NOTES
FROM SRI LANKA.
(May '06)
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05/07/06
Is it morning?
Once I had a hammer mill, made it run... made it race
against time. Once I had a hammer mill, now it's gone. Brother, can you spare
a... Oh, if I had a hammer mill.... I'd hammer in the mornin' ...
They say there's a song for every occasion, every
circumstance of life. Particularly the less pleasant circumstances (though most
of those are country songs). Why do you suppose that is, eh? I mean, what is it
about living in a small, damp, shaded area beneath a pancake-vendor's cart that
drives a person to song? Is it the persistent smell of rancid cooking oil? The
muttered oaths of disgruntled customers, waiting in vain for a decent stack of
jacks? The puddle of stagnant muck that is gradually leeching into my ragged
clothes? Well... it's hard to quantify the precise sources of creative
inspiration.
It pains me to tell you that, though the shadow of the
wrecking ball is not yet upon her, our beloved Hammer Mill is not long for this
world. Damn their eyes, those Madagascarian developers.... O defilers of our humble
dreams! What kind of upscale tourists or well-pensioned retirees would want to
make a new start upon the ruins of this sainted mill? Okay... so perhaps I'm
overstating it a little bit. The place smells like a city bus. But... and this
is important ... it smells better than the bottom of that malodorous pancake
stand! And after a few years, I've became used to the draftiness, the rusted
machinery, the occasional cave-ins, the crumbling brick battlements. Yea, we
even started to look forward to them. After all, it's all just part of the
squatter's lot -- living the 
dream, as it were, even if it more resembles a
nightmare. (What... you can think of a better way to live? I'm listening.
Speak louder!)
I think the hardest part is watching Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) fighting against more than five years of programming
that keeps sending him up to the barricaded doorway, only to be turned back
again. He's got a number of routine Mill maintenance tasks filed away in his
sophisticated electronic brain, and not being able to complete them makes his
circuits smoke like a chimney. (I saw Mitch Macaphee lighting a cigar on one of
Marvin's red-hot relay panels just yesterday. Matt and John sometimes warm their
hands over the glow when the night air gets brisk.) Hmmm... well, maybe that's not
the hardest part. The hardest part is probably listening to Anti-Lincoln make
his dictatorial speeches to nobody. Even his low-rent junta generals have
skipped town in search of more promising digs. All right, mister
anti-president -- it's been three hours. Time to clam up. Jesus, do I miss
those massive hammer mill walls!
What recourse for the wrongly evicted? Well... there is
one possibility, slight though it is. We've put a call in to Gung Ho, who's
currently deployed with his mercenaries someplace explosive (and profitable, no 
doubt). I figure he might know a guy who knows a guy... who'd be willing to
drop a bomb on a guy before they get the wrecking ball in position. Hey, don't
look at me like that. Last chances are last chances, right? Anyway, so far no
response from the Gungster. If you happen to run into him (and live to tell the
tale), have him contact us at:
Just under the Flapjack Cart
Third vendor stall along
Colombo Market Square
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Or just have him dial "JOE FLAPJACK" on his cell phone
- it will go right to me.
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Blind Justice. The jury in the
Moussaoui case handed in a life sentence; one less body on the 9/11 heap, and
that's all to the good... particularly since the government wanted so badly to
burn this mad Frenchman, throwing every grisly detail of the terror attacks at
the jury. Total victory has been elusive in the prosecutorial war on terror.
This perhaps explains the administration's preference for military tribunals and
the legal limbo of "enemy combatant" status. All this due process
nonsense really gets in the way when you want to get some decent sentencing
done. Still, the news isn't all bad for the Department of (In)Justice. They
managed to put Lynne Stewart away for the heinous "crime" of violating
an administrative 
agreement,
once again stoking the jury with a stack of evidence from unrelated terror
attacks and playing tapes of uncle Osama. Even more outrageously, they've
convicted an NYU grad student -- Mohammad Yousry -- because he performed his
normal duties as translator for the defense team. (See David
Cole's essay in last week's Nation for more.) Don't you feel a
whole lot safer now? Okay, how about now?
Most of these cases are built on sand,
wholly dependent on an extremely weak guilt-by-association component. That's why
the Lodi, California terror case is a shambles and why they failed to convict
Sami Al-Arian on a single charge (though federal prosecutors pulled a fast one
on this one at the last minute, agreeing to a plea bargain that would amount to
time served and deportation for Al-Arian, then apparently getting Alberto
Gonzales to intervene with judge Moody so that he would add 18 months to
Al-Arian's sentence on the basis of testimony thoroughly discredited in court
and rejected by the jury -- see John
Sugg's piece in Creative Loafing for details). Washington is
looking for people to take the blame, whether or not they are demonstrably
guilty. There's a kind of circus show-trial feeling to the proceedings, like the
Moussaoui case, the sentencing phase of which degenerated into an "I
won," "No, we won" dispute with a madman. How is it that
the press can still report with amazement the stuff that comes out of that guy's
mouth? What do they expect him to say? Here's a guy who exaggerated his own
importance in the 9/11 plot in an effort to get himself executed -- a ploy so
lacking in credibility that the jury could not send him to the death chamber.
It's as if the TV reporters are saying, "Yes, Tom... he's still
crazy."
Meanwhile,
the Bush administration is continually setting new benchmarks for its own
illegal and extra-constitutional behavior. Just this week it was revealed that
the president has issued "signing statements" on a large number of
laws passed by Congress during his tenure -- these documents essentially
announcing his administration's intention to ignore the law or apply it as they
see fit. Their reading of the president's constitutional authority as commander
in chief of the military is extremely expansive, bordering on banana
republic-type "strong man" powers. Russ Feingold's censure motion is
designed to call the president on this arrogation of near-dictatorial power and
hold him responsible for breaking the law, but it appears the Senate Democrats
haven't got the belly for it. One would think they might want to make an issue
of this for the fall elections -- you know, position themselves as the party of
the constitution, the party of rights and the rule of law, that sort of thing. I
for one am not holding my breath. They feel, I'm sure, that if they defend the
rights of the accused, it makes them look "soft on terrorism" or, in
pop jargon, "gay."
Slogan for the Republicans this fall: We
suck. Slogan for the Dems: We suck, only less hard.
luv
u,
jp
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05/14/06
What the ____ ?
Fill in the blank. (My preference is "fuck",
but don't let that influence you.) Always the "f" word in this group,
eh? Not so unusual. A million and one uses for that storied old English term,
and most of them apply to the music business. Nouns and modifiers... sometimes
proper names. (Sometimes improper names.)
Anyway, greetings from the streets of Colombo, Sri
Lanka -- Big Green's new "virtual squat
house", now that we've been tossed out of the Cheney Hammer Mill. As
always, morning finds us scrambling for shelter amongst the curbside artifacts
and trash bins. Expect to see us huddled together? Not a chance - it's every
slug for himself in this band. At least that's the way I felt about it while
there was still a relatively congenial spot available to me beneath the flapjack
vendor's stand. Alas, I have been expelled from that sanctuary, as well. Bloody
merchants! Now I'm trying to worm my way into my colleagues' temporary digs. So
that thing I said earlier about every man for himself? Not so. Not so.
Now, I don't want to leave you with the impression that
there has been no movement on our efforts towards reparations. As I mentioned
last week, our (former) neighbor Gung-Ho may prove to be our ace in the hole, so
to speak. So far we've had no luck trying to reach him at whatever remote
location he's been hired to invade, but we've got our best minds working on it.
Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has graciously allowed his solar batteries
and internal cosmium oscillator to be linked into a makeshift 
transmitter.
(Matt's on the key now, tapping out "C-Q, C-Q", just like pops used
to. Sometimes Marvin throws in "S.O.S." for good measure.) Trevor James Constable is using his patented orgone generating device to
send distress signals out into the ethers, even though the chances of their
attracting Gung-Ho's attention are next to nil (especially if he has his helmet
on). John? I don't know... I think he and anti-Lincoln are resorting to smoke
signals. Either that, or they're burning an awful lot of Zenite snuff.
It may seem ignoble of us to be calling in for close
air support. Why, you may ask, don't we use the legal process? Why the early
resort to violent methods? Well, I'm going to tell you. We Big
Green-ers are simple folk. We don't go
in for all that fancy legal-schmeegal mumbo-jumbo. Most of us, at least, prefer
a more direct message... like blow a big hole in their land office headquarters.
(My brother is a bit more attached to the intimidation 
method - have some goon
lean on them, know what I mean? Only goon we've got is Big Zamboola, and his
intimidating days are definitely over.) Not that we can count on Gung-Ho to do
anything particularly rash, but hey... we can ask, right? Doesn't hurt to ask.
There's a time limit on this street lifestyle - I'm
sure some of you know what I'm talking about. As my photos indicate, I'm getting
a little scruffier every day. (You should see the man-sized tuber. Couple of
days out in the rain and he starts taking root... and even the pillbox-dwellers
can't take the sight of him.) Come on, Gung Ho!
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Connecting the Dots. Well, well.
Looks like the NSA has been checking into our phone records and keeping a big
fat Orwellian eye on whom we've been calling, when, and for how long. Oh, damn!
I shouldn't be writing about this -- the mere discussion of any topic
detrimental to the Republicans gives aid and comfort to our enemies. So get that
straight, people -- talk = treason, okay? With the cooperation of their good
friends and campaign contributors at Verizon et al, the government is opening
your mail and checking out your phone bill... and it's none of your goddamn
business. 
They just want to know if you've been talking to any hardcore
terrorists, like -- say -- the folks at the Thomas Merton Center. It's a matter
of national security, so don't talk about it or you'll make Senator Jeff
Sessions very very angry. Don't even think about it -- the terrorists
will read your mind and take comfort in our lack of discipline. There's nothing
they can't do, nothing!
Are you afraid yet? Good. So am I.
God this is idiotic. I mean, does anyone
seriously believe that al Qaeda operatives would never suspect their phone
records are being scrutinized unless they read about it in USA Today? In this
age of disposable cell phones and calling cards you can buy at your supermarket
checkout counter, who the hell would plan terrorist attacks using their
household phone? The Democrats are treating this like a privacy issue, but it's
more serious than that. Sure, the notion of the government checking my phone
bill is annoying and invasive, but the larger question is what exactly are they
looking for? When they vacuum up large volumes of calling data, what makes the
NSA connect-the-dot-o-tron go ka-ching!? A call to Yemen? No... 'cause these are
domestic calls. Once again, the administration is saying "trust us",
but after all we've seen in the last few years, that only recalls to mind the
line from Animal House: "Hey... you fucked up. You trusted
us."
We know that they've been targeting
lawful, peaceful organizing and activism. We know that they've been painting
animal rights activists as "eco-terrorists" and the like. We know that
they routinely engage in "pig-fucking" their political adversaries.
What is the big picture here... the elephant in the room? Domestic spying is
like a narcotic to the executive branch. Once they start using it, it's hard to
stop. Cointelpro is probably the most glaring example, but it's not the only
one. What we're seeing may be the outlines of another massive abuse of power by
an administration that's politically on the skids, paranoid, and willing to do
just about anything to advance its highly unpopular agenda. That's not
conspiracy mongering -- I'm just observing that there is reason for concern.
It's similar to the detainee abuse scandal; the many disparate pieces strongly
suggest a unifying policy at its base, one that reflects well established
patterns of executive behavior stretching back decades. We were expected to
believe that the abuses at Abu Ghraib -- taken straight from the CIA torture
manuals -- were the work of rogue subalterns. Now we're supposed to believe that
opening our mail, listening to our phone conversations, and infiltrating our
bridge clubs will make us safer, when all the while they're failing to meet even
the minimum standards for preparedness and prevention identified by the 9-11
Commission and dictated by common sense.
I confess to being a wee bit
skeptical.
luv
u,
jp
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05/21/06
Run for cover!
Holy smithereens, batman. Or are you
superman? Either way, keep an x-ray eye open for falling debris. Actually,
that's only if you're superman. If you're batman, perhaps you have some kind of
protective or repellant device in you utility belt. If so, deploy at once. Use 'em
if you got 'em. (That's what I need... a utility belt! Mitch!)
Hola, you blog browsers out there. Welcome
to the land of unintended consequences. Yes, that's right, my friends... Big
Green has made another slight miscalculation. It seems we weren't
real careful about what we were asking for, and Jesus Christmas, we got it. (Or
is that Mother of Pearl?) As you may recall (if, like me, you haven't got
anything better to do than surfing the net and catching up on one bogus thread
or another), we had resorted to a last ditch effort at getting a-hold of Gung
Ho, our militant neighbor, and asking him to use his mercenary war machine to...
well... blast our way back into our beloved squat house, the abandoned
Cheney Hammer Mill, in a manner of speaking. Now, specifically what I had had in
mind was a show of force to intimidate the developers who pulled the mill out
from under us. You know what I mean - a couple of ultra-low flyovers aimed at
their local headquarters. Maybe dropping a couple of duds on the roof. Leafleting, perhaps. That sort of thing.
Well, we tried to reach Gung-Ho at his
remote deployment (destination: classified) via a number of different methods of
communication - smoke signal, orgone generator, e-mail, etc. I'm not sure which
one(s) actually got through to the old man, but whichever it may have been, the
message must 
have gotten significantly garbled somehow. (My vote is on Trevor
James Constable's orgone generating device, which should never be confused with
a telegraph.) Gung-Ho apparently got the impression that he should mount a
full-scale, sustained bombing campaign against the real estate firm in question.
Or maybe he just thought that would be a more fun way to do the job -- he's
never been real big on the subtle approach, quite frankly. Either way, he and
his A-Team came screaming into town in their surplus F-15's, shooting up
everything within seven square blocks of the real estate office. To make matters
worse, he chose the very moment when we were making another appeal for leniency
to the local magistrate... on the basis of our good will towards the community.
Awwwk-ward.
Okay, so how did this affect our plea?
Never mind that now. Suffice to say we failed to engender a sufficient degree of
sympathy from the judge -- or so it seemed when he was fleeing the courtroom
along just ahead of a collapsing cinderblock wall. (Yes, the courtroom is
downtown, a stone's throw from the developer's office.) It's a little hard to
describe the phantasmagoric scene that confronted us as we scurried into the
street. The word pandemonium comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others more
appropriate to the occasion. Catastrophe, perhaps. Suffice to say that Gung-Ho's
principal target -- the headquarters of the Madagascarian firm that had arranged
for our eviction -- had sustained more than superficial 
damage. The basement
looked as though it might still be useable, once rubble from the five floors
above it could be steam shoveled out. Ouch.
We tried to reach Gung-Ho on the phone,
but no luck. He must have just swooped in for the air strikes and then flown back
to whatever area of the world he's destroying-for-hire this week. Seems like the
only thing to do is to make our way back to the outskirts of town and see if, by
any small chance, a stray round or two might have homed in on... the...
hammer... mill......
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Red Meat. Looks like Admiral Rove
is settling into his new post (job description: save Republican Congress at all
costs). You can see the big juicy cultural issues being tossed out in time for
November, as fat boy scrutinizes each race, each district, each county for that
crucial wedge. Bush's loopy plan to station National Guard troops at the Mexican
border -- in conjunction with fences, barriers, high-tech sensors, and unmanned
drone aircraft -- is a clear gambit to mobilize the "minuteman" vote
in 
these
crucial border districts. Congressional races are all about getting the base
(and I do mean base) constituencies in action -- that's why we'll see
various draconian proposals aimed at immigration, gays, abortion, and other
brain-stem targeted issues. Even with Bush's ratings in the low to mid 30s, they
can still carry the day if they capture the top-of-mind issues in enough
districts and get the American Taliban to march zombie-like to the polling
stations. Overall turnout in mid-term elections is usually way below even the
poor numbers we see during presidential races, so the X-treme voters are far
more influential.
I can tell you, in my hometown
Congressional district (the 24th in upstate New York), we are going to witness
the most monumental political clash in living memory. Our 12-term Congressman is
retiring this year -- he's a "moderate" Republican, though with an
increasingly reactionary voting record as his party has swerved drunkenly to the
right. The Democrats have an opportunity to pick up this seat for the first time
in decades (the last time Utica, NY, was represented in Congress by a Democrat
was 1948), and the GOP is desperate to hang onto it... so both parties will be
spending like sailors this fall, bringing in the heavyweight political
consultants. It's going to get ugly, my friends, very ugly, and I can already
smell the pungent aroma of the porcine Mr. Rove wafting up from the sewers. For
a few brief moments, this backwater district will seem like the most important
place on the planet... then, after the November vote, it will recede back into
total obscurity, all promises forgotten once the hacks have packed up their
tents and beat it.
How
do we stay important? Move the whole bloody district down to the Mexican border.
There just aren't enough economically desperate people of color streaming across
the Canadian border for the national focus to remain fixed upon us. Not that all
that attention is a positive thing -- I for one would not want to live near what
is increasingly becoming a militarized zone; a kind of Maginot line against
immigration (it's likely to be every bit as effective as the original, too). And
another thing (ahem), how are they going to deal with ordering the
National Guard to the southwest when so many of them have served multiple tours
in Iraq? How are these guards people going to react to the situation at the
border after having been shot at for months on end? Is there anything else we
can ask of these citizen-soldiers? I mean, for chrissake, we're giving them yet another
mission? Meanwhile, Bush and company are awarding their rich constituents
massive tax cuts -- that's their sacrifice. Some give up their lives,
while others give up their tax burdens. They also serve who line their
pockets.
Next: the National Guard will be deployed
as hood ornaments for the rich. Expect an address to the nation sometime
soon.
luv
u,
jp
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05/28/06
Whoops.
There it is - the magic word. Little mishap or major
catastrophe, doesn't matter. One word covers it all. Call it an apologia, a mea
culpa, a universal admission of human failing... that's the word of the day.
Then there's that other little word: FUCK!
Fair warning to all: Be careful what you ask for! Yes,
friends, in an effort to restore our squatter's status at the abandoned Cheney
Hammer Mill, we have managed to blow a big hole in our beloved squat house - a
major breach in the street-side wall, courtesy of neighbor Gung-Ho and his
squadron of bombers-for-hire. Of course, we had asked the good fellow to drop a
few intimidating shells on the offices of the developer-bloodsuckers that turned
us out onto the streets. This he did - actually, a bit more emphatically than we
had expected. In fact, much of the town is in ruins, including the local
magistrate's courthouse. (Our plea for leniency was vacated, as was the
courthouse itself... just ahead of a wall of fire.) But as is his wont, he
got a little carried away and... well.... ka-boom. That's right -- ka. boom.
When we headed back towards the mill to claim what was
rightfully ours and saw a yawning gap with black smoke rising to the heavens, we
knew something was awry. Though I was inclined to send Marvin (my personal robot
assistant) in first to assess the damage (and perhaps extinguish the 
fires
before secondary explosions ensue), I took it upon myself to walk through the
front door ahead of him. What happened then? Well... I can only tell you in the
form of a popular song:
I fell in through a burnin' ring of
fire!
Down, down, down, and the flames a-gettin' higher!
Yes indeed -- Gung-Ho had opted for the heavier
ordinance. I think he may have had one or two of those mini-MOAB's in his
arsenal, I don't know. Earth penetrators, perhaps. Either way, there was a
gaping hole in the Earth's crust just inside the front entrance, the walls of
which were alight with an unearthly flame - Saint Elmo's Fire, perhaps. (Saint somebody's
fire...) In any case, I was imploring Saint Getmethehelloutahere in as loud a
voice as possible, grabbing uselessly at the air as I hurtled downward through a
newly drilled chimney of living rock that appeared to stretch straight to the
chewy center of the "oit", already. And I would have encountered that
great ball of molten caramel, had it not been for the diligence of our own
Trevor James Constable, who quickly surmised my perilous circumstance and
trained his orgone 
generating device down the bomb crater, grabbing me like a
science fiction tractor beam and pulling me back from the very jaws of oblivion.
Close shave, big mister.
I would rather not go through the trauma of describing
the rubble-strewn mess that confronted us within the bowels of our beloved
squat-mill. Suffice to say that we (i.e. Marvin) have a very large clean-up job
ahead of us. Probably a good time to go back on the road, especially since the
local constabulary will be after our collective ass, once they discover who is
responsible for the surprise attack... and once they've dug themselves out of
their collapsed building. Spaceward ho!
WEEKLY RANT.
(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.)
Best Laid Plans. Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert pressed the flesh with Dubya this week, collecting his
vaguely qualified endorsement of the unilateral "disengagement" plan
that would complete the project of dispossession forced upon the Palestinians
for the past 39 years. The plan, originally proposed by Sharon, seeks to redraw
the borders of Israel to encompass major settlement blocks in the West Bank and
virtually all of East Jerusalem, while securing the Jordan valley and dividing
the Palestinian population into isolated cantons, cut off from one another and
from Jerusalem, their cultural, political, and economic hub. It officially
throws all relevant UN resolutions out the window from 242 forward, allowing
Israel to claim land it seized in the 1967 war -- land that is clearly not part
of the State of Israel, illegally occupied by the IDF since 
that
time. Bush's reservation about the disengagement plan is really just a
diplomatic chimera -- he would like to see the same result achieved with some
level of participation by the Palestinians. What they term being a "partner
in peace" is really just taking part in your own oppression.
There's no question but that the
occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal, and that any
Israeli settlements built within those areas violate international law, aside
from being so plainly unjust that any 5-year-old could see it. And yet it
continues, with the support of our government and both major political parties.
And like any occupying power since Roman times, the Israeli government has
attempted to replace direct rule of the territories with some form of proxy
rule, via compliant (and bribe-friendly) local agents. During the years prior to
the first intifada, Tel Aviv tried to accomplish this by imposing
collaborationist Palestinians as local officials, mayors, etc., while working to
undermine the influence of the PLO. In fact, Israeli intelligence had a hand in
getting Hamas established as a component of this divide-and-rule strategy. The
Palestinian uprising in 1987-91 demonstrated to Israel that, even with a
severely marginalized PLO, Palestinian nationalism could not be countered
through the use of individual quislings. Then came Oslo.
Indeed, the brilliance of the Oslo Accords
was that they co-opted Arafat and the PLO as that long sought-after colonial
administration, in the form of the Palestinian Authority. The PA was charged
with handling security (Israeli security) while the development of
Israel's colonial infrastructure in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and (to a
lesser extent) Gaza continued at a steady pace. In return, the PA would
distribute all aid and tax moneys (minus graft) and Arafat could call himself
"president". This gave us the spectacle of his overfed lieutenants
living opulently amongst the 
unspeakable
squalor that was Palestinian society, while the superimposition of the Israeli
settlement infrastructure continued unabated by this sham peace accord, through
both Labor and Likud administrations. Though virtually unknown to the American
public (which has underwritten much of this construction), Israel's project in
East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been an inescapable reality for
Palestinians, its trajectory very clearly discernable. They see the Fatah-dominated PA as an accomplice in this, at worst, or as an institution too
ineffective and self-serving to stop the land grab, at best. Recall, too, that
Abbas (Abu Mazen) was chosen by Sharon, and that more popular Fatah figures were
kept from competing (some by remaining in Israeli jails). That's largely why
Hamas won the legislative elections -- because they are obviously not in the
pocket of Israel.
One thing hasn't changed: there can be no
peace without justice. We ignore this fact at our own peril.
luv
u,
jp
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