Impactivism

Terrorism News Today

So I get home this evening, and turn on Al Jazeera (my prime source of English language TV news in Madrid other than CNN International) and to my shock, they have the nerve (not to mention terroristic tendencies) *not* to be reporting on the U.S. election, even though the first results are probably a mere eight hours away.

How else am I to understand the minutiae of exit polling methodology, and how unreliable it can be but that the TV networks will use it anyway to predict the outcome of the election, perhaps before polls close in some states? Plus I need the hours and hours of advance "analysis" from "experts" wishing people good luck in supressing their latent racism when they go to vote.

Instead, Al Jazeera, in its unpatriotic, anti-American ignorance of what's important in the world, has a report from Goma, Congo, (where, unlike most U.S. news organizations, they actually have a reporter on the ground) which is surrounded by rebel soldiers, as government soldiers plunder, rape and kill civilians in their retreat from the town. Meanwhile, one quarter of a million people have fled their homes in the region, while the international community wrings its hands.

It's as if Al Jazeera is intentially provoking charges of being a terrorist news organization.

Speaking of, does that make me a terrorist if I watch it while supporting Barack Obama for president? (I've also been known to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart.) If so, my future traveling experience may revert to the several years I was on the terrorist watch list because (I believe) I have the same name as an IRA member who was, incidentally, killed 10 years ago by the British Army in Northern Ireland.

Good to know that the government agencies who compile those up-to-date lists aren't monitoring the internets, becuase I have a plane to catch Friday.

You can thank me later for this post

So yesterday I went to see Radiohead play in Berlin.

Radiohead. In Berlin, people. It’s OK, you can thank me later. It’s all good.

And of course I made my newest best friend Berthold come with me six hours before the show started so we would get right into the mosh pit. Even if he hadn't just met me he would have done it because he’s German, you know. They might hate you on the inside but they’re loyal as terriers. And they know how to stand up for themselves when the going gets tough. (Except, you know, when the Red Army is approaching. Then it’s best not to have any cyanide capsules casually laying around.)

Annnywaaay. A loyal race the Germans, generally speaking.

So Berthold and I go down to the park at Wuhlheide, where the concert was, and we start drinking half liters of Warsteiner a tad too quickly, and a couple of hours later we were really rolling. But there was still three or four hours to go and they hadn’t even opened the arena yet. And then I said. “Let’s go look for the band’s tour bus. I just *have* to tell Thom Yorke how much he’s changed my life.” And Berthold rolled his eyes, but I pleaded and pleaded until finally he said yes. I think it was because I told him how hot he looked in his Miesbacher.

So we go to find the tour bus, but of course there’s about 300 crazed fans hanging around it. Who are these people? Freakin’ groupies. You’re like sheep. Don’t you have any individualism? And then Berthold said I should keep my voice down a little because some of the skinheads were starting to look invitingly in my direction. 

But at least the skins were authentic. Most of these people were college-educated, tofu-eating, art-loving, Mountain Hardware-wearing pretenders. Seriously.

I mean these people weren’t true Berliners. They didn’t know how it felt, really felt, to grow up in a divided city. They didn’t live in Kreuzberg in the ‘80s, with the DDR breathing their cold communist breath around the backs of our necks while we tried to keep the Turks and the punks from fighting each other all the time. It was all we could do to lure them to the May Day protests and get them to focus their anger on the police.

But these fantards knew nothing of the blood and the sweat and the tears from that world. These freaking people were just bio-loving, child-bearing yuppies who think that Radiohead is, like, “a cool band.” These are the same people who’ve helped suck all the beautiful anguish and torment out of Prenzlauer Berg and turn it into a playground for rich new moms and gourmet restaurant-goers.

So we just left. The prospect of actually seeing Thom Yorke in person had cast quite a beautiful light in my unfocused eyes. But at this point, it all looked hopeless, and I was feeling a little down again, what with the beer and all the tranquilizers Autumn-Nikita gave me the other night at the Basbaum opening at the Eigen+Art gallery. I know. I know. But seriously, I could almost feel the spirit of Documenta in my freaking liver. I never thought my body could respond that way to art. But it might have just been the medications.

Berthold and I kind of cut down this small side road through the park near the main arena. And I see this car, and I’m thinking cool car, but how did this asshole get through security with his car?

And then, and you’re not going to believe this, I totally saw him. Right. Freakin. In. Front. Of. Me.

Of course Thom was way too cool to be on the band bus! What were we, stupid?

Before our very eyes, Thom gets out of this black ’67 BMW cabriolet that he’s just parked right in the friggin’ middle of the road. How cool is that? And at first he doesn’t see us because it looked like either he was going to lie on the grass to drink in the oneness of the summer sky or take a piss behind a tree. I don’t know.

“Thom!” I shouted. I couldn’t freakin’ believe it. I was meeting Thom Yorke.

Thom raised an eyebrow as if to look uninteresting as I rushed up to him. As if.

“First I want to say I’m sorry for my friends always saying you have such a whiny, nasally, British voice that’s like listening to fingernails scratching on a blackboard,” I blurted.

And Thom says, “Yeah. I get that sometimes. No worries, mate. Plus you can’t control what other people think.”

“Yeah, totally. And I always told them, you know, Thom’s voice is like an instrument from the angels, dude. It’s not like he just opens his mouth and, like, sings. His vocal chords emanate love and light and pain and suffering and shit. Think Nigel Kennedy’s violin when he’s playing Brahms’ violin concerto. It clouds the soul and lifts the mind. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Or something.”

And Thom’s eyes softened a little, and he said, “Thank you man. But now I have to go do the show.”

Then, just as he turned away I totally lost it and started to follow him. “Thom, you’ve helped me see through the dark when I didn’t have enough energy to create my own life and focus on what was important--me,” I gushed. “You were there when I had to get through the pain of my cat’s death alone because everyone else was wrapped up in their own selfish lives. I can’t thank you enough. You matter to me.”

And at that point I think I sort of grabbed his shoulder because next thing I know, he’s just whirled around and punched me right in the face. “Why don’t you fuck off and get your own fuckin’ life,” he says. And then Berthold is pulling me away, apologizing, saying in his most polite German accent, “I’m sorry, he’s not usually like this. It must be the mushrooms. The whole day he’s either been gushing about how amazing Radiohead is or running to the bathroom complaining of stomach cramps.”

“Those were fucking bio ’shrooms,” I spluttered as my lip started to bleed. “Bio. Because this is freakin’ Berlin, man. And this man here is a god.”

And Thom just walks away, swearing.

And at that point I think I sort of just collapsed on the ground from the awe and inspiration of it all. Next thing I remember the concert was over and I couldn’t speak any more—the warm, shiny glow of my aura was just too overwhelming.

I heard the show rocked, the energy in the crowd was amazing and that Thom was totally fired up (Berthold took pictures). And it was gratifying to know that I had a just little something to do with that.

I know you’re all saying, “No way this happened.” But it did. It totally did.

(photo credits to original photographers)

Make room for the Irish

Clearly the solution for the estimated 5-10,000 homeless people in Ireland is for them to go live with the crispies buying up apartments in New York. As one recent buyer comments, "It’s an Irishman’s dream to be able to go to Manhattan and be able to buy property there."

With an average life expectancy of only 42 years for a person sleeping rough in Ireland, sure they wouldn't be bothering you for long in your New York loft.

I'm falling in love all over again

Now, Leslie Feist may not know that she's my girlfriend. But that's never stopped our relationship blossoming these last few years.

I think it's finally time to just tell her once and for all. (I'm thinking a less direct approach than Borat's wedding sack, however; perhaps something a little more, well, windswept and interesting. But certainly no more having my geeky friends "anonymously" hand-deliver love poems I've written. I'm proud to say I stopped that since I turned 29.)

In any case, the new album "The Reminder," her third studio effort, is heartfelt, compelling, sometimes beautiful, and growing on me. Plus Feist knows how to hold an audience in the palm of her hand; which is why you'll find me and a few friends at the Fillmore on June 26. It's already sold out, I'm afraid, but the word is a second show will be added. So get on it if you're in the Bay Area.

Listen to "I feel it all" from Feist's just-released album.

"I don't know what I knew before. But now I know I want to win the war."

Halliburton solves global warming

I saw one of the most brilliant pieces of culture-jamming art I've ever experienced at The Andy Warhol Musuem in Pittsburgh today. In fact, every time I think of it, I can't stop laughing.

The Yes Men's Halliburton parody is in many ways so simple, yet so cleverly executed. And it has quite a delicious sense of the absurd.

At an insurance industry conference last year about disaster preparedness, in a presentation entitled "What Noah Knew," the Yes Men, posing as Halliburton executives, introduced the Halliburton SurvivaBall™, an invention for business executives designed to "save a human being, no matter what mother nature throws at him."

It's a large inflatable suit to weather any environmental disaster that might befall us. A gated community for one, if you will. The exhibit at the Warhol included several inflated SurvivaBalls™, video from the conference, video simulations of people in SurvivaBalls™ withstanding arduous weather conditions, and many fabulous illustrations of its myriad uses and capabilities, including this usage and safety card.

I love to see culture-jamming. Because it's fun. And creative. And because making people laugh is much more memorable than telling them what they're supposed to oppose, or who they should vote for.

I'll let Amy Goodman tell the story below, and you can check out more photos from the "Catastophic Loss" conference here.

Those pesky Guantanamo detainees

Those terrorists at Guantanamo are just never happy, no matter how much we do for them.

In case you missed it, the NYT reported yesterday that more than a dozen prisoners at the U.S. detention center there "are subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment."

You know, kind of like the way you subject yourself to your co-workers breaking wind. It was your choice to go to work, after all.

It reminded me of the indoctrinated news coverage of the prisoners who committed suicide at the prison last summer, whose deaths were (I'm not kidding) generally covered in the mainstream news media as a calculated assault on the United States. As I wrote at the time:

At first I wasn’t exactly sure what was behind the Guantanamo Bay suicides. But after reading the news reports carefully, I finally got it: we Americans are under attack from a bunch of guys rotting in their jail cells.

You see, the terrorists are trying to make us look like the bad guys by killing themselves while they’re supposed to be under 24/7 supervision. As Adm. Harry B. Harris explained to reporters, the men who committed suicide at Gitmo “have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own.” Harris believes the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

That’s right, these guys who choked themselves to death with their own bedding are a perfect example of how the United States is suffering more than anyone in this latest front in the war on terror.

First, media reports reveal that the three detainees had the audacity to avoid discovery by prison guards while they quietly offed themselves. Not happy to play by the rules, they apparently dispensed with the usual suicidal cry of, “Come quickly, I’m killing myself!”

To those of you who whine they were imprisoned for nearly four years without being charged with a crime, I say: Get used to the new reality, constitution geeks.

Next, they fashioned a noose out of their bed sheets. Allowing prisoners such “comfort items” as bed sheets and toiletries will now have to be reassessed, according to Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern Command. We’ve treated these people so well and this is how they repay us? Instead, the army says it will replace the standard issue Bed, Bath & Beyond “Egyptian” cotton sheets with recycled copies of Martha Stewart Living. Hey, it’s good enough for the homeless—plus you can learn how to etch your own suicide notes into ocean-worthy seashells.

Finally, the terrorists capped their carefully-staged prison revolt by unhurriedly hanging themselves until they asphyxiated. The army later said they would reconsider providing other luxury items at the prison such as three-speed brushed nickel ceiling fans, to which prisoners could potentially fasten a noose when they’re not cooling off after a long day of tropical confinement. I know the blinkered ACLU-loving beatniks will complain as usual—but everyone knows the wire cages at the lavish Cuban prison camp already boast A/C to temper the oppressive 110-degree heat.

You know we’re in trouble when it seems like the terrorists are winning the P.R. war against us.

The White House assured Americans that the deceased men were “committed terrorists,” according to the New York Times. Who amongst us actually needs to see evidence produced in court in order to believe the men who work for the president?

Just because the U.N. Committee Against Torture says detaining prisoners at Gitmo violates international law doesn’t mean that we can’t operate it according to basic business ground rules. So, tired of thwarting prisoners intent on hunger strikes by strapping them to restraining chairs and force feeding them through plastic tubes, President Bush announced additional measures the United States will undertake to prevent further suicides:

• All Guantanamo detainees will undergo “sensitivity training” to show them how much it hurts our feelings—and kinda makes us look bad—when they kill themselves in despair at being locked away indefinitely with no legal recourse;
• All newly-admitted detainees must complete a “prison application,” which requires prisoners to disclose all previous instances in which they have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge, and whether they tried to commit suicide there or not;
• To improve prisoners’ treatment by guards, “360-degree review” will be instituted, in which prisoners are encouraged to openly and honestly assess the job performances of the prison guards who terrorize them with dogs and occasionally urinate on their Korans;
• Some prisoners previously transferred from Abu Ghraib will be allowed to leave, on condition that they sign “confidentiality agreements,” in which on-the-job skills such as balancing, hooded, on a wooden box while attached to electrodes and remaining calm in their restraints while being sodomized by a broomstick* couldn’t be disclosed to future jailors, in order to avert leaking any “trade secrets.”

It’s understandable if we occasionally feel just a little bit bad for these evildoers, especially if some of them are merely shepherds from rural Afghanistan who were attracted by our shiny yellow food ration packs—or was that a cluster bomb?

And so what if 25 other Gitmo prisoners previously attempted to commit suicide there? It’s still the Caribbean.

But we can’t forget who the real victim is in this latest terrorist plot—the United States of America. Remember, our enemies only engage in shallow propaganda stunts such as committing suicide while indefinitely imprisoned without trial because they hate our freedoms, our generosity and our love for the rule of law.

*Actually happened, according to a U.S. Army report.