Author: mickeyz

Snapshots from the United States of Incarceration…
So, the Pope of Hope announced his (purported) objective of closing the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (“Gitmo”) within one year and we’re expected to herald this announcement as a drastic break from the past. But–as some of the regulars on my blog instantly declared–if President Obama were serious about hope and change, he’d close the prison tomorrow, apologize to the detainees, and offer them financial reparations. That could be promptly followed up with the immediate indictment of all government officials (including those in Obama’s administration) responsible for supporting torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial punishment, etc. And why not toss in the immediate closing of the US military base at Guantánamo Bay and the return of that land to Cuba? That, I submit, would be a minuscule first step upon which we could build.

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Waiting a year to close a single prison is nothing to celebrate. Transferring those illegally detained humans is not change anyone can believe in. Public promises about not torturing have been heard before and even if we could trust such dubious assurances, why are we so goddamned appreciative when a US president merely declares his theoretical intention to think about adhering to fundamental international law?

The Chairman of Change has made no secret of how he wholeheartedly adores the bogus war on terror. Closing Gitmo (an act which still falls squarely into the believe-it-when-you-see-it category) is at best a strategic sidestep by a cautious and calculating new president.

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A related New York Times piece began oh-so-cleverly: “Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed coming to a prison near you?” In the Jan. 24, 2009 article–“Guantánamo Detainees? Not in My State,”–journalists (sic) Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane wrung their hands over the 245 remaining inmates being “released into quiet neighborhoods across the United States.” It’s illustrative of the utter depravity we tolerate as normal in the home of the brave that war criminals like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Dick Cheney, Wesley Clark, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, etc. etc. walk freely among us while the newspaper of record preys on gullible readers with sensationalism and xenophobic fear mongering.

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In that same Times article, Mazzetti and Shane inadvertently offered another manifestation of America’s cultural rot when they mentioned a discussion of reopening San Francisco’s Alcatraz Prison specifically for the assumed terrorists detained (illegally) at Gitmo. But a spokesman for California Senator Diane Feinstein was quick to clarify that Alcatraz was a “national park and tourist attraction, not a functioning prison,” and that the senator “does not consider it a suitable place to house detainees.”

I suggest you take a few seconds to contemplate the depth of moral vacuity it requires for a society to accept a former prison as a national park and tourist attraction. Alcatraz is not an ancient artifact that curious humans are lining up to explore but rather, it’s merely a inactive part of still fully active injustice system. More than one out of every 100 American adults is imprisoned in the land of the free while others plunk down cash to tour a prison?

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As of December 31, 2007: 2,193,157 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails. That’s an estimated 506 prison inmates per 100,000 US residents. Breaking it down more specifically, there are…
*481 white male prison inmates per 100,000 white males in the US
*1,259 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males
*3,138 black male inmates per 100,000 black males

(Of course, this doesn’t include all the dis-labeled folks locked in nursing homes against their will and the innumerable animals in laboratories, zoos, etc.)

As Angela Davis sez: “There’s always a tendency to push prisons to the fringes of our awareness [so] we don’t have to deal with what happens inside of these horrifying institutions.”

Take-home message: Gitmo is a symptom. Barack Obama is a symptom. Obama promising to close Gitmo is like placing a band-aid over a cancerous tumor.

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
– Matthew 16:26
I wasn’t supposed to be born. After my mother gave birth to my sister, the doctors told her she’d never have another child. They couldn’t say exactly why (later, she was diagnosed with endometriosis) but they were pretty damn certain…the way doctors tend to be pretty damn certain. Wisely, my mother ignored such white coat condescension and less than two years later, yours truly arrived on the scene. Mom called me her “miracle baby” and I think this played a role in the amazingly close relationship we always had.

In the U2 song “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” Bono warbles: “That’s all right, we’re the same soul.” This simple line have given me the poetic license to imagine that my mother defied the medical odds by choosing to “share her soul” (so to speak) with me. This selfless act is what made it possible for me to be born and for us to have been such good friends.

We’re the same soul…

When my mother passed away last year, I found another quote to help me deal with the devastating loss of my soul mate. This one from the Tom Joad character in “Grapes of Wrath.”

Tom sez: “Maybe we’re not all individual souls, but maybe we’re all part of one big soul.”

Again, so incredibly basic but within that simplicity lies the secret: If we were to look upon all living things as part–along with ourselves–of one collective soul, it becomes impossible to live in denial about war, global poverty and disease, oppression, the destruction of our eco-system, etc. It becomes unbearable to visualize animals in a slaughterhouse, a laboratory, a circus, or a zoo. For anyone dwelling anywhere near the realm of reality, it is downright excruciating to contemplate 80% of the world’s forest and 90% of the large fish in the ocean being gone. If we are indeed “all part of one big soul,” as Tom Joad wonders, how can we not weep uncontrollably when–on this planet of abundant resources–a human being starves to death every two seconds?

Yet this is precisely the type of brutal culture we have helped create and, as a result, we are now haunted by billions and billions of lost souls. The souls of the victims of war, of greed, of our callous indifference and denial. Human and animal souls…and souls with roots, too. We are haunted by the souls of 100 animal and plant species going extinct each and every day. Souls like those of the Dusky Seaside Sparrow.

Once found mainly on Florida’s Merritt Island, the dusky seaside sparrow had its salt marsh habitat sprayed with DDT and cleared so it could be taken over by the space program. The last Dusky died in 1987.

We could all live more easily in a world without NASA but instead we’re stuck on a planet devoid of dusky seaside sparrows (and soon devoid of polar bears, California condors, Woodland caribou, whooping cranes, wolverines, etc.).

Our irrational behavior has corrupted Tom Joad’s hypothetical “one big soul” but perhaps–as I like to visualize my Mom doing–we can offer new life to the myriad lost souls by sharing and giving more of ourselves. We can do this by waking up, by remembering, by speaking out, by no longer playing the role of silent partnership as everything is consumed or poisoned or destroyed.

Do it for yourself. Do it for the planet. Do it for the future. Do it for the tortured souls, the victims of human progress (sic).

To give a voice and a new life to all those lost souls is to see ourselves, as Subcommandante Marcos once suggested:

“Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker in the National University, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Defense Ministry, a communist in the post-Cold War era, an artist without gallery or portfolio. A pacifist in Bosnia, a housewife alone on Saturday night in any neighborhood in any city in Mexico, a striker in the CTM, a reporter writing filler stories for the back pages, a single woman on the subway at 10 pm, a peasant without land, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student, a dissident amid free market economics, a writer without books or readers, and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains of southeast Mexico. So Marcos is a human being, any human being, in this world. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalized, and oppressed minorities, resisting and saying, ‘Enough’!”

He could’ve added: “Marcos is a dusky seaside sparrow in Florida.”

Or perhaps Eugene V. Debs said it best: “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

I’ll see you on the front lines, comrades. Don’t forget to bring your soul…

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net

Rosa Luxemburg sez: “The first revolutionary act is to call things by their true names.”
Let’s start with two facts:

1. The United States of America is a rogue state built on and maintained by terror
2. Barack Obama will do absolutely nothing to change or challenge the realities behind fact #1

In the name of providing context, let’s look back to the “good war” (a phrase in which–as Studs Terkel said–the noun and adjective don’t match) for an example of time-honored US terror tactics: In World War II’s Pacific theater–cheered on by the likes of Time magazine, which explained that “properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like autumn leaves”–US General Curtis LeMay’s Twenty-first Bomber Command, laid siege on the poorer areas of Japan’s large cities. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, the target was Tokyo, where tightly packed wooden buildings took the brunt of 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that a few explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died). The attack area was 87.4 percent residential. By May 1945, 75 percent of the bombs being dropped on Japan were incendiaries and LeMay’s campaign took an estimated 672,000 lives.

In a confidential memo of June 1945, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, an aide to General MacArthur, called the raids, “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings on non-combatants in all history.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson declared it was “appalling that there had been no protest over the air strikes we were conducting against Japan which led to such extraordinarily heavy loss of life.” Stimson added that he “did not want to have the United States get the reputation for outdoing Hitler in atrocities.” After the “good war,” LeMay admitted: “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”

The men that devised and carried out this heinous attack are widely considered to be part of this country’s “greatest generation” yet, by any sane definition, what I just described is terrorism…far worse than anything allegedly perpetrated by official US enemies.

Rosa Luxemburg sez: “The first revolutionary act is to call things by their true names.” Well then, here goes: Whether we–or Lord Obama–choose to admit it or not, the vaunted “American way of life” was built on a nearly exterminated indigenous population, the African slave trade, and all those killed in places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East, etc. It was built on stolen land using stolen oil. Our way of life was built on terror and it is maintained by terror: e.g. cops, prisons, military, and the psychological oppression of propaganda.

The exalted Pope of Hope is merely shilling old Kool-Aid in shiny new recyclable bottles. Until we act, we remain accomplices to his global and domestic crimes.

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net

Be patient, liberals…just a few more years.
Before we get to 2076, first things first: Hail Obama, our brilliant, articulate, eloquent, half-black savior and prince.

Okay, so maybe St. Barack is a tad less progressive than we imagined but you have to admit he’s brilliant and eloquent and half-black. And c’mon, folks, he’s not even in office yet. Give the poor guy a chance. Once he’s in, we’ll hold his feet to the fire and make real progress. We’ll get permits to hold weekend protests (with none of those nasty anarchists invited) and we’ll give voice to the voiceless…in our designated free speech zones, of course. President Obama will hear us, I’m sure. He’ll prove there is a difference between the two parties. After all, you can’t tell me you didn’t shed a tear when you saw all those young people celebrating in the streets. The youth have spoken! The future has arrived! Bushism is dead!!! Let’s rejoice!!! Let’s sing along with Ani DiFranco’s amazing new song, “Yes We Can”!!!

In fact, I’m willing to go out on a limb right now and boldly predict that by the year 2011, the number of US combat troops in Iraq will have decreased by at least 10-15%. To those who want more, I ask: We can’t expect Obama to simply withdraw those brave, heroic, gallant, valiant, superhuman men and women in one shot, can we? No way, there’s no cut and run for America. (And remember: we wouldn’t be in this mess if that damn egotistical Ralph Nader hadn’t ruined everything in 2000. He shouldn’t be allowed to run. Make it illegal, I say.)

At least Obama is forming a strong centrist coalition. “A team of rivals,” they say. Some may nitpick and point out that every single appointee is a Washington retread who supported the war and could’ve just as easily been chosen by John McCain had he won, but Obama is clearly in charge and he’s brilliant. He makes the decisions and he’s so articulate. He promised hope and change and, being that he’s so eloquent, I’m positive he will deliver. It would be negative, bitter, and cynical to think otherwise. In fact, anyone not thrilled with the historic election of a half-black man should not be allowed to breathe our precious oxygen. (Ain’t that right, Tim Wise?)

Looking ahead, we’ll have bumps in the road (like many years of recession, escalation of the war on Afghanistan and subsequent blowback, reinstitution of the military draft, drastic cuts in social programs, an ongoing policy of torture and extra-judicial trials, the use of US troops to quell dissent by US citizens on US soil, to name but a few) but I’m confident we’ll have the brilliant, inspirational Obama in office until 2016…followed by America’s first female president–Hillary Clinton–until 2024. Hooray!!!!! What a proud moment for the world’s greatest nation. Gender equality is ours!!! No more patriarchy!!!

Sure, those mean Republicans may steal an election or two. They may even stage one of those infamous false flag operations that a Democrat would never participate in. But we’ll prevail. We will prevail. Progressive values will never die and no slimy Republican or more-radical-than-thou nihilist can tell me different. I have faith. I have hope. I believe. I read The Nation and Z Magazine. I watch Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. I leave comments at Daily Kos. I’m part of the solution, pal. If you’re not with me, you’re against me!!! This is change I can believe in!!! How about you?

As this century progresses, we’re bound to see the first Hispanic-American president, the first Asian-American president, the first indigenous-disabled-transgender-atheist-undocumented-communist president and who knows what other proud breakthroughs lie ahead for the land of the free and home of the brave? Maybe we’ll cut emissions by 2-3%, the minimum wage will rise by at least 25 cents, and being a loyal American consumer will be so much easier when that national ID card becomes mandatory.

What’s that you say? 10,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in the US every second? We’re losing 200,000 acres of rain forest every 24 hours? 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides are used by Americans each year? 100 plant or animal species go extinct each day? 81 tons of mercury are emitted into the atmosphere each year as a result of electric power generation? Every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic? 13 million tons of toxic chemicals released across the globe each and every day? 70,000 new chemical compounds have been invented and dispersed into our environment since 1950? There will be no glaciers left in Glacier National Park by 2030? The Artic region expected to have its first completely ice-free summer in 2040? Coastal glaciers in Greenland thinning by 3 feet per year? 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone? 80% of the world’s forest are already gone? Every two seconds, a human being starves to death and 29,158 children under the age of five die from preventable causes every single day?

Slow down, Mr. Negative. Don’t bum me out with your pessimistic stats and unconstructive attitude. You’re full of bad news but you never offer a solution. You have no plan. We have a plan–a plan that comes equipped with its own soaring oratory, a plan named Barack Obama. Besides, it’s always best to focus on the positive and not dwell in gloom and doom. How else can we maintain the hope we need to make a difference? How else can we each become the change we wish to see in the world? How else can we justify our Obama worship?

Sure, some things are a little messed up but I deeply sense in my heart of hearts that change will come. It will come slowly, but it will come!!! By the time we get to that all-important 2076 election, true radicals will finally be able to vote their conscious. At long last, we’ll have a president that the people (well, the few people that are still alive) can support without compromise. No more lesser evil. No more hold your nose and vote. Nope, stay tuned for 2076, folks. Democracy, peace, justice, and solidarity will be ours on America’s 300th birthday…and it all begins on January 20, 2009 with our very own brilliant, eloquent, half-black Pope of Hope!!!

I’ll see you in the future…

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

Do you ever get the feeling that the voting booth is a lot like those buttons you find on some big city street corners? You know, the ones you push so you can obey the law while pretending to make the light turn green more quickly?
From high profile veterans to the suddenly energized young folks brandishing Obama bumper stickers on their fuel efficient (sic) vehicles, the Left–in almost all its guises–drank the Kool Aid again. Not just the lesser evil fairy tale but also the “Democrats can be pressured by popular movements” fabrication. No demands are placed on Democratic candidates for fear any hint of leftist tendencies would make them unelectable. Instead, we hear: “Let’s get them in office and then pressure them with our time-honored and battle-proven protest methods.” Sheer, unadulterated fantasy. Not a shred of evidence to back it up but it’s put forth every time America elects (sic) another president.

Question: Was any pressure exerted on the last counterfeit lefty, Bill Clinton?

Answer: Token, at best.

Question: Did such activist pressure – as wretchedly feeble as it was – have any impact on Bubba?

Answer: NAFTA; the repeal of welfare; the bombing of the Balkans, Iraq, the Sudan, etc.; Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act; Defense of Marriage Act, abandoning his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees; backing away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care; reneging on his promise to “take a firm stand” against the armed forces’ ban on gays and lesbians; the invasion of Somalia; increasing the Pentagon budget by $25 billion; firing Jocelyn Elders; dumping Lani Guinier; renewing the sanctions on Iraq; ignoring genocide in Rwanda; passing a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death; the passage of the salvage logging rider; continuation of the use of methyl bromide; weakening of the Endangered Species Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act; lowering of grazing fees on land; subsidizing Florida’s sugar industry; reversing the ban on the production and importation of PCBs; allowing the export of Alaskan oil; the telecommunications bill; unconditional support for the Israeli war machine, and not pardoning Leonard Peltier.

I could go on for hours but either you get the idea by now or you just don’t wanna hear it. And don’t forget: much of this happened while Mr. Bill was enjoying the “advantage” of a Democratically-controlled Congress in 1993-4.

Ain’t democracy swell?

Besides, what makes us believe in some imaginary left wing pressure (which, if it even existed, we already know will not be aimed in Obama’s exalted direction) that has the strength to influence presidents?

While the savvy strategist/activists of the Left harbor their delusions of grandeur about their ability to sway the Prince of Hope, here’s a tiny bit what they–and all of us–have allowed to happen without exerting our “influence”: epidemics of preventable diseases; the poisoning of our air, water, and food (including mother’s breast milk); global warming, climate change, animal and plant extinctions, disappearing honeybees, destruction of the rain forest, topsoil depletion, etc.; one-third of Americans either uninsured or underinsured in terms of health care; 61% of corporations do not even pay taxes; presidential lies, electoral fraud, limited debates, etc.; the largest prison population on the planet; corporate control of public land, airwaves, and pensions; overt infringement of our civil liberties; bloated defense budget, unilateral military interventions, war crimes committed in our name, legalization of torture, blah, blah, blah…

Before you know it, the US government will start spying on American citizens and detaining prisoners without charges while allowing corporations to ravage the earth in pursuit of profit, wiping out entire eco-systems in the process. Oops…sorry: they’re already doing all that and the mighty Left is fighting back by supporting Obama?

Everywhere I went on Election Day, I was asked by friend and stranger alike: “Did you vote?” Once the polling booths closed, I could be 100% certain I’d not be asked another politically motivated question by such people for another four years. No one would be rushing up to me and demanding to know if I was planning to do anything about, say, FISA, the death penalty, the PATRIOT Act, homelessness, or factory farming. The election is over. Obama has won. For 99% of the Left, that means their work is done until 2012. It’s time to gloat and reap all the rewards, right?

My prediction: The only pressure that will be consistently exerted by those on the Left will be the pressure of their soft butts on their couch cushions as they sit back to smugly watch Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Maher.

My advice: Take up yoga, lefties, because you’re gonna need an awful lot of flexibility to perform the contortions necessary to explain and justify President Obama’s actions over the next four years.

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

“You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress.”
– Malcolm X
“You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress.”
– Malcolm X

Another Election Day approaches and I’m reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): “He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, `Clinton will do better.’ Or `Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency.’ There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.”

But along came 2004…when Chomsky said stuff like this: “Anyone who says `I don’t care if Bush gets elected’ is basically telling poor and working people in the country, `I don’t care if your lives are destroyed’.” And like this: “Despite the limited differences [between Bush and Kerry] both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.”

Standing alongside Chomsky was Howard Zinn, saying stuff like this: “Kerry, if he will stop being cautious, can create an excitement that will carry him into the White House and, more important, change the course of the nation.”

Fast forward to 2008 and Chomsky sez: “I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions.” And once again, Howard Zinn is in agreement: “Even though Obama does not represent any fundamental change, he creates an opening for a possibility of change.” (Two word rejoinder: Bill Clinton)

This strategy of choosing an alleged “lesser evil” because he/she might be influenced by some mythical “popular movement” would be naïve if put forth by a high school student. Professors Chomsky and Zinn know better. If it’s incremental change they want, why not encourage their many readers to vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney? The classic (read: absurd) reply to that question is: “Because Nader or McKinney can’t win.”

Of course they can’t win if everyone who claims to agree with them inexplicably votes for Obama instead. Paging Alice: You’re wanted down the goddamned rabbit hole.

Another possible answer as to why folks like Chomsky and Zinn don’t aggressively and tirelessly stump for Nader or McKinney is this: 2004 proved that the high profile Left is essentially impotent and borderline irrelevant. Chomsky and Zinn were joined in the vocal, visible, and vile Anybody-But-Bush ranks by “stars” like Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Medea Benjamin, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Manning Marable, Naomi Klien, Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martin Sheen, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Cornel West, etc. etc. and John Kerry still lost.

News flash: The “poor and working people in the country” that Chomsky mentions above are paying ZERO attention to him or anyone like him…and that’s a much bigger issue than which millionaire war criminal gets to play figurehead for the empire over the next four years.

Zinn talks about Obama and the “possibility of change.” It seems odd to be asking this of an octogenarian but: Exactly how much time do you think we have?

Every twenty-four hours, thirteen million tons toxic chemicals are released across the globe; 200,000 acres of rainforest are destroyed; more than one hundred plant or animal species go extinct; and 45,000 humans (mostly children) starve to death. Each day, 29,158 children under the age of five die from mostly preventable causes.

As Gandhi once asked: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

I promise you this: The human beings (and all living things) that come after us won’t care whether we voted for Obama or McCain in 2008…if they have no clean air to breathe, no clean water to use, and are stuck on a toxic, uninhabitable planet. They’d probably just want to ask us this: Why did you stand by and let everything be consumed or poisoned or destroyed?

Conclusion: A vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama is–at best–an act of criminal negligence.

Mickey Z. is the author of two new books, CPR for Dummies and No Innocent Bystanders, and can be found on the Web here.

Sorry if this bursts your comfort bubble…
I’ve given some talks this year…talks that could accurately be described as “challenging” to those not part of a minute militant minority (see below link). One of the most predictable responses from the more mainstream of my listeners–whether during Q&A or in follow-up conversations and e-mails–is that some audience members feel attacked (by yours truly) for their lifestyle.

Attacked?

For the sake of clarity, I’d like to describe what I’d regard as an “attack.” Let’s say you’re a citizen in the most powerful nation on earth. You pay taxes and those taxes fund the most devastating military power the world has ever known. Your country uses this military power to intimidate, invade, and bomb with impunity. Most recently, some of those bombs you’ve help subsidize just might have landed in a residential area of Iraq and blown the limbs off a newborn baby, blinded his older sister, and wiped out the rest of the family. That, my friends, is what it’s like to be attacked. Sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping an overpriced latte in a local bar or bookstore, while an obscure writer opines that the America “way of life” is directly and indirectly responsible for the horrifying state of global affairs? Not an attack.

Sorry if that bursts your comfort bubble but as Henry Miller sez: “It isn’t the oceans which cut us off from the world; it’s the American way of looking at things.”

Another interesting reaction I’ve gotten is usually from more seasoned veterans…and it goes a little something like this: “I’ve be doing this for so long and nothing seems to change. It’s all so demoralizing and makes you want to quit.”Cue the goddamned violins. A bunch of pampered Americans are getting all weepy because their meager activist efforts have been essentially fruitless. You want demoralized? Try this on for size: You live in 1975 East Timor when Indonesia–with permission and funding from the aforementioned most powerful nation on earth–invades your land and slaughters one-third of your population. Yet, you continue to fight and organize and struggle and raise global awareness, fully cognizant that such actions are essentially suicidal. The US-supported invaders are ruthless and relentless. Somehow, these East Timorese humans managed to avoid getting bummed out and their efforts have resulted in some improvement.

I hope that doesn’t put you in a funk but as Noam Chomsky sez: “I’m not here to cheer you up.”

(Samples of my talk here)

Mickey Z. is author of several books, including CPR for Dummies and No Innocent Bystanders. He can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

Expanding the health care debate…
My fellow Big Apple resident Katie Robbins is one of the lucky few able to make organizing and movement-building a full time job. She’s worked on projects with Food Not Bombs in her hometown Akron, Ohio, advocated for family rights through Head Start, and is credited with organizing and directing the first community-based production of The Vagina Monologues to Seoul, Korea (where the bilingual production is still being performed annually by both Korean and foreigner actresses and activists). But while any of those credits would be worthy of a discussion, none of them are specifically why I’m interviewing her here. This conversation relates to her important work with Healthcare-NOW!
 
Healthcare-NOW! — with chapters and networks working for national health care in almost every state in the union — is a single-issue campaign supporting the movement for a single-payer, national, guaranteed healthcare plan in the United States. Healthcare-NOW’s mission is to eliminate health care injustice in the United States by implementing Bill HR 676 (introduced by Representative John Conyers).

Full interview here

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web here: http://www.mickeyz.net

CWG Press has just published: No Innocent Bystanders: Riding Shotgun in the Land of Denial by Mickey Z.
http://tinyurl.com/3srtnr

CWG Press has just published:

No Innocent Bystanders: Riding Shotgun in the Land of Denial
by Mickey Z.

http://tinyurl.com/3srtnr

Check out this rave review from Mike Palecek here:
http://www.countercurrents.org/palacek300908.htm

No Innocent Bystanders is a manifesto in fractals. Transcending labels and political parties, it gets to the heart of our planet’s rapid decline using a blend of facts, humor, vignettes, and relevant quotes and lists. Think: Derrick Jensen meets Arundhati Roy and Kurt Vonnegut.

On the liner notes for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, it’s stated that the song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was written during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. “A desperate kind of song,” Dylan called it. “Every line in it is actually the start of a whole song,” he explained. “But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.”

No Innocent Bystanders has been created in that spirit.

Order No Innocent Bystanders here:
http://tinyurl.com/3srtnr

For more about Mickey Z.:
http://www.mickeyz.net

(To follow is a version of a talk I’ve been giving throughout 2008)
Before you know it, the government might start spying on American citizens and detaining prisoners without charges while corporations ravage the earth in pursuit of profit, wiping out entire eco-systems in the process. Oops, sorry…they’re already doing all that without being stopped.

Take a look at your watch. Since yesterday at this hour, 13 million tons of toxic chemicals were released across the globe; two hundred thousand acres of rainforest were destroyed; more than 100 plant or animal species went extinct; and 45,000 human beings died of starvation (most of them children).

What will we say in 20-30 years when we’re asked why we didn’t do more to challenge all this? What will we say when we’re asked why cared more about Gwen Stefani’s tattoos than how our tax dollars are spent? What will we say when we’re asked why we focused on imaginary evildoers instead of the corporate pirates raping the planet and controlling our minds?

It’s not as if we don’t have choices. Ask yourself this: Which do you prefer, a consumer culture or an ozone layer? SUVs or forests? Cell phones or Eastern Lowland Gorillas? Would you give up the ability to text ttyl to your BFF in order to save a species from going extinct? In 2008, it’s not an unreasonable question.

Full article here