Hank's Blog
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
The Machine in Our Heads
by Glenn Parton
by Glenn Parton
The environmental crisis consists of the deterioration and outright destruction of micro and macro ecosystems worldwide, entailing the elimination of countless numbers of wild creatures from the air, land, and sea, with many species being pushed to the brink of extinction, and into extinction. People who passively allow this to happen, not to mention those who actively promote it for economic or other reasons, are already a good distance down the road to insanity. Most people do not see, understand, or care very much about this catastrophe of the planet because they are overwhelmingly preoccupied with grave psychological problems. The environmental crisis is rooted in the psychological crisis of the modern individual. This makes the search for an eco-psychology crucial; we must understand better what terrible thing is happening to the modern human mind, why it is happening, and what can be done about it.
read more...
Monday, March 29, 2004
Turning the Tide - Noam Chomsky's weblog:
1. What do you see as the best solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict?
It depends what time frame we have in mind. In the short term, the only feasible and minimally decent solution is along the lines of the international consensus that the US has unilaterally blocked for the last 30 years: a two-state settlement on the international border (green line), with "minor and mutual adjustments," in the terms of official US policy, though not actual policy after 1971. By now, US-backed Israeli settlement and infrastructure projects change the import of "minor." Nevertheless, several programs of basically that nature are on the table, the most prominent being the Geneva Accords, formally presented in Geneva in December, which gives a detailed program for a 1-1 land swap and other aspects of a settlement, and is about as good as is likely to be achieved -- and could be achieved if the US government would back it, which is of course the one issue that we can hope to influence, hence the most important for us. So far, the US has refused to do so. "The United States conspicuously was not among the governments sending a message of support," the New York Times reported in a (generally disparaging) news story on the December 1 meetings in Geneva where the Accords were presented
read more...
Thursday, March 25, 2004
The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil - human greed.
Will America, England, and the other great nations of the West continue to exploit the so-called weaker or uncivilized races and hope to attain peace that the whole world is pining for? Or will Americans continue to prey upon one another, have commercial rivalries, and yet expect to dictate peace to the world?
Not till the spirit is changed can the form be altered. The form is merely an expression of the spirit within. We may succeed in seemingly altering the form, but the alteration will be a mere make-believe if the spirit within remains unalterable. A whited sepulcher still conceals beneath it the rotting flesh and bone.
- M. K. Gandhi, as quoted in Peace Is the Way: Writings on Nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation
by Walter Wink (Editor), Fellowship of ReconciliationU.S., Richard Deats (Introduction)
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Published on Thursday, March 11, 2004 by Tomdispatch and The Nation
The Empire Backfires
by Jonathan Schell
The first anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq has arrived. By now, we were told by the Bush Administration before the war, the flower-throwing celebrations of our troops' arrival would have long ended; their numbers would have been reduced to the low tens of thousands, if not to zero; Iraq's large stores of weapons of mass destruction would have been found and dismantled; the institutions of democracy would be flourishing; Kurd and Shiite and Sunni would be working happily together in a federal system; the economy, now privatized, would be taking off; other peoples of the Middle East, thrilled and awed, so to speak, by the beautiful scenes in Iraq, would be dismantling their own tyrannical regimes. Instead, 530 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, military and civilian, have died; some $149 billion has been expended; no weapons of mass destruction have been found; the economy is a disaster; electricity and water are sometime things; America's former well-wishers, the Shiites, are impatient with the occupation; terrorist bombs are taking a heavy toll; and Iraq as whole, far from being a model for anything, is a cautionary lesson in the folly of imperial rule in the twenty-first century. And yet all this is only part of the cost of the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. To weigh the full cost, one must look not just at the war itself but away from it, at the progress of the larger policy it served, at things that have been done elsewhere-some far from Iraq or deep in the past-and, perhaps above all, at things that have been left undone.
read more...
"we live in an age when entire wars can be launched on phony pretences with few questions asked."
- Jeffrey Sachs in the Financial Times:
- Jeffrey Sachs in the Financial Times:
March 1, 2004 Monday
Don't fall for Washington's spin on Haiti
By JEFFREY SACHS
The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US manipulation of a
small, impoverished country with the truth unexplored by journalists. In
the nearly universal media line on the Haitian revolt, President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was portrayed as an undemocratic leader who
betrayed Haiti's democratic hopes and thereby lost the support of his
erstwhile backers. He "stole" elections and intransigently refused to
address opposition concerns. As a result he had to leave office, which
he did at the insistence of the US and France. Unfortunately, this is a
gravely distorted view.
President George Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on
toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by powerful US conservatives such as
former senator Jesse Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel
Castro in the Caribbean....
read more...
The Uses of Haiti, by Paul Farmer
In this impassioned, sometimes unwieldly, synthesis of history and report, Harvard-based Farmer, who alternates research with medical practice in rural Haiti, offers an indictment of American policy. He traces Haiti's long standing injustice from the sufferings of the 18th century slave economy, and the post-revolution establishment of a still-persistent feudal economy to the U.S. Marine invasion in 1915 and our subsequent support, based on business interests and anticommunism, for tyrants like Papa Doc Duvalier. The democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in a 1991 coup shortly after he began to redress Haiti's ugly inequalities; Farmer (AIDS and Accusation) notes how media reports meshed with the Bush administration's line, and criticizes the Clinton administration's inaction. Departing from his historical narrative, Farmer also decries harassing U.S. policy toward Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; describes the torture death of a peasant as an outgrowth of U.S. military training; and suggests that AIDS in Haiti should not be blamed on images of squalor, but more on "an established political and economic crisis." American remorse, he suggests, would be the first step toward a new commitment to justice.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
from ZNet:
US-Haiti
by Noam Chomsky
March 09, 2004
HAITI WATCH
Those who have any concern for Haiti will naturally want to understand how its most recent tragedy has been unfolding. And for those who have had the privilege of any contact with the people of this tortured land, it is not just natural but inescapable. Nevertheless, we make a serious error if we focus too narrowly on the events of the recent past, or even on Haiti alone. The crucial issue for us is what we should be doing about what is taking place. That would be true even if our options and our responsibility were limited; far more so when they are immense and decisive, as in the case of Haiti. And even more so because the course of the terrible story was predictable years ago -- if we failed to act to prevent it. And fail we did. The lessons are clear, and so important that they would be the topic of daily front-page articles in a free press.
read more...
Friday, March 19, 2004
Saturday, March 13, 2004
"Eternal time becomes tender, or better, earthly. From the earth, measured, weighted and counted. Would this be the idea of tempered tuning? The idea enters the mind and exits through the mouth... tempered, transformed. Later it goes out through the hands to become visible in the opus. Art and skill."
Anton Walter Smetak
Walter Smetak built around 150 sculpture-instruments, the "plásticas sonoras", today found in the Rector Macedo Costa Library, in the Ondina campus, Salvador.
Photo: Romulo Fialdini
Amém
for New Yorkers: Coltrane on WKCR
WKCR is presenting a massive festival of the music of John Coltrane from now until Wednesday March 24 -- nothing but Coltrane around the clock including his complete discography. They have rounded up some amazing rareties, from his very first recording in 1946 to his last performance in Harlem in 1967.
Also included will be Mitch Goldman's recent interview with Sonny Rollins about Coltrane and the spiritual power of music; Sonny made some pretty astonishing revelations.
WKCR is now broadcasting from 4 Times Square which is a big step up from the Columbia U building that they had been on since 9/11.
WKCR can be found at 89.9fm or at
www.wkcr.org
WKCR is presenting a massive festival of the music of John Coltrane from now until Wednesday March 24 -- nothing but Coltrane around the clock including his complete discography. They have rounded up some amazing rareties, from his very first recording in 1946 to his last performance in Harlem in 1967.
Also included will be Mitch Goldman's recent interview with Sonny Rollins about Coltrane and the spiritual power of music; Sonny made some pretty astonishing revelations.
WKCR is now broadcasting from 4 Times Square which is a big step up from the Columbia U building that they had been on since 9/11.
WKCR can be found at 89.9fm or at
www.wkcr.org
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
ok i'm really back in New York.
with Ricarda Cristina dos Santos and John Tchicai
classical big nose to the front
Bira Reis and Daniel Moreno
with Ricarda Cristina dos Santos and John Tchicai
classical big nose to the front
Bira Reis and Daniel Moreno
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
A review of last month's MaliCOOL gig in the Village Voice:
DIGGIN' 'BONES
Trombonist formerly known as avant meets men from Mali
Roswell Rudd's Malicool With Mamadou Diabate
St. Ann's Warehouse
February 13
"Kora and trombone: who knew?" So joked Roswell Rudd February 13 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, where he fronted his MaliCool band, an eight-piece ensemble of American and Malian musicians.
read more...
Monday, March 01, 2004
featured in the image above is Peu Meurray, who invented many different sized drums from recycled tires. Last night we went to his club, where we watched his band and also jammed with him.
John Tchicai
it's been a real pleasure and honor to meet and jam with the great John Tchicai, who just happens to be in Salvador at the same time as me, and who also happens to have worked closely with Roswell Rudd, with whom he formed the New York Art Quartet in the 60s...
it's been a real pleasure and honor to meet and jam with the great John Tchicai, who just happens to be in Salvador at the same time as me, and who also happens to have worked closely with Roswell Rudd, with whom he formed the New York Art Quartet in the 60s...
