“Filmforum is delighted to host an evening with one of the Southland’s most charming and talented filmmakers, Kate McCabe. Born and raised in Philadelphia, McCabe collaborates with musicians, sound designers and artists to make her films more delicious. Most of the time her films function as a portrait of some kind — sometimes layered in metaphor, others purely documentary in style. She also likes to blur the line between live action photography and animation, with time manipulation techniques both in-camera and with optical printing. (Apparently that is the fault of her masters in Experimental Animation from Cal Art.) Her work on film has been well received in galleries and festivals along with her photos and paintings. A founding member of the art collective Kidnap Yourself (located in the desert near Joshua Tree, CA), Kate’s focus lately has been finishing her first feature SABBIA, her dog Turner Ranch and publishing future art books for Kidnap Yourself.
Tonight will feature a sneak preview of her new film Sabbia, an ecstatic and exploratory film of musical and desert expanses, plus her last short film, Milk and Honey.
Sabbia (2006, 16mm on video, 79 mins., color, stereo sound)
Sabbia is a desert trip inspired by the music of Brant Bjork and visualized by Kate McCabe. Evoking the immeasurable desert landscape and old ghosts of a dusty past, the film beautifully weaves together a tapestry of perfect moments and a raw rock-n-roll way of life. As a form of psychedelic documentary, the film explores the musical wilderness of a weird and sexy Southern California wasteland. Sabbia presents the landscape’s vast sense of space and time and like a mirage, reveals the magic of desert music, art, and soul.
The vastness of the deserts, their sweep and scope and giant emptiness waiting to be filled with raw sound, has always been a prominent theme in Bjork’s music, and it finds suitable expression in McCabe’s airy, untethered visualizations of those parts of California where “wasted” describes the landscape instead of the people. Conjuring in bits and pieces everything from Van Sant’s Gerry to Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands, Bjork & McCabe’s Sabbia crowds the empty desert with sights and sounds that seem not so much natural as inevitable.
“The desert didn’t make sense to me as a kid. I knew brick houses, kickball on asphalt and subway trains. The desert was something in the movies - something foreign like: foreign legion, Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy, the Technicolor landscapes of Lawrence of Arabia, Mad Max and lost robots on remote planets. Sand to me meant Wildwood, New Jersey. I’ll admit that I had a long-standing crush on California, a deep pull toward all things west. Naturally, west is the direction I headed the minute I had a car that would make it. But the desert was just a blur off the highway in America, something I passed through on my way to Los Angeles. Years after the start of my life in LA, I first saw Brant Bjork up close as he popped onto the sidewalk outside the Whiskey fresh off the stage with Fu Manchu. I straight up told him that I wanted to be him when I grew up, (which would be if I could drum - but I don’t drum, I make pictures.)
“Hearing Brant’s Jalamanta for the first time was an overwhelming visual event. Every project he made thereafter had the same effect — a daydream sound track for a California state of mind, something that was becoming more real to me everyday. I started a film about my California experience called Milk and Honey and I knew that it needed a music that was true to the place. Strangely, I did meet Brant again, not on the sidewalk after a gig, but this time at a show with friends and immediately knew his sound would be the only one that fit. I seized the opportunity to work with him and soon enough was embarking on my first trip to the desert and a new film that became bigger than Brant or I probably even originally envisioned.
“At the start, I was curious if the landscape would be affected by my childhood movie versions of the scene. Brant drew me a killer map (with a key!), and I set out, camera in hand to film ‘the desert.’ Sounded so easy until I realized I was up against an impossible vastness that teased me like a mirage–daring me to draw closer. The desert slowly opened up to me; first it was with snow (which completely baffled me), secondly with kindness from new desert friends, then with oases, vistas, wanderers and ghosts. It even surprised me to find all the hidden water there, which began to seem as abundant as the wind. It felt undeniably like uncovering the secrets of a timeless place and impulsively capturing that optical illusion - keeping it genuine all the while. Much as I think Brant does when he makes such solid visual music. For this kind of film, so much is based on following that impulse, making your timing be your everything and patiently believing in well-founded chance.
“I moved to the desert since I started this project, and the only way to describe that phenomenon is that it spoke to me. Called me to come, open up and stay and that I did, because in person, this place is better than the movies. I know in my heart that I can never fully record on film a landscape in its entirety that is as vast, weird, wonderful and achingly beautiful as this. But - I can share with people that part of the magic that spoke to me, that part that challenged me like a mirage to visualize Brant’s soundscape — dared me to come nearer.” — Kate McCabe
Milk and Honey (1994, 16mm color film, 16 mins.)
An experimental ‘home movie’, the film exposes the nature of light, love and moon landings in the Promised Land of Southern California. When I started to shoot Milk and Honey I knew I had begun to capture moments that could transport the viewer between worlds of light and shadow to a place of tangible nostalgia.
The film became a record of how secluded one can become in California or anywhere else. In Los Angeles people come to live their dreams and as a result dreams are more real there. Yet human connectedness is different in parts, the sprawl and the automobile seem to take us further away from each other than before. Moving to Los Angeles seemed to me like traveling to a remote planet and we were astronauts hovering within its borders isolated in a strange sanctuary. Milk and Honey allows you to drift into that twilight world and dream of home. — Kate McCabe
Credits for Milk and Honey and Sabbia:
Sound Design: George Lockwood
Music: Brant Bjork
Photography & Direction: Kate McCabe
[spoken intro] This song right here is dedicated to the President of the United States of America. Y’all might know him as George Bush, but where I’m from? The lost city of New Orleans? We call him this…
[Ray Charles sample starts: “Georgia…”]
Bush! Let’s go…
Now… this song is dedicated to the one with the suit
thick white skin and his eyes bright blue
so-called beef with you know who
fuckit he just let ‘em kill all our troops
lookit all the bullshit we been through
had a nigga sittin on top of them roofs
Hurricane Katrina we shoulda called it Hurricane Georgia…Bush!
Then they telling y’all lies on the news
the white people smiling like everything cool
but I know people that died in that pool
I know people that died in them schools
now only to survive what to do
got no trailer you got to move
now it’s on to Texas and to Georgia…
They tell you what they want to show you
what they want you to see
but they don’t let you know what’s really going on
make it look like a lotta stealing going on
boy them cops is killers in my home
niggas shot dead in the middle of the street
I ain’t no thief I’m just trying to eat
man, fuck the police and President Georgia…Bush!
So what happened to the levees?
Why wasn’t they steady?
Why wasn’t they able to control this?
I know some folks who live by the levee
they keep on telling me said they heard explosions
same shit happened back in Hurricane Betsy in 1965
I ain’t too young to know this
that was President Johnson
but this is President Georgia…Bush!
[chorus]
We from a town where everybody drowned
Everybody died but baby I’m still praying wit’ cha!
Everybody cried but ain’t nobody tried
there’s no doubt on my mind it was…Bush!
[repeat]
I was born in a boot at the bottom of the map
New Orleans baby
now the White House hating
trying to wash us away like we not on the map
wait have you heard the latest
they saying you gotta have paper if you tryin’ to come back
niggas thinking it’s a rap scene
we can’t hustle and they drop
we ain’t from Georgia…
It’s them dead bodies
the lost houses
the mayor says don’t worry bout it
and the children have been scorned
no one’s here to care bout them
fat shout to all the rappers that helped out
yeah we lucky they called on y’all
but fuck President…Bush!
When you see them Confederate flags
you know what it is
a white cracker muthafucka that probably voted for him
now he ain’t gonna drop no dollars
but he do drop bombs
R.I.P. to they that died in the storm
but fuck President…Bush!
See us in the city man
give us a pound
if a nigga still moving then he holding it down
I had two Jags but lost both them bitches
I’m from the N.O….the N.O….
[chorus]
We from a town where everybody drowned
Everybody died but baby I’m still praying wit’ cha!
Everybody cryin’ but ain’t nobody tryin’
there’s no doubt on my mind it was…Bush!
Bush!
An inability to protect its citizens. The belief that it is above the law. A lack of democracy. Three defining characteristics of the ‘failed state’. And that, says Noam Chomsky, is exactly what the US is becoming. In an exclusive extract from his devastating new book, America’s leading thinker explains how his country lost its way
Published: 30 May 2006
The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival. Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world’s leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes. It is important to stress the government, because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree.
That brings up a fourth issue that should deeply concern Americans, and the world: the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy, one of the reasons for the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that, as Gar Alperowitz puts it in America Beyond Capitalism, “the American ’system’ as a whole is in real trouble - that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values [of] equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy”.
The “system” is coming to have some of the features of failed states, to adopt a currently fashionable notion that is conventionally applied to states regarded as potential threats to our security (like Iraq) or as needing our intervention to rescue the population from severe internal threats (like Haiti). Though the concept is recognised to be, according to the journal Foreign Affairs, “frustratingly imprecise”, some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified. One is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. Another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious “democratic deficit” that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.
Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of “failed states” right at home.
No one familiar with history should be surprised that the growing democratic deficit in the United States is accompanied by declaration of messianic missions to bring democracy to a suffering world. Declarations of noble intent by systems of power are rarely complete fabrication, and the same is true in this case. Under some conditions, forms of democracy are indeed acceptable. Abroad, as the leading scholar-advocate of “democracy promotion” concludes, we find a “strong line of continuity”: democracy is acceptable if and only if it is consistent with strategic and economic interests (Thomas Carothers). In modified form, the doctrine holds at home as well.
The basic dilemma facing policymakers is sometimes candidly recognised at the dovish liberal extreme of the spectrum, for example, by Robert Pastor, President Carter’s national security adviser for Latin America. He explained why the administration had to support the murderous and corrupt Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and, when that proved impossible, to try at least to maintain the US-trained National Guard even as it was massacring the population “with a brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy”, killing some 40,000 people. The reason was the familiar one: “The United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations of the region, but it also did not want developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely.”
Similar dilemmas faced Bush administration planners after their invasion of Iraq. They want Iraqis “to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely”. Iraq must therefore be sovereign and democratic, but within limits. It must somehow be constructed as an obedient client state, much in the manner of the traditional order in Central America. At a general level, the pattern is familiar, reaching to the opposite extreme of institutional structures. The Kremlin was able to maintain satellites that were run by domestic political and military forces, with the iron fist poised. Germany was able to do much the same in occupied Europe even while it was at war, as did fascist Japan in Man-churia (its Manchukuo). Fascist Italy achieved similar results in North Africa while carrying out virtual genocide that in no way harmed its favourable image in the West and possibly inspired Hitler. Traditional imperial and neocolonial systems illustrate many variations on similar themes.
To achieve the traditional goals in Iraq has proven to be surprisingly difficult, despite unusually favourable circumstances. The dilemma of combining a measure of independence with firm control arose in a stark form not long after the invasion, as mass non-violent resistance compelled the invaders to accept far more Iraqi initiative than they had anticipated. The outcome even evoked the nightmarish prospect of a more or less democratic and sovereign Iraq taking its place in a loose Shiite alliance comprising Iran, Shiite Iraq, and possibly the nearby Shiite-dominated regions of Saudi Arabia, controlling most of the world’s oil and independent of Washington.
The situation could get worse. Iran might give up on hopes that Europe could become independent of the United States, and turn eastward. Highly relevant background is discussed by Selig Harrison, a leading specialist on these topics. “The nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union were based on a bargain that the EU, held back by the US, has failed to honour,” Harrison observes.
“The bargain was that Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, and the EU would undertake security guarantees. The language of the joint declaration was “unambiguous. ‘A mutually acceptable agreement,’ it said, would not only provide ‘objective guarantees’ that Iran’s nuclear programme is ‘exclusively for peaceful purposes’ but would ‘equally provide firm commitments on security issues.’”
The phrase “security issues” is a thinly veiled reference to the threats by the United States and Israel to bomb Iran, and preparations to do so. The model regularly adduced is Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, which appears to have initiated Saddam’s nuclear weapons programs, another demonstration that violence tends to elicit violence. Any attempt to execute similar plans against Iran could lead to immediate violence, as is surely understood in Washington. During a visit to Tehran, the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned that his militia would defend Iran in the case of any attack, “one of the strongest signs yet”, the Washington Post reported, “that Iraq could become a battleground in any Western conflict with Iran, raising the spectre of Iraqi Shiite militias - or perhaps even the US-trained Shiite-dominated military - taking on American troops here in sympathy with Iran.” The Sadrist bloc, which registered substantial gains in the December 2005 elections, may soon become the most powerful single political force in Iraq. It is consciously pursuing the model of other successful Islamist groups, such as Hamas in Palestine, combining strong resistance to military occupation with grassroots social organising and service to the poor.
Washington’s unwillingness to allow regional security issues to be considered is nothing new. It has also arisen repeatedly in the confrontation with Iraq. In the background is the matter of Israeli nuclear weapons, a topic that Washington bars from international consideration. Beyond that lurks what Harrison rightly describes as “the central problem facing the global non-proliferation regime”: the failure of the nuclear states to live up to their nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation “to phase out their own nuclear weapons” - and, in Washington’s case, formal rejection of the obligation.
Unlike Europe, China refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the growing fear of China on the part of US planners. Much of Iran’s oil already goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons, presumably considered a deterrent to US threats. Still more uncomfortable for Washington is the fact that, according to the Financial Times, “the Sino-Saudi relationship has developed dramatically”, including Chinese military aid to Saudi Arabia and gas exploration rights for China. By 2005, Saudi Arabia provided about 17 per cent of China’s oil imports. Chinese and Saudi oil companies have signed deals for drilling and construction of a huge refinery (with Exxon Mobil as a partner). A January 2006 visit by Saudi king Abdullah to Beijing was expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for “increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas, and minerals”.
Indian analyst Aijaz Ahmad observes that Iran could “emerge as the virtual linchpin in the making, over the next decade or so, of what China and Russia have come to regard as an absolutely indispensable Asian Energy Security Grid, for breaking Western control of the world’s energy supplies and securing the great industrial revolution of Asia”. South Korea and southeast Asian countries are likely to join, possibly Japan as well. A crucial question is how India will react. It rejected US pressures to withdraw from an oil pipeline deal with Iran. On the other hand, India joined the United States and the EU in voting for an anti-Iranian resolution at the IAEA, joining also in their hypocrisy, since India rejects the NPT regime to which Iran, so far, appears to be largely conforming. Ahmad reports that India may have secretly reversed its stand under Iranian threats to terminate a $20bn gas deal. Washington later warned India that its “nuclear deal with the US could be ditched” if India did not go along with US demands, eliciting a sharp rejoinder from the Indian foreign ministry and an evasive tempering of the warning by the US embassy.
The prospect that Europe and Asia might move toward greater independence has seriously troubled US planners since World War II, and concerns have significantly increased as the tripolar order has continued to evolve, along with new south-south interactions and rapidly growing EU engagement with China.
US intelligence has projected that the United States, while controlling Middle East oil for the traditional reasons, will itself rely mainly on more stable Atlantic Basin resources (West Africa, western hemisphere). Control of Middle East oil is now far from a sure thing, and these expectations are also threatened by developments in the western hemisphere, accelerated by Bush administration policies that have left the United States remarkably isolated in the global arena. The Bush administration has even succeeded in alienating Canada, an impressive feat.
Canada’s minister of natural resources said that within a few years one quarter of the oil that Canada now sends to the United States may go to China instead. In a further blow to Washington’s energy policies, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, Venezuela, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on the openly hostile US government. Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other relations with China, with some setbacks, but likely expansion, in particular for raw materials exporters like Brazil and Chile.
Meanwhile, Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming very close, each relying on its comparative advantage. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil while in return Cuba organises literacy and health programs, sending thousands of highly skilled professionals, teachers, and doctors, who work in the poorest and most neglected areas, as they do elsewhere in the Third World. Cuba-Venezuela projects are extending to the Caribbean countries, where Cuban doctors are providing healthcare to thousands of people with Venezuelan funding. Operation Miracle, as it is called, is described by Jamaica’s ambassador to Cuba as “an example of integration and south-south cooperation”, and is generating great enthusiasm among the poor majority. Cuban medical assistance is also being welcomed elsewhere. One of the most horrendous tragedies of recent years was the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. In addition to the huge toll, unknown numbers of survivors have to face brutal winter weather with little shelter, food, or medical assistance. One has to turn to the South Asian press to read that “Cuba has provided the largest contingent of doctors and paramedics to Pakistan”, paying all the costs (perhaps with Venezuelan funding), and that President Musharraf expressed his “deep gratitude” for the “spirit and compassion” of the Cuban medical teams.
Some analysts have suggested that Cuba and Venezuela might even unite, a step towards further integration of Latin America in a bloc that is more independent from the United States. Venezuela has joined Mercosur, the South American customs union, a move described by Argentine president Nestor Kirchner as “a milestone” in the development of this trading bloc, and welcomed as opening “a new chapter in our integration” by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Independent experts say that “adding Venezuela to the bloc furthers its geopolitical vision of eventually spreading Mercosur to the rest of the region”.
At a meeting to mark Venezuela’s entry into Mercosur, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said, “We cannot allow this to be purely an economic project, one for the elites and for the transnational companies,” a not very oblique reference to the US-sponsored “Free Trade Agreement for the Americas”, which has aroused strong public opposition. Venezuela also supplied Argentina with fuel oil to help stave off an energy crisis, and bought almost a third of Argentine debt issued in 2005, one element of a region-wide effort to free the countries from the control of the US-dominated IMF after two decades of disastrous effects of conformity to its rules. The IMF has “acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain among the Argentine people”, President Kirchner said in announcing his decision to pay almost $1 trillion to rid itself of the IMF forever. Radically violating IMF rules, Argentina enjoyed a substantial recovery from the disaster left by IMF policies.
Steps toward independent regional integration advanced further with the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in December 2005, the first president from the indigenous majority. Morales moved quickly to reach energy accords with Venezuela.
Though Central America was largely disciplined by Reaganite violence and terror, the rest of the hemisphere is falling out of control, particularly from Venezuela to Argentina, which was the poster child of the IMF and the Treasury Department until its economy collapsed under the policies they imposed. Much of the region has left-centre governments. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, both major energy producers, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether. Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock. Some are even calling for an “Indian nation” in South America. Meanwhile the economic integration that is under way is reversing patterns that trace back to the Spanish conquests, with Latin American elites and economies linked to the imperial powers but not to one another. Along with growing south-south interaction on a broader scale, these developments are strongly influenced by popular organisations that are coming together in the unprecedented international global justice movements, ludicrously called “anti-globalisation” because they favour globalisation that privileges the interests of people, not investors and financial institutions. For many reasons, the system of US global dominance is fragile, even apart from the damage inflicted by Bush planners.
One consequence is that the Bush administration’s pursuit of the traditional policies of deterring democracy faces new obstacles. It is no longer as easy as before to resort to military coups and international terrorism to overthrow democratically elected governments, as Bush planners learnt ruefully in 2002 in Venezuela. The “strong line of continuity” must be pursued in other ways, for the most part. In Iraq, as we have seen, mass nonviolent resistance compelled Washington and London to permit the elections they had sought to evade. The subsequent effort to subvert the elections by providing substantial advantages to the administration’s favourite candidate, and expelling the independent media, also failed. Washington faces further problems. The Iraqi labor movement is making considerable progress despite the opposition of the occupation authorities. The situation is rather like Europe and Japan after World War II, when a primary goal of the United States and United Kingdom was to undermine independent labour movements - as at home, for similar reasons: organised labour contributes in essential ways to functioning democracy with popular engagement. Many of the measures adopted at that time - withholding food, supporting fascist police - are no longer available. Nor is it possible today to rely on the labour bureaucracy of the American Institute for Free Labor Development to help undermine unions. Today, some American unions are supporting Iraqi workers, just as they do in Colombia, where more union activists are murdered than anywhere in the world. At least the unions now receive support from the United Steelworkers of America and others, while Washington continues to provide enormous funding for the government, which bears a large part of the responsibility.
The problem of elections arose in Palestine much in the way it did in Iraq. As already discussed, the Bush administration refused to permit elections until the death of Yasser Arafat, aware that the wrong man would win. After his death, the administration agreed to permit elections, expecting the victory of its favoured Palestinian Authority candidates. To promote this outcome, Washington resorted to much the same modes of subversion as in Iraq, and often before. Washington used the US Agency for International Development as an “invisible conduit” in an effort to “increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority on the eve of crucial elections in which the governing party faces a serious challenge from the radical Islamic group Hamas” (Washington Post), spending almost $2m “on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction’s image with voters” (New York Times). In the United States, or any Western country, even a hint of such foreign interference would destroy a candidate, but deeply rooted imperial mentality legitimates such routine measures elsewhere. However, the attempt to subvert the elections again resoundingly failed.
The US and Israeli governments now have to adjust to dealing somehow with a radical Islamic party that approaches their traditional rejectionist stance, though not entirely, at least if Hamas really does mean to agree to an indefinite truce on the international border as its leaders state. The US and Israel, in contrast, insist that Israel must take over substantial parts of the West Bank (and the forgotten Golan Heights). Hamas’s refusal to accept Israel’s “right to exist” mirrors the refusal of Washington and Jerusalem to accept Palestine’s “right to exist” - a concept unknown in international affairs; Mexico accepts the existence of the United States but not its abstract “right to exist” on almost half of Mexico, acquired by conquest. Hamas’s formal commitment to “destroy Israel” places it on a par with the United States and Israel, which vowed formally that there could be no “additional Palestinian state” (in addition to Jordan) until they relaxed their extreme rejectionist stand partially in the past few years, in the manner already reviewed. Although Hamas has not said so, it would come as no great surprise if Hamas were to agree that Jews may remain in scattered areas in the present Israel, while Palestine constructs huge settlement and infrastructure projects to take over the valuable land and resources, effectively breaking Israel up into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from some small part of Jerusalem where Jews would also be allowed to remain. And they might agree to call the fragments “a state”. If such proposals were made, we would - rightly - regard them as virtually a reversion to Nazism, a fact that might elicit some thoughts. If such proposals were made, Hamas’s position would be essentially like that of the United States and Israel for the past five years, after they came to tolerate some impoverished form of “statehood”. It is fair to describe Hamas as radical, extremist, and violent, and as a serious threat to peace and a just political settlement. But the organisation is hardly alone in this stance.
Elsewhere traditional means of undermining democracy have succeeded. In Haiti, the Bush administration’s favourite “democracy-building group, the International Republican Institute”, worked assiduously to promote the opposition to President Aristide, helped by the withholding of desperately needed aid on grounds that were dubious at best. When it seemed that Aristide would probably win any genuine election, Washington and the opposition chose to withdraw, a standard device to discredit elections that are going to come out the wrong way: Nicaragua in 1984 and Venezuela in December 2005 are examples that should be familiar. Then followed a military coup, expulsion of the president, and a reign of terror and violence vastly exceeding anything under the elected government.
The persistence of the strong line of continuity to the present again reveals that the United States is very much like other powerful states. It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population, to the accompaniment of rhetorical flourishes about its dedication to the highest values. That is practically a historical universal, and the reason why sensible people pay scant attention to declarations of noble intent by leaders, or accolades by their followers.
One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: “They present solutions, but I don’t like them.” In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the United States have already been mentioned: 1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; 2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols; 3) let the UN take the lead in international crises; 4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; 5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter; 6) give up the Security Council veto and have “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind,” as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centres disagree; 7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending. For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy. To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on such matters because of another feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known. In a highly atomised society, the public is therefore largely deprived of the opportunity to form considered opinions.
Another conservative suggestion is that facts, logic, and elementary moral principles should matter. Those who take the trouble to adhere to that suggestion will soon be led to abandon a good part of familiar doctrine, though it is surely much easier to repeat self-serving mantras. Such simple truths carry us some distance toward developing more specific and detailed answers. More important, they open the way to implement them, opportun- ities that are readily within our grasp if we can free ourselves from the shackles of doctrine and imposed illusion.
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organising abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalised quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as “democratic politics”. As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.
This is an edited extract from Failed States by Noam Chomsky (Hamish Hamilton).
The godfather of gonzo says 9/11 caused a “nationwide
nervous breakdown” — and let the Bush crowd loot the
country and savage American democracy.
By John Glassie, Salon
Feb. 3, 2003 | He calls himself “an elderly dope fiend
living out in the wilderness,” but Hunter S. Thompson
will also be found this week on the New York Times
bestseller list with a new memoir, “Kingdom of Fear:
Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final
Days of the American Century.”
Listening to his ragged voice, there is some sense that
Thompson, now 65, has reined in his outlaw ways, gotten
a little softer, perhaps a little more gracious now
that he’s reached retirement age. “I’ve found you can
deal with the system a lot easier if you use their
rules,” he says. “I talk to a lot of lawyers.”
But do not be deceived. In “Kingdom of Fear” and in a
telephone interview with Salon from his compound in
Aspen, Colo., Thompson did what he’s always done: speak
the truth about American society as he sees it, without
worrying much about decorum. “Who does vote for these
dishonest shitheads?” he writes, referring to the
people currently occupying the White House. “They are
the racists and hate mongers among us — they are the
Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.”
That’s his enduring attitude in this new age of
darkness: a lot more loathing than fear.
…
Q: Your author blurb says you live in “a fortified
compound near Aspen, Colorado.” In what sense is it
fortified and why does it need to be?
A: Actually, I live in an extremely pastoral setting in an
old log house. It’s a farm really. I moved here 30 years
ago. I think the only fortification might be my
reputation. If people believe they’re going to be shot,
they might stay away.
… Do I have any illegal weapons? No. I have a .454 magnum
revolver, which is huge, and it’s absolutely legal. One
day I was wild-eyed out here with Johnny Depp, and we
both ordered these guns from Freedom, Wyo., and got
them the next day through FedEx. Mainly, I have rifles,
pistols, shotguns; I have a lot of those. But everything
I have is top quality; I don’t have any junk weapons. I
wouldn’t have any military weapon around here, except
as an artifact of some kind. Given Ashcroft and the
clear blueprint of this administration to make
everything illegal and everything suspicious — how
about suspicion of being a terrorist sympathizer?
Goddamn, talk about filling up your concentration
camps. But, yeah, my police record is clean. This is
not a fortified compound.
…
Q: I assume you’ve taken a side in the civil
liberties debate that’s come up in the aftermath of
9/11?
A: It’s a disaster of unthinkable proportions — part of
the downward spiral of dumbness. Civil liberties are
black and white issues. I don’t think people think far
enough to see the ramifications. The PATRIOT Act was a
dagger in the heart, really, of even the concept of a
democratic government that is free, equal and just. There are a lot more concentration camps right now than
Guantanamo Bay. But they’re not marked. Now, every jail,
every bush-league cop can run a concentration camp. It
amounts to a military and police takeover, I think.
Q: Well, as some have pointed out, Lincoln suspended
habeas corpus during the Civil War. Is some suspension
of civil liberties ever appropriate or justified in a
time of war?
A: If there’s a visible, obvious threat like Hitler, but
in my mind the administration is using these bogeymen
for their own purposes. This military law is nothing
like the Constitution. They’re exploiting the formula
here: The people are afraid of something and you offer
a solution, however drastic, and they go along with it.
For a while, yeah. My suspicions are more justified
every day with this manufacturing of dangerous killer
villains. The rest of the world does not perceive, I
don’t think, that some tin-horn dictator in the Middle
East is more of a danger to the world than the U.S. is.
This country depends on war as a primary industry. The
White House has pumped up the danger factor because
it’s to their advantage. It’s to John Ashcroft’s
advantage. There have always been pros and cons about
the righteousness of life in America but this just
seems planned, it seems consistent, and it seems
traditional.
Q: What do they get out of it?
They get control of the U.S. economy, their friends get
rich. These are not philosopher-kings we’re talking
about. These are politicians. It’s a very sleazy way of
using the system. One of the problems today is that
what’s going on today is not as complex as it seems.
The Pentagon just asked for another $14 billion more in
the budget, and it’s already $28 billion. [Defense
spending in the 2003 budget rose $19.4 billion, to
$364.6 billion]. That’s one sector of the economy
that’s not down the tubes. So, some people are getting
rich off of this. It’s the oligarchy. I believe the
Republicans have never thought that democracy was
anything but a tribal myth. The GOP is the party of
capital. It’s pretty basic. And it may have something
to do with the deterioration of educational system in
this country. I don’t think Bush has the slightest
intention or concern about educating the public.
…
Q: Well, what do you prescribe? What do you advocate?
A: All the blood is drained out of democracy — it dies –
when only half the population votes. I would use the
vote. It would seem to me that people who have been
made afraid, if you don’t like what’s happening, if you
don’t want to go to war, if you don’t want to be broke,
well for God’s sake don’t go out and vote for the very
bastards who are putting you there. That’s a pillar of
any democratic future in this country. The party of
capital is not interested in having every black person
in Louisiana having access to the Ivy League. They
don’t need an educated public.
Q: So what took place during this past election?
I believe the Republicans have seen what they’ve
believed all along, which is that this democracy stuff
is bull, and that people don’t want to be burdened by
political affairs. That people would rather just be
taken care of. The oligarchy doesn’t need an educated
public. And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny. I
think that’s what worries me. It goes back to Fourth
Amendment issues. How much do you value your freedom?
Would you trade your freedom for some illusion of
security? Freedom is something that dies unless it’s
used.
Q: Why would anybody listen to you?
A: I don’t have to apologize for any political judgments
I’ve made. The stuff I wrote in the ’60s and ’70s was
astonishingly accurate. I may have been a little rough
on Nixon, but he was rough. You had to do it with him.
What you believe has to be worth something. I’ve never
given it a lot of thought: I’ve never hired people to
figure out what I should do about my image. I always
work the same way, and talk the same way, and I’ve been
right enough that I stand by my record.
…
This country has been having a nationwide nervous
breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly
broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re
threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy.
But I don’t think fear is a very effective way of
dealing with things — of responding to reality. Fear
is just another word for ignorance.
…
Q: You’ve also referred to your beat as the “Death of the
American Dream.” That was the ostensible “subject” of
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Has it just sort of
been on its deathbed since 1968?
A: I think that’s right.
Q: A lot of people would argue with you about that anyway,
and believe that the American Dream is alive and well.
A: They need to take a better look around.
Q: But in a way, haven’t you lived the American Dream?
A: Goddammit! [pause] I haven’t thought about it that way.
I suppose you could say that in a certain way I have.
…
“I do not advocate the use of dangerous drugs, wild amounts of alcohol and
violence and weirdness — but they’ve always worked for me.”
Two Marines were told to photograph corpses, family members say
Updated: 52 minutes ago
HANFORD, Calif. - Two Marines were severely traumatized after following orders to photograph corpses of unarmed Iraqi civilians that members of their unit are suspected of killing, their families said Monday.
The parents of Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, 20, and Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, 21, both members of a Marine unit based at Camp Pendleton, said their sons were sent into the western Iraqi city of Haditha to help remove the bodies of as many as two dozen men, women and children who were shot.
While there, the two were ordered to photograph the scene with personal cameras they happened to be carrying the day of the attack, the families told The Associated Press in separate interviews. Briones� mother, Susie, said her son told her mother he saw the bodies of 23 dead Iraqis that day.
�It was horrific. It was a terrible scene,� Susie Briones said in a tearful interview Monday at her home in California�s San Joaquin Valley.
Navy investigators confiscated Briones� camera, his mother said. Wright�s parents, Patty and Frederick Wright of Novato, declined to comment on what might have happened to the photos their son took, but they said he had turned over all of his information to the Navy.
�He is the Forrest Gump of the military,� Frederick Wright said. �He ended up in the spotlight through no fault of his own.�
Ryan Briones told the Los Angeles Times that Navy investigators had interrogated him twice in Iraq and that they wanted to know whether bodies had been tampered with. He turned over his digital camera but did not know what happened to it after that.
Susie Briones called the Nov. 19 incident a �massacre� and said the military had done little to help her son, who goes by his middle name, deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder.
�I know Ryan is going through some major trauma right now,� said Susie Briones, 40, an academic adviser at a community college. �It was very traumatic for all of the soldiers involved with this thing.�
The details of what happened in Haditha are still murky. What is known is that a bomb rocked a military convoy and left one Marine dead. Marines then shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot other people, according to Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and decorated war veteran who has been briefed by military officials.
The incident has sparked two investigations � one into the deadly encounter itself and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up. The Marine Corps had initially attributed 15 civilian deaths to the car bombing and a firefight with insurgents, eight of whom the Marines reported had been killed.
…
Briones� best friend, Lance Cpl. Miguel �T.J.� Terrazas, had been killed the day of the attack by the roadside bomb, his mother said. He was still grieving when he was sent in to clean up the bodies of the Iraqi civilians.
One was a little girl who had been shot in the head, Susie Briones said.
�He had to carry that little girl�s body,� she said, �and her head was blown off and her brain splattered on his boots.�
The Wrights declined to say whether their son witnessed the killings or what he thought of the allegations against other members of his unit.
He was under so much pressure because of the investigation that he had consulted with an attorney, they said. He has also experienced psychological trauma.
Wright and Briones are both recipients of the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in battle.
Wright was injured during an assault on Fallujah in January 2005. He voluntarily rejoined his unit at Camp Pendleton the next month.
Briones was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. He received a Purple Heart during his first tour.
On Monday, both Marines were back at Camp Pendleton, near Oceanside, where base officials said several members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division were being confined during the investigations.
Lt. Lawton King, a Camp Pendleton spokesman, declined to comment Monday, but another Marine there reflected on the damage the reports have done.
Nicholas Grey, a second lieutenant in the Marine Reserves based at Camp Pendleton, said the case will result in a loss of credibility for the Marines and increase Iraqi anger.
�It will make it a lot harder for the Marines who want to go through the streets,� he said.
Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.
Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.
The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.
“We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them,” said Diana Farsetta, one of the group’s researchers. “I would say it’s pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air.”
Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. “They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like,” she said.
The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission’s enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group’s report.
The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer’s product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe’en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.
Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world’s largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. “We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video,” said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. “In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure.”
The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. “Essentially it’s corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news,” he said. “The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told.”
The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (�17,500).
