People Before Profit blog

Synthetic Chemicals in Baby Bottles

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:22:00 +0000

12-30-08, 11:16 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that some baby bottles contain chemicals that can cause health problems for babies? If so, how can I find alternatives that are safer? -- Amy Gorman, Berkeley, CA

No links connecting specific human illnesses to chemicals oozing out of baby bottles have been proven definitively. Nonetheless, many parents are heeding the call of scientists to switch to products with less risk. A 2008 report by American and Canadian environmental researchers entitled “Baby’s Toxic Bottle” found that plastic polycarbonate baby bottles leach dangerous levels of Bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that mimics natural hormones and can send bodily processes into disarray, when heated.

All six of the leading brands of baby bottles tested—Avent, Disney/The First Years, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, Gerber and Playtex—leaked what researchers considered dangerous amounts of BPA. The report calls on major retailers selling these bottles—including Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, CVS, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart—to switch to safer products.

According to the report, BPA is a “developmental, neural and reproductive toxicant that mimics estrogen and can interfere with healthy growth and body function.” Researchers cite numerous animal studies demonstrating that the chemical can damage reproductive, neurological and immune systems during critical stages of development. It has also been linked to breast cancer and to the early onset of puberty.

So what’s a concerned parent to do? Glass bottles are a tried-and-true chemical-free solution, and they are widely available, though very breakable. To the rescue are several companies making BPA-free plastic bottles (out of either PES/polyamide or polypropylene instead of polycarbonate). Some of the leaders are BornFree, thinkbaby, Green to Grow, Nuby, Momo Baby, Mother’s Milkmate and Medela’s. These brands are available at natural foods stores, directly from manufacturers, or from online vendors.

Most of the major brands selling BPA-containing bottles are now also offering or planning to offer BPA-free versions of their products. Consumers should read labels and packaging carefully to make sure that any product they are considering buying says unequivocally that it does not contain the chemical.

Unfortunately, switching to a BPA-free bottle is no guarantee the chemical won’t make its way into your baby’s bloodstream anyway. BPA is one of the 50 most-produced chemicals in the world. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), it is used in everything from plastic water jugs labeled #7 to plastic take-out containers, baby bottles and canned food liners. It is so omnipresent that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has found that 95 percent of Americans have the chemical in their urine.

Also, nursing mothers—especially those who haven’t discarded their old BPA-containing Nalgene water bottles—may be passing the chemical along through their breast milk. And if that weren’t enough, BPA is also used in the lining of many metal liquid baby formula cans. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) has posted email links to the consumer affairs offices of the major formula manufacturers so concerned parents can ask them to remove BPA from their product offerings and packaging.

CONTACTS: Baby’s Toxic Bottle Report, www.chej.org/documents/BabysToxicBottleFinal.pdf; NRDC, www.nrdc.org; CDC, www.cdc.gov; EWG, www.ewg.org.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

From Venture Capitalism to Vulture Capitalism

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:53:00 +0000

12-30-08, 10:47 am

Former US government officials often become either lobbyists or high paid executives for corporations over whom they previously had some regulatory power. They then often return to government much richer than when the left to serve the interests of those corporations. This has been most pronounced of course in the Pentagon and Pentagon-related activities (with the outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney as the most illustrious recent example).

But there is an interesting story in the New York Times this week, titled 'Veterans of ’90s Bailout Hope for Profit in New One,' which, when one reads between the lines, should give us some insight into how capitalists always work to profit from all conditions, including disasters.

The article refers to the former government regulators, now in private practice, who are representing the collapsing institutions of finance capital in their attempt to get as much as they can from the $700 billion dollar. Also, the article looks at their various finance capitalist clients with dreams of buying up these institutions at dirt cheap prices, thanks to public financing.

A key figure in all of this is William Seidman, who chaired the Resolution Trust Corporation which administered the Savings and Loan bailout and is now, according to the Times reporter, both representing various clients and serving as an advisory to both Secretary of the Treasury Paulson and economists of the Obama transition team. (Mother of mercy, is that a conflict of interest?)

If you believe that the masters of capital are moving away from the principle that Oliver Stone immortalized in the film 'Wall Street, 'that is, 'Greed is Good,' get a load of Seidman's comment about his activities. 'It is an enormous market [the battle to both get a piece of the $700 billion and to buy up institutions cheap that government funding will revive] I am really enjoying this.' 'Fortunes will be made here, no doubt about it,' another former Resolution Trust official notes. Another official notes with a bit a guilty glee, that while the financial crisis is a disaster for the nation, 'the opportunity going forward is unprecedented. It is fantastic. It is as if I had been in training for this for the last 40 years of my career.'

These men and their firms see the crisis as a way to make millions for themselves and billions for their clients. They are the 'vultures' of state monopoly capitalism, like the old Wall Street 'bears,' coming in to both buy cheap in the midst of a crisis in which it is public assets that will be sold off. Right now, as Sam Zell, CEO of the bankrupt Tribune Company, who made his fortune buying up Savings and Loan properties in the first great bailout notes 'the best opportunity right now is in the debt area, mortgages. We have been buying all along.'

Millions of people face foreclosure on their homes and 'the best opportunity right now is in the debt area, mortgages.' Tens of millions of workers who live paycheck to paycheck face the possibility of unemployment which will devastate them and their families and prominent figures like William Seidman are 'really enjoying this.' This is the system that praises itself as the foundation of progress and civilization, which defines conduct that would be considered pathological in normal social relations as good?

Immediately I thought of the old Robber Barons, particularly Jay Gould, who set up crises like this to profit from them (sometimes with the inside information of bribed government officials but not with their capital). Establishment scholars used to consider capitalists like Gould as the 'exceptions' to a system in which others, like Morgan and Rockefeller, however destructive their policies were to labor and small capitalists, were nevertheless developing a large corporate industrial system that raised living standards over time. While I never really bought that one, business leaders like Zell and functionaries like Seidman show that under the present decaying system of state monopoly capitalism, figures like Gould are now quite openly the rule rather than the exception.

What this shows is the necessity for a policy to make this 'bailout' very different than the last one. It is time to look seriously at public ownership and forms of regulation that will stop the profiteering, perhaps by making those who be these institutions be subject to various surcharges and other forms of taxation that will return to the public sector the built of the profits which come from them. The Obama transition team should take with a pitcher of salt 'advice' from these former bailout officials. They have little to offer, except perhaps as an example of what not to do in distributing the $700 billion in public investment.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:41:00 +0000

12-30-08, 10:35 am

Original source: Edge of Sports

As supporters of Gay Marriage are have discovered, it's never easy to be on the Mormon Church's enemies list. The Church of Latter Day Saints backed the anti-Gay Marriage Proposition 8 in California with out-of-state funds, and gave the right a heartbreaking victory this past election cycle. But the Mormon Church has been challenged in the past. Just ask Bob Beamon.

If you know Beamon's name it's almost certainly because he won the long jump gold medal in legendary fashion at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Beamon leapt 29 feet, 2.5 inches, a record that held for twenty-three years. Great Britain's Lynn Davies told Beamon afterwards, 'You have destroyed this event.' This is because Beamon was not only the first long jumper to break 29 feet, he was the first to break 28.

But you may not know that Beamon almost never made it to Mexico City. Along with eight other teammates, Beamon had his track and field scholarship revoked from the University of Texas at El Paso, the previous year. They had refused to compete against Brigham Young University. Beamon and his teammates were protesting the racist practices of the Mormon Church, and their coach at UTEP, Wayne Vanderburge, made them pay the ultimate price.

They weren't alone. As tennis great Arthur Ashe wrote in his book, Hard Road to Glory, 'In October 1969, fourteen black [football] players at the University of Wyoming publicly criticized the Mormon Church and appealed to their coach, Lloyd Eaton, to support their right not to play against Brigham Young University. . . . The Mormon religion at the time taught that blacks could not attain to the priesthood, and that they were tainted by the curse of Ham, a biblical figure. Eaton, however, summarily dropped all fourteen players from the squad.'

The players, though, didn't take their expulsion lying down. They called themselves the Black 14 and sued for damages with the support of the NAACP. In an October 25th game against San Jose State, the entire San Jose team wore black armbands to support the 14.

One aftershock of this episode was in November 1969, when Stanford University President Kenneth Pitzer suspended athletic relations with BYU, announcing that Stanford would honor what he called an athlete's 'Right of Conscience.' The 'Right of Conscience' allowed athletes to boycott an event which he or she deemed 'personally repugnant.' As the Associated Press wrote, 'Waves of black protest roll toward BYU, assaulting Mormon belief and leaving BYU officials and students, perplexed, hurt, and maybe a little angry.'

On June 6th, 1978, as teams were refusing road trips to Utah with greater frequency, and the IRS started to make noises about revoking the church's holy tax-free status, a new revelation came to the Book of Mormon.

Whether a cynical ploy to avoid the taxman or a coincidence touched by God, the results were the same: Black people were now human in the eyes of the Church. African Americans were no longer, as Brigham Young himself once put it, 'uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.' The IRS was assuaged, the athletic contests continued, and the church entered a period of remarkable growth.

Similar pressure must be brought to bear on the Mormon Church today for its financing of Proposition 8 in California. One nonprofit crunched the numbers and found that $17.67 million of the $22 million used to pass the anti-gay marriage legislation was funneled through 59,000 Mormon families since August. It was done with the institutional backing of the church, though many pro-gay Mormons have spoken out defiantly against the church's political intervention.

The question now is whether this latest tale of social conflict and the Church of Latter Day Saints will also spill onto the athletic field. Men's athletics have been one of the last proud hamlets of homophobia in our society (although the attitudes of male athletes is more progressive than you might think). But women's sports has been historically more open around issues of sexuality.

Will any women collegians raise the specter of Proposition 8 if they have to travel to the schools of Utah? Will we see the ghosts of Black 14 emerge from the past? If any athletes choose to act, the ramifications could be 'Beamonesque.'

--Dave Zirin is the author of 'A People's History of Sports in the United States' (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

CPUSA Supports Call for Ceasefire in Gaza

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:17:00 +0000

12-30-08, 10:11 am

Original source: Communist Party USA

The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) adds its voice to the growing international call by the United Nations Security Council, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and many others for an immediate cease-fire by both the Israeli government and Hamas, and a return to honest negotiations based on the two-state model.

The Bush administration bears a heavy responsibility for this crisis because of its failure to exert any pressure on Israel to resolve the situation by negotiations, and because of its continued enabling of the Israeli military assault by diplomatic, financial and military means. The massive use of force by the Israeli military has absolutely no justification morally, legally or politically. It has already caused enormous civilian casualties and will cause many more if continued. Nor is there any justification for Hamas' rocket attacks on civilian targets within Israel. They too are irresponsible, provocative, and deadly.

Any incursion of Israeli ground forces into Gaza will also cause massive civilian casualties, as well as qualitatively escalating and perhaps widening the conflict.

There is no military solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict.

We urge the incoming Congress and the Obama administration to break with the failed Bush policies, and take decisive action for a just diplomatic solution that supports the national aspirations of the Palestinian people as well as the true security interest of the Israeli people. Our government should play a leading role in convening an international conference, to include all the countries in the region and without preconditions, to work towards a lasting cease-fire and peace agreement for the region.

We also support calls for allowing the immediate entry of humanitarian aid, as well as an end to the blockade, which causes untold suffering among the people of Gaza.

We urge our members, friends and all peace-loving people to consider the following action proposals to end the bloodshed:

1. Contact the White House to protest US policy and demand emergency negotiations for an immediate cease-fire. Call 202-456-1111 or send an e-mail to comments@whitehouse.gov.

2. Contact your Representative and Senators at 202-224-3121

3. Ask President-elect Obama to pursue a new policy toward Israel/Palestine, and send a message at www.change.gov.

4. Organize or join public protests.

Deaths and Injuries in Gaza Include Hundreds of Non-combatants

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:00:00 +0000

12-30-08, 9:54 am

Editor's note: The US corporate media has reported that the vast majority of deaths in Gaza due to Israeli attacks since Christmas are 'mainly militants,' to quote CNN. Humanitarian groups in Gaza, however, report that hundreds of non-combatants, including women and children have been killed and injured. The following is a detailed report by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights published on Dec. 28th.

251 Palestinians, Mostly Civilians, Including 20 Children and 9 Women, Killed and 584 Others, Including 130 Children and 28 Women, Wounded

Original source: Palestinian Center for Human Rights

For the second consecutive day, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have continued to wage their bloodiest and most brutal war against the Gaza Strip since its occupation in 1967, under an international and Arab conspiracy of silence. In details of PCHR's press release issued yesterday and the attacks that followed, yesterday evening, IOF launched more air strikes against many civilian facilities, including workshops, houses, medical warehouses and even mosques in a grave precedent. IOF war planes have so far continued to fly over the Gaza Strip terrifying the Palestinian civilian population. At night, many Palestinian families received phone calls from the Israeli intelligence, which ordered them to vacate their houses as they would be bombarded. Such phone calls confused Palestinian civilians. PCHR believes that this declared war target Palestinian civilians and their property, and statements of Israeli political and military officials herald a humanitarian catastrophe and a persistent war at all levels. The international community is required more than ever before to immediately act to stop this gravest offensive since the Gaza Strip was first occupied by IOF. According to what PCHR field workers have been able to document so far, the number of civilian victims in the first ten minutes of the offensive against the Gaza Strip is the highest since 1967, and it is higher than the number of victims in the war against Lebanon in 2006.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation in the strongest terms for this bloody war, and calls upon the international community, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, and international organizations to immediately act to stop such grave and unprecedented deterioration in the human rights situation and humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR indicates that its field workers have faced extreme difficulties in documenting crimes due to the dangers of getting close to the areas that were bombarded more than once, and due to the confusion that spread over hospitals because of the high numbers of casualties as these hospitals lack necessary medical equipment. Additionally, many victim have not been identified as they were dismembered, and many of the wounded have not been listed on the records of hospitals.

According to what PCHR field workers have been able to document, the crimes committed by IOF have been as follows:

At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, 27 December 2008, dozens of IOF warplanes launched a wave of air strikes almost the same time throughout the Gaza Strip. This timing indicates that an Israeli decision was taken to cause maximum casualties in the climax of daily activities. It also explains the high number of victims killed or wounded in a few minutes on the bloodiest day during the 41 years of Israeli occupation. The timing of air strikes coincided with the end of the morning period and the beginning of the afternoon period at schools, many of which are located near police stations that were bombarded.

Rafah District

At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, 27 December 2008, IOF warplanes fired several missiles at the Palestinian security compound, which includes buildings of the Palestinian National Security Forces, Internal Security Service and Police, in Abu Baker Street in the center of Rafah, and at a number of training sites of Palestinian resistance groups in Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the west of the town. The targeted buildings were completely destroyed. The attacks were concentrated on the police station, whose vicinity was witnessing active movement of civilians and school children who were on their way to their schools in the area. As a result, 12 Palestinians were killed, including a child, a preacher, an Imam of a mosque, a physician, a nurse and a lawyer. Bodies of the victims were dismembered. Additionally, a mosque and a number of houses, shops, workshops and vehicles were damaged.

At approximately 03:30 on Sunday, 28 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded a smith workshop belonging to Abu Mousa family in al-Junaina neighborhood in the center of Rafah. At approximately 06:50, IOF warplanes bombarded a medical warehouse belonging to the Abu Hashem family in the same area. Fire broke out in the warehouse, where benzene was stored. The fire extended to 5 neighboring houses.

At approximately 07:30, IOF warplanes bombarded a police station, which had been already evacuated, in Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the west of Rafah.

At approximately 08:00, IOF warplanes bombarded a site of the Palestinian National Security Forces in the east of Rafah. Twenty minutes later, IOF warplanes bombarded a naval police station at the coast.

At approximately 10:50, IOF warplanes bombarded the building of Rafah Governorate near Rafah International Crossing Point.

Hospitals in Rafah have admitted 77 Palestinians who were wounded, including 20 children and 3 women. The wounds were described as moderate to serious.

Khan Yunis District

At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, 27 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded sites of the riot control police and the Internal Security Service and the building of the agricultural control department in the west of Khan Yunis. They also bombarded training sites of Palestinian resistance groups and a naval police station in the west and south of Khan Yunis. As a result, 16 Palestinians were killed, including 11 civilians, one of them is a child. Eight of the victims were killed in the attack against the agricultural control department. The victims were on duty.

At approximately 17:30 on the same day, Israeli warplanes bombarded a smith workshop belonging to the al-Jabri family in al-Amal neighborhood in the west of Khan Yunis.

At approximately 20:30, IOF warplanes bombarded and destroyed a cafeteria belonging to Mousa family.

At approximately 03:00 on Sunday, 28 December 2008, Israeli warplanes bombarded a smith workshop belonging to the Baraka family in Bani Suhaila village, east of Khan Yunis.

At approximately 08:30, IOF warplanes bombarded a greenhouse in al-Qarara village, east of Khan Yunis. At the same time, IOF warplanes bombarded agricultural areas in Khuza'a village, east of Khan Yunis, wounding a 14-year-old child seriously.

Hospitals in Khan Yunis have admitted at least 100 Palestinians who were wounded, including 12 children and an old man.

The Central Gaza Strip

At approximately 11:25, IOF warplanes bombarded 15 sites throughout the central Gaza Strip: A civil defense station and a police station in al-Zahraa' town; Fayez Jarad site of the Palestinian National Security Forces near al-Mughraqa village; a police station and a site of the Internal Security Service in Abu Meddain area; a civil defense station, 5 police stations and a site of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas in Deir al-Balah; a site of the National Security Forces in al-Maghazi refugee camp; a site of the National Security Forces in al-Boreij refugee camp; and a site of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades near Gaza Valley.

As a result of these attacks, 84 Palestinians, including 20 civilians, were killed. The victims include two children, one of whom is 3-year-old and was killed while he was at home in al-Zahraa' town and his mother and sister were seriously wounded.

At approximately 02:45 on Sunday, 28 December 2008, Israeli warplanes bombarded a house belonging to the al-Shaf'ei family in al-Boreij refugee camp after ordering the family to vacate it. The house was destroyed and a number of neighboring houses were heavily damaged.

At approximately 09:00, IOF warplanes bombarded a naval police station in al-Nussairat refugee camp.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah has admitted 100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, who were wounded in these attacks.

Gaza District

At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, IOF warplanes bombarded Arafat police compound in the center of Gaza City, where the ceremony of graduation of trained officers was being conducted; the headquarters of the past Preventive Security Service and offices of Wa'ed Society for Prisoners in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the south of Gaza City; al-Mashtal site in the Beach camp in the west of the city; al-'Abbas police station; a bust garage belonging to Hamas near Gaza Harbor; and the headquarters of the Security and Protection Service and the presidential compound in the west of the city. They also bombarded a police station in al-Daraj neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, a site of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas in al-Shoja'iya neighborhood and another one in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in the east of the city; a house belonging to the Humaid family in al-Tuffah neighborhood in the east of the city. At approximately 15:30, IOF warplanes bombarded the main gate of al-Saraya security compound in the center of Gaza City.

At approximately 01:00 on Sunday, 28 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded al-Burno Mosque near Shifa Hospital and two smith workshops belonging to the Khawaja and Abu Jahal families in the center of Gaza City.

At approximately 02:00, IOF warplanes bombarded the building of al-Aqsa Satellite Television in al-Nasser Street in the north of Gaza City.

At approximately 05:00, IOF warplanes bombarded a 3-storey house belonging to the Selmi family in al-Zaytoun neighborhood.

At approximately 08:00, IOF warplanes bombarded al-Shoja'iya police station in the east of Gaza City.

At approximately 09:15, IOF warplanes bombarded a store of weapons in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, a divan of the al-'Ashi family in al-Remal neighborhood and a site of the National Security Forces in al-Nasser neighborhood.

At approximately 10:10, IOF warplanes bombarded a space area in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in the north of Gaza City. Ten minutes later, they bombarded a police vehicle in al-Zaytoun neighborhood.

At approximately 11:00, IOF warplanes bombarded a part of al-Saraya security compound, which includes Gaza Central Prison, in the center of Gaza City.

As a result of these air strikes, 117 Palestinians, including 15 children and 7 women, were killed. The victims include 7 students of UNRWA Vocational Training Center and 3 members of the al-Rayes family. They also include a man and his son from Hwaij family, who were killed while inside their house when IOF warplanes bombarded a house belonging to the Humaid family. According to investigations conducted by PCHR, many victims, including chief of police Major General Tawfiq Jaber, were killed in Araft police compound where the ceremony of the graduation of police officers was being held.

Hospitals in Gaza City have admitted 200 Palestinians who were wounded, including 18 children and 12 women. The wounds were described as moderate to serious. At least 35 of the wounded have been receiving medical treatment at intensive care units.

The Northern Gaza Strip

At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, 27 December 2008, IOF warplanes bombarded a number of sites of Palestinian security services and training sites. As a result, 21 Palestinians, including 2 women and 3 staff members of the Palestinian Telecommunication Company, were killed.

The sites that were bombarded are:

· 'Abdul 'Aziz al-Rantissi site in the west of Jabalya, in which 9 security men were killed and dozens of others were wounded.

· The naval police station in the west of Beit Lahia, in which 3 security men were killed and dozens of others were wounded.

· The building of Palestinian National Security Forces in the east of Jablaya, in addition to a site of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades and a room of the Palestinian Telecommunication Company, where a passing woman, 3 staff members of the company and 3 members of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades were killed.

· A site of Palestinian National Security Forces in the west of Beit Hanoun.

· A space area in al-Amal neighborhood in Beit Hanoun, where two civilians, including a woman, were killed.

PCHR strongly condemns such series of war crimes being committed by IOF in the Gaza Strip, and:

1) Reiterates its call for the international community, especially the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international organizations to immediately intervene to stop such unprecedented deterioration in the human rights situation and humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.

2) Reminds that police stations, police officers and law enforcement officials are classified under the international law as civilians, and targeting them as such while they were not engaged in military action constitutes a violation of the international law.

3) Points out that the majority of the buildings and sites that were attacked are located in civilian-populated areas, so scores of houses were heavily damaged. Such attacks are an indication of Israeli disregard for the lives and safety of Palestinian civilians, which can be seen in the high number of civilian victims.

4) Calls upon States and international organizations to provide urgent humanitarian and medical assistance to the Gaza Strip, which has been under a tightened siege impacting all aspects of lives, especially health conditions, as hospitals in the Gaza Strip are unable to treat such high number of casualties.

A Poem for Gaza

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:49:00 +0000

12-30-08, 9:43 am

I never knew death until I saw the bombing of a refugee camp Craters filled with disfigured ankles and splattered torsos But no sign of a face, the only impression a fading scream I never understood pain Until a seven-year-old girl clutched my hand Stared up at me with soft brown eyes, waiting for answers But I didn't have any I had muted breath and dry pens in my back pocket That couldn't fill pages of understanding or resolution

In her other hand she held the key to her grandmother's house But I couldn't unlock the cell that caged her older brothers They said, we slingshot dreams so the other side will feel our father's presence A craftsman Built homes in areas where no one was building And when he fell, he was silent A .50 caliber bullet tore through his neck shredding his vocal cords Too close to the wall His hammer must have been a weapon He must have been a weapon Encroaching on settlement hills and demographics

So his daughter studies mathematics Seven explosions times eight bodies Equals four Congressional resolutions Seven Apache helicopters times eight Palestinian villages Equals silence and a second Nakba Our birthrate minus their birthrate Equals one sea and 400 villages re-erected One state plus two peoples…and she can't stop crying Never knew revolution or the proper equation Tears at the paper with her fingertips Searching for answers But only has teachers Looks up to the sky and see stars of David demolishing squalor with hellfire missiles

She thinks back words and memories of his last hug before he turned and fell Now she pumps dirty water from wells, while settlements divide and conquer And her father's killer sits beachfront with European vernacular She thinks back words, while they think backwards Of obscene notions and indigenous confusion

This our land!, she said She's seven years old This our land!, she said And she doesn't need a history book or a schoolroom teacher She has these walls, this sky, her refugee camp She doesn't know the proper equation But she sees my dry pens No longer waiting for my answers Just holding her grandmother's key…searching for ink

--Remi Kanazi is the editor of the recently released collection of poetry, spoken word, hip hop and art, Poets For Palestine.

78,000 Cubans Benefited from Operation Miracle

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:47:00 +0000

12-30-08, 9:41 am

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 29 (acn) More than 78,000 Cubans were operated on from their eye problems in 2008, stated sources from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) in Havana on Monday.

MINSAP Deputy Minister, Joaquin Garcia, told the press that, from July 2004 to date, more than 1,300,000 patients from 32 nations were operated on in Cuba and in the 59 eye hospitals donated by the archipelago to 15 states under the Cuban-Venezuelan Operation Miracle program, aimed at restoring or improving the vision of people with low resources.

Among other achievements, he mentioned the decrease of infant mortality, and the elimination of another nine infectious diseases, which are no longer a health problem.

He highlighted the good condition of health of the Cuban population, with indicators similar to those of rich countries but, unlike them, with a tendency toward social homogeneity, free health care, and the availability of health services for all citizens.

He announced that 2008 will close with an infant mortality rate below five per every 1,000 live births.

Another ten Cuban pharmaceuticals were registered in 2008. Among the results of the scientific area are 91 projects and products aimed at health care, 33 of them related to therapeutic vaccines, added the top official.

Garcia said that the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology already has 140 patents, while the Center for Molecular Immunology has 120. He highlighted the internationalist concept of the Cuban health system, which now has 72,000 doctors. He also made reference to 1959, when Cuba was left with only 3,000 doctors after the exodus encouraged by Washington.

From 1961 to date, some 185,000 health professionals and technicians have fulfilled internationalist missions in 103 Third World nations.

Also outstanding is the massive training of human resources in this field, for Cuba and for other regions of the planet.

Among other specialties, some 96,000 physicians, about 14,000 dentists, over 37, 000 infirmary graduates and 1,200 health technicians have graduated in Cuba since 1959.

From the Cuban News Agency

Book Review: 2666, by Roberto Bolaño

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:43:00 +0000

12-30-08, 9:37 am

2666 Roberto Bolaño New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Translated by Natasha Wimmer.

Women and girls in the fictional Northern Mexico city of Santa Teresa are being murdered. Law enforcement officials, riddled with incompetence and corruption, have few clues and do not seem overly concerned. The women, whom Bolaño catalogs in great detail, sometimes in precise forensic detail, in the novel's massive middle section, are maquiladora workers, students and prostitutes. Many are not even identified before being handed over to the local student hospital or buried in the public grave.

Bolaño's widely acclaimed novel, 2666, is presented in five parts, originally intended as five separate novels. Bolaño didn't make much money as a writer until his novel The Savage Detectives made a huge splash in its 2007 English translation – four years after the Mexican-Chilean author died of liver cancer.

Before his death, Bolaño had asked that 2666 be published as five separate books in order that whatever proceeds he earned from their publication might go to his surviving family. Five years after his death and the publication of the novel in its nearly 900-page entirety, Bolaño's latest work has been recognized as one of the finest novels of 2008.

2666 opens in the European academy. Four scholars begin an investigation into the life of a well-known German novelist. Their search for him and the details of his life leads them to Santa Teresa, Mexico where he was seen last. While there, they encounter a depressed Mexican academic obsessed with a book hanging on his clothes line and a mysterious black car stalking his neighborhood. During their brief visit to the city, the academics learn about the serial murders that have taken the lives of more than 200 women. But for them, the search for a missing German novelist seems more consequential.

The detailed and relentless cataloging of the deaths of hundreds of women in the border city of Santa Teresa in the novel's longest part, titled 'The Part About the Crimes,' serves as a lens through which readers witness the brutality of a modern society whose fabric has been torn by the exigencies of global capitalism, internal and external migration, and the dehumanization of the characters who people this nightmarish landscape.

At one point the narrator tells of an episode in which two young girls are kidnapped on the street in broad daylight in front of their two younger sisters. The younger sisters run to a neighbor's house, as their own parents are at work in a local maquiladora. The neighbor, who has to go to a public phone because she has none in her house, tries to call the parents at work, but her attempts are met with refusal by the telephone operator at the factory who rejects all 'personal' calls. Writes Bolaño:

'Despondent, [the girls' neighbor] went back to her house, to the other neighbor woman and the girls, and for a while the four of them experienced what it was like to be in purgatory, a long, helpless wait, a wait that begins and ends in neglect, a very Latin American experience, as it happened, and all too familiar, something that once you thought about it you realized you experienced daily, minus the despair, minus the shadow of death sweeping over the neighborhood like a flock of vultures and casting its pall, upsetting all routines, leaving everything overturned.'

(At this point, it is worth noting that the present action of the novel occurs mainly in the late 1990s, prior to the emergence of the new Latin American left and its bid to shed the dominance of North American imperialism. It is also worth noting that Bolaño's sojourn in Mexico began in the 1970s as a college student after his family fled the Pinochet dictatorship for having supported the socialist government of Salvador Allende.)

Indeed, it is the violence and murder, the brutality of the crimes that upsets the routine of this neglected life. While some individuals on the police force want to solve the murders, the higher-ups are unmoved. When a car linked to a number of the murders turns out to be a make and model of car often used by the older children of the city's elite families, pressure is applied to the police to stop pursuing that lead.

In an earlier part of the novel, an African American journalist named Fate travels to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match. When he learns about the crimes, his journalistic curiosity is piqued, but his editor refuses to allow him time and resources to write an article on them. At one point, someone tells him, 'No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.'

Indeed, the secret of the world. Hidden in the killings of women deemed inconsequential and replaceable is the mystery of power and corruption, labor and life, a struggle for survival that is lost in the anonymous back alleys and basements of the all too real globalized city.

Dire Humanitarian Situation Looms in Gaza

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:50:00 +0000

12-29-08, 12:45 pm

Original source: IRIN News

GAZA CITY, 29 December 2008 (IRIN) - As a result of a major offensive on 27 December by Israel against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, a dire humanitarian situation looms, according to aid officials.

Gaza had been teetering on the edge of such a crisis even before the Israeli offensive: Humanitarian access to Gaza has been severely restricted by Israel since early November.

Now infrastructure in several areas has been destroyed, leaving residents without electricity and water.

On 28 December Oxfam said it had been forced to temporarily suspend most of its humanitarian work in Gaza because of the bombing, and a programme which will feed 25,000 people has also been put on hold.

Only UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been able to send staff to Gaza since early November.

'Since 3 November Oxfam Great Britain's requests for the coordination of 10 staff members to enter and exit Gaza have been denied,' said Oxfam administrator Mohammed Abu-Gharbieh.

The death toll in Gaza has risen to over 300, but Hamas says rocket-fire into Israel will continue. One Israeli civilian was killed on 27 December by a missile fired by militants from Gaza and a second civilian was killed on 29 December.

Home to 1.5 million Palestinians, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Shortage of medical supplies

“Our capabilities are limited. Since August we have not received basic medications. The ICRC, which usually delivers 60 types of medication, has been unable to deliver a shipment for one month” said health ministry spokesperson Hamam Nasman.

“One hundred and five drugs and 230 basic supplies, like alcohol, cotton, needles, and IVs [intravenous drips] are out of stock.”

About 50 percent of Gaza’s 200 ambulances are not working due to the lack of spare parts, according to the head of ambulances and emergency care at the health ministry, Mawia Hassanin. As a result, victims were being brought to hospitals in private cars, donkey carts, and some were being carried by others on foot.

Air strikes

“Eight students from Gaza Vocational Training Centre in Gaza City were killed and 20 injured… by an air strike,” said UNRWA [UN Palestinian agency for refugees] spokesperson Sami Mshasha. “Two UNRWA teachers were also killed.”

Numerous targets were attacked in the Israeli offensive which continued on 29 December, including the presidential compound, security and police headquarters, the central prison in Gaza City and five mosques.

“At least 55 women and children in Gaza have been killed in Israeli air strikes since Saturday [27 December],” according to a tally by a UN aid agency, said Mshasha.

The attack follows a decision by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet to escalate Israel's response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza against southern Israeli communities.

The Israeli army said on 27 December that the air strikes 'will continue, will be expanded, and will deepen if necessary.'

“UNRWA recognises Israel’s legitimate security concerns. However, its actions should be in conformity with international humanitarian law and it should not use disproportionate force,” said Commissioner-General of UNRWA Karen AbuZayd.

Israeli goals

Israel has two goals, according to the spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Mark Regev: “To create a new security environment in Israel and to protect the population in the south.”

UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness in Jerusalem said: “It is virtually impossible to run or to do large-scale planning for such a humanitarian operation. We feed more than 750,000 people in Gaza. The World Food Programme feeds over 200,000 people in Gaza. We do cash distributions to 94,000 people. To conduct an aid operation of this scale - given the drip drip drip on and off policy of supplies into Gaza - it’s become virtually impossible.”

UNRWA stopped distributing food in Gaza on 18 December.

Bailout Blackout: Demand Full Accounting

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:06:00 +0000

12-29-08, 9:59 am

Some $350 billion in taxpayer cash has been handed over to the biggest banks in the country without oversight or even the slightest curiosity by the US government about what has been done with the money.

A recent Associated Press investigation of some of the banks that received billions of dollars as part of the bailout revealed that most of the banks have no intention of letting anyone, especially taxpayers, know what has happened to the money.

According to the AP, a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase, which took $25 billion from taxpayers, said, 'We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it.' We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to.'

'We're choosing not to disclose that,' said the spokesperson for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 billion, when asked about his banks use of the cash.

A survey of several other banks that took billions from the federal government's Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, declined to tell AP what they have been doing with the money.

Other investigations have shown, however, that some of the biggest banks have continued to pay their CEOs and other top executives hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries and even millions more in bonuses. Many of the banks have continued to pay for private corporate jets for their executives as well as expensive weekend getaways.

AIG, the massive insurance corporation, for example, spent $442,000 on a lavish corporate spa retreat just days after receiving $85 billion of taxpayer money. Some of the bailout money has gone to prop up banks in other countries.

While the Bush administration's rationale for the program was to loosen the credit markets in order to stimulate economic activity, many banks seemed to either have hoarded the money or have used it to buy up other banks, according to media reports.

For example, Bank of America, which took $15 billion in taxpayer funds, has recently increased its holdings in the China Construction Bank Corp. Meanwhile, only after a four-day sit-in by workers, the threat of a boycott by the state of Illinois, and massive political pressure, including a statement by President-elect Obama siding with the workers, at Republic Windows and Doors, a Chicago factory owned partially by the Bank of America, did the bank agree to extend credit to the factory management in order to settle back pay to laid-off workers.

In other words, instead of doing what TARP was supposed to do – loosen credit to keep people working – the Bank of America only provided a new line of credit to Republic Windows and Doors after being exposed.

The lack of accounting has angered many people. In a recent e-mail to its members, MoveOn.org circulated a national petition calling for a halt to spending additional TARP funds until banks provide a public accounting of what they have done with the money.

'Wall Street brought our economy to its knees through bad lending and complex financial instruments based on little more than air,' the MoveOn.org e-mail noted. 'Then Wall Street got took our bailout money and seems to have spent it on everything BUT getting the economy moving.'

How Much Old Growth Forests Do We Have Left?

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:48:00 +0000

12-28-08, 10:42 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: How much “old growth” forest is left in the United States and is it all protected from logging at this point? -- John Foye, via e-mail

As crazy as it sounds, no one really knows how much old growth is left in America’s forested regions, mainly because various agencies and scientists have different ideas about how to define the term. Generally speaking, “old growth” refers to forests containing trees often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old. But even when there is agreement on a specific definition, differences in the methods used to inventory remaining stands of old growth forest can produce major discrepancies. Or so complains the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF) in its recent report, “Beyond Old Growth: Older Forests in a Changing World.”

In 1991, for example, the U.S. Forest Service and the nonprofit Wilderness Society each released its own inventory of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and northern California. They both used the Forest Service’s definition based on the number, age and density of large trees per acre, the characteristics of the forest canopy, the number of dead standing trees and fallen logs and other criteria. However, because each agency used different remote sensing techniques to glean data, the Forest Service came up with 4.3 million acres of old-growth and the Wilderness Society found only two million acres.

The NCSSF also studied the data, and they concluded that 3.5 million acres (or six percent) of the region’s 56.8 million acres of forest qualified as old growth—that is, largely trees over 30 inches in diameter with complex forest canopies. By broadening the definition to include older forest with medium-diameter trees and both simple and complex canopies, NCSSF said their figure would go up substantially.

In other parts of the country, less than one percent of Northeast forest is old growth, though mature forests that will become old growth in a few decades are more abundant. The Southeast has even less acreage—a 1993 inventory found about 425 old growth sites across the region, equaling only a half a percent of total forest area. The Southwest has only a few scattered pockets of old-growth (mostly Ponderosa Pine), but for the most part is not known for its age-old trees. Old-growth is even scarcer in the Great Lakes.

It is hard to say whether the remaining pockets of scattered old-growth in areas besides the Pacific Northwest will remain protected, but environmentalists are working hard to save what they can in northern California, Oregon and Washington. The outgoing Bush administration recently announced plans to increase logging across Oregon’s remaining old-growth reserves by some 700 percent, in effect overturning the landmark Northwest Forest Plan of 1994 that set aside most of the region’s remaining old growth as habitat for the endangered spotted owl.

Protecting remaining old-growth is important for many reasons. “These areas provide some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, critical salmon and wildlife habitat, world-class recreational opportunities and critical carbon storage in our fight against global warming,” says Jonathan Jelen of the nonprofit Oregon Wild, adding that as much as 20 percent of the emissions related to global warming can be attributed to deforestation and poor forest management. “A growing body of evidence is showing the critical role that forests—and old-growth forests in particular—can play in mitigating climate change.”

CONTACTS: NCSSF, http://ncseonline.org/NCSSF/; Oregon Wild, www.oregonwild.org

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Stop US Low-flight Exercises in Japan

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:45:00 +0000

12-28-08, 10:39 am

Original source: Akahata

Sonic booms from low-altitude flight training exercises conducted by US military aircraft are disturbing residents across Japan and causing growing concerns about possible plane crashes.

The number of the low-flight exercises is said to have decreased. However, residents are still complaining in Hokkaido, some prefectures in northeast Japan, Gunma, and Nagano prefectures as well as in mountain areas in the southwestern region that includes Hiroshima Prefecture, plus Tokara Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture.

The recent FA-18D Hornet crash that killed residents in the United States added fear among residents in these regions.

If the safety of residents is to be ensured, a halt to low-altitude flight exercises is indispensable. No attempt simply to “minimize adverse impacts” will be effective.

Flying at an altitude below 150 meters

US military aircraft flying at high speeds are buzzing the ground while scattering the area with thunderous noise. Their shock waves actually break the widows of buildings. After appearing suddenly, they leave behind sonic booms that could cause “heart attacks” to residents. How can residents live in peace under such circumstances?

At the House of Councilors meeting on April 18, Japanese Communist Party representative Nihi Sohei demanded that the government take effective measures to stop the US low-flight exercises.

Defense Minister Ishiba Shigeru responded by saying, “After being exposed to the thunderous noise, I myself shared the great fear expressed by local people concerned.” If he really shared the fear, why did he leave the matter unchecked?

Alleging that their lawless flights in Japan are in accordance with domestic laws, the government has made no effort to regulate such flights. Many witnessed US warplanes flying below the altitude of 300 meters over densely populated areas and as low as about 150 meters in other areas, which is in violation of the Aviation Law.

While the Japanese government kept on ignoring the testimonies of witnesses, the US Forces in Japan officially replied to the Tokushima Prefectural Government last August that US aircraft were flying below the 150-meter level over non-densely populated areas.

Ignoring local requests, the government has made no inquiry into these illegal flights.

The government must stop accepting the low-flight exercises by foreign troops and take urgent steps to address residents’ concerns.

The government gives priority to low-flight exercises over the safety of residents because it has determined that nothing is more important than the Japan-US Security Treaty.

The government went so far as to say that maintaining and improving US air force pilots’ maneuverability skills through low-flight exercises is “essential for maintaining US forces’ operational capabilities in a state of readiness.

Low-flight exercises are not meant to ensure Japan’s safety. They are designed to meet the US strategy of launching preemptive strikes as part of the US military intervention policy anywhere in the world.

The low-flight exercises are intended to help pilots to increase their skill to access to enemy targets and strike them while avoiding radar detection in enemy areas.

How can Japan allow the US to continue such low-flight exercises to enhance their capabilities in lawless wars?

Negotiation with US is necessary to stop low-flight exercises

In the light of the Constitution safeguarding the right of the people to live in peace, how can it be allowed to expose residents to the possible danger of crashes of U.S. aircraft and rob them of their right to live in peace?

It is very arrogant for Nishimiya Shin’ichi, the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s North American Bureau director, to state at the House of Representatives committee on National Land and Transportation on December 14 that “Japan should be careful in requesting the US to suspend their low-flight exercises in Japan.”

It is high-time for the Japanese government to reconsider its subservience to the United States, and carry out negotiations with the US so that their low-flight exercises be discontinued.

The Unfinished Line

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:39:00 +0000

12-28-08, 10:33 am

Apparently one grand old racing car circuit is moving forward and another is moving backwards. Not surprisingly, it's the American circuit who's tires are stuck in reverse. I've been remiss on reporting on a Black driver in auto racing's most famous circuit, Formula One (F1) AKA the European Grand Prix. Truth be told, I've followed F1 for decades. Those colorful open wheel cars with the high horsepower engines of exotic vehicles such as Ferrari, BMV, Porsche etc., and the long sharp-turn highway tracks always appealed to me over the long oval and circular redundant tracks of the American auto racing leagues.

Since the '80's, I've seen some of the greatest drivers ever compete in F1; Alan Prost, the late-great-Ayrton Senna,and the best racer ever in my opinion, Michael Shummacher. The F1 season just recently ended last month and the final point standing show a dead heat between two of the top 10 drivers; Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) with 98 points, and Felipe Massa (Ferrari) with 97. The pleasent surprise about Hamilton is he is Black (OK Black father, white mother for you armchair gene splicers). The 2nd Black driver to drive an F1 vehicle and the first to complete a full season of competition. The scary thing about Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton (named after track star Carl Lewis) is this is only his second year year. He just missed winning it all last year by the same margin, setting many rookie records along the way. This year he nailed it with a final lap pass to finish 5th in the Brazilian Grand Prix in San Paulo, this also made him the youngest ever (23) to win an F1 title.

Hamilton's relationship with F1 began when he was only 10-years-old. The story goes, his idol then was Senna and he met the boss of Senna's McLaren team Ron Dennis and told him he wanted to drive for him some day (Lewis was already accomplished in go-cart racing) and Dennis replied to young Lewis to see him in 9 years. That kid was a natural, he had so much success in the junior racing circuts, Dennis looked him up.

I'm not implying that there is no racism directed toward Hamilton. The worst he's recieved is from Spanish fans, and the root of that has to do with a rivalry with a Spanish ex-teammate. Evidently there hasn't been any racism from the F1 officials. A huge difference from black drivers in the American circuits, who have a tough time even attracting sponsors the same way black basketball, football, baseball and even soccer players and teams traditionally have.

America's most famous car racing league; the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is still showing no signs of accepting blacks in any capacity even at this late date. They stick by their racism no matter what the cost. As of now it cost them around $225 million. Understand NASCAR has been saturated with rednecks ever since their days in the Grand National Series (later called Winston Cup, Nextel Cup and now Sprint Cup) back in1949. It's not that Black drivers are completely foriegn to them. Back in the early '60's there was Wendell Scott, and I recall Willey T. Ribbs with Winston Cup and CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) before he retired.

In truth only six Black drivers followed Scott (who retired in '73), Elias Bowie, Charlie Scott, George Willshire, Randy Bethea, Ribbs and Bill Lester. Of all of them Ribbs has had the longest and the most accomplished career. In '86 he became the first Black to drive a formula one car (from Brabham, Portugal), from '90-94 he drove open wheel again, this time for CART in a car owned by Bill Cosby. During that period he became the first black driver to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 in '91, and drove for another CART team in '94.

Although NASCAR makes claims of reaching out to the Black community to encourage Black involvement not only with drivers, but also technical crews and administration, recent news show their problems with race are too thorough and start from the top down. What NASCAR has had a hard time with lately is their acceptence of a Black female official; 32-year-old Mauricia Grant. From 1/05 to 10/07 Grant was a technical inspector whose responsibility was to certify cars.

Allegedly she has endured 23 incidents of sexual harassment and 34 incidents of race and gender discrimination, being referred to as a 'nappy-headed mo' and 'Queen Sheba' by co-workers. In other instances male co-workers have exposed themselves in front of her. Talk about NASTYCAR, of course at some point she was fired, of the 17 named in Ms. Grant's suit only twowere fired later on. Being a southern-born sports league and one of the last bastions of Confederate influence, NASCAR makes no apologies even in the era of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama.

Ribbs – though heaping praise upon CART – was known to be very critical of NASCAR, pummeling them with names like 'Neck Car' and 'WWE.' Evidently the circuit's racism is as cirular and persistent as their tracks. NASCAR doesn't have to make change as painful as they do, it's going to come sooner or later. There are legions of black drivers from American cities racing for various local associations, and within some of these can be found the next Wendell Scotts, Willey T. Ribbs, and Lewis Hamiltons.

--Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Challenger, contact him at pointblankdta@yahoo.com.

Inquisiciones sobre el paradigma, Entrevista a Eduardo Galeano

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:36:00 +0000

12-28-08, 10:31 am

I. Pasado

Jorge Majfud: Una visión humanista considera la historia como un producto humano, es decir, producto de la libertad de sus individuos y de los diversos grupos que la han realizado e interpretado. Una visión antihumanista afirma que, por el contrario, esos individuos y esos grupos son el resultado de la historia misma y su libertad es una ilusión. Si me permitís una limitación artificial dentro de este posible espectro, ¿dónde te situarías?

Eduardo Galeano: Por lo que tengo caminado y escuchado, me da la impresión de que nosotros hacemos la historia que nos hace. Cuando la historia que hacemos nos sale más bien chueca, o es usurpada por los pocos que entre nosotros mandan, decimos que ella, la historia, tiene la culpa.

J. M.: En esta visión no hay lugar para el determinismo materialista o para algún tipo de fatalismo religioso…

E. G.: Los fatalismos son cómodos, te permiten dormir a pata suelta, el destino está escrito en los astros, la historia camina sola, no te amargues, hay que aceptar o aceptar. Los fatalismos mienten, porque si la vida no es una aventura de la libertad, que alguien venga y me explique si vale la pena vivir. Pero ojo: también mienten los iluminados, los elegidos que se atribuyen el poder de cambiar la realidad tocándola con su varita mágica: y si la realidad no me obedece, no me merece.

J. M.: Si el tiempo de las revoluciones modernas, es decir, de las revoluciones abruptas y violentas ha pasado, ¿es la progresión o la resistencia la mejor alternativa en nuestro tiempo?

E. G.: Andá a saber cuántos mundos hay dentro del mundo, y cuántos tiempos dentro del tiempo. La historia camina con nuestras piernas, pero a veces anda a paso muy lento, y a veces parece quieta. De todos modos, cuando los cambios vienen de abajo, desde lo hondo, a la corta o a la larga ellos encuentran su camino, al ritmo que quieren o pueden. Desde abajo, digo, desde el pie, como cantó Zitarrosa. Lo único que se hace desde arriba son los pozos.

J. M.: En tu último libro Espejos realizás un esfuerzo al mismo tiempo creativo y arqueológico sobre un vasto espacio geográfico y temporal. ¿Qué períodos de la historia crees que se llevarían el premio mayor a la crueldad y la injusticia?

E. G.: Hay demasiados favoritos en ese campeonato.

J. M.: Bueno, más puntual, ¿podrías resumir la crueldad en una imagen, en una situación que te ha tocado vivir?

E. G.: Me ocurrió hace años, en un camión que atravesaba la selva del alto Paraná. Salvo yo, era toda gente de ese mapa. Nadie hablaba. Íbamos muy apretados, en la caja del camión, a los tumbos. A mi lado, una mujer muy pobre, con un bebé en brazos. El bebé ardía de fiebre, se quejaba. Ella sólo dijo que precisaba un médico, que en alguna parte tenía que haber un médico. Y por fin llegamos a alguna parte, no sé cuántas horas habían pasado, hacía mucho que el bebé no se quejaba. Ayudé a que aquella mujer bajara del camión. Cuando recogí el bebé, vi que estaba muerto. El asesino que había cometido esa crueldad era todo un sistema de poder, que no iba preso ni viajaba en camiones destartalados.

J. M.: Con memorias como esa deberíamos terminar aquí. Pero el mundo sigue girando. ¿Crees que el pasado precolombino ha sobrevivido tantos años de colonización y modernización, tanto como para definir una forma latinoamericana de ser, de sentir y hasta de pensar?

E. G.: Desde hace siglos, los dioses acuden, quién sabe cómo, desde el pasado americano y desde la selva africana y desde todas partes. Muchos de esos dioses viajan con otros nombres y usan pasaportes falsos, porque sus religiones se llaman supersticiones y ellos siguen condenados a la clandestinidad. II. Presente

J. M.: ¿Estamos presenciando el fin del capitalismo, de un paradigma basado en el consumismo y el éxito financiero, o simplemente se trata de una crisis más de la que saldrá fortalecido el mismo sistema, la misma cultura hegemónica?

E. G.: Con frecuencia recibo convites para asistir al entierro del capitalismo. Bien sabemos, sin embargo, que vivirá más de siete vidas este sistema que privatiza sus ganancias pero tiene la amabilidad de socializar sus pérdidas, y por si fuera poco nos convence de que eso es filantropía. En gran medida, el capitalismo se nutre del desprestigio de sus alternativas. La palabra socialismo, por ejemplo, ha sido vaciada de significado, por la burocracia que la usó en nombre del pueblo y por la socialdemocracia que en su nombre modernizó el look del capitalismo. Sabemos que este sistema capitalista se las está arreglando bastante bien para sobrevivir a las catástrofes que desata. No sabemos, en cambio, cuántas vidas podrá vivir su víctima principal, el planeta que habitamos, exprimido hasta la última gota. ¿Adónde nos mudaremos, cuando el planeta quede sin agua, sin tierra, sin aire? La empresa Lunar International ya está vendiendo lotes en la luna. A fines del 2008, el multimillonario ruso Roman Abramovich le regaló un terrenito a la novia.

J. M.: Quizás presume ser el primer hombre que le regala un pedazo de la Luna a una mujer, lo que viene a ser una especia de capitalismo romántico. ¿Crees que si China, por ejemplo, tuviese una economía hegemónica pronto se convertiría en un nuevo imperio, avasallante y colonialista como cualquier otro imperio?

E. G.: Si yo fuera profeta profesional, me moriría de hambre. No acierto ni en el fútbol, que de eso sí que algo sé. Todo lo que te puedo decir es lo que puedo ver: China está poniendo en práctica una exitosa combinación de dictadura política, al viejo estilo comunista, con una economía que funciona al servicio del mercado mundial capitalista. China puede proporcionar, así, baratísima mano de obra a empresas norteamericanas como Wal Mart, que prohíbe los sindicatos.

J. M.: A propósito, en el último “viernes negro”, el día del año en que en Estados Unidos las grandes cadenas de supermercados venden al costo, una avalancha de compradores no pudo esperar a que abrieran las puertas de uno de estos Wal Marts y se llevó por delante a un empleado. El hombre murió aplastado… A pesar de todo este absurdo, ¿podemos pensar que la humanidad se encuentra en un mayor estado de derechos individuales y de conciencia colectiva? ¿Qué es lo mejor de nuestro tiempo?

E. G.: En el siglo veinte, la justicia fue sacrificada en nombre de la libertad, y la libertad fue sacrificada en nombre de la justicia. Ya nuestro tiempo es el siglo veintiuno, y lo mejor que tiene es el desafío que contiene: nos invita a luchar para ayudar al reencuentro de la justicia y la libertad. Ellas quieren vivir bien pegaditas, espalda contra espalda.

J. M.: ¿Podemos comparar la aparición Internet con la revolución que produjo la imprenta en el siglo XV?

E. G.: No tengo ni idea, pero valga la ocasión para recordar que la imprenta no nació en el siglo XV. Los chinos la habían inventado dos siglos antes. En realidad, eran chinas las tres invenciones que hicieron posible el Renacimiento europeo: la imprenta, la brújula y la pólvora. No sé si ahora habrá mejorado la educación, pero antes aprendíamos una historia universal reducida a la historia de Europa. De Medio Oriente, nada o casi nada. Ni una palabra sobre China, nada sobre la India. Y del África, sólo sabíamos lo que nos enseñaba el profesor Tarzán, que nunca estuvo allí. Y del pasado americano, del mundo precolombino, alguna cosita folklórica, unas cuantas plumas de colores… y chau.

J. M.: ¿Cuál es el mayor peligro del progreso tecnológico en la comunicación?

E. G.: En la comunicación, y en todo lo demás. Las máquinas no son ningunas santas, pero no tienen la culpa de lo que nosotros hacemos con ellas. El mayor peligro está en que la computadora nos programe, como el automóvil nos maneja. Con asombrosa facilidad, nos convertimos en instrumentos de nuestros instrumentos.

J. M.: Como escritor y como lector, ¿qué tipo de lecturas te ocupan mayor tiempo hoy?

E. G.: Yo leo de todo, empezando por las paredes que acompañan mis pasos por las calles de las ciudades.

J. M.: Es la crueldad y la injusticia el mayor provocador de la literatura de Eduardo Galeano?

E. G.: No. Si así fuera, ya me hubiera enfermado de irremediable tristeza. Por suerte soy preguntón, curioso de nacimiento, y ando siempre buscando la tercera orilla del río, ese misterioso lugar donde se juntan el horror y el humor.

J. M.: ¿Por qué crees que será recordado nuestro tiempo en los siglos por venir?

E. G.: ¿Será recordado? ¿Habrá siglos por venir? Dios te oiga, y si Dios está sordo, que te oiga el Diablo. III. Futuro

J. M.: ¿Eduardo, creés que el mundo se dirigirá a un mayor equilibrio de sus fracciones geográficas, sociales y culturales o, por el contrario, estamos condenados a repetir las mismas formas de lo que hoy consideramos violencia física y moral?

E. G.: Condenados, no estamos. El destino es un desafío, aunque a primera vista parezca una maldición.

J. M.: ¿Una mejora de nuestro presente radica mayormente en la profundización de los valores humanistas de la tradición europea o en una revalorización de un origen perdido en los pueblos “periféricos”?

E. G.: La tradición europea no alcanza. Los americanos somos hijos de muchas madres. Europa sí, pero hay también otras madres. Y no sólo los americanos. Los humanitos todos, el mundo entero es mucho más que lo que cree ser. Pero el arcoiris terrestre no brillará, en todo su lucerío, mientras siga mutilado por el racismo, el machismo, el militarismo, el elitismo y todos esos ismos que nos niegan la plenitud de nuestra diversidad. Y dicho sea de paso, no viene mal aclarar que los valores humanistas de la tradición europea se desarrollaron mientras Europa exterminaba indios en América y vendía carne humana en África. John Locke, el filósofo de la libertad, era accionista de una empresa negrera.

J. M.: Sí, algo así como las democracias imperiales, desde la antigua Atenas hasta Estados Unidos. ¿Pero quiere decir eso que la historia se repite siempre?

E. G.: Ella no quiere repetirse, eso no le gusta ni un poquito, pero muy frecuentemente nosotros la obligamos. Por ponerte un ejemplo muy actual, hay partidos que llegan al gobierno prometiendo un programa de izquierda, y terminan repitiendo lo que la derecha hacía. ¿Por qué no dejan que la derecha lo siga haciendo, ya que tiene experiencia? Se aburre la historia, y se desprestigia la democracia, cuando se nos invita a elegir entre lo mismo y lo mismo.

J. M.: ¿Qué rol cumplen hoy en la sociedad los intelectuales “no orgánicos”? ¿Siguen siendo, al menos en una minoría, una fuerza crítica y provocadora?

E. G.: Yo creo que escribir no es una pasión inútil. Pero esa generalización, “los intelectuales”, orgánicos o no orgánicos, no se parece mucho al mundo real. Hay de todo en la viña del Señor. En mi caso, te puedo decir que trabajo con palabras, que soy un inútil total y eso es lo único que me sale más o menos bien, y que me consta, por experiencia propia y ajena, que el acto de la lectura es una secreta, y a veces fecunda, ceremonia de comunión. Quien lee algo que de veras vale la pena, no lee impunemente. Leer un libro de esos que respiran cuando te los ponés al oído, no te deja intocado: te cambia, aunque sea un poquitito, te incorpora algo, algo que no sabías o no imaginabas, y te invita a buscar, a preguntar. Y más, todavía: a veces hasta te puede ayudar a descubrir el verdadero significado de las palabras traicionadas por el diccionario de nuestro tiempo. ¿Qué más puede querer una conciencia crítica?

J. M.: Pero los escritores contemporáneos tienden a evitar esa palabra, “intelectuales” ¿Por qué?

E. G.: Te contesto por mí, no en nombre de “los escritores”, que también son una generalización dudosa. Yo escribo queriendo decir y decirme en un lenguaje sentipensante, certera palabra que me enseñaron los pescadores de la costa colombiana del mar Caribe. Y por eso, justo por eso, no me gusta nada que me llamen intelectual. Siento que así me convierten en una cabeza sin cuerpo, situación por demás incómoda, y que me están divorciando la razón de la emoción. Se supone que intelectual es el capaz de entender, pero yo prefiero al capaz de comprender. Culto no es quien acumula más conocimientos, porque entonces no habrá nadie más culto que una computadora. Culto es quien sabe escuchar, escuchar a los demás y escuchar las mil y una voces de la naturaleza de la que formamos parte. Para decir, escucho. Escribo en un viaje de ida y vuelta, recojo palabras que devuelvo, dichas a mi modo y manera, al mundo de donde vienen.

J. M.: A propósito, ¿cuál es tu técnica narrativa, es decir, tus hábitos y conductas de escritura?

E. G.: No tengo horarios. No me obligo. En Santiago de Cuba, un viejo tamborero, que tocaba como los dioses, me lo enseñó: “Yo toco -me dijo- cuando me pica la mano”. Y yo le hago caso. Si no me pica, no escribo. Nunca he firmado un contrato que me ponga plazos para entregar un libro. En la literatura, como en el fútbol, cuando el placer se convierte en deber, pasa a ser algo bastante parecido al trabajo esclavo. Los libros me escriben, crecen dentro de mí, y cada noche me duermo dándoles las gracias, porque me permiten creer que el autor soy yo. Y dicho esto te aclaro que escribo muchas veces cada página, que tacho, suprimo, reescribo, rompo, vuelvo a empezar, y todo eso es parte de la alta alegría de sentir que lo que digo se parece, y a veces se parece mucho, a lo que mis páginas quieren decir.

J. M.: Tus libros después de las dictaduras militares de Uruguay y Argentina, después del exilio, cambian de estilo. O quizás profundizan una característica: tu mirada sigue siendo la del rebelde inconformista, pero tu voz se vuelve más lírica. Si mal no recuerdo, fue Jean-Paul Sartre que dijo que la técnica de un escritor remite a su concepción del mundo. ¿Cómo definirías tu etilo? ¿Refleja tu percepción del mundo o, quizás, tus aspiraciones sobre él o el estilo es algo accidental, una forma de hacer las cosas que proviene de una historia de la estética, de una influencia de la adolescencia?

E. G.: Mi estilo es el resultado de muchos años de escribir y borrar. Juan Rulfo me lo decía, mostrándome un lápiz de aquellos que ahora ya casi ni se ven: “Yo escribo con el grafo de adelante, pero más escribo con la parte de atrás, donde está la goma”. Eso hago, o intento hacer. Intento decir cada vez más con menos.

J. M.: Un elemento común de la literatura del compromiso, de las utopías revolucionarias hasta los setenta, de los años previos a las dictaduras en América del Sur, parece ser la alegría. Como ejemplo ilustrativo podríamos hacer una exposición de fotografías de los rostros adustos de los Pinochet, por un lado, y de los rostros sonrientes de los Che Guevara por el otro. ¿Existe una conexión entre la “estética de la tristeza” de la literatura del siglo XX y las fuerzas conservadoras de la sociedad? ¿En qué medida es subversiva la alegría, el epicureísmo del que hablaba Américo Vespucio refiriéndose a cierta imagen de los nativos americanos?

E. G.: Vuelvo a la costa colombiana, y te cuento que allá el peor insulto es amargao. Nada más grave te pueden decir. Y no les falta razón, porque al fin y al cabo, no hay nada en el mundo que no merezca ser reído. Si la literatura de denuncia no es, al mismo tiempo, una literatura de la celebración, se aleja de la vida viva y duerme a sus lectores. Se supone que sus lectores deben arder de indignación, pero ellos se caen de sueño. Con frecuencia ocurre que la literatura que dice dirigirse al pueblo, sólo se dirige a los convencidos. Sin riesgo ninguno, se parece más a la masturbación que al acto del amor, aunque según me han dicho el acto del amor es mejor, porque se conoce gente. La contradicción mueve la historia, y la literatura que de veras estimula la energía de cambio nos ayuda a adivinar los soles secretos que cada noche esconde, esa humana hazaña de reír contra toda evidencia. La herencia hebreo-cristiana, que tanto elogia el dolor, no ayuda mucho. Si no recuerdo mal, en toda la Biblia no suena ni una risa. El mundo es un valle de lágrimas, los que más sufren son los elegidos que suben al Cielo.

J. M.: ¿Cómo imaginás el mundo dentro de cincuenta años?

E. G.: Con la edad que tengo, me imagino que dentro de cincuenta años ya no estaré. Como ves, tengo una imaginación prodigiosa.

J. M.: Alguna vez Onetti dijo que él escribía para sí mismo. ¿Galeano escribiría si tuviese la poca fortuna de ser el único sobreviviente de una catástrofe mundial?

E. G.: ¿El único sobreviviente? Uy! Me moriría de aburrimiento. Quizá escribiría igual, porque tengo el vicio, pero escribir para nadie es peor que bailar con la hermana. Onetti se enojó conmigo cuando una noche cometí una juvenil insolencia. Él me dijo eso, que él escribía para él, y yo le propuse llevarle al Correo esas cartas para Juan Carlos Onetti, calle Gonzalo Ramírez, Montevideo, etc., etc. Él se cabreó. Se cabreó porque mentía, y bien lo sabía. Quien publica lo que escribe, escribe para los demás.

J. M.: ¿Qué harías diferente si tuvieses la experiencia y la oportunidad de hacerlo de nuevo? ¿De qué se arrepiente Eduardo Galeano hoy?

E. G.: No me arrepiento de nada. Yo también soy la suma de todas mis metidas de pata.

Private Health Insurance is Bad For Public Health

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:46:00 +0000

12-27-08, 9:40 am

It is important to include in our thinking about the US Health Care system that private health insurers are often multi-million dollar investors in some of the worst health-damaging industries, cigarette manufacturers most notably, but also tobacco pesticides, pesticides in general, chlorine, polluting smokestack industries, oil, unhealthy foods, mountaintop removal coal mining, and even military weaponry.

Injuries or illnesses caused by those interests may be given insufficient attention or be mis-diagnosed by medical professionals under the economic umbrella of private insurers with massive holdings in those industries.

We see this routinely in the 'smoking' area where no cigarette manufacturer is exposed or condemned for the contamination of most smoking products with pesticide residues, radiation from certain fertilizers, untested and often known toxic non-tobacco additives, burn accelerants, addiction-enhancing substances, chlorine contaminants that produce dioxin in the smoke, and kid-attracting sweets, flavors, aromas, and soothing additives. That is a lot to overlook, especially by those professing expertise in the smoking and health topic.

Private insurers distract from the misdeeds of their investment properties and cast most of the blame onto the unwitting victims, onto non-complicit bar owners and the like, and onto the un-patented, public-domain, natural, and conveniently 'sinful' tobacco plant. To all appearances, insurers do this gross disservice to the public in general, to its own insurance customers, and to the integrity of medical science to protect their investments in the above interests.

Further, private insurers invest in pharmaceuticals (including those that make tobacco pesticides) and other health businesses, thus creating more conflicts-of-interest. Insurers and associated practitioners, etc., have motive and even corporate duty (to shareholders) to favor drugs made by their own investment properties over competing drugs that may be safer, more effective, and cheaper. Insurers may also be lax in assuring the safety of, or reporting problems with, drugs made by its investment properties.

We already know of the 'Sicko' horrors, and the massive waste of revenues inherent in the current system, but this Conflict Area ought be the axe that puts an end to this inherently cruel private insurance industry system.

This certainly ought put the end to the idea of mandatory patronage of such insurers because there is no Public Interest justification for compelling anyone to provide revenues, albeit second-handed, to the insurer's investments, and to the advertising, lobbying, campaign gifts, CEO bonuses, corporate jets and conventions, headquarter amenities, and so forth.

Further yet, the government's compelling of speech (with words and money) by citizens to private insurers may be a violation of the First Amendment.

The only alternative to all of this is a public-funded, public-administered Single Payer system where those unhealthy conflicts will not exist, everyone will be automatically covered, and the public will save around $350 billion a year.

Inquiries on Paradigm, Interview with Eduardo Galeano

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:41:00 +0000

12-27-08, 9:35 am

I. Past

Jorge Majfud: A humanist vision considers history to be a human product, which is to say, a product of the freedom of its individuals and the diverse groups that have enacted it and interpreted it. An anti-humanist vision asserts that, on the contrary, those individuals and those groups are the result of history itself, and their freedom is an illusion. If you will permit me an artificial restriction within this possible spectrum, where do you situate yourself?

Eduardo Galeano: Based on what I have experienced in my life, I have the impression that we make the history that makes us. When the history that we make comes out crooked, or is usurped by the few among us who rule, we blame it on history.

J. M.: In this view there is no room for materialist determinism or for any kind of religious fatalism…

E. G.: Fatalisms are comforting, they allow you to sleep soundly, fate is inscribed in the stars, history moves along by itself, don’t be bitter, one must either accept it or accept it. Fatalisms lie, because if life is not an adventure in freedom, someone should come and explain to me whether living is worth the trouble. But notice: the enlightened ones lie also, the select few who are attributed the power to change reality by touching it with their magic wand: and if reality does not obey me, it doesn’t deserve me.

J. M.: If the time of modern revolutions, that is, of abrupt and violent revolutions has passed, is it progression or resistance that is the better alternative in our times?

E. G.: Who knows how many worlds there are in the world, and how many times there are in time. History walks with our feet, but sometimes it walks very slowly, and sometimes it seems motionless. At any rate, when the changes come from below, from down in the depths, sooner or later they find their way, at their own pace. From below, I mean, from the foot, like in the Zitarrosa song. The only things made from above are wells.

J. M.: Your latest book Espejos (Mirrors) represents an effort that is both creative and archeological and covers a vast geographic and temporal space. Which periods of history do you believe would win first prize for cruelty and injustice?

E. G.: There are too many favorites in that championship.

J. M.: Okay, more to the point, could you sum up cruelty in an image, in a situation that you have experienced?

E. G.: It happened to me years ago, in a truck that was crossing the upper Paraná. Except for me, everyone was from that area. Nobody spoke. We were packed closely together, in the bed of the truck, bouncing around. Next to me, a very poor woman, with a baby in her arms. The baby was burning up with fever, crying. The woman just said that she needed a doctor, that somewhere there had to be a doctor. And finally we arrived somewhere, I don’t know how many hours had gone by, the baby hadn’t cried for a long time. I helped that woman get down off the truck. When I picked up the baby, I saw that it was dead. The killer who had committed this cruelty was an entire system of power, and was neither in prison nor travelling around on rickety old trucks.

J. M.: With memories like that one we should stop here. But the world keeps turning. Do you believe that the pre-Colombian past has survived so many years of colonization and modernization, enough to define a Latin American way of being, of feeling, and even of thinking?

E. G.: For centuries, the gods have come, who knows how, from the American past and from the African jungle and from everywhere. Many of those gods travel with other names and use fake passports, because their religions are called superstitions and they continue to be condemned to the underground.

II. Present

J. M.: Are we witnessing the end of capitalism, of a paradigm based on consumerism and financial success, or is this simply one more crisis which will end up strengthening the system itself, the same hegemonic culture?

E. G.: I frequently receive invitations to attend the burial of capitalism. We know quite well, however, that this system - which privatizes its profits but kindly socializes its losses, and as if that weren’t enough convinces us that that is philanthropy - will live more than seven lives. To a great degree, capitalism feeds off of the discrediting of its alternatives. The word socialism, for example, has been emptied of meaning, by the bureaucracy that used it in the name of the people and by the social democracy that in its name modernized capitalism’s look. We know that this capitalist system is managing quite well to survive the catastrophes that it unleashes. We don’t know, on the other hand, how many lives its main victim – the planet we inhabit, squeezed to the last drop – will be able to live. Where will we move, when the planet is left without water, without land, without air? The company Lunar International is already selling plots of land on the moon. At the end of 2008, the Russian multimillionaire Roman Abramovich made a gift of a little plot to his fiancee.

J. M.: Perhaps he intends to be the first man to give a piece of the moon to his wife, which turns out to be a kind of romantic capitalism. Do you believe that if China, for example, had a hegemonic economy it would quickly become a new empire, colonialist and dominating like any other empire?

E. G.: If I were a professional prophet, I would die of hunger. I’m not even right in soccer, and that is something I know something about. All I can say to you is what I can see: China is putting into practice a successful combination of political dictatorship, in the old communist style, with an economy that functions at the service of the capitalist world market. China can thus provide an extremely cheap workforce to U.S. enterprises like Wal Mart, which bans unions.

J. M.: Speaking of which, on the most recent “black Friday,” the one day of the year that the large retail chains in the U.S. sell at cost, an avalanche of shoppers couldn’t wait for the doors to be opened at one of those Wal Marts and it ran over an employee. The man was crushed to death… Despite all of this absurdity, can we think that humanity finds itself in an improved state of individual rights and of collective conscience? What is best about our times?

E. G.: In the 20th century, justice was sacrificed in the name of freedom, and freedom was sacrificed in the name of justice. Our time is now the 21st century, and the best it has to offer is the challenge it presents: it invites us to fight to assist the reunion of freedom and justice. They want to live real close to each other, back to back.

J. M.: Can we compare the appearance of the Internet with the revolution produced by the printing press in the 15th century?

E. G.: I have no idea, but it is important to remember that the printing press was not born in the 15th century. The Chinese had invented it two centuries earlier. In reality, the three inventions that made the Renaissance possible were all Chinese inventions: the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder. I don’t know if today education has improved, but before we used to learn a universal history reduced to the history of Europe. From the Middle East, nothing or almost nothing. Not a word about China, nothing about India. And about Africa, we only knew what professor Tarzan taught us, and he was never there. And about the American past, about the pre-Colombian world, some little folkoric thing, a few colored feathers… and ciao.

J. M.: What is the greatest danger of technological progress in communication?

E. G.: In communication, and in everything else. Machines are no saints, but they are not to blame for what we do with them. The greatest danger lies in the possibility that the computer can program us, just like the automobile drives us. With frightening ease, we become instruments of our instruments.

J. M.: As a writer and as a reader, what kind of reading occupies most of your time these days?

E. G.: I read everything, starting with the walls that accompany my steps through the streets of the cities.

J. M.: Are cruelty and injustice the greatest provocations for the literature of Eduardo Galeano?

E. G.: No. If that were the case, I would have already fallen ill from unmitigated sadness. Luckily I am a busybody, curious by birth, and I am always seeking out the third bank of the river, that mysterious place where humor and horror meet.

J. M.: Why do you think our times will be remembered in the centuries to come?

E. G.: Will be remembered? Will there be centuries to come? May God hear you, and if God is deaf, may the Devil hear you.

III. Futuro J. M.: Eduardo, do you believe the world will move in the direction of a greater balance of its geographical, social and cultural divisions or, on the contrary, are we condemned to repeat the same forms of what we today consider physical and moral violence?

E. G.: Condemned, we are not. Fate is a challenge, although at first sight it might appear to be a curse.

J. M.: Does an improvement of our present lie mainly in the deepening of humanist values from the European tradition, or in a revaluation of a lost origin in the “peripheral” nations?

E. G.: The European tradition is not enough. We Americans are the children of many mothers. Europe yes, but there are also other mothers. And not only the Americans. All the little humans, everybody is much more than what they believe they are. But the earthly rainbow will not shine, in all its brilliance, as long is it continues to be mutilated by racism, machismo, militarism, elitism and all those isms that deny us the fullness of our diversity. And by the way, it is fitting to clarify that the humanist values of the European tradition were developed while Europe was exterminating indigenous people in the Americas and selling human flesh in Africa. John Locke, the philosopher of freedom, was a shareholder in a slave-trading enterprise.

J. M.: Yes, somewhat like the imperial democracies, from ancient Athens to the United States. But does that mean that history always repeats itself?

E. G.: She doesn’t want to repeat herself, she doesn’t like that one bit, but very often we oblige her to. To give you a very current example, there are parties who come into the government promising a program of the left, and they wind up repeating what the right wing did. Why don’t they let the right continue doing it, since they have the experience? History grows bored, and democracy is discredited, when we are invited to choose between one and the same.

J. M.: What role do “non-organic” intellectuals fulfill in society today? Do they continue to be, at least a few of them, a critical and provocative force?

E. G.: I believe that writing is not a useless passion. But that generalization, “intellectuals,” organico or non-organic, doesn’t look much like the real world. It takes all kinds to make the world. In my case, I can tell you that I work with words, that I am totally useless otherwise, and that is the only thing that I do more or less well, and that it seems to me, based on my own and other’s experience, that the act of reading is a secret, and sometimes fertile, ceremony of communion. Anyone who reads something that is really worth the trouble, does not read with impunity. Reading one of those books that breathe when you put them to your ear, does not leave you untouched: it changes you, even if only a little bit, it integrates something to you, something that you did not know or had not imagined, and it invites you to seek, to ask questions. And more, still: sometimes it can even help you to discover the true meaning of words betrayed by the dictionary of our times. What more could a critical consciousness want?

J. M.: But contemporary writers tend to avoid that word, “intellectuals.” Why?

E. G.: I will answer for myself, not in the name of “writers,” which is also a dubious generalization. I write wanting to speak and express myself in a language that is sentipensante (feeling-thinking), a very precise word taught to me by fishermen of the Colombian coast of the Caribean sea. And for that reason, precisely for that reason, I don’t like at all to be called an intellectual. I feel like I am thereby turned into a bodiless head, which is also an uncomfortable situation, and that my reason and emotion are being divorced from one another. One supposes that an intellectual is someone capable of knowing, but I prefer someone capable of comprehending. A cultured person is not someone who accumulates more knowledge, because then there will be nobody more cultured than a computer. A cultured person is someone who knows how to listen, to listen to others and listen to the thousand and one voices of the natural world of which we are a part. In order to speak, I listen. I write on a round-trip journey, I pick up words that I return, stated in my method and manner, to the world from which they come.

J. M.: Speaking of which, what is your narrative technique, that is, your writing habits and behaviors?

E. G.: I have no schedules. I don’t make myself write. In Santiago, Cuba, an old drummer, who played like the gods, taught me: “I play” – he told me – “when my hand itches.” And I paid attention. If I don’t itch, I don’t write. In literature, like in soccer, when the pleasure turns into duty, it becomes something pretty similar to slave labor. The books write me, they grow inside of me, and every night I fall asleep thanking them, because they allow me to believe that I am the author. And having said this I will point out to you that I write each page many times, that I scratch out, I suppress, I re-write, I tear up, I start over again, and all that is part of the great happiness of feeling that what I say is similar to, and sometimes very similar to, what my pages want to say.

J. M.: Your books after the military dictatorships in Uruguay and Argentina, after exile, are different in style. Or perhaps they deepen one characteristic: your gaze continues being that of a non-conformist rebel, but your voice becomes more lyrical. If I remember correctly, it was Jean-Paul Sartre who said that a writer’s technique transmits his conception of the world. How would you define your style? Does it reflect your perception of the world or, perhaps, your aspirations about it, or is style something accidental, a form of doing things that comes from a history of aesthetics, from an influence of the adolescent years?

E. G.: My style is the result of many years of writing and erasing. Juan Rulfo used to tell me, showing me one of those pencils that you now almost never see: “I write with the graphite in the front, but I write more with the back part, where the eraser is.” That is what I do, or I try to do. I try to always say more with less.

J. M.: One common element of committed literature, of the revolutionary utopias up until the seventies, from the years prior to the dictatorships in South America, seems to be happiness. As an example to illustrate this we could make an exhibit of photographs of the severe faces of the Pinochets, on one side, and of the smiling faces of the Che Guevaras on the other. Does a connection exist between the “aesthetics of sadness” of the literature of the 20th century and society’s conservative forces? In what degree is happiness, the Epicureanism of which Amerigo Vespucci spoke with reference to a certain image of native Americans, subersive?

E. G.: I will return to the Colombian coast, and I will tell you that there, the worst insult is amargao (a bitter person). Nothing worse can be said to you. And not without reason, because at the end of the day, there is nothing in the world that doesn’t deserve to be laughed at. If the literature of denunciation is not, at the same time, a literature of celebration, it distances itself from life as lived and puts its readers to sleep. Its readers are supposed to burn with indignation, but they are nodding off instead. It frequently occurs that the literature that claims to speak to the people, only speaks to those who are already persuaded. Without taking any risks, it seems more like masturbation than the act of love, even though according to what I have been told the act of love is better, because one gets to know people. Contradiction moves history, and the literature that truly stimulates the energy of social change helps us to find the secret suns that every night conceals, that human feat of laughing in the face of the evidence. The Judeo-Christian heritage, which so praises pain, does not help much. If I remember correctly, in the entire Bible not a single laugh is heard. The world is a vale of tears, the ones who suffer the most are the chosen ones who ascend to Heaven.

J. M.: How do you imagine the world in fifty years?

E. G.: At my age, I imagine that in fifty years I will no longer be here. As you can see, I have a prodigious imagination.

J. M.: Onetti once said that he wrote for himself. Would Galeano write if he had the bad fortune to be the sole survivor of a world-wide catastrophe?

E. G.: The sole survivor? Uy! I would die of boredom. Perhaps I would write anyway, because I have the vice, but writing for nobody is worse than dancing with your own sister. Onetti got mad at me one night when I committed a juvenile insolence. He told me that, that he wrote for himself, and I proposed to carry to the Post Office for him those letters for Juan Carlos Onetti, Gonzalo Ramírez Street, Montevideo, etc., etc. He got pissed off. He got pissed off because he was lying, and he knew it quite well. Anyone who publishes what they write, writes for others.

J. M.: What would you do differently if you had the experience and opportunity to do it all over again? What does Eduardo Galeano regret?

E. G.: I have no regrets. I am also the sum of all the times I put my foot in my mouth.

--Translated by Bruce Campbell. Galeano is the author of Open Veins of Latin America and the trilogy Memory of Fire.

Witnessing the Decay of Western Hegemony and the Role of the Organic Intellectual

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:38:00 +0000

12-27-08, 9:33 am

Introduction

Antonio Gramsci differentiated organic intellectuals from traditional intellectuals, by emphasizing the role of the former in cultivating roots within their communities to help develop a self-inspired organic consciousness. Accepting their position within the dominant ideology, according to Gramsci, organic intellectuals will ultimately support the working-class in developing an alternative hegemony within civil society.

For many decades, society has been indoctrinated with the belief that liberal democratic capitalism was the benevolent solution to all world problems. Through this model of society, hunger was going to be eradicated, wars would come to an end, the environment would be saved, and justice would be distributed equally amongst all members of the human species. Entering the new century, western society celebrated the new millennium with the euphoria of success, once and for all; we had entered the final face of existence, the one, which would bring upon the earth the mythical wonders of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, without having witnessed the passing of the first decade of the 21st century, this dogma has been broken and as many across the globe struggle for survival and society is marred by the continuous threat of revolving crisis, the time for the revolutionary transformation of the western ideal is upon us. Yet, the fundamental questions remain to be answered, how can we act? What can we do?

It is the role of the organic intellectual to answer these questions. If there are any left who have not yet awaken from their slumber, the time has come for them to abandon the petit bourgeois existence of the petty professor attending wine tasting events, the government bureaucrat justifying the wonders of his mind while working on the golf swing at the local country club, or the 1960s hippie, that after a stint in the Berkeley student movements went on to become a prosperous businessman. In today’s holistic global crisis, one which threatens every single aspect of our existence – from the food we eat, to the air we breath, and to the way we interact between each other – those who in their youth considered themselves conscious individuals fighting towards change, can no longer hide behind the mask of the liberal democratic ideal of a capitalist society striving towards justice, peace and prosperity. All of these having remained ideals, while a reality of extreme misery for the majority, coexists today with the growing prosperity of a shrinking minority capitalizing on the growing pains of humanity.

In today’s crisis, we will all perish together or we will overcome it together, and as professor Chomsky often states, “so much depends on will and choice.” Yet, the choice at this point is between prolonged misery, constant crisis, environmental deterioration and continual war, or the possibility of working together in unison to overcome the hurdles, which we are facing. If we are to honestly look at what is happening in society, on any given day we can observe that the interests of the majority are not being respected and instead, the elites benefiting themselves, pitch to society the benefits of their choices by attributing everything to the trickledown effect – a warped inversion of reality which supports investing on those at the top in order to protect people at the bottom. I often wonder when I hear such discourse bombarded by government officials and experts through the traditional channels of propaganda, whether the rest of society is awake and paying attention, or simply asleep and indifferent. I can never be quite sure, because if indeed society is awake and paying attention, then we live in a world of fools, yet, if the indifference is attributable to being asleep, the task of waking up is a daunting one. One, which can only be carried out by the organic intellectual committed to revolutionary social transformation.

Decay of Western Hegemony

As western society struggles with rising tensions, both within and outside of its borders, as those being colonized begin to throw their shoes in despair, and those who thought they belonged to the empire begin to realize that their dream is no longer sustainable, the organic intellectual is able to grasp the severity of the global crisis. As bankers announce their losses, the banking cartel slowly collapses. First, the major investment banks and hedge funds, then their traditional counterparts, all showing loses which only a year ago had been presented as ground breaking profits, as slowly the deck of cards unfolds and everything crumbles. Soon the job cuts begin, across continents furious workers revel against their enslaving owners, demonstrations, walkouts, sit-ins, failed negotiations between trade unions and shareholders. The sky is falling and the capitalist always strives to win. For a while, dormant workers watch their colleagues being laid-off, at first it seems an unavoidable aspect of capitalism, the dirty side of a casino culture, which rewards some at the expense of others. But then, neighborhoods begin to witness empty houses, people evicted, squatters moving in, the law can do little to prevent it, the numbers are too big to contain. The lobbyists in Washington are eagerly fighting for pieces of the bailout money prepared by a government, which faced with complete anarchy must regain a foothold in the corridors of power. Confidence must never be lost. Hence, a new face in the White House, a new man, a new dream, perpetuated by the chanting of hope. But things will never be the same in America, as young bankers spend their holidays in despair not knowing if their job awaits them in the coming year, the dark thoughts of unemployment begin to creep in. Obama proposes solutions, three million jobs to be created by rebuilding the fallen infrastructures of the great American empire. An empire, which in its boom forgot to cement its foundations and now collapsing, will offer its unemployed bankers the opportunity to go and fix roads.

As America crumbles, its allies must wait and hope. they too must hold tight to the idea of a rebirth, they too must put their expectations and dreams in the hands of Obama. For the allies, there is not much more that can be done. They accepted the American way of life, they indulged in the great American credit card culture and now, millions of people around the globe are tied to the demise of Wall Street, thus the saying, “when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold.” So, as frantic politicians of the axis of good scramble for some sense of stability for their countries, industries collapse, unemployment raises, and currencies begin to witness the prospects of inflation, deflation, stagflation, stagdeflation, and ultimately, what few dare to mention – depression and eventual collapse.

At this point, relations which in the good times presented themselves as strong and unbreakable begin to shake, governments of the allied countries, the client states, are trapped between their commitments to the emperor and the demands of their people – their people need to eat and the emperor demands that his people eat first. So, the economies of the allied countries begin to fall one by one. As they do, chaos breaks within their borders and internal factions begin to fight for power, possibilities of revolution or civil war are no longer too far fetched as American influence retreats and the ruling parties are left in a vacuum, like sitting ducks, waiting for factions to fight for the reigns. First, the riots break out in the weaker allied countries such as Greece, where corruption has been so blatant that the disillusioned youth go out to the streets. At first, it looks like a minor incident, but soon it is apparent that youth everywhere are inspired by such actions. As the months go by, riots spark up in numerous countries, those that no longer feel a part of the empire are now eager to burn it.

The majority of people no longer see the governments as representing their interests, rather they are understood to be puppets of the ruling elites, the capitalist class, and this makes them the enemy. It didn’t have to be this way, but politicians have become so complacent that they flaunt the wealth accumulated through legalized corruption, something, which although accepted by the courts, is no longer accepted by the angry mobs. So politicians begin to flee into exile – first, they fly to the ally countries, but soon they realize that they are not welcomed there. Their presence can destabilize already fragile situations, so they hop from country to country, finding eventual refuge in some far away land, in the same way that Nazi war criminals ended up in the jungles of Latin America.

In the meantime, the military might of America and its allies keeps getting stretched, and the wars that were begun can no longer be effectively fought. With the unpopularity at home and the increased resistance of those being attacked, it seems like a retreat is in sight, however, the military commanders and the corporations involved in the creation of weapons of mass destruction, refuse to let go of this opportunity to continue their expansion. So the war continues, with every shell fired helping to discredit an act, which was presented as a necessary evil to liberate humanity from tyranny. Now the war is seen for what it is, an unjust act of aggression designed to conquer whole populations and generate profit for the small ruling elites. The United Nations, once believed to be a fair moderator of conflict, is now showing its face as the mechanism for justification of the mega-powers – it is no longer sustainable, it is now viewed as an aggressor. The International Monetary Fund is running out of funds and must call on the rising empires to support its transactions. As for The World Bank, it just passes from corruption scandal to corruption scandal, until soon it too will become obsolete. So, as the international institutions crumble and the allied countries collapse, America is left in debt with an internal discomfort brewing and external wars being lost. What was once a colonial project based on the strategy of sticks and carrots, has run out of carrots and all that is left, is the stick to continue the expansion. It is at this point that the American empire must decide between an all out war against the rising empires, or the acknowledgment of defeat. All empires rise and fall, what America can do, is to choose between a graceful fall and the third world war. For those in power the choice is clear, it is now essential for the people to speak loud and promptly. Will there be war, or will there be revolution? It is the role of the organic intellectual to promote revolution rather than war, but how? And what kind of revolution?

The rise of the organic intellectual movement

Mahatma Gandhi knew that soldiers had weapons when he chose to promote the path of non-violence. He also knew that only through this method India had a chance of transitioning from colonialism to a self-ruling nation, without descending into civil war. He understood the sacrifice people would have to make when they stood in front of guns with only their faces of indignation to protect them from their oppressors. The sacrifice proved worthwhile. Similarly, as liberal democratic capitalism comes to an end, the only option for western society to liberate itself from the chains of its ruling elites is to confront them through organized non-violent actions. It must be the role of the organic intellectual, to promote this path and educate the oppressed about its benefits, while proposing effective methods of direct communal action.

As the situation deteriorates in the west, there is no doubt that violence is going to increase. As the population begins to react to what is happening, governments will increase their police forces and will redeploy their militaries to monitor civilian streets – events, which are already apparent in certain areas of the United States. Yet, violence breeds violence, and we can no longer afford to take this route. So, as governments take bold steps to increase the controls of the civilian population and the clampdown on dissent becomes apparent, those who are currently ruled, need to understand the tools they have at their disposal in order to invert the pyramid of power. However, this reversal of the power structure in society requires sacrifices, and the sooner we all understand this, the faster we will be able to obtain true democracy based on peace, equality in front of the justice system, and sustainable prosperity for all.

Helping people understand this reality is the role of the organic intellectual. Of course, this is not an easy task, and it requires many people working together, using the tools at their disposal to build effectively coordinated information networks designed to empower the population. Many networks already exist at present, actively educating and organizing communities through grassroots efforts aimed at direct action, yet, the kinds of coalitions, which can reshape society in a revolutionary way are currently lacking friction. In America, the last time anything like this was actually lived was in the 1960s. Since then, groups have been fighting for their rights isolated from each other, which has allowed liberal democratic capitalism to contain them and appease them, without jeopardising the continual and coordinated expansion of the colonial project.

It is therefore the need to organize and unite outside of the elite power structures, which must be prioritized if there is going to be any kind of revolutionary transformation of western society. Once this step is acknowledged by the organic intellectual, and dealt with in a coordinated manner, efforts can then be directed to the numerous direct action initiatives, which are urgently needed: Putting an end to home evictions and making sure that everyone has a home. Organizing global trade unions, which can counteract capital strikes by paralyzing the capitalist economy and lobbying the demands of the workforce. Initiating consistent global demonstrations, requesting the halt of military investments and the dismantling of the war industrial complex. The start up of cooperatives focused on the development of new forms of sustainable technologies and alternative methods of production. The creation of community based and owned banking institutions. Coordinating the development of collectively owned community farming initiatives. The structuring of worker managed goodwill delegations, travelling around the world encouraging substitute forms of collaboration between countries.

Of course, these are only a few options out of the many which can be proposed and acted upon by an organized population, so these can only serve as suggestions, as organic intellectuals strive to unite existing grassroots efforts in coalitions designed to radically transform society. Sympathizing with the reality of the majority of workers – whose workday is committed without much choice to staying afloat within the strenuous capitalist economy – it is understandable that a critical mass is only achieved after many have been forced into poverty. However, it is the role of the organic intellectual, to educate the population about the consequences of not acting boldly and committing to the revolutionary project while still in the workforce, rather than having to do so later, when exposed to the charitable mercy of the ruling elite after being laid-off.

As things continue to deteriorate in the western world, these words will make much more sense. I do hope however, that a majority grasps this view before it is too late to avoid the third world war. Although, judging by the reflexes of society in predicting the current financial crisis, it might take a declaration of war before people understand where we are heading. The truth is, that unless the population is empowered and revolutionary, this event seems unavoidable at this point in time, when the ruling elites are amassing more power, the working class is clasping to its wages, and the industrial military complex is expanding at the fastest pace in the history of humankind.

--Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer.

Unscripted: Green Zone Theater and the Shoe Drama

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:35:00 +0000

12-27-08, 9:29 am

The plot, so unexpectedly, thickened in Iraq on a Sunday like no other. The two main actors – US President George W. Bush, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – took to the stage to perform another well-rehearsed press conference. The scripts were ever so predictable: Bush to tout the ‘progress’ achieved in Iraq, while al-Maliki to express gratitude for the freedom bestowed on his country. Both men were to caution from overstated optimism, and to forewarn of the great challenges that are yet to come. The two partners were to shake hands, smile and walk away. Things, however, didn’t go according to plan on Sunday, December 14.

A surprise appearance by till then little-known Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi provided a most unpredictable conclusion to the public performance regularly held in Baghdad’s Green Zone theater. Every joint press conference of US and Iraqi officials has, for years, concluded, more or less according to plan. Since the toppling of President Saddam Hussein’s statue in 2003, in a well orchestrated – Shakespearean even – series of events, until that fateful Sunday, few have dared to violate the carefully prepared, monotonous media appearances, which often end with a handshake, unconvincing smiles, and the mutter of disgruntled journalists for failing to land a last minute question.

But al-Zaidi changed all of that when he hurled his shoes at President Bush at the exact moment the two main actors were scheduled to exit the stage - compelling the US president to duck twice, astoundingly escaping the makeshift, but largely symbolic weapon. Truth be told, Bush’s timely dodges, were as impressive, as al-Zaidi’s seemingly impeccable pitches.

Much has been said of al-Zaidi’s daring act, which will indeed secure a permanent footnote in history books for an Iraqi man’s footwear. Stories are told of poems, computer games and artwork idealizing al-Zaidi’s shoes; and a rich Arab has reportedly offered millions of dollars for the pair of shoes that were meant as a “farewell kiss” to Bush. While most Americans are likely to remember Bush’s legacy as that of a man who has guided a nation into unprecedented economic mayhem, Iraqis, and others, will remember him as a brutal, self-righteous zealot, who invited untold bloodshed, humiliation and the destruction of a once a magnificent and leading civilization.

According to the US government’s logic, Iraq is now better off than ever before. As for the millions of lives that have been unjustly taken, and the millions of Iraqis on the run, their plight is a worthy price for freedom and democracy, precious US commodities that apparently come at a heavy price. Americans and the sanctioned Iraqi government are never to blame for any wrong doing. Iraq’s tragedy is always someone else’s fault, but largely the making of elusive terrorists, whose identities and sources of funds change according to whatever Washington’s political mood dictates. The insurgents, as they were called until recently, were initially remnants of and Ba’ath Party loyalists, disgruntled Sunnis, then they morphed into foreign fighters, then they were depicted as al-Qaeda sympathizers, copy-cats, then al-Qaeda itself, then Iranian agents in cahoots with rogue Shiite militants loyal to whatever character doesn’t suit the interests of the US and its allies. New characters were occasionally added to the Green Zone’s ever predictable play, unwanted characters were swiftly removed, and the play’s language was repeatedly rewritten.

Then al-Zaidi showed up and hurled his shoes at a grinning Bush, who just finished shaking al-Maliki’s hand and was ready to conclude his own ominous chapter in Iraq, one filled with lies, deceit, and the blood of many people, in fact too many to count.

As al-Zaidi was being overpowered, then dragged away by Iraqi security - who must’ve tried to impress their American security ‘counterparts’ by teaching the poor al-Zaidi a lesson in good manners, Abu Ghraib-style – the script writers, and stage directors and actors were likely to have been summoned to discuss what CNN described as a ‘security breach,’ but what should be more accurately described as a deviation from the script. Their orders were straightforward and seemingly simple: to create a parallel reality to the anti-occupation fervor and bloodbath outside, by staging a play of few actors that depicts the occupier as a friendly, obliging outsider, violence against the Iraqi people as a war on terror on behalf of the Iraqi people, governmental corruption as a fostering process of democracy and good governance, and so on. Naturally, the moment that al-Zaidi flung his shoes at cowering Bush, a new, although haphazard play was drafted, mixing the painful reality outside the Green Zone, with the comforting, imagined reality inside. If the al-Zaidi episode is to be credited in one thing, it should be for tossing up the terminology of the two stages. Bush was called “dog” by angry Iraqis for years, but not in a press conference. Iraqis mourned their dead, cried for their orphans and widows, millions of them, outside and Green Zone, but never inside. An Iraqi man, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, in a seemingly fleeting moment, changed everything.

What also confused the script is that al-Zaidi was not al-Qaeda, or an al-Qaeda sympathizer, not a foreign fighter, not a member of the dissolved Ba’ath Party, nor was he affiliated with it in any way, and not even an Iraqi Sunni, for any such affiliation would fit perfectly in the political and media scripts that would demonize the man as an enemy of the Iraqi people, stability, democracy, freedom, and the rest of the redundant clichés. Al-Zaidi is simply an Iraqi man who has, as a journalist, highlighted the suffering of his people as politely, ‘objectively’ and ‘professionally’ as he could, and when he could no longer tolerate the lies told in the Green Zone’s ever malicious drama, he scrapped the script altogether, chucking his shoes at the main actor: This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” His words, although uttered for the first time in the Green Zone theater, echoed the voices of millions of Iraqis outside, who have chanted these words, for six long, tragic years.

--Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Can Reparations-for-All Replace the Failed Bailout?

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:26:00 +0000

12-27-08, 9:20 am

In the final act, setting the stage for the Federal Reserve JP Morgan and his associates crashed the stock market in 1907 then offered to prop up the American economy with money he created out of nothing with the blessing of congress. -- Andre Michael Eggelletion, Thieves in the Temple.

Corporate Welfare, corporate communism, call it what you; let's not make a deal. Let's indict. The probelms that have led to today's recession were cause by bad regulators and the short-sighted members of Congress who enabled them. And this seems to have crossed party lines.

On 12/18 President-elect Obama blamed regulators for the nation's financial troubles saying that they 'dropped the ball' and they were 'asleep at the switch.' This is one of the few times regulators were singled out, a 10/26 60 Minutes segment claims the latest downfall of Wall Street was caused by... side bets. Also known as credit derivatives or credit default swaps (CDS) and this is a 'multi-million dollar market.' These side bets were based on the performance of US mortage markets. The segment compared this to a football bet where you can wager on a game without directly participating or managing the team to the victory it is trying to accomplish. By the same token CDS allows you to gamble on stocks and bonds and mortages without actually purchasing share of them.

The only real problem was the nature of the side bets. 60 Minutes interviewed Frank Partnoy, a University of San Diego law professor who stated the bets were based whether or not people would default on their mortages: 'This is the bet that blew up Wall Street.' It goes even deeper that 60 Minutes reveals, it was Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and American International Group (AIG) who were the most to blame. They made more bets than they could afford to pay off. It was the show's revelation of the Commodity and Futures Act of 2000; the bill was endorsed by then-President Bill Clinton, encouraged by then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan and passed by the 106th Congress and signed by Clinton almost exactly eight years ago to the day of you're reading this (12/21/08). HR4577 was never debated on as most other bills are. 157 Democratic and 133 Republican members of congress voted the measure into law.

What I noticed is the disparity between the funds the government is granting to corporate America ($700 billion) and the loan given to the big three auto makers. This despite the gross abuse of AIG, whose top execs more than once went on lavish vacation weekends to expensive resorts running up tabs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, even while asking for an additional $37 from the Federal Reserve. But instead of a flat no! A bill was passed to actually facilitate the corporate funding: the Emergency Stabilization Act of 2008 (HR1424), which authorizes the US Secretary of the Treasury to spend up to $700 billion to purchase distressed assets and infuse money into the banks.

It's the desire of government to take care of their corporate partners, the auto industry is seen as too much of a blue collar industry because of the direct employment and trasportation they supply to white working class and minority consumers.

Regardless of the political implications one well-known Buffalo broadcaster recently aired the best spread-the-wealth idea that would make both the auto industry and corporate America recover in record time while saving the government hundreds of billions in the process. Consider it reparations for everyone, but its a can't miss. An on-air commentary by Patrick Freeman on local Public Access and You Tube on 12/6 needs to be heard nationally:

'700 billion dollars now went to companies on Wall Street. Companies that are part of mainstream corporate America... if there was such an economic crises in this country of more than 300 million people, if you were to give each person in America one million dollars, pay off all they're debts, they're house, credit cards, everything, and give them the balance of that money and tell them they could use it any way they wanted to, don't you think that the economic crises that we are experiencing today would just go away? I think so, but nobody has the equation. Why are you giving away money to private entities? I am not for in any way continuing to finance private entities with taxpayer money... the benefit is going to corporate America who has had no regulations put on it.' Now that's change I can spend on. And an idea the President-elect needs to ponder between now and January 20th. This ultimate economic stimulus would concurrently benefit America on so many different levels. A one-time distribution to adults 18 and over would bring us out of recession very quickly.

--Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Challenger, contact him at pointblankdta@yahoo.com.

Controversial Rev. Rick Warren to Speak at King Memorial Service in Atlanta

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:46:00 +0000

12-23-08, 9:41 am

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA – Controversial pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, who at least once has compared homosexuality to incest, has been booked to be the keynote speaker at Martin Luther King, Jr. Annual Commemorative Service, according to a copy of the program obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.

The service is scheduled for January 19, 2009, at 10 am, at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church and is included in the official program of the ten-day King Center's Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration which begins on January 10.

Local homosexual activist Darlene Hudson says she learned the news when contacted by APN and expects there will be protests.

Hudson was part of a small group of protesters in 2004 when King's daughter, Bernice King, marched against same-sex unions in Atlanta along with Bishop Eddie Long.

'I'm completely baffled by this Rick Warren piece,' Hudson said. 'Inviting someone of his caliber, of comparing GLBTQ people to bestiality, that's a pretty low blow in our community, and to pedophiles, that's pretty grappling information to try to deal with.'

'I don't think it's gonna be very favorable within the gay community. As soon as this begins to move through the community, there's gonna be some quick organizing around it. You can't just sit idly by and allow this rhetoric to continue,' Hudson said.

'I think they should call for an apology before he goes up,' Hudson said.

'If we have to take some stands, I know our community will. We don't have time for this kind of hate this guy can perpetuate.'

Warren's upcoming speech in Atlanta was first noted on Blog for Democracy.

'My mind is confused about how Rev. Rick will talk about Dr. King's legacy of equal rights and then still preach about who is excluded from God's love,' blogger Bernita Smith wrote.

Warren made national headlines in recent days when equality activists criticized Warren's selection to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration.

Warren not only was a supporter of California's Proposition 8, which, as previously covered by Atlanta Progressive News, sought to redefine marriage--after the courts had previously redefined it, in California--to mean one man and one woman.

Warren also compared homosexuality with incest in recent remarks to Beliefnet.com.

'The issue to me is... I'm opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.'

Warren's upcoming King speech is on January 19; the inauguration in Washington, DC, is the following day.

The King Center did not immediately return two voicemails seeking comments, left for Steve Cline and Barbara Harrison.

COMMUNITY REACTION

Community members had mixed reactions to the planned King memorial speech. Homosexual activists were livid, while progressive Black leaders expressed a range of views.

'It's just absurd. It's ridiculous. In my opinion, nobody should be given a platform that's that divisive,' Betty Couvertier, WRFG radio host and homosexual activist, told Atlanta Progressive News. 'They're promoting discrimination.'

'He [Warren]... puts the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community... in this other place that doesn't give us humanity. People talk about civil rights and human rights,' Couvertier said.

'I think it's inappropriate for him to be involved in the inauguration. I think it's inappropriate for him to be involved in the King event,' State Sen. Vincent Fort, a prominent civil rights leader, told APN.

'What he represents in his slander of the gay community-- it is slander--seems to be antithetical to the spirit that Obama was communicating during the campaign as well as the spirit of the King Center--antithetical, at cross purposes,' Fort said.

'Rick Warren in his slander of the gay community seems to be divisive at best. There are people who say he's not so bad because he proposes greater emphasis on poverty and the environment. That's all well and good,' Fort said.

Fort said he didn't think someone would be invited to speak who 'has good views on poverty or the environment but [says] we don't like Black people.'

'It's troubling. We're not saying don't talk with him, don't communicate with him. There should be conditions. We could talk to him and meet with him, but to have him a central figure, that's a little bit different,' Fort said.

'He should not play a symbolic role in this kind of event, we don't need to put him out there as a lead figure,' Fort said.

'If it had been me, I probably wouldn't have invited him. Hopefully he can grow to become more tolerant,' Fort added.

State Rep. Tyrone Brooks declined comment. 'I don't agree with everyone they invite. They can invite who they want to invite. I don't work at the King Center. Who they invite is their business,' he said.

'I disagree with Rick Warren on gays. He also talks about HIV, poverty, and global warming. Those are issues I agree with him on,' Rev. Timothy McDonald of the First Iconium Baptist Church said.

'If we concentrate on those issues we might find some opening on issues I disagree with,' McDonald said.

'How are we gonna build bridges? Dr. King always talked about dialogue with those opposed to us, those who disagree with us,' McDonald said.

'I would be disappointed if the homosexual activists were not upset... but [they] should not expect the whole nation to be upset,' McDonald said.

'We can have some dialogue on the gay issues. I disagree with [his comments regarding] incest and all that. If I don't work with him, how is he gonna change it?' McDonald said.

'I would say to my gay brothers and sisters, the sun will still rise on January 21. He's not going to say anything about gays or incest. I just don't want folks to blow up,' McDonald said.

'The keynote address, I do not agree with. Several of those they've had for 10 years I said they never should have chosen them. They chose them for whatever reason and the sun still came up the next day,' McDonald said.

'Would I go run down there to hear him? No,' McDonald said.

BRIEF BACKGROUND ON KING DAY EVENTS

It is ironic that in fact, the first King memorial march, which took place in Memphis, Tennessee, the day after King was assassinated, was co-organized by his friend and advisor, Bayard Rustin, who was openly homosexual.

As previously reported by APN, Rev. James Orange, who passed away earlier this year, had been the annual organizer of the King March taking place on his birthday each January.

Rev. Orange ensured that march-which was one part of an annual series of events preceding King's birthday-continued to have an activist focus.

'He [Orange] was doing it under the MLK Center for Nonviolent Social Change. About 10 years ago, the King Center decided they no longer wanted to sponsor the march,' State Rep. Tyrone Brooks told APN in an interview for Rev. Orange's obituary.

'That's when he decided he would just organize a committee of activists and he would continue to sponsor the march. He didn't tell me that they ever gave him a reason,' Brooks said. 'I said, we don't need the King Center to do the march, we can do it.'

Today, the march is completely separate from the King Center events.

Orange founded the M.L. King Jr. March Committee-Africa/African American Renaissance Committee, Inc., in 1995. He and Rev. Joseph Lowery registered the organization with the State of Georgia in 2001.

The current CEO of Africa African-American Renaissance is James's son, Cleon Orange. His wife, Cleophas, is Secretary, as of an April 2008 filing.

For the past seven years, the King March festivities have included an annual Bayard Rustin breakfast, organized by an ad hoc group of activists.

The King Center has typically not included the Rustin breakfast as part of its schedule of events; however, Rev. Orange, while he was alive, had included the breakfast in his calendar, Hudson said.

As of today, Rev. Orange's King March website, while not completely updated, does list events for 2009 on its homepage, including the Rustin breakfast.

Several homosexual activists have participated in planning in the King March for several years, Hudson said.

Next year's march is being organized by Rev. Orange's wife and daughter, Hudson said.

At least two planning meetings already took place at the King Center although the events are separate from the King Center, McDonald said.

BRIEF BACKGROUND ON KING FAMILY CONFLICT OVER HOMOSEXUALITY

The conflict over equality for homosexuals has been a recurring theme in the history of the King family.

As mentioned earlier, Rustin worked behind the scenes to advise King on nonviolent organizing strategy and helped him build the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) in the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet, he did not receive much credit for his work because opponents of the CRM used Rustin's sexuality as a wedge issue to distance Rustin's colleagues from him.

For example, former US Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., once told the media there were 'immoral forces' within the CRM, presumably referring to Rustin. King at one point distanced himself from Rustin in order to work with Powell on legislation.

Rustin co-organized the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Three weeks before the march, former US Sen. Strom Thurmond charged Rustin of being a homosexual socialist with an arrest record, all of which were true.

Shortly thereafter, King defended Rustin, and the two began working together again.

Rustin and King co-organized what is today the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, had both been supporters of homosexual equality.

One of their daughters who was very supportive of equality, Yolanda King, passed away in 2007.

Another one of their daughters, Bernice King, as mentioned earlier, joined with Bishop Long to march in Atlanta against same-sex unions, in 2004, stirring national controversy.

'25 or 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the US were Black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regards to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian,' Rustin said shortly before his death. --Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor for The Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com. Atlanta Progressive Blog supplements APN and is available at www.atlantaprogressiveblog.com.