CRUD
Raven and I have had The Crud. After a year of living as far as possible from any industry, here we are in the middle of The Big Muddy of pollution, sneezing our brains out and spitting up unmentionable stuff here in Guayaquil (aka Galveston South). Kleenex litters the apartment, and the garbage can is full of chicken bones from the Traditional Soup Cure. Tea cups with suspicious smears of cough syrup are lined up on the kitchen counter.
This place stinks, Rave.
Raven, prostrate on the springless sofa, glares at me. And coughs.
“Tell me about it. When are we leaving?”
No, I mean the apartment stinks. Even with all the windows open it reeks of virus.
“It’s a microcosm, that’s all.”
You mean the Universe is sick?
Raven covers his beak with a Kleenex, spits.
“Let’s put it this way: it’s not having a bad hair day.”
I pull up a chair next to the bird.
Rave, we’ve got to pull ourselves together.
“Don’t do counselling mode with me. Please. The world is going to hell in a handbasket and you say we need to pull ourselves together. This can’t be my life I am living. Did you even look at any of the news commentaries today?”
I confess, no. I have done nothing but read Vargas Llosa’s “La Guerra del fin del mundo.”
“We’re LIVING the war of the end of the world. Why read about it. Look, people are even writing books about it.”
Raven flutters off the couch—like a limp handkerchief—and plops himself in front of the computer screen.
“Listen. It’s an article in The Globe about a book by John Newhouse called “Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order”, describing it as: "cri de coeur" from that lost Washington world that favors diplomacy over dictate, working with allies rather than unilaterialism, and "sensible pragmatic policy" rather than the "ritual truculence" that has become the hallmark of America's international relations.”
And just what does that “cri de coeur” say?
“ ‘Newhouse traces the right's bid for power to the attempt to take over the Ford administration in the so-called Halloween Massacre of 1975, when Donald Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and Cheney his deputy. Rumsfeld maneuvered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger out of his dual role as national security adviser, got Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger fired to be replaced by Rumsfeld himself, with Cheney promoted to chief of staff. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was told he would not be on the ticket when Ford ran for president the following year. Rumsfeld was not interested in Kissinger's efforts to limit nuclear weapons -- he wanted a harder line -- nor did the right want the moderates associated with Rockefeller's branch of the party.
Ford lost the election. But the right wing tried again during the first Bush administration with a proposed doctrine "cobbled together" after the first Gulf War by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy today, and Lewis Libby, now Cheney's chief of staff. The new doctrine spoke of not just remaining number one in the world but of destroying any state that might in the future challenge the United States -- i.e., preemptive offense without benefit of allies, without UN sanction, with a stress on raw military power over containment, persuasion, and diplomacy. It was not a doctrine that gained any purchase with Bush senior's administration. But after 9/11 in a new Bush administration, its day has come. Rumsfeld and others were angling for an attack on Iraq before Afghanistan, a suggestion which Bush wisely rejected. But it is now clear that for this administration, regime change always trumped disarming Iraq -- thus the intelligence skewing that has now been exposed. ‘”
Sounds like more of the same to me, guy. The incredible persistence of the bad guys. What else have they had to do BUT be persistent? But I take umbrage at the idea that Bush did anything “wisely”.
“Well, yeah. But everything is relative.
No, Rave. Everything isn’t relative. That’s like saying compared to serving a life sentence having a cold in Guayaquil is a happy event. It simply isn’t.
Raven sighs.
“Fundamentalists.”
Monday, September 22, 2003
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
SONS OF BITCHES AND OTHER USUAL SUSPECTS
Raven is stirring a bit of milk into his tea. This is an affectation he has taken up only recently, and I do not intend to share it with him.
“Did you know that Nixon called Salvador Allende a bastard and a son of a bitch?”
Raven, the asker of disingenuous questions.
I didn’t hear him say it, Rave. But I believe it. Nixon had a very dirty mouth. In fact, about the only clean talk I remember from him was when he said, “I am not a crook”—and that was a lie. In the Checkers Speech, I think it was. Along with referring to his wife, the long-suffering Pat’s “good republican cloth coat.”
“Checkers?”
Don’t you remember? That was the Nixons’ dog.
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget that much-maligned long-suffering beast? Anyway, in today’s LA JORNADA Helms of the CIA reports Nixon called Allende both of those after he won the 1970 election in Chile.”
Nixon and Kissinger were gunning for Allende from Day 1. Between the CIA and the Nixon Dirty Tricksters, and his not having a majority in the Chilean Congress, Allende was a Sisyphean stone rolling uphill during his whole almost-3-years in office.
“Listen to how they describe the “democratic way” Allende was removed from the presidency:
‘Eight million dollars were spent secretly between 1970 and the military coup of 1973, according to the Church Report—during which time the CIA and US military officers established contacts with Chilean military officers with the end of gathering intelligence and permitting the US to enter into communication with the group with the most possibility of taking the power from Allende. The collaborationist press, headed by the right-wing daily “El Mercurio”, was the voice of the terror campaign that contributed to the political polarization and financial panic of the time. Also strikes and terrorist attacks were financed, and shortages of necessary items were created, and a galloping inflation set in.
‘Philip Agee, ex-CIA agent, confessed years later: “The agency, by financing truckers and businessmen to organize against Allende (stopping the flow of merchandise and paralyzing the country) could create the appearance of chaos and disorganization which always is attractive to right-wing military leaders who advocate order and discipline. This creates the opportunity for them to intervene to restore order, peace and dignity to the nation.”’”
Sounds fishily like Caracas 2002, doesn’t it? In addition to military and CIA funds channelled to Venezuelan “opposition” groups, almost a million bucks on the books was given them by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Are there any more figures on the Chilean buy-off?
“Yeah. It says here:
‘The sabotage of Allende was gigantic: US aid that in 1965—during the government of Eduardo Frei—was 35 million dollars, dropped to a million and a half in 1971. And from a record 234.6 million dollars in credits from Eximbank to Chile in 1967, the number fell to zero in 1971, at the same time as Chile was given the lowest credit rating. The Inter-american Development Bank, which early in 1970 loaned Chile 45.6 million dollars, loaned Chile 2.1 million in 1972, at the same time that the World Bank loaned Chile exactly one dollar. The Club of Paris, pressured by the US, refused to renegotiate the enormous debt Allende inherited from his predecessors.’”
Nothing like a big time slap in the face, right?
“This article indicates that the plan of Allende’s government that was extremely worrisome to Washington was that its goal was to improve the living conditions of the people by way of a fair redistribution of income, and by way of the ballot box to advance toward democratic socialism. When it looked like Allende might actually receive a majority in the Congress is he was able to complete his government’s plan, all the alarms went off in the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA. Nixon said to do everything posible to bring Allende down.”
Great guy, Nixon—running around like a latter-day Perry at the same time, opening up China for exploitation by the West.
“Yeah, but Kissinger was the one who wrote the plan. And even then all the money the US used to buy people didn’t stop Allende's party from receiving more votes in March of 1973 than they did when he was elected in 1970.”
So that’s when the decided to take him out. He had said that only being shot would he not implement the people’s program. And they decided to take him at his word.
“That’s right. It says here: ‘In Washington they filed their sights for “D Day”—the day of the coup. All they needed was to define the date and the person to head it. The date was September 11, 1973. It was headed by general Augusto Pinochet.’”
And the rest, as they say is history. Unfortunately, it is a history that the Usual Suspects (aka the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon) keep trying to repeat in Venezuela, where another president is struggling to program dignity for his people. Last week, in a particularly cynical gesture, US Ambassador to Venezuela Charley Shapiro marched over to the National Election Commission and offered it the services of the same folks that stole the presidential election for George W. Bush 3 years ago.
“Some nerve!”
Raven pours his milk-laden tea down the kitchen sink’s drain.
I hope his tea is the only thing going down the drain.
*************
In memory of Salvador Allende, who died in La Moneda, Santiago de Chile, Sept. 11, 1973. An enormously destructive Sept. 11th brought to us by the Usual Suspects--the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon--just 28 years before they gave us Sept. 11, 2001--with its destructive pyrotecnics and its even more destructive aftermath. Thanks guys.
Raven is stirring a bit of milk into his tea. This is an affectation he has taken up only recently, and I do not intend to share it with him.
“Did you know that Nixon called Salvador Allende a bastard and a son of a bitch?”
Raven, the asker of disingenuous questions.
I didn’t hear him say it, Rave. But I believe it. Nixon had a very dirty mouth. In fact, about the only clean talk I remember from him was when he said, “I am not a crook”—and that was a lie. In the Checkers Speech, I think it was. Along with referring to his wife, the long-suffering Pat’s “good republican cloth coat.”
“Checkers?”
Don’t you remember? That was the Nixons’ dog.
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget that much-maligned long-suffering beast? Anyway, in today’s LA JORNADA Helms of the CIA reports Nixon called Allende both of those after he won the 1970 election in Chile.”
Nixon and Kissinger were gunning for Allende from Day 1. Between the CIA and the Nixon Dirty Tricksters, and his not having a majority in the Chilean Congress, Allende was a Sisyphean stone rolling uphill during his whole almost-3-years in office.
“Listen to how they describe the “democratic way” Allende was removed from the presidency:
‘Eight million dollars were spent secretly between 1970 and the military coup of 1973, according to the Church Report—during which time the CIA and US military officers established contacts with Chilean military officers with the end of gathering intelligence and permitting the US to enter into communication with the group with the most possibility of taking the power from Allende. The collaborationist press, headed by the right-wing daily “El Mercurio”, was the voice of the terror campaign that contributed to the political polarization and financial panic of the time. Also strikes and terrorist attacks were financed, and shortages of necessary items were created, and a galloping inflation set in.
‘Philip Agee, ex-CIA agent, confessed years later: “The agency, by financing truckers and businessmen to organize against Allende (stopping the flow of merchandise and paralyzing the country) could create the appearance of chaos and disorganization which always is attractive to right-wing military leaders who advocate order and discipline. This creates the opportunity for them to intervene to restore order, peace and dignity to the nation.”’”
Sounds fishily like Caracas 2002, doesn’t it? In addition to military and CIA funds channelled to Venezuelan “opposition” groups, almost a million bucks on the books was given them by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Are there any more figures on the Chilean buy-off?
“Yeah. It says here:
‘The sabotage of Allende was gigantic: US aid that in 1965—during the government of Eduardo Frei—was 35 million dollars, dropped to a million and a half in 1971. And from a record 234.6 million dollars in credits from Eximbank to Chile in 1967, the number fell to zero in 1971, at the same time as Chile was given the lowest credit rating. The Inter-american Development Bank, which early in 1970 loaned Chile 45.6 million dollars, loaned Chile 2.1 million in 1972, at the same time that the World Bank loaned Chile exactly one dollar. The Club of Paris, pressured by the US, refused to renegotiate the enormous debt Allende inherited from his predecessors.’”
Nothing like a big time slap in the face, right?
“This article indicates that the plan of Allende’s government that was extremely worrisome to Washington was that its goal was to improve the living conditions of the people by way of a fair redistribution of income, and by way of the ballot box to advance toward democratic socialism. When it looked like Allende might actually receive a majority in the Congress is he was able to complete his government’s plan, all the alarms went off in the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA. Nixon said to do everything posible to bring Allende down.”
Great guy, Nixon—running around like a latter-day Perry at the same time, opening up China for exploitation by the West.
“Yeah, but Kissinger was the one who wrote the plan. And even then all the money the US used to buy people didn’t stop Allende's party from receiving more votes in March of 1973 than they did when he was elected in 1970.”
So that’s when the decided to take him out. He had said that only being shot would he not implement the people’s program. And they decided to take him at his word.
“That’s right. It says here: ‘In Washington they filed their sights for “D Day”—the day of the coup. All they needed was to define the date and the person to head it. The date was September 11, 1973. It was headed by general Augusto Pinochet.’”
And the rest, as they say is history. Unfortunately, it is a history that the Usual Suspects (aka the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon) keep trying to repeat in Venezuela, where another president is struggling to program dignity for his people. Last week, in a particularly cynical gesture, US Ambassador to Venezuela Charley Shapiro marched over to the National Election Commission and offered it the services of the same folks that stole the presidential election for George W. Bush 3 years ago.
“Some nerve!”
Raven pours his milk-laden tea down the kitchen sink’s drain.
I hope his tea is the only thing going down the drain.
*************
In memory of Salvador Allende, who died in La Moneda, Santiago de Chile, Sept. 11, 1973. An enormously destructive Sept. 11th brought to us by the Usual Suspects--the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon--just 28 years before they gave us Sept. 11, 2001--with its destructive pyrotecnics and its even more destructive aftermath. Thanks guys.
Friday, September 05, 2003
PRINCES (continued)
“Wow, right on the nail!” Raven spits a beakful of granola across the breakfast table.
What’s up, guy? Tools in the newspaper?
“Yesterday we were talking about “reconstructive” contracts in Iraq being the sop to the Petrocriminals, aka “nobles”, in Maquiavellian terms. Now there’s an article in LA JORNADA that’s right on the nail.”
You mean that hits the nail right on the head, I think. Is my bird buddy piddling in the puddles of Bushisms?
“God, I hope not. Anyway, this guy goes so far as to call Halliburton a “parallel army” in the Iraqui context.”
Raven wipes up the spat granola with his napkin.
Sounds great. Let’s hear it.
Raven takes a deep breath.
“’ “The war on terrorism, highest phase of capitalism, has signified for the company Halliburton and its subsidiaries one of the most fabulous businesses in corporate history. In full view of everybody, its open association with the US government represents a paradigmatic case of influence trafficking, as well as the supreme example of just how profitable the war is for hawks and buzzards. Above all, if to that are added comfortable tax exemptions.’”
Hmmm. You’re right that we were right. Does the article total up the windfall for the buzzards?
“Yeah. “Operation Iraqui Freedom” gives them 1.9 billion dollars, plus more related to the Army Corps of Engineers. Then one third of the budget for maintaining US troops in Iraq (3.9 billion dollars) goes directly to Halliburton, and to a lesser degree to Bechtel and DynaCorp.”
This is a bit beyond the bones thrown to camp followers, I think.
“The JORNADA article quotes the WASHINGTON POST’s revelation that they are even wearing military uniforms—but with their company insignias on their shoulders.”
Halliburton maybe should just be called Dick Cheney, Inc.?
“Or Ubiquitous Dick Cheney, Inc. The article goes on to say that Michael Scherer, correspondent in Washington for the magazine Mother Jones, just announced their scope of operation, complete with an interactive map of “The World According to Halliburton”. ‘The reporter notes that the past two years have been excellent for Halliburton—After 9/11, the Bush government has awarded the second largest petroleum services company in the world with at least 2 billion 200 million dollars in defense-related contracts—the majority to support military operations overseas. The map illustrates the location of the bellicose investments of Halliburton: Guantanamo, Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, The Philippines, Russia, Georgia, Uzbekistan y Djibuti and Somalia. Not to mention domestic investments from coast to coast, plus Alaska, Hawaii, Guam y Puerto Rico. No less impressive is the geographic diversity of the “fiscal paradises” where they launder and keep their money: The Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Barbados, Nevis, Santa Lucia, Panama, Liechtenstein, Jersey, Mauricio. And they advanced 58 percent on the Forbes 500 list in 2002.’”
Just a mom and pop operation, Rave.
“Right. And just to put icing on the cake—by the way, we haven’t had cake around here in awhile—maybe chocolate would hit the nail on the head—Halliburton just received a contract for 391 million dollars to maintain the National Lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico—our old stomping ground—and another 200 million to “update” the security of the strategic biological research in the national Institute of Health, in Maryland. Not small change, either.”
I wonder what they mean by “maintain” the Lab at Los Alamos?
“Probably looking for Chinese Americans to blame security leaks on.”
Is that Wu Lee guy still in the New Mexico Penitentiary?
“No, they let him out when in the clean-up after that fire we watched so anxiously from the friendly confines of Espanola in 2000 they found top security hard drives collecting ashes and dust in broom closets. Sort of blew their case.”
I would think so.
“Now, can we talk about taking a walk for chocolate cake?”
Just what I need: A cakewalk with the Bird for All Seasons.
************
And speaking of cakewalks--this, from yesterday's TORONTO STAR piece, "Bailing Bush Out of His Iraq Fiasco" (reprinted today on COMMON DREAMS:
'Bush is now spending $1 billion a week to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq, along with 11,000 British troops and 10,000 others. Yet he has precious little to show for it. Saddam Hussein is still on the loose, and Iraq is being infiltrated by fighters bent on driving the Americans out.
This explodes the neo-conservative fiction that rebuilding Iraq as a stable democracy would be a cakewalk, once Saddam was deposed.
(As Bush might say--Great minds think by the same set of rules....)
“Wow, right on the nail!” Raven spits a beakful of granola across the breakfast table.
What’s up, guy? Tools in the newspaper?
“Yesterday we were talking about “reconstructive” contracts in Iraq being the sop to the Petrocriminals, aka “nobles”, in Maquiavellian terms. Now there’s an article in LA JORNADA that’s right on the nail.”
You mean that hits the nail right on the head, I think. Is my bird buddy piddling in the puddles of Bushisms?
“God, I hope not. Anyway, this guy goes so far as to call Halliburton a “parallel army” in the Iraqui context.”
Raven wipes up the spat granola with his napkin.
Sounds great. Let’s hear it.
Raven takes a deep breath.
“’ “The war on terrorism, highest phase of capitalism, has signified for the company Halliburton and its subsidiaries one of the most fabulous businesses in corporate history. In full view of everybody, its open association with the US government represents a paradigmatic case of influence trafficking, as well as the supreme example of just how profitable the war is for hawks and buzzards. Above all, if to that are added comfortable tax exemptions.’”
Hmmm. You’re right that we were right. Does the article total up the windfall for the buzzards?
“Yeah. “Operation Iraqui Freedom” gives them 1.9 billion dollars, plus more related to the Army Corps of Engineers. Then one third of the budget for maintaining US troops in Iraq (3.9 billion dollars) goes directly to Halliburton, and to a lesser degree to Bechtel and DynaCorp.”
This is a bit beyond the bones thrown to camp followers, I think.
“The JORNADA article quotes the WASHINGTON POST’s revelation that they are even wearing military uniforms—but with their company insignias on their shoulders.”
Halliburton maybe should just be called Dick Cheney, Inc.?
“Or Ubiquitous Dick Cheney, Inc. The article goes on to say that Michael Scherer, correspondent in Washington for the magazine Mother Jones, just announced their scope of operation, complete with an interactive map of “The World According to Halliburton”. ‘The reporter notes that the past two years have been excellent for Halliburton—After 9/11, the Bush government has awarded the second largest petroleum services company in the world with at least 2 billion 200 million dollars in defense-related contracts—the majority to support military operations overseas. The map illustrates the location of the bellicose investments of Halliburton: Guantanamo, Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, The Philippines, Russia, Georgia, Uzbekistan y Djibuti and Somalia. Not to mention domestic investments from coast to coast, plus Alaska, Hawaii, Guam y Puerto Rico. No less impressive is the geographic diversity of the “fiscal paradises” where they launder and keep their money: The Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Barbados, Nevis, Santa Lucia, Panama, Liechtenstein, Jersey, Mauricio. And they advanced 58 percent on the Forbes 500 list in 2002.’”
Just a mom and pop operation, Rave.
“Right. And just to put icing on the cake—by the way, we haven’t had cake around here in awhile—maybe chocolate would hit the nail on the head—Halliburton just received a contract for 391 million dollars to maintain the National Lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico—our old stomping ground—and another 200 million to “update” the security of the strategic biological research in the national Institute of Health, in Maryland. Not small change, either.”
I wonder what they mean by “maintain” the Lab at Los Alamos?
“Probably looking for Chinese Americans to blame security leaks on.”
Is that Wu Lee guy still in the New Mexico Penitentiary?
“No, they let him out when in the clean-up after that fire we watched so anxiously from the friendly confines of Espanola in 2000 they found top security hard drives collecting ashes and dust in broom closets. Sort of blew their case.”
I would think so.
“Now, can we talk about taking a walk for chocolate cake?”
Just what I need: A cakewalk with the Bird for All Seasons.
************
And speaking of cakewalks--this, from yesterday's TORONTO STAR piece, "Bailing Bush Out of His Iraq Fiasco" (reprinted today on COMMON DREAMS:
'Bush is now spending $1 billion a week to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq, along with 11,000 British troops and 10,000 others. Yet he has precious little to show for it. Saddam Hussein is still on the loose, and Iraq is being infiltrated by fighters bent on driving the Americans out.
This explodes the neo-conservative fiction that rebuilding Iraq as a stable democracy would be a cakewalk, once Saddam was deposed.
(As Bush might say--Great minds think by the same set of rules....)
Thursday, September 04, 2003
PRINCES
Raven has spent most of the morning deeply immersed in Maquiavelli’s THE PRINCE, from time to time shrieking out “Aha!”, and cackling uproariously at apparently crucial moments in the text.
Fun, is he, Rave?
Raven comes up for air from a particularly prolonged cackle, wiping a tear from one of his beady eyes.
“Reading the gems in this book is more fun than picking raisins out of the raisin bread from Supermaxi.”
Really? Would you mind sharing a few of those jewels of Renaissance wisdom?
“I’m more than happy to oblige. What if I read some of the classic examples of uncommon common sense, and we decide who among our contemporary “princes” we can apply those comments to?”
Fire away, guy.
“Okay. ‘When a prince finds himself effectively bathed in popularity’—I’m translating pretty freely from Spanish here—‘he should not be too afraid of being conspired against. But if instead of affection, he inspires hatred, the attitudes of the people can be terrible. Sensible governments and prudent princes will attend to pleasing the nobles, but they must exhaust all means to keep the people satisfied. This is one of the points that must never be forgotten.’”
Hmmm. If we apply that to the current imperial model—there are no “nobles”, but there are folks who wield an undue influence—the Petrocriminals, for example—a category which includes 90% of the Bush Gang, including “His Highness George W.” To those folks he has handed over the Keys to the Kingdom—ionospherically lucrative “reconstructive” contracts in Iraq, for example.
“Nice phrase—Keys to the Kingdom”. And what about the part of Maquiavelli’s comment that he said never should be forgotten?”
You mean keeping the people satisfied?
“Precisely. What is the Bush government doing to keep the people satisfied?”
Giving huge tax cuts?
“I don’t think you’re getting this. Those enormous tax cuts didn’t go to the people, but to the “nobles”.
Oh yeah. I knew that. How about slashing social, health and educational programs?
“Now there you ARE talking about actions directed towards the people. But I seriously doubt that those actions have resulted in a widespread feeling of satisfaction.”
Maybe not. How about making big bankrupt companies find the money that disappeared from people’s pension funds?
Raven narrows his eyes, sighs deeply.
“I don’t remember that anybody did that. I think George W just patted Kenny Boy on the back for that one. I’m afraid the satisfaction level is low among those people, too.”
I know. What about all those Middle America moms and dads who have been receiving surprise packages from Iraq?
“If you are referring to their sons coming home in body bags, I think their satisfaction level is particularly low. You’re not even catching the basic concept here. You could be one of Maquiavelli’s examples of how NOT to be an effective Prince, I think.”
I thought we were talking about Bush, Rave.
“I guess we were. If Maquiavelli were alive today, he’s be spinning in his grave.”
Raven lets out a buzzard-sized shriek. Tears fill his eyes again.
That was a Bushism, right?
“Right up there with knowing how hard it was to put food on his family. Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.”
Maquiavelli again?
Raven gives me a baleful stare from a Kleenex-cleansed eye.
“Uh—I don’t think so….”
(Continuaremos.)
Raven has spent most of the morning deeply immersed in Maquiavelli’s THE PRINCE, from time to time shrieking out “Aha!”, and cackling uproariously at apparently crucial moments in the text.
Fun, is he, Rave?
Raven comes up for air from a particularly prolonged cackle, wiping a tear from one of his beady eyes.
“Reading the gems in this book is more fun than picking raisins out of the raisin bread from Supermaxi.”
Really? Would you mind sharing a few of those jewels of Renaissance wisdom?
“I’m more than happy to oblige. What if I read some of the classic examples of uncommon common sense, and we decide who among our contemporary “princes” we can apply those comments to?”
Fire away, guy.
“Okay. ‘When a prince finds himself effectively bathed in popularity’—I’m translating pretty freely from Spanish here—‘he should not be too afraid of being conspired against. But if instead of affection, he inspires hatred, the attitudes of the people can be terrible. Sensible governments and prudent princes will attend to pleasing the nobles, but they must exhaust all means to keep the people satisfied. This is one of the points that must never be forgotten.’”
Hmmm. If we apply that to the current imperial model—there are no “nobles”, but there are folks who wield an undue influence—the Petrocriminals, for example—a category which includes 90% of the Bush Gang, including “His Highness George W.” To those folks he has handed over the Keys to the Kingdom—ionospherically lucrative “reconstructive” contracts in Iraq, for example.
“Nice phrase—Keys to the Kingdom”. And what about the part of Maquiavelli’s comment that he said never should be forgotten?”
You mean keeping the people satisfied?
“Precisely. What is the Bush government doing to keep the people satisfied?”
Giving huge tax cuts?
“I don’t think you’re getting this. Those enormous tax cuts didn’t go to the people, but to the “nobles”.
Oh yeah. I knew that. How about slashing social, health and educational programs?
“Now there you ARE talking about actions directed towards the people. But I seriously doubt that those actions have resulted in a widespread feeling of satisfaction.”
Maybe not. How about making big bankrupt companies find the money that disappeared from people’s pension funds?
Raven narrows his eyes, sighs deeply.
“I don’t remember that anybody did that. I think George W just patted Kenny Boy on the back for that one. I’m afraid the satisfaction level is low among those people, too.”
I know. What about all those Middle America moms and dads who have been receiving surprise packages from Iraq?
“If you are referring to their sons coming home in body bags, I think their satisfaction level is particularly low. You’re not even catching the basic concept here. You could be one of Maquiavelli’s examples of how NOT to be an effective Prince, I think.”
I thought we were talking about Bush, Rave.
“I guess we were. If Maquiavelli were alive today, he’s be spinning in his grave.”
Raven lets out a buzzard-sized shriek. Tears fill his eyes again.
That was a Bushism, right?
“Right up there with knowing how hard it was to put food on his family. Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.”
Maquiavelli again?
Raven gives me a baleful stare from a Kleenex-cleansed eye.
“Uh—I don’t think so….”
(Continuaremos.)
Friday, August 29, 2003
VETERANS OF CREATIVE SUFFERING
Raven, that rascal, is indulging his sweet tooth—er, beak—with apple strudel from Oro Verde delicatessen.
Rave, would you mind giving me a bite or two?
He looks up, faintly mocking the image of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“Why, sure. In fact”—he picks up a knife and begins to divide the fairly big brick of strudel—“I think giving you half would be fair.”
Good thinking, birdbrain—considering that I bought the strudel and brought it home.
“Between dessert fantasies I have been reading an article in Common Dreams by Ariel Dorfman called “Martin Luther King: A Latin American Perspective”. It was written to remember the 40th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, and it’s good.”
Raven is chasing a raisin around on his plate. A pregnant pause ensues. Continues.
Rave?
He pops the raisin in his beak.
“Sorry. Dorfman mentions that he first heard the speech on television April 4, 1968—the day that King was killed—a week after he arrived in Berekely , California.”
People remember things like that—like I remember walking into the English House at Seattle University the day JFK was killed—or coming home from classes at San Francisco State the evening of that same April 4, 1968 to watch probably the very same newscast that Dorfman was watching in Berekely, on the other side of San Francisco Bay. What was his reaction to the speech?
“He relates it to the situation surrounding the golpe de estado in Chile. He says:
‘It was to be Allende's fate to echo the fate of Martin Luther King; it was his choice to die three years later. Yes, on September 11, 1973, almost ten years to the day after King's "I have a dream" speech in Washington, Allende chose to die defending his own dream, promising us, in his last speech, that sooner rather than later -- m?s temprano que tarde -- a day would come when the free men and women of Chile would walk through las amplias alamedas, the great avenues full of trees, towards a better society.
‘It was in the immediate aftermath of that terrible defeat, as we watched the powerful of Chile impose upon us the terror that we had not wanted to visit upon them, it was then, as our non-violence was met with executions and torture and disappearances, it was only then, after the military coup of 1973, that I first began to seriously commune with Martin Luther King, that his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial came back to haunt and question me. As I headed into an exile that would last for many years, King's voice and message began to filter fully, word by word, into my life. After all, if ever there was a situation where violence could be justified, it would have been against the junta in Chile. Pinochet and his generals had overthrown a constitutional government and were killing and persecuting citizens whose radical sin had been to imagine a world where you do not need to massacre your opponents in order to allow the waters of justice to flow. And yet, very wisely, almost instinctively, the Chilean resistance embraced a different route: to slowly, resolutely, dangerously, take over the surface of the country, isolate the dictatorship inside and outside our nation, and make Chile ungovernable through civil disobedience. Not entirely different from the strategy that the civil rights movement had espoused in the United States. And indeed, I never felt closer to Martin Luther King than during the seventeen years it took us to free Chile of its dictatorship. His words to the militants who thronged to Washington, D.C., in 1963, demanding that they not lose faith, resonated with me, comforted my sad heart.
‘He was speaking prophetically to me, to us, when he said, "I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells." Speaking to us, Dr. King, speaking to me, when he thundered: "Some of you come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering."
Creative suffering. Such a great description of meanspiritedness as the mother of social injustice.
“There’s more:
‘He understood that more difficult than going to your first protest, was to awaken the next day and go to the next protest and then the next one, the daily grind of small acts that can lead to large and lethal consequences. The dogs and sheriffs of Alabama and Mississippi were alive and well in the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso, and so was the spirit that had encouraged defenseless men and women and children to be mowed down, beaten, bombed, harassed, and yet continue confronting their oppressors with the only weapons available to them: the suffering of their bodies and the conviction that nothing could make them turn back. And just like the blacks in the United States, so in Chile we also sang in the streets of the cities that had been stolen from us. Not spirituals, for every land has its own songs. In Chile we sang, over and over, the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the hope that a day would come when all men would be brothers.’
Beautiful image: Joy as a strategy for resistance!
“Dorfman turns grim, though, when he talks about the situation in the US now:
‘What would Martin Luther King say if he contemplated what his country has become? If he could see how the terror and death brought to bear upon New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 had turned his people into a fearful nation, ready to stop dreaming, ready to abridge their own freedoms in order to be secure? What would he say if he could observe how that fear has been manipulated in order to justify the invasion of a foreign land, the occupation of that land against the will of its own people? What alternative way would he have advised to be rid of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein? And how would he react to the Bush doctrine that states that some people on this planet, Americans to be precise, have more rights than the other citizens of the world? What would he say if he were to see his fellow countrymen proclaiming that because of their pain and their military and economic might they can do as they please, flaunt international law, withdraw from nuclear treaties, deceive and pollute the world? Would he warn them that such arrogance will not go unpunished? Would he tell those who oppose these policies inside the United States to stand up and be counted, to march ahead, never to wallow in the valley of despair?’”
A lot of folks wallowing in the valley of despair—or in the words of John Bunyan in PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, Slough of Despond—would like to know how to answer those questions, Rave.
“Well, he does give a response:
'It is my belief that he would repeat some of the words he delivered on that faraway day in August of 1963 in the shadow of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. I believe he would declare again his faith in his country and remind us of how deeply his dream is rooted in the American dream, of how, despite the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, his dream is still alive and how his nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
Let us hope that he is right. Let us hope and pray, for his sake and ours, that Martin Luther King's faith in his own country was not misplaced and that forty years later his compatriots will once again listen to his fierce and gentle voice calling to them from beyond death and beyond fear, calling on all of us to stand together for freedom and justice in our time. '
Well, Rave, it’s hard to add anything to that. Definitely, let us hope and pray that he is right.
Raven, that rascal, is indulging his sweet tooth—er, beak—with apple strudel from Oro Verde delicatessen.
Rave, would you mind giving me a bite or two?
He looks up, faintly mocking the image of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“Why, sure. In fact”—he picks up a knife and begins to divide the fairly big brick of strudel—“I think giving you half would be fair.”
Good thinking, birdbrain—considering that I bought the strudel and brought it home.
“Between dessert fantasies I have been reading an article in Common Dreams by Ariel Dorfman called “Martin Luther King: A Latin American Perspective”. It was written to remember the 40th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, and it’s good.”
Raven is chasing a raisin around on his plate. A pregnant pause ensues. Continues.
Rave?
He pops the raisin in his beak.
“Sorry. Dorfman mentions that he first heard the speech on television April 4, 1968—the day that King was killed—a week after he arrived in Berekely , California.”
People remember things like that—like I remember walking into the English House at Seattle University the day JFK was killed—or coming home from classes at San Francisco State the evening of that same April 4, 1968 to watch probably the very same newscast that Dorfman was watching in Berekely, on the other side of San Francisco Bay. What was his reaction to the speech?
“He relates it to the situation surrounding the golpe de estado in Chile. He says:
‘It was to be Allende's fate to echo the fate of Martin Luther King; it was his choice to die three years later. Yes, on September 11, 1973, almost ten years to the day after King's "I have a dream" speech in Washington, Allende chose to die defending his own dream, promising us, in his last speech, that sooner rather than later -- m?s temprano que tarde -- a day would come when the free men and women of Chile would walk through las amplias alamedas, the great avenues full of trees, towards a better society.
‘It was in the immediate aftermath of that terrible defeat, as we watched the powerful of Chile impose upon us the terror that we had not wanted to visit upon them, it was then, as our non-violence was met with executions and torture and disappearances, it was only then, after the military coup of 1973, that I first began to seriously commune with Martin Luther King, that his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial came back to haunt and question me. As I headed into an exile that would last for many years, King's voice and message began to filter fully, word by word, into my life. After all, if ever there was a situation where violence could be justified, it would have been against the junta in Chile. Pinochet and his generals had overthrown a constitutional government and were killing and persecuting citizens whose radical sin had been to imagine a world where you do not need to massacre your opponents in order to allow the waters of justice to flow. And yet, very wisely, almost instinctively, the Chilean resistance embraced a different route: to slowly, resolutely, dangerously, take over the surface of the country, isolate the dictatorship inside and outside our nation, and make Chile ungovernable through civil disobedience. Not entirely different from the strategy that the civil rights movement had espoused in the United States. And indeed, I never felt closer to Martin Luther King than during the seventeen years it took us to free Chile of its dictatorship. His words to the militants who thronged to Washington, D.C., in 1963, demanding that they not lose faith, resonated with me, comforted my sad heart.
‘He was speaking prophetically to me, to us, when he said, "I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells." Speaking to us, Dr. King, speaking to me, when he thundered: "Some of you come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering."
Creative suffering. Such a great description of meanspiritedness as the mother of social injustice.
“There’s more:
‘He understood that more difficult than going to your first protest, was to awaken the next day and go to the next protest and then the next one, the daily grind of small acts that can lead to large and lethal consequences. The dogs and sheriffs of Alabama and Mississippi were alive and well in the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso, and so was the spirit that had encouraged defenseless men and women and children to be mowed down, beaten, bombed, harassed, and yet continue confronting their oppressors with the only weapons available to them: the suffering of their bodies and the conviction that nothing could make them turn back. And just like the blacks in the United States, so in Chile we also sang in the streets of the cities that had been stolen from us. Not spirituals, for every land has its own songs. In Chile we sang, over and over, the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the hope that a day would come when all men would be brothers.’
Beautiful image: Joy as a strategy for resistance!
“Dorfman turns grim, though, when he talks about the situation in the US now:
‘What would Martin Luther King say if he contemplated what his country has become? If he could see how the terror and death brought to bear upon New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 had turned his people into a fearful nation, ready to stop dreaming, ready to abridge their own freedoms in order to be secure? What would he say if he could observe how that fear has been manipulated in order to justify the invasion of a foreign land, the occupation of that land against the will of its own people? What alternative way would he have advised to be rid of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein? And how would he react to the Bush doctrine that states that some people on this planet, Americans to be precise, have more rights than the other citizens of the world? What would he say if he were to see his fellow countrymen proclaiming that because of their pain and their military and economic might they can do as they please, flaunt international law, withdraw from nuclear treaties, deceive and pollute the world? Would he warn them that such arrogance will not go unpunished? Would he tell those who oppose these policies inside the United States to stand up and be counted, to march ahead, never to wallow in the valley of despair?’”
A lot of folks wallowing in the valley of despair—or in the words of John Bunyan in PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, Slough of Despond—would like to know how to answer those questions, Rave.
“Well, he does give a response:
'It is my belief that he would repeat some of the words he delivered on that faraway day in August of 1963 in the shadow of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. I believe he would declare again his faith in his country and remind us of how deeply his dream is rooted in the American dream, of how, despite the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, his dream is still alive and how his nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
Let us hope that he is right. Let us hope and pray, for his sake and ours, that Martin Luther King's faith in his own country was not misplaced and that forty years later his compatriots will once again listen to his fierce and gentle voice calling to them from beyond death and beyond fear, calling on all of us to stand together for freedom and justice in our time. '
Well, Rave, it’s hard to add anything to that. Definitely, let us hope and pray that he is right.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
THE SHILL
Raven and I are catching up on the local papers from the weekend—a respectable activity in itself, but more fun accompanied by linguini with pesto sauce—albeit pesto from a jar.
“Sad mess of potage they have here in Ecuador, it seems.”
Anything specific, Rave—is this about the food? Or in general?
“Might be in general, but what I am seeing is that after Colombia’s president Uribe
shot his mouth off about Chavez leading the Colombian guerrillas—obviously following the script of the US State Department—he rolled over here to shill for Plan Colombia with Gutierrez."
Oh? And did he say anything about those poor people along the Ecuador/Colombia border who are biting the dust from the Plan Colombia anti-coca herbicides?
“Yeah. In diplomatic language, too. But the message was that they could rot in hell before they would see any compensation from the Colombian government. Maybe we could put a few basil leaves in the pasta the next time we make it—just to give the illusion of freshness?”
Anything you say, guy. And all the Colombian refugees that have been streaming in here like the water we cooked the pasta in going through the colander? Did he have any Colin Powell-forged nuggets of wisdom about them?
“Hmmm. Sounds like both governments are colluding to indicate that they are only a handful of folks. But a guy running a Non-governmental Organization for the Jesuits says they are close to a couple hundred thousand over the past few months.”
I see. If the problem doesn’t exist they don’t have to solve it. Sounds like doublespeak to me, Rave. Or maybe they think enough Ecuadoreans will be able to sneak into Spain—despite the fascist vigilance there—that they will simply be replaced by Colombians?
“Would anybody notice the difference?”
I don’t know. We wouldn’t, but we’re not from here. And they wouldn’t care about our opinion anyway. Even though we are refugees, too. Sort of.
Raven tears apart a few basil leaves and strews them over the remains of the pasta.
“It won’t be the same as cooking them with the sauce, but…”
He beaks in.
“Not bad. I think Uribe was given the task of getting Ecuador’s president to agree to accept all possible fall out from Plan Colombia. Which he will, obviously, as it was he, after all, who submitted the proposal at the Rio Summit in May for the United Nations or the Organization of American States to intervene in Colombia.”
When Chavez disagreed, and said that Gutierrez’ proposal was opening the door for South American countries to be invaded—with an appropriate quote from Simon Bolivar about the “US appearing to be predestined by Providence to plague America with misery and death in the name of Democracy”.
“Bolivar was right. Fortunately, in between misery and death there falls the shadow: of linguini with pesto sauce.”
Raven leans back and rubs his tummy, content.
You’re impossible.
Raven and I are catching up on the local papers from the weekend—a respectable activity in itself, but more fun accompanied by linguini with pesto sauce—albeit pesto from a jar.
“Sad mess of potage they have here in Ecuador, it seems.”
Anything specific, Rave—is this about the food? Or in general?
“Might be in general, but what I am seeing is that after Colombia’s president Uribe
shot his mouth off about Chavez leading the Colombian guerrillas—obviously following the script of the US State Department—he rolled over here to shill for Plan Colombia with Gutierrez."
Oh? And did he say anything about those poor people along the Ecuador/Colombia border who are biting the dust from the Plan Colombia anti-coca herbicides?
“Yeah. In diplomatic language, too. But the message was that they could rot in hell before they would see any compensation from the Colombian government. Maybe we could put a few basil leaves in the pasta the next time we make it—just to give the illusion of freshness?”
Anything you say, guy. And all the Colombian refugees that have been streaming in here like the water we cooked the pasta in going through the colander? Did he have any Colin Powell-forged nuggets of wisdom about them?
“Hmmm. Sounds like both governments are colluding to indicate that they are only a handful of folks. But a guy running a Non-governmental Organization for the Jesuits says they are close to a couple hundred thousand over the past few months.”
I see. If the problem doesn’t exist they don’t have to solve it. Sounds like doublespeak to me, Rave. Or maybe they think enough Ecuadoreans will be able to sneak into Spain—despite the fascist vigilance there—that they will simply be replaced by Colombians?
“Would anybody notice the difference?”
I don’t know. We wouldn’t, but we’re not from here. And they wouldn’t care about our opinion anyway. Even though we are refugees, too. Sort of.
Raven tears apart a few basil leaves and strews them over the remains of the pasta.
“It won’t be the same as cooking them with the sauce, but…”
He beaks in.
“Not bad. I think Uribe was given the task of getting Ecuador’s president to agree to accept all possible fall out from Plan Colombia. Which he will, obviously, as it was he, after all, who submitted the proposal at the Rio Summit in May for the United Nations or the Organization of American States to intervene in Colombia.”
When Chavez disagreed, and said that Gutierrez’ proposal was opening the door for South American countries to be invaded—with an appropriate quote from Simon Bolivar about the “US appearing to be predestined by Providence to plague America with misery and death in the name of Democracy”.
“Bolivar was right. Fortunately, in between misery and death there falls the shadow: of linguini with pesto sauce.”
Raven leans back and rubs his tummy, content.
You’re impossible.
Friday, August 22, 2003
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER…
Raven is savoring one of his beloved cinnamon rolls, when an ominous shadow flutters across his eyes. And now they are perceptibly narrowing.
Uh oh. Something wrong with the roll?
“The roll WAS just fine. You weren’t listening to the news, were you?”
Rave, that’s rhetorical. I have had no visible relationship with television since you’ve known me.
“Yeah, okay. The roll tastes bitter now because bitter is the flavor of cynicism. Odd that Rumsfeld pays a visit to Colombia to talk about amping up Plan Colombia, and immediately Uribe´s presidential puss is plastered on the tv screen accusing Hugo Chavez of leading the guerrillas—he asks Chavez to tell the guerrillas that he wants to negotiate peace….”
Did he indicate which ones? It was my perception that Uribe was in charge of paramilitary guerrillas. I don’t remember if those were the ones Chavez bombed when they entered Venezuelan territory, or if it was the FARC, or the ELN. Or quien sabe quienes. I see your point about cynicism. Apparently the Bush petrocriminals don’t feel they have to dissimulate their control over Colombia´s president. They have decided to answer Chavez’ accusations of interventionism by trying to make him look like the one intervening in Colombia. Wow, what a guy! Not only is he running around the capitals in the Southern Cone promoting a united and sovereign South America, but also at the same moment he is charging around the Colombian jungles trying to overthrow the government of a sovereign country. Who are these people kidding?
“Remember that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public—P. T. Barnum I think said that. That applies as well in the austral parts of the globe.”
Raven wraps the remains of the roll in an Oro Verde takeout paper napkin.
Hmmm. Another synchronicity rearing its head. There’s an interview with Chavez as he was leaving Buenos Aires in today’s La Jornada. The correspondent asks him about the collection of signatures for the referendum against his presidency:
“Looking at this strong opposition advance, that coincides with an intense rhetoric of US functionaries against Chavez, how do you see the coming days?”
To which Chavez replies:
“One blow after another. Since I appeared on the scene this has been happening. Back in 94 they called me “el carapintada venezolano”, comparing me with a military movement in Argentina. This was towards the south, where because of the dictatorships there was a strong antimilitary feeling. In the area of the Caribe, they said that Fidel Castro and I were creating a Bolivarian guerrilla, a resurgence of the historical “great Colombia”. Then, when we decided to go the electoral route with a political movement to define a constitutional plan, they activated all the Venezuelan reactionary sectors, even preparing a coup in December 1998—in case we won the election. We were at the point of a coup, but they found themselves in the middle of an avalanche of votes, as well as with Bolivarian nationalistic soldiers that weren´t disposed toward that adventure to align themselves with the Venezuelan oligarchy against their country. They couldn’t do anything about the electoral victory and in December of 2001 was the beginning of what would be the coup of April of 2002.
“Since then they didn’t stop until the April coup where they were defeated and something happened which had never been seen before: a brave people and patriotic soldiers recovering the stricken government. Lets not forget that the US immediately recognized the coup leaders, and called those who shut down the Congress, annulled the Constitution and the court system, and who were pursuing and killing and terrorizing the Venezuelan people the “transitional government”. They showed their real faces. “The tyrant is out”, they said in Washington.
“The next step was the “petroleum coup”—two months of paralyzing that industry—until February of this year—with grave economic and social consequences for the country.”
In essence, Rumsfeld’s decision to speak from the mouth of Colombia’s President is just another flank of the US’s opposition to Chavez’ (and Bolivar’s) dream of a free, united South America. The antediluvian cynicism of the Bush Gang at the thought of another door slamming in their faces: the chance to control Venezuela’s vast petroleum and gas reserves and to impose a market zone for the “dumping” of superfluous US products.
Raven pours himself a cup of coffee, and dumps in half a ton of sugar.
“In short: Business as usual, with the usual suspects conducting it.”
And anyone who doesn’t buy it—Chavez, the rest of us—taking it in the shorts.
“If I were a woodpecker, I could give you Woody’s laugh.”
I think George W. already gave us that, Rave.
Raven is savoring one of his beloved cinnamon rolls, when an ominous shadow flutters across his eyes. And now they are perceptibly narrowing.
Uh oh. Something wrong with the roll?
“The roll WAS just fine. You weren’t listening to the news, were you?”
Rave, that’s rhetorical. I have had no visible relationship with television since you’ve known me.
“Yeah, okay. The roll tastes bitter now because bitter is the flavor of cynicism. Odd that Rumsfeld pays a visit to Colombia to talk about amping up Plan Colombia, and immediately Uribe´s presidential puss is plastered on the tv screen accusing Hugo Chavez of leading the guerrillas—he asks Chavez to tell the guerrillas that he wants to negotiate peace….”
Did he indicate which ones? It was my perception that Uribe was in charge of paramilitary guerrillas. I don’t remember if those were the ones Chavez bombed when they entered Venezuelan territory, or if it was the FARC, or the ELN. Or quien sabe quienes. I see your point about cynicism. Apparently the Bush petrocriminals don’t feel they have to dissimulate their control over Colombia´s president. They have decided to answer Chavez’ accusations of interventionism by trying to make him look like the one intervening in Colombia. Wow, what a guy! Not only is he running around the capitals in the Southern Cone promoting a united and sovereign South America, but also at the same moment he is charging around the Colombian jungles trying to overthrow the government of a sovereign country. Who are these people kidding?
“Remember that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public—P. T. Barnum I think said that. That applies as well in the austral parts of the globe.”
Raven wraps the remains of the roll in an Oro Verde takeout paper napkin.
Hmmm. Another synchronicity rearing its head. There’s an interview with Chavez as he was leaving Buenos Aires in today’s La Jornada. The correspondent asks him about the collection of signatures for the referendum against his presidency:
“Looking at this strong opposition advance, that coincides with an intense rhetoric of US functionaries against Chavez, how do you see the coming days?”
To which Chavez replies:
“One blow after another. Since I appeared on the scene this has been happening. Back in 94 they called me “el carapintada venezolano”, comparing me with a military movement in Argentina. This was towards the south, where because of the dictatorships there was a strong antimilitary feeling. In the area of the Caribe, they said that Fidel Castro and I were creating a Bolivarian guerrilla, a resurgence of the historical “great Colombia”. Then, when we decided to go the electoral route with a political movement to define a constitutional plan, they activated all the Venezuelan reactionary sectors, even preparing a coup in December 1998—in case we won the election. We were at the point of a coup, but they found themselves in the middle of an avalanche of votes, as well as with Bolivarian nationalistic soldiers that weren´t disposed toward that adventure to align themselves with the Venezuelan oligarchy against their country. They couldn’t do anything about the electoral victory and in December of 2001 was the beginning of what would be the coup of April of 2002.
“Since then they didn’t stop until the April coup where they were defeated and something happened which had never been seen before: a brave people and patriotic soldiers recovering the stricken government. Lets not forget that the US immediately recognized the coup leaders, and called those who shut down the Congress, annulled the Constitution and the court system, and who were pursuing and killing and terrorizing the Venezuelan people the “transitional government”. They showed their real faces. “The tyrant is out”, they said in Washington.
“The next step was the “petroleum coup”—two months of paralyzing that industry—until February of this year—with grave economic and social consequences for the country.”
In essence, Rumsfeld’s decision to speak from the mouth of Colombia’s President is just another flank of the US’s opposition to Chavez’ (and Bolivar’s) dream of a free, united South America. The antediluvian cynicism of the Bush Gang at the thought of another door slamming in their faces: the chance to control Venezuela’s vast petroleum and gas reserves and to impose a market zone for the “dumping” of superfluous US products.
Raven pours himself a cup of coffee, and dumps in half a ton of sugar.
“In short: Business as usual, with the usual suspects conducting it.”
And anyone who doesn’t buy it—Chavez, the rest of us—taking it in the shorts.
“If I were a woodpecker, I could give you Woody’s laugh.”
I think George W. already gave us that, Rave.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
EVEN THE OBITS ARE GOING AGAINST BUSH?
Raven was cackling his way through a bowl of popcorn and reading the Commondreams web site when I came in.
“Listen to this:
‘Sally Baron passed away Monday in Stoughton at age 71. Baron did not make a lot of news in her lifetime - she was busy working and raising six kids - but she went out with a message that warmed the hearts of Davis and a lot of other small-town Wisconsin progressives.
No one should slip the mortal coil without raging one last time against the dying of the light. And so Sally Baron did.
"Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush," reads Baron's obituary in today's editions of The Capital Times.’”
Fabulous!
“Tough old bird—pardon the attribution—should be many more like her.”
Raven tossed a popcorn kernel into the air and caught it in his beak.
Show off….
Raven was cackling his way through a bowl of popcorn and reading the Commondreams web site when I came in.
“Listen to this:
‘Sally Baron passed away Monday in Stoughton at age 71. Baron did not make a lot of news in her lifetime - she was busy working and raising six kids - but she went out with a message that warmed the hearts of Davis and a lot of other small-town Wisconsin progressives.
No one should slip the mortal coil without raging one last time against the dying of the light. And so Sally Baron did.
"Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush," reads Baron's obituary in today's editions of The Capital Times.’”
Fabulous!
“Tough old bird—pardon the attribution—should be many more like her.”
Raven tossed a popcorn kernel into the air and caught it in his beak.
Show off….
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
SLAMMING THE DOOR ON BUSH’S NOSE?
Raven has found a few smaller ravens in our neighborhood. They showed up after we put his image on the door of the apartment—which indicates they cruise around urban patios checking for bird buddies? We’re not sure—but he’s cheerier. This morning he went to kibbitz with them in the parking lot of the Policentro shopping mall, and when I came home in the afternoon he was picking raisins out of a loaf of bread with his old gusto….
So, Rave. You have some friends now.
“Little by little I guess we feathered friends will gather together. Adapting to a new place is a little like trying to put the UN headquarters in Baghdad back together again.”
Or Humpty Dumpty.
“I wish I could continue the sequence with the name George W. Bush. But my own homicidal inclinations are another matter.”
I suppose. Has any group taken responsibility for the car bombing? What’s the word out their in Birdland?
“It’s pretty quiet. I don’t think many birds here in Guayaquil are politically active. The politics here have a real cartoon quality:”
Are we talking Doonesbury?
“More like Wyle E. Coyote and The Roadrunner from what I have heard. One politician from here who became President of the country ran his campaign on the level of his sperm count.”
I assume you’re joking.
“As they say here, lamentablemente, no.”
Ouch. Well, I did read a piece in Internet by Robert Fisk called, “Who Wants to Go to Iraq Now?” He talks about how the attack was labelled by the US government’s spin doctors:
“Within hours of the car bomb explosion, we were being told that this was an attack on a "soft target," a blow against the United Nations itself. True, it was a "soft" target, although the machine gun nest on the roof of the U.N. building might have suggested that even the international body was militarizing itself. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the United Nations as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the United States.”
“Not a strain on logical thinking to come to that conclusion. Who else is occupying the country?”
Raven is back in form, tail feathers peeking out of the refrigerator.
“What happened to those imported from God-knows-where Granny Smith apples?”
I ate the last one last night with some Ecuadorean camembert cheese. You didn’t notice?
“Ah, yes. I remember smelling the cheese while I was watching the news from Baghdad. Between the dearth of bird chums and a cornucopia of US foreign policy bunglers, I was, frankly, feeling in the pit between a rock and a hard place.”
Sounds like you’ve been reading the I Ching again, Rave.
“Aesop’s fables, more likely. Baghdad is buzzing with buzzards—multiplying like mosquitoes every day, and nobody in the White House is reading the handwriting on the wall.”
That would imply literacy on the part of the current resident, an assumption I am not sure is a valid one. But your reference is well taken—I think the handwriting on the wall originally appeared on a wall in Babylon. Creepily close to the scene of yesterday’s crime, don’t you think?
“Daniel the Prophet interpreted it to mean that the king and his kingdom were going to bite the dust, and the king bit it that very night.”
Perhaps Daniel was more than a prophet?
“Well, he wasn’t in his own land, anyway. If anything is to come of the handwriting on the former wall of the UN headquarters in Babylon—er, Baghdad, somebody should be planting C-4 plastic explosives under Bush’s desk in the Oval Office.”
A subtle change from the under the desk antics of the Clinton days, Rave. Fisk says: “Bush was happy to show his scorn for the United Nations when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect U.N. lives in Iraq.”
"In any event, Bush’s caper of cajoling other countries into jumping on the peacekeeping bandwagon seems to have been blown out of the water.”
That’s what Fisk said—something like “slamming the door shut on that escape route.”
“Hopefully, with Bush’s nose in it.”
And if the handwriting on the wall in Baghdad leads to the C-4 plastic explosives in the White House, will we be able to say that the Universe stepped into the vacuum of power?
“We would have to consult the I Ching about that….”
Raven has found a few smaller ravens in our neighborhood. They showed up after we put his image on the door of the apartment—which indicates they cruise around urban patios checking for bird buddies? We’re not sure—but he’s cheerier. This morning he went to kibbitz with them in the parking lot of the Policentro shopping mall, and when I came home in the afternoon he was picking raisins out of a loaf of bread with his old gusto….
So, Rave. You have some friends now.
“Little by little I guess we feathered friends will gather together. Adapting to a new place is a little like trying to put the UN headquarters in Baghdad back together again.”
Or Humpty Dumpty.
“I wish I could continue the sequence with the name George W. Bush. But my own homicidal inclinations are another matter.”
I suppose. Has any group taken responsibility for the car bombing? What’s the word out their in Birdland?
“It’s pretty quiet. I don’t think many birds here in Guayaquil are politically active. The politics here have a real cartoon quality:”
Are we talking Doonesbury?
“More like Wyle E. Coyote and The Roadrunner from what I have heard. One politician from here who became President of the country ran his campaign on the level of his sperm count.”
I assume you’re joking.
“As they say here, lamentablemente, no.”
Ouch. Well, I did read a piece in Internet by Robert Fisk called, “Who Wants to Go to Iraq Now?” He talks about how the attack was labelled by the US government’s spin doctors:
“Within hours of the car bomb explosion, we were being told that this was an attack on a "soft target," a blow against the United Nations itself. True, it was a "soft" target, although the machine gun nest on the roof of the U.N. building might have suggested that even the international body was militarizing itself. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the United Nations as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the United States.”
“Not a strain on logical thinking to come to that conclusion. Who else is occupying the country?”
Raven is back in form, tail feathers peeking out of the refrigerator.
“What happened to those imported from God-knows-where Granny Smith apples?”
I ate the last one last night with some Ecuadorean camembert cheese. You didn’t notice?
“Ah, yes. I remember smelling the cheese while I was watching the news from Baghdad. Between the dearth of bird chums and a cornucopia of US foreign policy bunglers, I was, frankly, feeling in the pit between a rock and a hard place.”
Sounds like you’ve been reading the I Ching again, Rave.
“Aesop’s fables, more likely. Baghdad is buzzing with buzzards—multiplying like mosquitoes every day, and nobody in the White House is reading the handwriting on the wall.”
That would imply literacy on the part of the current resident, an assumption I am not sure is a valid one. But your reference is well taken—I think the handwriting on the wall originally appeared on a wall in Babylon. Creepily close to the scene of yesterday’s crime, don’t you think?
“Daniel the Prophet interpreted it to mean that the king and his kingdom were going to bite the dust, and the king bit it that very night.”
Perhaps Daniel was more than a prophet?
“Well, he wasn’t in his own land, anyway. If anything is to come of the handwriting on the former wall of the UN headquarters in Babylon—er, Baghdad, somebody should be planting C-4 plastic explosives under Bush’s desk in the Oval Office.”
A subtle change from the under the desk antics of the Clinton days, Rave. Fisk says: “Bush was happy to show his scorn for the United Nations when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect U.N. lives in Iraq.”
"In any event, Bush’s caper of cajoling other countries into jumping on the peacekeeping bandwagon seems to have been blown out of the water.”
That’s what Fisk said—something like “slamming the door shut on that escape route.”
“Hopefully, with Bush’s nose in it.”
And if the handwriting on the wall in Baghdad leads to the C-4 plastic explosives in the White House, will we be able to say that the Universe stepped into the vacuum of power?
“We would have to consult the I Ching about that….”
Monday, August 18, 2003
AN EPHEMERAL CONNECTION IN ECUADOR
Raven finally
hears the voice of another
bird that is not a
pigeon: perched on the corner
of the roof of the building
just across the street,
that bird closes the social
contract with Raven—
sending him its morning song,
that he grabs ahold of like
a life preserver.
His own song bursts loose; he knows
he is not alone!
He flutters like an arrow
on the early morning breeze,
rising to the roof
to join his lyric with that
of the unknown bird—
who slices the day like a
fat orange, then disappears.
Raven finally
hears the voice of another
bird that is not a
pigeon: perched on the corner
of the roof of the building
just across the street,
that bird closes the social
contract with Raven—
sending him its morning song,
that he grabs ahold of like
a life preserver.
His own song bursts loose; he knows
he is not alone!
He flutters like an arrow
on the early morning breeze,
rising to the roof
to join his lyric with that
of the unknown bird—
who slices the day like a
fat orange, then disappears.
Friday, August 08, 2003
CRIES AND WHISPERS….
Raven is not having the easiest time being a bird out of his normal air currents, and going from bumming on the beach in Puerto Angel to circling the shopping malls in Guayaquil is making him feel like a buzzard. Our favourite ave is down in the beak. But he was loaded for bear when he started reading Al Gore’s speech in NYC to MoveOn.org.
“He’s calling his speech 'The President's Ideologically Narrow Agenda Has Seriously Divided America...' I guess you can divide something into a tiny part and a big part—the tiny part having the money and the power and the gall to wave the emblems of same in people’s faces all the time. But the word divide someone implies a more equal distribution of mass.”
Okay, Rave. I hear what you’re saying. I also think you’re being picky. What was the real point—or the real points—of Gore’s speech?
“He mentions two main problems: ‘First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.’”
I suppose we are talking Halliburton and other petrocriminal operations?
“Well, they scrapped the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. Gore continues, saying ‘Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.’”
So, first comes secrecy, and then come the lies to maintain it. Special interest groups gobble up the pie, and the rest of the people fight over the crumbs?
“Well, Gore did mention that he was the first person laid off in the Bush economy that has seen millions of jobs lost.”
Is he expecting folks to identify with him, or what?
“He starts out his speech using pretty folksy language—so maybe he wants to grab the ear of the folks who actually have listen to the Bush malapropisms. But seriously, he continues by saying ‘Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action.’”
And healing the wrongs—not adding to them.
“That’s you talking from your Chiron line—but maybe that’s the new wave, as Gore talks about it, too. He says ’If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.’”
Oh oh. Rave, if you remember—the last civil war was won by the industrialized north—big business, as it were, of the mid-nineteenth century.
“Are you saying that maybe this civil cold war is the revenge of the south? Cotton then, and now oil?”
I have no idea. I am not sure I even want to go there. All I know is that something is bitterly wrong with actions, and with the ideological posture of the US government.
“Not feeling very funny today, are we?”
You’re not the only buzzard on the block, buddy. Let’s pray for our incredible lightness of being to return….
Raven is not having the easiest time being a bird out of his normal air currents, and going from bumming on the beach in Puerto Angel to circling the shopping malls in Guayaquil is making him feel like a buzzard. Our favourite ave is down in the beak. But he was loaded for bear when he started reading Al Gore’s speech in NYC to MoveOn.org.
“He’s calling his speech 'The President's Ideologically Narrow Agenda Has Seriously Divided America...' I guess you can divide something into a tiny part and a big part—the tiny part having the money and the power and the gall to wave the emblems of same in people’s faces all the time. But the word divide someone implies a more equal distribution of mass.”
Okay, Rave. I hear what you’re saying. I also think you’re being picky. What was the real point—or the real points—of Gore’s speech?
“He mentions two main problems: ‘First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.’”
I suppose we are talking Halliburton and other petrocriminal operations?
“Well, they scrapped the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. Gore continues, saying ‘Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.’”
So, first comes secrecy, and then come the lies to maintain it. Special interest groups gobble up the pie, and the rest of the people fight over the crumbs?
“Well, Gore did mention that he was the first person laid off in the Bush economy that has seen millions of jobs lost.”
Is he expecting folks to identify with him, or what?
“He starts out his speech using pretty folksy language—so maybe he wants to grab the ear of the folks who actually have listen to the Bush malapropisms. But seriously, he continues by saying ‘Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action.’”
And healing the wrongs—not adding to them.
“That’s you talking from your Chiron line—but maybe that’s the new wave, as Gore talks about it, too. He says ’If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.’”
Oh oh. Rave, if you remember—the last civil war was won by the industrialized north—big business, as it were, of the mid-nineteenth century.
“Are you saying that maybe this civil cold war is the revenge of the south? Cotton then, and now oil?”
I have no idea. I am not sure I even want to go there. All I know is that something is bitterly wrong with actions, and with the ideological posture of the US government.
“Not feeling very funny today, are we?”
You’re not the only buzzard on the block, buddy. Let’s pray for our incredible lightness of being to return….
Monday, August 04, 2003
RAVEN IN THE EYE OF CHIRON, GUAYAQUIL
Raven is licking
his wounds next to the river—
invisible wounds
(invisible as his tongue)—
but he knows that they are there:
living in this time
is like sailing down a vein
away from the heart,
bound for the extremities
(marginality in love,
stupidity in
the place of awareness,
trenchant cowardice
that can’t tell a white flag from
a black feather at midnight.)
The bird feels lonely
swimming against the current.
The sluggish river
groans its way to the ocean
as Raven aims oxygen
like an arrow at
our collective unconscious—
holding his breath for
apocalyptic vision
to explode, and set him free.
Raven is licking
his wounds next to the river—
invisible wounds
(invisible as his tongue)—
but he knows that they are there:
living in this time
is like sailing down a vein
away from the heart,
bound for the extremities
(marginality in love,
stupidity in
the place of awareness,
trenchant cowardice
that can’t tell a white flag from
a black feather at midnight.)
The bird feels lonely
swimming against the current.
The sluggish river
groans its way to the ocean
as Raven aims oxygen
like an arrow at
our collective unconscious—
holding his breath for
apocalyptic vision
to explode, and set him free.
Friday, July 25, 2003
RAVEN ON THE CLEARWATER RIVER
“Two days ago everything was taken away from me by people I had helped. Never again will I be able to trust the treacherous Americans. I am now ready for war.”
(Nez Perce Chief Looking Glass to Chief Joseph, Cottonwood, July 3, 1877)
Raven is flying
east over the Clearwater.
Suddenly his breath
begins coming in short spurts,
tears seeping from his eyes
like a sad surprise
and he knows that something bad
happened in this place.
He flutters down on a rock
on the bank of the river,
enters his old heart
and listens to the chief’s voice
as Looking Glass tells
his people to abandon
their village. Shots echoing
across years bury
themselves deep in Raven’s brain,
and he sees, as if
on an interior screen,
soldiers aiming their rifles
at women, children
and the defenseless elders.
As the July light
edges over the tall pines,
Raven sees the same sun that
in the year eighteen
seventy seven witnessed
another milestone
of Manifest Destiny—
the myth of the white man’s right
to take away all
the lands of native peoples
and keep them for his
own use—genocide as the
motor for development.
Raven hides his eyes
behind his wings, feels ashamed
of putting the sun
in the sky so many years
ago to make us conscious—
only to project
the mutual savagery
of human beings
on the celestial screen.
And again he hears the voice,
through the swaying pines,
of Looking Glass trying to
surrender, to save
his people from extinction.
Raven has heard the same words,
now, too many times,
in too many languages;
he wants to take back
the sun from the sky, return
the world to its earned darkness.
But he can’t do it:
the human juggernaut keeps
staggering forward,
blindly drowning the planet
in petroleum, in blood—
while Raven hunches
on a rock in Idaho,
imploring the Great
Creator to forgive him
for usurping his function.
“Two days ago everything was taken away from me by people I had helped. Never again will I be able to trust the treacherous Americans. I am now ready for war.”
(Nez Perce Chief Looking Glass to Chief Joseph, Cottonwood, July 3, 1877)
Raven is flying
east over the Clearwater.
Suddenly his breath
begins coming in short spurts,
tears seeping from his eyes
like a sad surprise
and he knows that something bad
happened in this place.
He flutters down on a rock
on the bank of the river,
enters his old heart
and listens to the chief’s voice
as Looking Glass tells
his people to abandon
their village. Shots echoing
across years bury
themselves deep in Raven’s brain,
and he sees, as if
on an interior screen,
soldiers aiming their rifles
at women, children
and the defenseless elders.
As the July light
edges over the tall pines,
Raven sees the same sun that
in the year eighteen
seventy seven witnessed
another milestone
of Manifest Destiny—
the myth of the white man’s right
to take away all
the lands of native peoples
and keep them for his
own use—genocide as the
motor for development.
Raven hides his eyes
behind his wings, feels ashamed
of putting the sun
in the sky so many years
ago to make us conscious—
only to project
the mutual savagery
of human beings
on the celestial screen.
And again he hears the voice,
through the swaying pines,
of Looking Glass trying to
surrender, to save
his people from extinction.
Raven has heard the same words,
now, too many times,
in too many languages;
he wants to take back
the sun from the sky, return
the world to its earned darkness.
But he can’t do it:
the human juggernaut keeps
staggering forward,
blindly drowning the planet
in petroleum, in blood—
while Raven hunches
on a rock in Idaho,
imploring the Great
Creator to forgive him
for usurping his function.
Monday, June 30, 2003
IN THE AFTERMATH OF TROPICAL STORM CARLOS, RAVEN SAYS FAREWELL
After days of rain
that very nearly drowned him,
raven is drying
his brain in welcome sunlight,
getting ready to pack his
beak and beat it south.
The little rock and roller
wants to play with the
big birds high in the Andes,
string his song down to the coast
again, and stop just
short of the Galapagos:
to meet up with Whale,
who’s been waiting to give him
back his immortality.
Raven’s been pushing
his luck, playing beach bummer
in this tiny bay
where the magnitude of Whale
can’t enter even in dreams:
this briny hide-out
is only a pirate’s cache
of Cuban cigars
in the intense panoply
of contraband that’s Whale’s grace.
Raven deserves to
receive Whale’s forgiveness,
now, for barging in
and gutting him like a fish,
trying to eat his power.
He has learned that small
can also be enormous,
can feel the great pulse
of the ocean in his eye—
the heartbeat of Whale, who drags
the Pacific like
a sweater unraveling
in waves behind him.
He has learned that he doesn’t
have to eat Whale to be him,
that he can dance on
his back as he plows the sea
seeding new beings,
and sing his clouds into bloom
like flowers, or like prayers.
After days of rain
that very nearly drowned him,
raven is drying
his brain in welcome sunlight,
getting ready to pack his
beak and beat it south.
The little rock and roller
wants to play with the
big birds high in the Andes,
string his song down to the coast
again, and stop just
short of the Galapagos:
to meet up with Whale,
who’s been waiting to give him
back his immortality.
Raven’s been pushing
his luck, playing beach bummer
in this tiny bay
where the magnitude of Whale
can’t enter even in dreams:
this briny hide-out
is only a pirate’s cache
of Cuban cigars
in the intense panoply
of contraband that’s Whale’s grace.
Raven deserves to
receive Whale’s forgiveness,
now, for barging in
and gutting him like a fish,
trying to eat his power.
He has learned that small
can also be enormous,
can feel the great pulse
of the ocean in his eye—
the heartbeat of Whale, who drags
the Pacific like
a sweater unraveling
in waves behind him.
He has learned that he doesn’t
have to eat Whale to be him,
that he can dance on
his back as he plows the sea
seeding new beings,
and sing his clouds into bloom
like flowers, or like prayers.
Friday, June 27, 2003
RAIN
Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.
A pause.
Raven’s voice calling me from the rooftop:
“I feel like Noah after the flood!”
Uh, just a minute Rave. I think you should be feeling like the bird Noah sent out to find land.
“Doves and pigeons are suckers. Who, with a normal set of brains, would bring back a branch of a tree in his beak under those circumstances? You can’t eat stuff like that.”
You don’t know what he did BEFORE he came back to the Ark with the branch. He could very well have eaten something tasty, then grabbed the branch to bring back.
“At least it couldn’t have been a MacDonald’s hamburger. Is that anti-MacDonald’s French guy still in jail?”
I thought that you would be up on all the news, guy. What’s the deal here?
“The deal is that this wheeler and dealer’s brain has been too rain-logged to process information.”
Raven flutters down next to me on the stone steps.
Thanks, Rave. I was getting a stiff neck looking up at you. I haven’t been too with it, either, but it seems to me that after they dragged him out of bed and crammed him in the slammer that something must have happened because I think I saw something about house arrest.
“At least if he’s in his house he won’t have any prison guards slipping him genetically manipulated gruel….And, speaking of snacks….”
Now what?
“Mind if I swipe the last packet of rye crackers?”
You know, some people have sent me e-mails commenting that you are obsessed with food.
“I’m a bird! A basic creature. Bound to the base of Maslow’s bird-feeder of needs—or whatever it’s called. Birds spend a lot of time looking for food and eating food. That’s not obsession; that’s survival. Birds like me don’t live to be 80 years old on a diet of self-actualization.”
Oh. How old are you, anyway?
“I’m not exactly sure. But I’m getting up there. Let’s just say 40-something.” Raven beaks into the last cracker, and crumples the wrapper. “But let’s get back to the anti-genetics guy.”
José Bové. He was supposed to turn up in Caracas in April, but he didn’t.
“Probably had other fish to fry.”
Rave, please. You’re doing it again. Somebody has to drive tractors into fast food spots. And somebody has to destroy genetically manipulated stuff that doesn’t even reproduce normally. All that weird DNA in the Darwinian soup has got to bode ill for our future.
“And if birds like me eat genetically manipulated garbage? What will happen to us?”
Are you complaining about the crackers?
“Naw, they were great. I was asking a serious question.”
I’m not sure if the eggshells would open and mutants would emerge. But something would happen. Eventually.
“Mercifully, I am not a producer of eggs. But I’d hate to see my descendants breaking millennial Raven traditions. A mutant sounds pretty unappealing as a grandson.”
Rave, is there a point to all this? A needle hiding in a haystack somewhere?
“Why does there have to be a point? Can’t I start my brain cells working again batting around a few random thoughts?”
A few random thoughts can be pretty dangerous. Look at Baby Bush.
“I said a FEW random thoughts. Not A random thought. And certainly not the same random thought over and over: Bomb someplace!
You forgot about: Put food on your family.
“Genetically manipulated mashed potatoes, no doubt. Just what people need: a smearer for president. And you think birds are obsessed with food! At least we eat what we find. We don’t smear it on our fledglings.”
Nor, I’d wager, do you bomb their nests.
“That would not be usual.”
Let’s hope that one of his random synapses puts the Oval Office in the crosshairs.
“Fouling his nest. Big time. Works for me!”
Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.
A pause.
Raven’s voice calling me from the rooftop:
“I feel like Noah after the flood!”
Uh, just a minute Rave. I think you should be feeling like the bird Noah sent out to find land.
“Doves and pigeons are suckers. Who, with a normal set of brains, would bring back a branch of a tree in his beak under those circumstances? You can’t eat stuff like that.”
You don’t know what he did BEFORE he came back to the Ark with the branch. He could very well have eaten something tasty, then grabbed the branch to bring back.
“At least it couldn’t have been a MacDonald’s hamburger. Is that anti-MacDonald’s French guy still in jail?”
I thought that you would be up on all the news, guy. What’s the deal here?
“The deal is that this wheeler and dealer’s brain has been too rain-logged to process information.”
Raven flutters down next to me on the stone steps.
Thanks, Rave. I was getting a stiff neck looking up at you. I haven’t been too with it, either, but it seems to me that after they dragged him out of bed and crammed him in the slammer that something must have happened because I think I saw something about house arrest.
“At least if he’s in his house he won’t have any prison guards slipping him genetically manipulated gruel….And, speaking of snacks….”
Now what?
“Mind if I swipe the last packet of rye crackers?”
You know, some people have sent me e-mails commenting that you are obsessed with food.
“I’m a bird! A basic creature. Bound to the base of Maslow’s bird-feeder of needs—or whatever it’s called. Birds spend a lot of time looking for food and eating food. That’s not obsession; that’s survival. Birds like me don’t live to be 80 years old on a diet of self-actualization.”
Oh. How old are you, anyway?
“I’m not exactly sure. But I’m getting up there. Let’s just say 40-something.” Raven beaks into the last cracker, and crumples the wrapper. “But let’s get back to the anti-genetics guy.”
José Bové. He was supposed to turn up in Caracas in April, but he didn’t.
“Probably had other fish to fry.”
Rave, please. You’re doing it again. Somebody has to drive tractors into fast food spots. And somebody has to destroy genetically manipulated stuff that doesn’t even reproduce normally. All that weird DNA in the Darwinian soup has got to bode ill for our future.
“And if birds like me eat genetically manipulated garbage? What will happen to us?”
Are you complaining about the crackers?
“Naw, they were great. I was asking a serious question.”
I’m not sure if the eggshells would open and mutants would emerge. But something would happen. Eventually.
“Mercifully, I am not a producer of eggs. But I’d hate to see my descendants breaking millennial Raven traditions. A mutant sounds pretty unappealing as a grandson.”
Rave, is there a point to all this? A needle hiding in a haystack somewhere?
“Why does there have to be a point? Can’t I start my brain cells working again batting around a few random thoughts?”
A few random thoughts can be pretty dangerous. Look at Baby Bush.
“I said a FEW random thoughts. Not A random thought. And certainly not the same random thought over and over: Bomb someplace!
You forgot about: Put food on your family.
“Genetically manipulated mashed potatoes, no doubt. Just what people need: a smearer for president. And you think birds are obsessed with food! At least we eat what we find. We don’t smear it on our fledglings.”
Nor, I’d wager, do you bomb their nests.
“That would not be usual.”
Let’s hope that one of his random synapses puts the Oval Office in the crosshairs.
“Fouling his nest. Big time. Works for me!”
Friday, June 20, 2003
IMPEACH THE BASTARDS II
Raven and I have been watching with great interest the incandescent bulbs lighting up above people’s heads who have finally realized that they were suckered into accepting and supporting the invasion of the sovereign country, Iraq—an invasion that is still going on, with daily deaths from confrontations between Iraquis trying to defend THEIR country and U.S. soldiers who’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re back in—where?—Indiana?
It warms our hearts to see folks finally demanding a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the machinations/manipulations/manufacturing of evidence and just plain lies (we come from the country and we know manure when we see it) strung together by the petrocriminals of the Bush Gang in order to get their hands—er, drills—into the second largest petroleum reserves on the planet.
“After that investigation shows just how guilty those guys are, do you think that people will look at the invasion of Afghanistan and be able to muster up enough historical memory to connect 9/11 with the Reichstag Fire?” Raven clamps his beak into a rye cracker.
A wry question from the rye cracker monster, huh? I’d like to hope so, Rave. I really would. But you have to remember that the bulbs that we’ve been seeing begin to give off some light are nowhere near the majority. In most of the bulbs there still beats the heart of darkness.
“Wretched analogy. It would be better to say still persists the peristalsis of stupidity.”
You’re too sensitive to images of darkness, and you’re getting too far out, guy—too close to Poe’s “detestable” putrescence from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”
“Poe! Of course. A saint of my devotion. Or maybe I am the saint of his devotion? A second-class saint though—all he had me say was “Nevermore”. Not even “One day at a time.”
Ouch, Rave. I fear we’re heading into a fog of alcoholic imagery.
“He WAS an alcoholic.” Raven unwraps another little packet of rye.
Poe? I suppose so. It didn’t seem to hurt his writing, though.
“I was talking about Bush. The leader of the Gang. The born-again bonehead who—as we indicated a few months back—should be impeached.”
Who would—in fact—do better falling off a barstool in Texas.
“Both of them would do better.” Raven lies down on the windowsill, ready for a snooze in the sun.
Bush and Poe?
I had a terrible feeling—even before I finished my question—that I had been had.
“Of course not.” Raven closes one eye. “Bush and the horse he rode in on.”
To the bar in Texas.
“To the Oval Office. It’s high time they cleaned out the manure in there.”
Raven closes the other eye, and a discreet snore begins to escape from his beak.
Raven and I have been watching with great interest the incandescent bulbs lighting up above people’s heads who have finally realized that they were suckered into accepting and supporting the invasion of the sovereign country, Iraq—an invasion that is still going on, with daily deaths from confrontations between Iraquis trying to defend THEIR country and U.S. soldiers who’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re back in—where?—Indiana?
It warms our hearts to see folks finally demanding a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the machinations/manipulations/manufacturing of evidence and just plain lies (we come from the country and we know manure when we see it) strung together by the petrocriminals of the Bush Gang in order to get their hands—er, drills—into the second largest petroleum reserves on the planet.
“After that investigation shows just how guilty those guys are, do you think that people will look at the invasion of Afghanistan and be able to muster up enough historical memory to connect 9/11 with the Reichstag Fire?” Raven clamps his beak into a rye cracker.
A wry question from the rye cracker monster, huh? I’d like to hope so, Rave. I really would. But you have to remember that the bulbs that we’ve been seeing begin to give off some light are nowhere near the majority. In most of the bulbs there still beats the heart of darkness.
“Wretched analogy. It would be better to say still persists the peristalsis of stupidity.”
You’re too sensitive to images of darkness, and you’re getting too far out, guy—too close to Poe’s “detestable” putrescence from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”
“Poe! Of course. A saint of my devotion. Or maybe I am the saint of his devotion? A second-class saint though—all he had me say was “Nevermore”. Not even “One day at a time.”
Ouch, Rave. I fear we’re heading into a fog of alcoholic imagery.
“He WAS an alcoholic.” Raven unwraps another little packet of rye.
Poe? I suppose so. It didn’t seem to hurt his writing, though.
“I was talking about Bush. The leader of the Gang. The born-again bonehead who—as we indicated a few months back—should be impeached.”
Who would—in fact—do better falling off a barstool in Texas.
“Both of them would do better.” Raven lies down on the windowsill, ready for a snooze in the sun.
Bush and Poe?
I had a terrible feeling—even before I finished my question—that I had been had.
“Of course not.” Raven closes one eye. “Bush and the horse he rode in on.”
To the bar in Texas.
“To the Oval Office. It’s high time they cleaned out the manure in there.”
Raven closes the other eye, and a discreet snore begins to escape from his beak.
Monday, June 16, 2003
DUELING BANJOS
Raven is in conspicuously bad humor this morning. Both of us despise rain, but he takes every drop as a personal insult.
Gee, guy, try to cheer up. We have to think about more important stuff than the weather.
Raven sniffs. “I think I am getting a cold. And you—who spent almost the whole day DRY in bed yesterday—you could show a little more sensitivity to your fellow creatures.”
I wasn’t just loafing, Rave. I was suffering the slings and arrows of my dental adventure of Saturday. Well, the aftermath of anesthesia, anyway. Now I remember why it had been 10 years since I last put myself in the hands of a dentist.
“I wish I could identify with you. Maybe teeth weren’t such an evolutionary bargain after all.” Raven looks down his beak in the mirror. “I don’t have tonsils, either.”
Rave, you are way ahead of the pack by anybody’s standards. I am reading a piece by Charley Reese. My friend Maryanne forwards me his stuff regularly—he is always a breath of fresh air, or at least a breath of common sense. I think you’ll appreciate that he agrees with you about the lack of evolutionary progress by the human race. Listen:
“It's too bad we can't force political leaders to settle their quarrels personally with pistols or swords. If that were their only choice, then most conflicts would be settled by negotiations. But instead, political leaders have the power to spend the lives of the nation's youth as if these precious lives were just another appropriation in the budget.
There is nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it. I suspect the human race has not changed appreciably since the cave man's days. Men have always settled conflicts with force and violence, and I suspect they will right up to the point where they wipe the human race off the face of the Earth.
If there is such a thing as evolution, it ain't working, at least as far as the human brain is concerned.”
“I told you so. Humans are an embarrassment to the animal kingdom—weak, conflictive, INSENSITIVE TO THEIR FELLOW CREATURES.”
Okay, I get the message. What would you like me to do to make you feel better?
“How about a cup of tea, for starters? With a smidge of Broncolin dumped into it. And—let’s see—soft-boiled eggs and toast and maybe some slices of papaya with a little lime juice dribbled over them and….
”Too bad we live at the end of the earth, Rave—sounds like a trip to the breakfast buffet at the Caracas Hilton is in order for you.
“Too far to fly in my tender condition. I guess I will just have to depend on your kindness….
”Blanche Dubois, in the flesh—er, feathers. Just what I needed.
Raven is in conspicuously bad humor this morning. Both of us despise rain, but he takes every drop as a personal insult.
Gee, guy, try to cheer up. We have to think about more important stuff than the weather.
Raven sniffs. “I think I am getting a cold. And you—who spent almost the whole day DRY in bed yesterday—you could show a little more sensitivity to your fellow creatures.”
I wasn’t just loafing, Rave. I was suffering the slings and arrows of my dental adventure of Saturday. Well, the aftermath of anesthesia, anyway. Now I remember why it had been 10 years since I last put myself in the hands of a dentist.
“I wish I could identify with you. Maybe teeth weren’t such an evolutionary bargain after all.” Raven looks down his beak in the mirror. “I don’t have tonsils, either.”
Rave, you are way ahead of the pack by anybody’s standards. I am reading a piece by Charley Reese. My friend Maryanne forwards me his stuff regularly—he is always a breath of fresh air, or at least a breath of common sense. I think you’ll appreciate that he agrees with you about the lack of evolutionary progress by the human race. Listen:
“It's too bad we can't force political leaders to settle their quarrels personally with pistols or swords. If that were their only choice, then most conflicts would be settled by negotiations. But instead, political leaders have the power to spend the lives of the nation's youth as if these precious lives were just another appropriation in the budget.
There is nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it. I suspect the human race has not changed appreciably since the cave man's days. Men have always settled conflicts with force and violence, and I suspect they will right up to the point where they wipe the human race off the face of the Earth.
If there is such a thing as evolution, it ain't working, at least as far as the human brain is concerned.”
“I told you so. Humans are an embarrassment to the animal kingdom—weak, conflictive, INSENSITIVE TO THEIR FELLOW CREATURES.”
Okay, I get the message. What would you like me to do to make you feel better?
“How about a cup of tea, for starters? With a smidge of Broncolin dumped into it. And—let’s see—soft-boiled eggs and toast and maybe some slices of papaya with a little lime juice dribbled over them and….
”Too bad we live at the end of the earth, Rave—sounds like a trip to the breakfast buffet at the Caracas Hilton is in order for you.
“Too far to fly in my tender condition. I guess I will just have to depend on your kindness….
”Blanche Dubois, in the flesh—er, feathers. Just what I needed.
Friday, June 13, 2003
HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE
Raven is trying to scrunch up my black boina small enough to get it to stay on his tiny head.
Rave, I just don’t think it’s going to work. You will have to commemorate the 75th birthday of Che Guevara some other way.
“Phooey. If anyone is the New Bird—it’s me.”
We are going to have people reading poems and parts of Che’s diaries and I think we might even have a cake. Your wearing the boina would really be a superfluous touch. Try pinning a star to one of your feathers.
“Savage. That’s what you are. I don’t suggest you poke holes in yourself.”
It’s not much different from putting a barrette in my hair, guy. You’re over-reacting.
Raven sniffs, offended.
You don’t have to be a star, baby—to be in my life. This is the time to remember Che—and others who have had the now increasingly rare habit of standing up for their principles and beliefs.
“I suppose. What kind of cake did you say we were having?”
*****
When I looked at the chronology of Che’s life that Lucinda had written for us on the whiteboard, I thought about how carefully Che’s life has been picked over:
Che
tu vida atrapada
como mariposa por un aguja—
pero ¡vuelas, vuelas!
Che
your life trapped
like a butterfly by a needle—
but you fly, you fly!
¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS, COMANDANTE!
Raven is trying to scrunch up my black boina small enough to get it to stay on his tiny head.
Rave, I just don’t think it’s going to work. You will have to commemorate the 75th birthday of Che Guevara some other way.
“Phooey. If anyone is the New Bird—it’s me.”
We are going to have people reading poems and parts of Che’s diaries and I think we might even have a cake. Your wearing the boina would really be a superfluous touch. Try pinning a star to one of your feathers.
“Savage. That’s what you are. I don’t suggest you poke holes in yourself.”
It’s not much different from putting a barrette in my hair, guy. You’re over-reacting.
Raven sniffs, offended.
You don’t have to be a star, baby—to be in my life. This is the time to remember Che—and others who have had the now increasingly rare habit of standing up for their principles and beliefs.
“I suppose. What kind of cake did you say we were having?”
*****
When I looked at the chronology of Che’s life that Lucinda had written for us on the whiteboard, I thought about how carefully Che’s life has been picked over:
Che
tu vida atrapada
como mariposa por un aguja—
pero ¡vuelas, vuelas!
Che
your life trapped
like a butterfly by a needle—
but you fly, you fly!
¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS, COMANDANTE!
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
PELOS EN LA LENGUA**
Yesterday Raven nearly deafened me, but he also entertained me--in the highest sense--with his translation of a little part of Hugo Chávez' comments from Sunday's "Aló Presidente". We think it's important that more people read the text, as the little part that was picked up my the news services was very distorted. It begins with a few lines from a song:
“I’m not a little gold coin that everybody likes.
I was born this way and I am this way.
Those who don’t like me—too bad.”
I am not, nor am trying to be a little gold coin. Some people don’t like my wart, but is it my fault I was born with that wart? I am not going to get rid of it. Some people don’t like my big lips—well, I was born with them, and how is that my fault? Some people don’t like my eyes because they aren’t blue—this is the way they are: eyes of the savannah--the color of the honey of the Aricas, said a writer. Some people don’t like my hair because it is curly—because it’s not blond and straight. This is the way I was born: I’m ugly—well, black or black with Indian—that’s the way I am. I’m not refined or anything—I’m a little crude sometimes—but how is that my fault? That’s the way I am and will always be—I’m not going to change; I am almost 49—how am I going to change? Some people don’t like my ideas, they don’t like the bolivarian revolution, they don’t like nationalism. Some may have the idea as one leader of the opposition said—well, a pseudo-leader—said in those days of the lock-out—they asked him what his aspirations for Venezuela were, and he said that he dreamed that Venezuela would become Miami Beach: “I dream of Miami Beach here in Venezuela.”
Okay, there are people who have their mind set on another country or another way of life—they would like those of us who are black, brown, indians mixed with white and so forth to disappear and that there would be an elite society. That’s fascism. There are others who have different political ideas and those are respected—some of you aren’t in agreement with Ch?vez and I respect your reasons—even those that seem absurd—that’s okay—everybody has his own heart and mind. Those who would like everybody to be white with green eyes—that’s okay—it’s their problem—but our little world here is made up of blacks and whites and yellows and browns and mixes—that’s the way we are and that’s how we’ll continue to be. Thanks be to God that the world is like that. We respect white people with green eyes—they’re our brothers. No one can be racist there or here.
No, no—we are all equal before God, before the law. There can’t be privileges nor distinctions by race or color. Some people don’t like it that I talk about Christ the way I do. Well, I conceive of him that way; some people see him as weak and foolis; Christ is no fool—Christ for me is a revolutionary, a man who goes around with the people fighting for justice. Some people don’t like me to say that Christ is a revolutionary—because they have a much more middle-class idea of Christ. How could Christ have been middle class if he was born in a stable? Christ was born in a stable, the son of a carpenter and the Virgin Mary and he grew up among poor kids and died crucified. Who crucified him? The powers that be of that time—the fascists of that time crucified our King and Lord and Commander in Chief, Jesus of Nazareth. Some people don’t like it that I talk this way about Jesus—they say I am sinning. Okay—I respect them because there are some who like to go to church; I almost never go to church—I don’t have time. I pray though—what I am saying now is my prayer. I love the Lord and I go around with Him and we go around in the streets, in the roads fighting for the people. That’s my Christ—I love him that way; I don’t like to see him crucified and with the fool’s face they put on him sometimes. My Christ goes around in the streets, goes around alive, not dead and crucified. Some people don’t like this; I respect their ideas.
Okay, I respect whatever difference with Ch?vez or with the idea of Ch?vez. Some people don’t like my idea about the economy, the participation of the State. I am not a communist—if I were a communist you can be sure I would say so. I don’t have hairs in my tongue, I’m not going to be hiding stuff—no. I haven’t even studied communism; even being a communist—if I were one—in this moment in Venezuela the project can’t be communist….Fidel Castro, my friend and brother, is a communist—but the project of Venezuela isn’t communist. It’s written here for whoever wants to know the economic project—in the Constitution….There are some Venezuelans—some of whom have doctorates and so forth that believe Ch?vez is pushing Venezuela towards communism, but they have been mislead. I am a nationalist, a revolutionary, a bolivariano—that’s me, I like that ideological classification—bolivariano is an ideological definition—a healthy nationalism, latin american internationalism, unity—these are some of the ideological lines which I navigate with—the same as Jesus.
**No tengo pelos en la lengua--literally I don't have hairs in my tongue--is an expression in Spanish that means I say exactly what I mean.
****Raven wants to add this description of himself that he found on eBay (his reward for the labor of translating):
In the spiritual world he is a bird who brings protection, a messenger, he warns the forces of light of oncoming destruction and battle therefore giving us the power to guard and time for preparation... he has the ability to see into the past, the future, and beyond the veil of death. He has the great ability to travel from this world to the next.
Yesterday Raven nearly deafened me, but he also entertained me--in the highest sense--with his translation of a little part of Hugo Chávez' comments from Sunday's "Aló Presidente". We think it's important that more people read the text, as the little part that was picked up my the news services was very distorted. It begins with a few lines from a song:
“I’m not a little gold coin that everybody likes.
I was born this way and I am this way.
Those who don’t like me—too bad.”
I am not, nor am trying to be a little gold coin. Some people don’t like my wart, but is it my fault I was born with that wart? I am not going to get rid of it. Some people don’t like my big lips—well, I was born with them, and how is that my fault? Some people don’t like my eyes because they aren’t blue—this is the way they are: eyes of the savannah--the color of the honey of the Aricas, said a writer. Some people don’t like my hair because it is curly—because it’s not blond and straight. This is the way I was born: I’m ugly—well, black or black with Indian—that’s the way I am. I’m not refined or anything—I’m a little crude sometimes—but how is that my fault? That’s the way I am and will always be—I’m not going to change; I am almost 49—how am I going to change? Some people don’t like my ideas, they don’t like the bolivarian revolution, they don’t like nationalism. Some may have the idea as one leader of the opposition said—well, a pseudo-leader—said in those days of the lock-out—they asked him what his aspirations for Venezuela were, and he said that he dreamed that Venezuela would become Miami Beach: “I dream of Miami Beach here in Venezuela.”
Okay, there are people who have their mind set on another country or another way of life—they would like those of us who are black, brown, indians mixed with white and so forth to disappear and that there would be an elite society. That’s fascism. There are others who have different political ideas and those are respected—some of you aren’t in agreement with Ch?vez and I respect your reasons—even those that seem absurd—that’s okay—everybody has his own heart and mind. Those who would like everybody to be white with green eyes—that’s okay—it’s their problem—but our little world here is made up of blacks and whites and yellows and browns and mixes—that’s the way we are and that’s how we’ll continue to be. Thanks be to God that the world is like that. We respect white people with green eyes—they’re our brothers. No one can be racist there or here.
No, no—we are all equal before God, before the law. There can’t be privileges nor distinctions by race or color. Some people don’t like it that I talk about Christ the way I do. Well, I conceive of him that way; some people see him as weak and foolis; Christ is no fool—Christ for me is a revolutionary, a man who goes around with the people fighting for justice. Some people don’t like me to say that Christ is a revolutionary—because they have a much more middle-class idea of Christ. How could Christ have been middle class if he was born in a stable? Christ was born in a stable, the son of a carpenter and the Virgin Mary and he grew up among poor kids and died crucified. Who crucified him? The powers that be of that time—the fascists of that time crucified our King and Lord and Commander in Chief, Jesus of Nazareth. Some people don’t like it that I talk this way about Jesus—they say I am sinning. Okay—I respect them because there are some who like to go to church; I almost never go to church—I don’t have time. I pray though—what I am saying now is my prayer. I love the Lord and I go around with Him and we go around in the streets, in the roads fighting for the people. That’s my Christ—I love him that way; I don’t like to see him crucified and with the fool’s face they put on him sometimes. My Christ goes around in the streets, goes around alive, not dead and crucified. Some people don’t like this; I respect their ideas.
Okay, I respect whatever difference with Ch?vez or with the idea of Ch?vez. Some people don’t like my idea about the economy, the participation of the State. I am not a communist—if I were a communist you can be sure I would say so. I don’t have hairs in my tongue, I’m not going to be hiding stuff—no. I haven’t even studied communism; even being a communist—if I were one—in this moment in Venezuela the project can’t be communist….Fidel Castro, my friend and brother, is a communist—but the project of Venezuela isn’t communist. It’s written here for whoever wants to know the economic project—in the Constitution….There are some Venezuelans—some of whom have doctorates and so forth that believe Ch?vez is pushing Venezuela towards communism, but they have been mislead. I am a nationalist, a revolutionary, a bolivariano—that’s me, I like that ideological classification—bolivariano is an ideological definition—a healthy nationalism, latin american internationalism, unity—these are some of the ideological lines which I navigate with—the same as Jesus.
**No tengo pelos en la lengua--literally I don't have hairs in my tongue--is an expression in Spanish that means I say exactly what I mean.
****Raven wants to add this description of himself that he found on eBay (his reward for the labor of translating):
In the spiritual world he is a bird who brings protection, a messenger, he warns the forces of light of oncoming destruction and battle therefore giving us the power to guard and time for preparation... he has the ability to see into the past, the future, and beyond the veil of death. He has the great ability to travel from this world to the next.
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