NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(August '05)
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8/7/05
Howdafugaya.
Sing a song of sixpence... then again, make it a shilling. Come back in 15 minutes and I'll raise it to half-a-crown! Hmmm... what the hell do you do with half a crown, anyway, besides cover half of her majesty's noble brow? Not a lot of that going on around here, to be sure. So damn -- we're giving those half-crowns away, looks like. (Did I say something, or was that you?)
Okay,
this breaks with tradition (and lord knows we live by tradition here at the
abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, squat house of Big Green),
but because I'm so punchy from lack of sleep (leaking roof, suffice to
say...also, anti-Lincoln and posi-Lincoln have been rehearsing their new
vaudeville act....ugh...), I'm going to throw the floor open for questions.
We'll just have ourselves a little visitor-directed forum here at www.BigGreenHits.com,
courtesy of the miracle of Web technology, which can bring us together in one
cozy virtual room and swill us with virtual cheap coffee and stale donuts. Who
wants to start us off? Anyone? Okay.... you back there -- the tall fellow over
in Madagascar. Let's start with you.
> What is the point of all this Lincoln-ography? Are you guys obsessed with the late president, or did his name just come up at random in your alphabet soup? <Franto Lumgodoral>
Yes
to both questions, Franto, old man. Lincoln -- like the Christmas holiday -- has
been a running theme for us since our founding days as a band.... before, even.
In fact, my illustrious brother has been going on about Lincoln practically
since the day I met him. The reason is simple: we're what historians and
scientists refer to as "crackpots" -- that is, members of contemporary
society who attempt to reclaim elements of an era totally outside their
knowledge and experience. By applying this very special "crackpotism"
to our musical endeavors, we have found a way to share our strange preoccupation
with the rest of 
the
world. Lincoln=quality. Quality Lincoln. See how that works? I should think that
much is obvious, Franto. How about your island nation? How did it come to be
separated from that part of east Africa from which it so obviously cracked
off?
All right, over there in British Colombia. Mrs. Delores Pendrake, it appears, has a question. Please take the "floor", if you will.
> Why are all the good band names taken? I mean, how did you get stuck with "Big Green" ... because there were no decent ones left? <Delores Pendrake>
Need I ask, what is in a name? I think your point is that "Garbage," "Queen," and "Cheap Trick" are better positioned than us... but that's not why they've met with such screaming success while we have encountered only failure. No, sir (or ma'am, rather) -- this gets into "goodness" issues. The reason why we know this is that we have played under other band names and have still fallen flat. Does the listening public care whether we're called "Big Green" or "Soundgarden" or "Seven Vertical Inches of Purgatory"? I think not!
Finally...
the young lady in Patagonia. Way, way in the back. Yes, you. Esmé, is it? Go
ahead.
> Can you tell me what happened to my repair order? No one answers the phone at your office. <Esmé Astafan >
I can tell you that if you ordered a sandwich by mail, it's probably being weighed out on the scale invented by Mitch Macaphee for that express purpose. That man is so creative, even his inventions -- i.e. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) -- try to invent things. (Though apparently no one has thought to tell Marvin that folk music has already been invented.)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Milestone.
With a flurry of Marine fatalities in Iraq, the total US dead in Dubya's
splendid little war pushed beyond the 1,800 mark this week. It appears the
higher this number grows, the more desensitized we become to it, as if we are
somehow passing the same milestone over and over again -- like it's old news.
Sentiment in the US has gradually turned against the war, but with these mostly
young people marching two-by-two into oblivion week after week, month after
month, year after year, you'd think the level of disgust with this gruesome
enterprise would reach such a fever pitch as to be impossible for even our
government to ignore. Not yet. And whereas 
our
president sold this war on pretexts that were clearly unfounded, he has yet to
pay enough of a political price as to prevent him from even thinking about
offering the current "let's throw good money after bad"
rationale.
Dubya has adopted and adapted the rhetoric of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Our continued presence in Iraq and the success of our mission (whatever that has become) will give those lost lives meaning. If we "cut and run", we will be doing the dead a disservice and admitting that they died in vain. Always back on the individual soldiers ... as if it had been their idea to start this stupid war in the first place. Under the guise of "supporting the troops," this administration (and its ideological cheering section) essentially blame the troops for everything. If the Bush Pentagon fails to adequately safeguard major caches of high explosives and draws criticism because these sites have been repeatedly raided by "insurgents", the administration will counter that our troops are doing an excellent job (criticism of the White House is twisted into sounding like criticism of the troops carrying out their imbecilic policies). When Abu Ghraib came to light, they trotted out the "a few bad apples" defense rather than take responsibility for a policy that clearly originated at the highest levels.
So
accountability -- such as there is in this "global struggle against violent
extremism" -- resides exclusively at the level of the private soldier. Not
only do they bear the full burden of the fighting, but they 
take
the heat for all of Bush's asinine decisions. Dubya and company are selling this
war as a kind of "supply side" solution to terrorism. Well, I agree
that it is a supply side solution... for the Bin Ladens of the world. What (non
US and allied) foreign fighters there are in Iraq are predominantly people with
no prior history of radicalism or "violent extremism" -- they are
people from Muslim countries who are driven by our attack on and occupation of
one of Islam's and Arab culture's most storied nations. This is a terrorist
recruiting tool more potent than the call to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in
the 1980s, where Bin Laden first learned his trade, courtesy of generous CIA
funding.
Hey ...it's not like Bush didn't get anything done before going to the ranch for his yearly 5-week vacation. He did endorse the "intelligent design" science curriculum to be taught alongside actual science. (Back in his school days, Dubya was probably more into chemistry...if you know what I mean. Explains a lot.)
luv u,
jp
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8/14/05
Have at you!
What's this? Six fingers on my right hand? I don't remember that spare digit... doesn't look familiar at all. Dreaming again... that must be it. Writing in my sleep. Blogging with my eyes closed. Third time this month. That's settled, at least. Just one question -- did I gain a finger or lose part of my memory? Am I ahead or behind here, damnit?!
Sleeping
on the job -- you can hardly blame me, what with all that's been going on here
at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I'm talking duties in addition to the
snail-climbing-Mount-Fuji recording project Big Green
has been working on lo these last two years. Launch date for our upcoming
interstellar tour is fast approaching and there still remains an impossible
amount of preparatory work to be done. I am only now realizing that it may have
been a mistake to put the anti-matter Lincoln in charge of booking the dates.
No, it's not the negativity that gets in the way...nor the antisocial
tendencies. I'm afraid it's the fact that he's a 19th Century man engaged in a
21st Century activity. I mean, we've gotten him to the point where he
understands what a telephone is and why he should talk to it like he's talking
to another human being. Space travel, however, is another matter entirely. Matt
gave him a closely guided tour of the reconstituted replica Jupiter 2 spacecraft
we use for our interstellar romps, and anti-Lincoln thought he was being brought
up into a water tank. (He now calls the ship the "great balloon" --
progress, yes... but we've got a tour to book, for chrissake.)
The
fact is, we're short-handed. So consequently everyone has got way too much to
do. Matt has taken it upon himself to get the provisioning together for our long
journey (looks like no one will be wanting for Vienna sausages or tawny port).
John has been consumed by his study of the ship's avionics -- something that no
one else in our party understands, so god knows he 
might
be napping somewhere. And, of course, with the near disaster of the space
shuttle Discovery fresh in everyone's mind, Trevor James Constable and Mitch
Macaphee have been going over our spaceship's hull with a fine-tooth comb,
looking for minute cracks in its thermal shielding, applying plastic wood with
tongue depressors where necessary. (Trevor James is working on a protective
blister made of etheric energy that would encompass the ship and make it, in a
word, in-wince-able.) Yes indeed -- everyone's got their hands full. Even posi-Lincoln is licking envelopes and putting a tuck into the accordion bellows.
And me? What am I doing? Well, fuck.... somebody's got to
mind the store.
It
fell to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to attempt to make contact with our
perpetual sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn.
As one might expect, his first try at intergalactic communication involved a
crystal set as old as yours truly. When that failed miserably, he tried a
telegraph key wired to a blender. (That made an interesting enough noise, but
produced no man from Zenon.) Next was the bicycle pump hooked to a table lamp,
pumping code into a flashing light bulb. Oh, you may scoff.... yes, you may. (I
certainly did.) But not five hours later, the indeterminate 
yet
unmistakable shape of our gaseous Zenite friend with the virtually
unpronounceable name and the blonde Telecaster became visible in the dim light
of our open refrigerator. (Still fond of snacks, you see.) Coincidence? I don't
think so. But either way, sFshzenKlyrn was
back amongst us, eating our groceries, doing windmills, and radiating a mean
surface temperature 420 degrees Kelvin. Good pumping, Marvin!
Will we have the requisite bookings before our launch date in a couple of weeks? Hmmmm... May have to pull anti-Lincoln off the phone and put the man-sized tuber to work. After all, he's been doing little more than watering himself at regular intervals since things started hopping around here. (That and directing traffic....his hobby...) So head's up, interstellar club owners -- you may be getting a garbled phone message from the world's largest sweet potato. (If he can figure out how to raise the handset.)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
The
Next War. Okay, it's August and typically things slow down a bit in the area
of political news. Tex is on vacation -- though you can still see him swaggering
in his ranch hand get-up through a couple of photo op events here and there. (Dubya has actually cultivated a way of swaggering while standing in one place
-- that saddle sore look of his perhaps resulting from Latte withdrawal.) And
though August is a bad time to launch a new campaign, Iran's nuclear enrichment
program has been the talk of an empty town (DC) just lately. You've heard the
rending of garments, I'm sure. Oh, god! They're enriching uranium again!
We're done for, we're done for! I mean, what the fuck....how many
billions are we devoting to nuclear weapons research 
and
development right now? And our nukes aren't just on the drawing board. We've got
thousands of operational thermonuclear weapons mounted on delivery systems fully
capable of striking anywhere on the globe. Further, we are actively working on
the capacity to base such weapons on orbital platforms from which they may be
deployed at will with virtually no warning. Oh yes, and Iran is counted amongst
the "Axis of Evil" -- one member of which (Iran's immediate neighbor)
has been invaded by us with catastrophic consequences for that nation. Then
there's that neighbor on the other side....Afghanistan.
So why the hell are those Iranians so paranoid, anyway?
In actuality, Bush and company have -- wittingly or not -- created the perfect formula for encouraging nuclear proliferation. First, designate a class of enemy or "failed" states. Then invade the one that most obviously does not have an active nuclear weapons program. They have thus provided non-nuclear states with a compelling reason to go nuclear. After all, what use to a nation like Iran is the bomb except as a deterrent? They can't use it without bringing on massive and devastating retaliation. And the idea they might pass it along to some shadowy terrorist organization is absurd on its face. Imagine the Iranians spending enormous amounts of their national treasure to create such a weapon, only to give it away to Sunni extremists who are just as likely to use it on their "apostate" regime as anyone else. There's a far greater likelihood that Russian nuclear weapons might end up in terrorist hands, since there are so bloody many of them already invented and ready to use, being guarded by people who haven't been paid in months. Iran a threat? Give me a break. When's the last time they invaded anybody?
So
here we are, the only nation ever to have used nuclear weapons against another
-- a nation committed to a policy of "preventive" war based on vague
and unsupported assertions about what capabilities another state my one day wish
to possess -- rattling our sabers at a country whose tumultuous recent history
has been largely defined by our repeated and sustained efforts to manipulate
them, from gaining control of their oil industry during World War II, to
overthrowing the elected nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953,
to supporting the dictatorial regime of Shah Reza Palavi for the next 25 years,
to assisting and financing Saddam Hussein's murderous war against Iran in the
1980s....the list goes on and on. And it appears that the Bush administration --
unencumbered as it is by any contact with reality -- has so convinced itself
things are going swimmingly in Iraq that they seem to think war with Iran is a
real option. Hey -- what else can you expect from these yo-yos? They never pay
any price for their bankrupt and disastrous policies -- why wouldn't they
do it again? For christ's sake....Rumsfeld's planning some kind of celebratory
march and country music jamboree marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,
like it's his freaking birthday or something.
Of course, for what it has empowered them to do in the last four years, it may as well be the entire administration's birthday.
luv u,
jp
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8/21/05
Launch sequence start....
Secure the LOX intake. Hydrogen, we need more hydrogen! Get me a reading on the static omigodlirometer -- that needle looks pinned. Something's wrong. The belly plates are slipping. Our circuits are beginning to heat. Send up a flare! Get me Washington! No one there? Then get me Lincoln! We're losing pressure. No. No! NOOOOOOO!!!
God
damn it. Blew another simulator test! Is Mitch Macaphee sure we need to
go through this pointless exercise? That makes about a dozen times we've tried
to work our way through some randomly generated emergency situation, and each
time the ship comes out of it with little x's on its front windows. Not a good
sign, no. But there's no way we would ever face circumstances like the ones in
these tests. For instance -- one computer generated crisis involved being
pursued by a large sentient asteroid named "Big Zamboola." (What a
rack of teeth on that sucker!) Another drill involved mischievous elves
from the planet Kyron who stow away on our ship and turn our ion-pulse
propulsion unit into a fichus tree. Now, I ask you, how likely is it that we will
run into either circumstance? Jesus H. Christ, Mitch.... what were you smoking
when you came up with these situations and why the hell didn't you bring enough
for everybody? (I didn't even know there was a planet Kyron...or that its
inhabitants were all under 2 feet tall. Did you?)
This
is what happens when a mad scientist goes on a safety kick. I think all the
recent space shuttle coverage is to blame. Now every time I turn around there's
a new device, a new procedure. Looka here, Mitch (as they say in the vernacular)
-- space travel was never meant to be safe, okay? You want to be safe? Stay in
bed and pull down the shades. Space travel is 
for the bold, the restless, the
unemployed, the no-lifer. People like us, damn it. We hurl ourselves into the
unknown because we're... well.... unknown down here in the "known".
(Did you follow that?) Out there, people (or reasonable facsimiles
thereof) queue up to attend our performances, to dance in their strange alien
ways, and to request songs off of actual Big Green
albums (of which there is currently but one, mind you) and bootleg cassettes.
Down here , we always played dives and the occasional opener for acts marginally
more popular than ourselves, getting requests for Scorpions songs and drawing
foul abuse for refusing to play same. Be honest -- wouldn't that drive you
into outer space? No? Well, anyway... my point is that safety is not part
of the decision-making process here. I think we're really talking about
something between impulsiveness and desperation.
As
if Mitch's obsession wasn't bad enough, we've had Marvin (my personal robot
assistant) pulling the "Fire Marshall Bill" routine -- part of his
constabulary training that hasn't yet been expunged from his memory banks, worse
luck. Here we are in the midst of preparations for what promises to be an
arduous tour of the outer reaches of our galaxy (never an easy thing) and Marvin
will occasionally insert himself into the middle of the proceedings wearing a
somewhat-too-large fire helmet and start going over fire prevention procedures
in the most opaquely pedantic manner imaginable. Important safety tips, yes, but
we've got a ship to put right. Trevor James Constable is far enough behind on
his etheric force field invention -- a meteor-proof blister that will surround
our ship like a fish bowl. Matt has the blintz fridge to stock. John is spraying
WD-40 into the retro nozzles (101 different uses). I'm busily catching up on my
sleep dividend (the opposite of a sleep deficit...like money in the 
bank).
Both Lincolns are working on their Grant impersonations, trying to outdo one
another. Tubey's keeping the phone company. (Actually, sFshzenKlyrn
has been good enough to take over the actual booking calls... thank god.) So you
see, there's plenty that needs doing.
Well, is that the time? Before I hit the sack for another deposit into my slumber account, I should mention that we've settled on a theme for this year's tour. It was Mitch Macaphee's idea, though I think it probably came out of one of his crisis simulation computers.
THE BIG ZAMBOOLA: Big Green Interstellar Tour Fall 2005
Guess all that training wasn't for naught after all.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Dog
Days. It took a mother's anguish to get people thinking about the Iraq war
as a disaster that cannot simply be ignored. That phenomenon has garnered the
usual reaction from the yammering legions of right-wing pundits. Ms. Sheehan is
"a crackpot" (Fred Barnes); she's obviously no longer grieving (Ann
Coulter); her protest may amount to "treason" (Bill O'Reilly). Man,
these reactionary fuckers sure are hyper-sensitive, aren't they? Can't stand the
thought of someone disagreeing with them. It's quite a spectacle to watch them
throw every name in the book at this bereaved but very determined Gold Star
mother -- Barnes was all puffed up with pride at having had the remarkable
bravery to face down this formidable political foe.... from a discreet distance,
of course. Gallant fellow, isn't he? (Just a brief aside about Coulter -- this
week my local upstate NY 
newspaper
dropped the blonde laptop bombardier's weekly column from its editorial page
after less than a year. I checked to see if she'd been sent to the comic page,
but alas....)
What Sheehan has done practically single-handedly is remarkable. She has given voice to an unapologetic call for peace at a time when neither major political party is willing to look at that option seriously. Let's face it -- the leadership of the Democratic Party is hopeless on this issue. Driven by the Democratic Leadership Conference (now three for three when it comes to losing national elections) and establishment hawks like Richard Holbrook, the presumptive "front runners" for 2008 are essentially attacking Bush's Iraq policy from the right, advocating more U.S. troops in that devastated country at a time when most Americans have reached the conclusion that this whole thing should never have happened and that we should get out. I mean, how wrong do these people have to be before no one listens to them anymore? Last year they ran two pro-war candidates and lost against one of the most unpopular incumbents in recent presidential history. Yet the Democrats still cling to this "me, too, only more" political strategy.
So
in essence Cindy Sheehan has taken up the fight that they have refused to join.
Her son killed for nothing (actually, worse than nothing, since this war is
making us more vulnerable, not less), she did the opposition party's job for
them and made them look like the unmitigated assholes they truly are. Oh,
yeah... I know some Democrats have their hearts in the right place -- Kucinich,
Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee... but as a national political 
force,
the party wants to take up the reins of Bush's "muscular" foreign
policy, throw more money at the Pentagon, and reserve the right to invade other
nations at will without provocation. Those of us who oppose this ludicrous war
effectively now face two pro-war parties. Our only option is to continue
the hard work of building a genuinely broad-based peace movement that will force
the two-headed political beast to stop spending our money on death, destruction,
and global destabilization. With her makeshift encampment, Cindy Sheehan has
shown us we can act instead of simply wait for a better day. And though the vast
majority of us do not have a son or daughter over in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's
time we take a page out of this mother's book and start thinking of those kids
as our responsibility, which they most certainly are.
luv u,
jp
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8/28/05
Hold on, brothers...
Okay. A little more to the left. That's it. Little more... little more... little...Whoa! Now up a meter. Up. I said up! That's down, you ding-dong! All right, all right. Bring her skyward just a bit. Yep, yep. Okay, stop. Stop. STOP!! Mother of pearl....
I
can't decide who is the bigger incompetent -- Marvin (my personal robot
assistant) as a crane operator or me as a foreman. This is what we are 
reduced
to, a mere seven days from the scheduled launch date for our THE
BIG ZAMBOOLA: Big Green Interstellar
Tour Fall 2005 -- loading
our own provisions at a breakneck pace the overworked staff of OSHA would
condemn in the most venomous terms imaginable. Hey -- we gotta job to do here
and, damn it, it's gonna' get done. Yes, we may be short handed... but then
again, who wants long hands? What I mean to say is, everyone associated with the
whole Big Green
project is willing to stretch a little to make this tour a success. And let me
tell you, I'm proud of each and every one of us...even if the efforts of some
have brought us cheek-by-jowl with screaming disaster. Yes, that's right -- the
anti-matter Lincoln has struck again.
The
trouble with these 19th Century characters is a.) you have to explain every
aspect of modernity to them until you are blue in the face, and b.) once you've
done that, they are liable to use that knowledge against you. We had to give
anti-Lincoln a crash course on space travel, explaining to him the "great
balloon" that is our spacecraft and how a few weeks in space can require
truckloads of supplies, from grease pencils to grape leaves to alarm clocks.
Mitch Macaphee provided a detailed history of the evolution of space vehicles
from the V-2 to the space shuttle and (of 
course) the Jupiter 2. The next
morning, when Matt arrived from the 7-11 in Borneo with a fully laden supply
caravan, anti-Lincoln was nowhere to be found. We later learned that he had
somehow managed to secure passage to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (or
as it is now known, Cah-lee-fawn-yah) and -- acting on the historical
information Mitch had given him -- effected the launch of one of the last
remaining Titan rockets. One may ask: why? Well, my friends -- in the world of
anti-matter Lincoln, there is no why. That sucker goes straight from x to
z.
While
anti-Lincoln was busily reenacting key moments in aerospace history, things
started heating up back at the launch pad of the replica Jupiter 2 -- the
interstellar recreational vehicle that will carry us to our now confirmed
engagements at venues on Saturn, Uranus, Charon (moon of Pluto), Beaucampus
(moon of Xymyster), Ptatzdlegerostophan (moon of Gilabasterandufromwitz 5917)
...and of course, Zenon. Okay -- I made up a couple of those moons. Just wanted
to see if you were paying attention. No, really -- we've got some exciting gigs
ahead of us. An anti-gravity stage set on Kaztropharius
137b. A spherical stadium at the
very core of Neptune. An orbital platform high above the molten surface of
Metaluna. Talk about excitement (yawn). Meanwhile, cronies are coming out of the
woodwork, volunteering to serve as our entourage. We may even be bringing the
infamous Dr. Hump this time, if we can find a secure capsule for his spirit jar
(just a brain is Dr. Hump, in case you don't recall). 
Then there's Tiny
Montgomery, our organist from a few years ago. Even "The Steels" want
to open for us on this phat, phat tour.
So with the official countdown already underway, I'm certain that in spite of anti-Lincoln's antics at Vandenberg, our ship will be on every black and white TV screen in the known universe when we lift off... all fifteen of them. So tune in next week, Big Green friends, as our too-large entourage embarks (well-stocked) on what may be the most exhilarating interstellar tour of our careers. Or not.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Who
would Jesus whack? Organized religion and politics always makes for a
volatile mix, it seems. Most people these days think of Islam, but there are
plenty of examples -- Hindu nationalism in India (the BJP), hyper-religious
Jewish settlers in the occupied territories of Palestine, and 
of course, closer
to home, the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who exert such a
disproportionate influence on policy-making right here in the U.S. There are the
"bible-believing" Christians who appear to have overlooked that
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" line -- one of ten reportedly written by the
hand of their god, and as such, a law that carries no qualifications, no
disclaimers, no whereases or therefores. So... how to explain their support for
Bush's war? Hmmmm. Then of course you have the twisted remains of Pat
Robertson, using his Christian Broadcasting megaphone to urge the assassination
of Hugo Chavez. After a somewhat mild rebuke, Robertson offered a lame apology
with this explanation:
"I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."
Does this man know he's on national television?
Chavez can be excused for thinking we're out to kill him, notwithstanding Robertson's comments or Rumsfeld's ridiculous rejoinder that we don't do that sort of thing (for chrissake, they were publicly discussing "taking out" Saddam Hussein not all that long ago). The Venezuelan president survived a coup mounted by political groups that enjoy the enthusiastic support of the US government, which reacted quite congenially to Chavez's brief departure from power, as did Britain and other western powers. Chavez's political opponents represent an economic elite that controls Venezuela's commercial media -- they were behind the unsuccessful recall election. This elite is closely aligned with U.S. economic interests in the region. They hate Chavez mainly because he has the unmitigated gall to use some of the country's wealth to improve the lot of the poor, and is doing it in a way that encourages community organizing -- something that would have brought in the thugs under previous regimes.
For
our part, the U.S. State Department (spearheaded by the disgusting object and
former Jesse Helms advisor Roger Noriega) openly despises Chavez because he is
resisting their plans for an even more expansive form of economic hegemony --
specifically, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), as hemispheric NAFTA-type agreement. Other regional political figures are following Chavez's
lead to some extent (often in response to the prevailing sentiments of their own
people), which makes the Venezuelan president a particular danger from
Washington's point of view. With oil prices sky high, Venezuela has some
maneuvering room, and that galls the living shit out of the Bush administration.
They want Chavez gone. In the good old Cold War days, they'd box him in
and try to make it so he had to go to the USSR for assistance, then they'd yell
"Commie!" But now there's no Soviet Union, and Venezuela isn't
Nicaragua, so they have to resort to a different bag of tricks -- coup (a la
Haiti), recall election (a la California), and wild charges of aiding
"terrorists" in neighboring Colombia (a la the Iraq - al Qaeda
connection). Fact is, Robertson was probably letting slip some mutterings he'd
picked up on from his good pals in the administration....because none of Bush's
investments in political sabotage have paid off so far, and they are getting
frustrated.
So, hey... all I can say is, Viva Chavez.
luv u,
jp