[Here's an email I sent out to everyone on my address book -- probably sounds bit self-congratulatry, but there are a lot of people working on this site now, in different ways. Alas, I do little actual writing for this site, and it gives some idea of where I think it's going.]
CIRCULARS has become a pretty distinctive mixture of writings by poets and artists (including satires, leaflets, and the "Mirakove Relays"), report activities (including news of arrests), links to political humor sites, a repository for articles covering things you won't hear about in the news (including government leaks and floor speeches), and some lively debate pro and con (look at the comments bar). Thanks to all of the editors, writers and hecklers who have contributed so far!
We were also recently written about in an article in the Village Voice. The article prompted over 5,000 hits over the past 4 days -- 1300 on Thursday alone.
One can question what a site like CIRCULARS or any indy media site does to stop the march toward war -- I do myself -- but there is no doubt that a lot of information and opinion has moved through the internet consolidating public anti-war sentiment in a way that is not happening on television, and that the web can spark new ways of imagining and enacting protest -- of creating a culture with its own points of focus, senses of humor, etc. -- that couldn't have happened 20 years ago. As many people are reading indy-media sites online, and what flies into their inboxes, as are reading the New York Times, and they are not necessarily radicals "in the know," with the right subscriptions and contacts.
I still hope that something some poet writes for CIRCULARS or any site, like Poets Against The War, becomes as addictive as the Senator Byrd speech has been for those with email trigger fingers -- "forcing the hand of chance," as they used to say. If I can be faulted for thinking of this as a media war leading up to the "real thing," I think it's an ok mistake to make -- I think of the entire Homeland Security Department as a multi-media department, lodging their camouflaged, gun-toting performance artists in the NYC subways at their will, and without petitioning for handouts. This all seems so incredibly shameful and insulting to me; I hope they keep doing it if only to embarrass themselves further.
Perhaps we can bring it to a point where we can organize worldwide protests EVERY WEEK -- sounds ridiculous of course, but not impossible. But I, personally, think the protests made a difference, if not in the US then to the people the US will have to talk to for airspace, foot soldiers, or even a sympathetic chat on the phone (or in the headlines). This one feel good moment is not enough, and people seem willing to spend a few hours walking in the same street.
Other site news: today I'm installing a search engine!
Please pass on word of Circulars to friends of yours who might be interested, and especially to other site and listservs who might include them in a links column, blogroll, etc.
Here's a few items that have appeared recently (the first paragraph of each entry is included -- all the stories go on from there):
---
Bookseller Purges Files to Avoid Potential "Patriot Act" Searches
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000209.html
In the interest of avoiding potential searches under the Patriot Act, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont has already discarded the names of books bought by its readers' club, and will purge purchase records for customers if they ask. "When the CIA comes and asks what you've read because they're suspicious of you, we can't tell them because we don't have it," store co-owner Michael Katzenberg said. "That's just a basic right, to be able to read what you want without fear that somebody is looking over your shoulder to see what you're reading."
---
Nick Lawrence/Jonathan Skinner
War On Iraq?
(leaflet for Teach-Ins)
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000204.html#000204
Over the past year and a half the Bush administration has put forth a variety of arguments for prosecuting a war on Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein. Keeping up with these arguments can be confusing—partly because they keep changing. At the same time, both here and abroad, challenges to the administration's reasoning continue to mount. What follows is an attempt to break down the major areas of debate.
---
Jonathan Skinner
Empire At The Brink: A Call To Action
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000203.html#000203
We stand truly at an historical juncture, with several directions mapped before us, and several more unknown. Yesterday's protests demonstrated an immense will for peace around the world, a growing sense "the people" have had enough. While immensely inspiring, the moment also calls for a clarity of mind, to assess the powers before and behind us, as well as within, and the road ahead. We must not underestimate the technological and ideological behemoth massed at the borders of Iraq and lodged in the minds of the men who command it.
---
Lytle Shaw and Emilie Clark in New York
Account of the Clark/Shaw Arrest
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000202.html#000202
Many friends have asked for more details about our spending the night in jail for taping up flyers last Thursday, February '3. So we wanted to offer a description of what happened. First of all, the flyers we were putting up were images of daily life in Baghdad taken by Paul Chan. As many of you know, Chan was in Baghdad in December and January as part of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of Voices in the Wilderness. Last Thursday night about fifty people met to pick up 8.5 x ''-inch copies of Chan's photos and begin posting them around Manhattan. The goal, of course, was to particularize and humanize our soon-to-be victims.
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Mirakove Relay#2: On Patriot Act II
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000199.html#000199
CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY OBTAINS SECRET DRAFT OF PATRIOT ACT II
The nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft of a secret document called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. This document is more commonly known as the Patriot Act II, and is designed to "give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information." You can download the document here:
www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0 &L5=0
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"These Weapons of Mass Destruction Cannot Be Displayed"
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000195.html
"The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate." ... so begins this parodic 404/Not Found page (http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/) for the UN Weapons Inspectors scouring Iraq. The page also offers a variety of helpful suggestions, including "Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install."
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Kasey S. Mohammad
Acknowledged Legislators: A Rant
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000194.html#000194
I sense that the poetry community is in a sensitive transitional period right now. By "the poetry community," I mean all the thousands of people who write poetry and who are increasingly more aware of each other's views and activities than historically ever before thanks largely to electronic technology. And by "sensitive" I mean simultaneously very promising of increased dialogue and cooperation, and very delicately poised on the brink of bitter conflict. It seems trivial to use such a phrase when the world is poised on the brink of a much bitterer conflict, but it is especially that larger conflict, along with poets' responses to it, that has advanced this transitional phase dramatically in the past month or so.
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Guardian Unlimited
The human shield has arrived, but what now?
Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000184.html#000184
At times it felt like hell on wheels. But the peace activists who travelled across a continent by London double-decker bus arrived at a Baghdad bomb shelter yesterday with their sense of mission just about intact. Few places in Baghdad convey the horror of war as sharply as the al-Ameriya shelter, where 400 Iraqi civilians were incinerated by US missiles during the last Gulf war.
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Senator Robert Byrd: Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000165.html#000165
To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.
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nationalphilistine.com: Baghdad Snapshot Action goes online and worldwide
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000168.html#000168
[New York City]-- On February 13, 2003, teams of artists and activists postered New York City with thousands of copies of snapshots from Baghdad. Quiet and casual, the snapshots show a part of Baghdad we rarely see: the part with people in it. The snapshots were taken by a friend of ours who just got back from Baghdad working with the Iraq Peace Team (link below). Yes, he saw Iraqis suffering and struggling. But he also saw Iraqis dancing and laughing. This moved him because laughing under the weight of the UN sanctions and the threat of an absurd war is no easy task. We were moved because the people in the pictures remind us of our friends & family.
http://www.nationalphilistine.com/baghdad/
---
Bob Perelman: Where We Are
for Kerry Sherin
http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000163.html#000163
We may not have chosen to live inside Dick Cheney’s mind, but we do.
Wyoming, I read somewhere, is the safest place to live in North America.
No tornados, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no hurricanes, monsoons, cyclones, or floods. No major airport: no big planes crashing in the sleet. Not even much traffic: not too many car crashes.
But if living in Wyoming is so safe, living inside Dick Chaney’s mind, though it was formed in Wyoming and stood for Wyoming in the Senate, is not safe at all.
How do you get from Wyoming to Shock and Awe?
Getting from Love to Hate, that’s easy: Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate.
"Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up."
Neil Pollack has worked himself into a froth over at The Stranger. His beef is as follows:
September 11, 2001, has had all kinds of unintended consequences. One of the least tragic, but most irritating, has been an explosion of absolutely terrible writing [ ... ]The contention beneath the rhetoric is this: "In general, left-wing writers lack authority. They either sound naive and crazy or they sound elitist [ ... ] From any important historical circumstance, only a few pieces of genuine literary art emerge. In this current situation, I would argue for two: the Onion's special issue immediately following September 11, and William Langewiesche's book about reclaiming Ground Zero."Post-September 11 writing felt like the nation's collective diary. Even at its worst, it was somehow cathartic and sweet, even necessary. But this war-to-be with Iraq has unleashed a torrent of pompous fulmination -- perhaps not as great in volume as after September 11, but twice as pretentious and grating.
More here.
In the interest of avoiding potential searches under the Patriot Act, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont has already discarded the names of books bought by its readers' club, and will purge purchase records for customers if they ask. "When the CIA comes and asks what you've read because they're suspicious of you, we can't tell them because we don't have it," store co-owner Michael Katzenberg said. "That's just a basic right, to be able to read what you want without fear that somebody is looking over your shoulder to see what you're reading."
The Patriot Act allows government agents to seek court orders to seize records "for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." Such orders cannot be challenged like a traditional subpoena; in fact, bookstores and libraries are barred from even stating that they have received such an order.
More on SFGate.
Remember all those 1950s films about constructing bomb shelters in your backyard? At The Department of Homeland Security's Ready website, that same spirit of paranoia is being trotted out again:
Terrorists are working to obtain biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons and the threat of an attack is very real [ ... ] All Americans should begin a process of learning about potential threats so we are better prepared to react during an attack [ ... ] Some of the things you can do to prepare for the unexpected, such as assembling a supply kit and developing a family communications plan, are the same for both a natural or man-made emergency.
UPDATE: It didn't take long for the "Ready" parodies to start to appear (like they used to say at SUCK, "A Fish, A Barrel, A Smoking Gun") ... you can find a few of them here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
THAW (Theaters Against War) will be broadcasting from WNYE 91.5 FM tomorrow, Friday Feb 21st from 8am-9am.
The hour will include short plays written for the upcoming THAW Action Day on March 2nd, a scene from the currently running Anti-War Comedy WARRIORS (information below), and much else.
 |
WARRIORS
By Michel Garneau
Directed by Nicholas Keene
With Tony Torn & Nicholas Keene
@
The P.I.T
154 West 29th Street
(W. 29th street btw 7th & 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10036
2nd FloorTickets $15
Discounts Available
FRI/SAT 10pm
CALL 212-367-8225 for Reservations
This weekend!!! POETS : 2 for 1
[I've been told by respectable sources that this is very good, but I haven't seen it myself. It's huge, 4.1 mb.]
The Bush/Blair site of the millenium:
http://www.dagbladet.no/download/readmylips_blush.mov
... another well-designed set of downloadable posters resides at Wake the World. These should meet all of your leafleting needs.
[Following is another document that Jonathan forwarded to me which was put together -- in a curt, bullet-pointed fashion -- to help with teach-ins. Here is a .pdf version of the document, formatted to be printed on a single two-sided sheet and good for handing out.]
Over the past year and a half the Bush administration has put forth a variety of arguments for prosecuting a war on Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein. Keeping up with these arguments can be confusing—partly because they keep changing. At the same time, both here and abroad, challenges to the administration's reasoning continue to mount. What follows is an attempt to break down the major areas of debate.
FOR WAR
* Iraq is a threat to the United States and the world.
The Bush administration argues that Iraq under Saddam Hussein is a rogue state capable of developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMD); if left unchecked, this capability would make Saddam a menace to the peace in the Middle East, if not the world at large. An even greater danger is that he could supply terrorist networks such as Al-Qaeda with WMD. Once WMD are in the hands of terrorists, argues President Bush, they "could not easily be contained." Likening this moment to Munich in 1938, administration officials have argued that Saddam Hussein must be stopped before this threat is realized, just as the Allies should have stopped Hitler.
* Iraq suffers under a brutal dictatorship.
Hussein's government has inflicted countless atrocities on its own people and numbers among the world's worst abusers of human rights. He employs torture and surveillance to keep the Iraqi people in a continual state of fear, while diverting Iraq's resources toward the enrichment and consolidation of his regime. He must be removed on humanitarian grounds alone.
* Regime change in Iraq will benefit the Middle East.
Democracy in Iraq would lead to growing liberalization of govern-ments all over the region by offering an alternative template to Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule. The benefits of this process could also include an eventual resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
* The credibility of international rule must be maintained.
Iraq has flouted several United Nations resolutions and must be held to account. If not, the UN will lose all credibility in its attempt to preserve an interna-tional rule of law that applies equally to all its members.
* Advances in communications and warfare technology, together with the time the U.S. has had to prepare for this war, will result in a quick and decisive conflict with minimal U.S. and civilian casualties.
Military technology since the first Gulf War has improved signif-icantly, with a tenfold increase in the use of "smart" satellite-guided bombs, and the introduction of unmanned reconnaissance vehi-cles, high-powered microwave weapons and a thoroughly digi-tized communications network.
AGAINST WAR
* The military threat from Iraq remains unproven, while North Korea, among other nations, openly flouts international agreements.
Credible analysts, including former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, argue that Iraq has been largely disarmed and that it is now effectively restrained through the UN inspections process. Hussein knows that a deployment of WMD traced to his regime would bring swift and decisive response. Connections between Hussein and Al Qaeda remain speculative at best. Meanwhile, the presence of WMD in the hands of other unstable or totalitarian regimes around the globe—in North Korea (with a missile capable of reaching the United States), Pakistan, and China, not to mention the neighboring Middle East states of Syria, Egypt, and Israel—argues for a general plan of disarmament to rid the world of these deadly weapons, of which the United States is now the leading manufacturer and supplier.
* "Nation building," in Iraq as well as elsewhere, is a long and arduous task, for which the United States has shown neither capability nor commitment.
Since the post-WWII recon-structions in Europe, the U.S. has largely restricted its leadership in the world to military matters, leaving the real work (and costs) of humanitarian aid, peace-keeping, and "cleaning up" to the international community. If the U.S. acts unilaterally, this time, it will have to face the consequences alone. The still-precarious situa-tion in Afghanistan, together with the equally uncertain state of the U.S. economy, offer little support to the confident assertions in Washington that we can manage a post-war crisis in Iraq. Iraq's political terrain, rooted in its colonial history, is complex: Hussein's despotic regime masks a feudal power structure, itself undermined by diverse revolution-ary movements, including substantial numbers of Kurds, as well as Shiite Muslims and a Sunni minority, opposed to one another and divided among themselves. Such difficulties argue against any smooth transition to democratic gover-nance. Furthermore, the past history of U.S. support for Hussein's regime at its bloodiest, during the 1980s—which entailed active collaboration in his war against Iran, even in the face of evidence that he used chemical weapons against his own people—does not, in many Arabs' eyes, qualify the U.S. for its professed role as "liberator."
* Justice in the Israel-Palestine conflict is a better route to peace in the Middle East than imperial invasion.
A U.S. invasion of a sovereign Middle East nation is likely to further inflame Arab feeling against the United States and against its client state Israel (a state also equipped with undeclared WMD). Neighboring countries would suspect, justifiably, that a puppet regime in Iraq is simply a means of extending U.S. control over an oil-rich region. The chances that an invasion would further undermine security both in the Middle East and abroad are too great to justify war. Instead, they point to the overwhelming need for a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in Palestine—where a less than fully democratic Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territories and subject their inhabitants to oppressive control, in tandem with a less than fully democratic Palestinian Authority that cynically ignores the demands of its constituents for reform. Aggressively promoting democratic solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would do much to ease tensions in the Middle East generally, as well as take away one of the few propaganda points in Hussein's attempt to ally himself with his Arab neighbors.
* The credibility of UN rule is best maintained through the compliance of its most powerful member.
The U.S. needs to abide by the rulings of the UN in its determi-nations over the best way to deal with a noncompliant Iraq. A "preemptive" invasion of Iraq, without a second UN resolution authorizing force, is illegal and contravenes the very basis of the charter of the United Nations, the principle of nation-state sover-eignty. The UN inspections process has produced results, and may be expected to produce more in the future. A U.S. rush to war can only further shred the fabric of international agreements, already weakened by the current administration's cavalier dismissal of those it finds uncongenial.
* Make no mistake: civilians are always the first victims of modern warfare.
Even in Afghanistan, where the U.S. went to some lengths to minimize so-called collateral damage (and which has been touted as a success), as many as 8,000 civilians were killed by U.S. bombs and many more maimed. In Iraq the U.S. has demonstrated its willingness to exact the "price" of significant civilian casualties— in the past, through bombing of water and sewage treatment infrastructure which, in com-bination with long-term sanctions limiting access to basic medicines and chemicals like chlorine, has led to the deaths of as many as 500, 000 children. Faced with invasion, Hussein will be far more likely to use whatever chemical and biological stockpiles he does harbor, whether on his own people or on U.S. troops. Finally, for all its reliance on high-technology and high-precision weaponry, the number-one priority of current U.S. military strategy— minimizing the deaths of U.S. soldiers through massively concentrated bombing from the air— can only translate into a corresponding increase of civilian deaths on the ground. We are told repeatedly that the Iraqi people are not our enemy. But Pentagon blueprints suggest otherwise.
SOME LINKS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Institute for Policy Studies:
www.ips-dc.org/iraq/primer.htm
Middle East Research and Information Project:
www.merip.org/
MoveOn:www.moveon.org/iraq_meetings/talkingpoints.html
Voices in the Wilderness:
www.nonviolence.org/vitw
Shape Your World:
www.shapeyourworld.info/bib.html
Historians Against the War:
chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/haw
Veterans for Common Sense:
www.veteransforcommonsense.org/
War Times:
www.war-times.org
Washington Post Opinion,
The Debate about Iraq:
www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/world/mideast/gulf/iraq/commentary/
Guardian UK Antiwar Links:
whtww.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/subsection/0,12809,884056,00.html
WHAT IN THE WORLD
ARE OTHERS THINKING? FIND OUT! FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS (IN ENGLISH)
Guardian UK:
www.guardian.co.uk/
Mail and Guardian (South Africa):
www.mg.co.za/
International Herald Tribune:
www.iht.com/
Rheinische Post:
www.rp-online.de/german-news/
Moscow Times:
www.moscowtimes.ru
Buenos Aires Herald:
www.buenosairesherald.com
China People's Daily:
www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/
Times of India:
www.timesofindia.com/
Al-Ahram Weekly:
www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/
Jerusalem Post:
www.jpost.com/
PROTESTS
Compiled by Nick Lawrence
and Jonathan Skinner,
English Department,
SUNY at Buffalo. 2/14/03
We stand truly at an historical juncture, with several directions mapped before us, and several more unknown. Yesterday's protests demonstrated an immense will for peace around the world, a growing sense "the people" have had enough. While immensely inspiring, the moment also calls for a clarity of mind, to assess the powers before and behind us, as well as within, and the road ahead. We must not underestimate the technological and ideological behemoth massed at the borders of Iraq and lodged in the minds of the men who command it.
At the same time as free (and some not-so-free) countries around the world allowed their citizens to mass in peaceful protest, the forces of liberalization—manifested in the superiority of American air, ballistics and communications power—appear ready to take a calculated risk with liberalism's next logical step across the globe. (I discuss the largely symbolic, though still significant, distinctions between "liberalism" and "imperialism" below.) To wit: if American and British (plus any other willing coalition's) troops are "met in Baghdad by Iraqis lining the street in celebration," then Blair and Bush's increasingly-reviled faces will enjoy a dramatic and successful makeover (Schell). Even North Korea, with its fledgling nuclear weapons program, or Iran, with its intractable fundamentalist regime, will be unable to resist a seemingly implacable forward march of history.
The strategy is one of three-step brinkmanship:
1) overwhelming force is massed, preferably by a unanimous international coalition, so persuasively that the resisting regime finally backs down and goes into exile;
2) barring that, the regime is isolated (as in Kosovo) and the air and communications environment so dominated by the "liberating" forces that the regime implodes under popular pressure;
3) when this strategy fails (as, debatably, in Iraq), an invasion becomes necessary to remove the regime by force.
The U.S. and its key UN (as well as NATO) partners do not disagree on the fundamentals of this strategy: the differences are of timing, and of which of the three steps at present to push (though there is an understandable reluctance on the part of the allies to allow a unilateral U.S. progression to step three, which reluctance I discuss at length below). The U.S., Britain and a handful of European allies with little to contribute and much to gain from supporting the effort, are clearly pushing for steps one and/or three. France, Germany, Russia and China, amongst others, seem to think the resources of step two have not yet been exhausted. If, in fact, warfare is increasingly a technological race to dominate the communications sphere (De Landa), then why make haste to draw blood? Can we not just step up the surveillance and monitoring (U2 fly-overs, teams of inspectors on the ground backed by troops, etc.) to the point of squeezing the life out of the Baath regime? The goal is the same—promoting democracy through the threat of "overwhelming force"—but without the risks implicit in the inherent unpredictability of warfare and the ensuing military occupation. Haven't we learned to use our guns without firing them?
The U.S. argues that steps one and two appear unlikely, if not impossible—twelve years of sanctions having only broken the Iraqi people and hardened Hussein's grip on power, rather than inspiring, as hoped, a popular revolt; and the rough ideological terrain obviously requiring oversight, deeply divided as it is between Shiite, Kurd, Sunni and secular concerns, promising little in the way of a "spontaneous" transition to democracy. But U.S.-led force has another, more intrinsic reason for having no options but step three: until tested in the battlefield, the U.S. will not truly be able to "deploy" its intended domination of the global communications sphere (De Landa). The U.S. will not decisively have demonstrated to the world its undisputed military-technological superiority (à la Hiroshima and Nagasaki—cf. Ullman; Afghanistan was a start but also disappointingly easy in its initial phase), and it will not be able to progress to the next stage of research and development without testing its innovations in the field.
Just as Gulf War I was, in the main, a showcase for the new technology of "smart bombs," Episode II promises to open a new theatre of digitized "real time" command-to-operations communications and space-based, as well as autonomous ("intelligent") artillery operations:
If they do attack Iraq, U.S. commanders would have an unprecedented view of the battlefield, provided by a network of spy satellites at 400 miles in space, Global Hawk reconnaissance drones loitering at 65,000 feet, manned JSTARS aircraft with moving-target indicator radar at 40,000 feet and Predator drones with video, infrared and radar sensors at 20,000 feet, all feeding data back to command centers and, in some cases, directly to combat aircraft. (Ricks and Loeb)
The U.S. Administration has to toe a line between minimizing civilian casualties, and maximizing the overwhelming effect of the new technology ("Shock and Awe"): not an easy line to walk (Ullman et al). The risks are great—on the side of U.S. forces, with inevitable glitches in the technology on which these forces are increasingly dependent, including new vulnerabilities implicit in open architecture cyberware (a trade-off for stability), and with increasing strain and fatigue on "volunteer" human resources stretched thin and worked to the breaking point (De Landa, Ricks and Loeb); on the Iraqi side, with the question of Hussein's willingness to use whatever stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons he does harbor on his own people and/or the invading forces, if pushed, plus his demonstrated willingness to use his own people as "human shields" for military targets—but the risks of inaction, of failing to complete the step to global communications hegemony, are, by this zero-sum logic of military dominance, far greater.
Whether this is a dominance of "liberalism" or "imperialism" in part depends on success in patching over an increasingly evident mid-Atlantic rift: while in some respects the disagreement with France, Germany, Russia and China is one of means, in other respects it signals a potentially far more serious rift. As Jonathan Schell argues in his latest piece for Harper's on the "futility of war," the closest historical analogue for the present moment would be not, as is generally argued in camps both for and against the war, 1938, but, rather, 1945—in particular, the period between the drafting of the outlines of a U.N. Charter at the San Francisco Conference on International Organization in April of that year, and the destruction of Hiroshima on August 6. U.S. deployment of the atomic bomb effectively rendered the U.N., which came into existence on October 24, 1945, irrelevant as a governing body. Today, the United States' rival powers (rival being a very relative term here) understandably hope, however quixotically, to forestall as long as possible a decisive U.S. victory in the race to "space-based" military hegemony. France, for example, is currently working on its own versions of the new high-powered "microwave" weaponry the U.S. reportedly will test out in a war on Iraq.
Europe would like to perpetuate the '90's facade of a "liberal" coalition that at the same time enables a sharing of its de facto imperial benefits (Anderson). In this light, Blair's stubborn embrace of the U.S. program, awkwardly reaching across the Atlantic chasm, is both a calculated realization of the inevitability of U.S. hegemony ("empire") and a "heroic" attempt to keep Europe on board, and thus, to sustain the hopes of "liberalism." In "Force and Consent" Perry Anderson has argued that the death of any democratic elements of "liberalism" went down long ago, in an effectively imperial "Americanization" of the planet sugar-coated with a palaver of humanitarian and democratizing high-mindedness; nevertheless, a unilateral (or bilateral) "preemptive" U.S. strike will still mark a critical turning point. The discourse of liberalism will be dealt a fatal blow in the "theatre of operations" as the U.S. demonstrates its unrivaled power and, more importantly, its will to use that power in flagrant disregard of the will of the international community. The "liberal" system of international alliances will be discredited, and fundamentalist or other popular resistances to U.S. imperialism will be emboldened. At the same time, a successful "liberation" of Iraq, under the new sign of empire, would bring potent viability to the notion of a Pax Americana (Anderson). The U.S. "showdown" in Iraq has significantly more to do with these kinds of calculations (outlined in The National Security Strategy of the United States) than with either Saddam Hussein or evident U.S. oil interests in the region.
To dispense with "old Europe's" liberalism does seem like madness, and the possibility of this has brought the world's liberals (who supported the bombings of Kosovo and Afghanistan) into a now-mainstream anti-war movement—but the end of liberalism is built into the logic, strategic as well as tactical, of U.S. militarization, and it is also a step impelled by frankly theocratic elements in the current U.S. administration. A conviction that the U.S. has been "chosen" to lead the world to "freedom" apparently outweighs the potentially fatal results of choosing to scrap old alliances. It is all or nothing: a brinkmanship with a fearful God where only inaction is unforgivable. What matters is to assume the righteous cause; the righteous who lose themselves, or the world, in the process, will be forgiven; but the righteous will prevail, confident in their faith—or so the screed goes. In many respects, the fate of the world hangs on the outcome of an old ideological debate internal to the dominant "culture" of the United States . . . between the "moral majority" and its more secular counterparts. It is a debate that may already have been decided in the elections of 2000 and 2002. The economics of U.S. militarization also have a large role to play in the outcome. Strains internal to the military as well as on an already precarious U.S. economy, of a $1 billion-per-day deployment, are tremendous and cannot be sustained for long (Ricks and Loeb). All of these factors—a militarized strategy for global dominance, extremist theocratic tendencies within at least two, if not all three branches of the U.S. government, and the material momentum of military buildup itself—come together in a decision for military action in Iraq; all that holds the U.S. back are the liberal interests of international backing and (which is part of this) some friction provided by an alliance with the Blair administration—a friction which may become more apparent as the U.S. moves toward decisive action.
Or is that all that holds the U.S. back? Popular manifestations of opposition to U.S. imperialism around the world are the largest they have been in thirty years, dwarfing the anti-globalization protests of the '90's, and this movement is just getting underway. If such opposition is merely a drag on an inevitable U.S. attack, and if the U.S. calculation succeeds with even the moderate success that has been encountered in Afghanistan, then such popular opposition will swiftly evaporate. (It would be interesting to know how many of this weekend's protesters would support a multilateral operation in Iraq.) If, however, a U.S. operation in Iraq encounters any serious setbacks, then popular opposition could become full-scale. Dissension if not outright mutiny within the U.S. military is even possible. Finally, if popular dissent is earnest about actually stopping the U.S. military machine before it goes to the brink, then several questions need to be asked up front—all posed under the general rubric of asking whether, indeed, "the people have the power."
1) As I have already asked, to what extent are the current demonstrations a continuation of the critique of "liberalism" manifested in the pre-9/11 "anti-globalization" protests? Or is the much-celebrated, new ideological diversity of these protests, at its mainstream core, largely a response to the threat of unilateral U.S. sabotage of that status quo?
2) To what extent was the "velvet revolution" across Central and Eastern Europe (as well as peaceful revolutions in other parts of the globe) a "flowering," as Jonathan Schell claims, of "liberal democratic" nonviolent action? Or was it, as U.S. hardline strategists obviously believe, a gift of the U.S. "defeat" of the Soviet Union through economic, military and technological might? The official line is, of course, a bit of both. But nonviolent activists in the U.S. would do well to break that history down and assess the odds, as they move forward with actions modeled on such precedents. The same goes for the much-invoked examples of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela.
3) Demonstrations have so far been "legal" or "permitted" and the authorities have, in the main, handled protestors with kid gloves. An effective campaign of nonviolent "non-cooperation" will, when push comes to shove, inevitably involve mass civil disobedience (and mass arrests). In what way will the new tools (cf. USA PATRIOT Act, "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") of what is now effectively a U.S. police state be applied to such demonstrators? What is the critical mass that would deter authorities from locking up or otherwise silencing dissenters, and is such a mass attainable? What support could U.S. dissenters count on from the international community?
4) The odds of popular revolution are strengthened by a perhaps unintended side-effect of communications technology: the possibility for instantaneous coordination around the planet. This weekend's rallies—millions of people marching in the U.S., South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, England, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Brazil, Mexico and a host of other countries—were coordinated in less than five weeks. The popular will for peace, a collective assertion that the zero-sum game of military conflict is a dead-end for the planet, seems to cut across many ideological and cultural barriers. Have these new circumstances even begun to be exploited? How much can the "unpredictable" nature of the new, asymmetrical global terrain be counted on?
U.S. military brinkmanship thus operates in at least two directions at once. It seems ready to dissolve old liberal alliances like the United Nations or even NATO, but it also may be provoking a popular solidarity across the globe, the likes of which have never been seen before. For those who oppose U.S. imperialism, the riskiest course of action is inaction, to "wait and see" what happens in Iraq. The uncertainties of that venture are terrifying; but the worst possible, and most likely, outcome would be a swift and successful victory for the U.S. (Anderson). A fiasco would be second worst, entailing possibly dire consequences but also new room for change (the "things have to get much worse before they get better" outlook).
The popular will for peace needs to be tested and encouraged by a clear education in the likely scenarios and the long-term issues at stake, which includes a frank discussion of the undersides of a Pax Americana and/or "liberal" democracy, along the lines of the "anti-globalization" critiques vocal just two years ago— foregrounding environmental, labor and social justice, as well as human rights, issues. And that momentum thus clarified, spurred by the U.S. administration's brinkmanship, needs to be rallied to fearless and overwhelming nonviolent force—something along the lines of a national strike. Otherwise it will remain merely symbolic if the U.S. succeeds in Iraq, or unprepared in the case of a disastrous outcome.
At this very moment we are living a critical historical juncture; the seeds of the future are latent right now in the actions of each and every human being on this planet. The moment is not lost on violent militarized states and terrorists; will the powerful forces of nonviolence, for their part, allow this uncertain moment to slip by? Last weekend's outpouring was a call to get in the streets and stay in the streets, and not to shrink from power when it comes marching with its clubs and its chemicals. I, for one, do not intend to be a spectator, to let the dogs of war have the upper hand—while the rest of us sit around, to "wait and see" what will "happen" on TV. Do you?
Jonathan Skinner
SUNY at Buffalo, Poetics
February 16-17, 2003
WORKS CONSULTED
Anderson, Perry "Force and Consent," New Left Review 17, Sept-Oct 2002
De Landa, Manuel War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Zone Books: NY, 1991
Ricks, Thomas E. and Vernon Loeb "Unrivaled Military Feels Strains of Unending War; For U.S. Forces, a Technological Revolution and a Constant Call to Do More," Washington Post, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2003
Schell, Jonathan "No More Unto the Breach: Why War is Futile," Harper's March 2003
The National Security Strategy of the United States. Winterhouse Editions: Falls Village, CT 2002 (PDF version available at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html)
The daily newspapers: especially The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The UK Guardian.
Ullman, Harlan K., and James P. Wade, with L. A. Edney et al. Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. Washington, DC: National Defense Univ., 1996
(www.dodccrp.org/shockIndex.html)
USA PATRIOT Act, "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" (HR 3162)
(www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/lawsregs/patriot.pdf)
by Lytle Shaw and Emilie Clark in New York
Many friends have asked for more details about our spending the night in jail for taping up flyers last Thursday, February '3. So we wanted to offer a description of what happened.
First of all, the flyers we were putting up were images of daily life in Baghdad taken by Paul Chan. As many of you know, Chan was in Baghdad in December and January as part of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of Voices in the Wilderness. Last Thursday night about fifty people met to pick up 8.5 x ''-inch copies of Chan's photos and begin posting them around Manhattan. The goal, of course, was to particularize and humanize our soon-to-be victims.
At about '':20pm, three plain-clothes cops (two men, one woman) in a converted taxi approached us at the corner of Mercer and Prince where we were in the process of taping a poster to a metal lamppost. (We were not using wheat paste). After flashing their badges, they asked if we had permission to poster and what we were putting up. Their next question was if we were going to the march on Saturday. We were told that postering was a "quality of life infraction" and that we would have to go to the station. We explained that Emilie was 7 months pregnant and asked if it was possible (since we both had our drivers' licenses) for them to write us tickets instead. They refused. We were cuffed, and put in the taxi-cab, and taken to the first precinct, on Varick. They explained that this was just a "procedure" and that it would only take an hour or so.
At the station we waited in our separate cells for about two hours while they fed our information into their computer system. During this period five NYPD officers were more or less continually involved processing our arrest. At around ':30am they announced that because their fingerprinting machine was not functioning they would have to take us to a different precinct for the fingerprinting. We were led out of the cells again, cuffed, packed back into a car, and driven to a precinct in Chinatown. Here Lytle was put back in a cell while Emilie was fingerprinted and vice versa. The fingerprinting machine did not work well and Emilie's fingers were rolled over and over again, sprayed with Windex, and then pressed yet again. The officer appeared to be having a hard time with the machine. No one offered to help him; and he didn't seek help. This process took about an hour, after which we were again cuffed, led out to the car and driven back to the first precinct.
They explained that after our information was sent to Albany it would take about an hour and so long as we didn't have any warrants, we could be let go with a court date. But at 5 am we were still locked up, with no information. Eventually (just after 5) Lytle's clearance came through. Emilie's, however, did not. And they could not tell us why. Only after repeated questions were we finally told that Emilie's finger prints had not been legible (though the machine approved or rejected each print at the time of its initial printing, and this was the reason it had taken so long in the first place). Emilie, we were told, would have to be taken to yet a third precinct and fingerprinted again. At this point we began to protest our treatment. Emilie had a bloody nose and was feeling weak and sick. She is, to say it again, seven months pregnant, and so staying up all night in a piss-soaked cell is just not a good idea. The only water she received was sent in by her brother, Andrew (who had been postering with us and was, now, luckily, waiting outside).
We asked, again, if we could have a paper ticket written. But they refused again. This time Emilie was taken alone to "Transit," a police station in the ACE station at Canal. Andrew and Lytle followed on foot. They then waited for Emilie for two more hours while the police re-printed Emilie and then cuffed her to a chair, while her information was sent, again, to Albany. At just before 7am Emilie was released.
This, then, is the basic narrative of what happened. But it's important to mention that this entire time we were being worked on by the police in a variety of ways‹and it's as much what they said (as the base fact of our incarceration) that gives a picture of how they wanted to intimidate us.
They wanted to talk. Having locked up a pregnant woman and kept her awake all night, they now wanted to appeal to what they supposed would be her protective, maternal instincts. They offered the friendly advice not to go to the march on Saturday, February '5. This, they all thought, would not be a good place for a pregnant woman. They expected violence. Mace was mentioned. They stressed that 8,000 cops would be there. They also emphasized that many of them would be rookies and suggested that they would be looking for violence. They said they wouldn't want to read our names in the deaths column of the newspaper. When Emilie was escorted to the bathroom, the female cop again laid into her about the danger of going to the protests while pregnant.
They also mentioned terrorism: they'd heard there might be suicide bombers at the rally. (The logic in this one was stunning: just as Americans begin to manifest large-scale public dissent for the murdering of Iraqis and Afghanis, the U.S.-based Al Qaeda cells from those countries would specifically seek out that constituency for staging its first suicide bombing in the U.S.). We're all exasperatedly familiar with how this larger threat of terror has been played, again and again, as a way to shut down civil rights. In these last statements we saw it in its most reduced and illogical form.
Both of us are physically okay, though extremely angry.
We hope to organize a presence at our March '3 court date and will be in touch as that develops.
Once again, thank to all of you who have shown us your support over the last week.
With the threat of imminent War in the Middle East, and the ugly ramifications of such a war, the offices of the Subversive Associates™ has prepared a very special offering to the world. This was initially a localized poster campaign in OTTAWA, MONTRÉAL and TORONTO, CANADA. But now we have made our anti-war posters available to other like-minded individuals to: DOWNLOAD, PRINT, AND POST.
This is an exercise in Social Geometrics, fun for children of all sexes, creeds, races and religions. We ask that those of you who share our disdain and disgust for war in any shape or form, under any guise or pretense, please take our offering and post them anywhere you deem visible. It is as simple as that!
Of course, participation is not mandatory, but always encouraged. Due to obvious legal implications, The Subversive Associates™ asks that if you choose to engage in the campaign, you are still mindful of the laws of your specific land.
We invite you to send pictures of your effort to: exercise@fotoplus.org
If time and participation permits, those pictures will be displayed in a gallery of graphical dissent.
CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY OBTAINS SECRET DRAFT OF PATRIOT ACT II
The nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft of a secret document called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. This document is more commonly known as the Patriot Act II, and is designed to "give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information." You can download the document here:
www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0 &L5=0
Find an excellent guide to the document by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee at
www.bordc.org/Repeal.pdf
View a quick list of consequences to Patriot II here:
reclaimdemocracy.org/civil_rights/govpower_enhancement_act.html
GRAVE CONCERN #1: SECRECY AND LIES
Patriot Act II reverses the fundamental principles of a liberal, democratic society: rather than citizens living private lives and our government being transparent, we are now to be transparent to government's impenetrable authority. Charles Lewis says, "democracy is supposed to be a contact sport, with many and diverse participants, and we quickly discovered that practically no one on Capitol Hill in either party or in the national news media had ever even heard of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." So the first concern is, this document is very mature and was kept from nearly everyone on Capitol Hill -- never mind the general public.
When the story broke, Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Dept., said, "Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels." In fact, the staff at NOW with Bill Moyers had obtained a control sheet that proved the document was delivered to VP Dick Cheney and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on January 10. Caught red-handed in lies.
www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=506&L1=10&L2=10&L3 =0&L4=0&L5=0
GRAVE CONCERN #2: DIMINISHED CIVIL RIGHTS
Whether you're a liberal, a libertarian, a conservative, an anarchist, all over free enterprise, an electric-triangle prodigy, or an amoeba painter, the Patriot Act II is not your friend! The only group that would be served by this act is one who believes that s/he is best served by a government that operates behind a thick veil, whose authority is beyond reproach and not subject to accountability.
The ACLU has posted an outstanding, detailed analysis of the Patriot II. Here are the basic offenses:
-- diminishes personal privacy by removing checks on government power
-- diminishes public accountability by increasing government secrecy
-- diminishes corporate accountability under the pretext of fighting terrorism
-- undermines fundamental constitutional rights of Americans under overbroad definitions of "terrorism" and "terrorist organization" or under a terrorism pretext; [nb: this topic will be the focus of relay #3 -- carol]
-- unfairly targets immigrants under the pretext of fighting terrorism
www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11835&c=206
GRAVE CONCERN #3: NO CHECKS NO BALANCE
"Another section would nullify existing consent decrees against state law enforcement agencies that prevent the agencies from spying on individuals and organizations. These consent decrees were crafted because state and local governments illegally invaded the privacy of American citizens and repeatedly violated their civil rights. To make matters worse, the proposed bill prevents courts from issuing injunctions to block future abuses."
www.commondreams.org/views03/0213-09.htm
GRAVE CONCERN #4: CITIZEN ENDGAME
"Perhaps the most troubling section would strip U.S. citizenship from anyone who gives "material support" to any group that the attorney general designates as a terrorist organization. Citizenship is the most basic right for all Americans, one from which other rights -- such as the right to vote, to participate in politics and even to live in this country -- all flow. Under our Constitution, Americans can't be deprived of their citizenship, and the rights that go with it, unless they voluntarily give it up."
www.commondreams.org/views03/0213-09.htm
DEJA VOODOO
If you want to know the future under these new laws, check out the past. Remember COINTELPRO, the FBI counterintelligence program from 1956-1971? Like the Patriot Act, it claimed to be protecting us from evil terrorists and agents of foreign powers. In practice, it was a plan to discredit and neutralize political dissidents at home -- dangerous terrorists like Martin Luther King, the NAACP, and the National Lawyers Guild. Congress and the courts shut COINTELPRO down because it was unconstitutional. Bush, Ashcroft & Co are bringing it back.. on steroids. The report of the Congressional committee that investigated COINTELPRO is surprisingly readable; see www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm. It's an eye-opener.. and it could have been written last week.
THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE "DICTATOR"
John Ashcroft's TIPS program in the original Patriot Act looks an awful lot like Fidel Castro's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), which the U.S. forcefully condemned. The CDR consists of neighborhood watch groups, which monitor and patrol blocks and barrios in order to enforce sedition acts. Many arrests have been made under their advisement. Behold, The U.S. Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996: SEC. 205. REQUIREMENTS AND FACTORS FOR DETERMINING A TRANSITION GOVERNMENT.
(a) Requirements.--For the purposes of this Act, a transition government in Cuba is a government that--
(1) has legalized all political activity;
(2) has released all political prisoners and allowed for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations;
(3) has dissolved the present Department of State Security in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, including the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Response Brigades; and
(4) has made public commitments to organizing free and fair elections for a new government--
usinfo.state.gov/regional/ar/us-cuba/libertad.htm
Read what the ACLU has to say about the TIPS program:
www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=10783&c=206
OUR FREEDOM, OUR RESPONSIBILITY
Heriberto Yepez, a writer, translator, and teacher in Tijuana, reports that U.S. flag burning has become common in Mexico. thetijuanabibleofpoetics.blogspot.com/ (see entry 15.2.03) Freedom is a responsibility. We really must reclaim ours. As international citizens, we have a responsibility to stop the violations the U.S. is guilty of, to get out of this isolation that the current administration have thrust us into, and to reinscribe the USAmerican flag with values that Mexico will embrace, not burn.
WHO WHAT & HOW 2 RELAY
Many thanks to contributors Eric Keenaghan and Charles Weigl.
Thanks to everyone for your great response to issue 1! It's excellent that so many of you have expressed offers to submit raw materials for Relay. Unfortunately, I'm too unorganized to manage unsolicited content right now; if you find something worth circulating, why not relay it directly to your own address book? As those tireless cats at Clamor Magazine say, Become the Media! Subscription requests go to mirakove_relay@yahoo.com.
TOY SURPRISE!
Get The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra into heavy rotation:
www.gemueseorchester.org/anfang_e.htm If they fail to make you giggle with glee, check yr pulse.
[Here's a speech of Byrd's from last year -- this one's even scarier. I'll try to get some more of his writings on the site. Here's his follow up speech -- I don't remember how much of this was reported in the media.]
Senator Byrd - Sept. 20, 2002, Remarks on Iraq Bioweapons
September 20, 2002Mr. President, yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense.ï¿S
Specifically during yesterday's hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:
"Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?"
The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge, but said he would review Pentagon records. I suggest that the Administration speed up that review for today my concerns have grown.
A letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which I submit for the Record, and other documents show that the United States may, in fact, be preparing to reap what it has sown.
The CDC letter, written in 1995 by former Director David Satcher to Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the United States Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in the 1985.
According to the letter from Doctor Satcher to Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand-carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent three months training in a C-D-C laboratory.
The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services be included in that request as well.
We do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is, in large part, responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the Administration now seeks to destroy. We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate.
The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers.
"The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate."
... so begins this parodic 404/Not Found page for the UN Weapons Inspectors scouring Iraq. The page also offers a variety of helpful suggestions, including "Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install."
[I ripped this from Kasey Mohammad's blog lime tree, but first I asked him in an email whether I could post it on Circulars and included some of my own feedback on the post. This sparked a little debate, much of which, I think, will be appearing on his blog.]
I sense that the poetry community is in a sensitive transitional period right now. By "the poetry community," I mean all the thousands of people who write poetry and who are increasingly more aware of each other's views and activities than historically ever before thanks largely to electronic technology. And by "sensitive" I mean simultaneously very promising of increased dialogue and cooperation, and very delicately poised on the brink of bitter conflict. It seems trivial to use such a phrase when the world is poised on the brink of a much bitterer conflict, but it is especially that larger conflict, along with poets' responses to it, that has advanced this transitional phase dramatically in the past month or so.
If you go to today's Washington Post, you'll find an obnoxious editorial by Richard Cohen on the Poets Against the War movement. Never mind his predictable "bad manners" take on the scuttling of Laura Bush's little poetry party; never mind his ignorantly dismissive attitude toward poetry itself; what is really striking is Cohen's explicit acknowledgement that poets have been at the vanguard of the anti-war effort, that they are actually influencing public opinion. Poets making a difference! And poets of all camps!
Of course, within those camps, mutual opposition still rears its head. Some people have made a big deal out of the way in which Sam Hamill has selectively represented the poets he finds most noteworthy or illustrious in his web "chapbook." This is understandable: it is a very safe, mainstreamy gathering of names, and does little to acknowledge alternative approaches to poetry, etc. But it is his website, and he had the idea first--and more importantly, it has done some good. I am almost as impatient with poets on "my side" who grouse about Hamill's poetic conservatism in this situation as I am with the real conservatives out there who discount poets' (and everyone else's) resistance to war. Today I heard a poet whose work I admire and to whose politics I am generally sympathetic refer to those who have contributed to Hamill's site as "lame-o's." This kind of misguided purist negativity is the last thing we need right now as a community of objectors. Shame on you, unidentified poet!
The transition I mentioned earlier is one that could be dramatic: poets could go collectively from a reputation for obscurity and irrelevance to one for engagement and activism. Or they could succumb to the temptation to hurl divisive invectives at each other over their "jism-splattered" (thanks for that charming image, Jim Behrle) computer screens. (Oh, and Jim is not the unidentified cranky poet mentioned above.)
Suppose it had been birdhouse-makers instead of poets who had made the big media splash by gathering 9,000 birdhouses and statements of conscience against war on Iraq. Do you suppose that within the birdhouse-making community, there would be intense backbiting and controversy over whether the correct birdhouses were being chosen for inclusion? Maybe, but I doubt it. Now even Billy Collins has spoken out against war; is it really helpful to worry that maybe as a result of this his poetry might be taken more seriously or something like that? Shouldn't we just be glad that arguably the most visible public figure in contemporary poetry has taken advantage of his position to make his opposition known?
Let's make this as clear as possible. In comparison with the impending loss of thousands of human lives, poetry--what kind of poetry, what about, how many syllables, intentional or nonintentional procedures, blah blah blah--is really really insignificant. The only significant thing about poetry in such a context is its potential use as a blunt instrument, a symbolic bludgeon, an abstracted blob of conceptual splat that gets a job done. Bad, good, difficult, rhyming, containing no words with the letter "p": that don't matter so much. Reactionaries like Cohen in his Post column and dissenters within "experimental" groups all choke on the same fallacy: that American poets' authority to speak out against governmental policy stems from the quality of their work, instead of where it does come from, which is their constitutional right as Americans to voice their opinions on whatever the hell they feel like! The fact that they are poets is incidental. The best thing that could come of all this is that poets come to be perceived as workers like people who do all other kinds of jobs, as concerned citizens who live in the real world like everyone else and can see beyond the details of their specialization to more pressing matters.
After we avert the atrocity Bush and his owners are pushing for, then we can sit around and decide which poets should get which medals for the poems with particularly high aleatory merit or superior hexameter that totally helped stop war more than any other. In the ugly meantime, let's put our collective collectivities to the wheel and get over ourselves.
US Plan for New Nuclear Arsenal
by Julian Borger in Washington
The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents, according to a leaked Pentagon document.
The meeting of senior military officials and US nuclear scientists at the Omaha headquarters of the US Strategic Command would also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to convince the American public that the new weapons are necessary.
The leaked preparations for the meeting are the clearest sign yet that the administration is determined to overhaul its nuclear arsenal so that it could be used as part of the new "Bush doctrine" of pre-emption, to strike the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of rogue states.
Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organization that obtained the Pentagon documents, said the meeting would also prepare the ground for a US breakaway from global arms control treaties, and the moratorium on conducting nuclear tests.
"It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the comprehensive test ban treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with article six of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Mr Mello said.
The documents leaked to Mr Mello are the minutes of a meeting in the Pentagon on January 10 this year called by Dale Klein, the assistant to the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to prepare the secret conference, planned for "the week of August 4 2003".
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for designing, building and maintaining nuclear weapons, yesterday confirmed the authenticity of the document. But Anson Franklin, the NNSA head of governmental affairs, said: "We have no request from the defense department for any new nuclear weapon, and we have no plans for nuclear testing.
"The fact is that this paper is talking about what-if scenarios and very long range planning," Mr Franklin told the Guardian.
However, non-proliferation groups say the Omaha meeting will bring a new US nuclear arsenal out of the realm of the theoretical and far closer to reality, in the shape of new bombs and a new readiness to use them.
"To me it indicates there are plans proceeding and well under way ... to resume the development, testing and production of new nuclear weapons. It's very serious," said Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who added that it opened the US to charges of hypocrisy when it is demanding the disarmament of Iraq and North Korea.
"How can we possibly go to the international community or to these countries and say 'How dare you develop these weapons', when it's exactly what we're doing?" Mr Schwartz said.
The starting point for the January discussion was Mr Rumsfeld's nuclear posture review (NPR), a policy paper published last year that identified Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential targets for US nuclear weapons.
According to the Pentagon minutes, the August meeting in Strategic Command's bunker headquarters would discuss how to make weapons to match the new policy. A "future arsenal panel" would consider: "What are the warhead characteristics and advanced concepts we will need in the post-NPR environment?"
The panel would also contemplate the "requirements for low-yield weapons, EPWs [earth-penetrating weapons], enhanced radiation weapons, agent defeat weapons".
This is the menu of weapons being actively considered by the Pentagon. Low-yield means tactical warheads of less than a kiloton, "mini-nukes", which advocates of the new arsenal say represent a far more effective deterrent than the existing huge weapons, because they are more "usable".
Earth-penetrating weapons are "bunker-busters", which would break through the surface of the earth before detonating. US weapons scientists believe they could be used as "agent defeat weapons" used to destroy chemical or biological weapons stored underground. The designers are also looking at low-yield neutron bombs or "enhanced radiation weapons", which could destroy chemical or biological weapons in surface warehouses.
According to the leaked document, the "future arsenal panel" in Omaha would also ask the pivotal question: "What forms of testing will these new designs require?"
The Bush administration has been working to reduce the amount of warning the test sites in the western US desert would need to be reactivated after 10 years lying dormant.
From the UK Indymedia site:
Poo-Flags Campaign
Since American foreign policy sucks, how about this for a spot of creative dissent:
Every time you see a dog-poo on the pavement, stick a little American flag in it to protest against the looming war. Get in touch for full-colour printable U.S. flags bearing the slogan "AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY".
Simply:
Email your full postal address to poo-flags@end-war.com, and pre-printed flags will be sent to you, or ask us for an A4 jpeg you can print out yourself ...
Anyone who emails photos of 5 successfully-flagged poos to poo-flags@end-war.com will receive a free "WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION" t-shirt. When submitting photos, please state the street name and town where your poo was flagged, to assist in monitoring distribution.
A poo-flags website is currently under development. This is planned to feature flag downloads, a gallery of submitted photos, and a map of flag distribution. Until then, get poo-flagging, and please distribute this article to your friends -- press coverage is within reach!
And remember - it's not disgusting, it's revolting.
[Here are links to two stories in the Village Voice about poet protest activities in NYC; the second one has a little bit on Circulars.]
The Village Voice: Features: Bards Not Bombs in NYC by Joy Press
The Village Voice: Features: American Ink by Joshua Clover
John Barlow in Toronto
Saturday February 15, 2003
Writers Against War had an incredibly fine day down at the city rounds today.
Assembling in frigid air which glittered with inhuman aspiration, the dauntless heroes, beloved for their thoughtful styles and inspiring talents, added a supplement of peace and friendliness to the event, which drew 50,000 overall, smiling with love and intermutual discovery.
In London England, the peace march was the largest of any kind ever, and one million hit the streets of Italy, while franticly enthusiastic groups shone in Australia, and in Tel Aviv, Israelis and Palestians marched together against war in Iraq ... but our little group with its one banner probably carried the most jam, for saying NO ~ NO to a no-hope war in Iraq, or anywhere else.
Simply bombing complex situations is the thinking of the dangerous. The problems faced by humanity and other life forms, worldwide, are only made worse by bombs. What global postmodernism means is that nations are not intact, not homogenous, not identities which can be made to represent; rather, it is individuals, of all ages and thinkings, whom live everywhere. And it is never a good idea to blow them up.
Even as I note this latter point, I point out that these too are my individuated thoughts. Bollocks to collective identity. This world could well learn from the differentiations and diversity of the writing world. If there were any down notes to the occassion (besides the fact that the militarists disregard all but militarists' opinion, likewise the jingoists) it is that our group did lose one another quite a bit toward the end, once we were in the city hall courtyard's windtunnels, barely able to hear the speeches.
But I was awfully pleased to hear what I think was Cathy Crowe speaking passionately on behalf of John Clarke, Gaeten Heroux and Stefan Pilipa, having their time wasted in a courtroom, over the June 15 2000 anti-Harris demonstration. Having done so much to help liberate Ontario from Mike Harris, and having done so much to help victims of Harris's ilk, and being such productive individuals, it is heartbreaking that a Law & Order system so bitterly classistly failing people must eat up their time during these troubling months.
Also: that peace marches were banned in New York because of the hoax-engendered terror-alert this week; and that no media coverage I saw mentioned if any resistance to the ban had been attempted. Shame!
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | John Sutherland explains why the US wants to attack Iraq
John Sutherland
Monday February 17, 2003
"I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle" says Shakespeare's soldier, the night before Agincourt. The "cause", the old sweats agree, is the only thing that can justify the next day's carnage. And here we are again, on the eve of battle. What then is the cause that has taken 46,000 British troops to the Gulf? Oil? Payback for the failed hit on dad? Homeland defence?
Add weapons-testing to the causa belli. Samurai knights, one is told, were permitted to try the cutting edge of their sword on the neck of any luckless (and soon headless) passing peasant.
The battlefield will be the testing ground for the US samurai. No more rhesus monkeys or pigs but real, live Iraqis.
In Afghanistan, the big new toy was the thermobaric bomb - the 15,000lb Daisycutter. It ploughed underground to release a "tsunami of air pressure". Your lungs were suddenly where your nose used to be. The bomb had been used twice in Gulf war one without success. Bunkers were obstinately unbusted. In 2001 it was profusely dropped on the Tora Bora cave complex. But, as Osama's recent bulletin told us, his warriors simply dug little holes elsewhere and escaped, their daisies uncut.
The newer, smarter weapon to be battlefield-tested in Gulf war two will be that fantasy of every sci-fi writer, a death-ray. The HPM (high-power microwave) bomb is the first viable product from America's top-secret Dew (directed energy weapon) programme. It is described as 100 lightning bolts, focused into a single pulse of radiation equivalent to two billion watts. Wow! The HPM bomb fries any electronic equipment within its impact area: computers, motors, radar. It all conks out, leaving the enemy defenceless.
The bomb is mechanically simple, robust, compact and - most important of all - ready to lock and load. "Vircator" (sounds Latin, but it is just short for Virtual Cathode Oscillator) has been fitted to small AGM-86 cruise missiles, carried by the cluster on B52s.
Currently, Vircator's destructive radius is a puny 300ft (they are working on that). But, if aimed precisely, it can penetrate underground without needing to blast its way into Saddam's bunkers. Well-earthed wire mesh built into the concrete fabric affords protection - but cunning radiation will eel its way through ventilation shafts, cracks, wires, radio antennae. You can burrow, but you can't hide.
The HPM arsenal has had highest priority in the run up to the war. It is, as the Pentagon coyly puts it, "the top item in our boutique of capabilities". And, in the past few weeks, it has been sold to the American public as a weapon of mass non-destruction - the Mother Teresa of bombs. "What's good about it," the Pentagon says, "is that it doesn't harm people." Regurgitating PR releases, the American press has hailed HPM as a humane "wonder weapon".
The only danger, apparently, is to those with pacemakers or on life-support systems. Since Saddam buries his nastiest labs under hospitals, that thesis may well be tested - having a pacemaker explode in your chest just might be classified as "harm".
Although not primarily an anti-personnel device, those who have been exposed to HPM report that its effect is agonising. The radiation penetrates below the skin, boiling nerve cells. It can blind. It induces uncontrollable panic (early research into HPM was as a crowd control agent).
Will the HPM bomb be employed as a "precision" weapon? Or as part of the declared "shock and awe" strategy to terrify the general population? Will it be used to destroy what infrastructure the last war left working? Will Iraqi civilians serve as guinea pigs? No one knows what the long-term effect of microwave exposure is. And, frankly, no one this side of the Tigris and Euphrates gives a damn. Peasant, bare your neck!
Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Monday February 17, 2003
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The human shield has arrived, but what now?
At times it felt like hell on wheels. But the peace activists who travelled across a continent by London double-decker bus arrived at a Baghdad bomb shelter yesterday with their sense of mission just about intact.
Few places in Baghdad convey the horror of war as sharply as the al-Ameriya shelter, where 400 Iraqi civilians were incinerated by US missiles during the last Gulf war.
The visit to the shelter yesterday was one of the first duties of the newly arrived human shields, who joined a lively camp of the anti-war movement in Baghdad.
There can be no doubting their passion but the activists' epic voyage did not encourage clarity of vision.
There were breakdowns - a third bus painted black and labelled Enemy Combatant was abandoned in Milan - drop-outs, logistical snags, infighting, a leadership coup, and the usual frictions that can be expected among strangers sharing the same cramped quarters, and not entirely sure of their purpose.
Beyond paying £300 for their passage, the 30 or so protesters, from Britain, the US, Australia, Scandinavia and elsewhere had little in common. Several were just along for the ride: journalists hoping to be smuggled into Baghdad as activists.
For Grace Trevett, an artist from Stroud in Gloucestershire, the journey began in April last year when she took part in a peace rally in the US. Others signed on just before the buses left London. "I feel shame on the Bush government and the Blair government making it necessary for people to do this to be heard," Ms Trevett said.
For three weeks, the focus was all on the journey across Europe, Turkey and Syria to Iraq. "It felt like the closer we got the more dangerous it became, and the stronger the realisation that there is life here," Ms Trevett said.
The bus, advertising the website humanshields.org and with a rear panel showing pictures of the Beatles, finally reached Baghdad on Saturday night - too late for Iraq's anti-war demonstrations. The travellers had been awake for two days.
Arrival had its own complications. When the activists crossed over the Iraqi border at the weekend, they were greeted by a rent-a-mob chanting Saddam Hussein's praises - raising doubts about whether the activists were providing support for the regime.
It was also not exactly clear yesterday what the activists would do in Baghdad.
"It is a great challenge and worry what to do," said Godfrey Meynell, 68, a retired civil servant and by far the oldest activist. "There is no real point in the whole thing except if we are causing doubts in the mind of those preparing for war."
Some protesters were planning a speedy return. Some were clearly comfortable with their role as human shields deployed at potential bombing targets in Iraq.
Others bridled at the term, saying it obscured the real purpose of the journey: to put a human face on the Iraqi civilians who will be killed.
"For me it was never an issue of going to Baghdad, and saving the people," said Ms Trevett. "It was very much coming in to see what we can do."
On Monday, March 3rd, 2003, the first-ever world-wide theatrical event for peace will happen in a city near you. Don't miss this unique opportunity to stand up for peace in your community, and provide a humorous entry into a healthy dialogue about current affairs. Attend or help plan a reading of Lysistrata, Aristophanes' anti-war comedy, to protest the rush to war on Iraq. Many of the readings will benefit non-profit organizations working for peace and humanitarian aid in Iraq.
Tomorrow morning, Monday, February 17, 2003, you will find a quarter-page ad from Poets Against the War on the Op Ed page of the New York Times. This ad was paid for by the many of you who sent contributions, and we thank you for allowing our collective voice to be heard. The ad is endorsed by two dozen of America's most influential and best-known poets, and it is signed in all our names, "Thousands of poets, one voice."
We continue to accept submissions of anti-war poems and statements. Please check the website for updates, for the latest information about readings and to enjoy the amazing anthology which is the heart and soul of Poets Against the War. You can now search the collection by poet's name, poem title and poet's location.
We continue to accept donations, as well. In addition to the New York Times ad, our future plans include coordinating a series of regional poetry readings in cities around the U.S., so that we may continue to bring attention to our cause. We are also producing a documentary about the Poets Against the War phenomenon and the readings that occurred in 160 cities on February 12, International Poetry Against the War Day. And I am currently editing a book of poems and statements selected from the website that will be published by The Nation in April.
Please click this link to donate to Poets Against the War, or you can send a check to: Poets Against the War, Box 1614, Port Townsend, WA 98368.
The many volunteers at PAW--designers, editors, developers, and support staff--all join me in expressing our profound gratitude to you for your moral and financial support, your wonderful letters of encouragement and, most especially, your poems. As we sort and post your work to the website, we are, all of us, very moved by what we read, moved sometimes to tears, moved more than we can say.
Peace,
Sam Hamill for Poets Against the War.
February 17, 2003
(NEW YORK CITY)- Artist Emilie Clark and writer Lytle Shaw were arrested for posting pictures of people from Baghdad in Soho late Thursday night. Both have been released. A court date has been set to prosecute the two for showing New York City the people who will die in a possible war against Iraq.
Clark and Shaw were members of the Baghdad Snapshot Action Crew. Based in New York City, the crew of 75 artists and activists began posting simple flyers with pictures of ordinary Iraqi citizens around New York City, in anticipation and solidarity of the February 15th anti-war rally.
The pictures were taken by artist Paul Chan, who recently returned from Baghdad as a member of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of the Chicago based, Nobel Peace Prize nominated activist group, Voices in the Wilderness.
Clark and Shaw were taping the letter sized flyer on a lamppost at the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets when three undercover policemen arrested them. They were charged with criminal misdemeanors. Shaw was released after five and a half hours. Clark spent seven hours in jail before her release. Clark is pregnant with her first son, and is expecting this Spring.
The arrests were a clear attempt by the police to intimidate New Yorkers to stay away from the protest. "If there wasn't a march on Saturday we wouldn't have been arrested.," Shaw said. While in custody, police harassed Clark and Shaw with talk about how dangerous the rally will be. "They kept saying how mace was going to be used on all the protesters," Clark said. "And then they said they had heard suicide bombers might attack the rally."
What was most disturbing to Shaw was how the cops tried to justify their actions against the two. "They tried to appeal to us sentimentally," Shaw said, "as though the repression they were enacting was really in our best interest."
"They wanted to send a message that we should stay home because it [the protest] was dangerous, and they didn't want to see us hurt."
The court date is set for March 13.
###
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.nationalphilistine.comBaghdad Snapshot Action Crew
http://unitedforpeace.orgFebruary 15 anti-war rally organizers
http://iraqpeaceteam.orgIraq Peace Team website
[A petition signed by 1600+ at the time of posting; from Ammiel Alcalay.]
No to war on Iraq .... No to dictatorship Petition
[I ripped this from Heriberto Yepez's blog, The Tijuana Bible of Poetics.]
I've having problems writing in English these days.
I think a great number of Mexicans are becoming basically anti-American State and if this new series of wars is conducted further, the United States needs to know this is going to damage greatly the relationship between our two cultures.
This war has no reason. This war is part of the system to make America richer, and dominant over the rest of the world. Bush is no more good than Saddam. He's just your Bin Laden.
The American government looks like a serial killer to us.
I come from a great series of cultures, an even though we have been sleeping for some time now, we are now awake. And even this stupid blog is part of a campaign from our culture to try to communicate before language has no meaning left.
Is this war going to really happen? And then what other war is the United States government going to create next?
You're cloning yourselves all over the world. It appears like the United States wants to erase the Other, and wants to take resources from other cultures to continue your way of life. Your government and our corrupt politicians are uniting to turning Mexico, for example, into a slum. How could you helped our interior enemies to destroy Mexico? This cannot continue.
The alliance between these two corrupt governments is turning the Mexican people into enemies of both, and now sees them as one force whose purpose is to destroy our freedom.
The American government and American companies are making money out of our future. The signs of a social disaster are everywhere. And a big part of the problem is the role of the U.S. in our economical, social and political life.
The U.S. is part of the present threat against our language and existence. We are starting a revolt against our government because we want to put an end to our racism and social injustice (40% of Mexicans live in extreme poverty because 90% of the wealth is property of less than 10% of the population, the TV system is erasing the real issues, and is part of the government, drug dealing is widespread and is, of course, part of the government). We need to transform ourselves to fix the political life of our culture—and that involves the United States, because this government is corrupting even more our political life and is making us poorer and poorer.
And now we see how the American government is going into one more of its international lies, at the same time that is ruining our economy. The Irak war (the sequal!) is part of the same pattern that promotes the transformation of Mexico and Latin America into the employees of American interests.
The United States has been the leader of implementing a nuclear orden, a continuous war. The United States, because of that, is solely responsabile of stopping this blindness. First this new war, and then the total order your politicians and companies run.
You are headed to a disaster. This kind of world cannot go on more than two or three decades more. Change before your population is subject of all kinds of attacks, from terrorism to world wide hate.
This is one of the most dark times of American History. Get out of it.
Do you know, for example, that burning American flags is becoming an increasing activity in Mexican life? Each day that goes by Antiamericanism grows in Mexico. I'm sure this is not something which your media let's you know, but this is happening here.
The feeling in Mexico is 9/11 happened because the U.S. States asked it for. Spreading violence and inequality all over the world brings you this kind of karma. Every time I meet with my students, friends or talk with any people, the U.S. is strongly criticized.
We don't like violence. So, why do you believe so much in violence? What's the fun of it?
This has been happening all over the 20th Century, but now it has reached a point, in which the Mexican national project is collapsing. This is a moment in which Mexican history is about to change drastically. Different groups are preparing to go to war against poverty, and popular culture is imagining a third quest for justice, after the first two in 1810 and 1910. Too many things have happened in the last decades and now the country is a daily state of discontent.
The U.S. is criticized strongly here, radically. First the government, for behaving like a butcher, and then regular Americans, who appear to be powerless or lacking any desire to see what your country represents in the world.
You appear to have no respect for espirituality and others. You appear to be the leaders of destroying the Earth.
I would not say this to you, if I didn't know for sure this is not just me talking, but a whole culture. This is what is being discussed here. You.
You need to realize you must stop your government. It is destroying not only our cultures but also your own culture. You are a country with a great number of cultures, and you have created great things (like your different literatures and musics) but now you're turning into this monster which even your neighbors fear and are now preparing to resist.
You may say, "What is this young Mexic@n intellectual talking about? This e-dude must be crazy, exaggerating, have nothing to do". But believe me, your government and your silence is damaging the way we see, feel and think about the United States. Mexico is becoming basically anti-American.
You must take responsability for stopping Bush, the CIA and the companies that are runing the war. You're risking to live Vietnam again.
But this time all the world is going to be Vietnam.
The last time three American intellectuals (friends of mine) came to Tijuana, I was afraid we could encounter anti-American reactions. And it kind of happen. We were sitting in a dowtown bar, drinking a beer, and then a man came, directed his talk to my friends, and used the bottles to explain us in the table how he felt the U.S. is opressing Mexico and other countries, and then he asked if we had any work for him because he had no job thanks to both governments.
It was a completely miserable situation. Here I was sitting with American writers I admire, and here I was also hearing a Mexican poor man, with no future. Two worlds in a strange encounter. None of us knowing what to say or do.
Just last night somebody remembered to me, that the Indian uprising in Chiapas started the same day that Nafta oficially began working. It was the first war against the Mexican-U.S. goverments alliance. It was a war against what president Carlos Salinas represented: the poverty and opression of the Indian population in Mexico, the continuation of the PRI (which was the party who ruled Mexico, thanks to violence and fraud, for the last seventy years) and the strenghtening of the American influence in our daily life.
The Mexican 1910 Revolution started in a similar way. For similar causes.
And now after the PRI was beaten in an election we all prevented from becoming another electoral fraud, this new party arrived, PAN. We got out of the PRI perfect dictatorship (as it was called some years ago by Vargas Llosa, one of the most important writers in Latin America) but entered into this new way of functioning, less visibly corrupt but far more effective in widening the difference among the classes.
PAN is a party from the right wing. And guess what? The head of our first "democratic goverment" is a former president of Coca Cola.
(Literally. This is not a joke).
Mexico headed by a Coca Cola ex-president? This is simple humillating to what our culture means. Mexicans are people who dedicate a great part of their energy to understand our relationship with language, knowledge, the place we live in, and now, suddenly a bunch of crooks are humillating us with this Coca Cola clown?
This will not stand. Americans need to understand you cannot do this to Mexico. We are going to reconstruct the relationship with ourselves, because it has been damaged greatly due to our corruption and Mexicans selling our country to the highest client. We are going to take care of ourselves, but you need to stop your companies and politicians. They are going to fail.
So do what you have to do before they throw you into this non-sensical situation they are creating. Your culture is strong, it doesn't need this kind of generals, senators, ceo's and fools damaging it.
The Mexican population is thinking how to act on the threat of us becoming Americanized.
Even though our media and our government don't appear to be anti-American State, regular people are becoming that in great great numbers. We used to be the country represented by maize, but know we buy corn from the U.S.
Mexico is realizing following the American way is destroying our culture.
I am telling you this because you need to know this is happening in the South. A couple of days ago, the most important newspaper (leftstist and anti-PAN-PRI) from Mexico City reported the poets stance against the war (click here). Guess why this makes front news in Mexico?
It looks to us as if the people of the United States, its politicians, intellectuals, don't care enough about the killings and injustice your government is spreading. An any news about resistence inside the U.S. is welcome.
To the Mexican mind, an American (a "gringo") is somebody who is a macho, doesn't understand his relationship with this planet, and wants to make more money, and would do anything to accomplish this, even organizing wars or trying to control other countries. This is the image your sending.
I'm convinced this is a moment you're going to regret if you don't act. This is a moment similar to that before and during the nazi regime. People knew what was being done to the jews, but many of them didn't do anything to stop the nazi government. You're government is behaving like a serial killer, like a sniper (the sniper from Washington), you're government is the leading terrorist State, don't you see how this is turning the world against you?
Do you want to become a culture who is going to be blame for the murder of many thousands, even millions of people, in two or three decades or even in a few years?
And all of this is why, when I have try to write in English these days, something happens in my hands. A discomfort.
Brooklyn, 2/16/03: Yesterday, New York City was a hall of mirrors.
Brooklyn, 2/16/03: Yesterday, New York City was a hall of mirrors. Riding the subway was like navigating bumper cars--trains going in the opposite direction of where they were supposed to be headed, the N train running on the V line for no apparent reason, the east bound Brooklyn L train headed west, skipping stops, stopping all together and with no warning telling people to get off and transfer to the train across the platform, which when it finally arrived was headed in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to be going, proceeding three stops, stopping again and instructing people to either walk across the platform and transfer, or stay on the same train if they wanted to get back to where they started from (with no instructions as to how they were supposed to get where they were actually going).
The first stop in Brooklyn was a sea of confusion--most of the people there did not know how or why they had spontaneously manifest in Brooklyn when they thought they were headed for the West Village. This chaos apparently started around 11:30 am--exactly at the time when people were attempting to gather for the anti-war protest. Why the MTA (Mass Transit Authority) would purposely scramble their trains to prevent people from getting to the protest is baffling. Perhaps it was just a coincidence--"construction" as the drivers said--but since when does construction in an otherwise efficient city effect every single train simultaneously?
And the mass confusion caused by the MTA was mirrored by the police—as if it was all a part of some bizarre master plan orchestrated by some conniving jack-in-the-box politicians and police commissioners. They blocked the streets for (as I understand) 30 blocks, preventing anyone from walking East along the side-streets to get to the main rally on First Avenue. If you were lucky enough to be on First Avenue already, you could walk West. But once you crossed Second Avenue, there was no turning back. People who crossed the line and then wanted to turn around were forbidden from entering. It was like walking through liquid mirrors that solidified back into glass once you passed through them.
These bizarre East-block barricades extended up to 5th Avenue. "Why are the streets blocked," we asked the officers as we crossed the avenues, headed west. Sternly: "Because there has been vandalism and complaints from residents." With a humble smile: "Honestly I don’t know." Snootily: "Because all these people wandering around are a disaster waiting to happen."
All the people wandering around was truly a remarkable sight. A "disaster waiting to happen" that was caused explicitly by the police. Because they were forbidden from walking to the rally, large groups of people with their anti-war signs paraded up and down 2nd Ave, 3rd Ave, Lexington Avenue, even 5th Avenue, forming their own marches. It was beautiful. Passers-by trying to shop were confused, befuddled, annoyed. The police were barraged by a litany of questions: "You mean I can’t even get to the park?" "You mean I can’t even get to a restaurant on 3rd Avenue where I am supposed to meet a friend?" "You mean I can’t get to Bloomingdales!!?" "You mean I can’t get to a rally which is legal!!!?"
It was inevitable that this would lead to dramatic action. According to this morning’s Daily News, "It grew especially heated several times between 1 and 3 p.m. on Second and Third avenues, when officers prevented arriving protesters from walking east to join the majority of the crowd. Police officials later said demonstrators refused to walk north where they were allowing protesters to enter First Avenue." To walk north in order to walk east, they would have had to have walked over 15 blocks. It was 10 degrees outside. Right, ok. No problem. Finally the agitated protestors broke through the barrier. The police used their horses to shove people on the sidewalk. A couple horses suffered injuries. MTA busses were used to escort people who had been arrested. A friend who witnessed this said they put people on one bus at a time, in order to separate them from other protestors.
How did this connection between the MTA and the Police come into effect? Since when is it public transportation’s business to work with the police to curb people’s rights to assemble? It was clear that the police were making up their own rules. It was clear to anyone roaming the streets yesterday, trying to walk east to attend a legal protest, trying to ride the subway in any logical direction, trying to manoeuvre the streets--that our "freedom to assemble" is, like other constitutional rights, vanishing before our eyes. Pooof. When directions are scrambled, streets blocked off, our own internal maps of our city are distorted. The message they were trying to get across was clear—you people have no power.
Of course, although they may have succeeded in confusing people, they failed miserably to contain us. Walking the streets yesterday it was clear how many people came out to oppose to the war--no matter how the officials try and fudge the actual number of protestors, people were out in droves. The police underestimated the crowds (I guess they were baffled that Code Orange didn’t succeed in terrifying us to make the trek to Home Depot for duct tape, like those people in the very-susceptible-to-be-attacked suburbs). At 1:45, two hours after the rally started, Chief of Department Joseph Esposito declared a Level 4 mobilisation, the force's largest emergency deployment. This cost the department $5 million in overtime—a cost that easily could have been curtailed had simply allowed a marching permit.
Most significantly, the protest here was happening simultaneously 100 times over around the globe. We could see ourselves reflected in Rome, London, Copenhagen, San Francisco. We were numerous, and today breath a sigh of relief. The papers report this morning that the U.S. and Britain are re-drafting their UN resolutions against Iraq. Of course, this sigh (a moment of hope) will inevitably turn back to anger and disbelief in the coming weeks as our hawk administration proceeds war-head strong in their illogical and asinine plans to inflict chaos and mayhem in the Middle East. And no doubt, we’ll be back on the streets again--this time a little bit more knowledgeable about what tricks the city is capable of.