I just ran across this eerily prescient article by Indian novelist, journalist and activist, Arundhati Roy, published by The Guardian on September 29, 2001, less than three weeks after 911. The New York Times refused to publish the article. They probably thought she was a dangerous Commie. And she is.  Look at her face.

Here’s the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4266289,00.html

Read’em and weep.

We All Want the Same Thing

When I was a child at school we were taught the importance of individuality, how different we all were from one another. Now that I’m an old codger I feel more and more like everybody else. All of us old codgers want the same thing: for our kids and grandkids to be healthy and happy. So please bear with me while I give you a quick rundown on ours.

Our son Dean (45) and his wife Lola finally managed to purchase the acre of woodland adjacent to their garden, so Dean now has space to plant a vegetable garden, harvest firewood and continue his never-ending rustic building projects. Their 12-year-old twins, Dean and Alex, are growing big and blond and beautiful, and seeing them side by side only doubles the impression. Their little love-child sister, four-year-old Celia, doesn’t weigh 25 pounds yet, but she lays down the law in that house.

Our youngest, Bill (almost 38), and his wife Victoria are still pending delivery of a child in adoption from Madagascar. In the meantime Bill works as a geology professor at the University of Granada and spends his spare time photographing insects and tending his olive grove. From his childhood we wondered if he would become a biologist or a geologist. Turns out he’s both, and an olive farmer, as well.

Tanya, the eldest at 47, and her husband Javier, sold their farm and Spanish mastiff breeding operation near Montefrío in Granada and moved to Burgo de Osma, a beautiful little historic town in the province of Soria, Spain’s coldest. Javier is having his second novel published this month and working on his third book, a non-fiction work about Iceland, the richest country in the world for 15 minutes. They have spent time in Iceland and actually bought a little house in a fishing village on the north side of othe island.

Tanya’s three kids; Leo (26), Lucía (24), and Elisa (21); are all in good shape and about to finish university in physics, agricultural engineering and fine arts, respectively. Last fall Leo climbed up a tree and sat there for two hours till he shot a wild boar with his bow and arrow. They’re all driving up to Burgo de Osma together to spend Christmas with Tanya and Javier.

Maureen remains everybody’s favorite person, and she works hard to deserve it. She’s what Kurt Vonnegut called a “wampeteer,” a person who brings other people together. She’s also a fairy godmother: just ask Kristina. Aside from that, she makes art. She’s had two exhibits this month, one at the Delagua Gallery in Úbeda (Jaén) and the other here at home. The open-studio show here worked better. The sights and smells of an artist’s studio exercise a powerful influence on art buyers.

We lost two of our old home-bred dogs this year, Gusi and Chuf Chuf, but were given a new puppy by our friend, Miguel Ángel Arcas, as she was finding increasingly creative ways of punishing him for leaving her home alone, like peeing on his pillow. She’s a delightful little bob-tailed white Shi Tzu cross called “Cuca” and her rugged character reminds us of Piki China, a Pekinese we used to have. Though she’s docile and playful, she doesn’t stand any nonsense from anyone, particularly the neighborhood tomcats.

That leaves me. The good news is that after two years with tendonitis in my shoulder which kept me from swimming, I’m now fully recovered and back in the water four times a week. The secret? Google. After trying acupuncture, physiotherapy, massage, osteopathy and like that, I looked up “tendonitis” in our favorite search engine and it said, “Don’t do anything that hurts.” Six months later I was almost new.

My book (which turned out to be two books) is on the back burner, as it was running over bumps and I had to get back to work and didn’t have time to fix it. I must say, it gets depressing when you’re revising your own manuscript and start finding it too boring to go on. Now I’m reading a book about plots, which I should have read before. As soon as I get some free time, I know what I have to do, I think.

It has been my good luck this year to discover some remarkable people on the World Wide Web, people to enjoy listening to and reading, to learn from, and yes, to admire.  Paul Jay, the Canadian television journalist and film maker, is the man behind The Real News, an indispensable information source for those of us who distrust the mainstream media. I find it hard to believe that the best people to consult on the news of the United States are the members of a Canadian news organization, but that’s the way it is.  I also want to mention Naomi Klein and Leila Fadel (here in an interview from Bill Moyers’ Journal), the former a writer and activist, the latter a reporter in Iraq. Both of these young women seem to me to be people capable of changing the world for the better. Who else can we say that about these days?

So, all in all, it’s been a very good year for us, though not so much for other folks around the world. Now that the New American Century is taking off with such impressive results, however, I think there is some hope for many of those unfortunate people who are weary of having their savings filched, their oil fields occupied and their weddings bombed. Time will tell, of course, but I’m optimistic.

So, here’s wishing you all a very merry winter solstice, and new year full of prosperity and solidarity. Do drop us a line if you get time. I promise to answer.

Kind regards,

Mike, Maureen & Family

In a week in which it comes to light that President George W. Bush revealed that God told him to invade Iraq–with all that implies–and former Repulican presidential candidate–and pretender to the vice-presidential slot along with John McCain–Mike Huckabee made a supposedly jocular comment in the middle of a speech to the American Rifle Association to the effect that his Democratic opponent, Barak Obama, was taking cover as someone had him in their sights, I am at a loss for words.

“Sinister?” “Grotesque?” “Macabre?” “Surreal?” “Bizarre?” “Perverse?” “Ominous?” “Sordid?” “Infamous?”

None of these words seems grand enough to express the magnitude of the villainy at large in the United States of America these days, villainy which continuously stretches our credulity beyond the breaking point.

I cannot make a comment which is commensurate with the circumstances. If I were a Buddhist monk I would immolate myself. But I’m not a monk unfortunately. I’m not even a Buddhist.

If I were a poet I would write:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

But I’m not a poet. Besides nobody listened to Yeats, either.

So I give up. I’m at a loss for words.

Last March 13-16 some 250 American veterans of the Iraq and Afghan occupations gathered at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD for the “Winter Soldier – Iraq and Afghanistan” conference, a replica of a similar event which took place in Detroit in 1971, during the Vietnam War. This recent weekend was devoted to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ first-hand testimonies regarding the events which they both witnessed and participated in during their tours of duty in those two countries, events which included abuses and atrocities from the destruction of homes to the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.

What seems remarkable to me in all of this is not that there were U.S. abuses, even atrocities, in Iraq. We suspected that all along. What boggles the mind is that this mass confession by more than 200 American veterans, which took place in Silver Spring, MD, not 25 miles up Georgia Ave. NW from Washington DC, received virtually no coverage in the American mainstream press. It’s as if the “normal” media, the papers that most people read, the TV news programs that most people watch, had universally boycotted this uncomfortable news event. Because a group of American soldiers, “our boys,” sitting in front of cameras and microphones recounting first-hand experiences of cold-blooded murder of Iraqi civilians, however uncomfortable, is certainly news. But CNN was not there, nor ABC, nor NBC. In order for American citizens to learn about these events they had to read reports from the alternate Internet news websites such as alternet.org, truthout.com, Democracy Now, The Real News, or Indy Media, or through the coverage of foreign news organizations who sent teams to Maryland to cover the event.

The British Guardian newspaper commented afterwards:

The 200 veterans who came together just outside Washington DC to testify in Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan in March this year were ignored by the US mainstream media. The only newspaper to report the event, the Washington Post, relegated it to its local news section. In the UK, only the Times and the Morning Star covered this important story (the Guardian published a report online, but not in the actual newspaper).

So this eminently newsworthy event–covered by both British and French news organizations–was ignored by the mainstream American media, including even their newspaper of record, the once-august NY Times. How did this news blackout come about? Was there a conspiracy of silence? I think not. That seems far fetched even for the U.S.A., where everything is possible. The truth is even sadder. No sinister authority nor conspiration has to intervene to oblige the great American media to turn their backs on the ugly and uncomfortable truths coming out of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. All editors know these are subjects which mainstream Americans would rather not think about, subjects which are better simply swept under the rug.

Here’s the excellent Democracy Now coverage on You Tube:

Asia Times Online published an article on May 10, 2008 entitled “An oil-addicted ex-superpower.” The American author, Michael T. Klare, Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, makes a chillingly convincing case for the fact that the United States’ massive borrowing to pay for its oil habit has already cost them their superpower status.

The fact is, says Klare, America’s wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world’s leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export.

From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the US claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil.

But those times are long past, according to Klare.

He says, US domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and has been in decline ever since. When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%… Though few fully realize it, this represented a significant erosion of soverign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom.

Meanwhile, other countries are are enjoying petroleum-driven ascendency, countries like the Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the Gulf Emirates, whose “soverign wealth funds” currently hold trillions of dollars in prized American assets. Klare asserts, “In time, however, a transfer of economic power of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of political power as well.”

War, of course, contributes greatly to the US oil problems. First of all it costs money which the country doesn’t have. And secondly, fighting a war demands a lot of oil, not to mention fighting several wars, which is what the Pentagon seems to be planning.

Klare says, And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon’s capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.

So, if the United States–with its dedication to high-on-the-hog lifestyles, SUV’s and endless wars–is the big loser in the oil sweepstakes, who are the winners? Ironically, it seems to be a couple of the Americans’ old acquaintances: Russia and Iran. Russia, the world’s second leading producer of oil and its top producer of natural gas, is the only great power not dependent upon other states for its energy needs. And thanks to the shrewd policies of Vladimir Putin, American firms never acquired substantial energy assets in Russia.

Then there is Iran, who not only sits on massive petroleum deposits, but does so in one of the world’s most important geo-strategic locations.

Klare concludes: As a result of our addiction to increasingly costly imported oil, we have become a different country, weaker and less prosperous. Whether we know it or not… the United States is an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

Michael Klare’s new book,
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet:
The New Geopolitics of Energy,
is available from Amazon.com

U.S. Artists Mount Countrywide Art Protest

A couple of fine-art printmakers and veteran art activists have recently started a very interesting politiical ball rolling in the United States. Stephen Fredericks, of the New York Society of Etchers, and Art Hazelwood, longtime member of the California Society of Printmakers, have founded a movement–which they call a “national coalition”–of artists who will be mounting and participating in a series of political art exhibitions this fall.

Fredericks and Hazelwood declare in the introduction to the Art of Democracy website: “We chose this time when the nation is particularly politically aware to bring into focus overlooked and under-represented voices and views on the state of politics, and the state of democracy today.” Let’s let them tell their own story.

A Brief Interview with Stephen Fredericks

Q: When did The Art of Democracy project begin?
A: The earliest press leaks about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying programs inspired me to organize an exhibition called the Art of Persuasion. Officially, this show was a production of the New York Society of Etchers. It was first presented at the National Arts Club in November 2006 to cover the mid-term election period.

Q: How did it come about?
A: Shortly thereafter, multi-activist and artist Art Hazelwood (who was the only ‘guest artist’ in our show) wrote and said that he had been so inspired by our effort – that he had then and there resolved to produce a like exhibition in San Francisco to cover the 2008 elections. I instantly picked up the phone and called Art to propose a joint effort. He accepted. We almost immediately began talking about expanding our efforts on a national basis. The NYSE had received several offers to travel the Art of Persuasion show – including one from Loyola University in Chicago for the fall of 2008 – so bang – we were on our feet and running almost immediately.

Q: How has it grown and extended to other places around the U.S.?
A: Art Hazelwood was already well know and represented in activist art circles – so networking thru existing relationships nationally was pretty seamless. To help me get started organizing local artists in Chicago, Art put me in touch with Kurt Webb. Josh Macphee connected me to the activist blog world in Chicago as well. Concurrently, we launced a website and started spreading the word via newsletters and general releases to printmaking societies, etc. Word has traveled fast, we now have commitments for over 30 exhibitions in over 24 cities nationwide – and the list is still, really, growing.

Q: How do artists go about participating.
A: Artists can organize their own shows and have them listed as coalition exhibitions, and/or participate in exhibitions being organized by others thru ‘calls for entries’. There is a list of calls for entries to open exhibitions on the website. We also have extensive links on the website to direct people to related activities and events.

Q: What media formats are accepted?
A: Multiple, but as it stands now – mostly prints. Each exhibition effort is pretty much unique. There are also public art exhibitions, poster exhibitions, a show on billboards in St Louis accompanied by posters of them – the list is quite variable and highly creative. I only saw posters on the website. Are prints and paintings also admitted? Yes, mostly prints as it stands and posters, but yes, paintings too to some extent.

Q: What can concerned Americans do to help The Art of Democracy achieve its goals?
A: Organizing a show is the most effective way to get involved, followed by the creation and distribution of politically oriented posters. We need not lecture you on the power of the printed image – particularly graphic art posters. Exhibitions can be of any scale and duration – though they must be open to the public and aspire to legitimate professional standards. We are not pursuing an anarchy-based, destructive, negative visual arts campaign. On the contrary – we are advocating change through legal, democratically inspired activism.

Q: Wouldn’t it have been nice to have launched this project after the First Persian Gulf War in 1991? What took so long?
A: Personally, it was the 2001-2005 assault on the Bill of Rights and the increasing encroachments upon our private lives through the growth of police powers that caught my attention.

Q: Given the Americans’ general lack of interest in the current spate of anti-war films and books, do you think anti-war art will fare any better?
A: America, politically, has not been this on fire since the Vietnam War era. The Art of Democracy is only partly focused on anti-war art. Politics themselves, oil, energy, immigration, civil liberties, and global warming are just a few of the hot buttons here.

Comments by Art Hazelwood

• You would not believe the kind of enthusiasm that is developing around this.
• There are, for me, two sides of this that are inspiring. First, of course, the heightened political engagement that I have not seen in my conscious adult life. A lot of this energy is coming from college campuses now too, which is inspiring. But a second thing that is equally inspiring for me is to see artists taking an active role in creating venues, pursuing ideas, taking the whole participation in society seriously.
• Certainly there are more than a fair share of artists that sit back and say… its not art, or no one will show my work, but the surprising thing is how many are stepping up and saying basically, I will be heard.
  
• We are artists and we can use this talent to make some noise. That is inspiring to me.
• We’ve got more, a lot more coming down the pike with a group of wildly enthusiastic artists in Puerto Rico, who are thrilled to even be considered part of the concept. With billboards in Missouri, and street posters in Milwaukee and Atlanta, and college student shows and high school student projects and grand old artists and radical street artists alike.

For more information: http://www.artofdemocracy.org

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Pentagon Plan Re-Defines Surrealism
According to an article in this morning’s Guardian, the Pentagon has plans to emulate Samuel Taylor Coleridge and convert the Baghdad Green Zone into a stately pleasure dome with the new billion-dollar American Embassy surrounded by “fashion boutiques, swanky cafés, and shiny glass office towers.” There are even luxury hotels and a golf course in their plans.

Michael Howard, author of the article states:

A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a “dream” makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.

According to the article, Marriott International has already signed a deal to build a hotel in the Green Zone. I wonder what they’ll call it. The Marriott Shock and Awe? The Hearts and Minds Marriott? The mind boggles.

Howard’s report adds:

One Los Angeles-based firm, C3, has said it wants to build an amusement park on the Green Zone’s outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.

One wonders if the Green Zone Skateboard Park will

be open to all the legless Iraqi boys and girls.

Cynical Me

I’m probably cynical but, faced with all these international investors rushing to buy this little corner of Hell which the Americans have created in Iraq, I suspect that this fascinating piece of news has very litle to do with luxury hotels or golf courses. Or with skateboard parks, for that matter. Though its messages are subliminal, lurking just underneath the turf on the 18th green, they are quite clear:

1. It’s “business as usual” in Iraq.
2. The United States intends their presence in Iraq to be permanent.

The first message is a lie. The second one is true, though from intention to reality is a long leap.

Howard ends his article on a mercifully more realistic note:

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. “What do I care?” shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. “I don’t have electricity, I don’t have fresh water and I don’t have a job.”

Out of the Box

My wife says, “They’re all dribbling from the mouth,” and suggests that, while the geniuses at the Department of Defense are thinking “out of the box” they should consider putting padlocks on all the exits from the Pentagon, thereby converting its inhabitants into residents of a giant five-sided facility for the criminally insane.

Journalist Pepe Escobar is one of those remarkable Brazilians like the film director Fernando Meirelles or the photographer Sebastiao Salgado, rich in both human and professional qualities. In fact, all three of them are related to Sao Paulo. The first two were born in that city and Salgado studied economics at the university there.

Escobar was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He currently writes a column called The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is a correspondent and news analyst for The Real News Network. Escobar is the author of two books, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge (Nimble Books, 2007).

On August 30, 2001, less than two weeks before September 11, he wrote a prophetic column for Asia Times Online entitled: “Get Osama! Now! Or Else…“

Here’s a link to the best of Escobar’s columns in Asia Times Online. There’s lots of excellent reporting here dating back to July, 2004.

Take a look at these videos of Escobar´s work as a news analyst for the Real News Network. I think you’ll find a new depth and fresh insights into every subject Escobar touches upon. For me it’s like having a curtain drawn back before my eyes. It makes me realize just how timid and limited is the reporting done on the same subjects by the mainstream media.

Why Did President Bush Go to Iraq?

And this:

McCain’s Song “Bomb Iran” Shows Agenda

And this:

Iran-Pakistan-India Pipeline is On