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Disrupting Everyday with Agitating Art Projects

Art shouldn’t be an elite thing made by a specialized class of people and then cut off in a museum or traded between rich people. No, we’re all born artists. I’ve never identified as an artist, but increasingly, I’ve been realizing that my self-definition as “non-artist” actually makes me a better artist, if that makes any sense at all.

Even though we’re all born artists, our culture tries to beat the artist out of us. And our culture alienates most people from art. The elite get to enjoy art, while common people are supposed to exist in a mass produced, soul-less environment in which all forms of expression are utilitarian or are designed to control us or Sell Product.

I’m not sure what the best definition of art is, but I think of it as any form of expression which is designed primarily to evoke emotion, thought, reaction, contemplation, or self-observation.

Every moment and every place can be an opportunity for art and the agitation and tension that goes with the best art. My favorite forms of art are when we create situations in which it is unclear where the art creator’s work ends and the art “consumer’s” role begins — in other words, where there is less of a barrier between creator and observer and where everyone gets to participate.

I especially like making art part of everyday life, or rather making one’s life itself art. If you can concentrate on doing that, then you start to live life in the moment — breaking down a focus on the future and goals and replacing those forms of being with a fuller experience of the present and the way things are right now.

In times like these, we need to figure out as many ways as possible of strongly protesting business as usual — of saying “this state of affairs is unacceptable!” We need a vast diversity of tactics — from protests, to direct action, to sabotage, to very strange life participation performance art. Here are two art projects I’ve been working on — maybe these will give you ideas and inspiration to make your own art projects, or maybe at least you’ll think they’re strange and funny.

Gate of Nails — It all started when my housemate wrote an article for Slingshot denouncing cell phones a few years ago. It seemed like everyone was getting them, and they are such an unfortunate technological development — to always be reachable, to have everyone around you talking to themselves all the time, to hear ringing no matter where you go. We posted a sign on the gate of the house: “Please destroy cell phones before entering.” People thought we were odd and ignored the sign. Cell phones kept going off during dinner, around the hot tub, in the bathroom . . .

So a few months ago, we started collecting old broken or abandoned cell phones and nailing them to the gate with huge, thick, scary looking nails. Suddenly, we were getting really strong reactions from everyone who saw them. To physically put a nail through a cell phone — an item considered a sacred necessity of modern existence — How dare you! The gate is right on a major street, so the art piece gets a lot of exposure.

The other day, I talked with some kids walking by who asked “why are you doing that?” I explained that it was an art project, that it was designed to create strong reactions, and that it had worked. They stared at me like I had two heads.

Ever since we started nailing up phones, I’ve realized how much I would like to nail up a bunch of other forms of technology. I still have to find nails big enough to crucify a clock, a computer, a TV set, our refrigerator, our dryer, and a few cars.

Lecternette Theatre — We also recently got a fold-out portable “lecternette” with a built in PA system. It was originally created for the US military, and how we got it is another story entirely. Anyway, we set it up on the porch and have been practicing public speaking — making addresses to the passing cars and random people walking by. It turns out, it is really hard to get comfortable with having your voice amplified. I was in a band and I got used to singing into a microphone after a while — public speaking is a whole other thing. On good days, this is really good art because it make me feel uncomfortable, it makes the passing random people hearing it feel uncomfortable, and it is all about expression. We’ve been discussing having a box on the Lecternette with a bunch of different subjects so that you would go up there, draw a subject, and then have to talk about it for a while. Another idea is that you could be in disguise to talk on the lecternette to free you up to speak frankly since it wouldn’t be you, but a character doing the talking.

On a typical day my voice booms out over cars stopped in traffic: “Your way of life trapped in those steel boxes — going from a meaningless place where you earn money to a meaningless place where you spend it — this is not life! Don’t lose touch with the meaningfulness and the miracle of your life.”

A couple of weeks ago, we managed to combine the lecternette with the gate of nails by conducting a nailing ceremony narrated on the Lecternette, including amplifying the sound of the nail getting pounded through the cell phone. It’s great to reclaim art for the people!

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Battling Your Inner Capitalist

As we struggle against capitalism and the ways that it stifles our livelihood and crushes our human potential, we overlook the ways that it is ingrained in us and how we have made it a part of counter culture. Not only are we victims of capitalism, but without even realizing it, we are perpetrators of it. Capitalism is rooted in competition and views everything that facilitates profit as an asset and everything else as opposition. The whole idea of profit has been ingrained in our psyche. Within our everyday interactions we are constantly asking ourselves, “What’s in it for me?”

The conditioning starts as soon as we’re brought into this world. In our first year of life most of us are forced to sleep separately from our parents and we are weaned off our mother’s breast before we’re even a year old (if that). Our parents are convinced that they are doing what is best by preparing us to “fend for ourselves” out there. Society conveys the idea that if we rely too much on our family (or anyone else for that matter), we will grow up to be weak and unable to climb to the top of the consumer pyramid. We cry out for love, safety, and comfort from the isolation of our crib, but we learn that unless we are hurt physically, our cries will be ignored. A whole culture of capitalism surrounds us, sterilizing almost every form of self-expression and interaction. It plants a backwards version of individualism inside of us, teaching us that everything is competition. Trust nothing and no one.

We go through life feeling an unplaceable sense of loneliness and isolation around or disconnection from everyone and everything. As we get older it gets harder to express ourselves, listen, and understand each other within the rigid limitations of consumer culture. But everyone around us seems to be finding the key to fulfillment with their new cars, video games, television, and computers…. then it hits us. “No! It’s all wrong! I need more than this putrid, uninspiring, detached existence!” We start to understand that there is something very shallow about the whole cycle of competition, consumption, alienation, winners, and losers. We decide that we need something much more engaging so we reject society altogether.

But we need to take it a step further than just rejecting the crooked strategies of a capitalist society. Many of us get caught up in making ourselves victims of capitalism, using it as a way to explain away the dissatisfaction that we might still have with our lives. We make capitalism into some kind of scapegoat that exists “out there,” and deny that it exists inside of us. To call capitalism some kind of economic institution is to simplify the complexity of what is really going on in our society; the economic institution is an outcome of it, but its creator is far more wretched.

When we as punks rejected “society,” many of us pulled its evils even closer and immersed ourselves further in The Competition. How often do we put labels on others who are not a part of “our community” or tighten up when some stranger approaches us to offer kind words? Does that voice that says “what do they want from me” still speak in our heads? We make moralistic judgements about people we know nothing about, those who we feel we can’t “profit” from, and we perpetuate the abyss of alienation that we rejected in the first place. As we try so hard to climb out of it, we don’t even stop to notice that the beast we’re escaping from is clinging to our backs and pulling us further into the pit of judgement, competition, and isolation.

In order to break down this system we need to challenge that capitalist variety of individualism-based-on-competition within ourselves. While embracing our autonomy and self-direction, let’s learn how to trust each other, open up to others, and build deeper connections with all of our interactions . . . with everyone. When we deconstruct our own judgements and stereotypes we can see people as they really are, with feelings and needs much like our own, and this is a huge step toward making the fear-based, cold-hearted system crumble.

But our inner capitalist destroys much more than our relations with others; it is far more knifing than that. In society, we are constantly told that we are under qualified; we need to work more before we can get that position that we want, we need to get a degree before we can have the right career. Our personal capitalist takes this demoralization to a whole other level. It tells us that we are too under qualified to actualize our aspirations and dreams, we won’t be good enough, and that we will FAIL. It tells us we need to have more experience, be older, more educated, less stupid, etc.. To protect ourselves from potential failure as well as the dissatisfaction of not realizing our dreams, we tell ourselves that we will do it someday…and when that day comes we will be happy, but not just yet.

We put off joy constantly. Then we die.

I’m writing this as a sort of call to action. I have a very profound need to obliterate capitalism and its destruction of the human spirit and the only way that I see that happening is by starting from the deepest level. Once we embrace life and all of the possibilities that it offers us, the Revolution will be easy. The realization of our dreams is a political act, an insurrection from the soul. Go! Travel around the world, move out into the woods, go back to school for the simple purpose of learning, drop out of school, stop paying rent, write that article or book that you’ve always wanted to, quit your career, start a career, bike across the country, move to Antarctica, strive for the end of all capitalist wars, do what works for you, just look inside yourself and ask: “What are my deepest desires?” and take action! Do it with the passion of knowing that you’re not a victim of the demoralizing machine anymore. Don’t wait, because your little capitalist will jump into your head whenever it gets a chance and soon you could be dreaming of tomorrow again, living from your armchair, and denying your incredible potential and life’s endless possibilities.

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Book Review: The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs

Corruption, addiction and murder on a large and small scale. This is the story that Douglas Valentine chronicles in his new book The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs (Verso, 2004). Valentine, who is also the author of the definitive story of the US counterintelligence program in Vietnam known as Operation Phoenix (The Phoenix Program), does a thorough job of detailing the crooked and sordid history of the original US agency created to fight the so-called war on drugs. That agency, for those who don’t know the history or have only known the Nixon-created Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). Created for fundamentally racist reasons, the FBN was the brainchild of Harry Anslinger — an ambitious law-and-order type guy who devoted his life to protecting America’s upper classes. Anslinger built the agency based on white Americans fears and, in doing so, changed the society’s perspective on drugs from one where virtually everything was legally available to one where the government tried to control every aspect of drug distribution. It is Anslinger and his agency that is responsible for America’s current conception that drug abuse is a police problem and not one better left to health professionals.

Valentine’s central thesis is explained in the book’s introduction. Briefly stated, it is this: “federal drug enforcement is essentially a function of national security, as that term is applied in its broadest sense: that is, not just in defending America from its foreign enemies, but preserving its traditional values of class, race and gender at home, while expanding its economic and military influence abroad.” As the book delves deeper into the story of how this thesis worked out in practice, it becomes clear that this did not always mean that the big-time drug dealers got arrested. Indeed, if they had the right connections and skills (such as those skills required for assassination and those connections that might serve the counterintelligence capabilities of the US), not only were these men not arrested; they were protected in all their enterprises, legal and otherwise.

It’s a tawdry to downright demonic story that comes out in these pages. From questions about the role of big time heroin manufacturers and traffickers in the subversion of governments and democratic movements to stories about MKULTRA (a secret program developed by the CIA to find drugs to use in brainwashing) to LSD experiments on unsuspecting citizens, this book makes it clear that nothing is as it seems in the “war on drugs.” For those who fight battles in this war on a daily basis, be they cops or users, this is not news. The depth of the deception and inhumanity may be, however. The more one reads of Valentine’s work, the more it becomes clear that honest agents and cops have little place in this business. More than once, the reader is provided with the story of an agent’s years of hard work setting up and tracking a big-time trafficker being blown or destroyed some other way because of that trafficker’s connections and use to the national security state.

What is remarkable about this story is that it holds surprises even for those who consider themselves hardened to the realities of government skullduggery. For example, the government’s complicity with various Mafia bosses and their Cuban cohorts make it all but inevitable for questions to be raised about the intelligence community’s involvement in the JFK assassination. In addition, there are several passages that raise the issue of Israel’s role in international drug smuggling since before its inception in 1948 — an involvement, which Valentine believes, continues under the aegis of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Of course, this makes perfect sense if one considers the history of US intelligence “encouraging” its surrogates involved in counterrevolutionary work to use drug trafficking profits to buy guns and other weaponry. After all, US intelligence and Israeli intelligence are more than brothers in arms — they are two arms of the same body.

The tone of The Strength of the Wolf is summed up best with a quote from a conversation Valentine held with FBN agent Jim Attie thirty-five years after he retired. “I’m not proud of what I did. It was a dirty job. It was a form of amorality, and to this day I feel tremendous guilt and have unending nightmares as a result of what I did as a narcotic agent.” Unfortunately, Valentine’s book makes it clear that many agents don’t have such qualms. This history makes it abundantly clear that those who directed them certainly didn’t. All of which leaves us common folk with the nightmare of their policies.

Encyclopedic in its scope, Valentine’s book is an important and necessary story that reads like a coherent speed freak’s monologue — detailed and relentless in its delivery. If nothing else, The Strength of the Wolf makes it abundantly clear that many members of the illegal drug business are on government payrolls and that the US “war on drugs” is really nothing more than one more front in the Empire’s war on those who disagree with its plans for the planet. Furthermore, the book leaves the reader with the feeling that this front has only expanded since the end of the FBN. This book and its story certainly makes one skeptical about anything the government might say or do at home and abroad. If the CIA and Mossad could help the ultra-right counterrevolutionary OAS in Algeria in an attempt to divide the anti-colonialist movement back in the 1950s, who’s to say that they aren’t doing something similar in Iraq?

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Bring Down B.I.O.

People across the continent are organizing to disrupt the global meeting of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) June 6-9 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. BIO is the largest biotech lobbying organization in the world. It works to promote mega-corporate control of human food supplies and the environment. Its corporate members and supporters — Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Genentech and all of the major pharmaceutical companies — are quite literally threatening the continuation of life on earth with their pollution, unsustainable agricultural practices, and genetic engineering experiments.

BIO’s decision to meet in San Francisco is a surprising opportunity — why would the biotech industry voluntarily have a huge meeting in a politically hostile, well organized community with a history of successful and militant direct action? Their blunder will be the people’s gain. 16,000 industry representatives, scientists and government officials are expected at the convention, filling local hotels for miles around. To say “logistical and security nightmare” understates the vulnerability of the BIO 2004 conference. Police will have to make the difficult choice of turning San Francisco into an armed camp — shutting down major streets around the convention center for days and deploying thousands of police — or allowing activists to turn the meeting into a chaotic, embarrassing fiasco.

June 6-9 may well become San Francisco’s Seattle. If you live in the Bay Area, now is the time to get together with your friends, neighbors and family to form affinity groups and figure out how you can plug into the uprising. If you live elsewhere, you might consider planning a trip to SF.

What is planned

Protest organizers under the umbrella “Reclaiming the Commons” are hoping to couple powerful street protests with inspiring examples of positive alternatives to a corporate controlled, biotech future: “It’s time to put as much energy into creating a better world as we have been putting into resisting the exploitative one! We need to get off the corporate grid, exercise democracy outside of party-driven, corporate-funded electoral machines, live sustainable lives, and create just and thriving communities amid the corporate-controlled world!”

They hope to showcase “community-based, eco-solutions to urban problems” — planting gardens, practicing mutual aid and direct democracy, and experimenting with sustainable, do-it-yourself ways to meet human needs. In addition to a welcome center with a food forest, composting toilets, solar showers, gray-water system and bike taxis and bio-diesel shuttles, there will be teach-ins, panels, and workshops all leading up to direct action against the BIO 2004 convention. Events are schedule June 3-9 — starting three days before the start of the BIO conference.

What is BIO 2004

According to BIO’s website: “BIO represents more than 1,000 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations in all 50 U.S. states and 33 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of health-care, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products.” The conference will include “biotech executives, investors, journalists, policymakers and scientists from more than 55 countries.”

BIO’s role is to clear the way for ever-increasing corporate control of agriculture and to promote biotechnology. According to Reclaim the Commons “The biotechnology industry is a prime example of how global corporations are eroding democracy, threatening our health and environment, and concentrating control of our food and resources in the hands of a few profit-driven companies. With almost no public debate, over 100-million acres of genetically engineered (GE) crops are planted each year in the United States. That’s almost 70% of the world’s GE crops. Once released into the environment, these GE life forms can’t be recalled, and there’s no way to predict their effects on our bodies, ecosystems, and our future. Gambling with the future of human and environmental health is gravely affecting food sovereignty throughout the world, dramatically increasing the risks of biowarfare and further entrenching the health-for-profit system with the creation of biopharmaceuticals that are ‘grown’ in GE plants and animals. Already these artificial life forms have contaminated seeds and crops that have been cultivated over thousands of years.”

According to the BIO website, the convention will include “150 panel sessions, 1,200 displays, a business forum with 200 company presentations, and a career fair.” It costs $1,995 to register for the conference, guaranteeing that only those friendly to the industry will be in attendance. BIO notes that “the Bay Area is the world’s leading bioscience corridor, with 820 companies generating an annual payroll of $5.8 billion, according to BayBio. But the region is not alone. Some 4,000 biotech companies worldwide are using biology to create products that solve health and environmental problems.”

June 3-9 will be our chance to show the corporations and their politicians that we don’t want BIO’s “solutions” to our health and environmental problems. We demand real solutions that work with the earth and are controlled by the people. At this stage in history, the best way to help the environment is to leave it alone and re-learn how to live simply and lightly on the earth.

Get involved

Make your travel plans / schedule your vacation now. There will be action spokes councils in SF on May 2 and May 31 from 4-6 at St. Boniface Church, 133 Golden Gate Ave. June 3-5 there will be teach-ins, panels and workshops from 9:30 – 5:30 at the Women’s Building at 3543 !8th St, at New College at 777 Valencia and at the Unitarian Hall at 1187 Franklin. Direct action is expected June 6-9. For more information, contact (877)806-2871 or www.reclaimthecommons.net. To check out what BIO is up to, check out www.bio.org.

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They're Into Bondage – thoughts on gay marriage

With all respect for every person’s search for happiness, regardless of whether it includes marriage…

It would be nice if we could just laugh at the folks getting gay-married… But marriage is no joke. Unlike lunch counter and voting booth struggles of previous years, which were based on individual access for all, this rights struggle is based on increasing access for some gays — those wanting to legitimize the sanctity of their coupledom. It’s about increasing access to services and economic privilege based on the willingness to enter into a ‘monogamous’ relationship legitimized by the state.

The sense of commitment once associated with straight marriage has disappeared, leaving behind a strange mixture of economic and legal privileges that should be accessible to anybody, with or without a marriage slipknot. Immigration, visitation, and adoption rights, tax breaks, healthcare — sanctified gay couples look forward to these privileges, while the rest of us unwilling or unable to ball-and-chain ourselves enjoy the trickledown liberation of one big blow smashed in the right wing’s ballooning homophobia. Do radicals have to join this poorly situated fight for gay inclusion in the mainstream before we have any hope of smashing the very institutions upon which the mainstream thrives?

Yes, the right wing’s bigoted response to gay marriage means that they truly believe we can fuck off and die. It’s a ball watching the right wing bend over backwards to stop gays from getting married, but we come down to the same old reality: some queers are still marginalized by our normalized gay cousins. The right wing’s magnificently homophobic response lends only temporarily disruptive potential to the otherwise monotonous attempt at assimilation. Liberals fight for an inclusive society while preserving their piece of the pie within a capitalist context that necessitates division and poverty. There’s nothing principled about this struggle for inclusion, because it is based on exclusion. Along with straights, gays will be rewarded with benefits — tax breaks and health insurance — that increase as couples approximate the middle class american dream. Those without the American FastPass — people working jobs that will never in a million years give them benefits; people working the street corner; people too sick to work; the crazies, cripples, sexual freaks, political radicals — for these gays, marriage is about as ‘nice’ as a particleboard bookshelf or cardboard shack.

The institution of marriage is very tricky. With straight divorce rates at 50%, it’s clear that the marriage myth is stronger than reality. The myth is upheld by the strong marriage (and by extension, divorce) economy. Between white weddings and custody battles, this economic niche is robust. With the entrance of the gay niche market, powerful in its own right, marriage will be here to stay as a stabilizing force of capitalism.

Money aside, the eternal true love and happiness promised by wedding vows are verrrrrry seductive….. fallacies. Long-lasting love and commitment to one person, to any person, to many people, are worked out through trust and intense, open communication. Many of the gay couples getting married have been together 10, 20 years — more evidence that relationship longevity is not dependent on access to the state sanction of marriage. Many people are getting married with no illusions about the commitment side of things, but specifically for the economic and legal privileges. Who’s to tell people not to make use of these newly available options? Who doesn’t want a tax break? It’s hard to sidestep the path of least resistance when the tide is strong.

Indeed, as happy couples of all sorts encircled the San Francisco city hall in a bizarre ritual, the sex police shut down My Place, an old SoMa bar renowned for gay cruising and hot back room sex. Gay marriage won’t help the freaks, the people too queer to be boxed in white with a silver bow, the people who think beyond this ‘liberatory’ limp dick. The onus is now on the gays getting married: prove that you understand the deadly complexity of the institution of which you partake, and make this gay ‘civil rights’ struggle mean something for all homos.

This is the real struggle here: not attaining the gay marriage act itself, but the opportunity, the necessity, for people to do hard work developing self-analyses of how their use of the marriage tool places them solidly within a matrix of oppressive institutions. There’s no time like the present for marriage to come out as a false god.

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G8 Summit 2004: target Savannah Georgia

Activists across the globe are heading to Savannah, Georgia to protest the annual meeting of the G8 June 8-10. The meeting of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, England and the US — is actually being held on an island 80 miles from Savannah. Savannah will be as close as regular citizens can get to the rulers of these 8 “democracies.” After disruptive protests in Genoa in 2001 in which Carlo Guliani was killed and in Kananaskis, Canada in 2002 in which Ewoks seized forested areas, world leaders are increasingly tired of having to deal with pesky protests. Having the summit on an island was the best spot US organizers could find to isolate it from public view.

The meeting will give world leaders a chance to coordinate their agenda — the war on terrorism, centralization of corporate control over all life on earth, and the attack on self-determination and freedom. Are we going to just lie back and take it? FUCK NO!

According to protests organizers “Local activists have been working to build a broad, black and labor-led front at the neighborhood level to welcome out-of-town activists to Savannah.” They are calling for an “international festival for peace and civil liberties.”

The Savannah area provides numerous opportunities for linking the global struggle for economic justice and self-determination with local conditions. The majority of citizens are African-American but according to local activists, city politics are nonetheless tightly controlled by an all-white oligarchy.

For more information, contact the Free Speech Savannah coalition: 866.237.7563, 22 West Bryan St. (172) Savannah, GA 31401, www.freesavannah.com.

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International Day of Action and Solidarity with Jeff "Free" Luers

June marks the fourth year that our friend and comrade, Jeff “Free” Luers has been imprisoned and held captive by the state of Oregon. Sentenced to 22 years and 8 months for burning three Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) at Romania Chevrolet in Eugene, Jeff has continued to be active in prison and fight back with his words and inspiration. This June 12, we aim to strengthen his efforts by promoting a day of action and solidarity with Jeff throughout the world.

This day will mean many things to many people — we say do what fits your local situation and your desires. Some ideas are film screenings, protests at SUV dealerships, wheat-pasting campaigns, letter writing and outreach, music shows and direct actions. The important thing is that you ask yourself: will this action help Jeff’s situation?

Jeff’s imprisonment is meant as a deterrent to social and environmental movements all over. There is no central organizing body or group to check in with but the J12 Organizing Committees can help by providing you with flyers, graphics, and merchandise such as videos, zines and stickers about Jeff’s case.

For info, contact: www.freefreenow.org or Break the Chains, P.O. Box 12122, Eugene, OR 97440 www.breakthechains.net or Free’s Defense Network, POB 3, Eugene, OR 97440.

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Life in Iraq

Slingshot interviewed Tristan Wingnut, a Berkeley-based wandering activist, after his return from a month-long trip to Iraq. He was there during February, 2004 .

Slingshot: What does the U.S. occupation of Iraq look like/feel like?

T. Wingnut: Well it’s hard to say. Everyday life goes on. Streets are full of people who shop or go to work if they have a job etc. The biggest problems I see in Iraq are economic. For instance, massive unemployment while the Occupation enforces Saddam’s anti-worker laws and passes more. If Iraqis can’t get jobs and all the ‘reconstruction’ work goes to foreigners and all the money leaves the country, then Iraq isn’t really reconstructed as an economically viable entity even if it has newly painted schools. Mostly reconstruction is just repainting rather than building.

SS: Were you able to have interactions with U.S. soldiers? Did you find them to frustrated/angry with the situation they are in or did they come off as patriotic and focused on controlling Iraqis?

TW: I’m not a great one to talk to soldiers but friends talked to them lots and sometimes I was there. It’s hard in the streets as the soldiers are afraid, pointing guns and zipping by on convoys. At the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters] and other places it’s easy. Almost all of the soldiers say they want to come home, for different reasons, mostly personal. Some fear death but also it’s boring and far from friends and parties etc. My friend handed out the Bring them Home post cards and the response was “Oh, I’m not allowed to take that” but no real hostility. One soldier said “I love being able to help the Iraqi people.” Basically they appear to think that they are doing a good thing by being in Iraq. Many soldiers have never left, for instance, The Green Zone, so their whole view of Iraq is from inside a military base. Patrolling is closer to Iraqis than many soldiers get. I saw a soldier pop his head out of a tank and take photos as he zipped down my street. I heard that there is plenty of hostility towards Iraqis, but I mostly missed it. Most soldiers are, like, 19 or 20 and I get the impression they are trying to “do the right thing” to help Iraq. I also spoke to Iraqis who had been in jail. They had plenty of terrible stories but also spoke very well of specific US soldiers who helped them and tried to do special things for them or treated them as human etc. I think those soldiers are trying to maintain their humanity in a bad situation.

SS: Is the presence of U.S./Foreign corporations noticeable and what is the opinion of the Iraqis about this?

TW: Iraqis aren’t stupid, and know they are being ripped off, but they desperately need jobs so they work for contractors — Bechtel or Stars and Stripes (army newspaper) or sell shish kababs in army bases. You see the corporate people zipping by in White SUVs with body guards and all. They waste a huge amount of money on this: overhead, executives, mercenaries and zipping about. They do tons of assessments but very little actual reconstruction. Most reconstruction is actually done by Iraqis, who aren’t afraid to work and will be there day after day and not hiding in US bases.

SS: What divisions did you observe in Iraqi society? What are the relations between regular Iraqis and Iraqi expatriates? Is there hope for Iraq working out its divisions?

TW: No one knows what will happen in Iraq. Some think civil war. Most people get along fine. People hate Ahmed Chalabi and his group and are mistrustful of many ex-patriots in politics. The return of so many Iraqis has made rents sky rocket in Baghdad, leading to tons of evictions, gentrification etc. There are thousands of squatters all over. Society is divided between Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and others. Race didn’t seem an important factor. Many people love Saddam. He was Iraq the way the US flag represents this country. Everywhere you see a flag here one used to see Saddam there. Others and especially Shiites hate Saddam and are so happy with the US for getting rid of him. Many people were happy to meet an Ameriki and praised George Bush. But I think patience is wearing thin. The Shiites want to run the country and soon.

SS: What did you see in regards to wimmins situations?

TW: Newspapers make it sound worse than it is. It is bad though. Under Saddam Iraq was reportedly relatively safe for women and they were able to move about. Now it’s much more dangerous and women fear strangers. Iraqis believe that the US created all these problems, either intentionally or not, and has no solutions. Iraq has become more and more Islamic in dress. Most women wear head scarves. Almost all Shiites and people from the south do. Many women wear a big black, all covering thing that I think is called an Abaya and it has to be held closed with one hand. Very male dominated society or men are the active ones and most of the workers but some women work too, you know paid employment.

SS: Did you find any other independent press or internationals?

TW: There are quite a few other Internationals such as the Christian Peacemaker Teams. There are a bunch of independent or leftish journalists too. Iraq has had an explosion of press — 200 some newspapers. I just heard the US shut one down. Cool Iraqis put out the independent Al Muajaha newspaper.

SS: What are the realities of people’s basic needs being met? Electricity, water, food, medical attention? Are there social divisions apparent where some people receive more of these resources?

TW: Baghdad has electricity for about 10 hours a day, people with money and stores have generators. Other cities have better or worse electricity. It goes out all the time with no warning. Gas station lines are down to about an hour. All stations are guarded by 4 guys with AK-47s and tons of barbed wire. Medical care is cheap or free but hard to get to for many and not high quality. The Oil for Food Program gives people the minimum food they need to get by. The port of Umm Qasr has no water. One guy told me “At least under Saddam we had running water twice a day for two hours.” Social divisions are the same as everywhere — the rich have generators, buy black market gas etc..

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Slingshot Box

Slingshot is a quarterly, independent, radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988.

Just before getting to work on this, we sit and talk and eat and try to figure out the make-up of this paper. We often wonder outloud about the people who pick this up, and how much it is hated. It’s a good laugh considering how dire and unlaughable the world situation is these days. Being a DIY paper since 1988 makes for an amorphous collective. A startling difference between the first few years and now is funding. Slingshot previously had to dig deep into the collective’s pocket to publish it. Now it is largely funded by the organizer. Still we would not be here if it wasn’t for the nameless people who thanklessly carried on upholding self-imposed deadlines. What hasn’t changed much has been our home base. Ten years ago we printed our “temporary” new address at the Long Haul. Well we’re still here and if you come to town check our new leopard print facade. We can’t say much for the rest of our home town, and if you read Smash E-Ville on pg.9 you’ll get a good picture of how it is…and what we can do to it. Another hot item all over the place is the Gay Marriage debate. Obviously this affects our community closely. You wouldn’t think it but some of our Anarchist friends got gay married and no doubt they had good reasons. We hope we don’t lose any friends and can get people to consider different perspectives from the mainstream. A similar thing can be said of the Progressive Judaism piece on pg.10. Our awesome cover is the logo drawn by Becky for the new info shop in Indonesia. Check out the story on pg.4. And finally we are excited that the Biotech conference will be met with a Reclaim the Commons call to action in June. This will be in the heart of downtown San Fransico and not on some fucking island or fortress. Plus it may force people to consider the conumdrum of living in such an active conscious community, at the same time home to all sorts of awful corporations. We look forward to ample material documenting this next fight.

Slingshot is always on the lookout for writers, artists, editors, photographers, distributors and independent thinkers to help us make this paper. We are interested in reviewing books and zines again but ask contributors keep these under 200 words. If you send something written, please be open to editorial changes.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of the collective members. We welcome debate, constructive criticism and discussion.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting May 2 at 1 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley

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Warsaw Wants You! Take on the E.E.F.

On April 28-30 the European Economic Forum (EEF) will take place in Warsaw. As you know, this took place before in Salzburg, Austria. President Kwasniewski volunteered Poland to host it at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos. The Polish authorities don’t hide the fact that they would like the EEF to be transfered to Warsaw for good. Besides the prestige of hosting such an event, they want to show the rest of the world that they have no problems with opponents of neoliberalism here in Poland. They know that the anti-globalist movement is weak and disorganized in Poland. They want to use this meeting to show the world that while every other place has tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets, riots and closing off whole sections of the city, Poland will be calm and orderly. They are so sure of this that they have chosen to hold the event in the Palace of Culture in the center of Warsaw. The choice of this place shows how sure they are that nobody can bother them. The decision-makers in Davos pointed out that this event will decide if it will be permanently held in Warsaw.

So it is important that we foil their plans. We have to show them that we won’t tolerate their politics. The social situation is favourable because the imcompetence and corruption of all consecutive governments makes more and more people open their eyes to what’s going on. The effects of the policies of both the right-wing and left-wing governments in Poland have led to over 20% unemployment in the country and this is growing. (Among youth, not counting graduates of higher education, this figure is twice as high.) More than 60% of people live at or under the poverty line. Last year it came to violent miners’ protests in Warsaw. Such fights haven’t been seen since the 80s. Other social groups are also in an equally bad situation. Social frustration concerns many social groups and professions. The libertarian and left anti-authoritarian milieus started preparing late last year but we won’t hide the fact that without significant support from abroad we won’t be able to organize large-scale protests.

We are open to cooperation and welcome you here. We will accept any kind of help with open arms. This will be the first action on this scale in Poland. From our side we will try to ensure legal protection and basic medical care during the action to the best of our capabilities, a place to make banners and so on. In places we will have translators, we’ll organize a list of afforadable accomodations, the Food not Bombs activists from different cities in Poland will prepare food for those who need it. We will try to organize the technical infrastruture for Indymedia although this might be a problem on account of the very modest funds that we have available. We invite everybody who shares the ideals of fighting against suffocating neoliberalism. We’ll show the army of technocrats, politicians and financier/sharks who are coming here that nobody gave them any right to decide for us. Let’s all meet in Warsaw on 28-30 of April. We will decide about our future!

—Polish Libertarian Milieu Organizing the Anti-Summit Wa29