First one Dirty Projectors. Second one Animal Collective. So if, as Jacques Attali says, you can foresee the what society will look like 20 or 30 years ahead of time by looking at the shape of today’s music, what are these songs telling us?
Here is a video of an instrumental that my friends Sam, Spencer, Rachel, and I played in our show at the Pennyroyal cafe last Satuday.
The song is called ‘Ventolera’. It’s a traditional Andean song that a Chilean group named Quilapayún plays.
Read about the type of weapons and tactics that Israel has been using on Gaza’s civilian population here.
Please check out this hugely informative article.
Jan 16, 2009 By David Edwards, Cromwell David on Znet
On March 24, 1999, an emotional Tony Blair appealed to the House of Commons and to the people of Britain:
“We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe.”
Blair described the emergency:
“Let me give the House an indication of the scale of what is happening: a quarter of a million Kosovars, more than 10 per cent of the population, are now homeless as a result of repression by Serb forces… Since last summer 2000 people have died.” (Blair: ‘We must act - to save thousands of innocent men, women and children,’ The Guardian, March 23, 1999; www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,,209876,00.html)
Not even Blair claimed all the killings had been on one side. George Robertson, the UK Defence Secretary at the time of the crisis, testified before the House of Commons that until mid-January 1999, “the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been”. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Routledge, 2003, p.56)
The Guardian rallied to Blair’s cause:
“The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to protect the people of Kosovo… If we do not act at all, or if there is a limited bombing campaign which still fails to change Milosevic’s mind, what is likely to be Kosovo’s future?” (Leader, ‘The sad need for force, Kosovo must be saved,’ The Guardian, March 23, 1999)
The following day, NATO began its 78-day blitz of Serbia.
Ten years later and almost one-half of the 2,000 death toll that so horrified Blair and the Guardian in 1999 has been reached by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in its massacre of 890 Palestinians in just over two weeks. Some 3,800 more have been wounded. The current slaughter is far more one-sided than Kosovo. There have so far been 3 Israeli civilian deaths and 10 soldiers killed: 4 of these were victims of their own ‘friendly fire’.
KLA attacks did nothing to temper media outrage at the spectacle of the Serbian state attacking tiny Kosovo. The focus was on Serbian “massacres” and “genocide”. The Observer wrote of the alleged killing of 45 Albanian civilians in Racak by Serb armed forces on January 16, 1999:
“History will judge that the defining moment for the international community took place on 16 January this year… Albanians returning after an attack by Serb security forces discovered the bodies of men they had left behind to look after the houses.” (Peter Beaumont, Justin Brown, John Hooper, Helena Smith and Ed Vulliamy, ‘Hi-tech war and primitive slaughter - Slobodan Milosevic is fighting on two fronts,’ The Observer, March 28, 1999)
Serb forces, the Observer wrote, were “pursuing their own version of a Balkan Final Solution”. (Ibid.)
In 1999, British and American media were full of talk of “genocide” in Kosovo. A Nexis database search showed that between 1998-1999 the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and Time used “genocide” 220 times to describe Serb actions in Kosovo. (Email from Edward Herman to Media Lens, August 27, 2002)
We have found no examples of a British journalist describing Israeli actions as “genocidal” over the last month. Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips made rare use of the word on January 5:
“Many others also share the view that Israel is in the wrong. So why is a country [Israel] under attack from genocidal fanatics pilloried for defending its citizens against slaughter?” (Phillips, ‘Yes, this war is terrible. But the alternative was worse - for us all,’ Daily Mail, January 5, 2009)
Israel’s massacre is presented as a “war”, as a “Gaza conflict” between two sides engaged in “fighting”. This is the standard fiction, as Tim Llewellyn, the BBC’s former Middle East Correspondent, noted five years ago:
“In the news reporting of the domestic BBC TV bulletins, ‘balance’, the BBC’s crudely applied device for avoiding trouble, means that Israel’s lethal modern army is one force, the Palestinians, with their rifles and home-made bombs, the other ‘force’: two sides equally strong and culpable in a difficult dispute, it is implied, that could easily be sorted out if extremists on both sides would see reason and the leaders do as instructed by Washington…” (Llewellyn, ‘Why the BBC Ducks the Palestinian Story - Part 1,’ Media Lens, January 15, 2004; www.medialens.org/alerts/ 04/040115_Ducking_Palestine_1.HTM)
Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, one of two foreign doctors working at Gaza’s biggest hospital, al-Shifa, told CBS News:
“I’ve seen one military person among the hundreds that we have seen and treated. So anyone who tries to portray this as sort of a clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and we can prove that with the numbers.” (CBS News, January 5, 2009; http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA)
Even the death toll cited above does little to communicate the true one-sidedness of the wider violence, injustice and cruelty. One hardly knows where to begin. For example, largely unmentioned by the media, prior to the latest invasion, 14 Israelis had been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from Gaza over the last seven years as against 5,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks. (Seumas Milne, ‘Israel’s onslaught on Gaza is a crime that cannot succeed,’ The Guardian, December 30, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/30/israel-and-the-palestinians-middle-east)
Consider the response of Blair and the Guardian to Israel’s mass killing. From Blair there is no longer talk of the need to send bombs and tanks to save a stricken population (Blair led calls for a ground war against Serbia). Instead:
“I think the position is that there are circumstances in which we could get an immediate ceasefire and that’s what people want to see. I think the circumstances focus very much around clear action to cut off the supply of arms and money from the tunnels that go from Egypt into Gaza. I think if there were strong, clear, definitive action on that, that would give us the best context to get an immediate ceasefire and to start to change the situation.” (Andrew Sparrow, ‘Immediate Gaza ceasefire is possible, says Tony Blair,’ The Guardian, January 6, 2009; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast)
No Guardian editorials have proposed a massive military assault on Israel as the only “honorable course for Europe and America”. The question has not been asked: “If we do not act at all… what is likely to be Gaza’s future?” Instead, the country’s “leading liberal newspaper” is sensitive to the perspective of the Israeli killing machine:
“The ghost of Israel’s humiliation at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 hangs over this enterprise and Israel will want to exorcise it… Israel will judge the success of its operation on the extent to which it will have depleted Hamas’s command structure, as well as its ability to launch rockets.” (Leader, ‘Gaza ground assault: When victory is a hollow word,’ The Guardian, January 5, 2009)
As we will see, the claim that Israel is working merely to smash “Hamas’s command structure” is a classic liberal herring.
The Guardian’s solution: “There is only one way out of the political trap which Israeli forces are now entering, and that is an immediate ceasefire.” (Ibid.)
To be fair, a second leader did contemplate a slap on the wrist:
“If Israel presses on regardless, it should face an immediate suspension of all arms from the EU, as Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, proposes.” (Leader, ‘Gaza: No shelter,’ The Guardian, January 7, 2009)
As ever, Israeli politicians claim to have been heroically restraining themselves and their capacity for violence (a manifest source of pride) in the face of endless provocation. And yet, as recently as February-March last year 110 Palestinian civilians were killed during ‘Operation Winter Heat’. (See our earlier Media Alerts: ‘Israel’s Illegal Assault On The Gaza “Prison”,’ March 3, 2008, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/ 08/080303_israels_illegal_assault.php; and ‘Israeli Deaths Matter More,’ March 11, 2008, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/ 08/080311_israeli_deaths_matter.php)
This military violence is piled on the staggering economic violence of Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Prior to the latest offensive, John Ging who runs the Gaza operations of Unrwa, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees, told the BBC last month:
“There’s one million on food aid, including 750,000 refugees. 80% are below the poverty line, meaning they live on less than $2 a day. Almost 100,000 jobs have gone in the last 18 months, since the total Israeli embargo came in. [Because that included most building materials] $93m of Unrwa construction projects, medical centres, houses for refugees, all are stopped. 3,200 out of 3,500 Gaza businesses have gone down in the siege.”
“There’s no ray of sunlight. It’s all going in the wrong direction. It’s all well documented and predictable.”
“The Quartet [of the US, UN, Russia and the EU] said a new approach was needed for Gaza. In fact there are even stricter sanctions.” (BBC online, ‘Bowen diary: The days before war,’ January 10, 2009; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7822048.stm)
During the ceasefire, Israel placed severe restrictions on the number of trucks allowed to bring food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, wrote in the Guardian:
“It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.” (Shlaim, ‘How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe,’ The Guardian, January 7, 2009; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine)
He added:
“The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash.”
It is the sheer cruelty of Israeli oppression that captures the world’s imagination. Or, more accurately, defies it.
Targeting Hamas
The corporate media has been happy to echo the claim that Israel is “targeting Hamas” rather than the Palestinian people. In reality, the Palestinian people elected Hamas as its democratic government in 2006. And it is the Palestinian people who are paying the price now. The state of the art, US-supplied missiles, bombs and artillery shells are not being aimed at the regular army targets for which they were designed: tanks, command posts, trenches and bunkers. They are being fired into residential areas in one of the world’s most densely-populated strips of land.
The white phosphorus (WP) shells being used are incendiary airburst weapons designed to incinerate a wide target area. The weapon has been used by US forces in their infamous “shake ‘n’ bake” attacks on Iraqi insurgents in cities such as Fallujah. On the BBC’s World News, correspondent Ben Brown said WP shells were being used merely to illuminate targets in Gaza. (Brown, BBC World News, January 9)
Israel consistently claims that 80 per cent of those killed were Hamas “militants”. Al Haq, a Palestinian legal rights group, reports that in fact 80 per cent of Palestinian fatalities have been civilians. According to figures cited by the World Health Organisation, at least 40 per cent have been children. (Jonathan Cook, ‘Civilian death toll spurs legal action,’ The National, January 9, 2009; http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090109/FOREIGN/417838381/1002)
Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) characterised the death toll as reaching “alarming proportions” and indicative of “extreme violence indiscriminately affecting civilians.” (http://reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/TUJA-7N55DU?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=pse)
Claims of careful targeting are hardly credible given that Israeli artillery shells hit three United Nations-run schools being used as refugee centres, killing more than 50 people. The UN had informed the Israeli military that the schools were refugee centres - GPS coordinates were provided. Israeli forces knew what they were attacking and they knew the centres were packed with the same families they had previously told to leave their homes to avoid attack.
Israel explained that Hamas fighters had been firing from within one of the schools. When the claim became indefensible, it was quietly withdrawn in “private” briefings to Westerners - a retraction barely reported anywhere. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s0BRJS6WnMs)
The latest claim (Ben Brown, BBC World News, January 11) is that the UN-run school was hit by a stray mortar round. But just prior to the launch of the ground offensive, Israel shelled Palestine Square, Gaza City’s main shopping area, killing five Palestinians. They destroyed the American International School. They also destroyed a mosque in Beit Hanoun during evening prayers killing a dozen people. At least thirty civilians were killed in Zeitoun when a house was shelled the day after Israeli forces ordered 100 Palestinians to shelter there (Mel Frykberg, ‘Israel Fighting Also The UN,’ January 10, 2009; http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45364). Were these all accidents?
Haaretz reported that, in approving the ground invasion, the Israeli government had taken into account the likely high number of Palestinian civilian casualties. On January 9, the paper reported that Lt. Colonel Amir, commander of a combat engineers unit, had told Israeli TV:
“We are very violent. We are not shying away from any method of preventing casualties among our troops.” (Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, ‘Israel’s three alternatives for the future of the Gaza war,’ Haaretz, January 9, 2009; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053590.html)
Israeli media have reported that their commanders are unsurprised by the heavy civilian toll - the priority was indeed the protection of IDF soldiers:
“For us, being cautious means being aggressive,” one told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “From the minute we entered, we’ve acted like we’re at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground. I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock. Maybe someone there will sober up before it continues.” (Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, ‘Using aggressive tactics in Gaza to save soldiers’ lives,’ Haaretz, January 7, 2009; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053401.html)
These are comments which define the methods and aims indicated by the term ‘terrorism’.
On January 6, Israeli internal security minister Meir Shitreet responded to the massive civilian casualties on BBC’s Newsnight:
“The French say, ‘La guerre comme la guerre’.” (January 6, 2009; http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gnjlm/Newsnight_06_01_2009/)
War is indeed war, but the civilian population of Gaza is not at war - the Geneva Conventions protecting civilian life apply.
Last year, Shitreet suggested that residential Gaza neighbourhoods from which Hassam rockets were fired should be obliterated: “any other country would have already gone in and level [sic] the area, which is exactly what I think the IDF should do - decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.” (Attila Somfalvi, ‘Sheetrit: We should level Gaza neighbourhoods,’ Ynet, February 10, 2008; http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3504922,00.html)
He added: “We should let them know ‘you have to leave, this area will be taken down tomorrow’ and just take it down - that will show them we mean business.”
Using violence to show a civilian population “we mean business” is, again, terrorism. Needless to say, Shitreet was advocating major war crimes.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared that Gazan civilians should not be allowed “to live normal lives”; and internal security minister Avi Dichter has previously demanded that Israel take action “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”. (Jonathan Cook, ‘Disappearing Palestine,’ Zed Books, London, 2008, p.132)
Preparing The Propaganda For War
Well in advance of the invasion, Israel developed plans to counter the inevitable images of bloodied children and tiny, dismembered bodies. Avi Pazner, Israel’s former ambassador to Italy and France, drafted in to support the propaganda component of the offensive, commented:
“Whenever Israel is bombing, it is hard to explain our position to the world. But at least this time everything was ready and in place.” (Anshel Pfeffer, ‘Israel claims success in the PR war,’ Jewish Chronicle, December 31, 2008; http://www.thejc.com/articles/israel-claims-success-pr-war)
Eight months ago, the perfectly named National Information Directorate was formed within the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. This is now coordinating media operations across the various government departments. The Directorate began preparing for a Gaza offensive some six months ago. Yarden Vatikay, director of the National Information Directorate, told reporters:
“One of our lessons from the Lebanon War [2006] was that there were too many uniforms in the coverage, and that doesn’t come over very positively.”
As a result, there are now: “Fewer military officers; more women; tightly controlled messages; and ministers kept on a short leash.” (Ibid.)
A press centre was set up in the Israeli town of Sderot, near the border with Gaza, so that foreign reporters would spend as much time as possible in the main civilian area affected by Hamas rockets.
Israeli ministers have also been ordered not to give unauthorised interviews to avoid a repeat of last year’s PR disaster when Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatened the Palestinians with a “holocaust”.
“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” (’Israeli minister warns of Palestinian “holocaust”,’ The Guardian, February 29, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1)
‘Shoah’ is the Hebrew word normally used to refer to the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis.
A key deception promoted by the National Information Directorate involves the claim that the latest cycle of violence began when Hamas broke a four-month ceasefire agreed last June. In fact, Israel broke the ceasefire when it launched a raid into Gaza on November 4, killing six people. On November 5, the Guardian reported:
“A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.
“Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured. The violence represented the most serious break in a ceasefire agreed in mid-June, yet both sides suggested they wanted to return to atmosphere of calm.” (Rory McCarthy, ‘Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen,’ The Guardian, November 5, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians)
The Guardian added:
“Until now it had appeared both Israel and Hamas, which seized full control of Gaza last summer, had an interest in maintaining the ceasefire. For Israel it has meant an end to the daily barrage of rockets landing in southern towns, particularly Sderot.”
On December 27, at the start of the latest attacks, Reuters reported that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had “blamed Hamas for breaking a cease-fire with Israel, which launched air strikes on Gaza killing more than 200 people.” Rice commented:
“The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza.” (Tabassum Zakaria, ‘Rice: Hamas broke cease-fire,’ News24, December 27, 2008; http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2446278,00.html)
Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Telegraph on January 10:
“Hamas deliberately broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into southern Israel from densely populated cities, using the areas around schools and mosques as launching points.” (Dershowitz, ‘Don’t play into the hands of Hamas,’ Daily Telegraph, January 10, 2009)
The BBC’s version of events from January 9 was more subtly deceptive:
“The ceasefire, brokered by the Egyptians, was often broken in practice… Events began to come to a climax after the Israelis raided southern Gaza on 4 November 2008 to destroy smuggling tunnels.” (BBC online, January 9, 2009;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7818022.stm)
No mention was made of the six human lives also destroyed in the attack. The same BBC article, “Q&A: Gaza conflict,” asked:
“What casualties have the Hamas rockets caused?
“Since 2001, when the rockets were first fired, more than 8,600 have hit southern Israel, nearly 6,000 of them since Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005. The rockets have killed 28 people and injured hundreds more. In the Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza, 90% of residents have had a missile exploding in their street or an adjacent one.” (Ibid.)
The article noted that “Palestinian medical sources say that about 700 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s current campaign there.” Again, curiously, despite mentioning that Hamas rockets have killed 28 Israelis since 2001, the BBC made no mention of the fact that 5,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli strikes over the same period prior to the current Israeli offensive - a figure fast approaching 6,000.
I got Marcos’ speech off of a blog called Anarchy Alive:
“Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians’ fault, due to their violent nature.
The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.
And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.
Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government’s heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.
The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy “strategic” military points (that’s how the military manuals put it) and to “soften” the resistance’s reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen “in the outside world,” that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the “cleaning out” of the probable “nests of resistance.”
The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.
We don’t know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called “conflict in the Middle East,” but from this corner we have something to say:
According to the news photos, the “strategic” points destroyed by the Israeli government’s air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven’t seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So–and please excuse our ignorance–we think that either the planes’ guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such “strategic” military points don’t exist.
We have never had the honor of visiting Palestine, but we suppose that people, men, women, children, and the elderly–not soldiers–lived in those houses, shacks, and buildings.
We also haven’t seen the resistance’s reinforcements, just rubble.
We have seen, however, the futile efforts of the information siege, and the world governments trying to decide between ignoring or applauding the invasion, and the UN, which has been useless for quite some time, sending out tepid press releases.
But wait. It just occurred to us that perhaps to the Israeli government those men, women, children, and elderly people are enemy soldiers, and as such, the shacks, houses, and buildings that they inhabited are barracks that need to be destroyed.
So surely the hail of bullets that fell on Gaza this morning were in order to protect the Israeli infantry’s advance from those men, women, children, and elderly people.
And the enemy garrison that they want to weaken with the siege that is spread out all over Gaza is the Palestinian population that lives there. And the assault will seek to annihilate that population. And whichever man, woman, child, or elderly person that manages to escape or hide from the predictably bloody assault will later be “hunted” so that the cleansing is complete and the commanders in charge of the operation can report to their superiors: “We’ve completed the mission.”
Again, pardon our ignorance, maybe what we’re saying is beside the point. And instead of condemning the ongoing crime, being the indigenous and warriors that we are, we should be discussing and taking a position in the discussion about if it’s “zionism” or “antisemitism,” or if Hamas’ bombs started it.
Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we’re lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there’s a professional army murdering a defenseless population.
Who from below and to the left can remain silent?
Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?
We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don’t stop a bomb and our word won’t turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters “IMI” or “Israeli Military Industry” etched into the base of the cartridge won’t hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it’s heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.
We don’t know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.
I don’t know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it’s as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.
As for everything else, what will happen will happen. The Israeli government will declare that it dealt a severe blow to terrorism, it will hide the magnitude of the massacre from its people, the large weapons manufacturers will have obtained economic support to face the crisis, and “the global public opinion,” that malleable entity that is always in fashion, will turn away.
But that’s not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.
And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they’ll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they’ll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they’ll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they’ll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.
And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians’ violent nature and they’ll make declarations condemning that violence and they’ll get back to discussing if it’s zionism or anti-semitism.
And no one will ask who planted that which is being harvested.
For the men, women, children, and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 4, 2009.
Momentum Climbing gym in Sandy, UT is hosting a fundraiser for SUWA this Friday from 8-~12pm. Music and entertainment will be provided. Climbing is from 8-10 is $15–$5 of that goes to SUWA. The silent auction is from 10-11:30ish–entrance fee is $5 (wich goes to SUWA).
There will be climbing, a silent auction, art, free stuff, and a chance to participate in Visual Cacophony’s community art protest to tell the BLM and the Bush Administration to keep oil and gas drilling away from our wild lands in Utah. The BLM pulled a few parcels from the land auction–but not permanently.
Also, if you can, bring a piece of art, no matter how small or large, that shows how you feel about Southern Utah, or Utah land in general, and we will deliver it to the BLM as a protest. Or bring an art project that we can all participate in.
Bring your friends and family!
More info on land auctions here and here.
A lot of you that check in here are artists or art enthusiasts or aesthetes or at least ex-athletes… so I thought I would post a few paragraphs from a book by Jean Baudrillard that I’ve been reading called The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, from the chapter “Contemporary Art: Art Contemporary with Itself.” It might be interesting to re-read the “Hipster” article I posted a few weeks ago after reading what Baudrillard has to say. Leave comments about what you think…
“The adventure of modern art is over. Contemporary art is contemporary only with itself. It no longer knows any trancendence either towards past or future; its only reality is that of its operation in real time and its confusion with that reality.
Nothing now distinguishes it from the technical, promotional, media, digital operation. There is no transcendence, no divergence any more, nothing of another scene: merely a specular play with the contemporary world as it takes place. It is in this that contemporary art is worthless: between it and the world, there is a zero-sum equation.
Quite apart from that shameful complicity in which creators and consumers commune wordlessly in the examination of strange, inexplicable objects that refer only to themselves and to the idea of art, the true conspiracy lies in this complicity that art forges with itself, its collusion with the real, through whcih it becomes complicit in that Integral Reality, of which it is now mrerely the fimage-feedback.
There is no longer any differential of art. There is only the integral calculus of reality. Art is now merely an idea prostituted in its realization….
“The trasference of art, become a usesless function, into a reality that is now integral, since it has absorbed everything that denied, exceeded or transfigured it. The impossible exchange of this Integral Reality for anything else whatever. Given this, it can only exchange itself for itself or, in other words, repeat itself ad infinitum….
“This is merely one of the sides of the conspiracy.
The other isde is that of the spectator who, for want of understanding anything whatever most of htetime, consumes his own culture at one remove. He literally consumes the fact that he understands nothigns and that there is no necessity in all this except the imperative of culture, of being a part of the integrated circuit of culture. But culture is itself merely an epiphenomenon of global circulation.
The idea of art has become rareified and minimal, leading ultimately to conceptual art, where it ends in the non-exhibition of non-works in non-galleries–the apotheosis of art as non-event. As a corollary, the consumer circulates in all this in order to experience his non-enjoyment of hte works….
“No longer any real object in all this: inthe ready-made it is no longer the object that’s there, but the idea of the object, and we no longer find pleasure here in art, but in the idea of art. We are wholly in ideology.
And, ultimately, the twofold curese of modern and contemporary art is summed up in the ‘ready-made’: the curse of an immersion in the real and banality, and that of a conceptual absorption in the idea of art….
“Art in its form, signifies nothing. It is merely a sign pointing twoards absence.
But what becomes of this perspective of emptiness and absence in a contemporary universe that is already totally emptied of its meaning and reality?
Art can now only align itself with the general insignificance and indifference. It no longer has any privileged status. It no longer has any other final destination than this gluid universe of communication, the networks and interaction.
Transmitter and receiver merging int he same loop: all transmitters, all receivers. Each subject interacting with itself, doomed to express itself without any longer having time to listen to the other.
The Net and the networks clearly increase this possibility of transmitting for oneself in a closed circuit, everyone going at it with their virtual performances and contributing to the general asphyxia [Like what I’m doing right now on this blog??]….
“Since the nineteenth century, it has been art’s claim that is is useless. It has prided itself on this (which was not the case in classical art, where, in a world that was not yet either real or objective, the quesiton of usefulness did not even arise).
Extending this principle, it is enought to elevate any object to uselessness to turn it into a work of art. This is precisely what the ‘ready-made’ does, when it simply withdraws an object from its function, without changing it in any way, and thereby turns it inot a gallery piece. It is enough to turn the real itself into a useless function to make it an art object, prey to teh devouring aesthetic of banality.
Similarly, old objects, being obsolete and hence useless, automatically acqurie an aesthetic aura. Their being distant from us in time is the equivalent of Duchamp’s artistic act; they too become ‘ready-mades’, nostalgic vestiges resuscitated in our museum universe.
We might extrapolate this aesthetic transfiguration to the whole of material production. As soon as it reaches a threshold where it is no longer exchanged in terms of social wealth, ti becomes something like a giant Surrealist object, in the grip of a devouring aesthetic, and everywhere takes its place in a kind of virtual museum. And so we have the museification, like a ‘ready-made’, of the whole technical environment in the form of industrial wasteland….
“Lastly, what purpose does this useless function serve?
From what, by its very uselessness, does it deliver us?
Like politicians, who deliver us from the wearisome responsibility of power, contemporary art, by its incoherent artifice, delivers us from the ascendancy of meaning by providing us with the spectacle of non-sense. This explains its proliferation: independently of any aesthetic value, it is assured of prospering by dint of its very insignificance and emptiness. Just as the politician endures in the absence of any representativeness or credibility.”
This is J. Reuben Clark of the First Presidency speaking in general conference just after World War II:
“As the crowning savagery of the war, we Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we …. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that; it was a world tragedy …. And the worst of this atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women, and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large a general approval of this fiendish butchery.”
Civilian deaths in Hiroshima: over 140,000
Civilian deaths in Iraq: estimated as high as 97,762 (and counting)…
