Roses are green,Violets are too,
Stop equating individuals
With their reproductive organs.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Ode to sunlight
Roses are green,Violets are too,
Stop equating individuals
With their reproductive organs.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
State of the Union address: more reading, less watching.
Back when my mom was a little girl, she lived with her mother, grandmother, and grandfather in a one-room "communal apartment" in Kiev. For those who aren't familiar with the realities of life in USSR: after the Bolshevik revolution in the end of 1917, and the civil war that lasted for two years after, many previously privately-owned houses and apartments were redistributed among the many people who moved to cities. If they were lucky, a family would be assigned one or two rooms in an apartment with several other families, mostly strangers, and then share the bathroom (or an outhouse) and the kitchen. The only way to improve one's living arrangement was to trade with someone, which was not such a private arrangement as it may sound at first.
Anyway, it's not my intent to write a treatise about the realities of life under Soviet Russia. I'm just giving some relevant background to the story.
So, my mother was living in a housing development in a communal apartment in Kiev. The building itself was quite old, and has all kinds of problems. As could be expected, the powers that be weren't all that willing, interested, or able to fix those problems, some of which were quite acute. At the time relevant to the story, the most acute problem was water leaking, or more like showering, from more than one place in the pipes and into the people's already-cramped living quarters. The tenants, hardened to put up with all kinds of privations, reached their limit, and started complaining loudly and insistently to the management, and the management's management (which is really the way to go if you want to get things done: threaten the bureaucrat's own job).
The manager, a relatively young and ambitious man, came quickly to address the tenants once the complaints started coming in to his manager. Gathering everyone in the courtyard, he eloquently appealed to the tenants' patience, making promises high and low if only they'd give him some breathing space to act, and hold off on their complaints so as not to distract him from doing his job.
Everyone was convinced, except for one tenant---an elderly blind man, who insisted that the manager was misleading. But overall, the tenants calmed down and stopped complaining, and settled down to patiently wait on the fulfillment of the manager's promise, placing buckets under the drips.
Three drippy weeks later, they learned that the young fella was promoted to manage a large new apartment complex in Leningrad. He was gone, aided by their silence in keeping his record clear of complaints.
The tenants cried out, betrayed, but for that elderly blind man. When asked how he knew the guy was not being straight with them, though he heard the same speech the rest of them heard out there in the courtyard, the blind man simply replied: "While you were staring at his gestures, I was listening to his words."
Which brings me to the State of the Union, or, more generally, to speeches in general, and president Obama's speeches in particular. No, I did not see the president's speech, nor did I see the GOP rebuttal. Rather, I read the transcript. Obama makes good speeches, and I particularly appreciate that he gives concrete and specific proposals, and doesn't rely only on the high-sounding generalities or cute anecdotes that were so prevalent in the speeches of W Bush (though to be sure, they were there a-plenty). I also found the GOP rebuttal lacking in similar concrete specifics, and high on generalities.
After reading the transcripts, I was curious about other people's reactions to the substance of the two speeches. What I find instead are prolonged discussions about who clapped when, whom Obama appeared to look at a particular phrase in his speech, who was scowling more than usual.
People, you are staring at their gestures.
It reminds me of the recent interview with Michael Moore on DemocracyNow!, where he talked about writing a letter to president Obama decrying his disappointment with the president's first-year performance. In the interview, Moore said,
I suspect that Michael Moore, and many others, were staring at Obama's gestures, while I was listening to his words.
Obama is an excellent public speaker. He can take a W Bush speech and make it sound hopeful and progressive. But the words will still say the same thing. And deeds need not follow words. So I have a suggestion: skip watching the speeches. Read the transcripts instead. And remember to follow the actions.
Anyway, it's not my intent to write a treatise about the realities of life under Soviet Russia. I'm just giving some relevant background to the story.
So, my mother was living in a housing development in a communal apartment in Kiev. The building itself was quite old, and has all kinds of problems. As could be expected, the powers that be weren't all that willing, interested, or able to fix those problems, some of which were quite acute. At the time relevant to the story, the most acute problem was water leaking, or more like showering, from more than one place in the pipes and into the people's already-cramped living quarters. The tenants, hardened to put up with all kinds of privations, reached their limit, and started complaining loudly and insistently to the management, and the management's management (which is really the way to go if you want to get things done: threaten the bureaucrat's own job).
The manager, a relatively young and ambitious man, came quickly to address the tenants once the complaints started coming in to his manager. Gathering everyone in the courtyard, he eloquently appealed to the tenants' patience, making promises high and low if only they'd give him some breathing space to act, and hold off on their complaints so as not to distract him from doing his job.
Everyone was convinced, except for one tenant---an elderly blind man, who insisted that the manager was misleading. But overall, the tenants calmed down and stopped complaining, and settled down to patiently wait on the fulfillment of the manager's promise, placing buckets under the drips.
Three drippy weeks later, they learned that the young fella was promoted to manage a large new apartment complex in Leningrad. He was gone, aided by their silence in keeping his record clear of complaints.
The tenants cried out, betrayed, but for that elderly blind man. When asked how he knew the guy was not being straight with them, though he heard the same speech the rest of them heard out there in the courtyard, the blind man simply replied: "While you were staring at his gestures, I was listening to his words."
Which brings me to the State of the Union, or, more generally, to speeches in general, and president Obama's speeches in particular. No, I did not see the president's speech, nor did I see the GOP rebuttal. Rather, I read the transcript. Obama makes good speeches, and I particularly appreciate that he gives concrete and specific proposals, and doesn't rely only on the high-sounding generalities or cute anecdotes that were so prevalent in the speeches of W Bush (though to be sure, they were there a-plenty). I also found the GOP rebuttal lacking in similar concrete specifics, and high on generalities.
After reading the transcripts, I was curious about other people's reactions to the substance of the two speeches. What I find instead are prolonged discussions about who clapped when, whom Obama appeared to look at a particular phrase in his speech, who was scowling more than usual.
People, you are staring at their gestures.
It reminds me of the recent interview with Michael Moore on DemocracyNow!, where he talked about writing a letter to president Obama decrying his disappointment with the president's first-year performance. In the interview, Moore said,
And I thought to myself, did Michael Moore hear different campaign speeches and presidential debates than I did? Obama didn't make any promises about real universal healthcare, he only talked about working towards extending coverage to the 40 million Americans who currently don't have it. And he never talked about getting out of Afghanistan, he talked about getting out of Iraq, and shifting the focus back to Afghanistan, which is exactly what he did.
I sent a note off to the White House the night of the Massachusetts election, and I said to President Obama, “I’m sure you’re not surprised. What did you think was going to happen after a year of completely going back on everything you promised in terms of real universal healthcare, a year of you not getting us out of Afghanistan but escalating the war to a degree that is shocking?"
I suspect that Michael Moore, and many others, were staring at Obama's gestures, while I was listening to his words.
Obama is an excellent public speaker. He can take a W Bush speech and make it sound hopeful and progressive. But the words will still say the same thing. And deeds need not follow words. So I have a suggestion: skip watching the speeches. Read the transcripts instead. And remember to follow the actions.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
A very brief current history of Haiti
The Right Testicle of Hell:
History of a Haitian Holocaust
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
Sunday 17 January 2010
1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.
11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?
Don't blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers' death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves' successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
15. Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!
16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.
***
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.
Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
History of a Haitian Holocaust
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
Sunday 17 January 2010
1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.
11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?
Don't blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers' death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves' successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
15. Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!
16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.
***
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.
Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Tanya Tagaq: song of the innuit
A week ago I blogged on the heteronormative framework, and how some people don't fit into it. Usually heteronormativity is an LGBT (and other alphabet soup) issue, but here's a lovely counterexample of it, at least from the perspective of western ideas of femininity. Tanya Tagaq is an innuit throat singer. I love this performance in particular, because she is dressed in an ideal western-style feminine clothes, accompanied by a western instrument, but her singing really puts the western idea of femininity to question.
It's also one of the coolest songs I ever heard.
It's also one of the coolest songs I ever heard.
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