Americana as contemporary obsession...

...just as America would appear to be going into a decline. Dave Cole's art below seems to interact with the growing trend toward an archival American "heritage," particularly amongst white, college educated youth. I think this sculpture captures something of it's provincial quality, it's danger of mutual nullification, and the malignant undercurrent on top of which it sits.

http://davecoledavecole.com/projects-loaded-shotguns.php

Planned Palestinian City, Argument for Sovereignty?

Poverty Statistics Hitting News Outlets, 1 in 15 Americans Affected by Poverty

From The Skanner:

"About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four.That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent."

They demonstrate the shifting compositions of urban poverty in the United States, with a recognition of undocumented and increasing Latino poverty:

"The new supplemental poverty measure for the first time will take into account non-cash aid such as tax credits and food stamps, but also additional everyday costs such as commuting and medical care. Official poverty figures released in September only take into account income before tax deductions.Based on newly released estimates for 2009, the new measure will show a significant jump in overall poverty. Poverty for Americans 65 and older is on track to nearly double after factoring in rising out-of-pocket medical expenses, from 9 percent to over 15 percent. Poverty increases are also anticipated for the working-age population because of commuting and child-care costs, while child poverty will dip partly due to the positive effect of food stamps.For the first time, the share of Hispanics living in poverty is expected to surpass that of African-Americans based on the new measure, reflecting in part the lower participation of immigrants and non-English speakers in government aid programs such as housing and food stamps. The 2009 census estimates show 27.6 percent of all Hispanics living in poverty, compared with 23.4 percent for blacks."

October 30th, 1950; Puerto Rico's Nationalist uprising

Text from Nothing to Be Gained Here:

"On October 30th of 1950 a Puerto Rican woman by the name of Blanca Canales led an uprising in the mountain town of Jayuya. Under her leadership the Nationalists took Jayuya and Blanca Canales declared Puerto Rico a free republic. At the same time in the town of Utado Nationalists were fighting the US National Guard and other Nationalists were attacking “La Forteleza” the governors mansion in San Juan and the Federal Court House in Old San Juan.

Blanca Canales and the Nationalists were successful in holding Jayuya for three days until the US military bombed them from the air and sent in ground troops

[...]

The Nationalists may have failed to free Puerto Rico but they succeeded in keeping the US from hiding it’s colonial possession with semantic Orwellian double speak like “Free Associated State”… The Nationalists succeeded in making it be known all over the world that Puerto Rico wanted to be free and was willing to fight to do so"

(image of National Guard invading Jayuya)

State of Exception Discourse, It's Problems

Michael Hardt discussing how claims about "sovereign power" as based on "a state of exception" (e.g. Abu Ghraib, the new jurdical category of "enemy combatant" that enables torture, etc., preemptive defense) is always governed by a constitutionalist tendency, a desire for the rule of law, rather than any ethos that might be revolutionary, or transform the conditions for such exceptions:

Never Forget...

Of all of the 9/11 memorialization hysteria, Vladimir Lenin would remind us, cui prodest?:

"In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures.

For instance, “Europe”, the states that call themselves “civilised”, are now engaged in a mad armaments hurdle-race. In thousands of ways, in thousands of newspapers, from thousands of pulpits, they shout and clamour about patriotism, culture, native land, peace, and progress—and all in order to justify new expenditures of tens and hundreds of millions of rubles for all manner of weapons of destruction—for guns, dreadnoughts, etc."

Let's remember, in the case of Iraq:

"There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with al-Qaida or with the September 11 attacks.

Wall Street Journal, right after 9/11: “Few U.S. officials believe that any real alliance between Iraq and al-Qaida ever emerged… The two groups share few aims and have very different motivations.”(Sept. 19, 2001)

BBC, Feb. 5, 2003: “There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaida network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News.”

New York Times (Oct. 11, 2001) reported that intelligence officials from Jordan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia do not believe there is any serious Hussein-bin Laden connection.

On Sept. 11 itself, top government officials decided to use the airliner attacks to justify war with Iraq. “CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq–even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.” (Sept. 4, 2002)

In October 2002, the New York Times reported that Rumsfeld created a Pentagon operation “to search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists”–despite CIA reports saying there were none.

Shortly afterward, Rumsfeld announced that he had “solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaida members” (Seymour Hersh, May 28, 2003). Soon other officials of the U.S. government were presenting what he said as “evidence.”

When examined, these U.S. government claims have no basis in fact. Their “evidence” relies on a bogus McCarthyite method of linkology– If A is linked to B, and B is linked to C, then D must be backing terrorists, and anyone who questions that is probably also linked to terrorists."

And also, there is always the fact that the Taliban seems to be making some gains.

Ghostface Killah, Top 10 Softest Rappers

Some of Ghostface's comments here are a little fucked-up, particularly those that regard gender norms, but I think there is something fundamentally right about his assessment of Soulja Boy:

"5. Soulja Boy 

Aka the 2011 Mr Bojangles. This nigga also deserves recognition as the coon of the decade namsayin. I dont even kno how muthafuckas listen to this niggas music….nevermind callin that shit hip hop. If it was 1930 this nigga would be rockin a necklace made of chicken legs n pigs feet n be tap dancin on watermelons for a livin. Anyways…sons music is only technically hip hop….like drinkin a beer wit a straw n a umbrella in the bottle is technically drinkin a beer namsayin. Hidin behind 50 Cent wont protect you from ya own bitchassness tho son. This nigga been germinatin in the garden of wackness for a hot minute now. This nigga done splashed hisself wit enough water from the fountain of coonery to last 12 lifetimes. Stop givin this nigga a pass jus cos he young. Muthafuckin Run DMC was around this niggas age when they made King Of Rock yo. LL Cool J was on his first comeback when he was this niggas age yo. NWA made Fuck The Police when they was this niggas age son. You cant hide behind youth forever you clown ass muthafucka. If I see you Imma smack the slaves outta you nigga. Its open season on you son."

Despite the proliferation of rap artist personas we see in the media, some even transgressing boundaries that make Ghostface uncomfortable, there remains a need to furnish America with a metonymic stereotype or icon upon which we might heap blame upon as a representative not only of the "poverty" of culture in African-American communities, but also for the affliction of its persistent economic poverty. To the reactionary mindset, the former produces the latter.

The Koch Empire and Venezuela

You may remember the Koch brothers from the recent outbreak of popular outrage over the liquidation of public employee bargaining rights by the current governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. The Koch brothers spent over $34 million dollars trying to undermine workers rights particularly of public employees seemingly in collusion with Walker. What you might not know about them is that last October they saw the fertilizer plants they owned in Venezuela nationalized by standing President Hugo Chavez.

You might think this would be a story ripe for Fox News or various rightwing pundits to pounce upon. Here's why they kept the nationalization hush hush, from eXiled:

"The Kochs made hundreds of millions on every end of this deal…and even more surprising, bond markets cheered the nationalization. In other words, the free markets championed by the Kochs gave a big thumbs-down to Kochs’ negative influence on the value of the business, while at the same time, the free-market Kochs earned huge windfalls doing business with socialists. No wonder this story hasn’t made the rounds.

Here’s what happened: When Chavez’s nationalization of the plant took Koch Industries out of the picture, bond investors responded by driving up the value of the company’s bond debt by a whopping 33 percent. That means they had a lot more confidence that the debts would be paid back AFTER the free-market Kochs were out of the picture. As every business school flunky knows, price fluctuations of bonds are very much like those of stocks: the more they cost, the higher the confidence in a given company. And that means investors had less faith in the ability of the Kochs to run a tight business operation than they did in a bunch of Venezuelan socialist bureaucrats.

[...]

So for all the enterprising Americans out there wondering “What’s the secret to the Kochs’ success?” The answer isn’t pretty—especially if you’re one of the gullible Tea Party libertarians who believe the Kochs practice the free-market libertarianism that they preach. Their ability to reap billions and billions in profits year after year isn’t about buying low and selling high, but about buying subsidized-by-the-state, and selling subsidized-by-the-state. Using taxpayer money to cover the costs and ensure profits every time—that’s the simple formula to the Kochs’ success."

What's more is now the Koch's appear to be taking Chavez's government to court over the nationalization, before a investment dispute body in the World Bank. Check out this article from the Latin American Herald Tribune for more.

Tepoztlán and Movements for Autonomy in México

A Narconews report on a community's response to "a building project that would’ve turned communal lands into a golf course. When the people of Tepoztlán found out about the plan, they expulsed the mayor and the police and barricaded all entrances to the town. During the eight months that followed, Tepoztlán organized its own community police and elected an autonomous government, free of political parties.

[...]

After eight months of autonomy, in April 1996, the police killed a local campesino, Marcos Olmedo, near the spot where Emiliano Zapata was shot exactly 76 years earlier. The man’s death was followed by the cancellation of the construction plan. The townspeople, exhausted and mourning but also pleased with their victory, gradually allowed the police and political parties to return to Tepoztlán.

Tepoztlán’s struggle is not the only of its kind. The eviction of the golf course marked a renaissance of resistance movements in the state of Morelos. During the almost 17 years that have passed since Tepoztlán first declared itself a free town, autonomous municipalities have popped up in different parts of the state. They have an impressive track record of winning most of their battles, but those victories have often been, like the one in Tepoztlán, tinged with sadness: many of the movements have failed to bridge the gaping class divisions that characterize Mexican society. Many times autonomy has lasted only a fleeting moment."

Primitive Accumulation is Now

La guerre des resources by odjag

(i.e. Rosa Luxembourg was right)

Mark Krikorian is a Racist, Anti-Immigrant Immigrant

A commentator for the rightwing organization the Center for Immigration Studies (note the fact that it seeks to give the academy access to correct information on immigration as if the academy's own biases make this impossible) and Armenian immigrant, Mark Krikorian makes a fairly telling comparison (on National Public Radio) between how worthwhile immigrants are to the United States and some sort of national doughnut orgy:

Krikorian says we can think of immigration like a good fat-filled doughnut.

"When you're 11 years old, you eat all of the doughnuts that your parent will let you eat, and they're probably good for you at that point," he says. "When you're 50 years old, you can't eat doughnuts like that anymore. There's nothing wrong with the doughnuts. They're the same doughnuts. But your metabolism has changed. And our body politic's metabolism has changed so that we need to start now looking at what's good for our grandchildren, not what was good for our grandparents."

This comment with its veiled allusions to immigrants as sugary foods that not only pollute the bodies of elder members of a society, but also poison generations to come evinces ideas of racial/cultural purity, albiet ones impacted by a crude behaviorism. As much as this comment seems downplay its racism by reverting to a metaphor of unthreatening food, it still reeks of miscegnation panic of previous decades and centuries.

If you needed a little more convincing Krikorian's "post"racism observe his enlightening comments on Haiti following the earthquake:

"My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough…But, unlike Jamaicans and Bajans and Guadeloupeans, et al., after experiencing the worst of tropical colonial slavery, the Haitians didn’t stick around long enough to benefit from it. (Haiti became independent in 1804.). And by benefit I mean develop a local culture significantly shaped by the more-advanced civilization of the colonizers."

Commentators from Think Progress follow this comment up nicely with:

"In fact, Haiti’s comparatively short-lived colonial history might be the best thing the island had going for it. Haiti’s revolution inspired the fights for independence across Latin America and ushered in the end of slavery in the New World. Meanwhile, a never-ending sphere of Western influence and self-serving intervention probably offers a better explanation for why Haiti is as “screwed-up” as it is. Unlike the islands of Jamaica, Barbados, and Guadalupe, Haiti has long been the 'poster case for the vicious circle of colonial and foreign intervention, poverty, violence and political instability.'"

Peru, Part 1: Aguantando Los Andes

I've been waiting to revisit my trip to Peru mostly because of pressure to get back into school work and to face the mountain of grading I had piling up on the days I spent not working, but I guess I have a moment tonight to spend some time deliberating on the things I've gleaned from Peru.

The more I look back on the trip the more it seems to culminate a lot of the ongoing processes of life for me in generative and positive ways.

I decided to educate myself more about Peru, it's history, and the struggles between left-guerillas in the countryside and an increasingly authoritarian state all verge on issues I want to explore for the dissertation, although mostly tangentially. Peru had a rather unique group emerge out of the late-70s/early-80s insurrectionary struggles going on throughout Latin America. They were dubbed Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path), a break off group from other Maoist currents in Peru at the time. It's leader, a former political philosopher, Abimael Guzmán, insisted on the necessity of crossing "the river of blood" into a glorious post-capitalist world for which Peru was its threshold. This meant a strategy of attempting to choke the remnants of colonial social relations, capitalist exploitation, and neo-colonial arrangements from the society and the people through guerilla operations, reeducation, and terrorism. I don't know enough about them to say much beyond that their rhetoric seems born of a kind of mode of prophecy as much as politics, as killing in the name of the future seems to be highly valued for Sendero Luminoso (see Vice Magazine's article on contemporary musical dispatches from the group). Mario Vargas Llosa, the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and perhaps one of the more right-wing members (he ran for president of Peru once on a neo-liberal platform, ugh!) of, what America's literary public likes to define as Latin America's New Narrative form, has written a novel on the issue called Lituma en Los Andes or Death in the Andes which I am still reading despite having visited Peru over a month ago. Llosa apparently once got into fisticuffs with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, perhaps over Marquez's wife (this part could be a rumor), in the Museo de Bellas Artes in downtown Mexico City.

The Inca too, offer a unique counterpoint to some of my thinking about the indigenous histories of Latin America (I have read mostly about Meso-American peoples and their traditions) insofar as the history of human sacrifice seems highly contested (between my tour guides of various destinations, but also a short piece I read from a feminist anthropologist). Apparently although their societies enforced strict gender segregation and roles, they tended to be roles with a great deal of gender parity, insofar as women served similar ritual roles as men with gender specific power and knowledge-sharing kinship structures. Women in these powerful roles were then targeted by the Spanish Inquisition post-conquest as witches.

However, despite the militaristic missionary work of much of the Spanish empire the emissaries from Spain encouraged and pursued aesthetic cultural syncretisms with Andean/Inca culture to facilitate conversion. I saw a great deal of this fascinating cultural blending in the facades of churches and cathedrals throughout the country (in one case I was informed that St. James, who was in some cases interpreted as the Moor killer, was repurposed as a ritual figure for the practice of Andean black magic).

The Spanish also had a difficult time destroying what were the foundations on Incan temples, buildings, and city walls so instead they often built on top of them. We saw a number of churches and walls in the Sacred Valley and in Cusco built on the former Incan foundations.

Cusco (or the "navel"), formerly a major city for the Inca, was our first significant stop of the trip before the hitting the Inca trail. It is a beautiful city involving a great deal of Spanish colonial architecture, lush plazas, and an altitude that might inspire illness (I had a headache for the duration of our stay). It is replete with tourists and those catering to tourism (too many pizza shops to count) which is after all one of Peru's largest industries. In addition to tourists and those in the tourism industry (including young women who would not stop offering massages) we encountered those who kept to some element on Andean native traditions: women with braids, wearing fedoras, and traditionally patterned sarapes in which they carried goods for sale or their children, kids carrying baby goats and lambs insisting that you hold them for a photo for a few soles (Peru's currency).

The soundtrack I would have stuck with was this volume of Peruvian cumbias (Afro-Latin rock) from the 1960s titled The Roots of Chicha, which I heard throughout the trip. My iPod broke on the plane ride, which was fine as I was on a hiatus from technology for the whole trip. This was one of the better decisions I made.

Regardless, I did prepare for the trip by imbibing this album in the weeks leading up to the trip. A decent track I would recommend from this album is as follows:



Another noteworthy and fascinating artist from Peru is Yma Sumac who had a five octave voice and I unfortunately discovered her only after the trip had ended. A few examples of her extraordinary and eerie talents below:

One of the drawbacks of the trip that was simultaneously a benefit for me was that we were traveling a group of people, the reason behind the trip affordability, few of which understood Spanish and even fewer who spoke any semblance of the language. Although the trip itinerary had been prepared ahead of time there are of course a numberless set of interactions one has to have in order to figure out where one is headed, confirmations, questions, and difficulties that arise as one travels. I was responsible for translating on almost all of these occasions. This pushed me to practice my Spanish a great deal. Although at times I resented it I think this experience made me feel like a more adequate traveller, someone who can handle and take care of themselves in Latin America with a little research and some occasionally tortured grammatical constructions. The only times I wanted to strangle the other travelers in my group was when they insisted I help them haggle for fractions of the dollar off of stupid shit they were buying, and forgetting that I wasn't being paid to help them in the first place, i.e. making stupid demands for my skills.

After a day in Cusco we awoke early to hit the trailhead of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. When we arrived after several stops and starts it was revealed that some of us had the wrong tickets for the type of traveller we were and thus 3 of us could not proceed onto the trail (for those of you thinking you are a graduate student and deserve to pay student prices for admission in Peru you should note that if you are 25 or older you are too old to be considered a student, unlike in the United States and Europe). This fact was devastating for the 3 left behind as the trip was centered around this element of Peru to begin with and for whatever opaquely bureaucratic reason they were not allowed to pay the remainder owed for a different ticket. Nor could they purchase tickets for any of the following days because the government limits the number of hikers on the trail, requiring that travelers prebook tickets.

Despite this setback I have to say the hike was challenging, beautiful, and fascinating. My boyfriend, his friend Becca, and I seemed to take to the altitude pretty well despite my constant headache and so we stayed ahead of the other hikers in our group most of the time, giving us space to talk as we liked and enjoy the sights together. It was the end of the rainy season so clouds were pouring over the mountains like rivers of the air making the hike between and around them all the more dramatic. The Inca believed (or so I was told) that the mountains were holy so the hike was more of a pilgrimage through the mountains and their passes, moving through multiple ecosystems and temperatures along the way on the way to Machu Picchu.

The second day was by far the most physically challenging. The altitude and steepness of the climb (which incidentally the trail is made out of uneven stone stairs carved by the Inca) made the highest points difficult to maintain a steady pace for very long. The lack of oxygen at times made my limbs feel as if they were heavier and more difficult to move. Towards the end of the highest pass we were stopping every 20 feet or so to catch our breaths, but with every break we felt completely rejuvenated and ready to tackle more. At the highest point that day the bf, Becca, and I looked at each other, bundled up against the cold and laughed at the joy of the accomplishment.

A note about the labor that made this trip possible: So even as we were looking at each other happy and satisfied by the hard work it took us and our backpacks up the hill, we had to notice the porters who were resting around us as well. The Peruvian government mandates that everyone who enters the Inca trail has to have a porter that goes along with them. I am not clear on the reasoning for this, perhaps, it just frees up a bunch of seasonally available jobs. If you are part of a tour group which most everyone was, they arranged this for you. The porters for our group carried food, cooking supplies, and tents which they set up before we arrived at the campsites. They usually kicked our asses on the trail, usually with nothing more than a sweater, shorts, and a pair of canvas golas scampering across slippery stairs. This reality made me relatively uncomfortable, several of us got together to put together some decent tips for the porters (because it turns out they don't make a great deal of money for 4 days of labor) and I was enjoined to make a speech to honor their labors (again as the only Spanish speaker) where I got to acknowledge this even as there seemed little I could do beyond this.

The rest of the hike which probably could have been consolidated into fewer days was peppered with smaller Incan ruins along the trail either food depots or guard towers (the tour guides seemed to be at odds about which at certain points), and amazing Incan mountainside terracing that we could see as the clouds slid across the faces of mountains and cliffs. The Inca also carved smooth rectangular tunnels into rock faces to ease the trail through which we easily passed, amidst rainforest limbs dripping with vegetation, moss, and moisture. On the last day we waited at the Sun Gate to see if the clouds would part so we could behold Machu Picchu from a good distance. Seeing the pockets of air open up the clouds and the former Incan city was really pretty amazing at the moment, mostly because we had been immersed in its environment for so long, and that we had worked to get there. I unconsciously approach tourism scenarios, I think most consumers of Western media do this, like I would instances in which I am a spectator--with a half-bored interest. Marching up the trail made seeing the city that much more spectacular.



One interesting element of the city is not only the resilience of it's foundations to the elements (it was discovered at the turn of the 19th-20th century), but also the ways in which debates about restoration seemed very much alive in the tour. Our guide was of the opinion that ruins should remain ruins, there is something unique in how ruins enable more open interpretations that restoration tends to foreclose upon, ignoring the history of the site since its abandonment.

We rounded off the trip with mineral baths in the public hotspring pools in Aguas Calientes (a nearby town) and a really expensive burrito I bought (burritos are not Peruvian food, but I was feeling rushed to catch a train) made out of a crepe and lima beans.

Jeremy Scahill vs. Liberal Imperialist Rhetoric

Jeremy Scahill, acclaimed for his history of Blackwater, argues against liberal defense of Libyan interventions:

Twitter Didn't Produce The Uprisings in the Middle East or in Northern Africa

Modernization theory is wrong, here's why.

From Al Jazeera:

To listen to the hype about social networking websites and the Egyptian revolution, one would think it was Silicon Valley and not the Egyptian people who overthrew Mubarak.

Via its technologies, the West imagines itself to have been the real agent in the uprising. Since the internet developed out of a US Defense Department research project, it could be said the Pentagon did it, along with Egyptian youth imitating wired hipsters from London and Los Angeles.

[...]

But neither version is particularly useful for organising resistance to the local dictatorship. In any case, the internet was turned off at decisive moments in the Egyptian uprising, and it was ordinary Egyptians, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, who toppled the regime, not the hybrid youth of the global professional classes.

Globalisation is also coming to awareness of the situations of other peoples, such as those similarly oppressed by local and faraway powers. Of particular interest are those moments when these peoples rise up, when they devise forms of revolt and struggle. Defeats provide lessons, and victories give hope. These revolutions need not be on satellite TV to effect their instruction. Revolutionaries in France and Haiti in the 1790s received news of one another''''s activities by the regular packet ship that plied between Jamaica and London.

Sailors, slaves, and workers circulating in the Atlantic between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries shared and improved upon their repertoires of revolt and resistance, bringing the good news to ports from Rio to Boston, Bristol to Havana.

In recent visit to Chile Obama elides questions about the U.S. endorsement of the overthrow of Salvador Allende.

In the words (read: command) of Richard Nixon, responding to the election to Salvador Allende in the 1970s: "Make their economy scream."

On the recent visit by Obama to Chile the The Latin American Herald Tribune reports:

Asked by a Chilean reporter about Washington’s role in the 1973 coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende, Obama acknowledged that “the history of relations between the United States and Latin America have at times been extremely rocky and have at times been difficult.”

“I think it’s important,” he added, “that we’re not trapped by our history. And the fact of the matter is, is that over the last two decades we’ve seen extraordinary progress here in Chile and that has not been impeded by the United States but, in fact, has been fully supported by the United States.”

In recent days Chilean unions, student organizations and leftist parties asked Obama to use his visit to Chile to apologize for the backing of the then-U.S. government for the coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Looking to the future, Obama proposed, as he repeated in his address later, an alliance of equals between his country and Latin America that would allow cooperation in such fields as student exchanges and the war on drugs.

"Trapped by history" in this understanding = to acknowledge the imperialist incursions on national sovereignty historically committed by the United States and the cavalier attitude with which it has approached Latin America in general?

Oligarchic Stirrings in the U.S. of A.

It's been my contention with the interpenetration of marketing, money, and politics have moved the United States closer to what some Latin American government situations involve (as in, Honduras) where conservative and liberal elements engage in clientelism and electoral power swapping. Some numbers from the Center for American Progress appear to confirm increasing class war from the right. Also, Republican Maine Governor engaging in the cultural end of said class war by demanding the removal of a labor oriented mural from the state's Department of labor and the renaming of conference rooms, previously commemorating labor leaders and the first female U.S. cabinet secretary. The account from his administration:

We have received feedback that the administration building is not perceived as equally receptive to both businesses and workers -- primarily because of the nature of the mural in the lobby and the names of our conference rooms.

Some Gains for the PRD in Mexico and the Left

Some challenges are coming to Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that had ruled the country for 7 decades from an uneasy coalition between the the Democratic Revolution Party and the National Action Party (current President Felipe Calderón's party), but particularly from the more left-oriented PRD. From the Financial Times:

"[Newly elected gubernatorial candidate Angel Aguirre] addressed a crowd of supporters in the resort of Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and held his hand high to signal a 'V' for victory.

'Tomorrow is the start of a new era,” he said in a sign that he wanted to put behind him what had been a particularly dirty and scrappy election in a state where drugs-related violence has spiralled in recent years. “Today as never before, Guerrero deserves and needs unity and peace.'

The PRD’s win comes not a moment too soon for a party that has ruptured internally and has lost significant ground in Mexican politics since narrowly losing the presidential race [to the PAN].

Yet while both the PRD and the PAN will doubtless take heart from the result in Guerrero, political analysts say that it will probably make little difference to the PRI’s impressive comeback since losing the presidency in 2000 after 71 years of consecutive rule."

Also, February 1st, (from the Latin American Herald Tribune) "a coalition calling itself the National Movement for Food Sovereignty, Workers Rights and Democratic Freedoms [protested; made up of some 30,000 students, peasants, workers and unemployed].

'We’re looking for a new social and economic order for the country, because it’s urgent that we put a stop to price inflation, chiefly on basic necessities, and at the same time do something about the problems of unemployment and crime,” said the leader of the National Confederation of Peasants, federal legislator Gerardo Sanchez Garcia.

'We need a social movement so the government doesn’t forget that he made a commitment to resolve social problems and avoid even bigger crises for the sectors we represent,' electricians union chief Martin Esparza said."

➔ Suggesting further progressive and left unrest in Mexico.

Žižek on the Great Egyptian Revolt

Here, in a op-ed for the Guardian, Slavoj Žižek appears to be affirming a point made by Tariq Ali, in an earlier issue of The New Left Review, but takes it a bit further with regards to Egypt:

"The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries. When Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 40 years ago, it was a country with a strong secular tradition, including a powerful communist party that took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Where did this secular tradition go?

[...]

In order for the key liberal legacy to survive, liberals need the fraternal help of the radical left. Back to Egypt, the most shameful and dangerously opportunistic reaction was that of Tony Blair as reported on CNN: change is necessary, but it should be a stable change. Stable change in Egypt today can mean only a compromise with the Mubarak forces by way of slightly enlarging the ruling circle. This is why to talk about peaceful transition now is an obscenity: by squashing the opposition, Mubarak himself made this impossible. After Mubarak sent the army against the protesters, the choice became clear: either a cosmetic change in which something changes so that everything stays the same, or a true break.

Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is that there is no organised political power to take over if Mubarak goes. Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The argument for Mubarak – it's either him or chaos – is an argument against him.

The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is given a chance? Today, more than ever, Mao Zedong's old motto is pertinent: "There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent."

Where, then, should Mubarak go? Here, the answer is also clear: to the Hague. If there is a leader who deserves to sit there, it is him."

2004, Response to Rumsfeld

In reading Greg Grandin's excellent history of the 1980s proxy wars waged by President Ronald Reagan in Central America, entitled Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the New Imperialism, Grandin notes an Ecuadorean general's response to Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that Latin America begin to "consolidate control" by way of the United States of potential terrorist, drug-trafficking, and guerilla threats,


"'In Latin America,' Vargas retorted, 'there are no terrorists--only hunger and unemployment and deliquents who turn to crime. What are we going to do, hit you with a banana?'"

2010 Review Part 2

Promising elements of 2010:

1) After a discussion with Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of American's Prison Empire and associate professor at University of Hawaii, I had all but given up on the possibility of the emergence of prisoner led movements at all given 2 facts he shared: 1) the capacity of prisons to warehouse people and also use solitary confinement as a means of quelling prisoner dissent, was highly effective, and; 2) and Bill Clinton's reduction of requisite journalist/scholarly monitoring of prisoner conditions (as well as suspending all prisoner led reform cases) make the system almost opaque to reform-minded folk and the general public. Even as tougher laws continue to dispossess prisoners of basic citizenship rights and more and more adult American's (over 10%) are currently serving time, it would seem that even momentary fulminations of resistance should arise somewhere.

A recent prisoner strike in Georgia suggests a different picture that was both organized and peaceful. From Final Call:

Fed up with bad food, unjust treatment, poor education and inadequate health care, thousands of inmates in Georgia's prison system staged “Lockdown for Liberty,” a peaceful protest on Dec. 9, according to activists.

The Black, White, and Latino inmates from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith, and Telfair State Prisons refused to leave their cells for work and other activities, partly because they feel the Georgia Department of Corrections treats them like slaves, according to supporters who are not jailed.

“I'm talking to these brothers every day, every other minute really, and particularly in Macon, Telfair, Hays and Smith, their decision is they're not going to stop this strike now. One brother told me, ‘We will ride until the wheels fall off,' and that's been the sentiment amongst the men when they started this,” said Elaine Brown, a spokesperson for the strike.

More specifically, the inmates are demanding: a living wage for work, opportunities for higher education, better health care without excessive fees, and an end to cruel and unusual punishment for minor infractions.

They also want more fruits and vegetables, more vocational training, an end to some restrictions on family access, and an end to excessive telephone charges and just parole decisions.

“Part of our purpose for doing this is that Georgia is the only state that does not pay it's inmates at all. Some guys in here work seven days a week and they don't get a dime,” said Dondito, one of the strikers, who requested anonymity.

He said despite reports by the Department of Corrections that no inmates have been hurt, several in Augusta have been beaten up to unrecognizable points, according to their families.

[...]

Ms. Brown, former chairman of the Black Panther Party, said she doesn't know how long the men are going to strike but doesn't believe they are prepared to give up after just after one or two days, despite the beatings in Augusta.

“The tactical squad went in to trash their property and give them a shake down to try and break their spirits and force them into some violent confrontation. They cut off visitation for everyone, and are really reacting very violently to what is a non-violent protest,” Ms. Brown told The Final Call.

Dondito said the prisons are doing all they can to break their spirits and the strike, like cutting off the heat and hot water, taking away recreation, feeding them cold sandwiches, and refusing to wash their clothes.

He said strikers intend to stand for as long as it takes to force a change in horrible living conditions, which include being beaten when taken to or in solitary confinement and receiving bad food.

2) Wikileaks continues to churn out important diplomatic leaks, as well as business/banking leaks, despite Amazon and Paypal's decisions to bump the site from their server and from accepting funds in the name of the organization.

Some Worsts:

1) The failure of the DREAM Act. Let's be clear U.S. policy toward Latino, particularly Mexican, illegal immigrants has been an exchange of the promise of citizenship for status as cannon-fodder for various U.S. wars. This lead to some positive outcomes after WWII for example where veterans of the Mexican-American and Puerto Rican persuasion becamed disillusioned about their chances in already racially/ethnically stratified societies and in many cases this produced some radicalization, beyond assimilation. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, offered a disenfranchised, subordinate, and racialized underclass the same opportunity, with the added possibility of citizenship through college graduation. On the one hand the cannon-fodder element consistently suggests the value for racialized and immigrant lives and its consistent application suggests a continued devaluation of non-white, non-"native" citizenry. That said, the act's failure by five votes also leaves many who immigrated the United States as children without a path to citizenship and enfranchisment; producing an underclass much like the "sans-papiers" of France who remain unintegrated into the nation for generations.

2) Break-ups from long-term relationships can thrust your life into a series of deeply self-engrossed bouts of confusion and self-loathing. Avoid them (or prolonging them), when possible.

3) Haiti, 1 year later, according to community activist Jordan Flaherty:

One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the nation's tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.

The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors – including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction – have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others' suffering, receiving contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses. 

[...]

The disaster profiteering exemplified by Ashbritt is not just the result of quick decision-making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity, and as a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country's economy.

Relief and recovery efforts, led by the US military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

[...]

Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written, "Haiti's poverty began with a US/Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of US foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote US corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d'etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and destroying Haiti's food sovereignty essentially promoting famine."

4) Arizona's racist new laws were co-written by the prison industry.

Favorite new vegetarian and vegan recipe:

Chickpea/Seitan Cutlets, at PostPunk Kitchen. For those of you who are like me, and have been vegetarians for most of your lives the possibility of new alternatives to meat, are always welcome. This particular recipe combines ground chickpeas, various spices,, bread crumbs, with vital wheat gluten to produce some tasty fried alternatives to steaks.

Favorite new find, that is already not that new in really any sense:

Pissed Jeans, combining hardcore with noise rock in the vein of Jesus Lizard:



Favorite new accessory, that redudantly fills a need (although it's smaller):

The Scout Pack, by Duluth.

Favorite viral video of 2010:



Favorite DIY Porn Auteur:

Despite my general distaste for the world of twink, The Black Spark represents rather well shot and interesting, but also incredibly hot short films for x-tube, including actual filtering in lenses, play with color, and skilled use of handheld cameras.