My friend Peter asked me about this. So since the news is well out in international media by now, it would probably be fair to mention that these past couple of weeks the political situation in Guatemala has been more than a little precarious.

The Economist article: An indictment from the grave explains and puts the situation into a bit of context.

In brief, key members of the government have come under suspicion of murder, as foretold by the now deceased lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg. In a video released onto the internet in the days following his death, he accused president Álvaro Colom of the murder of Rosenberg’s client, anticipating that he himself would be the next to die. A serious allegation to be sure, that’s now being investigated by the UN independent comittee CICIG and an FBI agent (one) the US embassy flew in last week. There has been a bunch of manifestations in support of Colom and a great deal more demanding his resignation these past weeks, marking the deepest political crisis of the Colom administration.

Also, demonstrations against the mining operations sprung up in the capital yesterday, among other places at the Canadian embassy. And also yesterday Goldcorp, the company responsible for the Marlin mine in San Marcos, held its annual shareholder meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Indigenous community members from Sipacapa and San Miguel Ixtahuacán in the Guatemalan highlands, as well as Nak’azdli First Nation representatives of British Colombia came to Vancouver to confront Goldcorp with its environmental and human rights resposibilities. I’m excited to hear how it went.

FRANCE – IMMIGRATION/SOLIDARITY: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made the demand that a fixed quota of 5,500 people be arrested by 2011 for helping illegal immigrants in France. Article L662-1 of the ‘Code for the entry and residence of alien citizens in France’ allows the state to arrest pretty much anyone deemed a ‘helper’ to immigrants; the definition ranging from human smugglers to people who out of solidarity and humanity would give temporary roof, a meal or spare clothes to a migrant in need, or as in the case of a soup kitchen organizer, recharge an immigrant’s cellphone battery.

As a response, thousands of people gathered in the center of Paris and in other French cities, offering themselves up for arrest on the charge of the crime of solidarity – so that Sarkozy might meet his demand two years ahead of schedule.

Here’s an article at france24.com

I shouldn’t feel the need to explain why I personally don’t want to own a gun, because back home in Denmark I think the general public opinion is that the idea of private gun ownership is completely insane (with the exception of professional hunters. Only hunting rifles serve any purpose in a civil society, and that’s in the woods – though I don’t particularly like hunters either). After a bit of research on various pro-gun websites I now feel a nausea brewing from reading all these macho statements and glorifications of real men, warriors and free people. But that’s not why I wanted to suddenly write about gun ownership. It’s because I recently had a handful of conversations with some of my US friends about gun ownership, where the right to bear arms is constituted in the Second Amendment. I found the issue really worth further debate, because I was surprised that none of my friends, all of whom I consider liberals, offhand took the same position as me, though their opinions differed from each other.

It started over a breakfast conversation with my friend who is from Texas, and part of the radical liberal environment there – my friend is very politically conscious, conscientious, responsible and thoughtful. He’s also vegetarian and a great cook.
Talking about the news in the US he mentioned that the Obama administration wants to instate new restrictions on gun ownership, and that people are praising it – ‘because it’s Obama, it’s all right’. I haven’t been able to actually find any real news on that, but my immediate thought when he told me was that that sounded like a really good idea.

But apparently my friend spoke of the news as a disappointment – though he doesn’t own and doesn’t want to own a gun – and that puzzled me. How could a young radical liberal and my friend support private gun ownership, when the notion to me opposes just about everything I stand for? When I’ve brought it up with other friends since, I’ve still received mixed responses, and I’ve come to realize just how deeply rooted the right to bear arms as constituted in the Second Amendment, and the idea of the individual’s sense of personal protection must be in US culture and tradition. I guess I had an idea that gun-supporters were generally conservatist republicans and neoliberals.

The argument from my friend was that the people should have the right to possess firearms because the government should not have a monopoly on strength of arms. Theoretically, if the government does not serve the people or turns against its own people, the people should be able to defend themselves against the government, and hence have the potential means to do so.
On my first year in art school, a supposedly radical institution, I was taught the definition of the state, central to the understanding of politics, as an entity which claims monopoly on the legitimate use of violence .. something I’ve later found out is the definition given by Max Weber. The idea is that authority is based on the threat of exertion of force, be that a financial penalty or community service on the mild end of the scale, imprisonment and physical force on the opposite end. Advocates for gun ownership who agree with this point to totalitarian regimes, where strict gun control accompanied by confiscation has often been followed by restriction in social liberties and ultimately in human rights violations; therefore, the people should have the right to protect their rights and resist tyranny.

I of course agree with that people shall have the right to protect their civil and human rights, and that in regimes throughout the World this is not the case. I’ll even say that I support instances of popular struggle which was won through an armed struggle – most obvious to me is when I look back at Guatemala’s 36-year long internal armed struggle, though the progress won is still questionable. However in the light of what I observe in the world, I think there’s a very long way from the guerilla uprisings against dictatorships and totalitarian regimes of Central America or South East Asia, to the United States – well, at least in terms of comparison … Anyway,

I’m going to make some arguments and counter arguments to why I’m completely against private gun ownership. Two differnent arguments but both in favor:

“People should own personal firearms so they can defend themselves against the government. The government has guns, so the people should be able to respond to that”

“Even if you are opposed to guns, because they exist and are available in the US, it’s important for people to be familiar with them so if you are ever in a situation where there ARE guns, you won’t be at a disadvantage because you’ve never used one”

My real concern with these arguments is that they are made by people who claim radical positive change on a grassroots level, which I define as policy change from enlightenment, criticism, and vision. The idea of defending yourself against an oppressive government ignores a number of issues. and certainly constitutes, for me, a conflict of interests. It is a non-political position that accepts status quo – the fact that there’s an awful lot of firearms in the US – and responds by claiming the right for more firearms. In terms of wanting political change this thinking strikes me as an admission of failure and resort to militant, in essence primitive, measures. It also dehumanizes ‘the State’ to a point where it’s two chess players against one another and a uprising against an abstract ‘authority’. Without taking into account the fact that handguns are designed to kill people, that serve ‘no function than to harm individuals’ as Obama said in a statement about getting guns off the streets. In the end, it is a device to be used by one person to inflict death on the other.

Not surprisingly there is a substantial correlation between ownership of firearms and the rate of homicides and suicides by gun – interestingly enough it seems the possession of a firearm becomes an incentive to crime, homicide and suicide, rather than just a tool in the process. Seems that suicide victims as well as homicide perpetrators by gun, are likelier to not carry out their plan if the means of a firearm is not at hand – they don’t turn to another means instead. I believe this must have something to do with the nature of the gun itself.

An argument from another good friend was that the government shouldn’t regulate everything. I agree with this, but definitely not in that the government shouldn’t regulate anything – and that a strong case could be made that the government is not regulating those things that are killing people at home and abroad – such as guns and the free market. Instead, its citizens tend to destroy each other by fear as well as by gun. Government should definitely regulate guns, and not to protect itself from its people, but to protect the people from themselves. Unfortunately the free flow of weapons correlate with the flow of the free market and with the interests of the multinational neoliberals.

The justification by political radicals (liberals and Greens) for owning firearms is thus self contradictory to their political goal. If you support the rights to bear arms and you own a firearm, then you naturally support the weapons industry, the end of which profits financially from the death of the other. An industrial complex that feeds on and into capitalism and the immensity of pain and human suffering that takes place in our world today.

I’ve twice been on the wrong end of a gun, but those two experiences didn’t give me any desire to be on the commanding end, rather they made me despise them even more. People should oppose to the nature of authority, of domination, of force; by denouncing its external means of upholding that authority instead of  resorting to primitive rhetoric of resistance, based on fighting fear with fear, externalized force through the barrel of a gun. That’s what the neoliberal agenda and the nations of dominance are about.

It’s this society of fear, built up in the Western world, that has laid bare entire nations within the last decade and is threatening to eat us from within. People who share this ideology do not deserve to call themselves radicals … at least not in the intended meaning of the word.

I remember a short discussion about this a long time ago, another dinner where in response to something I said about never wanting to shoot, even hold a gun, another friend said she liked to shoot her family’s hunting rifle, because it made her feel powerful.
If that’s power I would rather be powerless – but I’m not. I believe we can affect change by enlightenment and unity, by building a community of social cohesion, connectedness and trust.

Any comments are more than welcome.

So Washington reports that an intelligence comittee of the Senate is finally going to conduct an investigation of the CIA policies of detention and interrogation under the Bush administration. Do they mean the special methods of questioning? Do they want to revise the enhanced interrogation techniques, perhaps examine whether someone did something bad? Why fix something that’s not broken? As it turns out, they don’t exactly intend to find out whether the CIA broke any laws, but rather to “learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future” … Maybe they’re planning to tidy things up a bit, I’m sure there’s a screw that could be tightened somewhere in there. But the agency will be undergoing scrutiny while it’s busy having its head and both arms stuck into two wars in the Middle East and who knows how many clandestine facilities outside the US for a good (or very bad) reason. CIA director Leon Panetta says CIA officers “should not face prosecution if they were acting on orders in accordance with Bush administration legal opinions”, which is to day, before the investigation beings, the chief is already admitting that members of his staff have been doing nasty stuff worthy of legal action on human rights abuses. But because they “did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them”, as if Bush & co. were a fraternity of friars lecturing schoolboys, and as if we’ve learned nothing from history about the free will … after more than sixty years. But if we have, then surely the findings of the intelligence committee – if it does its job diligently – should fall back on Panetta himself and his superiors … They can probably rest assured that it won’t come that far, though. It seems we’re awfully slow learners.

To make matters worse, “[the Obama administration] having considered the matter, adheres to its previously articulated position” on the rights of detainees in Afghanistan, which continues to defy both logic and the Geneva Conventions. Battlefield detainees held without charges by the United States in Afghanistan are not entitled to constitutional rights to challenge their detention, a predicament even worse than that of the prisoners of Guantánamo. Snafu.

Alison Des Forges (1942 – 2009)

Reading about genocide these days, a subject that has been intermittently on my mind since I became aware of the extend of the violence in Darfur in the fall of 2006. At the time the conflict had been raging since 2003, but whether because of the poor media coverage, or slow fermentation of my sociopolitical awareness of the world, somehow it had escaped my attention until then. That summer I had been discovering the work of Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, who had showed me that it was possible to work with art from one’s moral conscience, from a feeling of obligation and solidarity towards the world, without compromising aesthetic integrity or a poetic powerfulness. Jaar worked for on a six-year project to represent the 1994 Rwandan genocide, creating a series of works which he believed all failed in representing the genocide to the public. Today I’ve probably lost faith in most of those values of integrity, certainly departed from responsibility towards the art world, but at the time art school discourse was still having a heavy influence on me. When the reality of the conflict began to dawn on me, I saw that it was following the same pattern as the historical events in Rwanda that I was introduced to through the work of Alfredo Jaar. I tried to do art projects that dealt with the Darfur conflict, but it would be a shame to say that it went very well. It didn’t go well at all, but I’ll recognize it as a point of departure into the process that has let me to where I am now.

Today I came across the obituary of Alison Des Forges, historian and influential human rights activist with Human Rights Watch (HRW) for almost twenty years, and a forefront expert on the Rwandan genocide. Des Forges died on February 12 in a plane crash along with the 48 other passengers of a flight from Newark to Buffalo in upstate New York. Des Forges ‘dedicated her life to working on Rwanda and was the world’s leading expert on the 1994 Rwanda genocide and its aftermath’, and HRW characterized her as ‘the epitome of the human rights activist — principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and,’ (this especially resonates with me) ‘to using that truth to protect ordinary people.’ I haven’t read any of her work – she authored the book ‘Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda’ (the title alone says something about the scale of conflict) – but here is a video commemorating the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in 2004, from the HRW home page.

“Alison’s loss is a devastating blow not only to Human Rights Watch but also to the people of Rwanda and the Great Lakes region. [...] She was among the first to highlight the ethnic tensions that led to the genocide, and when it happened and the world stood by and watched, Alison did everything humanly possible to save people. [...] She never forgot about the crimes committed by the Rwandan government’s forces, and that was unpopular, especially in the United States and in Britain,” [...] “She was really a thorn in everyone’s side, and that’s a testament to her integrity and sense of principle and commitment to the truth.”

- Kenneth Roth, exec. dir. of HRW

Since I came to Guatemala for the first time, this world of grave human rights violations has become very present and real; although I live a very priviledged life of a westerner here, the hard reality and sad history of Guatemala is evident in the testimonies of people I meet, who lost their friend and family to the civil war, and in the faces of people I meet on the street. The unmistakable prevailing poverty of a majority of the Mayan population reflects the century-long discrimination of the indigenous peoples, an issue that have been hardly dealt with since the peace accords in 1996, when for the first time in history the Mayan population was even recognized by the constitution, as peoples in their own right. Close to half the population, they’ve always been brutally victimized and discriminated against; during the worst years of the Civil War (roughly 1978-85), they were directly targeted by the military governments, and under the presidencies of Lucas García and Efraín Rios Montt, over 200,000 Mayans were very brutally  killed, and tens of thousands disappeared. Although it was claimed to be an attempt to ‘pull up from the roots’ the support for oppostition resistance guerillas, you’d have to add four hundred years of racial discrimination to the causes of what was essentially the worst genocide of the Americas since colonial times.

There’s so much more to tell, and I will return in future posts to the subject. Night has fallen and I’m about to turn in, to the simple words of William Carlos Williams:

it is difficult
to get the news
from poems
yet men die miserably
every day
for lack
of what is found
there

.

Update Monday 16: a long feature on Alison Des Forges and Human Rights Watch on today’s show of Democracy Now. Amy Goodman interviews Kenneth Roth about Alison Des Forges, about Rwanda, genocide, and the Israeli/Palestine situation. If the link ceases to work, this should be a direct link to the show.

“… the legacy of the Rwandan genocide: It’s as if you took a picture of a family, and ripped it down the middle. And then tried to fit the halves back together again. Even with the best glue in the world, it’s never gonna be the same. People betrayed their deepest values in order to kill (…). Whether you look at it from the point of view of the victims or the point of view of the perpetrator, these are not things that can ever be forgotten.”

- Alison Des Forges

GAZA STRIP. 2005. Settler in Gadid try to resist evacuation by Israeli forces.
Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos

…

Update: Please read Letters from Gaza
and from same site, take a closer look at the Map of Gaza Casualties

photo from cnn.com

Gaza is burning, and while Israel continues its aggression against the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza, now going on twenty days, the children are a majority among those innocent caught in the crossfire – I doubt even Israel’s most stiff-necked official can claim that these are enemy combatants and keep a straight face. By all accounts, at least one third of the victims in Gaza are children, more than three hundred so far. What is happening right now is horribly, fucking wrong, a humanitarian disaster of sinister proportions in the face of an international community that so far can only look in from the outside.

As their rockets and artillery keep dropping, Israel is still preventing international reporters from entering the territories, claiming that it would compromise military operations. According to cnn.com, “Israel has accused Hamas militants of exploiting the deaths of civilians to garner international sympathy through the media,” in other words, of painting a rather unfair image of Israel’s military operation by focusing too much on civilian casualties — echoing the 2004 second bombing of Falluja in Iraq by Israel’s ally the United States; here too, the city under seige was cordoned off so no-one were able to flee the bombing raids because they were turned back at the city gates. The New York Times, known for their ardent support of the war, applauded the shutdown of hospitals like Falluja General Hospital, regarded by the invaders as “a propaganda weapon for the militants, [...] with its stream of reports of civilian casualties.”  So, it was considered a legitimate target, since “inflated civilian casualty figures [...] had inflamed opinion throughout the country, driving up the political costs of the conflict.” (my emphasis). Subsequently, Al-Jazeera was harshly critized by high US officials for, again, having “emphasized civilian casualties” during the destruction of Falluja, in other words, reporting the truth – known as bad for business. ¹

But what is happening in Gaza right now looks less like a military operation and more like a state-run campaign of mass-homicide on innocent civilians (again the resemblance with Iraq is striking). The president Evo Morales of Bolivia and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez both announced today that they are severing diplomatic relations with Israel on the basis of “the gravity of the atrocities against the Palestinian people,” and continued by accusing Israel of participating in “state terrorism” against “the most weak and innocent human beings: children, women and the aged.” ²
In this article on Z Space we find some numbers to back that up: “…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.”

Figures that surely deserve to enter the debate about Israels proclaimed legitimacy..

I appreciate that even in a small city like Quetzaltenango, local Guatemalan youth were able to muster a crowd for a peace march for Gaza yesterday, which, however small, managed to get a lot of attention, carrying a casket on its way through the city and up to the Plaza de Israel, effectively blocking traffic for a  good while. I hope as many as possible will summon of the strength to participate in denouncing Israel’s crimes in Gaza right now so that pressure from the international community will convince Israel to put and end to the atrocities.

News updates at cnn.com/gaza, and a few articles:
Robert Fisk: Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn’t work,
and, this just in:
Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.
Naomi Klein: Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction.

And the words of another man, far more clear sighted and eloquent than I, on the conflict as seen from the Americas, in fact not far from where I am now (copy-pasted from Lucas Mulder’s blog, where he also shares his own thoughts on Palestine – these words however come from Chiapas, Mexico):

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. ³

.

¹ Noam Chomsky, in Failed States
² (CNN.com)
³ (100cm.org)

A man found Alladin’s lamp lying around. Since he was a big reader, the man recognized it and rubbed it right away. The genie appeared, bowed deeply, and said: “At your service, master. Your wish is my command. But there will be only one wish.”
 Since he was a good boy, the man said, ”I wish for my dead mother to be brought back.”
 The genie made a face. “I’m sorry master, but that wish is impossible. Make another.”
 Since he was a nice guy, the man said, “I wish the world would stop spending money to kill people.”
 The genie swallowed. “Uhh … What did you say your mother’s name was?”

Reading, reading, reading … it’s about time I read a feel-good novel … Norwegian, perhaps … But alas, at the moment in a stack down there on my floor, Chomsky, Klein, Johnson and Galeano are glaring up at me, a menacing four to be reckoned with (particularly since I have to bring them along in my backback if I don’t finish them within a few weeks). Here’s Galeano again, from Upside Down:

So The Deaf Will Hear

The number of malnourished children in the world is growing. Twelve million children under the age of five die every year from diarrhea, anemia, and other illnesses caused by hunger. A 1998 UNICEF report, full of such statistics, suggests that the struggle against child hunger and death “become the world’s highest priority.” To make it that, the report turns to the only argument that seems to work today: “The lack of vitamins and minerals in the diet costs some countries the equivalent of more than 5% of their gross national product in lives lost, disability, and lower productivity.”

A sensible argument.

I went to this street corner to snap a pic of a mural on Avenida Corrientes, only to find that it had been pasted over with election posters. The mural depicted what has become an icon of the fight for justice from the disappearences in Argentina, the outlined drawing of faceless Jorge Julio López. López was ‘disappeared’ by the dictatorship during the National Reorganization Process in 1976 but returned in 1979. In 2006 hours before he was going to witness against his torturers, López was disappeared for the second time. Here there was a big mural. Now it’s gone.

Evo Morales in coca leaves. The guy’s definitely growing on me. Or what’s the expression..

Redirect your gaze at this article on Z net: The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia

Photo: REUTERS/David Mercado/files

I just came across this website, osocio.org, ‘social advertising and non-profit campaigns.’ The photo is from a post on Blog Action Day (October 15). I’ve just begun checking out the site, but it seems really worthwhile and worth sharing. Yay!

When I started this blog it was with the intention to remove myself somewhat out of the picture and not write about my personal life. I wanted to work with the blog and writing as a medium for processing what I’ve learned about politics and social conditions of the place I am, to understand better through writing to some idea of a public, however exclusive and elusive that may be. I especially wanted to get better at analysing the stuff; not just begin to realize some of the causes and effects of globalization and international relations, but to be able to pass on that knowledge and apply it elsewhere. So my excuse for not writing has been an itching feeling of being slightly too dumb for my mission. Anyway I’ll try do do better, and in time, there’ll me more pictures, too, to brighten up the view (I didn’t bring my digital camera on this little field trip, unfortunately). I’ve spent a good part of my previous months reevaluating my position in relation to the art world, and taking a critical look on the way my education (in art school) has shaped my way of thinking and acting. And I’ve thought a good deal about the future further away than just in front of my nose.

Since I left my home in Denmark I’ve been confronted with a social reality which I sought and hoped to be able to incorporate into my artistic practice. In order to do this, I tried to emerge myself completely into understanding the culture, history, politics and contemporary life of where I was. To begin with that was Guatemala, later Buenos Aires, Argentina, and although I’ve met a bunch of local artists and activists I’ve had very little contact with the contemporary art world (not to say, you know: as little as possible).

Well, it’s safe to say I’ve been having new perspectives on a bunch of stuff, not least about talking about politics from within a contemporary art context. I’m very critical (if not articulate) about how contemporary art continues to circulate; not least how politically engaging artwork is almost always self-deceiving in its ability to counter- and interact effectively with politics. I felt like I was trying to talk about politics, while I was really producing entertainment for the culturally educated. Some years ago I decided that my motivation to work with art was a motivation to work with politics, but the actual work I was doing was getting further and further away from this. My choice to go to Latin America and spend a year here was conscious about that, but I sure wasn’t prepared for the ride! So right now I’m trying to figure out my direction and what consequences to take.

… to be continued.

Actually, just a side note before that.

So just a few words on the election (you know, THE election). I was very excited when I searched out an internet café two days ago to get the news, and admit that I felt not only a big wave of relief, but yes – a big hope for the future. Some of my friends in radical circles in the U.S. (Jen Angel, for one, like here) have been warning me about Obamanian rapture obscuring the real politics and challenges at hand, as have various other commentaries I’ve read. Indeed they are right, and indeed, from most European points of view, Obama is far more conservative than radical. In a znet commentary, Cynthia Peters arguments that popular movements are were we ought to be putting our hopes and efforts, because not only are there still plenty of cracks in the edifice for Obama’s policies, but there’ll be further pressure from corporate power and financial organizations to push through their policies in Obama’s presidency. The democratic base for change lies in continued pressure from beneath towards the site of power to push through the will and policies of the people.

That said I for one find me inspired to hope for a better future with this presidency. At least the election have shown us that the U.S. is capable of change, after all.

I remember seeing Howard Zinn speak to an audience in Cambridge some months before the Iraq war started. An audience member asked, “What do we do if Bush invades Iraq?”

“That’s not the question to ask,” Zinn pointed out. “The question to ask is: what are we going to do to make sure he doesn’t invade Iraq?” ¹

Oh, and on that note, here’s a link to a video about the military industrial complex: Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki, dir., on YouTube. I haven’t seen the film itself, but would like to. I did read a book by Chalmers Johnson, featured here in the clip, called Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and he’s got his numbers right. The documentary is about the United States’ relationship with war as business, the development of the military-industrial complex in the United States and, following 9/11, the privatization of war.

But let’s talk about something else…

¹ Cynthia Peters

I’m reading the book Upside Down by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, one of Latin America’s most eloquent voices and fiercest denouncers of the effects of globalisation and the free market on social injustice and poverty in the world. His style of writing is kind of like having a boxing glove covered in something sweet and pretty pounded into your head and you’re beggin’ for more, and you can put your finger on just about anywhere in Upside Down, and there’ll be some amazing quote about the state of the world. I thought I’d highlight this one.

From Eduardo Galeano: Upside Down. A Primer for the Looking-Glass World:

The upside-down world rewards in reverse: it scorns honesty, punishes work, prizes lack of scruples, and feeds cannibalism. Its professors slander nature: injustice, they say, is a law of nature. Milton Friedman teaches us about the “natural rate of unemployment.” Studying Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, we learn that blacks remain on the lowest rungs of the social ladder by “natural” law. From John D. Rockefeller’s lectures, we know his success was due to the fact that “nature” rewards the fittest and punishes the useless: more than a century later, the owners of the world continue to believe Charles Darwin wrote his books in their honor.