Friday, December 21, 2007
Towards the Unconditional Return of All Tribal Lands
Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, was recently elected to the presidency of Bolivia and has proposed a new constitution which would recognize the rights of the country's indigenous population to their tribal lands including natural resources (this is what really frightens the avaricious oligarchs in the wealthier provinces of the country -- not the lifting of term limits so often publicized by the U.S. news media which is actually not uncommon in many of Europe's democracies).
At the same time, further north, representatives of the Lakota Sioux Indians (including three veteran A.I.M. activists who were at Wounded Knee during the 1973 takeover) have declared independence from the U.S. citing years of treaty violations and other grievances. The delegation has already met with representatives of the Bolivian government which has expressed interest in the Lakota Sioux cause.
Hopefully this is just the beginning.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Stop the Genocide in Iraq!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Petition of Protest Against the Annapolis Summit
We the undersigned declare our rejection to Annapolis Summit for the following reasons:
First: we repudiate the exploitation of the Palestinian cause to conceal the United States' failure in its illegitimate imperialist invasion to Iraq.
Second: Arab governments attended this summit under the pressure of the United States. The governmental capitulation to the United States does not mean by any means that it articulates the will of Arab people. The United States is aware of the contradiction between Arab people will and its governments' gluttonies.
Third: The announcement and invitation to this conference, completely ignore the Palestinian right in the land of Palestine, the right of return of refugees, the establishment of a free, independent and sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Forth: Arab people resent racism, we do not recognize racist entities and we do not accept its existence in our region. As we reject racism which is spreading world wide along with the hegemony of Globalization culture, we refuse the United States endeavors to impose racist categorizations in our region. We insist on our negation to Israel, we do not recognize it as a state and we assert that we do not abide to treaties signed by illegitimate Arab governments supported by the United States.
Fifth: The main aim of such a summit is to form a front of Arab governments that disregards Palestinian rights, implements the American imperialist plot which titled as "The New Middle East" and to impose proxy war on our governments with Iran and resistance groups to serve American interests.
As we declare our rejection Annapolis Summit and to all American-Zionist-Imperialist schemes, we announce our demands as:
1- The comprehensive liberation of the complete Palestinian Lands and the establishment of an independent, liberated and sovereign Palestinians state with Jerusalem as its capital.
2- The return of all Palestinian refugees from the diaspora to the land of Palestine.
3- The departure of all occupation forces from all the countries of the region: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and the Golan.
4- Lifting of the siege on the Palestinian people.
5- Removing American domination from the region; We do not want American aid, we do not want American support for dictatorial governments in the region, we do not want American intervention, which give provokes sectarian sense in our region, and we do not want American intervention to protect the Zionist entity in the region, we do not want the American exploitation to our wealth and our resources, we do not want neither good or evil from the United States.
We want to build our countries depending on our human and natural resources without interference from any outside force. We want our right self - determination.
6- We refuse the establishment of a "Jewish" state in our region; we respect all beliefs and religions, and admit citizenship to all citizens, equally, regardless of their doctrines, religions, or races. We resent the Zionist entity and its violation of human rights: slaughtering our women and children, expelling natives from their mother lands and building racist settlements on it.
We demand our rights according to:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
And according to:
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. res. 1514 (XV), 15 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 66, U.N. Doc. A/4684 (1961).
Which Declares that:
1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
3. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.
4. All armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease in order to enable them to exercise peacefully and freely their right to complete independence, and the integrity of their national territory shall be respected.
5. Immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or colour, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.
6. Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
7. All States shall observe faithfully and strictly the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the present Declaration on the basis of equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of all States, and respect for the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
Justice for Samina Malik!
How to Behead
Hold him
Tie the arms behind his back
And bandage his legs together
Just by the ankles
Blindfold the punk
So that he won't hesitate as much
For on seeing the sharp pointy knife
He'll begin to shake
And continuously scream like an eedyat
And jiggle like a jelly
Trust me – this will sure get you angry
It's better to have at least two or three brothers by your side
Who can hold the fool
Because as soon as the warm sharp knife
Touches his naked flesh
He'll come to know what'll happen
No evidence was presented at the trial to prove that Ms. Malik had actually committed or was even planning any violent actions against anyone. She was convicted for possessing certain types of literature and writing certain types of poetry. In other words she was convicted for merely thinking certain types of thoughts.
But I'd like to suggest that she was also convicted for thinking certain types of thoughts AND being the child of Asian Muslims. I have written much more violent poems than this one -- one of which was actually published in my High School literary magazine. It's hard for me to imagine that there are no other 22-year-olds in the U.K. who have written violent poetry and/or are in possession of books like "The Anarchist Cookbook" or "Guerilla Warfare" (Ernest "Che" Guevara). Ms. Malik was singled out because of her race and religion.
But never mind the issue of Racism for a minute since the dominant discourse disavows the existence of Racism in the world today. What about FREEDOM -- for which these English and U.S. imperialists claim to be committing genocide in the Middle East? And where is Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch? How come I have been able to find only one article defending Ms. Malik's right to freedom of thought? Has our new motto become (thanks Stephen Colbert) "'live free or do whatever it takes so I don't die"?
Monday, September 10, 2007
Greenland, Israel and the Osama Bin Laden video
But for the time being -- here's another self-indulgent tirade.
Greenland's Ice Sheet is Melting
The impact of this development will be much greater than the melting of the polar ice caps. What else can I say? Oh yeah, and two-thirds of the global polar bear population will disappear by 2050.
Israel or occupied Palestine
The story about which I wrote in April of this year has finally made its way into the main stream media -- dozens of youths in Israel have been carrying out violent antisemitic attacks against their fellow citizens. The culprits are all Russian immigrants who were permitted to immigrate under Israel's racist "Law of Return" which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to automatically become an Israeli citizen whether or not they themselves actually practice the Hebrew faith. Somehow most reporters have missed the bitter irony of the situation.
Osama Bin Laden Video
So the evil terrorist bogey man who supposedly planned the attacks of September 11, 2001 is actually part of that sect of radical militant Islam that's into making low budget videos.
Everyone should read the ABC News transcript (English of course) of what Bin Laden said in the latest video. Apparently he is not only into making low budget movies, but he's also into Noam Chomsky. He's also an ant-capitalist, anti-imperialist environmentalist. That is to say he's an independently wealthy, ant-establishment low-budget film-maker. He's boho chic.
The bulk of the transcript, after the usual praise of divinity which is always included in religious discourse, reads like a litany of the evils of capitalism and (especially) U.S. imperialism. The whole middle section is a fairly accurate criticism of the current situation right now. Hell! He even talks about the problems in Africa! But O.B.L.'s conclusion is that we ( U.S. citizens) should all become Muslims and build an Islamic theocracy here in the U.S.
I wonder who would benefit from making a video that equates anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideas with Islamic fanaticism?
Keep in mind that the source of the video was the SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Website < http://siteinstitute.org/> which is run by Rita Katz who I suspect is an Israeli or U.S. intelligence agent (do a quick Google search on her and you'll see why). The video itself was then carried by pretty much every major U.S. news outlet complete with a full transcript in English from ABC.
Am I the only person who thinks this video is a complete fabrication designed to discredit any legitimate critique of the current world system and, worse, to equate it with "terrorism"?
If I were Noam Chomsky, who frankly isn't even that radical, I would seriously consider emigrating.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Why Turkey Will Never Be Allowed Into the European Union
Let's look at what Nicholas Sarkozy actually said about the issue in his debate with Segolene Royale before the French presidential elections:
"Ceux qui souhaitent l’entrée de la Turquie en Europe sont ceux qui ne croient pas à l’Europe politique. C’est la mort de l’Europe politique" (Those who hope for the entry of Turkey in the EU are those who do not believe in a political Europe. It's the death of a political Europe).
Politics is about power. What Sarkozy said was that Turkey's entry into the EU would mean the end of the latter as a world power. Why?
I'll start my answer to this question by looking at the most prominent party among those who are hoping for the entry of Turkey in the EU. That's right, you guessed it, the good old USA.
Turkey's entry in the EU is part of the US's plan for rendering Europe completely dependent on a US-dominated energy infrastructure stretching from the Caspian through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Turkey's entry into the EU would also be the last nail in the coffin in which plans fo any independent European military force would be buried. The US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Turkey is a key member, would remain the sole guarantor of security on the continent and the EU would be nothing but a free-trade zone dominated by a hegemonic US in a unipolar New World Order.
Unfortunately for the US, like so many of the grandiose dreams of the US ruling class these days, this plan is all but dead. Russia has successfully secured all of the major gas and oil reserves in the Caspian (as of May 12, 2007) completely cutting out the US. In other words the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipeline is now empty. The EU's dependence on Russia for gas and oil is now solid and, unlike the US which seeks to weaken the EU and subordinate it to US interests, Russia supports a strong economic and political EU as a partner in its effort to push the US out of Eurasia.
Turkey could strengthen its economy and, more importantly, its sovereignty by looking eastwards to make strategic alliances -- Iran and Russia are two potential partners that come to mind. Otherwise, left out of the EU as well as the rapidly forming alliances in Asia (e.g. the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), Turkey will be just another pawn in the US' losing play for global domination.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Al Qaeda is a Metaphor
Holy shit man! I'd be soiling myself right now if I didn't know that Al Qaeda is about as real as my dream of spending a night with Bipasha Basu, Marylin Monroe, Vanessa Paradis, Ashwarya Rai and Natalie Wood.
Here's what Martin Scheinin (Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) has to say about Al Qaeda:
... I don’t see the global war between states and Al Qaeda as anything more than a metaphor. I don’t see Al Qaeda as qualifying as a global army that could be party of a global, never-ending armed conflict.
Scheinin, as a United Nations appointee, has to mince words. We don't. Al Qaeda is a metaphor that the U.S. government uses to inspire xenophobia (i.e. racism) among the people it controls. Al Qaeda is all people, especially people of color, who oppose U.S. interests whether they employ terrorist tactics or otherwise. What defines a terrorist act according to international law is a violent attack against the general populace. This is not the operative definition the U.S. government uses. When resistance fighters in Iraq attack U.S. soldiers they are not committing acts of terrorism as defined by international law. Yet, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, anyone in Iraq who opposes the U.S. military presence there is a terrorist -- hence the chimera ubiquitous in the U.S. news media known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ultimately we will be informed by our leaders that branches of Al Qaeda are firmly entrenched in every single region which is critical to the global hegemonic strategy of the U.S. ruling class.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Free Sami Al Haj!
Five-and-a-half years ago -- on December 15, 2001 -- U.S. military personnel captured Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj while he was en route to Afghanistan in Pakistan. He has since been held, with no criminal charges against him, as an "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo Bay. Sami, who is a Sudanese national with distinctly African features, reported to his attorney who was finally allowed to see him in December of 2005 that:
- he has been tortured (e.g. forced to remain seated, exposed to the tropical sun, deprived of sleep, subjected to sexual abuse, confined in rooms in which extremely loud music was played, etc.)
- he has been interrogated with the use of threats more than 130 times
- he has a throat cancer that is not being treated
In other words the U.S. government claims to support freedom of speech yet it is trying to destroy a news outlet because of its distinctly balanced approach to current events in Western Asia (in March 2003, Al Jazeera was awarded by Index on Censorship -- an international group which campaigns against censorship -- for its "courage in circumventing censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world"). This isn't the first time the U.S. military has struck violently against Al Jazeera:
- November 13, 2001 -- U.S. missles destroy the Kabul offices of Al Jazeera in Afghanistan.
- April 8, 2003 -- U.S. missles strike the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera killing reporter Tarek Ayoub.
- November 22, 2005 -- The Daily Mirror (U.K.) leaks the infamous "Al Jazeera Bombing Memo" in which U.S. President Bush suggests to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair the idea of bombing Al Jazeera.
The U.S. government claims to fight for Democracy and the rule of law yet it is currently holding countless prisoners without due process.
There is no Global Islamic Conspiracy! This is as much a work of racist fiction as was Hitler's Global Judeo-Bolshevist Conspiracy.
For more about Sami: http://www.prisoner345.net/
To sign a petition: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19079
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Kosovo and the Battle for Eurasia
As I write these lines, the powerful Group of 8 is deciding the fate of a small province in Serbia known presently as Kosovo. The E.U. and U.S. want independence for Kosovo as quickly as possible while Russia has promised to oppose any moves towards independence without direct talks between Pristina (the administrative center of the province) and Belgrade (the capital of Serbia). Once again the lines are being drawn between opposing sides in an increasingly dangerous global situation.
Kosovo, also known as Kosovo and Metohija, has never in its history been an independent political entity. While most of its population is comprised of ethnic Albanians, there have always been significant Serbian, Bosniak, Turkish and Roma (Gypsy) minorities. In around 1995, a paramilitary organization financed by heroin and prostitution trafficking (as well as other criminal activities) called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged on the scene. The following year, the KLA provoked a full-scale war with Serbia by attacking Serbian police and civilians alike with the aim of full independence. This conflict was known as the Kosovo War and it lasted until 1999. That year, NATO carried out a military operation against Serbia bombing both military and civilian targets. NATO, spearheaded by President Clinton, claimed that the Serbian government was committing genocide in Kosovo and had to be stopped.
In April of 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia's cities, the U.S. state department announced that the genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had taken as many as 500,000 lives and compared the the ethnic cleansing to the Nazi Holocaust. In May that figure had somehow fallen to 100,000 -- according to the Department of Defense. Strangely, after NATO occupied the region and place it under the governance of the U.N. in June, the number shrank to 10,000 -- this time according to the British Foreign Office. No reports have ever stated how the British Foreign Office arrived at this figure and to this day it has never been objectively confirmed.
The fighting ended in October and by November, most of the ethnic Albanian refugees who had fled during the conflict returned to their homes. However, much of the remaining Serbian population population -- some 250,000 people -- fled and have never been able to return. The Roma (Gypsy) population was also forced to flee after being brutalized by the KLA.
After the war, reports began to surface which revealed that British and U.S. (CIA) intelligence agents had been in constant contact with the KLA since at least 1996 and that they had been providing advice and training to the KLA throughout the war. These reports further undermined the official pretext for the NATO invasion since the putative "genocide" of ethnic Albanians had not begun until well after the CIA made contact with the KLA. While, most people in the U.S. and Europe probably still believe the genocide story and that the U.S. got involved in the Balkan wars of the 1990s for humanitarian reasons, it is fairly clear that the NATO bombing of Serbia was in fact the final phase of the U.S.'s plan for Yugoslavia after the death of General Tito -- dissolution and the establishment of a permanent air base in the region.
Slobodan Milosevic was the antagonist in the official U.S. story about Yugoslavia not because of his war crimes or his responsibility for ethnic cleansing but simply because he opposed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. The wars in the Balkans were wars amongst thieves scrambling for the scraps of what was once a major regional power and war crimes were committed on all sides. Slobodan Milosevic was different from the other forces in the region mainly because his aim was to maintain the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia (he is arguably the least evil of the players involved ). Every step of the way, since the death of General Tito, the U.S. and its junior partners in Europe supported the forces of fragmentation and Slobodan Milosevic stood in their way.
Kosovo, now controlled by the heroin and prostitute trafficking KLA, would be an excellent location for a U.S. air base. It would serve as a strategic base for any air offensive against Iran and is another step towards the goal of encircling Russia and dominating Eurasia.
Of course Russia is opposing Kosovo's independence just as it opposes U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Moreover, Russia is making its own power moves. Recently Russia secured natural gas deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan -- deals which will increase the energy dependence of Europe on Russia. Meanwhile, the efforts of the U.S. and Europe to build a Trans-Caspian oil pipeline that would allow them to bypass Russia are all but dead in the water.
Unlike the Cold War we are no longer in a situation where the major players recognize the line between "yours" and "mine". The U.S. wants Eurasia and a unipolar world while Russia wants to maintain its position as a regional power-broker with China as an equal partner in a multi-polar world. Either they will come to an agreement or they will go to war.
Monday, June 4, 2007
There Won't Be Another Cold War
Iran simply does not have the ability to launch a missile attack against Europe. Moreover, since the E.U. is
Side note: the utter contempt with which the current
So, if the official justification for building missile defenses in Eastern Europe is a lie, then why is
The first Bush and Clinton administrations carried out the initial phase of the effort -- the looting of the Russian financial system. Under the auspices of the IMF and with the assistance of corrupt Russian politicans (e.g. Boris Yeltsin) and businessmen (i.e. gangsters), billions of dollars were funneled out of Russia and into U.S. banks.
Simultaneously and continuing into the present, the U.S. government has sought to fragment the countries of the former Soviet Union into as many little countries as possible, since little weak countries are easier to dominate than larger ones. The obvious supplement to this strategy has been the support of anti-Russian, pro-U.S. governments in the former Warsaw Pact nations of
Side note: NATO absorbed the Baltic States and
The final phase of the plan is to encircle Russia with missile defenses using the pro-U.S. countries of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as bases. This, theoretically (since missile defense systems have not been proven to actually work), would allow the
But why would the
The most immediate task [in the wake of the Cold War] is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role (page 198, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).
Why is
Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources (page 31, The Grand Chessboard, 1997).
In other words the
Monday, May 21, 2007
Venezuela Blows Up the D.E.A.'s Spot
Last year I wrote about the the so-called "War on Drugs" in Latin America and how it is in fact a cover for the U.S.'s drug wars to protect its financial interest in cocaine trafficking. What I neglected to mention was that the U.S.'s drug wars are part of a political strategy as well. Fortunately Chavez's government called the U.S. out on this issue earlier this month in response to criticism from the White House that Venezuela was not cooperating with the U.S. in curbing cocaine smuggling. Minister of the Interior Pedro Carreño explained to the Associated Press that his government ended its cooperation with the U.S. D.E.A. in 2005 because the agency wasn't making any arrests or smashing any cartels. Instead it was smuggling huge amounts of blow through the country. In effect the D.E.A. was itself operating as a drug cartel. Morever the authorities in Venezuela discovered that the U.S. D.E.A. had infiltrated government intelligence agencies and represented a threat to national security. Thus it would appear that the U.S. D.E.A. serves two functions: (a) as a an instrument of espionage it serves to protect U.S. strategic political interests; and (b) as an enforcement agency it serves to protect the U.S.'s financial interest in cocaine trafficking.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Post-May Day Rant
Sometimes the world is just so fucked-up that El Gringo Rumbero prefers to tune it out and immerse himself in simple pleasures without yielding too much to his many vices. Then he throws cold water on his face, slips on his mouth guard and comes out from his corner swinging!
The Pope is a wicked man. Never mind the fact that he is the master of an institution which bleeds the poor while its leaders, especially the Pope himself, live lavishly. Never mind that the Catholic Church as an institution, throughout its entire history, has done absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering of the masses of people of the world -- on the contrary it has most often played an intrumental role in oppressing and even murdering people in mass. Just look at the history of this Pope in particular.
1941: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, joins the Hitler Youth. His excuse that he had to join because membership was legally required at the time is not satisfactory from a man who is supposedly the representative of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus (née Yeshua Ben Yusuf) would not have even been allowed to join the Hitler Youth so I think we know what he would have done in such a situation!
1943: Pope Benedict XVI, née Joseph Alois Ratzinger, is drafted into the German Army. Again, the man who is currently the supreme master of the universal
Now this man, who we see is not exceptional in any way and certainly not especially Christian, is applauding the Spanish Conquest and "conversion" of the indigenous people of the Americas while denouncing both Marxism (true to his Nazi roots) and Capitalism (while he prances around in gilded robes). Behold, the Antichrist!
What's going on in
Why would Estonians want to rehabilitate Nazism? Answering this question requires one to look at the history of
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Zionists Spread Anti-Semitism to Palestine
Last year I wrote an entry on
Apparently, in a strange twist of fate that is giving me an evil kind of pleasure, the policy has backfired! Israeli citizens – even IDF soldiers – have been carrying out vicious anti-semitic attacks inside Israel! As I explained in my entry last year – White people (unlike people of color like the Jin family) need only produce a single Jewish parent or grandparent in order to fulfill the official definition of a "Jewish person" and thereby automatically become Israeli citizens. This policy has resulted in the immigration of over one million Russians to
Monday, April 23, 2007
Post-Earth Day Musings
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Virginia Tech
Bill O'Reilly: El Gringo Rumbero, do you hate America?
El Gringo Rumbero: Hell yeah!
Why is it such a big deal that the shooter was Asian? Conversely -- why wasn't it such a big deal that the shooters at Columbine were White? How does his being Asian have so much explanatory power? Could it be that the U.S. is still a nauseatingly racist country?
Here's my hypothesis about the shootings:
This guy killed all of those people because a lot people in this country are fucking annoying and anyone who has never fantasized about just going all out and fucking buck wild and putting gaping holes in his fellow Americans is either extremely Buddha-like and Saintly or just plain stupid and insensitive to the world. In fact the guy said he was sick and tired of the students at Virginia Tech whom he viewed as rich and debauched. In other words -- it aint that deep, people! Stop hiding your racism behind pseudo-anthropology and look at the world around you!
This guy killed all of those people because it's so fucking easy to get a firearm in this country! You can get one at Wal-Mart. The kid had two nine-millimeter pistols that he obtained legally! Had he stayed in Korea -- where it is virtually impossible for civilians to procure firearms (legally or illegally) -- he probably would just have gotten wasted and, in the worst case, gotten his ass beat in a drunken brawl. Instead he was in Blacksburg (VA) where -- unlike in Korea -- any demented psychopath or his retarded cousin can easily and legally procure lethal firearms.
And where's the memorial address for the 650,000 dead Iraqis Mr. President?! Why are the lives of 650,000 dead Iraqis worth exponentially less than the lives of 32 Americans?!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The War On Drugs (Revisited)
From New York to Tehran the world is getting high, high, high. Why? That's a rhetorical question isn't it? Why can't we all just get high on life? Let's face it: if life were a drug, it would be rubbing alcohol. It may get you a little drunk sometimes but, ultimately, it's just going to make you go blind or just kill you. For most people in this world, life is about figuring out where the next meal's coming from and for most of the rest it's about drudgery. We spend our time circulating commodities -- consuming them, manufactuiring them and selling them even though some of us wake up to the painful realization that we ourselves have become mere commodities, merely means by which this absurd machine perpetuates its murderous existence. So we get tipsy, twisted and tight trying to attain that sweet perfection that eludes us when sober. We look for the sublime through the eye of a hypodermic needle or try to inhale it -- hot, dry and ethereal -- through the stem of a glass pipe. But let me tell you, I checked and double-checked, baby I've done research and nobody ever found nirvana between the folds of a glassine envelope. Nobody ever found paradise at the bottom of a brandy snifter. What drugs provide is simulation and, as with all simulacra, you have to pay. Drugs are money, they cost money, and the high you get from them is the manifestation not of creativity, not of the reality that makes us all live but of the qualitative experience of a discrete quantity of money. And as with all money, someone had to die for those drugs, someone like the people of Afghanistan and Colombia. So to escape the misery of life in the Babylon system we took drugs and by taking those drugs we only augmented our complicity in the system that creates our misery. The same system that provides those drugs to slake our appetite for the sublime while securing surplus cash-flows and circumventing insurrection. Still we get no satisfaction. Instead we have crime, drugs and war ... and with so little love left in the world, maybe it's time we tried an insurrection.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
"300": The Banality of Fascist Art
Gilles Deleuze, 1983
Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader (with the fall of the Soviet Union), America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a politically antagonistic world.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 2007
On Saturday I shelled out 18 bucks for me and my date to see "300" -- Warner Bros.' production of the Frank Miller graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Since then I have been in a persistent state of of silent panic. No one in the audience booed as did the audience at the Berlin Film Festival last month after the screening of 300. There was intermittent laughter but no anger at such a blatantly fascist, racist and sexist spectacle. I can't believe that there could possibly be any question about the nature of this film. Here's a synopsis -- the world is being engulfed and overwhelmed by degenerate, diseased effeminate dark-skinned people from Africa and Asia and the only thing that stands in their way are 300 White Super-Men from Sparta which represents "freedom" (a word that, thanks to the U.S., now is devoid of any meaning whatsoever), masculinity and physical fitness (i.e. Whiteness as configured in the movie). Thus we are not talking about a hidden message here. Where is the outrage? D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was met with significant protests all across the country upon it's release about a Century ago. Where is the protest now? After 100 years of replaying the same fascist and racist scenario to the public it would appear that the majority have finally internalized the illusion such that, as one blogger put it, "it's ok that it has a fascist aesthetic... so long as you know it's there." I would argue that this is in fact the hallmark of culture that has become rigorously fascist. When the elements that comprise fascist ideology -- denigration of life in and for itself, glorification of death in war, racism and sexism -- become banal then you can be sure that you are living under a fascist regime.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Imperialist Discourse and Neo-Fascism in Japan
Another unspoken rule of the dominant discourse: It's alright to deny one's responsibility for past crimes against humanity -- as long as the people against whom those crimes were committed were not White.
Case in point – Last week Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly denied that the Japanese Government was responsible for the system of forced sexual slavery maintained in the areas of
There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it... So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly.
The declaration Prime Minister Abe referred to was the one the Japanese Government made on August 4, 1993 in which it admitted playing an unspecified role in the maintenance of brothels – the so-called "Comfort Stations" – while denying any responsibility and denying that any war crime had been committed. This declaration came largely as a response to pressure from a movement led by some the few survivors of the Comfort Stations. The stories of these women – so-called "Comfort Women" who came from all over East Asia but mainly from
The establishment of Comfort Stations in the areas of East Asia controlled by
Now imagine what kind of outrage would result if the Prime Minister of Germany were to declare that the German Government during World War II was not responsible for the Holocaust, that there never was a genocide and that the government was changing its position on the issue!
Remember how the news media of the core imperialist nations demonized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning the historical veracity of the Final Solution and the Lagers? And
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Finned Ones, Four-Legged Ones and Winged Ones
"What do they know - all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."
Isaac Bashevis Singer
About five years ago I went to a calf auction in the heart of
Inside the trailers were thousands of calves, born only the day before, waiting to be auctioned off to the dealers – the men in the sports jackets. Even before coming to the auction I knew the facts – that calves were a by-product of the dairy industry and that
The auctioneer rang a bell and the first calf was brought onto the scale and then pushed into the ring. It was a very small frail creature with bulging eyes and protruding rib cage. The hair on its body was still matted from the fluid in its mother's womb. It cringed and scurried to and fro across the ring and cried out. As I gazed into its eyes which were already yellow from malnutrition in the glaring light it occurred to me that something terrible was taking place in that room. The look in the animal's eyes was a fear so uncanny it made my guts tighten. It was the fear of an infant born only the day before whose sole experience is cold and hunger – the terror of a brand new life being ground into nothing. And while I began to panic inside as the animal cried out, the dealers in the front row began to kick and prod the creature with their mud-encrusted boots. The little beast tried in vain to avoid the blows in the tiny space but each way it turned it met another boot which pounded its hollow rib cage and sometimes knocked it off its unsure hooves. While this was happening, a string of unintelligible words streamed quickly from the auctioneer's lips until finally the man in overalls grabbed the calf by the neck, painted a number on its back and pushed it through one of the doors. This ordeal was repeated for several hours until the trailers were empty, when all the calves had been selected either for the veal farm or for slaughter. At the slaughterhouse the calves are ground into dog-food or frozen veal patties and there is no need to describe here what happens at the veal farm as enough has been written about these sordid facilities.
This is the role Civilized man has reserved for the finned, four-legged and winged ones – the animals. Animals are fair game. Man raises them for slaughter and even hunts them to extinction. And, since men are – after all – animals (we must eat, fuck and shit), one need not wonder at how men butcher entire villages, murder women and children and implement Final Solutions.
Monday, February 12, 2007
The Gringo You Love to Hate
It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.
People hate El Gringo Rumbero? Believe it! Every now and again I run a Google search on my square moniker to make sure no one is surfing the Web using my government name to cruise for jail-bait or solicit assault weapons or narcotics (since, obviously, i never do that shit). This morning I ran my regular search and, lo and behold, my birth-name comes up on the "Pro-raghead terrorist and communist filth list" posted by some responsible U.S. citizen doing his part to protect the precious homeland. Okay so maybe some drunk adolescent Internet user from Indiana enjoying his first pickup truck with a gun rack blasting Christian Rock is not exactly what Mao had in mind when he wrote about "the Enemy" but hey -- I'm an Armchair Revolutionary!
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
North America on ICE
It's been a long time… I shouldn't have left you… without a strong rhyme to step to
Eric B. & Rakim, 1987
A lot's gone down during my hiatus. For example: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been hard at work deporting hundreds of Mexican people who are in this country illegally.
You all know about ICE right?
ICE is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And, as ICE is charged with the enforcement of over 400 federal statutes, ICE Special Agents quite possibly possess the broadest investigative authority in the United States Government. Also ICE is the largest special weapons and tactics (SWAT) unit that has ever been mobilized!
The answer is clear: there is no terrorist threat. Why throw money and resources at an imaginary problem?
Okay but wait… if there's no terrorist threat, then what the hell is the DHS for?! The answer to this question should be obvious but many of us are too consumed by fear (fear spread by the DHS itself) to realize it. Think of the words "Department of Homeland Security" carefully. It tells us our home is in danger and we need this state institution to protect us. But we don't need it to protect us from foreign invaders since we have the Department of Defense for that. We need it to protect us from the evil terrorists! But who are the evil terrorists?
Consider that, in immigration raids now, ICE Special Agents are using the classic "darker than a grocery bag test" to separate the illegal from the legal immigrants. Moreover, in their press releases, ICE personnel have been equating illegal immigration with crimes that are much more repulsive to the public at large and that have long been associated in the news media with people of color -- like dope peddling, murder, rape, sexually abusing children and theft. Right now the line is that they are going after criminals and illegal immigrants but, given the Patriot Act, the terrorism law and the investigative powers ICE possesses, it is likely that the definition of a "terrorist" will grow increasingly broader.
In other words, the purpose of the DHS is to continuously create and violently suppress "terrorists" whenever the need arises, in the interest of ensuring the power of the state. That is to say that the DHS is nothing less than a terrorist institution. The most obvious parallel here is with the original terrorist body, the notorious Committee of Public Safety (Comité de Salut Public) of the Jacobins which presided over the infamous Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Both institutions use fear and violence to maintain order and, ultimately, to suppress dissent and preserve power. Another such organization that comes to mind is the Ku Klux Klan.
So when John Kerry says he "will hunt down and kill the terrorists," he is not only supporting actual terrorism abroad in the form of military interventions in the countries of Asia and elsewhere, but he is also supporting actual terrorism right here in the 50 states. It's time to recognize that the discourse of anti-terrorism in facts supports the biggest agent of terror in the