Brother, Can You Spare a Tofutti Cutie?

New Year’s Resolutions

Along with eating healthier and getting more exercise, here are some of my New Year’s resolutions:

1) Stop being apocalyptic. Stop expecting America to experience a crisis that “wakes” people up and changes everything. The American capitalist class has steadily ground down the working class majority since the early 1970s with no meaningful resistance and there’s no apparent reason this can’t continue indefinitely. Things don’t magically get better just because they’ve been lousy for a long time.  

Git along, little sheeples, nothing to see here: thirty million Americans under or unemployed, 50 million with no health insurance, 47 million on food stamps, declining real wages and leisure time for almost 40 years, full speed ahead with illegal wars and robotic warfare, the slow strangling of prudent savers to give money to speculators (through prolonged artificially low interest rates),  indefinite detention and assassinations of American citizens, immunity from prosecution (or even any investigation) for government-approved criminals -- from CIA torturers to spying telecom companies to Wall Street fraudsters, and the ongoing flash crash back to feudalism from trillions of dollars stolen in tech, housing, commodity and credit bubbles. If it walks like a crisis and quacks like a crisis but people don’t treat it like it’s a crisis, then it’s not a crisis. Through it all, no one of any import stands up and screams, “That duck has no clothes!” And there’s still no Million Gun March on Washington. 

2) Look on the bright side of America’s closeness to Israel. The Great and Little Satan are arm in arm and jumping off a cliff together -- they are happy and we should be happy for them. Clarity is always good. The latest outrageous act committed by an Israeli settler automatically becomes the baseline that will be defended by every American politician. Countries that confuse their interests with other nations are the Fool walking off the mountain in the Tarot card deck. Buh-bye! Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians also flushes out all those closet Custers on the American left. People who deny justice for victims of a land and water stealing ethnic cleansing project will always undermine (or walk away from) any movement for peace or justice -- they are neo-cons in waiting. 

America’s right wing doesn’t see the Israeli/Palestinian “issue” through the Nazi genocide portal so much as through the Native American genocide portal: they are cheering on the cowboys and cavalry. While they are having their masturbatory massacre fantasies of dark-skinned people, it’s good that the rest of the world sees America’s first black president warmly embrace the Bull Conner of the Middle East -- it’s a reminder that America can never be trusted and that America’s foreign policy is mainly a play thing used by politicians to get elected. Support of Israel is America’s warning label, a skull and crossbones that says America doesn’t mean anything it says about freedom, equality, democracy, or one person one vote. “Separate and unequal, segregation now and forever!” says Barack Obama, where it concerns Palestinians.  

3) Stop listening to people who talk about the “1% versus the 99%.” This phrase must have been thought up by someone who believes capitalism is basically good but some miscellaneous fiends just ruined it for everybody with their “cronyism” etc. They never tell us how the capitalist class got such a crushing financial advantage to begin with. Here’s the answer: They got all this money by stealing it from you at work each day where you are paid only a tiny fraction of the vast wealth that you help create. The capitalists siphon off the surplus booty for their opulent lifestyles plus assorted payoffs to the other purposeless parasites and anti-evolutionary freaks that comprise the tax, insurance, real estate, advertising and public relations industries. And don’t forget about the petty cash to bribe United States Senators. You work and pay for all of it, including your own enslavement. If you understand and believe this, you are now a Marxist -- that didn’t hurt, did it? The problem isn’t the 1%, it’s 100% the capitalist system because it’s based on theft. 

Other reasons to reject the “1% versus the 99%”: First, if we look at the people who respond to the “bread” component of the American empire’s bread and circuses, we find that millions are doing perfectly fine and feel they have way too much to lose by any change in the current system. On the “circuses” side of the equation there are plenty of people content with blaming their problems on immigrants and minorities and glorying in the spectacle of killing the latest Muslim villain of the month. ( In Obamaville there are only two street signs and they both point in the same re-election direction: Dow Jones Green, Muslims Blood Red -- it’s kind of a Christmassy-type intersection.) And if we add in all the members of the working class who either are ignorant of their own class interests or actually aspire to be members of the capitalist class, we might find that the percentage of “us” versus “them” doesn’t look so favorable.

Instead, I urge a different kind of percentage to move the debate forward. I believe that America will start to turn around at the exact moment that the capitalist class becomes more afraid of the working class than we are of them. As soon as 51% of us performs this judo, America begins to get well. Working out the expression of losing our fear is the only real issue. The capitalist class hasn’t had to give back anything in nearly 40 years and nothing really significant since the Great Depression. The 1% versus 99% is meaningless -- 51% of the capitalist class being scared shitless for their lives is priceless.  

4) Stay positive. No matter how bad things look for non-human animals and nature, one day Guyeah! (my version of Gaia) will prevail and that blight known as humanity will be gone or have to significantly (whimsically and ahimsacally) start over. O happy day! 

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play a little Tetris. You don’t have any Tofutti Cuties on ya, do ya?

published 12/30/2011 at counterpunch.org

The Horseshit Whisperer Rides Again

Pulling the Trigger on Trigger

The chief function of American presidents is to “break” unruly working class resistance to American capital whether in Middle Eastern deserts, Latin American jungles or the streets of Oakland and Cincinnati. Eight years of Bush/Cheney fear-training gave way to the current horse shit whisperer-in-chief whose vague soaring Rorschach rhetoric encourages his followers to believe they’re  getting their own personal nods and winks about what he believes and what he’ll do if he just gets a “chance.” And, often, when he gets the chance, he’s worse than Bush. To wit:

Just in case my liberal Democrat animal-lovin’ friends missed it: last week Barack Humane Obama signed a bill legalizing horse slaughter for human consumption in the United States after it was outlawed six years ago, thus betraying his 2008 campaign pledge (yawn) to keep it illegal. With the stroke of a pen, Obama is responsible for killing more animals each year than Dick Cheney has killed in a lifetime. 

Seventy percent of Americans wanted to keep horses off the menu but, in a flowering of demockracy -- genus venus americanus flytrapus -- the POTUS and the Congrossest kept their bipartisan unbeaten streak alive: the working class majority must never, ever get anything we want, no matter how tiny. Obama’s favorite movie is said to be “The Godfather” and, figuratively, he just put 200,000 horses’ heads each year into the beds and nightmares of anyone who cares about them. Hope and change you can tuck into. The particulars of this merciless outrage, including our old friend: private profit/socialized cost, can be found at  Our Compass. 

(Here’s some free advice for you Republican presidential yahoos: if you can put a pole ax in Obama’s hand and a thoroughbred horse on the other end of it, you’ll win the election. Poster: “Uncle Tom Obama wants YOU to go the knackers!” Remember all the letters congress received several decades ago when the military was gassing beagles? Give it a try, Mitt and Newt -- it only requires that, for once, you refrain from out-gooning Obama. You can’t excoriate Obama because he didn’t waterboard the horses before he killed them.)

Vegan nags like me point out that horses shouldn’t be eaten any more than cows, chickens, pigs, fish, deer, whales or humans. Others correctly say that American capitalism’s current Death-Mask-In-Chief murders Pakistani, Yemeni and Afghan children on a regular basis so why be surprised when he pulls the trigger on Trigger. 

So why is Obama’s marching of Mr. Ed into the terror and cruelty of the slaughterhouse any more irritating than numerous other things he does? It probably has to do with how hard it is to get minimal protections for non-human animals enacted and the fact that he keeps pretending, just like his liberal supporters keep pretending, that he and they are some kind of superior enlightened humane beings wholly unlike their barbarous right wing opponents who we’re supposed to be petrified of. It’s the liberals who shop around for both “humane meat” and “humanitarian”  “good wars” and other oxymorons -- and that grates. The lack of revolutionary class/vegan-conciousness among people on the left -- revealing their cowardice, shallowness, hypocrisy and stupidity, and the attachment they have to failure -- is one of the biggest impediments to anything positive happening in America. What’s true of health is also true of ethics and revolution: you can’t buy it, you have to live it. 

And now I have a special treat for you, an exclusive draft of a screenplay I’m  sending to Pixar called “Barack O’Celery.”

White liberal child: Mommy, come quick and look in the refrigerator! The organic Barack O’Celery is spoiled! He’s all slimy.

White liberal mom: Oh I know, honey, and we paid so much for him -- what a waste. He was so fresh and healthy-looking when we bought him four years ago at the Whole Fools election market.

Child: Can we throw him out?

Mom: No, we’ll probably just keep him for another four years.

Child: Mommy, there’s some cockroaches having a sit-in on the lower shelf, protesting the Barack O’Celery and he just pepper sprayed them! Everything in the refrigerator is ruined.   

Barack O’Celery: Will you two shut up and close the door! This doesn’t concern you! I’m trying to build a coalition of carrots, radishes and kohlrabi to attack some bok choy -- the security of this entire refrigerator depends on it! 

Child (coughing): Mommy, he’s making a mess in there and the longer he hangs around, the whiter he gets.

Mom (coughing): God only knows what he’ll be like four years from now.

Child: Mommy, can we go riding today?

Mom: No, Barack O’Celery just killed your pony. I don’t know how he did it from inside the refrigerator -- he had to really go out of his way -- but he did it. Sorry, pumpkin.

Child (horrified): Liberal mommy, is that my dead pony wrapped up in the refrigerator?! I don’t think I can take four more years of Barack O’Celery! And you need to get the hell up out of here too!

published 12/9/2011 at counterpunch.org

Ain't No New Thing: Reflections On The Whitey House

Gil Scott-Heron Dies at 62

The commanding voice that named the names, that directed a musical letter of rage (air mail special) to whitey on the moon, and lived to see a revolt (if not a revolution) televised from Egypt, has died. Gil Scott-Heron died Friday afternoon at age 62 in NYC’s St. Luke’s Hospital.

I don’t know what age I was when I first heard Scott-Heron wittily and boldly lambaste Nixon and Spearhead Agnew and Ronnie Raygun and Attilla the Haig and Marlin Perkins and Papa Doc Bush — they and their America didn’t mean shit to him (and me and millions of other Americans) and it felt damned good to hear it. One of his favorite targets was Americans’ greatest religious experience: getting something for nothing — specifically, the ripping off of black art, music and culture by (mostly) white capitalists while its creators often died paupers.

He declined the title of “Godfather of Rap” and it was easy to see why. I was blown away by NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” the first couple weeks I listened to it — the anger, the violence, fighting back against racist cops, the clarity about who your enemies are, the cheapness of life worn like a badge. But I found that I couldn’t keep listening to it indefinitely — the music, especially, was both depressing and boring. And that’s what Gil Scott-Heron and his brilliant longtime collaborator Brian Jackson figured out: they created a poetic, free-flowing, typically flute and percussion-driven platform for Scott-Heron’s AK-47 mouth to artistically and scathingly say that America was a racist war-loving hypocritical slag heap, deluded by fake movies, fake history, fake images and fake media. Scott-Heron and the multi-instrumentalist Jackson fused and maxed out beat poetry and music to what they always should have been, with fabulous hypnotic grooves and the occasional tasty solo. Scott-Heron ra-ta-tatted against injustice, but you kept on listening, for decades, because the hooks and creativity are always present whether moving through funk, soul, R & B, free jazz, African or Caribbean beats. Drugs, violence, poverty, inequality, opportunistic “leaders” and sellouts, addiction, defeat and lives that never got off the ground were frequent subjects. But the really unforgivable sin was musical boredom.

In his prime, Scott-Heron shouted that the emperors were not only stark naked but stark raving mad. He had empathy for people struggling against addiction and poverty and whenever you have empathy — artistically, personally, politically — it will lead you to a better place. And this is another difference between Scott-Heron and many of the rappers he is alleged to have inspired. Empathy begat the anger. I dispute that most of the rappers I hear are angry — if they were, they would be totally revulsed by Barack Obama. How empathetic are Americans, in general, when they acquiesce to the nonstop killing of innocents all over the world– they may think they are angry or that their backs are against the wall but these are largely the cries of the alienated, unconnected and passive, satisfied as debt-slaves with iTrinkets and currently presided over by MC Obummer, an astounding master of, as it turns out, killing hope.

I saw Scott-Heron perform two years ago at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. To see the creator of “Storm Music” and “The Bottle” perform in an intimate club was a thrill. He had a voice and presence that you paid attention to — his baritone was born to deliver Shakespeare, as bassist Ron Carter once said. He and his rockin’ pianist, blistering lefty lead player and the smoking rhythm section were so relentlessly good that I didn’t even miss my favorite song, “Storm Music,” or “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The new songs, from “I’m New Here,” were instantly embraced. “The Bottle” swung mightily that night. And he was hilarious, both that night and on his recorded offhand pot shots against the ruling class, something that isn’t often noted when he’s written about.

That Philly show fell in a time period, the fall of 2009, where I also saw James McMurtry and Iris DeMent. Interestingly (maybe) is that Scott-Heron did not perform “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” DeMent did not perform “Wasteland of the Free,” and McMurtry did not play “We Can’t Make It Here,” all absolutely classic songs pointedly critical of America. I’m sure these artists had different reasons for not playing these tunes but I took it as a bad omen. The impression it made on me was that now that the Big Bad Bush was gone it was time to STFU about America. It was time to start feeling good about America because an uncouth goon from Texas was replaced by a smooth-talking intelligent Wall Street stooge. Protest and anger were uncool. Nothing as pseudo-glorious as Reagan’s Morning (Thunder) in America but, rather, some weak-ass liberal Sleepytime tea time in America. Scott-Heron had also spoken favorably about Obama.

So, after two years of Obama, I muse: the working class of America, especially blacks, can get as much action on their concerns by sending a letter to whitey on the moon as they can from having America’s first black president in the White House.

In the jumbled world of confusing musicians with leaders, I thought about how Scott-Heron canceled a planned show in Israel in 2010 (why did he ever schedule it?) — persuaded by activists that it would be similar to playing in apartheid South Africa. One might imagine that Scott-Heron would be helping to lead a BDS movement instead of being confronted by it. But why should we expect musicians and celebrities to be more unaffected by capitalism than 99.9% of the rest of the population? His embrace of Obama perfectly symbolizes the personal and political decline and irrelevance of the left over the last 40 years. We didn’t just come a short way, baby. We went headlong the wrong way. O working class, we have to be constantly moving forward toward the overthrow of capitalism because when we cease to advance we will either die immediately or be lost for decades.

So I’m thinking of Gil Scott-Heron and his commendable activism against the nuclear industry and apartheid South Africa, and the litmus test of one’s  commitment to justice, equality and the rule of law, i.e., supporting the Palestinians against Israel, and how two weeks ago I saw my first keyboard hero, Ray Manzarek (of the Doors), at the Sellersville Theater, pleased with his acid-tested spirituality, telling the crowd that Christians and Muslims and Jews should put away their religious books and just love each other and, by the way, he and Robby Krieger are looking forward to playing as the Doors in Tel Aviv this summer because “the Israelis are so cool.”

(Hey, Ray, how about you and Robby do something that truly breaks on through: be on the next Free Gaza flotilla and play a Gaza concert if and when you “break on through” the illegal Israeli blockade — maybe you can see how “cool” the IDF is. Maybe you can grab Jim Morrison from out of the ether, where you said he resides, and bring your interstellular spirituality down to earth where it might mean something. It says in the Uncool Book that faith without works is dead.) Oh well, as a sometime Zionist, sometime Christian troubadour once admonished us, “Don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters.” He never explained the parking meter thing though I assumed he was warning us not to take up the drunken dares of friends to vault over the meters after the bars close.

And I give Gil Scott-Heron almost the last word: “It ain’t no new thing — America is always the same old shit.”

Now, are those words from many years ago too negative and cynical, too unhopey and unchangey? Well, decades after Gil Scott-Heron urged people to send their unaffordable, unpaid “doctor bills to whitey on the moon,” he lived to see 45 million Americans without any health insurance and 47 million on food stamps. He railed against ghetto poverty in 1970 and 41 years later lived to see the greatest inequalities in wealth since the Great Depression. And he lived to see the first black POTUS, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who’s currently slaughtering innocent dark-skinned people in five different countries. America can’t make clothes, shoes, toys, electronics, peace or justice but we make a hell of a lot of irony.

Anyway… Gil Scott-Heron, don’t rest in peace as everyone is advising you to, rage on wherever you are, be witty and scathing, be the fighter you are, be bold when no one else will, whether you’re in heaven or hell, I’m sure that things can be better in both places. Take with you into eternity the fiery ambitious man/child who wrote a well-regarded novel, “The Vulture,” when you were only 19 years old. Fuck crack, fuck Rikers, fuck HIV, fuck capitalism's blunting of your spirit, it happens, from time to time the darkness comes along to terrorize the weak and challenge the strong, because you were a human being, not a god, the storm is coming, it grows on the waves from Johannesburg to Montego Bay, these were tiny blips on the road to making a beautiful soul, none of us are who capitalism says we are, we have no idea who we are or what we could be, but justice is coming on the wings of a storm and we resist in the present for those yet unborn, what’s that music (storm music) playin’ on the radio, what’s that music (storm music) playin’ everywhere I go, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sweeter feelin’ in the whole wide world than Gil Scott-Heron playing “Storm Music” on the radio.

published 5/31/2011 at counterpunch.org

The Good Don't Triumph And There Is No Justice

Brian De Palma's "Blow Out" Thirty Years On

This July 21 is the 30th anniversary release date of Brian De Palma’s political/conspiracy thriller “Blow Out,” starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen and John Lithgow. Critics praised De Palma’s artful weaving of references to other directors and movies and real life events into “Blow Out” but audiences were turned off by the film’s ravagingly sad ending. As a movie heathen, I’m not so interested in De Palma’s cinematic virtuosity, and I feel that the critics never got to the heart of why this is such a powerful film — which is the fact that it’s a deep and devastating attack on America. The film’s numerous similarities and small divergences from today’s political landscape are instructive.

SPOILER ALERT! I reveal the ending of “Blow Out,” so if you haven’t seen it and intend to, you might want to stop reading now.

Travolta plays Jack, a sound technician who serendipitously records an auto accident which turns out to be the murder of the governor of Pennsylvania and  potential presidential candidate. Jack rescues Sally (Nancy Allen) from the crash scene and the story follows their efforts to interest the authorities in the evidence they have, the conspiracy/cover-up they are met with and their own fated investigation as they battle against the political operative/murderer Burke, played by John Lithgow. The film is set in Philadelphia against the backdrop of a splashy patriotic ain’t-we-great “Liberty Days” celebration.

Jack and Sally represent marginal members of the American working class, motivated chiefly by guilt and trying to redeem themselves. The fact that they feel guilt is in stark contrast to the powers that be in the movie or to America’s real political, financial and military elite who would find it unfathomable to redeem themselves because they would never imagine that they’ve done anything wrong –  except, perhaps, not made enough money or not bombed enough countries.

Jack and Sally are pitted against Burke who is no mere private eye gone bad. No, Burke has superior knowledge of surveillance, wiretapping, the staging of “accidents” and various ways to kill people. It’s never made explicit in the movie but I take Burke as some kind of ex (?) government agent, probably a CIA assassin. He is a one man death squad who ties up the “loose ends” and engages in false flag murders of complete strangers to cover up the murder he really wants to commit. The powerful and privileged are protected at all costs.

The greatness of “Blow Out” is due to the contrast between what America thinks itself to be versus what it actually is. In the movie, as in real life, while the people are having an Old Glory-gasmic celebration of the America they think they live in — freedom, democracy, the light unto the world — in reality, in the  underbelly of the nation, the real work is being done by people like Burke, who murder innocent people right and left and get away with it, violating every law and premise the nation was supposedly founded on — except murder and theft are exactly what it was founded on. The “Liberty Days” revelers whoop it up in mirage America, the America that never was or is always just out of reach, just one more election away, celebrating fake freedom (the one that doesn’t know it’s chained up because it never moves) and fake democracy (the one where we’re supposed to be eternally grateful to vote for one of the twin heads, Republican or Democrat, of the capitalist freak.)

“Blow Out’s” roof top climax, played out beneath the exploding fireworks of “Liberty Days,” is one of the most memorable scenes in all of film. Travolta’s character Jack does everything in his power to do the right thing but he and Sally are ultimately destroyed, Sally physically and Jack, more pertinent to everyday life in America, mentally, socially, emotionally and spiritually. When Jack tries to be an honest, altruistic full participant in society, when he becomes the most vital and self-actualized, and the least little bit effective (a hero for the working class, as opposed to Navy SEAL death squad heroes for the ruling class), America promptly destroys him. Jack lives in trickle-down America where evil, not wealth, trickles down and ruins many a small life. “Blow Out” is a great and terrible Greek-like tragedy because Jack gets the person killed that he  risked his own life to initially save.

It was actually the audiences, not the critics, who best understood “Blow Out.” The critics were too cowardly and unclassconscious to acknowledge the truth of a film that took on the Great Satan, they could only speak of De Palma’s technical brilliance. But the audiences — they understood in a visceral way, the ending smacked them in the mouth, the ending said all is not well here, their hopes and dreams and notions of justice crushed, innocence laid waste (as represented by Sally), the mockery of the “promise” of America and all the lies told to children every day in every school. Audiences recoiled at seeing themselves as the mindless “Liberty Days” revelers instead of the heroic resisters like Jack and Sally — they understood that they betray the founding icons every day — by never taking a risk to overthrow the illegitimate ruling class — even as they celebrate those icons.

On the roof top in “Blow Out,” on a raw revelatory monumentally sad Independence Day night, the flags wave, the fireworks explode and the cheers rise while, out of sight and under the din, another innocent person is anonymously killed for the American ruling class. That’s the American creation story, by God: the good don’t triumph and there is no justice. America wrecks the world, America moves on — and it all so easily escapes the notice of the revelers. America doesn’t pay, America doesn’t make amends, so get used to it, red man, black man, yellow man, sand man. And if every once in a blue moon the serfs get hit and bellyache, “Why do they hate us!” — and the masters go on a ten-year murder tantrum across the earth — well, for Wall Street, the Pentagon and the corrupt politicians who successfully run on racism and warmongering, well, it’s all good. In fact, it’s a bonanza. Let a thousand Blackwaters bloom. That’s your American revolution, that’s your gift to the world.

De Palma took much more heat for his 2007 film “Redacted” than he did from the 30-year-old “Blow Out” even though the latter will probably go down many years from now as the most consummate film critique of America. (“Redacted” was based on the true story of Abeer Hamza, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was gang-raped and murdered in her home by American soldiers. The troops also murdered her mother, father and 6-year-old sister. Just a little slice of life in America’s nonstop unconstitutional wars which weak-ass liberals insist that their hero Obama continue. Yes, liberals support the gang-rape of children and mass murder — see how easy it is to be Fox News when your Dumbocratic targets don’t, in fact, have any principles except getting their unprincipled man elected?)

The one faulty thing about “Blow Out” is that John Lithgow’s character is presented as a rogue operative whereas the lawlessness and murderousness that he symbolizes have always been US government policy, though, unlike today’s world, they used to be officially denied and decried. Also of note: Lithgow’s character is cut loose in the end by his superiors as opposed to, say, the way Obama moved heaven and earth to get CIA agent Raymond Davis, accused of murdering two Pakistanis, out of a jail in Pakistan and back to America.

Another divergence between “Blow Out” and the present concerns the idea of conspiracy. In “Blow Out” there is an all-encompassing successful conspiracy. But that was so then (Reagan) and this is now (Obama). And what’s different now is that the constitutional scholar/shredder Obama has normalized his predecessors’ crimes: undeclared wars, torture, indefinite detention and extra-judicial assassination (including of American citizens) are now openly defended and celebrated. When you can openly get away with these crimes and more, when there is no effective opposition to anything you do, what need is there for a conspiracy?

Now that I’ve given you my bleak interpretation of Brian De Palma’s bleak vision of (bleeping) America, let me cheer you up. I’m no comedian but I do know a few jokes.

Did you hear the one about the country that got its pride back after ten years by summarily executing a 54-year-old dialysis patient? Booyah! You don’t think that’s funny?  Well there’s lots of college students, who were only ten years old at the time when the pride was lost, who think it’s a riot… Tomorrow belongs to them and they are well prepared — look at all the American flags apparently stashed in their dorms, ready for any Old Glory-gasmic celebration that comes along…

What about the one where a government walks into a bar and says give me billions of dollars each year to fight a terrorist boogeyman and then, when the same government has the opportunity to easily capture the terrorist and question him about his worldwide links to other terrorists, and put him in handcuffs and frog-march him into court for months on end and demystify him — but, instead, chooses to immediately gun him down and silence him, thus insuring his martyrdom…? You heard that one too? You’re so hip, you must watch a lot of TV!

OK, what about the killing of the terrorist in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the 24-hour aftermath where, in Washington (District of Costellobad), the White House took back the tale of the bloodthirsty fiend shot dead in a fire fight while cowardly using one of his wives as a human shield in his luxurious mansion while his impoverished followers freeze their jihadis off in caves? You don’t think that’s funny? You know, you’re a tough crowd, so let’s just call it a night before I start heckling you back.

Just go out and get the Criterion Collection’s recently released “Blow Out” on Blu-ray or a double disc DVD containing lengthy interviews with Brian De Palma and Nancy Allen, De Palma’s 1967 feature “Murder a la Mod,” a booklet and many other extras.

published 5/13/2011 at counterpunch.org

Rutabaga Ridge and Bac-O

A Joke of a Country

The aftermath of the Arizona shooting reminded me of how much support there is for the Second Amendment compared to other amendments. No one -- left or right -- believes that guns will be restricted in any way.

Not so with the other amendments. The ruling class has figured out how to make the Bill of Rights irrelevant.

The First Amendment now means we have the right to assemble in cages far away and out of sight of our political leaders at their conventions. (If dissent falls over in a cage does it make a sound?) Freedom of speech now only has real meaning and impact if there are millions of dollars of TV and radio advertising behind it.     

The Fourth  Amendment was KOed in the phony war on drugs but its body is still kicked about the ring in the phony war on terror. Waking up each day in America means learning how many new ways we are spied upon and not free. Now there’s an ever-growing number of places where we are not secure in our persons and effects -- homes, phones, vehicles, cameras, computers, airports and, soon, bus and train stations and malls. (I absolutely draw the line at my favorite station -- the Magnum roller coaster station at Cedar Point.) I fantasize about tens of millions of crazed Fourth Amendment fetishists. You’ll only pull that probable cause from my cold dead hands.

The Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments are a nightmarish parade of absurdities where it’s entirely possible to be an illiterate Afghan goat herder kidnapped by a criminal gang ( “He was Osama bin Laden’s yogurt man!”) and sold to the American military for a lottery-like pay out and then be jailed and tortured (if tortured to death, stop here)  without charge or trial and, years later, stood up in a show trial held out of sight on an island nation (which Americans have always been taught hates freedom and democracy) and have the torture-induced false confession used as evidence against you and then, when you are miraculously found not guilty, you can continue to be held and put into however many jeopardies it takes to keep you locked up forever and then thrown into solitary confinement in a Supermax prison, like 25,000 Americans, where your mind will be destroyed in a most definite cruel and unusual punishment, and all of this is just a pit stop to your ultimate destination on a gurney where you can, finally, wrongfully, legally, be tortured to death in a  “botched” execution. And your kidnapping, false imprisonment, torture and death will be proudly used by politicians to drum up money and votes. It may not be George Mason and James Madison’s cup of tea but it hits the spot with the Tea Party, most of the United States Congress and President Obummer -- and these highly evolved superior beings are all that matter. 

And yet the Second Amendment seems immune from any encroachment. But I put it to you that we don’t know how strong the Second Amendment muscle really is because it never gets a decent workout. And here’s how to exercise it: I urge all animal liberationists, eco- warriors and every Latino and  Muslim in America to assemble the vast, but perfectly legal, arsenals that many on the white right have always had. Then we will see how well-tolerated the Second Amendment is, something the Black Panthers learned long ago. I expect that we would see vegan compounds -- bloody Rutabaga Ridges and Bac-Os -- being stormed by the ATF and FBI. 

***

My favorite headline about the Arizona shooting came from the  January 8 Trentonian which threw in everything but the kitchen sink: “Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot in head in terrorist attack: federal judge, 9/11 girl killed; is Sarah Palin responsible?”  

Here’s a quote from the article:

“Giffords is known in her southern Arizona district for her numerous public outreach meetings, which she admitted in an October interview with the Associated Press can sometimes be challenging.

‘You know, the crazies on all sides, the people who come out, the planet earth people,’  she said following an appearance with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Tucson, where Mullen was questioned by a woman who wanted the military to start ‘building cities instead of destroying them.’ ‘I’m glad this just doesn’t happen to me.’”

Right. The crazies, the planet earth people who would rather see money spent building cities than destroying them. The crazies who don’t like mountaintop removal and fracking and unconstitutional wars and extra-judicial assassinations and indefinite detention and giving away the public treasury to thieving bankers, or the ongoing spectacle of Senate warmongers like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman pushing for turning Iran into thousands of bloody Safeway parking lots. 

McCain was quoted in the same Trentonian article from Colombia, America’s favorite human rights abuser in Latin America, where he was visiting its president. Arizona is a mere anti-union “right to work” state but oh what a free market paradise Colombia is -- there, right wing death squads successfully compete against labor organizers by routinely killing them. I’m sure Sen. McCain was raising (Arizona?) hell about all those murdered union organizers. It’s more likely that the senator was ascertaining how well American tax dollars are being spent to exterminate leftist guerillas under the cover of a bogus “war on drugs” and ginning up trouble against Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela next door. 

   

******

The United States Congress feels no urgency about the following: On January 7 the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced there are 14.5 million unemployed Americans, 8.9 million others who are working part-time but who want full-time work, 1.3 million who looked for work in the preceding 12 months but not in the four weeks leading up to the employment survey and 1.3 million discouraged workers who have given up looking for work altogether -- for an official grand(ly understated) total of 26 million unemployed or under-employed. Contrariwise, the United States Congress moved heaven and earth in one week in 2008 to prop up insolvent zombie financial institutions with a potential $20 trillion, according to SourceWatch, of which the bankers took millions for Christmas bonuses and kicked back a tiny amount as the Congressional bribes known as campaign contributions. 

Trillion$ to pay off the gambling debts of zombie banksters, 26 million Americans without jobs. A joke of a country. A lawless country -- with more repressive laws than ever -- socially, morally and financially bankrupt, that rightly commands no loyalty or respect. Fast action and trillion$ for bankers,  millions of jobless Americans fighting for every little scrap they can get, whether it’s food stamps or unemployment benefits. That’s the priorities of the sanctimonious corruptatons in the United States Congress who call for civility in public discourse while they spend trillions of more dollars on the slaughter of innocent people in unconstitutional wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arizona shooter is presented as an aberration while the CIA and young men at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada kill hundreds of times more civilians in Pakistan (over 2,000 murdered since Obama took office) in their computer-guided drone strikes.  

The Arizona shooting will evolve from ruling class hand wringing about the rabid right’s rhetoric to concrete actions against Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, eco-activists, Hugo Chavez, the FARC, Iran, Hezbollah and any entity effectively resisting the American empire. 

*********

I fluctuate every day, sometimes every hour, between hope and despair. My hope is the destruction of the American empire -- my despair is that it might not happen in time for millions of people. At this moment, I’m unexpectedly bullish on its demise. I’m totally confident, for the next ten seconds, that something this arrogant, bankrupt and nakedly hypocritical is creating the courageous and determined people all over the world -- in the jungles and deserts and even in the belly of the military beast itself -- who will bury it, and have a good laugh doing it. Hallelujah, brother!

Oops -- too late. Back to the shit. This country is in permanent lockdown. We have the right to dream and the right to blow off steam but not the ability to change anything. Every day we slog on, on fire but insensate, through the perfectly calibrated Hell of America where nothing positive can happen for the vast working class majority unless it first, and mostly, benefits a tiny minority of rapacious parasites. The money is for THEM, the mainstream news is for THEM, all the worry and concern and action in government is for THEM, everything is for THEM and we are of no consequence. Dictators of the world, come visit America and see how it’s really done: Here the slaves believe they are free because they can buy iShit in ten different colors. Here it’s a way of life that the majority NEVER gets what it wants whether it’s universal single-payer health insurance, an end to wars or an end to bailing out the rich. Behold the narcissistic obedient subjects, with their phenomenal tolerance for dark-skinned pain and death, who have the exact government they deserve -- watch them work until they drop because Wall Street fleeced them of tens of trillions of dollars in fraud-filled pump and dump asset bubbles. Behold the Marlboro Man dreams floating above the foundational cowardice of the American working class, ignorantly proud that, unlike the French and Greeks and Tunisians, they would never cause any trouble for their capitalist masters. Behold the Extermi-Nation, where the only honorable place to be is six feet under or the penitentiary. Martin Luther King knew it then, Bradley Manning knows it now. Listen up, Obummer: Manning is closer to King than you have ever been and will ever be. 

published 1/25/2011 at dissidentvoice.org

Al-Qaeda Wants to Kill You with Rattlesnakes!

Shake Your Rattlebooty


My hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, wasn’t much interested earlier this year when WikiLeaks released “Collateral Murder,” the classified American military video which showed an Apache helicopter crew having a jolly time mowing down Iraqi civilians, including children and two Reuters news staffers.

But now that ghost face killa Joe Lieberman has given American business its marching orders to destroy WikiLeaks, the Inquirer has plenty of alarmist anti-WikiLeaks stories.

My favorite recent WikiLeaks scare, entitled “a hit list for al-Qaeda,” told of   “infuriated” unnamed government officials who “expressed alarm” that WikiLeaks released a State Department cable of “potential targets”  whose disruption by al-Qaeda could “jeopardize our national security.” Among the targets: the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz and the Australian laboratory that produces  polyvalent crotalid antivenin — the antidote for rattlesnake venom. Yup, public enemy number one, Julian Assange, went and told Osama bin Laden where the Panama Canal is — and we’d been keeping it from him for all these years!

The concern expressed for the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil is transported, was touching also. Touching, because many United States Congresspersons foam at the mouth for an Israeli attack on Iran which, in turn, would shut down the strait and cause gas prices to soar. But it all makes sense in Capitol Hell: if Israeli aggression causes me to pay $10 a gallon for gas that’s a regrettable but necessary thing, whereas if al-Qaeda causes this same result it’s an economic disaster for the world that can only be properly avenged by murdering a multitude of Muslim civilians.

As for the al-Qaeda/rattlesnake connection, well, this makes sense too. If you’re a person in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen, and America is converting your wedding parties into funerals, your rage is likely directed to one thought only: I’m going to get even by making sure that some poor bastard in West Texas, dying of a rattlesnake bite (which he probably deserved), knows in his dying moments, when he can’t get any antivenin, that Sharia law and baba ganoush have triumphed after all.

But what if the shadowy world of the pit viper family began working tail in hand with al-Qaeda? What would an al-Qaeda terrorist rattlesnake be like? If he was like the failed shoe bomber and the failed underwear bomber, and all the other terrorists who can’t find a gun or a knife or a match in America, he’d be a little bit off. To wit:

If a terrorist rattlesnake was coiled up in the seat next to you on an airplane he would probably appear furtive and wouldn’t “look right.”  You might be too polite (or afraid) to say something like, “Shouldn’t you be in the cargo area?” Or you might think that this snake has connections, especially if he’s in first class — maybe this is Paris Hilton’s snake, maybe you should ask if he’d pose for a picture together. You should definitely tweet about it immediately. Everything must be okay with the authorities — and that’s all that matters — because the snake made it through the TSA scanner or got felt up just like you did.

Somewhere in your carry on bag you have your good digital camera, the one with the equivalent of a 300 mm zoom lens that pops out about 4 inches — you must have that close up of the snake’s tongue  and his rattles. You turn in your seat and zoom in on his face  — “Come on, show me your tongue, shake your rattlebooty, attaboy!” and — wham! — out of the blue, the crazy terrorist rattlesnake bites your forearm! But because this is a screw-up terrorist rattlesnake, instead of fangs he has molars and instead of venom he regurgitates a nauseating concoction of chocolate milk and barbecued Fritos all over your arm. You and several other passengers wrestle him to the floor and you end up getting that photo-op after all. You’re famous, baby.

In the weeks following this terrorist plot you and the rest of America learn one of two things:

1) For years the family, friends and neighbors of this particular rattlesnake were victims of a foreign invasion, torture and genocidal killing. It turns out that snake hunters — a tiny subset of America’s treasure trove of psycho killers and sadists — go to the canyons of West Texas and thread long tubing into narrow crevices in canyon walls where rattlesnakes sleep and then pour in gasoline and /or ammonia ( snake hunters care about nature, dontcha know) to drive out the snakes. Then the hunters bravely capture the snakes with long metal tongs and transport them to “festivals” where the animals are shot, burned with cigarettes and sometimes have their mouths sewn shut with wire before they are gutted and skinned. But don’t think this isn’t educational or fun for kids because the adults will let children hold the still beating heart of a decapitated snake and sometimes even the head itself, though it can bite for up to an hour later — see how cruel and vicious rattlesnakes are! So are we creating more terrorist rattlesnakes faster than we are killing them? A known known that only Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t know for sure.

Or, we learn this:

2) The FBI befriended and cultivated this terrorist rattlesnake and bought him the plane ticket. They knocked him out, drained him of all venom, filed down his fangs and promised him a fabulous garbage dump in paradise where, rather than 72 virgins, there will be 72,000 varmints.

After the plot is foiled the FBI offers this terrorist rattlesnake a deal and puts him in the same small cell as Private First Class Bradley Manning, whose 23rd birthday occurred on December 17. The rattlesnake — touted by the FBI as “pet therapy” — is a sop to civil libertarians who had complained about Manning’s  mind-destroying solitary confinement, the 23 hours of each day with no contact with any living creature. The government’s impeccable reasoning is this: the snake scares or befriends Manning who turns on WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange who turns on all the people in the world who he doesn’t know who steal and anonymously leak classified information and who hate the American government and then, after a few decades, when everybody who has a contrary view to the US government is behind bars or dead, the war on terror is over and America wins. It all makes perfect sense — if it didn’t the American public wouldn’t believe it. And if it didn’t make sense, newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer would alert us immediately.

published 12/24/2010 at dissidentvoice.org

Grand Central Nature

A Jug of Wine, a Loath of Them, and Thou


I used to be a very active animal activist. One of the things that I and my comrades would contend with was charges by others that we liked non-humans better than humans. “Why aren’t you doing something for people?” went the seemingly pre-recorded announcement from passing strangers at our demonstrations. And whenever you probed the loudest mouth of them all you’d find that he — inevitably a he — wouldn’t be donating his time to anybody, human or non-human. We activists were always calling up a list of things that we either did or were (nurses, therapists, teachers, social workers, etc. ) or feeding vegan meals to the homeless or earnestly enumerating the many personal health and environmental benefits from not exploiting animals. Always trying to justify ourselves -- and compassion and mercy -- to stone cold barbarians.


                                             *


A couple weeks ago my girlfriend and I spent four days at the White Pig Bed and Breakfast, a 175-acre nature sanctuary in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia. Soaking in the outdoor hot tub one night, we saw a shooting star and, later, turned off the jets and listened as various creatures walked about unseen in the dark woods. In the daytime we rubbed the snouts and bellies of the sanctuary’s resident pot-bellied pigs, hiked up to the top of the cascading Crabtree Falls (where it seems to rain lady bugs) and enjoyed all manner of trails in the splashy glowing Shenandoah Forest. Walking one day deep in a sunny valley there was nothing but stillness — and a four foot black snake lying zigzag  across the trail. We walked right in front of him and he never moved. I turned around and took a few pictures, capturing his angular pose, and then he finally slid on. It made me feel good that this creature was apparently not afraid of us. This was his land, his home he seemed to say. Why should he live in fear here? He and we seemed to be starting at ground zero with each other. And I like that feeling a lot. I like meeting creatures who have neither been terrorized nor tamed by humans.


But what’s nature without a little “red in tooth and claw,” courtesy of human shock and awe? Many of us hiking in the Blue Ridge, or standing on the magnificent overlooks, would occasionally hear gunshots ringing out, reminding us that hunters were playing army against the animals we marvel at or gearing up to do so in the weeks ahead. It was the reminder that some people enjoy watching the light and life go out of an innocent creature’s eyes. No empathy or appreciation of what it’s like to be unarmed, defenseless and shot, to be raising your family or searching for food or simply having a pleasant glorious day and then have someone come into your home (when their home of superior comfort and ease is far away) and perform the profoundly cowardly act of shooting you. Practicing cowardice over and over again is utterly emasculating.


                                     * *


Sometimes you explore to get lost and surprised and other times to find a setting for a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou. And sometimes all you get is a hearty satisfying loathe of THEM. Climbing the Humpback Mountain trail we found that the summit was grand central nature chock-a-block with “humanity” jostling for the highest bestest view near the edge of the giant Humpback Rock outcropping, complete with children falling on the slippery slanted rocks and their parents screaming after-the-fact warnings, all the while bumping others with well-provisioned voluminous backpacks  and ski poles (used as walking sticks) as they pin-balled yupward to the absolute top (civilization, i.e., the parking lot, was all of 20 minutes — downhill — away.)


A great place to contemplate nature as you can see — human nature. It didn’t matter that the entire view was spectacular wherever you stood, the humans already at the top wouldn’t budge so the new climbers could take their place and that didn’t stop the newcomers from pushing their way through the madding crowd. Peaceable me preferred a compromise where they embraced and then took a lovers’ leap. Remember, this is all on the edge of a 3,000 foot mountain. There didn’t seem to be any appreciation by the conquerors that nature can be hazardous as well as beautiful. It was a jumbled pointless “rock” concert minus the music and dope. I fantasized that we might go one purple-assed baboon (thank you, William Burroughs) over the line sweet Jesus and the whole overhang would give way and we’d tumble into the valley below. That would teach us.


Well, no, it wouldn’t. Disaster doesn’t teach humans anything. If it did, we wouldn’t be starting a new war in the Middle East every little whipstitch or give money to too big to fail banks so they can scarf up their competitors and become even too bigger to fail in the future. I’ll stick with the quiet sunlight on the dignified blacksnake. I could watch him for hours, but I couldn’t stand the humans on the peak of Humpback Mountain for 30 seconds. Sayonara. “What’s it like up there?” asked one ascending hiker on our way down. “It’s like Market Street in Philly — except there’s ski poles.”


                                        * * *


After my first night back at work — I work in the automotive industry — I was driving home through Valley Forge  National Historical Park at 11:30 at night and the car in front of me swung into the oncoming lane to avoid something. And that something was a young deer sitting in the road, looking back and forth with her legs tucked under her. I stopped, put my flashers on and got out.


She was very afraid and tried rising on her front legs and dragged herself near some grass at the side of the road. Both of her back legs were badly injured. She looked around for help and I could hear her mother or another of her tribe snorting nearby in the darkness. I didn’t know what I could do for her so I walked over to her, knelt down, started petting her and talked to her. She eased up and didn’t try to get away. After a few moments, I got up.


Cars and cars and cars are going by. I’m offered all kinds of advice: “Don’t go near it, they’ll kick ya!”  Others asked if I needed some automotive help. Yeah, I need for you and me to get the fuck off this planet, I thought. I need for cars, these slaughterhouses on wheels, to die.  I wave the cars around. Why aren’t you people home in bed? Why are you and I on the roads at midnight on a Tuesday? Why do country roads have interstate-sized traffic on them? Why are there two busy roads right in the middle of what should be a 3,600-acre nature sanctuary?


I called my girlfriend and she gave me a couple numbers of wildlife rehabbers, one of whose recorded announcement said that they weren’t taking any calls that week and another whose recording advised calling the game commission. I left messages anyway and then decided there was no good answer for this deer so I called 911. After about 15 minutes a couple park rangers pulled up behind me and I asked if anything non-lethal could be done for this creature. One said they would take care of it and that I should go. The ranger acted like I was a crazy person and this was a big joke. I was finding it hard to leave. I got in my car, started to drive then rolled down the window and, not knowing exactly what I wanted to say, uttered, “This is all very sad.” “Will you go now,”  he said. And after about five seconds of driving I heard a gunshot as they killed her.


                     * * * *


There’s a good chance, even without getting hit by a car and then shot, that this deer might have only lived two more weeks. That’s because Valley Forge National Historical Park is now in the first week of its first-ever deer kill, a $3 million four-year plan to kill 1,100 of the park’s estimated 1,277 deer. After the formality of “democracy,” a bogus public comment period which had all the effect of an antiwar sign on Dick Cheney, the park did what it was always going to do from the beginning.


In every park deer kill the cover story is always the “understory,” the  saplings, seedlings and shrubs that deer have the audacity to eat. These plants, plus ground-nesting birds and tulips (deer Tofutti), don’t compete very successfully with deer and that is something the Dr. Frankenstein park managers aim to change. The managers “manage” and disdain mere wilderness and wildlife sanctuaries where animals work out their own destinies. The hell with evolution or survival of the fittest. And all of this nature vivisection is done at the expense of the deer and must never inconvenience the humans, their tourism, their cars, their parking lots, their roads, the chemical run-off from their nearby farms or their high-speed commerce.


Even compared to other parks, which have far fewer resources, Valley Forge park officials acted in very bad faith. Park officials admit that the deer population peaked in 2005 and has declined and stabilized, proving that the deer can be controlled without shooting. How many deer are in the park is also an open question because the park extrapolated its count from several “eyeball” surveys done by volunteers instead of conducting more accurate infrared aerial surveys before and after last year’s hard winter. Even working within their own murderous logic, park officials could choose not to shoot bucks so that the natural one to one ratio between bucks and does can be re-established faster and result in less deer being killed overall. Instead, the park’s plan is to kill bucks, does, young, old, healthy, unhealthy, whatever it takes to kill 500 deer this winter.


Beyond the understory cover story, the real story is this: it’s many people’s  perception that there’s too many large disobedient rebel animals who will not be contained by the average fence and who do not recognize capitalist property rights or the rules of the road which state: get the hell out of the human way. Valley Forge Park has been under pressure for years from wealthy land owners adjacent to the park, a noisy kind of Hostas Rights Movement, who lose thousands of dollars each year (they say) to deer eating their ornamental plants and shrubs. These money patriots love living near the park — they just don’t like the wildlife that comes with it. Do I relate to people who have thousands of dollars to spend each year on ornamental plants? Do I give a damn about their money or their mistaken view that they own the outdoors? I don’t recognize their “property rights”  over nature or the illegitimate laws used to enforce them. I’m not “civilized,” thank God. Bambi and Proudhon believed the same righteous thing: all property is theft — and I’m with them.


The deer are also unpopular with many motorists who are far too busy and important to slow down in the park. Presented with no stop signs, traffic lights or speed bumps, their perception is that “nothing’s here.” So, if they can, they blow through the park, often at 50 mph, because they know the frustration that awaits them on Routes 202 and 422 and the mordantly named Schuykill “Expressway,” one of the best monuments to civilization anywhere in the world. No, nothing’s here, nothing except all these deer, foxes, raccoons, chipmunks, skunks, opossums, squirrels, turtles, snakes, frogs, birds and, yes, a bona fide predator of deer, a few coyotes.


Lowering the speed limit in the park from 35 to 25, and enforcing it, would probably eliminate nearly every deer/vehicle collision. For a brief time every day I bring the revolution to the park by going 25 mph. Since it’s clear that you, O working class, aren’t going to perform your historic mission, your real work of overthrowing capitalism (you're about 162 years late for work, according to Marx and Engels), I don’t give one little damn about you being on time to your bogus work, your make-believe work, your slave work, your artificial world work, your obedient ass-kissing keep your head down work, your life-wasting soul-draining work, your manufacturing of death work, your unquestioning anti-Earth work. I don’t care about interrupting your lifelong inertia dream. As you can imagine, I'm sometimes late for work. So don’t get behind me because I will lead you nowhere, slowly. I’ll make you watch the black snake indefinitely or stand in a lady bug blizzard and I’ll comfort your enemies, like the deer.


published 11/15/2010 at dissidentvoice.org