assorted items

ap/ under the same sun

apparently Arvin is hibernating, so here's more lazy blogging from me...

Barbara O’Brien discusses two recent commencement speeches, and the right-wing take on them:

So, to re-cap the rules: (1) When a pro-war politician gives a pro-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle and boo him, that shows how Deranged the Angry Left is - because they heckled a pro-war speech. (2) When an anti-war politician gives an anti-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle, walk out and even riot, that also shows how Angry the Left is - because they “provoked a near riot” by pro-war students.

Mark Kleiman discusses Tom Kean’s commencement speech at Skidmore:

Former NJ Gov. Tom Kean is reported to have told the Skidmore College commencement:"Plato said, 'The penalty for not participating in government is to be governed by your inferiors.' Think about it. It may be happening."

some older news from Qadeeb al-Ban at Mere Islam, who hasn’t posted in a while.

"in a gesture of love"

Zeynep, at Under the Same Sun:

“Welcome to the Club, Iran”

Iran has decided to adopt the techniques of the rich and powerul:

"I officially announce that Iran has joined countries with nuclear technology," Ahmadinejad said today.[11April-JV] But more importantly, he might have said, Iran will now join the West in using an even more important technology: modern public relations. They, too, will use the ubiquitous, orwellian writing behind the leader.

1. Now, I think it would've been helpful if Kean had been this prickly when he was a bigshot on the 9-11 comission. He could have objected when George Junior insisted that his testimony not take place under oath and in the same place (and with cameras rolling) like everybody else's, but instead in a private session in the white house with Cheney present to coach him. But hey, that's the past.

2. do you like the doves? I think they're a nice touch.

cross-posted at HugoZoom, etc.

fascism n' fukuyama, etc

Diebold machine via the Augusta Chronicle(l.);Nicola Jennings cartoon of Francis Fukuyama via the Guardian.

1.from Billmon: "Cooking With Gas"

It's quite unfair, if you think about it. The Saudis hold token elections for toothless municipal councils -- in which women weren't even allowed to vote -- and get petted and praised by democracy boy and his office wife. Egypt holds semi-rigged elections for its national parliament, in which an illegal opposition party nonetheless wins a substantial number of seats (albeit under various aliases) -- and gets nothing but grief. So what does Saudi Arabia have that Egypt doesn't have (or at least, not in exportable quantities)?

2.via American Samizdat:
"Top Ten Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State"


3. a reminder, from indie journalist Robert Lindsay that the war is hardly over in Afghanistan either.


4. hey Francis: next time, say something before the bombs start falling:
from Scott Harrop, guest-posting at Helena Cobban's Just World News:

Why has Fukuyama's recently released book, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy (Yale UP) caused such a sensation? Quite simply, here we have a leading inner member of the neoconservatives in the Reagan and Bush Administrations breaking ranks with his former comrades. His book and his address at UVA explain why and set out a better course for American foreign policy.


In his lively prepared remarks , Fukuyama condensed his book into 30 minutes. He began with an overview of neoconservatism's roots. Evolving far from its origins on the Trotskyite left in the 1930?s, neoconservatives after World War II retained an idealism about the universality of human rights and were impressed that American power could be used for noble purposes. On the domestic front, neoconservatives focused on counterproductive consequences of government social engineering efforts.

Yet between these two themes emerged a key contradiction and legacy. The same movement so eloquently skeptical of government'?s capacity to enact social transformation was as sure in its convictions about the utility of international force to bring about ?transformation? for other countries.

Applied then to the post 9-11 world, the Bush neoconservatives made three critical misjudgments. First was the expansion of the doctrine of pre-emptive war into that of preventive war. After 9/11, Fukuyama agreed that containment was no longer an option and invading Afghanistan was necessary - to pre-empt a demonstrated imminent threat. But too many variables of the presumed threat from Iraq were unclear. What imminent threat was to be pre-empted?

Out of a desire to be lazy, I was just going to post these links and excerpts and leave it at that, but Fukuyama bears some HugoCommenting:Harrop discusses FF's remarks at some length, and just based on this JWN post(haven't read th' book), it's difficult to not come away with the impressions that

1.Fukuyama's thesis is just warmed-over Kerryism, a la Mister there's-a-better-way's pusilanimous insistence(s) in 2004 that even though he voted both for and against the war, if it was up to him he would've worked harder to get the Europeans to support it first, but hey I'm not a dove, don't accuse me of that, blah blah blah... Only with bigger words, and (presumably) footnotes.

2.Apparently Fukuyama says nothing about the shifting rationales for the war, as if the phoney-baloney concern about WMDs from '02-'03 is just not something we talk about in polite society. Harrop doesn't call him on this, saying nothing about this either. As I was hitherto unfamiliar with Harrop's writing, I don't know if I should attribute this to an oversight or flimflammery.

3.Harrop is kind in not pointing out that Fukuyama is an intellectual seeking redemption*, because he's (a)best known for The End of History and the Last Man, and (b)how blitheringly wrong he was in The End of History, because he seemed to buy the staggeringly insipid assumption that the fall of Soviet communism was, somehow, the only unentanglement of a major world conflict that mattered, because the Soviets, the Europeans, and the Americans were the only peoples that mattered in geopolitical terms. Billions of other people exist, sure. But to make shoes and low-cost electronics gear for us, give us their oil, and maybe smile when we visit their countries and take photos of their charmingly indigeneous ways.

*Harrop says Fukuyama arrived at his UVA speech gig on a Harley(please stop laughing). This strikes me as tellingly poetic, not only because it reminds me of Kerry's lame Leno appearance doing the same thing two years ago, but because Harley Davidsons are ridiculously overpriced and antiquated bikes sold as boutique items for yuppies who want to recapture their youth, much as FF wants to recapture his relavence.

cross-posted at HZ, etc.

when I initially posted this, Micah Holmquist wrote to let me know that Fukuyama did indeed address the shifting rationales offered for the war when he did a PBS interview show recently.-JV

Join me at the American Street

...where I'll be posting each Thursday (and cross-posting/archiving here).

Do we have ANY fight left in us?

Dissent without resistance, it should be noted, is a form of consent. If official acts offend our sense of decency, moral sanction must be enacted, and justice applied through punishment and restitution, or one’s words have no meaning but to flatter one’s sense of piety. Autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and justice cannot be obtained without accountability. Thus there are distinct limits to a strategy of moral theatrics in containing such things as the neurosis of militarism and the associated pathogen of aggression; at some point, risks must be taken to curtail systematic global violence. The problems of terrorism, foreign and domestic, lay and official, I would observe, promise to get worse until the popular desire to be either righteous or reassured is surpassed by a popular desire to be informed and effective; faith in piety or patriarchy is not conducive to personal growth. Reflective analysis is the antidote to doctrinaire strategy and tactics.
~Jay Taber, The Power of Moral Sanction

Most of you already know - even though you can't bring yourself to admit it - The Republic is deader than Elvis. The definition of "post-Constitutional" is painfully obvious to a thoughtful, erudite reader such as yourself. You've been following the crimes of the Bush Administration for over a half-decade now. And you're accustomed to feeling a cold blade thrust into your heart by the politicians you send to D.C. to do The People's work. It's a fucking wonder any of us have any blood left. Come to think of it, that would explain the anemia.

Still, we wait for someone else to unfurl the anti-war banner from an overpass or spray-paint THE ONE PARTY STATE on each stop sign at the four-way intersection near the high school. But outward signs of discontent are few-to-nonexistent, and those of us not surrounded by like-minded citizens wonder, "Isn't anyone in this community feeling as abused and outraged as me?" Who would know.

Dissent without resistance. We're guilty as fuck and you know it.

Like damsels in distress, we dream of salvation from the Democrat who "grows a spine" or a contemporary version of Edward R. Murrow to conquer the hostile airwaves. Someone to waltz onto the television screen and fashion something meaningful from the scattered shards of dissent lying here and there. In our heart of hearts, we know it isn't going to happen. But clinging to the fantasy spares us from pondering what risks we are willing to take and what sacrifices we are willing to make, if any.

Liberals like to think of themselves as tough. The sad, uncomfortable truth is that we are role-playing in ornate costumes stained with the blood, sweat and sacrifice of generations past. We are hiding behind peace signs and the hollowest of platitudes to feed our self-righteousness. What have we fought lately? Plenty, if one's idea of "fighting" is writing letters to the New York Times and Nancy Pelosi.

I like admitting this as much as you like hearing it: With the rarest of exceptions, today's Liberal is anything but tough. And getting that way - like the boxer preparing for The Big Fight - should be a top priority among those who purport to be "reality-based." As individuals, we are far too preoccupied with appeasing authority - with "playing by the rules" - to cause The Powers That Be any real trouble. This has to change.

If the function of knowledge is to inform action, where is the action in this sterile, stifling ghost town of conformity we call America?

Like the polished Democratic politicians who preen before the cameras, grumble on cue and then accommodate the dark forces of fear and oppression as if it's Just Another Day, so, too, does the rest of the citizenry engage in this charade. Expecting elected Democrats to fight, even as we ourselves do nothing but write the occasional letter and/or check, reveals a debilitating character flaw that must be corrected if our downward spiral is to be broken. Until this fundamental weakness is acknowledged and overcome, our Constitutional Republic will lie in ashes as The Knobby Boot stands on our collective throat. Short of such an epiphany and correction, we can only look forward to a future of disappointment, resignation and submission. And until each of us takes it upon ourselves to change personally, we will deserve our lousy fate.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

~Mario Savio; Berkeley, 1966

Take it like a toadie, Ross

From the blog of ABC's investigative reporter, Brian Ross:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Lock the motherfuckers up. Put 'em on waterboards. Pistol whip 'em. Flush their Blackberries after gleaning. Threaten their families. Make 'em cry for months on end in some rank dungeon in Kazakhstan.

The corporate press makes excuses - daily - for MY rights getting trampled. When it's their ox getting gored - oh my, well, that's different.

A blank check from the news media to the Republican Party created the monster known as George W. Bush and then greased the skids for his every crime. And they're still doing it. Why anyone makes a distinction between corporate news media and government at this late date - with all we've been forced to endure for the last decade, in particular - is a mystery to me. They are two faces of the same monolith and bear the same degree of responsibility for unleashing the plague of neoconservatism on the world. Yeah, I said it: the same degree of responsibility.

Whether Brian Ross or Tony Snow or Dick Cheney or Bob Schieffer or Karl Rove or Generalissimo Bush or Katie Fucking Couric, they're all elitist assholes who don't give a righteous shit that The Republic lies in ashes... at least not until it's their sorry asses that get ground up in the cogs of oppression like yesterday's beef. Fuck 'em.

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast saved me the trouble of leaving a comment for Mr. Ross:

You guys in the press have been sucking up to this president from the very beginning. You reported his lies, you bought the B.S., and you did it all for access and so you could get invited to the right parties, and so he could towel-snap you and give you stupid nicknames.

And where did it get you? Monitored by the NSA.

Maybe if you'd done your job from the beginning, we wouldn't be living in a fascist state run by a madman right now. But no....it was more important that Al Gore was stiff and John Kerry had no charisma. You wanted to drink beer with this guy? Fine. Drink your beer with him. But don't start crying now about your rights being violated.

Posted by: Jill | May 15, 2006 12:51:01 PM

Greendale, Part II

Got my copy Thursday. Raw and ragged. Electric guitar as murky and distorted as the picture of reality we are fed every day.

It's also a damn nice companion piece to the powerful and moving film, Greendale (2003), Young's fearless, stirring ode to direct action which aired on IFC last week. Ragged Glory, indeed.

And now it's time for a rolling, cross-country protest featuring as many anti-Fascist musicians as can be assembled -- a painfully overdue celebration of DEFIANCE. Whether or not it will happen is an open question (I've heard no speculation concerning such an event), but it needs to happen. Badly.

A Ghost From The Republic

"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

-Louis Brandeis

Toward The Light

Dangriga Bus Station, 27 April 2006

notes from the inexplicable

Tempted as I am, explaining the trip to Belize is impossible. It cannot be done.

As someone who loves language, it is frustrating to encounter its limitations. Unfortunately, that is my burden. Every novel combination of words I could use to dazzle and impress and possibly convey a tiny splinter of the psychological gestalt that rearranged my soul has long been claimed by New Age hucksters and verbose mental health professionals.

So, instead of all that, here are just a few of the things I learned:

• Budget travel = plenty of beer money.
  
  
• I don't hate kids after all. And, hell no, I still don't want any.
  
  
• Joe Bageant is a walking, playing, singing compendium of early-to-mid 20th Century American music.
  
  
• Regardless of whatever open mind accompanies you, and no matter how great things work out, eating chicken in the Third World is just as motherfuckin' scary as it sounds.
  
  
• Contribo bitters, baby. For all you ethnobotanists and shaman-types [secret handshake here]: Soak a mature stick of the tropical vine aristolochia trilobata in rum for, well, come to think of it, I'm not sure for how long, but a couple of weeks with regular agitation would work fine. The result is a tonic with a tinggggg. Like ginseng, it has a "healthy taste" - earthy, medicinal and strangely comforting. And like all good medicine in the Caribbean, contribo is said to be great for a boner (fortunately, the odds of getting an erection in a bar in Dangriga are even more remote than you think). It's also water soluble for those who eschew alcohol, but a taste for astringents will come in handy with either version.
  
  
• Avoid hitch-hiking from Hopkins Village to Dangriga under the blazing equatorial sun, especially on Sunday. Eighty percent of the traffic on that particular stretch of highway is comprised of vans from the Hamanasi Resort ferrying rich-ass tourists to and from the airport and exotic coastal excursions. It just isn't reasonable to expect them to give a good goddamn if some diminishing stain of a dust-covered human being is withering and dying on the roadside.
  
  
• The monstrous face of Empire is infinitely more horrific when reflected in the eyes and stories of the world's poorest citizens.
  

Thank you, gentlemen.

How fortunate I am to have such informed, entertaining colleagues willing to keep the lights on here during my absence. Sincerest thanks for the many gems provided by Jay Taber (aka Spartacus) of Skookum and Jonathan Versen of Hugo Zoom while I was wandering Belize with and without Mighty Joe Bageant. You two are hereby released from further acts of charity, but the key remains hidden beneath the welcome mat anytime you wish to use it.

Engine of Death

Why We Fight
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1422779427989588955

Shrewd

According to notinmycounty.org the Minuteman Militia has decided to caravan across the US recruiting to their misguided cause. Inadvisably, they began their campaign by appealing to Southern blacks against Latinos for taking their "traditional" jobs washing dishes and cleaning toilets.

Seriously, what will these nitwits think of next? I mean, a Negro auxiliary waving confederate flags in New Orleans to protest Mexicans cleaning up toxic waste without suitable safety protections, getting less than minimum wage? That's the Minuteman Militia's new secret weapon?

Where's Jay Ward when we need him?

IWT redux

I originally posted this at HZ on March 6th, here-- but it bears repeating and sharing with as wide a potentially receptive audience of non-stupid people as possible:
if you are as frustrated with the unrelenting crappiness and general triviality of network and cable tv news as I am, you might find the news of the existence of IWT exceptionally welcome. I hadn't even heard of them until Jonathan Schwarz mentioned them a few months ago. (A good thing too, because now I don't have to start my own television news network from scratch, something I wasn't particularly looking forward to doing as I think it would've taken up a lot of my time.)

from Schwarz:

IWT [Independent World Television] wants to build a real television news network without government funding or advertising revenue; essentially the plan is just to ask people for money. They are trying to appeal to the entire English speaking world, not just in the US but also Canada, England, Australia, even India.

In March I didn’t know how to copy n’ cut n’ paste stuff from screenshots, so here’s a nice little graphic from their website-- apparently they’re going to change their name to The Real News. I think it’s cheesy and the former name is preferable, but I’m no marketing expert, etc. Nevertheless, they’re still worth supporting and you should tell people about them and give them many buckets of money, or at least what you can.

Bobby Sands(1954-1981)

Bobby Sands died 25 years ago today. He was a member of the Irish Republican Army, very briefly a member of the British parliament, and died as a consequence of a hunger strike while in a British prison. Wikipedia has a pretty decent article discussing his brief life, and the impact he had on people. (In Tehran there is a Bobby Sands Street, which used to be named after Winston Churchill in the days of the Shah.)
Frederick at Demagogue reminded me of the anniversary, and notes this Independent article. And there's this, from his hometown newspaper.

cross-posted at Hugo Zoom. (the image of the mural, located in Belfast, is also courtesy Wikipedia. Note the camera.)

Tense Situation

Assassinations of Indigenous Movement leaders in Mexico and Guatemala this week by right-wing death squads have prodemocracy activists throughout Latin America nervous about a possible escalation of US military violence there. With the horrific atrocities of the last half-century still fresh in their minds, the sixty million Indios south of the US border are understandably on edge.

a gratuitous bonus: the chicken salad sandwich scene

Bobby: I'll have an omelet, no potatoes. Give me tomatoes instead, and wheat toast instead of rolls.
Waitress: No substitutions.
Bobby: What do you mean? You don't have any tomatoes?
Waitress: Only what's on the menu. You can have a number two - a plain omelet. It comes with cottage, fries, and rolls.
Bobby: Yea, I know what it comes with, but that's not what I want.
Waitress: I'll come back when you make up your mind.
Bobby: Wait a minute, I have made up my mind. I'd like a plain omelet, no potatoes on the plate. A cup of coffee and a side order of wheat toast.
Waitress: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you a English muffin or a coffee roll.
Bobby: What do you mean "you don't make side orders of toast"? You make sandwiches, don't you?
Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?
Bobby: You've got bread. And a toaster of some kind?
Waitress: I don't make the rules.
Bobby: OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.
Waitress: A number two, chicken sal san. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?
Bobby: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.
Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?
Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees.

Five Easy Pieces still via BBS/Columbia/Criterion.

cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.

Private Party

In the mid-1990s Bolivia's gas industry was privatized, and Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) was stripped of its operational capabilities. In the mid-2000s Bolivia's gas industry is being publicized, and despite all the flutter in the first-world press, its just contracts, margins, and re-operationalizing the YPFB. No more glamorous than shifting bus driver pensions back from private management to public, and the buses too. Some changes of terms, some changes of margins. Nothing to start wars and coups over, unless that is the actual purpose of wars and coups.

Democrats should start talking with Morales, and Chavez, and Lula. Handing Abramoff and CREA's clients the terms and margins for coal, oil, and gas royalties is not the only policy choice possible, unless the Democratic Party is also the Party of Privatization and Efficiency and ... whatever else grand theft auto can be spun as.
http://wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/2006/05/002735.html

Wasteland

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire--the former WA State Attorney General who battled the feds for cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after serving as head of WA State Ecology and being ignored by US DOE--said on 60 Minutes Sunday evening that the millions of lethal gallons already in the groundwater are headed for the river, and that "Time is not on our side."

The CBS story focused on the faulty containment structures and plans for the millions of gallons that haven't yet leaked out of the disintegrating underground tanks. Everything recently built was built incorrectly, and has to be retrofitted or abandoned.

Gregoire did say the Columbia River was the lifeblood of the Northwest, but did not have time to elaborate. What she was unable to get into is the fact that the municipal water supplies and irrigation districts and hydropower stations downstream will become little Chernobyls. It's also not difficult to imagine what will happen to Oregon and Washington's lucrative tourism industry when their world-renowned beaches become radioactive wastelands.

I don't oppress people, I just reinvest my dividends

this illustration looks kind of Thomas Nast-y to me, but from whence the original issued I am unsure. I got it from univie.ac.at

1. from Editor and Publisher:"Reports: Plame Was Monitoring Iran Nukes When Outed"

and, from my email:

2. Frank Barnako's internet newsletter:

Microsoft gunning for Google

There are 5,000 stories about Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Google Inc. (GOOG), but apparently not one Web site or newsletter that sees an opportunity here to alert investors on how to make money in this fight to the death.

Imagine the acquisitions to be made, heads to be hunted, lawsuits to be filed and patents to be infringed!

3. and, from my Motley Fool e-mail:

"How America's Wealthiest Families Accidentally Got Rich"

that's the title of their latest message, offered without any apparent irony, in an attempt to sell another newsletter. They cite two past high performers, PepsiCo[1] and Phillip Morris. And some more verbiage:

"Put simply, no other financial services company in the world is nearly so well positioned. Just watch as this world-class operation skims the cream right off the top of this country's customer pool.

Meanwhile, an incredibly robust distribution network will allow it to run roughshod over the U.S. market... cherry-picking the most profitable accounts in the nation. And it's you, the shareholders, who will reap the benefits..."

"When India and Asia take over the world... will you profit?

Well, you'll have a much better chance of doing so if you own a piece of this South Korean steel manufacturer..."

You would get a letter grade off for your melodramatically lurid tone if you made this up as an assignment in a creative writing class. My sarcastic title aside, I often find myself wanting to discuss the question of moral agency vis-a-vis living in an industrialized society, because I do see it as a particularly thorny one. I started to discuss this topic last fall(here and here) but stopped myself, only partly because of a lack of time.

Fuelling Resentment

According to reports published on the anniversary of the hanging of Saro Wiwa, the situation on the [Niger] delta means “more violence, more and better-armed criminal gangs and militias, and more corruption in the procurement and marketing of oil and gas” (9). There are an average of 1,000 violent deaths a year on the delta, which is becoming a grey area similar to Chechnya or Colombia.

The oil economy also causes indirect casualties. Last year in Bayelsa state the poisonous mixture emitted by gas flaring, a practice that has now been banned by Nigerian courts, caused 5,000 cases of respiratory diseases and some 120,000 asthma attacks (10). To escape the pollution affecting the food chain, thousands of environmental refugees leave the centre of the delta for the ghettoes of Port Harcourt or Ajegunle, on the outskirts of Lagos, the economic capital. ...

Trouble is brewing, with an alarming increase in the number of small arms in circulation. New armed groups advocating secession have emerged since January, such as the (Ijaw) Mend, which is demanding the release of Alamieyeseigha and Asari. These groups have increased their attacks on oil facilities and the kidnapping of foreign executives. ...

“The whole of Bayelsa is volatile and could ignite, especially if something happens to Alamieyeseigha or Asari,” said Andy Rowell, a British journalist. “Many of the issues - such as resource control, corruption, poverty and pollution - will feature in the election. They are a product of the continuation of the exploitation of the delta by Britain and the United States. What will also be interesting at the election is what the US and British governments do.”

The British Labour MP John Robertson, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on the Niger Delta and visited the area with Rowell in August, thinks the situation is explosive: the people of the delta know that oil produces huge riches, which provide almost no benefit to them. He says the present situation is fuelling resentment towards the companies involved in creating the riches and towards community leaders, who are accused of conniving with the oil companies. To make matters worse, unscrupulous people are exploiting discontent to carry out attacks that undermine the source of future prosperity (12).

For Robertson, the key question remains: how would a revolution in Nigeria affect the rest of Africa?
http://mondediplo.com/2006/04/06nigeria

Forward Ops

US Special Forces commandos--preparing for invasion-- operating inside Iran since June 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4180087.stm

April (was) national poetry month

Stephen Crane and Carolyn Forché(University of Albany photo)

As is so often the case I’ve been dallying, so I’m writing about this under the wire as it were, although most of you will only see it no sooner than Monday, May 1st.

Now, I am no poetry expert. In fact, a few years ago when I still subscribed to the New Republic I had more poetically-inclined friend who used to chide me for never reading the poems, TNR being one of the (very last) national mainstream periodicals that regularly includes
contemporary poetry, although I’ll admit you’re probably as likely to see a copy of it at your doctor’s office as Granta or the Kenyon Review.

Anyway: non-expert or no, I thought it would be a good thing to visit the world o’ verse to see what, if anything, today’s poets are saying about the war. The first thing I found was Amiri Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America,” which is posted on his web site. Baraka was born LeRoi Jones in 1934 but changed his name in the 60s, and many people associate him and his work with that era. Somebody Blew Up America was composed in October 2001, and you might regard it as anti-semitic. I will admit I didn’t care for his suggestion that the Jewish employees were warned not to go to work at the trade center on the 9-11. It's a canard I’ve heard elsewhere too, and I don’t think it originated with Baraka.



I had a little difficulty finding post 9-11 political verse on the net. I specifically was looking for verse from contemporary established poets as opposed to ordinary shmoes like yours truly-- not because I am one who thinks that a writer who lacks academic imprimateur is inherently not worth reading, I don't, but because I saw writing this post as an excuse to investigate what today’s academic poets are saying about the war and related matters.

I suspect many poets are leery of the power of the web to jerk with their intellectual property rights, and poets as a rule are not particularly well-renumerated writers, unlike say, the Million Little Pieces guy. I thought that perhaps Baraka was fairly singular among poets of his generation in having his own website, but I note that current US laureate Ted Kooser(born 1939) does too. Kooser’s is much slicker and I couldn’t find any actual verses represented, just links encouraging you to buy his books. There is an interesting Kooser quote at wikipedia:

"Every stranger's tolerance for poetry is compromised by much more important demands on his or her time. Therefore, I try to honor my reader's patience and generosity by presenting what I have to say as clearly and succinctly as possible .... Also, I try not to insult the reader's good sense by talking down; I don't see anything to gain by alluding to intellectual experiences that the reader may not have had. I do what I can to avoid being rude or offensive; most strangers, understandably, have a very low tolerance for displays of pique or anger or hysteria. Being harangued by a poet rarely endears a reader. I am also extremely wary of over cleverness; there is a definite limit to how much intellectual showing off a stranger can tolerate."

A case could be made that this is a political statement(It's from the Midwestern Quarterly, from 1999. ) But I am (otherwise) at a loss to glean any political views from Kooser.

Maybe younger poets are more likely to have an internet presence, like poetess Shanna Compton*(born 1970), and Jesse Ball(born 1978. He also has no verses at his site.)-- it’s hard to say. I did find the Nation article “Poets Against the War”(from early 2003) which includes a statement co-signed several modern American poets, including former US poet laureate Rita Dove(‘94-95) and W.S. Merwin. An excerpt:

a few of the works posted on "Poets Against the War," (www.poetsagainstthewar.org), the website set up by Sam Hamill, poet and editor, when he called for poems and statements against war in Iraq. At last count, there were 8,200 entries. Hamill's summons to poets followed Laura Bush's invitation to a symposium on American poetry at the White House, which was "postponed" when it was learned that antiwar poems were to be presented.

Statement:

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, provided him and his handlers with a role for him, that of "wartime leader," which they, and he in turn, were quick to exploit....

Finally, a very brief sampling of US political poetry:

1.Only obliquely about war and politics, is Whitman’s ode to Lincoln upon his assassination:



the Library of Congress link to the proof sheet is here. (Double-click the above image for the full-sized version for easier reading.)


2.After Whitman’s dirge to Lincoln, I’m guessing that Stephen Crane’s "War is Kind" may be the most famous of US war poems. I haven’t included it here because even though it's public domain it's on the long side, and because his oeuvre is fairly readily available online. But here’s a shorter Crane:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

ok, one more Stephen Crane, “The Successful Man”. Because I’m fond of Crane, and because this one makes me wonder what he would’ve thought of a certain well-known 21st century politico:

The successful man has thrust himself
Through the water of the years,
Reeking wet with mistakes --
Bloody mistakes;
Slimed with victories over the lesser,
A figure thankful on the shore of money.
Then, with the bones of fools
He buys silken banners
Limned with his triumphant face;
With the skins of wise men
He buys the trivial bows of all.
Flesh painted with marrow
Contributes a coverlet,
A coverlet for his contented slumber.
In guiltless ignorance, in ignorant guilt,
He delivered his secrets to the riven multitude.
"Thus I defended: Thus I wrought."
Complacent, smiling,
He stands heavily on the dead.
Erect on a pillar of skulls
He declaims his trampling of babes;
Smirking, fat, dripping,
He makes speech in guiltless ignorance,
Innocence.

His poems are like that-- unrhymed, often consciously epigramatic, and reflecting a jaundiced view of humanity. Also, they don’t have titles, and are generally referred to by their 1st lines. Crane’s verse is arguably “pre-Kafaesque”, because even though their timelines overlap somewhat, Crane was dead by 1901 and I believe that none of Kafka’s works were published until after his death in 1924, so Crane could never have known about Kafka.


3. Mark Twain’s War Prayer, which is also kind of lengthy; I posted it at HZ the week before the Iraq invasion, here. Twain wrote it in 1905 about the US war with Spain, and could not get it published in his lifetime**. Also, more readably, here.

**I find myself idly wondering if 15 or 20 years from now we'll find out about a a short play that Arthur Miller may have written in response to 9-11 and its aftermath.


4. Denise Levertov(1923-1997) was born in England but came over here in the 50s and became a US citizen. She was active in protesting the Vietnam war. From her work:

“What were they like?”

“In California During the Gulf War” (1991)


and an excerpt from “Advent 1966”:

because of this my strong sight,
my clear caressive sight, my poet's sight I was given
that it might stir me to song,
is blurred.
There is a cataract filming over
my inner eyes. Or else a monstrous insect
has entered my head, and looks out
from my sockets with multiple vision.

5. Jumping around a bit chronologically, Howard Shapiro’s(1913-2000)poetry is often associated with WWII. (He fought in the Pacific theater.)

from “Hospital”:

Kings have lain here and fabulous small Jews
And actresses whose legs were always news.

not all war poetry is inevitably grim.

6. Carolyn Forché teaches at Skidmore College in upstate New York. Some 25 years ago she wrote:

"I have been told that a poet should be of his or her time. It is my feeling that the 20th century human condition demands a poetry of witness. This is not accomplished without certain difficulties. . .If I did not wish to make poetry of what I had seen, what is it I thought poetry was?"

and, also from the early 1980s, Forche’s The Colonel:

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daugher filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home.

He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around, he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air.

Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Forché went back to El Salvador 12 years later. Some of her comments are here.

Other soldiers said it was not uncommon to cut the ears off the corpses of rebels to verify enemy casualties to commanders. But officers said they frown on the practice.

"Sometimes in battle, my men get excited and cut the ears off the dead terrorists," the lieutenant commanding the army unit said. "It is not something we order, but sometimes the excitement of the moment overcomes them."

7. Finally, although he’s neither an American nor a versifier, Harold Pinter’s Nobel lecture(December 2005),“Art, Truth and Politics” is here.

additional links:

Here Comes Everybody: the writers on writing blog

* from Shanna Compton’s blog, Hal Sirowitz’s
“The Hawk Who Became a Dove”(2004)

I posted this late last night at Hugo Zoom, my home blog, but didn't make it before midnight here.

Correction: Initially I wrote that Carolyn Forché was presently teaching at George Mason U., because they still have a link up for her info. In fact, she's teaching a writer's workshop at Skidmore this summer.