Photo essay & coverage of the Republican National Convention welcoming committee. For full details go to NYC Indymedia.
Critical Mass
DNC to RNC March
Tens of Thousands March in N.Y. to Show Opposition to Bush
March for Women's Lives
contact service@salvationinc.org with any questions.
The following is the letter of resignation from former Portland police officer and murderer or Jason Jahar Perez, Jason Sery.
contact service@salvationinc.org with any questions...
Here is an excerpt from a recent interview of George W. Bush, conducted by Sheryl Henderson Blunt, posted on Christianity Today(05/28/04).
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/121/51.0.html
SHB: Do you believe there is anything inherently evil in the way some practice Islam that stands in the way of the pursuit of democracy and freedom?
GWB:I think what we're dealing with are people—extreme, radical people—who've got a deep desire to spread an ideology that is anti-women, anti-free thought, anti- art and science, you know, that couch their language in religious terms. But that doesn't make them religious people. I think they conveniently use religion to kill. The religion I know is not one that encourages killing. I think that they want to drive us out of parts of the world so they're better able to have a base from which to operate. I think it's very much more like an … "ism" than a group with territorial ambition.
SHB:More like a what?
GWB:An "ism" like Communism that knows no boundaries, as opposed to a power that takes land for gold or land for oil or whatever it might be. I don't see their ambition as territorial. I see their ambition as seeking safe haven. And I know they want to create power vacuums into which they are able to flow.
SHB:To what final end? The expansion of Islam?
GWB:No, I think the expansion of their view of Islam, which would be I guess a fanatical version that—you know, you're trying to lure me down a road [where] … I'm incapable of winning the debate. But I'm smart enough to understand when I'm about to get nuanced out. No, I think they have a perverted view of what religion should be, and it is not based upon peace and love and compassion—quite the opposite. These are people that will kill at the drop of a hat, and they will kill anybody, which means there are no rules. And that is not, at least, my view of religion. And I don't think it's the view of any other scholar's view of religion either.
This attitude of religious intolerence has been a common trait in many recent figures in history. It is not unexpected that the U.S. president would encourage others to feel this same bigotry for another culture. It is a way to gather support for his deviant causes. And he is not alone. He has support from a many people simply because he is pro-life and anti-homosexual. Beliefs that many Christians hold dear.
In a 2002 survey http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1010-02.htm
Some 69 percent of conservative Christians favored military action against Baghdad; 10 percentage points more than the U.S. adult population as a whole.
And almost two-thirds of evangelical Christians said they support Israeli actions towards ''Palestinian terrorism'', compared with 54 percent of the general population, according to the survey, which was released by Stand For Israel, a six-month-old spin-off of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).
Our president and these men and women are not to be trusted with making decisions for other peoples lives. It is obvious that they have no faith or knowledge of the religion that they abuse. If they abided by the teachings of the Bible they most certainly should have read St. Matthews chapter 5 verses 38 and 39 in which it says "Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." This is a verse asking for nonviolence, even in the face of violence.
In that same chapter, in the book of Matthew, verses 43 and 44 it says "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say unto you Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" These verses speak for themselves and so do hundreds more throughout the "good book".
The leader of the free world is not a Christian. He is a reckless business man lying for the greed of money and power. These things he says about Islam are incredible. It is Mr. Bush and the vast majority of conservative Christians who "conveniently use religion to kill","that have a perverted view of what religion should be". Mr. Bush and his cabinet are the people who "will kill at the drop of a hat, and they will kill anyone". Our president is a terrorist preying off of your fears. These are his 120,000 soldiers occupying Iraq for oil and and other financial gain. These same soldiers, Christian or otherwise, were raiding 200 poor Iraqi civilians homes a week. I ask you, are we less secure because of a handful of Islamic terrorists or because our country (with the most wealth and military might) is lead by a man who lies about his spirituality.
I ask Christians to love their fellow man, be brave, and open their arms and hearts even if it means economic change or an unsure tommorrow. If you believe in god and the words of the Bible than you know that God will certainly help you to remain strong as you act and speak against war and violence.
all hail john kerry: our next fascist ruler
i went to kerry's rally at portland's waterfront park last week (8.13.04). boy was that an enthusiastic crowd of "well at least he's not bush" people. my good friend craig and i laughed, heckled, and made it obvious we were not there to blindly endorse this "democrat." we had a great time, and you know what else? it was a bunch of bullshit.
the current head of the amerika inc. and his trained killers
the main reason i say this is because of the war on terrorism. the war on terrorism is much like a continual christmas bonus for ge, news corporation, and all the other global conglomerates that make a shit ton of money from war. terrorism is not something you can win with war! in fact war is what causes terrorism. it's perfect for our corporate kingdoms to keep the american masses at bay by convincing them they need protection. our food supply is full of chemicals like MONSANTO RBGH that literally gives you cancer. That's a growth hormone injected into cows to make them produce more milk. the documentary the corporation has a nice bit of information on that evil company. if you care about your health, watch that film. how about a war on corporations that are killing people? that is a war i'd be willing to personally fight, oh wait that's what i'm doing now.
why can't he be our next king?
the best thing about that rally was bon jovi. not his bullshit speech about "my america" but the acoustic version of "living on a prayer" and the show stopper "wanted dead or alive." you know that part where he sings, "i'm a cowboy / on a steal horse i ride / and i'm wanted," then richie sambora sings that high "waaanteeed?" i love that part and so does everyone else. that's the part everyone always sings, i love it! ok, ok, back to kerry.
god bless bon jovi
so the war on terror... the fact is, if with we want to wage a war on terrorist states then we should start burning our own cities. some people say over the last 20 years the united states government has murdered 8 million people on almost every continent. "terrorism" committed by non governments has only claimed around 8,000 lives in the same amount of time. is this kind of terrorism the real problem, or is it foreign policy that compels desperate extremist groups to commit terrorist acts? john kerry vowed to be smarter and tougher on terrorism then bush. if he would just say, "look we are going to start treating others countries humanely, and be help mend the destruction our greed has caused. this is how we are going to combat terror." then i would be his biggest supporter. but that fact is john kerry is an employee of citygroup, microsoft, and viacom and he is applying for a job he is going to get: ceo of amerika inc.
people like me are stuck in a very fucked up position. of course bush and company are the worst thing to happen to amerika in a long time, so we have to get them out of there. i wish we could take them out of office and stick them in jail, because that is were they belong - jail. nader seems to be dead in the water because corporate amerika is totally against him, even though he would be a better president then we have ever had. i've personally met the guy and he is awesome! so where do we go now? reluctantly with camp kerry.
so on election day i will be voting for old "big head" and from that day forward i'll be on him, watching his every move. i suggest you all up the watch as well because the real problem is not going to be solved once we get rid of bush. the real problem is the corporations and their undying, unrelenting thirst for wealth and growth, and at the head of the corporations sit the major shareholders. these shareholders are the true rulers of the world and they must be taken down, removed from the power structure from which they dominate.
viva la revolucion!
I Love You, Madame Librarian
By Kurt Vonnegut
I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.
And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.
In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.
In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.
With good reason.
In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.
Piece of cake.
In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.
Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.
Piece of cake.
The O’Reilly Factor.
So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.
Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.
Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?
Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.
My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”
Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!
Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.
What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/903/
The decisions that human beings make which determine which species flourish and which species suffer is often a selfish decision. Choosing one form of life over another to improve the living conditions of the decided “superior” species is a major problem in our modern times. As scientists work to stop diseases which affect the human species, they study using the bodies and lives of defenseless animals. As industry supplies both economic demands made by the capitalist system and employment demands made by the poor/working class, entire ecosystems are destroyed. As long as man decides to exist on a level where his needs come before the needs of others, there will always be a need for direct action. The tactics taken by those who commit these acts need to be a part of a large campaign to awaken society to a mindset which cares for all living creatures equally, and invites an ecological society to develop.
Greed can alter a being. Getting a sweet taste of fortune, excess wealth, comfort and security may cause you to not question where this comfort comes from, or at what cost it arrives to you. All too often will this fantasy of the Western, post-industrialized, capitalist consumer culture exist without much examination of the reality, or the true cost. We are raised at an early age to see life as something which we are to “get” or “take” the most out of. The “true pleasures in life” are advertised on television, as an excuse to add just one more item on the credit card. Work hard, and you can be anything or anyone you want. This illusion is presented to all people of all classes. The fatal flaw of such a mirage is that if an entire working/lower class were to desire to move up in social status, a black hole would exist, revealing the lies behind the curtain.
Despite all the pitfalls of our current greed- and profit-saturated society, most of the population exists within, and adheres to, its doctrine. This lead to booming industries, which are constantly making a buck as the wheels of commerce turn. The result of industries' actions are less dreamy. Pollution, the destruction of species, and the removal of ecosystems all occur under the watch of a corporate-run country. The lives of animals, plants, and humans suffer as man extends his reach into the depths of America’s resources. Direct action, the tactic of a physical action to prevent, slow down, or raise awareness of an issue, is an important method used by those who feel they can no longer let the machine run the way it’s running.
When Edward Abbey wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang, a modern bible was created for eco-raiders. Abbey wrote about four strangers who come together in their growing rage towards industry and growth over land and life. The characters take drastic measures in various forms to stop man’s machine fueled advance. From burning billboards, to sabotaging bulldozers and other equipment, to destroying oil rigs, the crew work their way around the southwest in order to “save” all they can from “destruction.” Their ultimate goal lies in destroying the Glen Canyon Dam, which they feel has taken the life out of the Colorado River. This cause has continued outside of the novel, as many individuals have worked to both symbolically and physically cause the existence of the dam to end.
Three major groups are responsible for a majority of direct actions deemed illegal by the government both here and overseas. These three groups are Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Although their tactics may vary, their desired outcome is similar: to stop man’s expansion and destruction of life and the land which habitats life. These groups work to raise awareness by their actions, leaving the courtroom battles for those who have faith in a slow and expensive legal system.
Earth First! is a direct action group who often refer to The Monkey Wrench Gang as the book which possesses the core of their beliefs. They are perhaps the most popular direct action group known by the public. Dave Foremen, a founder of Earth First!, named the group for the title’s simplicity and strength. All actions taken, all decisions made, must have the Earth considered first, with no compromise towards protecting the planet. Foreman is the author of Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching. His group has led thousands of actions for the protection of wildlife, forests, and the overall existence of the planet. Through often illegal yet nonviolent actions, and media covered events, EF! can bring to the public eye issues which normally may go unadressed in the mainstream press.
The style of Earth First! actions vary, from tree sits, to blockades, to logging roads, to sabotaging of equipment, and so on. The creativity exhibited grows as more and more actions occur. Tree sitting has become a very popular action for gaining exposure about a potentially decimated or removed forest. Individuals, with a support assisting team, will remain nonviolent, suspended hundreds of feet high in an old tree for months, or even years, in order to save the trees. The most famous tree sitter is Julia Butterfly Hill, who was in a tree for over two years in Humbolt County, California. In the end, Hill saved a group of Redwood trees in the area.
On the far side of this spectrum, both the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front, act without hesitations about illegal violence. The front page of the web site has a powerful initial quote, "The ELF realizes the profit motive caused and reinforced by the capitalist society is destroying all life on this planet. The only way, at this point in time, to stop that continued destruction of life is to by any means necessary take the profit motive out of killing." By focusing their energies on destroying established businesses, businesses which exist in part by sacrificing either land, nature, or animal, these groups go straight to the source of what they feel are the causes for the mindset which allows such actions to be approved, or at least overlooked. The money which runs in the bloodstream of the capitalist society is thus reduced from the living body of business.
The guidelines for the the Earth Liberation Front are simple: 1) To cause as much economic damage as possible to a given entity that is profiting off the destruction of the natural environment and life for selfish greed and profit. 2) To educate the public on the atrocities committed against the environment and life. 3) To take all necessary precautions against harming life. These simple steps applied in the real world have landed the ELF on the top of “ecoterrorists” lists watched by the federal government.
One of the most well-known incidents that the ELF has taken credit for is the burning down of a ski resort in Vail, Colorado. This event did about $12-$26 million worth of damage. Their reason was the planned expansion into an area which was the last habitat for Lynx in the state. A letter sent to the media after the event occurred, ended with, “This action is just a warning. We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded areas." Their web site lists actions taken from the past eight years, with amounts of financial damage done each year listed proudly.
With millions of dollars worth of damage caused, it is no wonder why this organization is pursued by a government which firmly stands by industry, growth, and capital. The ELF’s militant stance keep their actions from being warmly accepted by the public. For example, local Portland restaurant owner, and former ELF/ALF member, Craig Rosebraugh, was questioned by a House Subcommittee on ecoterrorism in which he was asked, “Are you personally concerned that one day an ELF or ALF perpetrated attack will wind up killing or wounding someone?” His response - “No, I am more concerned with massive numbers of people dying at the hands of greedy capitalists if such actions are not taken.” Statements like this may seem either passionate and strong to those on one side of the argument, or dangerous and deadly to those on the other side.
Responses to direct action in the mainstream public can be difficult for those looking to raise public awareness. In our post 9/11 world, the word “terrorist” can do much more damage than good. By labeling these acts, and the passionate activists as “terror related”, the discussion of whether these corporations and their procedures are good or bad, never reaches the public discussion. Media coverage will often breeze past the reasons behind these actions and instead focus of those affected, using the footage of destruction as their bait to attract viewers. If it is a tree sit being covered, where there is no image of destruction, the story may end up in the “offbeat” section, alongside a water-skiing squirrel and hot dog eating contest. This process, in which the corporate run media are negligent in their reporting the whole story, leaves it up to the independent press to cover these events.
The other side of the argument is one that is difficult to deny, on the surface: jobs are needed, and workers need these jobs to keep their families secure. When a logging company is stopped, money is lost, from the top to the bottom, meaning even the lower-class logger will experience hardship (especially the lower class). When a job site is sabotaged and the company loses millions of dollars worth of equipment, worked are laid off, the company suffers, and the “progress of industry” grinds to a halt.
These perspectives are understandable. They come from a world where capitalism is king, and the sacrifices made for the almighty dollar are obvious. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to sell it, does it matter? No, not to the timber industry. The people in the fur industry, which thrives on the skinning of innocent creatures to serve the vanity of the wealthy (more than the poor in the cold), do not regard themselves as evil. They see themselves as humane businesspeople, filling a need for their customers. The capital motto rings true in all businesses: “as long as there is a demand for it, there will be a supply for it."
The actions and justifications arise on both sides of the relationship. As long as the customer believes it is okay to buy these products, or rather, never question the effects of purchasing certain products, the company will supply them, and vice versa. As long as industries see customers “voting with their dollars,” they will continue with production. So where can this be stopped? Direct action works as one tactic to immediately stop industries, hoping to raise awareness along the way. By exposing the effects of consuming certain products, and in such quantity, we have a hope of changing the public mind.
I contacted the always wise and nonstop thinking machine that is Noam Chomsky, asking what he thought of direct action as a means to create change. He replied that it was difficult to say, as it depended on the specific action. He also said the end product, to be effective, had to deal with public opinion and the policy makers. This point is true as far as the need to awaken a “green mind” within the population, a mindset which will not allow destruction of life and land to occur for the better living of the Western man’s post-industrialized world.
Convincing people that the "freedom" to have whatever you want (as advertised on the glow-box), is a dangerous lie told by big business, seems like a difficult task. I believe that the methods lie in the details of information, as suggested by Marti Kheel. Exposing the public, through various ways, to the atrocities which are caused by our constant consumption will eventually cause the reconsideration of such actions. Ecological security for all beings within the global ecosystem must not be recklessly altered or destroyed in order to keep profit margins high.
Direct action is just one of the many fronts on which we need to attack our current system. Society will eventually be forced to rethink their methods of living if these attacks occur. Over time, as the public learns what a money-fueled-government really looks like, it will become completely unacceptable. A revolution will occur. It may not be a bloody one, taking place on the streets, but it will be one with equal or even greater force. One which will dry out the feed lots for greedy capitalists and their deadly ways. One which will end corporate rule and environmental destruction by man’s thirst for wealth.
By allowing the process to slowly work through “dollar votes,” you still ignore the roots of the problem. The ecological society which is desperately needed must incorporate new ideas of what “progress” means, outside of economic values. We must not look to our bank accounts to see if we are successful individuals. We must create communities on smaller scales, reducing the need for foreign goods and dangerous synthetics. We must question what is really needed in order to live fully. We must reduce our own footprints in the Earth just as we reduced (if not removed) the footprints of industry. At the same time, we must encourage a loving relation with the planet, and all of its inhabitants. We must not look towards the destruction of others to advance ourselves; this will no longer be an option. When we lead by example, and our methods make it painfully obvious that life is better, we will begin the process of change.
Sources
Abbey, Edward. The Monkey Wrench Gang. Perennial Classics, New York, NY 1975
http://www.animalliberation.net/
Chomsky, Noam. Professor of Linguistics MIT. Interviewed by author via e-mail, 7/28/04
http://www.earthfirst.org/
http://www.earthliberationfront.com/
Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors. The Noble Press, Chicago, IL 1990.
Sterba, James. Earth Ethics. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ 1995.
Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty
Both Hurricane Cheney and Hurricane Bush began touching down all throughout the world earlier than expected this election season.
Their destruction could be seen all over the planet.
From incredible amounts of trees being cut from forests.
To immense amounts of pollution being allowed to spread into our waters.
To bombs falling and death building overseas.
To the loss of jobs in Ameri©a.
These 2 Hurricanes have done more damage than any prior to their existence. They are expected to be active and destructive until mid-January, 2005, when Tropical Storm Kerry is due in.
WE
LOVE
YOU
PORTLANDERS
ASIAN
WHITE
BLACK
LATINO
POOR
RICH
MIDDLE CLASS
WORKERS
SLAVES
KILLERS
INNOCENTS
WE LOVE YOU ALL
I post this article to show how other countries are surviving outside of the dominant framework of hegemony and exploitation. We can learn a lot from Chavez and from Venezuela
Loathed by the rich
Why Hugo Chávez is heading for a stunning victory
Richard Gott in Caracas
Saturday August 7, 2004
The Guardian
To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow.
First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chávez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington.
While Chávez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chávez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington.
Chávez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien régime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chávez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them.
The expected Chávez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'état in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president.
The unexpected restoration of Chávez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chávez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup.
The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chávez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media.
The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged.
Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chávez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chávez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chávez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990.
Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chávez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chávez, and Chávez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chávez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chávez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition.
He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch.
Faced with a Chávez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chévez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job."
· Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press
Zmag article on Chavez and the violence proclaimed against him
[...] = my comments
Resources:
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
http://www.dictionary.com
Anytime I venture inside the Pioneer Mall or any other big shopping mall, like Lloyd Center or Clackamas Town Center, I am overwhelmed with an urgent sense of invasion. I don't know if I can explain it well. I'll try. I feel like their walls are closing in on me. I see nothing but robots and lemmings, cell phones, Verizon, Comcast, the green of the dollar, Fossil, Gucci, Prada, Liz Claibourne and meat fetishes prevailing in the rotundas of the eateries and in the leather-made products in the incandescant- lit dim glow of the overhead lights. I apologize if this seems like a lot. It is.
I am upset with these polished annals of consumerism because: 1. Portlanders (Americans) are pelted with media ideology and examples of what to care about (products and meat) in these malls, 2. The kind of persuasive advertising inherent in a mall like Pioneer Mall posesses much efficacy, so that 3. consumers are either blind to this phenomenon or they are embracing it.
Places like Pioneer Mall act like consumer schools of thought and economic practice, but without a viable interdisciplinary administration. In other words, if you go to the mall and don't buy anything, no one of authority tells you that you must not do so. Although if one were to cause an anti-consumerist scene in a mall, the administration (the rental cops) would surely reprimand them.
I called shopping malls 'consumer schools'. So what is the education? Consumerism, of course. Two very good definitions of consumerism are: "#1. The theory that a progressively greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial.
#2. Attachment to materialistic values or possessions: deplored the rampant consumerism of contemporary society."(2)
These notions, especially the compelling attachment facet, which in turn reinforces brand name identity, are displayed and reinforced by the media on the cycloptic eye of television's power elite and on billboards, then fed back to us in the Pioneer Malls of America in the form of large wall ads. These ads raid the walls of our malls like so much propaganda. They have to in order to contrast the drab but shiny tiling, the drywall separators and the specific key lighting. This is not coincidental. The malls are conjured to be the way they are so that the products are the most eye-catching, the most important, the most visually stimulating.
I would fathom that every mall in the country makes use of certain specific elements to make the shopping experience more docile and depersonalizing These elements are intentionally manifest. For one thing, every mall is enclosed indoors, away from any sort of natural environment or precipice. The sterile, artificial environment which envelops the interior is key to reinforcing consumerism because it subtracts the natural environment, and hence the products at hand are glorified in a utopian world away from any notions of environmental connection. They are the most beautiful things inside an otherwise elaborate underground bunker.
The docile, programmable human mind has been conditioned to accept this phenomenon, and does so without question. This is the same tactic used in grocery stores, outlet and strip malls and the big shops like Fred Meyer or Costco. I always thought the prospect of raw foods available in sterile, artificial environments to be ludicrous.
However, ask yourself how often you see children questioning the efficacy of raw goods in an artificial place like Freddy's.
So when I venture inside a mall, I said I feel attacked. It is the unbridled motivation to be an 'empowered' consumer by feeding money into its existence. This prospect has in turn, made me an antisocial consumer. I can't go into these places without having a borderline mental breakdown. I gouge away from the hip pop culture consumerist ideals and marketplaces because they make me feel smothered. I feel unadulterated hate when I see somebody like Paris Hilton, somebody who became famous for her scandalous sexual promiscuity and is now a revered pop cultural icon, on display for Gucci or whatever, I just feel sick. I feel sick because these are the people whom our media and our popular consumer culture is endorsing to be our consumer stewards. The women in these kinds of ads look dead to me, lying next to their sparkling Prada purse made from sick bovines in Macau for all I know. Advertising will go to any length to sell their dystopia to consumers, and the consumers eat it up because they're duped into believing that there is nothing wrong with 'stimulating the economy'.
I have read several accounts written by prominent feminist intellectuals whom express dissent for the media machine and consumerist culture, not only in the 'old days of feminist thought', but now in the uber-complex postmodernist media-driven world of now. "Postmodern art [if one could call advertising 'art'] (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject." (1)
If one looks closely at ads like Prada or Gucci, one sees examples of said dehumanization. Women in particular are shown as dead, doll- ike figures made to be flawless as the leather bag she affluently presents. Men are, too. Men, whom are typically depicted as the steadfast prominence of power, precision and confidence, are sometimes contrasted to be doll-like carne similar to their female model counterparts. I would venture to think that these notions are quite obvious to the modern American consumer, but paradoxically even with this realization, consumerism has never taken a turn-off in reposed trust (with exeption paid to the fur industry, of which has seen countless instances of disgust with its mortal practice not only from animal liberation fronts, but from feminist circles and modern American people like you [hopefully] and I).
It definitely affects people like myself. I find advertising which uses the aforementioned elements (which ads do not, is a more relevant question) abhorrently sick and twisted. That advertising in its seemingly dialectic pursuit of the dollar ipso facto using men and women as meat hooks for the fashion, business, leisure and technology industries can only imply a clear and irrefutable contempt for human beings.
This is what I see when I venture into Pioneer Mall. I see contempt for humans and the content of their characters. I see persons which are displayed as dead flesh for the benefit of the leisure industry's oligarchial and unrelenting qwest (sic) to commodify humans for the 'stimulation of the economy'. As for the dutiful consumers themselves, who do emulate many of the tenets of the advertising machine's body politics, I feel little empathy for them. I think this is where my contempt arises from.
They are just like the ads. Lemmings. Carbon copies. Duplicates. Replicas. Emulations. The loss of the intrapersonal system. Makeup for women is all in good fun, and fashion is the right of any American women or man who wants to make themselves prettier, happier, more desirable or more beautiful. It sickens me that consumers take these notions of standards of beauty and make an argument like it's all in good fun. What these advertisers are telling consumers is that you are not pretty, beautiful nor are you whole in any way until you participate in our system of body-politic slavery.
My personal response to this phenomenon has been to stifle my urges to spend money and intstead I now habitually make most of my days buy nothing days. Am I an example? I don't particularly think so. I don't necessarily want to influence others in my own reaction.
http://thecorporation.tv/
Starting Aug 6 at Cinema 21
One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history. In this complex and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence. Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the 4corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, THE CORPORATION charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.
On July 9th, Howard Dean and Ralph Nader debated one another regarding Nader's presidential bid for the 2004 election. An interesting event where both men seemed to be on the same side of many an argument except of course for the main theme. Nader uses interesting tactics when battling Dean's attempt at logic, while Dean continues to repeat a "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" mantra throughout the debate.
