looking for a place to rest or eat that is suitable.

Yesterday I went to a rally and march concerning migration and immigration and borders - against deportations and oppression and borders. "Kein Mensch Ist Illegal" is the German for a slogan I'm quite familiar with from being in in the US-Mexico borderlands: No One Is Illegal. I shot a few stills, some video, and recorded some great audio, including a great trio of german singers at the rally who did this sort of electroindustrial rap music, a few songs worth, which seemed to be relevant to the issues at hand but I couldn't be sure, of course. I made my first post to Germany Indymedia's website with some of the photos.

Today as I made my way around the city picking a few more bits of gear and supplies, the week of G8 protests officially began in Rostock and Schwerin. Police have already started huring people and arresting people. I've been following the Germany IMC news ticker to see the latest news. Julia and I will be driving her mother's car to Rostock tommorrow morning. I intend to spend most of the day just getting oriented and attending border/migration related forums and workshops at one of the convergence centers. Then monday is the big migration demo and march. I plan to stay safe and relatively out of the action, playing my usual role of media activist and documenting, rather than getting in the thick of the action.

Tonight though we'll be at a screening at NGBK, a gallery in the Kreuzberg neighborhood here in Berlin, where they will screen some of Julia's work. Later in the week they plan to screen some videos of mine as well as indymedia videos I've gathered during my stint as indymedia newsreal editor.

Something seems to have broken regarding my Twitter feed, which used to appear on the right column of my blog thanx to some stolen and hacked javascript code... You may want to check my Twitter page if it seems like a long time since I've blogged and you're worried or curious what's going on. I may not get to my blog that often in the coming week, though i'll try, but I can post to Twitter with my phone, so I might do that, even though it costs money, just to keep you avid readers informed...

NEE

A hilarious political protest campaign is going on in Belgium, making fun of the system in a really effective way and encouraging people to vote for empty seats in the Belgian parliament.

And parodying unrealistic campaign promises:

(via Brian)

Newt Gingrich calls Spanish "the language of living in a ghetto"

Former speaker of the House of Represetatives Newt Gingrich (what is he now, just a racist hatemonger on the lecture circuit?) gave a speech decrying bilingual education and calling Spanish "the language of living in a ghetto". He received cheers from the crowd of members of the National Federation of Republican Women.
(via Mun2 Daily Dos)

Tucson Weekly, You Suck Again (now for sexism)

Just a few weeks after yet another insanely racist and propagandistic cover story about illegal immigration by the ludicrously unskilled and racist Leo Banks, the Tucson Weekly is at it again.

I wouldn't make this much fuss about this normally except that this issue came out yesterday, on International Women's Day. They pretty much hardly ever put anything this extreme on their cover, but now of all days, they run this. And it's completely gratuitous, nothing to do with the story at all, except that the story is dead boring (about the state legislature) so they must have felt they had to jazz it up to get people to even pick up a copy.

Tucson Weekly, you are the most conservative, racist, sexist, classist entertainment weekly I have ever seen out of all the 8 or 9 cities i've lived in, including, believe it or not, Charleston, South Carolina. In fact, in everywhere else that I've lived, the weeklies have been at least somewhat consistently left-of-center - although the Portland Mercury is sometimes annoyingly too-hip-to-be-left (but this is because they feel the need to appear cooler and different than the older, more staid liberal Williammette Week. This may be a little of what's going on here in Tucson; although there's no other paper to compete with, they maybe just purposely printing shockingly clueless and controversial stories in order to boost circulation).

Tucson Weekly, you suck.

Chavez Getting Even Stronger

The Venezuelan legislature is in the process of giving Hugo Chavez "the power to rule by decree for 18 months so that he can impose sweeping economic, social and political change." Wow. How long before he declares himself president-for-life?

Appropriately enough, I just saw an excellent film called Land of the Blind, about a fictional and archetypal country that goes from totalitarian right-wing rule to totalitarian left-wing rule thanx to a palace guard, played by Ray Fiennes, who later regrets his role in the revolution when things are even worse under the new "People's Committee for Justice and Democracy" regime, and is imprisoned for refusing to sign the loyalty oath to the Chairman-for-Life, played by Donald Southerland. It's a really great dystopian absurdist black-comic story, kindred in set design and mood to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, tho not as funny.

Gradually Eroding Freedoms

I can't remember where I first was referred to this, but according to various blogs, there's an amendment to a bill in Congress now, Section 220 of S. 1, though "on hold," that would basically require anyone writing about Congress to register quarterly with Congress. WTF? Insane. Both left and right bloggers and organizations seem to be complaining, but there's not as much chatter about this, or media attention, as I would expect. I looked further and found this on the SF Bay Times site:

Checking the actual text of Section 220, a laborious exercise indeed, I find that the text requires that third parties who pay money in order to engineer what might appear to be a grassroots lobbying effort must declare themselves. I also learn that the tactic, presumably one close to the heart of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, is called “Astroturf lobbying.”

Ok, so this doesn't seem to be the fundamental threat to free speech that some are saying. Plus, even if it passed, how would one ever enforce it? wouldn't it be hard to prove in court that something "appears to be a grassroots lobbying effort?"

But speaking of taking away freedoms, I found a really great video by an indymedia videographer named Flux Rostrum, about the NYPD attacking him and stealing his camera at a protest in NYC. The irony is that the protest was a Oaxaca/Brad Will solidarity protest at the Mexican Consulate, protesting the murder of a videographer by government/PRI/paramilitary thugs. Flux ends his narration poignantly when he says, holding up the lens of his camera that stayed in his hand when the cops ripped the rest of it away, "how many years before they just shoot us here, too?"

Tucson Activists and La Otra

Here's a video I made recently that I just uploaded about the appearance of the Zapatista La Otra Campaña caravan coming to Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, about one hour south of the Arizona border.

You can also download it from my server (33 MB).

yay! Pinochet is Dead!

Wow. Former Dictator of Chile Augusto Pinochet has finally shuffled off his mortal coil. Of course I should wait a bit before getting too excited, since there was talk that he'd died a week ago and then he apparently had not. But this time it looks real. It's just too bad he was not brought to justice before kicking the bucket.

Marian Franz Dies

Director of the national Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund died a couple weeks ago.

In 1982, Franz became the first full-time director of the National
Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

Franz believed that war taxes have enormous consequences.

"They kill twice," Franz said. "First, they directly enable war . . .
particularly paying for weapons. Second, taxes allocated for war
represent a distortion of priorities. Money is taken away from the
important work of healing and spent to destroy and kill."

Chingo Bling on Holamun2

This little video is a hilarious but inspiring history and civics lesson.

Stick A Yellow Ribbon On Your SUV

I don't remember who sent me this video but it's pretty great. The beginning part is sort of infantile, so just wait it out or skip ahead about a minute, and then when the actual yellow ribbon song starts, you will enjoy.

Locality

I've been to 2 different neighborhood, urban-development, "should-we-allow-more-gentrification?" kind of meetings in the last week and a half, even though I'm just 3 days into living in the neighborhood. It's odd, thinking of getting involved - well, being involved, already - considering that 2 months ago I didn't know if I'd even be able to stay in Tucson and remain sane. Also, I've lived in enough places to see that this gentrification, re-development struggle is happening everywhere, albeit at different rates and in different stages depending on which city we're talking about. I've never known where to settle down, dig in, and join the fight.

Here I'm talking about a "green" (solar panels, rooftop gardens, etc) condo project just a few blocks from my new place called OneWest, which was voted down by the neighborhood association in March and then it was brought back and that vote was reversed last week, amid much controversy (now the talk is that the re-vote was against Robert's Rules of Order, which ostensibly the neighborhood association follows as its decision-making process).

Meanwhile just south of me is part of the target area of something called Downtown Links. It's the legacy of battle that's been happening in Tucson since the 70s when the state wanted to just punch a freeway right through downtown to link the east side of town to the interstate. They got most of the way but then the opposition was so fierce that they gave up and handed it off to the city government in the late 80s. The city has been trying to finish it in some form, and it's been gradually downgraded to basically a 25mph surface street with a bunch of awkward connections to existing surface streets and some accompanying urban development along the side, supposedly, like bike paths, some greenery, maybe some noise abatement walls, etc - but also lots of "opportunities" for business development along the route.

These things are both very contentious. There's just a couple opinions/observations that I want to mention: first, they're both really all about money; second, they involve bait-and-switch "quality of life" or "greenwashing" tactics to make them seem more palatable to regular people, and to obscure the fact that it's really to serve the relevant members of the business class that wants to exploit the situation; third, about the Downtown Links specificially: this project is 15 to 20 years from being done. By then, for all we know 90% of us will not be able to afford gasoline or any other means for propelling personal motor vehicles. What are we doing continuing to make decisions revolving around motorists and a car-centered lifestyle?

Beyond Hope

In the latest issue of Orion Magazine we are brought an excerpt from Endgame, the upcoming new book by Derrick Jensen, one of my favorite authors to make it their business to meticulously describe exactly what's wrong with western culture and civilization. The excerpt is on a subject I've seen him write and speak about before at great length, but it's nice to see it in this form. It's about the problem with hope.

When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we're in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free—truly free—to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins.

I've had many conversations with people about Jensen's position on this. It's hard for some to wrap their heads around the idea that hope can be bad.

I think it's a very priveleged position to think that it's always neccesarily bad, but I don't think that's what Jensen is saying. Certainly as a survivor of a brutal childhood full of abuse he understands that in some situations hope is what keeps you alive and carrying on. Hope is a useful tool for certain situations, like fear and pain and computers and hammers and dynamite. But like all tools it can turn into an overused crutch that actually hinders the user. Certainly people with lots of power like we middleclass white gringos can afford to stop hoping so much and start actually doing more.

Voter Reward

Wow. there's actually someone trying to get this initiative on the ballot in Arizona for this fall:

This law will establish a voter reward random drawing every two years with a first prize of one million dollars or more. The purpose is to increase voter participation. Voters who cast ballots in primary or general elections will be eligible to win. The money will come from the Arizona Lottery and private donations.

What a good idea. Maybe it would even get some of my misguided anarchistoid friends to vote.

(thanx José)

Unifier of Latin America

Nice article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Bush has presided during one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era domino theory has been a bust elsewhere, it's working in Latin America.

quote of the day: control or no control

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."

- Robert A Heinlein

Bush's 19-yr old Nephew on the Dubai Port Deal

This is hee-lar-ee-ous. Chip off the old block, I say. Got a prosperous career ahead of him, I'm sure....

(via José)

Ha Ha Ha America

Wow. Ha Ha Ha America is a clever, funny, scary little film about China and the U.S. Everyone in gringolandia should watch this. Everyone. Go. click and watch it. now.

Impeachment Futility

Can someone please explain why people are wasting time and money trying to impeach Bush? For one thing, it's not going to happen, but even more importantly, do you really want Dick Cheney to be president?

We'd have to impeach like 8 people before we'd get to someone in the chain of command that's not just as dangerous to the world as Bush. At least Bush is an incompetent monkey that's making a fool out of himself and the whole regime. Impeaching him would be like getting rid of Jar Jar Binks so that Darth Vader can take over.

Is it just symbolic? Pshaw. I'm tired of (at least that kind of) symbolism. I bet you'd have more positive effect on the world if you took the money that these people are spending on impeachment ads in the New York Times and spent it buying satellite internet modems for villages in Iran.

Coronado Out for 2 more weeks at least.

Well, Rod just called and he's on his way back from San Diego after attending a hearing on the government's motion to stay his release. The judge said no, why don't you prepare something more carefully.

so The govt is going to refile their motion and a hearing is set for 2 weeks from now, march 23, when he has to go back to San Diego again.

We got reporters from all over calling and emailing us to hear the news. It's pretty crazy.

okay. gotta go. other things call...

What's the Truth About Foreign Aid and Development?

I just listened to a radio program with John Perkins, the author of the hit book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." Also on the show were 3 other guests with a wide range of positions about the claims Perkins makes in his book. The most last one is a guy from the World Bank who basically completely disagrees. His main point was, well, yeah, there's bad stories but there's good ones too, and of course projects and loans are going to fail a lot because these countries are risky environments. He also spewed out lots of statistics about how the world and its poor people are better off in the last few decades thanks to foreign aid and the IMF and the World Bank, etc. Perkins counters with other statistics that prove just the opposite.

The show's host sums it up by saying "the devil is in the details." Whenever anyone uses that maxim I like to quote Einstein who said the opposite: God is in the details.

But anyway, my point is, if the details are important, but the different sides are tossing around totally contradictory details, how do we decide? What numbers do we believe? How can we, the normal, everyday members of civil society, possibly know what the truth is? on one side are very smart people, even nice people, even a couple people I know personally, who say "capitalism has made the world better, here's the stats to prove it." And then on the other side are other very smart people saying the opposite, and they have convincing figures too.

What to believe? Is this just a matter of faith?

Rod Coronado Arrested by Feds Today

Crazy things seem to always happen on Wednesdays here. I can rememeber a few Wednesday nights coming to the Dry River meeting and finding out some bad news about some arrest or raid or something.

Today is another one. Rod Coronado apparently was arrested at his workplace today. His girlfriend reportedly went to his house and found FBI and ATF agents searching it.

We really don't know more than that. There's speculation that it's something to do with the grand jury investigation in San Diego, connected to Rod's speaking event there a couple years ago. This has been brewing for awhile. (I wish I had more links about this grand jury investigation but the search function on the SD IMC site seems to be screwed up, so I only have the above link which I had bookmarked a couple months ago).

I shouldn't say anything else yet. I feel like I should be writing this on the AZ IMC site, but indymedia folks here are skittish about writing stuff too soon. There's a certain preciousness to feature articles here that is a big contrast to Portland. I personally think it's better to write a little bit ASAP, maybe even speculate a little bit, rather than sit on a story till you have 5 paragraphs worth of absolute truth - as long as it doesn't put anyone at risk or incriminate anyone. But, whatever, I'm new here and when in Tucson, do as the Tucsonans.

Anyway, we'll have something up in the morning, I think.

Double Jeopardy

Tonight was a big event for Arizona Earth First!, just a few blocks from where I live. At the UA Law College there was a talk by Rod Coronado planned, about his recent conviction for interfering with a mountain lion hunt, and other information about other hunts that Earth First! is campaigning against. A rough cut of a video I've been working on about the Sandhill Crane hunt was also shown.

It turned out that Rod couldn't speak, because of the conditions of his pre-sentencing agreement, and because it would possibly result in a longer sentence for him. But that's not all, there was further controversy. Apparently the International Safari Club called the law school and objected to the event and the idea that EF! would be asking for donations to help with Rod's legal defense. They also said they would have people present there, but nobody showed up. Typical of cowardly hunters (the Safari Club says it's a conservation organization but they are basically just a trophy hunters lobbying group, and a powerful one, based in Tucson).

Furthermore, another bombshell was dropped; Rod is being re-charged in state court for the Sabino canyon mountain lion incident, charges that were dropped last year, for a crime that is basically the same as what he's already been convicted of in federal court. There's actually a warrant for his arrest starting at midnight tonight (half an hour ago now). He's planning to sleep somewhere secret tonite and go to the courthouse in the morning first thing with his lawyer and sort all this out.

The other crazy bullshit is this: tommorrow is the annual public commentary hearing about various wild game hunts that Arizona Game and Fish Department is required to have. One reason for the EF! event tonight was to urge people to go to the hearing and give comments. Well, it came out during the event that Game and Fish has actually moved the hearing to the International Wildlife Museum, which is the headquarters of the International Safari Club (and some call it the International Wildlife Mausoleum, since it's nothing but dead stuffed animals). This is so patently ludricious as to defy belief. It would be like if there was a presidential debate at the headquarters of the Republican Party. Or an organic food conference at Monsanto. It's just ridiculous.

Anyway, I'll be there with indymedia press pass and video camera to get it on tape.

Zero Coke Movement

At first I was confused, but I guess that a new anti-coke consumer boycott campaign is somewhat in response to a Coca-Cola ad campagn to sell their "Coke Zero" sugar-free product. The boycott actually goes further and mentions that you should stop drinking all soft drinks, drink water instead and send the money you would spend to fund efforts to get clean water to those who don't have it.

This is good advice. I don't drink soft drinks, or packaged beverages at all, except the occasional bottle of juice. Coffee is my guilty disposable-income vice, but I only have about 1 latte or whatever a day, so I don't think I'm that bad.

This seems like a silly thing to even be blogging about. but I saw that page and then thought of some people I know who are drinking cans of soda all the time. Plus we just had a big discussion on a mailing list I'm on about fatness in the U.S. and high-fructose corn syrup. bleah.

Some Iraq Arithmetic

My housemate just brought up the point that the Iraq War has now used up more money than the value of all the oil in Iraq, even if you don't count the cost of extracting the oil. He had his numbers off a little way off, but the point is still interesting to think about.

Let's see, under the sands of Iraq there's about $5.6 trillion worth of oil (figuring about $50/barrel). And the Cost of the Iraq War so far: $234 billion. How much more will the U.S. spend? How expensive will the oil be to extract? What will the price of oil do, and whose oil is it? These are all things that will effect the final result of the equation, but it's looking like even from just a business perspective, the "Blood for Oil" may not end up being is still well worth it. (In other words, my housemate was totally wrong. I did the math wrong at first so i thought he was only wrong by about a factor of 2, but he's actually wrong by a factor of 20, hence the crossed-out sections.)

But one final thing to point out: you could buy about 11 million Toyota Prius hybrid cars with the money the Iraq War has cost us. Not quite enough for every car-driving Unitedstatesian, as my housemate claimed, but maybe the government could get a bulk discount....

(and isn't it amazing that in about 5 minutes I can go to the web and check a statistical factoid that someone tells me and come up with how true or false it really is? Things haven't always been this way...)

With a Small Letter 'a'

I just read a really great article about anarchism, mostly about the present-day form of "small-letter a" anarchism that is driving the global "movement of movements," and comparing it to historical Anarchism and to Marxism.

Reminds me that I still want to obtain and read Change the World Without Taking Power by John Holloway.

Iraq Facts

I just heard on NPR that the Shia represent only 10 to 15% of the population of Iraq, a clear minority, though they had been ruling Iraq for a long long time before the U.S. invasion. But the reporter mentioned that most Shiites that you talk to there believe they're not a minority and don't act like they're a minority.

Kind of like Americans.

The Irish Lesson

Paul Theroux writes in the New York Times a great critical op-ed piece about Bono, Africa, and Ireland.

And because the NYT is going to time out free access to this piece i'm going to just paste it here:

The New York Times December 15, 2005 Op-Ed Contributor The Rock Star's Burden By PAUL THEROUX

Hale'iwa, Hawaii

THERE are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment. If Christmas, season of sob stories, has turned me into Scrooge, I recognize the Dickensian counterpart of Paul Hewson - who calls himself "Bono" - as Mrs. Jellyby in "Bleak House." Harping incessantly on her adopted village of Borrioboola-Gha "on the left bank of the River Niger," Mrs. Jellyby tries to save the Africans by financing them in coffee growing and encouraging schemes "to turn pianoforte legs and establish an export trade," all the while badgering people for money.

It seems to have been Africa's fate to become a theater of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help - not to mention celebrities and charity concerts - is a destructive and misleading conceit. Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.

I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children's Village. I am speaking of the "more money" platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for - and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.

If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was when I lived and worked there in the early 60's, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses, and large amounts of financial aid, and yet it has declined from a country with promise to a failed state.

In the early and mid-1960's, we believed that Malawi would soon be self-sufficient in schoolteachers. And it would have been, except that rather than sending a limited wave of volunteers to train local instructors, for decades we kept on sending Peace Corps teachers. Malawians, who avoided teaching because the pay and status were low, came to depend on the American volunteers to teach in bush schools, while educated Malawians emigrated. When Malawi's university was established, more foreign teachers were welcomed, few of them replaced by Malawians, for political reasons. Medical educators also arrived from elsewhere. Malawi began graduating nurses, but the nurses were lured away to Britain and Australia and the United States, which meant more foreign nurses were needed in Malawi.

When Malawi's minister of education was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the education budget in 2000, and the Zambian president was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa's problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid. I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies in Botswana, compared with the kleptomania of its neighbors. Donors enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons these countries are failing.

Mr. Gates has said candidly that he wants to rid himself of his burden of billions. Bono is one of his trusted advisers. Mr. Gates wants to send computers to Africa - an unproductive not to say insane idea. I would offer pencils and paper, mops and brooms: the schools I have seen in Malawi need them badly. I would not send more teachers. I would expect Malawians themselves to stay and teach. There ought to be an insistence in the form of a bond, or a solemn promise, for Africans trained in medicine and education at the state's expense to work in their own countries.

Malawi was in my time a lush wooded country of three million people. It is now an eroded and deforested land of 12 million; its rivers are clogged with sediment and every year it is subjected to destructive floods. The trees that had kept it whole were cut for fuel and to clear land for subsistence crops. Malawi had two presidents in its first 40 years, the first a megalomaniac who called himself the messiah, the second a swindler whose first official act was to put his face on the money. Last year the new man, Bingu wa Mutharika, inaugurated his regime by announcing that he was going to buy a fleet of Maybachs, one of the most expensive cars in the world.

Many of the schools where we taught 40 years ago are now in ruins - covered with graffiti, with broken windows, standing in tall grass. Money will not fix this. A highly placed Malawian friend of mine once jovially demanded that my children come and teach there. "It would be good for them," he said.

Of course it would be good for them. Teaching in Africa was one of the best things I ever did. But our example seems to have counted for very little. My Malawian friend's children are of course working in the United States and Britain. It does not occur to anyone to encourage Africans themselves to volunteer in the same way that foreigners have done for decades. There are plenty of educated and capable young adults in Africa who would make a much greater difference than Peace Corps workers.

Africa is a lovely place - much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth. Such people come in all forms and they loom large. White celebrities busy-bodying in Africa loom especially large. Watching Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie recently in Ethiopia, cuddling African children and lecturing the world on charity, the image that immediately sprang to my mind was Tarzan and Jane.

Bono, in his role as Mrs. Jellyby in a 10-gallon hat, not only believes that he has the solution to Africa's ills, he is also shouting so loud that other people seem to trust his answers. He traveled in 2002 to Africa with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, urging debt forgiveness. He recently had lunch at the White House, where he expounded upon the "more money" platform and how African countries are uniquely futile.

But are they? Had Bono looked closely at Malawi he would have seen an earlier incarnation of his own Ireland. Both countries were characterized for centuries by famine, religious strife, infighting, unruly families, hubristic clan chiefs, malnutrition, failed crops, ancient orthodoxies, dental problems and fickle weather. Malawi had a similar sense of grievance, was also colonized by absentee British landlords and was priest-ridden, too.

Just a few years ago you couldn't buy condoms legally in Ireland, nor could you get a divorce, though (just like in Malawi) buckets of beer were easily available and unruly crapulosities a national curse. Ireland, that island of inaction, in Joyce's words, "the old sow that eats her farrow," was the Malawi of Europe, and for many identical reasons, its main export being immigrants.

It is a melancholy thought that it is easier for many Africans to travel to New York or London than to their own hinterlands. Much of northern Kenya is a no-go area; there is hardly a road to the town of Moyale, on the Ethiopian border, where I found only skinny camels and roving bandits. Western Zambia is off the map, southern Malawi is terra incognita, northern Mozambique is still a sea of land mines. But it is pretty easy to leave Africa. A recent World Bank study has confirmed that the emigration to the West of skilled people from small to medium-sized countries in Africa has been disastrous.

Africa has no real shortage of capable people - or even of money. The patronizing attention of donors has done violence to Africa's belief in itself, but even in the absence of responsible leadership, Africans themselves have proven how resilient they can be - something they never get credit for. Again, Ireland may be the model for an answer. After centuries of wishing themselves onto other countries, the Irish found that education, rational government, people staying put, and simple diligence could turn Ireland from an economic basket case into a prosperous nation. In a word - are you listening, Mr. Hewson? - the Irish have proved that there is something to be said for staying home.

Paul Theroux is the author of "Blinding Light" and of "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town."

Posted by steev at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

Earth First! Activists found guilty of all counts

It's a sad day. The trial I've been covering for the past week for Arizona Indymedia has ended in a verdict of guilty on all counts for both defendants, Rod Coronado and Matt Crozier. That link is to a story I co-authored this evening, which is pretty "objective" and "standard journalism." Here's where I go off and get personal.

I was somewhat surprised at the verdict - I really gave some of the jury more credit, thinking that some of them would be smart enough to see past the crude emotional manipulation enacted by the prosecutors, especially since I was there for a lot of the jury selection so I kind of knew what sort of people many of them were - and some were psychologists, software engineers, professors - not your average numbskull middle-americans.

It's just sad, too, knowing Rod and thinking that he could get 6 years or more in prison, and he's about my age, and has a 4-year old child. They wanted to lock him up right away because the prosecution thinks he's a flight risk, but Rod's lawyer convinced the judge that that wasn't necessary.

Now he has till March to be sentenced.

Tommorrow, I have to go back to that same courthouse, to cover a hearing to dismiss charges in yet another trial, this one being the No More Deaths case, in which 2 volunteers last summer trying to help 3 undocumented migrants dying in the desert were arrested and are being charged with felonies. I'm helping another videographer from Pan Left to try to get interviews on camera with the defense lawyers as they come out of the building after the hearing.

It's just courtroom overload lately...

The Feds

There is so much to write about, I barely know where to begin, but it strikes me that most of what's interesting happening around here has to do with representatives of the federal law enforcement or justice system.

First of all, I spent another afternoon at the federal courthouse, listening to the beginning of U.S. vs. Coronado and Crozier. The prosecution spent a long time talking about how the trial was not about activism or environmentalism or animal rights or wildlife management or politics, and then spent the rest of the afternoon making it be all about that. They wasted tons of time establishing that, yes, there are mountain lions in the Sabino Canyon area. duh. oh, and that Matt Crozier once had a job in Tucson. This is something tax money is paying for, folks.

Second, the judge in the No More Deaths case, U.S. versus Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, has decided to push back the trial from December 20 to January 10, because he wants 3 weeks of vacation. So one of the defendents, plus witnessess, family, friends, and other supporters who had been planning to come and had plane tickets purchased so they could be here December 20 are now fucked. Thanx, judge. Of course, we're all hoping the case is dismissed anyway, or that the prosecutor drops the charges, anyway.

Third, it has come to the attention of activists here that the Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott, Arizona has been raided this afternoon by over 15 FBI agents and JTTF officers and at 8pm they were still there, going over everything, confiscating anything to do with the ALF, ELF, eco-terrorism, and the like. Bill, one of the founders of the infoshop who lives there, has been arrested and will be arraigned tommorrow at 10 am in Flagstaff. Prescott people are still trying to figure out what to do, find Bill a lawyer, etc. At our weekly meeting the Dry River Colletive discussed for a while what to do. We mainly want to be there to help as soon as Bill and the Prescott folks know how we can help them. Apparently there was some police raid of a school today in Flagstaff that may be related too, with officers ripping down posters that had to do with the SnoBowl issue - something I'm not even really that aware of, but I think it has to do with a Flagstaff-area ski place that is doing things will desecrate some mountains that are holy to an native american tribe.

(oh and parenthetically, a fellow videographer here in town launched into a mini-rant at me today about how an air force helicopter was surveilling his house and some people he knew were getting similar attention and that we had to do something soon or the world was going down the tubes, basically.)

So, basically, the federal government is really messing with Arizona activists today.

Earth Firsters Trial This Week in Tucson

Today I spent a big chunk of the afternoon at the Federal Courthouse here in Tucson, because Rod Coronado and Matt Crozier are on trial for interfering with a mountain lion hunt.

Today was the preliminary pre-trial hearing and jury selection. I was there for the jury selection and it was extremely interesting. only 6 of the 31 potential jurors had NOT heard about the incident in the media. This surprised the lawyers and the judge, and they ended up clearing all the jurors out of the room, and bringing one at a time back in and asking them where they had heard about it, what they remember hearing, what opinion if any did they form from the news, and whether they thought they could put that opinion aside and be objective in the trial. About 7 or 8 were excused, I think.

I've been called for jury duty a couple times but never for a criminal case, much less one this controversial. Still, all jury pools are amazing cross-sections of humanity, and this was no exception. Of course they tend to be skewed toward people that have been at the same address, and are registered to vote, I think. (isn't that the database they use? I'm not sure but I think so.)

The judge is kind of funny. Sort of a gentle, self-deprecating old fart who kept joking about how he was getting old and losing his hearing.

The whole thing was actually pretty entertaining, and I kept thinking it's no wonder so many court/lawyer based TV shows are and have been so popular. The legal and judicial system are how things get done in our society, and they're actually really interesting social systems, too. The whole thing is steeped in ritual, or one might say bureacracy, but think about it: the court system works because people are confident in its consistency and reliability. Though ruled mostly by old rich white men, it's general pretty uncorrupt compared to some nations, and people trust it and live (or sometimes die) by its results. Part of the confidence comes from things being utterly aboveboard and having the appearance of trustworthyness, impartiality, etc. So that's where those rituals come in. Like the whole ploddingly slow jury selection process, bringing in 70 people, giving them numbers, calling out the first 31 numbers, slowly, having them sit in order, etc etc. this is all unneccesary from a strict efficiency perspective, but it inspires confidence, because it's so rock-solid and consistent. or at least it appears so.

Tommorrow are opening arguments, which I will probably be at, too. more as it happens.

CPT hostages in Iraq to be killed Thursday

The kidnappers who took the 4 Christian Peacemaker Teams members are threatening to kill all of them by Thursday, December 8 unless all prisoners in Iraqi and American prisons in Iraq are freed. There's an online petition, in Arabic and English, with over 15 thousand signatures.

Whatever your view of the Iraq situation or religion-based NGOs, it's so horrible and horribly ironic and sad that they would be singled out by the terrorists.

Responsibility

My friend José, one of the smartest and most careful-thinking people I know, has written something in his blog with a very good point about the war in Iraq, and the ethical responsibility of our nation. I realize it will not be extremely popular amongst a lot of activists I know, but I confess I have said and thought similiar things in the past. I remember the night of the September 25 anti-war vigil in Portland, on the Morrison bridge with my candle, a reporter from KBOO with a microphone and a minidisc recorder was interviewing people and she asked me what I thought should happen in Iraq with the troops. I expect that most of the folks she asked on that bridge that night said "bring em all home now," but I said, basically, that things aren't ever black or white, they're always grey, and it's complicated. it would probably be really disasterous to pull all of our forces out immediately, and yet obviously we're screwing stuff up there, so there has to be a middle path, where we start extricating ourselves, but in a responsbile way.

It's a really hard problem; all the important problems usually are.

Border Issue Getting Big for GOP

The LA Weekly brings us an interesting, though unsurprising, story on how the border thing is becoming a big deal to Republicans.

on Minutemen co-founder and California Congressional Candidate Jim Glichrist: "While campaigning last week with Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) — perhaps Capitol Hill's most vocal advocate for a crackdown on illegal and legal immigration — Gilchrist distributed leaflets that claimed 'a vote for John Campbell [his opponent] is a vote for more illegal aliens.'"

I should add that Bush will be in Tucson, at the Air Force base, for about 2 hours tommorrow. I plan to be there to cover for indymedia the group of activists who will be protesting his presence, and for whom a humane border is a big priority.

"Just Keep the President Home"

An editiorial in the Kansas City paper about Bush's visit to Argentina is one of the most asinine, insulting, condescending pieces of dreck that I've ever read about Latin America. excerpt:

he [Bush] recently learned that he is unpopular among some Latin Americans.

Violent protests greeted him this month at a meeting of Western Hemisphere presidents in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

But neither he, nor we, should lose any sleep over this. It was the product of the unholy triumvirate of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and over-the-hill soccer star Diego Maradona.

The three of them are the personification of the most common failing of Latin American nations: perpetual adolescence.

I'll be condescending back, Shirley, and say, I should have expected this kind of think from Kansas.

The Life of a Salad

An really great article in the LA Weekly about all that goes into bringing a Ceasar salad to your plate encompasses a plethora of social problems of today: genetic engineering, labor, immigration, health, pesticide pollution of the environment, gentrification, urban sprawl... It's all there.

I feel responsible for wasting the fistful of romaine left on my plate. All the work that went into getting those leaves here — only to have them thrown out? It seems wrong. Especially since I know what made it possible for this lettuce to be cheap enough for the Cheesecake Factory to dole out such ludicrously oversized portions. I’m paying $7.95 for this salad, but other people are picking up the rest of the unseen tab.

(via josé)

You'll Wish This Was Parody.

A right-wing song called "Bush Was Right", by a band called "The Right Brothers," is out and wow, it is BAD. MSNBC has made a silly video (making fun of it) to go with it.

America Thugs

I'm not sure where this came from originally but it's pretty dang funny.

Riot Porn Blog

yes, there's a riot porn web log now. There's a blog for everything.

This one has pretty great photos. (via onto and lotus)

Fort Huachuca

If you are or have been at all interested or involved with the anti-war movement, you probably know about the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the campaign against it. Few know about Arizona's version, near Tucson: Fort Huachuca.

Fort Huachuca is the home of the Army Intelligence Center and is where they produce the manuals and textbooks on interrogation and related topics that are used at the SOA. They also, I understand, train the teachers who teach at the SOA, and it's a major electronic surveillance center.

Tommorrow, Sunday, the 20th, in solidarity with the yearly protest in Georgia, there will be the second annual protest at Fort Huachuca, which I'm planning to attend. It should be interesting. I'm amazed that last year was only the first time It's been done.

For a little more background see an article from earlier this year about the new commander of the base, who was previously Army chief of intelligence in Iraq - during the Abu Graib affair.

So, if you're in the region, this year or in the future, instead of travelling all the way to Georgia, come to Fort Huachuca instead. Burn less fossil fuels and help bring attention to another important piece of the U.S. military atrocity machine.

Venezuela, Chavez, The Environment, and Globalization

I recently read 2 very interesting articles about Venezuela by Christian Guerrero which look at the Chavez Bolivarian Revolution from a critical perspective I have not seen before. Christian is an activist Ecuadorian-American who lives here in Tucson and works with the Earth First Journal (which is based here).

One article is called "What's So Revolutionary About Venezuelan Coal?." The other is called "The War of 100 Years."

They're really worth looking at.

They remind me of an Eduardo Galeano essay, one of my favorite things he's written, called "Ser Como Ellos," ("To Be Like Them"), because they bring up a fundamental question in the ongoing global struggle of the rich against the poor, the rich countries against the poor countries: (To put it really simply) In this fight, is it the aim of the conquored simply to become like the conquerors? Or is there another way? A "third path?"

An Old SF Story That Seems More Relevant Than Before

A story by Bruce Sterling called "We See Things Differently" appears to be from the 80s but brings up some ideas that are especially interesting in this post-Soviet age where the big bogyman is Islamic terrorists. It posits a world where the Afghan Mujahadeen nuked Moscow and removed the USSR from the world power struggle. Meanwhile the Arabs formed a theocratic mega-state that somehow manages to separate itself from the global economy, and the U.S. gets economically pummeled by Europe and Japan.

I've always liked Sterling's writing and this is a great short story that looks at another possible world where the U.S. is no longer dominant.

(thanx to mykle , who told me this was on metafilter recently.)

Ink in Inc About a Portland Activist Celebrity

A new article in Inc. Magazine about Craig Rosebraugh is actually really good and balanced. It really captures well the contradictory characteristics of Rosebraugh, a famous and controversial figure in the activist bubble of Portland. The ELF spokesman who now owns and runs a fancy vegan restaurant. The revolutionary that fires his employees when they try to organize.

The article has provoked some interesting discussion in the local IMC. I know people in this town that idolize him. Indymedia people who will voluntarily cloud their vision and values in order to stand in solidarity with Craig, because they respect him so much as a radical. I've always had mixed feelings about his work, his anti-nonviolence message backed up with years of research and convincing arguments. And it's been really really fascinating that someone who seems to be such an extremist is such a combination of conflicting values and activities.

National Strategy Conference for War Tax Resistance

Today I'm going to New York City for a strategy conference on war tax resistance this weekend. I'm being flown out there to videotape it and do interviews. This is a continuation of a project I've been slowly working on for 2 years now to produce a documentary about war tax resistance. I already have about 20 hours of interviews with various people, and I plan to tape a lot more at this event. It is a rare opportunity, because WTRs from all over the country will be there, and some of them are almost legendary, old-timers who've been doing WTR for 25, 30 or more years. So it will be good to get them on tape.

What does "strategy conference" mean? Well, we'll be discussing what to do within the WTR movement. How to grow it, what the goals should be, what methods would be good to get to those goals. I've thought this kind of planning is pretty important for some time, since the movement or tactic seems pretty limited, and yet it seems to be such an obvious, excellent, and satisfying